New Event End Times Feature Coming Soon

Unknown

Dissatisfaction with event ending times has been a thing for a long time now. It's good to see some development towards addressing that. Well done.

That said, I really hope the devs will read this thread attentively (and post responses...also, a pony); in the first two pages, there have already been a number of potential pitfalls identified and details that need clarifying. Even the best possible solution will involve trade-offs and won't please everyone perfectly, but this is a chance for a rather nice quality-of-life upgrade--let's not waste it.

Unknown

All I can see in this thread is a sort of brainstorming that will help D3P a lot. It will also relieve the frustration of everyone.

Including the whole community in the changing process is probably more important than the result. Now everyone realizes how hard the task is, and it will be a good way (for future changes as well) to downsize the number of complaints on the forum.

Beta Testing can occur in off season events, so that if it fails, it doesn't have major consequences. Whatever happens, compensate the players for participating in the Beta process. Be generous !

A good way of avoiding the afore mentioned problems (5D/Xmen/Outlaws joining at the same time to have some kind of advantage) could be :

To not disclose the Alliance scorings after X hours or after something has occurred (like all the Timezones have joined), or not disclose Alliance scorings at all during the whole event,
Therefore : To not make Alliance rankings so vital, so that individual scorings/rankings matter more (Season Alliance rankings do not matter much in terms of rewards in the Top 100 for instance),

D3P will have to find out what the best solution is so that they make the same turnover with a new system.

The current system seems to be not good for transitioning players (not mentioning the end times) so the new system could maybe also address their frustration ?

D3P want a lot more Alliances in the competition (free slots), so the reward structure will have to change also. If the Top 100 Alliances do not make the turnover of the company, then the reward structure has to change beyond the Top 100.

Sandilord

I think I wet myself a bit when I read this.
Finally, good stuff! I might not have to invest amounts of HP more than US players just for living in EU.

Bowgentle

Thank you for finally attempting to fix PVE end times.

On the other hand, I'm not totally sure people were clamoring for changes to PVP, as well.
We'll just have to see how this whole thing will shake out.

I fully expect this thing to be implemented on the last few days of the third season for Lady Thor, completely botched - and then taking 3 months to fix it again lol

I _would_ be cautiously optimistic, but the track record of implemented changes doesn't look too great

But anything that lets me finish PVP before bedtime every time is good, so I'll withold judgement for now.

Unknown

I see a lot of valid concern that Alliance placement will be greatly affected by the last running shard of the event. Could a solution be to have each of the three shards have their own Alliance rewards? Thereby encouraging an Alliance to "group up" in the same shard?

Unknown

I love it!!!!!

you guys should do trails on new characters too

Unknown

Currently are all the alliances ranked in a single bracket? If not, they could also bracket alliances according to end times people choose. Thus, you wouldn't have to worry about what happens in the alliance rankings when the event ended (all end times are reached).

Bowgentle

KevinMark wrote:

Currently are all the alliances ranked in a single bracket? If not, they could also bracket alliances according to end times people choose. Thus, you wouldn't have to worry about what happens in the alliance rankings when the event ended (all end times are reached).

Alliances are currently unbracketed.

Unknown

My suspicion is that we'll see either older super-alliances adapting to the new end times (X-Men 1-3, in one time zone, X-Men 4-6 in another, etc.) or we'll see existing ones pick one time zone and new alliances springing up to dominate the others (or older ones adapting to become super-alliances). I think we may see some affect on the very top scores, but if you're not regularly getting 1200 or so I don't think the effect will be a fraction as noticeable - partly because - if it does have a big effect - you'll see a bunch of the crowd that keeps finishing 6-10 jump to the underserved times where they're more likely to be able to finish 1-5.

I think this is largely going to help scores, because people will be able to play and compete more in PVPs they're currently not bothering with. I have only occasionally put any real effort into the M-W PVPs, usually finishing under 700, because - unless it's offering one of the handful of covers I need - it's not worth the HP needed to finish higher. If I can have that end at 1 am like the other two do, I'll be scoring over 800 even if it's Loki covers. Losing the X-Men (if I pick a time they don't) won't hurt me much because I'm almost never getting matched against them as is, because I rarely finish much over 900 anymore.

I think the concerns that people have over it suppressing scores may be a problem for the first few weeks, as people figure out the new system, but that things will adjust pretty quickly.

CNash

Will this address the problem of the "166 Wall" that springs up as soon as you hit 600 points in a PVP? 2*-3* transitioning players don't have a hope in hell of getting higher than 6-700 in any PVP because of this, and they're the ones who most need the 3* cover reward!

SodaPopinski

Thanks for the screenshot too.....somehow it makes it more real to me that it is actually coming!

hex706f726368

EDIT: nevermind, either the original post was updated or i missed a line late last night while reading it

user311

For me the 1pm EST times are the hardest while the 1am EST times are the best. If I could choose to always have it as 1am for instance that would be great. I am very skeptical about what happens after the first group ends. I hope there is a test run or really good explanations regarding the post event activity. I cannot imagine any scenario though other than timing where there are not major risks for havoc.

GrumpySmurf1002

Since I don't see it because everyone's worried about PvP scores: How are the PvE subs going to work?

Are all subs going to change to a function of 24/48/72 hours from the end time you pick?
Are subs going to have their own sub menu of end times?
If your main bracket ends Wednesday 12pm EST, can you choose a final sub that ends Wednesday 6pm EST?

Side note, I think it's funny that it's gone from "it's easy, just give us staggered end times." to "wait, how is staggered end times going to work with placement awards?" Easy indeed.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Side note, I think it's funny that it's gone from "it's easy, just give us staggered end times." to "wait, how is staggered end times going to work with placement awards?" Easy indeed.

To be honest, I think people are overstating how much the awards complicate the end times.

Unknown

Best feature add that this game has had in a long time I completely agree with this one, even if we have to suffer through bugs for the first few months that it is out.

Unknown

One possible solution to alliance rankings for the three shard times is to just have 3 separate rankings for the 3 shard times. If your alliance wants to do well, maybe most of the people will be in the same shard - would allow to have 6 top 2 slots instead of 2. Would probably have the side effect though of alienating the few non-american or non-european people in your alliance if they didn't fit into the same wedge.

I'm surprised they don't implement this into pve first to be honest. Seems like pve is the biggest culprit in the end time issue

GrumpySmurf1002

LoreNYC wrote:

I'm surprised they don't implement this into pve first to be honest. Seems like pve is the biggest culprit in the end time issue

PvE is the bigger culprit, but being forced to consistently use bigger shields because of unfriendly end-times has certainly been talked/complained about a bunch as well.

orionpeace

Would there be a concern in the implementation for PvP of a dwindling supply of targets to attack?

What if 50% of players join P1, 25% join P2, and the remaining join P3? I would assume that once P1 ends, those players are done and cannot be attacked. Their score is locked. Likewise, when P2 ends. For the final hours P3 players could only attack other P3 players, while P1 could attack all players through to their end time.

It just seems that scores could be drastically diminished for P2 and P3, with a smaller pool and therefore fewer opportunities to rise.

Or am I totally misunderstanding how this is going to work?

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

I'm not really seeing how "Players will only be matched with those sharing the same shard" implies that that'd be the only people that they'd be able to find in their Matchmaking, as opposed to the obvious reading of it: that each bracket doesn't mix people from different shards. I.e. at time X there'd be (at least) 3 open brackets, one for each time shard that fills up as people from that time shard join.

Though yes, it does need a bit more clarification.

re quoting this since we are still completely in the dark on what this means. I agree with spoit and seem to be in the minority. I don't think they would lock attacks / matchmaking into the shards. It's just for the brackets. Also would love some info on how alliances work with this!