Urgent : Devs! Event might be a disaster!

psuscott16

A base level of complaining will always be there because the game will never be perfect for everyone. The 2 main complaints I have seen since I have started playing are legit ones though that really need to be addressed.

1. THE RNG on card drops and the chance at dupes is really annoying. I have started to think of the problem as this. Lets pretend I am a billionaire and have a good chunk of money to burn on a game like this. Lets say I drop 10k and just buy card packs. Do I end up with all the cards? I'm guessing you would still end up not getting every card or you may still be missing that one card you need to finish off a deck you want to build. Obviously, the devs want to get what they can as far as money from the people playing the game, but at some point the frustration levels get to much and people will take their money elsewhere.

2. The fact that no one was able to earn the top prize of this last event is a major problem. The events are the only thing that really keep people playing this game IMO. The quick battles are okay but become super redundant and frustrating to try and stay near the top. They require a big time commitment also. Past that you have story mode and once that is done, nothing. Events are what keep people playing the game. A legit chance at good loot for using your skills with deck making. If you start screwing people over with those they will leave. People are saying to relax and wait for a response, but shouldnt there have been one already? At least on the forums? It feels like the devs are to busy with their load, but thats just a guess. I guess we will see what happens.

buscemi

Ohboy wrote:

buscemi wrote:

1) People were not actually mad about the first event being too short, they were in fact mad that they lost points. There is a subtle and important difference.

some wise man wrote:

While their guard was down, players like me with no lives struck a merciless blow, grinding out all of our games as quickly as possible and ending the event before anyone realised what was going on.

1) this guy led the complaint charge the last time, when the first event ended so quickly and many people didn't get to do progression. This one ended even quicker, but the root cause is the same. The boss didn't have enough hp. It just so happens that no one could get progression at all this time. It's seems different for you only because I assume you got to finish the event the last time.

Don't be silly People were not mad that they didn't play the grindy event for longer, they were mad that *because* they couldn't play the grindy event for longer, it meant that they missed out on STUFF. You know the STUFF they're always going on about how much they want?

If people really wanted to play grindy events for longer, why on earth would they just have changed all the event objectives for everything to make the games shorter? It seems unlikely they'd do that if there was a huge outcry of complaints that the games weren't long and boring enough. It seems more likely that people complained that they were too long and boring. And I'm no memory expert, but I'm pretty sure it was the second one that actually happened.

Ohboy wrote:

buscemi wrote:

2) Yes. We will complain if the event is too long, or too short. Wouldn't you complain if your bath was either too hot or too cold?

2) I might, if I forgot I drew my own bath. I'm simply pointing out that people will complain anyway if devs always over compensated as suggested. Thanks for backing me up.

Don't be SILLY! Honestly, you're getting quite sarcastic. I don't know where you get it from.

YES people will complain if the devs overcompensate. But they won't complain if the devs merely compensate!!! Do try and understand what I'm saying before you think that I'm agreeing with you.

span_argoman

Assuming these boss events are solely dependent on player participation for decreasing the boss' health, one way to make them more robust to varying player participation rates is to have the boss health decrease with participation and over time.

As an example, say the boss has 1,000,000 ribbons worth of health. Let's assume 3 scenarios:

Low-participation: 10,000 points/hour
Normal-participation: 20,000 points/hour
High-participation: 40,000 points/hour

Based on participation only, the event will last:
Low-pa: 100 hours (4.2 days)
Norm-pa: 50 hours (2.1 days)
High-pa: 25 hours (1.0 days)

And this leads to problems like what we are currently facing where events can either be too short or last forever.

On the other hand, say if the boss' health was doubled to 2,000,000 ribbons and aside from participation the health naturally drops by 1% per hour (20,000 points per hour).

What we then get is:
Low-pa: 66.7 hours (2.8 days)
Norm-pa: 50 hours (2.1 days)
High-pa: 33.3 hours (1.4 days)

And the ratio between participation and time can be tweaked to manage variability. Say if we raise the total points to 4,000,000 and up the attrition over time to 1.5% (now 60,000 points per hour), we get:
Low-pa: 57.1 hours (2.4 days)
Norm-pa: 50 hours (2.1 days)
High-pa: 40 hours (1.7 days)

So for the same range of participation rates, you can reduce the event duration variance from 3.2 days to 0.7 days.

The point is by adding a fixed component to the rate that the boss' health decreases, you have a greater control over the duration of the event by:
1. Having less variability in event duration between high participation and low participation events.
2. Having a guarantee that the event will end by a certain fixed timing even if there is little to no participation. This is especially important considering that a lot of people stop playing after hitting all their progression rewards in coalition events.

glggwp

some guy already pointed out, just make it fully charged with no refresh at the start and end it in 2 days. so people can get on their lives and still have the flexibility to decide when to play within the time window. there is also no tie-breaker in rewards: 15 people scored full points means 15 people ranked no.1

this "boss health" gimmick is pretty useless

Ohboy

buscemi wrote:

Ohboy wrote:

buscemi wrote:

1) People were not actually mad about the first event being too short, they were in fact mad that they lost points. There is a subtle and important difference.

some wise man wrote:

While their guard was down, players like me with no lives struck a merciless blow, grinding out all of our games as quickly as possible and ending the event before anyone realised what was going on.

1) this guy led the complaint charge the last time, when the first event ended so quickly and many people didn't get to do progression. This one ended even quicker, but the root cause is the same. The boss didn't have enough hp. It just so happens that no one could get progression at all this time. It's seems different for you only because I assume you got to finish the event the last time.

Don't be silly People were not mad that they didn't play the grindy event for longer, they were mad that *because* they couldn't play the grindy event for longer, it meant that they missed out on STUFF. You know the STUFF they're always going on about how much they want?

If people really wanted to play grindy events for longer, why on earth would they just have changed all the event objectives for everything to make the games shorter? It seems unlikely they'd do that if there was a huge outcry of complaints that the games weren't long and boring enough. It seems more likely that people complained that they were too long and boring. And I'm no memory expert, but I'm pretty sure it was the second one that actually happened.

I think you're confusing avacyn event with the emmukrul one. I'm comparing a coalition event with the last one we had.

You don't need to be a memory expert. Just go do a quick search on shteev's complaints on the first avacyn event. Oh he was a quick one to complain about the event not giving a chance to casual players due to boss's low hp. Or just read the segment I pasted for you. You do agree with what you wrote in your past incarnation right?

Ohboy wrote:

buscemi wrote:

2) Yes. We will complain if the event is too long, or too short. Wouldn't you complain if your bath was either too hot or too cold?

2) I might, if I forgot I drew my own bath. I'm simply pointing out that people will complain anyway if devs always over compensated as suggested. Thanks for backing me up.

Don't be SILLY! Honestly, you're getting quite sarcastic. I don't know where you get it from.

YES people will complain if the devs overcompensate. But they won't complain if the devs merely compensate!!! Do try and understand what I'm saying before you think that I'm agreeing with you.

Nah just curious why you're not drawing your own baths. And who is still drawing baths for you. And how they respond to said complaints. My curiosity on this subject while piqued, is however is off topic.

I would encourage you to take your own advice. The devs not compensating enough is the entire reason why the event failed, in the context of what I was saying to techparadox. He suggested overcompensating as the approach(making it too long so everyone is guaranteed to have a chance to make progression) , and I was just telling him that's been done before. Since you agree with me that people will complain either way and I felt it safe to thank you for backing me up.

Mod Edit: Removed inflammatory comment

bk1234

Kevinanth wrote:

The concept of "Boss Hp" is just stupid. I love the PVE aspect of these events but needing to vigilantly watch the life percentage is annoying as hell.

I imagine channel calls from your team captain every 15 minutes for the last 5% must be overwhelming.

losdamianos

glggwp wrote:

there is also no tie-breaker in rewards: 15 people scored full points means 15 people ranked no.1

Amen to this my brother
all tie breakers should be rewarded equally rather than d3 is discriminating players from Europe and Australia

Hibernum_Will

Hi everyone - just a quick update: the number of players playing this weekend went through the roof, resulting in the event Boss expiring faster than we anticipated. You far exceeded our estimates! Like Volrak said, these things are fundamentally hard to predict especially for a brand new Event.

In the short-term, we'll rerun this Event again, with rebalanced Boss Health of course. In the long-run we're looking at some options to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I'll post the full details shortly!

losdamianos

Hibernum_Will wrote:

Hi everyone - just a quick update: the number of players playing this weekend went through the roof, resulting in the event Boss expiring faster than we anticipated. You far exceeded our estimates! Like Volrak said, these things are fundamentally hard to predict especially for a brand new Event.

In the short-term, we'll rerun this Event again, with rebalanced Boss Health of course. In the long-run we're looking at some options to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I'll post the full details shortly!

I would love to see some actual statistics to back this up, following your logic within the matter of 5? days between PVE event of Avacyn and Fateful showdown player base have more than doubled ?
in Avacyn top players were able to score over 1k points which is over 2 times top reward of 450 points

Ohboy

Hibernum_Will wrote:

Hi everyone - just a quick update: the number of players playing this weekend went through the roof, resulting in the event Boss expiring faster than we anticipated. You far exceeded our estimates! Like Volrak said, these things are fundamentally hard to predict especially for a brand new Event.

In the short-term, we'll rerun this Event again, with rebalanced Boss Health of course. In the long-run we're looking at some options to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I'll post the full details shortly!

Please make a seperate update thread. No one is going to see your update here.

SpaceDuck

Hibernum_Will wrote:

Hi everyone - just a quick update: the number of players playing this weekend went through the roof, resulting in the event Boss expiring faster than we anticipated. You far exceeded our estimates! Like Volrak said, these things are fundamentally hard to predict especially for a brand new Event.

In the short-term, we'll rerun this Event again, with rebalanced Boss Health of course. In the long-run we're looking at some options to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I'll post the full details shortly!

That's actually really good news in a way. I thought I'd noticed more bodies in the game and different names in matchmaking. More players is a good thing.

Mainloop25

Hibernum_Will wrote:

Hi everyone - just a quick update: the number of players playing this weekend went through the roof, resulting in the event Boss expiring faster than we anticipated. You far exceeded our estimates! Like Volrak said, these things are fundamentally hard to predict especially for a brand new Event.

In the short-term, we'll rerun this Event again, with rebalanced Boss Health of course. In the long-run we're looking at some options to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I'll post the full details shortly!

Will Panharmonicon be offered up as a prize again?

blacklotus

Mainloop25 wrote:

Hibernum_Will wrote:

Hi everyone - just a quick update: the number of players playing this weekend went through the roof, resulting in the event Boss expiring faster than we anticipated. You far exceeded our estimates! Like Volrak said, these things are fundamentally hard to predict especially for a brand new Event.

In the short-term, we'll rerun this Event again, with rebalanced Boss Health of course. In the long-run we're looking at some options to make sure this doesn't happen again.

I'll post the full details shortly!

Will Panharmonicon be offered up as a prize again?

yes. see the announcements group for details.