Rubberbanding, replenishing, and tied points

Options
Unknown
Unknown
edited January 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
I've been reading through the forums and have a vague idea of what's going on with these things, but i'm fuzzy on some details.

I'm currently doing the "Hidden Stash: Bolivia" sub-event, and for the first time i'm actually able to do all the missions. I went through every spot on the map and got all the points possible, and found myself tied at 3900 with a _lot_ of other people.

There are currently 15 hours left in the event. I thought the sub-event was 24 hours long and that the maps refreshed every 8 hours. However A: i still can't get any more points and B: the top 10 players are still all at 3900.

I found a reference saying that the map refreshes depending on when you complete it. What does "complete" mean in this case? I've gotten all the points i can so is that complete? Or do i need to continue replaying spots until i've gotten all the possible rewards from every spot? (Two of them were obstinate and kept giving me 20 ISO, so there are three rewards left i need to collect.)

I also had the impression that rubberbanding rewarded people who played later so they could "catch up". However despite finishing all the spots well after a number of other people, i still ended up at 3900, the same as them. Does rubberbanding not apply to sub-events? Or is there just a cap on how many points you can get until the refresh?

And if the event doesn't refresh, or it does and a bunch of us all end up tied at whatever the new cap is, will they really just give the top tier reward to the four people who waited and finished at the last minute, even if all of us have the exact same point total? I can understand rewarding players who play more and i understand there's always a list minute rush in these things, but putting a cap on things so that those of us who hit it first can do absolutely nothing to improve our ranking seems really sucky.

Thanks!

Comments

  • mischiefmaker
    mischiefmaker Posts: 932
    Options
    I'm not sure what "complete" means. It might be different for different sub-events, but based on the last subevent where I was paying attention, it means the first time you play the mission, and it refreshes 8 hours later. I think we are all quite sure it has nothing to do with rewards, although it might be based on the first time you exhaust all the points (play it 5 times, until it's worth 0). So, if you play mission A at 9am, and then play mission B at 4pm, mission A will be worth full points again at 5 pm, whereas mission B won't get full points again until midnight.

    Note that "full points" might not be the same number of points as the first go-around due to rubber banding.

    Rubber banding helps people who start the main event late to catch up. This is why so many people are tied at 3900 in the sub-event -- they are all very low in the main event, so got the maximum number of points from rubber banding for every mission.

    I agree that the tie-break system is a bit suboptimal, but I'm pretty sure it won't matter because there should be at least one more set of missions for all the tied players to do (two more, if you started it early enough). And this time a lot of you will be closer to the top of the main event, and so won't get as many points from rubberbanding.

    Hope that helps!
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    Personally I find they always reset sometime between 2AM EST and 8AM EST, and I generally do the events as quickly as I can. That would put the reset at about 14-16 hours for me.

    That said, I hate rubber banding. I feel it almost punishes me for just playing the game when I can. I know why it exists so everyone can get a chance, but I don't like having to play at specific times to get the most rewards for the same amount of work. I don't let it bother me too much, but it's sort of irritating knowing I may only get 500 points for something that someone who waits longer may get 2000 points for just because I decided to play it at that instant.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    Hopefully this event serves as a later lesson to the devs to come up with a better tie-break system or to just go by points so if say the top 10 had 3900 at the end of the event they count as only number 1 of the event so someone with 3899 points would be rank 2 and 3890 would be rank 3 if no one was had between 3898-3891 points. etc.
    I do wish the time when a mission will refresh was made visually apparent in game.
    The rubber banding mechanic is actually quite interesting and while understanding what it does vaguely I dont know specifics. I'm in the top 5k of the main event which isnt great but also not horrible and I get the max from the rubber banding mechanic.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    @Nirosu The usual way such things are handled in most real world contests i've observed when there's no tie-breaker present is that everyone tied for a place counts as that place and counting resumes normally after the tie. ie if two people had 3900 points and one person had 3890, the first two would be tied for first and the last one would be in third, so there would technically be no one in second place. I think that would be entirely fair. If D3 can't come up with some more reasonable deadline than "last person to squeak in before the event ended" then they ought to go ahead and give everyone tied for first the first place prize. Even just "first person to get the points wins the tie" would be better than _last_ person to get the points wins the tie. The people who go early ought to already be punished enough by the rubberbanding, they shouldn't be losing the tie too.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    Donaithnen wrote:
    @Nirosu The usual way such things are handled in most real world contests i've observed when there's no tie-breaker present is that everyone tied for a place counts as that place and counting resumes normally after the tie. ie if two people had 3900 points and one person had 3890, the first two would be tied for first and the last one would be in third, so there would technically be no one in second place. I think that would be entirely fair. If D3 can't come up with some more reasonable deadline than "last person to squeak in before the event ended" then they ought to go ahead and give everyone tied for first the first place prize. Even just "first person to get the points wins the tie" would be better than _last_ person to get the points wins the tie. The people who go early ought to already be punished enough by the rubberbanding, they shouldn't be losing the tie too.

    I think they are going for the same standard method. I noticed that whenever i end up in a tie with a few other players, my name is placed on top of the list of tied players. so wouldn't it be the same with the others? In my point of view on the rankings i'm at the top and it's the same with everyone tied with me... hence all are tied at the top and are supposed to get the same prize.
  • Spoit
    Spoit Posts: 3,441 Chairperson of the Boards
    Options
    Chef Bro wrote:
    Donaithnen wrote:
    @Nirosu The usual way such things are handled in most real world contests i've observed when there's no tie-breaker present is that everyone tied for a place counts as that place and counting resumes normally after the tie. ie if two people had 3900 points and one person had 3890, the first two would be tied for first and the last one would be in third, so there would technically be no one in second place. I think that would be entirely fair. If D3 can't come up with some more reasonable deadline than "last person to squeak in before the event ended" then they ought to go ahead and give everyone tied for first the first place prize. Even just "first person to get the points wins the tie" would be better than _last_ person to get the points wins the tie. The people who go early ought to already be punished enough by the rubberbanding, they shouldn't be losing the tie too.

    I think they are going for the same standard method. I noticed that whenever i end up in a tie with a few other players, my name is placed on top of the list of tied players. so wouldn't it be the same with the others? In my point of view on the rankings i'm at the top and it's the same with everyone tied with me... hence all are tied at the top and are supposed to get the same prize.
    No, and that's the problem, if there are 100 people tied for 1st (to be silly), only the person who got to that point last would get the 1st place prize
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    Chef Bro wrote:
    I think they are going for the same standard method. I noticed that whenever i end up in a tie with a few other players, my name is placed on top of the list of tied players. so wouldn't it be the same with the others? In my point of view on the rankings i'm at the top and it's the same with everyone tied with me... hence all are tied at the top and are supposed to get the same prize.

    I can guarantee you that's not how it works. I tied for #2 in a Lightning Round, but my name showed as #3. And that's the placement I got. Last in, first out is how it works.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    Tie should go to the person who got the rating first for being proactive.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    That would require the sorting algorithm to be changed from a > to a >= -- clearly ridiculous (or... maybe... from a <= to a < -- the horror...)
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    I'm clearly still not understanding the rubberbanding. The Hidden Stash: Bolivia event only reset once as far as i can tell. Before the reset there were well over 100 of us all tied at 3900 points. I had to play a bit earlier after the reset than i wanted (the event was going to end before i would have woken up in the morning) so i decided to grind out all the missions. Two people had already gotten 7800, two times the original 3900 amount, so it seemed like there wasn't any rubberbanding going on in the sub-event, but after getting all the available points in all the missions i ended up at 7700, exactly 100 points behind the two leaders, even though i'd gotten the points after them and should have benefited from any rubberbanding.

    In addition, if our points are being affected by rubberbanding why was there exactly a 100 point difference between us? I would have expected the difference from rubberbanding to be a small percentage, which ought to result in an odd number of points at the end rather than values all divisible by 100.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Options
    Donaithnen wrote:
    I'm clearly still not understanding the rubberbanding. The Hidden Stash: Bolivia event only reset once as far as i can tell. Before the reset there were well over 100 of us all tied at 3900 points. I had to play a bit earlier after the reset than i wanted (the event was going to end before i would have woken up in the morning) so i decided to grind out all the missions. Two people had already gotten 7800, two times the original 3900 amount, so it seemed like there wasn't any rubberbanding going on in the sub-event, but after getting all the available points in all the missions i ended up at 7700, exactly 100 points behind the two leaders, even though i'd gotten the points after them and should have benefited from any rubberbanding.

    In addition, if our points are being affected by rubberbanding why was there exactly a 100 point difference between us? I would have expected the difference from rubberbanding to be a small percentage, which ought to result in an odd number of points at the end rather than values all divisible by 100.

    In this particular case, the total value of all the missions in Bolivia is 390. The maximum rubberband bonus is X10. Therefore, the maximum points that can possibly be obtained is 3900.

    You couldn't get the full 3900 next time because your total points are presumably higher than the guys who got 3900 again, so you had less from rubberbanding and ended up with only 3800. The fact it's 100 less is just a freak coincidence.

Categories