Why such weight given to event end times?

Unknown

Why are the end times the most important aspect of any event? I'm not complaining, I just don't understand the logic of it. It feels like just keeping your schedule open outweighs effort, skill, and a good roster. It's possible to grind away on PVE for days, then get pulled away by real life during the final hour of an event, and end up with practically nothing in return. As for PVP, having a life or living in a European timezone is going to cost those players a ton of HP for shielding. I'm not complaining or even saying the systems are unfair, I'm just wondering what the point is. can someone please explain it to me? The whole rubber banding system feels like it is there to punish people that like to play the game a lot and reward people that just leave it sit there but are available to play at the right time.

_RiO_

Rubber banding is there to allow both stragglers and people that are new to the game to join in during the last day and still get somewhere.

But really, it's completely unbalanced and likely impossible to ever be balanced correctly with regards to competitive placement against other players. If Demiurge really want stragglers that are late to the party to still have something to fight over, then retain a separate placement and progression score and apply the rubber banding mechanic only to the progression score. It really has to be removed from the placement score; there is no way of fixing it without opening other cans of worms.

An even better solution would probably be to base the progression ladder's score points on the time left in the event when a player joins. E.g. if I would join on day 1 of 3 I would need 40,000 points for the top progression reward, but if I would join on day 2 of 3 I would only need 25,000 points. You could still introduce diminishing returns so that the top rewards remain out of reach of people that would settle on abusing this mechanic for maximum returns on minimal play time. But you can tune all this without **** around with players' placements.

Unknown

rooter wrote:

Why are the end times the most important aspect of any event? I'm not complaining, I just don't understand the logic of it. It feels like just keeping your schedule open outweighs effort, skill, and a good roster. It's possible to grind away on PVE for days, then get pulled away by real life during the final hour of an event, and end up with practically nothing in return. As for PVP, having a life or living in a European timezone is going to cost those players a ton of HP for shielding. I'm not complaining or even saying the systems are unfair, I'm just wondering what the point is. can someone please explain it to me? The whole rubber banding system feels like it is there to punish people that like to play the game a lot and reward people that just leave it sit there but are available to play at the right time.

Because the most important thing is this game is TIMING.

If you join an event too early, you're screwed
If you join an event too late, you're screwed


... and if you don't grind for the last 1-2 hours of any event, you'll likely not place high enough to win the 3* reward that you're probably chasing.

Sad, but true. It's one of the many reasons why I can't take this game seriously anymore.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

Because the most important thing is this game is TIMING.

If you join an event too early, you're screwed
If you join an event too late, you're screwed


... and if you don't grind for the last 1-2 hours of any event, you'll likely not place high enough to win the 3* reward that you're probably chasing.

Sad, but true. It's one of the many reasons why I can't take this game seriously anymore.

Well, yeah, that's exactly what I said. I'm just trying to figure out the reasoning. As far as I can see, it doesn't seem to make the game more fun or make more money for D3. If they want to reward people that wait until the last minute, they should just start new brackets for the stragglers. The devs are pretty smart, there must be a reason.

I can't wait for the next Gauntlet, now that event makes sense to me!

Unknown

rooter wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

Because the most important thing is this game is TIMING.

If you join an event too early, you're screwed
If you join an event too late, you're screwed


... and if you don't grind for the last 1-2 hours of any event, you'll likely not place high enough to win the 3* reward that you're probably chasing.

Sad, but true. It's one of the many reasons why I can't take this game seriously anymore.

Well, yeah, that's exactly what I said. I'm just trying to figure out the reasoning. As far as I can see, it doesn't seem to make the game more fun or make more money for D3. If they want to reward people that wait until the last minute, they should just start new brackets for the stragglers. The devs are pretty smart, there must be a reason.

I can't wait for the next Gauntlet, now that event makes sense to me!

You could argue that their system does in fact make more money. Because if we were allowed to just play and achieve progression/placement rewards on our own time, no one would ever buy health packs or boosts. By emphasizing timing, it increases the likelihood that people will buy boosts to grind as much as possible in the last hour, and makes it so two bad boards or bad cascades means players can't simply just wait until health packs recharge or heroes recover if they want to place well.

_RiO_

gobstopper wrote:

You could argue that their system does in fact make more money. Because if we were allowed to just play and achieve progression/placement rewards on our own time, no one would ever buy health packs or boosts. By emphasizing timing, it increases the likelihood that people will buy boosts to grind as much as possible in the last hour, and makes it so two bad boards or bad cascades means players can't simply just wait until health packs recharge or heroes recover if they want to place well.

In other words; you make the game pay-2-win.
And pay-2-win is not a long term sustainable model. I doubt the devs are stupid enough to bank on that.

DD-The-Mighty

_RiO_ wrote:

Rubber banding is there to allow both stragglers and people that are new to the game to join in during the last day and still get somewhere.

But really, it's completely unbalanced and likely impossible to ever be balanced correctly with regards to competitive placement against other players. If Demiurge really want stragglers that are late to the party to still have something to fight over, then retain a separate placement and progression score and apply the rubber banding mechanic only to the progression score. It really has to be removed from the placement score; there is no way of fixing it without opening other cans of worms.

An even better solution would probably be to base the progression ladder's score points on the time left in the event when a player joins. E.g. if I would join on day 1 of 3 I would need 40,000 points for the top progression reward, but if I would join on day 2 of 3 I would only need 25,000 points. You could still introduce diminishing returns so that the top rewards remain out of reach of people that would settle on abusing this mechanic for maximum returns on minimal play time. But you can tune all this without **** around with players' placements.

pretty much. Normally the counter argument would be the removal of rubber-banding bolsters the grinders. But honestly the events are already grindy as heck anyway. whenever this discussion comes up people also like to forget that most players do both. Grind their A's off and then strategically wait to do one last brutal push at the end. If you're not willing to do one or the other (and you don't have babbys-1st-brackets) you're not going to get much of anything out of pve. (maybe pvp too?)

Moral

In both pvp and pve there are more points avalable at the end than the middle or beginning, unless you are the overall leader.

And when it comes down to it, anything competitive gives the advantage to those who go last. Last at bat, last possession, leaders against a clock like downhill skiing all allow leaders to finish at the end to know what they need to beat.

Unknown

I have been trying to push the idea of a rubberband that decays slowly over the last day of an event.
There will be a point where just the rubberband, not the base points reaches a maximum then drops off so if you miss the peak by a few hours you can still rack in a ton of points while it is at say %80. If you wait even further the points become harder to farm in large numbers but there are still many out there. And if you wait till the last two hours you are so close to only base node points that further grinding may only move your position slightly. But you wont lose hundreds of ranks if you miss it.

Unknown

I was thinking something similar to what Crypto proposes, namely that - at the 50% of the event left place - the rubberband begins to degrade linearly. Thus, it would still; be 100% at the 50% mark, but 90% at the 45% left mark, 80% at the 40% left mark, etc, until it goes to 0 rubberbanding as the event ends.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

I have been trying to push the idea of a rubberband that decays slowly over the last day of an event.
There will be a point where just the rubberband, not the base points reaches a maximum then drops off so if you miss the peak by a few hours you can still rack in a ton of points while it is at say %80. If you wait even further the points become harder to farm in large numbers but there are still many out there. And if you wait till the last two hours you are so close to only base node points that further grinding may only move your position slightly. But you wont lose hundreds of ranks if you miss it.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

Katai

I never quite understood why PvE is competitive to begin with. How does any of that make any sense?

The overwhelming success of the gauntlet should be a huge indicator as to how PvE is SUPPOSED to work.

Unknown

rooter wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

Because the most important thing is this game is TIMING.

If you join an event too early, you're screwed
If you join an event too late, you're screwed


... and if you don't grind for the last 1-2 hours of any event, you'll likely not place high enough to win the 3* reward that you're probably chasing.

Sad, but true. It's one of the many reasons why I can't take this game seriously anymore.

Well, yeah, that's exactly what I said. I'm just trying to figure out the reasoning. As far as I can see, it doesn't seem to make the game more fun or make more money for D3. If they want to reward people that wait until the last minute, they should just start new brackets for the stragglers. The devs are pretty smart, there must be a reason.

I can't wait for the next Gauntlet, now that event makes sense to me!

If the rumors I hear are true, the final 12 hours of this PVE event will be a gauntlet-esque 12 hour node. There will be a set of nodes that can only be completed once to move onto the next.

Not sure if it will provide rewards for each node beaten though.

Unknown

onimus wrote:

rooter wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

Because the most important thing is this game is TIMING.

If you join an event too early, you're screwed
If you join an event too late, you're screwed


... and if you don't grind for the last 1-2 hours of any event, you'll likely not place high enough to win the 3* reward that you're probably chasing.

Sad, but true. It's one of the many reasons why I can't take this game seriously anymore.

Well, yeah, that's exactly what I said. I'm just trying to figure out the reasoning. As far as I can see, it doesn't seem to make the game more fun or make more money for D3. If they want to reward people that wait until the last minute, they should just start new brackets for the stragglers. The devs are pretty smart, there must be a reason.

I can't wait for the next Gauntlet, now that event makes sense to me!

If the rumors I hear are true, the final 12 hours of this PVE event will be a gauntlet-esque 12 hour node. There will be a set of nodes that can only be completed once to move onto the next.

Not sure if it will provide rewards for each node beaten though.

Makes no difference to me; I'm no where near the top to win Doc Oc and I consider PvE to be a <profanity removed>. I just use it (and just about any event) for ISO.

Unknown

It's not something anyone did or could even change. It's a logical outcome to a point based reward structure with a fixed time length. If you want to place well, you want to improve your score, and make sure no one else can improve their score simultaneously. The best way to do that is play the last half hour. Then you are getting 100% improvement on the people not playing. There is no way to lessen the value of playing in this timeframe given the current structure of play and rewards.

The only way this will ever change is 100% progression based PvE, which has happened recently and may be an indicator of PvE of the future.