What Are Optimal Node Settings?

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

With the recent changes to Trial of Zeal's node recharge time and max node charges, there have been a wide variety of feedback that emerged. In order to assist the development team in concisely understanding the community's perspective, I have created this poll to determine what kind of node settings players find optimal. 

Based on my understanding, boss event play-time is affected by 3 variables: # of Max Node Charges, Node Recharge Time, and Boss Health. 

Please note that the below poll options use the verb "Change," as opposed to "Increase" or "Decrease." This was done on purpose to account for both sides of the same coin. After selecting an option, please write a brief comment explaining whether you support an increase or a decrease to the corresponding variable.

In addition, it would greatly assist the team if players would be willing to include a brief explanation of why they find their chosen changes desirable.

Thank you!

Update: When considering your version of the verb "Change," please use the recent 4hr Recharge Rate and 4 Max Node Charges as your baseline.

hawkyh1

I'm thinking there should be an option that allows
for greater than 24 hours worth of charges stored.

HH

Laeuftbeidir

Change Max Node Charge. Change Recharge Time. Keep Health Same.

4 hours is an annoying grind; 8 hours makes the event very long..6 seems to be a good compromise to me; 4 charges perfect. Boss HP should be changed slightly by the devs, just like they did it in the past, until the event has the optimal duration.

Sarahschmara

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

Simply preload the nodes with the total charges for the event and let the players decide when to play. 

wereotter

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

After actually playing it, I did like the extra number of plays I got on the weekends, and don't think the four hours are a bad thing there, but wouldn't want events that take place on weekdays to have that same short turn around. However, allowing us to bank more charges in the event that people go out and engage in social activities and don't play their matches when they refresh, or for those who work weekends, would be a plus. If a node can hold 5 charges, then that means you have 19 hours before you have to play at least one round in order to keep your refreshes from capping out and being off sync, which seems a good fit for events like I described.

I think this will be especially important now in summer months where it's more likely people will be outdoors and doing things during the day, and less likely to want to log in for the 20 minutes, or however long it takes, every 4 hours to complete nodes.

Phase

Change Node Recharge Time. Change Boss Health. Keep Max Charge Same.

I don't think coalition challenges should be about the quantity of the matches, but instead the quality of them. I don't want to have to rush through them just to have a family life on the weekends. It is easily 2-3 hours of puzzle quest per day to drain all your charges, spread out across multiple play sessions.

Go back to 8 hour charges. Keep the 4 charge max as it allowed players to knock out a days' worth of charges at once without missing any, a feature we sorely lacked during RatC and FS. And if you guys have worries about players hitting progression, do the sensible thing and reduce the number of points required to hit progression. RatC used the SAME SCORING per fight and it topped out at 450. Now it's been "nerfed" to 750. Do the smart thing and reduce that number if you're worried about enough players getting the top prize.

And while you're at the above, PLEASE remove that silly basic booster prize for plat players. I don't claim to deserve much but I think putting in the time to hit plat has earned me at least a big chunk of runes or an Amonkhet or KLD booster, seeing as how you guys haven't even given out event rares for progression yet.

sjechua

Everything Changes.

Set maximum nodes to 5. Starting nodes at 2 out of 5. Node recharge back to 8-hours. Progression rewards at 600 ribbons. Boss Health Points to 1,200,000 ribbons (assuming 2,000 active players)

Tilwin90

Change Max Node Charge. Change Recharge Time. Keep Health Same.

To explain... I don't mind about the boss health as much if everything else is handled properly. I remember the Kaladesh PVE events were properly made in this direction - you could finish the rewards rather early if you won all matches or just miss some charges, leaving enough room for slower players to catch up, and competitiveness for coalitions to grind for leaderboards. Not sure if there was more or less health there, but it definitely felt right. Not stressful but challenging and fun!

Now, this being said, I don't have specific values here and wasn't that into technicalities back then to know what was the magic formula.

I do know I am completely against increasing the grind - 8 hours regeneration was FINE, 4 hours was a nightmare! Get some form of QB grind back so whiners can stop complaining they have nothing to do in the game so they want to make everyone else's life miserable. I prefer quality to quantity to be honest...

As for the total charge counters, I don't get why we are deviating from the PVP events where you can get up to 5 counters. Players like predictability. So why do we need to play with these numbers differently between one and the other? Having the same values sets the same expectations. KISS principle is king here!

Bottom line: If I were you, I would make PVE events uniform with what we already have on PVP (DO NOT twist my feedback by touching PVP recharge period and max counters please because I am TOTALLY FINE with PVP events from this point of view!!!)

N.B.: While I recognize that there are developers and software engineers around here, it's generally known that users' are great at identifying what they like and dislike about the application, less great at coming up with the solution to make things better.
I find it extremely cowardly how at times we are asked for feedback, that feedback implemented in what we see as twisted (as it happened with the reward cutting into half and overpricing of boosters to "increase rare rate" - that was super shady!), and then... "oh, but you asked for it", have that feedback slapped back into our faces. If people are unhappy with the implementation it's because the solution is probably bad, not that the feedback based on which it was implemented was bad. So in my view poor execution is not excusable by the argument "the players don't know what they want"

Steeme

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

From the perspective of someone not participating in the Coalition portion:

Change max node charge to about 8.  Keep the 4 hour refresh.

Gives enough time to be away from the game without charges dissolving.

Also allows the ability to play a greater number of banked charges all at once.  I find that my performance is a little bit better when I'm fully warmed up and focused.

julianus

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

Steeme said:

From the perspective of someone not participating in the Coalition portion:

Change max node charge to about 8.  Keep the 4 hour refresh.

Gives enough time to be away from the game without charges dissolving.

Also allows the ability to play a greater number of banked charges all at once.  I find that my performance is a little bit better when I'm fully warmed up and focused.

@Brigby, I agree with this comment. The main problem with the refresh time, to me, was the limited number of charges that you could bank. Steeme articulated it well.

Kyokudai

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

From my perspective, I don't see a need to even have a thing such as "Max node charges".  Events are pretty well time-boxed so it is not like nodes could be saved up indefinitely.

If I were king for a day, I would say there is no max node charges, and all charges that you will have available for an event are given up-front.  Also you will get a free mythic today courtesy of the king.

This would allow us filthy casuals to have a binge session to compete in an event without having to schedule our lives around when we will get more node charges, so that we will have a shot at getting above 50th. 

Tempus

Change Max Node Charge. Change Recharge Time. Keep Health Same.

My vote means "change" as increase.  In both cases:. Node refresh time, and max node charge.  

My vote means "keep health same" as "continue to tweak as needed to maintain a 72 hour event" (which is what has been the case for the better part of a year.)

IIRC, progression rewards were stretched over 850 points because, at 450, competitive players complained the event lasted too much time after max rewards were reached.  This led to the 8 hour refresh time, a welcome change that felt fair considering the reduced value of rewards.  After some initial health tweaks it felt balanced to me, and I didn't see much complaint during most of the last block (Spring 2017).

At the outset of AKH, players didn't have the cards or experience to finish the "boss" in time for the given health.  So the health was lowered.  I believe the next event lasted around the ideal 72 hours, but then we couldn't make max progression before the health expired.  That prompted the controversial big (secret) change to refresh time so that players had more chances to make progression rewards.

(I don't recall how we settled in to the similar RAtC event at the outset of the previous block without needing this change to the refresh time.  We still would've had 72 hours to make 850 pts and, if there were more players participating, health was just adjusted accordingly.  How we normalized the RAtC settings escapes me at the moment, so I may be missing something big or obvious here.)

So the devs want to balance the opportunities for an "average" player (not a newbie but not a top 10-er) to reach max progression against the number of post-reward matches a competitive player is required to play, while having the event duration remain within 72 hours.  That is the triangle of competing interests as I see them.  Adjust one angle, and you change the other two.

During AKH, it feels to me like the devs have made too much change at one time to just one corner at a time, without enough consideration given to the possible outcomes.  With the caveat above about RAtC, it seems to me that a smaller tug on all three corners  could be a better way to align the competing interests without throwing things too far out of balance.

In practice, splitting the difference on each of the key variables just makes sense to me as the next iteration to try, while still maintaining balance.

For example, I suggest considering all these changes together:

1) (Re)compress progression rewards into 650 points.
2) Change refresh time to 6 hours.
3) Change max node charge to hold 24 hrs + 1.
4) Continue tweaking health to maintain 72 hour duration.

This is just a suggestion for the next thing to try.  I haven't done any math to model it out, but this feels like one of those dilemnas where player variability makes frequent incremental iteration more effective than finding a perfect model up front.


EDIT:. I'm also unclear on what value having a "max node charge" provides in this PVE event.  Perhaps it serves to discourage procrastination and even out the rate of health depletion making health tweaks easier to model to maintain the 72 hour duration?  Just a stab in the dark.

Brigby

Hi Everyone. For this upcoming Trial of Zeal, the Max Node Charge will be increased to 6 charges. Everything else will remain the same as the most recent previous iteration.

Daddystyx

Change Node Recharge Time. Change Boss Health. Keep Max Charge Same.

You people have no lives to play 4-hour charges.   Why would you put this kind of time management pressure on people that have a family.  This is going to cost you allot of people this weekend @Brigby.   This poll should have been put in the game inbox as the number of people here voting is almost nothing out of the general population of the game.  20 people are going to cause you a mass abandonment of this game.  Good luck D3!

deletedgone

Change Node Recharge Time. Change Boss Health. Keep Max Charge Same.

Option four allows people to play once a day, three or four charges a day (6 or 8 hour refresh), and still have it end in Sunday.  Any more charges than this in one day is too much.

wereotter

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

Daddystyx said:

You people have no lives to play 4-hour charges.   Why would you put this kind of time management pressure on people that have a family.  This is going to cost you allot of people this weekend @Brigby.   This poll should have been put in the game inbox as the number of people here voting is almost nothing out of the general population of the game.  20 people are going to cause you a mass abandonment of this game.  Good luck D3!

Upping the number of charges the node can hold means you can go 23 hours without playing at all before maxing out and not being able to bank any more. This means less pressure to play every four hours while still giving more chances to make full progression, especially with the high threshold of ribbons needed to get there. 

Daddystyx

Change Node Recharge Time. Change Boss Health. Keep Max Charge Same.

Then they should lower the requirement to get max rewards by 20% to account for the people that can't handle the last node.

ShomiTheMonkey

Change Max Node Charge. Change Recharge Time. Keep Health Same.

Give every player more worthwhile rewards in all the events so that they see value in the prizes would be a great idea no matter how this vote goes.

We'd also appreciate a vote for our thoughts on the Crafting System before it comes out and much more hope about this game's possibly great future.


Free Cookies seems like an easy remedy also but that will likely not satisfy the majority of players ☺

Krishna

Change Node Recharge Time. Change Boss Health. Keep Max Charge Same.

Having this survey is really great! But I feel the way it is set up is a bit counter intuitive. The best way to have the survey would be to have each item individually, and you vote to change it or not.
 For example, do you want to change the node recharge time, yes or no.
The node recharge time is the biggest issue in my coalitions, and according to the survey currently, almost double the people want to change the node time than want to keep it the same. But because there are 3 different places to vote for changing node recharge, it looks like keeping the node the same is most popular. I hope this survey is read in that way, and I also hope this comment is read for that matter. Lol thanks again

Beaver

Change Node Recharge Time. Keep Else Same.

Please, change back the recharge time to 8 hours

rafalele

Change Max Node Charge. Keep Else Same

Sarahschmara said:

Simply preload the nodes with the total charges for the event and let the players decide when to play. 

This should be the answer.