Who wants to explain what was going on in PvP this morning?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Before I start the point of this thread isn’t to point fingers or call anyone out. I legitimately want answers. Anyone who’s familiar with how the game works or has an explanation or has seen this before can feel free to respond. I’m not on the forums much but here I am…

Names of players involved will remain ommitted.

At 8 am CST my overnight shield expired and I lined up my usual high value targets (My score was 1250ish at the time). Completed two hits and placed 3 hr shield. Apx 1 hour later I lined up 3 more targets and hit two of them and placed another shield around 1350ish pts.

At this point I noticed two things that were unusual. #1) I was not getting hit… At all. No retals no direct hits nothing. #2) The same 4-5 high value targets were constantly available.

Now #1… I never can go more than 2-3 minutes after unshielding without being hit. I have at most 5 minutes. This is why I rarely if ever make two hits on a shield hop. I can’t afford to. Although my team does enormous dmg they are horrendous on defense (As many of you know)

#2) I spend easily 20-30k+ skip tax every PvP looking for targets. This morning I didn’t pay skip tax because as soon as I came out of a shield hop the targets were already there.

So at this point (about 10:00 CST) I made a 3 hit jump and shielded. I immediately had 3 targets lined up again. At this point I was around the 1400 pt mark. Some targets that were less desirable we easily replaced with 1-2 skips. Doing 3 hits in one jump is completely unheard of at this level. From past experience I can tell you it will result in a net of -120ish so I simply don’t do it. Even 2 is unusual for me.

After that 3 target jump I played my PVE nodes for about 20 minutes. Decided to check out PvP again and noticed that the competition was moving up rapidly in pts so I went back to PvP.

Now I want to make it clear that between 8am and 11am I had done 3-4 shield hops and have had absolutely NO attacks. Again… This is completely unheard of for me since I am such a soft high pt target. It is not abnormal for me to have 10-15 hits within 10 minutes of shielding.

Since PVE was just starting to wind down and I wasn’t being hit I figured what the hell… Let’s go for 3 targets again. Lined up the usual suspects and went after them. After one hit I noticed I had finally gotten my first hit. I didn’t think much and hit one more of my targets. After coming out of that hit I had been hit 3 additional times. (So to recap that’s 4 hits within 2 minutes but zero hits on the previous 4 shield hops)

Feeling frustrated by the enormous loss in pts I immediately shielded instead of hitting that 3rd target. At this point I was at 1380 instead of the 1500 I was going for… Which is fine it happens.

So I regrouped and started looking for more targets. What I found was nothing. All 1-3 pt targets and the multiple high value targets had simply vanished. Spent 5k Iso skipping and found absolutely nothing. In that time I was also being hit… Constantly. I was hit between 12-15 times within minutes whereas I received no hits the previous 3 hours.

So as someone who probably spends an embarrassing amount on this game I am trying to make sense of this. During this time my alliance mate Shamsali was out hitting the same targets but his score wouldn’t update until said targets had stopped playing. That was the point he started getting hit as well.

I have heard all the rumours and know people have submitted tickets etc. I really have to insist that somebody explain how this stuff happens. Players with high scores is of no concern to me. I can and have consistently (at least lately) pull 1600-1700 pt scores in pvp. Maybe others think that these high scores = cheating but I can tell you they = time and money. Like it or not that’s the game.

At this point its starting to seem like there’s no longer a level playing field. What assurances do I have that my time and money are being wasted competing with people not spending the money?

Allegedly D3 is looking into this but this needs to be a top priority. I can’t continue playing a game where I spend money to compete if I have no assurances that others can bypass the spending money part of the equation.

2

Are we talking about f2p players like locked and me - or cheaters? You have no assurances that I won’t find and whack you regardless of how much money you plunk down.

3

I can’t say for sure this is what happened with you, but I’ve seen server issues before that basically don’t update scores for a while, which maybe just means severe server lag. So it’s possible no one saw you were unshielded for a while since it was such a short time and the server was lagging. It doesn’t explain you getting hit hard the last time though. Weird issues always come up at the end of pve events/subs due to high activity and then when the server goes into rewards mode, so I usually just try to avoid pvp at that time.

4

You should hit me. I don’t care if people hit me shielded or not. I’m saying I was receiving absolutely NO hits from anyone. I expect about 10 hits after unshielding because that’s typical for me.

For the other guys question this all happened PRIOR to PVE sub ending. And my score was updating. It was an alliance mate that was having the update issue

5

I’m confused about what you are getting at. You talked a lot about weird queues, with you not getting hit and getting targets too easily, then getting hit a lot and having a hard time getting targets, then all of a sudden talk about cheaters bypassing money. What do you think the cheaters are doing? I’m just confused.

6

Am I understanding right here ? You spend 20-30k in skip tax per pvp ?

Is that what it takes to perform in a PvP ?

If we value this, this is $50 worth per PvP ? That does not include the shield hp.

I will not comment nor express any opinion about this, but I am astounded.

Besides 20-30k ship tax is 2000-3000 skips.

It must be a large amount of stress to perform in a pvp.

D3P should quickly change the system, the same way Magic the Gathering did a couple of years ago. Ever since, they have doubled the number of players.

They should learn from games that succeed…

7

Goobady,

I’m not accusing anyone of cheating. I’m trying to make sense of the issues with this game before I decide if I should continue to play. I am sure my post is poorly worded and thought out but I’m writing this on a cell phone.

Artkos, I am a unique case. I don’t think anyone else is paying that kind of skip tax. I am going for the highest score in every PvP. By no means do you need to do that. Other guys who get 1400ish are doing so with maybe 3-4 shields and not paying much skip tax at all.

8

A few weeks ago I was in an event and I had a somewhat similar experience where the server wasn’t taking into account my rising score as I won fights. This meant that I had a continuous stream of high point targets and never had to skip, while at the same time my enemies probably saw me as worth a lot less points than I actually should have been worth. When I left the event to check something else and rejoined the event then my score had been updated and things were back to normal. This repeated as long as I stayed within the event.

I scored very well that event, unfortunately it hasn’t happened again since.

9

This is a server issue… and when you encounter it, it’s like free points. Final points aren’t getting communicated correctly and I’d assume that you are never introduced to a new batch of players. So even though at the highest server level, your points are being tracked correctly, that information doesn’t make its way downhill for a while. So at your level in this process, you were stuck at 1250 the entire time, and weren’t being added to new queues. So you continue to see high value targets and not get attacked since you’re not in queues. Then when the server wants to start fully working again (unpredictably minutes or hours), your score is properly updated and you’re added to queues again.

10

I noticed that with friends in the Alliance. They found me. It was showing 740+ points but I was at 900+ at that time.

The update must be slow to save on server’s resources.

11

Forum servers problems, so my message was duplicated.

May I ask why you spend so much ISO to place so high and not level your characters instead ?

12

Yes I was around for those. This didn’t seem consistent with that. I don’t know… Thats what I’m trying to figure out. Was hoping that someone else was having the same experience and could provide some insight.

13

That amount of resources on one PvP round amazes me as well. I’m in your bracket, and you’re leading #2 by 622 points (at the time of this writing).
I thought I spent too much time playing MPQ, but now I know why I will never be in the top. I sure won’t spend that much (read ANY) money on this game to reach that point.

To answer your question, I have noticed times where I don’t get hit for hours at a time, then within the time it takes me to play one game, I’ve been hit 4 or 5 times.
I think it just has to do with timing and where you are in other peoples’ queues.

14

Got my own puzzler…

At lunch and some time befor I noticed the #1 in my bracket was holding at 1200+ and shielded I think, I don’t recall his name.

I play a few battles then look again, and he had vanished from sight.

Seems either he was a cheater, or got hit like a punching bag. I did sneak a peak at his rouster and it was nearlly fully maxed out. including a 102 Nick Fury.

15

This morning I played the PVP for the first time; my initial score of 40 was apparently enough to get me 6th place in my bracket! I smelled a rat, rebooted the app and saw that my true rank was something like #225. So obviously something funny was going on there.

16

This may or may not be related, but I’ve noticed since the advent of “True Healing” I’ve been attacked only a fraction of what I used to be. I think part of this is that people simply can’t play as much. But more importantly why attack a tough looking team when you can pay a little skip tax and find a cream puff team to take on? And I almost never get retaliated against anymore either. It just isn’t worth using up your precious few battles on a retaliation where you might get 20 points when instead you can go find someone easier to fight for 30.

17

I’m in the same bracket as you, actually right below you but with far less points. I’ve had exactly one retal and it was a defensive win. However, I see less nefarious reasons. For me I try to attack many weak teams early on so they will just skip me. Also, I would see when you unshield. It was during the end of a pve sub. I think people were focused on that since its sentry rewards so not even playing PvP at that time.

I have hp saved up not ISO. So I just do a couple of skips and go for it then shield. I won’t ever get 1500 points like you but I don’t spend the money to do it either. To answer your question; yes you are getting an advantage spending money. I’ll finish around 1100 you 1600 or higher…so there you go. icon_e_biggrin.gif

18

I’m in an almost identical boat as you WorldRunner, albeit on a smaller scale, and with less paying. I do shield intelligently but I try to stretch my dimes and I hate paying for a shield if there was no reason to.

Everyone seems to want to point their finger to the almighty server. Perhaps that’s true but until a dev admits it is definitely this cause in this particular case for both of us I don’t want to rush to that conclusion.

What I do know for certain is that when I get in on PVP as soon as it starts that I am not going to get attacked (read: not often, one or two may happen) between roughly 10pm and 6am GMT-8. I am not an extreme gamer but I do play to win and this time frame fits in with the normal waking hours for my life. I am not a no-lifer, and work 40 to 50hrs a week.

500 is not a lot of people. If I had to guess you found a sweet spot. Maybe you started this PVP slightly differently then your norm. My sweet spot seems way too consistent to be a server issue and I don’t see any other people on the leader boards taking the same gains. Whether because it was Tuesday, or the hours, or first of the month I think you just found some time when others weren’t playing as much. See if you can replicate and take advantage of it. I can usually assure top 5 using at most 3 shields (one of each) and a 5 pack of heals. I do not have the best team, strongest is a lvl 115 followed by some 2* 85s.

19

@WorldRunner

Same experience this morning. I was playing for three hours and eerily was not getting hit. I was massively topping my bracket (yay sharding) and just kept getting the good stuff.

I’m thinking to myself, Sub ends today, people are saving their packs, not enough time mid-week… maybe I won’t shield. Then I got slammed all at once midafternoon. just BAM. Now nothing… I’m still leading my bracket by a good enough margin with a day to go, but it was odd to be sure. I’ve got a nice backlog of retaliations to chew through.

20

Wasn’t active myself at that time but what you described doesn’t sound unusual. I’ve noticed prolonged quiet spells in pvp where you get very few attacks - especially in the last couple. And if some high point folk are actively shield-hopping and you are skipping a lot then you expect to keep queuing them - that’s why you’re skipping right?