Rubberbanding and server time creates serious problems

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1

This post concerns PvE events, not PvP events

All players need hero points, so the game gets extremely competitive. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that all players get to fight for points and rewards on equal terms, but because of rubberbanding it all gets out of hand since anyone can march in on the event late, play a few quick matches and skyrocket to a good ranking and get good rewards. How fair is that to other players who have spent hours and hours to earn points?

Even worse, the events are completely controlled by the server time, so if you live in the “right” time zone, your event ends at 21 PM and you have all the chances in the world to battle late and safeguard your ranking. Players living in the “wrong” time zone on the other hand, have their events end at 4 AM and have to make the unpleasant choice of either “staying up so late that your whole life will get wrecked” or “go up so early that everyone will think you’re completely insane”. And because of how the events work now, with rubberbanding and late ranking changes in the events, this is NECESSARY to get good rewards.

A perfect example, taken from real life (yesterday, or today, depending on how you see it):

I stayed up late and kept playing til 2 AM. By that time, I had the first place in one event. The event had four hours left and I just had to go to bed, so I did. By morning, I had been pushed down to somewhere below place 50, and all I got was three measly standard tokens instead of two assault tokens and the much needed 50-100 hero points. Had I been able to play late in the event, I would have been able to land somewhere between place 5-20, which has been the case several times. So this felt completely unfair to me.

Here’s how I think this problem should be solved:

  1. Skip rubberbanding completely. It’s not fair that a player can waltz in with just an hour left on the event and finish in the top ten rankings. Totally unfair to everyone who have played like crazy to get there.

  2. Individual event timers, so that you always get 24 hours to finish the event whenever you start it (as long as you start it at least 24 hours before the end time). Each event should then have a clear start time and end time (march 3 to march 5, for instance), everyone gets the same amount of game time and can choose for themselves which is the best time to play. Prizes will be delivered shortly after each bracket is completed so you won’t have to wait for other brackets to finish (except if there is a bigger, final ranking for all events together).

If nothing is done to correct this problem (and a problem it is), I can’t see how D3 can justify the current event system at all, because as of now, the first 23 hours DON’T COUNT AT ALL! All the action and rankings are decided in the final hour of each event and a lot of players just can’t play in that final hour! icon_e_sad.gif

2

I entirely agree with this post.

The recent ISO-8 pve event finished at 8pm (UK time) for the first few days and I was astonished to find myself placing in the top 5 with ease. Then the tournament end time changed to 5am and I sucked for the rest of the week. The combination of rubber banding and server time zones is really punishing. I’m not saying it should favor any particular time zone but there needs to be a fairer system in place.

3

I’ll agree with the above as well.

As far as I see it, the only way to fix this problem properly is to split the events out by timezone and to prevent abuse by cheaters close off the match system between approx. 1:00 AM and 7:30 AM for each local timezone. Can’t cheat yourself into a different timezone for an advantage if it means locking yourself out of points, period.

(Ofcourse, logistics-wise this is a nightmare.)

4

Yes, fixing events for each timezone would be a programmer’s nightmare, I suspect…that’s why I instead suggest that the events are made available at a given time (ie march 12) and must be finished within a given time (ie march 14), but within that time, you only have 24 hours to finish the event, counted from the time you start playing the event. This is very easy to accomplish and as players start playing the event, brackets are created and filled, and scored independently. The exception would be the “umbrella events”, which lasts for ten days, but I imagine it’s quite doable to fix that also. Sure, this means there will be as much as a day’s wait to get the final prizes, but I think it’s more important to give every player a fighting chance to get as good rewards as possible, but the current system is very unfair on that point. icon_e_sad.gif