How are the hard-core PvP alliances handling the "new MMR?"

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Forgive me if this just serves as a showcase for my MPQ ignorance, but I’ve been wondering, how are the hard-core (T50? T20? T10? T1-2?) PvP alliances handling the “new PvP MMR” internally?

When DDQ got me interested in MPQ after a long period of relative dormancy, I searched for an alliance that worked for me, and I found one I’m comfortable with. No real minimums, but an overall expectation that we all try as best we can. We tend to do well overall, sometimes peeking our heads into the T100 in PvE, with varied but respectable numbers in PvP. Our heavy-hitting vets did well by all counts in Ultron. Me, not-so-much ( icon_redface.gif
).

Personally, I knew at the outset that I would need to find an alliance that was not specifically PvP driven, because I didn’t have the roster, experience, or patience to do well, relatively speaking. Again, personally, I knew that I could manage T100 PvE solo if I was determined, but PvP? That was a big NO. I’d read enough in the forum to know that PvP alliances didn’t joke around when it came to minimums, so I knew that any alliance with a PvP minimum was not going to be a good fit for me. And then came the new MMR.

I used to at least know that I could get in, get a token and some ISO, maybe even stretch to 300 points, and ultimately end up getting a minimal (but appreciated icon_e_wink.gif
icon_e_smile.gif
) “thanks for playing” ISO bonus at the end, and maybe even a token, but now? Sheesh. My matchmaking, team health, enemy health, and potential rewards for my level of ability and roster strength make it challenging to even open anything in the right-hand tab, let alone actually pick an end-time.

So I’m just wondering, with all the forum posts discussing kicking players, “strict” minimums, and the onset of what appears to be some “challenged” matchmaking as well as increased health/increased damage/increased need for and length of roster healing, how are the heavy hitters adjusting? Do you guys discuss alterations to minimums?

Are the more established alliances even concerned with the changes? It’s hard to tell sometimes whether a change is as negative overall as it seems to be via the comments that are posted, and I guess I’d just be curious to hear from some who have been playing at the highest levels for a while.

Cheers!

DBC

2

We are usually about top 20 and we dropped the requirements from 800 to 600. 800 is still achievable, but its just become a bit tedious and a lot of members are just jaded with the new long climb. Thing is we haven’t really dropped down the table too much, so it appears than a lot of similar levelled alliances are suffering the same problem.

Crewsaders are still smashing it.

3

It feels like you ‘have’ to play the meta game more than ever if you want a shot at 1000 progression these days. Choose the wrong bracket and you could easily find that 4* cover completely out of reach in a wall of 10 point matchups from 800 points on.

Get in the bracket with a hyper co-ordinated group such as the x-men and tactically queue up your point targets at the right time and you might just find 1000+ to be easier than breaking 700 points in the above talked about bracket.

In summary. PvP feels ‘broken’ on a competitive level when measured against the season scores of players and progression rewards of events. Far too much success depends on out of game communication and cheap tactics like boosting (something which has gotten out of hand with retaliation changes), alliance truces, tactical match queuing, double tapping and other such tactics that I’m forgetting or am simply unaware of..

This isn’t to say that a solo player without LINE could never possibly compete in the new MMR. Top 5 and especially top 10 are still very much open to anyone willing to shield hop and play tactically enough. But the MMR changes have seemingly opened the floodgates on ‘allowable exploits’ at least from my perspective as a top 10 alliance member.

I’d love to see the issue of bracket point disparity addressed as a VERY high priority issue. I think that removing the names AND complete rosters of your opponents at the battle selection screen would go a LONG way to making PvP a more universally fair experience (this info could still be shared post battle).

Of course changes like these come with the consequence of severe point drops in all brackets since people rely on high point targets to even make progression rewards. So you’d absolutely have to scale back progression rewards to compensate.

4

We’re not exactly hard-core, but we were asking for 650 and dropped it to 600. We don’t line much and we have individuals who still occasionally hit 1,000 by putting their time and effort into it.

We went to PVP only three or four seasons back, and have been T50 every season since then, and in about a third to half of the events as well.

With the new MMR we lost a few that wanted to PVE more again, likely since PVP -was- easier/less grindy/less time-intensive than PVE, but it feels very similar now. It’s also a bit harder to recruit 600+ PVP’ers only. When we started PVP only, there were plenty that did that - I’m not sure if more are going PVE/PVP both or if those that can hit 600 (high leveled characters across deep levels) are just not around.

5

Not hardcore but I think we’ve been hitting top 25 consistently this season without any problems. Though I think I’m the weakest limb of this 20 legged horse. icon_e_sad.gif
I need to improve my roster a bit more.

6

The new MMR changes were the straw that broke the camels back for me (Kamala Khan’s most recent Season 12 Teenage Riot PVP marked the last hurrah of the good ol’ days imo). I went from going for 1k prog in PVP routinely and top 50 in PVE to going for top 25 placement (if I feel like it) in PVP and dumping PVE entirely.

In another thread I commented how the longer 8min fights due to health buffs, always against the weekly PVP buffed chars (cause that’s what everyone has to use to get from being raped) from score 0 to around score 800 adds up to a part time job in terms of hours per week (~15 hours) – perhaps double the time commitment that it was before, assuming you only play PVP and DPDQ.

The MMR change also caused me to eschew PVE altogether and resign as co-commander of Wrecking Crew. The time commitment became too much.

It seems I’m not alone. I’m ranked about 11th-14th in my season 13 bracket (without touching simulator yet and not breaking 850 in any PVP event, about 5k score atm), I used to typically be fighting for top50 season placement (in a death bracket where top 10 was 12k -17k season scores) throughout the past 3-4 seasons. Either I got a very lucky (dead) bracket this season, or lots of people have left, or have gone super casual like me.

The big problems outstanding atm are: the new tiny kitty MMR (should be reverted to pre season 12), PVE scaling (should be fixed/reduced), reward tiering needs rebalancing (for PVP and simulator), and as for weekly PVP char buffs, I’d just get rid of them so the featured is never overshadowed. The reasoning is: They nerfed most of the good 4* to the point where you’ll probably get more team diversity with everyone naked (unbuffed), than you get with the current scheme of a few chars buffed each week. (How many of your nodes were lvl 240 Cmags/Blade in the last week?)

7

This really needs to go, its just compounding the grind.

8

D3 are not very smart, they nurf the character we pay for and work for, but then, they nurf them to create character diversity, but then, they super buff weekly character’s, so now we play against those match after match.

Stop buffing character’s if you want to see team diversity.. icon_eek.gif

This season will probably be my last after 521 days playing this game, really sick of the same pattern D3 uses in this game, always the same rewards, essentials char, scaling, mmr, etc,etc, etc.
Witcher 3 in a few days, yah baby ! icon_e_smile.gif

9

We’re not top20 (though we were 21t in the HB pvp)
We dropped our ask to 500 but honestly the people who were topping out around 800-1k are still doing pretty close to that. Overall people are less interested in the game in general than they used to be though.

10

Yes, you got very lucky.

My season bracket T10 ranges from 9500 to 8000, and my 5146 gives me rank 200.

So I’m not seeing a dropoff of high scorers - some people from the big alliances went casual, yes, but they were replaced by other high scorers immediately.

Points are lower across the board, yes. But the people going for 1K are still hitting 1K, and the guys going for 1800 are still hitting that, too. Although I have no idea why you’d want to spend upwards of 2000 HP per PVP doing that.

Django dropped the minimum to 600 now, and we’re at least T50 all the time, most of the time T25, which is due to our crazies (and robots) hitting 1100+ most of the time.
It’s probably crazy stressful in a constantly T10 alliance, but below that it’s pretty cozy.

11

The biggest impact is being in a constant state of recruitment because more people have had enough. We were very stable for several seasons… no movement at all. Now we seem to be in a constant state of 18-19.

12

Yup
I was very happy to push to 1K every PVP, but now it depends on the week. I lucked out this week with 166 IF and BP, but last week I didn’t have any maxed characters. That is to say, it was less fun. As a result, I’ve been shuffled around bit.
The game is certainly less fun. I’ve yet to see any vet say it is more fun.

13

Hey all,

I just wanted to say thanks for everyone weighing in.

As I said, although I’ve dabbled, PvP isn’t my world. I like to balance/form my opinions based on hearing from people who actually know what they’re talking about, so the input is greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

DBC

14

You’re not seeing the picture from D3’s perspective. Their priority is to make money, right? How does that happen if players simply used 4horevine teams constantly in pvp, therefore rendering moot the need for players to buy cover packs to get new characters and slots to keep them? The publisher nerfed characters in order to make secondary characters look more attractive and encourage players to buy covers. Same reason for having weekly buffed characters, to encourage sales of cover packs. It’s all about the money, man. icon_cool.gif

15

re: breaking 1,000 pts. If you’re outside the hardcore groups (xmen, crewsaders, etc.) I think it depends on which shard you picked compared to these guys. If you’re in the same shard as the ultra high scorers, you might get lucky and manage to find some of these guys as 40+ point targets and use them to make big leaps in scoring. However, if you’re unlucky and happened to pick a different shard than them, then you’re stuck with targets in the teens and twenties, and very unlikely to break 1,000 mark.

I point this out because I believe the top pvp alliances try to have everyone in the same shard (and hopefully same bracket even); this makes it easier to coordinate in terms of pushing, breaking shield, and even leaderboard placement in a bracket.

I’m not in a hardcore pvp alliance (usually top 100 season though), and in the she hulk event our alliance happened to have 2 guys in the same bracket for top 5. And a handful of other members were in the same shard, and constantly got matched with targets from this same bracket. So. . . through coordination and targeting competitors in the bracket, we helped an alliance member get first place. This is the first time we’ve done it, but I could see how alliances could use coordination for leaderboard placement.

In my example with Trial by Combat (she hulk) event, I was in top 10 in my bracket pretty much the entire time and I kept getting snipped by 2 affiliated alliances (no names mentioned). So breaking 1,000 points was pretty much out the window. icon_cry.gif

16

Tacos have adjusted fine. Everyone hates it, but just about everyone in our crew is heavy grinder, so we just persevere. Regarding scoring, we have never really held to a score minimum. Our general rule is to play every event and score as much as real life allows you…the numbers will work themselves out.

This attitude keeps our crew loose and focused on having as much fun / getting as much value as they can from their experience. And in the current MPQ landscape that is all but barren of fun…it goes a long way to keeping our members fresh.

We do take polls toward the end of each season to gauge how everyone in our entire organization (DPTacos, DPOrder, DPAARP) is feeling for the upcoming season and shuffle as needed. The most motivated / fresh / excited members for the following season go into Tacos. Members who need a breather go to AARP, where there is NO EXPECTATION at all. And the remaining members comprise Order, who always end up top 25-50 for the season.

easy…marc

17

I would like to get a look at their last two quarterly figures and see if their new model worked. I haven’t spent money in about 3 months and there seems to be a lot of disenfranchised like me. While I don’t disagree with your sentiment, I just feel that they took it too far and cynically ignored their customers.

The Sega takeover probably explains a lot. But who knows anyone’s logic until its explained.

Edit: I was probably spending about £20 ($30) a month. While this isn’t whale levels of spending, most companies would love to get loyal customers spending that regularly.

18

My old alliance flirted with Top 50 but the mother alliance decided they couldn’t handle shuffling people for pvp anymore so now they are pve only and I’m in a new alliance. I’m mostly pvp only and may end up DPDQ only after this season. Not fun at all…

19

I’ve retired from competitive PVP because the new MMR and weekly buffed characters have killed the fun of this game for me.

20

Wow, even the legend can’t overcome (stomach) the PVP changes. That actually says quite a bit.

[Although I assume “retired from competetive PVP” means Jamie Madrox will always T100 in PVP without actually entering the event.]