11 replies to this topic

[Enigmos]

I'm just going to set out a couple of observations regarding PGI's weekend challenges. Currently the Urbanmech contest is ongoing. Generally speaking, unless you are a top flight player with loads of experience don't expect too much of your opting in and playing. Do opt in and see how your performance currently compares, but try to avoid obsession and frustration.

These challenges define a complex calculation describing how points accumulate per match. Your top ten scores are summed to give your challenge total. You won't have a fully valid score to compare until you have put in at least ten matches (or however many for the challenge you are considering.).These measures are actually, IMO, pretty well chosen. Not only is your personal performance as a combatant pilot in your chosen mech build the biggest factor, but the performance of your team is also a big factor. This should encourage you to play for your team. You could have a great game personally, but if your team fails to win then the match won't be worth beans. By the end of the challenge, optimal scores will be crucial.

At first, when the challenge first opens, your score may seem competitive, but unless you consistently make kills and assists and your teams win you will quickly find you are falling seriously behind.

If you have a good score (top twenty), but you decide to go to sleep that night, you will fid that your rank has fallen far behind by the time you awaken because many players play all weekend, and a few appear to share an account and play in shifts.

It will be possible to catch up, but only by playing enough games that you get ten matches out of the total that are about as good as the ten best matches of the twenty best participants in that challenge on those days, assuming they are using equivalent mech builds.

If you find yourself working hard, even overnight, trying to get a better score and up your total, my recommendation is to honestly accept that whatever your rank is at that point is a fair estimate of your relative current skill in that challenge on those days. We all can always improve, but that doesn't happen overnight. It has to be okay to be human.

Remember that for most players the primary job in te game is to have fun. If you aren't having fun, then you are doing something wrongly.

Best wishes, pilot. And welcome.

Edited by OriginalTibs, 12 April 2015 - 07:52 AM.

[Xaiier]

The simple fact is that these "challenges" are not so much challenging as they are tedious.

Instead of promoting a specific player oriented and actually difficult challenge, like "get 1000+ damage in a match" they only require mediocrity, and instead challenge you with the sheer amount of time you have to put into them in order to obtain a reward. They set the bar low, with stuff like "get 30 match points" that an average player should get most of the time, and set up the rewards such that every player independent of skill must spend an inordinate amount of time to complete them. This results in completing a challenge not being an achievement but more of a "participation reward" where everyone gets a prize. In the end this helps keep player count up, but increases the grind to the point where a lot of people are burned out on the game after pushing to complete all the requirements.

It does make sense though, as it caters to the lower skill players and pushes people who don't play very often to play more, which in the long run is good for PGI. I just wish people would realize them for what they are, and that PGI would offer some actual challenges alongside the grindy ones.

[epikt]

Xaiier, what a bunch of elitist bullcrap.
I agree on one point though, they are not "challenges", they are "events".
As for everyone geting a prize, that's good. Those events need to reward teamplay and cooperation, not selfish, twisted and abusive behaviour like it currently does. The only virtuous events PGI organized were those with collective rewards (like the Stormcrow sales), instead of leaderboards and/or individual objectives that draws players to adopt specific strategy (farming damage, farming assist, stealing kills, etc) in order to optimize their points.

Back to the OP, I also think these kind of events with collective rewards are also the best for new players to feel being part of a community.

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actually difficult challenge, like "get 1000+ damage in a match"

This would be the worst. First it's not that difficult (though a bad player probably won't get it), second and more important it's definitely not an indicator of your performance.
The games I'm really happy with my performance and my team's performance are those where everybody gets 250dmg and 1 kill. Those shared damage games are the best, it means you're working well together and that everyone did their job. As for the low damage, it tells we were efficient at taking targets down.
The games where I'm happy about my performance as in "I carried the team", I dealt between 600 and 800dmg.
As for the 1000+ games, most of the time all I think of my performance before I see the final scoreboard is "your aim was terrible".


PS: that gave me an idea for an event: the more your team's score is evenly shared, the more points you get.

[Lily from animove]

But then epikt, how does anything rewad any teamwork at all if 30 score is to be furfilled? thats so low, it does not require any teamwork.

Not even the grouchallange requires any teamwork. except all clicking ready up in the group screen.

Not sure what data PGI can track, but a lance challange where every player gets one point for every mech they kill together as a lance (everyone shot at it, and the lance was dealing most damage on that kill) would generate more teamplay amongst a lance. But that may for the new players be already too hard to get.
But currently they re participiaton events. past that there is nothing.

Especially with the fact that PGI can make reward stages, a challang should include a big prize thatis a true challange. (to the victors was the only truly challanging event). nythign else was either just participate + grind, or only participate.

But they could mix that, make the low rewards, participation rewards, and the higher ones real challanges.

It's sad that I gonna mis the urbie challange, its the only challanging one we had for a while.

The adder challange, isntead of past the adder being further grind could have been:

Camo: 20 matches of score 100+ (or even Score 100+ matches in an adder). that would be challanging isntead of a grind. While randombob cna still grind low score matches for the adder, The camo will be a skill reward.

Edited by Lily from animove, 13 April 2015 - 01:10 AM.

[Arn0ldSchwarzenegger]

If you can spend every waking hour playing like Twinky then your going to get high on the leaderboard, it should count only your first 10 games, rather than your best 10 out of 10 thousand.
Its part skill, part rediculous games played, part spreading your damage over all the components.
I prefer having good aim and actually the cored components to killa mech rather than doing a competition encouraging laser bukakke

[epikt]

Lily from animove, on 13 April 2015 - 01:02 AM, said:

But then epikt, how does anything rewad any teamwork at all if 30 score is to be furfilled? thats so low, it does not require any teamwork.

The 30 score requirement does not reward anything, except not doing an horrible game. What it says is simply "play like any other day and you can get stuff". I like that.

[Anunknownlurker]

well, as a fairly new player I've loved all the events so far (not the urbie one though as I don't have it!). I don't care if the requirements are low, the rewards make it for me - additional mechbays,GXP and consumables (which I can barely afford in normal circumstances all come in handy. These events seem more geared to the newer playerbase but, to be honest we are the ones who need encouragement to face off against you more skilled experienced players!

For the more experienced players well, they are events you don't have to opt into, participate in or collect the rewards if you neither want or need them.

I am sure that some more challenging events will happen in the future to keep you interested.

[JC Daxion]

OriginalTibs, on 12 April 2015 - 07:50 AM, said:

Remember that for most players the primary job in te game is to have fun. If you aren't having fun, then you are doing something wrongly.

Best wishes, pilot. And welcome.

all to much do people forget this....

and yea, i find the challenges fun, about 50% of the time. About half i avoided to begin with because they are in something that is not my play style. But how do people not get that it is about getting lots of people playing on the weekend, and then rewarding them for doing so.

More people playing, gets larger player base, makes more money, makes ELO work better, gets more people that might play competitive, gets more people that are weekend warriors, aka the casual crowd.. It seems like a pretty good sized increase in player base since PGI took over and started running these weekend events. Kudos on that, and i am loving the easy to get Premium time.. Often i just grab that and then relax and enjoy the nice bonus if i only feel like playing 5-10 games the whole weekend. An extra mill is worth it in my book.

[Tool Box]

I am happy I didn't get urban mechs for the reason that I needed to have a life this past weekend I don't want to grind out the games to keep up on the leaderboards. Even for the jenner chassis challenge i spent one day playing it rather than the full weekend but it still became a small obsession.
I'm also trying to keep in the spirit of having fun when I play a game not feeling like this is a job. Although I DO like competition.

Edited by Tool Box, 13 April 2015 - 10:36 AM.

[Xaiier]

epikt, on 13 April 2015 - 12:47 AM, said:

...
This would be the worst. First it's not that difficult (though a bad player probably won't get it), second and more important it's definitely not an indicator of your performance.
The games I'm really happy with my performance and my team's performance are those where everybody gets 250dmg and 1 kill. Those shared damage games are the best, it means you're working well together and that everyone did their job. As for the low damage, it tells we were efficient at taking targets down.
The games where I'm happy about my performance as in "I carried the team", I dealt between 600 and 800dmg.
As for the 1000+ games, most of the time all I think of my performance before I see the final scoreboard is "your aim was terrible".


PS: that gave me an idea for an event: the more your team's score is evenly shared, the more points you get.

I used that just as an example of a difficult feat, I don't think that would be a good idea either.

But really, do you live in some kind of fantasy world where every player is the same skill level? As much as we all want to have great teams where everyone helps equally, that just isn't reality. There will always be players which are better or worse than the average, and its not something you can just pretend doesn't exist. When every event is solely based around a large time commitment and not actual performance, it just results in an awful grind for everybody.

Those perfect games where everybody gets 1 kill and sub 300 damage, those are not good games, 99% of the time that's a sign of a 12-0 stomp. When there is actually a balanced and even game (which is really rare actually) the damage amounts are widely distributed based on how long each player was alive.

Your idea for an event is...horrible. It would punish good players for performing well, which would promote them to intentionally under-perform, resulting in an all around awful experience where nobody wants to actually engage for fear of losing their own (and their teams) points.

[epikt]

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But really, do you live in some kind of fantasy world where every player is the same skill level? As much as we all want to have great teams where everyone helps equally, that just isn't reality. There will always be players which are better or worse than the average, and its not something you can just pretend doesn't exist.

What I said never implied all players had the same skill.
All I said is good teams share the damage and kills. It's a team game, if there is an achievement players should seek, it's the team performance instead of individual performance.

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Those perfect games where everybody gets 1 kill and sub 300 damage, those are not good games, 99% of the time that's a sign of a 12-0 stomp.

This wasn't an example of good game but an example of good performance (ideal performance, actually).

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Your idea for an event is...horrible.

Indeed, you're right. It was just a random idea.

But I have a strong belief about events, is that reward should not be individual but collective, and based on the collective performance.
Events should have a virtuous effect on the community, not induce toxic behaviours like grind, damage farm, kill steal, etc... In other word, they should not change the way people play.
And if more than that it could make them concerned about the welfare of all, instead of only caring about their own precious selfish reward, well, that would be for the best.

Edited by epikt, 14 April 2015 - 06:53 AM.

[Rogue Jedi]

here is a suggestion for a way to do a fair tournament which rewards teamwork instead of individual player skill, and can be finished relatively quickly if you have a few good games.

if your team wins everyone still connected at match end gets 1 point for every player on your team who got 30+ match score and an additional point for each survivor, so if you win and everyone gets 30 or better and you all survive you end up with 24 points.

if you loose you get 1 point for every player who gets 30 match score and is still connected at match end and one point for each dead Mech on the winning team, maximum of 23 points.

that would encourage teamwork because the top players would be trying to protect their teammates, share kills and damage to ensure all players get the required score

so if the match comes down to 1 Mech surviving the loosing team could make more points than the winning team, however the most profitable outcome would be to be on the winning team in a 12-0 massacre.

have a requirement of something like 300-500 points for the top prize, and you have an event which can be completed with 25 games or if it goes badly may take 50, but is highly unlikely to get to the 120+ games without getting the top prize which put me off the game for a week or more as with some of the earlier events and eventuraly convinced me to never again invest heavily in completing those.

based on my screenshots archive a winning team usualy has 8+ players with 30+ damage and a loosing team usualy has at least 4 with 30+, also the winning team tends to have between 4 and 8 Mechs left at the end. so an average game should usualy bring in 12+ points for a win and 8+ points for a loss

Edited by Rogue Jedi, 14 April 2015 - 07:45 AM.