8 hour refresh vs 3 hour Edit Hope they DO NOT do this

slidecage

I guess you do see a major different between the two. Now i did not keep track of the last pve scores that close but i think they were a lot closer. right now in my bracket

the 5th seed over the 6 seed is like 15,000 points with less then 2 hours left in the entire event
The 10th see is 14,000 over my 12th rank seed with 2 hours left in the event.

now i can see why they may want 3 hour refresh since it will keep many more people off their servers at the end of the event ( i mean even if you had 8 hours theres no way your going to make up a 15k difference to move into the new reward brackets so less people will be playing meaning less people pulling on their servers, then again this also means less people willing to buy extra health packs to make a MAJOR FINAL RUN IN THE FINAL HOURS so if you think the company would want easy money they would think about pushing it back to 8 hours so the final few hours people would buy buying health packs to try to snipe one another

should of wrote down the scores in the last PVE (what was 8 hour) and see how big a different it was


Just wondering different brackets differents in scores between say rank 5th to 6th and rank 10th to 11th.

Sort of shocked its this big of spreads

my bracket (with 2 hours left)
1 182k
5 164k (18k spread)
6. 158k (6k spread)
10 140k
11 138k (so not that big)
14 128k (me) so 12k from 14 to 10th

instead of trying to help me team there is really no reason to play or grind in the final 3 hours (mostly the lead trying to get into the top 10 was over 10k in the final 24 hours so there was no hope to make it to top 10 but played just to stay in top 50


ALSO would love to be able to see ALL SCORES in an event not just who is 5 levels higher and below you

dkffiv

If everyone is roughly the same score whoever does the grind down the best at the end wins. Therefore they would sell more health packs since the final 2 hour frantic push is the most important. In previous events my lead was large enough that I didn't need to play or boost that hard in the final hours.

Unknown

i well come 8hrs now as...i have my live back.

play one or two at nigh is better than keep busy " every" night

slidecage

dkffiv wrote:

If everyone is roughly the same score whoever does the grind down the best at the end wins. Therefore they would sell more health packs since the final 2 hour frantic push is the most important. In previous events my lead was large enough that I didn't need to play or boost that hard in the final hours.

and that is why i think they did the 8 hour. It showed that many did not even have to play the last 8 hours to remain in the top 10. Now your going to have to spend tons of cash to do it. Whoever had the bigger roaster or money will just win just like the PVP is now the PVE will become like that within the next 6 months.

Unknown

Pretty sure the closer score differential and any other difference you might see from the 8h test vs the last 3h PvE has everything to do with Starlord as rewards vs L.Thor (a pretty old character that most people had maxed) and nothing to do with actual refresh rate difference.

dkffiv

Lerysh wrote:

Pretty sure the closer score differential and any other difference you might see from the 8h test vs the last 3h PvE has everything to do with Starlord as rewards vs L.Thor (a pretty old character that most people had maxed) and nothing to do with actual refresh rate difference.

8 hour refresh rates will naturally have closer scores. Players who do every rotation vs. doing a double/triple grind before sleep with the current 2h24m or 3h rotations gain a 20%/60% of a rotation advantage, the only way separation will occur now is based on how well the grind down goes.

NorthernPolarity

slidecage wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

If everyone is roughly the same score whoever does the grind down the best at the end wins. Therefore they would sell more health packs since the final 2 hour frantic push is the most important. In previous events my lead was large enough that I didn't need to play or boost that hard in the final hours.

and that is why i think they did the 8 hour. It showed that many did not even have to play the last 8 hours to remain in the top 10. Now your going to have to spend tons of cash to do it. Whoever had the bigger roaster or money will just win just like the PVP is now the PVE will become like that within the next 6 months.

I thought having a deeper roster leading to more rewards was a good thing.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Pretty sure the closer score differential and any other difference you might see from the 8h test vs the last 3h PvE has everything to do with Starlord as rewards vs L.Thor (a pretty old character that most people had maxed) and nothing to do with actual refresh rate difference.

8 hour refresh rates will naturally have closer scores. Players who do every rotation vs. doing a double/triple grind before sleep with the current 2h24m or 3h rotations gain a 20%/60% of a rotation advantage, the only way separation will occur now is based on how well the grind down goes.

Most people's play availability isn't going to divide perfectly into 8 hour chunks around perfect end times, so you're going to see a lot of differentiation from people doing clears at non-optimal times. I"ll probably start the new PVE this evening, but do a second clear with something like 4 hours left on the timer, go to bed, and then do another clear before work, which will also probably be with 3-4 hours left on the timer, because I lose fewer points that way, unless I think I"ll be free to play at lunch (which is always iffy).

People who can play whenever they want will clump, but they did before, too. And there aren't that many of them.

dkffiv

Ben Grimm wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Pretty sure the closer score differential and any other difference you might see from the 8h test vs the last 3h PvE has everything to do with Starlord as rewards vs L.Thor (a pretty old character that most people had maxed) and nothing to do with actual refresh rate difference.

8 hour refresh rates will naturally have closer scores. Players who do every rotation vs. doing a double/triple grind before sleep with the current 2h24m or 3h rotations gain a 20%/60% of a rotation advantage, the only way separation will occur now is based on how well the grind down goes.

Most people's play availability isn't going to divide perfectly into 8 hour chunks around perfect end times, so you're going to see a lot of differentiation from people doing clears at non-optimal times. I"ll probably start the new PVE this evening, but do a second clear with something like 4 hours left on the timer, go to bed, and then do another clear before work, which will also probably be with 3-4 hours left on the timer, because I lose fewer points that way, unless I think I"ll be free to play at lunch (which is always iffy).

People who can play whenever they want will clump, but they did before, too. And there aren't that many of them.

True but I think the top 5 or more will be a lot closer (maybe even top 20). Unless the clears start taking 1 hr+ (like in Simulator), if its an easy 15-20m clear window the main separation starts occurring when you have people who sleep vs. don't which for the most part won't matter as much. In the beginning of the event its usually minimal separation but once its gone on for a few days people start seeing they have no shot at the top x and start playing less. If everyone's bunched then that give up point will probably occur after a sub ends and people see where they fall during the grind down.

Unknown

I've been thinking about optimum play style for the 8 hour refresh and it makes sense to me that the final 2 hour grind should now be an 8 hour grind instead. Once you've cleared a sub within the final 8 hours it will never be full points again so the slight differential between waiting until 2 hours left (let's say 10 to 15 percent) will be offset by the fact that you might run out of time and health packs before you can grind all the nodes down. Shouldn't this make starting the grind with a full 8 hours left a better strategy? Finish all you can and then wait 2 to 3 hours to refill health packs and go again. Am I wrong on this?

Scoregasms

I would lean towards the side that it's going to be pretty similar and that it's not going to be that much different in final scoring from 8 hours to 3 hours based on The Hunt results, but as it's been stated, it was for a popular vaulted character that a lot of folks already had (not for me though), so that probably did skew the results. I'm sure if it was for a 4*, it'd be much closer, but I think that's probably going to be the same in either format.

Here's the link to my post: viewtopic.php?p=285644#p285644

Quoted here for convenience:

Scoregasms wrote:

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.

There was a good spread in points in the Top 10 and Top 4 were well above Bottom 4 by a significant margin (50K+), which is how it shakes down typically. Once folks make the decision to not go for a top reward, play is gonna switch to maintain mode versus climb. I won this bracket by a good margin without having to do a final crazy end of sub grind like I normally do in 2.5/3 hour refresh cycles. Play was even sub-optimal in comparison (again, maybe due to the Rewards for this one). To those who say this goes to the one who buys the most health packs, I question how they do 3 hour refresh final grinds, I definitely bought more health packs during TaT (I placed 1st in my bracket) then I did for The Hunt since I had a limited window to do the grind (which was once and that was really so I could PVP afterwards).

8 Hour timers gives you the option to do a final grind at a much nicer pace to allow for health pack regeneration, 3 hours are more difficult IMO. Grinders are gonna grind regardless of format and they probably aren't going to like this since missing a refresh will be less likely by most folks (given Ben's point above, you can just do it early and not lose too many points).

To your point, the first few days of an event are going to be bonkers with placement jumping around like crazy, but provided you are fairly regular with your refreshes, it should all normalize by the final sub.

Note, I did not see folks bunched together like many believe with the same score any more in 8 hours than I did in 3 hours other than at the very beginning of the first sub.

JVReal

With 8 hour refreshes, they need more stuff to do in the game.

first clear at noon... play PVP to 300 points... twiddle thumbs until the next time I can play with full refresh. Do 2nd clear, click over to PVP... see a bunch of people I can't beat, read some Alliance chat that doesn't always work (still)... twiddle thumbs until bed time, do another clear at 10 (with 6 hours left on refresh pushing it to 14 hours for full refresh) go to sleep. Still have 6 hours left in my refresh time when I wake up, wait until noon to do a clear with full points, twiddle thumbs, read some alliance chat, look at other games to download and play while waiting another 8 hours.

Do a clear if I'm still playing the game and haven't been absorbed into a different game that actually wants me to play...

rednailz

JVReal wrote:

With 8 hour refreshes, they need more stuff to do in the game.

first clear at noon... play PVP to 300 points... twiddle thumbs until the next time I can play with full refresh. Do 2nd clear, click over to PVP... see a bunch of people I can't beat, read some Alliance chat that doesn't always work (still)... twiddle thumbs until bed time, do another clear at 10 (with 6 hours left on refresh pushing it to 14 hours for full refresh) go to sleep. Still have 6 hours left in my refresh time when I wake up, wait until noon to do a clear with full points, twiddle thumbs, read some alliance chat, look at other games to download and play while waiting another 8 hours.

Do a clear if I'm still playing the game and haven't been absorbed into a different game that actually wants me to play...

sounds like you need another hobby and to take a bit of a break from the game. if pvp, pve, lightning round, simulator, and alliance chat aren't keeping you busy enough, you must be doing MPQ in your sleep. I don't judge, but I don't think the intent of this game was to be a MMO or something where you can play for 16 - 20 hours straight. It's a match 3 game. Perhaps the daily pve will help.

Phaserhawk

8hr is only going to hurt the grinders, everyone else will have more competition. For example, lets say you have 1000 in your group and 10 of them are grinders.

In the 3hr model the grinders will lock everyone out of the top 10 and fight amongs themselvs.

In the 8hr model the grinders will have less opportunity to lock eveyone out so the more casual player (90%) can at least have a shot at top 10 possibly if they are willing to grind those last few hours hard. If not, they will place roughly where they did before and had to do a lot less to get it.

The only way this is worse, is if all of a sudden the 90% has a large portion decide to push hard in events and fight for those prizes. Then if you played relaxed and got top 100 before and now people that normally placed 500 to 101 go crazy on you then you may have to play more than you normally would have in the 3hr model in order to keep that top 100 spot, but...if everyone still plays the same way, it's the grinders that will be having to really fight for the top prizes as they will have more competition, so whil there might be more volitility in the the top 100, you in theory could do less playing for the same result as the 3hr, but you may be more tempted to try to place high but that is of your own choosing.

dkffiv

JVReal wrote:

With 8 hour refreshes, they need more stuff to do in the game.

first clear at noon... play PVP to 300 points... twiddle thumbs until the next time I can play with full refresh. Do 2nd clear, click over to PVP... see a bunch of people I can't beat, read some Alliance chat that doesn't always work (still)... twiddle thumbs until bed time, do another clear at 10 (with 6 hours left on refresh pushing it to 14 hours for full refresh) go to sleep. Still have 6 hours left in my refresh time when I wake up, wait until noon to do a clear with full points, twiddle thumbs, read some alliance chat, look at other games to download and play while waiting another 8 hours.

Do a clear if I'm still playing the game and haven't been absorbed into a different game that actually wants me to play...

You must be a new player. 8 hours are fantastic for veterans as its a very delicate balance of rationing health kits as best as possible. PvE with 2h24m rotations was brutal, that's not even enough time to fully regenerate 5 health kits (which lead to a ton of hate toward the Heroic format). When I go into a final PvE sub grind down or a PvP push I want all 5 kits available. Before sharding I had to try to make blocks of time where this could occur (and boost the hell out of matches I normally wouldn't have just to avoid taking damage). With this I can PvE, wait 3 hours, PvP, wait 5 hours and repeat. Also you're allowed to sleep.

Unknown

I edited with just one thumb.

JVReal

rednailz wrote:

JVReal wrote:

With 8 hour refreshes, they need more stuff to do in the game.

first clear at noon... play PVP to 300 points... twiddle thumbs until the next time I can play with full refresh. Do 2nd clear, click over to PVP... see a bunch of people I can't beat, read some Alliance chat that doesn't always work (still)... twiddle thumbs until bed time, do another clear at 10 (with 6 hours left on refresh pushing it to 14 hours for full refresh) go to sleep. Still have 6 hours left in my refresh time when I wake up, wait until noon to do a clear with full points, twiddle thumbs, read some alliance chat, look at other games to download and play while waiting another 8 hours.

Do a clear if I'm still playing the game and haven't been absorbed into a different game that actually wants me to play...

sounds like you need another hobby and to take a bit of a break from the game. if pvp, pve, lightning round, simulator, and alliance chat aren't keeping you busy enough, you must be doing MPQ in your sleep. I don't judge, but I don't think the intent of this game was to be a MMO or something where you can play for 16 - 20 hours straight. It's a match 3 game. Perhaps the daily pve will help.

Not sure where you got that from my post, I don't play for 16-20 hours straight. I already told you PVP I can only scratch 300, maybe push to 400... in a 3 day event that takes a whole hour to accomplish maybe. Lightning rounds only last an hour so I'm not on every hour and usually occur during my workday so I many times never see them to play them, plus being a 2* transitioner I don't place well in any event. Simulator I play for about 20 mins between PVP's every few days because you can only go so far before points are **** and you have to wait for a bigger pool to build up, I seldom get past 800 points there, and that stretches the entire season. That only leaves PVE, and that now has 8 hour refreshes.

As was stated in a different thread, there isn't enough content that is suitable for me as a 2* transitioning player with 35 roster spots with only my 2* guys as playable to be able to get any kind of fun/rewards to fill that 8 hour gap. PVE was the only thing that brought me joy in the game, now I can only enjoy it every 8 hours.

I do hope daily PVE comes out soon, and hopefully it gives me something to do between refreshes. If I had a 3* roster that allowed me to be competitive and enjoy PVP (despite pvp still being broken, you shouldn't lose more points than you can earn), lightning rounds and Simulator, I would agree with you that 8 hour refreshes would allow me to focus more on those, though still feel boring to me.

8 hours was pushed out too early and too fast. Where was the 4 hour test? That would have been nice. Instead we got 3 hour grind fest, or 8 hour snooze fest. Pick your better of two evils and people picked 8 instead of a balance in between.

slidecage

dkffiv wrote:

JVReal wrote:

With 8 hour refreshes, they need more stuff to do in the game.

first clear at noon... play PVP to 300 points... twiddle thumbs until the next time I can play with full refresh. Do 2nd clear, click over to PVP... see a bunch of people I can't beat, read some Alliance chat that doesn't always work (still)... twiddle thumbs until bed time, do another clear at 10 (with 6 hours left on refresh pushing it to 14 hours for full refresh) go to sleep. Still have 6 hours left in my refresh time when I wake up, wait until noon to do a clear with full points, twiddle thumbs, read some alliance chat, look at other games to download and play while waiting another 8 hours.

Do a clear if I'm still playing the game and haven't been absorbed into a different game that actually wants me to play...

You must be a new player. 8 hours are fantastic for veterans as its a very delicate balance of rationing health kits as best as possible. PvE with 2h24m rotations was brutal, that's not even enough time to fully regenerate 5 health kits (which lead to a ton of hate toward the Heroic format). When I go into a final PvE sub grind down or a PvP push I want all 5 kits available. Before sharding I had to try to make blocks of time where this could occur (and boost the hell out of matches I normally wouldn't have just to avoid taking damage). With this I can PvE, wait 3 hours, PvP, wait 5 hours and repeat. Also you're allowed to sleep.

proves my points. the 8 hour only helps the vets out, newbies with lower ranked people and less slots are going to get killed and since they admitted most of the people just joined in the last 6 months less see how fast the PVE Dies off. Newbies cant get that far in PVP and now they are taking the PVEs away so nothing to play so why even play

Unknown

Can anyone tell me why my pve refresh time is in excess of 14 HRS???!?!?!?!

slidecage

wanted to add to this topic without making a new one.

I really REALLY hope they do not do this but if they really wanted the cash They could do this.


hey everyone we know how much people love the new 8 hour refresh and we also know the grinders loved the 3 hours so guess what we are going to make the best of both worlds, thats right for just a mere XXXX HP you can speed up that refresh , yes the refresh will remain at a flat 8 hours but if you want to play me you can speed up your refresh time


Would be a quick way for them to earn $$$



If you dont wait for it to reset to 0 it adds 8 hours on to whatever time you had remaning so if you had 3 hours and played you now have a refresh of 11 hours , but i think you already knew that and might be a glitch

Unknown

Confuss wrote:

Can anyone tell me why my pve refresh time is in excess of 14 HRS???!?!?!?!

Did you play nodes more than once? The refresh times stack.