OSCORP: HEROIC Meta Analysis of Progress-Based Subs

I started a tracking thread here to gather data from the City sub of the latest run of Oscorp: Heroic. At the end of the City sub, aaronschmiz started a new tracking thread for the Tower sub here, and after crunching the numbers we collected from the City sub, I posted an analysis of the completion rate data in that thread. With this new type of sub, we aren't given a hard end time, and since timing refreshes is absolutely mandatory to maximize points, it's pretty important that we can start generating reliable estimates.

My post-City analysis is in the spoiler block below:

I think that analysis largely holds up, though there are a few points that need clarifying. But first, here's a quick-and-dirty summary of the Tower sub rate data (all times will be east coast US; M/hr = million points per hour):

The first 15% of the progress bar took about 14.5 hours, from 6PM to 8:30AM, and the progress rate varied from 3-5M/hr. 15-30% took about 10.5 hours, from 8:30AM to 6PM, and the progress rate was around 6-6.5M/hr. 30-45% took 13.5 hours, from 6PM to 7:30AM, with a progress rate of about 5M/hr. 45-75% took 20 hours, with an average rate of 6-6.5M/hr. There was a brief dip in progress rate over the next 5%, down to 4.5M/hr, from 3:30AM to 6AM, but the next 15%, from 80-95%, picked up substantially, varying from 6.5-8M/hr from 6AM to 3:30PM. Finally, the last 5% was turbocharged, clipping along at 11-12M/hr from 3:30PM to the end of the sub at 5:13PM.

(In my City analysis, I used % per hour, though I think M/hr will be more useful in the future. For a completion bar of 400M, 1% = 4M.)

For the given set of variables that applied in Oscorp: Heroic, much of the middle phase of stacking up points happened at around 6-6.5M/hr. There were some dips in progress rate, almost certainly due to the sinusoidal nature of global activity across a 24 hour period, but even those dips had a floor of around 3M/hr early on, and 4.5M/hr later. The high-activity period at the end of the Tower sub was much shorter than the City sub, but only a little faster--City progress rate peaked at 10M/hr across the last 20%, while Tower progress rate peaked at 11-12M/hr across the last 5%. There are a few possible factors here--maybe the playerbase got slightly better at timing the final refresh; maybe the City ending on a weekend changed the global activity pattern.

In general, for subs of this type, there are a few different factors that will affect the overall rate of completion, and therefore the projected end time of the sub. The first is global participating player population. More people getting points = faster completion. Next is the base points on the sub's pins, probably best captured by the average value of the top 3-5 pins, compared to the overall length of the progress bar. Finally, there is the balancing effect of rubberbanding and scaling. Rubberbanding provides an acceleration effect where growth is smaller at the beginning (nobody is far enough apart to get bonus points), but much bigger later on (most of the player population is getting bonus points). Personal and community scaling provide a deceleration effect where pins are easy to beat early on, encouraging more grinding, but much harder later, forcing players to pick their battles and hit fewer pins. There's a second "acceleration" effect due to players joining the subs midway through the completion period, as well. In Oscorp: Heroic, the acceleration effects of rubberbanding and late joiners outweighed the deceleration effect of scaling, but it would take considerably more information to tease out the details of that balance.

Thank you to all the people who contributed data points to this tracking project; I hope we'll be better able to get a handle on progress-bar subs in the future with fewer headaches.