D3 did the impossible (a rant from a Euro player)

Unknown

First of all, as the thread title indicates, I'm a European player. As all my fellow Europeans know, MPQ has never exactly been A Euro-friendly game. In order to do well in any PVE, and thus earn the new characters, you need to play hard during the last hour, which means getting up at 5AM to play the game (shoutout to the brits who have to get up at 4AM !). That used to give MPQ the title of "least Euro-friendly game ever".

Well, apparently D3 weren't satisfied with just owning that title, they did their absolute best to achieve the impossible: make the game even worse for Europeans.

Let me explain what happened.

In Heroic Jugg, I grinded as hard as my health packs allowed and went to bed in 2nd position in my bracket after midnight, with a seemingly decent lead of 2000 points on rank 10. Health issues prevent me from playing more than 30 minutes, so I wake up at 5:30 to see that I have dropped down to rank 84. Now I play as much as I can, but there are barely enough points on the board to get back into top 20, let alone top 10 even if I didn't have limited playtime thanks to true healing.

Surprisingly, the main culprit here is not true healing, it's the 2h24 resets. There is just no way for a European player to make up the point loss of having to skip the second to last refresh. You can try to give yourself a small buffer, by doing missions twice before sleep, but thanks to rubberbanding, this results in far less points than anyone will get who can play 3 hours before the end.

So congrats again to D3 for doing the seemingly impossible: take he most Euro-unfriendly game and make it even more unfriendly.

PS: If you expect me to get up at 3AM to do that precious second-to-last refresh, you can go tinykitty yourself. That is all.

Bowgentle

Went to bed at midnight, with about 500 points up on 2nd place.

Woke up at 5 at 38th with about 4K behind first. Grinded until my Health Packs were out and scraped out an 8th place finish. Could have done more, but I wasn't going to buy HP.

It's possible as a European, but not with only half an hour in the morning, you need to give yourself an hour at least.
Half an hour works for subs, not for Heroics.

Nonce Equitaur 2

That's terrible, so it's time for me to make a suggestion.

THE END TIMES ... when an event starts, one of 3 endtimes can be chosen, at 0, +8, +16 hours. If you choose one of the latter, the start will be delayed. Each person can only see and play in one of the three events. They are run as three different events so far as rubberbanding and similar things go. Personal scores and awards arrive as each event ends. Alliance rewards are tallied at the end of the last event.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

That's terrible, so it's time for me to make a suggestion.

THE END TIMES ... when an event starts, one of 3 endtimes can be chosen, at 0, +8, +16 hours. If you choose one of the latter, the start will be delayed. Each person can only see and play in one of the three events. They are run as three different events so far as rubberbanding and similar things go. Personal scores and awards arrive as each event ends. Alliance rewards are tallied at the end of the last event.

I would love that, but we all know it just won't happen.

Bowgentle

Snikrot wrote:

Yesterday:

I slept till 9AM.

today:

I slept till 7AM.

It's good to catch some sleep.

-Emeryt

If I didn't have to get up for work anyway I'd love to sleep in, yes
We'll see what happens when I go on holiday in July.

kensterr

It is so different for Asian players, depending on the end times, which is directly 12 hours ahead of EST.

For Heroics - wake up, play one round while eating breakfast. Head to work and pray that boss doesn't come into the office early, or have a meeting or have some function to attend.

What we all do for MPQ. Wish I had Emeryt's guts to just delete my roster.

Polares

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

That's terrible, so it's time for me to make a suggestion.

THE END TIMES ... when an event starts, one of 3 endtimes can be chosen, at 0, +8, +16 hours. If you choose one of the latter, the start will be delayed. Each person can only see and play in one of the three events. They are run as three different events so far as rubberbanding and similar things go. Personal scores and awards arrive as each event ends. Alliance rewards are tallied at the end of the last event.

Or even easier, if the game detects where you are, it puts you in a bracket with your timezone. Is that easy and It wouldn't need a lot of programming.

And there is another soultion, rubberbanding needs to be eliminated. It is totally unfair and stupid (how is it that the system is good to players that plays less often ?!?!?!?!). Without rubberbanding last hours of play would not be that important, the game would depend a lot more about timing precisely your refreshes so you could maximize the times you could do each node. You have a fixed max puntuatuion for each node, and a fixed refresh rate.


I was screwed by timezone too. I went to sleep being first in my bracket with 1k points from the second position, and 4 hours to go, and when I woke up I was 95 !!!! Not even top 50!!! I barely won a She Hulk cover.

Maestro145

As an European player a tend to agree, This game is NOT EU friendly!

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

It is so different for Asian players, depending on the end times, which is directly 12 hours ahead of EST.

For Heroics - wake up, play one round while eating breakfast. Head to work and pray that boss doesn't come into the office early, or have a meeting or have some function to attend.

What we all do for MPQ. Wish I had Emeryt's guts to just delete my roster.

ken i can do that for you. what's your login name and password?

Unknown

Polares wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

That's terrible, so it's time for me to make a suggestion.

THE END TIMES ... when an event starts, one of 3 endtimes can be chosen, at 0, +8, +16 hours. If you choose one of the latter, the start will be delayed. Each person can only see and play in one of the three events. They are run as three different events so far as rubberbanding and similar things go. Personal scores and awards arrive as each event ends. Alliance rewards are tallied at the end of the last event.

Or even easier, if the game detects where you are, it puts you in a bracket with your timezone. Is that easy and It wouldn't need a lot of programming.

And there is another soultion, rubberbanding needs to be eliminated. It is totally unfair and stupid (how is it that the system is good to players that plays less often ?!?!?!?!). Without rubberbanding last hours of play would not be that important, the game would depend a lot more about timing precisely your refreshes so you could maximize the times you could do each node. You have a fixed max puntuatuion for each node, and a fixed refresh rate.


I was screwed by timezone too. I went to sleep being first in my bracket with 1k points from the second position, and 4 hours to go, and when I woke up I was 95 !!!! Not even top 50!!! I barely won a She Hulk cover.

remove rubberbanding and you introduce another problem. grindfest, server-load, bots designed to grind those 1pt nodes, etc... i like rubberbanding, it allows me to play optimally and still getting the rewards.

I feel your pain even thou I am not a EU player. Perhaps a move towards a 4 different endtime (as opposed to the current 2) would be a fairer system? Players around the world take turns getting screwed by the endtimes.

Unknown

You guys count yourselves lucky. I always lose all covers because I refuse to get up early because of a game on workday.
This time I went from #4 in my bracket to #160 in the last 7 hours. Same thing happened last time. By design something is broken if you can drop 150+ ranks in the last few hours if you have been constantly top 10.

I decided not to care, and refuse to get up. That is all I can do.

Unknown

this is my opinion about this as also EU player

Bravo D3

I have already the first real result of the True healing. I was #1 in my Bracket during most of the ISO event for she-hulk (who was nerfed before birth, btw) and as I live in Europe, I generally would have played longer in the night, in order to be able to have made to top 20, as all these events finish in a very poor time for people in Europe. And if the aim of the change was to play in my own pace, this includes that I should be allowed also to sleep without suffering too much.

Rubberbanding became extremly unfair to all the EU based users, as all the events tend to increase points and even as I have heard, allowed new characters around 2 hours prior to the end. This would mean that we have to wake up 5 in the morning and play like hell (actually not possible any more, as once you are severely hit, you should wait for hours). Therefore, I am suggest the following:

1) Stop the Rubberbanding system and develop a point system, where instead of having big points at the beginning you would have an increasing amount of points and increasing difficulty. The max level should be pre-defined and once achieved, the node would be blocked. This would allow a lower region bias and reducing the current handicap expecially for People in Europe, Africa and Latin America.

2) Have the events in time rotation. I.E. if the current event finished at 01:00, the next should finish at 02:00, then 03:00 and so on. In this way there will be less bias and the game will be more FAIR to everybody around the globe, as at one point, you have in general a zone of 8 hours of advantage per event!

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

Went to bed at midnight, with about 500 points up on 2nd place.

Woke up at 5 at 38th with about 4K behind first. Grinded until my Health Packs were out and scraped out an 8th place finish. Could have done more, but I wasn't going to buy HP.

It's possible as a European, but not with only half an hour in the morning, you need to give yourself an hour at least.
Half an hour works for subs, not for Heroics.

I consider myself even more unlucky. Also European player. Played until 3h before the end and was 1st with a 1k lead on second. Today I see I finished 21st, only 90 points behind #20. I can tell you finishing just outside top 20 feels much, much worse than finishing in top 100. It means the last 1-2 hours I played were wasted since I could get a top 100 which gives essentially the same rewards. No matter how hard you play, you don't get the rewards you should get unless you play in the last 2 hours. And they keep insisting that the recent changes were so we can play when we want to. What a joke.

Unknown

Uk based myself so agree with all of the above luckily I have a odd work pattern so ain't as bad but it still is a killer.

Unknown

WolfmanX25 wrote:

First of all, as the thread title indicates, I'm a European player. As all my fellow Europeans know, MPQ has never exactly been A Euro-friendly game. In order to do well in any PVE, and thus earn the new characters, you need to play hard during the last hour, which means getting up at 5AM to play the game (shoutout to the brits who have to get up at 4AM !). That used to give MPQ the title of "least Euro-friendly game ever".

Well, apparently D3 weren't satisfied with just owning that title, they did their absolute best to achieve the impossible: make the game even worse for Europeans.

Let me explain what happened.

In Heroic Jugg, I grinded as hard as my health packs allowed and went to bed in 2nd position in my bracket after midnight, with a seemingly decent lead of 2000 points on rank 10. Health issues prevent me from playing more than 30 minutes, so I wake up at 5:30 to see that I have dropped down to rank 84. Now I play as much as I can, but there are barely enough points on the board to get back into top 20, let alone top 10 even if I didn't have limited playtime thanks to true healing.

Surprisingly, the main culprit here is not true healing, it's the 2h24 resets. There is just no way for a European player to make up the point loss of having to skip the second to last refresh. You can try to give yourself a small buffer, by doing missions twice before sleep, but thanks to rubberbanding, this results in far less points than anyone will get who can play 3 hours before the end.

So congrats again to D3 for doing the seemingly impossible: take he most Euro-unfriendly game and make it even more unfriendly.

PS: If you expect me to get up at 3AM to do that precious second-to-last refresh, you can go tinykitty yourself. That is all.

Well said, I couldn't agree more,
We are now also going to come under Alliance pressure, do to underperformance in PVE, which will further drive players away, Surely it can't be so hard to have 2 tournaments running with different end times, or just instigate an EU server ?

Unknown

I went to bed rank 24 woke up 6 am to see i finished rank 244.
For once i like to see EU players end an event 12 at night that would be perfect for EU and US players.
For now i'm done with pve events untill D3 get there act together.

Bowgentle

MrDogfather wrote:

For once i like to see EU players end an event 12 at night that would be perfect for EU and US players.

Those subs in that one PVE that ended at a random time when the mayhem meter was filled during the evening was perfect for both sides of the Atlantic - 11pm CET.
Of course that end time was an accident and not planned, I'm sure the subs were supposed to end at 4 am or something.

kensterr

If D3 is unwilling to have different end times or more flexible end times then maybe new covers in progression rewards for all PVE will be an acceptable compromise?

For the recently concluded Heroics that means a She Hulk cover as the final progression reward after IM40 yellow. Or as with some previous PVE, have the cover as reward for completing a node.

Unknown

Stopped thinking a while ago that they are remotely bothered about this. So I stopped giving them money. Seemed a good compromise.

Polares

laoahpeh wrote:

Polares wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

That's terrible, so it's time for me to make a suggestion.

THE END TIMES ... when an event starts, one of 3 endtimes can be chosen, at 0, +8, +16 hours. If you choose one of the latter, the start will be delayed. Each person can only see and play in one of the three events. They are run as three different events so far as rubberbanding and similar things go. Personal scores and awards arrive as each event ends. Alliance rewards are tallied at the end of the last event.

Or even easier, if the game detects where you are, it puts you in a bracket with your timezone. Is that easy and It wouldn't need a lot of programming.

And there is another soultion, rubberbanding needs to be eliminated. It is totally unfair and stupid (how is it that the system is good to players that plays less often ?!?!?!?!). Without rubberbanding last hours of play would not be that important, the game would depend a lot more about timing precisely your refreshes so you could maximize the times you could do each node. You have a fixed max puntuatuion for each node, and a fixed refresh rate.


I was screwed by timezone too. I went to sleep being first in my bracket with 1k points from the second position, and 4 hours to go, and when I woke up I was 95 !!!! Not even top 50!!! I barely won a She Hulk cover.

remove rubberbanding and you introduce another problem. grindfest, server-load, bots designed to grind those 1pt nodes, etc... i like rubberbanding, it allows me to play optimally and still getting the rewards.

I feel your pain even thou I am not a EU player. Perhaps a move towards a 4 different endtime (as opposed to the current 2) would be a fairer system? Players around the world take turns getting screwed by the endtimes.

Maybe removing rubberbanding has some problems but is way fair, if you play more than me, you win. This statement should always be true!

And right now if you keep playing the same nodes, they get more difficult, so you have to balance if winning 10 or 50 pts is enough when fights keep getting more difficult. So I think there would be no grindfest.

But in the end if they want to keep with rubberbanding the NEED to implement timezones in the game.

kensterr

I think the problem with PVE in general is not that much rubberbanding but incorrect scaling and also no choice of EASY, HARD, CRAZY modes.

With the current change in healing someone with a full roster of maxed 3* can easily grind all nodes and almost all levels, even after some of the heroes get killed in the PVE nodes. For someone like me with only 6 maxed 3* it is harder to grind even if I chose to. Just imagine those with lesser maxed or non maxed 3*. They are screwed if they get abnormal scaling. And we all know how sometimes AI tend to get very crazy cascades. Let's not forget about AP feeding goons as well.

Until Demiurge becomes less stubborn and become more creative and imaginative with their game mechanics we all are stuck with rubberbanding, unholy scaling, and little sleep.