The boss battles

tfg76

It's soon time for another iteration of boss battles, and it's likely that the new event will also go with 4 hour recharges, making it a huge grind for coalition players.

There's been recent discussions about 4 hr vs. 8 hr charges, with good arguments on both sides. For players that are struggling to beat the difficult bosses, 4 hour recharges seems better. For players in coalitions where it's expected that they play all nodes, 8 hr recharges are better.

I believe that both camps of players want to play and achieve difficult challenges, and for coalitions, those that manage to devise good strategies and plans should be rewarded accordingly.

To achieve this, it seems to me that the old reward system (and the one used by single-player PvE) achieves this: give progression and coalition points only once for each boss and objective. This way, the coalition is incentivised to actually solve each battle and its objectives and help each team member do so. Today, the oppositive is true: the incentive is on getting players to play as much as possible, not as "good" as possible. It's advisable to skip secondary objectives on the 3.x nodes, since it's better to win them easily and play more other matches.

IIRC, this kind of scoring system was used back in OGW. Maybe time to go back?

Ohboy

Ogw has no coalition pve events. 

tfg76

You may be right But the point remains - what's the use of this endless grind. Does anyone think it's fun?

Gotcha617

Why are the people wanting 4hr recharge times put in the class as ppl that have a tough time? I'm a long time player of the game and in a top 10 coalition. I find this game is taking away more playing time as a whole. I play the daily events that cost to get in. I play tg every day. Always participate in every event. I literally do all this during bathroom breaks at work or 15 min before I go to bed. As far as I'm concerned you guys would be happy to play 1 match a day and be rewarded mythics for it. Please give me more nodes. Or at least something else to do.

Ohboy

tfg76 said:

You may be right But the point remains - what's the use of this endless grind. Does anyone think it's fun?

There's no use or point to it. Like grinding heroic battles to tier up or for runes. It's entirely voluntary once you've beat all the objectives. 

It's just a arbitrary personal objective to do every node. If everyone did find it too grindy to do, then the front line would move back a few hundred points. Water finds its own level. 

Laeuftbeidir

Individual leaderboards and rewards would be a good incentive to make the grind at least feel worth it

Ohboy

Laeuftbeidir said:

Individual leaderboards and rewards would be a good incentive to make the grind at least feel worth it

I like it. 

tfg76

To me, what I don't like is that once I've mastered a node, I don't feel like playing the same game over and over multiple times per day. The node 3 battles typically take 20-30 minutes, and so clearing them 6 times per day is a time investment of up to 3 hours, and that's not counting the lower nodes.

Of course, playing the game at all is voluntary, and in fact I will likely choose to not play all of these games. However, I do feel I'm letting my coalition down by not doing so. 

Also, I'd love my coalition to really focus on getting everyone up to speed on how to beat each node and its secondary objectives rather than just urging everyone to play as much as possible. It's that mental challenge (Puzzle!) that intrigues me, I don't need another job!

madwren

Laeuftbeidir said:

Individual leaderboards and rewards would be a good incentive to make the grind at least feel worth it

You're saying that earning a Basic Booster doesn't excite you? 

madwren

tfg76 said:

To me, what I don't like is that once I've mastered a node, I don't feel like playing the same game over and over multiple times per day. The node 3 battles typically take 20-30 minutes, and so clearing them 6 times per day is a time investment of up to 3 hours, and that's not counting the lower nodes.

This.

The time investment is ridiculous, and playing the same games against the same opponents over and over is a Sisyphean cycle of dismay.

For those of you who can finish all the games in minimal time, such as Gotcha up above, congratulations. 

However, it constantly amazes me how little empathy there is around here. Step outside your own experiences, people. Brew solutions for those whose opinions differ from yours. Advocate a different way that helps everyone maximize their playing experience. But for the love of Pete, the "well I like it so it must be fine" attitude is tiring. 

Gotcha, the solution to your boredom is for d3 to add more Story Mode, run concurrent coalition and non-coalition events, and provide a more meaningful/rewarding Training Grounds experience.

What is your solution for those who find 4-hour refreshes are unreasonable? 

Ohboy

madwren said:

tfg76 said:

To me, what I don't like is that once I've mastered a node, I don't feel like playing the same game over and over multiple times per day. The node 3 battles typically take 20-30 minutes, and so clearing them 6 times per day is a time investment of up to 3 hours, and that's not counting the lower nodes.

This.

The time investment is ridiculous, and playing the same games against the same opponents over and over is a Sisyphean cycle of dismay.

For those of you who can finish all the games in minimal time, such as Gotcha up above, congratulations. 

However, it constantly amazes me how little empathy there is around here. Step outside your own experiences, people. Brew solutions for those whose opinions differ from yours. Advocate a different way that helps everyone maximize their playing experience. But for the love of Pete, the "well I like it so it must be fine" attitude is tiring. 

Gotcha, the solution to your boredom is for d3 to add more Story Mode, run concurrent coalition and non-coalition events, and provide a more meaningful/rewarding Training Grounds experience.

What is your solution for those who find 4-hour refreshes are unreasonable? 

To not play every 4 hours? 

It's like the 2 hour boosters. No I'm not logging in every 2 hours. I can see people who might, and kudos to them. But I'm not doing it. 

span_argoman

Being in a casual coalition, my fellow members are quite happy with the 4-hour refresh cycle as it means we have more leeway to hit Progression. We still regularly hit top 100 for the weekend PvE events.

So if I may venture to extend this sentiment to the other casual coalitions, let's assume a player base of 20k players (slightly less than the last revealed player count of 22k several months back). Split evenly into coalitions, that's 1,000 coalitions.

If we take out the entire top 100 coalitions just for argument's sake, then it's only 90% of the player base which is probably grateful to have more chances to hit Progression. The tradeoff being that top coalitions have to fight harder to maintain their ranking in the event. By those numbers it doesn't look good for those pushing for the refresh timers to be extended back to 8 hours.

Even if we halve the count to 10,000 players, it's still 80% of the player base that would be glad to have more chances and flexibility to hit Progression. Even if we halve that number yet again on an unbased assumption that casuals don't play every weekend, it's still 3:2 in support of 4-hour recharges.

And for people who would like to bring up the "Competitive players spend money which keeps this game running"  argument, I have coalition members who spend money on the game too so it isn't just the competitive players keeping this game alive.

Ohboy

It's also illogical to say top players spend more because they have the least incentive to actually spend. 

This game's incentive system has been running in reverse for a while now. 

madwren

Ohboy said:

madwren said:

tfg76 said:

To me, what I don't like is that once I've mastered a node, I don't feel like playing the same game over and over multiple times per day. The node 3 battles typically take 20-30 minutes, and so clearing them 6 times per day is a time investment of up to 3 hours, and that's not counting the lower nodes.

This.

The time investment is ridiculous, and playing the same games against the same opponents over and over is a Sisyphean cycle of dismay.

For those of you who can finish all the games in minimal time, such as Gotcha up above, congratulations. 

However, it constantly amazes me how little empathy there is around here. Step outside your own experiences, people. Brew solutions for those whose opinions differ from yours. Advocate a different way that helps everyone maximize their playing experience. But for the love of Pete, the "well I like it so it must be fine" attitude is tiring. 

Gotcha, the solution to your boredom is for d3 to add more Story Mode, run concurrent coalition and non-coalition events, and provide a more meaningful/rewarding Training Grounds experience.

What is your solution for those who find 4-hour refreshes are unreasonable? 

To not play every 4 hours? 

No, I mean an actual solution, rather than a sarcastic one.

You're an intelligent fellow, You know good and well that "don't play" is as much a solution as telling someone who doesn't like a law, "If you don't like it, just leave the country."  That's a stagnant methodology that doesn't facilitate positive change or reform, and certainly doesn't respond to the concerns raised by a significant portion of the community. 

octal9

I still like my solution. @Brigby

1) Start the event on at 5pm UTC (the usual start) on Friday. 
2) Lower the raid health. (optional, see 4)
3) Reinstate 8hr recharge to sate the competitive players.
4) Freeze the coalition leaderboards at event "end". This can be at raid health = 0, or at 3PM UTC (the usual event end time) on Monday - whichever comes first, perhaps.
5) Allow players to continue at their own desire until 3PM UTC Wednesday to sate anybody that wants more opportunities to play.

Competitive players get their leaderboards, casual players get their progression.

Ohboy

No really. This is the solution. 

If you don't like running, don't join marathons. There's no need to actually leave the country. Or to stop running for health. Just don't go running marathons. If you like to win marathon medals, then run the marathon. 

Most people don't run marathons, and those who choose to do so don't complain that it's too long. 

The grind is a red herring anyway. It's not actually about the grind. A similar level of complaint would probably arise if everyone only got 9 charges total for the entire event because coalitions lose their grinding advantage. 

It's about coalition rewards being too hard to earn. As if the word "earn" has lost all meaning. If you're joining a marathon voluntarily, don't complain you're running a marathon. 

Steeme

This was the same issue with the Emrakul's Corruption event.

If you skipped the tertiary objective on nodes 2 and 3, it was quite enjoyable.

Yet there was a thread where everyone chimed in saying "Stop making us play it."

I remember getting barked at by rabid players when I made the suggestion "Can't you just skip the objectives you're not enjoying?"

Not going down that path again.

Skiglass6

I wish people would stop saying they want to play more because this is somewhat disingenuous. What they are really saying is that they want to play more, as long as they are getting more rewards. If people really wanted to just play more, they could play TG until their heart is contnent. It would at least have more diversity than playing the same 9 known decks. 

Most of the players who are asking for 4hr timers are asking for more attempts to learn how to beat the node 3 bosses to either make progression or make it easier. Most are not trying to figure out multiple decks to beat them and I imagine they are not trying to max out their score. Because when they hit nearly 1400 ribbons (which I do) in 1 event then they will not want to keep doing it. It really is only fun once just to see how high you can score. 

Since D3 does not tell us why they increased the progression from 450 to 850 and now 750.  I would like to think they were trying to help the coalitions by making everyone that wants progression do more damage during event. But then people couldn't hit progression so they had to add HP to boss which then made it run long. So then they changed it to 4hrs so everyone could do more damage faster. So in the end it never helped.  But maybe they did it just to be mean. 

So, NO, the answer is not, don't run the marathon if you do not want to be in a marathon. the best answer is decrease the ribbons needed for progression, change back to 8hr timer, get rid of the boss hp and have the event end 12 hr shift from the other events so all time zones can get screwed by the end of some event. But if we can not get away from the 4hr charge, at least throw me a bone and give me 5 crystals for every 50-100 ribbons above progression. 

Steeme

Skiglass6 said:

Since D3 does not tell us why they increased the progression from 450 to 850 and now 750.  I would like to think they were trying to help the coalitions by making everyone that wants progression do more damage during event. But then people couldn't hit progression so they had to add HP to boss which then made it run long. So then they changed it to 4hrs so everyone could do more damage faster. So in the end it never helped.  But maybe they did it just to be mean. 

They increased the progression because the players asked for it.

Coalition players were complaining that there was no reward after 450 ribbons other than maintaining your place on the coalition leaderboard.

Skiglass6

I am not saying you are wrong about that, but is it posted from D3 or D3 rep that this is the case. Because if that is the reason why, it didn't work because I am not getting anything from 750 to 1400. So D3 should then admit what they did, didn't work and revert to the way it was. 

Ohboy

This game had a long history of players asking for something and then regretting it because they never think of the consequences.  

Complain about the 750 to 1.4k gap loud enough, and you'll get it. Along with everything that comes with it. 

Also, you might want to reconsider reverting. For the majority of the pve event run, the nodes were 4 hours each, and ended only when the boss died(no time limit) 

Consequences.