Changes to PVP bracket creation? Devs please comment

Unknown

So after the last couple of PVP events, the points required to place in top 10 of a PVP for most of the forumites is now ~1100 point and crazy competitive. we also have folks that are in brackets were 600+ is taking the top 5 spot. Below are two examples from Top Gun:

High - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6960&start=260#p134792
Low - viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6960&start=260#p134816

Are we now being put into brackets based on our MMR?

Thanks!

Unknown

I started an alt to see how long it would take to build fully covered starter heroes under the new PVP cover award system. I will join the Rag tourney with both accounts simultaneously and see where I end up. On Sunday I will take a look at the top scores in both brackets if they are different.

Back in a few.

UPDATE: My alt and I are in different brackets. Both of them are sparsely populated right now and the leaders both have less than 50 points right now.

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

I started an alt to see how long it would take to build fully covered starter heroes under the new PVP cover award system. I will join the Rag tourney with both accounts simultaneously and see where I end up. On Sunday I will take a look at the top scores in both brackets if they are different.

Back in a few.

dediacted i like it keep us posted

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

UPDATE: My alt and I are in different brackets. Both of them are sparsely populated right now and the leaders both have less than 50 points right now.

Thanks for this Ghast.

This is a bit alarming if true. Combined with the change to MMR pvp is becoming very grueling.

daveomite

Agreed. It definitely seem like something must have changed, as I'm pretty sure we all approach most pvp's about the same, similar join times, etc. But now, in my bracket alone, at least the top 20 are 1k+ in Top Gun, which seems a bit odd from a few weeks ago.

mags1587

Okay, I'm hoping this is some kind of bug because if not, I really need D3 to provide some kind of reasoning as to why they're suddenly bracketing by MMR. Because this makes zero sense to me.

Unknown

That would be hilarious if true because jozier's in my bracket and the game considering his capabilities to be roughly equal to a scrub like me is the ultimate insult to his honor

HairyDave

gamar wrote:

That would be hilarious if true because jozier's in my bracket and the game considering his capabilities to be roughly equal to a scrub like me is the ultimate insult to his honor

Me too - he's in my Season 1 bracket

Unknown

I'd likewise be pretty interested to hear the devs comment on this topic. Lately, it definitely does seem like we're getting matched into brackets by mmr, and top 10 are almost always 141's with 1100+ rank points. It used to be possible to place. Now, it's a chore just to get into the top 50...

Clintman

I am going to hazard a guess that they are not using MMR to aid in bracketing, my guess is they are using your PVP Season ranking to place you in the correct difficulty levels.

I am basing this on how the PVE Season brackets are evening out now and the right people are in the top spots, who coincidentally happen to be in my brackets when I PVP now.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

I am going to hazard a guess that they are not using MMR to aid in bracketing, my guess is they are using your PVP Season ranking to place you in the correct difficulty levels.

I am basing this on how the PVE Season brackets are evening out now and the right people are in the top spots, who coincidentally happen to be in my brackets when I PVP now.

If true then it makes sense to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. Training altogether until the last possible PVP event.

I see theunwiseone in my main account bracket now. DecoyDuck too. We're sitting on top of the bottom.

simonsez

In other words, they figured out a way to penalize success in PvP too? So, every mid-tier player has gotten thrown to the wolves, so that people with 1-star lv20 formations can get some 3-star covers? Not sure how this is supposed to be fun. Over the last 3 events, I've raised my personal best by 150 points, and seen my rank go from 25th 3 events ago, to 79th in Top Gun.

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

I started an alt to see how long it would take to build fully covered starter heroes under the new PVP cover award system. I will join the Rag tourney with both accounts simultaneously and see where I end up. On Sunday I will take a look at the top scores in both brackets if they are different.

Back in a few.

UPDATE: My alt and I are in different brackets. Both of them are sparsely populated right now and the leaders both have less than 50 points right now.

I knew it!! I noticed during the top gun death bracket that SOMETHING had to be up... I was planning on trying this too with the rags tourney. This would be a really dumb idea to do and they need to change it back. Keep it straight time as it's more fair that way. missing out on covers just because it purposefully puts you in ridiculously hard brackets is just stupid.

Unknown

Another data point, I joined on my mobile, steam, and wife's mobile at the same time. My accounts both ended in the same bracket (182 ranking and 389 ranking). My wife's account has 4278 season 1 rank. No brackets were close to filling.

Clintman

Ghast wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I am going to hazard a guess that they are not using MMR to aid in bracketing, my guess is they are using your PVP Season ranking to place you in the correct difficulty levels.

I am basing this on how the PVE Season brackets are evening out now and the right people are in the top spots, who coincidentally happen to be in my brackets when I PVP now.

If true then it makes sense to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. Training altogether until the last possible PVP event.

I see theunwiseone in my main account bracket now. DecoyDuck too. We're sitting on top of the bottom.

If you think about it, season ranking is a true measure of where your are at difficulty wise, you may tank the piss out of your MMR, but where you are on average over multiple PVP rounds tells D3 who you should be fighting against. It would appear they have worked to break the code on how we game the system. now if only they would increase reward to match the risk the system would be bearable. As it is people rail against having to fight against teams that chew theirs up for the same rewards as someone gets for beating a level 6 team.

If I got the same rewards for killing a level 1 snake as I get for downing the Lich King, I would have never left Goldshire. I would spend my days killing level 1 snakes because it makes no sense to do a 20 minute fight when you get the same payout as a 30 second fight.

Unknown

Took ten more minutes for my bracket to fill completely, I got in around 230.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

Ghast wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I am going to hazard a guess that they are not using MMR to aid in bracketing, my guess is they are using your PVP Season ranking to place you in the correct difficulty levels.

I am basing this on how the PVE Season brackets are evening out now and the right people are in the top spots, who coincidentally happen to be in my brackets when I PVP now.

If true then it makes sense to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. Training altogether until the last possible PVP event.

I see theunwiseone in my main account bracket now. DecoyDuck too. We're sitting on top of the bottom.

If you think about it, season ranking is a true measure of where your are at difficulty wise, you may tank the piss out of your MMR, but where you are on average over multiple PVP rounds tells D3 who you should be fighting against. It would appear they have worked to break the code on how we game the system. now if only they would increase reward to match the risk the system would be bearable. As it is people rail against having to fight against teams that chew theirs up for the same rewards as someone gets for beating a level 6 team.

If I got the same rewards for killing a level 1 snake as I get for downing the Lich King, I would have never left Goldshire. I would spend my days killing level 1 snakes because it makes no sense to do a 20 minute fight when you get the same payout as a 30 second fight.

Yeah, with scaling and now brackets like these, doing well only makes things harder for you with nothing to show for it. Do well enough in PvE and you get to fight 395 nodes, do well enough in PvP and you get to be in a bracket where 1100 points might get you a top 10, 900 points if you don't want a 2* cover as reward.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

Ghast wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I am going to hazard a guess that they are not using MMR to aid in bracketing, my guess is they are using your PVP Season ranking to place you in the correct difficulty levels.

I am basing this on how the PVE Season brackets are evening out now and the right people are in the top spots, who coincidentally happen to be in my brackets when I PVP now.

If true then it makes sense to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. Training altogether until the last possible PVP event.

I see theunwiseone in my main account bracket now. DecoyDuck too. We're sitting on top of the bottom.

If you think about it, season ranking is a true measure of where your are at difficulty wise, you may tank the piss out of your MMR, but where you are on average over multiple PVP rounds tells D3 who you should be fighting against. It would appear they have worked to break the code on how we game the system. now if only they would increase reward to match the risk the system would be bearable. As it is people rail against having to fight against teams that chew theirs up for the same rewards as someone gets for beating a level 6 team.

If I got the same rewards for killing a level 1 snake as I get for downing the Lich King, I would have never left Goldshire. I would spend my days killing level 1 snakes because it makes no sense to do a 20 minute fight when you get the same payout as a 30 second fight.

That's all well and fine but that doesn't mean they should lump as all into one bracket. Having all of us have to get ridiculous scores for top 10 and new covers while others get off super easy is pretty stupid. If you are going to lump all the "same difficulty" people into one bracket then you would have to make it so you can only attack and be attacked by people in the bracket (which is a horrible idea too). Why fix something that isn't broke?

Unknown

Ghast wrote:

Clintman wrote:

I am going to hazard a guess that they are not using MMR to aid in bracketing, my guess is they are using your PVP Season ranking to place you in the correct difficulty levels.

I am basing this on how the PVE Season brackets are evening out now and the right people are in the top spots, who coincidentally happen to be in my brackets when I PVP now.

If true then it makes sense to avoid S.H.I.E.L.D. Training altogether until the last possible PVP event.

I see theunwiseone in my main account bracket now. DecoyDuck too. We're sitting on top of the bottom.

I can say for certain that the S.H.I.E.L.D. Simulator has nothing to do this, as I am sitting at the time of this post in 129,625th place there.

That said, observations I presented in the "This Game Isn't Fun Anymore" thread is relevant to reiterate here. All of these changes (which are still not fully implemented yet) are designed to normalize difficulty across all tiers of play. These changes are designed to level the playing field, which render any advantage through power a player might possess to dominate other players (such as 141s easily defeating 85s) negligible.

The TL;DR version: The free ride to the top of brackets using a dominating roster is OVER.


Higher-level players are being segregated away from the lower level players, and this is intentional. Part of how F2P games function is to cause discomfort. Players that can easily win brackets are quite comfortable in their rosters and thus are unlikely to spend because they are dominating others. Thus, the logical answer to this problem is to remove the advantages that the player possesses to reintroduce discomfort. Thus, the creation of brackets containing only high-level players.

As more time passes, the recent changes will filter in even more high-level players per bracket, making each bracket even more competitive.

Next, you take away the safety crutches that players use in PvP. That would primarily be Patch, Spidey, CMags, and Hood. Spidey and CMags are on the block either this week or next (gosh... the timing of the long-awaited funbalancing is.... rather convenient), which makes Patch high-risk again. Hood gets effectively hard countered by the introduction of a powerful Classic 3*** Daken who generates free strike tiles. Well, that takes care of everyone rather quickly then.

Without any safety crutches, everyone at the high end is rendered to be at the same power level, and can be easily defeated by another player with the correct opposing counters. No one can single-handed dominate any other high-level roster.

That brings us to the no-so-distant future, where this is likely to be a scenario for an upcoming PvP:

3*** Prize Cover: Classic Daken
Top 10 Prize Blue, Top 50 Prize Black, Alliance Prize Purple

Because of the continual segregating of players into special brackets, let's assert that 50% (250 players) are going to be active in each high-level bracket. So, there are 250 players, all with 141 rosters, that are all equally capable of defeating each other, and are going to scramble for those scarce 10 blue covers. The competition would be intense for those covers and would likely devolve into shield hopping to put any meaningful distance away from the pack, because players would be highly uncomfortable without any personal advantages to place higher than others. The only advantages left are boosts, shields, and health packs, all of which are conveniently purchasable. Without any advantage over another roster, damage incurred per fight will drastically increase and the odds of a costly 3 health pack wipeout on each and every fight will also significant rise.

The end result is a highly competitive, highly uncomfortable environment, where the only minor respite available comes in the form of hard currency purchases, at all levels of play.

These changes are working exactly as designed.

NorthernPolarity

Edit: Never mind, I was being too optimistic.

Unknown

I wonder when exactly it puts us in a bracket. Once we join fight OR once we get points for the fight.

On my way to join simultaneuosly.