I was pushing for 50 CP in PVP when I saw someone worth 69 point, with just 2* Storm and Jugg. I looked into his roster and saw that he was sandbagging. I hit him anyway because it would save me playing time.
Then he hit me hard. Three times in a row. I was expecting retaliation, I know he was sandbagging. But how could he find me 3x in a row, and hit me everytime?
As I understand it, retaliation should automatically erase me from his queue, especially after losing points and having my rating adjusted.
It’s possible he had you queued before you hit him. Sometimes the game glitches and give you the same opponent you just beat. That would make it three.
Or maybe you just wandered into his kill zone I guess..
Maybe he was setting up a cupcake for his friends and you hit him before he got his shield up so cycled through the queue to hit you 2 more times after his retaliation because he was mad?
It’s also wise, when you come across a “cupcake” team like that, to wait 4-5 minutes before hitting it. When players put out teams like that, they almost always plan to shield soon thereafter once folks have them queued and ready- that’s how they donate points to the rest of the slice. If you hit it right away, though, it can be like throwing rocks at the hornet’s nest, as they or their friends might come looking for retribution!
I must have been lucky.
I didn’t really understand this phenomina when I encountered it. I was trying to get some points and found a team of NMags and CStorm worth, like, 70 points. Wondered how they’d managed to get so far on a 2* roster and attacked them.
Can’t remember if I shielded after or not…but either way I thought nothing of it and nothing bad happened.
Only days afterwards did it twig what had happened.
He did you and everyone in the slice a favor by putting out that cupcake team, and instead of returning the favor and waiting for him to shield you hit him and took 69 points from him. He obviously wasn’t too happy about that and spent enough ISO on skips to find you 2 more times for the triple. Next time wait, or be prepared for this kind of targeting from bakers and their friends.
The question is not whether he would retaliate. With his roster, he will retaliate. The question is why the game system allows someone to be repeatedly targeted and attacked.
I once played a facebook game with a broken PVP system where not only one can be targeted but his “location” can be broadcasted to the whole legion and their alliance. The last time I played the game, my legion was forced into war by a bully legion and it brought in the whole alliance. It was a nasty experience that ultimately made me quit the game.
PVP should allow for retaliations. Let players retaliate back and forth if they want it. But being targeted and attacked over and over? That is not a pleasant experience.
P.S. Doubly unpleasant if this is the way it’s “supposed to work” in order for the devs to sell shield. Putting a player in an unpleasant experience so that they will buy protection? Smells like racketeering.
PvP is a competitive game mode, if you became invisible to players after a retal it would lose its competitiveness. If you are unshielded people will find you, and if they are looking for you specifically they will spend the ISO to skip until they find you.
Honestly this is nothing. The best snipers out there will dump points to their friends or randoms so that when they hit you it hurts more, and they don’t just hit you 3 times and stop, they hit you throughout the entire event. It’s part of the game. It’s what makes it competitive. It’s what makes it fun.
Not to mention, at certain points in a PvP there really are only so many players the game can give you to fight. I tried to hit 1000 the other day but the only opponents were worth 28 points unless I wanted to fight a boosted Red Hulk with his level 380 OML buddy for 70 points.
“Don’t attack cupcake teams right away” is not that difficult to remember. When I find a cupcake I try to do another fight before taking on the cupcake, that gives the baker time to shield.
Your perspective changes a bit when you get high enough to bake yourself though…
Assuming that you meant that you were going for your 25CP (1300 point progression reward), that means that you have enough points to be seen by almost all rosters. And if you were close to 1300, and hit 3 times, you are still above 1000 points and can be seen by just about everybody.
And if you’re in a battle chat for that slice, you pretty much only have that handful of people to hit because you have a friendly truce with a lot of people. So sometimes, it’s not about a bunch of people aiming for you, there pretty much isn’t anyone else around to hit.
P.S. Sorry for hitting you so many times Quebbster, but you’re pretty much the only non-friendly I have in my MMR range. Trust me when I say I try my best to skip you but there’s only so much ISO I can burn skipping if your name keeps popping up every other skip.
I know that feeling, so I don’t mind that much. It’s still a good while away from my final climb, so I’ll be able to recoup the Points. I might hit you back though.
He looks like he’s halfway through 3* progression and I do see some people with 2* rosters hitting 1300 so I wouldn’t totally rule out that he could be close to 1300. But yea, probably he had a typo and meant 50HP. Then I have no idea why he experienced that. Doesn’t seem logical for a cupcake baker to be so vengeful as to dump his points to oblivion just to punish 1 random cupcake sniper.
How a player should know, that this specific team is under " the cupcake-rules"? How to know, how much time the “friendly cupcakeplayer” needs to shield?
This “cupcake”-thing shows for me, how broken this whole pvp-structure is.
Fun? No! As others wrote, only players with 4*rosters have fun, the rest are victims with no fun.
Looking at the fielded team and the amount of Points it’s Worth should give you a clue whether it’s a cupcake or not. If you suspect it is, check the opponent’s roster to confirm. If he has maxed four- or fivestars but is Fielding one- and twostars, it’s probably a cupcake.
Time enough for one more fight in case they do a mid-hop bake so they can put their A-team back on defense. That’s why I try to take on a different opponent Before hitting a cupcake.
Probably the easiest way for 5* to climb through 600 is via trapcaking. I.e. putting out cc and hitting retals. At a low level sub 600. its the easiest and most reliable way to climb without hitting other 5*.
There are alot of weird quirks in mmr that make it possible and quite easy to triple a que. The one thing thats not clear in the message is “why didn’t you shield?”
If you going to take a high level player on, did you really expect that he was going to let you take 70 points? His return triple probably only barely =70.
Time of climb is also pretty important. If you did that on day 1, the baker was ready, had a game plan and you got beat by a better tactic. In fact, I pretty much can guaranteed that you over climbed past the equilibrium pt and you were caught in his que field by virture of where he layed out the cc. I.e. if everyone in the shard is at 400. The baker is at 1k, your at 700. You are still in his que regardless of roster disparity. In the last 12 hours, the baker would never risk trying to triple you, but in the first 2 days, you were farmed for iso and or 2* covers.
lots of tactics have evolved as players refine their understanding of game psychology and tactics. In the aggregate, most players play like the zombie horde (i.e. sheep) and its easy to see patterns that can be taken advantage of. For example, you could plot out the time of bracket join vs avg score of the bracket top 10. and you would see that the later you join the bracket, the higher the avg score of top 10. (yes that drops at the very end)
Probably the most telling statement in your post was that you knew his roster was sandbagged, and you still took the risk on the assumption that he couldn’t or wouldn’t retaliate back.
