Update to Progression Rewards in Story Events (5/18/17)

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Comments

  • Pessi
    Pessi Posts: 170 Tile Toppler
    To put this comment in perspective, I normally do 5/6 clears so this change is a positive for me. However, I completely agree with previous comments about the placement of CP rewards. Its very back end heavy. (insert yo momma joke)

    Personally I liked them peppered about a bit as before.

    On this plus side these changes might tempt those dropping down to CL7 back to CL8, which would be a positive. 

    The flow of 200iso->200iso->200iso is a little boring also!
  • granne
    granne Posts: 852 Critical Contributor
    Daiches said:
    Brigby said:
    @St_Bernadus

    If you choose to wait until the points for the 5th clear are full, then you only need to complete each node's 5th clear to hit max progression. If you don't feel like waiting, then you can immediately full clear all nodes to hit max progression.
    Ehm.. That's not what said in the announcement.
    @Daiches that answer from Brigby was in response to a question about 48-hour subs.
  • Saeva
    Saeva Posts: 39 Just Dropped In
    Bowgentle said:
    Missing the 25cp makes the 5 day event a waste of my time. So yes, it is important to know what we have to do to get it. 

    Then just do 5 clears to be safe?
    And we're back around to the issue of how people don't always have time or energy for 'just' another 30 minutes a sub. 

    Bowgentle said:
    Why not just play the current event and see if you can easily make final prog with your normal playstyle? If you can't, adjust next event. Worst case you miss the 25 CP this PVE and can adjust for the next one. Missing 25 CP once isn't going to kill you.
    How dismissive. Just because you're not concerned doesn't mean other people are overreacting to be concerned.

    Anyway, that is far from the 'worst case' involved. Worst case is that you can't adjust your playstyle to make final prog. It doesn't really matter why that'd be the case. Maybe it's because you simply can't cut out the time every day, something you were maybe working around by doing more (6 clears) on some days so that you could do less (no clears) on other days. Maybe it's because this new requirement literally makes it impossible for as many top competitors to get both placement and progression rewards (which is only speaking of a very small percent of the player base but it's the part of the percent most dedicated to this game). Maybe it's because without the 4* essential it's literally impossible to get full progression (that's unclear atm but I guess we'll find out!). Maybe it's for another reason not brought up already in this thread.

    We're theorycrafting because, as you put it, the dev is 'very, very bad with words'. That's pretty unacceptable for a business nor something we, as consumers, need necessarily blasely accept the way you clearly have, but since it's true theorycrafting is what we do to try to figure out the answer for ourselves.
  • Nick441234
    Nick441234 Posts: 1,496 Chairperson of the Boards
    Bowgentle said:
    Missing the 25cp makes the 5 day event a waste of my time. So yes, it is important to know what we have to do to get it. 

    Then just do 5 clears to be safe?
    And what if it had turned out to have required 6? These things need to be clear prior to events starting. 
  • escart85
    escart85 Posts: 54 Match Maker
    Ok so I'm confused about the new clearing policy starting with The HUNT.

    First leg I did everything 6 times, where the 5th and 6th clear was done just right after the 4th so no waiting. I didn't have gamora rostered on the 1st leg. 2nd leg of the event - 48hr node. I did 5 clears on each node where the 5th was at almost full points cause I had the luxury to wait without having to rush and I had gamora rostered. I didn't have time for the 6th clear. Now the 3rd leg started and I'm at 33k points in progression where as the top is at 60k+ and I don't see how I'm going to get the top progression reward at 55k so something is wrong. It was mentioned that you could do 5 clears (the 5th being at full points) or 5th and 6th without waiting to get to top progression. 

    I'm not seeing it. Can anyone explain this? Are we having another Enemy of the State moment when they didn't do the math right?
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    Saeva said:

    We're theorycrafting because, as you put it, the dev is 'very, very bad with words'. That's pretty unacceptable for a business nor something we, as consumers, need necessarily blasely accept the way you clearly have, but since it's true theorycrafting is what we do to try to figure out the answer for ourselves.
    They've been bad with words since the game started and it has gotten worse over the last three years.
    This is not going to change.
  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards
    escart85 said:
    Ok so I'm confused about the new clearing policy starting with The HUNT.

    First leg I did everything 6 times, where the 5th and 6th clear was done just right after the 4th so no waiting. I didn't have gamora rostered on the 1st leg. 2nd leg of the event - 48hr node. I did 5 clears on each node where the 5th was at almost full points cause I had the luxury to wait without having to rush and I had gamora rostered. I didn't have time for the 6th clear. Now the 3rd leg started and I'm at 33k points in progression where as the top is at 60k+ and I don't see how I'm going to get the top progression reward at 55k so something is wrong. It was mentioned that you could do 5 clears (the 5th being at full points) or 5th and 6th without waiting to get to top progression. 

    I'm not seeing it. Can anyone explain this? Are we having another Enemy of the State moment when they didn't do the math right?

    5 clears assumes that you have all the essentials.
    Missing Gamora on day 1 means you'll have to clear more on the following days.
  • Storm of fire
    Storm of fire Posts: 37 Just Dropped In
    (I previously commented here, with my initial reaction to the increase of clears for full progression and what I would've liked to see in regards of distribution of rewards)

    Thinking on this change more makes me feel that the change was done because the numbers of people playing events drops off after the 4 star reward significantly and that the players who played through overshot final progression by a lot (because they were largely aiming for placement).
    So wanting players to play longer, since time = money, means shifting the 4 star to four clears on all nodes on all days rather than the three-ish clears on all nodes per day or playing ~75% of the event previously required.

    With that perspective it seems a bit misleading (and therefore breeds distrust amongst the playerbase) to say it's about extending and increasing rewards, when it's really about increasing play time and engagement. Which is an entirely reasonable objective for 7 day events, which did have the problem of a lot of players dropping out on day 5 and 6 as they received the cover. I may not be a fan of the increased requirement of clears, nor of backloading the rewards, but making 7 day events more rewarding and increasing engagement in those last two days is something I completely understand and agree with.

    But for 3 and 4 day events especially, I'm not convinced aiming to increase player engagement by shifting the goalposts does so evenly. The players who want the cover will play a bit more, the people aiming for for placement get more stuff but in theory play the same amount, and the people who only wanted CP will have to look at their priorities and decide whether a cover is enough or if they might as well try to go for placement.
    Not to mention that players who are missing essential characters will find it a lot harder to achieve full progression with the new reward structure, or that it now seems impossible for lower Clearance Levels to reach full progression.

    So if this change was to encourage extra play from people who only played to the cover, why not switch the CP and cover rewards around in the previous reward structure, so that final progression rewarded the specific cover? The dev team obviously considers a specific cover to be high value, given the cost required to purchase it either with CP or through the Heroes for Hire store. Or is the net gain of play time with this new structure worth more than what a simple switcheroo would offer?
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,817 Chairperson of the Boards
    Dunno if anyone is really reading this at this point, other than back and forth about whether the effort is worth it/possible/etc.  But here is something I have not really seen mentioned:  Perceived fairness.  

    Months ago, "cupcakes" were eliminated (basically) in PVP.  Some players (forum posters) saw cupcakes as unfair, and felt they were shut out of points and goals by their time limitations and not being part of Line groups.  (Please don't turn this into a debate about whether or not it truly helped all players, was unfair, etc.  The point here is the perception, not the fact.)  PVP has many problems, but now there is less perception of unfairness.

    For PVE, It is well known (at least among forum users and high-end players) that waiting to join a bracket can result in higher placement, and easier cover acquirement for some players.  Does this seem fair to the average player?  (I argue no, if you can't time your entry to an event to just the right time, it definitely seems unfair.)  And yes, there has always been the risk of losing out on progression rewards for placement.  The new system very obviously increases this risk, possibly to the point of it being impossible to hit progression when joining late (as pointed out already with some nice math).

    So this change, which pushes more players to join sooner, increases perceived fairness.  I want to stress PERCEIVED here.  If you think that most players are joining at the same time as you, then you think that you have an equal shot of getting rewards.

    Yes, it increases competitiveness too.  Which I think developers want, as it probably leads to resource consumption (HP for shields, iso for boosts etc).  

    More players thinking the system is fair to them, makes them more likely to play.  More players mean more payers.  Gaming the system, while engaging and making the game more interesting, can be seen by less competitive players as unfair and discourage them.

    Does it suck that we have more time requirements?  Yes.  I hope they find a different solution.  But I wanted to bring up a problem that developers may see that few if any forum users would view as a problem - bracket sniping is probably behavior that developers don't really like and probably want to discourage.
  • Fightmastermpq
    Fightmastermpq Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    Just make the current bracket information show up in game so that you don't have to coordinate or get lucky to jump in a fresh bracket.
  • escart85
    escart85 Posts: 54 Match Maker
    Bowgentle said:
    escart85 said:
    Ok so I'm confused about the new clearing policy starting with The HUNT.

    First leg I did everything 6 times, where the 5th and 6th clear was done just right after the 4th so no waiting. I didn't have gamora rostered on the 1st leg. 2nd leg of the event - 48hr node. I did 5 clears on each node where the 5th was at almost full points cause I had the luxury to wait without having to rush and I had gamora rostered. I didn't have time for the 6th clear. Now the 3rd leg started and I'm at 33k points in progression where as the top is at 60k+ and I don't see how I'm going to get the top progression reward at 55k so something is wrong. It was mentioned that you could do 5 clears (the 5th being at full points) or 5th and 6th without waiting to get to top progression. 

    I'm not seeing it. Can anyone explain this? Are we having another Enemy of the State moment when they didn't do the math right?

    5 clears assumes that you have all the essentials.
    Missing Gamora on day 1 means you'll have to clear more on the following days.
    Based on my rough calculations it basically means I have to grind the nodes to 1 which at this point makes me want to stop playing this event and just chill because I don't have the time for it. I was really hoping it wouldn't come to this because at 4 mandatory clears i could still get top progression with 2 out of 3 essentials and some grinding. Now it seems like the bar is too high. Maybe I'm upset because it wasn't explicitly said that you need to do 5 full clears with all essentials and if not then you can only reach the big hp reward. I dont know. I need to rethink my approach to pve.
  • Milk Jugz
    Milk Jugz Posts: 1,122 Chairperson of the Boards
    Just make the current bracket information show up in game so that you don't have to coordinate or get lucky to jump in a fresh bracket.
    I would really like this change also, it would beat the hell out of waiting for the bracket info to refresh, sometimes its not completely accurate, or refreshes well after the bracket flips. Seems especially so for s4, that seems to be the slowest and least played slice. They tell you how many people are in there once you join, why not show how many are there when you're about to join??
  • escart85
    escart85 Posts: 54 Match Maker
    I agree. Because so far i enjoyed the benefits of SCL8 with a steady income of 150hp per pve and now even though you are getting more you need to commit more time and the intermediary 200 iso  rewards are just peanuts 
  • Magic
    Magic Posts: 1,199 Chairperson of the Boards
    One extra "loss" I see is in the Hero points department. Before the change I would play SCL7 and getting top50 was not much of an issue. That is 100HP per day. Getting the same in SCL8 is much harder, takes more grind. Sure - it pays off more but is it worth it?
  • Mekuh
    Mekuh Posts: 12 Just Dropped In
    edited May 2017
    I don't like this update. I was perfectly fine with getting 10 CP if I can't reach the max progression goals. Now I'm guaranteed to get 8 CP (really?) and so far, I don't think I'm close to getting it atm. I can imagine how bad this'll be in 7 day events.

    With the constant bugs that stopped me from putting money into this game, money hungry updates for those that are struggling for 3* and 4*, and now this, I may consider quitting this game all together. I'm willing to give this another chance in the next PVE. If all else fails, I quit.

  • Tee
    Tee Posts: 231 Tile Toppler
    edited May 2017
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. Apologies for the confusion.

    Beating every non-repeatable mission once and every repeatable mission 5 times (3 times for Join Forces missions and 2 times for Wave missions) will get you the top Progression reward. Mission regeneration does not factor into the equation.

    For anyone that missed it.

    It is 5 clears.
  • Avalanche Kincaid
    Avalanche Kincaid Posts: 83 Match Maker
    What's to be mad about?  If you were already doing 4 clears already, just hit the 4 easy nodes 3 times near the beginning and the end of the sub and you will be golden.  One more clear is at most 30 minutes (non-wave).  30 minutes more for a but load of rewards, big deal.  Spread that 30 minutes throughout the day.  10 minutes taking a dump, boom 2 hard nodes down.  10 minutes of commercial time watching the news 3 more down.  10 random minutes doing whatever 4 easy nodes and loaner node down.  There you go, enjoy your extra rewards.