A bunch of buffs happened

@MegaBee said:

@Borstock said:
Do you people who never shield just finish with 300 points every PvP or do you make sure you're playing at the end every time?

Playing for progression.

For a long time, it was just whenever i felt like it, finishing at 300-500 points wherever it landed me. Now I'm doing the farming thing a bit more, but still don't care about finish. If in less than 24 hours I end up with a lot of points, I'll use a shield, but generally I just end up around 500 points, maybe top 100

@rainkingucd said:

@MegaBee said:

@Borstock said:
Do you people who never shield just finish with 300 points every PvP or do you make sure you're playing at the end every time?

Playing for progression.

For a long time, it was just whenever i felt like it, finishing at 300-500 points wherever it landed me. Now I'm doing the farming thing a bit more, but still don't care about finish. If in less than 24 hours I end up with a lot of points, I'll use a shield, but generally I just end up around 500 points, maybe top 100

This answered the question asked. Thank you.

I might use a shield at the end of Season if I am at risk of dropping down a reward finishing place but otherwise just play like the guys above happy with top 100 but hopefully better.

@entrailbucket said:

@trenchdigger said:
I don't disagree with that statement, and you have to make some assumptions (based on experience) of the difference in placement that shielding is likely to give you. This depends on all sorts of factors including the strength of your roster, your willingness to play right up to the event end, etc.
What you can do though is create a table, which I think is what the analysis included, showing the difference in rewards between 1st place and 2nd place, 1st and top 10, 2nd and top10, top10 and top25, etc.
The analysis also tried to provide an objective valuation of a 4*, 3*, mighty token, etc. in a common currency of gold so you could compare expected change in rewards with cost of shields to gain those additional rewards. Again not perfect because there is no exact conversion rate, but I thought it was a really good attempt and presented a compelling analytical computation showing that only real outliers (say top 200 to 1st place, and I'm guessing here because I can't remember the exact detail) justified spending on multiple shields.
That being said there was no value attributed to the pure satisfaction of a top place finish, and I'm sure the people who regularly shield multiple times in every event do value this, so I'm not trying to say anyone is playing the game wrongly.

Yeah, I think I do remember that, and I think they focused on using multiple shields/repeated hopping for very high scores -- which is almost always a net loser on resources.

Loser on HP, certainly! Ask me how I know 🤣

@entrailbucket said:

@trenchdigger said:
I don't disagree with that statement, and you have to make some assumptions (based on experience) of the difference in placement that shielding is likely to give you. This depends on all sorts of factors including the strength of your roster, your willingness to play right up to the event end, etc.
What you can do though is create a table, which I think is what the analysis included, showing the difference in rewards between 1st place and 2nd place, 1st and top 10, 2nd and top10, top10 and top25, etc.
The analysis also tried to provide an objective valuation of a 4*, 3*, mighty token, etc. in a common currency of gold so you could compare expected change in rewards with cost of shields to gain those additional rewards. Again not perfect because there is no exact conversion rate, but I thought it was a really good attempt and presented a compelling analytical computation showing that only real outliers (say top 200 to 1st place, and I'm guessing here because I can't remember the exact detail) justified spending on multiple shields.
That being said there was no value attributed to the pure satisfaction of a top place finish, and I'm sure the people who regularly shield multiple times in every event do value this, so I'm not trying to say anyone is playing the game wrongly.

Yeah, I think I do remember that, and I think they focused on using multiple shields/repeated hopping for very high scores -- which is almost always a net loser on resources.

A few things to unpack.

People push and chase for a lotsa reasons. But I think this question is directed to a specific subgroup.
a. yes people push because of rewards, covers stones etc. (this group should of course read Helix's post and consider when how and why to use shields.)
-- This is predictable and everyone understands the basic economic rationales etc. I'm not talking about these players who are going after specific identifiable drops etc...

but there's also
b. a large group of "eldar tier" (full supports, 550 meta, full farms/wallet) who continue to play at a dedicated rate beyond drop resources. End tier guys who log multi-hundreds of matches per event. This can be either the dedicated Front Runners or dedicated suppressors. To be clear, these players already have multiple avenues to get the resource they want. Play/participation is not about attaining any resource from that event.

I'm not gonna speculate on the white hat / black hat playstyles but lets consider the actual costs of resources/shields for players in this situation (end tier whales). An event is 2 and 1/2 days. Under a strict refresh, you could fire 3 shields every 8hrs (550hp per session) i.e. 3 plays sessions in 24hrs (9shields a day), but realistically people would prefer 2 or 1 play sessions vs 3 sessions every 24hrs. So realistically, even END TIER rosters are only spending between 550-1100 hp a day for their respective playstyle. People can have their own reaction to that number of 550-1100 hp per day, but keep in mind the first sentance (full farms/wallets)

The other side of course are the "1000" win players. Lets charitably say they avg 400 wins a day. I've heard pve scl 10 has teams in the 700 range (which is a reasonable approximation of high level pvp teams) and the avg clear times are in the 12-15 min range (2 matches per node x 10 nodes). So just rough back of the envelope assumes 2 matches a min against 3x650+ opps.

So 400 matches is approx 200min or 3 1/2 hrs of daily gametime. This is just back of the hand math, but daily play is probably pretty similar to the time they spend watching tv in the evening.