Prodigal Sun, Episode 4.5

over_clocked

Toxicadam wrote:

I'm not even going to stress about it. I'll get my 40th place or whatever and my top 100 Alliance reward and that's fine.

What about reaping easy rewatds while others grind?

Unknown

What is up with LA? Is the sole purpose of this subevent to make you grind all of the nodes because of the extremely low point values and screw yourself out of the rest of the event or something? I've played each of them twice because, at most, some of the Hawkeye nodes get up to a little over 100 points or something. And I'm 2000 points behind the leader in this one.

Wakanda, I'm barely paying attention to because I'm only doing a couple of the nodes. Not going to get my **** kicked in the Deadly ones on that map.

Unknown

I think the devs just need to take this to its logical conclusion and just have a random number generator determine the number of points, ideally after the mission is complete. They can also randomly change people's point totals at odd hours of the day. After that, they can double the level the awards kick in and halve the point progression. This works best if they don't announce anything and tell CS to say "everything's working as intended."

Unknown

Heads up... there was just a stealth change in the meter totals.

LA 90M --> 75M (Now at 62% as of 11:50 AM EDT)
Wakanda 100M --> 90M (Now at 49% as of 11:50 AM EDT)

Shortening the meters to ensure that there is a viable risk of them filling before the timers on the subs run out?

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Heads up... there was just a stealth change in the meter totals.

LA 90M --> 75M (Now at 62% as of 11:50 AM EDT)
Wakanda 100M --> 90M (Now at 49% as of 11:50 AM EDT)

Shortening the meters to ensure that there is a viable risk of them filling before the timers on the subs run out?

They probably realized that they made a major tinykitty-up with the rubber-banding and are adjusting the goals as a result.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Sumilea wrote:

Carthl wrote:

lithicbee wrote:

So it's been about 21 hours since I last played in the PVE and my highest point node in Los Angeles is 135, and in Wakanda it's 158 (the essential is 277 but everything else is lower). Is this right? I was kind of expecting them to be worth more after a refresh.

Yes. This event, or at least these subs, has relatively little rubberbanding and will reward those who play a lot more (with scaling *cough*).

The point totals are as follows

Los Angeles 40,63,111,79,111,135
Wakanda 79,119,158,158,158,277

Still not seen one extra point on any of my nodes yet.

Ah interesting. It actually looks like there is absolutely no rubberbanding in these subs, then. Guess I shouldn't have missed these first two refreshes...

I noticed that pretty early on but I don't have the endurance to do stuff on every refresh. The good thing is that the points are low enough that it doesn't seem to have much of an impact on your overall ranking. I started this #1 in my bracket and now I'm #3 even though I'm way behind on the sub brackets.

Bowgentle

Teke184 wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Heads up... there was just a stealth change in the meter totals.

LA 90M --> 75M (Now at 62% as of 11:50 AM EDT)
Wakanda 100M --> 90M (Now at 49% as of 11:50 AM EDT)

Shortening the meters to ensure that there is a viable risk of them filling before the timers on the subs run out?

They probably realized that they made a major tinykitty-up with the rubber-banding and are adjusting the goals as a result.

Instead of just adjusting rubberbanding. Makes total sense.

Looking forward to starting the subs in a bit and being lumped together with people who grinded two full refreshes.

I wonder what the idea behind all of this is? Do they really want everyone to grind everything to dust each refresh, just to be on the safe side if they decide to abandon rubberbanding again? They still treat PVE as if scaling doesn't exist, that's so incredibly shortsighted.

Unknown

Teke184 wrote:

They probably realized that they made a major tinykitty-up with the rubber-banding and are adjusting the goals as a result.

Actually, I've been thinking about this for awhile and believe that everything is going exactly to plan currently.

Consider this....

What if.... An event was technically played backwards? That is, the event with the highest yield for points was played first instead of last, with each subsequent round generating fewer and fewer points. Wouldn't such an action punish those who like to start late on events and ride the rubberband? Also, wouldn't this effectively eliminate any competition who didn't grind hard in the first sub (Manhattan) as these players who took it easy are now thousands of points behind the leader? Further... early grinding yields high scaling down the road, which leads to....

What if.... The devs used the data from the previous failures to reach higher-tier progression rewards to fine tune this event. As points per sub continue to diminish, the odds of reaching Daken continue to diminish, despite the leaders being within 15k of reaching him with 5.5 days left in the event. Scaling + low yield nodes means that people that started late and got sharded into an early bracket have no chance of catching up (outside of the potential of a final round global bracket rubberband, whatever that may be). I'm thinking that their math currently project the scores to be in the 40-43k range. "Oh... so close... yet so far..... you should have grinded more and you could have reached that Daken. If only you had bought some covers/ISO to make yourself just a bit more powerful, you could have had it ALL...."

What if.... The "Mayhem Meters" are another tool being used by the devs to cut players short on points to ensure that the majority of the top of the leaderboard doesn't reach 45k? If this is indeed the purpose of the meters in the current sub, what a better way to ensure that last 90-120 minute grinding doesn't happen leading to enough lost points to ensure that Daken isn't reached? "Not our fault you didn't read the Event Rules tab that implied that the subs would close early if the meters fill...."

As usual, this is all theorycrafting, but I'm currently having a hard time reaching a conclusion that anything is actually going wrong with the event from the devs' perspective. If the last "what if" is true, then the meter progression points changes are simply being done to ensure that there is very much the potential to end the subs early and place additional pressure and discomfort on the players about when they have to start grinding low points nodes that they really don't want to avoid being locked out of 4-5 thousand points that likely will make all the difference in placement in this PvE.

Unknown

Well it'd certainly be easier to start with a ton of points and then lower it as people get close to hitting the Daken rewards (to prevent a case where everyone gets all progression rewards just for entering), than start too low and say 'oops top score is projected to have half of the points needed for the first meaningful progression reward', because if you hike up the points at that point then everyone will complain about how all the earlier playing is now meaningless.

At any rate I think people are crying too much about the no rubberbanding round. With the scaling you still pay for those points you grinded, and this round's point is very small compared to the first 2. If you want to kill your scaling for a 500 lead, go for it. And on the other hand, don't be mad someone pulled a 500 point lead on you because they're willing to sacrifice their scaling. Scaling should be considered a resource. There is a point where it is okay to sacrifice it, namely if you're pretty sure it'll make you set for the rest of the event.

For what it's worth here's my personal ranking so far:

Overall: 3 (started 1st before bracket started)
LA: 351 (started this about 12 hours later after it's open)
Wakanda: 37 (started this immediately though didn't do much playing on the first pass)

So although I'm not doing too great on these brackets, my overall ranking is barely impacted. It looks like the #2 and #3 at the start of this event just decided to grind hardcore and opened up a big lead, and that's okay because I definitely wasn't planning on grinding them every refresh even if I knew there was no rubberbanding (and I suspected that quite early on) for the sake of my sanity, not to mention scaling.

Unknown

Oh yeah, for conspiracy theories, what about this: rubberbanding only kicks in when the Mayhem meter is filled.

That'd mean you gain for grinding but only if you convinced everyone else they shouldn't grind, because if everyone grinded you'll fill the meter which allow the others guy to catch up!

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Well it'd certainly be easier to start with a ton of points and then lower it as people get close to hitting the Daken rewards (to prevent a case where everyone gets all progression rewards just for entering), than start too low and say 'oops top score is projected to have half of the points needed for the first meaningful progression reward', because if you hike up the points at that point then everyone will complain about how all the earlier playing is now meaningless.

At any rate I think people are crying too much about the no rubberbanding round. With the scaling you still pay for those points you grinded, and this round's point is very small compared to the first 2. If you want to kill your scaling for a 500 lead, go for it. And on the other hand, don't be mad someone pulled a 500 point lead on you because they're willing to sacrifice their scaling. Scaling should be considered a resource. There is a point where it is okay to sacrifice it, namely if you're pretty sure it'll make you set for the rest of the event.

For what it's worth here's my personal ranking so far:

Overall: 3 (started 1st before bracket started)
LA: 351 (started this about 12 hours later after it's open)
Wakanda: 37 (started this immediately though didn't do much playing on the first pass)

So although I'm not doing too great on these brackets, my overall ranking is barely impacted. It looks like the #2 and #3 at the start of this event just decided to grind hardcore and opened up a big lead, and that's okay because I definitely wasn't planning on grinding them every refresh even if I knew there was no rubberbanding (and I suspected that quite early on) for the sake of my sanity, not to mention scaling.

Wow!! Phantron, I am in the same boat.

Overall fluctuation between 3 and 5.

Mid to uppper 70s in both subevents. Number 1 and 2 in my main is already at if not over 30K by now... about 3K above the rest of the pack. That's fine with me as my Xforce is cover capped and he turns into 1K iso - which is not worth the scaling. Top20 is even fine for me... It's just funny how each bracket seems to have this "leader" way ahead of the pack...

elusive

So I'm not the only one who has an entire sub full of nodes that range from 40-137 and yet somehow have people in my bracket with over 2700 more points than me? How does that even work? I don't think grinding them all to 1 point would bring me to that, since there's only six nodes total.

I'm not completely up to snuff with all of the techniques (optimal playing times, mostly), so I assume I'm just hosed and have to deal with it.

Unknown

I'd agree with Phantron's comments about scaling a resource that needs management.

In reality, this has always been the case, but the convenience of grinding a few high point nodes + essentials to fully reach the bracket leaders meant that the value of scaling was so low that players were abusing it for an unfair advantage (at least to catch up in fewer nodes to the bracket leader and then eventually overtaking them as the rubberbander has lower scaling than the person who grinded to the top).

Now, at least in this event, scaling has weight and each player has to determine their own value proposition (regardless of the potential Mayhem Meter uncertainty).

Player looks at the field of low point nodes....

Am I far enough behind the leader to warrant playing the nodes now?
Do I push now, even though I know that I am incurring scaling on myself?
If I don't push now, will the lost points from not pushing prevent me from achieving the progression/placement rewards I want?
In a bad situation, such as this, how much better must the bad situation become before I believe that the situation has become good enough to start playing?

Each and every person is going to have reach their own conclusions on this matter.

That said, the decision is not going to be completely unbiased. Peer pressure will kick in and cloud logical judgment. The Mayhem Meters on each sub might close them early, forcing players' hands. Players who do not know about rubberbanding/scaling are still to this moment perfect clearing each refresh (or at least 90%+ so). How long can each person hold out before being forced to make a hasty, irrational decision on the matter?

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Sumilea wrote:

Carthl wrote:

lithicbee wrote:

So it's been about 21 hours since I last played in the PVE and my highest point node in Los Angeles is 135, and in Wakanda it's 158 (the essential is 277 but everything else is lower). Is this right? I was kind of expecting them to be worth more after a refresh.

Yes. This event, or at least these subs, has relatively little rubberbanding and will reward those who play a lot more (with scaling *cough*).

The point totals are as follows

Los Angeles 40,63,111,79,111,135
Wakanda 79,119,158,158,158,277

Still not seen one extra point on any of my nodes yet.

Ah interesting. It actually looks like there is absolutely no rubberbanding in these subs, then. Guess I shouldn't have missed these first two refreshes...

Hmmm, guess I should have checked the thread before starting my subs this morning...sigh.

I am still mildly worried that the subs will end when the meter fills.

Bowgentle

Well, that 1050 points in LA will really help in catching up in my main... where I'm now 8K behind the leader

This is actually fun to figure out how much to play, but I wish thy had not made the points _this_ low.
Feels wrong to play for so little, but still, 1000 points can very well make a difference in the end.

Unknown

I don't know if it's a plan or a freak accident but so far the event structure breaks down like this:

First 2 events - big points, rubberbanding. Relative low weight on timing unless you somehow weren't able to play in the last 12 hours at all. This determines your overall positioning.

Next event - small points, no rubberbanding. Heavy weight on timing (the guy who grinded an extra refresh would have a significant advantage). However, since the points are small compared to the first 2 events, this is more of a manuever phase. If you're trying to build a bigger lead or move up to the next tier, you may want to burn some of your scaling (and sanity) to get ahead. If you've been doing your homework in the first two events, you can definitely take this round easy with minimal impact to your score. Also, this shakes up the sub bracket winner from the usual 'grind at the end' guys, which I think is fine since the sub events can use some variety and give people something to shoot for. Normally the sub event winners are all dominated by the same type of player, and I think this will change considerably this round since people who typically dominate sub events can actually afford to take it easy and probably should, unless they're just a grinding machine.

Unknown

wathombe wrote:

Hmmm, guess I should have checked the thread before starting my subs this morning...sigh.

I am still mildly worried that the subs will end when the meter fills.

Since there's no rubberbanding it actually doesn't matter if the event ends immediately because your point value are exactly the same at any given time until a refresh kicks in.

Now if rubberbanding kicks in what the mayhem meter fills, that'd be rather interesting...

rawl316

I'm worried with these dinky points about hitting the 45k for the purple daken.

Unknown

rawl316 wrote:

I'm worried with these dinky points about hitting the 45k for the purple daken.

We got people with 2/3 of the point needed for 45K halfway through the event.

Consider we've had events where nobody finished with 1/2 of the point needed for the top prize, I don't see the cause for alarm. We've certainly seen far worse.

Bowgentle

Interesting subs.
In LA my leader is at about 1600, 550 ahead of me.
In Wakanda, I'm leading 2nd by 600.
I've played an equal number of missions per sub.
Huh.

Managed to creep up to 28 in the main, points are crazy close. Except right at the top, but these rosters with only 85s _have_ to get scaled out eventually with the grinding they've been doing.