The Simulator (PvE) - (May 30 - June4)

Unknown

Maybe I should clarify that my Spidey is 1/1/4 right now? I assure you all, stunlocking with Spidey has never ever been possible for me.

tbighead21

I didn't really care for the individual panther cover and I Knew that I wasn't going to reach the Mag cover. In your last two rounds I basically aimed for a top 50 cover to get a recruit token.
I waited till the end to start the sub events and place In the top 25 easily.
In this last round I started the Normal event with less than 30 minutes left and finished In the 20s. I started the Hard one a little before that and finished top 10. Easiest recruit tokens yet.
I'll probably use the same method next time depending on the rewards structure.
PvEs last too long for me to play over and over.
It's interesting reading this thread to see how you guys break down the point systems system. Very detailed

Unknown

gamar wrote:

At least when you stunlocked with spidey you had to deliberately set up the stunlock... a couple times in the last round I found myself taking infinite turns with superbuffed cMags almost by accident, which probably didn't help my scaling

That is the dumbest thing the game invented, issue scaling on good performance -- especially making patch and cmags buffed leader.

Sure he could deal even with those big guys alright and the essentials still it smells from miles.

(Btw using the tech is mandatory, you slip the team dies. Insult to the injury.)

Unknown

Vairelome wrote:

Maybe I should clarify that my Spidey is 1/1/4 right now? I assure you all, stunlocking with Spidey has never ever been possible for me.

But it was possible for tons of people, and many in the community effortlessly winning battles with Spidey probably kept community scaling "artificially" high. It's within the realm of possibility that most players are seeing scaling creep down now that we've had a couple PVEs with nerfed Spider-Man.

over_clocked

Vairelome wrote:

(For what it's worth, my roster is maybe in the last stages of the 2*->3* transition. I only have 1x 141 (Thor), but I've got 3x over 100 and 8x 3*s that are 85+.)

Thanks, please don't forget to share your PvE experience once you have 2+ 141s. I don't think I had one such roster in my top 10.

over_clocked

pasa_ wrote:

locked wrote:

I'm not sure I got it, so to have optimal points (not a lead, just enough for a good main placement) it was enough to play essentials once (3 in normal, 3 in hard, 6 overall) every 2,5 hours for 5 times or what?

For one time

This drives me crazy. How come one time?
The minimal amount is 5x6 per 2 sets of subs, right? And only higher if you intend to maintain your rank, lest improve it.
I barely played a single node more than 4 times per sub and got some scaling (160+ for Hard Essentials easily in the end, which is of course doable, but I did wipe sometimes without intending), so not sure how that is doable at all unless you start out against levels 20-30.

Edit: it's impossible to wipe with cMags, so probably wiped in non-essential nodes. Should have known better and only hit those once per sub

Unknown

Let's say you got 3 essential missions that are 100 point base and you plan on playing each of them 3 times in a 12 hour period.

Before you'd play it 3 times and then wait 12 hours, so it'd look like this

At time T = 0H you have (100+80+60)*3 = 720 points, missions are currently at 40 points
At time T = 2H 24M you still have 720 points, mission are at 60 points
At time T = 4H 48M you still have 720 points, mission are at 80 points
At time T = 7H 12M you still have 720 points, missions are at 100 points.

Now let's say you simply play each mission once every 2H 24 for a total of 3 times, so the same amount of games as before
At time T = 0 you have 300 points, missions are currently at 80 points
At time T = 2H 24M you have 600 points (because missions refreshed to 100), missions are currently at 80 points.
At time T = 4H 48M you have 900 points, missions are currently at 80 points.
At time T = 7H 12M you still have 900 points, missions are currently at 100 points.

You have 180 points (25% more than before) for doing exactly the same number of missions. Your missions are worth exactly the same at the end of 7H 12M (100). The latter is almost certainly likely to take better advantage of rubberbanding anyway since the leader may have improved his score at this time.

Of course, the requirement is that you're able to play at these times, and that's what I don't like about this time. If this is the final refresh, you will be irrecoverably behind someone who played it like this. Prior to the final refresh, you can probably make it up with rubberbanding, though I suspect someone who do this strategy will build a lead roughly equal to the maximum number of point you can be behind the sub leader while getting no rubberband.

To make things even more unfair, because the latter guy has more points for playing the same number of missions, he can even play less than normal and have better scaling for the end. Note that if you're doing this method and you see that you're say #10 before you even did your missions (which should happen around the 3rd or 4th pass), you can always just not do the missions.

For what it's worth I noticed a lot of my missions spontaneously going down in levels without dying. I had about level 220 toward the end but for round 1 I was doing my usual 'get check mark on everything' routine before I figured this out. I'm pretty sure my levels went down from round 2 and 3 using this method plus the usual suicides.

Note that if there are less than 2 hours left on the event, obviously you should then grind whatever you need for whatever placement you're shooting for, but this allows you to build a huge lead prior to the last 2 hours. However, this also means the last 12 hours of an event aren't something you can miss anymore, at least relative to anybody who does the above method, because those guys will completely blow you away in points.

over_clocked

@Phantron:
Wait wait you were supposed to grind essentials 3x every refresh before? Now I see why I thought the new system is more grind-y.
Not surprisingly I was unable to get a red Sentry in Prodigal Sun besides the freebie, but hitting every 12h refresh is hard enough already.

So, I almost understood all those figures, I'm curious what did you mean when you said that anyone could take away the lead with just 9 missions? Did you mean joining in the last 7,5h and doing 3x clears or something?

Tharos

Finished #2 of my bracket, with slighly less than 140k if I remember well.
tl;dr version: No play schedule or strategy, just played when I could, for how long I could. And yes, this event favored a "2* with punisher roster", which is what most of people have.


My roster:
Full of maxed 2*, with a 115 punisher. Exactly what is needed for this event with the overbuffed characters: I did 99% of the battles with OBW, Wolvie, Storm and punisher. And of course the featured character when needed. Taking so low damage that I needed to use heal only every 6-7 battles. Hope it helped with the scaling.

Scaling:
I stopped pve 2 events ago due to having level 250+ in front of me. This time, I had very low levels, I do not know why. The higher levels I saw were about lvl 120 on hard for the normal nodes, and level 80 on hard for the essential nodes. Most of the time, for those essential (I mainly cleared them), I had level 30 on normal, and level 50 on hard.
So yes, for one time, I think I was favored in this event!

My strategy:
Nothing special. Never played every 2.5 hours or so, I tried to do as usual, but this refresh rate fits much more my play habits.
I usually start a sub not so long after it appeared. Cleared about half of the nodes, in both modes (real life seems to always force me to stop before finishing all nodes).
Then, when I have some free time, I clear all the other nodes once. All this process took between 30 minutes to 12 hours, depending on my free time.
After that, I usually played between 5 minutes to 2 hours each time, focusing on the essential nodes. After the initial clear, I touched the "normal" nodes only when they were worth more points than the essential ones.
Between two play sessions, there were sometimes more than 15 hours, sometimes only 1 hour. Most of the time, it was 8-10 hours. That's the way I can play a game, not 2h every 12h as this game asked before. So I really prefer this scoring system.

One thing that I know really, really helped me: woking up really early, so I had 1h of play available right before the end of sub 1 and sub 3 (for sub 2, I could only launch the game 20 minutes before the end).

Pretty pleased with this event, event though the scaling seems slightly too low this time! (wouaaw, never thought I could write this one day)


And for those who think this event were favoring the "newbies", I do not agree. You may call us "newbies", but I am at day 130, and started competition way too late for having nice 3* covers. A lot of us are not newbies, but only people screwed by the 3* income rate (I play with my 2* for a single reason: all my 3* are in the 50-70 range, nothing useable, asides from my 115 punisher without maxed green).
Yes, I think I was favored on this event, but I would rather have more 3* covers than only one event favoring my roster and my way of playing this game. Most of the other events, it had been the opposite.

Frailezim

What a painful event. And quite possibly the last I ever play from start early. The amount of time invested is not worth it, ended up getting a storm cover after what, 6 days of relatively solid playing and over 110K points? That is insanity. Is there any reason why you don't get a summary for PVP from an alliance standpoint?

Remember the good times when we had event's that just lasted the weekend? **** me I miss those days.

3* rosters or vet players seem to be getting the raw deal in this, or is it just me?

Unknown

locked wrote:

@Phantron:
Wait wait you were supposed to grind essentials 3x every refresh before? Now I see why I thought the new system is more grind-y.
Not surprisingly I was unable to get a red Sentry in Prodigal Sun besides the freebie, but hitting every 12h refresh is hard enough already.

So, I almost understood all those figures, I'm curious what did you mean when you said that anyone could take away the lead with just 9 missions? Did you mean joining in the last 7,5h and doing 3x clears or something?

Well the essentials had higher value than any other mission on first and second stack. Sometimes I do a third stack if I'm doing a lot of missions but not always. If you're only doing 2 stacks you just stop after the first 2H 24M.

Let us consider the actual numbers for R3, which is 450 points base for nodes. Let's say we all do essential 3 times, then doing them all at once gets you (450*2.4*3) = 3240 base points. Doing them every 2H 24M gets you 450*3*3 = 4050 base points. This is 810 more base points so we assume you lead by at least that many. Now let's say this is only the event start, so you'd have at least a lead of 810 points. However, the 'once every 2H 24M' does most of his missions at a later time, so he actually benefits more from rubberbanding. So after one round you'd expect the latter guy to be ahead by about at least 1000 points to the next refresh. Now how do you actually make up a 1000 point lead in this game? You can grind a lot, but the scaling will get you. Yes the rubberband helps some, but your opponent will open up a lead at least as big as the first time on the second refresh too. Assuming you're not aware of this technique, the only way you can catch up against that lead is by grinding a lot more, but then scaling will almost certainly kill you. As far as you're concerned, the guy with the 1000 point lead after one refresh isn't going to get caught even though you both played exactly 9 missions.

Now, what if this is the final refresh? Let's say you're exactly tied with someone going into the final 12 hours. Under the old way you'd probably wait until about 2 hours or so before you start grinding. The guy doing a mission every 2H 24M would start doing his mission around 12H, 10H 36M, and 8H 12M prior to the end, and all his mission would've refreshed to full 5H 48M before event ends, and now he has a lead of at least 4050 points on you. How can you possibly make up a lead of 4050 points in 2 hours when the guy ahead has the exact same missions available as you? Sure, he might end up doing more missions than you, but we'll assume that it is acceptable to do a bit extra to secure a good finish. Most likely the scenario will play out with you making up that lead by your second pass of your essentials, and then at that point the guy with the lead just does all his essentials that are still at first stack and retake the lead and you would have no chance of catching up at that point (he's on his first stack while you're on your third stack), and sure he ends up doing about 3 more missions than you in the end, but that's a small price to pay for winning.

over_clocked

So, it was possible to completely screw the leaders by joining every sub at the -12h mark and playing 6 games 5 times (more or less)? Interesting.

Unknown

locked wrote:

So, it was possible to completely screw the leaders by joining every sub at the -12h mark and playing 6 games 5 times (more or less)? Interesting.

No, because in that scenario we assumed you're tied with someone in the final 12H, which is definitely not going to be the case if you join a bracket at that time (could easily end up in one where the leader already has a lot of points).

You should just think of this method as getting about 25% more points for doing the same number of missions as you used to. You can still place poorly doing that. I think I was #80 overall since I missed the last refresh of R2 completely, so getting 25% more points elsewhere isn't anywhere close to making that up. But, having 25% more points for doing the same number of missions is still a rather sizeable advantage compared to anyone who plays a similar number of missions as you, assuming they're not aware of this timing. At the very least, getting 25% more points for the same missions should offer you a huge advantage with scaling when you do need to make a push (because you need to do less missions later).

over_clocked

Oh, silly me, I see. Well, at least that's a bit more reasonable otherwise former happy rubberbanders would have stated how they easily rode the system.
On to the next Calvinball PvE!

kensterr

I hope that Phantron or Sumilea will post a placeholder post in Tat so that we can easily go to that page to find out how rubberbanding works for that event instead of reading many many pages

Bowgentle

kensterr wrote:

I hope that Phantron or Sumilea will post a placeholder post in Tat so that we can easily go to that page to find out how rubberbanding works for that event instead of reading many many pages

I mostly hope the "how to game the system" post won't be made until the event is over, else everything will go crazy again when everyone with read access here starts playing optimally without figuring out stuff on their own (which severely limits the number of people who do it).
Because, seriously, the number of people in here with _way_ too much time on their hands which would allow them to play every 2.5 hours for 10 days straight if they knew that this is optimal scares me.

Unknown

I just want to say that I really liked the new system. I got only Top 50, but that's mostly because 5AM is early, so I slept until 5:30 and only did 2 more clears of the hard essentials, skipping the final easy refresh.

As someone who actually takes damage and uses health packs instead of prologue healing, the 2.5 hour playing suits me much better. Before, if I wanted to do each mission 3 times, I'd sometimes run out of health packs. Now, that is no longer an issue.

Also, I really like the increased flexibility. I'll illustrate this by describing my typical work day, assuming a 1.5 day event that starts at 6PM, like this round 3.

I like to wait at least an hour before entering an event in order to avoid the super-hardcores. So I enter the event at 7PM. I do a complete clear of the sub and I do the high point nodes once or twice more. Previously, these nodes refreshed after 7AM, also known as the time where I'm going to work. I get home from work at roughly 5PM, so if I want to do a final refresh starting at 5am, I'm on a very tight schedule. In the Simulator, doing the essentials twice means 12 fights, which takes roughly 50 minutes (I don't boost, so I'm slower than others). So my second run ends at 5:50, exactly 12h10 minutes before the end. Now, I could still do a last refresh, starting at 5:10AM, when the nodes I cleared first have refreshed, but the other ones haven't.

Long story short, previously my life made it very hard for me to even hit all the 12 hour refreshes.

With the new scoring, after work I can do 6 missions every 2.5 hours (let's say at 5, 7:30 and 10, doing two clears at 10 before going to bed) and having full points at 5AM for my last refresh.

I would really like this change to be permanent, even if it technically means that Europeans will never win a PVP event again, since you should do your second to last run around 4 hours before the end, so some time after 2AM.

TazFTW

I liked this event. I prefer PvE to PvP and with the shortened refreshes I could play PvE whenever I wanted. I didn't have to "force" myself to play PvP when I had time to play but couldn't play PvE because I was in the middle of a 12 hr refresh.

Der_Lex

Managed to all but skip the first sub (had better things to do during the weekend) but ended up in the top 25 in my bracket in the end by listening to Phantron's advice. I even scored first on my final subs. Not that those tokens gave me anything remotely useful... but hey, I needed that black BP cover. And all the ISO and HP are always nice.

Curious how scaling and refreshes will work in Thick as Thieves now. I recall that being a bit of a trainwreck the first time around.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Oh, silly me, I see. Well, at least that's a bit more reasonable otherwise former happy rubberbanders would have stated how they easily rode the system.
On to the next Calvinball PvE!

I dont know about that. I was keeping my 1st-3rd place throughout the whole event. Than went to sleep at 3rd place (EU timezone for the win) 6 hours before the event ended.

I ended up top 75.

I firmly believe that mechanics are broken if after 5 days of being 1st you can be pushed out in the last 6 hours.