Unhappy Euro Player, tourney end times must change!

Unknown

Darklondon wrote:

Black widow.

1:30am - sleep - 2nd place

Wake up. Dropped 350 and placed top 50 again

8(

Same thing here!

Unknown

2am - 1st place
Woke up to "top 50" this morning.

Unknown

I live in Australia so am completely used to getting the short end of things when it comes to any sort of online game and time zones, and after a while you learn to become accepting of the way it is.

Small player base means you are in the minority. As an minority why would they change their times to accommodate you? Of course they wont, it doesn't make good business sense.

So unless there are some Euro only servers created, then I would get used to it really fast because although I cant see the player base figures I am pretty sure that the US = majority, which means they make the money, pay for the development, and allow the game to continue. Anyone else gets to play because its open to the world, and if they don't like it ... boo hoo?

As with all things in life, minority = irrelevant.

Get used to it, or at the very least, lobby for something realistic ... like a server dedicated to euro time zone, so you can play with your own fellow euro zone folks.

Welcome to todays lesson in reality!

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

this is one of those things that's pretty binary. We either support different event endtimes or we don't.

So in the internal discussions it would appear that someone doesn't support different event endtimes. What rational is used to support that position? Even those who live in areas where the current end times are favorable see why an adjustment would be a fair change. I'm sort of scratching my head trying to figure out why someone would feel that people in Europe/Eastern US wouldn't want a fair shot at the end rewards of the tournaments.

Zirtak

The only good reason I can think of is simple statistics, like Aleatory is saying. If there are way more people playing in or near American time zones, it would be only logical that tourneys end at unfavorable times for Europeans. Or maybe the devs want to monitor round endings and don't like waking up at 5 am, like us?

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Everly wrote:

IceIX wrote:

this is one of those things that's pretty binary. We either support different event endtimes or we don't.

So in the internal discussions it would appear that someone doesn't support different event endtimes. What rational is used to support that position? Even those who live in areas where the current end times are favorable see why an adjustment would be a fair change. I'm sort of scratching my head trying to figure out why someone would feel that people in Europe/Eastern US wouldn't want a fair shot at the end rewards of the tournaments.

The way I read that was that having different end times for different brackets in the same tournament wasn't currently possible; either way it's a rather ambiguous statement though.

IceIX has previously stated that the devs want to be around when tournaments end. I'd hope that would iron itself out and they'd feel more confident about having other end times, but I'm certainly not one of their devs.

As for staggering bracket time ends -- that's probably a lot of code that doesn't exist right now; there's possible issues about different tourney durations ("simple" solution -- end bracket at X amount of time after it was created, with a hard end time -- so presumably whatever bracket you start in will end sometime near when you start). One plus about this idea is that you could have a perpetual rolling tournament (which might be a good thing to do to SHIELD training).

And, honestly, after there being fairly significant issues in the last 3 releases maybe they're twitchy about having tourneys end when they're not around...

CFacto

I'm annoyed by this again!

I keep coming up against high level IM40s now. It's not possible for me to get one as they are event rewards for events where EU players always get knocked out of the decent positions, as happened to me again last night. Lightning rounds are not an alternative as those are insanely hard to place well in. Now there is an event that buffs these very event rewards, making already disadvantaged players even more disadvantaged.

Unknown

I've previously posted that instead of staggered times and all this malarkey just have a worldwide finish 2 hours earlier as a compromise. All these puny EST players who struggle to stay awake till midnight can get their early night and we in the GMT (who set the time for the rest of the world) can get more than 2 hours sleep! Simples!

Unknown

HulkSmash wrote:

I've previously posted that instead of staggered times and all this malarkey just have a worldwide finish 2 hours earlier as a compromise. All these puny EST players who struggle to stay awake till midnight can get their early night and we in the GMT (who set the time for the rest of the world) can get more than 2 hours sleep! Simples!

We should really stop doing daylights savings time. That extra hour of daylight is causing massive amounts of global warming!

Unknown

I'm on West Coast USA and I have to assure you guys that this same thing happens here. It doesn't matter where you are. It just happens during the day rather than at night. Tournies end at 9pm for me. A couple tournies ago (I think Thor), I was number one at around 5pm. Took a nap for 2 hours. Woke up at #36. I couldn't believe it. I spent the next two hours till the tourney's end hammering my way up and down, only managing to reach 11.

The Avengers tourney that ended yesterday, I was bouncing between 1, 2 and 3 all day long. About 2 hours before the tourney ended, I started getting constantly attacked and knocked down. To 11, then to 7, then 13, then 5, then 15, then 3. I really really wanted to be in the top 2 for the red IM40. I ended up number 3, I think, because I only get yellow and blue IM40. That was with blowing the last of some of my boosts and completely out of health packs. And that was with me awake. I wasn't sleeping. I was sitting there with the phone glued to my hand for about 4 hours straight. Made no difference.

Unknown

Some of the complaints I have seen on here regarding tournaments are:
Most of the tournament doesn't matter, its all about the last day and last 30 minutes specifically
People outside of US time zones at a disadvantage
See-sawing points

My thought on it are is alternate PVP tournament type: King of the Hill

You still generate regular points in the same way for the Progress Rewards, but instead of the Placement Rewards being your ranking based on ending Placement Rewards, it is based on your overall ranking throughout the tournament - how long you could stay higher up the latter.

Once you have made your first attack and joined the tournament, you begin to score Dominance Points (or whatever) based on your ranking.

1-2 50 points
3-10 25 points
11-25 10 points
26-50 5 points
51-75 3 points
76-150 2 points
151-200 1 point

With this, final score doesn't matter, and would encourage everyone to try to keep their numbers up throughout the tournament instead of saving it all up for a big final push. People in other time zones would be on a more equal footing with US players. The last 30 minutes would be far less hectic. I think it would smooth the ups and downs some and give people a little more reason to play throughout.

The Dominance Points would be extremely high numbers (someone staying at 100 points throughout would be about 14400 while someone staying in top 25 would be around 72000 and mythical person staying in top 2 the entire time would come in at a mind boggling 360000 points!). Final prizes would be by Dominance Ranking.

I know I had posted this elsewhere in an obscure area nobody saw.

Unknown

If you wanted to do something like that, wouldn't it be simpler to go by highest score achieved, with ties going to whomever got there first?

Unknown

Misguided wrote:

If you wanted to do something like that, wouldn't it be simpler to go by highest score achieved, with ties going to whomever got there first?

Not really. If player A got to 1st place the first day for 1 hour then stopped playing and dropped down to 150th and played no more. Player B, however, stays in the top 25 throughout. Player B will far outrank Player A.

Or another example would be a European player who plays all the time and generally stays in the top 10 except during his/her sleep cycle will still do pretty well no matter when the tournament stops, while a US player who stays around 50-100 most of the time and then rockets to #1 in the last half hour, will finish much lower.

Unknown

pumkin wrote:

I'm on West Coast USA and I have to assure you guys that this same thing happens here.

You can defend, you can attack at last 2 hours - we (Europeans) can not

Unknown

The problem is with the money based point system. I say that because whomever is willing to burn the most health packs with the strongest/fastest kill deck at the last second (while constantly playing a poke war with whomever they are attacking and using up boosts to get faster kills...which subsequently cost currency making someone more willing maybe to spend on ISO) will win. It's better for business as opposed to say, the top 2 spots being owned by day 2 and top 10 by day 3 due to grinding and diligence.

That's not to say the process is wrong or bad, just its not in thier best interest to change it. More competition is good for business. Luckily the game is an actual puzzle game first and foremost if the powers are balanced and the opponents are equal so the dev money grind for this game is pretty manageable at this point (unlike games like bahamut, which I "played...term used loosely.. for awhile).

I think if they simply lowered the amount of points lost for a defeat a lot of this would be mitigated as racking up large scores beforehand could be done... Or maybe allow only 1 full strength retaliation so that when the original attacker attacks a second time the game brackets the battles between the two players into a "feud" where each player gains a lower but set amount of points for a win and loses very little or nothing for a loss. If someone losses an attack phase then the feud ends and the "winner" gets a small "feud win" bonus and the loser a small negetive.

Also, its not just euro players. Ppl in the US have commitments, ppl on the east coast end time is 12 am which is a bit late for many to sleep on a Sunday night. Sure, its not having to wake up at 4 am, but the issue isn't just non-Americas based. As such, most would appreciate some more selection in end times. It would likely cause more competition, causing more money to be made by devs, so I would think it would be in yhier best interest.

Then again, I also understand them wanting sleep lol

Unknown

Just chiming in to say I agree that the current tourney time system is unfair for Euro players and would like to see some concessions made for them.

Unknown

soenottelling wrote:

The problem is with the money based point system.

I don't agree. I've done fairly well in a number of tournaments (I'm not a top player or anything, but I do ok) and I have never once bought health packs.

There is a pay to win aspect, but I think it is rather mild, and amounts more to "pay to get strong quickly". There is literally nothing in the game that you can accomplish by spending money that an not be accomplished without, and I think the Dev team is to be commended for that. Can spending money get you there after? You bet, but it isn't like there are characters you can only buy from a premium shop. And in full disclosure, yes I bought some HP and finally spent it after hanging on to it for weeks. I have gotten a ton of enjoyment out of the game and spent far less so far than what I would have been willing to for a retail release, as a PQ nut.

I do think the folks across the Atlantic are getting a bit of a raw deal, and I under post and their impatience waiting for a solution. I also think the Dev team is listening and will find a way to improve the situation, it just may take a bit more time. That's just my opinion, mind you.

Unknown

soenottelling wrote:

The problem is with the money based point system. I say that because whomever is willing to burn the most health packs with the strongest/fastest kill deck at the last second (while constantly playing a poke war with whomever they are attacking and using up boosts to get faster kills...which subsequently cost currency making someone more willing maybe to spend on ISO) will win. It's better for business as opposed to say, the top 2 spots being owned by day 2 and top 10 by day 3 due to grinding and diligence.

Then it's not working very well... because I'm f2p, I haven't spent a dime on the game yet and excepting the Lightning Rounds I've finished in the top 2 in the last four tournaments in my bracket.

But my location and sleep schedule work with the tournament end times. If I was European or Asian then there's no way I'd be able to do that. The last half hour, and really the last 5 minutes, are the most important for final ranking. You still have to place yourself well prior to that, but if you're not there for those last few minutes then the likelihood of you ranking high are greatly reduced.

That's why I think it's important that they eventually make multiple end times available.

Unknown

I think the end times should just always be randomized. At least then everyone is fairly equally messed over. ^^ Right now North American west coasters have the sole advantage.

If they can fix the "people grinding in the last 30 minutes to win" thing too, all the better.

As-is with point reductions it's next to impossible to get the higher tiered points-based rewards because you'll be attacked and lose dozens of points before you can gain any ground at the higher tiers. So there's a few things that could use tweaking. The time zone randomizer just equalizes things so everyone can suffer equally from the same issues.

Unknown

Ultimately, it seems the final rank should be based on the highest score you reached, period. Not on the score you were at when the tourney ended. I reached over 900 in that Avengers tourney. But at the end, I was at about 835 or something, and it was that number that determined my rank. There would still be the yoyo-ing up and down, but you would have the entire duration of the tourney to battle your way up as high as you could go. It wouldn't all depend on the last 30 minutes. If you wanted, you could spend 8 hours straight just beating your way up to 1200 and then be like okay peace out and stop playing until the tourney ended. You would still have a chance of being in the top 10 if 10 other people didn't pass 1200.