It was pointed several times that placing would become harder under the new method of PVE. One of the reasons is that the 24h timer plus the reduced number of clears to 1 (which is not a bad thing, mind you) reduced point variance, so every minute missed from the “optimal way” represent a loss of precious few available points that can easily cost you a dozen positions. The Simulator is particularly bad because the amount of points available through the event is so low, reducing point variance even further.
I argue that “covers are plentiful” is true only for the more hardcore player. Since OP has trouble placing in PVE and PVP, I doubt he belongs in that category. On the other hand, if covers are not plentiful, one shouldn’t stress over missing one or two covers either. The difference between a 1-cover 4* and a 2-3 covered one is negligible and luck alone (from opening tokens) will dictate which characters advance further, faster. Looking at OP’s roster you can see how that’s true, with most of his newer 4*s lounging at 1-6 covers, while Chulk is, randomly, almost fully covered.
Speaking of roster, OP, looking at it I see that many, many of your championed 3*s have a poor combination of covers. Not sure if that’s just an artifact of the way they were when you championed and you never updated the page when you re-spec them? For example, GSBW and Iron Fist have only 3 covers in purple when that’s the one aility of them where you want to have 5 covers. That might be what’s holding you back in PVP, where you need blazingly fast and efficient combos. I’d say that if you are constrained for time, PVP is a better bet at progression than PVE in the terms of more bang for your time buck. There’s a science to it regarding timing which is not evident and you needn’t feel bad for not knowing it. I or most other gentlemen or gentlewomen in this forum would be happy to give you pointers.
If you have even a semblance of a life then you just can’t compete with the people who play that don’t. And yes, I’m sorry, if you’re grinding nodes to 1 point…and then grinding some more…you don’t have a life. This game is your life. I shudder to think what the total would be if these players added up the hours they spend matching tiles.
The devs could change this; they could make PVE, TRUE PVE, not this competitive garbage we fool ourselves into thinking is PVE. But they don’t give a toss. “Play when you like”…as long as you don’t care about placement.
Luckily, I don’t. CLs let me play up to a 4* cover, netting some CP along the way. It’s slow progress, but it’s still progress.
The Anniversary’s reversion to non-CLs has highlighted starkly, once again, how much I truly hate the systems that underpin this game that has so much potential to be amazing.
The grind at end, (3 hits) equates to roughly 2 times full clear points. Plus the 4 clears at full points, means competition is only determined by the grind. Let’s put max progress at 1x, that makes full grind roughly 1.5x. From what I’m seeing, the top 100 cutoff at the end of the last couple of events are approximately 1.3x. The spread is only 0.2x between the top 100 alliances.
Let us not forget the old system also had nodes with capped scaling. I now have a mature 3 champed 5* roster and that means grinding level 440 nodes. This has dramatically changed the amount of time that PvE requires and really makes me wonder what the point of levelling is.
I, too, remember saying that placement was going to get more difficult, but mainly for the people with lives and strong rosters. And I also predicted it was going to become BORING and it has. Instead of playing a little bit at regular intervals it is mind numbing repetition once a day. Not an improvement and the reason I am done with competitive PvE. (Which shouldn’t be a thing)
theHunter - F2P (ot really) game about hunting. It has plenty of different competitions (longest shot, best scoring animal etc.). Every now and then there is a comp that goes for 48hrs and it requires you to hit as many specific animals as possible in that period of time.
It’s not unusual that top player plays for 48hrs straight just to win it. 2nd, 3rd place usually have well over 20hrs played in that period of time (2 days). Only top 3 players get rewards.
Oh, 1st place rewards is in-game currency worth 1,5 USD…
I completely agree…for these reasons most of the playerbase asked for PROGRESSION REWARDS in PVE.
They gave us a glimpse of what could have been with the cleareance ( a 4
cover as progression reward)
but soon after they took it back
Progression rewards is the only thing that will fit the mantra : play when you want as much you want.( like David HI FI wrote months ago
The actual system is only a grindfest 2hours at the beginning and 2h at the end of each sub, followed by another 2h grind to clear the new nodes …so 4 hours of continued playing if you want to be able to get at least in top 20 if you are lucky enough to find a NOT SO COMPETITIVE bracket… otherwise you ll be screwed
It’s way too much for “NORMAL” people who have a job, a family and a real life other than a puzzle game
I accept a long time ago that I was never gong to really compete (got top 10 in Elektra release event which was a brutal level of grind and vowed never again).
I get that they want to promote sales of tokens, but why be quite so stingy with the new release covers. Why not replace the 25cp with a new release cover, and put placement awards for these covers back to top 50, let those folks go nuts for more covers and make it easier for everyone else to play to our own schedule. If you want to gate it, you’ve got those shiney Clearance Levels to help with that. Then put Clearance Levels back into the next event and award another cover there in the normal progression spot. Then with pvp, a chance at one at 900. Play 3 events well, and I could have a 1/1/1 character. They are still going to sit there for months before they get many more covers, but you would at least be giving me the illusion of progress (and I still need to stump up the 1000 HP to roster it, and I’ve got 3 to chase, so it’s more likely to happen). Stops people from feeling like the are being cut off for having a life, keeping them more engaged.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
Add a cover after or before the 25 CP but leave those alone.
Chances at 5* covers >>>>> new releases, for a pretty big portion of the vet population.
And yes, T10 in PVE requires about 3.5 hours daily, especially with a mature roster, which is insane.
Progression rewards are for the sane. Competitive rewards are for the insane. That’s fine, because it means the game caters to different types of players. If you’re a guy with a life outside of MPQ, ignore the competitive side entirely and just focus on progression.
As a guy with a job and family I 100% agree with the OP. One thing that I think would help (certainly not fix) is more slices. The slices for PVE are horrible for someone with my schedule:
7am - My start time for work.
12pm - My lunch break, this would be workable if you didn’t have play for 2 hours straight at the beginning of each sub.
5pm - What I’m doing now. I leave work at 4pm and usually get home at 4:30 so I don’t have enough time to do a proper final clear and traffic and wife aggro usually sideline me further.
11pm - Again might be workable if only 1 clear is requried, but I need to sleep sometime.
2am - Ha, you’re funny.
What I’ve currently been doing. Pick the 5pm slice. Grind out each node to 4, this usually takes me to sometime between 7:30 - 8:30 depending on scaling, availability of health packs, boosted character, etc. I then have to do any real life stuff in the last hour and half before bed.
Do my DDQ in the morning before I leave for work.
During my lunch break I do a 5th clear of as many nodes as possible, starting with the lower and working my way up. I know this isn’t optimal, but I can’t guarantee 2 clears per node at toughest scaling with my schedule so this is the best I can do. Sometimes if there’s time I grind out the 6th on the 3 easy nodes.
After I get home hit as many of the top point 6th nodes as possible, usually only get a handful before reset.
5pm start it all over again.
Usually get a disappointing rank like 50-100.
SCL lessens this pain by putting better rewards in progression and making poor placement not feel like such an insult, but every event SCL is off it’s like salt in wound.
Yes SCL is a little step forward…but for one step forward we usually get 2 steps back
Anyway, I understand that they don’t want to give many covers of a new character because they prefer to sell packs, but instead of eliminate SCL for the new release and the following PVE, they could have put another 4
character in progression or add 25
or even 20
I agree with OP that we have to play ridiculously lot to be able to achieve high ranks and with strict times. That’s why I’m about to give up too placing well, just not happening. I already play nearly 4 hours every day this game and that is way too much. I think haven’t played any game this much ever. Not even any individual Final Fantasies. So I focus on progress awards too.
I had the same issues as the OP: kids, wife, work. It all adds up and I hate ignoring my family to play a mobile game.
I do get down time at work, but thats kinda iffy. Watching my back etc.
I play what I can when I can, I normally place top 100 for release PvE’s but with this being double iso, and a genuinely tough PvE it was hard. Hit 150 ish, so its still a 3clops cover. Means venom bomb will be a harder slog, but that’s fine.
This wouldn’t have been so bad if we had clearance levels…
In this particular case, terrible idea. Missing out on all of the double ISO for a hope of getting a new cover is giving up way too much. Bracket sniping occasionally has its place, but it is better served in PvP, not story mode, and certainly not in double ISO story mode.
I empathize with the OP. Sometimes you get a death bracket where 6x clears isn’t enough, but that’s rare in my experience. For me, I find 4x clears on day one followed by 4x semi-optimal (within 8 hours of start) with 2x clears about 3-4 hours before the end on the remaining subs to be reliable enough for T100 in slice 5 new releases.
One thing to keep in mind perhaps: Don’t pre-join events, and don’t try jumping in right at the event’s start. If you do this, you’re generally getting into the more hardcore crowd. I usually join 8-16 hours after my preferred slice begins. YMMV.
Who are you people that can actually do this & get away with it for very long? I didn’t even grind Simulator for spit. Finished, I dunno, T500, T600, something like that. Mostly just doing 1-2 clears for some ISO and progression rewards. Even that was too much for my wife; she notices when I stare at the phone a little too much, and called me out on it last night after our son had gone to bed.
If I ever tried a 4-clear grind session in the presence of my wife I’d likely be staring down divorce papers. And you know what? Rightfully so.
If you’ve got a family, just don’t try to play this game competitively. It’s not worth it. You’re not going to remember or care in your old age that you won 3 covers of some new character in some phone game from ~30 years ago.
And yeah, I gotta do better myself at putting the phone away at night.
