I know Ignoring a player mutes them from the lobby, but does it prevent you from being matched with that player too?
How would they abuse? I honestly would want it to prevent matchmaking with Ignored players, simply because there is no solution right now to the problem of veteran/high-ranking players tanking their ratings to grind on newer players. It's irritating having to go against someone who tanked themselves with a ton of epics/legendaries, and also equally irritating when I get into match after match of people resigning before the first round even starts. I just want to avoid tankers and battle sportsmanlike players. I don't mind if someone who doesn't tank has better equipment than me in a battle, because the battle will still be fair, I just don't enjoy getting face-rolled by tanking players who are quite clearly waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of my league in terms of the uber-godly equipment they have at rating 720.
What if you ignored all high-rated players? Then you could ONLY play AI or get matched down (which lets you smurf without tanking). (I totally get where you're coming from, though, and wish there were an easy solution.)
Well, I can't get above rating 850, so there's no chance for me to fight anyone above 1000, and those players likely have really, really, good gear that I simply can't compete with. I can barely stay above 800 most of the time, and not for a lack of trying, I will pull some crazy tactics out of my hind-quarters to keep up. I simply don't have the strong gear that others seem to have in spades. I can attempt to grind day in and day out, but it's hopeless if I can only win 4 or 5 battles in a day, and until I get to the end of the SP campaign, I can't go there for competitive loot, even then that loot is limited in 24-hour increments. How about a compromise for a temporary solution, Blue Manchu? Instead of ignoring players and not matchmaking with them, how about an after battle question posed to both players: Do you prefer this opponent, or dislike this opponent? No answer = neutral. 1 prefers 2, 2 prefers 1: much more likely to get matched up. 1 prefers 2, 2 is neutral: slightly more likely to get matched up. 1 prefers 2, 2 dislikes 1: slightly less likely to get matched up. 1 dislikes 2, 2 dislikes 1: much less likely to get matched up. 1 & 2 neutral: no change, normal likeliness of being matched up. Reset preferences daily, when the reward path gets reset. Xbox/Playstation have a preference feature to matchmaking, which gets trumped by quality and number of available players. Smaller player base, more likely preferences get ignored, however you cannot 100% avoid a player on either network, because you can still get matched up with them. I've seen it happen. I don't know the details behind CH's matchmaking process, I imagine connection quality is not too important, since it's turn based. Ratings first, preference second, if no matches, check again without preference. *Throws arms in the air* I just can't make any progress at all, I will never get an Epic chest in MP, simply because of the sheer skewing of matches due to tankers. What am I supposed to do? Join them and tank myself so I only fight Gary? What fun is fighting Gary? He makes terrible moves, and I have terrible luck with chest loot. I shouldn't have to ruin the game for other people just so I can have a chance at getting awesome competitive loot. I don't want to deal with trolls by becoming a troll, that's just no good!
I mean, it's kind of like the purple dragon in Heroin Hero, right? If a match takes on average 15 minutes, and you lose 50% of games on average (expected), it's going to take you 10 hours to get the chest. In other words, it's only accessible if you tank or if you have a lot of time to spare. The epic chest is NOT the point of multiplayer, it's a fun dream.
Well how else am I supposed to get guaranteed Epic+ loot? Gold chests don't hand out epics with great frequency (I have yet to get anything above a rare) and there's no other way I can see to get competitive loot, other than paying to buy Epic chests. It's one of those things where you had to be there from the start to have a chance, now that everyone's settled in with their awesome loot, there's no way for new players like me to climb the ladder. It's a self defeating system that strongly discourages new players from engaging in MP. I keep trying, I don't want to give up, but every attempt makes the horizon gloomier by the minute. I don't want to walk away from this game after completing the SP campaign, but if things don't change I'm afraid I'll have to, because simply put, the whole point of playing a game is to have fun, if you're not having fun, then you're not really playing the game, your attempting to survive it, and that's no way to play. I have fun being challenged by other players who are within my range or slightly out of it, I do not have fun getting face-rolled by low rated players with uber-godly equipment. EDIT: If you play chess, then you can relate to the following. How fun would chess be if a chess master with an Elo rating of 2,000 purposely lost match after match to get knocked down to 300, and then you played against them at your honest skill rating of 280? Answer: Not very.
Uh, I don't know how you're supposed to get guaranteed epic loot besides the treasure hunts. That's the only guaranteed epic loot I've ever received except for the one time I got the purple chest (which took me 8 hours, and it was a labor of science). I have a lot of epics and I've gotten them all just by playing a lot, I guess. For the record, I'm currently rated 1400, though at a 50% win rate my current build usually rests around 1385. I win between one and six games of multiplayer per day, opening an average of two golden chests per day. I don't tank and I have fun playing PvP. Where are you in the campaign? When you complete it, you can go back and do quests for guaranteed rare drops. I've found a lot of epics this way. You can also buy epics at Randimar's if you find yourself flush with gold. I've bought one or two. I definitely think you need to complete the campaign to stand much of a chance in PvP (at any rating), but I think the people with good items and high skill gravitate toward the upper ratings for sure. 800-900 isn't dominated by legendaries, people with sick legendaries climb higher. If you're having difficulty against NON-TANKERS I recommend completing the campaign, doing some quests, and trying to find strategy advice for PvP. Spectate some games and play some casuals against strong players for hints. That said, if the 800-900 bracket is hellish for you because of strong players who tank, then we need stricter anti-tank policy. I don't think ignoring players in matchmaking is a very futureproof solution, especially because, as I said, it would basically ruin high-level play. Report players who you think are tanking, though—I think that functionality has been implemented
I hover around 1100-1200 and I play 0-1 MP games a day, sometimes up to 6 on weekends for the third gold chest. My main CH activity is SP grinding the campaign, because I'm a farmer at heart. OP, I would advise you to finish the campaign first - you will simply not be able to gear up in any other reasonable way. The jump in loot power is immense. There's another thread comparing what you can get for 1 minor and 1 major vs 2 major tokens - big difference. Two of the most sought after (on the forums) items are level 18 commons - I'm looking at you Bejeweled Shortsword and Wand of Seared Air. Grinding them out of SP is the only reasonable way to get them. If you like MP (and you probably do, being an MTG player), there's unfortunately no quick fix to gearing up, since there isn't an option to trade or anything else. Aside from paying (which isn't a really great way, considering the conversion rate), SP is the way to go. I figure the chests in MP aren't really for gearing up - they're just motivational items to incentivise playing. Much like the booster packs from winning FNM aren't really the way to building a great collection (though they can help) - you normally buy a box or something like that. The CH equivalent is grinding (or buying epic chests). The issue of tankers is a real one to be sure, but I don't think the item balance in CH is that bad. There are some on-the-watchlist items that we and the BM team have pointed out before (e.g. Vibrant Pain, draw decks, etc.), but most decks can be made with rare and below items. The key to any good deck is consistency, which really means getting as MUCH gear as you can, instead of focussing on gear quality. If you post up teams, I'm sure plenty of people here are keen to give advice. Also, about items - one of the most OP items imo, Demon Charm of the 2nd circle, is available at the L1 and L6 shop almost everyday. It doesn't have to be paired with Nimbus to be OP - it is inherently card advantage powerful. Pilgrim Bailey describes it pretty good in a well commented-on thread (and with a good sense of humour too).
If you can't get the 20th chest for over 1 week straight then you shouldn't attempt to get it. I once tried to win 20 matches everyday for a week and the result is not that good: All of the epic or above I pulled are junk. In fact, I got more useful items from the gold chests than the purple one. So just try to get all the gold chests and you will eventually get stronger. Today, I was lucky and manged to pull 2 legendary out of 4 gold chests. But woe on me, they are all treasure.
You didn't ask for tips but I have some nevertheless. Sorry about that. Luckily 1000 rating is possible if you get a couple golden chests a day. I did it, but I didn't encounter tankers then.. Perhaps if you don't mind you could go with the OP metagame (http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/guide-want-1300-1500-mp-rating.4389/) to have a chance to beat these buggers. One card advantage priest and a beat-you-in-a-turn warrior is all you nowadays need IMO. As the MP chat sometimes says epic chest is an epic disappointment most of the time. Item rarity is also not always expressive of item power like we can read from here http://www.cardhunter.com/2012/10/card-rarities-2/. Rarity is mostly about complexity of the item. Some Legendaries are very situational or niche. Same should apply to Epics. So actually you're chasing skills qualities eg. Silver and Gold skills. Common Bejeweled Shortsword is a prime example of a really powerful not so rare item (except that it is kind of rare..) Some of my most powerful items are Rare, Uncommon and Common in rarity. I'll list some items I often equip or have equipped you can sometimes even buy from the stores cheaply: Ogre Hide Armor, Rageblood Dagger, Bejeweled Shortsword, Savvy Attacker, Angry Attacker, Tough Leather Cap, Solid Rock, Runestone, Advanced Ferocity, Perfect Ferocity, Perfect Toughness, Gauntlets Of The Giant, Mail Of Succor, Demon Charm Of The 2nd Circle, Shuddering Relic, Advanced Cleansing, Incense Of Roiled Air, Malign Mace, Sword Of The Lion, Greenstone Pendant, Advanced Electromancy, Off-balance Boots, Chestnut Boots, Electroporter Novice. Granted I got some of that after buying club but at that point I was already at 1150 rating. The point of this paragraph was that opening those MP Gold Chest is enough to gear up. And didn't gold chests have like 5 % legendary rate? Knowing what items are powerful is half of the battle. I don't really know what weapons to equip with my warriors which might cost me some rating; I have lots of good warrior stuff. Some time ago I played 1 warrior because I didn't have enough stuff for two warriors. Having a balanced War Wiz Pri party has a gear advantage: drops drop equally for all classes and thus you should have something good to equip for every class. Triple warrior team is hard to gear up on your first weeks of playing whereas a balanced party is much more doable. Lastly you don't need all the crazy skills like Impenetrable Nimbus, Nimble Strike or Hard To Pin Down. 1200 rating is, again, achievable without these. With balance changes coming to the last card it gets easier. I hope my post helped and more importantly didn't rub salt in the wounds. :/
I really, really like this. This is a list of nice items to look out for, some in Randimar's too. If you have pizza left over from the tutorial, get a Fierce Dwarves starter for the Rageblood Dagger and Incense Of Roiled Air. Also, I cannot stress enough completing the campaign, to unlock Cardstock II. The first stage of Cardstock II starts off pretty reasonable, and can only get easier when you start getting better items. Then you can join the legion of grinders who farm Cardstock II by completing the first adventure, exiting, clicking on another adventure to exit Cardstock II completely, and then replaying the first adventure. You will get some required items this way. The others can be picked up from the stores.
I get hit with Powerful Hack quite frequently, sometimes parrying it, but it's a common thing for me to see. Go figure on this one: Shortly after my last post, it seemed like all the tankers went to bed or something, because I was not paired up against any of them. I was paired up with on-par and slightly better equipped players, winning 7/11 matches (although one was a resign because the player apparently was trying to face Gary), and they weren't short either, they were nail biting down to the last 2 hp of my character and the opponent's. Also managed to get two Epic items out of a golden chest, Silvery Chalice and Candy Nauticorn, neither of which is equipment, but Epic items nonetheless. Also, after those matches my rating has bumped up to 906, which is the highest I've ever been. Seems a weird combination of Finagle's and Hofstadter's laws. After experiencing all (or most) possible worst-case scenarios, it seems the RNG felt I deserved a reward, in the form of confusion, treasure, and ratings. I won't eat my words, but I will boil them down and make a tea. P.S.: Tankers are still evil.
If you want more epic items, one way to get them is by grinding the SP battles a lot (by not finishing an adventure, just complete the first battle or two on repeat). The epic drop rate from the basic chest is somewhere in the 1% region. When you get together well-suited tactics and gear for a particular battle, you can finish it even 25+ times per hour. This means you'll be getting on average an epic item per about 1.5 - 2 hours played depending on whether you're a club member. This is a best-case scenario, some battles are considerably slower even with good gear. The lower level adventures are faster and produce some excellent epics, I really like level 6 epics myself. I don't recommend this kind of extreme grinding as a permanent strategy as it easily leads to burnout, it is very repetitive and worklike. As a short-term solution it can relatively quickly and reasonably dependably rack you a lot of items to fill out your collection. The items will mostly be equal to or +-1 level items based on the adventure level but even +-3 items drop with a small percentage, +-4 haven't been observed so far. There is more experience-based data about this in the linked thread. This means if you're after particular items, you need to grind the level-appropriate adventures. I don't recommend trying to get a single item, that can get very frustrating. It's better to pick an item level where there are as many items desirable to you as possible as this will produce most satisfaction. The wiki is an excellent resource for this, especially the category links of which my link is a good example.
On the topic of tanking, how long does it take a player to do it, anyway? Is it something that a player does for an entire afternoon and everyone sees them doing it as a result, or does it just take 4 or 5 losses to reduce yourself significantly enough that you can effectively start at the bottom? I don't want to know because I feel I might try it someday, I'm just curious how it works, and whether or not even a single player doing it spells frustration for tons and tons of legitimate players.
Well, the rating system is pretty much Elo from chess, so each battle there is a difference between player ratings, and that difference is what is given to the winner, and taken from the loser. Sometimes I win a match and get 12-22 points, other times I lose a match and lose 12-18 points. I'd say with that minimum (12), it would take 10 throws to lose 120 rating, maximum (22) would be losing 220 rating in 10 throws. We all know how long it takes to throw a match, 2 clicks. I don't really know if there's really a resign penalty or not, because there have been times where I had to resign in the first or second turn because my kids were acting up, and I wasn't going to make my opponent wait forever while I handle RL stuff. I'd click to enter a match before tending to the kids, and less than 3 minutes (penalty time) later, I was in a match! I'd hear the music just a minute or two (I was counting) after I clicked to join the queue, so it seemed to me that there was no penalty actually being applied, just a lengthened search time before fighting Gary. Any way, if the penalty is broken, then it would take maybe about 1 minute to get into a game, per throw, so potentially 10 minutes to drop the rating 120-220 points, depending on how many players are on. Within a couple hours you could do some significant damage to your rating, most likely enough to get tanked down to high 700's low 800's, which is where the bulk of new players start at after Gary matches. If the penalty isn't broken, and it's just bugging out for me, then multiply that time by 4, because you just went from 1 minute search time to 3 minute penalty plus 1 minute search time, resulting in 4 minutes per throw, rather than 1 (roughly). ༼ シ༽ރ We need more emoticons, like a nerd-glasses face, with tape.
