Changes to PVP bracket creation? Devs please comment

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

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

I am, I promise. LOL.

I just think PVP should truly be PVP.

Just like in poker, if I win against you, I don't get the pot plus extra because you have more money in your bank than I do. And vice versa, I don't get less because I have more.

Unknown

Carthl wrote:

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...

It would be interesting to know if you are in an alliance and what rank your alliance and personal rank are. The numbers are the current topic for debate. If you could provide numbers we could better determine what is effecting you.

Unknown

So my suspicions in the top gun thread were true, thanks for testing it.

This is the single worst change I've experienced in this game. This basically transforms every PVP bracket into a mini Elite tourney. Wow, they must have been such fun format to play, so we get graced with the permanent pleasure. All your favorite features all the time, Shield hopping, boosting every fight to cut those drawn out matches...

And of course this was a stealth change, again. For what do you even post the patch notes? Everything is so obfuscated, it's just frustrating and disappointing. This is a competitive game, yet it completely lacks one of the most important things in a competition. Clearly defined and consistent rules.

Unknown

This better not be a change... I only have one 2* character above level 60 (61...) and barely placed in the top 200 with ~600 points... I can't even get higher than that since it's just a wall of 85's and 141's above that. How am I getting put into this bracket? It doesn't even make sense...

Unknown

Artless wrote:

It would be interesting to know if you are in an alliance and what rank your alliance and personal rank are. The numbers are the current topic for debate. If you could provide numbers we could better determine what is effecting you.

I'm not sure what you mean by personal rank? In the season? I'm #317 with ~6k points (1.5 of those from shield training) My alliance is a 5 people alliance with friends from my regular chat group, all of them with similar or weaker rosters. We're usually in the 1750-2500 range, #2067 this time because one of us didn't play.

Unknown

Guys, I'm noticing these gradual increases too. I'm wondering whether people's actual roster lvl affects these brackets or match making? Ie; if you have a team of 2/3 maxed 3*, a team of 1 maxed 3* and several maxed 2*...and so on?

I seem to notice a pattern whereby I can reach 8/9/1000pts, at different times during the event, but as soon as I break thresholds to receive awards end up getting hit 2/3 times...as if it's purposely matching me with a different lvl of opp. when I push past these points. It may even be that I'm suddenly matched with active opp? Possibly other bracket leaders or players who are also breaking the same thresholds I am? I inevitably don't get the 100 pt mark award and as I get closer to 1.1k am forced to shield due to these continual retaliations. I've also realised once I hit the point I'm lvl with bracket leaders, that no matter how many times I skip, it just rotates a select 7/8 opp! Often these opp are stronger than me or on less pts than me making them less beneficial targets, esp. If they retaliate. Why give an option to skip when you're not really doing so after the first 100 or so ISO. You're just flipping through a roster of 7 opp? Anyone else seeing this?

Recently, I broke 1.1k for the first time as did several of my alliance! This was also first time I'd broken 900. I forget which pvp it was. Our leader had 1.7k! We were all really bemused and could all target a high lvl opp. For loads of pts. (Kyip..I think.) next event I got obliterated and struggled for top 25!! I have placed top 10 easily for the past month before this weird change. Everyone, it seemed struggled. Was the blip in the event before some trigger? Did anyone else's see or abuse kyip?

Lastly, the reason I mention roster is I only have a maxed l.cap and several 2*. In last few events I've grafted to get into top 10. I didn't see maxed 3* until I got into pole positions. My all. Members were struggling at 5/600pts facing maxed 3* and losing their teams before they were even bracket leaders. They have bigger 3* rosters than me...just not the power players (patch/mags/pun) and if they do they're not maxed. I'm worried I'll actually put myself in a worse situation if I max another 3* character... Or even build one that overtakes my top 2* . unless it's a power player?

Also...does anyone tank anymore? I stopped recently (when shield was erased from prologue) but tried It again today. I used to retreat but this time I played out the matches (nearly as boring as watching daken/storm cascades wipe me out. ironically when I want them to come...they don't!). I'm not sure whether it had an effect. I'd just started the rags pvp so I can't be certain but I was facing 1*storm. Something I'm sure I hadn't faced from the start in top gun pvp (ps-these were opp. Not battleangel hipdudeglasses Or baconmagic that are originally generated)

DrNitroman

Current level of difficulty in PvP is quite discouraging.

To be honest, I'm not fond of competition and when I began the game, I focused on PvE. But with the introduction of alliances, season ranking... and improvement of my own roster, I became more dedicated in PvP with some successes. Now, I am losing motivation for PvP again.

The two sins of MPQ remain the difficulty scaling and incentive for progression.
Difficulty: It has to be progressive. I expect top 10 and top 1 to be very challenging at least but top 100 should not. In other words, I'd like that PvP fights start easy and increase progressively towards challenging difficulty. It's a game! Sometimes I want to invest energy to rank high and I'm OK to encounter difficulty. But sometimes I just want to have fun with the first fight which I expect to be less challenging.
Progression: The incentives for progression are weak, gaining more covers don't make you more competitive as you are matched against similar roster. In many games (e.g. H'n'S, RPG) You want to become more "powerful" to go farther, in MPQ, you fight harder to stay in the same place. Atm, my incentive for progression is only the collection: I play to complete my roster because I'm a collector guy.

I don't ask the game being easier, just a balanced difficulty to be able to have fun playing hardcore or casual depending on my mood

Unknown

Carthl wrote:

Artless wrote:

It would be interesting to know if you are in an alliance and what rank your alliance and personal rank are. The numbers are the current topic for debate. If you could provide numbers we could better determine what is effecting you.

I'm not sure what you mean by personal rank? In the season? I'm #317 with ~6k points (1.5 of those from shield training) My alliance is a 5 people alliance with friends from my regular chat group, all of them with similar or weaker rosters. We're usually in the 1750-2500 range, #2067 this time because one of us didn't play.

I am also ~6k points in the season 1 rankings. In my brackets it takes more than 1k points to clear top 10. I Think if you are scoring at least as many points as you are, you are seeing really difficult brackets.

Unknown

Just my two cents:
I have two accounts and I started Top Gun with both at the same time. My main account has a roster of maxed 2* characters and no usable 3*, the other account has only a lvl 40 mStorm and lvl 40 IM35 and a bunch of low level 2* characters. With my main account I was in a bracket where first place ended with 1219 pts and 10th place had 1001 pts. On the other account I was placed in a different bracket with 1st 819 pts, 10th 643 pts. I had about the same results with the Loki PVP before but I'm not sure if I joined with both accounts at the same time.

My problem with this is that with my roster of maxed 2* characters I feel like I have absolutely no chance now to come anywhere near top 50, whereas two weeks ago I was able to reach top 50 with about 600-700 pts. All the top players in my bracket sport rosters of maxed 3* chars. So I have practically given up to compete in PVP because I cannot reach the 3* covers I need and I don't need the 2* covers (and it has become a chore now facing only lvl 85 or above rosters).

I am now playing PVP mainly with my second account of low level characters and it is actually FUN. I was able to finish in top 100 and top 25 respectively in the last two tourneys. So for now I have decided to stick to not leveling my characters any further and enjoy this game. On my main account I am only playing PVE at the moment but in general I feel like beeing stuck there with my 2* roster without almost no chances of completing any of my 3* chars. So this new bracketing has definitely made things worse for longtime players because competition has become insane IMO.

EDIT: main account is in a 5 people alliance, personal season ranking is #903 with ~4000pts, 2nd account is no alliance and #971 with 1646pts

Unknown

DrNitroman wrote:

Current level of difficulty in PvP is quite discouraging.

To be honest, I'm not fond of competition and when I began the game, I focused on PvE. But with the introduction of alliances, season ranking... and improvement of my own roster, I became more dedicated in PvP with some successes. Now, I am losing motivation for PvP again.

The two sins of MPQ remain the difficulty scaling and incentive for progression.
Difficulty: It has to be progressive. I expect top 10 and top 1 to be very challenging at least but top 100 should not. In other words, I'd like that PvP fights start easy and increase progressively towards challenging difficulty. It's a game! Sometimes I want to invest energy to rank high and I'm OK to encounter difficulty. But sometimes I just want to have fun with the first fight which I expect to be less challenging.
Progression: The incentives for progression are weak, gaining more covers don't make you more competitive as you are matched against similar roster. In many games (e.g. H'n'S, RPG) You want to become more "powerful" to go farther, in MPQ, you fight harder to stay in the same place. Atm, my incentive for progression is only the collection: I play to complete my roster because I'm a collector guy.

I don't ask the game being easier, just a balanced difficulty to be able to have fun playing hardcore or casual depending on my mood

DrNitroman, I'm the same. The only reason I compete at all is to gather more covers (and the HP needed for slots). I was hoping when I started that better characters would make it easier to 'collect them all', but instead it has become harder, since the rewards I get for even a decent try are less than would be useful at my level, it's not fun. I'd like to try for some more Loki covers in the current tourney, regardless of how useless he is for the game, because he's one of my favourite Marvel characters, but I know that no matter how hard I try, I likely won't be able to get him. So why trying at all?

Artless, yeah well, except those brackets don't actually match my own ability when it comes to competition The way I understand the reward structure, 1* players can aim at competing for 2* covers to build up their rosters. Two stars should be able to compete for 3* and people with finished three stars can duke it out for top ten. If someone with a two star roster has no chance in seven hells getting anywhere near a three star, or even the higher tier of of two star rewards, the progression stagnates and that 2* player will lose interest. There's no point in placing 2* people in brackets where the top 50 are all taken up by 3* players. If they want to split us up by roster strength, then they should go ahead and make attainable rewards that are actually useful to the people in the different brackets.

Spoit

With this change, it's quite easy to have multiple 141s and put forth a good few hours of effort and still not be able to get a single 3* cover by not bothering to be around for the last hours/want to waste HP on a shield. I think when I passed 900 this last tournament, that was like #54 or something thereabouts. And that was like 6 hours before the end, well before people were pushing and putting up 3 hour shields.

900 is not a very casual level of points!

Bowgentle

Enter a bracket.
See 5 other people with multiple 141s at 25 points.

Well this'll be fun if this will be the norm from now on.

HairyDave

Spoit wrote:

With this change, it's quite easy to have multiple 141s and put forth a good few hours of effort and still not be able to get a single 3* cover by not bothering to be around for the last hours/want to waste HP on a shield. I think when I passed 900 this last tournament, that was like #54 or something thereabouts. And that was like 6 hours before the end, well before people were pushing and putting up 3 hour shields.

900 is not a very casual level of points!

No it really isn't.

I started Top Gun making my usual slow cruise up to about 500 in the first day (expecting 7-800 to be enough for a shot at a top 10 finish) and to be honest it wasn't all that difficult with my L40something Falcon+OBW+Punisher/Wolverine team just picking off 20-25 points against OBW+Thor teams everywhere. Then as soon as I got over 300 points I start getting absolutely hammered by maxed Spidey+CMags teams that I had no hope of retaliating against so I could only claw my way up to about 600.

Which wasn't even good enough for the top 100.

Thanks to some amazing luck and spending boosts like candy I managed to squeak into about 80th just at the close but that was at 730 points - only 50 less than I scored a week ago in God of Lies which netted me 8th!

DrNitroman

Bowgentle wrote:

Enter a bracket.
See 5 other people with multiple 141s at 25 points.

Well this'll be fun if this will be the norm from now on.

Same for me when I enter my bracket...
... except that I'm probably lacking some sense of humor

Note that, as a response, I aligned Daredevil in my team: no funny game without a surprise ambush... and defensive wins

Linkster79

I Top Gun I was in the same bracket as Clintman, Nemek, Krow, Polkio and others. Now I usually get around 700-800 points in PvP and tend to hover around top 25 and can creep as high as top 5 if a bracket is generous enough. Top Gun I got to nearly 900 points and wasnt even top 25. I spent the last 8 hours unshielded and ended up just scrapping into top 100 with 600 or so points. I am in a 7 person alliance and arent exactly lighting up the season 1 leaderboards.

If this continues as a player it is very unlikely I will be making progress and like others I thought that if I played well and got better characters it would make it easier to place higher. For some reason this game is doing everything in its power to make it harder the more you play.

Unknown

I scored 759 and finished 58th in the latest PvP where Falcon covers were awarded. With that I lost my chance to get any of his covers soon. I also remember events where I finished in top 10 with just scoring 600. Ranked 119th in Top Gun that recently finished with a score of 610.

I think they should remove the cover reward at 1100 points or restructure the progression rewards that are achievable in a more timely manner. It takes so much time to reach that. Not to mention it is not possible to reach for people who doesn't have at least 2 good level (above 100) 3* characters.

Unknown

I am guessing that this mpq is losing their revenue very fast and they think of this way to make ppl buy hp for shield...

over_clocked

gee, a ton of players (new and mid and top alike) encountered UNPLEASANT scaling during how many PvE events again? I wonder what could possibly drive them all away, couldn't be that feeling of being punished for progressing, that delicious feeling of being powerless and helpless, no way.

Unknown

This is interesting indeed, I also noticed lately to see 20+ people with 141 heroes, way way more than ever. Just assumed it's due to game aging but may really be coming from different bracketing.


I see no problem with MMR-based brackets *if* they also reflect the increased difficulty in the prize structure. Either extending the tiers in a harder bracket or issue additional rewards.

Otherwise again what is the point to develop the roster? It only gains you more risk and damage for the same potential gain.

Bowgentle

This will be _so much fun_ once Nick Fury is the Top 1 reward!
Imagine the fun - 2 brackets, each with 250 forumites with multiple 141s slogging it out for top spot!

While in 200 other brackets, 1 and 2* teams with 700 points are walking away with their Fury cover.

Yeah, I can totally see us spending HPs to turn each PVP into an elite tourney for a prolonged time, this'll be a really sustainable business model, herding all your veterans and big spenders into the same brackets.