Enemy of the State (July09th-July16th, 2015) Bracket Size___

SnowcaTT

Ben Grimm wrote:

I ended up going to bed about an hour before the last bracket opened and have no regrets about that. I've now missed the launch PVEs of two of the last three new characters - though I did get Carnage on the re-run - and really don't mind. 4* tournaments are too miserable to be worth losing sleep over.

On the plus side, I suspect, by the time the next character launches, I'll have dropped into the newbie brackets. The Thing launch PVE is the only PVE I've played since the Carnage re-run, and that was the only one I had played in since the one where Bullseye was a progression award. And we're not getting any new characters for at least three weeks.

This.

I don't regret NOT grinding for 7 days, just not worth it for (most likely) one personal cover.

I -ALMOST- regret staying up and grinding from 10pm-midnight my time. Sure it was only two hours - but at this point the loss of sleep is really probably not worth one 4* cover.

Now I've achieved Ant/Thing/PX/Carnage by playing less than 12 hours in their respective events. I don't mind waiting until the end - but maybe the Devs should eliminate this "loophole"....

TxMoose

i think they're doing everything they can to minimize the possibility.

mal - one thing you got is several hundred hp and loads of iso. good job getting as far as you got.

i wasn't able to stay up late enough - if it was 12 i would've done it, but 2am is tough for an old fart when i have work the next day.

jackstar0

I did the grind for less than an hour before going to sleep and still managed t100, so I feel like that was a win.

I really had no interest in grinding away for a full 7 days for Ant-Man. If it had been Thing, I would have done it for sure, but Ant-Man doesn't do much for me, so he wasn't worth the extra effort. The downside is that I didn't get all that iso and rewards along the way, but I did get some work done and got sleep more regularly, so I think that paid off.

I think the real thing is that there should be personal progressions that include earning all covers, and then competitive alliance rewards for those that push harder and those could include maybe a little more. But taking away the 999 against 1 would be a change that would work for me. More Gauntlet-style and less of this...

SnagglePuss

Malcrof wrote:

I just missed t10 in the last minutes after 7 hardcore days of grinding.... and seeing people join last minute getting it with 1/6th the points i had.. kinda makes me a little angry.. we need something to remedy this, i feel so shorted now.

Good news is, 7 days of grinding, and getting all rewards in all nodes, i have 2 new 166's, yay for iso.

Tokens, HP and a hell of a lot of ISO are the positives. You can pull at least 50k ISO which really accelerates lvl.

I can sympathize, I just can't take the long grinding anymore.
A happier balance would be to wait until the first new bracket of the slice you want. More of the hardcore grinders join from the very start so at least you avoid them.

Malcrof

SnagglePuss wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

I just missed t10 in the last minutes after 7 hardcore days of grinding.... and seeing people join last minute getting it with 1/6th the points i had.. kinda makes me a little angry.. we need something to remedy this, i feel so shorted now.

Good news is, 7 days of grinding, and getting all rewards in all nodes, i have 2 new 166's, yay for iso.

Tokens, HP and a hell of a lot of ISO are the positives. You can pull at least 50k ISO which really accelerates lvl.

I can sympathize, I just can't take the long grinding anymore.
A happier balance would be to wait until the first new bracket of the slice you want. More of the hardcore grinders join from the very start so at least you avoid them.

Got zilch from the tokens, all 2* (or 250 iso as i look at it), and yes, the HP are decent, nowhere near what i would have needed if i didn't have him rostered already (i always make sure to stay above 1k HP now that we have a cap)

But, i now have a 3 cover Ant-Man, which is equal to the combined number of covers on my Starlord, IW, and Carnage.

AXP_isme

I slept through the grand opening of the mythical new bracket. Woke up at 6.30 BST jumped in the bracket but only managed to get to ~110, I got some ISO and some HP for 30 minutes of play so I shouldn't complain.

What I find disappointing is that I couldn't join early due to real life commitments and by the time I could join the only bracket that opened in 4 days opened in the wee small hours. If I'd joined any earlier I would have been 1 or more sub(s) behind everyone else and unable to compete properly. I'm not sure there's a good solution beyond non-competitive PvE (hint hint). I want to play PvE, I enjoy it, but I think they should close any incomplete brackets when a sub closes and open a new one. At least within a sub there's a limited amount of rubberbanding, as soon as a fresh one opens you've **** anyone who couldn't join earlier.

I don't want to go back to the bad old days of rubbish end times and obscene rubberbanding but the current system isn't perfect by any stretch. People who have no choice but to join late shouldn't be penalised for it.

Malcrof

AXP_isme wrote:

People who have no choice but to join late shouldn't be penalised for it.

You had 7 days to join, plus the 24 hours prior to the first slice... Waiting 5 or 6 days to join, that is just hoping for a fresh bracket and gaming the system.

Which is why i think PVE is flawed.. add the rewards to progression, go over the numbers of the last 2 pve's of each type, and add rewards accordingly. This way, someone who grinds hard for 7 days doesn't lose out, and get less final rewards (the ones we were actually playing for) than someone who played for an hour.

TxMoose

really I vote for gauntlet/ant-man style events or pve simulator minus the leaderboard and refresh times. make everything progression. take every player in the game, take average performances and just break down what percentage can get to what level and set progressions appropriately. they might get more play then because it doesn't matter what slice you're in, who else is in your slice, or when you choose to make your clears. that would end all the 'joining late crowd' and grinding because everyone else is grinding and finishing 101st for ant-man (or in mal's case 11th or 12th). those who have weekend commitments don't feel like they can't join - they can join and do what they can and then make up points later when they have more time. if you wait until the last day you better have a big, useful roster, 100 health packs and 8 hours of available playing time.

DrNitroman

I gave a shot at the last slice 5 bracket just before leaving to work.
I finished #102, 200 points from #100...
Shouldn't have go to work....

On the bright side it was the easiest top 150 in PvE that I ever had!

RemoDestroyer

What's wrong with pve? All you need for a top 20 finish is to spend at least 1 hour exactly every eight hours (at the refresh) and at least 3 hours (2 at the end of 1 sub and 1 at the beginning of the next sub) exactly every 24 hours. For 7 days straight until the next event starts which is now immediately after the current event ends.

This is not far off from a feeding schedule for a newborn baby. And everyone loves a baby, right? This is just how D3 helps to spread some of the joys of parenthood.

Unknown

Whilst I can understand some people feeling aggrieved at seeing a few people score some covers for 90mins work, remember that this was the first fresh bracket in 5days. Although I didn't want to join day 1 because of having social commitments on Thursday/Friday/Saturday I would of been more than happy to join sunday but there were no choices open to me.

The current pve system has it flaws with several day old stale brackets being common place and generally if you don't join day 1 or 2 you can forget getting a good result. Personally I feel 7 days is too much of a commitment for pve and I really think they should stick with 3 or 4 day long events.

AXP_isme

Malcrof wrote:

AXP_isme wrote:

People who have no choice but to join late shouldn't be penalised for it.

You had 7 days to join, plus the 24 hours prior to the first slice... Waiting 5 or 6 days to join, that is just hoping for a fresh bracket and gaming the system.

Which is why i think PVE is flawed.. add the rewards to progression, go over the numbers of the last 2 pve's of each type, and add rewards accordingly. This way, someone who grinds hard for 7 days doesn't lose out, and get less final rewards (the ones we were actually playing for) than someone who played for an hour.

In the interest of clarity, I left home before the PvE started and was driving through Europe arriving back home on Monday evening. I knew I would have little to no available play time for the first 4 days of the event.

Could I have joined before it started? Yes. Could I have played when I was travelling? Sparingly, yes. Could I have joined on Monday evening when I arrived back? Again, yes. All of those choices would have put me at a severe disadvantage.

To an extent it is gaming the system but I'm not looking for an advantage so much as I'm trying to limit any disadvantage due to timing. I understand why you'd be cross that a minimal amount of effort got some people more rewards than you who worked really hard for them. There are numerous problems with the current PvE structure, there are a number of good suggestions about the forums for how to improve it. I'm not looking for sympathy, I'm just trying to draw attention to one of the (probably Unintended) consequences of the move to a sub based structure where rubberbanding is only within, and not between, subs. It stops late joiners from catching up with those who have been playing longer. That may be the right choice for the game overall but it means that unless you can, and want to, play during the whole period of an event your placement will suffer. I just think we shouldn't be penalising those who can't, in order to chastise those who don't want to.

SnowcaTT

Mr Stoat wrote:

Whilst I can understand some people feeling aggrieved at seeing a few people score some covers for 90mins work, remember that this was the first fresh bracket in 5days. Although I didn't want to join day 1 because of having social commitments on Thursday/Friday/Saturday I would of been more than happy to join sunday but there were no choices open to me.

The current pve system has it flaws with several day old stale brackets being common place and generally if you don't join day 1 or 2 you can forget getting a good result. Personally I feel 7 days is too much of a commitment for pve and I really think they should stick with 3 or 4 day long events.

Keeping the same reward structure but putting it down to 500 players would help keep fresh brackets coming out, discourage waiting until last moments for fresh bracket, encourage players to play the whole time (since you don't have to beat 900 other people, but only 400), let folks play their schedule a bit better rather than perfectly hitting every refresh, get more rewards out to the users - everything would be a win! Oh, for the players....so let's not do that.

SnagglePuss

This seasons PvP simulator is more of a PvE event than most PvE events. Progression based rewards, strong rosters have an easy time. Weak rosters need to get stronger. Yes you are competing against others at the higher end but the climb before that is pretty much perfect as the matches get progressively harder. I've sunk more time into that than I expected.

Just do gauntlet style PvE, dial back the scaling a little and leave that running. It would be less of a load on the servers as well. Those with strong rosters, it should be easy for them like it is in every other game.

TazFTW

Ben Grimm wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

And we're not getting any new characters for at least three weeks.

did that come from d3? if so I wholly endorse. they'll probably wait until my vacation for the next big thing - oh well. at least I can get some of my roster situated by then. have a few goals i need to focus on without feeling i need to put levels into a featured (like torch).

I thought they said we weren't getting anyone new until the 30-day Ant-Man event was over; that's what I was basing it on.

They also said more variants are coming, so "no new characters" could mean no never before seen in game characters but here's lazy (but still sexy) Cyclops.

Unknown

SnowcaTT wrote:

Mr Stoat wrote:

Whilst I can understand some people feeling aggrieved at seeing a few people score some covers for 90mins work, remember that this was the first fresh bracket in 5days. Although I didn't want to join day 1 because of having social commitments on Thursday/Friday/Saturday I would of been more than happy to join sunday but there were no choices open to me.

The current pve system has it flaws with several day old stale brackets being common place and generally if you don't join day 1 or 2 you can forget getting a good result. Personally I feel 7 days is too much of a commitment for pve and I really think they should stick with 3 or 4 day long events.

Keeping the same reward structure but putting it down to 500 players would help keep fresh brackets coming out, discourage waiting until last moments for fresh bracket, encourage players to play the whole time (since you don't have to beat 900 other people, but only 400), let folks play their schedule a bit better rather than perfectly hitting every refresh, get more rewards out to the users - everything would be a win! Oh, for the players....so let's not do that.

I like both of these suggestions.

I have to say that on the flip side, if the bracket had not filled, we would not be having the same conversation. It's a small flaw in all of PvE to have 100ish extra Antman covers in the entire MPQ Universe for this extra bracket. For me, day 370ish player, I am just sick of PvE, the grinding and the constant hit on your schedule. If there wasn't a new bracket, it wouldn't have made too much of a difference for me either way. (Actually this normal 'crusty' bracket that I had joined had 465 people when I joined so it wasn't exactly fresh).

The devs have to come up with a way to get people more incentivized to play for that stint of time. A single 4* cover just isn't going to cut it anymore since there are so many being released (1 per season now I think?). Maybe even pushing the 8hr slices to 12hr or more progressions or a reward for entering late?