Fortunately no one was hurt and it seems that the OP has realized his great folly.
However, i hope that the point of his post will not be lost: there is a problem with the current pVe model and the current status of the game.
Sure we can chide him for his obvious addiction to the game and for his poor decision making. He has a lot of serious reflecting to do. But don’t we all?
i’ve never played a game that was so oriented around real world time. You will occasionally hear from posters on here about frustrated wives/significant others, cutting down on family time, reducing one’s sleep time and other things people do to accommodate the time schedule of this game. i fall into the category of those that have been adjusting their sleep time to do well in this game.
The reason i do this is because it works.
i have two other friends that play this game and in terms of roster strength, i’m light years ahead of them. But my so-called “achievement” has less to do with skill and more to do with understanding the meta-game and the willingness to sacrifice time. My one friend even laughed at me (in the way you laugh at a child for being silly) when she found out how much i plan my daily life around this game.(she is a daily casual player who plays mostly on train rides going back and forth from work and a little bit before she goes to bed. She currently has 22 health packs because she never uses them.)
but i like this game. it’s fun most of the times. and i’ve come to realize that i am the kind of person that likes to be “the best there is” lol
However, with that being said, i understand why people get burnt out playing this game. In order to excel, it asks a lot (or some might say too much) in terms of time commitment. i don’t know much about mobile gaming, but with more traditional console games you simply play whenever you like. Of course, you can do that with this game but unless you are very lucky with timing of events being convenient for your lifestyle (e.g. a high school student living on the West Coast of the US lol), you won’t see a lot of progress. For some players, that’s cool.
But for those that want to be “the best there is”, playing casually is not really an option, at least not as the game currently exists. it’s either go hard or go find another game that rewards your desire. Casual play leads to really, really slow progress. i know because i have a bunch of casual players in my alliance and occasionally you will read about a poster who has been playing this game for a year and only recently maxed their first 3*.
Now when you have a bunch of people trying to be “the best there is” at a game that requires only a minimal amount of skill and strategy (at least when it comes to pVe, pVp is a different kind of beast) it basically boils down to two major factors:
- RL circumstances (job, personal commitments, etc.)
- How much time you are willing to commit to achieve a decent rank
A player has very little control over the first factor (save for those bathroom breaks); it’s the second factor where the player makes the choice: is the prize worth my time? And if so, how much time? (You will often see Ben Grimm make these kinds of choices on this forum)
As with many players that come to the forum, i try to find ways to maximize my ability to attain rewards while doing the least amount of work. However, as more players develop their rosters and catch on to the mechanics behind the meta-game, the more effort will be required to maintain a top position. That is why it’s becoming more and more the norm to see people shielding from ranks 1-25 when a new, worthwhile character is being released where when I first started only a handful of people would ever shield.
In regards to pVe, there are have been various ways to try and confront the issue of the Grind, perhaps most prominently rubberbanding. For those that don’t know, rubberbanding was a method in which a player could theoretically sit out of an entire event while others grinded away and with proper timing (usually around the 12 hour mark if i remember correctly) “rubberband” to the top of the rankings and place higher playing significantly less time than others who had grinded away most of the event. Of course it is an unfair mechanism and could only be fully utilized by people who could grind the last few hours of the event. Recently, it seems that rubberbanding has been toned down enough that such tactics are no longer viable for top rankings. Why did they implement rubberbanding in the first place? Theoretically in order to keep casual players interested in the event. If you join a pVe event where the player in 1st has 60,000 points and you only are able to get 5,000 points on your first round with a rank around 600 it doesn’t give you much incentive to continue playing the event, does it? However, say with the rubber band you were able to gain 20,000 pts and place somewhere around top 100. Two or three more goes at it and you break Top 10! But when more savvy players caught on to this, it lead to heavy exploitation. Now for us more savvy (lazy) players, we rely on bracket reporting in the hopes of skipping the long grind that comes with pVe. [and that method has turned into a new fiasco with the time slices lol]
Obviously for a casual non-competitive player, pVe is not so much of a hassle. But for those are trying to be “the best there is” pVe symbolizes one thing and one thing only: the Grind. In my mind, the Grind is a Mexican Bandito called El Senor Grind and he makes us do the Mexican hat dance over and over again, shooting at our feet and telling his companion Senorita Scaleita throw more hats in and make the music go faster.
que imaginary sequence
El Senor: "Dance for me! Dance for me! F4D!!
F4d: “I’ve already done this dance 6 times already!”
El Senor: “Oh! Did you hear that Senorita Scaleita?! Senor f4d said he wants more hats and wants faster music!! Well, let him have it!”
f4d: "I..
bang bang
El Senor: “Dance f4d! Dance for me! La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar♪”
bang bang
Senorita Scaleita: “Oh wow! He finished in 27 minutes and 36 seconds this time!”
El Senor: “Aye dios mio! Was it too easy for you, f4d? We will just have to add more hats and make the song faster for you! See you in 3 hours muchacho!”
F4d: out of breath no…more…hats…
end imaginary sequence
In all seriousness though, it’s no wonder people burn out. the way i manage to deal with the monotony of doing the same nodes over and over again is by imagining i’m racing other forum members (sometimes with funny results). it’s gotten to the point that i don’t even bother reading the dialogues to events anymore [save the occasional Deadpool zingers.] it always brings a smile to my face when i see a name i am familiar with in pVe.
Getting back to the point though, in an ideal situation where everyone has all the free time they like, pVe simply becomes a test of timing and wills. Theoretically in such a situation the scaling should rise so those that have the strongest roster, best strategic planning and/or greatest HP resources will be end up winning the day. But more realistically speaking, since very few of us are trying to hit every refresh every 2.5 or 3 hours, more often than not it comes down to who is willing to do the most refreshes.
Confession: Sometimes i play this game more than i would like to.
i imagine that goes the same for anyone who wants to be “good” or “the best”.that’s why we have words like “practice” and “training” lol. Anywhoo, ideally, i would like a variety of game modes some competitive, some non-competitive that all offered good prizes. The game is fun, the new characters are cool but the current game modes are no longer novel. As previously mentioned, now i get my jollies from battling it out with forumites and other in-game rivals so i imagine i am heading into the final phase of pleasure that can be derived from this game in its current form.
To echo the sentiments of past vets before me and those still sticking with it, i really hope the devs provide more non-competitive, less time restrictive game modes. They can keep the current pVe format (maybe continue tweaking the refresh times a bit?) since i know there are those that like it but offer something else too.
As for the OP, let us just be thankful that all it took was minor fender bender for him to wake up from the game’s enchantment and let it be a warning to us all not to get so deep into the game that we put ourselves or others at danger. And i mean that to include our relationships with our loved ones and our other interests in life, not simply life/death situations.
Wishing everyone a safe, happy gaming experience!
fight4thedream
P.S.- Since i don’t want to look like i’m just pointing out the problem without offering any constructive suggestions, here a some past posts of mine regarding this matter:
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/15997
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/16429
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/19896