PVE tapping

Eec411

This would require a pretty big overhaul to pve, but I think it addresses all the issues

1) track time spent in game to clear nodes.  Each node can be played ad nauseum, quickest 7 times give time total for the node. Sum of all node times is overall sub time.  Rank players by time completed.

alternative to sum, avg times.  Quickest summer avg determines rank.

this then becomes a test of roster strength and player skill.  If your roster is better than mine, you’re going to win.  If our rosters are comparatively equal but I’m faster than you, I win.

2) if this is implemented, now we don’t need brackets or even time slices.  Open up a sub event for the day, everyone can play when they want, at their speed.

what about placement? Simple: create tiered rewards.  They already do this artificially via brackets.  Top 5% of scores earn reward A, next 5% earn reward B, etc.

I’ve eliminated tapping, bracket sniping, specific grind times and eliminated bracket flips all with one solution!

Spudgutter

Kolence said:

veny said:

aesthetocyst said:

veny said: ...  locking nodes after 10 attempts .... i think we already had this system and as far as i remember, the result was DOZENS of players complaining they have the same amount of points, taking f.e. 1st - 30th place BUT with different rewards.

No we haven't. Not in my time played. Within those confines, you're hallucinating/rambling.

There are several events where at different points players have the same score because it isn't over yet. There are a few where they end with identical scores. There has been 1—Gauntlet—in which players that finished all had the same score, and there were placement rewards, but it was understood that time was the tiebreaker. The complaints were centered on having placements in a Gauntlet at all, not about time being a tiebreaker.

We had a system where nodes could be done 6 times and that was all - they were locked after that so no more points (this was later removed because there were players with same points but different placements which caused an uproar).. 
And as far as i remember, gauntlet never had placement rewards.

But yeah, maybe my memory is flawed... it happened years ago.

I seem to remember one of the test pve's ending with many players finishing with the exact same maximum points score. But that time the nodes didn't recharge points over time, no? 

Just adding points recharging is pretty much all the tie breaking that's needed. And making them recharge faster than people are able to tap fixes the rest.

I think you are right, that gauntlet was forever ago, but there was a one where they had a lot of ties, so people kind of stopped playing, and then at the end of the event they gave everyone that completed it the top rewards, and everyone that stopped playing got mad because they would have kept going if they knew.  

The rockett

Yes they had a failed test for PVE and they were warned what would happen with it and didn't listen before it was too late. They did give all players that got the optimal socre for that event top rewards. 

Borstock

This is one of those things I keep trying to care about, but can't. If someone puts in hours more than I do, why should I expect to beat them?

I get the perceived hypocrisy, and agree it at least hasn't been resolved if the devs truly want tapping to end. But there just isn't a real good way to measure the skill of players without drastically changing the way the game works... Not really. So the winner is always going to be someone who taps, or can always play optimally to the second, or who drops money to upgrade to the latest game-breaking meta. I just... Don't... Care. I'll continue to top 20 or top 50 and trudge along that way. Happily.

Mind you, I don't begrudge those who do care. Care about what you want. I just can't about this particular issue that barely affects a few people. 

j0nats

i say remove scaling level caps after 7th clear.  if you can multitap lvl 600 700 800 goons (or worse 5 star esential nodes), then you deserve to win.

Kevmcg

If I remember right, the reward that all top scorers received was X-23, She was one of my highest 4 stars at the time. Getting the extra covers was one of the few times I thought they were overly generous with rewards.

PenniesForEveryone

Borstock said:

This is one of those things I keep trying to care about, but can't. If someone puts in hours more than I do, why should I expect to beat them?

I get the perceived hypocrisy, and agree it at least hasn't been resolved if the devs truly want tapping to end. But there just isn't a real good way to measure the skill of players without drastically changing the way the game works... Not really. So the winner is always going to be someone who taps, or can always play optimally to the second, or who drops money to upgrade to the latest game-breaking meta. I just... Don't... Care. I'll continue to top 20 or top 50 and trudge along that way. Happily.

Mind you, I don't begrudge those who do care. Care about what you want. I just can't about this particular issue that barely affects a few people. 

It's not the devs intent, and it's bad for the game.  The best rewards are for T1 SCL9 PvE - you get LTs, and those aren't distributed lightly.  That reward is meant to be an incentive for players to try and grow their roster so that they can compete at a higher level.  But in practice - that's not how you earn those rewards.  You earn those rewards by relentless tapping.  So any incentive to actually progress your roster is gone if you can easily earn those rewards just by tapping harder.

We don't need single point nodes as tie breakers.  Because of how the refresh system works speed is the tie breaker and it is reflected in the points that are earned.  The faster you open the sooner your timers start, the more points you regenerate, and the higher your score - no tie breakers needed beyond that.

Beer40

aesthetocyst said:

Sm0keyJ0e said:

Those that are arguing in favor of allowing tapping are missing the original message from D3: that they deemed it to be unhealthy and thought this new system would eliminate it (noting that they needed to be worth at least a couple of points to eliminate tiebreakers). 

However, they were completely wrong.

Tapping is a ridiculous extreme 

If you want change to happen, you want an exploit eliminated, it must be widespread enough to warp the meta.

If you want tapping to die, you need more people to be tapping. Get to it. Enable each other to tap by providing sub-by-sub lists of best nodes to tap, provide calculators for tap-related arithmetic, run threads discussing tapping advice and strategies, buth here and on Reddit, wiki, Discord, everywhere.

If you want it to go away, the most efficacious thing you can do is to blow it up into a big joke

If you want it to go away, the most efficacious thing you can do is to blow it up into a big joke 

I feel like this is the most sound advice. The more people that tap, if its not something MPQ wants, the more likely they are to get rid of it. So I tapped for awhile yesterday. It wasn't an efficient tap as I started way early and took large breaks in between sets of tapping, but maybe it'll help get some attention and we can be done with this mess.

Borstock

PenniesForEveryone said:

Borstock said:

This is one of those things I keep trying to care about, but can't. If someone puts in hours more than I do, why should I expect to beat them?

I get the perceived hypocrisy, and agree it at least hasn't been resolved if the devs truly want tapping to end. But there just isn't a real good way to measure the skill of players without drastically changing the way the game works... Not really. So the winner is always going to be someone who taps, or can always play optimally to the second, or who drops money to upgrade to the latest game-breaking meta. I just... Don't... Care. I'll continue to top 20 or top 50 and trudge along that way. Happily.

Mind you, I don't begrudge those who do care. Care about what you want. I just can't about this particular issue that barely affects a few people. 

It's not the devs intent, and it's bad for the game.  The best rewards are for T1 SCL9 PvE - you get LTs, and those aren't distributed lightly.  That reward is meant to be an incentive for players to try and grow their roster so that they can compete at a higher level.  But in practice - that's not how you earn those rewards.  You earn those rewards by relentless tapping.  So any incentive to actually progress your roster is gone if you can easily earn those rewards just by tapping harder.

We don't need single point nodes as tie breakers.  Because of how the refresh system works speed is the tie breaker and it is reflected in the points that are earned.  The faster you open the sooner your timers start, the more points you regenerate, and the higher your score - no tie breakers needed beyond that.

It is a good argument that, in SCL9 especially, the rewards at the top get very juicy. I see that. I just feel like there's always a complaint when it comes to placement in PvE. And this argument really feels like, "I want to win, but I only want to play X number of minutes to do it, and I don't want somebody who plays an hour longer than I do to beat me".

I also have to reject the idea that growth for other rosters is being stunted by tapping. I compete in SCL9 and regularly top 20. I have almost every 4* champed. My roster is moving along fine.

Couldn't they just increase the points value of every node so that the drop-off after each clear is so significant that no amount of tapping would overcome efficient gameplay?

ETA - I guess that's been suggested.

Stax the Foyer

Eec411 said:

This would require a pretty big overhaul to pve, but I think it addresses all the issues

1) track time spent in game to clear nodes.  Each node can be played ad nauseum, quickest 7 times give time total for the node. Sum of all node times is overall sub time.  Rank players by time completed.

alternative to sum, avg times.  Quickest summer avg determines rank.

this then becomes a test of roster strength and player skill.  If your roster is better than mine, you’re going to win.  If our rosters are comparatively equal but I’m faster than you, I win.

2) if this is implemented, now we don’t need brackets or even time slices.  Open up a sub event for the day, everyone can play when they want, at their speed.

what about placement? Simple: create tiered rewards.  They already do this artificially via brackets.  Top 5% of scores earn reward A, next 5% earn reward B, etc.

I’ve eliminated tapping, bracket sniping, specific grind times and eliminated bracket flips all with one solution!

I'm really glad to see this here, because it's almost identical to what I think should happen, absent the infinite repeatablity (save us from ourselves, please).  Starting a node starts a clock (in match display is a possibility).  Making the move that finishes the match stops the clock.  This wouldn't take into account post victory displays, the game knows exactly when you make the winning move, as the spoilery VICTORY banner showed once upon a time.

Your points for that match are based on the base value, with an increasing number of points being deducted for time spent in the match.  You can skew those calculations to emphasize certain nodes by altering the base and decay rates.  So, say the 5* essential node is worth 500 points.  You could lose 2 point for every 15 seconds up to 3 minutes, then from there, lose 1 point for every 15 seconds up to 10 minutes.  Keep flattening out that decay rate so that there's essentially a floor, and use that floor to calculate progression rewards, so that there's nobody who gets left out as long as they cleared.

You can make the trivial nodes decay slowly enough that everyone gets full points on them.  Encourage goofing around, instead of one-punch Thanos kills.  Make the decay sharper on the harder nodes, so that those are the important ones.  Keep the 4 full point clears and associated scaling increases, and make the base value for the next 3 clears be full, 2/3, and 1/3 of that base.  After that, it zeroes out.

This eliminates the need to schedule within the day, and lets people play at their leisure.  It wouldn't fix brackets, which is something that I'd like to see done, as well, but it would at least mean that you don't have to schedule your day around one of 5 specific break points if you want to succeed.  You don't have to mindlessly smash the screen to speed through the between match screens, you're not punished for reading the story, and you can play in small, focused bursts all throughout the day, and take the time to put together a good team for each matchup.

Huntah86

Personally I'm not bothered by tapping but I also know that I'll never be more than a T20 player and I'm fine with that. One thing I did want to mention that I've never understood is when people complain about PVE rewards and want everything to just be changed to progression.  You can just play the events to progression and not worry about placement so that's already an option.

Colognoisseur

I want to reiterate some of the issues with some of the solutions presented because we have already tried them and they have made large amounts of players unhappy.

1. All nodes go to zero- When it was tried there was a massive tie at full points and an uproar which required the first place rewards to be handed out to everyone. That is not a solution. The idea that fastest means the cream rose to the top does not take into account different connection speeds. Someone playing on a phone with a 4G connection will lose to me playing on my fiber optic connection at home. Identical rosters would not necessarily be playing on an even playing field due to connection. That's not to mention the RNG of getting a bad board or two on a tough node. If you lose because you have a slow connection and RNGesus gives you a heavy useless color board a couple times would you feel better? I know all of this would irritate me.

2. Make PvE progression based- We have that right now it is called SHIELD Training for every new release. I point you to every thread that exists after each run of it. Progression only would have to be gated in a similar way cutting off large swathes of the event to those without the required roster. Because the players don't like being locked out this also is not a solution.

There is not an easy solution here despite the flaws. It is the same issue that exists in PvP between points and win-based. We have had tastes of all the alternatives and I think none of them are even close to perfect.

broll

Borstock said:

This is one of those things I keep trying to care about, but can't. If someone puts in hours more than I do, why should I expect to beat them?

I get the perceived hypocrisy, and agree it at least hasn't been resolved if the devs truly want tapping to end. But there just isn't a real good way to measure the skill of players without drastically changing the way the game works... Not really. So the winner is always going to be someone who taps, or can always play optimally to the second, or who drops money to upgrade to the latest game-breaking meta. I just... Don't... Care. I'll continue to top 20 or top 50 and trudge along that way. Happily.

Mind you, I don't begrudge those who do care. Care about what you want. I just can't about this particular issue that barely affects a few people. 

Pretty much my take.  Why shouldn't placement be an effort stat?  The way it's measured without tapping is who's got time at the right time, which IMO is even more unfair.  I'd much rather someone beat me because they invested hours more time then me, then beating me because my job/home life make the 5 time slices all bad for me so I can never win.

The only reason anyone cares about this is because the vets expect their handout rewards (ironically what they always yell at those who don't like PvP for expecting).

The placement system is garbage.  In a perfect world it should be a merit of skill and roster level, instead it's a merit of planning your life around a game, speed, and in this case spending ludicrous amounts of time playing.

Unless someone's botting I don't see this as any worse than any other placement in this game.

jgomes32

In part i think people who tap made the effort to get the lead. On the other hand i don't think tap should be a thing. 

Tapping is just part of the problem with Pve. Since the scailing change i can no longer compete for T1 due to a combo of tap/sandbag, still solid getting T5/10 in SCL8, S2-3 though... But that's a different discussion i guess. 

Stax the Foyer

Colognoisseur said:

I want to reiterate some of the issues with some of the solutions presented because we have already tried them and they have made large amounts of players unhappy.

1. All nodes go to zero- When it was tried there was a massive tie at full points and an uproar which required the first place rewards to be handed out to everyone. That is not a solution. The idea that fastest means the cream rose to the top does not take into account different connection speeds. Someone playing on a phone with a 4G connection will lose to me playing on my fiber optic connection at home. Identical rosters would not necessarily be playing on an even playing field due to connection. That's not to mention the RNG of getting a bad board or two on a tough node. If you lose because you have a slow connection and RNGesus gives you a heavy useless color board a couple times would you feel better? I know all of this would irritate me.

My idea above would address the connection issue, at least.  By looking only at playtime in individual matches, the ability to skip through the other menus quicker wouldn't determine placement.

Board luck is always a factor, even now, but over the length of a PvE, it evens out somewhat.

With the 5* essential, ties at a reward break point are unlikely to be an issue, and certainly not a widespread issue.  That big tie was under scoring conditions that couldn't be replicated now, under the current system.  We all saw that tie coming, and for similar reasons, we can see that it won't be happening again.

Tiggida

Make all the nodes go to 0 after 6 clears and let them refresh/regen normally. There would rarely be any ties and tapping a single node a million times would actually result in a lower score since it would be worth more the longer you let it refresh. Just remove 3 pts or whatever it is from the node people are tapping and make it go to 0 like the rest do. I guess you could still tap a node but you would have to wait for it to refresh to 1 or more pts which would make tapping an even more time consuming and tedious chore. For a tie to happen in the above scenario 2 people would have to start and do their initial and final clears in exactly the same amount of time. I highly doubt we'd see many ties if that's the devs main reason for leaving a node to tap available.  

Tiggida

aesthetocyst said:

Tiggida said:

Make all the nodes go to 0 after 6 clears and let them refresh/regen normally. There would rarely be any ties and tapping a single node a million times would actually result in a lower score since it would be worth more the longer you let it refresh. Just remove 3 pts or whatever it is from the node people are tapping and make it go to 0 like the rest do. I guess you could still tap a node but you would have to wait for it to refresh to 1 or more pts which would make tapping an even more time consuming and tedious chore. 

This also kills tapping dead. Mathematically dead. The best kind.

Still allows "making up" some points, but makes outproducing 'optimal' play impossible.

It really seems so obvious to me unless I'm missing something. The players who play the best optimally should win. I don't know where this idea that ties would be rampant came from. I've played enough events where nobody in my bracket taps and there are virtually no ties happening in the top portion of the bracket. The scores are REALLY close, sometimes within 1 or 2 pts, but I don't think I've ever seen a tie in 3+ years of playing. 

maguirenumber6

Beer40 said:

All nodes should go to 0 after 6 clears.

This is exactly how it should work. All this crazy tapping really is unhealthy.

Bowgentle

maguirenumber6 said:

Beer40 said:

All nodes should go to 0 after 6 clears.

This is exactly how it should work. All this crazy tapping really is unhealthy.

While you're at it, give me a node reward for every clear that gives points.
It's idiotic that I have to clear 7 times, yet I only get node rewards for 6 clears.
Don't even get me started on the two day subs.

PenniesForEveryone

Bowgentle said:

maguirenumber6 said:

Beer40 said:

All nodes should go to 0 after 6 clears.

This is exactly how it should work. All this crazy tapping really is unhealthy.

While you're at it, give me a node reward for every clear that gives points.
It's idiotic that I have to clear 7 times, yet I only get node rewards for 6 clears.
Don't even get me started on the two day subs.

And why are there 6 rewards for that first loaner node that starts a timer after a single clear and consequently never gets cleared more than 4 times???