Once again, once more, EU players got screwed

simonsez

Polares wrote:

I DON'T WANT to wake up at 5 am to play a stupid computer game.

You know what? Neither did I. But I was still doing clears at 3am and 5:30am for 5 days. I'd rather put in the effort than complain later that the event structure screwed me.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Polares wrote:

I DON'T WANT to wake up at 5 am to play a stupid computer game.

You know what? Neither did I. But I was still doing clears at 3am and 5:30am for 5 days. I'd rather put in the effort than complain later that the event structure screwed me.

Errr... you do realise that doing clears at 3am and 5am was pointless until the last day, right?

Unknown

'Sharding' time zones would solve this problem, but there's probably not enough financial benefit in doing that for the devs. I think they operate under the simple equation of: more competition = more psychologicial pressure = more money.

Unknown

Polares wrote:

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 tinykitty 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.

Just another huge issue that D3 refuses to acknowledge; the only thing that matters in PvE or PvP is that you play in last few hours of the event. You can spend hours and hours grinding, but it doesn't make a difference until the last few hours. I've gotten screwed out of many covers and rewards because I couldnt play at the end of an event. I feel your frustration and pain.

Unknown

Maybe they'll announce something tomorrow.

Either way, PvE events are pretty stupid in general... I'd rather just do the PvP once every 3 days, shield and get my covers. PvE is just for some ISO farming.

simonsez

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Errr... you do realise that doing clears at 3am and 5am was pointless until the last day, right?

Not until someone explains that hitting each node once every 2.5 hours isn't the way to max points. People smarter than me keep insisting that rubberbanding doesn't overcome grinding, ie those who play more still have the advantage. If not true, I'd like to see that debate, since there's more to maxing points than I know I at this point.

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.

"What do you really expect them to do though?"

1. Acknowledge that this is an issue
2. Take steps to correct it.

I have no suggestions; I'm not a developer; I play the game. It's up to them to step up and realize that people are sick of wasting 7-10 days on an event, only to get screwed out of anything useful because of the inner working of their game.

Instead, we get stealth nerfs to Spidey, OBW and OUR MOST PRECIOUS HOT DOG STANDS!!! Thank God they changed the usefulness of those hot dog stands; that really enhanced our gameplay.

Unknown

Without fixing the broken gameplay, there is an easy patch to this problem. Instead of having every PvE end at midnight EST, rotate them between midnight, 6am, noon, and 6pm. Every single player will have 1 event end when they are typically sleeping, 1 or 2 events end at a convenient time, and 1 or 2 events end at a not as convenient time. It levels the playing field.

While we are at it, apply something similar to PvP - 1am EST endtimes on Friday and Sunday nights suck too.

Edited for grammar

Unknown

Rubber-banding is ok if scaling is proportionate. Issue now is that those who just depend on rb also seem to get less scaling.
There's also the issue with uneven bracket activity leading to a range of scores needed to finish top.
With alliance points being given rewards, rubber-banding also penalizes alliances. Someone in my alliance started with 24h left and ended with 64k+ points, seems crazy to me.

Consistency is also really important. Annoying that different events seem to have totally different scoring methods.

Could maybe do events with no rubber-banding, no brackets and everyone just plays with information on the score required to be in the top 1%, 5%, 10%, 20% etc and prizes given out based on which percentile you finish at.

Unknown

numez wrote:

With alliance points being given rewards, rubber-banding also penalizes alliances. Someone in my alliance started with 24h left and ended with 64k+ points, seems crazy to me.

That kind of stuff makes a mockery of progression rewards as well as overall ranking rewards. 1 days work for the same reward as 7 days work... *scratches chin*

dreamwanderings

Tonny4ever wrote:

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".

But it would be a great mistake for D3 to focus on the American market, because the largest potential market is abroad. I couldn't find statistics of international sales from the American comics industry but :
- up to 70% of Marvel movies income is foreign;
- in 2013, figures for sales of comic book type products in a single European country (France) was 70% than in the whole of the US. Granted, most isn't American comics, but I couldn't find figures for other countries and that's only one country.

(not to mention D3 already charges purchases a bit more in Euros than in Dollars, even taking AVT into account)

scottee

Every suggestion here has a downside. It's not as simple as everyone would make it out to be.

People are complaining about rubberbanding, so they want it eliminated. But without it, the placings would come down to grinding. There was significant complaining about how much grinding this game required before rubberbanding was in place.

Multiple end times for the same event has positives, but also its own issues. Prizes would get released at different times, which some would obviously complain about. But I'd think the bigger issue is that they want employees present at event end times in case something goes wrong. That means times that work for the American time zone where the offices are. (Which is also why some end times wouldn't work.)

Their solution so far has been to flip flop the end times, 12 hours at a time. They also rotate event types, so some are no subs, some have many subs, some have stronger rubberbanding, some have less rubberbanding, some you face all Daken/Bullseye, some you chase down Devil Dino.

The biggest point in this thread is the rubber banding. Yes it sucks to play well for a week and then get bumped down a lot at the end. But it also sucks to miss the first day of a 7-day event and have no chance to catch up so participating at all is pointless.

Unknown

No sarcasm or attitude intended, but if you KNOW that after putting in work for 8 hours a day for 7 days you will get nothing worthwhile, why do it at all?

If I ran a business that screwed customers, and I knew the customers were getting screwed, but they kept coming back, then the status quo is plain to see.

I wouldn't do that, but that's my morality. But if you keep coming back for a beating, don't you take some responsibility for getting beat?

Unknown

Paintsville wrote:

No sarcasm or attitude intended, but if you KNOW that after putting in work for 8 hours a day for 7 days you will get nothing worthwhile, why do it at all?

If I ran a business that screwed customers, and I knew the customers were getting screwed, but they kept coming back, then the status quo is plain to see.

I wouldn't do that, but that's my morality. But if you keep coming back for a beating, don't you take some responsibility for getting beat?

Stockholm syndrome

warcin

scottee wrote:

People are complaining about rubberbanding, so they want it eliminated. But without it, the placings would come down to grinding. There was significant complaining about how much grinding this game required before rubberbanding was in place.

Please explain in what way is it not fair that the people who put in the most effort get the biggest benefit. Rubberbanding tied together with scaling makes it best to not play the game except only at the very end and then screw over those who want to or are willing to play your game the most. Yes casual players will not get the big rewards but they shouldn't be getting them over top of people spending 2-3 times the amount of effort.

Unknown

i can't see the devs rushing to change anything, so maybe the eurozone will have too play a bit smarter, i know it's not a solution to the problem, but you could join a alliance with mostly U.S players, that way if you can't compete for the player rewards a good alliance should still get you 1 cover, which you will need for the main nodes for the next pve, and you feel like your getting something for your points, or use pve just to farm iso and pick up covers from pvp,

Unknown

white1 wrote:

i can't see the devs rushing to change anything, so maybe the eurozone will have too play a bit smarter, i know it's not a solution to the problem, but you could join a alliance with mostly U.S players, that way if you can't compete for the player rewards a good alliance should still get you 1 cover, which you will need for the main nodes for the next pve, and you feel like your getting something for your points, or use pve just to farm iso and pick up covers from pvp,

As a US player who hates (but can work with) midnight/1am finishes, I am offended by this statement. Basically you say that Euros need to eat a **** sandwich, but if they join a US based alliance they can at least add a slice of wilted lettuce to it for better flavor.

jojeda654

warcin wrote:

Rubberbanding tied together with scaling makes it best to not play the game except only at the very end and then screw over those who want to or are willing to play your game the most.

Only if we the ridiculous global rubber-banding from this last re-run of Unstable Iso. Prodigal Sun had sub-based rubber-banding and I was not able to rocket to the top on the last sub, not to mention the last nodes.

warcin wrote:

Yes casual players will not get the big rewards but they shouldn't be getting them over top of people spending 2-3 times the amount of effort.

And I think this is what the devs are trying to avoid. If casuals feel that they cannot win, why stick around? But if you end top 2 on your very first tourney and beat all the vets with better rosters, wouldn't you be much more likely to pay for 2 slots to keep that brand new 3* and the awesome 4*? (Yeah, I know joke's on them. Neither one is a good char.)

Unknown

white1 wrote:

i can't see the devs rushing to change anything, so maybe the eurozone will have too play a bit smarter, i know it's not a solution to the problem, but you could join a alliance with mostly U.S players, that way if you can't compete for the player rewards a good alliance should still get you 1 cover, which you will need for the main nodes for the next pve, and you feel like your getting something for your points, or use pve just to farm iso and pick up covers from pvp,

Or... or we could play... harder? I believe that's a tactic.

In all seriousness, I play for a decent (regular top 50 Alliance) so scrabbling around for a cover isn't the issue. The issue is that I play for the competitive element, and no amount of 'playing smarter' is going to change the fact that unless you get up in the middle of the sodding night at the end of the event, you're not competitive.

over_clocked

simonsez wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Errr... you do realise that doing clears at 3am and 5am was pointless until the last day, right?

Not until someone explains that hitting each node once every 2.5 hours isn't the way to max points. People smarter than me keep insisting that rubberbanding doesn't overcome grinding, ie those who play more still have the advantage. If not true, I'd like to see that debate, since there's more to maxing points than I know I at this point.

What were your levels like at the end of Unstable Iso-8? o.o Maxing your points inevitably leads to maxing your scaling, too!

On a related note, is this how people get to see 395s these days, playing every 2,5 hours for a week?
I think I joined Unstable Iso-8 way too early (with ~3 days and 11 hours left) and grinded way too much for my liking, but I never hit nodes every 2,5 hours for more than 2 refreshes in a row and never saw levels rise past 220-230.