Once again, once more, EU players got screwed

Polares

Well, it was spected, everybody already knew it, and today, once again, once more, EU players got screwed in the Unstable Iso-8 PvE for Captain Marvel.

I really don't undestand WHY the **** developers keep doing events with just one main event and rubberbanding in it. It is very unfair, specially for EU players. I DON'T WANT to wake up at 5 am to play a stupid computer game. I ve been playing games for more than 25 years (I am 38) and never I had to play games like this.

I ve been playing this event all week, I ven been always in the top 10, and yesterday when I went to sleep I was 2nd, with 5 hours to go. I knew from the beginning that I was going to be screwed the last day, and certanly I was, I finished 79 . I won just one cover after all the 'hard work'. All the work I ve been doing during the week was for nothing.

THIS HAS TO END. Last event with a new character was really great, with two day sub-events, and no rubberbanding in the main event. I don't get why the step back. If the next event is like this, it is going to be my last, I am tired of this game.

Unknown

Haha, you call that screwed? I went to bed #3 with 8 hours to go, woke up #212. Every time we call this out. Every time no reaction. You just have to hope that they read it at least.

Unknown

Absolutely this, and the developers have given no reasonable feedback on the matter - despite answering questions on a bunch of less important issues.

I spent the vast majority of this event in the top 30, more often than not in the top 20 and then last night my alarm (set to vibration because my wife doesn't really like being woken up at 4am) didn't wake me up. I went from 15th at 1am to 115th at 5am.

7 days, then a 100 place drop in the final 4 hours.

Come on Demiurge - Will, Ice, Lake... anyone. Can you finally give some answers on why ALL PvE mains finish at stupid 'o' clock for Europe and if that's going to be the case, why the hell you can't reduce rubberbanding?

Yes, there has been some progress (Prodigal Sun was perfectly paced, and the last Maggia event actually had no rubberbanding for the last 12 hours) so why revert back to this terrible PvE format now?

I will bump this topic every day until we get some kind of answer.

Unknown

What do you really expect them to do though? Move the time 5 hours up? That'll put the timezone on one side of you in the same position you're in and then the timezone on the other side of you will have all their tournaments ending at 10am, right in the middle of their work or school day. Then you have twice as many people out of luck as you had before. What time are they possibly going to choose that's going to be perfect for all time zones? I don't like having pvps end at noon on Wednesdays every week when I can't be there to play them at the end either, but that's the way it goes. They can't possibly please everyone in this situation.

These events are all just on a repeating cycle too. It wasn't some arbitrary decision they made just to mess with the Euros. It's just this events turn in the loop. It should be back to the more typical ones after this for the next several months until Unstable Iso-8 pops up again someday. Maybe they'll cut Unstable Iso-8 out of the cycle someday with all the complaints it get, but they haven't so far, and I wouldn't hold my breath on them doing it any time soon. I don't like it as a pve either. I, and everyone else in my alliance, agree that it is the worst of all the pve types, but it's just one week out of every 3 months or so. It's not the end of the world. There will probably be a pvp with the new character as the prize again very soon, like usual.

Mawtful

I played for 5-10 minutes each day on my morning commute, and again in the evening.
I took lunch a little bit later than usual today so I could play during the last hour.
Picked up 2 covers.
STRAYA WINS AGAIN!

But really, I'd say that it's time to let the game go. I'm not saying it'll be easy, particularly if you've spent money, but if you ease up on yourself then you might just make it through without an aneurysm.
Events have flipped back to finishing at either 2pm or 2am for me. This time I was lucky, next time I know I won't be playing in the final minutes, so I'll have to temper my expectations. PvP? Forget about it! I make my way to 300pts collect my Bagtoken (fun fact, I haven't got a 3* out of one of these since Season 1) and call it a day. We're probably due for a rerun of the Simulator next, and that's always good for ISO regards of final standing, so I may join early. Otherwise I'm just going to wait for the last day and see how I go. The game has just about come back around to being fun for me again. I've got over 6k HP now, since I don't spend it on anything. And I like to keep a small bank of 30k ISO, otherwise I'm making my way through my roster trying to soft-cap all of my heroes. The Red CapA progression reward actually means I can go back and put some more ISO on him, but otherwise, I'm probably close to 50% done on my 3-stars. I plan to cap as much of my roster as I can. If I reach the point where there's noone left to spend ISO on without spending HP on covers, then I've beaten the game.

Anyway, I feel sorry for you having put in a lot of effort only to receive little reward. They didn't exactly obscure the end time, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Please don't think that demiurge are actually targeting the EU - it comes across as if the world does exist outside its borders, as though you were playing the role of the sort of un-educated redneck that gets interviewed about the Middle East in an attempt to paint all Americans with the same brush. Remember that anyone outside of the -5 to -8 UTC (I'm pretty sure that covers mainland USA, give or take) is going to be put out. Even then, there are likely some players in those zones who can't/won't/sholdn't/aren't awake at midnight so they're equally screwed.

Take care of yourself.

P.S. The Destiny Beta just got thrown open to anyone with a 360/PS3/XB1/PS4, so if you've got any of those consoles you should consider giving that a shot. I had fun and it sold me on the game come release. Otherwise Blizzard just added the first wing of their Naxxramas "Adventure Mode" to Hearthstone - a free download. That could distract you for a bit. And if you've got nothing but a WiiU, Android phone and Linux box, then I'm sorry, I've got no freebies I can suggest right now.

Edit: Actually, I remembered that Valve made Team Fortress available on Linux, and that's been F2P for a while now. So there you go.

Unknown

Ralstonator wrote:

What do you really expect them to do though? Move the time 5 hours up? That'll put the timezone on one side of you in the same position you're in and then the timezone on the other side of you will have all their tournaments ending at 10am, right in the middle of their work or school day. Then you have twice as many people out of luck as you had before. What time are they possibly going to choose that's going to be perfect for all time zones? I don't like having pvps end at noon on Wednesdays every week when I can't be there to play them at the end either, but that's the way it goes. They can't possibly please everyone in this situation.

There have been numerous suggestions for this issue, and it's worth pointing out that (if I recall correctly - EVERY pve main bracket has finished at this time, unlike the PvP rotation which sometimes throws us a reasonable finish time.

1. Reduce / eliminate rubberbanding - it's Mario Kart **** that doesn't have any place in a massively multiplayer environment

2. Have 3 different brackets for different timezones that you select when you choose to enter (you might have a slight delay to enter as your bracket is filled). As your competition is only bracket-wide rather than global, there is no significant impact on the game to have one bracket finishing later or earlier than another by a few hours. It could also reduce server load at key times (although tech support I'm guessing is the issue).

3. This is a bit 'outside the box' in terms of thinking, but why not make your placing based on your average ranking during the event? People will still go nuts on the final day trying to improve their average ranking but it seems a lot fairer than someone finishing 2XX in the event after spending 7 days mostly in the top 20 just because they couldn't play the last couple of hours.

So, yeah, lots of options and Demiurge hasn't given feedback on any of them - despite it being one of the most common issues raised in the game over the last half a year or so.

Unknown

Ralstonator wrote:

What do you really expect them to do though? Move the time 5 hours up? That'll put the timezone on one side of you in the same position you're in and then the timezone on the other side of you will have all their tournaments ending at 10am, right in the middle of their work or school day. Then you have twice as many people out of luck as you had before. What time are they possibly going to choose that's going to be perfect for all time zones? I don't like having pvps end at noon on Wednesdays every week when I can't be there to play them at the end either, but that's the way it goes. They can't possibly please everyone in this situation.

These events are all just on a repeating cycle too. It wasn't some arbitrary decision they made just to mess with the Euros. It's just this events turn in the loop. It should be back to the more typical ones after this for the next several months until Unstable Iso-8 pops up again someday. Maybe they'll cut Unstable Iso-8 out of the cycle someday with all the complaints it get, but they haven't so far, and I wouldn't hold my breath on them doing it any time soon. I don't like it as a pve either. I, and everyone else in my alliance, agree that it is the worst of all the pve types, but it's just one week out of every 3 months or so. It's not the end of the world. There will probably be a pvp with the new character as the prize again very soon, like usual.

Sorry to say, but you are missing the point. We dont have a problem with the ending time itself. We have a problem with the ending time BECAUSE the rubberbanding system is flawed by current design.

I am not selfish enough to want perfect ending times for me, I realize there are different timezones. I want an answer to the underlying problem.

Unknown

and I want a pony.

Unknown

I dropped from 47th to 201st over night.... 7 days of grinding to finish 15 points outside of the new 3* reward. Luckily my Alliance managed to get top 100 so I at least have one cover.

DrUnpleasant wrote:

1. Reduce / eliminate rubberbanding - it's Mario Kart tinykitty that doesn't have any place in a massively multiplayer environment

2. Have 3 different brackets for different timezones that you select when you choose to enter (you might have a slight delay to enter as your bracket is filled). As your competition is only bracket-wide rather than global, there is no significant impact on the game to have one bracket finishing later or earlier than another by a few hours. It could also reduce server load at key times (although tech support I'm guessing is the issue).

I think you have two very good points there. The problem at the moment is the rubberbanding not the end time zones. The current model rewards players that are available to play for the last 4-6 hours rather than those that have played constantly over the the whole 7 day period.

The second point is something that I was thinking of as a solution to this problem. But I think this whole problem is only something which affects a minority of players and it just is not important enough for the Devs to change.

Polares

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Ralstonator wrote:

What do you really expect them to do though? Move the time 5 hours up? That'll put the timezone on one side of you in the same position you're in and then the timezone on the other side of you will have all their tournaments ending at 10am, right in the middle of their work or school day. Then you have twice as many people out of luck as you had before. What time are they possibly going to choose that's going to be perfect for all time zones? I don't like having pvps end at noon on Wednesdays every week when I can't be there to play them at the end either, but that's the way it goes. They can't possibly please everyone in this situation.

There have been numerous suggestions for this issue, and it's worth pointing out that (if I recall correctly - EVERY pve main bracket has finished at this time, unlike the PvP rotation which sometimes throws us a reasonable finish time.

1. Reduce / eliminate rubberbanding - it's Mario Kart tinykitty that doesn't have any place in a massively multiplayer environment

2. Have 3 different brackets for different timezones that you select when you choose to enter (you might have a slight delay to enter as your bracket is filled). As your competition is only bracket-wide rather than global, there is no significant impact on the game to have one bracket finishing later or earlier than another by a few hours. It could also reduce server load at key times (although tech support I'm guessing is the issue).

3. This is a bit 'outside the box' in terms of thinking, but why not make your placing based on your average ranking during the event? People will still go nuts on the final day trying to improve their average ranking but it seems a lot fairer than someone finishing 2XX in the event after spending 7 days mostly in the top 20 just because they couldn't play the last couple of hours.

So, yeah, lots of options and Demiurge hasn't given feedback on any of them - despite it being one of the most common issues raised in the game over the last half a year or so.

In fact, they solved most of the problems with the last event with She-Hulk I think it was, where they had the main event WITHOUT rubberbanding, rubberbanding was present just in the subevents, and just with the position in the sub-event (not the general position, so rubberbanding was less pronounced), so you could not lost that many positions on the last day if you didn't/couldn't play. What I don't get is why they used again this kind of event, it is a really dumb move.

Option 2 would be really great too.

Unknown

They've been doing a couple events to end at 7am.
So i expected this one to end at 7 aswell without really looking at the end time.
Ofcourse this screwed me big time but luckily ended top 200

Hope they keep the 7am and 7pm endtimes in the future its so much better for eu.

hurcules

Eliminating rubberbanding would alienate casual players, so no go.

3 time zones PvEs? Too complicated. No go.

Best way forward, IMHO, is to rotate end times. Every region gets their fair share of shafting.

Unknown

hurcules wrote:

Eliminating rubberbanding would alienate casual players, so no go.

3 time zones PvEs? Too complicated. No go.

Best way forward, IMHO, is to rotate end times. Every region gets their fair share of shafting.

Eliminating rubberbanding would alienate casual players, so no go.

- Not if you changed the refresh timers so that they were 8 or 12 hour refreshes instead of 2.5hrs, and/or reduced rubberbanding's upper limit (to say 300% of initial max node value). I think Demiurge Will has already commented that the 2.5hr refresh timers are promoting the grindy gameplay more than they'd intended.

3 time zones PvEs? Too complicated. No go.

- Other mobile games of higher complexity do this, so it's not exactly rocket science.


Best way forward, IMHO, is to rotate end times. Every region gets their fair share of shafting.

- I'm not on board with the idea of the idea that anyone should struggle to compete in any event, and some PvE's have got it right (and been praised on here) with the way they've worked (She Hulk and Sentry PvE's) so I really don't understand why they can't make sure all PvE's use the same mechanic.

sapphire_MPQ wrote:

The second point is something that I was thinking of as a solution to this problem. But I think this whole problem is only something which affects a minority of players and it just is not important enough for the Devs to change.

It effects everyone in Europe and Africa which I'd hope isn't a small number of players. However, game developers have traditionally mistreated these player bases (is Puzzles and Dragons even available now on Android in Europe?) so maybe the numbers are insignificant. The EU has a population of 743m with high smartphone penetration, whereas the USA has a population of 313m so you'd think there was a worthwhile market.

Kiamodo

You guys should unionize.

Unknown

Ralstonator wrote:

What do you really expect them to do though?

Set up a Europe server with different event end times.

Unknown

Splitting the playerbase into different timezone brackets for PVE should be something they look into. PVE opens there are 3 nodes each with a different start/end time clearly labeled. You can only pick one and it sends you to a bracket with everyone else who made the same choice you did. Each one will run the same amount of time and if you picked a late start/late end it will be greyed out until it's start time. Either set the three nodes 4 or 8 hours apart and you have decent coverage over the day.

I can see why something like this would be a nightmare to organize for any PVP events, but PVE already splits us into our little pockets, why not have different timing on the pockets?

Unknown

I'm UK so get the super-**** 5am finishes. This latest event was much more friendly than the ones with 4 subs finishing at 5am so no complaints from me

You know pretty early whether it's going to be all about the last hour rubberband (it usually is) so no need to be surprised at the end of the event.

Not sure it's as easy to fix as some make out so I work around what we get. I could see separate timezone endings causing problems with progression awards, e.g. only certain timezones get them all due to rubberbanding and size of populations.

So I decide at the start whether I'm prepared to do the last day 4am hour grind, and if not I'll try and reduce my scaling and not fool myself that i'm going to finish high.

Unknown

I'm an European gamer and I suffer from the same problem.

However I kinda understand why developers keep the PvE events that way. If you noticed the majority of people who play this game is from America. So it's normal to benefit who give them "more money".

Polares

hurcules wrote:

Eliminating rubberbanding would alienate casual players, so no go.

I don't understand why someone could be alienated because of removing rubberbanding.

So you basically are telling me that someone could be alienated if he has not the possibility of scoring more than me playing half the time and starting the event late ?!?!?!? This is illogical and stupid. If I play more than you, I should have a better score. And I think everybody will agree to this reasoning, casual or hardcore. So no one should be aliented because of this.

And as someone said, If you don't want people grinding too much, you just need to change refresh times.

RUBBERBANDING IS EVIL !!!

Wolarsen

49th four hours before event ends, woke 260th. After a 6 days event, i find it annoying at the very least. I wouldnt be so fussed for an old character, but this will probably barren me for a following event, in wich CMarvel will be required for essential nodes.

I did set the clock alarm once to wake midnight for a last time push in an event; next day i felt so ridiculous and decided to not do that again; but still itches

Unknown

This was the second time that I've failed to wake on my alarm for the end of the event, maybe next time I should bite the bullet and put the alarm volume up. Sure, I might get an angry wife and divorce threats but at least I won't miss out on an average 3* cover.

Hold on a sec... *begins to rethink priorities in life*