Upcoming PVE End Times Testing (*Updated)

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hello everyone,

We wanted to give you a heads-up that selectable Event end times testing for Story-based (PVE) content is set to begin with Iso-8 Brotherhood, arriving Friday, December 05, 2014.

We have waited to begin Story-based testing until after the Meet Rocket & Groot Event. While waiting made things harder for those outside of the Americas, the last thing we wanted was for the end times to make things worse for everyone due to unforeseen circumstances.

As with any testing, we expect that a few bugs may rear their ugly heads when the new feature is live. Should any issues occur we will work quickly to correct them. Please bear with us (and share your feedback) as we implement this exciting new feature.

Thank you!

*Update (12/03/14): The plan for this test is to have 5 selectable end times similar to how the Versus end time selection works. To keep variables down on the test, we're leaving the Sub-Event timers the same, which means that they're going to be 12 hour subs. This will help us to nail down any bugs that may appear. Specifically, we can rule out anything related to the changing of sub times.

A reminder - when selecting your end time, choosing a final end time in the afternoon may mean that previous subs end early in the morning.

Unknown

My pillow will be eternally grateful to that.

Unknown

yup looking forward to some nice evening finishes

Unknown

Did not expect this at all.

DubbaHuss

Ahh, iso 8 brotherhood. I've already selected my time, never o'clock sounds good.

PuceMoose

Thanks for the heads-up! Unexpected and appreciated.

Chrono_Tata

Thank goodness for this. Having a convenient end time is much more crucial to pve than pvp due to lack of any similar system to shielding. Much appreciated charge.

Unknown

DubbaHuss wrote:

Ahh, iso 8 brotherhood. I've already selected my time, never o'clock sounds good.

Blatantly stolen from Oglaf and badly photoshopped.

Edit: very badly. Put wrong date in, used imgur to edit it further. When I make a mess, I make a MESS!

Unknown

Iso 8 brotherhood is awesome. I think people are confusing it with unstable iso.

This is the one with lots of subs and opportunities for hp.

turul

An advice for developers:

please fixate ALL PVE sub end times to selected end time, because if I choose 10PM as ideal end time, 10PM+12hrs will not be ideal.

And i cant think of any ideal end time+12hrs, due to my work schedule.

Unknown

turul wrote:

An advice for developers:

please fixate ALL PVE sub end times to selected end time, because if I choose 10PM as ideal end time, 10PM+12hrs will not be ideal.

And i cant think of any ideal end time+12hrs, due to my work schedule.

I hope those are the "unforeseen results" David mentioned in his post.

Spoit

"David wrote:

Moore"]
We have waited to begin Story-based testing until after the Meet Rocket & Groot Event. While waiting made things harder for those outside of the Americas, the last thing we wanted was for the end times to make things worse for everyone due to unforeseen circumstances.

Grumble grumble, when I said that they should delay testing to the off season to make make sure things weren't messed up, I get shouted down that it needs to be implemented NAO!!1! but when D3 says it, it's awesome

Unknown

Hi David,

A few questions from the resident PvE end time zealot:

1. How many slices will there be?
2. If more than 3, are there concerns over main bracket filling speed (i.e. people joining after some have already completed 2-3 clears)
3. Will all subs conform to the end time scheduling? E.g. if I pick 9pm, will they all end at 9pm?
4. I assume rubberbanding will be off the 'global' leader in that sub time slice, or will it continue to be off the overall event leader?
5. What am I going to post about if all this goes well?

Cheers,

Unknown

Interested to see how this works. My PVP has become nightmare central the past two weeks, so really hoping the same doesn't happen on PVE. Like the concept of this though.

unpouramor

Thank you soooooooo much!!!! I love you!

Dartmaster01

All of the issues above need to be addressed (or at least responded to) BEFORE this rolls out!!!

Esp. make sure sub end times are shown at end time selection. If not, this system is less than useless and everyone will suffer no matter where you live.

Unknown

turul wrote:

An advice for developers:

please fixate ALL PVE sub end times to selected end time, because if I choose 10PM as ideal end time, 10PM+12hrs will not be ideal.

And i cant think of any ideal end time+12hrs, due to my work schedule.

This can't be said enough. Once we have selectable end times, make sure all subs last 24 hours or 48 hours, and all start and end at the same time. No 12 hours, no 36 hours, no weird times. Just 24 or 48 hours exactly.

GrumpySmurf1002

Ben Grimm wrote:

turul wrote:

An advice for developers:

please fixate ALL PVE sub end times to selected end time, because if I choose 10PM as ideal end time, 10PM+12hrs will not be ideal.

And i cant think of any ideal end time+12hrs, due to my work schedule.

This can't be said enough. Once we have selectable end times, make sure all subs last 24 hours or 48 hours, and all start and end at the same time. No 12 hours, no 36 hours, no weird times. Just 24 or 48 hours exactly.

I assumed each sub would be selectable. In fact, I was hoping that was the case. With PvP, I've found the 7pm on Sunday to be more enjoyable a finish time than the typical 1am, but I wouldn't want to carry that all week. If you can pick each sub, it would make the game much more flexible and probably make PvE a bit less of a hassle.

DrNitroman

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Hi David,

A few questions from the resident PvE end time zealot:

1. How many slices will there be?
2. If more than 3, are there concerns over main bracket filling speed (i.e. people joining after some have already completed 2-3 clears)
3. Will all subs conform to the end time scheduling? E.g. if I pick 9pm, will they all end at 9pm?
4. I assume rubberbanding will be off the 'global' leader in that sub time slice, or will it continue to be off the overall event leader?
5. What am I going to post about if all this goes well?

Cheers,

Yep very pertinent questions and probably there will some bugs in this feature at the start
But anyways IMO it's good news, really good, thanks!

Unknown

I have one suggestion about this. I'm on Pacific Time, so I have my pick of the best end times and always have. But I've only ever made the mistake of not picking the soonest end time once, and here's why I didn't do it again: you can't even look at the event until after it starts. So when I decided Sunday 1pm would be an interesting end time, I had to wait until the next day to even find out what the prize would be.

Okay, sure, you might say I should look at the forums, but these forums are not part of the game. I didn't even find out about them until I'd been playing for a long time. I expect all pertinent information to be available in-game, so what I'm asking for is this: Open the event at the same time for everybody, but don't activate the nodes until start time. Or something. But keeping the event greyed out for people who chose a later end time is kind of crummy.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

turul wrote:

An advice for developers:

please fixate ALL PVE sub end times to selected end time, because if I choose 10PM as ideal end time, 10PM+12hrs will not be ideal.

And i cant think of any ideal end time+12hrs, due to my work schedule.

This can't be said enough. Once we have selectable end times, make sure all subs last 24 hours or 48 hours, and all start and end at the same time. No 12 hours, no 36 hours, no weird times. Just 24 or 48 hours exactly.

I assumed each sub would be selectable. In fact, I was hoping that was the case. With PvP, I've found the 7pm on Sunday to be more enjoyable a finish time than the typical 1am, but I wouldn't want to carry that all week. If you can pick each sub, it would make the game much more flexible and probably make PvE a bit less of a hassle.

That would work too, but it's not clear from the wording. They also need to make sure subs are long enough to accommodate that, though, and that they scale the availability (the unlock nodes) around a schedule that allows people to get that to work properly. There's also the potential rubber-banding catch - if people could pick any time for any sub, they could pick a lower-scoring initial bracket but then pick heavy-participation subs so that they're at a different rubber-banding rate than the people they're competing against.