Prodigal Sun, Episode 4.5

Nighthawk81

Phantron wrote:

KermitD wrote:

im having same issue with nodes as well... top people in both my bracket hsve 1500 plus points..i dont even have that to play with.. and its not rubberbanding

Those guys indeed have every node down to 1, and it's awfully hard to catch up to them with the new rubberbanding. Your best hope is that the scaling will mess them up later, because otherwise you're not catching up to that.

LA shows me about 400 points between 1 and 21 where I am at. But Wakanda is about 1200 points difference from first to 43. I don't think I even had 2400 points available to me to grind up to when I started the event!

Nighthawk81

Does anybody have any idea what the refresh is in this sub event? I guessed 12 hours on the first sub and finished #3 (which never happens for me). I started this sub with **** points levels available and hit every node three or four times until the matches were worth less than 40 or 50.

mouser

Sumilea wrote:

colebavery21 wrote:

It makes no sense how I have played as optimally as possible yet the leader in my sub bracket has almost 4000 more points than I do.

Anyone know how this happens

Someone really hit that sub hard if they hit 15K points.

Wondering if maybe the sub rubberband formula includes a main/global bracket leader component

Unknown

sup123 wrote:

Ok, sub leaders have 1k over me already in LA, 2k in Wakanda.
Are they grinding all nodes into oblivion or am I missing something here?

They the same for me as well. However since i am now somehow leading my main bracket I stopped at this point and said the sub rewards can do tinykitty themselves.

Unknown

mouser wrote:

Sumilea wrote:

colebavery21 wrote:

It makes no sense how I have played as optimally as possible yet the leader in my sub bracket has almost 4000 more points than I do.

Anyone know how this happens

Someone really hit that sub hard if they hit 15K points.

Wondering if maybe the sub rubberband formula includes a main/global bracket leader component

I could not possible work that out since I am now currently leading my main and hence must be reasonable close to the global leader. In the current two subs every node I have completed has been at base points however. And as people only post "I am 4K behind the leader" and not the information needed to work this out I will just drop back to my default play style.

I think they just trying to change things up to reduce all the game theory that is going on. If we do not know the rules cannot work out the best plan.

Unknown

Honestly I feel like the current rubbberband "rules" are what it should have been all along.

Previously, if someone cleared all the nodes to 1, anyone could theorectically come in at the last minute and overtake him/her. That hardly seems fair, and those of us on the forums, knowledgeable about this, took maximum advantage of rubberbanding.

Now, it seems like rubberbanding will allow you to catch up to your leader only if you do as much as he/she does. This seems much fairer. If the group leader grinds his nodes down to 1, then you can catch up to him if you choose to do the same thing anytime before the refresh hits.

The new meta now is weighing the benefit of grinding to lead your sub-brackets, or going a more conservative route to preserve your scaling.

All the people leading in my sub-bracket I've never heard of. My guess is that they are not forumites and do not know all the nuances about rubberbanding and scaling. Hence, they are likely to win the sub-brackets (and why shouldn't they for grinding so hard?) but they are likely to face difficulties down the road when their scaling kicks in.

This once again reinforces the notion that these type of events are marathons, not sprints. The true prize is the Sentry covers from the main bracket, not the tokens from the sub-brackets that are more than likely going to yield 2* covers. Imo it's better to forgo placement in the sub-brackets while just focusing on maintaining a high rank within your main bracket, and not letting your scaling go out of control where you can't compete in latter rounds. A lot of the current sub-bracket grinders are unfortunately going to find that out the hard way.

Unknown

Mizake, it suppose to be hush hush.....

Unknown

Oops is this not alliance chat ?

Nemek

Mizake wrote:

Honestly I feel like the current rubbberband "rules" are what it should have been all along.

Previously, if someone cleared all the nodes to 1, anyone could theorectically come in at the last minute and overtake him/her. That hardly seems fair, and those of us on the forums, knowledgeable about this, took maximum advantage of rubberbanding.

Now, it seems like rubberbanding will allow you to catch up to your leader only if you do as much as he/she does. This seems much fairer. If the group leader grinds his nodes down to 1, then you can catch up to him if you choose to do the same thing anytime before the refresh hits.

The new meta now is weighing the benefit of grinding to lead your sub-brackets, or going a more conservative route to preserve your scaling.

All the people leading in my sub-bracket I've never heard of. My guess is that they are not forumites and do not know all the nuances about rubberbanding and scaling. Hence, they are likely to win the sub-brackets (and why shouldn't they for grinding so hard?) but they are likely to face difficulties down the road when their scaling kicks in.

This once again reinforces the notion that these type of events are marathons, not sprints. The true prize is the Sentry covers from the main bracket, not the tokens from the sub-brackets that are more than likely going to yield 2* covers. Imo it's better to forgo placement in the sub-brackets while just focusing on maintaining a high rank within your main bracket, and not letting your scaling go out of control where you can't compete in latter rounds. A lot of the current sub-bracket grinders are unfortunately going to find that out the hard way.

Yeah, it's definitely shifted towards favoring those who play more, with still a little bit of rubber banding. Seems fine to me.

Unknown

Well it must take slightly less effort for the guy trying to catch up assuming both started at the same spot, but yes, it's awfully close to equal effort to catch up now, which is fair. If someone grinded every node down to 1, it should take an effort that's pretty close to that to beat him.

This also means you're no longer faced with the prospect of falling into oblivion if you can't do all your missions at the exact time the event ends. While I wouldn't recommend doing them with exactly 12 hours left to go, it seems like finishing them with say 5 hours to go is still going to put you on a solid footing. Not quite as ideal as finishing at the optimal time, but definitely workable.

Keep in mind that while getting a small lead will indeed cost you a lot of scaling, unless someone's scaling got so bad where they can't even beat anything anymore, you still have to face that same scaling when making up that small lead at the later brackets, plus whatever community scaling that exists.

Unknown

Guys one question, in regards to the scaling, does the retreating tactic still affect and bring down the levels of the mobs?

HairyDave

So I'm going to have to smash these subs to get anywhere? Joy.

The highest points I got out of any of them was about 170 and I'm several thousand behind the leaders. All because I put my effort into finishing season 1 off instead of starting the last sub...

mohio

Quick question (probably for Sumilea, but anyone chime in) - if I (or anyone really) am going to do multiple clears/refreshes, does it actually matter when they happen so long as I finish as close to the end time as possible (and of course with 100% nodes, goes without saying). Each refresh gives you base + rubberband, with rubberband based on a global sub leader, so no matter what you're going to have the same number of "base" points right? So, the gist of the question is, will timing your final play as late as possible erase the inefficiency of earlier refreshes or should you time them all perfectly or risk "losing" points simply due to when you play?

over_clocked

My Wakanda leader has 2,2k points (I only got 949 from my single clear) - but not bothered in the least, #30 in main. Man they sure grind and what for? I only shoot for leftover 500 ISO rewards when I have time.

Edit: Mizake, thanks for the excellent analysis and putting it into words. Also thanks for using 'forgo' - I have been using 'forego' instead and I need to fight silly mistakes like that!

Unknown

locked wrote:

My Wakanda leader has 2,2k points (I only got 949 from my single clear) - but not bothered in the least, #30 in main. Man they sure grind and what for? I only shoot for leftover 500 ISO rewards when I have time.

Edit: Mizake, thanks for the excellent analysis and putting it into words. Also thanks for using 'forgo' - I have been using 'forego' instead and I need to fight silly mistakes like that!

You Wakanda leader needs to breakout his grinding boots my subs was at 2750 before the end of the first refresh. The maximum points is 2847 so they left all of 97 points on the table that refresh.

Unknown

is there no rubberbanding in these subs? my points hasnt changed at all since it started

Unknown

I haven't checked the PvE for multiple hours, but I think the devs changed the event text to clarify that the subs end if the meters fill?

"Cause as much damage to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents and facility as you can before the Mayhem Meter fills and the Avengers arrive!"

So... this would imply that the sub changes upon the bar filling... probably to replace the goons with Avenger heroes. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the timer on the subs would seem to be a failsafe to keep the story moving, rather than artificially injecting points into the meter. Because we all know how well THAT went in the last PvE....

Nemek

mohio wrote:

Quick question (probably for Sumilea, but anyone chime in) - if I (or anyone really) am going to do multiple clears/refreshes, does it actually matter when they happen so long as I finish as close to the end time as possible (and of course with 100% nodes, goes without saying). Each refresh gives you base + rubberband, with rubberband based on a global sub leader, so no matter what you're going to have the same number of "base" points right? So, the gist of the question is, will timing your final play as late as possible erase the inefficiency of earlier refreshes or should you time them all perfectly or risk "losing" points simply due to when you play?

For the absolute maximum score possible, there is a very set timetable. If you give yourself an hour to do a full clear, then it's at 27 hours, 14 hours, 1 hour (from the time the sub ends), with the earlier refreshes being less important than the later ones.

Playing outside of the "optimal" times leads to small inefficiencies and you will "lose" points to somebody who played it completely optimally. But...the number of players playing completely optimally is ridiculously low, and it's likely that they will scale themselves out before the 9 days are up.

My personal opinion...you almost HAVE to time your last play well, and I highly recommend you time your second to last one well. If you plan to play 3 refreshes, you can probably play that first one whenever, as long as you don't mess up your second/third refreshes by doing so. I find that many of the high-level players just do two refreshes.

Nemek

Lyrian wrote:

I haven't checked the PvE for multiple hours, but I think the devs changed the event text to clarify that the subs end if the meters fill?

"Cause as much damage to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents and facility as you can before the Mayhem Meter fills and the Avengers arrive!"

So... this would imply that the sub changes upon the bar filling... probably to replace the goons with Avenger heroes. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the timer on the subs would seem to be a failsafe to keep the story moving, rather than artificially injecting points into the meter. Because we all know how well THAT went in the last PvE....

I feel like that's how it read when I looked at it awhile back. I think it's still vague enough that I wouldn't put much stock in one possibility over another. I guess we'll know for sure sometime tomorrow...

Unknown

Assuming one is able to do every mission the optimal clearing pattern is obviously finishing your last mission of the entire bracket right as time ends. That said, whatever they did to the rubberband recently greatly minimized the timing aspect. It's still worse to finish early, but the difference is very small now, and in fact since it takes a lot of time to get every mission done, you might be able to get enough extra missions done compared to someone starting even with 2 hours left (it's far from certain to be able to do every mission 5 times in that time frame) to make up the difference with your extra time.