On Bracketing and SHIELD Training

GigerHR

This change basically guarantees I will not see another 3* cover from PVP. I've been playing 196 days, so I'm getting lumped in the "veteran's" bracket. My roster is strong enough to reach the now required 1,100 points for top 10, the problem is, I can't play enough hours in a day to grind my way up to that level. In my nearly 200 days, I've managed a >1,000 point PVP score exactly once - and that was when I had a day off, with no family around and with no other demands on my time, so I was able to put in the hours of grinding it takes to make it up to that range. If this keeps up, there's just no chance I'm going to make it to the top levels.

D3, please go back to the way things were. Days played on its own is the worst way to segregate your player base - it does nothing to account for play style/roster strength, and does nothing but punish your loyal players. If you're going to bracket players based on anything other the time they joined or a completely random assignment with no weighting, then you need to incorporate all of the factors that play into making brackets fair: average time played/day, average pvp score, timezone, roster strength, etc.

These past few tourneys have been the most depressing thing I've seen since I started playing. Staring at a wall of 1,000+ scores to barely break into the top 10 in my bracket just makes me not want to play. The only reason I've put in any PVP time at all in the past week is to support my alliance - and we haven't even managed a top 100 placement in that time! Seriously, what's the point in playing in a tourney where I have no chance at earning anything worthwhile?

Unknown

GigerHR wrote:

This change basically guarantees I will not see another 3* cover from PVP. I've been playing 196 days, so I'm getting lumped in the "veteran's" bracket. My roster is strong enough to reach the now required 1,100 points for top 10, the problem is, I can't play enough hours in a day to grind my way up to that level. In my nearly 200 days, I've managed a >1,000 point PVP score exactly once - and that was when I had a day off, with no family around and with no other demands on my time, so I was able to put in the hours of grinding it takes to make it up to that range. If this keeps up, there's just no chance I'm going to make it to the top levels.

D3, please go back to the way things were. Days played on its own is the worst way to segregate your player base - it does nothing to account for play style/roster strength, and does nothing but punish your loyal players. If you're going to bracket players based on anything other the time they joined or a completely random assignment with no weighting, then you need to incorporate all of the factors that play into making brackets fair: average time played/day, average pvp score, timezone, roster strength, etc.

These past few tourneys have been the most depressing thing I've seen since I started playing. Staring at a wall of 1,000+ scores to barely break into the top 10 in my bracket just makes me not want to play. The only reason I've put in any PVP time at all in the past week is to support my alliance - and we haven't even managed a top 100 placement in that time! Seriously, what's the point in playing in a tourney where I have no chance at earning anything worthwhile?

Agreed!

Please guys, return the game to they way it was. When it was fun. When it didn't have to be a full time grind. When you didn't have to be in an alliance to get all the covers. When you didn't have to feel like you've let your alliance down when you can't play full time for a day or two and you don't have to constantly have the monkey on your back of possibly being kicked.

Please for the love of god or whomever you believe in make it fun again so I don't have to come in here and make angry comments all the time and and then have to read condescending replies from mods. (sorry but they really are sometimes)

I seriously have to believe that only 3-6 months ago this game had the happiest and most loyal fan base out there. That all started to change around the time of the Thor nerf. Find what worked for the game then and go back to it.

Go back to the happy and loyal fan base!!

Arogntbastrd

So the basic jist seems to be,this change is so that new players won't get scared and think they can't win. My feelings are the same as with restructuring the alliance reward bc SHIELD kept winning. Why shouldn't the best players win and why should the player base that is weaker feel like they can win?

I understand that many humans are delusional and entitled, but why are THOSE the people that need to be catered to? If you're better you should win, if your roster is only good enough to get top 248 then that's what you should get. If that players not happy with the reward either the reward structure is flawed or the player has unrealistic expectations.

What sense does it make to have veteran brackets where the majority get useless covers, and "easy" brackets where new players are getting 3* rewards they can't even use yet. All that does is make things more difficult/ upsetting for better players. Sounds a lot like scaling, which we all love and think is fair...

When I was young, I had to level up my 1*s til I got some 2*s. When I needed 2*s I finished in the prize range that made my 2*s stronger. Eventually my 2*s were strong enough to where i could get some 3*s. The system worked!

These young kids nowadays just wanna win their pvps and have their make out parties. Well I say no sir! People worked hard for their 141s so they could smack people around and giggle. When I lost to a strong roster, I thought "I want to go to there" I played more, I got better, now I run through flowers. You're trying to let the riff raff all up in our flowers! If the 141s can't enjoy our virtual suburbs (top pvp placements) we're going to move out and you're going to be left with a bunch of hooligans and dropping property values.

I realize you want new players to keep coming back for more. All you have to do to make any player happy is make sure the rewards they ARE able to get when competing with titans of industry make their rosters better. The games fun! It's addicting! People want to get better, it's human nature. Give people rewards that are useless and you end up with threads like this.

Vohnkar

GigerHR wrote:

This change basically guarantees I will not see another 3* cover from PVP. I've been playing 196 days, so I'm getting lumped in the "veteran's" bracket. My roster is strong enough to reach the now required 1,100 points for top 10, the problem is, I can't play enough hours in a day to grind my way up to that level. In my nearly 200 days, I've managed a >1,000 point PVP score exactly once - and that was when I had a day off, with no family around and with no other demands on my time, so I was able to put in the hours of grinding it takes to make it up to that range. If this keeps up, there's just no chance I'm going to make it to the top levels.

D3, please go back to the way things were. Days played on its own is the worst way to segregate your player base - it does nothing to account for play style/roster strength, and does nothing but punish your loyal players. If you're going to bracket players based on anything other the time they joined or a completely random assignment with no weighting, then you need to incorporate all of the factors that play into making brackets fair: average time played/day, average pvp score, timezone, roster strength, etc.

These past few tourneys have been the most depressing thing I've seen since I started playing. Staring at a wall of 1,000+ scores to barely break into the top 10 in my bracket just makes me not want to play. The only reason I've put in any PVP time at all in the past week is to support my alliance - and we haven't even managed a top 100 placement in that time! Seriously, what's the point in playing in a tourney where I have no chance at earning anything worthwhile?

Agreed.

For the first time in months I did only 300 points on the last loki event. I usually go for 700+ with my 2* low 3* roster. But this last events have been a nightmare of 1k+ top10 with full 141 competition, so I don't bother anymore. I'll try again to place well on the Iron Man PvP event, but if the bracketing keeps going like that were I'm being punished for playing so long, bye bye MPQ. For now you won't see a single € from me, it seems D3 objective to have low lvls pleased, so have fun getting money from them guys, instead of your loyal 100+ days players.

Its so frustrating to being punished for playing a game! I love MPQ, but its getting ridiculous to be treated like that, I'm not asking for free covers o rewards, before the last changes I had to boost myself to get high enough to do top 5/10, I had to use my shields properly, but at least If I was on a "nice" bracket I could plan my way up and with dedication do something. Right now I won't even try, my top10 is always 1k+.

Unknown

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.

Ice, you've always been pretty up front with the players and I think most of us appreciate that. So the following is nothing personal against you...

Ever since TaT it's been painfully obvious that D3 is way out of their league with massively online style play. Rubber banding, scaling and MMR are always changing because the company has no idea how to do it. Will the programmers (and to be fair, the real villains here are probably the bean-counters) ever go with a system that dynamically adjusts each PVE node or PVP encounter based on the currently deployed hero team?

Using PVE as an example, honestly, the dev team should be looking at every node and deciding whether it should be an "easy", "normal", or "hard" node before the event commences. Trivial and impossible should never, ever be things under any circumstances. Easy nodes should be within 10 levels of the currently selected hero team, normal should be within 30-ish levels of the current hero team, and hard nodes should be within 50-75-ish levels of the current hero team. Events should be a good mix of each difficulty with the more difficult nodes obviously being worth more points. Player deploys three 141 heroes against a Hard node? Game should scale the enemy mobs to, oh, say level 190 or 200. These numbers are kind of arbitrary and subject to tuning based on collected metrics.

Although the example is arbitrary, I think the point is clear. Every system D3 has put in place over the past 4-5 months punishes players for winning AND erases any motivation to progress. Because there is no progress. The goal posts move every time you win a match or place well in an event. It has morphed from a game to a job to a death march.

scottee

Devs, here's how you can remove the need for this bracketing "fix" and also return MMR to what it was. And you'd make all the vets happy.

Create tournaments for new players only. Set it up so you can only play in it if you're in your first 30 days, or give every new player tokens to play in 5 or 7 or 10 of them. Run them for something like 5 or 7 days so you don't have to worry about it much, and place 2* covers in as progression awards and as the main placement awards, with a 3* as the prize for #1. Limit it to 2* max characters so no one can dominate with a paid 3*. New players get a taste for PVP without messing up the game for everyone else. Profit.

Unknown

GigerHR wrote:

This change basically guarantees I will not see another 3* cover from PVP. I've been playing 196 days, so I'm getting lumped in the "veteran's" bracket. My roster is strong enough to reach the now required 1,100 points for top 10, the problem is, I can't play enough hours in a day to grind my way up to that level. In my nearly 200 days, I've managed a >1,000 point PVP score exactly once - and that was when I had a day off, with no family around and with no other demands on my time, so I was able to put in the hours of grinding it takes to make it up to that range. If this keeps up, there's just no chance I'm going to make it to the top levels.

D3, please go back to the way things were. Days played on its own is the worst way to segregate your player base - it does nothing to account for play style/roster strength, and does nothing but punish your loyal players. If you're going to bracket players based on anything other the time they joined or a completely random assignment with no weighting, then you need to incorporate all of the factors that play into making brackets fair: average time played/day, average pvp score, timezone, roster strength, etc.

These past few tourneys have been the most depressing thing I've seen since I started playing. Staring at a wall of 1,000+ scores to barely break into the top 10 in my bracket just makes me not want to play. The only reason I've put in any PVP time at all in the past week is to support my alliance - and we haven't even managed a top 100 placement in that time! Seriously, what's the point in playing in a tourney where I have no chance at earning anything worthwhile?

Getting over 1000 doesn't involve massive amounts of time.. 2hrs 15 minutes will do. You can get from 0-950 in 2 hours..shield to block the retaliations, then 3 hours later line up some nice juicy targets before the shield goes off... play for 15 minutes for the last 200 points... voila.. 1100 in a playtime of 2 hours and 15 mins. On my sons account.. which has OBW and Wolverine as 85 and 70 i have got 715 points in 45 mins... its not characters, it's timing.

Unknown

Nerdrage wrote:

GigerHR wrote:

This change basically guarantees I will not see another 3* cover from PVP. I've been playing 196 days, so I'm getting lumped in the "veteran's" bracket. My roster is strong enough to reach the now required 1,100 points for top 10, the problem is, I can't play enough hours in a day to grind my way up to that level. In my nearly 200 days, I've managed a >1,000 point PVP score exactly once - and that was when I had a day off, with no family around and with no other demands on my time, so I was able to put in the hours of grinding it takes to make it up to that range. If this keeps up, there's just no chance I'm going to make it to the top levels.

D3, please go back to the way things were. Days played on its own is the worst way to segregate your player base - it does nothing to account for play style/roster strength, and does nothing but punish your loyal players. If you're going to bracket players based on anything other the time they joined or a completely random assignment with no weighting, then you need to incorporate all of the factors that play into making brackets fair: average time played/day, average pvp score, timezone, roster strength, etc.

These past few tourneys have been the most depressing thing I've seen since I started playing. Staring at a wall of 1,000+ scores to barely break into the top 10 in my bracket just makes me not want to play. The only reason I've put in any PVP time at all in the past week is to support my alliance - and we haven't even managed a top 100 placement in that time! Seriously, what's the point in playing in a tourney where I have no chance at earning anything worthwhile?

Getting over 1000 doesn't involve massive amounts of time.. 2hrs 15 minutes will do. You can get from 0-950 in 2 hours..shield to block the retaliations, then 3 hours later line up some nice juicy targets before the shield goes off... play for 15 minutes for the last 200 points... voila.. 1100 in a playtime of 2 hours and 15 mins. On my sons account.. which has OBW and Wolverine as 85 and 70 i have got 715 points in 45 mins... its not characters, it's timing.

Nerdrage I'd absolutely right....I don't get why People are complaining about higher scores. First that means you are getting more rewards along the way making it easier to level characters. Second, you are an idiot to think that people aren't going to push for high points for a **** character because you want the high points to get that Nick fury. The only complaint I have about that is, I'm currently on 25th place in the season and all I'm going to get is 10 packs.....luckily my alliance is top 100 but I don't think it's right to penalize people in a non top 100 alliance and screw them out of a top end card. If you already know your alliance is shot, there is no point in competing for the **** reward cards.
On another note everyone I know that plays has to get into the 1000s to be near top 10, I just think the matchmaking has changed where people aren't coming out of a match losing 6 times as often as it used to be.

tbighead21

Easy way to help out beginners and vets:

Increase the daily reward ISO back to 500. Everybody loves more daily ISO.

Increase the frequency of receiving 1 or 2 star characters after fights. The new people need them and the veterans can sell them for more ISO. The increase in the daily ISO reward will help the new people level up and feel more competitive.

Also allow members of an alliance to pool HP together to expand the alliance. New alliances can grow quicker and become more competitive.

Everybody wins and everybody wants to continue playing this game.

HailMary

tbighead21 wrote:

Increase the frequency of receiving 1 or 2 star characters after fights. The new people need them and the veterans can sell them for more ISO. The increase in the daily ISO reward will help the new people level up and feel more competitive.

They did. It went from "literally zero" to "like, whoa, a lot." Seriously, my rewards queue regularly climbs north of 20 covers before I remember to even check it. I've probably gotten two, complete, 13-cover MN Mags characters since they started giving us fight-completion covers.

tbighead21 wrote:

Also allow members of an alliance to pool HP together to expand the alliance. New alliances can grow quicker and become more competitive.

Everybody wins and everybody wants to continue playing this game.

Except that HP pooling is currently pretty far down the list of complaints, not to mention the HP farming nightmare that'll bring.

Currently, the top forumite complaints seem to be crazy scaling, PVP MMR (i.e. wall of 2x141s right off the bat), and the new veterancy-based PVP bracketing (i.e. demonic brackets where #10 is at 1020 regularly coexisting with puny brackets where 760 gets your #2)

tbighead21

HailMary wrote:

Currently, the top forumite complaints seem to be crazy scaling, PVP MMR (i.e. wall of 2x141s right off the bat), and the new veterancy-based PVP bracketing (i.e. demonic brackets where #10 is at 1020 regularly coexisting with puny brackets where 760 gets your #2)

Agreed. It seems like all of this is done to help out the new people at the expense of people that have been playing for months. They should level the playing field and figure out other ways to help them. With over a day left in Heavy metal the leader in my group already has over 1200 and the top 10 is crazy high. Another member in my alliance is in a bracket where the leader only has 700. It's ridiculous.

HailMary

tbighead21 wrote:

Agreed. It seems like all of this is done to help out the new people at the expense of people that have been playing for months. They should level the playing field and figure out other ways to help them. With over a day left in Heavy metal the leader in my group already has over 1200 and the top 10 is crazy high. Another member in my alliance is in a bracket where the leader only has 700. It's ridiculous.

Yep, I understand the logic behind making the changes (that Ice kindly laid out for us), and I agree that not making newbies run for the hills is a good thing. But, as Tanqueray Guy is fond of saying: always in moderation. This new bracketing went way overboard. Either explicitly segregate veterans and new/mid-tier players in events that give appropriately greater rewards for high difficulty, or put a few heavy hitter in each bracket so that we're not all bunched up in brackets where 1000 points ends up being an "eh, not bad, I guess" score.

If you don't mind my asking, I'm curious about your alliance member in the soft bracket: what's his roster strength like? How long has he been playing?

tbighead21

HailMary wrote:

If you don't mind my asking, I'm curious about your alliance member in the soft bracket: what's his roster strength like? How long has he been playing?

40 days, 3/3/5 ares level 69 is his highest ranked fighter, second best is a 5/4/1 storm level 56, 560 points has him ranked 27th in heavy metal.

tbighead21

I guess being on day 184 and having 8500+ pts in season 1 means I have to look up to reckless442 in my bracket lol.

Unknown

"Break Stuff"

Its just one of those days
When you don't wanna wake up
Everything is ****
Everybody sux
You don't really know why
But you want justify
Rippin' someone's head off
No human contact
And if you interact
Your life is on contract
Your best bet is to stay away ****
It's just one of those days!!

[chorus]
Its all about the he says she says ****
I think you better quit
Lettin' **** slip
Or you'll be leavin with a fat lip
Its all about the he says she says ****
I think you better quit talkin that ****
(Punk, so come and get it)
Its just one of those days
Feelin' like a freight train
First one to complain
Leaves with a blood stain
Damn right I'm a maniac
You better watch your back
Cuz I'm ****' up your program
And if your stuck up
You just lucked up
Next in line to get **** up
Your best bet is to stay away ****
Its just one of those days!!

[chorus]

I feel like ****
My suggestion is to keep your distance cuz right now im dangerous
We've all felt like ****
And been treated like ****
All those **** that want to step up
I hope you know I pack a chain saw
I'll skin your **** raw
And if my day keeps goin' this way I just might break somethin' tonight...
I hope you know I pack a chain saw
I'll skin your **** raw
And if my day keeps goin' this way I just might break somethin' tonight...
I hope you know I pack a chain saw
I'll skin your **** raw
And if my day keeps goin' this way I just might break your ****' face tonight!!
Give me somethin' to break
Give me somethin' to break
Just give me somethin' to break
How bout your ****' face
I hope you know I pack a chain saw, what!!...
A chain saw, what!!...
A **** chain saw, what!!...
So come and get it

[chorus]

Unknown

benomoth wrote:

"Break Stuff"

Its just one of those days
When you don't wanna wake up
Everything is tinykitty
Everybody sux
You don't really know why
But you want justify
Rippin' someone's head off
No human contact
And if you interact
Your life is on contract
Your best bet is to stay away tinykitty
It's just one of those days!!

[chorus]
Its all about the he says she says tinykitty
I think you better quit
Lettin' tinykitty slip
Or you'll be leavin with a fat lip
Its all about the he says she says tinykitty
I think you better quit talkin that tinykitty
(Punk, so come and get it)
Its just one of those days
Feelin' like a freight train
First one to complain
Leaves with a blood stain
Damn right I'm a maniac
You better watch your back
Cuz I'm tinykitty' up your program
And if your stuck up
You just lucked up
Next in line to get tinykitty up
Your best bet is to stay away tinykitty
Its just one of those days!!

[chorus]

I feel like tinykitty
My suggestion is to keep your distance cuz right now im dangerous
We've all felt like tinykitty
And been treated like tinykitty
All those tinykitty that want to step up
I hope you know I pack a chain saw
I'll skin your **** raw
And if my day keeps goin' this way I just might break somethin' tonight...
I hope you know I pack a chain saw
I'll skin your **** raw
And if my day keeps goin' this way I just might break somethin' tonight...
I hope you know I pack a chain saw
I'll skin your **** raw
And if my day keeps goin' this way I just might break your tinykitty' face tonight!!
Give me somethin' to break
Give me somethin' to break
Just give me somethin' to break
How bout your tinykitty' face
I hope you know I pack a chain saw, what!!...
A chain saw, what!!...
A tinykitty chain saw, what!!...
So come and get it

[chorus]

I'm not sure this will be approved by the thought police.

In all seriousness I have a silly question.

What is tinykitty?

Clintman

An automatic profanity filter that changes objectionable words to tinykitty

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

An automatic profanity filter that changes objectionable words to tinykitty

thank you

Unknown

Although i'm all for forum positivity I feel like people give IceX a free ride for his posts. The claim that there is a "slight" change to bracketing is either misinformed or intentionally misleading because there is nothing slight about it at all....

That aside, months ago I said D3 were starting to devalue progression in their game and it's just kept rolling from there. Scaling made having high level rosters a punishment and now they've gone for an even more bizarre "time since joining" based punishment for PvP.

I genuinely don't see a reason to make people constantly fight against equally or more powerful rosters in PvP beyond money grubbing by D3. It feels like they simply want to sell more health packs and more shields because, especially after the spiderman nerf goes in and even more so when they almost inevitably nerf OBW (just waiting til the first post by a dev about her being used too much so they're looking into it) people cannot maintain the health of their heroes with a prolonged PvP push. So the hope from the devs is you'll chose health packs over prologue healing because your matches already take much longer AND spidey heals much less so prologue healing becomes less attractive.

Add to that the fact you need much higher scores to place in PvP so you need to win more games and can't afford to take painful retals, so they hope you'll shield hop thereby spending more HP.

In most games you progress and actually GAIN something from your progression. In MPQ that was higher PvE scores and easier PvP placing. They then went for the top end points based bracketing overwriting MMR towards the end of events but that at least meant you had an easier time getting the first part of your score before having to work harder on the points that got you your 1100pt cover or top placement. Now you get hard fights from your first point (unless you're beating on seed teams) and ridiculously stacked brackets regardless of your ability to compete (time played doesn't equal equivalent rosters). The points based MMR overwrite at the end of the events doesn't even cause better rosters to rise to the top because you don't get to be in the brackets with the bad rosters who win their bracket with 700-800 points instead you get 1k+ top 20s.

It's a truly bizarre set up and I can only assume D3 feel like they get more money from their newest players and despite IceX's attempts to justify all these recent changes as some kind of "fairness" or "challenge" it all comes across as cynical cash grabbing to me.

I guess we need to hope newer players wander onto the forums, see what veteran players are saying about the pointlessness of advancement and stop spending on the game to try and kickstart their rosters. Then maybe D3 will bother to sort this out since the overwhelmingly negative responses on the forum seem to matter not a jot.

Unknown

Whatever. Bring it on.

More arcane rules just means new ways to exploit and dupe the system into getting what I want with the least amount effort required.

Hold me, I'm scared.