OSCORP HEROIC - MAY 8-14

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

You act as if these things can't be tweaked or altered during the course of an event.

Didn't we just learn that this might be an incredibly bad idea?

Unknown

Moghwyn wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

You act as if these things can't be tweaked or altered during the course of an event.

Didn't we just learn that this might be an incredibly bad idea?

Some of us learned. Some of us knew beforehand. And some of us are, evidently, still oblivious.

Unknown

Well, just think about the bonanza of additional material it will give you to forum-whine about all day long. It's a win-win for you.

Either it works in the real game or it fuels the other meta-game you like to engage in.

Unknown

Moghwyn wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

You act as if these things can't be tweaked or altered during the course of an event.

Didn't we just learn that this might be an incredibly bad idea?

Agreed.

This is why they're supposed to look at all this stuff on their test server before they push it live.


They did it right earlier this week by bumping the lightning rounds when they found that they were accidentally set as Season 1 events.

However, they seem to have huge problems forecasting the interest in various PVE events to the point where the progressions are set correctly.

Unknown

Knock3r wrote:

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.

Thanks, I understand and appreciate your response. A few suggestions:

Can this past day be treated like a mini-event, with no final reward payout? Everyone that worked hard yesterday has already rightfully won rewards through progression and end-battle rewards. Resetting the event would simply allow them to re-earn those same rewards again as an added bonus.

And perhaps the in-game pop-up can have a large font alert (similar to Nick Fury announcement) and leave it up for an hour or three before the actual reset? The following text could link them to the forums for an explanation, which has an added benefit of driving more traffic and new players to the forums?

They don't want more forum traffic. It means they might have to actually start listening to us

DrNitroman

I played the event for the first time nearly 10h ago, in the morning. (Clearly entered late)
Since this morning, node points slowly increased... but I'm under the impression that rubberbanding was really decreased and that there will not be many supplementary points when refresh will be complete in 2h.
I don't complain as I think all the players in my bracket entered late and experienced the same competition.

I just hope that this new design problem open the way toward events playable without precise timing tactics and with adequate rewards for each player effort. Maybe the progression bar mechanic is a good step?

Unknown

Teke184 wrote:

Moghwyn wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

You act as if these things can't be tweaked or altered during the course of an event.

Didn't we just learn that this might be an incredibly bad idea?

Agreed.

This is why they're supposed to look at all this stuff on their test server before they push it live.


They did it right earlier this week by bumping the lightning rounds when they found that they were accidentally set as Season 1 events.

However, they seem to have huge problems forecasting the interest in various PVE events to the point where the progressions are set correctly.

I am sure they have more then a test server. I would also have code which simulates events with 100,000+ players with about a dozen different play styles that used to work out what node values should be, how rubber banding works, where the placement rewards go, how does personal and global scaling increase over the event etc. Surely they not using WAGs

mags1587

I completely get why they can't restart the event. The average player who doesn't visit the forums would have no idea what happened and the event restarting would probably result in a lot more grief for D3 (through CS tickets) than the grief they're getting from the people who were affected by and understand the problem with points. It doesn't mean that the people affected by the points issue (myself included) don't have a valid complaint, mind you.

Hopefully they'll come up with a solution. Grinding nodes to catch up is not an acceptable solution with scaling as it is. Players may or may not catch up in this event only to be screwed in future events. And if D3 can't tweak anything in the event itself, perhaps they can at the very least share some tips/details about how to play optimally without having your personal scaling go through the stratosphere.

Linkster79

Teke184 wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

May as well go for a hat trick of questions that will never officially be answered. How many times do you have to run a PvE event before you get 1 right?

I think the only thing most people can agree on is that The Hunt (Hulk) has been run right.

Well, only if you ignore the time they accidentally hit the completion bonus for Hulk at about an hour into the event and then reset it about 10 minutes afterward.

Was that by any chance the last event that did not involve scaling?

Unknown

I think I need some preparation H to help me with their suggested solution...

My team just got "tenderly caressed" at the "Smash And Grab" node, which is supposed to be an easy one.

Nemek

The Hunt (Ares) was the last PvE with no scaling.

morgh

Toxicadam wrote:

Moghwyn wrote:

Actually it happened three hours into the event. With massive demands for a restart taking at most another half an hour, because the collateral damage was very obvious to anybody with at least a basic understanding of the game mechanics.

I understand the game mechanics and understand that a handful of thousands of points can be overcome quite easily through rubberbanding and point inflation of future subs.

Ummm but Adam - rubberbanding has been COMPLETELY castrated - if I am 6000 points behind my sub-bracket leader and I have NOT played any of my nodes, for me to have any hope of catching up, the node point values should be rather high am I right? Well the point values range from 80 to 450... not exactly anything that would allow me to bridge the gap now is it? (if I could consistently defeat level 160-241 enemies anyway :>)

Unknown

Linkster79 wrote:

Teke184 wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

May as well go for a hat trick of questions that will never officially be answered. How many times do you have to run a PvE event before you get 1 right?

I think the only thing most people can agree on is that The Hunt (Hulk) has been run right.

Well, only if you ignore the time they accidentally hit the completion bonus for Hulk at about an hour into the event and then reset it about 10 minutes afterward.

Was that by any chance the last event that did not involve scaling?

Maybe the first time it was run, which was before Thick As Thieves... I'm talking about the run probably 2-3 months ago, which was after Episode 4 had been run at least once.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

The Hunt (Ares) was the last PvE with no scaling.

And it was actually fun. I didn't even have the roster at the time to attempt the lvl 230 nodes. Even the 95/135 nodes were a challenge for me. I still cleaned up, and I had a blast.

daveomite

I'm personally sick of the excuse that "the forum is a small portion of players". That may be true, but realize what that means, and stop throwing out 5 dollar words to blow off a situation, like what is clearly being done now.

I know a thing or two about audience. I have worked in radio and television industries for 25+ years. That means, dealing with ratings such as Arbitron, Nielsen, etc.

To break it down in the simplest way I can think of, for a station, your "audience" is made of up of the cume audience, the core "P1's", and the advertisers. In this example, "cume"=the masses, P1=core, important listener and advertiser, well, I think that's clear enough.

The "core" people on this forum represent a mixture of P1 users and, technically, advertisers. Why do I say advertisers? Because, many of the "P1" users have invested money, equivalent to being an advertiser.

So, I appreciate that they had to switch who was making the "official responses", just own up to the fact, at this point, you're just trying to play CYA with this.

I am not trying to sound gruff about it, but as a business, the recent responses are terrible excuses, and you so easily kick back that so few would even be affected by this.

Fine, D3P rep - look up my account. Tell me how many hours I have played. Yes, I am sub 80 days in game, but greater than $250-300 invested. So, statements like you made are nothing but offensive because

1. I've been an active user

2. Active on your forum

3. Invested countless hours

4. Invested money that I did not have to give to you at all.

So, as a player, I'm upset.

But as a customer, you just really offended the hell out of me.

The thing is, I know there are more customers on here, ones that have invested even more. Realize who your talking to here, not just players, but the ones who continue to support D3P via their pocketbooks.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

The Hunt (Ares) was the last PvE with no scaling.

That was the last event that I recall being fun throughout the whole event. Even though I had a weak team at the time I still managed to place well because I could skip the 3x230 and repeat other nodes to make up for it.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

* The change that was made at 7 PM last night was to reduce the speed of rubber-banding, which was set too high, and to increase the global score target, which was set too low.
** People that played through everything immediately at 3 PM are at a disadvantage to those who started after the change (as per usual, the way rubber-banding works).
** People that started playing after the change have advantages and disadvantages relative to those who played through everything to completion before, but close to, the change. They're capable of earning more points in total. But before the change, you would earn points faster when you were farther behind. So starting after the change was worse for people that play a few missions, but starting after the change was still better for those who are competing for the very top spots.
** There are cases that shift the advantage around in complex ways for people who played during the change. If you played through everything a couple times before the change and a couple times after, you're at a disadvantage to someone who started at the same time as you and played everything to completion before the change. It depends on exactly what you played when whether the change was good or bad for you.
** Rubber-banding compensates for that advantage as the event goes on. At 10 PM last night, it was easy to tell who'd benefited from the extra rubber-banding and who hadn't. As the morning has gone on, the lead that the folks who got extra rubber-banding have over other players has greatly diminished. It looks like it'll be gone in another few resets.

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.

Sheeesh have you ever even HEARD of SCALING

You talk as if grinding the hell out of nodes through rubber banding has no other impact at all even though the forums have been giving you plenty of feedback on your scaling system for weeks and weeks. The suggestion there is some kind of slight advantage to getting all those points by completing minimal matches is total ****. You're saying that the impact of having even another 30 levels on your enemies in a LIMITED hero selection PvE is only slight?

Finally the more points in total for starting after the change thing is total ****. If you are ahead and equal on refreshes you are ahead period. The person behind will rubber band but can literally never overtake the person who is ahead if they have equal activity. To put it nice and simply the person behind has to use up nodes to catch up to the person who is in the lead, thereby when (IF) they reach their score the leader still has nodes left which the trailing player does not.

daveomite

mags1587 wrote:

I completely get why they can't restart the event. The average player who doesn't visit the forums would have no idea what happened and the event restarting would probably result in a lot more grief for D3 (through CS tickets) than the grief they're getting from the people who were affected by and understand the problem with points. It doesn't mean that the people affected by the points issue (myself included) don't have a valid complaint, mind you.

Hopefully they'll come up with a solution. Grinding nodes to catch up is not an acceptable solution with scaling as it is. Players may or may not catch up in this event only to be screwed in future events. And if D3 can't tweak anything in the event itself, perhaps they can at the very least share some tips/details about how to play optimally without having your personal scaling go through the stratosphere.

I agree, they can't really restart the event as it's been running to long. If they had any intention of doing that, it would have been done last night. Hence, the slow responses, and the change up of who is now responding.

I never asked for a reset, nor to be given a free cover, or anything like that. All I ask for is to have a chance to catch up without destroying my MMR in the process. Every so called "solution" thus far all leads to one thing...either giving up, or affecting your scaling in negative ways, and still probably never catch up. That's not a solution, that's a shove off.

I respect what they have to deal with, and understand it's a nightmare to deal with upset people about a change. But they simply should have known what was going to happen...they are the developers of the game.

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

The thing is, I know there are more customers on here, ones that have invested even more. Realize who your talking to here, not just players, but the ones who continue to support D3P via their pocketbooks.

Maybe it's like politics... sure, you THINK you deserve to be heard by your representative because you donated $2500 and that seems like a lot to you, but the only people with a voice in Washington are the Slobofixes

Unknown

morgh wrote:

(if I could consistently defeat level 160-241 enemies anyway :>)

Well, that's the rub I can't really answer for. If you are one of the unlucky one's that has their scaling screwed up, then you are really at a severe (and unfair) disadvantage.

That's why PvE MMR carryover should be eliminated. In cases like this where you might find yourself in a bad situation and then you're afraid to 'grind away' in fear of what that might do to your future events.