Okin107 wrote: It looks like US players miss the rest of the world on PVP because they could hop over them during the time we where sleeping. Here's an idea then. If you want the time slots to be gone, let's make the event times EU based. You can still have your 2k scores but this time you lose your sleep. Sounds fair to me!
Raekwen wrote: user311 wrote: I dont see how its D3 that split the alliances up? Every alliance has US and EU players mixed in. The idea of "choose your own" was to benefit everyone's schedule. It is the people in the alliances that make the choice to all join the same time shard. You all could self regulate and join the time appropriate to your timezone and this problem would not exist to the extent that it does. But you dont, you deliberately game the system so that the rest of us are shut out. That is not D3 ... its you. Alright, let's take your example, and everyone chose their own timezone (which I'm pretty sure is more or less what happened in Hulk.) So, the US timezone shard blows up, since that's where the majority of top scorers live. The EU timezones are still sitting at half the score of the US timezone. So, not only does it make it much harder for the EU top scorers to do well, it makes the other EU players who were previously feeding off of the top scorers have to work much harder and spend much more to hit progression rewards. I'll give you a real life example. mrdogfather is our alliance is EU. In Hulk, he joined his own shard. Subsequently, he scored among the lowest in our alliance, due to the shard targeting (he's usually among the top.) In the GSBW event, he felt forced (not by us) to join shard 4 so that he could keep up with season scores and because he wanted to contribute to the alliance. So, he went back to getting up at odd hours. Now, you can say that he should be happy with lower scores in the exchange of playing at his time, but why should he have to sacrifice? He should be able to play at his time, and contribute the same as the rest of us.
user311 wrote: I dont see how its D3 that split the alliances up? Every alliance has US and EU players mixed in. The idea of "choose your own" was to benefit everyone's schedule. It is the people in the alliances that make the choice to all join the same time shard. You all could self regulate and join the time appropriate to your timezone and this problem would not exist to the extent that it does. But you dont, you deliberately game the system so that the rest of us are shut out. That is not D3 ... its you.
Okin107 wrote: reckless442 wrote: I can't speak for everyone, but I think I can fairly say that most vets have no interest in hitting 2000. We want to hit the progressions, get top-5 rewards, and help our alliances get top alliance results. For S.H.I.E.L.D, we have never had minimums and don't kick people out for low scores. Instead, we compensate for a member's RL issues, but that means some of us have to push high if we want the alliance to stay top-10 and receive the 5000 ISO alliance reward. But as more alliances have high scorers, it has become increasingly competitive, and that pushes players to go even higher. OPH went as high as it did because we wanted to ensure out point was made even if other alliances did swaps to try to match us. We didn't think we would have garnered the same attention if we didn't win. As for locking players into alliances, that wouldn't work because you do have the problem of players who slack off or have RL issues. Having 19 members miss rewards because one member didn't participate is going to create a lot of anger and will causes alliances to collapse as high scoring players search for greener pastures. From what you describe and from what I read in this thread and forums in general, the real issue is MMR and not time slots. Similar to you not finding targets at a certain high point range, middle range has the same issue with "The Wall". So while you want them but can't find them, we have them but can't milk them. What this change has done, is exaggerate MMR issues and make them more visible. Point awards along with matchmaking need a huge re-work. For the sake of everyone in this game, this needs to be addressed. But I don't think that alliance hopping and bad MMR are the product of the time slots change. Time slots only increased people's attention to them. MMR was bad since forever, but now with the time slot brackets I'm glad that the vets decided to jump in the conversation. Don't blame time slots, blame the really bad MMR and sharding for this mayhem.
reckless442 wrote: I can't speak for everyone, but I think I can fairly say that most vets have no interest in hitting 2000. We want to hit the progressions, get top-5 rewards, and help our alliances get top alliance results. For S.H.I.E.L.D, we have never had minimums and don't kick people out for low scores. Instead, we compensate for a member's RL issues, but that means some of us have to push high if we want the alliance to stay top-10 and receive the 5000 ISO alliance reward. But as more alliances have high scorers, it has become increasingly competitive, and that pushes players to go even higher. OPH went as high as it did because we wanted to ensure out point was made even if other alliances did swaps to try to match us. We didn't think we would have garnered the same attention if we didn't win. As for locking players into alliances, that wouldn't work because you do have the problem of players who slack off or have RL issues. Having 19 members miss rewards because one member didn't participate is going to create a lot of anger and will causes alliances to collapse as high scoring players search for greener pastures.
Spoit wrote: reckless442 wrote: I can't speak for everyone, but I think I can fairly say that most vets have no interest in hitting 2000. We want to hit the progressions, get top-5 rewards, and help our alliances get top alliance results. For S.H.I.E.L.D, we have never had minimums and don't kick people out for low scores. Instead, we compensate for a member's RL issues, but that means some of us have to push high if we want the alliance to stay top-10 and receive the 5000 ISO alliance reward. But as more alliances have high scorers, it has become increasingly competitive, and that pushes players to go even higher. OPH went as high as it did because we wanted to ensure out point was made even if other alliances did swaps to try to match us. We didn't think we would have garnered the same attention if we didn't win. As for locking players into alliances, that wouldn't work because you do have the problem of players who slack off or have RL issues. Having 19 members miss rewards because one member didn't participate is going to create a lot of anger and will causes alliances to collapse as high scoring players search for greener pastures. Maybe I misread the OP, but that exactly what the conversations in alliance chat were about. People took issue with the 3rd to last paragraph, and then deliberately misconstrued the arguments off of those couple lines (which is why I had recommended against having that in the post to begin with)
reckless442 wrote: Spoit wrote: Spoit wrote: gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table... You want a gentle nudge? I joined this bracket at 78th place at 1. It's now 8:20 and it's only at 307 people. I joined at that time every other week and it was full in well under an how. Gently nudge this sharding. (there are already 5 RO/x-men/AoS people in the top 10, and that's well before most people even start to climb) 3 hours later, and it's added all of...3 people. I don't think think this nudging could be any more gentle I just joined shard 4. Got added to the same bracket at no. 392. The leader has 1087 points already.
Spoit wrote: Spoit wrote: gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table... You want a gentle nudge? I joined this bracket at 78th place at 1. It's now 8:20 and it's only at 307 people. I joined at that time every other week and it was full in well under an how. Gently nudge this sharding. (there are already 5 RO/x-men/AoS people in the top 10, and that's well before most people even start to climb) 3 hours later, and it's added all of...3 people. I don't think think this nudging could be any more gentle
Spoit wrote: gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table... You want a gentle nudge? I joined this bracket at 78th place at 1. It's now 8:20 and it's only at 307 people. I joined at that time every other week and it was full in well under an how. Gently nudge this sharding. (there are already 5 RO/x-men/AoS people in the top 10, and that's well before most people even start to climb)
gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table...
Brothanoomsy wrote: Raekwen wrote: user311 wrote: I dont see how its D3 that split the alliances up? Every alliance has US and EU players mixed in. The idea of "choose your own" was to benefit everyone's schedule. It is the people in the alliances that make the choice to all join the same time shard. You all could self regulate and join the time appropriate to your timezone and this problem would not exist to the extent that it does. But you dont, you deliberately game the system so that the rest of us are shut out. That is not D3 ... its you. Alright, let's take your example, and everyone chose their own timezone (which I'm pretty sure is more or less what happened in Hulk.) So, the US timezone shard blows up, since that's where the majority of top scorers live. The EU timezones are still sitting at half the score of the US timezone. So, not only does it make it much harder for the EU top scorers to do well, it makes the other EU players who were previously feeding off of the top scorers have to work much harder and spend much more to hit progression rewards. I'll give you a real life example. mrdogfather is our alliance is EU. In Hulk, he joined his own shard. Subsequently, he scored among the lowest in our alliance, due to the shard targeting (he's usually among the top.) In the GSBW event, he felt forced (not by us) to join shard 4 so that he could keep up with season scores and because he wanted to contribute to the alliance. So, he went back to getting up at odd hours. Now, you can say that he should be happy with lower scores in the exchange of playing at his time, but why should he have to sacrifice? He should be able to play at his time, and contribute the same as the rest of us. If you will check, Stalker7 had the same problem in this pvp. He is normally a High scorer but couldn't do much because of his time slot and lack of players. This has wrecked his season average.
lokiagentofhotness wrote: That makes total sense to me - you can't join a timing where it's easy for you to get to number 1 but then be able to attack a player in another timing where his 1000 points only gets him number 25? It's not fair for him and not fair for the game. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. So high level players have to decide if they want number 1 or if they want the progression rewards.
lokiagentofhotness wrote: And none of this is the fault of the transitioning players - it's the high level players who are choosing shard 4 instead of the other shards.
lokiagentofhotness wrote: As far as I can tell - if you join shard 4, business as usual. Leaders with highers scores = players being able to find 50 pointer games. If you join other shards, leaders with lower scores but players can't find any scorers beyond 20 points. That makes total sense to me - you can't join a timing where it's easy for you to get to number 1 but then be able to attack a player in another timing where his 1000 points only gets him number 25? It's not fair for him and not fair for the game. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. So high level players have to decide if they want number 1 or if they want the progression rewards. And none of this is the fault of the transitioning players - it's the high level players who are choosing shard 4 instead of the other shards.
Spoit wrote: And side note, can we please come to a consensus on the terminology? Using shards conflates the issue, while death sharding has always been and issue and these divisions have just exacerbated it, using the same word to describe two related, but distinct things just conflates the issue. I nominate the term "slices", since that's what the devs originally described it as IIRC. (time) slots would be fine too
Flare808 wrote: Okin107 wrote: It looks like US players miss the rest of the world on PVP because they could hop over them during the time we where sleeping. Here's an idea then. If you want the time slots to be gone, let's make the event times EU based. You can still have your 2k scores but this time you lose your sleep. Sounds fair to me! You forget that D3 is an American company based on American soil with a player base that is primarily North American audience. While they should listen to the feedback from Europe and Asia, how can you fault D3 from catering to their largest audience? They have to be appealing to the largest market, like any other company would. For the record, I am not speaking out of self interest as I do not live in North America. In regards to the 2k scores- Part of the push to max out was due to the impending Sentry nerf. Scores will fall post-nerf and some of us pushed harder to get into better position for the overall Season VIII score.
Demiurge_Will wrote: LoreNYC wrote: Curious how end times will affect rubber banding Rubber-banding is relative to the other players in your time slice.
LoreNYC wrote: Curious how end times will affect rubber banding
Okin107 wrote: Flare808 wrote: Okin107 wrote: It looks like US players miss the rest of the world on PVP because they could hop over them during the time we where sleeping. Here's an idea then. If you want the time slots to be gone, let's make the event times EU based. You can still have your 2k scores but this time you lose your sleep. Sounds fair to me! You forget that D3 is an American company based on American soil with a player base that is primarily North American audience. While they should listen to the feedback from Europe and Asia, how can you fault D3 from catering to their largest audience? They have to be appealing to the largest market, like any other company would. For the record, I am not speaking out of self interest as I do not live in North America. In regards to the 2k scores- Part of the push to max out was due to the impending Sentry nerf. Scores will fall post-nerf and some of us pushed harder to get into better position for the overall Season VIII score. That says nothing about who they cater to. Blizzard is established in the US along with many other companies, but they value their customers equally all around the globe. If you make your product available to a specific target group, be ready to listen to their feedback. There people paying in EU same as they do in US.
Spoit wrote: http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18504&hilit=slice&start=80#p250440 Demiurge_Will wrote: LoreNYC wrote: Curious how end times will affect rubber banding Rubber-banding is relative to the other players in your time slice. Regardless, shards has been used for a LONG time to refer to the "gentle nudging" so using it for other stuff, especially when the slices are making sharding worse, confuses the issue
Flare808 wrote: (Comment based on current system) There is no message D3 is sending with having 5 identical shards available. They do not have control over where their players decide to play and did not force the top alliances to shard 4. You have complete control over which shard you play in. Like you said, if you want to score well, you end up with the high scorers, but that is a personal decision that each person/alliance makes on their own. I'm not saying this system is flawless or right, just pointing out that D3 isn't intentionally funneling all the top scorers together just to screw with you.
Flare808 wrote: Your premise was to have EU friendly times, correct? I pointed out that as a corporation, D3's goal is to make money (providing a good game is secondary to that for most companies). I did say that they should listen to all feedback, from anywhere in the world. But that doesn't mean that they will bend to appease a minority, which the EU is. Think about it this way, say McDonalds has a new burger they want to roll out. They can only season it one way for all of the burgers that are sent around the world. (Of course, they would localize the flavors, but in this case they can only choose 1 way) America likes the burger salty and fatty, no veggies of course. EU likes it with barbeque sauce and tons of onions. They would have to go with the burger that America likes because that makes them the most money. Yes, they may lose out on EU money, but that lost money pales in comparison to what they lose by using the EU favored burger. If you forced D3 to choose a single end time, NA would be favored due to the demographics.
Shadow wrote: Flare808 wrote: (Comment based on current system) There is no message D3 is sending with having 5 identical shards available. They do not have control over where their players decide to play and did not force the top alliances to shard 4. You have complete control over which shard you play in. Like you said, if you want to score well, you end up with the high scorers, but that is a personal decision that each person/alliance makes on their own. I'm not saying this system is flawless or right, just pointing out that D3 isn't intentionally funneling all the top scorers together just to screw with you. That's assuming that the high scorers always choose the same timeslot. The problem is that they may not. The x-men have the upperhand in this and since you are in x-men 4, I do not think you are able to fully appreciate the issue. Whichever timeslot that your mega alliance chooses, there will be a trickle down effect to the rest of the people in that timeslot. In Smash Hit, x-men chose timeslot 1. Then in Highpoint Kill, a different timeslot. This could change on a perpetual basis so choosing the right timeslot to score well becomes like a game of roulette for those people who aren't a part of the x-men alliances. On the other hand, if timeslot 4 is going to be where the high scorers are always going to be, then I would say that it is fair to a certain extent. People can choose a timeslot knowing in advance that if they want to score well, they should join timeslot 4 and if they are more concerned about their placement, then they should join any other timeslots. Question is, can we always say timeslot 4 is where the points will be?
Raekwen wrote: Enough people have made the point that global sharding won't work, and I guess I see their point. I still don't think it would as drastic as it's been pointed out, but I admit I don't really know. I still think it would be a better solution than this one though.