OSCORP HEROIC - MAY 8-14

Phaserhawk

I just think back to the movie "Clear and Present Danger". The president's friend got killed in a bad situation and all the yes men are trying to tell him to deny knowing him, pretend you don't know him. And Harrison Ford/Jack Ryan says, I disagree, I would say he was a good friend, and that you are shocked. "Why try to defuse a bomb that's already gone off?"

The event is FUBAR'd. The bomb has gone off, so quite trying to fix it or deny it. Just end it, and start anew, or give everyone a cover of each, because the damage is already done

Bowgentle

Lyrian wrote:

Is it possible for Demiurge to tweak the global repeatable nodes to address this problem later in the event without the nuclear option?

You know, after how 'close' everyone was to reaching even half of the progression rewards in the last 3 or 4 PVEs one might harbour slight doubts at Demiurge's ability to correctly calculate node values.

What's even greater: After one day of the last 3 PVEs it was clear that nobody was going to reach the progression rewards.
Reaction from Demiurge: None.

After half a refresh it was clear that points were skyrocketing.
Reaction from Demiurge: Immediate and gamebreaking for most who were planning to use rubberbanding - a tactic which had been working for months now.

Unknown

Just to note before I begin I'm not a fan of everyone not having an equal chance and I hope something is done to fix it that doesn't swing the pendulum the opposite way. That being said I'm kind of disappointed in the forum community right now calling for a massive blow up of this event. It seems like everytime I come on here someone (multiple someones) are complaining and bashing the game for punishing you for playing early and often and now that there is a glitch that benefited people for playing early and playing often everyone complains that its not far that the keeners have an advantage. Honestly I wasn't a recipient of the boost in points because I follow the PVE advice on here that says play as little as you can as late as you can but as far as i recall we all hate that we arent rewarding for playing more. It just seems like no matter what happens its never gonna make people happy on here.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

But... that's a lot of IFs that need to all become valid in harmony at once.

You forgot one very important aspect here, IF you manage to time your refreshes better than all the other players ahead of you. Since there isn't any fixed time schedule on the sub events, you have to guess the point at which the event will roll over very accurately, 12 hours in advance, in order to make headway. If at least half of the average 500 ahead of you do the same, top 250 is the best you can hope to achieve. To make matters worse, those ahead of you can even slip up without endangering their placement much in relation to yours, their extra points will provide a huge safety buffer.

Unknown

I think (most) everyone is being too whiny and hyperbolic. Let the event play out and then make your complaints. The devs still have time to tweak points to let people catch up and even if it doesn't pan out, they can always sprinkle in additional Dakan rewards in future events to help people get their share.

IIRC, similar things happened with DD and LazyCap rewards where there were snafus and then they showered us with the opportunity to get them.

Unknown

pasquali617 wrote:

That being said I'm kind of disappointed in the forum community right now calling for a massive blow up of this event.

I don't give a damn what method they use to fix things as long as they do it.

If not, I'm just going to concentrate on Season 1 events like Top Gun, Krakadoom, and even the simulator because beating my head against a wall for little payoff isn't appealing.


The way this clusterfark is set up, I apparently have little to no shot at finishing in the top 100 to grab a Classic Daken cover and I'm certainly not going to get the 50,000 progression award of the red Patch unless the point totals spike soon.

Unknown

Well I just Clawed my way to top 20 and did not totally destroy my scaling doing it. (Rampage is now at 103) and I am getting zero rubber band scaling of the sub so I know what the node values are. I am currently 1040 behind the leader. In fact if I had known I could pull it in this fast I would have done slightly few nodes in both refreshes. I thought the base node values where lower and they rubber band scaling was higher.

It is all very tight but there are 4260 points up for grabs with no rubber banding if you grind all nodes to zero. I will see if I can stabilize myself in the top 20 by doing a more usual set of nodes now (i.e. 8 missions a refresh and not 14)

Phaserhawk

Sumilea wrote:

Well I just Clawed my way to top 20 and did not totally destroy my scaling doing it. (Rampage is now at 103) and I am getting zero rubber band scaling of the sub so I know what the node values are. I am currently 1040 behind the leader. In fact if I had known I could pull it in this fast I would have done slightly few nodes in both refreshes. I thought the base node values where lower and they rubber band scaling was higher.

It is all very tight but there are 4260 points up for grabs with no rubber banding if you grind all nodes to zero. I will see if I can stabilize myself in the top 20 by doing a more usual set of nodes now (i.e. 8 missions a refresh and not 14)

I hope it goes well for you, I just don't want you to get your hopes up when the players that were above you come on and play, and due to the rubberbanding blast another 3k points back in front of you.

Unknown

Sumilea wrote:

Well I just Clawed my way to top 20 and did not totally destroy my scaling doing it. (Rampage is now at 103) and I am getting zero rubber band scaling of the sub so I know what the node values are. I am currently 1040 behind the leader. In fact if I had known I could pull it in this fast I would have done slightly few nodes in both refreshes. I thought the base node values where lower and they rubber band scaling was higher.

It is all very tight but there are 4260 points up for grabs with no rubber banding if you grind all nodes to zero. I will see if I can stabilize myself in the top 20 by doing a more usual set of nodes now (i.e. 8 missions a refresh and not 14)

That's great, but I think the issue is....what's gonna happen to your scaling? If the people left behind have to grind all their nodes down then that doesn't bode well for future rounds when you are facing lvl 400 mobs because you had to grind due to a developer error.

Unknown

I highly doubt there will be an event reset. If you reset, you have three reactions:

• Early skimmers/forumites, who will cheer.
• Early grinders, roughly equal in number to the early skimmers, who will say "man, **** this game, I was winning and now all my points are gone."
• Everybody else (the vast majority) who will say "a reset? FFS this game sucks I'm not starting over!" and go leave a 1-star review on their store of choice.

If they wanted to fix it, it'd be relatively trivial to do so, assuming they have the correct tools. Fixes range from the simple (drastically increase the rubberband percentage and score so everyone gets another refresh in) to elaborate (run a batch process to determine all brackets started at time of adjustment and retroactively reduce points for nodes cleared) Not really relevant how they do it.

The question is, will they? We know Demiurge is a fan of A/B testing, and this is a pretty fascinating test case, albeit one arrived at unexpectedly. My bet is they'll let it ride and see how it affects HP spend. How many people affected by the bug, who may/may not know that there was a bug, will spend HP to try to claw back into contention?

Unknown

I don't think the outlook is good, guys. It's almost noon over at their office and 16 hours since the issue started. The fact that we haven't gotten an actual explanatory or "damage control" response from D3 this morning, outside of one line responses from the lead designer that don't actually address the main issue at hand, means we'll most likely have to grin and bear this one.

I guess they're filing this mishap under "working as intended".

Unknown

Knock3r wrote:

I guess they're filing this mishap under "working as intended".

Well that's what I am assuming hence trying to get a top 100 finish in my main bracket. I have a clearer idea how well that's going when I see how far I fall over the next 11 hour until my nodes refresh again.

Unknown

Knock3r wrote:

I don't think the outlook is good, guys. It's almost noon over at their office and 16 hours since the issue started. The fact that we haven't gotten an actual explanatory or "damage control" response from D3 this morning, outside of one line responses from the lead designer that don't actually address the main issue at hand, means we'll most likely have to grin and bear this one.

I think the outlook is great, actually. If they don't do anything, I get to spend my weekend outside, working in the garden and on the lawn. If they do fix it, I get whatever benefit they offer + the rewards I've already earned. I call that a win-win for me.

JamieMadrox

I joined early and did all of the nodes except the patch ones a few times. Had a decent score. It's been nearly 24 hours since I touched a node (before the change) and my highest nodes are just about to hit 500 points. I'm at 4500 points and my bracket leader is at 9k. There is something very wrong here. More so than "we doubled the goal and it halved the node points". I'm starting to think that the node regen times for rubberbanding got halved as well.

Unknown

chadds wrote:

If this doesn't get fixed properly, we need to stick together and organize something like a 1 week HP buying boycott. As long as users are still spending money, they aren't going to care if they keep us happy. If we affect the bottom line though, they will listen.

Sadly, that'll never work - 200,000 players and only a single digit percentage come to the forums... Not much of a boycott.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

Knock3r wrote:

I don't think the outlook is good, guys. It's almost noon over at their office and 16 hours since the issue started. The fact that we haven't gotten an actual explanatory or "damage control" response from D3 this morning, outside of one line responses from the lead designer that don't actually address the main issue at hand, means we'll most likely have to grin and bear this one.

I think the outlook is great, actually. If they don't do anything, I get to spend my weekend outside, working in the garden and on the lawn. If they do fix it, I get whatever benefit they offer + the rewards I've already earned. I call that a win-win for me.

Exactly no reason to play it right now as it is, and if they don't fix their screw up i will have more time for the same stuff above!

Unknown

The base node values are currently as follows:-

Secure Perimeter: 40
S.H.I.E.L.D. Research: 60
Rope-a-Dope: 200
Iso-8 underground: 100
Freedom of the Press: 160
Father's Day: 220
The Brute Squad: 240
Rampage: 220
Smash and Grab: 180

I would not say they totally out of line of what we normally see.

Unknown

So far the structure and gameplay of this one has actually been quite good IMO.
I hate that it go screwed up in the first hour there might have been some positive feedback that is not drown out by all those unhappy with the points snafu.

Bowgentle

Sumilea wrote:

The base node values are currently as follows:-

Secure Perimeter: 40
S.H.I.E.L.D. Research: 60
Rope-a-Dope: 200
Iso-8 underground: 100
Freedom of the Press: 160
Father's Day: 220
The Brute Squad: 240
Rampage: 220
Smash and Grab: 180

I would not say they totally out of line of what we normally see.

If Brute Squad is base value 240 then rubberbanding sure as hell isn't based on anything sensible.
I've done exactly ONE mission in the sub 12 hours ago (Rampage) and my Brute Squad is worth a ginormous 888 points.
That'll do me wonders trying to catch up to the 9000 points my main leader has.

Unknown

The rubberbanding takes care of a sudden spike in points but it is not immediate. Let's just say the nodes are 100%/50%/1 and there are 5 nodes at 1000 points for the sake of simplicity. Let's say I did all these nodes for 7500 before anyone else did, and then they're reduced to 1/10 of their original value. Well you're most certainly not getting 7500 points from the rubberbanding. Maybe you get 3000 or 4000, but you sure aren't catching my 7500 in the first run. Now next refresh my missions are worth base value (because I'm bracket leader by a huge margin compared to rest of world) so I get at most 750 more points, and the people behind gets more than 750. It's less than what they got the first refresh (because rubberbanding is smaller) but it's more than what I got (750). Maybe it's 2000 so the gap gets smaller. This repeat itself so my unfair advantage is trimmed down by some % each refresh. Problem is if the bracket ended and I still lead by 500, that's pretty much insurmountable in a world where we assume a max point mission is base 100. Even if my lead gets trimmed by 50% each refresh, I'd still lead by 500 after 4 refreshes and if the event ended by then, then nobody can reasonably catch up to my unfair unadvantage.

Looking at my sub bracket numbers it looks like we're pretty close to cutting 50% of the lead each refresh. Like I mentioned, that's not enough when people started with a 4K lead because 1/4 of that is 1000, which isn't something you can expect people to make up.