In PVE, is there a reason for a timer after 4 clears?

PiMacleod

I personally dont understand why a players internet connection is taken into consideration with placement.  

For server connections?   Sure.  That's their server!  They gotta keep it up and running.  And when things fail, they generally hand out things to everyone who was logged on.

But if the server isnt at fault, and you entered a dead zone in your house, or got close to the Canadian border and your network switched over, or just as simple as your phone lost power...  why is this something any dev would worry about?  They're concentrating on making a game, not trying to cater to every possibility of disconnect anyone could have. 

 I guess it just sounds a bit 'entitled' to say that "I deserve my placement" even though you were disconnected.  It would be rather easy to take your battery out mid game if you were losing, just to gain that safety net of "my game disconnected!  I deserve a reward!"  

Personally I would just say your match didnt count.  Too bad if something caused your disconnect.  I'd rather err on the side of fairness,  and knowing gamers, people will always take the free win if they can guarantee it.  So, dont count those disconnected fights.  ...guess that's just my opinion.

HoundofShadow

The flaw is how are the devs going to group players who 

Daredevil217

PiMacleod said:

I personally dont understand why a players internet connection is taken into consideration with placement.  

For server connections?   Sure.  That's their server!  They gotta keep it up and running.  And when things fail, they generally hand out things to everyone who was logged on.

But if the server isnt at fault, and you entered a dead zone in your house, or got close to the Canadian border and your network switched over, or just as simple as your phone lost power...  why is this something any dev would worry about?  They're concentrating on making a game, not trying to cater to every possibility of disconnect anyone could have. 

 I guess it just sounds a bit 'entitled' to say that "I deserve my placement" even though you were disconnected.  It would be rather easy to take your battery out mid game if you were losing, just to gain that safety net of "my game disconnected!  I deserve a reward!"  

Personally I would just say your match didnt count.  Too bad if something caused your disconnect.  I'd rather err on the side of fairness,  and knowing gamers, people will always take the free win if they can guarantee it.  So, dont count those disconnected fights.  ...guess that's just my opinion.

But that’s my point. If you don’t count the disconnected fights then people will be force closing the app over and over to get favorable win conditions and fast matches so they can clear faster than their opponents. It would be the new way to min-max. 

KGB

Daredevil217 said:

PiMacleod said:

I personally dont understand why a players internet connection is taken into consideration with placement.  

For server connections?   Sure.  That's their server!  They gotta keep it up and running.  And when things fail, they generally hand out things to everyone who was logged on.

But if the server isnt at fault, and you entered a dead zone in your house, or got close to the Canadian border and your network switched over, or just as simple as your phone lost power...  why is this something any dev would worry about?  They're concentrating on making a game, not trying to cater to every possibility of disconnect anyone could have. 

 I guess it just sounds a bit 'entitled' to say that "I deserve my placement" even though you were disconnected.  It would be rather easy to take your battery out mid game if you were losing, just to gain that safety net of "my game disconnected!  I deserve a reward!"  

Personally I would just say your match didnt count.  Too bad if something caused your disconnect.  I'd rather err on the side of fairness,  and knowing gamers, people will always take the free win if they can guarantee it.  So, dont count those disconnected fights.  ...guess that's just my opinion.

But that’s my point. If you don’t count the disconnected fights then people will be force closing the app over and over to get favorable win conditions and fast matches so they can clear faster than their opponents. It would be the new way to min-max. 

Not a chance you can minimize and force close the app, re-open it (go through the loading screen), go through several menu select screens and re-do a battle faster than you could simply win the one you were playing. Esp with the Rocket/Thanos/Kitty meta where matches last 20-30 seconds normally and 1 minute tops.

The forced close thing was added back in the days when retreating cost serious health (25+%) so players who were losing (ie bad board, bad cascade) were force closing to save health. Now it's far better to just retreat if the enemy is going to fire a single Nuke or big AOE power that's >10% of your health since you only pay 10% to retreat.

KGB

P.S. Incidentally if you hit a dead zone in your house or lose internet etc the 'win' will still be recorded and reported when you get your connection again. It's just that it's delayed time wise on the server side so the refresh counter starts different (if it's one of your first 3 clears it doesn't matter) and thus fewer points. Unless you are trying for T10 or better placement it rarely if ever matters. If you are trying for T10 then you know how it works so you better not move around your house or do anything that might affect your internet connection.

Daredevil217

KGB said:

Daredevil217 said:

PiMacleod said:

I personally dont understand why a players internet connection is taken into consideration with placement.  

For server connections?   Sure.  That's their server!  They gotta keep it up and running.  And when things fail, they generally hand out things to everyone who was logged on.

But if the server isnt at fault, and you entered a dead zone in your house, or got close to the Canadian border and your network switched over, or just as simple as your phone lost power...  why is this something any dev would worry about?  They're concentrating on making a game, not trying to cater to every possibility of disconnect anyone could have. 

 I guess it just sounds a bit 'entitled' to say that "I deserve my placement" even though you were disconnected.  It would be rather easy to take your battery out mid game if you were losing, just to gain that safety net of "my game disconnected!  I deserve a reward!"  

Personally I would just say your match didnt count.  Too bad if something caused your disconnect.  I'd rather err on the side of fairness,  and knowing gamers, people will always take the free win if they can guarantee it.  So, dont count those disconnected fights.  ...guess that's just my opinion.

But that’s my point. If you don’t count the disconnected fights then people will be force closing the app over and over to get favorable win conditions and fast matches so they can clear faster than their opponents. It would be the new way to min-max. 

Not a chance you can minimize and force close the app, re-open it (go through the loading screen), go through several menu select screens and re-do a battle faster than you could simply win the one you were playing. Esp with the Rocket/Thanos/Kitty meta where matches last 20-30 seconds normally and 1 minute tops.

The forced close thing was added back in the days when retreating cost serious health (25+%) so players who were losing (ie bad board, bad cascade) were force closing to save health. Now it's far better to just retreat if the enemy is going to fire a single Nuke or big AOE power that's >10% of your health since you only pay 10% to retreat.

KGB

P.S. Incidentally if you hit a dead zone in your house or lose internet etc the 'win' will still be recorded and reported when you get your connection again. It's just that it's delayed time wise on the server side so the refresh counter starts different (if it's one of your first 3 clears it doesn't matter) and thus fewer points. Unless you are trying for T10 or better placement it rarely if ever matters. If you are trying for T10 then you know how it works so you better not move around your house or do anything that might affect your internet connection.

Unless I’m misunderstanding, the timer starts when you start the match and stops when the victory banner is displayed. So force closing would be slower overall, absolutely, but could provide a better “recorded time” in the event of a bad board or strikes getting wiped in a bad cascade.

HoundofShadow

I don't think it's easy to implement this timer mechanics due to technical issues. The timer needs to begin from MPQ server?

The server is probably going to get overload with requests back and forth. The devs might want to shed lights on this?

bluewolf

Right now the game is only reporting to the server at match end.  In fact, the points will refresh while you are in the match.  So if you were ahead of time (faster clears than you expect), you can actually enter a match, slow clear, and claim a few more points.  (At least, that seems to be the case to me.  It could also be that the display isn't updated in the app appropriately and the points are static upon entering.)

Any system that uses a timer should probably use a timer for each match to be somewhat fair for the player that misses a clear at the end (can't play until late, but plays really fast).  A timer per match would require more traffic, and more data usage to communicate to the server "match start" and "match end".  Obviously the game does that in PVP already to some degree (finding opponents up front, but only reporting match end to claim the actual points at the point of match end that the opponent is worth) but PVE is the main mode people play.  So that's a technical issue and could actually slightly slow down the user experience since you're doubling the invountary connection points and therefore are more vulnerable to issues that spring up regardless how still you sit on your couch or in your office.

The biggest issue with just going to a timer for placement is that it caters to the top 5-10% of players while setting up a standard for scoring that the other 95% is probably not very concerned about.  It also expressly goes against the developers' wish to somehow deemphasize speed in the game.

Another issue is just UI and clutter.  You have to assume that points will still exist per node and clear, in order to keep the progression table in place for the players that want to only play to progression (and even provide newer players a set of achievable goals as they get higher up the table).  So you'd see points and time and probably number of clears (maybe with a number of clears left, so you know how much you need to do before it ends).  It's not an insurmountable obstacle, but not completely trivial either.

This is one of those cases where we can create our own system for a PVE reward structure while the developers have their own beliefs and practices.  Like, playing on schedule sometimes stinks, but the developer have some idea of how much time or how many clears you should complete in order to get the rewards they give out.  And they don't seem to have much flexibility there on an ongoing basis.

It seems apparent that the system we have isn't going anywhere based on the feedback we're seeing.  I do see how it's a compromise on a number of levels.

1.  It does reward speed by allowing you to maximize points with faster clears.  At the same time, the points are an indirect measure of speed allowing the developers to keep the time factor somewhat hidden.
2.  Hiding the time factor from new players (who will really have no idea about it until they engage pretty deeply with the game and start searching out additional information) is probably a good thing.  Beginners are going to be playing some pretty long matches and could get pretty demoralized if they start understanding how quickly some players are completing matches.

The last thought I have is wondering, under a pure timer system, what would happen to some people when their competition (presumably) increased when more people might be able to speed clear when not restricted to the schedule as is.  Right now the same people tend to score well every time, and that would surely change.  And some people would move around in slices, I presume, if they still existed at all.  And if you cleared early I wonder what the experience would be like to watch your placement go up or down based on people coming along after you, but be completely unable to do anything about it.

I do have one major criticism about the system in place.  At one point, the timers started at 4 clears and 4 clears was ALSO the progression goal.  Then the developers gave us more rewards - yay! - but made 5X the requirement for progression.  So the natural visual cue and advice of playing 4X for max points and getting all the rewards changed and just made things more confusing for players.

That is the (maybe best) thing about Support Circuit - making 4X be enough for progression.  #bringback4X