PVE - How competitive are the slices?

DarthDeVo

Bowgentle said:

DarthDeVo said:

I'm in 4.9, always the second bracket (which usually opens in prejoins right before the event starts or shortly after it goes live), and I wish I could play just about any different slice. 

4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

If you think that is slow,try 2.9.
Two brackets, every PVE.
The second one never fills.

Hey, plenty of players to fill brackets for SCL 10 ... right?

Bowgentle

DarthDeVo said:

Bowgentle said:

DarthDeVo said:

I'm in 4.9, always the second bracket (which usually opens in prejoins right before the event starts or shortly after it goes live), and I wish I could play just about any different slice. 

4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

If you think that is slow,try 2.9.
Two brackets, every PVE.
The second one never fills.

Hey, plenty of players to fill brackets for SCL 10 ... right?

If they make the rewards worth it, yes.
Shame they won't do it.

bluewolf

The issue with adding SCL10 is dilution of rewards.  Something no one seems to be thinking about among the players, which is understandable.  We all want better rewards and a reason to keep matching gems.

The developers have some budget for how many rewards and what kind they give out on an ongoing basis.  I assume that is based in part on how many people play the game in general and at each level, and probably how hard.

I can enter an SCL9 bracket (I always play slice 1 or 2) and hit T50, never fail, with 7 clears.  If that wasn't the case (lets say it was only T100), the developers would probably expand the rewards to encompass people who basically play as hard as possible.  I could be wrong, but it would not make sense to me for the developers to have, say, people playing 7 clears ending up with 2*'s in scl9.  Part of the design is for you to feel that your effort can get you good rewards that advance your roster.  And realistically, 7 clears is the maximum effort you can now put in, with only your timing differentiating which level of rewards you receive.

TLDR;  there aren't that many people playing hard, if I can be in the top 50/1000 by just doing my 7 clears on a fairly optimal schedule (within a few hours of open and close)

SCL 10 would divide up the top playerbase into other whole set of brackets (let's say you divided the current SCL9 brackets in half between 9 and 10).  There are currently 13 full and 5 open SCL9 brackets for Prodigal Sun.  So 9 and 9.

So for about half the players at the top end, you are going to increase rewards for presumed more effort due to higher enemy levels, (but not that much unless the trend of easier play is dramatically altered).  And assuming most of the current top end players abandon SCL9 for better rewards, then by default a lot of players in SCL9 will suddenly start earning better rewards for the same effort as they can place higher now that the top end players moved on.

Now, if, as we suspect, the playerbase (especially the top end) is either the same or shrinking, would it make sense to increase the rewards given out from the developers' point of view?

To me this is the issue and the catch 22.  The developers are unwilling to implement SCL10 due to a lack of top end player growth, and top players leave as there is less to keep them engaged.

Xception81

How do you know how many full and open brackets there are? I’ve noticed comments like this before and always wondered. 

Bowgentle

Xception81 said:

How do you know how many full and open brackets there are? I’ve noticed comments like this before and always wondered. 

There are LINE rooms which track that stuff.

JSP869

MegaBee said:

Pants1000 said:

I moved from 4.9 to 5.9 and found it much less competitive.  I figure it’s because 4 ends in US prime time, while most of the US is asleep when 5 ends.  Then again I also usually join late in the first sub, after a flip or two.

What does the .9 signify?

4.9 means 4th time slot/bracket in cl9, while 5.9 is the 5th time slot/bracket in cl9.

I don't know why folks settled on listing the cl second instead of first. To me, it's more logical to reference the difficulty level first and then the time slice/bracket, i,e., 9.4, 9.5, etc., but the 4.9, 5.9 style was well established long before I joined the bracket sniping community, so I just adopted it like everyone else has

CT1888

JSP869 said:

MegaBee said:

Pants1000 said:

I moved from 4.9 to 5.9 and found it much less competitive.  I figure it’s because 4 ends in US prime time, while most of the US is asleep when 5 ends.  Then again I also usually join late in the first sub, after a flip or two.

What does the .9 signify?

4.9 means 4th time slot/bracket in cl9, while 5.9 is the 5th time slot/bracket in cl9.

I don't know why folks settled on listing the cl second instead of first. To me, it's more logical to reference the difficulty level first and then the time slice/bracket, i,e., 9.4, 9.5, etc., but the 4.9, 5.9 style was well established long before I joined the bracket sniping community, so I just adopted it like everyone else has

Slices were here long before CL, so when they launched moving from saying S4 has flipped to 4.9 has flipped would have been the natural progression within the community. 

abenness

Bowgentle said:

Xception81 said:

How do you know how many full and open brackets there are? I’ve noticed comments like this before and always wondered. 

There are LINE rooms which track that stuff.

What is the proper way to access these bracket-tracking rooms? I am brand new to LINE, and no one else in my alliance uses it.

My username there is “klael” if anyone is willing to help me out, it would be much appreciated.

Yepyep

DarthDeVo said:

...
4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

@DarthDeVo, would you please explain what this means? What is the first "flip," and how could you miss it? And how could anything other than starting the event too late cause you to miss the first sub? Finally, how do you know how fast 4.9 fills...?

DarthDeVo

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

...
4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

@DarthDeVo, would you please explain what this means? What is the first "flip," and how could you miss it? And how could anything other than starting the event too late cause you to miss the first sub? Finally, how do you know how fast 4.9 fills...?

When a PvE event is first made available, people can start joining at each available SCL in one of the five slices. As soon as a bracket reaches 1000 players it becomes full and a second one opens and starts filling with more players. 

Most brackets in each slice will fill at least once before the event goes live for that slice, or shortly after it goes live. 

So for instance, I play Slice 4 of SCL 9. That goes live at 11 p.m. in my time zone. The first bracket usually fills and the second starts filling shortly before or after the event goes live. However, it usually takes about 20 hours for this second bracket to fill and for a third one to open. And *that* bracket basically never fills before the event ends.

People will intentionally wait for brackets to flip to hopefully get in less competitive brackets and increase their likelihood of placing well. In these instances, it's important to join as soon as you can when the new bracket opens so you can get the most points possible and improve your chances of placing well. 

So in the case of 4.9, if you don't join the second bracket and wait for the third, you sometimes risk missing the first sub. For the most part, people are willing to sacrifice the resources from one sub if it means they can place better for the event. But for others, that may be a dealbreaker. And if you miss the third bracket when it opens, then you may end up not placing well either. 

Lastly, there's a Google spreadsheet that tracks how fast the brackets fill and call the flips. Most of that info comes from various Line rooms. 

Yepyep

DarthDeVo said:

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

...
4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

@DarthDeVo, would you please explain what this means? What is the first "flip," and how could you miss it? And how could anything other than starting the event too late cause you to miss the first sub? Finally, how do you know how fast 4.9 fills...?

When a PvE event is first made available, people can start joining at each available SCL in one of the five slices. As soon as a bracket reaches 1000 players it becomes full and a second one opens and starts filling with more players. 

Most brackets in each slice will fill at least once before the event goes live for that slice, or shortly after it goes live. 

So for instance, I play Slice 4 of SCL 9. That goes live at 11 p.m. in my time zone. The first bracket usually fills and the second starts filling shortly before or after the event goes live. However, it usually takes about 20 hours for this second bracket to fill and for a third one to open. And *that* bracket basically never fills before the event ends.

People will intentionally wait for brackets to flip to hopefully get in less competitive brackets and increase their likelihood of placing well. In these instances, it's important to join as soon as you can when the new bracket opens so you can get the most points possible and improve your chances of placing well. 

So in the case of 4.9, if you don't join the second bracket and wait for the third, you sometimes risk missing the first sub. For the most part, people are willing to sacrifice the resources from one sub if it means they can place better for the event. But for others, that may be a dealbreaker. And if you miss the third bracket when it opens, then you may end up not placing well either. 

Lastly, there's a Google spreadsheet that tracks how fast the brackets fill and call the flips. Most of that info comes from various Line rooms. 

Great explanation, thanks. But there is no true transparency into the filling of each bracket, correct? That is, the game interface does not tell us this information. So isn't it pure speculation to try to determine (1) how fast a bracket fills, (2) when/if one has filled, and (3) what bracket one has joined? Or is there some indication of any of this provided by the game somehow?

abenness

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

...
4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

@DarthDeVo, would you please explain what this means? What is the first "flip," and how could you miss it? And how could anything other than starting the event too late cause you to miss the first sub? Finally, how do you know how fast 4.9 fills...?

When a PvE event is first made available, people can start joining at each available SCL in one of the five slices. As soon as a bracket reaches 1000 players it becomes full and a second one opens and starts filling with more players. 

Most brackets in each slice will fill at least once before the event goes live for that slice, or shortly after it goes live. 

So for instance, I play Slice 4 of SCL 9. That goes live at 11 p.m. in my time zone. The first bracket usually fills and the second starts filling shortly before or after the event goes live. However, it usually takes about 20 hours for this second bracket to fill and for a third one to open. And *that* bracket basically never fills before the event ends.

People will intentionally wait for brackets to flip to hopefully get in less competitive brackets and increase their likelihood of placing well. In these instances, it's important to join as soon as you can when the new bracket opens so you can get the most points possible and improve your chances of placing well. 

So in the case of 4.9, if you don't join the second bracket and wait for the third, you sometimes risk missing the first sub. For the most part, people are willing to sacrifice the resources from one sub if it means they can place better for the event. But for others, that may be a dealbreaker. And if you miss the third bracket when it opens, then you may end up not placing well either. 

Lastly, there's a Google spreadsheet that tracks how fast the brackets fill and call the flips. Most of that info comes from various Line rooms. 

Great explanation, thanks. But there is no true transparency into the filling of each bracket, correct? That is, the game interface does not tell us this information. So isn't it pure speculation to try to determine (1) how fast a bracket fills, (2) when/if one has filled, and (3) what bracket one has joined? Or is there some indication of any of this provided by the game somehow?

Correct - in the game the only way to see the numbers for your bracket, is to actually enter the bracket, which locks you there for the event.  

The google spreadsheet mentioned is visible from:
http://tinyurl.com/mpqbracket 

I try to use this info to get in on new flips for 1.7. My concern is that it doesn’t always get refreshed frequently. I don’t know if the information in Line is more up to date than this.

@DarthDeVo, how does a new user access these Line rooms? I assume some are alliance-specific for the ultra-competitive groups, but aren’t some public?

DarthDeVo

abenness said:

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

...
4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

@DarthDeVo, would you please explain what this means? What is the first "flip," and how could you miss it? And how could anything other than starting the event too late cause you to miss the first sub? Finally, how do you know how fast 4.9 fills...?

When a PvE event is first made available, people can start joining at each available SCL in one of the five slices. As soon as a bracket reaches 1000 players it becomes full and a second one opens and starts filling with more players. 

Most brackets in each slice will fill at least once before the event goes live for that slice, or shortly after it goes live. 

So for instance, I play Slice 4 of SCL 9. That goes live at 11 p.m. in my time zone. The first bracket usually fills and the second starts filling shortly before or after the event goes live. However, it usually takes about 20 hours for this second bracket to fill and for a third one to open. And *that* bracket basically never fills before the event ends.

People will intentionally wait for brackets to flip to hopefully get in less competitive brackets and increase their likelihood of placing well. In these instances, it's important to join as soon as you can when the new bracket opens so you can get the most points possible and improve your chances of placing well. 

So in the case of 4.9, if you don't join the second bracket and wait for the third, you sometimes risk missing the first sub. For the most part, people are willing to sacrifice the resources from one sub if it means they can place better for the event. But for others, that may be a dealbreaker. And if you miss the third bracket when it opens, then you may end up not placing well either. 

Lastly, there's a Google spreadsheet that tracks how fast the brackets fill and call the flips. Most of that info comes from various Line rooms. 

Great explanation, thanks. But there is no true transparency into the filling of each bracket, correct? That is, the game interface does not tell us this information. So isn't it pure speculation to try to determine (1) how fast a bracket fills, (2) when/if one has filled, and (3) what bracket one has joined? Or is there some indication of any of this provided by the game somehow?

Correct - in the game the only way to see the numbers for your bracket, is to actually enter the bracket, which locks you there for the event.  

The google spreadsheet mentioned is visible from:
http://tinyurl.com/mpqbracket 

I try to use this info to get in on new flips for 1.7. My concern is that it doesn’t always get refreshed frequently. I don’t know if the information in Line is more up to date than this.

@DarthDeVo, how does a new user access these Line rooms? I assume some are alliance-specific for the ultra-competitive groups, but aren’t some public?

Yepyep: You are correct in the sense that before you join a bracket, the game won't display the count of that bracket. That's when you have to rely on people who have already joined to accurately report the count of the bracket. 

I'm sure you've noticed after joining an event that on the main event page there's a counter telling how many players have joined that bracket. These are the numbers people periodically report. If they happen to report every half hour or hour you can get a rough estimate of how quickly it's filling and when it may flip, but that's hardly a guarantee. 

That spreadsheet will actually track how many times a bracket flips as well, so that part is taken care of. 

Abeness: Some alliances do have their own bracket tracking, but most of the large public rooms are very welcoming. The one I'm in is simply called PVE Bracket Count. I believe it's one of the main contributors to the spreadsheet. 

abenness

DarthDeVo said:

abenness said:

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

Yepyep said:

DarthDeVo said:

...
4.9 also fills so slowly that if you don't catch that first flip, you can easily run the risk of missing the first sub entirely. 

@DarthDeVo, would you please explain what this means? What is the first "flip," and how could you miss it? And how could anything other than starting the event too late cause you to miss the first sub? Finally, how do you know how fast 4.9 fills...?

When a PvE event is first made available, people can start joining at each available SCL in one of the five slices. As soon as a bracket reaches 1000 players it becomes full and a second one opens and starts filling with more players. 

Most brackets in each slice will fill at least once before the event goes live for that slice, or shortly after it goes live. 

So for instance, I play Slice 4 of SCL 9. That goes live at 11 p.m. in my time zone. The first bracket usually fills and the second starts filling shortly before or after the event goes live. However, it usually takes about 20 hours for this second bracket to fill and for a third one to open. And *that* bracket basically never fills before the event ends.

People will intentionally wait for brackets to flip to hopefully get in less competitive brackets and increase their likelihood of placing well. In these instances, it's important to join as soon as you can when the new bracket opens so you can get the most points possible and improve your chances of placing well. 

So in the case of 4.9, if you don't join the second bracket and wait for the third, you sometimes risk missing the first sub. For the most part, people are willing to sacrifice the resources from one sub if it means they can place better for the event. But for others, that may be a dealbreaker. And if you miss the third bracket when it opens, then you may end up not placing well either. 

Lastly, there's a Google spreadsheet that tracks how fast the brackets fill and call the flips. Most of that info comes from various Line rooms. 

Great explanation, thanks. But there is no true transparency into the filling of each bracket, correct? That is, the game interface does not tell us this information. So isn't it pure speculation to try to determine (1) how fast a bracket fills, (2) when/if one has filled, and (3) what bracket one has joined? Or is there some indication of any of this provided by the game somehow?

Correct - in the game the only way to see the numbers for your bracket, is to actually enter the bracket, which locks you there for the event.  

The google spreadsheet mentioned is visible from:
http://tinyurl.com/mpqbracket 

I try to use this info to get in on new flips for 1.7. My concern is that it doesn’t always get refreshed frequently. I don’t know if the information in Line is more up to date than this.

@DarthDeVo, how does a new user access these Line rooms? I assume some are alliance-specific for the ultra-competitive groups, but aren’t some public?

Yepyep: You are correct in the sense that before you join a bracket, the game won't display the count of that bracket. That's when you have to rely on people who have already joined to accurately report the count of the bracket. 

I'm sure you've noticed after joining an event that on the main event page there's a counter telling how many players have joined that bracket. These are the numbers people periodically report. If they happen to report every half hour or hour you can get a rough estimate of how quickly it's filling and when it may flip, but that's hardly a guarantee. 

That spreadsheet will actually track how many times a bracket flips as well, so that part is taken care of. 

Abeness: Some alliances do have their own bracket tracking, but most of the large public rooms are very welcoming. The one I'm in is simply called PVE Bracket Count. I believe it's one of the main contributors to the spreadsheet. 

@DarthDeVo  The problem I have is that as far as I can tell you need to be invited into a group (eg pve bracket count) by a Line friend. Would you mind friending and inviting me? My Line id is klael.

abenness

@DarthDeVo thanks for hooking me up in Line

After my second top5 finish in 1.7, I am now trying for 1.8 after I saw a flip in the google doc.  Joining with 135 in the bracket, and many with multi-thousand points, I ended up finishing the 4-clear in 7th place.  Waiting now to see if I can be fast enough to climb to 5th over 3 days. If not, top10 gets equivalent to SCL7 top5 anyway (2 Domino covers).
If I get pushed out of top10, I will just be sad, and bide my time until I next have the 5e