PVP is broken

Unknown

The only way to do well in PVE is to have characters that are so intimidating that no one will bother challenging you. In the final hour of the last PVP event, I went undefeated in matches that I started, winning ten in a row for 15-30 points each. As a reward for my efforts, I ended up netting -200 points and dropping 30 or so slots in the standings. It is infuriating to see that you were beaten three times every single time you come out of a winning watch. I feel like I am constantly being punished because the AI is too stupid to play my characters for me.

One possible solution would be to not penalize the player whatsoever when the AI loses a match for them. However, they should be docked twice as a many points when they pick a fight and lose. Another benefit to this would be that players would play an event the day it starts and not just wait until the final day to quickly climb up the ranks with big points just waiting to be taken and no one bothering to fight them.

I'm sick and tired of doing poorly in events because of factors that I have absolutely no control over.

scottee

I'm pretty sure you mean PVP, not PVE.

And yes, it can be infuriating to push up high only to come out of a match with four losses losing you a hundred points.

Pretty much, don't except to win any fights on defense. Offense has too many advantages. Also, the last hour is definitely the most active, as everyone's trying to make a last minute push, meaning everyone not shielded takes a lot of hits.

Best advice is push at the end like you are so you can start gaining HP. If you're not finishing high enough for that yet, keep working on strengthening your roster. You'll get there eventually.

Once you don't have to use all your HP on roster spots and can spare a little shields, make your big last push about 3.5 hours before the event ends. Then as soon as you start running out of health packs, it should be just under 3 hours left in the event, and you can put up a 3-hour shield that costs 75 HP. Once your roster's strong enough, you'll be able to do this to win good covers and still profit a little bit of HP.

But yes, it takes a while to get to this point.

atomzed

Agree with scotee.

Sometimes it feels like you are among a pack of wolves, as soon as your shield drops, they come rushing in hordes.

However, your suggestion will break the game. While defense by the AI is weaker, this makes it more important to have a line up that deters ppl from attacking. Tanky heroes like hulk makes people pause to consider before attacking.

If we adopt your suggestion of no points loss in defense, then it means that it's purely a race of offense. You will end up seeing glass cannons team, like a lot more storm and mmn teams (for 2*), as people don't care about defense.

This will have an effect on the meta and you will probably see the same teams over and over again in pvp. Is that fun? Not in my opinion as I like variety.

Linkster79

atomzed wrote:

This will have an effect on the meta and you will probably see the same teams over and over again in pvp. Is that fun? Not in my opinion as I like variety.

Currently my PvP matches are all OBW, Thor and a L23 Loki. I skip 3 or 4 times and may see a Daken, Ares combo a few more skips and back to OBW and Thor.

Trying to break 800 but keep getting hit by teams with 2x141, which my L121 C.Mags is struggling to carry the other 2 team mates.

atomzed

Linkster79 wrote:

atomzed wrote:

This will have an effect on the meta and you will probably see the same teams over and over again in pvp. Is that fun? Not in my opinion as I like variety.

Currently my PvP matches are all OBW, Thor and a L23 Loki. I skip 3 or 4 times and may see a Daken, Ares combo a few more skips and back to OBW and Thor.

Trying to break 800 but keep getting hit by teams with 2x141, which my L121 C.Mags is struggling to carry the other 2 team mates.

At 2*, obw, Ares and thor are among the best, so its no surprise to see them the most. And theynare equally good in offense and defense.

At higher level, you see a mix of high hp defense team like hulk. Hulk is medicore in offense but he's good I'm def, and the fact that ppl played him is to beef up on defense.

And oh, 1 reason why the suggestion will not be implemented is that it will take away the need for shields. I doubt d3 will remove a HP sink.

NorthernPolarity

atomzed wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

atomzed wrote:

This will have an effect on the meta and you will probably see the same teams over and over again in pvp. Is that fun? Not in my opinion as I like variety.

Currently my PvP matches are all OBW, Thor and a L23 Loki. I skip 3 or 4 times and may see a Daken, Ares combo a few more skips and back to OBW and Thor.

Trying to break 800 but keep getting hit by teams with 2x141, which my L121 C.Mags is struggling to carry the other 2 team mates.

At 2*, obw, Ares and thor are among the best, so its no surprise to see them the most. And theynare equally good in offense and defense.

At higher level, you see a mix of high hp defense team like hulk. Hulk is medicore in offense but he's good I'm def, and the fact that ppl played him is to beef up on defense.

And oh, 1 reason why the suggestion will not be implemented is that it will take away the need for shields. I doubt d3 will remove a HP sink.

I think Hulk's a pretty bad investment nowadays. I agree with the defense being important, but Hulk's lack of offense really really hurts in most PvP tournaments that devolve to a 2v2 tournament. The current tournament for instance, requires you to use Loki which almost no one has leveled, so it's going to be on your other 2 guys to carry your team. This means that using Hulk is pretty bad since it means that only one guy on your team is doing all of the heavy lifting. The meta's now shifted such that BP/LazyThor are your goto guys for defense since they're a lot better on offense than Hulk ever will be.

Unknown

I think Hulk is more used offensively than defensively because it's really just not that hard to either stun Hulk or build enough AP to take him out in one turn. Yes occasional user errors can lead to a rough Anger counter cascade but user error can lead to all kinds of incredible wipeouts and it's hardly limited to Hulk. Of course the problem with using Hulk offensively is that you can't take enough damage to trigger Anger unless something like Judgment is already on the board, but it's kind of backwards to purposely let the enemy get a significant attack like Judgment just to trigger Anger.

The AI is irrelevent because if the AI was awesome on defense (and it can easily be), people would just posting about cheating AI always pulling crazy moves and you'd never have those points you're trying to defend in the first place, because you'd end up losing a lot to the same AI that you're hoping to defend for you. It's because the AI is weak so that you even have all that point to lose in the first place.

danae

For me, I think the reason why Hulk is a good deterrent is that people don't want to play against him because in the time that if would take you to kill him off, you might possibly have lost more points from other people's attack on your team.

atomzed

NorthernPolarity wrote:

atomzed wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

atomzed wrote:

This will have an effect on the meta and you will probably see the same teams over and over again in pvp. Is that fun? Not in my opinion as I like variety.

Currently my PvP matches are all OBW, Thor and a L23 Loki. I skip 3 or 4 times and may see a Daken, Ares combo a few more skips and back to OBW and Thor.

Trying to break 800 but keep getting hit by teams with 2x141, which my L121 C.Mags is struggling to carry the other 2 team mates.

At 2*, obw, Ares and thor are among the best, so its no surprise to see them the most. And theynare equally good in offense and defense.

At higher level, you see a mix of high hp defense team like hulk. Hulk is medicore in offense but he's good I'm def, and the fact that ppl played him is to beef up on defense.

And oh, 1 reason why the suggestion will not be implemented is that it will take away the need for shields. I doubt d3 will remove a HP sink.

I think Hulk's a pretty bad investment nowadays. I agree with the defense being important, but Hulk's lack of offense really really hurts in most PvP tournaments that devolve to a 2v2 tournament. The current tournament for instance, requires you to use Loki which almost no one has leveled, so it's going to be on your other 2 guys to carry your team. This means that using Hulk is pretty bad since it means that only one guy on your team is doing all of the heavy lifting. The meta's now shifted such that BP/LazyThor are your goto guys for defense since they're a lot better on offense than Hulk ever will be.

Agree that BP and LT are much better than hulk in defense AND offense. they are still tanky, and their moves hurt. But from what I am seeing, hulk seems to be more common than those other 2 characters. Which is why I mentioned him.

If you have a high level BP and LT (Lvl 115 and above), to you are probably better off using them for offense and defence.

Unknown

danae wrote:

For me, I think the reason why Hulk is a good deterrent is that people don't want to play against him because in the time that if would take you to kill him off, you might possibly have lost more points from other people's attack on your team.

That's true when hulk first dropped and the nearest hp of a relevant character was 5,800. Not so much when thor breaks 8k (bp too?Or is he only to 7k range?) and both have far superior moves. Almost Any time hulk wins you a round it due to a really horrible mistakenly near kill turning into multiple cascades and uses of his green. When thor gets 28 green its game over. Even 14 green for thor can end matches fast by knocking out whomever you had holding onto most of your ap. Thir getting his yellow often means he gets his green in the same match. Usually that means you lost minimum on character. Compare with hulk who you likely can keep away from green and red enough to kill even slowly via match damage if you have to.

As for why hulk is seen more...simply that thor is a very new character and bp is pretty new but hasn't been part of a lot of the rewards yet. Hulk was release late December on comparison. Besides that, thor isn't all that rare. Bp is a little more rare, but still not uncommon on high lvl teams. Hulk is like punisher before he kinda got moved up in tier via other characters being nerfed....decent character who ppl had lots of covers for for a number of reasons...and so they used him.

Hulk is only even somewhat a deterrent compared with 5.8k opponents..not bp or thor. I'd still rather fight any other 5.8k or lower hp 3*** over hulk simply due to hp....in a vacuum. Thing is, most ppl have hulk obw or hulk/other high lvl. Hulk + high lvls means you might be skipping anyway (note that hulk gains more hp per a lvl than most, and since hp is what determines his def usefulness...30 lvls lower means more for him than say punisher or magneto) while he is a badatch with obw imo unlees you have a high lvl required character because obw purple wins rounds because it steals AND gives...not just steals. With hulk, you lose the whole reason obw can win def fights imo.

Phaserhawk

I had some unbelievable defensive wins with Army of One with Punisher/OBW/Hood. I would lose 30 but gain 45 it was hilarious. I went from 3rd to 1st a couple of times from defense only with that. I would get pushed down (i was shielded) all of a sudden I'm in first again due to defenseive wins.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I had some unbelievable defensive wins with Army of One with Punisher/OBW/Hood. I would lose 30 but gain 45 it was hilarious. I went from 3rd to 1st a couple of times from defense only with that. I would get pushed down (i was shielded) all of a sudden I'm in first again due to defenseive wins.

I said it in the 'LT v Punisher' thread, but I have a ton of trouble against Punisher/OBW teams. Punisher's green is so cheap he can sometimes get off two of them by the time you eliminate OBW. Because you're more focused on denying her black/purple. Then you're scrambling to knockout those strike tiles as they are ripping through your team.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

I'm pretty sure you mean PVP, not PVE.

And yes, it can be infuriating to push up high only to come out of a match with four losses losing you a hundred points.

Pretty much, don't except to win any fights on defense. Offense has too many advantages. Also, the last hour is definitely the most active, as everyone's trying to make a last minute push, meaning everyone not shielded takes a lot of hits.

Best advice is push at the end like you are so you can start gaining HP. If you're not finishing high enough for that yet, keep working on strengthening your roster. You'll get there eventually.

Once you don't have to use all your HP on roster spots and can spare a little shields, make your big last push about 3.5 hours before the event ends. Then as soon as you start running out of health packs, it should be just under 3 hours left in the event, and you can put up a 3-hour shield that costs 75 HP. Once your roster's strong enough, you'll be able to do this to win good covers and still profit a little bit of HP.

But yes, it takes a while to get to this point.

I question the shields sometimes. After day 1 of Loki I went to bed without putting a shield up. I had over 500 points at that time. I woke to 9 attacks and 2 defenses and over 100 points lost. Because I was going to work and had been attacked so much I decided to put an 8 hour shield up. I didn't get attacked once. My shield fell and the attacks began again. I did some battling and brought myself back to about 600 points and added a 3 hour shield as I was going to be too busy to play. Again I didn't get attacked once. My shield fell and I got attacked within 5 minutes. Again I battled and put a 3 hour shield up with about 3.5 hours left. I never got attacked again. Then in the last 30 minutes when my shield fell I couldn’t battle enough to keep up with the attacks.

This added to the fact that I feel like I can't even go to bed without having to spend money on the game has me a bit disgruntled. The only thing that keeps me from raging about this is know I'm not the only one.

Unknown

CoolB76 wrote:

I question the shields sometimes. After day 1 of Loki I went to bed without putting a shield up. I had over 500 points at that time. I woke to 9 attacks and 2 defenses and over 100 points lost. Because I was going to work and had been attacked so much I decided to put an 8 hour shield up. I didn't get attacked once. My shield fell and the attacks began again. I did some battling and brought myself back to about 600 points and added a 3 hour shield as I was going to be too busy to play. Again I didn't get attacked once. My shield fell and I got attacked within 5 minutes. Again I battled and put a 3 hour shield up with about 3.5 hours left. I never got attacked again. Then in the last 30 minutes when my shield fell I couldn’t battle enough to keep up with the attacks.

This added to the fact that I feel like I can't even go to bed without having to spend money on the game has me a bit disgruntled. The only thing that keeps me from raging about this is know I'm not the only one.

You do know that (unless your username begins with K) putting on a shield means that people don't see you on their nodes anymore except for retaliations, right?

Unknown

gamar wrote:

CoolB76 wrote:

I question the shields sometimes. After day 1 of Loki I went to bed without putting a shield up. I had over 500 points at that time. I woke to 9 attacks and 2 defenses and over 100 points lost. Because I was going to work and had been attacked so much I decided to put an 8 hour shield up. I didn't get attacked once. My shield fell and the attacks began again. I did some battling and brought myself back to about 600 points and added a 3 hour shield as I was going to be too busy to play. Again I didn't get attacked once. My shield fell and I got attacked within 5 minutes. Again I battled and put a 3 hour shield up with about 3.5 hours left. I never got attacked again. Then in the last 30 minutes when my shield fell I couldn’t battle enough to keep up with the attacks.

This added to the fact that I feel like I can't even go to bed without having to spend money on the game has me a bit disgruntled. The only thing that keeps me from raging about this is know I'm not the only one.

You do know that (unless your username begins with K) putting on a shield means that people don't see you on their nodes anymore except for retaliations, right?

No I didn't know that. I thought it just protected your points. Maybe I just wasn’t being retaliated much this time but in the past I have been attacked numerous times with a shield up so I assumed it was to protect points only.

Unknown

rooter wrote:

The only way to do well in PVE is to have characters that are so intimidating that no one will bother challenging you. In the final hour of the last PVE event, I went undefeated in matches that I started, winning ten in a row for 15-30 points each. As a reward for my efforts, I ended up netting -200 points and dropping 30 or so slots in the standings. It is infuriating to see that you were beaten three times every single time you come out of a winning watch. I feel like I am constantly being punished because the AI is too stupid to play my characters for me.

One possible solution would be to not penalize the player whatsoever when the AI loses a match for them. However, they should be docked twice as a many points when they pick a fight and lose. Another benefit to this would be that players would play an event the day it starts and not just wait until the final day to quickly climb up the ranks with big points just waiting to be taken and no one bothering to fight them.

I'm sick and tired of doing poorly in events because of factors that I have absolutely no control over.

You need to also remember the reason why you are winning all those fights is because the AI is too stupid to play other people's characters for them. A true PVP, where your enemy actually makes the best matches, doesn't skip 5s, and chooses who you attack would result in a lot more losses. So instead of a system where the player wins about half the time on offense or defense, they made it so you almost always win offense and almost always win defense. Then how good your team is in making people skip you, plus how fast you can win offensively change those ratios so you can get higher.

Dormammu

rooter wrote:

The only way to do well in PVE is to have characters that are so intimidating that no one will bother challenging you.

This is an accurate statement. In fact, it is about the only reliable defense against an attacker who holds every advantage. But 'doing well' in PvP is a relative term.

When I was in the 1* to 2* transition I was pleased with a top 200 finish and the 2* cover placement reward. I found top 200 was easily achievable with a maxed 1* team, and as my 2* guys started becoming more viable I started creeping into the top 50 once in a while. Once I had my 2* team solidified and near-maxed, top 50 became much more reliable and the 3* cover placement rewards started showing up for me to make the next transition. During this time I kept my placement expectations realistic. I knew top 10 would be difficult, and winning a tournament was not possible. But top 50 and a 3* cover was not hard and kept me moving forward.

I sometimes feel as though people who complain about how frustrating PvP is are unrealistic about their placement (I'm not pointing fingers at Rooter, I have no idea where he/she is at roster-wise). PvP is not about playing more than everyone else, like PvE. It's about that slow climb of building your roster over months. Players who have maxed 2* teams think if they just play more matches than anyone else they deserve to be able to win the tournament, but that isn't how it works - players with multiple maxed-out 3* characters struggle to win tournaments. Being able to reliably finish in the top 10 takes months and months of time (or a lot of money) to do, and I wonder if people get too impatient.

Shields are a necessary evil as well, as they are the only way to hold position. If you can't afford to shield it's a nearly-impossible meat-grinder at the end. I wish shields were a little cheaper, but the devs gotta do what they gotta do to put food on the table, I suppose.

Unknown

Removing the point loss is not gonna happen, shields must be a pretty good source of revenue right now.

I'd like to see something like what other F2P games have, where you get shielded for a while after losing a certain number of points/matches. Of course attacking would break the shield, but this way you wouldn't lose half your points while you are at the bathroom or something.

But then again, shield-hopping seems more profitable.

Unknown

Dormammu wrote:

rooter wrote:

The only way to do well in PVE is to have characters that are so intimidating that no one will bother challenging you.

This is an accurate statement. In fact, it is about the only reliable defense against an attacker who holds every advantage. But 'doing well' in PvP is a relative term.

When I was in the 1* to 2* transition I was pleased with a top 200 finish and the 2* cover placement reward. I found top 200 was easily achievable with a maxed 1* team, and as my 2* guys started becoming more viable I started creeping into the top 50 once in a while. Once I had my 2* team solidified and near-maxed, top 50 became much more reliable and the 3* cover placement rewards started showing up for me to make the next transition. During this time I kept my placement expectations realistic. I knew top 10 would be difficult, and winning a tournament was not possible. But top 50 and a 3* cover was not hard and kept me moving forward.

I sometimes feel as though people who complain about how frustrating PvP is are unrealistic about their placement (I'm not pointing fingers at Rooter, I have no idea where he/she is at roster-wise). PvP is not about playing more than everyone else, like PvE. It's about that slow climb of building your roster over months. Players who have maxed 2* teams think if they just play more matches than anyone else they deserve to be able to win the tournament, but that isn't how it works - players with multiple maxed-out 3* characters struggle to win tournaments. Being able to reliably finish in the top 10 takes months and months of time (or a lot of money) to do, and I wonder if people get too impatient.

Shields are a necessary evil as well, as they are the only way to hold position. If you can't afford to shield it's a nearly-impossible meat-grinder at the end. I wish shields were a little cheaper, but the devs gotta do what they gotta do to put food on the table, I suppose.

The "problem" is more like what the OP is saying... it's not that he's losing, it's HOW he's losing

When you get stuck in an MMR "pocket" where all you see is the same 5 level 141 teams, or the same 5 15-point matches, no matter how much you skip; and when the point ratios make it extremely difficult to progress because outside of shield-hopping the reward/risk ratio is so low, you get this perception that you're being beaten by the system, not the game, which is extremely frustrating.

user311

I wish there was a mirror match or something you could try out. That way you could learn the way the AI will play with your team. I love how I can play with GSBW and lay down my green tiles perfectly to make matches. The AI just randomly places them. I understand the AI is going to avoid 5 in a row but I'll settle for 4 over randomness. So for this, I avoid using using her because I know the AI will get killed before getting 13 greens. Theres other scenarios that the AI prefers, and I think if you are going into PVP you need to be ready for the strange way that your team will be played.