On Bracketing and SHIELD Training

Clintman

DayvBang wrote:

Clintman wrote:

empirical evidence suggests this is not a gentle push at all.

I think you're confusing "empirical" with "anecdotal".

em·pir·i·cal
emˈpirikəl/Submit
adjective
based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

What is wrong with my word choice? I dont know the algorithm, I only know what I have experienced without the benefit of all the data.

Seriously dude its not like I mixed up there and their.

Spoit

Seriously, can we not have another dictionary fight?

Clintman

Spoit wrote:

Seriously, can we not have another dictionary fight?

The difference between this and the other word fight is Davy isn't an argumentative DB:) I have no problem talking with him, and will end the conversation rather than devolve it.

daveomite

@ICEx...I'm thinking it may be time for me to just go to pasture or something. Not to sound overly pointed about this, but I do not agree at all with your reasoning's.

The change made to the bracketing is not, in any way, gentle at all. So I agree with most of the other posters on here. Maybe you haven't been in any of those pvp brackets of hell, but it's certainly not a good way of implementation.

Maybe I'm a bit more frustrated about it, as just last night, I wound up dumping $200 bucks into this game, again, to buy covers for heroes that I have never gotten enough covers for, namely, 3* ones. I did this because D3 has basically left me no choice other than to just walk away. But even with dropping in the money, I would have to put in at least another $100 just to get my very first 141 character due to how expensive that is.

But since D3 seems to love to throw 141 teams in my face, that I have little ability to win other than whatever skill, and a huge amount of luck. That's worse than odds at a **** table. So, I'm guessing you are actually trying to force people to spend more and more, as obviously, it's about the only way to keep up.

If you think that is some achievement for D3, that's ridiculous. For a F2P game, as its billed, this is one of the most expensive ones I've ever laid my hands on. On top of that, D3 has single handedly mucked up my ability to progress, level up...anything, because "for the good of the game", we get less rewards, less iso, fewer covers you actually need, and incredibly hard brackets for anyone without a 141 character to even have a chance.

This is not fun. It's just plain stupidly hard. I was in one of those brackets of doom...where the entire top 30 was shielded and over 900 points, the top 20 over 1k. And yrs, i was in that group, with over 1k, but it wasn't fun, and certainly not cheap. I was in another one too, then last night, one where I actually made top 10 with less than 1k. How is that supposed to be logical? It goes against the very things you said was "working as intended".

I can't speak for everyone here, but I feel I've done my part. I'm sitting here on my 85th day, active on your forum, have over 10,400 points in season 1, have 34 roster spots, paid to start an alliance, then moved to another and paid to open the final 5 slots.

I have spent over $400 easy on this game, and what have I gotten out of it? A brick in the face. Increased scaling to 395 in the hunt, brackets that I have to pay through the nose for boosts and shields just to TRY to get over 950 points. Oh, and screwed because I did a clear of the nodes in Oscorp before D3 switched up the points, I have never recovered from that, neither has my alliance.

So, you may THINK that it's "working as intended", and maybe it is...but for your pocketbooks. Not for the betterment of the game, and certainly not for the betterment of my playing experience

I am aware that this post might be borderline ban material. My apologies to the mods here, not trying to make anyone's job even harder. Also aware that I am being so open publicly saying how much I've spent. If this is flame material for some of you, have at it. I'm just frustrated at the lack of attention to detail with this, because I love this game, but it just keeps on kicking me in the teeth.

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

Maybe I'm a bit more frustrated about it, as just last night, I wound up dumping $200 bucks into this game, again, to buy covers for heroes that I have never gotten enough covers for, namely, 3* ones. I did this because D3 has basically left me no choice other than to just walk away.

Developers: "All goes according to plan. Prepare to implement Phase Three. Moo hoo ha ha."

ClydeFrog76

IceIX wrote:

More likely coincidence than not. I'd have to look at precise data in each case to make 100% sure. But overall within statistical variances (because random is indeed random), it's working out how we want.

There's actually no such thing as a truly random computer generated number, everything is merely pseudo-random.

Infrared

Suggestion: do balancing by making weak characters better, rather than by making strong characters worse.

Buff the weak characters like Bagman, Doom, Loki, etc. and suddenly OBW and CMag won't seem so overpowered anymore.


Suggestion: do balancing by making weak players better, rather than by making strong players worse.

State the rules and mechanics of rubberbanding and MMR in the in-game "Event Rules" page. Then new players will have the same information as us forum readers. This will even the playing field more fairly and there will be less need to punish veterans by increasing the probability of them being bracketed together.

franckynight

@daveomite.. i cant be more agreed with what you said.. Now.. I stop ranting about changes cause its up to me now.. Either I can make with the new game direction (more money to throw to stay afloat and compete ie pay for shield, pay for health pack, pay for boost..) either i leave..

kensterr

daveomite wrote:

So, you may THINK that it's "working as intended", and maybe it is...but for your pocketbooks. Not for the betterment of the game, and certainly not for the betterment of my playing experience

They won't admit to that.

And seriously this whole Season 1 and stats on how much they made through IAP - it's just to show numbers to investors and shareholders etc. With competition going on, it's also to show people how many people are "engaged" in their game on a daily basis. To shorten things up, let's just say that players are "numbers" to the devs and nothing more.

Bowgentle

@daveomite

While I agree with all your points, spending _more_ money was the _wrong_ message to send
That just reinforces their views that people might grumble, but they still spend money. Not the message we want to get across.

Otherwise, good post.

Unknown

I was considering spending another $20 to open up more roster slots for my team, but at this point with all the changes to Bracketing, Matchmaking, and Rewards, I don't see any benefit to doing so. I'm not making any progress at getting better because the rewards of late have been new characters (which take forever to get covers for) or **** characters. Progressing out of 1* into 2* has been extremely painful and slow, and at a certain point, if things keep going the way they are I'll either skip 2* territory completely, or quit.

I enjoy playing the match 3 game. I don't enjoy having to grind out for hours just to keep up with everyone else, but even with grinding I'm falling further and further behind.

daveomite

Bowgentle wrote:

@daveomite

While I agree with all your points, spending _more_ money was the _wrong_ message to send
That just reinforces their views that people might grumble, but they still spend money. Not the message we want to get across.

Otherwise, good post.

thank you. I agree, that is the wrong message, and I am most certainly not trying to give the impression that I support their views, for I do not. I was not trying to convey that, rather, spending money over the last 82 actually did not help as much as i would have hoped it would. That, for those with a max 85 team, but you have a 3* cover, and you think you can buy all their remaining covers, then level them up to 141 so you can compete better in something... I'm trying to state clearly that it won't happen, not like that, and not without some excessive spending.

What I have spent, most was for my own game, but part of it was to help the better half with her game too. So, I didn't just spend wildly on solely my team, etc. It has been used over two accounts to a degree.

I would strongly suggest that people don't spend on the game, at least not like I may have explained that I did. My point was that it really got me nowhere, and opened a whole new door of issues.

Side note to everyone, I apologize if my post seemed too self centered or gruff, or simply seemed like yet another complaint posting. I know that may others on this forum have been dealing with many of the same issues. It's frustrating that it's happening like it is, as I know we all love the game. But, at the time of writing it, I was dealing with a 5 alarm migraine, and I was watching the alliance I'm in fall below the top 150 in the event, and trying to rally non active members.

To be honest, I've actually come to love this forum, and the people on it, more than the game itself. I thank the members for making me feel welcome here.

daveomite

franckynight wrote:

@daveomite.. i cant be more agreed with what you said.. Now.. I stop ranting about changes cause its up to me now.. Either I can make with the new game direction (more money to throw to stay afloat and compete ie pay for shield, pay for health pack, pay for boost..) either i leave..

thanks francky. I appreciate the support ...and of course, agree with you as well obviously.

daveomite

kensterr wrote:

daveomite wrote:

So, you may THINK that it's "working as intended", and maybe it is...but for your pocketbooks. Not for the betterment of the game, and certainly not for the betterment of my playing experience

They won't admit to that.

And seriously this whole Season 1 and stats on how much they made through IAP - it's just to show numbers to investors and shareholders etc. With competition going on, it's also to show people how many people are "engaged" in their game on a daily basis. To shorten things up, let's just say that players are "numbers" to the devs and nothing more.

right, I seriously doubt they would. And I agree.

mohio

MP23Quest wrote:

I was considering spending another $20 to open up more roster slots for my team, but at this point with all the changes to Bracketing, Matchmaking, and Rewards, I don't see any benefit to doing so. I'm not making any progress at getting better because the rewards of late have been new characters (which take forever to get covers for) or **** characters. Progressing out of 1* into 2* has been extremely painful and slow, and at a certain point, if things keep going the way they are I'll either skip 2* territory completely, or quit.

I enjoy playing the match 3 game. I don't enjoy having to grind out for hours just to keep up with everyone else, but even with grinding I'm falling further and further behind.

I did one Lightning round earlier basically from start to finish and picked up I think 3 2* covers. If you're having trouble finding those 2*s you should really be playing pvp as much as possible. And if you hit a wall, throw in those lvl 6 2* or lvl 15 3* that are doing nothing for you and retreat to get easier matches. Might seem silly to lose points on purpose but it'll be worth it in the end.

KaioShinDE

daveomite wrote:

@ICEx...I'm thinking it may be time for me to just go to pasture or something. Not to sound overly pointed about this, but I do not agree at all with your reasoning's.

The change made to the bracketing is not, in any way, gentle at all. So I agree with most of the other posters on here. Maybe you haven't been in any of those pvp brackets of hell, but it's certainly not a good way of implementation.

Maybe I'm a bit more frustrated about it, as just last night, I wound up dumping $200 bucks into this game, again, to buy covers for heroes that I have never gotten enough covers for, namely, 3* ones. I did this because D3 has basically left me no choice other than to just walk away. But even with dropping in the money, I would have to put in at least another $100 just to get my very first 141 character due to how expensive that is.

But since D3 seems to love to throw 141 teams in my face, that I have little ability to win other than whatever skill, and a huge amount of luck. That's worse than odds at a **** table. So, I'm guessing you are actually trying to force people to spend more and more, as obviously, it's about the only way to keep up.

If you think that is some achievement for D3, that's ridiculous. For a F2P game, as its billed, this is one of the most expensive ones I've ever laid my hands on. On top of that, D3 has single handedly mucked up my ability to progress, level up...anything, because "for the good of the game", we get less rewards, less iso, fewer covers you actually need, and incredibly hard brackets for anyone without a 141 character to even have a chance.

This is not fun. It's just plain stupidly hard. I was in one of those brackets of doom...where the entire top 30 was shielded and over 900 points, the top 20 over 1k. And yrs, i was in that group, with over 1k, but it wasn't fun, and certainly not cheap. I was in another one too, then last night, one where I actually made top 10 with less than 1k. How is that supposed to be logical? It goes against the very things you said was "working as intended".

I can't speak for everyone here, but I feel I've done my part. I'm sitting here on my 85th day, active on your forum, have over 10,400 points in season 1, have 34 roster spots, paid to start an alliance, then moved to another and paid to open the final 5 slots.

I have spent over $400 easy on this game, and what have I gotten out of it? A brick in the face. Increased scaling to 395 in the hunt, brackets that I have to pay through the nose for boosts and shields just to TRY to get over 950 points. Oh, and screwed because I did a clear of the nodes in Oscorp before D3 switched up the points, I have never recovered from that, neither has my alliance.

So, you may THINK that it's "working as intended", and maybe it is...but for your pocketbooks. Not for the betterment of the game, and certainly not for the betterment of my playing experience

I am aware that this post might be borderline ban material. My apologies to the mods here, not trying to make anyone's job even harder. Also aware that I am being so open publicly saying how much I've spent. If this is flame material for some of you, have at it. I'm just frustrated at the lack of attention to detail with this, because I love this game, but it just keeps on kicking me in the teeth.

I can't believe your post got 19 upvotes. By responding to being bent over backwards with spending EVEN MORE MONEY is exactly why the devs do the bad things they do. Congratulations, you and people like you are the reason the game goes to ****. If people just stopped spending money when they get **** by the devs then they would stop **** us.

Mankind is stupid.

Unknown

Days played is a terrible factor for deciding what bracket you go in. I'm playing since October but I just picked up pace recently. Now I'm thrown constantly into brackets with all the heavyweights. I might play as long as them, but my roster is still 1 or 2 mio Iso behind them.

IceIX wrote:

Our matchmaking, scaling, and rubber banding systems are always changing and will very likely continue to do so for the life of the game. We may make changes that require some user readjustment such as this one, but please understand that we always make these alterations with the full intention to make the game a better one for everyone.

I guess everybody can agree that constant alterations are necessary, we would just like to be informed about what's happening. You put up patch notes anyways, don't hide half of the changes there, pretty please?

Shadow

This new change on how people are being grouped together is bad. There is no sense of accomplishment to be obtained when a new player is able to rank highly on the leader board simply because the developers decided to let them have an easy time. I started this game 3 months ago. At that time, even with the noob roster that I was using, I was able to climb to top 50 and sometimes be close to top 15. I liked it and I wasn't being spoon fed an easy chance at getting the 3* covers. If I saw a 2* cover that I liked, I might hold back a bit and get 3 covers for it.

Fast forward to the last PvP that just ended. I have a very decent score that normally gets me top 25 if not top 10. However, because of the way things are now being grouped, if I had not been around in the last 10 minutes of the event, I wouldn't even have made top 50. We already know that we have to be around to play during the final minutes of PvE in order to rank well. We do not want this same thing to happen for PvP.

Unknown

KaioShinDE wrote:

daveomite wrote:

@ICEx...I'm thinking it may be time for me to just go to pasture or something. Not to sound overly pointed about this, but I do not agree at all with your reasoning's.

The change made to the bracketing is not, in any way, gentle at all. So I agree with most of the other posters on here. Maybe you haven't been in any of those pvp brackets of hell, but it's certainly not a good way of implementation.

Maybe I'm a bit more frustrated about it, as just last night, I wound up dumping $200 bucks into this game, again, to buy covers for heroes that I have never gotten enough covers for, namely, 3* ones. I did this because D3 has basically left me no choice other than to just walk away. But even with dropping in the money, I would have to put in at least another $100 just to get my very first 141 character due to how expensive that is.
....
If you think that is some achievement for D3, that's ridiculous. For a F2P game, as its billed, this is one of the most expensive ones I've ever laid my hands on. On top of that, D3 has single handedly mucked up my ability to progress, level up...anything, because "for the good of the game", we get less rewards, less iso, fewer covers you actually need, and incredibly hard brackets for anyone without a 141 character to even have a chance....

I am aware that this post might be borderline ban material. My apologies to the mods here, not trying to make anyone's job even harder. Also aware that I am being so open publicly saying how much I've spent. If this is flame material for some of you, have at it. I'm just frustrated at the lack of attention to detail with this, because I love this game, but it just keeps on kicking me in the teeth.

I can't believe your post got 19 upvotes. By responding to being bent over backwards with spending EVEN MORE MONEY is exactly why the devs do the bad things they do. Congratulations, you and people like you are the reason the game goes to tinykitty. If people just stopped spending money when they get **** by the devs then they would stop tinykittying us.

Mankind is stupid.

I agree and disagree with this. Like daveomite, I spent money on this game. For the most part, it was a small amount here and there for odds and ends. I think daveomite gave them a lot of money, but for me at least, the more recent purchase was for the sake of finally being able to just play the game like I wanted - specifically, the game kept punishing you for leveling up by harder and harder scaling/mmr, on promise that once you hit high levels in the mid hundreds, you'd have an easier time regularly placing top 10 (ie, just staying current), and it looked like that would finally be the case for me. Instead, first thing I saw was a switch over to this weighted sharding tinykitty. The sharding I understand, the weighting I don't.

The reason people spend money on F2P's isn't just to line devs pockets, but it's on the understanding that the F2P format does require people to spend some money in order for the devs to stay in business. Normally I stick to off-line single player games. Part of what drew me into this was the prologue actually. It led me to believe there would be more consistent progression, instead of all this wacky bracketing and nightmare grinding just to place. If you spend a decent amount, you do expect to get something for it, and namely in a casual game like this, the ability to play casually and not have to grind like hell. This is the type of game (MMO), where playing longer normally nets you better characters and a slightly easier time. By paying in, it's on the assumption that you're "catching up" a lot faster, so that you don't have to grind so much anymore, but this doesn't appear to satisfy the devs. The amounts davemite and I both spent on this game should be considered "lifetime subscription" especially considering pricing tiers for standard P2P MMO's, but the game, and the devs, don't appear to treat it as such. You spend money, and they just seem to take the attitude, okay, how can we extract EVEN MORE money from these people. It's not really fair to rag on daveomite for supporting them. He came to basically the same conclusion that I came to - namely that dropping a bit of money into the game to help the devs should net making the game casually playable and get us into the *** roster promised land. In most other games, online and off, it would have. The fact that it doesn't here says more about the devs, than it says about daveomite.

But if we're going to talk turkey here, by the numbers, I could have chosen to use my money to support some off-line games, like I've normally done, be they major studios or indie devs. That would have correlated to a lot of games. At the time I decided to support Demiurge, it was because I've been playing MPQ exclusively in lieue of the time I'd normally spend on other games (and to be honest a little more than I'd like to spend). The assumption being that things will stay relatively the same, and I'll continue to be able to play, and play more casually, for a long period of time, not suddenly get hit with crazy brackets of death, where nearly every single top finisher has 141's and 1k+ points, and ~900 only nets you 25-50 on average. The difference really comes to what you get out of your purchase. For me, the assumption that I'd be able to keep playing the game as it had been before, and not have to grind so hard anymore, was sufficient. The equivalent money put into offline games would have netted comparable or more playtime, with considerably less grinding, but I enjoy pattern matching, and I've enjoyed tracking my roster progression over time. Now it's pretty much just meaningless though.

Their solution to encouraging involvement in new players should be to make progression a little easier and the game more playable/enjoyable in general, not to just dump all the vets and transitioning vets into death brackets together, and say "but you can buy health packs and boosts and shields to temporarily get you out of there!" I have not had a single bracket since the switch over to this shard system that hasn't been a death bracket. I've been joining random times, when my old times seemed to be too crowded (before we understood the concentration was due to weighted sharding), and it always pushes me in with a bunch of of maxed 141's, and inevitably the top 10 is 1k+ almost exclusive (a few dipped into high 900's for top 10), and generally 850-950 just to reach top 25. These are scores that used to win brackets, or at the very least ensure top 10. I've noticed a similar change in PvE. You have to grind harder than you used to for increasingly less rewards. This patch pve was a bit of fun (though still grindy), like the first one, but still plagued by the same problems.

Had it not been for Demiurge screwing the pooch on this one and easing reward tiers a little as a result, my ranking after grinding the whole tournament would only barely have gotten me into 3x *** land, and probably wouldn't have as people would've been grinding 10x harder if prize tiers were constricted like they have been lately. It hasn't been fun. Even with the eased rewards, one of my fellow alliance-mates who grinded the whole tournament missed the blue daken cover by 7 spots. It used to be that landing in reward tiers were easier if you grinded a moderate amount, and dropping a little money into the system to ease things over was a reasonable proposition. Now the game's just gotten progressively more of a grind, and it's harder and harder to actually earn any rewards. This isn't a recipe for keeping players around, especially if they feel that their purchases have don't have any benefit other than lining the devs pockets.

Linkster79

Linkster79 wrote:

Devs dont care why people quit, as long as they got some money out of you that is all that matters and if you dont plan on spending again they need to ship you out and make room for the next mug. If you are a free player they are happy to get rid of the dead weight that is consuming their bandwith and clogging their server

It now seems that after a certain period of playing that want to get rid of you too. I have 1 3* character over level 100 and because I am a daily but casual player for about 6 months I now have to face team of level 141. I regulary finished top 10 or 25, now I can't hit top 50. The absolute most ridiculous thing is the more I play the lower I finish. Last PvP I was about to claim the 900 progress reward, without me losing to anyone myself I finished hundreds of points lower! In any competition have you ever heard of being deducted points unless you seriously breach the rules?

tl;dr play more to level up and things will get a lot more difficult not easier.