Feedback Thread - The Hunt for the Falcon - April 18 - 27

Unknown

The event was quite the marathon.

One of the issues with these PvE events is that each event should have it's own feel. and I think the hunt definitely achieves that.

The biggest issue with the event is user fatigue.

I'm not a fan of the staggered sub times but this is where the hunt differs from other events. The event could be improved by making it so you only have to do each sub 3 times instead of 4 and spreading it out just a bit. maybe have 2 subs end on a single day once during the event, but certainly not all three end on the same day like the last day of the event.

Variety of characters would be nice but I think you have to be careful with that. If every event all had the max variety of characters they would all seem too similar, none of them would stand out with it's own vibe. I didn't mind the constant daken and bullseye. The scenarios were different enough that you weren't fighting the exact same battle over and over again.

Stacking Doom on the last day of this event was really lame, The player base was super fatigued as it was and throwing in a PvP that ended on the same day just made it worse.

Scaling is an issue, but that is not anissue with the event itself. Hopefully Demiurge has received the scaling feedback loud and clear. I would be surprised if it doesn't change before the next PvE event.

Unknown

Yes, you had to be really active and play each event to place high

Yea, this is the first event where rubberbanding felt like it worked perfectly. You couldn't cheese the system to get easy 1st place finishes in certain subs, but you could still miss a few refreshes and place in the top 10 of a particular sub.

If you missed one or two sub-missions you weren't going to get top 20, but you still could get top 100 overall. Which seems fair. In the past, you could miss half the event and still come back and storm to a top 10 finish (while reaping easy first places in most events) if you had joined early and had a global leader that was 50k points ahead of you.

So it rewarded persistance of play, but didn't require you to play constantly. Quite a feat considering some of the imbalanced PvE events of the past.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

Yes, you had to be really active and play each event to place high

Yea, this is the first event where rubberbanding felt like it worked perfectly. You couldn't cheese the system to get easy 1st place finishes in certain subs, but you could still miss a few refreshes and place in the top 10 of a particular sub.

If you missed one or two sub-missions you weren't going to get top 20, but you still could get top 100 overall. Which seems fair. In the past, you could miss half the event and still come back and storm to a top 10 finish (while reaping easy first places in most events) if you had joined early and had a global leader that was 50k points ahead of you.

So it rewarded persistance of play, but didn't require you to play constantly. Quite a feat considering some of the imbalanced PvE events of the past.

The rubberband is definitely done quite well this time. It's pretty much impossible to snipe #1 unless you're in an extremely weak bracket. Persistance will definitely win though you can certainly get a respectable amount of points for the usual 'wait for last 2 hour' strategy, but don't count on competing for top 10 like that.

Unknown

you clear all nodes once at the start rubberband at the end you come top 2 that was my strategy . Unless your Davecass who just cleared everything, thought he was going to make HT red progression, rate he was going at lol

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Yes, you had to be really active and play each event to place high

Yea, this is the first event where rubberbanding felt like it worked perfectly. You couldn't cheese the system to get easy 1st place finishes in certain subs, but you could still miss a few refreshes and place in the top 10 of a particular sub.

If you missed one or two sub-missions you weren't going to get top 20, but you still could get top 100 overall. Which seems fair. In the past, you could miss half the event and still come back and storm to a top 10 finish (while reaping easy first places in most events) if you had joined early and had a global leader that was 50k points ahead of you.

So it rewarded persistance of play, but didn't require you to play constantly. Quite a feat considering some of the imbalanced PvE events of the past.

The rubberband is definitely done quite well this time. It's pretty much impossible to snipe #1 unless you're in an extremely weak bracket. Persistance will definitely win though you can certainly get a respectable amount of points for the usual 'wait for last 2 hour' strategy, but don't count on competing for top 10 like that.

I never figured out how to game the subs... In most of the subs I took somewhere between 20th and 50th because once you get within ~500 of 1st all of the nodes have double digit points, and for giggles I decided to try to take one of the Alaskas by taking an early lead out of the gate, but a couple of guys passed me in the next 12 hours and I couldn't catch back up to them. It ended up not being a big deal because even with that, I still got top 20 in the main (despite missing almost an entire sub due to the server crash), but I'm kind of curious as to what the "correct" strategy was to win a sub (or finish at 15000 points higher than me like davecazz who lead my bracket)

NorthernPolarity

gamar wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Yes, you had to be really active and play each event to place high

Yea, this is the first event where rubberbanding felt like it worked perfectly. You couldn't cheese the system to get easy 1st place finishes in certain subs, but you could still miss a few refreshes and place in the top 10 of a particular sub.

If you missed one or two sub-missions you weren't going to get top 20, but you still could get top 100 overall. Which seems fair. In the past, you could miss half the event and still come back and storm to a top 10 finish (while reaping easy first places in most events) if you had joined early and had a global leader that was 50k points ahead of you.

So it rewarded persistance of play, but didn't require you to play constantly. Quite a feat considering some of the imbalanced PvE events of the past.

The rubberband is definitely done quite well this time. It's pretty much impossible to snipe #1 unless you're in an extremely weak bracket. Persistance will definitely win though you can certainly get a respectable amount of points for the usual 'wait for last 2 hour' strategy, but don't count on competing for top 10 like that.

I never figured out how to game the subs... In most of the subs I took somewhere between 20th and 50th because once you get within ~500 of 1st all of the nodes have double digit points, and for giggles I decided to try to take one of the Alaskas by taking an early lead out of the gate, but a couple of guys passed me in the next 12 hours and I couldn't catch back up to them. It ended up not being a big deal because even with that, I still got top 20 in the main (despite missing almost an entire sub due to the server crash), but I'm kind of curious as to what the "correct" strategy was to win a sub (or finish at 15000 points higher than me like davecazz who lead my bracket)

Winning a sub is the same strategy as its always been: grind as much as possible right before the end of the sub and each 12 hour interval, so you would time your runs such that you finished 13 hours before the event (to give you some breathing room for your next clear) and just before the event ends. The only problem is that your PvE MMR could mess up your runs by giving you ridiculous levels to prevent you from grinding as much as possible, so you need to either have a roster strong enough to brute force your way through that and grind your heart out, or trick the system into thinking that you suck so that you can fight more reasonable opponents. Dave did a combination of managing his PvE MMR and hardcore grinding in order to get his huge lead I believe, so it's the same as its always been for most events in this game.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Winning a sub is the same strategy as its always been: grind as much as possible right before the end of the sub and each 12 hour interval, so you would time your runs such that you finished 13 hours before the event (to give you some breathing room for your next clear) and just before the event ends. The only problem is that your PvE MMR could mess up your runs by giving you ridiculous levels to prevent you from grinding as much as possible, so you need to either have a roster strong enough to brute force your way through that and grind your heart out, or trick the system into thinking that you suck so that you can fight more reasonable opponents. Dave did a combination of managing his PvE MMR and hardcore grinding in order to get his huge lead I believe, so it's the same as its always been for most events in this game.

The scaling wasn't a problem, the problem was that in most subs by the time you catch up to near the current leader your nodes don't give enough points to pass them. So in one sub I tried to do exactly what you said, but some players still managed to pass me, and then *I* couldn't get enough points on nodes to re-pass them!

I guess I needed to start my refresh-clears even closer to the end of a refresh than 45 minutes, although the points dry up so much when you're close to the leader that I didn't think that would have helped much

Unknown

you must have got the order of your nodes wrong I placed top 2 in most of the subs and did it by rubberbanding. I took out the hard nodes first then left the essentials to last

Unknown

We've had The Hunt a few times before and I haven't seen this much displeasure with it. Is it the increased scaling or maybe pressure to get points for alliance that's causing people to call it a "marathon" or "grind"?

People also complain that it's repetition of the same enemies. But with exception of the Simulator event, it has mostly been the same enemy structure of facing Dark Avengers and goons in PvE events.

Unknown

beemand2g wrote:

you must have got the order of your nodes wrong I placed top 2 in most of the subs and did it by rubberbanding. I took out the hard nodes first then left the essentials to last

Hmm, Now that I think about it I ground my nodes starting with Highest point -> Lowest point so that probably IS it

Unknown

Team_Xtreme wrote:

We've had The Hunt a few times before and I haven't seen this much displeasure with it. Is it the increased scaling or maybe pressure to get points for alliance that's causing people to call it a "marathon" or "grind"?

People also complain that it's repetition of the same enemies. But with exception of the Simulator event, it has mostly been the same enemy structure of facing Dark Avengers and goons.

This was the first event with scaling beyond 230. I'd guess the people with walls of 390+ enemies is a big part of the frustration.

People are, with good reason, getting more and more irritated with scaling. And - regarding community scaling, especially - it's not clear why D3 is doing it. It seems like a poorly implemented and poorly thought out mechanic, and all it does is irritate virtually everybody. I didn't even get hit that hard by it and I'm sick of it.

Unknown

Team_Xtreme wrote:

We've had The Hunt a few times before and I haven't seen this much displeasure with it. Is it the increased scaling or maybe pressure to get points for alliance that's causing people to call it a "marathon" or "grind"?

People also complain that it's repetition of the same enemies. But with exception of the Simulator event, it has mostly been the same enemy structure of facing Dark Avengers and goons in PvE events.

It's mostly the negative feedback loop of scaling. Once you get scaled to a certain point, you feel compelled to start using stuns just to get passed them, which leads to increased scaling, which leads to stuns, and so on.

Basically you either luck out and remain below the ridiculous threshold, or you cross the line and all of a sudden can't do anything to stop the runaway freight train of scaling.

I also don't remember the last Hunt, but I thought only the essential nodes were repeatable the last time it was run. I could very well be wrong on that but I seem to recall it being less mission heavy.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

This was the first event with scaling beyond 230. I'd guess the people with walls of 390+ enemies is a big part of the frustration.

jozier wrote:

Basically you either luck out and remain below the ridiculous threshold, or you cross the line and all of a sudden can't do anything to stop the runaway freight train of scaling.

Ok, so it seems the biggest issue is scaling related. My scaling wasn't that bad, so I guess I had a better experience. Sucks though for other people

jozier wrote:

I also don't remember the last Hunt, but I thought only the essential nodes were repeatable the last time it was run. I could very well be wrong on that but I seem to recall it being less mission heavy.

I think you're right. I do remember not all nodes being repeatable previously.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Winning a sub is the same strategy as its always been: grind as much as possible right before the end of the sub and each 12 hour interval, .

Not entirely true. In the past,(when rubberbanding was first introduced) you could join the PvE on day one. Sit out for the first 2-3 sub-missions and then make an earnest effort on the fourth day. That way, your 'global leader' had built up a huge amount of points, and then all your future possible node points would all be based off of his score.

So you could rack up huge point totals that your other competitors in your sub-mission bracket couldn't even touch (as long as you made your 'push' right at the end). They would grind their nodes down to 1 point and you would still be 5k-8k above them.

This of course is back when first place prizes were actually more valuable and worth achieving. Now the amount of difference between the prizes is pretty insignificant.

Unknown

Good:

- Good amount of ISO/token rewards, especially compared to Heroic Oscorp which was extremely anemic with rewards. I was ISO starved coming out of the Heroic event, but was able to level a few toons nicely during this event.

- Rubberbanding has been tuned for the better. Previously it was a mad rush towards the end and kind of a toss up whether or not you could finish top 2. It literally came down to who would finish a node closest to when the event ended. Now I noticed I could hang on to a top spot for much longer and much earlier. I grinded out a top 2 finish during the very first refresh, but after I saw my scaling go up I quickly realized that wasn't gonng be worth it for an extra Assault token which would likely yield me a 2*. So I strategically just aimed for top 10-20 finish for each bracket while maintaining a "drafting" distance from the #1 in my main bracket. What I noticed was I could hit top 10-20 an hour before the event ended, and I could still maintain that position, whereas before I would have to play up to the last minute. This is a huge improvement in my book.


Bad:

- Event was too long, and this relates to scaling, which is a separate issue not tied specifically to this event. However, because this event ran so long, scaling got out of control. Had the event only lasted 5-7 days, I think scaling would have peaked for most of us in the 200-300 range, which isn't great but is acceptable.

- Poorly designed progression awards. Yet again (what is this, like the fourth straight tournament?) where the top tier award is not obtainable. Whatever algorithms they are using to try and figure out how many points players are gonna score....clearly it isn't working.

- Extremely repetitive. We have Lazy Thor, Lazy Cap.....how about Lazy Hunt? Lazy Event Design? Not sure what's going on in their creative design department, but new events would be nice, instead of continually re-hashing the old. A few more new tournaments and the constant repeating of elements won't be as noticeable.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

The scaling wasn't a problem, the problem was that in most subs by the time you catch up to near the current leader your nodes don't give enough points to pass them. So in one sub I tried to do exactly what you said, but some players still managed to pass me, and then *I* couldn't get enough points on nodes to re-pass them!

I did it as follows - basically what NorthernPolarity said. At the second to last refresh finish at about the 12h45 mark, giving you 45 minutes to do the sub that was about to finish. At this time I want to be close - inside top 10 to the leaders. For extra points in both Florida and Savage I saved some one time only nodes until the last refresh. Ie Jump jet 1 and 2 in florida and Dino in savage were saved so I could use these points to close the gap. (Hence my comment on the first weekend in the main thread I was doing the nodes in the wrong order) Then its just a matter of timing you last push so you finish right as the sub ends.

Made top 2 most of the time and finished with 139K points.

Bacon Pants

I almost don't want to go to Disney this summer because I now hate Florida.

The good:
The only good I can think of from this event is the ISO received to continue leveling Not So Lazy Thor. Oh wait! There is one more good thing...this stupid event is over.

The bad:
Everything else.

Unknown

Here are the things that stood out to me

The Good:

-Tokens: I don't know if I was just lucky, but I pulled a lot more gold covers from the special Hunt Tokens thing than I have in past tournaments, and that made me happy.
-Lots of subevents = lots of ISO opportunities.

The Bad:



Midway through the tournament, I was already locked out of a lot of nodes because of scaling, and that's just not fun. And it's not because I have some mega crazy huge roster. I have only one maxed 3* character.

Linkster79

mags1587 wrote:

Chimaera wrote:

Any design that punishes players for playing too much is tinykitty bad and needs to be changed.

Any design that punishes players for not playing other than not winning the event is tinykitty bad.

This current design does both.

This. Also, I would add: Any game mechanic that punishes a player for playing well (i.e. not taking damage) has to be taken back to the drawing board.

Both of these. Also any game mechanic that punishes individuals for how well others do is incredibly stupid.

Unknown

I am pretty new, but I honestly preferred the heroic venom event alot more than this one, at least we were rewarded with a bunch of 3* covers for the hard work in that event. For the hunt after 10 days of hard work we got 3 falcon covers and a bunch of moonstone and bagman covers!