Developer/Vetran Player Question: Player Advancement

Unknown

I have a few questions that I would like to pose to the community and or more importantly the developers. I've been playing Marvel Puzzle Question about 2 months and have spent a significant amount of time and money trying to catch up to the players who have been playing since the games release last year. I really enjoy the game and don't mind monetarily supporting a game that I enjoy playing and is continually updated. I have however; like many other players, run into a brick wall which prompted me to check the forums to see if other members of the community have been experiencing the same problems that I have.

First, let me be forthcoming and explain briefly how I am playing. During a PvP event I join the event as soon as it starts shoot my way up the rankings as high as I am able utilizing health-packs, OBW healing, and the PVE Prologue to heal so I can continually play without having to stop. I play the event throughout the events time-span until I am able to shield between rank 2 - 25 and hope for the best for the next 8 - 24 hours. During the last hour of the event, if necessary, I make another huge push and again hope for the best. I have had very good results with this method; however, as I mentioned previously, I think by doing this I have suddenly pigeon holed myself into an MMR bracket that I can handle no longer handle. The last two events I was unable to place below rank 50 which was frustrating because I was being pitted against all players around level 141. I was being continually defeated even while using buffs. I am currently playing 85 Ares, A.Wolverine, OBW, and a level 103 Steve Rogers with the most recommended character builds.

After checking the forums I found out that I may have been playing to much, utilizing heals, and not tanking. Here is where I get confused: I enjoy the game and want to gain ISO and Covers to upgrade my favorite characters; however, I feel like I am being penalized for playing to much. Judging from the other various posts on the forums I feel like there is a specific method to play this game. It seems like if I don't follow the this specific method I won't advance in a timely manner and will in many cases be shut out of events as a result of difficulty.

Some players are going as far as using a tanking method to lower their MMR by suiciding their entire squad over an over again during a lightning round or PvP event. This is apparently done over and over again until their MMR reach a normal level. This sounds very boring as well as a huge waste of time. I am not at all interested in doing this. I am here to win, not waste my time purposely losing.

What I would like to know is how am I supposed to play this game? It appears if I play this game and grind like in an MMO my MMR will get so high that I will be unable to place where I want in events. When this game was envisioned did the developers expect players to play occasionally or spent a lot of time playing. Again, if anyone has any constructive feedback I'd really like to hear it. I am sure I am not the only one who is confused with how to play this game.

Humble Regards,
Diz

scottee

I'd suggest not shielding so early. Move up high, but then you'll naturally take loses. I usually casually push up to 700ish and then just walk away. All the natural attacks knock me down maybe 200 points at most. But then you have lots of retaliations worth a chunk, and you're MMR is within normal ranges. Then make a big push and shield til the end of the event.

By shielding early, the computer has only seen you go on a huge winning streak. Then when you try to push at the last minute, it sees you trying to extend that winning streak into the cosmos.

I usually don't shield for most of an event, make a big push 8 hours before the end, put up an 8-hour shield, and come out ahead in HP and with a top 10 placement.

LordWill

Welcome to the forum Diz.

I just wanted to say, you aren't alone. More and more players are starting to see issues and coming to the forums for help.

The best advice I can give you is stick around and read the forums. We don't have it all figured out and we're just as mystified at some of the game mechanics as you are.

NorthernPolarity

Yeah, this game definitely punishes you for playing efficiently. I believe PvP tanking has been changed such that it's nowhere near as effective as it was before, so for PvP you can just continue playing like you normally do. I would not join PvP events as soon as they open since people who are more into the game would join then as well, so you would have to compete with those people for your rankings.

Unknown

You have the answer and you don't like it.

Either tank or fight strong players. Not much else to it.

Unknown

Sounds like your trying to move to a three star team. I found that point in my game playing the most difficult. I never really got into tanking too much, and I made it out. The hard part is that you will be fighting harder teams until you can pull your roster up. Level your cap and then focus on another three star. It will be a while before you get back to where you were (meaning winning top 10). The game seems to give beginners a bit of an advantage with earning top positions. For example in my brackets top five positions are usually held by people with low level 2 stars or high level 1 stars. I have 141 three stars and can pull the top 10 every now and again, but when I ran with my two star teams it was no problem at all. Best of luck.

over_clocked

What scottee said. Try to land easier brackets by joining at off-times, you have all the time in the world to climb as high as you can, there is absolutely no need to join early unless you desperately need some progression rewards and ISO. Do let other people to hit on you when you are not making your final push - it's passive tanking and it works.

wirius

You have to understand, the game is designed to be fair, and give people of all MMR's a chance. You've been winning. A LOT. So the algorithm is going to think, o.k., we want to put him in a bracket that's a little more difficult each time, until he can't handle it anymore.

And that's how YOU'VE been able to win all this time. You didn't have to compete with 141's, until now. Didn't mean they didn't exist in the game. But they were winning a lot, so you never saw them.

The game is not about you winning all the time. Period. Its not designed that way, and never will be. Its about finding your appropriate challenge level.

Want not to be stonewalled at 141's? Lose a couple of events that don't matter. Stop trying to win everything before you have a 141 roster. Shoot to get one good 3 completed, then things will roll easier, and you'll be able to handle your increased MMR gain.

Don't forget, YOU have been benefitting from the very system you're decrying right now. Now instead of other people having to face harder challenges, while you've coasted, its your turn to pay the piper. "You got yours". Now its time to let others do the same for a few rounds.

Unknown

^^ Don't think i'd agree the game is designed to be "fair". I think it's designed to try and get you to spend money as much as possible without totally pissing you off .

As far as the OP's problem, since you purely talked about PvP then healing doesn't matter. That's a dumb PvE mechanic and healing in PvP doesn't make an impact as far as anyone can tell. Instead it's just wins vs losses.

The main problem with your approach is going hell for leather early then shielding. Weirdly it makes more money for the devs so you'd think they would encourage you but the opposite is true. You end up facing a lot of people with low scores because no-one has really got going yet, so you rack up a hell of a lot of wins to get to your score, then shielding stops you taking any losses to help balance things out.

You would be much better off not shielding, taking some losses then getting those points back before using a shorter shield nearer to the end of the event. Also consider putting in a tank team occasionally at the start of an event (be there right at the beginning, save one of the really weak seed teams, get a few hundred points then beat that team with your **** heroes).

In both PvP AND PvE you want to think about points per match as your main guide. You want to get as much as possible for the minimum possible wins, throwing in some losses that don't cost you much to help balance things out (in PvP for example you lose very little for a loss in the low hundreds points, it only really hurts when your score is higher). The mechanics basically reward playing as little as you can get away with.

Unknown

dizlegion wrote:

Some players are going as far as using a tanking method to lower their MMR by suiciding their entire squad over an over again during a lightning round or PvP event. This is apparently done over and over again until their MMR reach a normal level. This sounds very boring as well as a huge waste of time. I am not at all interested in doing this. I am here to win, not waste my time purposely losing.

Very good observation. Too bad you already supported the game with your real money, so making yourself part of the problem too. At this point your options are really limited. Namely you can chose between playing along with all the braindead design elements, and have a chance to win something -- or continue with your ideals and keep losing. Oh yeah, the third option is to leave it.

dizlegion wrote:

What I would like to know is how am I supposed to play this game? It appears if I play this game and grind like in an MMO my MMR will get so high that I will be unable to place where I want in events. When this game was envisioned did the developers expect players to play occasionally or spent a lot of time playing. Again, if anyone has any constructive feedback I'd really like to hear it. I am sure I am not the only one who is confused with how to play this game.

The picture is not completely clear as there are some changes for a week or so that are not figured out yet. Up until that point PVP was on a really simple formula, the devs used a scoring system resembling Elo points, completely ignoring the fact it was created for completely different kind of tournaments and where applied, used in a different ways too. (Namely, having big Elo points is quite a benefit, while in MPQ it has zero gain and applies massive disadvantage.)

So simply put you were supposed to lose in order to keep your rating low and get lower opponents. Smart players made separation by time or place, as most of the count is global and carried over -- so lost where or when id does not count in prize terms and won where they were interested in going for it.

Yes, it is waste, it is boring, and yes, the game keeps penalizing you if you play too many good games. At least in PVP it seem only the win/loss counts and it is relatively simple to manage -- though it is not much different from having an "I win" button as soon as you have a relatively strong party eliminating much of the fun from real competition. OTOH the competition was never real for a moment as you just attack the AI in any case. In tournament structure there are more problematic elements than this (like MMR circles and no cooldown for attacks.)

For PVE the problems are much much deeper and you're supposed to do all kinds of suboptimal plays to avoid directed penalties; while the whole field is massively slanted to start with and on top most of the quirks is obscure.

The only effective way against it would really be on the monetary field -- f people refused to support this ****, devs would start to actually listen (or take the money and run...), until most just keep compensating with spending and support these ways we will not have anything better for sure.

Unknown

wirius wrote:

You have to understand, the game is designed to be fair, and give people of all MMR's a chance.

And what kind of "fair" is that? Along that idea the actually fair solution would be just use a flat random generator to hand out the prizes ignoring every other element.

If it is treated as competition, then it is the very opposite of fair, like arranging box matches where lighter players can use knuckles or pistols.

Just read up how mmr-based structure works for for actual good, like in a Swiss-system tournament, you will soon discover it has no resemblance on what we have in MPQ, nothing even close.

wirius

pasa_ wrote:

wirius wrote:

You have to understand, the game is designed to be fair, and give people of all MMR's a chance.

And what kind of "fair" is that? Along that idea the actually fair solution would be just use a flat random generator to hand out the prizes ignoring every other element.

If it is treated as competition, then it is the very opposite of fair, like arranging box matches where lighter players can use knuckles or pistols.

Just read up how mmr-based structure works for for actual good, like in a Swiss-system tournament, you will soon discover it has no resemblance on what we have in MPQ, nothing even close.

I'll expound upon what I wrote. Even with a low 1* roster, its possible to get number one in a tournament with MMR the way it is. Its designed to let players win early, so they have fun and feel accomplishments. For those lower players to win, (i.e, the OP) someone else has to face harder opponents instead. The fairest way to do this is put the people who keep winning a lot in the brackets with other people who keep winning a lot.

Thus everyone has an easy start, and it keeps ramping up the more you win. The cap is when you arrive at having 3 141's. At that point, your MMR can't really go any higher, and everyone is on the same page (if everyone has the 3 141's to fight with at the time)

Trust me, you love the system. Its why you've been able to just go, then shield up. But in the end, you've got to be that person who has to fight harder eventually, so people lower and newer then you can have the easy fun you did as well.

Everyone loves the system, until the inevitable consequence of that system arrives.

Unknown

wirius wrote:

I'll expound upon what I wrote. Even with a low 1* roster, its possible to get number one in a tournament with MMR the way it is.

For the record, current (at least week-ago) PVP structure does not allow that really, and after reaching dome points (was around 700) MMR gets mostly ignored and you're offered as public target. It used to be a lot but lately points went up due to alliances and now even more sue to Season. so the MMR-based advantage for *s is only good for something outside T10. Still not bad at all, just nothing like number one. (What is a tough call even with several*120+ roster, with safe go for 2-10.)

For PVE is is actually easier to win subs with negligible roster and one cover of the featured her -- not sure how that stands up for whole tournament but I kinda recall to see that nonsense even close to end of the Hunt.

wirius wrote:

Its designed to let players win early, so they have fun and feel accomplishments. For those lower players to win, (i.e, the OP) someone else has to face harder opponents instead.

No doubt about that, D3 wants newbies to win well over their due to get hooked and to make them pay for cover slots. No debate here. I only debate the assertion that this cheating practice can be called "fair" using any traditional, non-Orwellian meaning.

wirius wrote:

The fairest way to do this is put the people who keep winning a lot in the brackets with other people who keep winning a lot.

No, the actually fair way would be to creat the scoring brackets using the MMR or roster strength or day count or whatever value. (Preferably for different prizes matching the expertise). Or create such arenas for the players' exclusive selection.

wirius wrote:

Trust me, you love the system.

Huh? Your mind-reading skills are not up to the task really. Sure many players love that at the start until they grow to the sucker side and realize the progression they thought the game is about is undermined. Guess people also like the freebie narcotic samples handed out.

Unknown

When you join an event too early, you drastically increase the odds of needing a higher score to "place" in an ideal reward tier.


So, you need to decide which is more important to you ... high rewards or more ISO. If you want a good chance of placing in the top 5, you should join an event with 12-36 hours left. That way you only need about 600-1000 points to hit the leaderboard. You can easily grind up those points in a few hours of play and maybe one shield. Of course, you will probably be forgoing thousands of ISO's from not playing as much.

So, for one event, try to join with 12-14 hours left and see how it works out for you.

Also, your healing and playing time has no effect on your PvP (player v player) ranking. That has more to do with your PvE ranking (we assume).

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

When you join an event too early, you drastically increase the odds of needing a higher score to "place" in an ideal reward tier.

LOL, that always remind mi this: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5735&hilit=memes&start=80#p105198

and more experience about "smart" joining and getting into similar helluva bracket. If the brackets are big and you chose an off time it may leave a huge timeframe to collect big rosters. In hot period it fills in minutes. So I'm not really sure if early join is necessarily that bad really.

Certainly it's a good idea to experiment with different join times and advance strategies.

What worked for me best a few months ago still having medium roster was to climb to 400-ish and sit there for a day unshielded. Point loss is way too low and attack rate also as that is not an impressive target. So I either keep the points or collect good retals to start the push. Then climb from there to final position in the last 8 or 3 hours and shield.

NorthernPolarity

Toxicadam wrote:

When you join an event too early, you drastically increase the odds of needing a higher score to "place" in an ideal reward tier.


So, you need to decide which is more important to you ... high rewards or more ISO. If you want a good chance of placing in the top 5, you should join an event with 12-36 hours left. That way you only need about 600-1000 points to hit the leaderboard. You can easily grind up those points in a few hours of play and maybe one shield. Of course, you will probably be forgoing thousands of ISO's from not playing as much.

So, for one event, try to join with 12-14 hours left and see how it works out for you.

Also, your healing and playing time has no effect on your PvP (player v player) ranking. That has more to do with your PvE ranking (we assume).

I don't really agree with losing out on iso: the time you spent trying to maintain a good tournament ranking can just be spent grinding shield training for the same iso. You might get less iso purely from psychological reasons of not having incentive to grind shield training, but thats more on you than playing early actually getting you more iso.

I don't really see any reason not to join later as opposed to earlier aside from timing passive tanking to coincide with the tournament.

Wolarsen

I love the game and got quite hooked, but i find the system WAY far from fairness...

Before anything else, time constrains; as Polarity says, what you do before the last 24 hours of the event is practically irrelevant (excep for getting more ISO and the chance of putting 300 and 600 progression rewards into good use). If you cannot actively play during the last hour of each event, you really need to use a shield.

Second, as Pasa says, once you pass 700 points something changes and the big 3*** sharks appear; I use a 2** roster (2 maxed and a 12 cover OBW), and at 800 points I need like 10 skips to get a 2** enemy team or similar. I got so confused when i realized I was being attacked by a power roster wich wasnt even in my bracket (I had 15ish rating and could see ratings from 1st to 20th). I also agree with him on the need to match you with similar players, but I find hard to select a good system; roster strenght looks a way to go, but how can you compare for example a roster with 1x lvl120 3* char with another with say 7x lvl 70 3*? A maxed Bagman/MHawkeye/Bullseye vs a Thor/OBW/Wolverine?

Unless you have a full 141 roster, I would recommend checking a streak of event results in order to roughly know the rating needed for each reward rank (I find it surprisingly stable); decide what reward you are aiming for and what shield you are willing to spend; make your push before the lenght shield you chose, shield up and hope for a good result. Feels bad when you get bypassed by players playing/shielding after you, but you also have a chance to actually raise as the players who already had you on scope at the time you shield can still lose to you, granting points; I once shielded at 11 and woke up being 9 for an extra cover, SO groovy!

Unknown

The pvp is cruel, you need a better roster (3 141s) to be able to place at the top frequently, and you also have to find a lucky bracket.
I dont recommend joining the events right after they start, because lots of players do that, it's hard for you to get an easy bracket.
Best chance for you is to get as many points as possible 24 or 8 hours before the events end and shield up.

simonsez

pasa_ wrote:

Certainly it's a good idea to experiment with different join times and advance strategies.

I learned the hard way during the Loki event that the worst time to join is right after a pve cycle ends. Apparently, that's when all the savvy people decided to start pvp, since they were done with pve for a while.