Reintroduction of Strange Sights 5* essential node midway through event

@ArchusMonk said:

@entrailbucket said:

@ArchusMonk said:

@Bullroarer said:
**First, I'm going to acknowledge that for those who play casually, some of what I'm about to say might sound silly.

And, in a way, it is. MPQ is a game, not real life. Those who know me will know that "Real life comes first" is something I'm fond of saying.

Having said that, MPQ is a game that many of us effectively pay to play, and the game's existence is dependent on it being a game that delivers a positive player experience to those that are willing to pay to play it.

The MPQ player experience has, on the whole, deteriorated in the last 12 months, and this issue is an example of that. Allow me to explain...**

I think by now almost everybody who reads this forum will be aware that the current PVE event, Strange Sights, started with the 5* essential node missing.

This was, of course, initially confusing, but word of it quickly spread here and elsewhere and it didn't require much player adaptation to not play a node that wasn't there.

True, it made getting full progression rewards marginally harder for some players but many of them would be able to adapt, and there was an obvious and a fair way of dealing with the issue: by issuing some player compensation.

It wasn't an ideal situation but it was the same situation for everybody: the playing field was a little smaller but it was still a level playing field for everyone.

For some strange reason (no pun intended) someone in the dev team decided that the best way to resolve things was to reintroduce the 5E node, and to reintroduce it in the current active sub-event.

Words cannot adequately express how foolish that was.

It might have been well intended but this move has taken what was a fair event and turned it into an unfair one, because those who noticed that the 5* essential node was back and acted on it now have a massive advantage over those who haven't noticed it at all.

And the sooner someone noticed and acted on it, the more of an advantage they had.

Someone who was on course to finish top in the event might now not even finish in the top 50 or even the top 100, purely because this node was introduced at a random point.

And it's not just individuals that this effects, it also effects alliances. An alliance made of players who play the later slices now has a significant disadvantage over an alliance made of players who play the earlier slices.

There are multiple ways that this missing node could have been "fixed". Here are just some that I can think of:

1. Leaving things as they are; giving some player compensation later.

2. Reintroducing the node for the final sub-event only, which hasn't started yet, and leaving its points value as normal.

3. Reintroducing the node for the final sub-event only, which hasn't started yet, and (for this one time only) increasing its points value.

4. Reintroducing the node at a random point during the current sub-event.

(Those are four possible approaches that I thought of in just 30 seconds; you can probably think of others.)

Of those four approaches, three are fair to everybody and keep the event a level playing field.

One isn't fair, and distorts the entire event.

Why the devs chose that one unfair approach is a mystery to me.

I hope that such an issue never occurs again but if it does I hope that the devs think about the consequences of their "fix" — and perhaps even discuss it with us — before they "fix" it.

**Apologies if this all sounds like a rant but I care about the long-term health of this game, and I see players, some of whom I consider friends, drifting away from this game and this community because of mistakes like this one, and that concerns me.

If you care about this game then it should concern you as well.**

PS, this missing node shouldn't even have happened. It was missing from Strange Sights was last run for players on Steam who were already playing with the new Unity engine and for Unity beta testers on other platforms. It was reported as an issue then; it should've been addressed before Strange Sights was run again.

Thanks for posting this, so that I didn’t have to. I’ve been t5 the last several events, and now I sit 40th through no fault of my own other than not realizing that I should have been more aware of this possibility based on the poor choices the devs have made in the last several months. I know EB likes to say this game is player against player NOT player vs devs, but when something like this happens, I definitely feel I’m playing against the devs. I guess this is just another nudge towards the door.

When they screw around with the competition that's something different. I said in the post about this that they shouldn't fix it midstream because it'd be unfair (I definitely didn't expect them to because they never fix anything that fast).

You're still not playing against the developers, but they're changing the rules to advantage one group of players over another.

Intellectually, I get what you’re saying and probably agree with you, but emotionally, I do blame the devs for my missed nodes, and feel I went up against them and lost. However, as a competitive PVE player, I always feel like something was against me when I miss a node. Inconvenient phone call? The person that called was against me. WiFi outage? Internet provider. Lost power? Mother Nature or the power company. I just cut it too close or didn’t make the necessary adjustments if the wrong characters were boosted? My own arrogance or complacency (this is by far the most common reason I miss). I could go on, but you get the idea. lol

I think part of the problem here (and forgive me if this isn't the case anymore, I haven't played competitive PvE in a LONG time) is that the top of the leaderboards for each slice/CL/bracket tend to be pretty static, because the truly competitive players tend to join in the same place at the same time. If you place #4 in every event for several years, it's easy to forget that other players are competing against you! It can feel like you'd only get #6 because you messed something up.

But what if 5 absolute murderers from some other slice invade and push you down to top 10? You did your best, and nothing went wrong, but they were just better. You couldn't blame any outside influence for that.

In this case, the devs handed some group of players an unfair advantage and those players beat you. The devs' job is as referee -- make the competition fair, so we all play under the same rules, and they failed at that. It's why I'm annoyed at bugs that affect us all, but only get truly upset about stuff that advantages certain groups over others.

@ArchusMonk said:

@entrailbucket said:

@ArchusMonk said:

@entrailbucket said:

@ArchusMonk said:

@Bullroarer said:
**First, I'm going to acknowledge that for those who play casually, some of what I'm about to say might sound silly.

And, in a way, it is. MPQ is a game, not real life. Those who know me will know that "Real life comes first" is something I'm fond of saying.

Having said that, MPQ is a game that many of us effectively pay to play, and the game's existence is dependent on it being a game that delivers a positive player experience to those that are willing to pay to play it.

The MPQ player experience has, on the whole, deteriorated in the last 12 months, and this issue is an example of that. Allow me to explain...**

I think by now almost everybody who reads this forum will be aware that the current PVE event, Strange Sights, started with the 5* essential node missing.

This was, of course, initially confusing, but word of it quickly spread here and elsewhere and it didn't require much player adaptation to not play a node that wasn't there.

True, it made getting full progression rewards marginally harder for some players but many of them would be able to adapt, and there was an obvious and a fair way of dealing with the issue: by issuing some player compensation.

It wasn't an ideal situation but it was the same situation for everybody: the playing field was a little smaller but it was still a level playing field for everyone.

For some strange reason (no pun intended) someone in the dev team decided that the best way to resolve things was to reintroduce the 5E node, and to reintroduce it in the current active sub-event.

Words cannot adequately express how foolish that was.

It might have been well intended but this move has taken what was a fair event and turned it into an unfair one, because those who noticed that the 5* essential node was back and acted on it now have a massive advantage over those who haven't noticed it at all.

And the sooner someone noticed and acted on it, the more of an advantage they had.

Someone who was on course to finish top in the event might now not even finish in the top 50 or even the top 100, purely because this node was introduced at a random point.

And it's not just individuals that this effects, it also effects alliances. An alliance made of players who play the later slices now has a significant disadvantage over an alliance made of players who play the earlier slices.

There are multiple ways that this missing node could have been "fixed". Here are just some that I can think of:

1. Leaving things as they are; giving some player compensation later.

2. Reintroducing the node for the final sub-event only, which hasn't started yet, and leaving its points value as normal.

3. Reintroducing the node for the final sub-event only, which hasn't started yet, and (for this one time only) increasing its points value.

4. Reintroducing the node at a random point during the current sub-event.

(Those are four possible approaches that I thought of in just 30 seconds; you can probably think of others.)

Of those four approaches, three are fair to everybody and keep the event a level playing field.

One isn't fair, and distorts the entire event.

Why the devs chose that one unfair approach is a mystery to me.

I hope that such an issue never occurs again but if it does I hope that the devs think about the consequences of their "fix" — and perhaps even discuss it with us — before they "fix" it.

**Apologies if this all sounds like a rant but I care about the long-term health of this game, and I see players, some of whom I consider friends, drifting away from this game and this community because of mistakes like this one, and that concerns me.

If you care about this game then it should concern you as well.**

PS, this missing node shouldn't even have happened. It was missing from Strange Sights was last run for players on Steam who were already playing with the new Unity engine and for Unity beta testers on other platforms. It was reported as an issue then; it should've been addressed before Strange Sights was run again.

Thanks for posting this, so that I didn’t have to. I’ve been t5 the last several events, and now I sit 40th through no fault of my own other than not realizing that I should have been more aware of this possibility based on the poor choices the devs have made in the last several months. I know EB likes to say this game is player against player NOT player vs devs, but when something like this happens, I definitely feel I’m playing against the devs. I guess this is just another nudge towards the door.

When they screw around with the competition that's something different. I said in the post about this that they shouldn't fix it midstream because it'd be unfair (I definitely didn't expect them to because they never fix anything that fast).

You're still not playing against the developers, but they're changing the rules to advantage one group of players over another.

Intellectually, I get what you’re saying and probably agree with you, but emotionally, I do blame the devs for my missed nodes, and feel I went up against them and lost. However, as a competitive PVE player, I always feel like something was against me when I miss a node. Inconvenient phone call? The person that called was against me. WiFi outage? Internet provider. Lost power? Mother Nature or the power company. I just cut it too close or didn’t make the necessary adjustments if the wrong characters were boosted? My own arrogance or complacency (this is by far the most common reason I miss). I could go on, but you get the idea. lol

I think part of the problem here (and forgive me if this isn't the case anymore, I haven't played competitive PvE in a LONG time) is that the top of the leaderboards for each slice/CL/bracket tend to be pretty static, because the truly competitive players tend to join in the same place at the same time. If you place #4 in every event for several years, it's easy to forget that other players are competing against you! It can feel like you'd only get #6 because you messed something up.

But what if 5 absolute murderers from some other slice invade and push you down to top 10? You did your best, and nothing went wrong, but they were just better. You couldn't blame any outside influence for that.

In this case, the devs handed some group of players an unfair advantage and those players beat you. The devs' job is as referee -- make the competition fair, so we all play under the same rules, and they failed at that. It's why I'm annoyed at bugs that affect us all, but only get truly upset about stuff that advantages certain groups over others.

Well I’m mainly talking about missing nodes which lowers my score (and placement). You’re talking about my placement being lower if other better players were in the slice. I don’t have any problem with that. If I did my best (and had the same shot as everyone else), but I placed 21, that would be fine. I wouldn’t be looking at assigning blame.

What you describe has actually happened to me in reverse. A few months ago, I was usually 8-10. In the last couple months, I’ve usually been 3-5. My PVE teams and supports didn’t get any better. My methods didn’t change. The difference is that 5 better players stopped playing my bracket. At least 1 of them retired. I’m not sure what happened to the other 4.

I think we're agreeing with each other. A fair competition is good. When the developers advantage some group over another, it makes the competition unfair, and you're fighting against the other team AND the referees.

It’s interesting to me that some bigger games let you delete your account by request but they also build in a 30 day waiting period. So you can just decide to get rid of your progress without the selling off etc (admittedly I don’t know how many have a way to destroy your progress in a similar way). But they enable you to decide to reverse your decision within the 30 days so they can reduce CS work to restore accounts that people decided to get rid of in a fit of rage then changed their mind about.