OSCORP: HEROIC Meta Analysis of Progress-Based Subs
I started a tracking thread here to gather data from the City sub of the latest run of Oscorp: Heroic. At the end of the City sub, aaronschmiz started a new tracking thread for the Tower sub here, and after crunching the numbers we collected from the City sub, I posted an analysis of the completion rate data in that thread. With this new type of sub, we aren't given a hard end time, and since timing refreshes is absolutely mandatory to maximize points, it's pretty important that we can start generating reliable estimates.
My post-City analysis is in the spoiler block below:
I think that analysis largely holds up, though there are a few points that need clarifying. But first, here's a quick-and-dirty summary of the Tower sub rate data (all times will be east coast US; M/hr = million points per hour):
The first 15% of the progress bar took about 14.5 hours, from 6PM to 8:30AM, and the progress rate varied from 3-5M/hr. 15-30% took about 10.5 hours, from 8:30AM to 6PM, and the progress rate was around 6-6.5M/hr. 30-45% took 13.5 hours, from 6PM to 7:30AM, with a progress rate of about 5M/hr. 45-75% took 20 hours, with an average rate of 6-6.5M/hr. There was a brief dip in progress rate over the next 5%, down to 4.5M/hr, from 3:30AM to 6AM, but the next 15%, from 80-95%, picked up substantially, varying from 6.5-8M/hr from 6AM to 3:30PM. Finally, the last 5% was turbocharged, clipping along at 11-12M/hr from 3:30PM to the end of the sub at 5:13PM.
(In my City analysis, I used % per hour, though I think M/hr will be more useful in the future. For a completion bar of 400M, 1% = 4M.)
For the given set of variables that applied in Oscorp: Heroic, much of the middle phase of stacking up points happened at around 6-6.5M/hr. There were some dips in progress rate, almost certainly due to the sinusoidal nature of global activity across a 24 hour period, but even those dips had a floor of around 3M/hr early on, and 4.5M/hr later. The high-activity period at the end of the Tower sub was much shorter than the City sub, but only a little faster--City progress rate peaked at 10M/hr across the last 20%, while Tower progress rate peaked at 11-12M/hr across the last 5%. There are a few possible factors here--maybe the playerbase got slightly better at timing the final refresh; maybe the City ending on a weekend changed the global activity pattern.
In general, for subs of this type, there are a few different factors that will affect the overall rate of completion, and therefore the projected end time of the sub. The first is global participating player population. More people getting points = faster completion. Next is the base points on the sub's pins, probably best captured by the average value of the top 3-5 pins, compared to the overall length of the progress bar. Finally, there is the balancing effect of rubberbanding and scaling. Rubberbanding provides an acceleration effect where growth is smaller at the beginning (nobody is far enough apart to get bonus points), but much bigger later on (most of the player population is getting bonus points). Personal and community scaling provide a deceleration effect where pins are easy to beat early on, encouraging more grinding, but much harder later, forcing players to pick their battles and hit fewer pins. There's a second "acceleration" effect due to players joining the subs midway through the completion period, as well. In Oscorp: Heroic, the acceleration effects of rubberbanding and late joiners outweighed the deceleration effect of scaling, but it would take considerably more information to tease out the details of that balance.
Thank you to all the people who contributed data points to this tracking project; I hope we'll be better able to get a handle on progress-bar subs in the future with fewer headaches.
My post-City analysis is in the spoiler block below:
Vairelome wrote:Analysis from City sub: I stuck all the numbers from the original tracking thread in a spreadsheet, and beat the data until a chart popped out, and found a few surprising details.
Expected:
The tail of the graph representing the final chunk of the sub did have a somewhat greater slope than the rest of the graph (though a good chunk of our early data was sporadic).
Not Expected:
The slope increase was smaller than predicted--midway through the event, we were accumulating about 1.5-1.7% every hour, but in the final period, gains were closer to 2.5% per hour. That's more, but it's not even double the rate.
The slope during the final period did not go exponential; while the rate did increase from the middle of the event to the end of the event, the final period was still basically linear.
Most Surprising:
So, the rate across the "final period" was about 2.5% per hour? That period started at around 80%, not 90% or 95%. We went from 79% to 90% in roughly 4 hours 30 minutes, and then from 90% to 100% in 4 hours 10 minutes.
Conclusion--I expect the data gathered from this first sub will probably do a good job of predicting future subs of this type, so long as the back-end mechanics stay more or less the same. Sure, regular forum-goers will be able to tune their performances a bit better, but I think this will have a minimal impact on worldwide trends, since we're a small minority of the total playerbase. Most players will check in periodically, grind some nodes, wait for refresh, see that the cumulative total probably won't permit an additional refresh, and grind extra during the last 80%, and that behavior will dominate the statistics.
I think that analysis largely holds up, though there are a few points that need clarifying. But first, here's a quick-and-dirty summary of the Tower sub rate data (all times will be east coast US; M/hr = million points per hour):
The first 15% of the progress bar took about 14.5 hours, from 6PM to 8:30AM, and the progress rate varied from 3-5M/hr. 15-30% took about 10.5 hours, from 8:30AM to 6PM, and the progress rate was around 6-6.5M/hr. 30-45% took 13.5 hours, from 6PM to 7:30AM, with a progress rate of about 5M/hr. 45-75% took 20 hours, with an average rate of 6-6.5M/hr. There was a brief dip in progress rate over the next 5%, down to 4.5M/hr, from 3:30AM to 6AM, but the next 15%, from 80-95%, picked up substantially, varying from 6.5-8M/hr from 6AM to 3:30PM. Finally, the last 5% was turbocharged, clipping along at 11-12M/hr from 3:30PM to the end of the sub at 5:13PM.
(In my City analysis, I used % per hour, though I think M/hr will be more useful in the future. For a completion bar of 400M, 1% = 4M.)
For the given set of variables that applied in Oscorp: Heroic, much of the middle phase of stacking up points happened at around 6-6.5M/hr. There were some dips in progress rate, almost certainly due to the sinusoidal nature of global activity across a 24 hour period, but even those dips had a floor of around 3M/hr early on, and 4.5M/hr later. The high-activity period at the end of the Tower sub was much shorter than the City sub, but only a little faster--City progress rate peaked at 10M/hr across the last 20%, while Tower progress rate peaked at 11-12M/hr across the last 5%. There are a few possible factors here--maybe the playerbase got slightly better at timing the final refresh; maybe the City ending on a weekend changed the global activity pattern.
In general, for subs of this type, there are a few different factors that will affect the overall rate of completion, and therefore the projected end time of the sub. The first is global participating player population. More people getting points = faster completion. Next is the base points on the sub's pins, probably best captured by the average value of the top 3-5 pins, compared to the overall length of the progress bar. Finally, there is the balancing effect of rubberbanding and scaling. Rubberbanding provides an acceleration effect where growth is smaller at the beginning (nobody is far enough apart to get bonus points), but much bigger later on (most of the player population is getting bonus points). Personal and community scaling provide a deceleration effect where pins are easy to beat early on, encouraging more grinding, but much harder later, forcing players to pick their battles and hit fewer pins. There's a second "acceleration" effect due to players joining the subs midway through the completion period, as well. In Oscorp: Heroic, the acceleration effects of rubberbanding and late joiners outweighed the deceleration effect of scaling, but it would take considerably more information to tease out the details of that balance.
Thank you to all the people who contributed data points to this tracking project; I hope we'll be better able to get a handle on progress-bar subs in the future with fewer headaches.
0
Comments
-
Many thanks for producing this analysis, Vairelome, really appreciate it!
Since you already have the data points tabulated (in spreadsheet, I presume), would you mind posting the cumulative graph (both % and absolute numbers)? Would be interested to see how they look.
Cheers!0 -
I used an OpenOffice spreadsheet to collect and work on the data, but I don't know how to insert a graph into a post. I can put the raw numbers into a table, though, so you can cut and paste it. All of the numbers are from the threads I linked in the top post.
City Data:Time Value Percentage 01:34:00 AM 124000000 31.00% 06:56:00 AM 151000000 37.75% 02:20:00 PM 203000000 50.75% 04:17:00 PM 216000000 54.00% 06:23:00 PM 230657231 57.66% 08:35:00 PM 243000000 60.75% 02:30:00 AM 281000000 70.25% 04:07:00 AM 290289356 72.57% 07:27:00 AM 307000000 76.75% 09:09:00 AM 318000000 79.50% 10:40:00 AM 332000000 83.00% 11:10:00 AM 337000000 84.25% 12:43:00 PM 351907470 87.98% 01:19:00 PM 357667623 89.42% 01:34:00 PM 360000000 90.00% 02:20:00 PM 367400000 91.85% 02:28:00 PM 368000000 92.00% 03:00:00 PM 373438015 93.36% 03:30:00 PM 377903550 94.48% 03:47:00 PM 380000000 95.00% 04:00:00 PM 383280158 95.82% 04:20:00 PM 386115085 96.53% 05:06:00 PM 393512827 98.38% 05:30:00 PM 397500000 99.38% 05:44:00 PM 400000000 100.00%
Tower Data:Time Value Percentage 06:21:00 PM 1673778 0.42% 07:21:00 PM 4962771 1.24% 02:16:00 AM 39347824 9.84% 03:45:00 AM 44600009 11.15% 04:05:00 AM 45675120 11.42% 04:55:00 AM 48318175 12.08% 05:30:00 AM 50182935 12.55% 06:50:00 AM 53740959 13.44% 08:38:00 AM 59783302 14.95% 10:55:00 AM 71344613 17.84% 11:53:00 AM 76872358 19.22% 12:03:00 PM 78255171 19.56% 12:42:00 PM 82287287 20.57% 01:08:00 PM 84938525 21.23% 01:45:00 PM 89209602 22.30% 01:47:00 PM 89274077 22.32% 03:12:00 PM 98775606 24.69% 04:03:00 PM 104344315 26.09% 04:25:00 PM 106788176 26.70% 05:15:00 PM 111959721 27.99% 06:03:00 PM 117328772 29.33% 07:24:00 PM 124693878 31.17% 08:41:00 PM 131254174 32.81% 09:34:00 PM 135691426 33.92% 10:58:00 PM 142599392 35.65% 11:58:00 PM 147291551 36.82% 12:25:00 AM 149808844 37.45% 01:16:00 AM 154373531 38.59% 01:17:00 AM 154580229 38.65% 02:00:00 AM 157662817 39.42% 04:34:00 AM 166871443 41.72% 06:31:00 AM 173886783 43.47% 07:24:00 AM 178397509 44.60% 10:12:00 AM 194980973 48.75% 12:09:00 PM 208603844 52.15% 01:51:00 PM 219617104 54.90% 03:52:00 PM 231101053 57.78% 05:00:00 PM 238124635 59.53% 06:13:00 PM 242028876 60.51% 07:17:00 PM 248669507 62.17% 08:23:00 PM 255851268 63.96% 09:14:00 PM 260960673 65.24% 10:35:00 PM 270184701 67.55% 01:11:00 AM 288305575 72.08% 02:21:00 AM 295472402 73.87% 03:29:00 AM 301339052 75.33% 04:13:00 AM 304736139 76.18% 05:30:00 AM 309966090 77.49% 06:10:00 AM 313097924 78.27% 07:40:00 AM 321728948 80.43% 08:02:00 AM 324081556 81.02% 10:05:00 AM 339080473 84.77% 11:13:00 AM 347380674 86.85% 11:57:00 AM 353708810 88.43% 12:48:00 PM 359851251 89.96% 01:42:00 PM 366613207 91.65% 02:50:00 PM 375973553 93.99% 03:31:00 PM 381500000 95.38% 03:45:00 PM 384320000 96.08% 04:38:00 PM 393732980 98.43% 04:51:00 PM 396299981 99.07% 05:13:00 PM 400000000 100.00%
0
Categories
- All Categories
- 44.8K Marvel Puzzle Quest
- 1.5K MPQ News and Announcements
- 20.2K MPQ General Discussion
- 3K MPQ Tips and Guides
- 2K MPQ Character Discussion
- 171 MPQ Supports Discussion
- 2.5K MPQ Events, Tournaments, and Missions
- 2.8K MPQ Alliances
- 6.3K MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
- 6.2K MPQ Bugs and Technical Issues
- 13.6K Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest
- 503 MtGPQ News & Announcements
- 5.4K MtGPQ General Discussion
- 99 MtGPQ Tips & Guides
- 421 MtGPQ Deck Strategy & Planeswalker Discussion
- 298 MtGPQ Events
- 60 MtGPQ Coalitions
- 1.2K MtGPQ Suggestions & Feedback
- 5.6K MtGPQ Bugs & Technical Issues
- 548 Other 505 Go Inc. Games
- 21 Puzzle Quest: The Legend Returns
- 5 Adventure Gnome
- 6 Word Designer: Country Home
- 381 Other Games
- 142 General Discussion
- 239 Off Topic
- 7 505 Go Inc. Forum Rules
- 7 Forum Rules and Site Announcements