The myth of Death Brackets

Colognoisseur

So it has become accepted lore among many on the forums that the devs have created a logarithm that pushes people into death brackets of other high level rosters.
Except for some reason I haven't been placed in one since they supposedly started happening.
If anyone was a candidate for a death bracket it should be me.
I've played since mid-October every day and got my daily award for day 216 today. So it can't be length of play because the people that have been in the last six PvP's i've played in have mostly mid-level rosters.
I have a roster of every character from 1-3* fully maxed with >lvl 100 4* IW, X-force, and Fury. So it can't be strength of roster.
I placed #3 in season one and was in the top 10 when this supposedly started happening. So it can't be where I was placed in season one.
I placed in the top 5 of every PvP during season 1 and even won a few. So it can't be how you finish in individual tournaments.
I finish in the top 5 of every PvE. So it can't be that.

If there were truly death brackets I would be put in one every single time because there is no metric in which I am not in the top percentile. Except I haven't been placed in one. You want to know how many other level 141 characters there were in my top 10 for Heavy Metal? Three. That is not three players with 141 teams that is three players who each had one 141 character on their roster, funnily enough only one of those was IM40. Scores ranged from me in first at 1014 to tenth at 831.

If death brackets exist how can I have avoided them for so long.
They're a myth and the fact that I haven't been placed in one over seven different PvP events is proof.

Unknown

New lore: Death Brackets only plague F2P players, as backed up by this post.

Unknown

If the debs are somehow using logarithms to control any aspect of this game then I think we, as a player base, have some big worries in store.

Unknown

I'm in my 30s, and have never had chicken pox.

If chicken pox exists, how can I have avoided it for so long?

Chicken pox is a myth, and the fact that I've never gotten it in decades of potential exposure is proof.

Unknown

I have every character except LThor and the maxed 1-stars I sold to make room on my roster for new two and three star characters. My highest level characters are L100 (Punisher, Hood, Spider Man) -- I place much higher priority on leveling people for challenges than on maxing characters. Though I have spent a lot of money (covers only, I see no value in buying ISO), my roster level overall is probably quite low.

My brackets pretty consistently have half teams with maxed 2* characters (fine) or else teams with maxed 3* characters (pretty tough, but I can skip around the 141 Patch/LThor/Hulks).

I do remember when I got my first character to L90(The Hood), when my next highest were all in the 60's, that suddenly I only saw teams at 90+. That went on for several weeks until I lost enough matches (I guess) and got enough others leveled up to win again.

Colognoisseur

Susra wrote:

I'm in my 30s, and have never had chicken pox.

If chicken pox exists, how can I have avoided it for so long?

Chicken pox is a myth, and the fact that I've never gotten it in decades of potential exposure is proof.

Because a vaccination for chicken pox became available in 1995 and so chicken pox has become much rarer.
You haven't been exposed because it is near eradication levels at the current time, if you're in the US.

Death Brackets are happening to everyone if the lore is correct except someone like me and there supposedly is no vaccination.
Unless it's $$$$

_RiO_

bonerang wrote:

If the debs are somehow using logarithms to control any aspect of this game then I think we, as a player base, have some big worries in store.

It would explain the almost exponential rate of enemy scaling though, wouldn't it?

Unknown

they exist, i quit due to being placed in one permanently, and i had spent hundreds on the game just not recently because they refuse to offer me a sale. my highest character was 105, followed by 103, then 90, my pvps woudl start wiht max 2* no problem, as soon as i hit 300 points it was all max 141s, by the time i hit 600 enemies worht 20 points were non existent, but the game had no problem offering me up to people taking 30+ often into the 40s points from me. top 10 in my last 6 pvps required 1100+ points, top 50ing was requiring mid 800s.

My last 4 pves began with enemies above 100, the last 2 started at around 150, and these are the "easy" nodes.

death brackets exist, im not sure how i got permanently placed in one, i think it may be because i refused to pay more without a sale, but they refused to offer me sale because ive paid before without one... i guess i dunno man.

ive been playing since mid october.

Unknown

Some brackets are obviously harder than others but it's still a matter of luck of whether you get it. If everyone is always getting death brackets, they wouldn't be deadly enough to be called such in the first place.

Deimos12

If you spent "hundreds on the game" how are your highest characters 105, 103 and 90?
I've spent a little over $60 and have 5 maxed 141's....

Unknown

best i can really answer to this is that its the same as flipping a coin. Sure it can be 50/50 for which side it lands on but you know eventually some poor **** is going to flip heads 20 of 20 times and you know that there is going to be some other peep who is going to flip 20 of tails. That's just statics for you.

So congrats...you're the 1% ?

Unknown

Deimos12 wrote:

If you spent "hundreds on the game" how are your highest characters 105, 103 and 90?
I've spent a little over $60 and have 5 maxed 141's....

being on steam means if you do social media sharing i am netting roughly half the iso as you, and because i did some stupid **** and sold a bunch of level 50-60 2 stars back in the day to respec them, and have a tendency to up new characters to 50 or 60 so they are usable when powered up... and to level up whoever is powered up for an event 5 times.

i also never spent a cent on iso.

non steam players really don't understand how handicapped steam players are.

Arogntbastrd

This could be easily explained by what ICEIX told us is happening. Veteran players are being nudged towards each other but not forced, that's why sometimes death and sometimes not so much

Just like he said not every elite player is always gonna be in a hard bracket, that Implies not every non elite player is always gonna be in a cake bracket

This along with the added effort by many players at the end of season 1 would explain pretty much everyone's experiences with bracketing so far. As with anything there will be outliers and there will be people for which it doesn't work perfectly.

In my case, brackets were pretty tough at the end of season one. S2 Ive had a bracket were 1000 would not have been enough for top 10 and a others where 1000 got me top 5. Bc people as a whole aren't pushing as much, pts are down and there is more competition at a lower point total. This all makes sense to me

However to accept this most likely solution as the real answer would mean people would have to accept that something a dev told them wasn't a lie, and so many of the people on these forums are so jaded they just refuse to do that

Colognoisseur

Phantron wrote:

Some brackets are obviously harder than others but it's still a matter of luck of whether you get it. If everyone is always getting death brackets, they wouldn't be deadly enough to be called such in the first place.

It's not that i don't believe you can't end up in a bracket full of high level rosters. I just don't think the sharding of brackets has anything to do with it. It is like it was before. The luck of when you start and when other high level rosters start is what determines if you are facing a death bracket, not some insidious plot by the devs to group them all in the same shard.

There are plenty of things to lay at the devs doorstep for improvement, this is not one of them.

Colognoisseur

Arogntbastrd wrote:

This could be easily explained by what ICEIX told us is happening. Veteran players are being nudged towards each other but not forced, that's why sometimes death and sometimes not so much

Just like he said not every elite player is always gonna be in a hard bracket, that Implies not every non elite player is always gonna be in a cake bracket

This along with the added effort by many players at the end of season 1 would explain pretty much everyone's experiences with bracketing so far. As with anything there will be outliers and there will be people for which it doesn't work perfectly.

In my case, brackets were pretty tough at the end of season one. S2 Ive had a bracket were 1000 would not have been enough for top 10 and a others where 1000 got me top 5. Bc people as a whole aren't pushing as much, pts are down and there is more competition at a lower point total. This all makes sense to me

However to accept this most likely solution as the real answer would mean people would have to accept that something a dev told them wasn't a lie, and so many of the people on these forums are so jaded they just refuse to do that

Yes this is what I think happened and where the idea of the forced Death Bracket came from. Thanks ArogntBastrd for saying it better than I did.

PorkBelly

Arogntbastrd wrote:

This could be easily explained by what ICEIX told us is happening. Veteran players are being nudged towards each other but not forced, that's why sometimes death and sometimes not so much

From a functional perspective, what is the difference between "nudged" and "forced"?

Spoit

I will say the brackets have been a lot less death-y since season two started. Not sure if it's burnout or the nudging being adjusted.

Arogntbastrd

PorkBelly wrote:

Arogntbastrd wrote:

This could be easily explained by what ICEIX told us is happening. Veteran players are being nudged towards each other but not forced, that's why sometimes death and sometimes not so much

From a functional perspective, what is the difference between "nudged" and "forced"?

Pi*R^2



I guess nudged implies weighting and forced implies sure thing. My guess is Veteran players have a higher probability of being in a harder bracket and vice versa

Unknown

Colognoisseur wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Some brackets are obviously harder than others but it's still a matter of luck of whether you get it. If everyone is always getting death brackets, they wouldn't be deadly enough to be called such in the first place.

It's not that i don't believe you can't end up in a bracket full of high level rosters. I just don't think the sharding of brackets has anything to do with it. It is like it was before. The luck of when you start and when other high level rosters start is what determines if you are facing a death bracket, not some insidious plot by the devs to group them all in the same shard.

There are plenty of things to lay at the devs doorstep for improvement, this is not one of them.

The dev did say they try to push players with similar roster strength together, but I'm sure it's still mostly dependent on just luck.

Unknown

Sorry but i can't really agree with that. Just because you yourself haven't experienced it, doesn't mean it's not there. I have been in them for the last few pvp's and while the scores have gone down a little, your still looking at 1000 for 10th place.

I've never experienced a lot of things in games others have. Does that make it any less real? Nope.

scottee

Spoit wrote:

I will say the brackets have been a lot less death-y since season two started. Not sure if it's burnout or the nudging being adjusted.

I think this had a lot to do with everyone's bracket difficulty. People were pushing harder in general. A lot more shield hopping. Pretty sure Ice said somewhere that point totals were up all around because of the season. So it's not that people were getting placed in harder brackets, but that EVERY bracket was harder to place in.

Also, I think brackets are only going to get harder, as the max 3* tier is basically the end game right now, so as more and more people reach that level, there will be more stacked 141 teams in everyone's bracket and mmr. I have two maxed 141's now, and fighting me looks the same as fighting someone who's been here since the beginning of the game. More players push into that top tier, but the former top tier players have no where else to go. There's no 4* end game, those are just trophy prizes. So players are going to start pooling up at the top level. This is actually why they NEED to keep releasing 3* characters, so the top top tier players don't get bored and just leave (though some already are). Alliances and seasons help add end game as well, but if they stopped adding new content, players would leave even quicker.