Unstable ISO-8 PvE Event Feedback Thread

Unknown

I didn't vote b/c the rationale attributed to the "meh" option wasn't accurate. I'm fine with a lack of subs, and the subsequent decrease in the number of heroic tokens given out, but the rubberbanding was what broke the event. I'm fine with an event that allows the leaders to build a lead, in so far that if the leader slacks, rubberbanding should allow others to catch up with effort. However, this was a sprint masquerading as a marathon, so despite playing as intelligently as I could and hitting first place for 6 straight days, I ended up ~13th b/c of the frenzy in the last 60 minutes (and the wall of 230's that sprung up presumably due in part to community scaling).

While I also agree that more substantial progression rewards in the mid-tiers would be appreciated, I'm still ok with some rewards being available to only a select few. I hit the 53K reward, and from what I gather, no one else did much better than that. I still maintain that it was the disincentive to grind among the leaders that caused the progression rewards to be out of reach, not so much the set thresholds. We've seen both extremes, where it seemed that everyone here had the last progression reward a day or more before the event ends, and this one where no one even came close to the top end rewards. The former is just as broken as the latter, but b/c we got to have our cake, we didn't complain then.

Ultimately, I added levels to a number of different characters and I got a 1/1/1 Torch out of it, so I'm not going to complain much. Just some minor gripes more than anything.

Unknown

Dunkelgrau wrote:

The progression rewards were a train wreck. If you got the 53333 Progression reward, you were probably top 2-3% and they should go ahead and add the Y and R LazyCap covers to your account.

I was just above there (~53,500) and finished ~35th place, so 3% is pretty close.

NorthernPolarity

Riggy wrote:

I didn't vote b/c the rationale attributed to the "meh" option wasn't accurate. I'm fine with a lack of subs, and the subsequent decrease in the number of heroic tokens given out, but the rubberbanding was what broke the event. I'm fine with an event that allows the leaders to build a lead, in so far that if the leader slacks, rubberbanding should allow others to catch up with effort. However, this was a sprint masquerading as a marathon, so despite playing as intelligently as I could and hitting first place for 6 straight days, I ended up ~13th b/c of the frenzy in the last 60 minutes (and the wall of 230's that sprung up presumably due in part to community scaling).

While I also agree that more substantial progression rewards in the mid-tiers would be appreciated, I'm still ok with some rewards being available to only a select few. I hit the 53K reward, and from what I gather, no one else did much better than that. I still maintain that it was the disincentive to grind among the leaders that caused the progression rewards to be out of reach, not so much the set thresholds. We've seen both extremes, where it seemed that everyone here had the last progression reward a day or more before the event ends, and this one where no one even came close to the top end rewards. The former is just as broken as the latter, but b/c we got to have our cake, we didn't complain then.

Ultimately, I added levels to a number of different characters and I got a 1/1/1 Torch out of it, so I'm not going to complain much. Just some minor gripes more than anything.

Whoops, forgot to add that rubberbanding reason to meh. I'll also add another "Other" option for future polls that you can vote for if you had a different line of reasoning and wanted to explain it in the thread.

Unknown

It was a nice causal event after a very competitive and hectic one. I think the devs are doing a top job. They listen to a lot of the feedback and make improvements when they can.

Unknown

beemand2g wrote:

It was a nice causal event after a very competitive and hectic one. I think the devs are doing a top job. They listen to a lot of the feedback and make improvements when they can.

I agree i liked the event.

Dreylin

I think that the solution might be to relax the rubberbanding at the end so that everything is not entirely dependent on timing of the last push. If the rubberband multiplier reduced over the period of the last refresh, that might help.

e.g. considering a 12hr refresh:

Play before end-12hrs you can get the full rubberband multiplier
end-6hrs = 75% multiplier
end = 50% additional 'banding

with a sliding scale in between.

I expect that the percentages would need adjustment to get right (maybe you reduce to a min of 25% at the end), but the idea would be to tune it such that everyone can remain competitive over that last refresh without giving any undue disadvantage to those who not lucky enough to be able to play in the last couple of hours of the event.

Looking at this as I write it down, of course then it would be that much more important to have a lead at end-12hrs, so the last-but-one refresh would be the key time. Maybe you have to dial back the 'band over a period of several refreshes in order to obtain the desired result.

This would be applicable for any event with major points in the Main bracket such as TaT, Heroics & maybe Hulk. Could also be applicable to a longer sub or one with a higher refresh rate?

Unknown

Dreylin wrote:

I think that the solution might be to relax the rubberbanding at the end so that everything is not entirely dependent on timing of the last push. If the rubberband multiplier reduced over the period of the last refresh, that might help.

e.g. considering a 12hr refresh:

Play before end-12hrs you can get the full rubberband multiplier
end-6hrs = 75% multiplier
end = 50% additional 'banding

with a sliding scale in between.

I expect that the percentages would need adjustment to get right (maybe you reduce to a min of 25% at the end), but the idea would be to tune it such that everyone can remain competitive over that last refresh without giving any undue disadvantage to those who not lucky enough to be able to play in the last couple of hours of the event.

Looking at this as I write it down, of course then it would be that much more important to have a lead at end-12hrs, so the last-but-one refresh would be the key time. Maybe you have to dial back the 'band over a period of several refreshes in order to obtain the desired result.

This would be applicable for any event with major points in the Main bracket such as TaT, Heroics & maybe Hulk. Could also be applicable to a longer sub or one with a higher refresh rate?

I don't know that a reduced scaling on rubberbanding is the key change to be made. Ultimately all that does is shift the grind time from being in the last two hours to the last hours of getting maximum effect. Further, the other problem presented is a more distinct possibility of prog awards to being achievable because of points being affected by DR as the event winds down to a close, when you really want more points to be injected. You do get flukes like what happened in this event in regards to progs, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.

Dreylin

Skyedyne wrote:

I don't know that a reduced scaling on rubberbanding is the key change to be made. Ultimately all that does is shift the grind time from being in the last two hours to the last hours of getting maximum effect. Further, the other problem presented is a more distinct possibility of prog awards to being achievable because of points being affected by DR as the event winds down to a close, when you really want more points to be injected. You do get flukes like what happened in this event in regards to progs, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.

Except that reaching (or not) progression rewards is more a function of grinding than it is of rubberbanding, as it's about how far the top guys can go.

And if tweaking the 'banding at the end of the event affects the max point score achievable, then they can just calibrate the progression rewards thresholds as needed ... like they did for ISO-8...

rbdragon

Hi there....first off, I'm new to the board so.....hi....

Now, as for the tourney - I had a hard time choosing between meh and okay...truth is it wasn't terrible but it was rather boring. Everyone has mentioned the rubberbanding aspect, which was definitely an issue. My biggest issue with it is this - this is supposed to be fun as well as a competition right? Well for me, I have much more fun actually playing the game than sitting around waiting until playing the game is worth it. Having said that, I did take advantage of it and got two torch covers (my alliance is my nephews who don't really play enough but I would feel bad if I removed them.....for now).

How about a tournament where the points are static, and instead of the points decreasing each time, they increase but so does the difficulty? And once you hit the max and beat the max, it is no longer playable. There are only progression rewards in this tourney so you aren't really playing against anyone. Has this been done in the past? I think a tourney like that every so often would be good for player morale.....

Unknown

rbdragon wrote:

Well for me, I have much more fun actually playing the game than sitting around waiting until playing the game is worth it. Having said that, I did take advantage of it and got two torch covers (my alliance is my nephews who don't really play enough but I would feel bad if I removed them.....for now).

The reason I don't feel that way about this event is that while in this event it didn't matter if you played until near the end, in other PvE events after you've played a bit, you can't play for the next 12 hours or it hurts you. At least in this event, during the first 5 days I had the freedom to play whenever I wanted if I wanted to fill a little time, even though it didn't really help me make progress towards significant rewards.

rbdragon wrote:

How about a tournament where the points are static, and instead of the points decreasing each time, they increase but so does the difficulty? And once you hit the max and beat the max, it is no longer playable. There are only progression rewards in this tourney so you aren't really playing against anyone. Has this been done in the past? I think a tourney like that every so often would be good for player morale.....

That would result in a lot of people tying for first, and while I personally wouldn't mind PvE being entirely "progression" based, the game developers probably want to keep the amount of high rewards limited

Unknown

Dreylin wrote:

Skyedyne wrote:

I don't know that a reduced scaling on rubberbanding is the key change to be made. Ultimately all that does is shift the grind time from being in the last two hours to the last hours of getting maximum effect. Further, the other problem presented is a more distinct possibility of prog awards to being achievable because of points being affected by DR as the event winds down to a close, when you really want more points to be injected. You do get flukes like what happened in this event in regards to progs, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.

Except that reaching (or not) progression rewards is more a function of grinding than it is of rubberbanding, as it's about how far the top guys can go.

And if tweaking the 'banding at the end of the event affects the max point score achievable, then they can just calibrate the progression rewards thresholds as needed ... like they did for ISO-8...

Ok. Fair enough on that. However, the reduction on RB effect still effectively just transfer grind times to a different 2 hour block. The problem is finding that fine line of balance between pleasing the hardcore crowd (which can be said to be a small fraction of the playerbase), and catering to the larger casual playerbase of the game.

The pie chart of total revenue breakdown over the past two weeks in GD can attest to the fact through assumed population:spending ratio that we are indeed the minority in the endgame.

HairyDave

It was a "Meh" from me.

I didn't mind the structure as much as the community scaling - there were quite a few nodes early on and on the last day that were near as makes no difference impossible purely because I didn't get a chance to jump on them as soon as they appeared. And thanks to the rubber-banding the non-impossible nodes were worth jack (Level 90+ goon fights worth 50 points or less, for example).

Dreylin

Skyedyne wrote:

Dreylin wrote:

Skyedyne wrote:

I don't know that a reduced scaling on rubberbanding is the key change to be made. Ultimately all that does is shift the grind time from being in the last two hours to the last hours of getting maximum effect. Further, the other problem presented is a more distinct possibility of prog awards to being achievable because of points being affected by DR as the event winds down to a close, when you really want more points to be injected. You do get flukes like what happened in this event in regards to progs, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.

Except that reaching (or not) progression rewards is more a function of grinding than it is of rubberbanding, as it's about how far the top guys can go.

And if tweaking the 'banding at the end of the event affects the max point score achievable, then they can just calibrate the progression rewards thresholds as needed ... like they did for ISO-8...

Ok. Fair enough on that. However, the reduction on RB effect still effectively just transfer grind times to a different 2 hour block. The problem is finding that fine line of balance between pleasing the hardcore crowd (which can be said to be a small fraction of the playerbase), and catering to the larger casual playerbase of the game.

The pie chart of total revenue breakdown over the past two weeks in GD can attest to the fact through assumed population:spending ratio that we are indeed the minority in the endgame.

Well, the idea is to try and remove the "optimum 2hr window" or at least reduce the impact of it. In my mind it's not so much to balance between hardcore and casual, but to balance between hardcore European / American / Asians who need to sleep or work or whatever and can't necessarily play at the end of the event.

Another possibility would be to increase the window at the top where rubberbanding is ineffective. i.e. instead of 10x at -10,000pts ramping to 1x at -1,000pts, instead ramp to 1x at 2,000pts - that way there's more of a grind remaining at the top needed to pass the leader.

Another option would be to look at the benchmark for rubberbanding - right now this is assumed to be the overall points leader in all brackets, but what if there was also a modifying factor based on the leader of your bracket?

As I said, any of these solutions would require a lot of tweaking to get right ... and an acceptant playerbase willing to see it get worse before it gets better. I doubt anything will be changed, but it doesn't hurt to hope a little.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Current partial results:

Great: would like to have a lot more events with this type of structure in the future. - 5 - 8%

Who are these crazy people?!

Some people just want to watch the world burn.