Upcoming PVE Mission Points Change

Unknown

Benben77,

IF a 5-Star (or even the next 4-Star which definitely know is coming) were to be released, I would not complain about an X hour refresh VS a Y hour refresh (ie. 3 hr vs 8 hr.) If I decided it was truly important to me, I would do my very best to qualify for whatever the prize is. In the hypothetical example you outlined, I think the bigger issues that the majority of players would have are:

- Why are you giving out such a valuable prize to so few per bracket?
- Why is a five star being released? I thought you wanted X transition or Y transition to be easier
- Scaling complaint
- ISO shortage complaint
- X, Y, Z complaint

Letting more people enjoy the game (making it more competitive because more people can "grind" an 8 hr refresh) might affect my in game development by not allowing me to place as highly. However, in the long term, that means more people spending money on this (where I might or might not be so inclined), more people giving feedback to the devs, more people on the forums, etc. If you really want the D3 Devs to fix whatever specific issues you have with this game, the more people able to enjoy makes it easier for them to do so.

fmftint

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. Hopefully you'll all enjoy this new PVE experience!

Let us know what you think.

The Hunt is ending tomorrow, will this "trial" extend to the next PVE event or will we be going back to 2.5-3 hour refresh?

*Edit*
I loved the 8 hour refresh and hope they are here to stay

Unknown

fmftint wrote:

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. Hopefully you'll all enjoy this new PVE experience!

Let us know what you think.

The Hunt is ending tomorrow, will this "trial" extend to the next PVE event or will we be going back to 2.5-3 hour refresh?

*Edit*
I loved the 8 hour refresh and hope they are here to stay

Same here. I think it's the first change in a while that makes me sad that it's just a trial.

GothicKratos

Third for hoping they stay.

Unknown

Another voice that would like this 8hrs refresh to stay.

Since I'm still quite new and need many covers as I can find, so I do PvE a lot.
Having longer refresh hours means a lot to me, it greatly helps me to manage health packs and allows me to do other part of the game more effectively.
I often find myself sitting with extra health packs when I finished my PvE run and have nothing else to do afterward.
This allows me to either stop playing and enjoy life or dump those packs into something else like Shield Sim or push further in PvP, or do Lightning Rounds.

By the way, I saw from somewhere in this thread somebody mentioned something about progression reward.
I do feel like something is off here since I'm already at 5x of the last progression reward and looks like I'm going to finish at 6x when it ends.
But I'm sure the developers are aware of that. I didn't say that I don't like it though..
I still remember how difficult it is to do PvE without essential character and had to wait until very later until I can use him/her from last progression reward.

El Satanno

I gotta say I am officially loving the 8-hour refresh. The most valuable thing for me is that now I have time to do other things, both in-game and out. I'm actually doing the season simulator again! Amazing! Some people may say that having longer refresh times prevent people from playing the game, but I say poppycock. I play just as much as I did before and feel better about it as well. It's nice to do a sweep of the nodes and know I don't have to worry about setting an alarm or some other crazy **** so I don't waste time when they refresh.

I may as well add that I also think progression rewards ought to be re-examined to make the top tier something one achieves closer to the end of an event. I hit the top level about 24 hours ago, and that was without access to any of the essential nodes.

Unknown

I'm all for the 8hr refresh, but hope the overlaps that destroyed the 8 hr refresh go away. The Hunt was painful.


RWG6

We Are Gr00t

Nooneelsesname

Eight hour refreshes are amazing. Love them. Please keep forever.

Professa D

But how am I supposed to crash my car or get fired from work now?

Unknown

The points change is great, thanks!
Will it b followed by an increase in iso drop values? I certainly hope double iso events will become the norm
Re: 8h refreshes, another good thing. Still, like others before me said, the overlaps in The Hunt were painful.
All in all, these changes make it look like MPQ is aiming for great things

Unknown

Echoing the love for 8h refreshes. It's made PVE so much more enjoyable.

Unknown

Professa D wrote:

But how am I supposed to crash my car or get fired from work now?

Just text and drive like the average idiot driver I see careening towards me during my work commute. Do it long enough, and you'll be plowing into a preschool in no time.

Vhailorx

After playing the whole event, 8 hours is definitely much, MUCH better than 2:24 or 3 hours.

I still do have some concerns about using the Hunt as a test event because the overlapping subs dilute the effects of the 8 hour refresh. But that may be more of a problem with the Hunt than with the new refresh.

I am also concerned about the marathon end-of-sub grinds, as it is definitely possible to grind for an hour or more at the end of each sub and still lose ground. It's exactly the sort of tediously repetitive competition that people wanted to avoid (and the reason the 8 hour refreshes are so enjoyable for players). I think that reducing the number of nodes in each "stack" would help with this problem.

But overall, I think I need to emphasize that after running almost the full event, some of my early concerns were mitigated and I definitely think 8-hours is an overall improvement to the player experience. I think it should become the new baseline.

Unknown

At the risk of forum reputation, I disagree. 8 hours refreshes were boring.

If you're scaled out of half the nodes and/or don't have an essential character, then only being able to do 2-3 nodes every 8 hours was boring. Although it was nice to have time to play other games, I was kinda in the mood for MPQ. Breaking shields in PVP just to play and lose rank seemed pointless. Reducing the amount of points in PVE by playing early seemed pointless.

The Hunt is a little bit of an anomaly in that it has so many non-essential nodes. If they kept the 8 hour refresh for other PVE's, I think PVEs would slow to a crawl. The draw of the game for myself and other transitioners now is PVE, as it's the only place we can reliably get 3* covers. I know I'm in the forum minority (I'm not hardcore), but I know I'm not alone, eg:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22544

Overall, longer refreshes for The Hunt and Simulator (eg events with a lot of nodes) are ok, but 8 hours is too long, 6 might be more fun. Please keep the rest of the events at 3 hour refreshes.

Ebolamonkey84

daibar wrote:

At the risk of forum reputation, I disagree. 8 hours refreshes were boring.

If you're scaled out of half the nodes and/or don't have an essential character, then only being able to do 2-3 nodes every 8 hours was boring. Although it was nice to have time to play other games, I was kinda in the mood for MPQ. Breaking shields in PVP just to play and lose rank seemed pointless. Reducing the amount of points in PVE by playing early seemed pointless.

The Hunt is a little bit of an anomaly in that it has so many non-essential nodes. If they kept the 8 hour refresh for other PVE's, I think PVEs would slow to a crawl. The draw of the game for myself and other transitioners now is PVE, as it's the only place we can reliably get 3* covers. I know I'm in the forum minority (I'm not hardcore), but I know I'm not alone, eg:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22544

Overall, longer refreshes for The Hunt and Simulator (eg events with a lot of nodes) are ok, but 8 hours is too long, 6 might be more fun. Please keep the rest of the events at 3 hour refreshes.

I could see this being boring for people who primarily focus on PVE, but it is great for trying to balance time between PVP and PVE. I haven't really had to decide whether I should use my health packs for one or the other.

Playing early does not actually reduce the points that much. The nodes have six stacks, so each clear takes a little over 16% of the value away. With 8 hour refreshes, you gain 2% of the value back per hour. There were a few points in this event where the nodes would be full at 3 AM for me. I played them at midnight before bed instead. In the morning, I was only a couple hundred points behind the people that had done the optimal clear.

The real difference maker in this event seems to be how many clears you are willing and able to do in the final hours of a sub. In the first Alaska sub, I started doing clears with about 4 hours to go. I did 5 full clears of the nodes and was able to take first. Others started later but cleared less nodes, so the slight point gain from waiting was offset by me playing more.

Unknown

Really liking the 8hr refresh cycle. Cuts down on the grind (even though this event was quite boring due to the recylcing of the subevents), cuts down on the required hours/day, and just much more managable to be competitive in this game without impacting my life negatively. The amount of time I put in this event would usually get me T50, but I'm able to comfortably get T10. Really enjoying it!

Unknown

Hey Everyone!

It sounds like pretty much everyone's enjoyed the 8hr refreshes in this event! That's great to hear. We think that the 8hr refresh times are a good idea, but we want to get some additional data before we change the PVE standards. Since the next PVE event will reward a brand new character (And one I'm personally very excited about) we thought it wasn't a good idea to mess with the status quo. As a result Thick as Thieves is going to run next with the standard 3hr refresh times.

We will be running another event with 8hr refresh times soon. Details will follow.

Trisul

Demiurge_Miles wrote:

Hey Everyone!

It sounds like pretty much everyone's enjoyed the 8hr refreshes in this event! That's great to hear. We think that the 8hr refresh times are a good idea, but we want to get some additional data before we change the PVE standards. Since the next PVE event will reward a brand new character (And one I'm personally very excited about) we thought it wasn't a good idea to mess with the status quo. As a result Thick as Thieves is going to run next with the standard 3hr refresh times.

We will be running another event with 8hr refresh times soon. Details will follow.

Vhailorx

daibar wrote:

At the risk of forum reputation, I disagree. 8 hours refreshes were boring.

If you're scaled out of half the nodes and/or don't have an essential character, then only being able to do 2-3 nodes every 8 hours was boring. Although it was nice to have time to play other games, I was kinda in the mood for MPQ. Breaking shields in PVP just to play and lose rank seemed pointless. Reducing the amount of points in PVE by playing early seemed pointless.

The Hunt is a little bit of an anomaly in that it has so many non-essential nodes. If they kept the 8 hour refresh for other PVE's, I think PVEs would slow to a crawl. The draw of the game for myself and other transitioners now is PVE, as it's the only place we can reliably get 3* covers. I know I'm in the forum minority (I'm not hardcore), but I know I'm not alone, eg:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22544

Overall, longer refreshes for The Hunt and Simulator (eg events with a lot of nodes) are ok, but 8 hours is too long, 6 might be more fun. Please keep the rest of the events at 3 hour refreshes.

Why would people ding your reputation for voicing a perfectly reasonable (if wrong!) opinion? Oh wait, it's the internet. . .

I do think your concern is somewhat valid in that a pve event that had only 3 active nodes at any one time would be fairly boring with an 8 hour refresh. But I think that most events have more like 10-12 nodes active at any given time (e.g., Hulk has two subs at a time, most of which have 4 basic nodes and 2 essentials). The Hunt is a bit higher than that (plus it has all though non-repeatable nodes in Florida), and the Simulator is much higher, with 20 nodes active at any given time.

I think 8 hours is perfect for the 10-12 node events IF you also play pvp. I suspect that describes most of the player base. And I would definitely choose a little bit of enforced downtime + doing well in pve to basically having to choose between life/job/sleep and grinding every 2:24 to do well in PVE.

But, given the new post from Demiurge_Miles, it looks like its back to the 3 hour grind for (yet another) new character. sigh.

Scoregasms

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

Playing early does not actually reduce the points that much. The nodes have six stacks, so each clear takes a little over 16% of the value away. With 8 hour refreshes, you gain 2% of the value back per hour. There were a few points in this event where the nodes would be full at 3 AM for me. I played them at midnight before bed instead. In the morning, I was only a couple hundred points behind the people that had done the optimal clear.

The real difference maker in this event seems to be how many clears you are willing and able to do in the final hours of a sub. In the first Alaska sub, I started doing clears with about 4 hours to go. I did 5 full clears of the nodes and was able to take first. Others started later but cleared less nodes, so the slight point gain from waiting was offset by me playing more.

Agreed, not sure how other Brackets ended up at for The Hunt (think this is still going), but I was in the first Slice and here's what I observed (general guess on my part, not saying this is actually what happened).

1-4: were the only ones who seemed to be grinding down nodes at the end of each sub (this is really only required if you want T2) as we all ended up north of 130K and would swap placement with one another constantly
5: was kinda weird, not sure, but I'm 99% sure this person ground down all the subs their first pass through and never touched it again, good enough to finish fifth overall and generally top 10 sub finishes (2*-3* Transition Player based on Roster)
6-10: Seems for the most part just did single refresh passes and maybe some light end time grinding, average score of 88K (ish)

I've placed T2 in the PVE's since Prodigal Sun, that includes the hellish grind that was Enemy of the State for Elektra and it's 3 hour refreshes... I would say compared to those, 8 hour refreshes are a HUGE improvement and I vote for them to stay.

I was not even close to being as optimal for The Hunt as I have been in other PVE's. Other than the first sub refresh at 5AM, I don't think I went back to an early morning optimal clear schedule the rest of the event. I'd do a double clear in the evening with my next refresh at 1PM the next day which was perfect. For 9PM end of subs, I'd start my final clear around 6 and grind through 4-5 times. For 9AM end of subs, I'd do it the night before (starting around 10 or 11) and leiseruly grind through 4-5 times a good 9-10 hours early.

This was good enough to finish in first and to Ebola's point, those final end sub grinds were the key. I do have a decent roster, a couple 4* at 192 fully covered and a good amount of 166's, so my scaling isn't quite as bad as maxed 270 rosters, but I do end up fighting the 395 Deadly level nodes too more often than I want to (not in this event though, thank god).

Basically, if you want T2, you still have to put in the effort (though, it's shifted more to end of sub grinding vs waking up every 2 hours), T10, normal refreshes with some extra end grinds seem good enough. Hell, to someone else's point of playing nodes early, it worked for someone in my bracket, not sure why it wouldn't in others. Yes, Essentials do suck, but I didn't have Punisher in the Hulk event and I still finished in 2nd place with 116K points (not sure if I just lucked into a bracket or not to allow that, but still seems possible with extra work).

Anyway, I hope the 8 hour refreshes are here to stay, though I'd probably be OK with 6 hours too.