Understanding rubberbanding...

Unknown

First off, my thanks to our developers for this game. It's great. I love it. Thank you for all your efforts to make this game better and better.

That being said, we have a lot of angry people here since last night, so why don't we try to be constructive and understand the problem rather than griping and counter-griping. I always played the events in spurts every few hours after the rubberbanding made an encounter worth playing, and I repeated them until their value needed to come up again. I have never had a problem placing in any event. In the recent Hunt, I was in the 51-100 bracket, though this was because I wanted the Wolverine covers. I sat in rank 1-3 on various days without much effort and slowly slid into the position I wanted by closing day. To me, the issue everyone seems to be having isn't really about fairness. It is absolutely 100% fair in that everyone participates under the same set of conditions. The difference lies in those who understand the system and those who do not. That being said, I do not understand the system (though I'm lucky enough to do fine under it).

To the point, does anyone have a working knowledge on how the scaling effect of event points works? By this I mean, the actual formula for which the value is calculated. Or, if IceIX would like to chime in, can you give us some direction in how point calculations work over the variable of time both within a particular encounter and across other encounters in an event? For example, if we have encounter X worth 50 points at the start of an event:

1. Is there a formula to understand what the event will be worth in 60/90/120/etc. minutes assuming no play has been initiated for this or any other encounter? Or, if we can just know if it is linear, exponential (probably not this), or otherwise?
2. What is the rate of decay for the value of an event assuming back-to-back play of any given encounter?
3. How does winning one encounter affect the values of other encounters in the same event?

Hopefully we can work to understand the mechanic so we can all plan better from the start. I'm sorry for those of you who felt robbed from The Hunt, but really, the event was fair. We all were subject to rubberbanding. We all had 10 days to do what we could. And let's be honest, the developers were REDICULOUSLY generous handing out ISO, tokens, and covers throughout the event. If you spent money on this game and weren't happy, don't do it again until you feel the events are more "stable". We all knew there would be rubberbanding, playing the "I didn't know" card and then attacking the developers isn't fair. This event really didn't roll out any differently than any before it. The last hours are when everything changes in ALL the events, that's how events like this across any game works. Expect it, and prepare for it.

Unknown

The fairness isn't about understanding rubber banding, as you and others suggest. It's about it punishing more active players and rewarding those who wait for extended periods of time to play the event. I.e. it punishes grinders.

Unknown

kripton wrote:

The fairness isn't about understanding rubber banding, as you and others suggest. It's about it punishing more active players and rewarding those who wait for extended periods of time to play the event. I.e. it punishes grinders.

I grinded and did not get punished. Hunt does not punish grinders it punished eager beavers that exhausted their points too early.

Unknown

The solution to a dodgy mechanic is not to ensure the 150 people using a forum understand it

Unknown

kripton wrote:

The fairness isn't about understanding rubber banding, as you and others suggest. It's about it punishing more active players and rewarding those who wait for extended periods of time to play the event. I.e. it punishes grinders.

Like I said, the issue lies in understanding how the rubberbanding system works. If you don't understand, you potentially lose despite hard work, like yourself and, evidently, many others. Though, back on topic. Any reliable information or experiences?

abuelo wrote:

The solution to a dodgy mechanic is not to ensure the 150 people using a forum understand it

Yes, but it is what we have at the moment, is it not? Neither you nor I are developers, so we work with what we have.

Unknown

It seemed that it punished people who were in brackets with aggressive grinders. I was in a pretty low key bracket. I didn't do much grinding, and I waited until later in each attack to play. Since the rubberbanding was meant to even out the different brackets and not the players in each bracket, the brackets with aggressive grinders got had almost no points to earn. Meanwhile, I had times where I could play Jump Jets 3 (I think that's what it was called) for an easy 1500 points. This caused a problem because it interferred with the way individual brackets ranked. In brackets such as mine, being down 1000 points was something I could easily make up without much effort. In other brackets, it condemned the player to a rank of 125. I believe the idea was that 15th place in each bracket should have a similar amount of points. Same for every other placement. This made competitive brackets nonfunctional after a while. A minimum grindable amount of points would have relieved the problem for the competitive brackets. For the noncompetitive brackets, each bracket should get a rating that determins how much it is rubberbanded. This would preserve the competition throughout the bracket while still evening out the different brackets. I think that would help alleviate some of the complaints.

That said, with the current system, you have to hope you get in a good bracket and take your time. You know when the mission is going away, so plan for it.

Spoit

Blue Shoes wrote:

It seemed that it punished people who were in brackets with aggressive grinders. I was in a pretty low key bracket. I didn't do much grinding, and I waited until later in each attack to play. Since the rubberbanding was meant to even out the different brackets and not the players in each bracket, the brackets with aggressive grinders got had almost no points to earn. Meanwhile, I had times where I could play Jump Jets 3 (I think that's what it was called) for an easy 1500 points. This caused a problem because it interferred with the way individual brackets ranked. In brackets such as mine, being down 1000 points was something I could easily make up without much effort. In other brackets, it condemned the player to a rank of 125. I believe the idea was that 15th place in each bracket should have a similar amount of points. Same for every other placement. This made competitive brackets nonfunctional after a while. A minimum grindable amount of points would have relieved the problem for the competitive brackets. For the noncompetitive brackets, each bracket should get a rating that determins how much it is rubberbanded. This would preserve the competition throughout the bracket while still evening out the different brackets. I think that would help alleviate some of the complaints.

That said, with the current system, you have to hope you get in a good bracket and take your time. You know when the mission is going away, so plan for it.

And then rubberbanding off main brackets also interfered with the subbrackets being smooshed together like that

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Blue Shoes wrote:

It seemed that it punished people who were in brackets with aggressive grinders. I was in a pretty low key bracket. I didn't do much grinding, and I waited until later in each attack to play. Since the rubberbanding was meant to even out the different brackets and not the players in each bracket, the brackets with aggressive grinders got had almost no points to earn. Meanwhile, I had times where I could play Jump Jets 3 (I think that's what it was called) for an easy 1500 points. This caused a problem because it interferred with the way individual brackets ranked. In brackets such as mine, being down 1000 points was something I could easily make up without much effort. In other brackets, it condemned the player to a rank of 125. I believe the idea was that 15th place in each bracket should have a similar amount of points. Same for every other placement. This made competitive brackets nonfunctional after a while. A minimum grindable amount of points would have relieved the problem for the competitive brackets. For the noncompetitive brackets, each bracket should get a rating that determins how much it is rubberbanded. This would preserve the competition throughout the bracket while still evening out the different brackets. I think that would help alleviate some of the complaints.

That said, with the current system, you have to hope you get in a good bracket and take your time. You know when the mission is going away, so plan for it.

And then rubberbanding off main brackets also interfered with the subbrackets being smooshed together like that

Yea, I didn't mind that with my bracket, but I didn't think about how obnoxious that would have been for the more competitive brackets.

Nemek

To answer the actual question posed...

Nobody really knows, and that's more a function of it being tweaked after every event so far. I'd be surprised if the actual formula were ever released by the devs, it likely isn't worth it. Then we'll get threads titled "ICEIX RUBBERBANDING FORMULA BROKEN, I PLUGGED IN ALL VALUES AND GOT 5 FEWER POINTS. BUG BUG BUG, QUITTING THIS GAME, TOO MUCH GREED." And then with every small change, some group of people will complain about it.

Unknown

From what I could tell from my bracket and being my first tournament here the top 100 stayed within 600 points and it dropped hard from there. I ran out of points very quickly and by the end of each submission I was completely out of points I played once an hour to burn my lives so grinding points down shouldn't have been an issue until last day I say this with very limited knowledge of the system but my bracket didn't fit with a true grinder pace I could have hit it way harder but what would have been the point

All I know is I want a min limit of points so when I can grind I get to

Unknown

I stand by my statements at the start of The Hunt.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1142&p=13641#p13641

FWIW, I won all 3 Punisher covers (3rd in my bracket, ~59100 points).

I suppose I can add more detail if anyone wants, regarding my theories and how I managed to place 3rd (I was 2nd but another enterprising player by the name of Sooty had a slightly better strat than I did and overtook me in the last 15mins, well played mate).

PS: I was unable to grind the missions with the L200+ enemies, I don't have characters that strong.