I like rubberbanding, I like sharding. Small Tweak Please

Unknown

-TLDR- Close off the last bracket(s) at the end of each sub so that everyone joining at the start of the new sub has a fair chance at placing.

Rubberbanding helps because most people are not able to play this game 24/7. Late joiners can catch up by playing optimally.

Sharding helps keep newer players away from the more senior players so that they will have fun instead of getting crushed.

With the introduction of sharding, there are probably more than one bracket to fill at the same time. Since there are fewer senior brackets than newbie brackets, they take longer to fill, and stay open longer. This means there is a possibility of the bracket spanning past an entire sub. Late joiners that land in a new sub with players that have already played in one or more subs, will have little to no chance to catch up and place unless the current players in the lead slack off (unlikely in a senior bracket). As a result, the best way for a late joiner to have a chance to catch up is ONLY if there is rubberbanding in the main at the end of the event.

Lately rubberbanding at the end has been minimized or removed entirely. This means that anyone that is in a bracket that has missed playing at the end of a rubberbanded sub will have very little chance at placing well. This is especially so for people that join mid event at the beginning to of a sub that has been sharded into a bracket with players that have played in the previous sub.

I propose that if there is no rubberbanding to be found at the end of the event, please close all the open brackets at he end of each sub (or T-2.5h) so that late joiners can compete fairly against others that have joined around the same time.

This will lead to a minor increase in prizes being injected into the game, but would ultimately lead to better gameplay as there would be less anxiousness to when one would be able to join an event.

simonsez

BubBLeB0y1977 wrote:

-TLDR- Close off the last bracket(s) at the end of each sub so that everyone joining at the start of the new sub has a fair chance at placing.

This is a good idea if the goal is to make sure everyone ignores PvE until the last sub starts.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

BubBLeB0y1977 wrote:

-TLDR- Close off the last bracket(s) at the end of each sub so that everyone joining at the start of the new sub has a fair chance at placing.

This is a good idea if the goal is to make sure everyone ignores PvE until the last sub starts.

Making sure everyone ignores PvE until the last sub starts isn't the goal of this suggestion. Playing PvE for an entire event has its own advantages:
- more victory rewards as each node will guarantee at least one prize
- higher points will net more progression rewards
- placement prizes for each sub
- vets have an easier time spreading themselves out (at least within their own alliance via communication)
- more FUN!
People (mostly vets) tend to forget that placement prizes are not the only rewards for PvE.

Not everyone that plays the game can start a PvE at the beginning and play to the end. Which is why rubberbanding is in place. Rubberbanding will allow for the maximum number of players to have an equal chance to place in an event. Without rubberbanding, only the 24/7 grinders will place. There is no 100% solution, and rubberbanding seems to be the best way to date.

There are those that will choose to only play at the end, and there are those that have no choice but to play at the end. If everyone waits to join at the last minute, they will all have a higher chance of being sharded into the same bracket, and only a fraction of them will place.

simonsez

Giving everyone an equal chance of placing regardless of how much effort they put into it, isn't an idea I'm going to get behind.

reckless442

simonsez wrote:

Giving everyone an equal chance of placing regardless of how much effort they put into it, isn't an idea I'm going to get behind.

What Bubbleboy is suggesting is that people's placements will be against players who joined around the same time by closing the main bracket when a sub ends. So everyone in the bracket will play an equal number of subs. That avoids the problem that existed in my bracket in the last PVE, where the main bracket was open for at least three subs. I joined during the middle one, started 20k points behind the leader, and never had a chance to place high. And I wa better off than people who joined a day later; they were two subs behind the leader.

Also, not having rubber-banding at the end exacerbates another problem. Not all subs are created equal. Because each sub has rubber-banding, scores between subs may vary significantly. That affects the total score in the main bracket, because purely by chance, Person A may wind up in a sub with grinders who drive scores high, while Person B does not. They may play the exact same amount, but Person A's main bracket score will be higher. Without rubber-banding off the main leader, your chance of placing, no matter how much your grind, is purely dependent on the luck of your sub brackets.

That imbalance gets multiplied with alliance placements. Rubber-banding off the main bracket at the end provided some way for final scores within alliances to be somewhat similar. Now, the top alliance scores are mostly dependent on which sub brackets players wind up in.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Giving everyone an equal chance of placing regardless of how much effort they put into it, isn't an idea I'm going to get behind.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. Would you please rephrase? Do you mean that everyone should join during the first bracket? People have real life obligations, does that mean too bad for them? What would be the point of sharding or rubberbanding if not to give an equal chance to place for the maximum number of people? If my suggestion is implemented, everyone in the first bracket will be competing against all the other people that joined during the first sub. All the people that joined during the 2nd sub will be competing against those that joined at that time as well. Everyone that joins the event will still have to put in an effort to beat everyone in their bracket regardless of join time.

Currently if you join after the first bracket, there is a chance that you will be put in the same bracket as someone that has already completed a sub. This puts you at a huge disadvantage. At the same time, by pure luck, you could be put into a bracket that has no one in it that completed one or more subs prior, which gives everyone in the fresh bracket a fair chance to place (unless somone joins your bracket in the next sub).

Unknown

If you close a main bracket whenever a sub ends that gives a pretty sizeable advantage to the guys who join late if only because you might get into a bracket with significantly less than normal people if that bracket closed while nowhere close to filled.

The bigger issue is that right now the weak rubberband + weak scaling pretty much always favors doing as every missions on every cycle and you can never make that up if you fall even a cycle behind let alone a sub behind. I don't like how the system overly awards the guy who joined earlier. With the rubberband as weak as they are, I think it'd be better to just go to no rubberband but limited number of missions per large time cycle, something like 3 per 12 hour period per node count on a flat value. The person who joined first still gets the tiebreaker for finishing them earlier in the case of tie, so latecomers will always lose if the guy at the top managed to do everything already, but otherwise everyone would have a fair shot.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

If you close a main bracket whenever a sub ends that gives a pretty sizeable advantage to the guys who join late if only because you might get into a bracket with significantly less than normal people if that bracket closed while nowhere close to filled.

I did for see this as a problem as an open bracket could potentially mean you wouldn't have to play past the opening mission to place.

A potential solution could be to reduce the number of sharding brackets that need to be consecutively filled during the last refresh(es) to one (slowly or immediately) . This way, only one open bracket spans past the end of the sub. They could then increase the number of sharding brackets back to normal once the bridge bracket fills. This would reduce the number of people affected by previous sub players.