Time to Re-Visit Slice Options

simonsez

carrion pigeons wrote:

the evidence is in the engagement levels of the playerbase.

Where is this evidence? With you cheeleaders crowing about how much higher your rankings have been, that sounds like evidence that engagement is way down.

I just hope that for the new character release, the PvE players come back and give you people a dose of reality.

johnnyzero

Go ahead and add me to the list of folks who would love a 9:00pm EST end time. I used to be a permanent resident of Slice 4, but 1 clear at 11:00pm was bad enough...4 clears just isn't happening.

hodayathink

simonsez wrote:

hodayathink wrote:

It doesn't matter how logical their play was or wasn't.

Call me an idealist, but I don't think placating the illogical is ever a solution to a problem, especially when communication and education haven't been tried yet.

You want to get into logic, let's talk about the logic of game design.

The old way was designed such that it was telling players to stop playing after their first run through. As a normal player, the game removing points from the node, and starting a countdown where at the end the countdown the node is back to it's original amount of points, and playing the node again while the timer is active decreases the points even more and adds more time to the timer, very clearly tells you that the game doesn't want you to play the nodes again until the node refreshes. If that's not what they wanted players to do, then the game design needed to change to reflect that.

simonsez wrote:

carrion pigeons wrote:

the evidence is in the engagement levels of the playerbase.

Where is this evidence? With you cheeleaders crowing about how much higher your rankings have been, that sounds like evidence that engagement is way down.

I just hope that for the new character release, the PvE players come back and give you people a dose of reality.

I'd argue that for the past couple of events there's more people saying that their rankings are worse than before than that their rankings are better, which would be evidence of higher engagement. See threads like this one or this one.

TimGunn

they don't necessarily need to add additional slice choices (although that would be nice). It would help if they just moved the slice choices a few hours. For example, move slice 4 back 1 or 2 hours and it would be better for US east coast players.

Polares

carrion pigeons wrote:

Polares wrote:

Second, 8h refreshes sucked for you. It was MUCH MUCH better than the horror we have now. Playing 30 min every 8-10 hours and 1:30 at the end was MUCH MUCH better than having to play for 3-4h. PvE now is like a part time job, and we dont get paid for it

No. This is objectively better and the evidence is in the engagement levels of the playerbase. Whether or not I personally prefer it is irrelevant. Again, the style of play you describe that optimizes points is SUPPOSED to be awful, because they want to minimize the number of players who do it.

How do you know the engagement is up, do you have any objective numbers to sustain your claim? (I am not saying it is not, but you can't afirm that without data). This is the first time the new system has been tested with a new release so if you want to assert this method is better you should at least wait until the end of this event to see how people feel about playing for 4h in one seat to get the covers, and how people play in next events, when they realize they have to play like crazy to get new chars.

There is some people that hated the old system that now are doing better, that is obviously true, but I would like to see real numbers to see if people really prefer this system.

For me, and this is just my opinion, this system is HORRIBLE for new releases, it is just the opposite of 'play whenever you want', which is what they were selling with this new system. For future releases I will just play as before or less, I will play just for the iso, if I get top100 cool, if not who cares, so count my engagement as down

TimGunn

Interesting discussion on PVE system. I was thinking this could work:

• no timers, can play each node 7 times and then it is locked (like the prior test)
• problem - very many ties resulting in needing to finish final sub right when it opens
• new feature - battle timers. when you start a match a timer runs (ends when you have Victory)
• for each match you get a time bonus, along the lines of: finish in less than 2 minutes - bonus of 10 points; finish between 2:00 and 2:20 get 9 points, finish between 2:20 and 2:40 get 8 points, and so on
• won't be any ties or very few ties, so solves the placement tie issue from the test run
• allows players to play on their own schedule, just when you do play, you have to play fast (see example below)
• rewarding fast players has been a feature of every PVE, so this goes along with that

bad parts,

• rewarding fast players is implicit feature of PVE; however, this system makes it explicit, not sure if that will turn people off
• would require programming to add timers, note, Pokemon Go has battle timers, so it can be done!
• timers maybe add stress/anxiety
• could result in small point differences between top scorers and lower placements which can be frustrating, but scoring could be adjusted (i.e., "i'm so mad, i was only 4 points out of top ten")

Here is an example of how it might work:

• Sub opens at 7:00 am
• Assume two nodes for 500 points each
• Player A defeats both nodes at 7:30 am, very slow player and does not get any battle time bonus - total points 1,000
• Player B defeats one node at 11:00 am, very quick match and gets 10 battle time bonus, then completes second node at 11:30 pm, very quick match and gets 10 bonus pts - total pts 1020
• Player C defeats both nodes at 5:30 pm, moderate fast match and gets 5 bonus points per match - total points 1,010
• Player D only defeats one node and leaves with 505 total points

The top placement is Player C who played when convenient.

alphabeta

TimGunn wrote:

Interesting discussion on PVE system. I was thinking this could work:

• no timers, can play each node 7 times and then it is locked (like the prior test)
• problem - very many ties resulting in needing to finish final sub right when it opens
• new feature - battle timers. when you start a match a timer runs (ends when you have Victory)
• for each match you get a time bonus, along the lines of: finish in less than 2 minutes - bonus of 10 points; finish between 2:00 and 2:20 get 9 points, finish between 2:20 and 2:40 get 8 points, and so on
• won't be any ties or very few ties, so solves the placement tie issue from the test run
• allows players to play on their own schedule, just when you do play, you have to play fast (see example below)
• rewarding fast players has been a feature of every PVE, so this goes along with that

bad parts,

• rewarding fast players is implicit feature of PVE; however, this system makes it explicit, not sure if that will turn people off
• would require programming to add timers, note, Pokemon Go has battle timers, so it can be done!
• timers maybe add stress/anxiety
• could result in small point differences between top scorers and lower placements which can be frustrating, but scoring could be adjusted (i.e., "i'm so mad, i was only 4 points out of top ten")

Here is an example of how it might work:

• Sub opens at 7:00 am
• Assume two nodes for 500 points each
• Player A defeats both nodes at 7:30 am, very slow player and does not get any battle time bonus - total points 1,000
• Player B defeats one node at 11:00 am, very quick match and gets 10 battle time bonus, then completes second node at 11:30 pm, very quick match and gets 10 bonus pts - total pts 1020
• Player C defeats both nodes at 5:30 pm, moderate fast match and gets 5 bonus points per match - total points 1,010
• Player D only defeats one node and leaves with 505 total points

The top placement is Player C who played when convenient.

Massive disadvantage to higher end players as the enemies have far higher health so matches automatically take longer. Plus forces me to run a team every match just to be quicker not use full extent of my roster for interest.

Placement PVE needs to end and it move to progression - that solves all even if they have to adjust the rewards somewhat - they want a casual play whenever you want system and then tie rewards to insane 5 hour straight grinds (good luck with Florida in The Hunt everyone!)

SkyElf

simonsez wrote:

stochasticism wrote:

None of the slices are ideal for competitive play on the West Coast either.

fmftint wrote:

Same boat here, none of the current slices are ideal for competitive play on the east coast

If one needs a 4-5hr block of time for competitive play, no slice or time zone will ever be ideal...

I agree. There is no possible time where it is convenient to play for 4-5 hours straight. That's why the new format sucks. They say that it is not time-sensitive, but any system with a timer of any kind is going to be time-sensitive for players who care about rank. Players who just want the mission rewards and don't care about points could ignore the timers in the old system too. It was unfair to declare not having a timer a failure just because it did not work in combination with having missions drop all the way to 0 points.

RoboDuck

With the new way of having to play if you are interested in placement, there really needs to be more slices. I'm now down to 1 slice that remotely works timewise for me. It's also the slice I always hate competing in, slice 4.

Pongie

I only have one slice that fits my schedule and that is 9pm/11pm (depending on daylight saving). 11pm was great with the old 8hr schedule, with the new format, 9pm is better

TimGunn

OJSP wrote:

TimGunn wrote:

they don't necessarily need to add additional slice choices (although that would be nice). It would help if they just moved the slice choices a few hours. For example, move slice 4 back 1 or 2 hours and it would be better for US east coast players.

With 24 time zones around the world, there will always be players affected by any changes to the time slice options.

there are more than 24 because some places are on half hours! like in India

but i'm sure the majority of the player base live in a handful of time zones, probably US east coast, Europe and China

Stony

So apparently this thread prompted an in-game survey. But so many other issues ignored for months (years?). I just don't get these devs.

mckauhu

Isn't it still possible to play that exactly same time schedule as before? What's the big deal?

simonsez

mckauhu wrote:

Isn't it still possible to play that exactly same time schedule as before?

As long as you're not trying to rank, sure...

Fightmastermpq

johnnyzero wrote:

Go ahead and add me to the list of folks who would love a 9:00pm EST end time. I used to be a permanent resident of Slice 4, but 1 clear at 11:00pm was bad enough...4 clears just isn't happening.

Same here. 9 is better than 11, but 10 would be best for me. Takes me about 1:30-2 to get through my first 4 clears, 2-2:30 for the last 4 if I am grinding to 1. I can usually start around 7:30 in the evening, so I think 10 would be perfect.

mckauhu

OJSP wrote:

mckauhu wrote:

Isn't it still possible to play that exactly same time schedule as before? What's the big deal?

Depending on how long we allow the nodes to refresh as long as possible to full points, grinding them to 1 would produce different amount of pts. Granted, waiting for the node to refresh 20 hours or just 6 hours might seem insignificant (For a node that's worth 100, after it's been cut 25% and the timer starts: waiting for 20 hours would bring the node back to 96. Waiting for 6 would bring the node back to 81). In fact, it could be the difference between top10 and 11th place, top50 placement and 51st place, and so on.

From the last Heart of Darkness (note the last 4 placements (9th,10th,11th and 12th) are very tight):



If you only play the nodes at full points (3 times per sub), then yes, probably this new system would make no significant difference. Others who are willing to grind harder would always finish higher on the leaderboard.

Ok I see

Arphaxad

A 9pm EST slice would make life for a lot of players better. Please make it happen.

Linkster79

Now it is more important to play at the start of events instead of at the end let's go back to no time slices Get rid of brackets too and have everyone in one big bracket

At times I like to be evil.