Bonus points when Servers at low load

Nonce Equitaur 2

Many times, the servers have gone down because of the importance of points at crucial times. This hurts a lot of people, especially european players.

One fix -- a Bonus points are for when the servers are in really low loads. These points
1. Wouldn't count for progression prizes.
2. Wouldn't affect rubber-banding.
3. Wouldn't affect your rank during an event
4. Would only be added on at the end of an event.

People that played only the last hours of an event wouldn't get any of these Bonus points. European players would get lots of Bonus points, playing while the Americas are asleep.

There might be an icon that pops up when the servers are feeling neglected.

Unknown

I could dig an off peak reward.

Night Owl Iso bonus, play when everyone else is asleep for 20 extra iso per match.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Cryptobrancus wrote:

I could dig an off peak reward.

Night Owl Iso bonus, play when everyone else is asleep for 20 extra iso per match.

I wasn't thinking extra ISO -- I was thinking extra event points. For example, if a node paid 900 event points, you might get 450 as a separate Bonus, which would go into a Bonus area and otherwise not affect any other ranking or scoring.

At the end of the event, you'd get the bonus points. I do see one issue, though ..... European players rack up 10,000 bonus points for an event. US players grind the last minutes of an event (for no bonus), to get into the Top 10. Then the event ends. The people in the Top 10 -- none of them had Bonus points. They get booted down to level 150 as a block of european players suddenly have all the top spots when their bonus points kick in.

Unknown

Yeah, tweaking the event points sounds tricky everything would have to be done real time, banks would only cause riots.

Now if the rubberband were dependent on server load so you can catch up quickly while others sleep but when everyone is grinding away the rubberband goes to next to nothing.

Alternatively a rubberband that starts way too strong and decays to zero over the course of an event might be fun to try.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Having low server load = high rubberbanding, and vice-verse, would work well.

They could also do events with unknown end times. The event might last some minimum amount of time, then stop when the server hits a low-load state.

Unknown

While that seems entirely rational to me, I am picturing the person who cannot let it ride staying up all night trying to keep themselves top 5 until the event finally ends and sets them free. Likewise trying to pass out rewards based on average ranking throughout an event would only encourage some people to be on constant vigil keeping their rank maxed at all times.

This variable rubberband business sounds promising, there does seem to have been much praise for events that have lessened the rubberband towards the end. Being based off an invisible factor like server load may or may not help. I almost want to see one of our resident data people come up with an optimal PVE strategy based on a simple linear decay rubberband. Points should be easy to come by early, so some work early on should help a lot and if you are positioned decently a good push at the end can separate you from the pack. But would it be better to push sooner when the band still has some stretchiness or wait till the end? Could someone who ground out the event with 3 hours to go still be competitive if they called it a night there or would the last hour still be required?

To eliminate the mad dash at the end we would need to teach people that in that last few hours even node points would decay down to pocket change.

What about for long running events normal points normal rubberband until the last day where both node points and rubberband decay by ~3.75 % an hour for 24 hours leaving only a 10% effectiveness for that last hour. Should be possible to build up a good score during the event, catch up from missing time for personal reasons/sleep, maintain it on the last day according to your own schedule but not be required to be there the last 2 hours if you want any placement at all.

I would be up for trying something like that.

Unknown

My biggest concerns with that are 1) unfair advantages for certain timezones. I'm in Australia and my prime playing times start when EU and US are all offline and tend to end when as the US is waking up. So that's potentially a lot of bonus for me, all the while I'm playing when I want.

2) People are already complaining/bragging that they are getting up in the small hours of the morning and staying up all night grinding events. If we incentivise that behaviour, it's only going to happen more.