Combined improvements for scaling and time zones (PVE)

Unknown

1. Refreshes happen every twelve hours by the clock, not by when the node was played last.

This is important for the rest of the changes to work, and it will also help solve the time zones issue. There is a small downside in that people who are able to be active at the refresh times have an advantage in that they can play two refresh cycles at once (on either side of the refresh). I think this is far outweighed by the benefits this give people in time zones where event ending times are very inconvenient.

2. Rubber-banding is calculated and locked in at the refresh, *not* dynamically.

This will make it so that no matter when you play during a refresh cycle, you have the same amount of rubber-banding available to you. This eliminates the disadvantage people in different time zones have when they can't play at the finish. There is still a slight disadvantage in that you won't know what the winning score will be, but I can't see a way of eliminating that short of removing the leaderboards. Demiurge wouldn't want to do that, because the competitive element is necessary to drive user engagement.

This has a performance downside for Demiurge, in that there will need to be a lot of computations done at the end/beginning of the refresh cycle, but it shouldn't be prohibitive.

3. Community scaling is calculated and locked in at the refresh.

Disclaimer: I can't know for certain why community scaling exists, but my belief is that it is a counter-balance to rubber-banding. Rubber-banding makes it so that you can catch up in an event and don't have to play all the refresh cycles. Community scaling makes it so that playing just the last cycle isn't an obviously optimal strategy. Since playing the last cycle is still pretty much the best strategy, I would argue that the effects of community scaling are still too weak.

Community scaling needs to have two components: First, there is a time-based component. This should be the weaker factor in calculating community scaling, and it exists mainly to gently encourage people to play the entire event if they can. Second, community scaling should be based on the amount of rubber-banding - and this should be the major factor. While rubber-banding offers people a chance to catch up in events, I believe this should be balanced by having to face tougher opponents to do so.

Note that community scaling has nothing to do with how many nodes other people are clearing, except indirectly, as their clearing nodes will increase their score, and potentially your rubber-banding.



What does this system look like to a player?

If you play all the time and you lead the event, your nodes are always at their base values (no rubberbanding), and you see only a weak community scaling effect as the event progresses, due to time.

If you're a new player, but you play consistently, you should be competitive - your rubberbanding will still be low, and you'll still see only a weak scaling effect.

If you're a tough player who likes to grind hard at the end for maximum rubber-banding, your nodes will be worth a lot more, but you'll face the toughest possible opponents.

If you're a new player that plays intermittantly, you'll see difficulty ramp up for you as rubber-banding kicks in, and you may find yourself completing fewer and fewer nodes each refresh, but on the other hand, they'll still be worth more.

Unknown

Anything that reduces the dependency on being present in the last two hours is a good thing. I know they want some excitement of competition but it shouldn't be that if you're in the wrong timezone don't bother trying to compete unless you change your lifestyle.

Unknown

Exactly, as a player from "wrong" timezone I have to say, that this is going to be the reason for many european players to quit. Whether 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. both ending times are extremely bad.