Shielding and Matchmaking is now broken since Army of One

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I call shenanigans on the latest stealth update to matchmaking algorithm that was put in place for Army of One. It would be great if a dev could let us know what is going on here or at least investigate for themselves. My theory is that at minimum this change was made:

“If you are shielded you are largely ignored by matchmaker and show up maybe 1 of 100 skips”

@devs: in practice this is a horrible experience for anyone active and not shielded in the final 1h of a tourney because so many are shielded by then the pool for active targets becomes incredibly small and the huge penalty makes you incur losses at a rate impossible to advance. if the goal is to make us play with 24h left in the tourney and shield for a day… mission accomplished but competition stifled. please tune the matchmaker to show shielded players equally.

why do I say this? The TLDR is

5 losses = first 21h of shielded time
1 loss = in final 50 minutes of shielded time.
8 losses in 10 minutes of “unshielded” time , “unshielded” being without shield and the 1 min following adding a shield for stragglers

The experiences that back that statement up:

I got to about 650 pts in army of one with 22h left and put up a 1 day shield. At this point I was getting 1 loss for every 3 wins making it a net gain of 15pts at best for 10 min effort so felt like a ceiling. That was 2nd place 24h ago and with 1h to go I’m sitting 4th in my bracket.

2 losses = 0h-12h of shield
3 losses = 12h-21h of shield
0 losses = the 10 min window from 60min to 50min left in tourney

seems pretty quiet and I’m within 100 pts of 1st place with a 90 pt lead on 6th so it seems a good time to make a quick push, win 5 battles and shield again.

I get all 3 zones setup, chars and 3x boosts ready, and blitz 3 battles in 4min. I win 60 points I lose 43. I’m sitting 3rd so I shield again to wait out the retaliations. I get hit by 2 more losses in the next 1 min neither of which are retaliations. i wait 10 minutes and it’s quiet, no more losses. within 80 points of 1st still seems doable but I’m cautious of being unshielded longer than 3 min…

blitz another 3 battles in 4 min but this time take 2 losses, 1 retaliation from earlier and 1 random. gain 65 points lose 56, net gain 9 points. I shield up and watch to see what happens.

following 1 minute I get walloped by no less than 3 people, 1 retaliation from recent blitz and 2 more randoms. loss of 102 if i wasnt shielded. If this was all just from retaliations maybe i picked the wrong targets but suddently I’m public enemy #1 to any active player it seems.

quiet for the next 20 min no losses. final 1 min of tourney i get 1 random loss.

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similar experiences have been seen by others from:

Why are shields SO broken?
Not getting attacked?

2

Guess what? Everyone agrees with you icon_lol.gif

3

I guess the intent is to make PVP so unfun and miserable that people will waste HP on shields to save their sanity. They’ve been looking for an HP-sink for the past 3 months, I guess they’ve figured out how.

Mission accomplished?

This was only posted a few weeks ago (from Demiurge_Will):

It’s not cool that the progression rewards are so unachievable, though, and I’d like to fix that.

4

same here… seen shielding is pointless… nope is attacking me at all.. when i broke off the shield at last min.. 3 lose straight… and drop to 10th but still manage grab 100 hp and 2 patch cover… oh well better than nothing icon_mrgreen.gif

5

I think people forgot that things were always pretty insane in the last 30 minutes of a PvP tournament. Without pre nerf Ragnarok to intimidate your opponents, there’s no longer any guaranteed of your safety. I’ve fell from #1 to #200 in the last 30 minutes before shields were in.

If your points are relatively high, and they have to be if you’re in top 10, you’re always going to be a likely target.

6

True. The last few PVP events didn’t end like that due to all of the Shield/Matchmaking tweaks, but now the piranha tank is back in full force in the last hour.

7

Except that in previous tournaments, EVERYONE was in the MMR pool.

With shielded people dropping out and no longer being frequently offered as targets, in the last 30 minutes there are far fewer targets so those unshielded get hammered twice as hard as they used to. It’s worse than it used to be, the only difference is now you can purchase a (now necessary) placeholder.

8

Sure, at the upper ends of the scoring. If you were in the 900-1100 range you could see some wild swings, but you were still able to hustle and keep your head afloat. Also, you didn’t have people with 100-200 points hitting you out of the blue and taking away 50 points. Most of the attacks came from people within reach of your position.

The entire PVP is a mess right now. It’s almost entirely due to matchmaking (or the lack thereof).

9

The purpose of shielding is to let you take a break without getting hit, not to add more points to the pool for easy program

In that light, they work correctly, but they also put a massive target on unshielded players

If they return point loss to what it used to be (about 50-60% of what the opponent gained) I feel like it would be working pretty well from a player perspective.

10

  1. so it works correctly when the upper 10% are all shielded out of necessity to protect rank and the 3 brave/unlucky players of that top 10% get a massive bullseye on them from the remaining 90%?

  2. who are you going to attack in the final 1h, someone with less points than you or the guy with 600pts and is now worth 30-50pts?

  3. unlucky guy #1 shields next tournament, fun is doubled for unlucky guys #2 and #3. see point 1 for continuing cycle of insanity

11

The guy who is #1 started out in a commanding position so why shouldn’t he have an advantage? The guys at the top that are shielded didn’t magically have these high ratings. From observing my bracket, the guys at the very top usually hit a high rating and then worked on protecting it for the entire duration of the tournament. Why should it be easy to beat someone who is carefully protecting his lead for so long?

12

Hence why I now only play pve events. I USED to have fun with the PvP tournaments; now, not even a little. Helps that I dont need any of the rewards for now, but I feel for those that do.

13

I’ve noticed now PvP functions more like PvE, in the sense that if you let your bracket’s leader build an insurmountable lead you can completely forget about catching up to him. And in PvP, a 50 point lead can very well be insurmountable. The last few brackets I’m in I observed a very consistent pattern of a guy pulling to the 800s very early and then just stayed shield there for the entire duration of the tournament, with nobody making a serious effort trying to catch up to him and then finding out you can’t possibly get past 800 in the last 3 hours of the tournament. With shield costs now reasonable, you cannot count on the bracket leader self destructing for the win. He can simply do 2X24 hour shields for 400 HP and that’s still a very good deal for a 4 star cover that you need.

14

I guess the best strategy then is to join a bracket with about 5 hours left, bust your ass for 2 hours and then throw up a shield for the final 3 hours to avoid the frenzy.

15

Even that’s not a sure strategy anymore, as you’re on the radar of a lot more people under the new system. Also, more of those players are pursuing the same strategy (I know many here have sworn by joining late brackets) and there’s a general increase in activity towards the last 8 hours of a tourney since shields are more affordable, meaning locking down a top spot at the buzzer is going to be way more of a gamble now than it ever was.

I’ve always approached PvP as an early joiner, as it gives me the opportunity to slug it out for more ISO. As such, it’s been a little easier for me to adapt to the changes. The main difference is that before I would maintain a 200-300 point gap between me and 2nd, and grind higher when I saw them making a push to try and demoralize them (usually worked). Now, I play in off-hours whenever possible, and even then play in short bursts before reshielding. A 100 pt. gap is all it takes to feel good about holding 1st now, but building that gap takes time, planning, and HP.

That’s the biggest change to the meta in both PvP and PvE that I can see. For each event, I have to ask myself if I’m playing for covers or if I’m playing for ISO/HP. Doesn’t look like it’s possible to do both anymore.

16

Question has anyone else noticed that you do not receive bonus boost anymore after a match in pvp or pve. Been playing for last 5 hours straight not one boost.

17

The reason ppl not trying to place first is simple.

The top tier reward is not worth it.

I’d say if its green wolverine or blue invisible woman, then the competition for top will be much fiercer.

18

i just got some boosts in the 2nd running of Army of One. didnt receive any boosts during 18 fights of PvE, maybe fluke?

19

Exactly. icon_e_sad.gif

This is completely nuts. It is just plain impossible to make progress, you chose between turtling up at some random point and leave it there or lose from coming behind shields.

Also now shield is just mandatory to finish anywhere in HP-giving positions.

And the design decision quoted on top, that fight is concentrated on only unshielded people is outright broken in this “system”, that should have never passed a design review. Guess they wanted to handle the problem of shielded tank teams, but ignored the overall results.

20

You have to play the game they want you to play..It sucks but I have finished first for 3 consecutive PvP tournies, only using 1 shield each time… I have a strategy that is pretty foolproof and one that I adjusted to fit the current way the PvP is being run… The days of just going out there and raising hell are over, you have to think this through logically and you can score in top 10 rather easily…