Upcoming PVE Mission Points Change

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Comments

  • Moon Roach
    Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
    Wow. Is there nothing Jamie Madrox can't do?
  • Nellobee
    Nellobee Posts: 457 Mover and Shaker
    Moon Roach wrote:
    Wow. Is there nothing Jamie Madrox can't do?

    I hear Jamie Madrox can make a sandwich so big no one can eat it....and then he eats it anyway.
  • thanos8587
    thanos8587 Posts: 653
    final hour sub grindfests ftw!!
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    thanos8587 wrote:
    final hour sub grindfests ftw!!

    This already happens currently. This change just means it will be ever more critical to make sure you don't miss out on that final hour if you want to maintain your position.
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mr Stoat wrote:
    thanos8587 wrote:
    final hour sub grindfests ftw!!

    This already happens currently. This change just means it will be ever more critical to make sure you don't miss out on that final hour if you want to maintain your position.
    Which is where time slices come in, which - coupled with 24/48 subs - lets everyone pick an end time where they can play.
    Problem solved.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    Adam12 wrote:
    You can still play the game as much as you like. There's nothing stopping you from continuing to play without waiting 8 hours between refreshes.
    Are you being disingenuous, or letting us know you have no idea how to properly play PvE?
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    even if two players can clear all of it in 8 hours the amount of time needed is going to be give the faster player a decisive advantage.
    Oh good, now it's just like PvP... icon_rolleyes.gif
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mr Stoat wrote:
    thanos8587 wrote:
    final hour sub grindfests ftw!!

    This already happens currently. This change just means it will be ever more critical to make sure you don't miss out on that final hour if you want to maintain your position.
    Dare I say it makes it even more critical to grind even deeper than before, and not skip nodes you would have in the past because they're too damaging?
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Bowgentle wrote:
    Mr Stoat wrote:
    thanos8587 wrote:
    final hour sub grindfests ftw!!

    This already happens currently. This change just means it will be ever more critical to make sure you don't miss out on that final hour if you want to maintain your position.
    Which is where time slices come in, which - coupled with 24/48 subs - lets everyone pick an end time where they can play.
    Problem solved.

    Exactly. I think these two changes coupled together are really a good thing. I've been a pve grinding madman in the past especially when new characters have been on the line, but generally the pve experience has been horrible (I'm looking at you thoress pve). I appreciate that brackets may be more competitive now but I'll be honestly glad to see the back of having to get up every 2hrs to grind some nodes for 20iso just to stay in contention for covers.
  • thanos8587
    thanos8587 Posts: 653
    Mr Stoat wrote:
    Bowgentle wrote:
    Mr Stoat wrote:
    thanos8587 wrote:
    final hour sub grindfests ftw!!

    This already happens currently. This change just means it will be ever more critical to make sure you don't miss out on that final hour if you want to maintain your position.
    Which is where time slices come in, which - coupled with 24/48 subs - lets everyone pick an end time where they can play.
    Problem solved.

    Exactly. I think these two changes coupled together are really a good thing. I've been a pve grinding madman in the past especially when new characters have been on the line, but generally the pve experience has been horrible (I'm looking at you thoress pve). I appreciate that brackets may be more competitive now but I'll be honestly glad to see the back of having to get up every 2hrs to grind some nodes for 20iso just to stay in contention for covers.

    im just trying to imagine a 24 hour sub:

    one clear at hour zero
    one clear at hour eight
    one clear at hour sixteen
    grind like mad at hour 23

    im almost imagining that the points gathered in the last hour could exceed the points from the first three clears combined meaning some crazy leaderboard action since everyone will likely have hit their first three clears and be in the same relative point position going into the final hour. let the insanity begin!!!
  • Unknown
    Unknown ADMINISTRATORS
    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.

    We've actually upped the number of clears it takes to grind a node down to 1 point. For this upcoming PVE it's going to take 6 clears to grind a node down to 1. This has two major benefits: It softens the penalty for players who can't or don't play "maximally." And it should help keep top players from all having the same score by letting them get a non-trivial amount of points towards the end of a sub.

    We think that 8 hours is a good refresh time, but yes, if it doesn't work out, we're definitely interested in trying other options (including 4hrs)
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:
    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.

    We've actually upped the number of clears it takes to grind a node down to 1 point. For this upcoming PVE it's going to take 6 clears to grind a node down to 1. This has two major benefits: It softens the penalty for players who can't or don't play "maximally." And it should help keep top players from all having the same score by letting them get a non-trivial amount of points towards the end of a sub.

    We think that 8 hours is a good refresh time, but yes, if it doesn't work out, we're definitely interested in trying other options (including 4hrs)

    Hi, Miles. I can't speak for everybody, but I can say that for myself I truly appreciate this kind of information. A lot of the time when we open up a new event, I (we) have to play a guessing game on refresh times, amount of clears it takes to reduce a node and other information along those lines. We (I) really, really like this kind of info, so I (We!) can judge how we want to play that particular event.
    So, thank you. The time you've taken to update us on this is pleasing to me (us?)

    PS: Sorry about the parentheses overload - I (we? no...just I) felt like using extra punctuation today.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:
    For this upcoming PVE it's going to take 6 clears to grind a node down to 1. it should help keep top players from all having the same score by letting them get a non-trivial amount of points towards the end of a sub.
    I can't help but wonder what the intended strategy is for grinding down lv395 nodes a dozen+ times during the final grind.
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    simonsez wrote:
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:
    For this upcoming PVE it's going to take 6 clears to grind a node down to 1. it should help keep top players from all having the same score by letting them get a non-trivial amount of points towards the end of a sub.
    I can't help but wonder what the intended strategy is for grinding down lv395 nodes a dozen+ times during the final grind.
    To seperate the guys who can do that from the ones that can't, to create point differences to avoid tiebreakers?
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    thanos8587 wrote:


    im just trying to imagine a 24 hour sub:

    one clear at hour zero
    one clear at hour eight
    one clear at hour sixteen
    grind like mad at hour 23

    im almost imagining that the points gathered in the last hour could exceed the points from the first three clears combined meaning some crazy leaderboard action since everyone will likely have hit their first three clears and be in the same relative point position going into the final hour. let the insanity begin!!!

    Sure, if you only needed 5 health packs to grind down the nodes after they're scaled to 395, this would be the case.
  • SnowcaTT
    SnowcaTT Posts: 3,487 Chairperson of the Boards
    Bowgentle wrote:
    simonsez wrote:
    Demiurge_Miles wrote:
    For this upcoming PVE it's going to take 6 clears to grind a node down to 1. it should help keep top players from all having the same score by letting them get a non-trivial amount of points towards the end of a sub.
    I can't help but wonder what the intended strategy is for grinding down lv395 nodes a dozen+ times during the final grind.
    To seperate the guys who can do that from the ones that can't, to create point differences to avoid tiebreakers?

    That's just it. I've seen the argument that there won't be any differentiation between scores now. Sure there will be, some hit all 9 nodes, those that can't hit 8, others hit 7, others skip the hard ones and only hit 6.

    x 3 times a day x # of days + end grind-down of nodes: whoever can clear all the nodes every time will still be at the top, whoever can clear most of the nodes every time will be slightly lower, and whoever grinds some of the nodes but can't clear them all still has a chance to end in a decent position of anyone who can't clear every time. It's this third category who will be hit most - all of the sudden the grinders with lesser rosters won't be able to beat out the slightly less grindy with much better rosters.

    Is that a big problem? This seems like more of a solution - unless you were one of those that was winning due to grind over winning due to roster. In which case: roster will get better and you'll be able to do better - that's the game in a nutshell right? Of course this all assumes scaling is equivalent for all, if 1* transitioning to 2* teams flood the leader boards I'm sure there would be a giant outcry.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Any chance of trying out 4 hours in the PVE after? I'd be curious which one people prefer in practice, and those seem like the two most popular options.
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    Is there going to be any change in node rewards? On an 8 hour cycle it will be nearly impossible to get 4/4 rewards if you only play "full" nodes
  • Ebolamonkey84
    Ebolamonkey84 Posts: 509 Critical Contributor
    fmftint wrote:
    Is there going to be any change in node rewards? On an 8 hour cycle it will be nearly impossible to get 4/4 rewards if you only play "full" nodes

    If you only play full nodes it is also highly unlikely that you will finish near the top. The end of sub grind will be the main thing that determines placement.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Fantastic! Thanks for listening to our concerns! Getting up in the middle of the night to get a good placement isn't my idea of fun. Also, thank you for not introducing a new character during this experiment. Hooray!!

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