Question on Rubber Banding

Unknown

So I have been playing this game for a while now (just got my 211 day reward and have been playing since before rewards were implemented) and I have always known rubber banding existed though this is the first time the flaws in the system have been thrown in my face so clearly.

In the thick as thieves event (Anderson inc specifically) I am trying to gather up 25000 points for the hulk cover, in just trying to gather the points I got to rank 2 last night. I was rank 6 this morning about 2 hours before the end of the event and I played the event straight through till the end. In that time I never lost a fight or even had to worry about using health packs as my Spider-man kept my team topped off the whole way through, and yet as the event got down to 1 hour left I noticed that my rank kept dropping. Since I was constantly playing, each match was only giving me between 1 - 15 points, with no matches offering me anything better point wise I just stuck with it. I finished the event somewhere around 54 having been playing straight though from the point that I was rank 6.

So my question is, is this really how this works? It seems silly to me, it is one thing to have a system in place that allows people to catch up, it is another thing to punish the players who play straight through. The entirety of the top 10 were a full 1000 points ahead of me, even if i was completing a match at a rate of 1 per min, by averaging 10 points a match I would still have been far short.

I had always assumed that it would equal out in the end, for example where there would be something like 15,000 points available in a round (excluding the 1 point matches) with the points rewards being weighted toward the end. This made sense to me because it didn't give the constant players an unfair advantage by putting the top ranks out of reach, but also didn't make it too easy on the last comers because they have to complete a lot of matches in a short amount of time. Clearly I was mistaken, so what is my best play here? Not take part in events till the last 4 hours or so? As of right now I am pretty disappointed in the current system, it seems broken for anyone who plays more consistently throughout an event.

Unknown

You're confusing the timing on the refreshes with rubberbanding. Currently, all nodes replenish at the rate of 20% per 2 hour 24m, or roughly 7 minutes per 1%. Let's say a node is base 100 points. You beat it once and it's now 80 points. 7 minutes later it'd be roughly 81 points, and 82 points after 7 more minutes, and so on.

Now, let's say you play the mission twice, and then it takes 4h 48m for the stack to refresh, so you get 100+80 points = 180 points and you have your mission refreshed by 4h 48m.

But if you instead play once, wait 2h 24m, play again, and then wait another 2h 24m, you'd get 100+100 = 200 points and you'd still have a full mission stack by 4h 48m.

To put in simple terms, you want to play the mission once and then wait until the mission fatten up back to 100% before playing again. And if you have time constrains, you need to play enough time to match your time constrains. That is, suppose you know you can't play the game again for 5 hours, then you should play twice, because 5 hours is enough to replenish 2 stacks. If you're going to sleep, consider playing at least 3 times (8 hours roughly replenishes 3 stacks). Playing more often than one stack per mission once every 2h 24m on average is bad unless it's the final 2h (nothing could possibly refresh at this point so it doesn't matter), and if you do play more than one stack, give the mission enough time to replenish. You should use nodes with no rubberbanding (they're usually the one that have a value of like 80 points since forever) as a timer by playing them once and see when they get to their full value, or just remember/write down when you last played.

Based on the way you play, it sounds like you probably benefit a lot from rubberbanding, but it doesn't make up for playing in completely the wrong timing.

Unknown

That's interesting, thank you for the reply because I would have never figured that out on my own. It seems a little unnecessarily complex, but now that I know that there is a method to the madness, I will be able to take better advantage of the system. It would be nice if D3 would implement a refresh timer to make the system a little more transparent, but what can you do.

Unknown

I've been playing since before the daily rewards were implemented. I always thought that it did a refresh at 6:30 am just like my daily rewards. I never would have put together that it had a slow but steady refresh. Thank you for explaining that. Appreciated.

And I'm sure I could have read that somewhere, I realize. Thank you for putting it here!

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

it doesn't make up for playing in completely the wrong timing.

This is perhaps one of the most frustrating things about this game. How are we supposed to know this stuff? Such huge game changing rules should be documented in the game somewhere.

Unknown

rooter wrote:

Phantron wrote:

it doesn't make up for playing in completely the wrong timing.

This is perhaps one of the most frustrating things about this game. How are we supposed to know this stuff? Such huge game changing rules should be documented in the game somewhere.

Having the rules listed somewhere would definitely save a lot of headache and wasted time.

Macen Gofai

Phantron wrote:

You're confusing the timing on the refreshes with rubberbanding. Currently, all nodes replenish at the rate of 20% per 2 hour 24m, or roughly 7 minutes per 1%. Let's say a node is base 100 points. You beat it once and it's now 80 points. 7 minutes later it'd be roughly 81 points, and 82 points after 7 more minutes, and so on.

Now, let's say you play the mission twice, and then it takes 4h 48m for the stack to refresh, so you get 100+80 points = 180 points and you have your mission refreshed by 4h 48m.

But if you instead play once, wait 2h 24m, play again, and then wait another 2h 24m, you'd get 100+100 = 200 points and you'd still have a full mission stack by 4h 48m.

To put in simple terms, you want to play the mission once and then wait until the mission fatten up back to 100% before playing again. And if you have time constrains, you need to play enough time to match your time constrains. That is, suppose you know you can't play the game again for 5 hours, then you should play twice, because 5 hours is enough to replenish 2 stacks. If you're going to sleep, consider playing at least 3 times (8 hours roughly replenishes 3 stacks). Playing more often than one stack per mission once every 2h 24m on average is bad unless it's the final 2h (nothing could possibly refresh at this point so it doesn't matter), and if you do play more than one stack, give the mission enough time to replenish. You should use nodes with no rubberbanding (they're usually the one that have a value of like 80 points since forever) as a timer by playing them once and see when they get to their full value, or just remember/write down when you last played.

Based on the way you play, it sounds like you probably benefit a lot from rubberbanding, but it doesn't make up for playing in completely the wrong timing.

Thank you for this! I've been playing for a while now (I'm at Day 77) and I've wondered about the points in the nodes and how they refresh. This will be very helpful (until D3 finds someway to ruin it.)

Unknown

Just an addon to ur explanation. If i attacked a node that had 100 why does another node decrease in points also? (maybe a mute point - just because it does) also if i fought 2 different nodes would i have to wait 2.24 hours for both nodes to max or 4.48 hours?

Unknown

thymantric wrote:

Just an addon to ur explanation. If i attacked a node that had 100 why does another node decrease in points also? (maybe a mute point - just because it does) also if i fought 2 different nodes would i have to wait 2.24 hours for both nodes to max or 4.48 hours?

That's rubberband. Let's say hypothetically the formula works like this:

If leader is ahead by 5000, modifier is 5X
If leader is ahead by 3000, modifier is 3X

You have 2 missions with 400 base points, so they both appear as 2000 point to you, so you do one of them. Now you're only 3000 behind the leader, so your RB modifier drops to 3X. So to you, your missions now look like:

Mission you just did: 400 base * 80% (you used up one stack) * 3 = 960
Missions that you didn't do: 400 base * 3 = 1200

It's easy to get rubberband confused with the stack replenishing gradually, since to you both of them looks like your value going up on their own over time.

Unknown

Ask and ye shall receive I guess, a couple days after this post they implement a refresh timer. Guess I just should have waited a couple days before complaining about my lack of understanding.