Changes to PVP bracket creation? Devs please comment

daveomite

Soenottelling and several of us were talking about that exact idea in the thread for Top Gun.

I'm not too sure that's really it. I have 8,300+ points, soe was close, but 2 other people in the bracket had <5,500, where as mags wasn't in our bracket and has points closer to both soe and I.

They obviously did something, it's just a matter of what. I ended at 1016, in 28th place. Only because my phone/game crashed into a reboot with 4 min left. My shield expired in the time to reboot and I had lost about 30 points. I was originally in 21st with 1047 points. Even talking about having over 1k points and being that close to 30th sounds nuts.

Anyway...I think the season points may actually have some factor in it, as that makes total sense, but there has to be some other factor too. That's what caused us to all come to the conclusion MMR has to be playing some sort of role in it. How else would you have so many people, each with different values, all wind up in the traffic jam of our bracket of doom?

Still nuts just thinking about it. Lol.

Unknown

Emeryt wrote:

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.

entered at the same time and finished at the same time.

2 different brackets. One has 161pts at #1, second 211.

daveomite

Emeryt wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

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.

entered at the same time and finished at the same time.

2 different brackets. One has 161pts at #1, second 211.

Very interesting...nice test Emeryt

NorthernPolarity

Emeryt wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

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.

entered at the same time and finished at the same time.

2 different brackets. One has 161pts at #1, second 211.

Emeryt, were these 2 accounts drastically different in roster strength?

Clintman

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my Wife gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

She got to top 5 in 2 hours, she joined yesterday and did not have time to play until the end, and got top 5 with a 600 score, I took first in mine with a 1300 score, 2nd was points behind me and the competition was brutal all day long. 10th place has 1120 points.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

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.

entered at the same time and finished at the same time.

2 different brackets. One has 161pts at #1, second 211.

Emeryt, were these 2 accounts drastically different in roster strength?

My main: 3x 141, all chars, missing only about 40covers.

My second: no char above lvl 50, maxed Storm and IM35. 20chars.

daveomite

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my GF gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

exactly. One person the the Top Gun thread won 3rd place with just 640 points, yet in out bracket, we had people with 900 points stuck all the way down to near-50 range. Just completely different situations. Never seen anything quite like it.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

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.

Wow. Brilliantly written. And if true, extremely scary for F2P players or players who don't have the RTM to keep up.

And if true, I would hope they would be wise enough to know that this would be a disastrous change, causing their profits to eventually plummet and only be a temporary increase in revenue. At some point, people will just walk away when they have had enough. And then they would be left with a much much smaller revenue stream and a very disgruntled player base that, as you can see here in the forums, would sound the alarm in ranting reviews and run off potential new players.

I worked in the Title Pawn business for several years, and what I learned there applies to most businesses, which I am sure MPQ is included. When my company cut its interest rate in half, we actually increased our revenue stream by 50% in the first year and more than doubled it with in 3 years. Mainly because people who would not have normally used our high interest service, didn't feel so jilted by it when we lowered the rate. So the same principle would work here. You lower the prices, but offer the same benefits and more people will likely spend money that they normally wouldn't have, and people who already spend money will spend just as much, if not more.

Making the game so hostile... I'm sorry, "competitive" to a point where you team is constantly getting slaughtered and your two choices are buy health packs or sit this out will not solve anything.

In Top Gun, I was in an awesome bracket. I got to #1 (633 pts) on the first night and for the first time ever paid to shield myself. It wasn't until the last 20 minutes that I got bumped to #3 spot. My best friend got put in a bracket from Hades and played 10x harder than me, only to place at #354 (I think that was his Rank). He's relatively new to the game, so he already has no plans to play any of the PVP events because he just kept getting slaughtered with no end in site. Win 15pt, but lose 25-30 points from being beaten while winning said points.

So let's hope this is not their new marketing technique to drive more sales, and more of a bug in the system.

Clintman

daveomite wrote:

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my GF gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

exactly. One person the the Top Gun thread won 3rd place with just 640 points, yet in out bracket, we had people with 900 points stuck all the way down to near-50 range. Just completely different situations. Never seen anything quite like it.

Everything we hate about PVE rolled into PVP

daveomite

Clintman wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my GF gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

exactly. One person the the Top Gun thread won 3rd place with just 640 points, yet in out bracket, we had people with 900 points stuck all the way down to near-50 range. Just completely different situations. Never seen anything quite like it.

Everything we hate about PVE rolled into PVP

Wonderful. Before you know it, they'll implement some form of refreshing into PvP, and constantly keep us guessing on those refresh times.

NorthernPolarity

Emeryt wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

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.

entered at the same time and finished at the same time.

2 different brackets. One has 161pts at #1, second 211.

Emeryt, were these 2 accounts drastically different in roster strength?

My main: 3x 141, all chars, missing only about 40covers.

My second: no char above lvl 50, maxed Storm and IM35. 20chars.

Thanks! We should further test this out just to be sure.

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my Wife gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

She got to top 5 in 2 hours, she joined yesterday and did not have time to play until the end, and got top 5 with a 600 score, I took first in mine with a 1300 score, 2nd was points behind me and the competition was brutal all day long. 10th place has 1120 points.

Clint, can you try joining at the exact same time as your wife to further test the theory? Would be a really good data point to have.

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my GF gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

exactly. One person the the Top Gun thread won 3rd place with just 640 points, yet in out bracket, we had people with 900 points stuck all the way down to near-50 range. Just completely different situations. Never seen anything quite like it.

Actually it was 633. Get it right.

And the #1 and #2 guy got their positions in the last 20 minutes at 729 and 652. I held #1 with 633 and a shield since midnight the night before.

daveomite

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my Wife gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

She got to top 5 in 2 hours, she joined yesterday and did not have time to play until the end, and got top 5 with a 600 score, I took first in mine with a 1300 score, 2nd was points behind me and the competition was brutal all day long. 10th place has 1120 points.

Clint, can you try joining at the exact same time as your wife to further test the theory? Would be a really good data point to have.

I'm going to try the same with my better half with the rags event. Even soe and mags thinking of joining in. Just to see where everyone winds up. The GF has a <75 team, and her MMR is no where near what mine had gotten to with those lovely 395 nodes.

daveomite

aaronschmiz wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Clintman wrote:

Sad to say it, but if they have broken the code for this, and every PVP is going to be like these last two, I will lose interest. It's not worth it to work this hard for the same reward my GF gets with her 2* roster when she plays 1/3rd as much as I do. I won't spend money on shields to shield hop for **** covers I already have I order to stay in the top 10 with an 1150 PVP score.

exactly. One person the the Top Gun thread won 3rd place with just 640 points, yet in out bracket, we had people with 900 points stuck all the way down to near-50 range. Just completely different situations. Never seen anything quite like it.

Actually it was 633. Get it right.

And the #1 and #2 guy got their positions in the last 20 minutes at 729 and 652. I held #1 with 633 and a shield since midnight the night before.

haha..sorry about than aaron. Guess I was rounding up.

Spoit

sms4002 wrote:

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?

I'd be, well not fine, but grudgingly dealing with it for these death brackets IF they increased the prize banding for them.

Unknown

I must be in a parallel MMR to everyone as I ain't seen much change to this. I just think more people are pushing

Unknown

sms4002 wrote:

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.

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?

I'd be, well not fine, but grudgingly dealing with it for these death brackets IF they increased the prize banding for them.

This is in players' immediate best interest and the developers' long-term best interest. I imagine the temporary increase in revenue will blind them from thinking this is a good idea in the short term.

Unknown

I think that if they are going to base the new PVP brackets from MMR, then they need to tidy things up a bit. In theory it could work, but would need some tweaks, subsets if you will.

Make sure that Roster Strength plays a major role in bracket formation.
Let's just say your MMR is "XXX", you get divided based on that, then you get further divided by your Roster Strength.
If you have three 3* maxed covers, you shouldn't be fighting people who have 1* maxed covers with random 2* covers.

Make each fight equally based.
Not on a scaling system that makes some opponents worth 9 pts, and others are worth 30. Set it at solid amount. (say 25 pts per fight)
I'm not sure how it would work if you got down to 0 points. But I am sure there is a way to do it.

Keep the fighting with-in the bracket itself.
Pump enough points into the bracket system to begin with by using seed teams. Or better yet, remove the seed teams and just assign each player on his first fight "x" (say 100) amount of points. All the points stay in the bracket. 500 players x 100 points, to a max total of 50,000 points if you can annihilate all of the other 499 opponents in your bracket.

Just by separating the brackets this way removes the need to tank your MMR. It removes the need for scaling in PVP's. And it hopefully removes the bottleneck effect that has been seen in the last few PVP's. Players get to stay competitive, and knowing that there are 50,000 points that are guaranteed inside your bracket, will probably make players play even harder. And enjoy the experience much more.

Spoit

Yeah....I don't think you're playing the same game as the rest of us

Unknown

I'm no where near to the level of you people since I'm sitting firmly in 2* land, but I still end up in a bracket where 600 isn't even enough for a top 100 placement. This is ridiculous. If I shield early enough, I won't break even on HP, since 800 is the best I can do before I'm beaten down back to ~600 and looking at this 800 probably wasn't enough for #25. It's not a 'forum' bracket, but still way out of my league.

All I can place are useless covers which I already have and a sprinkle of HP (if I don't shield, if did, I'd lose). I thought the point was to win rewards, not waste my time? Well, I'm certainly not going to be wasting it on PvP anymore, if this is what it looks like from now on, cause it's a drag and a bore.

I usually join sometime on the day after the event starts, not too particular. However, I tend to see the same people in my top ten in several events in a row, so unless we just happen to have the exact same playing times...