How happy are you with the time slice times?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

This came up in the Thick as Thieves discussion, and I thought we might benefit from a focused discussion:

How happy are people with the times that the time slices are divided at? Right now, the divisions are very uneven - with either three or six hour separations over a 24-hour period - where four or five hours would be a little more even.

Personally, I’m happy with the times for PVP, at least for the Tuesday-Saturday and Friday-Monday times, though I wouldn’t object to them being a little later. The Sunday-Wednesday Slice 1 is okay for me, but no other is even halfway decent.

But the PVE times are absolutely terrible for me. Because I have a job, I can mainly play in the evenings, and there are no good time slices for me. Right now, Slice 1 is 9 am for me, Slice 2 is 3 pm (I think), Slice 3 is 6 pm, Slice 4 is midnight, and slice 5 is 3 am. All of those are bad; the least terrible have been Slice 1 (when there are 12 or 36 hour subs) or Slice 4 (when there aren’t). And I’m not in some section of the world with few players; I"m in the Eastern Time Zone of the US. But they’ve moved it so that the six hour window between time slices completely blocks out all decent time choices for me. 6 pm is too early for me to play at the end; midnight means I miss the first 6 hours of a sub. And the other choices are all worse.

How happy are people with the time slices right now? When do you have problems?

2

I’m curious to know what your experience was like before Time Slices. Weren’t some or all of these problems still something you had to deal with before? Actually, how did it work exactly before? Just trying to understand why folks have issues with Time Slices (even if the time are off a bit, nothing is ever going to be perfect).

EDIT: I like Time Slices for the record, not sure what it was like before, so I can’t comment. I’m Eastern Time Zone as well and find either the 9PM or 12PM Slices work best for me. I will double or even triple clear (with 2.5/3 hour timers) based on my sleep/work/IRL schedule and can still maintain good placement since I will put effort in to grind down subs at the end.

3

It used to be everything started at noon and ended at midnight (Eastern time). There are two main reasons the current times are worse for some of us in the US now:

  1. The people who midnight was terrible for are now in other brackets; most of Slice 4, which is literally the only end time slice I can grind at the end of now, is players for whom that’s a good time. It’s essentially that the people who were doing well are now in fewer brackets, and someone on the West coast or in the middle has a massive advantage against someone on the East coast. I’m essentially stuck in a situation similar (not quite as bad, admittedly) as the people in Europe were before time slices, in that I have an inherent disadvantage time-wise.

  2. They didn’t used to put you in a sub bracket as soon as it started. That means I’m starting subs multiple clears behind now, and can rarely catch up. If the bracket time was a few hours earlier, I could do a couple clears before bed, but as it is, I’m asleep when it ends.

4

I like it, and with 8 hour refreshes from now on, it should help correct some the issues/problems I imagine as you can set it up with that in mind.

5

I don’t mind them, they don’t really seem to be a regular interval, and the times did seem odd for me, but I am usually in the 4th slice that ends at Midnight. It works for me because I put my youngest to bed at 9, then I play through while watching some shows on TV with my wife in the ‘wind down’ phase of the night. We go to bed at 10, if I didn’t get to play at 9 because wife wanted to chit chat, I play at 10 in bed when the wife is sleeping. I’ll hit the nodes, play some PVP if there are reasonable teams in my nodes, and I haven’t hit my 300 point goal. I’ll then make another couple of runs before sleeping if the event isn’t ending that night to make my refresh timer to last until 6-7 in the morning. I play in the morning before work, then I play at lunch. If an event/sub ends at Noon, I have the flexibility to take lunch early at 11:30 - 12:30 to finish one sub and start the next. If the entire event starts at Noon, I take my lunch at noon and start out the event running through as many nodes as I can. I then play again after work when i get home around 6, then again at 9, and so on. Sometimes I can play some nodes around 4 on the days that I go to the mailroom to sort mail, those days I can hit the refresh at 4, then play again at 7 and 10. When the event ends at midnight, at 10 I begin to go through the nodes as often as I can before running out of health packs and bodies.

This is of course with 3 hour refreshes. 8 hour refreshes throws a wrench into the routine, so I’ll have to see how it fits into my routine or if I need to pick a different time slot because of the significantly less number of times I can play and how awkwardly 8 hour refreshes shoves itself into your day/night. I know this is not a debate about refreshes, so I leave it at my personal experience.

I posted a topic on refresh slices instead of time slices, but deleted it since it seemed like it was beating a dead horse since they already decided to make 8 hours permanent for better or for worse.

6

8 hour will make it slightly less bad for me, but there is still no time I can hit both the beginning and end of the sub. There is literally no configuration they could do with 4/5 hour separations (as oppose to 3/6) that that’s true for.

7

Here’s a related question: how many slices is too many?

If this game was a massive mainstream hit the likes of Clash, we’d have 8 slices to cover every 3 hour slot. But I doubt D3 want to dilute the brackets too much more.

8

I don’t think they necessarily need to add any; just space them a little better. If they moved Slice 3 one hour later, for example, it would be four hours after slice 2, five before slice 4, and I’d be fine with it. If they moved Slice 4 one hour earlier, it wouldn’t be quite as good, but it would still allow me to get a clear before bed. I just think six hours between slices is too many.

9

I was just going to say 8 slices because 8 seems to be D3P’s magic number… lol, but you’re right, that may be too many slices. What about every 4 hours, giving you 6 slices?

Edit: I think I was noticing, aren’t there different time slices for PVP? I usually end up picking 1pm or 7pm or something like that, but since I don’t really play at the end I play at the beginning, the slice end times don’t mean as much to me as picking based on start time.

10

Very much in agreement with original post.
PVP is much better, though 2 or 3 of the slices seem to be no goes for 2* due to lack of players, assuming I want a top 100 or top 50 finish. Having an evening appointment doesn’t totally ruin my ability to play an event.

PVE is far worse. When I join a bracket I’m way further behind then I used to be. If I’m not available to play during the very start of each sub opening, I’m mostly screwed for it. They’ve made PVE way too regimented in terms of schedule.

11

Because my job starts at 10 AM eastern time, slice 1 in PvE is perfect for me; I can wrap up an event either at 9AM before I leave for work, or at 9PM when I’m winding down in the evening. There’s no PvP ending time I really like, though - 10PM Eastern would be about perfect.

12

I have no issues with the slices in PvP. Tuesday 10pm, Friday/Sunday (well, technically Saturday/Monday) 1am or 4am are fine. I’d gladly take a 10pm slice on Sunday, but it’s not affecting my life.

PvE is a little trickier to tell. The only really competitive PvE I’ve played since the change is Simulator, and I was on vacation for a week so I chose slice 3, putting me with a small, seemingly non-competitive player base. I can make 6pm work if need be, but 6am is deadly. Generally I’ll still be ok with the midnight finish, but wouldn’t complain about a 10pm option there too.

Basically, I need to move to California, then the time slices would be perfect.

13

Are PvP end times spaced differently or just one hour later? Anyway my issue with time slices is that they make things like “TaT brackets are at ___” necessary because brackets fill so slowly after the first 12-24 hours that you could easily be 24+ hours behind if you decide to join on day 2. I suppose that’s the price we pay for having things be convenient for more players. Maybe this will change some with 8 hour refreshes since joining early is less of a commitment to grinding since every 8 hours is more manageable than every 2.5 or 3.

14

The slice 2 is the more convenient for me.
Time is GMT+1 here so slice 2 means 10 pm ending for pvp and 9 pm for pve.
More, 9pm ending in pve means that 12h, 36h etc subs end at 9 am and I can play them (just a bit in fact) at 7 am before work.

So I’m rather happy with slice 2, I often shift to slice 5 the wednesday to keep an ending in the evening.
I rarely use the other slices but I’m glad that they all contribute to the dilution of the competition intensity! icon_e_wink.gif

15

Time slices are allowing me to be a bit more competitive in PvE, but they frustrate me.

What I find is that I feel I NEED to pick a slice where I know I can 1. Start right at the start, 2. Grind right through the end of one sub and the start of the next.

Right now, I am able to pick the 6 PM time, but it feels like an anchor. I have to make sure I’ve completed cooking and eating dinner by 5, then blitz the nodes for an hour without enjoying playing. I also need to manage my team so I can get a first clear of the next sub by 7PM, so I can get a full refresh in before I grind them down for bed. Right now, I have light flexible work hours, come March, work picks back up.

Before the time slices, I felt like everyone, with a life, was equally screwed (except Europe who was totally screwed), so I didn’t feel the need to push. Now I feel like I have a chance to place higher, yet enjoy reaching the placement less.

I do wish there was an end time every 3 hours to choose from.

Of course, trying to figure out what PvP slice might fit my social schedule for a given week is even worse, and shield cooldowns have made having an unpredictable play schedule really suck. But that is a whole different rant.

16

Lots of people on this forum have made the argument that competitive PvE itself is really unnecessary and detracts from the game. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but removing that aspect of PvE would invalidate the need to have time slices at all for PvE (i.e. Gauntlet).

17

Another result of time slices is that the “X slice is at X people” thread makes PvE too unfair, especially for people that are slice-flexible. I’m not complaining selfishly either, as using that thread has helped me finish pretty high in most PvEs, but I do feel us people using it are gaming the system. D3 has added sharding to deal with that, but everyone hates that solution.

18

My problem isn’t necessarily the time of the slices as much as the fact that I need to be playing at Time X and Time (X + 12 hours) because of 36 hour sub lengths. Which only makes one timeslot even remotely possible for me. If all subs ran a multiple of 24 hours then several of the current times would be workable for me.

19

yea they need to make one sub for 36 hours and the rest for 24 or 48 hours. I wonder where they came up with 5. Shocked the did not just do 4

midnight 6am noon 6pm (ever 6 hours)

20

As the originator of the “X slice is at X people” thread (Juggernaut Heroic was the first), pre-time slices, my original intent was to game the system. I wanted to play less but get the top rewards by beating out the people in my fresh bracket, so I was playing for efficiency (more clears than people in my bracket, less clears than people who started event earlier, same prizes). Those threads worked a lot better when there was only 1 or 2 brackets (vet / baby) filling at a time, because they filled faster. I thought time slices would ruin the threads, but they are still useful. With 5 or 10 (or more) brackets filling at the same time, 1 or 2 [vet(s) / baby] in each of the 5 time slices, these are going to fill up slower.

Time slices pros/cons from viewpoint of (former) competitive PVEer

Pros
-Get to choose your end time, so you can grind at the end of subs, which is only way to get separation from people hitting every refresh
-Potentially spreads out grinders in other time slices, so you have a less chance of them ending up in your bracket. On the flip side, but lower chance of happening, it could have them gathering in a time slice or bracket

Cons
-The benefit of time slices is negated by 12 and 36 hr subs, so you don’t get to conveniently grind at the end of subs, which is only way to get separation from people hitting every refresh
-Slower filling brackets means you have to join earlier / play more, if you want to contend for higher rewards and/or reach progression rewards

The 1st pro, is a very big pro. It created the cons, but those aren’t as impactful to negate the benefit of pro. I am in favor of the time slices.

I think they are real hesitant to tinker with the 12/36 hr sub format in older subs/PVEs (which is almost all the PVES), but did Enemy of the State (post time slice new content) have any 12 or 36 hr subs?

With the 8 hr refresh, which I am heavily in favor of, and very happy to see them make permanent, I might return to competitive PVE, as it is the only way I could probably cover my 2/2/3 Xforce or 3/0/2 Thor. If I have easy brackets, why not try to cover my 1/4/2 IW, 3/1/1 Elektra, or ?/?/? Starlord. They may see an Xforce type buff someday, although I highly doubt it. I have my Fury optimally covered at 5/5/3 due to lucky token drops and a few top PVE finishes, so when he is a reward, I won’t be going for Top 2.