PVE... what if

Shadow

This post is probably a bit early and we will have to wait for tomorrow to see what's done on the main bracket nodes. But let's assume that it doesn't have rubberband like the 3 subs that were before it.

Whoever takes top spot will basically be whoever grinds most consistently for the 6.5 days. Later nodes have points which are higher than the earlier ones. i.e. the second sub had more points than the first sub and the third sub had more points than the second sub. So, even if one takes an early lead, one would still need to be consistent in the later subs or risk falling behind.

Pros:
- People who work the hardest will be rightfully rewarded.
- The final hour has less of an impact and if you've been grinding consistently beforehand, might even have zero impact. I wasn't around for the final hour of the second sub but still held onto my top 2 placement. I also have a 22k point lead over #10 on the main bracket at this stage which means I wouldn't drop out unless the main has rubberband. If it does, all hell breaks loose for everyone.

Cons:
- Do you really want to be grinding consistently every 2.5 hours for 6.5 days straight?

So, what if all new character PvEs were like it?

Unknown

That's been the way most PvE events with subs have been recently not counting lost causes like Unstable Isotope.

Unknown

Yup, it's all about grinding each node optimally every 2.5hrs for best part of a week in these type of events. Normally they rotate the end times a bit, but just for laughs it seems that this event is only for people who can play constantly from 10:30pm-12am (EST) or 3:30am-5am (GMT).

IamTheDanger

Said it before, and I'll say it again; rubberbanding needs to be lowered.

Someone please explain to me why I can grind non stop for a week, just so someone can swoop in at the last hour and win by rubberbanding off all my hard work? I feel that this has always been unfair.

I understand rubberbanding, and even agree somewhat. It just needs to be lowered. If I have 10,000 points, a player using rubberbanding should only be able to get 8,000 at most. They still get a good finish, but not enough to overtake the ones that worked their butts off.

GrumpySmurf1002

I finished the first sub in 6th in my main bracket, thousand or two above 10th. I waited to join the 2nd sub until T-11 hours. After one clear, I was still 20k behind the top 10 of my main bracket. I hit it optimally from that point on, and still only clawed back to 9th.

Same thing so far in the 3rd sub, and I joined earlier this time. I'll have to hit multiple refreshes optimally to claw back.

If there's a rubberband in this event, it's really weak. If people are catching up quick, I'd imagine it's off-time zone doing multiple clears. There's no way you can go from 90th-9th in this event in one or two clears.

lukewin

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Said it before, and I'll say it again; rubberbanding needs to be lowered.

Someone please explain to me why I can grind non stop for a week, just so someone can swoop in at the last hour and win by rubberbanding off all my hard work? I feel that this has always been unfair.

I understand rubberbanding, and even agree somewhat. It just needs to be lowered. If I have 10,000 points, a player using rubberbanding should only be able to get 8,000 at most. They still get a good finish, but not enough to overtake the ones that worked their butts off.

I just recently (last PVE) started using rubberbanding to help me out. I thought rubberbanding doesn't allow you to be overtaken. Using your example, if you have 10k at the end, there's no way someone could've gotten more than 10k, unless you stopped playing. Now if you have 10k with hours to go, and stop playing, and they didn't stop, I could understand them overtaking you. I have an 8k lead over 3rd in my main, but there's no way I'm letting it die down this close to the end. I do have the luxury of missing a refresh here and there, but I have to make sure that I play at the end to finish strong.

Unknown

Rubberband has been weak and pretty much all PvE events are on this format. I have a 15K lead over #2 and a 35K lead over #10 in TaT. Barring some kind of catastrophic collapse in the last 2 days I should be able to easily hold on to top 10. Of course I didn't grind all this time to finish top 10, so I'd still be sorely disappointed for finishing only top 10, but that's a matter of expectation.

From my observation you can easily get around 60% of the overall leader (main or sub, depending on whatever the format is)'s points with rubberbanding, but once you're past that the rubberband slows down greatly. Thus, if you're sitting at below 60% of the leader's points then it'd indeed appear people can easily slingshot past you because this is a region that is quite trivial for anyone to pass up.

NorthernPolarity

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Said it before, and I'll say it again; rubberbanding needs to be lowered.

Someone please explain to me why I can grind non stop for a week, just so someone can swoop in at the last hour and win by rubberbanding off all my hard work? I feel that this has always been unfair.

I understand rubberbanding, and even agree somewhat. It just needs to be lowered. If I have 10,000 points, a player using rubberbanding should only be able to get 8,000 at most. They still get a good finish, but not enough to overtake the ones that worked their butts off.

Er, rubberbanding HAS been lowered: it seems like with this event, its virtually nonexistant once you're in 10k of the global sub leader, meaning you can build a lead of 10k each sub.

IamTheDanger

NorthernPolarity wrote:

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Said it before, and I'll say it again; rubberbanding needs to be lowered.

Someone please explain to me why I can grind non stop for a week, just so someone can swoop in at the last hour and win by rubberbanding off all my hard work? I feel that this has always been unfair.

I understand rubberbanding, and even agree somewhat. It just needs to be lowered. If I have 10,000 points, a player using rubberbanding should only be able to get 8,000 at most. They still get a good finish, but not enough to overtake the ones that worked their butts off.

Er, rubberbanding HAS been lowered: it seems like with this event, its virtually nonexistant once you're in 10k of the global sub leader, meaning you can build a lead of 10k each sub.

Actually, I didn't see any signs of rubberbanding at all in this one. My highest point nodes are the same points everytime. And I am aware that it has been lowered from what it used to be. I'm just a bit biased on the subject because when I first started this game, many moons ago, the first PvE i was in, I held top 5 the entire time. With 30 minutes left, I was in #2 spot. #3 was several thousand behind. And I played non stop. But at the very end, a player that was not even in the top 10 ranks 30 minutes ago, came in and beat me by 8 points. For a new player to miss out on his first 4* Xforce by 8 points was a tad irritating . I had only been playing a week or so and didn't know how useless he was back then. All I saw was a Wolverine with 4 stars and I wanted it to go with my 1*s I had at the time. But I will admit it has gotten better.

Unknown

You might not be able to tell there's rubberbanding in the current event because a lot of nodes start with oddball base value like '633' and it's easy to see '642' and figure that you must have remembered the base points wrong. The rubberbanding is certainly not noticeable if you're remotely competitive in your sub.

NorthernPolarity

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Said it before, and I'll say it again; rubberbanding needs to be lowered.

Someone please explain to me why I can grind non stop for a week, just so someone can swoop in at the last hour and win by rubberbanding off all my hard work? I feel that this has always been unfair.

I understand rubberbanding, and even agree somewhat. It just needs to be lowered. If I have 10,000 points, a player using rubberbanding should only be able to get 8,000 at most. They still get a good finish, but not enough to overtake the ones that worked their butts off.

Er, rubberbanding HAS been lowered: it seems like with this event, its virtually nonexistant once you're in 10k of the global sub leader, meaning you can build a lead of 10k each sub.

Actually, I didn't see any signs of rubberbanding at all in this one. My highest point nodes are the same points everytime. And I am aware that it has been lowered from what it used to be. I'm just a bit biased on the subject because when I first started this game, many moons ago, the first PvE i was in, I held top 5 the entire time. With 30 minutes left, I was in #2 spot. #3 was several thousand behind. And I played non stop. But at the very end, a player that was not even in the top 10 ranks 30 minutes ago, came in and beat me by 8 points. For a new player to miss out on his first 4* Xforce by 8 points was a tad irritating . I had only been playing a week or so and didn't know how useless he was back then. All I saw was a Wolverine with 4 stars and I wanted it to go with my 1*s I had at the time. But I will admit it has gotten better.

Rubberbanding definitely exists, you're just one of the crazies (like me!) that grind 24/7. I stopped grinding one night, and noticed some minor rubberbanding before grinding back up.

FaustianDeal

It feels like the subs are banding separate from the main though. For the last (let's call it) 36 hours I have remained fairly consistently ranked 10th in my sub, but my ranking in Main improved for the first 30 hours of that span - rising from 60th --> 39th. Then for the last 6 hours my overall ranking has dropped back to 50th (while holding constant in my sub).

My (probably vain) hope is that the subs are have a banding target that is separate from the main, so that someone who skipped the first sub doesn't get a free pass to a 1st place finish in the second sub. In previous PVE events where the main map would open (with repeatable nodes) after the final sub there has often been additional banding available there - because any banding you get there doesn't pollute the subs.

Maybe that's just me hoping that I didn't automatically lose out on a top 50 finish by limping into the first sub (trying to get away with 5.0 days of grinding instead of 6.5).

Unknown

FaustianDeal wrote:

It feels like the subs are banding separate from the main though. For the last (let's call it) 36 hours I have remained fairly consistently ranked 10th in my sub, but my ranking in Main improved for the first 30 hours of that span - rising from 60th --> 39th. Then for the last 6 hours my overall ranking has dropped back to 50th (while holding constant in my sub).

My (probably vain) hope is that the subs are have a banding target that is separate from the main, so that someone who skipped the first sub doesn't get a free pass to a 1st place finish in the second sub. In previous PVE events where the main map would open (with repeatable nodes) after the final sub there has often been additional banding available there - because any banding you get there doesn't pollute the subs.

Maybe that's just me hoping that I didn't automatically lose out on a top 50 finish by limping into the first sub (trying to get away with 5.0 days of grinding instead of 6.5).

If you joined a sub early you'd likely improve your main bracket position even while staying constant in the sub because an earlier sub will tend to have higher overall scores compared to one that started later. Conversely if you joined a sub late your main bracket position is likely to fall behind even while you're holding constant in that sub because people in your sub tend to have less points compared to others.

IamTheDanger

NorthernPolarity wrote:

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Rubberbanding definitely exists, you're just one of the crazies (like me!) that grind 24/7. I stopped grinding one night, and noticed some minor rubberbanding before grinding back up.

Sounds about right. I literally grind, then set my alarm for the minute the refresh time is up. In the last sub, the highest point node was worth 766 every single time. Also, I've been in the top 10 most of the time. So if RB is based on top 10, then I guess I wouldn't have seen any.

But I still think it's too high. My brother plays this game also,, but doesnt grind. He only plays twice a day, 3 times a day on weekends, (sometimes not even that much). Yet he somehow managed a top 25 in a recent PvE. It was either Blade or Mysty, can't remember which off the top of my head. Only playing 2 times a day, he was able to get the same or better rewards than people that grinded a lot more. And as much as I love my baby brother, that just does not seem fair. Especially for newer players that do not understand how it works. Which is how I missed out #2 rank for my first gold character,(Xforce, I only had 1* and a couple 2* at the time), even if he was next to useless 9 months ago, and thats why I am not to fond of RB.

But I also understand that I'm not the only one that has been screwed by RB. But to have it happen after playing for less than 2 weeks and on my first PvE event, well, it makes a pretty bad first impression. But that's just my messed up opinion .

Unknown

The "What if ...?" series was really cool. If only we could explore the What if...? universe with regard to this game.



Anywayz, many months ago, at the beginning of this year, D3 indicated they didn't want people to grind. Why then, are we dealing with 2.5 hour refreshes? It's absurd. It isn't fun at all.

Unknown

This event has people who are more than 100K points behind seeing nodes worth less than twice the base points, and I don't think this is particularly unusual for recent events. For Unstable Isotope I was nowhere near the top and it sure doesn't look like any of my node ever hit double points either. I think people just underestimate how much base points nodes are worth. In order to keep things interesting the nodes tend to be in increasing base points toward the end of the event, and often the points are so high that even without rubberbanding they make a very large impact. If you had 100K points at the start of the last day for TaT you're in a very good shape (should be close to top 10 in most bracket), but there are potentially 72000 points in the final day if you did every cycle plus grinded everything down to 1 at the very end. So if you're taking it easy and someone put together such a run it might look like that guy is rubberbanding out of nowhere when in reality it's because the final main nodes have about twice the points compared to any other day so it's possible to make up a significant deficit.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

The "What if ...?" series was really cool. If only we could explore the What if...? universe with regard to this game.

Anywayz, many months ago, at the beginning of this year, D3 indicated they didn't want people to grind. Why then, are we dealing with 2.5 hour refreshes? It's absurd. It isn't fun at all.

They said they wanted to decrease the amount of required grind to be competitive, and they have done that. The problem is that the really competitive people will gravitate towards the optimal strategy, which is play every 2.5 hours. It's better than playing continuously, non-stop. The sane (or less insane) among us will play sub-optimally, but well enough to rank decently.

Honestly, the 2.5 hour refresh is the better than any other proposed solution we've seen out there so far. It lets you play, take a break, eat a meal, (or switch to PVP for a little while) and then come back and attack PVE again.

People are so focused on winning that they can't do simple cost/benefit analysis. It seems like a good kick in the pants to show that there will always be someone more willing to sacrifice than you; or if you win, it shows you how much you have to sacrifice just to be #1 in some online game. Honestly, coming in #1 is really fun, but it's not worth this game becoming a job to do it every time, especially one where you have to pay money instead of it paying you.

Unknown

Well, if it was easy to be #1, you probably won't be #1. But the game could be slightly less insane to get to #1.

GrumpySmurf1002

daibar wrote:

Honestly, the 2.5 hour refresh is the better than any other proposed solution we've seen out there so far. It lets you play, take a break, eat a meal, (or switch to PVP for a little while) and then come back and attack PVE again.

Dividing by 10 is as arbitrary as dividing the day by any other number. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 24, 30, 32, and 36 all go into 1440 minutes evenly (as well as their divisors of course).

8 refreshes (3 hours) or 6 refreshes (4 hours) are well more intuitive than 144 minutes, would still give enough play to keep you attached, and still ease the grind a bit.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

The "What if ...?" series was really cool. If only we could explore the What if...? universe with regard to this game.

Anywayz, many months ago, at the beginning of this year, D3 indicated they didn't want people to grind. Why then, are we dealing with 2.5 hour refreshes? It's absurd. It isn't fun at all.

They said they wanted to decrease the amount of required grind to be competitive, and they have done that. The problem is that the really competitive people will gravitate towards the optimal strategy, which is play every 2.5 hours. It's better than playing continuously, non-stop. The sane (or less insane) among us will play sub-optimally, but well enough to rank decently.

Honestly, the 2.5 hour refresh is the better than any other proposed solution we've seen out there so far. It lets you play, take a break, eat a meal, (or switch to PVP for a little while) and then come back and attack PVE again.

People are so focused on winning that they can't do simple cost/benefit analysis. It seems like a good kick in the pants to show that there will always be someone more willing to sacrifice than you; or if you win, it shows you how much you have to sacrifice just to be #1 in some online game. Honestly, coming in #1 is really fun, but it's not worth this game becoming a job to do it every time, especially one where you have to pay money instead of it paying you.

"They said they wanted to decrease the amount of required grind to be competitive, and they have done that." - I disagree. Im finding PvE worse than it was earlier this year, say 9 months ago. With the introduction of seasons, the game is so cut-throat now that the only way to win is to grind.... endlessly. Enjoy your 20 ISO.

Honestly, the 2.5 hour refresh is the better than any other proposed solution we've seen out there so far. It lets you play, take a break, eat a meal, (or switch to PVP for a little while) and then come back and attack PVE again. - Asking the player base to play every 2.5 hours is a "solution"? Sounds more like they want you to re-schedule your life around their game.

Unknown

I think if 2.5 hours was changed to 4 hours it would work a lot better. You could do a couple clears before sleep or work, and it wouldn't disrupt your day nearly as much.