I want to discuss rubber banding in pve

mohio

So we've all seen the burnout quit posts and people complaining about the grindy nature of pve. I'm going to propose that a lot of that can go away if we bring back a stronger rubber band. Now hang with me while I explain the reasoning.

The issue with strong rubber banding like we had in the past is that it really hurt those who were unable to play at the end of each sub and especially the end of the event. Now that we have time slices people should be able to pick end times where they are able to play therefore the rubber band should be fair for everyone. I'm not looking for something that will trivialize grinding non stop but missing a few refreshes or god forbid actually sleeping and not grinding nodes down before bed should not keep me (or you) from placing highly as long as you continue to put in the work.

So what do y'all think? Can we bring back some larger amount of rubber band so we don't all burn out on pve? Personally it would let me play more since I could join early knowing I don't have to grind each sub nonstop without falling out of contention.

Spoit

I never got why people endlessly whinned about it in the first place, since you could never RB past the leader (or anyone else who was dedicated to grinding) anyway

Vohnkar

Agreed, I used to like PvE back when refreshes were 8-12 hours and there was rubber banding. I'm not a top50 player, but I managed to get to top 100 relatively easy if I played everyday.

Now, with the scaling and the 2,5h resets, PvE is a pain.

Unknown

This. Definitely this.

I've missed the last couple of days of the current PVE due to life and just jumped in to work my way up only to find that's impossible.
The points for each mission are nowhere near high enough to even move me up 1 reward level let alone into anything good.

I used to hate rubber banding because of the awkward finishing times but the new selectable finish times make it perfect for bringing back the rubber band.

Unless something happens to remove the grinding nature of the game I don't see myself playing it much. I can't commit to the stupid grind that it takes to get good rewards.
The old rubber banding was good (never thought I'd say that) because if you wanted to play a lot and grind you could and would still earn points. If you wanted to play only occasionally you were still fine as long as you timed it right.

Really hoping for a change soon as I've invested too much time, and a bit of money, in this game and I'd really just like to enjoy playing it again.

Unknown

The problem with having a strong rubberband is that you might as well make every sub 12 hours because that's about the only period of time where it mattered if the rubberband was strong. Now before scaling got out of hand it might have been okay to just hit your nodes when you're bored for some minimal position manuevering plus some iso, but of course that doesn't work when your hard nodes start at 200.

At any rate if the point is to reduce grinding, once the nodes gets hard enough they do their job fine because you can't grind nodes that you can't beat, though 'hard enough' is not exactly fair due to scaling.

babinro

I think it fails to address the problems and instead asks for a way to 'meta-game' the event for maximum rewards through minimum effort. This is EXACTLY what I've done with PvE and PvP in the past (through late join pushes) but it's hardly a 'good' solution to the actual issue.

- There should be no such thing as rubberbanding.
- Nodes shouldn't have refresh timers.
- People shouldn't have to farm in the last hours of a sub to even have a shot at doing well in something that spans days.

Let people gain static amounts of points and grind the nodes when they can set aside the time. This can still be every bit as much the competition it is now without forcing people to jump through hoops.

Below is one way to go about this which has been mentioned in other threads so I'll spoiler tag it.

The Guantlet shows us that having no required refresh rate is ideal for players.
Why not simply increase the mob levels with every victory and reward points accordingly?

Example:
Simple Starting Node - Every victory is 100 points.
- First battle is level 50 goons, 2nd battle is level 100 goons, level 150, ect forever

Moderate Difficulty Starting Node - Every victory is 200 points.
- First battle is level 100 goons, 2nd battle is level 150 goons, level 200, ect forever

Hard Difficulty Starting Node - Every victory is 300 points.
- First battle is level 150 goons, 2nd battle is level 200 goons, level 250, ect forever

Every victory gives out a guaranteed reward...none of this 20 ISO stuff. Easy nods could be mostly 1* tier covers and simple boosts. Moderate could be those ** tier covers and standard tokens. Hard could be ** tier covers with 250 ISO and 500 ISO rewards.

Note: These are just example levels and they could still scale based on roster so new players have a chance. The levels I provided here would be appropriate for end gamers like myself. So a new player may see something like level 5, 10, 15, rather than 50, 100, 150.

This system would allow for various ways to deliver the overall PvE rewards. Rewards could progression based like with The Gauntlet. They could be bracketed as before. They could also percentile based where the top 5% of scorers win _____, top 15% win _____. I'm not sure which system would be best for both players and D3 but it's certainly flexible.

Note: While I think the OP's suggestion would improve the current state of things...I think it's still a band aid solution that's ultimately harmful for the game to promote.

notamutant

babinro wrote:

I think it fails to address the problems and instead asks for a way to 'meta-game' the event for maximum rewards through minimum effort. This is EXACTLY what I've done with PvE and PvP in the past (through late join pushes) but it's hardly a 'good' solution to the actual issue.

- There should be no such thing as rubberbanding.
- Nodes shouldn't have refresh timers.
- People shouldn't have to farm in the last hours of a sub to even have a shot at doing well in something that spans days.

Let people gain static amounts of points and grind the nodes when they can set aside the time. This can still be every bit as much the competition it is now without forcing people to jump through hoops.

Below is one way to go about this which has been mentioned in other threads so I'll spoiler tag it.

The Guantlet shows us that having no required refresh rate is ideal for players.
Why not simply increase the mob levels with every victory and reward points accordingly?

Example:
Simple Starting Node - Every victory is 100 points.
- First battle is level 50 goons, 2nd battle is level 100 goons, level 150, ect forever

Moderate Difficulty Starting Node - Every victory is 200 points.
- First battle is level 100 goons, 2nd battle is level 150 goons, level 200, ect forever

Hard Difficulty Starting Node - Every victory is 300 points.
- First battle is level 150 goons, 2nd battle is level 200 goons, level 250, ect forever

Every victory gives out a guaranteed reward...none of this 20 ISO stuff. Easy nods could be mostly 1* tier covers and simple boosts. Moderate could be those ** tier covers and standard tokens. Hard could be ** tier covers with 250 ISO and 500 ISO rewards.

Note: These are just example levels and they could still scale based on roster so new players have a chance. The levels I provided here would be appropriate for end gamers like myself. So a new player may see something like level 5, 10, 15, rather than 50, 100, 150.

This system would allow for various ways to deliver the overall PvE rewards. Rewards could progression based like with The Gauntlet. They could be bracketed as before. They could also percentile based where the top 5% of scorers win _____, top 15% win _____. I'm not sure which system would be best for both players and D3 but it's certainly flexible.

Note: While I think the OP's suggestion would improve the current state of things...I think it's still a band aid solution that's ultimately harmful for the game to promote.

While I agree with some of what you said, the current pve matchups kind of prevent a method like this. For example, outside of some really bad luck, I can grind a henchmen/goon node forever, no matter how much health or damage they do, since my teams are good at destroying tiles. They would have to completely eliminate certain types of nodes. Rather than doing that, they should just cap the amount of points you can get from a node during an event. Up the difficulty by scaling (sometimes unfair) to prevent everyone from being able to grind them for max points. Maybe 12 clears to get max points. You can do it all at once or over the course of the event. Cut length of PvE times from these ridiculous 7 day events down to 2-3 days each like pvp. Good players will play aware of limited health and recovery time. People that are willing to pay can get healthpacks. The biggest problem will be differentiating those at the top. For everyone above 50 in ranking, they will probably have different point totals, but it is possible every single person at top will have max points. So they would need some method to differentiate those. Perhaps add an extra bonus node with ridiculous difficulty. Or perhaps add a node you only get to try once, and have those node types available only twice an event. If you lose, those points are gone forever. Of course, then it would be a bit more random since you sometimes get a bad board. Still, having limited points that don't require playing at specific times is an obvious solution. The only thing that needs to be figured out is how to differentiate players, if the scaling isn't capable of that.

Unknown

People say you can beat certain nodes forever but if a Thug is level 395 without someone with a higher yellow power, there are a lot of ways things can go wrong even if it's just firing off a Pistol every turn no matter who you have.

At any rate nodes with only goons are rarely worth a ton of points. Anyone who can move the board isn't going to be beaten with 100% reliability once they're level 395, or 250 for that matter. Not all 250s are created equal, but even the weakest level 250 can wear you down quite a bit.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

People say you can beat certain nodes forever but if a Thug is level 395 without someone with a higher yellow power, there are a lot of ways things can go wrong even if it's just firing off a Pistol every turn no matter who you have.

At any rate nodes with only goons are rarely worth a ton of points. Anyone who can move the board isn't going to be beaten with 100% reliability once they're level 395, or 250 for that matter. Not all 250s are created equal, but even the weakest level 250 can wear you down quite a bit.

Or the muscle's ridiculous strike tiles. A couple matches once they're not, not even a full cascade, and at least once character is dead

Unknown

What's to discuss? If you try to have a life outside of the game, you will be punished. You must grind MPQ until you burn out and quit. How is it people have not gotten this memo yet?

You used to be able to not play an entire sub. Now you are forced to play the sub the whole time it's open and not just enter at the end.

You think you have a 3 hour break in between each refresh? Nope. You have 3 hours from the time you beat the first node, not the last one. So if you have real scaling, good look with that 30-40 minute clear depending on how many subs.

You think you have the full remaining time of the 3 hours after you finished the last node? You are wrong. You must also find time to play PVP.

You think the time after you have left after PVP is your break time? No. If you want ISO, you must also play the lightning rounds.

You think your time after the lightning rounds is yours? Your are correct. Enjoy your ten minute break before your next PVE optimal.

This 10 minute break brought to you by True Healing. Remember without true healing, you would not get a 10 minute break every three hours to live your life and sleep.

brisashi

I still think leaderboards need to go away altogether for pve even though D3 won't do it.

You could make elektra the top progression reward at 200k points and have all 3 be the reward for anyone that hit 250k. We already compete with each other over a modest amount of rewards in pvp. The only difference with pve is that your score doesn't go down.

FaustianDeal

Does the auto-entry into every sub of an event play any factor here?
I know one of my less creative meta-strategies was to late-enter the first sub of an event; hoping to get a main bracket with less hard-core players, and then try to join one of the earliest brackets possible in every sub after, hoping to draft on the RB in those more grindy subs. This may have been a non-strategy (bordering on a ritual, or 'lucky socks') but it worked consistently enough that I gave it credibility.

Even if that strategy doesn't work; having different competition in each sub meant the possibility of getting a different reward in each sub (which was sometimes a good thing). Auto-loading me means that the top 10 in almost every one of my subs has been the same set of grinders who are dominating my overall as well. Its one thing for an unlucky sharding to block me out of the overall, but it has also had the net effect of locking me into the same prize tier for each of my subs as well.

Also, am I the only one who still hasn't gotten used to strange to opening a sub and being listed in 692nd place when you start every sub of an event? It feels a little too Groundhog Day for my liking.

Unknown

brisashi wrote:

I still think leaderboards need to go away altogether for pve even though D3 won't do it.

You could make elektra the top progression reward at 200k points and have all 3 be the reward for anyone that hit 250k. We already compete with each other over a modest amount of rewards in pvp. The only difference with pve is that your score doesn't go down.

Completely agree with this.

Unknown

Each bracket having a 500 player will b much more better. So that we have a higher chance in getting the top rewards.
From top 100 they can change to top 75 of each bracket will have the 3* cover. If not they can just drop from top 100 to top 150 will have a 3* cover. As the game have b around for 1+ year. It more people playing now then before. Why the rewards is still unchanged. Only top 100 will get the 3* cover.

simonsez

mohio wrote:

I'm not looking for something that will trivialize grinding non stop but missing a few refreshes or god forbid actually sleeping and not grinding nodes down before bed should not keep me (or you) from placing highly as long as you continue to put in the work.

I'm in the camp that sees this as a contradiction. If you're not setting your alarm at night or grinding down nodes before bed, then you're NOT putting in the work. The people who are getting 5 elektra covers had to play like psychos in order to earn them. That was their choice, and they deserve to be rewarded for it. Rb rewards those for not playing, and that doesn't feel right.

CrookedKnight

Rubberband makes it possible to join a bracket at a not-quite-optimal time, to get some actual sleep, or to have a job, or to have your phone run out of batteries at an unlucky time, etc., and still place highly enough to get rewards worth mentioning. It's a buffer against real life happening. The trick is to make it a big enough bonus to make up for missing a few cycles but small enough to prevent the Heroic Venom Scenario where only the last 45 minutes mean anything.

_RiO_

simonsez wrote:

mohio wrote:

I'm not looking for something that will trivialize grinding non stop but missing a few refreshes or god forbid actually sleeping and not grinding nodes down before bed should not keep me (or you) from placing highly as long as you continue to put in the work.

I'm in the camp that sees this as a contradiction. If you're not setting your alarm at night or grinding down nodes before bed, then you're NOT putting in the work. The people who are getting 5 elektra covers had to play like psychos in order to earn them. That was their choice, and they deserve to be rewarded for it. Rb rewards those for not playing, and that doesn't feel right.

The only reason they had to play like psychos is because a few persons at the top of the chain decided to play like a psycho. Those persons first started doing so because they figured out game allows it. The others are simply following suit so as to not fall behind the curve and safeguard their own placement. It's a vicious cycle started by a few no-lifers that decided to grind the game to the point of ludicrousness in an effort to ensure their placement would be set in stone.

Unknown

What people don't get about rubberbanding is that the margin of victory is just as great back when rubberbanding was out in full force. People actually played less overall to get the #1 so the guy who is playing like a psycho now certainly can play at least that much if we go back to a heavy rubberband. What's going to happen is that the guy that plays like a psycho will win his bracket by 1000 points, which is a seemingly small but absolutely insurmountable lead in the heavy rubberband era. Now, most people don't know the system enough to see that it is indeed insurmountable, but 1000 points with heavy rubberband is just as insurmountable as 40K with weak rubberband. The only exception is if the guy that plays like a psycho missed the last 2 hours for whatever reason, but it's really hard to see that happening for a guy that is sacrificing sleep to right now. Sure, for the masses it might make you feel better about your performance when you see the #1 only won by 1000 points, but that's 1000 points you can never make up no matter what you did. Well, for the non top 10 range it'd be far more random in the sense that whoever gets to play in the last 2 hours is always going to have a big advantage, though again if people are playing this hardcore now then going back to a less hardcore version with heavy rubberband should mean people have no problem making sure they make the last 2 hours unless there's some physical impossibilty.

Spoit

Angela90 wrote:

Each bracket having a 500 player will b much more better. So that we have a higher chance in getting the top rewards.
From top 100 they can change to top 75 of each bracket will have the 3* cover. If not they can just drop from top 100 to top 150 will have a 3* cover. As the game have b around for 1+ year. It more people playing now then before. Why the rewards is still unchanged. Only top 100 will get the 3* cover.

They're not going to change the ratios. Hell, if they cut them in half, they'd round the reward % down. i.e. if they halved the bracket size, the top 5 reward tier would now become top 2 instead of top 3. And in that case, if you think it's a bloodbath now....

The thing is, you're not competing with the 1000 people in your bracket, you're only fighting with the 6th, 1tth, 51st, etc.

_RiO_

Spoit wrote:

The thing is, you're not competing with the 1000 people in your bracket, you're only fighting with the 6th, 1tth, 51st, etc.

True. The fact is that you're aiming for very specific 'breakpoints' in the ranking where placement shifts at a quite hectic rate compared to other parts of the ranking. Basically; you need to keep on pushing once you top one of those breakpoints, or you will be swallowed by the next guy. And since the next guy has to do the same ... we have a vicious cycle again. (You'll find that at the heart of all things MPQ, players egging other players on is very much a recurring theme.)

All in all, I think we'd find placement rewards on the whole to be far more enjoyable if we'd just be banking a number of points that we could put towards player-determined cover crafting, a bit like how Hearthstone's dust functions. The effect of the breakpoints in the rankings would be gone and you wouldn't end up with 'all-or-nothing' continuing to hang over your head for every event. As a nice side-effect; even transitioners that would not be able to score within top 100 for a 3* cover, would still walk away with some crafting points that could in the long run be put to some proper use. They won't continue to end up empty-handed and left out in the cold on a plateau in their growth curve. Slow and steady would eventually win them the race.


Sure; but what would entice people to compete and build up their rosters then? Well... you get to place better and then gain crafting points faster or outright win complete covers at the top 5 or top 10 that would (intentionally) cost you an arm and a leg to craft. You could also add some interesting economy dynamics with crafting points. E.g. you could allow the disassembling an established cover for crafting points and have those go towards crafting a cover of an essential character, but at reduced conversion efficiency in the long term that would still be a net-loss.

Really; it baffles me that we do not yet have this type of crafting mechanic in the game, when the only thing that sets MPQ apart from the collectible card game norms is the fact that MPQ uses match-3 as the vehicle for its enemy encounters instead of the usual card battles.

FaustianDeal

Phantron wrote:

What people don't get about rubberbanding is that the margin of victory is just as great back when rubberbanding was out in full force. People actually played less overall to get the #1 so the guy who is playing like a psycho now certainly can play at least that much if we go back to a heavy rubberband. What's going to happen is that the guy that plays like a psycho will win his bracket by 1000 points, which is a seemingly small but absolutely insurmountable lead in the heavy rubberband era. Now, most people don't know the system enough to see that it is indeed insurmountable, but 1000 points with heavy rubberband is just as insurmountable as 40K with weak rubberband. The only exception is if the guy that plays like a psycho missed the last 2 hours for whatever reason, but it's really hard to see that happening for a guy that is sacrificing sleep to right now.

Agree. Someone who grinds for 6 days and 8 hours of Prodigal Sun is not going to miss the last 2 hours of that event and see his Elekra covers go up in smoke. They will still show up and grind the last hour. Allowing me to pick from a variety of end times should have largely eliminated the fear of missing the end of an event. If I am not missing the last 2 hours, I have nothing to fear from rubber-banding.

Even in the old, heavily banded days, it was expected that you would have to grind out as much of the map as possible at the end to preserve placement. Then it became a question of how early you would be willing to commit to doing a scheduled clear every 2:24 to preserve placement. If you worked your schedule you couldn't be caught. the key was that just had to commit to the schedule earlier than anyone else in the bracket. We have finally entered the end-game phase of that logic, where people commit to the schedule of regular clears from the very beginning of the event.

These scheduled grinders cannot be caught, even with rubber banding turned up as high as I have ever seen it. All the banding would accomplish is a more generous distribution of progression awards, and keeping the interest level high in the general player base.

Rather than leaving people with the feeling of futility that comes from being 40k behind and only seeing 5k in total available on the whole map - that's the kind of thing that causes players to give up... a player who gives up doesn't play - and is less likely to pay as a result, that's a bad outcome for a 'for-profit' game. With rubber-banding turned up higher the player 40k back can see 39k with of points on the board and still be willing to show up to play. The player in the lead can still sign in and see 5k of points on the board; as long as he plays he's fine. His lead will diminish, but (given the way these people play) nothing behind them matters.