Best Of

Just to address a topic that came up earlier. How much stock should people place in my analyses? That's a bit of a tricky question, because there's a few different angles that question can be asked in the context of.

First: as I've stated many times, I am not a crystal ball. I cannot predict the future with precision. I would say my data is pretty reliable, as I collect it from the game and I take care to collect it carefully. So my past data is pretty solid.

How I project that into the future to make predictions/projections is not infallible, and I try to be transparent with that. I made an initial prediction of 6.3 billion points at the start of the event, but I revised that upward to 6.9 billion as I got more data, and in particular the very big jump in points starting with the start of sales compared to 2024. We could still end up at 7 billion or we could fall to 6.5 billion. Neither are impossible at the moment, but the most likely path lands somewhere around 6.9 or maybe 6.8 billion.

My estimates for bracket cutoffs is even more hazy. I'm analyzing the data to look for patterns in spending (units and cash) and exercising judgment. But those could be off by 20% or more if my guesses are wrong. Again: I try to show my work there so people know why I'm predicting what I'm predicting, and also to what degree I could miss by. But if you think I'm way off there, I could be.

But having said all of that, there are some things the data says that simply straight up contradict the more wild guesses some other people are making. For example, some people think that players could just stop spending today or tomorrow. It is possible but it ignores the fact that people aren't a hive mind. There is nothing short of a nuclear war that would cause everyone to simultaneously stop opening crystals. Half a million people do not all just turn on a dime like a flash mob. If we score 250 million today, we're not scoring 10 million tomorrow. We're not even scoring 100 million tomorrow. We might score 280 million, we might score 200 million. Scoring can change, but it won't change dramatically absent some big outside influence - like the sales, like the double track units. Scores change slowly as players individually run out of units at different times or decide to call it quits. Scores change dramatically when resources suddenly become available to players and they collectively take advantage of them.

When I say we're headed for 6.9 billion, that's a prediction. I could be wrong. But when I say we're going to hit milestone 48, that's less a prediction and more a recognition of reality. There is zero probability that we're going to score less than 270 million points in the next four days. That would require scoring to drop from about 250 million points a day to about 68 million points a day. The data says that's all but impossible. During last year's banquet when people were most pessimistic, our lowest day was 123 million. We averaged 165 million in the last four days. We're not going to suddenly drop to less than half of that this year.

People should not just trust me because I'm me. They should trust - or not trust - the analysis. And if someone else wants to do their own analysis that concludes different things, by all means. The more the merrier. But I would say that most of the pessimists aren't doing analysis. They aren't even just wildly guessing. They are pushing a narrative, and they don't really care what the data says. They don't care what people are doing. Which is their right, but comparing what I'm doing to what they are doing is comparing someone who writes cookbooks with someone who does competitive food fights. We're not really in the same business.

😂Bro you're just trolling now. Usafa is going for rank 1 and Andy and Liam used units they got from brawl for a zero cash spend.

I'm not revealing other people's scores as that's not on but the guy top of my alliance has opened over a 1000 sbcs and last year ranked in the top 150. That's impressive, so not sure why you're bragging all over the boards about your 400 bucks spend. Hell, I've spent 200.

You should stop.

Personally I’m extremely satisfied with this event. To be honest, I don’t think I can take any more really good milestones. I’ve been so glued to this game during these milestone updates, its like its 2018 again and I can’t seem to find a life outside this app. I think my mind needs this event to conclude lol.

Thank you for the replies, though I think I still maintain that this interaction is not in line with the spirit or intention of the fight designer(s).. they added that in there so that Buff immune champs cannot simply be placed there to make gaining charges impossible - Lizard is circumnavigating this currently and I don't it's intended, I think it's a language/coding situation, but maybe Kabam can let us know

And yes, agree that AAR is a good answer to this placement - we used BC, for example

Yeah. This feels like such a major cash grab with zero effort on kabam part. Considering leaving my alliance and possibly game if this continues in this direction.

You can swap champs, you just can't have the same champ as the high score on multiple podiums.

The problem is it’s not fun

It’s mostly just the podium leveling grind that’s a problem. I enjoy taking shots at a superboss much more than the monotonous grind of the same set of easy encounters in an AQ map even if it’s harder, but it’s not like most superboss fights (e.g. an EoP encounter) where you retry until you get a good solo and job done. You can get the best fight you’ll probably ever manage within your first few attempts… and then you have to repeat that 10 more times to actually get some more meat on that scoring run. It’s kinda demoralizing to have your good run set only for it to essentially “not count” until you grind some more.

I also think it’s weird that this only takes place over 3 days. If it’s replacing the 7 day AQ cycle, why not just let people put up scores the whole week? As is, it puts a lot more pressure to grind podium EXP quickly before the event ends, which in turn just makes the experience more frustrating than if you could ration those attempts out over a longer period of time.

I get that Kabam needed some way to monetize the new mode, and I appreciate the idea that podium levels give less skilled players a way to make up for poorer raw fight scores with time and effort, but it feels like it has too much impact on total fight scores in its current state for anyone to really feel comfortable ignoring it. The coliseum fights are not dynamic and difficult enough for me to enjoy throwing myself at them dozens of times, and it definitely shouldn’t be that difficult, but that’s exactly why the grind shouldn’t be such a prominent feature.

10-25%. Don't get tricked by people on the forum, the majority here may be 30k+ points-wise, but this majority is the 0.5% of the playerbase.

in previous years it’s always been 1*s (they give the most) and 2*s