Proposed change to time slices

JSP869

While the five slices may be perfect for a lot of players, the best - not perfect, just best - slice for me is #4, being 8pm my time. But it's not great though because I'm often still busy with evening activities so I sometimes miss doing my final clears. 11pm is better for doing my final clears but it's horrible for initial clears because I get up at 4am, so when I do slice 5 (and I have) I'm either doing my final clears a little early, staying up horribly late to do my initial clears and getting 4.5 hours of sleep, or doing my initial clears on the train 5-6 hours after the event/sub opens.  So for me and I'm sure many others there is no perfect slice time, just one that's a little better than the rest.

I propose eliminating the five time slices and have each event begin at GMT+0, but with a few changes to how the events & subs works.

An event begins at GMT+0, and all players who join within the first 24 hours will have a full 24 hours from the time they joined to complete the first sub's nodes. Anyone who joins between 24 and 48 hours after the event begins would start in sub 2 with 24 hours to play the second sub's nodes, while joining between 48 & 72 hours would start you in sub 3 but again still have 24 hours to play the third sub's nodes. (This is assuming three 24-hour subs.)

Players would still be divided into 1,000 player brackets, however, a player who waits for the Flip to join a fresh bracket would not gain any advantage over everyone else who joins much later (as long as they still join the same sub) because every player would still have a full 24 hours from when they joined to do their sub's clears.

In my opinion this would be a huge quality of life improvement because every player would be able to join an event at the time that best suits them and their own personal schedule (school, work, family life, etc.)
It would also be a fair change to all because if a player wants to join an event at 7:45am, or 8:15am, or 11:25am, or 3:20pm, or whenever, they could do so and still be able to compete on a level playing field because everyone would have the same amount of playing time (assuming they all begin within the first 24 hours, of course).

Ptahhotep

Players would still be able to gain an advantage by joining immediately before the close of a sub and hoping that the bracket they join is not full when the sub closes.

JSP869

Ptahhotep said:

Players would still be able to gain an advantage by joining immediately before the close of a sub and hoping that the bracket they join is not full when the sub closes.

That is correct. There would still be that advantage over anyone in your bracket who joins over 24 hours late after the first sub closes. That's not really any different to the way the system is now though. If you get lucky with a Flip you can join a new or somewhat fresh bracket near the end of the sub, get in your full 7 clears, and when the sub ends you'll have a huge points advantage over everyone joining afterwards.

HoundofShadow

How do you determine placement?

Ptahhotep

JSP869 said:

Ptahhotep said:

Players would still be able to gain an advantage by joining immediately before the close of a sub and hoping that the bracket they join is not full when the sub closes.

That is correct. There would still be that advantage over anyone in your bracket who joins over 24 hours late after the first sub closes. That's not really any different to the way the system is now though. If you get lucky with a Flip you can join a new or somewhat fresh bracket near the end of the sub, get in your full 7 clears, and when the sub ends you'll have a huge points advantage over everyone joining afterwards.

The difference is that under the current system players looking for this advantage are spread out across the slices and have to allow time to complete all of their clears. Under your system they would all be trying to join in the last minute before the sub closes. All those players trying to join at once is likely to overload the servers.

JSP869

HoundofShadow said:

How do you determine placement?

No change to how placement is scored. The only difference is the scores wouldn't be finalized until the time is up for the last player in the bracket, i.e., 24 hours after they joined. That does mean if you're one of the first players to join a bracket you would have to wait some time (maybe 6-8 hours, maybe even longer) after you're done before you know your final placement.
Think of it like a golf tournament with a staggered rather than shotgun start. You may finish early and have the lowest score of the round at that time, but that doesn't mean you win. There may be another 40 players that haven't finished their round, and any one of them could shoot an even lower score.
That doesn't mean you're disadvantaged by joining early. If you can complete your clears in the fastest time you'll still have the highest score and still place first in your sub/event. Which is just as it is now, the difference being that if your schedule does not allow you to begin your clears immediately when the event/sub begins (or the bracket flips) and especially if you cannot finish your clears just before the event/sub ends, it doesn't matter if you can do your clears faster than any other player in your bracket, you are at a disadvantage because of the currently imposed time constraints of the five slices.
This system would eliminate that disadvantage. Yes, it would still be the fastest players who place highest, but that's exactly how scoring/placement works now. My system would just level the playing field so you're not being a disadvantage just because you cannot join an event right on 4am or 9am, or whenever.

Ptahhotep said:

JSP869 said:

Ptahhotep said:

Players would still be able to gain an advantage by joining immediately before the close of a sub and hoping that the bracket they join is not full when the sub closes.

That is correct. There would still be that advantage over anyone in your bracket who joins over 24 hours late after the first sub closes. That's not really any different to the way the system is now though. If you get lucky with a Flip you can join a new or somewhat fresh bracket near the end of the sub, get in your full 7 clears, and when the sub ends you'll have a huge points advantage over everyone joining afterwards.

The difference is that under the current system players looking for this advantage are spread out across the slices and have to allow time to complete all of their clears. Under your system they would all be trying to join in the last minute before the sub closes. All those players trying to join at once is likely to overload the servers.

I'm not sure the hardcore players (and I count myself among them, as I also use Line and other resources to find out when a bracket has Flipped) would all wait until the very last minute to join.
We'd probably still wait for the Flip and a fresh bracket, but I think you would actually be able to play more competitively/score higher by picking a time where you know you'll have an hour to play completely uninterrupted, and joining the event at that time. 

broll

Ptahhotep said:

Players would still be able to gain an advantage by joining immediately before the close of a sub and hoping that the bracket they join is not full when the sub closes.

There are ways to solve that.  What I would recommend is one of threechanges:

1.  Make placement percentage vs a static number.  So right now T10 is top 1% of a 1000 player bracket.  However if someone joined late and got a 500 person bracket 1% would only be T5 meaning your two times less likely to easy win placement off of this.  That liklihood get's smaller the smaller the bracket is.  If someone joins a bracket with 100 people 1 person get's T10 rewards and no one get the higher rewards, fewer than 100 no one is eligible for T10 rewards.  This would not only stop sniping but actively discourage it.

2.  A combination with above, but make it percentage based, but also balance out the brackets.  If 7526 players joined before close, break that out into 6 brackets of 941 & 2 of 940.  That way everyone who attempts to snipe would be shuffled into an equal sized bracket and thrown at the bottom for their attempt to cheat the system.  This would have a negative of slightly fewer rewards due to smaller size brackets and percentages, even for the people on the ball. 

3.  Make it precentage based, have no brackets at all.  So back to the 7526 players model.  1% of that is 75.  The top 75 players get T10 rewards (instead of now there would be 8 brackets so 80 players would fit that spot.

Another change that all 3 of these assume, is rather than having completely separate rewards for each tier (for example T1 & T10 being mutually exclusive) they instead stack.  So players who place the T10 equivalent get the rewards for T20, T50, T100, etc.  

So to parse that piece out.  Current rewards for the Hulk overall all as follows:

	4* Covers	3* Covers	LTs	HTs	ETs	STs	HP	P ISO	R ISO
T1	4	0	4	4	6	0	250	14000	280
T2-5	3	0	2	4	6	0	200	13000	280
T6-10	3	0	0	2	6	0	200	13000	280
T11-20	2	0	0	0	6	0	200	11000	280
T21-50	1	0	0	0	6	0	175	9000	280
T51-100	0	3	0	0	6	0	175	9000	280
T101-200	0	2	0	0	4	0	175	8000	230
T201-300	0	2	0	0	2	0	175	7000	45
T301-400	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	6500	35
T401-500	0	0	0	0	6	0	0	6000	30
T501-600	0	0	0	0	4	0	0	5500	0
T601-800	0	0	0	0	0	6	0	5000	0
T801-1000	0	0	0	0	0	4	0	4500	0

Doing as close to a 1 to 1 conversion with %s and stacking I've got this.  It would give a some extra covers and tokens and would probably need some tweaks but you can see the gist:

	4* Covers		3* Covers		LTs		HTs		Ets		STs		HP		P ISO		R ISO
T 0.1%	4	1	3		4	2	4		6		6		250	50	14000	1000	280
T 0.5%	3		3		2	2	4	2	6		6		200		13000		280
T 1%	3	1	3		0		2	2	6		6		200		13000	2000	280
T 2%	2	1	3		0		0		6		6		200	25	11000	2000	280
T 5%	1	1	3		0		0		6		6		175		9000		280
T 10%	0		3	1	0		0		6		6		175		9000	1000	280	50
T 20%	0		2		0		0		6		6		175		8000	1000	230	185
T 30%	0		2	1	0		0		6		6		175	175	7000	500	45	10
T 40%	0		1	1	0		0		6		6		0		6500	500	35	5
T 50%	0		0		0		0		6	2	6		0		6000	500	30	30
T 60%	0		0		0		0		4	4	6		0		5500	500
T 80%	0		0		0		0		0		6	2	0		5000	500
Participating	0		0		0		0		0		4		0		4500	0

(NOTE The columns to the left under each heading are totals and the columns to the right under that heading are how many new of that resource to add at this new tier level.  The left column is literally just a sum of all the right columns.)

EDIT: Wow these forums are bad...  The preview of the second table looked fine then the unnecessary and very large side bars came and smooshed it to ruin it.  

I would also recommend dropping it down to 1% being the highest and shifting rewards down appropriately.  Since the other changes would address the exploit of bracket sniping higher rewards shouldn't be as big of a concern.

HoundofShadow

Assuming a 3 day event with 24 hours per sub that begins at 12pm on 1 October:

Changes proposed:

1) full 24 hours to clear the sub regardless of join timing.

2) "The only difference is the scores wouldn't be finalized until the time is up for the last player in the bracket, i.e., 24 hours after they joined. That does mean if you're one of the first players to join a bracket you would have to wait some time (maybe 6-8 hours, maybe even longer) after you're done before you know your final placement."

3) 1000 players per bracket

Event 1:
Sub 1: 1 Oct 12pm till 11.59am
Sub 2: 2 Oct 12pm till 11.59am
Sub 3: 3 Oct 12pm till 11.59am

Event 2:
Sub 1: 4 Oct 12pm till 11.59am
Sub 2: 5 Oct 12pm till 11.59am
Sub 3: 6 Oct 12pm till 11.59am

Wouldn't that affect the next sub? Currently, placement rewards are given out within 5-10 mins after an event has ended.

Under this system, I have to wait for a few hours in order to get my placement rewards and I won't know what time my bracket will end because I don't know when the 1000th player joined the event. I'm aware that there's some effort made by other players to track when a new bracket will open. But it's extra work for those who don't track bracket opening and closing.

Secondly, it could be a long wait for those in the last bracket or even any other bracket. Assuming there are 667 players in the last bracket and at 11:59am, some players decided to join the last bracket. Those initial 667 players have to wait for ~24 hours instead for their rewards. So, those players who depends on placement rewards to get the character covers for the next event essential have to wait if they want to maximize the amount of points. This doesn't affect veteran players because they have 90% or even 100% of the characters rostered.

The idea behind no time slices is good: everyone get to play at their ideal timing. But the minus points that I pointed out outweighs the ideal timing given. 

How could you improve on the implementation?

JSP869

Maybe a hybrid of my idea and the current system? It would still mean waiting for your placement prizes, but what if we retained the current time slices, or even split them evenly around the clock so perhaps it could be 6 slices each separated by 4 hours.

So for the 8pm slice you could have 4 hours to join (until 11:59pm) to still have 24 hours to complete your clears. But if you join later than 11:59pm you would only have until 7:59pm the next day  to do your clears. Or that day rather, because by then it would be the day after the event opened when you joined it.

Although as you've pointed out, there are people that rely on the placement prize covers to do the Essential node in the next event, so they'd still be disadvantaged by not getting their prizes until everyone in their bracket is done with the event, and that may not be until several hours after they want to do the event

It would seem it is very difficult to come up with a system that treats everyone fairly.

DigitHAL9000

New time slices really sucks: my slice lasts an hour more.
I was hoping them to add one more slice so to make mine shorter.
😕
Support Circuit has better slices.