Support Circuit - Hiatus (4/5/19)

Brigby
Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
Hi Everyone,

Back in January we introduced the Support Circuit event as a way to provide additional opportunities for players to earn more Supports, as well as bringing in a new event for everyone to enjoy. Over the past 2 rotations of it, we’ve heard a lot of player sentiment, and we really appreciate the feedback everyone has provided.

While we’ve certainly heard some positive notes being shared, we think that there is still room for us to improve the way players earn Supports. As a result, starting next Monday (4/8/19) Support Circuit will be taking a break from the event schedule as we work towards building upon the concept of earning Supports even further.

Once again, thank you for providing all of your feedback on Support Circuit and acquiring Supports, and we hope to return with something even better for everyone to enjoy.
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Comments

  • StevO-J
    StevO-J Posts: 751 Critical Contributor
    Will the supports in tokens still be updated, or will this also be postponed until the Support thingy gets updated?

    Thanks in advance.
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,605 Chairperson of the Boards
    Well THAT is a surprise and a half.

    Although I guess with other first-runs, PVP win seasons, the PVE trials back before we got settled into the current more uniform model (4 clears to start the timer, 6 for all node rewards, set number of nodes each event, etc), some of the first runs of events or bosses, doing it once or twice and then taking a break to tinker is EXACTLY what the devs do. So I guess the surprise is that the devs agree that there's some room for improvement, and that makes it a pleasant surprise.

    Looking forward to what the devs come up with next. Sometimes it's a curveball. Like we've got a chicken sandwich, and think it needs work, you have no idea if they're going to come back with a new topping on that sandwich, or if they're going to convert the whole thing into a chicken pizza. We could get Support Circuits 2.0, or something entirely different that attempts to serve a similar (but improved) function.

    It's a bummer, because I know these things usually take a while, but I can't recall one of these prolonged phases of testing features and studying data that ended poorly.
  • Twomp_thaDJ
    Twomp_thaDJ Posts: 237 Tile Toppler
    I honestly haven’t seen the devs move on something so fast.. in the title it also says hiatus... so I guess I’m excited and nervous at the same time.. guess time will tell us which R I should have felt
  • Glockoma
    Glockoma Posts: 555 Critical Contributor
    @Brigby

    I truly enjoy seeing the wheels turning, even if it has to come from scratch. I hope to see more hasty works, for better or worse. Thank you for the details and we as fans of the game hope for more words on the other big issues.
  • jackstar0
    jackstar0 Posts: 1,280 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2019
    This is the kind of communication we're after.

    Honestly my main issue was placing it on Mon-Tues.

    And I agree with the people saying that placing 1st wasn't even a means to getting something worthwhile.

    And if placement doesn't guarantee progress, let's just make it a progression-only style event!
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    StevO-J said:
    Will the supports in tokens still be updated, or will this also be postponed until the Support thingy gets updated?

    Thanks in advance.
    Don't worry. We're not just completely dropping Supports. In the short term, we do already have plans set up for several of the upcoming Supports, but I'm afraid I don't have any exact details to share at the moment.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,821 Chairperson of the Boards
    I appreciate the communication.  I will hold onto my Support tokens and wait to see what happens.  

    The riso and CP were valuable to me, so I'll miss the chance to play for those resources.  I did well with my vault pulls as well, but that's a matter of luck of course.

    I honestly haven’t seen the devs move on something so fast.. in the title it also says hiatus... so I guess I’m excited and nervous at the same time.. guess time will tell us which R I should have felt
    Technically the Wins based PVP was faster than this, as they were rolled back after one season.  But as pointed out already, the saved covers were made more lenient/generous very quickly, which was a benefit to players.
  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2019
    I got a question about this. So the event did not turn out as planned so you are putting the event on Hiatus. 
    How long until you think there would be a replacement?  
    Why not run this until there is a replacement?  

    When we all fought against the win based system, you just didn’t put PVP events or season on Hiatus while trying to figure out how to do the hybrid system. 
    When doing different tests on PVE, you didn’t put them on Hiatus while changing stuff around. 

    in these cases you made it clear that you were working on this while keeping the event going.  So this could be another week or months until we see this again.  It’s great to hear that you are working on this but it seems just to pull it until further notice doesn’t seem good in my eyes.  
  • Richyyy
    Richyyy Posts: 305 Mover and Shaker
    @Brigby, it'd be nice if you'd still switch the selection of available Supports to the next group of 16 on Monday. The one Support I was vaguely interested in hasn't been seen yet, so I have a bunch of unused tokens. I understand suspending the event while you work out what you're doing, but let's finish off the rotation.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,455 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2019
    I imagine the data from the Kra-Van store action needs to get evaluated and compared to the SC. The economy on Supports compared to Covers is so different, I’m sure there are implications for offering direct buys that need to be sifted through.
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,759 Chairperson of the Boards
    I’m kind of sad it is going on hiatus.  I was mainly enjoying the extra CP and I liked the boss events.  Hopefully it will be a short hiatus and we will get the support circuit back and will get more higher level supports. 
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,081 Chairperson of the Boards
    These would be great to run concurrently with boss events. A lot of us are twiddling our thumbs the last day waiting for the next event to start. When it's run the same time as a regular PVE lots just don't have the time for it all.
    Big +1 on that. Perfect fit.
  • Zeofar
    Zeofar Posts: 45 Just Dropped In
    Pretty sad to see this gone. I legitimately enjoyed this event, and despite a lot of players voicing reactions about how the rewards felt bad, I think the math was clear that they represented a significant increase in support rewards compared to the previous state.

    My main concern now lies with the changes to Master Support Tokens made in January, which was the only change to the support system I couldn't get on board with. That change removed the guarantee of getting a 4 or 5 star support from the 250 CP Support Bundles, a feature which I would have considered the main draw of those bundles and also made them the most reliable way to make progress on high-level supports.
    With the introduction of the Support Circuit, I wasn't too bothered by this since it brought a steady flow of support pulls to compensate and meant I could just hold onto the CP instead. I'm going to take it on faith that there will be something to replace SC in the future, but here is where the problem lies: if what comes next represents a drastically different paradigm than SC (HP-driven vaults and stores vs Support rewards from play, for example) then it might feel like a regression overall. Something to consider, perhaps.
  • Warbringa
    Warbringa Posts: 1,299 Chairperson of the Boards
    This is the sort of communication that we appreciate (as mentioned by other posts before).  I didn't mind the Support Circuit but really just saw it as an opportunity for more iso and CP than actually getting supports.  The vault was too diluted to realistically get a decent support without spending a lot of HP (which I did on the first run and still got nothing good).  I think duplicate supports need to be improved as mentioned above as well.  Perhaps a banking system for duplicate supports (much like character covers) would help to more access to higher level supports for the player base over time?