Unhealthy PVE: Tap tap tap the whole day

Phumade

Dax317 said:

Tappers are just adjusting tactics to have a fighting chance when out matched by superior rosters that have no business playing on any cl other than 8. 

Because of privacy rules, they can't post the LB that sparked this discussion.  but with that said. this issue arose between 2 elite level 5* rosters in scl8.

I acknowledge that monster rosters dropping into lower tiers is an issue.  but that really wasn't the point of the post.

Its unfortunate that they can't share the full context of the discussion (I.e. you have to see that leaderboard)


clearance level 9 and or restricting players to specific scl wouldn't have made a difference.  

Dax317

Thank you, Phumade! I do appreciate the context. But do you see my point as a whole?

TheDobot

At this point of the game do we even need to be competing like this in PVE anymore?  I think it's time that PVE drops the placement system.  PVP can be the Wild West, but PVE, at this point, should be about the puzzles and not the grind.  Give us challenges in PVE that really makes one use their teams and makes people think.

Without grinding after the final play, it takes almost 2 hours to do a final clear and the 2 hours for the first clears of the next subs.  That is 4 hours, of needed investment at a time, choosen by the game too, that one has to play a day.  

This (above) should be the complaint.  If people want to grind one point nodes to get first then that's their deal, but there is no reason it needs to take someone 4 hours a day, every day of their life, to get there.
 

Bowgentle

TheDobot said:

Without grinding after the final play, it takes almost 2 hours to do a final clear and the 2 hours for the first clears of the next subs.  That is 4 hours, of needed investment at a time, choosen by the game too, that one has to play a day.  

No it doesn't - unless you're playing in a CL that is WAY too tough for your roster.
Drop down to where your clears take an hour, tops. That's where you should be playing.

Lucifier

Kevmcg said:

My understanding is that there needs to be tie breakers. That is why the "hardest" nodes still maintain 1-3 points. Just reinforcing what is mentioned above - the point scale increase suggestion is the best way to make "tapping" a losing strategy.  Increasing node point scaling by a factor of 30 would make it close to break even. Tapping can get 3 points per minute.  The PVE Events also have to make sure that no node worth under 500 points ever allows for a constant 1 point value. My experience is that tapping is most rampant for new releases (as expected) and on the final sub when one of the nodes has a small value and the regen. cost to tap is at its lowest.

I'll also add that this is a byproduct of CL based opponents that are too easy (in my opinion) and the ability to use teams such as Big Thanos with 2 of our 100+ roster deadweight, or using Dr. Strange against goons.  Tappers can use those teams to win in a few matches without taking their eyes off the Football game they are watching.

tie breakers already exists, who get a certain point first will place higher than the other.

acescracked

Dax317 said:

... I define a whale as anyone playing outside their Clearance Level..

That's probably the strangest definition I've ever read.

acescracked

Dax317 said:

... Tappers are just adjusting tactics to have a fighting chance when out matched by superior rosters that have no business playing on any cl other than 8. Until they open 9 and 10 and restrict any from playing more than than one cl below their level then whales need to stop their tinykitty about lesser rosters adjusting tactics to have a fighting chance... 

And this is blind rage resulting in misunderstanding of what the OP is referring to.

It's not the "lesser" rosters doing the tapping since they can't clear the 3 point hard node 1000 times. It's the "whale" rosters that can abuse the tapping of the 3 point hard node.

jamesh

Lucifier said:

getting rid of brackets altogether, would do so much good for the game. 

I can not agree with that (or at least till we know what the new system looks like) because:
as we know there are 5 time slices per each Clearance level, so for CL8, there are 5 time slices, and lets assume each slice have 5 brackets (could be more):
5 x 5 = 25 different groups of placement rewards, that mean only for CL8:
end of event rewards:

• 25 players will get the 1st placement rewards
• 100 players will get the 2-5 placement rewards
• 125 players will get the 6-10 placement rewards
• 250 players will get he 11-20 placement rewards
• 750 players will get the 21-50 placement rewards
• and so on.....................

same idea apply to the event daily rewards
same idea apply to the alliance daily/end of event rewards
same idea apply to others CL level like 7,6, ................

putting all players in one bracket (even tho there are 5 time slices) will decrease the number of player that can get the high placement rewards (which i do not think that will encourage players to play more).

Well, the obvious fix is to change the placement rewards to work based on percentiles.  So rather than awarding a particular prize to the top 100 players out of a 1000 player bracket, award it to the top 10% of players.

It'd probably still make sense to segment people by time slice so people not playing in the last slice would have an idea of what their placement actually is though.

Lucifier

@jamesh

good idea, and an easy way to think about a solution for taping issue, simple just let points go down to 0 (not to 3).

as for bracket issue (some could be easy or less competitive some could be more) also there is an easy solution (as someone here mentioned it before), for example in a certain time slice, usually will be like 6 brackets (each with max is 1000, of course the first 5 will be full, and the last one depends on how many players has joined it).
instead of above (6 brackets), from beginning of the event, the game (internally) open 12 brackets, and when players join the bracket it will be distributed to these 12 brackets, by the end of event each bracket will have like 500 or 600 players, and i don't think the rewards beyond 500 is worth anything, or anyone is playing even with 4 clears, i doubt will end beyond top 500.

JRYUART

How's this? Make it so that anyone that taps beyond a specific low threshold can no longer see the leaderboard.  The idea is that it de-incentivizes them to blindly tap not knowing how much progress they have made against another tapper with the risk being that it just wasn't enough.  Why risk tapping and wasting irl time if you can't be sure your effort will pan out in the end?  May not directly fix it but it would certainly make it way more risky.

DarthDeVo

JRYUART said:

How's this? Make it so that anyone that taps beyond a specific low threshold can no longer see the leaderboard.  The idea is that it de-incentivizes them to blindly tap not knowing how much progress they have made against another tapper with the risk being that it just wasn't enough.  Why risk tapping and wasting irl time if you can't be sure your effort will pan out in the end?  May not directly fix it but it would certainly make it way more risky.

 I'm not sure that would work. If they're willing to do it when they can see the board, if anything it would probably drive them to be even more obsessive if they couldn't see it. With no idea if they're ahead or not, they'll likely keep tapping, just to be sure or on the safe side 

Kishida

DarthDeVo said:

JRYUART said:

How's this? Make it so that anyone that taps beyond a specific low threshold can no longer see the leaderboard.  The idea is that it de-incentivizes them to blindly tap not knowing how much progress they have made against another tapper with the risk being that it just wasn't enough.  Why risk tapping and wasting irl time if you can't be sure your effort will pan out in the end?  May not directly fix it but it would certainly make it way more risky.

 I'm not sure that would work. If they're willing to do it when they can see the board, if anything it would probably drive them to be even more obsessive if they couldn't see it. With no idea if they're ahead or not, they'll likely keep tapping, just to be sure or on the safe side 

Also, how could you prevent somebody from asking for accurate scoreboard updates on Line?

JRYUART

Kishida said:

DarthDeVo said:

JRYUART said:

How's this? Make it so that anyone that taps beyond a specific low threshold can no longer see the leaderboard.  The idea is that it de-incentivizes them to blindly tap not knowing how much progress they have made against another tapper with the risk being that it just wasn't enough.  Why risk tapping and wasting irl time if you can't be sure your effort will pan out in the end?  May not directly fix it but it would certainly make it way more risky.

 I'm not sure that would work. If they're willing to do it when they can see the board, if anything it would probably drive them to be even more obsessive if they couldn't see it. With no idea if they're ahead or not, they'll likely keep tapping, just to be sure or on the safe side 

Also, how could you prevent somebody from asking for accurate scoreboard updates on Line?

True on both accounts. Maybe the extra points that they tap at the lowest point values are tabulated and notated blindly only to be revealed at the end of sub or event? While there are some that have the fortitude to just keep tapping ad nauseum for every event, one would think that it's not sustainable for the long term in regards to their real lives (and jobs hopefully) and tappers will just give up.  

The strongest suggestion posted somewhere earlier I think was that the hard and ess nodes scale waaaaaay up after the 7th clear tied not to the SC level you chose but rather, your roster. This way, even if those with strong rosters drop down to a lower SC, it wouldn't all be a cakewalk.

Thus,  this becomes a risk vs reward scenario where you could attempt to tap those hard nodes but your health packs would suffer greatly (not to mention tedious matches for a miniscule amt of points), possibly discouraging some from even considering the extreme tapping marathons.

Sm0keyJ0e

I agree this is a problem. More than once my optimal play time has lost out to someone starting two hours early and simply playing a 3 point node over and over. Who knows, maybe they gave their device to a child. It's a broken game mechanic that rewards obsessive behavior.

As far as tie-breakers, why does there even need to be this added mechanic? There are no ties as it is. Whoever lands on a score first wins. It's that simple. We see this with sub clears all the time. THAT is your tie-breaker.

Any number of other solutions have been posited that would also work as well: inflating scores so grinds are meaningless, dropping all nodes to 0 after 3 subsequent clears, etc.

It needs to be fixed for the sake of the health of those grinding for 16 hours. People have died playing video games too much! Don't let this happen to MPQ!

BatteryHorse

It's sad that there are people so hopelessly addicted to this game, and to that tiny dopamine release you get when you win a mission or event, or when you see that purple cover pop up, or when you champ a character, that they'll put hours and hours and hours into this meaningless game.  

They're fake points, they're fake currency, they're fake rewards.  The whole thing is artificial.  I have fun playing, and my roster is solid, but I've caught myself staying up too late some nights trying to get my clears in before falling asleep, mostly because I want to do my part for my alliance, but I usually feel pretty stupid afterwards.  

It's a game.  It's supposed to be fun.

Wonko33

Maybe he's just OCD and wants them all to be down to 0, either way he deserves first place

Beer40

All nodes should go to 0 points after the 6th clear, you know, when the rewards end.

AngryGerman

Wonko33 said:

Maybe he's just OCD and wants them all to be down to 0, either way he deserves first place

No one has said that he doesn't deserve first place. He put in some serious work. What people have been saying is the mechanic that allows him to play for 16+ hours over 2 days shouldn't exist. It's bad for the health of the player and the game. 

Dax317

acescracked said:

Dax317 said:

... I define a whale as anyone playing outside their Clearance Level..

That's probably the strangest definition I've ever read.

Why strange? Someone playing way above their competition level is strange. I guess NFL players playing with college players is ok, gotcha. Good chat, mate.

acescracked said:

Dax317 said:

... Tappers are just adjusting tactics to have a fighting chance when out matched by superior rosters that have no business playing on any cl other than 8. Until they open 9 and 10 and restrict any from playing more than than one cl below their level then whales need to stop their tinykitty about lesser rosters adjusting tactics to have a fighting chance... 

And this is blind rage resulting in misunderstanding of what the OP is referring to.

It's not the "lesser" rosters doing the tapping since they can't clear the 3 point hard node 1000 times. It's the "whale" rosters that can abuse the tapping of the 3 point hard node.

There was no rage whatsoever. It was a well reasoned explanation of why lesser rosters sometimes tap, tap, tap to level the playing field. Yes, I misunderstood the OP because the original post was removed because it violated forum rules. But my explanation still stands as solid when higher rosters come down multiple cl to play. They are changing tactics to keep up and as a military historian, good for them. Those who adapt are the ones who usually come out on top. Thank you for responding to my post and giving me a chance to further explain my point. Have a great day!

Stax the Foyer

Lucifier said:

@jamesh

good idea, and an easy way to think about a solution for taping issue, simple just let points go down to 0 (not to 3).

as for bracket issue (some could be easy or less competitive some could be more) also there is an easy solution (as someone here mentioned it before), for example in a certain time slice, usually will be like 6 brackets (each with max is 1000, of course the first 5 will be full, and the last one depends on how many players has joined it).
instead of above (6 brackets), from beginning of the event, the game (internally) open 12 brackets, and when players join the bracket it will be distributed to these 12 brackets, by the end of event each bracket will have like 500 or 600 players, and i don't think the rewards beyond 500 is worth anything, or anyone is playing even with 4 clears, i doubt will end beyond top 500.

There's an even more elegant way to do it that I've suggested in the past, which is bracket splitting.  It could work as follows:

1)  Prejoining brackets are generated based on the number of people who prejoined a given start time shard for event start.   Assume for the sake of this example that less than 1000 people prejoined, so there's one bracket at the beginning.

2) The event starts, with as many brackets as needed (in this case, 1, but it works with any number of starting brackets.

3) As soon as player 1001 joins that shard, a new bracket is generated.  This is not a fresh bracket, with player 1001 in first place, alone.  Rather, a second bracket is generated, and the players in the first bracket are distributed across these two brackets, by moving a percentage of players from the existing bracket(s) into the new brackets.  So now, you have one bracket with 500 people in it, and another bracket with 501 people in it.

3) These brackets continue filling, with new players being added to one of the brackets with the lowest population, so that they all fill up equally, until they're both full at 1000 players each.

4) When player N001 joins, an (N+1)th bracket is generated, and the players in the first two brackets are distributed across these brackets, by pulling 1/(N+1) of the players from the first N brackets and putting them in the (N+1)th bracket.

5) This process repeats over the course of the event, until it ends with some number of almost completely filled brackets, with the same number of good prizes given out here as would be given out under the old system.

How are the people chosen to be removed from the bracket and placed in the fresh one?  I'm glad you asked!  This could be done randomly, but a better way to do it could be to simply go down the leaderboard and pull every (N+1)th person from the bracket when the (N+1)th bracket is generated, so that the new shard is reflective of the overall point distribution (with an offset between brackets, so you're not pulling the players at the same rank from each shard, so wonky things don't happen at the top end)

Why is this better?

A) It minimizes the effect of bracket luck, to the extent possible.  The final point distributions will be more homogenous across brackets.

On a similar note, it kills bracket sniping.  Bracket watching isn't fun, and it relies on the ignorance of the majority of the playerbase to work well.  It's not a good thing.

C) You'll randomly get a boost in placement as the event goes on, as players ahead of you are pulled out of your bracket to be part of a new one.  That's a good feeling, even for people who don't peek under the hood.  They'll just feel like their efforts were rewarded.

Why could it be bad?

There's the possibility that you could get bumped out of very high placement when a new bracket is generated, but this would probably only affect T2 placement.  Selection of players could be done in a way that ensures that nobody is moved to a bracket where their position would drop, although that would be slightly more complex analysis if there's a few brackets with a bunch of tappers.

The net benefit of the above would be huge, and would encourage early and consistent engagement in PvE.  Right now, you might find yourself in a position where the game incentivizes you to not play the game while you wait for a bracket flip.  That seems bad.  Let's fix that.