OSCORP HEROIC - MAY 8-14

Unknown

Expecting the event to not be completely F'ed up and advantaging random people is an "entitled attitude"? Interesting.

nyark

Knock3r wrote:

nyark wrote:

I've said this from the beginning, let us unlucky folks join a new bracket at least. I just want a fair shot at earning the Daken covers instead of being dumped in a 5k point hole on the first day due to no fault of my own.

I'm sorry but how would D3 begin to sort out the "unlucky"? I'm pretty sure D3 would have to build a unique one-off algorithm just to weed out who deserves a second chance or not. This would be a tremendous amount of work and seems just unreasonable.

No algorithm needed, just pop up a message "We screwed with the event at 7pm last night, if you would like to be pulled out of your bracket contact us at blahblah". Everyone who contacts them would be manually removed from their bracket, then they can join a fresh bracket from scratch. They seem confident that this only affects a small percentage of players so they shouldn't get too many requests, right?

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

My expectation is that over the next day or so, we'll all start to see what Sumilea saw, and that persistent and well-timed play will determine who ultimately ends up on top. We're also still investigating if there's something safe that can be done to even out the advantage the change gave some folks, in case it doesn't continue to evaporate, or in case there's something very safe (that we haven't thought of yet) that we can do right now.

My expectation is that we won't, a headstart is still a headstart if all players involved participate on an equal level, no matter how often you cut that headstart in half. Sure, the top slackers will drop in rank, but unless you are willing to grind single points nodes a hundred times in the end you are guaranteed to only get closer to the players putting some real effort in, never to catch up. To be frank, the past few months have given me the understanding that D3 has at best a very superficial understanding of the math involved in this game, missing their educated guesses by miles over and over again. I'm willing to bet my account for a free Daken cover of each color for everybody that persistent and well-timed play will not determine who ultimately ends up on top. For those players disadvantaged by your downscaling it will only shake the top ranks a bit. Deal?

I'd still like to propose a reasonable solution to this fisaco, offer players a choice. Once the event is finished, allow anyone interested to exchange the placement reward for one on par with the average personal placement of the past three PvE events. So if somebody places at #123 but previously managed to place #5, #14, #8 (making this an average of (5 + 14 + 8)/3 = 9), it's safe to assume that player got pushed out of an expected top 10 due to your inability to conduct the competition in a professional way. Offer the same for alliances. This is something I'm sure is well within your power and ability to do, provided there is any interest at all to compensate for the damage and trouble caused. Offer an additional 10k ISO to those players willing to make the exchange, just to show that you intend to be more careful in future.

Bacon Pants

Toxicadam wrote:

ender wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Just as I said, quit your whining and wait for the entire event to play out before you come to some conclusions.

I am guessing you are one of the folks with 10K points already. you just dont want to lose your advantage

Nope .. I work all day and didn't get to join until 8pm EST. I just get tired of how knee-jerk this forum can be sometimes. The entitled attitude of some people is ridiculous.

When there is a serious change mid event...things like this will happen. The change affected me and it sucks. That's not whining, it's a statement. I highly doubt that others, like myself want to grind relentlessly just to see if we can gain any ground.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

ender wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Just as I said, quit your whining and wait for the entire event to play out before you come to some conclusions.

I am guessing you are one of the folks with 10K points already. you just dont want to lose your advantage

Nope .. I work all day and didn't get to join until 8pm EST. I just get tired of how knee-jerk this forum can be sometimes. The entitled attitude of some people is ridiculous.

So you joined after the change and thus are not at all disadvantaged, except perhaps for alliance totals.

And I echo Rajjeq. A level playing field is a very, very basic expectation.

Nonce Equitaur 2

My main concern at this point is scaling.

Some people had it easy, and got thousands of points right off the bat, playing a few easy matches.
Other people did many hours of grinding to catch up, playing many, many matches, for 100 points a match. The battles are already getting gruesome.

Do not punish the people that were forced to do catch up with obscene scaling in subsequent matches. Anything over level 180 will be difficult even with a maxed set of the available characters. If the battles go to level 250 and up, they'll become impossible.

Having to play 100+ matches to catch up was enough of an ordeal. Don't compound it by adding another gotcha for those that missed out.

Unknown

They screwed up and won't fix it properly. They expect us grind each node to its base value each refresh to catch up and that still doesn't guarantee we will make up the difference. Just reset the event, the people that have the huge advantage don't have it anymore and vice versa with the people who are at a major disadvantage. The solution is simple and shouldnt take long to implement.

A level playing field is all we ask... The devs should look at it as giving goodwill to its faithful and loyal player base. It goes a long way in the end.

Bacon Pants

TheFallen wrote:

They screwed up and won't fix it properly. They expect us grind each node to its base value each refresh to catch up and that still doesn't guarantee we will make up the difference. Just reset the event, the people that have the huge advantage don't have it anymore and vice versa with the people who are at a major disadvantage. The solution is simple and shouldnt take long to implement.

This is my biggest problem with their suggested solution. Grind each node, which causes a myriad of issues:

Personal scaling increases
Healthpacks wasted
Healthpacks bought to keep grinding
ect. ect.

Or ultimately smashing your phone or computer to pieces like the printer from Office Space.

I feel like D3 is essentially telling us to go f ourselves. It just ultimately doesn't matter to them, it probably affect a small % of the playing base, and new players will always be joining the game. Something like this (albeit big or small) will happen again in a month or two...That's been the track thus far.

Phaserhawk

The only hope of a fix, is if they can increase rubberbanding of the main node. That way when individuals finish their sub brackets and have to play the main node bracket again to reopen a sub the node values could be high to catch them back up, it might not be perfect to catch the head starters but at least it will reign it in a little.

scottee

I joined early, didn't play much, and then saw all this. I'm one of the most disadvantage. My personal preference is a reset of course, as it would give me a level playing field.

However, I also see the difficulty of resetting. The people who had the lead before the change got there legitimately. Resetting would screw them out of all their work. Even if there were NO point change screw-up, the people who were in first at that point were still at an advantage because they grinded out enough to be in first. That's how they got there. At that point, if joe-shmoe and the leader both played exactly the same and played ideal, of course the original leader should win.

So I see no problem with not resetting.

The main question now is how easy to you make it for others to catch up. Rubberbanding was never intended to allow people to easily overtake the leader, just to get close. In fact, many people still find rubberbanding in and of itself an unfair mechanic. Everyone here says they don't want to grind, but the most fair point system is with NO rubberbanding or scaling, and the one who grinds the most wins. That's not what people want. What people really want is it to be easy for them to win and harder for others to win. The problem is that his is what EVERYONE wants.

I find increased rubberbanding acceptable. Of course it's not ideal. Ideal is there was never a mistake in the first place. I think they should have just let the first sub end fast and then increase the points in the second sub. (Although then people would whine that they didn't have time to play the first sub and are at a disadvantage and will never be able to catch up. Hmmm. Sound familiar?)

The purpose of rubberbanding was to let people who play the most still win, but allow those that didn't play as much to feel like they're not that far behind. I suspect over the course of the event, increased rubberbanding will get close to fair results.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

ender wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Just as I said, quit your whining and wait for the entire event to play out before you come to some conclusions.

I am guessing you are one of the folks with 10K points already. you just dont want to lose your advantage

Nope .. I work all day and didn't get to join until 8pm EST. I just get tired of how knee-jerk this forum can be sometimes. The entitled attitude of some people is ridiculous.

Wanting a level playing field in a game is hardly entitlement.

And "wait for the event to play out" is a moronic suggestion when the proper solution is a reset. You think a reset will be better received after 6 days?

Demiurge_Will

wathombe wrote:

Knock3r wrote:

Demiurge_Will, I sincerely appreciate the in-depth response but can you please give us a simple reason why the event can't just be restarted?

A million times, this.

Yeah, good question. The reason: that would wipe out a lot of effort on the part of many players. A secondary consideration is that there isn't a great way to tell people that it's about to happen or explain what happened - a small fraction of players check forums, and people might not see an in-game pop-up in time.

There might be cases where that cost to players is worth it, but likely not a day into an event.

scottee

Phaserhawk wrote:

The only hope of a fix, is if they can increase rubberbanding of the main node. That way when individuals finish their sub brackets and have to play the main node bracket again to reopen a sub the node values could be high to catch them back up, it might not be perfect to catch the head starters but at least it will reign it in a little.

I agree this would help.

Another solution would be to implement full or partial global rubberbanding. Global rubberbanding essentially negates any early advantage, though it makes for crazy high point totals which ruins their progression reward projections, but I would find this perfectly acceptable in this case.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

ender wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Just as I said, quit your whining and wait for the entire event to play out before you come to some conclusions.

I am guessing you are one of the folks with 10K points already. you just dont want to lose your advantage

Nope .. I work all day and didn't get to join until 8pm EST. I just get tired of how knee-jerk this forum can be sometimes. The entitled attitude of some people is ridiculous.

You know, I actually don't necessarily disagree with your position; who knows, there is a possibility that rubberbanding might just even things out in the long run. But I also don't want the situation to be, "there's a small fire in the living room" and after 6 days, to say, "yea, we should have totally put out that fire" while standing over the ashes of the house.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Yeah, good question. The reason: that would wipe out a lot of effort on the part of many players. A secondary consideration is that there isn't a great way to tell people that it's about to happen or explain what happened - a small fraction of players check forums, and people might not see an in-game pop-up in time.

There might be cases where that cost to players is worth it, but likely not a day into an event.

You know when it is worth it? Five to six hours into an event right after you make an entirely rash change that severely disadvantages many players. Much less effort wiped out at that point.

Why were you so quick to change point values and point goals at 7pm EDT, then glacially slow to do anything about the horrific imbalance that change created?

scottee wrote:

Another solution would be to implement full or partial global rubberbanding. Global rubberbanding essentially negates any early advantage, though it makes for crazy high point totals which ruins their progression reward projections, but I would find this perfectly acceptable in this case.

This is actually a fantastic idea.

Of course, the entire reason they probably made the points change in the first place is that they are too stingy to give out progression rewards.


EDIT: typo

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

There might be cases where that cost to players is worth it, but likely not a day into an event.

So, since this happened just a few hours into the event, what was the reason to not react right away and instead let this deteriorate to a point where you could claim that the cost to players would no longer be worth it?

Unknown

Bacon Pants wrote:

When there is a serious change mid event...things like this will happen. The change affected me and it sucks. That's not whining, it's a statement. I highly doubt that others, like myself want to grind relentlessly just to see if we can gain any ground.

Firstly, the change happened less than 8 hours into the event, not midway. With people demanding a complete wipe or mass-reward handout less than 12 hours after that. That's a knee-jerk response.

I had something similar happen to me in another PvE event (Lazy Cap intro). I joined on the first day, thinking I could start in earnest on the third day and get all those rubber-banded points. But they had greatly diminished global rubberbanding. So, I was perpetually 3-8k off the lead pack for almost the entirity of the event. As low as 400-500th place in my bracket. Eventually, over the course of the event, I was able to catch up and placed in the top 50. Didn't have to grind .. just had to do my light clears at the right times.

Not an optimal finish, and I was a bit of a victim of a 'rules change' that I was unaware of. But at the same, it wasn't the end of the world.

Unknown

If you guys are so worried about upsetting players, push out a single daken *** cover and restart the event. even if they dont go to the forum to know what happened, they will be thrilled to get the extra daken and continue where left off

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

wathombe wrote:

Knock3r wrote:

Demiurge_Will, I sincerely appreciate the in-depth response but can you please give us a simple reason why the event can't just be restarted?

A million times, this.

Yeah, good question. The reason: that would wipe out a lot of effort on the part of many players. A secondary consideration is that there isn't a great way to tell people that it's about to happen or explain what happened - a small fraction of players check forums, and people might not see an in-game pop-up in time.

There might be cases where that cost to players is worth it, but likely not a day into an event.

I proposed letting players keep their ISO/rewards earned as well as keeping their progression progress (without the points going toward the new event ranking). Maybe it's too hard to program for you guys?

Also in every one of your/IceIX's responses telling people to just "grind it out" you completely neglect scaling. Does this mean that you plan on shutting off scaling for the remainder of this event? Or does D3's left hand not know what its right hand is doing?

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

Not an optimal finish, and I was a bit of a victim of a 'rules change' that I was unaware of. But at the same, it wasn't the end of the world.

If the "rules changes" puts you at a distinct disadvantage to picking up at least one Classic Daken cover, which is the major point of this event, then it is a Big Farking Deal.