Enemy Of The State Test: Some Early Results

Akari

To people complaining that they should have announced the free X23 covers beforehand, there's no way they could have known the numbers would be what they were, and it's more a consolation prize after the fact. It could be expanded somewhat, but it wouldn't be fair to just offer covers to people with less than max because it would dilute the effort spent by those that got their t10s fairly.

To the people that gave up clearing nodes just because they saw t10 was full... quitters! Or maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment...

Moon Roach

My head hurts thinking about what the optimum strategy would have been if rubber-banding had been on. Maybe that's going to be test #6.

I think that placement rewards should have been more aligned with the way its done in golf (*). If the top 12 get the same score, they get the same reward (**), 13 and onward continue with the rewards for that tier.

(*) Except that in golf they pool the rewards and split it, 4 people tied for 3rd get 3rd - 6th prize money split 4 ways.

(**) Except that there should be a special reward for #1, and only #1. If you finish first, you finish first and that achievement should be acknowledged.

I might post that in the barren wasteland of the suggestions sub-forum.

dmeleedy

So as one of the 329 players (WizardDave) I would like to say thank you for 3 more covers. I finished 7th, so it was very disappointing to only get 1 cover.

That being said, the "play at your own pace" did not really work for the most competitive people. I felt forced to play as much as possible, and this ended up being 6 to 7 hours a day. This pace was brutal. I did not get enough sleep all week. I felt miserable at the end of the test. The difficulty level seemed to be brutal as well. I noticed that the people who finished before me in my bracket had championed 5 stars, or many championed 4 stars, so it seemed like another "the rich get richer" thing. I only had one championed 4 star, so I was having to make due and spend more time trying to get through the "deadly" nodes.

I had predicted that the last day would pretty much be a "race", so I felt that on the last day (given that I had been lucky enough to score max points every previous day) made me feel obligated to play all night trying to place well.

Remember the data doesn't show the feelings of your player base. I was telling people that if they stuck with this for the new format, my PVE days would be over.

fanghoul

Glad to hear that this was perceived to have been a successful event at the dev end of things. After EotS event, I've been reflecting that the current PvE system rewards not playing the game, which is maybe not the best way to go around things? Going back to the original set up has left me a little frustrated with the fact that if I really want to maximize my points, I should avoid playing MPQ when I have the time and urge to right now. Also, not having the enemies levels scale up over and over means that the battles are feel more repetitive to me. I just don't have the strategic nightmare of trying to beat up people so much higher level than me to try and rank. I might as well beat every node rather than trying to figure out whether it's worthwhile for me go for a really, really difficult one for more points, or grinding the easy one for fewer.

That's my newb perspective on things. Clearly to people used to getting into the top tiers, the new system changing what it takes to get into those tiers is frustrating. It does leave me wondering who the people are that are making it into the top tiers now, that weren't making it before. Obviously there has to be some trade off there.

smkspy

dmeleedy wrote:

So as one of the 329 players (WizardDave) I would like to say thank you for 3 more covers. I finished 7th, so it was very disappointing to only get 1 cover.

That being said, the "play at your own pace" did not really work for the most competitive people. I felt forced to play as much as possible, and this ended up being 6 to 7 hours a day. This pace was brutal. I did not get enough sleep all week. I felt miserable at the end of the test. The difficulty level seemed to be brutal as well. I noticed that the people who finished before me in my bracket had championed 5 stars, or many championed 4 stars, so it seemed like another "the rich get richer" thing. I only had one championed 4 star, so I was having to make due and spend more time trying to get through the "deadly" nodes.

I had predicted that the last day would pretty much be a "race", so I felt that on the last day (given that I had been lucky enough to score max points every previous day) made me feel obligated to play all night trying to place well.

Remember the data doesn't show the feelings of your player base. I was telling people that if they stuck with this for the new format, my PVE days would be over.

I feel exactly the same way, that last day was a mental beat down and I was just trying to place in the top 50.

And my roster is similar, I have zero camped 4 stars none above 150 and 16 champed 3 stars, and when I looked at the people with similar scores they had amazing rosters full of 5 stars, champed 4s, and all 3s champed.

hodayathink

dmeleedy wrote:

So as one of the 329 players (WizardDave) I would like to say thank you for 3 more covers. I finished 7th, so it was very disappointing to only get 1 cover.

That being said, the "play at your own pace" did not really work for the most competitive people. I felt forced to play as much as possible, and this ended up being 6 to 7 hours a day. This pace was brutal. I did not get enough sleep all week. I felt miserable at the end of the test. The difficulty level seemed to be brutal as well. I noticed that the people who finished before me in my bracket had championed 5 stars, or many championed 4 stars, so it seemed like another "the rich get richer" thing. I only had one championed 4 star, so I was having to make due and spend more time trying to get through the "deadly" nodes.

I had predicted that the last day would pretty much be a "race", so I felt that on the last day (given that I had been lucky enough to score max points every previous day) made me feel obligated to play all night trying to place well.

Remember the data doesn't show the feelings of your player base. I was telling people that if they stuck with this for the new format, my PVE days would be over.

Play at your own pace will never work for the most competitive people, unless they just straight up decide not to break ties at all (i.e. for this test, everyone who gets max progression gets the #1 reward). Because of your competitive nature, you're going to push to place first, and since they're getting rid of the timer in some way (the only constant between basically all of the tests), "optimal strategy" will always be to play a whole lot at once. The only way to change that is either for people to stop being competitive, or for them to stop making this a competition (which I'm completely aware is what some people want).

The Herald

hodayathink wrote:

dmeleedy wrote:

So as one of the 329 players (WizardDave) I would like to say thank you for 3 more covers. I finished 7th, so it was very disappointing to only get 1 cover.

That being said, the "play at your own pace" did not really work for the most competitive people. I felt forced to play as much as possible, and this ended up being 6 to 7 hours a day. This pace was brutal. I did not get enough sleep all week. I felt miserable at the end of the test. The difficulty level seemed to be brutal as well. I noticed that the people who finished before me in my bracket had championed 5 stars, or many championed 4 stars, so it seemed like another "the rich get richer" thing. I only had one championed 4 star, so I was having to make due and spend more time trying to get through the "deadly" nodes.

I had predicted that the last day would pretty much be a "race", so I felt that on the last day (given that I had been lucky enough to score max points every previous day) made me feel obligated to play all night trying to place well.

Remember the data doesn't show the feelings of your player base. I was telling people that if they stuck with this for the new format, my PVE days would be over.

Play at your own pace will never work for the most competitive people, unless they just straight up decide not to break ties at all (i.e. for this test, everyone who gets max progression gets the #1 reward). Because of your competitive nature, you're going to push to place first, and since they're getting rid of the timer in some way (the only constant between basically all of the tests), "optimal strategy" will always be to play a whole lot at once. The only way to change that is either for people to stop being competitive, or for them to stop making this a competition (which I'm completely aware is what some people want).

I'm one of the no contest crowd. We have PvP for smashing chairs over each other's heads, I would really rather we have a story mode that's enjoyable to play

killerkoala

play at ur own pace works with finite points, i think every one enjoyed playing one those events like, "growth industry". if they diversified covers for 4*'s they could do it every 2 to 3 days. add in a loaner 4* for their essential so peeps can try them out, a 3* essential that gives a cover, and 10 cp per completed event (5 in nodes and 5 for final progression) it would add up fast. just don't crank up scaling impossible and i think we would all accept it. it'd be like a new DDQ but only every 3 days.

mpqr7

Seriously, who are these people who played 6-7 hours/day, 7 days in a row??? That's literally impossible for those of us with jobs and families. That's just too much time to be expected to play on a game, especially for what... a few 4* covers???

fmftint

mpqr7 wrote:

Seriously, who are these people who played 6-7 hours/day, 7 days in a row??? That's literally impossible for those of us with jobs and families. That's just too much time to be expected to play on a game, especially for what... a few 4* covers???

Most of us only did it ONE day, and in my case it was 4.5 hours for T5

Sub 1-5 were cleared casually throughout the day, Sub 6 was a 4 hour sprint after the wife and kids were in bed

Pwuz_

I just want to remind everyone that D3 only cares so much about how we "feel", with the exception of how much we "feel" like spending real money to win.

If you spent money on the game during that test and you don't "feel"good about it, you have just fallen for their psychological trap. Be assured they will do what they can for you to open your wallet as much as they can.

Actions speak louder than words. Don't like something, don't spend the money. They can see when you spend money and from there how you spend your resources, but the key is to put you into the position where you choose to spend money as often as possible.


_______________________________

Side note: not sure if anyone else mentioned this or not, but pretty sure my score glitched higher than it should have for some of those wave nodes if I finished some of the waves, but not all of them. I didn't honestly play enough to really test it out or abuse it, but I would not be surprised that that is how people were able to increase their score higher than the hard cap.

scottee

Phaentom wrote:

mazerat wrote:

So over 10,000 brackets and all the people willing to play for max points were crammed into 44 (.44%) of them? I stopped playing less than halfway through day 1 of my slice and got top 300. Seems like the system is working just fine.

100,000 + ppl would be 100+ brackets, since each bracket has 1,000 players. Which means those 329 players that achieved the max points were in 44 of those 100+ brackets.

Also, I'd imagine that every person who cleared max points was in a vet bracket, hence the bunching of ties for 1st instead of them being spread out.

Bowgentle

scottee wrote:

Phaentom wrote:

mazerat wrote:

So over 10,000 brackets and all the people willing to play for max points were crammed into 44 (.44%) of them? I stopped playing less than halfway through day 1 of my slice and got top 300. Seems like the system is working just fine.

100,000 + ppl would be 100+ brackets, since each bracket has 1,000 players. Which means those 329 players that achieved the max points were in 44 of those 100+ brackets.

Also, I'd imagine that every person who cleared max points was in a vet bracket, hence the bunching of ties for 1st instead of them being spread out.

Highlighting once again the absurd and unfair death bracketing in PVE.

That said, thank you for those extra X-23 covers!

SnagglePuss

Congrats to everyone this affects.

My bracket had about 17 people hit perfect scores. When it became clear to me that i couldn't clear as fast as them and faced with Crit boosts / standard tokens in wave nodes, i too put tools down.

seraphiel

*Cut it down to ~5-6 replays maximum to burn it down to 0 points. Wave nodes only repeat for enough *waves* to equal the max replays on regular nodes. For example: If it's 6 for a standard, then a 3-wave node can run twice before its points and rewards are completed.

*Increase the rewards to equal this test (or more ). More rewards were nice, but 70iso after a 10-minute Gorgon wave node is... lame. Especially when all it really does is kick the difficulty up for the CP that you won't get until the very last thing.

*Handle ties exactly the same as they're doing now (but didn't announce beforehand, so it kinda screws up the whole test): if you get enough points for 1st place, you get all the 1st place stuff.

*Most importantly, and if you do absolutely nothing else, this needs to be addressed: split people up into brackets of similar-level rosters. If there are going to be placement rewards, it makes no sense for someone with a dozen 2-stars to have to compete in the same bracket with someone who has a highly suspicious number of 5-star covers. It doesn't matter what sort of scaling is attempted to resolve this; it simply can't. The power sets, utility, and availability of backup characters are too different for something as basic as scaling to actually balance.

Linkster79

I slate D3 for almost anything so when they make gestures like this it's only fair that I praise them. Well one D3, well done.

Cycocivic

Thank you D3. Very commendable of making it worth all the grinding and I love the game.

I finished in 7th in slice 5 with only 8 or 9 with max scores. Of the teams I had the least impressive roster 2 5*(1-2 covers), my highest 4* is fully levelled 3/1/3 xfw so powerful not, and 18 champed 3* (IF and cmags highest boosted characters). So even at my scaling (lvl 349 maxed enemies) it was challenging at times, but manageable with the right team composition and the right board (i retreated whenever i felt i had no chance of winning).

It was definitely awesome to play when you want as I had my son's graduation and daughter's 1st birthday that saturday. I managed 2 10th place sub finishes, 1 top 50(sat) and the rest were top 20. I would say I spent 6-7 hrs a day to do full clears. My closest to not finishing a final node(wave of course)left me with just under 30 min. and my main team down and out with no hp left. Managed to finish it with a makeshift team of IF, BP and halfbeatup CMag and lots of boost. I couldn't make a full clear w/o taking a break(either for hp regen. or just sleep before I went to work). I also took my foot of the grinding pedal when I knew I couldn't get a top 10 sub finish and when I fell out of top 5 in the final sub(I already knew I could do no worst then 9th overall in final placement).

Early on I knew in order for me to get a top 10 finish was to at least finish with a max score and not worry about sub placement until the last one. That last 1 started at 1am in the middle of my last day of work. I had to wait until 6:30am when I got home to start grinding. The moment I fell out of top 5 I took a nap. Finished it up when I got up. That last wave node took me a good 15-20+ min. to clear each. Also one of main team Cmag/Mohawk/Loki seems like it took forever to manage a victory.

With all that said I feel this form of pve suits me best because it netted me my highest finish since I started mpq and got my first x-23 cover in the beginners bracket. I like being able to see the finish line and that i won't be bracket sniped. It definitely makes it worthwhile to know all that grinding was netting me a well deserved reward and i could take a nap when i needed to.

Thanks again D3 for making MPQ(the only game I play now).

abmoraz

I'm torn. I loved the fact that "First one done gets first place". That makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than the normal "whoever can grind the last 2-3 hours the most of every sub node wins". Everything about this event was light years better than the normal PvE set-up. Even the reward structure (if the devs are adamant about placement rewards, which is by far the worst thing about PvE) was better. Want the best rewards? Finish first. Want good rewards? Just finish.

BUT...

I had a perfect on every sub node, finishing anywhere from 10th to 50th, cause I really did play when I felt like it, rather than blasting all the nodes at the start. On the last sub, I noticed when I had cleared everything but two passes on the big final wave node, that the top 20 had filled up already. At that point, spending the effort to clear those last 2 nodes for, what I thought would be no improvement in placement rewards, didn't seem worth it at all so I didn't bother. Now I find out that skipping those 2 nodes cost me three X-23 covers. ****.

What really needs to happen is that the rules and rewards be explicit before the event starts so that we, as a player base, can make informed decisions on how we want to play the event. According to the rules announced, clearing those last 2 passes on the wave node would have gotten me a Critical boost and 70 ISO, but according to the post-facto rule changes, they would've gotten me a critical boost, 70 ISO, and three 4 covers.

Overall, this format was a vast improvement, just stay consistent with the rules. Your attempt to "rectify ties" took what felt like a huge victory and suddenly made it feel like a disappointment.

carrion_pigeons

Regret is a powerful emotion, but not a reasonable one. People complaining about d3 being more generous than they had to be to people who are not them are being jerks and need to get a sense of perspective.

Literally nobody hit max points on the basis of thinking that d3 would un-break ties. They didn't have more information than you. The fact is that you chose where to place and they didn't. I understand the regret and the disappointment, but the reality is d3 did something nice they didn't have to, and that should be encouraged. Doing anything else is short-sighted and just generally makes you a terrible person.

smkspy

Yeah, it was a good gesture, though the right one to do. I just wish they would have applied it evenly to the subs as well. Lots of people busted their **** on subs for top place and had the same thing happen to them. Especially on that last sub which was an all day event for little rewards.