JUGGERNAUt HEROIC! Sep 12 - Sep 15

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The arguments for scaling is always difficult to tell because you don't get to ask the guy who passed you up what are his levels. For all you know his levels could be higher than you and he just outplayed you. Additionally in these heroic events you tend to get a lot of weird thing going on with the guy whose highest character is a level 40 Thor 3* which the game conveniently forgets is really level 130. Yes your level 166 Thor is really level 256 too, but 256 versus enemies scaled for 166 is far less dominant compared to 130 versus enemy scaled for 40. As far as I can tell for equal strength roster your score appears to be part of the scaling factor too which makes it pretty hard to leapfrog someone with any scaling trickery. There's all kinds of problem with heroic events when the roster are uneven but maybe it's done to balance the fact that non heroic events are almost always dominated by maxed rosters. Normally even heroic events are fairly max roster dominated but this one the roster is so bad that having everyone maxed out would have very little impact because you got no one useful to use besides Thor.

I'm not sure why people keep on bring up their scores relative to progression thresholds as if it means anything. If you want to go back to the dark ages the Thor cover would be at 200K and nobody would even have half of the points to get it. They must have figured that it wasn't worth figuring out how to set the progression rewards at a challenging level so now it's pretty much a 3* cover for sort of showing up for your efforts. They're already set at a 'everyone gets a trophy' level and no they're not handing out even more trophies for just showing up. Be glad you get a trophy in the first place, because for a long time nobody got a trophy at all in most PvE events.

again back to my earlier post. Dev going from one extreme to the next. Just because one extreme is bad does not mean it is outright a mistake. There must be a way to find the middle of the road. 200k is impossible I agree, but 20k is pathetic and just removes the sense of achievement. It promotes a greater lets join in the last 12 hour bandwagon which imo is a greater threat and problem then an un-achievable reward.

If they keep this up then why even have a 2 day, 5 day or 7 day event? might as well just make it 12 hour and let everyone dash to the finish line.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

Not the 4* - the 4* should still be very difficult to get. What I mean is that to get top 10, you have to play in the last hour. It is literally impossible to get one of each cover now without grinding the last hour, and maybe impossible to get two different covers. What would be better for the system would be you play about as much as you o now, but you can set the schedule. The 3-4 was just an example; don't read too much into that specific number. Just a matter of knowing ahead of time "I have to do X clears to get the covers I want." The 4* should be set significantly higher than the top 3* cover.

FYI I did not play in the final hour and was able to finish first. But to get to this type of lead it took a few waking up in the middle of the night and exhusting all my L200 Dino bite TU as well as a gazillion health packs and boost to attain which is by no means normal and casual.

While I applaud the dev team taking the rubberbanding a notch down, and scaling up to keep people at bay. It is far from being balanced and perfect. I welcome the idea of being able to predict my effort versus reward any time of the day,

orionpeace

I would love it they adopted a format that requires you join earlier but still used the point based achievement others have mentioned.

For example:

First set of nodes open, in whatever format. There is one node that is locked that requires X number of clears or points to unlock. You win that battle and you unlock the next set of nodes when they become available (e.g. at noon the following day). The unlock occurs on an individual basis and rubberbanding should be fairly low. The first set of nodes stays open 12 hours after the second set opens and then goes poof. The points in the second set of nodes are worth +50% and have the same unlocking component for the third set and expires 12 hours after the third set is available. The third set has +50% points and so on and so on.

I'm not saying every event should have this format, but when they run a short event. Give personal and alliance rewards for each set. And final rewards based on a scale of the total potential points. The potential is easily calculated. And say, you get final 3rd cover if you hit the 70% mark of that potential, with the other two at 50% and 60%. If they want to include a 4*, it should only be for the truly dedicated/mad at the 80% mark, with little ISO rewards and such on the way.

For reference, the potential for this event was roughly 95K. So the covers would have been awarded at 47.5K, 57K and 66.5K.

Unknown

orionpeace wrote:

For reference, the potential for this event was roughly 95K. So the covers would have been awarded at 47.5K, 57K and 66.5K.

The maximum was a bit more than that. Since there was no scaling for the first 8K behind the leader it would be next to impossible to play leapfrog so maximum was

200 (one time node)
3800 x 24 normal refreshes every 2 hours 24 minutes
3800 x 3 (grind all nodes to 1 inside the final hour)

Total 102800. It looked like the winning score was about 77K. And I will put money on there were very few people between 69K and 77K for the obvious reasons.

As for joining late lets assume you joined at 13 hours to go so you can get in 6 refreshes. The global leader had about 60K if you cleared every node once each refresh and also only once in the last one you would have finished with around 68K just about to lose the rubber band scaling. Probably enough to get you top 10 in all but the hardest brackets. You could push this closer to 70K if you worked harder in the final refresh. Its the same reasons as above as to why you finishes with this score with respect to the global leader.

The really interesting game to play is to say okay lets say I only want to stay by doing the 6 highest scoring nodes increasing to all of them as I approach the end. How much earlier do have to start and will it take more or less nodes to do it this way. (Nice little programming exercise)

Pushing the scaling from 140% of the base nodes to 200% in this event just means that to this point, just at the start of the rubber band scaling kicking in, takes longer - about a refresh and a half in this case.

I always thought that PvE should be just about progression rewards and if they removed the rubber banding totally all D3 has to do is figure out what % of the optimal score to set the rewards at. However they will never do this as they seem to want to level the playing field between roster - personally scaling, and have late starters to catch up - rubber banding. So do be shocked when people figure out it takes way less effort using the catch up mechanic than playing from the start.

Unknown

I really don't give a tinykitty about the mechanics of the event; I just want a fair shot of scoring the new character if I have put more time and effort into it than others. It's total **** hearing that so many people enter late, and take 1 hour to get the same amount of points that it took me several hours, over the course of 3 days, to get.

F U D3

_RiO_

Sumilea wrote:

As for joining late lets assume you joined at 13 hours to go so you can get in 6 refreshes. The global leader had about 60K if you cleared every node once each refresh and also only once in the last one you would have finished with around 68K just about to lose the rubber band scaling. Probably enough to get you top 10 in all but the hardest brackets. You could push this closer to 70K if you worked harder in the final refresh. Its the same reasons as above as to why you finishes with this score with respect to the global leader.

That only works if you actually get to play the final refreshes, 'where it matters'. If you're stuck in the unfortunate Euro timezones then you can say bye bye to the last 3 or 4 refreshes being playable. Do the math on how much of a lead you have to build up in earlier sweeps and you'll quickly realize it's not all sunshine and rainbows, even if you do manage to play consistently throughout the entire event.

PvE rubberbanding is fundamentally and irrepairibly broken with regards to time zone differences. Period. As long as rubberbanding stays in the picture, the only way you're going to win anything substantial outside of the preferential US timezones is to stay up late to 1 AM to grab an additional refresh or two, then sleep 3 hours to 4 AM to grab one or two more refreshes at the end. It's bloody ridiculous. (I'd argue anyone doing it should seriously consider checking themselves into rehab for videogame addiction. That kind of thing is not healthy human behavior people!!)

Moral

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Can I get a clarification from folks who want to turn PvE into progression awards only? Do you mean you want it to be an "everyone gets a trophy" style event? If so, that'd be pretty terrible for all the people who don't like PvP and prefer getting high end awards via PvE.

If not, what exactly is the difference between requiring a score of 70k to rank first and get all the rank awards, vs. requiring a score of 70k to get all the progression awards? At least with the former, you have constant feedback as to where you stand. If the latter, I'd have no idea during an event whether or not I'm on pace to hit the target.

The way I've envisioned it, you eliminate the arbitrary rubberband/scoring. Just base it strictly on what you clear.

Take the last simulator. 6 subs, 10 nodes. 60 total. Clear 1 nodes - standard token. 2) Iso8. 5) health pack. 10) boosts 15) Heroic Token 20) HP 25) Iso 30) Iso 35) Heroic Token 40)Beast 45) Thor Red 50) Thor Yellow 55) Thor Green 60) Fury Blue.

Ramp up the difficulty to make getting 60 nearly impossible (heavily scaled Daken - Hood - Don type insanity).

In your example, a 60 hour (2.5 day) event could be optimally cleared 25 times. If a full clear were worth 10,000 points (no rubberbanding), the developers in your example would set the Blue Fury at 180,000 points.

Is this really what you're looking for?

GrumpySmurf1002

Moral wrote:

In your example, a 60 hour (2.5 day) event could be optimally cleared 25 times. If a full clear were worth 10,000 points (no rubberbanding), the developers in your example would set the Blue Fury at 180,000 points.

Is this really what you're looking for?

No, they're not refreshable. No grinding, no optimal refreshes. One node = 1 pt. You have 24 hrs to clear each set. If you get it done in an hour, good for you. It's the difficulty of the nodes that sets the attainability of Fury.

Spoit

mohio wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

The main difference is that if you could pass the bar to get the final prize at 7 pm local time, you don't have to stay up to the end and grind it out

Maybe this isn't what you mean, but this sounds to me like you want top rank style awards while being able to play less and not grind as much. Which is pretty close to the "everyone gets a trophy" idea that I don't want to see PvP turn into. XForce black wasn't easy to get, and it shouldn't be easy to get. No real difference to me whether it's rewarded via rank or progression, so long as the required level of effort is the same... what is important to me is that it doesn't get cheapened by making it attainable via casual play... and to me, doing 3-4 clears a day, and no final grind, is casual play.

Not the 4* - the 4* should still be very difficult to get. What I mean is that to get top 10, you have to play in the last hour. It is literally impossible to get one of each cover now without grinding the last hour, and maybe impossible to get two different covers. What would be better for the system would be you play about as much as you o now, but you can set the schedule. The 3-4 was just an example; don't read too much into that specific number. Just a matter of knowing ahead of time "I have to do X clears to get the covers I want." The 4* should be set significantly higher than the top 3* cover.

The way I see it the progression style helps keep the following from happening (and this just happened): I joined with about 12 hours to go and played as optimally as I could for those 12 hours. I scored 65.5k and took 5th place. My alliance mate joined on the first day, scored a couple hundred points higher but "only" managed top 20. Surely he put in more effort for his points and deserves the greater reward, yet because his bracket was tougher or older or whatever, he walks away with fewer rewards than I got with a lower score. It might seem like progression style rewards would be handing out covers to everyone, but that's just cause most people here on the forum are in the top 5% of players so yeah! most of us would get all the progression rewards. Doesn't mean they couldn't find a balance where they're still handing out an amount of covers they're comfortable with.

Also as for the 4* issue, they could keep the competition part for that and hp/iso rewards to ensure that there's still some semblance of competition since many people thrive on that sort of thing.

And you probably also had less scaling to deal with to boot!

Sandmaker

MikeHock wrote:

I really don't give a tinykitty about the mechanics of the event; I just want a fair shot of scoring the new character if I have put more time and effort into it than others. It's total **** hearing that so many people enter late, and take 1 hour to get the same amount of points that it took me several hours, over the course of 3 days, to get.

F U D3

I don't quite understand posts like these. What exactly about it was unfair? You had the exact same "fair shot" as everyone else who played the event. The rubberband mechanic has been in this game for 9+ months and there's even a guide on these forums on how to use it. You made a conscious choice to play the way you did. Which is fine, considering we don't all wrap our lives around this game. But at this point it is hardly their fault (or even D3's fault) that you didn't play as optimally as they did.

Maybe if you actually did "give a tinykitty about the mechanics" that people here are discussing, you'll do better next time.

atomzed

Sandmaker wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

I really don't give a tinykitty about the mechanics of the event; I just want a fair shot of scoring the new character if I have put more time and effort into it than others. It's total **** hearing that so many people enter late, and take 1 hour to get the same amount of points that it took me several hours, over the course of 3 days, to get.

F U D3

I don't quite understand posts like these. What exactly about it was unfair? You had the exact same "fair shot" as everyone else who played the event. The rubberband mechanic has been in this game for 9+ months and there's even a guide on these forums on how to use it. You made a conscious choice to play the way you did. Which is fine, considering we don't all wrap our lives around this game. But at this point it is hardly their fault (or even D3's fault) that you didn't play as optimally as they did.

Maybe if you actually did "give a tinykitty about the mechanics" that people here are discussing, you'll do better next time.

Chill sandmaker.

Such posts tend to be more of "why-didnt-i-get-my-covers" rant than anything else. The forum have seen it all, people complaining about RB screwing them off covers,and people complaining about not enough RB screwing them a chance of covers (as it favors the grinders).

There is no way any system can please everyone because not everyone can get the covers.

Sandmaker

atomzed wrote:

Chill sandmaker.

Such posts tend to be more of "why-didnt-i-get-my-covers" rant than anything else. The forum have seen it all, people complaining about RB screwing them off covers,and people complaining about not enough RB screwing them a chance of covers (as it favors the grinders).

There is no way any system can please everyone because not everyone can get the covers.

But I just wanted to rant about the people ranting about not getting covers...

atomzed

Sandmaker wrote:

atomzed wrote:

Chill sandmaker.

Such posts tend to be more of "why-didnt-i-get-my-covers" rant than anything else. The forum have seen it all, people complaining about RB screwing them off covers,and people complaining about not enough RB screwing them a chance of covers (as it favors the grinders).

There is no way any system can please everyone because not everyone can get the covers.

But I just wanted to rant about the people ranting about not getting covers...

Then there will be rants about people ranting about the rants... And the rants go on...

All in a day's work for mpq forum

Unknown

I do think pve should be about profession rather than ranking, but I don't feel that it lends itself well to their business model and this is unlikely to ever happen.
It would eliminate the rb people **** about (I love it, i have other things todo) and help euro too... but it would likely result in more covers being handed out.

simonsez

_RiO_ wrote:

If you're stuck in the unfortunate Euro timezones then you can say bye bye to the last 3 or 4 refreshes being playable.

If you ask the people who finished in the top 2, I'm assuming that with the weak rb, a lot of them spent 2 nights waking up every 2.5 hours to get a clear in. Should anyone have to do that to win in a f'ing phone game?? That's a different argument. I'm just saying that EVERYONE could be complaining, "I didn't get my black XForce because 3 or 4 refreshes were not 'playable' for me each night". Everyone except those who decided it was worth that kind of effort.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

I really don't give a tinykitty about the mechanics of the event; I just want a fair shot of scoring the new character if I have put more time and effort into it than others. It's total **** hearing that so many people enter late, and take 1 hour to get the same amount of points that it took me several hours, over the course of 3 days, to get.

F U D3

I don't quite understand posts like these. What exactly about it was unfair? You had the exact same "fair shot" as everyone else who played the event. The rubberband mechanic has been in this game for 9+ months and there's even a guide on these forums on how to use it. You made a conscious choice to play the way you did. Which is fine, considering we don't all wrap our lives around this game. But at this point it is hardly their fault (or even D3's fault) that you didn't play as optimally as they did.

Maybe if you actually did "give a tinykitty about the mechanics" that people here are discussing, you'll do better next time.

What isnt fair? That I played for a handful of hours over the course of 2+ days to score the same amount of points as someone who joined very late and cleaned the nodes once in 45 minutes.


Are you refering to this thread? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5304 Perhaps I should re-review it, but like the Rule #1 says: "Timing is everything" and god forbid I am not able to play at the most ideal time.... so yes, I made a conscious choice to play when I could since I am not a slave to MPQ.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

What isnt fair? That I played for a handful of hours over the course of 2+ days to score the same amount of points as someone who joined very late and cleaned the nodes once in 45 minutes.

Are you refering to this thread? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5304 Perhaps I should re-review it, but like the Rule #1 says: "Timing is everything" and god forbid I am not able to play at the most ideal time.... so yes, I made a conscious choice to play when I could since I am not a slave to MPQ.

We didn't put the system in place. You knew rubberbanding is a thing and you still decided to join early. You can't join early and then complain that you played more than people who joined later. That doesn't make any sense. If you want to play less, join later.

Furthermore you were competing with people who joined at the same time you did. It doesn't get any more fair than that. It's an absolute even ground. Why do you even care about the late joiners? Keep your eyes on your own plate.

What is unfair is that you can get sharded into a stale bracket where you have no chance of competing for the top prizes. You have no control over that and the only way to mitigate the risk is joining rather early. No doubt you'd also complain about getting into a late bracket if you decided to join late.
Crying about unfairness doesn't really help as long as you are not presenting solutions. I proposed a fix for the current system in the Venom thread but as long as they don't implement it we'll have to play the hands we are dealt.

If it makes you feel any better, my clanmate and I joined the last bracket that fired 7 hours before the event ended and we took places 1st and 2nd.

NorthernPolarity

MikeHock wrote:

Sandmaker wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

I really don't give a tinykitty about the mechanics of the event; I just want a fair shot of scoring the new character if I have put more time and effort into it than others. It's total **** hearing that so many people enter late, and take 1 hour to get the same amount of points that it took me several hours, over the course of 3 days, to get.

F U D3

I don't quite understand posts like these. What exactly about it was unfair? You had the exact same "fair shot" as everyone else who played the event. The rubberband mechanic has been in this game for 9+ months and there's even a guide on these forums on how to use it. You made a conscious choice to play the way you did. Which is fine, considering we don't all wrap our lives around this game. But at this point it is hardly their fault (or even D3's fault) that you didn't play as optimally as they did.

Maybe if you actually did "give a tinykitty about the mechanics" that people here are discussing, you'll do better next time.

What isnt fair? That I played for a handful of hours over the course of 2+ days to score the same amount of points as someone who joined very late and cleaned the nodes once in 45 minutes.


Are you refering to this thread? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5304 Perhaps I should re-review it, but like the Rule #1 says: "Timing is everything" and god forbid I am not able to play at the most ideal time.... so yes, I made a conscious choice to play when I could since I am not a slave to MPQ.

It's not about the absolute number of points, the only points that matter is the points you have relative to the other players in your bracket. You've been around for a very long time, so you should know exactly how all of this works by now. Playing before the last 2 days of the event is completely meaningless and you only need to maintain top 25 or so. The night before the last day, push yourself to first. On the morning of the last day, you see yourself drop to 20-25. Proceed to optimally grind the last day to get yourself back to first. That strategy has worked since pretty much forever. I get you think the system is unfair, but this event is more of a relic of the old days where there weren't events with 1 day subs, so I dunno what else to say.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

It's not about the absolute number of points, the only points that matter is the points you have relative to the other players in your bracket. You've been around for a very long time, so you should know exactly how all of this works by now. Playing before the last 2 days of the event is completely meaningless and you only need to maintain top 25 or so. The night before the last day, push yourself to first. On the morning of the last day, you see yourself drop to 20-25. Proceed to optimally grind the last day to get yourself back to first. That strategy has worked since pretty much forever. I get you think the system is unfair, but this event is more of a relic of the old days where there weren't events with 1 day subs, so I dunno what else to say.

I think you need to qualify the condition with 'in an event with only main nodes'. Playing prior to the last 2 days is very important for any event with sub since otherwise you'd start with a hole you can never get out of if you joined early, and if you join late you can also join in an established bracket that has an extra sub (or more) ahead of you that is also impossible to make up.

It's probably easier to finish in the top 25 or lower if you join late compared to early because competition is likely lower but moving up is expoentially harder if not impossible in such a bracket because it is quite possible the leader start with an insurmountable lead. Even in an event with main node rubberbanding, someone who plays as much as you that starts out with a significant lead will still win comfortably at the end because the person who starts out ahead always gets to play as late as possible which maximizes the effect of rubberbanding. For this particular event, finishing #25 is about the same as #150, so it's particularly bad for starting late unless you only want one cover for Colossus. In that case it's pretty safe since even in the worst case you probably will get top 150 and it wouldn't take much work.

Unknown

PPPlaya wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

What isnt fair? That I played for a handful of hours over the course of 2+ days to score the same amount of points as someone who joined very late and cleaned the nodes once in 45 minutes.

Are you refering to this thread? viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5304 Perhaps I should re-review it, but like the Rule #1 says: "Timing is everything" and god forbid I am not able to play at the most ideal time.... so yes, I made a conscious choice to play when I could since I am not a slave to MPQ.

We didn't put the system in place. You knew rubberbanding is a thing and you still decided to join early. You can't join early and then complain that you played more than people who joined later. That doesn't make any sense. If you want to play less, join later.

Furthermore you were competing with people who joined at the same time you did. It doesn't get any more fair than that. It's an absolute even ground. Why do you even care about the late joiners? Keep your eyes on your own plate.

What is unfair is that you can get sharded into a stale bracket where you have no chance of competing for the top prizes. You have no control over that and the only way to mitigate the risk is joining rather early. No doubt you'd also complain about getting into a late bracket if you decided to join late.
Crying about unfairness doesn't really help as long as you are not presenting solutions. I proposed a fix for the current system in the Venom thread but as long as they don't implement it we'll have to play the hands we are dealt.

If it makes you feel any better, my clanmate and I joined the last bracket that fired 7 hours before the event ended and we took places 1st and 2nd.

So, join early but don't join early....?

"You knew rubberbanding is a thing and you still decided to join early. "

"What is unfair is that you can get sharded into a stale bracket where you have no chance of competing for the top prizes. You have no control over that and the only way to mitigate the risk is joining rather early....."

I am under no obligation to offer solutions and wouldn't have a clue how to fix everything thats broken with this game. I am not a dev, and have no experience in programming or anything of that nature. What I can do, is share my frustrating experience and feedback.