Upcoming PVE Mission Points Change

Unknown
Unknown ADMINISTRATORS
edited February 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
Hey All,

We've been experimenting recently with how long it should take for full mission node points to refresh in a PVE event. As I'm sure some of you have noticed, we've already tried a conservative change of 2.5hr -> 3hr refresh times. When we tried this change we were on the lookout for a few issues:
    Players clustering at the top with the same score Creating additional grinding, especially for those players Rubber banding becoming more erratic towards the end of an event

We didn't see any of those issues and now we want to try something a little bit bigger.

So I'm here to announce that our PVE event, The Hunt is going to be running starting on Tuesday 1/20/15 with 8hr refresh times for missions.

This is a big change! But we think it will really help everyone's enjoyment of our PVE events.

Why 8hrs? Well there's a few reasons. We think 8hrs has a good natural rhythm to it, allowing for several satisfying play sessions throughout the day. On top of that, more than 50% of players voted for 8+hrs in this poll from a month ago: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20373

Also, we're worried about people feeling like they need to wake up in the middle of the night to play our game. Seriously, we're super happy that you're committed to the game, but please don't ruin your sleep schedule. Sleep is good for you.

This change is only a trial and we'll be collecting data to decide whether it should become a permanent change, as a result we've lined it up so that we're not testing this out on an event that rewards a new character. Hopefully you'll all enjoy this new PVE experience!

Let us know what you think.
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Comments

  • lukewin
    lukewin Posts: 1,356 Chairperson of the Boards
    I look forward to this change.
  • Scoregasms
    Scoregasms Posts: 373
    Love this change! Hooray!! Hopefully this is received well by the masses.
  • jackstar0
    jackstar0 Posts: 1,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    Applaud this experiment.

    Hope the data supports it.
  • rixmith
    rixmith Posts: 707 Critical Contributor
    Awesome! Thanks for listening to our concerns and ideas! I look forward to trying it out.
  • Kiera13
    Kiera13 Posts: 46 Just Dropped In
    This sounds awesome. Thanks especially for testing this when a new character isn't the prize. I appreciate it. icon_e_biggrin.gif
  • stochasticism
    stochasticism Posts: 1,181 Chairperson of the Boards
    This sounds fantastic. Hope the data supports this change. Or if it doesn't that you consider something less drastic like 4hr refreshes.
  • Trisul
    Trisul Posts: 887 Critical Contributor
    Awesome, less grinding overall!

    I assume that point values overall are going to rise for each node to compensate. What's interesting is that it makes the timing of entering an event, and the last hour of each subevent that much more important.
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:
    On top of that, more than 50% of players voted for 8+hrs in this poll from a month ago: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20373
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:
    This change is only a trial and we'll be collecting data to decide whether it should become a permanent change, as a result we've lined it up so that we're not testing this out on an event that rewards a new character.

    I see you have your bases covered with regards to showing that you are listening to the forumers. Nice work!
  • AxeVirtuoso
    AxeVirtuoso Posts: 34
    Awesome. Very welcome this change.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    I especially liked this part
    Also, we're worried about people feeling like they need to wake up in the middle of the night to play our game. Seriously, we're super happy that you're committed to the game, but please don't ruin your sleep schedule. Sleep is good for you.

    icon_e_biggrin.gificon_e_biggrin.gificon_e_biggrin.gif
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    what is the point decay going to be like? how will this interact with progression rewards?
  • Unknown
    Unknown ADMINISTRATORS
    fmftint wrote:
    what is the point decay going to be like? how will this interact with progression rewards?

    The points per mission will look the same, but will now take 8 hours to refresh fully (instead of 2.5h). We've tuned the progression rewards for this event to take this into account.
  • Kiera13
    Kiera13 Posts: 46 Just Dropped In
    Any chance you can tell us what character the prize will be? Please?
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    Kudos for doing the right thing - didn't see that one coming.

    Thanks for listening icon_e_smile.gif
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Some more thoughts:
    1. Does this mean that 3 clears will result in reducing a node's point value down to 1? I could see this being an issue since a big differentiator for the top 10 is who can grind the final nodes most efficiently, and 5 clears makes it so that there is plenty of room for people to pull ahead by doing 5 full clears. 3 full clears is significantly easier, and might result in too much point bunching: keeping it at 5 clears by making it take 1+ days instead of 24 hours to refresh would probably solve this problem.
    2. I'm also worried that an 8 hour clear time will result in issues that you've previously mentioned. If this doesn't work out, could you also test 4 hr refresh times? I think that would be a good compromise between making the PvEs too easy to hit optimally (which will probably be the result of this 8 hour test), and the 3 hour times that simply require way too much time to grind.
  • turul
    turul Posts: 1,622 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited January 2015
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:



    Also, we're worried about people feeling like they need to wake up in the middle of the night to play our game. Seriously, we're super happy that you're committed to the game, but please don't ruin your sleep schedule. Sleep is good for you.

    This change is only a trial and we'll be collecting data to decide whether it should become a permanent change, as a result we've lined it up so that we're not testing this out on an event that rewards a new character. Hopefully you'll all enjoy this new PVE experience!

    Let us know what you think.

    To let us sleep and have a job at the same time, please do the same to PVP - get rid of cooldowns - it increases the time interval to rank well too much.

    New PVE:
    - Please do Enemy of the State instead of The Hunt, and pls Doom/Loki purple as progression reward icon_e_smile.gif
    a.k.a Army of Squirrels vs Army of Ninjas
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    4 hours would have done fine but 8 is certainly better than 3!
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    NorthernPolarity wrote:
    Some more thoughts:
    1. Does this mean that 3 clears will result in reducing a node's point value down to 1? I could see this being an issue since a big differentiator for the top 10 is who can grind the final nodes most efficiently, and 5 clears makes it so that there is plenty of room for people to pull ahead by doing 5 full clears. 3 full clears is significantly easier, and might result in too much point bunching: keeping it at 5 clears by making it take 1+ days instead of 24 hours to refresh would probably solve this problem.
    2. I'm also worried that an 8 hour clear time will result in issues that you've previously mentioned. If this doesn't work out, could you also test 4 hr refresh times? I think that would be a good compromise between making the PvEs too easy to hit optimally (which will probably be the result of this 8 hour test), and the 3 hour times that simply require way too much time to grind.


    Good thoughts. 8hrs may be a bit too far apart. Especially when you take into account the length of some subs. A 12hr sub, for example, is only going to have enough time for one full point pass, which means it would proably turn into a grindfest after the first passthrough.

    I agree that 4 may be the "happy place" in regards to refresh, since it cuts evenly into all the sub timeframes we typically see and would allow for more than one full point passthrough per sub.

    That being said, depending on the adjustments made to Prog rewards, it may not be as much of an issue once it gets implemented.
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    What about scaling? Will I clear one rotation then come back to unplayable nodes 8 hours later?
  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    Another random thought: back in the day, the devs decided to try a new reward structure for Heroic Oscorp where you could earn 2 of the newly released 3* covers purely through progression awards, and the last cover through placement awards. That PvE ended up being the worst PvE ever released in the history of the game for other reasons (broken scaling, etc), but we never saw any more experiments regarding this award distribution, presumably because of how no one played the event because everything else was completely broken. So if this 8 hour thing doesn't work out, at least try out the 4 hour one before calling it quits because of metrics: you know that 2->3 hours was fine, and I'm pretty sure that 3->4 hours will be as well.

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