Customizing defense power preferences?

Bowgentle

Alex502 said:

This why I don't enjoy it, as in order to smash up that mountain, you have to have SPECIFIC Championed 5 stars to even begin to compete, and the only quick way to earn command points is to place high in PvP. This creates a cycle of loss return, meaning I can push and push and push but then fall right back down to where it means nothing for me to have done that much work. This is why I want the defense to work better. To be honest, the win based progression is great for this issue, and I'm glad they added that in, but it doesn't help with the fact that I still lose all point progression I earn, because the losses just rack up by the dozens.

You don't need to place high in PVP.
1200 is all you need.
Or 75 wins, if your roster isn't good enough for 1200.

Alex502

And the max I have been able to push to has almost always been around 800 or 900. By the time you start to reach those higher tiers, the other players are all rocking these huge 5 stars or Championed and powered 4 stars. It makes it nearly impossible to continue higher. To be fair, a stronger AI would mean this gets even harder to progress, but I'm so tired of pushing so much to see all my points disappear over just an hour. In an hour, I lost over 30 matches, hundreds of points, and no hope to rise that score again.

entrailbucket

Alex502 said:

Perhaps if the AI skill increased with SHIELD rank? I find it boring that the AI acts the same at rank 2 or 7.

Haha, the players at rank 8 and 9 would complain the loudest about a more difficult AI.  Remember they're the ones who originally complained so much about win-based progression that the devs actually undid it to make them stop complaining.

Bowgentle

Alex502 said:

And the max I have been able to push to has almost always been around 800 or 900. By the time you start to reach those higher tiers, the other players are all rocking these huge 5 stars or Championed and powered 4 stars. It makes it nearly impossible to continue higher. To be fair, a stronger AI would mean this gets even harder to progress, but I'm so tired of pushing so much to see all my points disappear over just an hour. In an hour, I lost over 30 matches, hundreds of points, and no hope to rise that score again.

75 wins.

entrailbucket

Alex502 said:

And the max I have been able to push to has almost always been around 800 or 900. By the time you start to reach those higher tiers, the other players are all rocking these huge 5 stars or Championed and powered 4 stars. It makes it nearly impossible to continue higher. To be fair, a stronger AI would mean this gets even harder to progress, but I'm so tired of pushing so much to see all my points disappear over just an hour. In an hour, I lost over 30 matches, hundreds of points, and no hope to rise that score again.

If I stay unshielded for an hour at 900 points I'll lose hundreds of points too, and I'm using 500+ 5*...that's just what this game is, and it's not likely ever going to change.

The way players work around this is to shield when they reach that level, wait a bit, skip repeatedly to line up higher point fights, then break shield for a few fights before shielding up again.  It's a fun little metagame in itself, lots of adrenaline gets generated by trying to finish your fights before one of the zombies finds you and attacks you. 

I'm not sure exactly what you're working with, but that's what all the names above you on the leaderboard are doing.  If you can get to 900 now you can probably reach 1000 or so by shield-hopping without too much additional hp expense.

Jaedenkaal

Alex502 said:

This why I don't enjoy it, as in order to smash up that mountain, you have to have SPECIFIC Championed 5 stars to even begin to compete, and the only quick way to earn command points is to place high in PvP. This creates a cycle of loss return, meaning I can push and push and push but then fall right back down to where it means nothing for me to have done that much work. This is why I want the defense to work better. To be honest, the win based progression is great for this issue, and I'm glad they added that in, but it doesn't help with the fact that I still lose all point progression I earn, because the losses just rack up by the dozens.

Sure, but... surely if the AI won 20% more matches, you'd expect to also lose that many more matches of your own? Which you would lose points for. So it would be a wash, except that everyone would be losing more.

Phumade

Alex502 said:

To be honest, the win based progression is great for this issue, and I'm glad they added that in, but it doesn't help with the fact that I still lose all point progression I earn, because the losses just rack up by the dozens.

Honestly,  now that you have win progression why do you even care about losses?  There are no rewards or metrics that track point losses or match losses.

I would actually say that while your original post was about AI design,  your real complaint is how the matchmaking system works.

MPQ is really two different games.

1.  The actual match 3 experience:  Things like AI, powers design, costs, etc..

2.  The leaderboard placement game:  Placement and ultimately points depends a lot more on understanding how players are active, quality of their roster, how ELO points work,  collaboration etc...  The actual mechanics of the game are really just tangential related to how high a person places.  We've all seen players with weaker rosters keep up with 5* rosters, because of how well they can play the "placement game".   So while its definitely true that great rosters dominate the meta,  AI defense is a relatively minor part of that equation.

justsing

Alex502 said:

This why I don't enjoy it, as in order to smash up that mountain, you have to have SPECIFIC Championed 5 stars to even begin to compete, and the only quick way to earn command points is to place high in PvP. This creates a cycle of loss return, meaning I can push and push and push but then fall right back down to where it means nothing for me to have done that much work. This is why I want the defense to work better. To be honest, the win based progression is great for this issue, and I'm glad they added that in, but it doesn't help with the fact that I still lose all point progression I earn, because the losses just rack up by the dozens.

Why do you even care about losing point progression now that wins progression is a thing? You can earn all the progression rewards (which is where most of the CP is) via the number of wins regardless of your roster strength and final points total.

HoundofShadow

Defensive wins were abused a while back. That's why your defensive wins are worth only a few points. I can't imagine how rampant defensive wins would be abused.

I think you need to use shield to climb past 900. As for MMR, you can try to observe your slice and timing.