Changes to PVP bracket creation? Devs please comment

simonsez

Tooeasy wrote:

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...

I don't know if that will work. There are a lot of players now who won't bother shielding because they can't reach a score worth protecting. I used to push early, post a score that I knew would be good for top 50, and then shield for 8-24 hours. Now that the top 50 is beyond my reach, why should I shield? To make sure I get that Moonstone cover I'm gonna sell for 250 iso?

Unknown

Just wanted to check in and say that I won #2 in Doctors Orders with ~650 points. #10 was around ~500. I just thought I was lucky and so tried to replicate the exact same join time in Top Gun (ran into my former alliance-mate in both brackets), but no luck. Had to get ~850 for #7. #10 being ~800.

This makes me think that this is either another exploitable mechanic (even worse than tanking) or I just experienced a random glitch. Either way, I think this is one of the worst changes ever in the game, if real.

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

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.

I totally see myself finally quitting for good should that happen.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

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.

This statement couldn't be more wrong. I have +25% points in Season from someone who hasn't started playing yet in Shield Sim. How can this score be used to determine how good someone is? It is discouraging that the devs keep finding ways to make their game less fun with each update. I remember in January they said they would be honest with the player base and let us know of changes before they happen. I guess honesty can only go so far.

At the same time they are incapable of delivering what they promise. The nerfs to Spiderman and Magneto are 4 months in the making and still no changes to them. It could be that they are not confident in their skill to nerf them without destroying them, but I suspect it is a monetary issue since they are probably still making money from players who pay to level them.

DecoyDuck

I wanted to see how low the bracket was after finishing the first match in Krackadoom... and all these 0 points are already there? Was that always the case? Or this new predestination theory?

simonsez

ihearthawthats wrote:

Just wanted to check in and say that I won #2 in Doctors Orders with ~650 points. #10 was around ~500. I just thought I was lucky and so tried to replicate the exact same join time in Top Gun (ran into my former alliance-mate in both brackets), but no luck. Had to get ~850 for #7

That wouldn't have gotten me top 50 in my bracket. And if I had to guess, I'd say my roster is no better than yours.

Unknown

DecoyDuck wrote:

I wanted to see how low the bracket was after finishing the first match in Krackadoom... and all these 0 points are already there? Was that always the case? Or this new predestination theory?

I saw you when I joined, so that was just coincidence. In PVP, joining a single match and losing/retreating puts you in a bracket with 0 points. I pushed the buttons to join, pause, and retreat simultaneously on two iPads to see if my main and alt accounts ended up in the same place. No such luck.

Theunwiseone is also lurking in our bracket. It would be interesting to see when he joined relative to when we joined.

DecoyDuck

Ghast wrote:

Theunwiseone is also lurking in our bracket. It would be interesting to see when he joined relative to when we joined.

If I'm using your original post as an indication, I think I joined about the same time you did (about an hour and a half before the Top Gun ended). I thought all those zeroes were more nefarious, not just science at work...

mags1587

I just joined the Rags tourney and I appear to have gotten into a new bracket. Highest score is 48 points.

Bowgentle

mags1587 wrote:

I just joined the Rags tourney and I appear to have gotten into a new bracket. Highest score is 48 points.

That'll be the S.H.I.E.L.D bracket then. It'll stay open the next 8 hours until your quota of 141s is reached.

Clintman

Narkon wrote:

Clintman wrote:

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.

This statement couldn't be more wrong. I have +25% points in Season from someone who hasn't started playing yet in Shield Sim. How can this score be used to determine how good someone is? It is discouraging that the devs keep finding ways to make their game less fun with each update. I remember in January they said they would be honest with the player base and let us know of changes before they happen. I guess honesty can only go so far.

At the same time they are incapable of delivering what they promise. The nerfs to Spiderman and Magneto are 4 months in the making and still no changes to them. It could be that they are not confident in their skill to nerf them without destroying them, but I suspect it is a monetary issue since they are probably still making money from players who pay to level them.

I would say it is safe to assume shield SIM is not counted in my theory. I would also say that they do not have a single indicator the determines how you join the matches, instead what I am imagining is that they have an algorithm that puts a Hogwarts type sorting hat on your melon and says you should go to Griffindor if there is room, however it also says we need to fill hugglepuff first, so even though you were sorted to Griffindor, they had room in hugglepuff so that is where you went.

What it really accomplishes though is putting all of the Slytherin folks together. I imagine it even holds a few spots filling Slytherin to 90% with first come, first served and saving that 10% for the really slytheriny folks.

mags1587

Bowgentle wrote:

mags1587 wrote:

I just joined the Rags tourney and I appear to have gotten into a new bracket. Highest score is 48 points.

That'll be the S.H.I.E.L.D bracket then. It'll stay open the next 8 hours until your quota of 141s is reached.

We'll see. I wasn't in the last couple of brackets of death so whatever they're using to bracket players I don't seem to have hit the highest tier yet. I really hope D3 explains this and tells us what they're trying to accomplish by making it harder for top players to get top rewards. Because the only thing I can see this accomplishing is driving people away from the game

Unknown

To save me reading through the last 4 pages, is there a tl;dr version of what's generally accepted to be going on with the brackets now? (Sorry for the lazy post, I just don't have a lot of time right now...)

Bowgentle

mags1587 wrote:

I really hope D3 explains this and tells us what they're trying to accomplish by making it harder for top players to get top rewards. Because the only thing I can see this accomplishing is driving people away from the game

Of course they won't.
They haven't said a single word ever since they started tinkering with MMR, tanking and everything else.
I assume this means that whatever it is, it is working as intended, as always.

Clintman

Fluffyudders wrote:

To save me reading through the last 4 pages, is there a tl;dr version of what's generally accepted to be going on with the brackets now? (Sorry for the lazy post, I just don't have a lot of time right now...)

The TLDR version is, we have no idea.

Colognoisseur

I don't think this is happening the way everyone thinks it is happening.
I have been top 10 Season 1 standings over the last three PvP's I have been right around top 100 SHIELD Sim over the same time.
I join PvP within about an hour of the same time every time.
My brackets have been essentially unchanged in the make up of high level and mid range rosters. I rarely end up in a bracket with any of the other "big guns".
Over Doctor's Orders, Top Gun, and at least early in Krakadoom I don't see any sign of them here.
I checked the final standings for my Top Gun bracket, top 5 all greater than 1100 points were high level roster, multiple 141's. second 5 were all mid range with less than 2 141s and one max 2* roster.
I have seen the point inflation for top places.
I think the reason for that is Season 1. There are players who now are really pushing at their pvp totals to raise their rank in Season 1 especially as we enter the final 10 days. I think the competitive nature is driving people to score that extra 100 points.
There have always been easier brackets and i have won my share with 600 points and i have lost my share with 1100 points.
If it has gotten more competitive at the top and I agree it has blame it on Season 1

Unknown

Fluffyudders wrote:

To save me reading through the last 4 pages, is there a tl;dr version of what's generally accepted to be going on with the brackets now? (Sorry for the lazy post, I just don't have a lot of time right now...)

There's definitely something going on with filtering, what it is exactly is anyone's guess.

Lloyd Christmas

All I know is that I saw the changes happen right after I moved from an alliance ranked in the 300s to an alliance ranked I the top 100. Might be coincidence....... But doubtful

Ludaa

If this is an intentional strategy it seems they want players to hurry up and get maxed 2*'s ( the new VS. cover rewards ), then run into near impossible 3* placement rewards, and finally spend all their money to progress any further. Hopefully I'm just being really pessimistic about a game I enjoy the **** out of right now. In Top Gun I placed #41 with 850 points and a max 2* roster and was surrounded by higher level teams.

Unknown

aaronschmiz wrote:

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.

Just re quoting this because I agree with it fully. Basically a TLDR is making these **** changes to have death brackets will not work. It won't get the "heavy hitters" to spend any money. It will get them to quit. Maybe they don't care about this because more purchases are from newer players just starting so they want to make it easy for them to win at first? I don't know. But honestly think of someone like walkyourpath. He has a max 4* and 9 max 141's. Spending money at that point is not going to give him any sort of advantage (unless its a new character and he builds it up quicker) but once you reach a point of having at least 3-4 max characters you are past the point of spending for a significant advantage. I assume they want people stuck in **** brackets to have to spend HP on boosts, health packs, and shields for every tourney because that's really the only thing that would give someone like him a huge advantage over the hoards of other max 141's in ONE **** BRACKET. It's like I said, I am never going to shield hop and waste HP on boosts or health packs just because I am stuck in a bracket where 900 points is out of top 50 all the while there are other brackets with 900 being far and away first place. I will just quit out of frustration before I do any of that. This change needs to be reverted. Stop punishing people for getting high level characters!