An idea to combat last minute entry winning main prize
RobGripes
Posts: 2,300 ✭✭✭✭✭
So there has been debate for and against late entry into events.
I believe there may be a solution here, and would like to open it up for discussion.
I believe that the best way to run events is to have a single server bracket for each region. The key difference however, is that the bracket expands as new players enter.
The event could have a pre-determined percentage of players for each tier of prizes.
For example
Tier 1: 10%
Tier 2: 20%
Tier 3: 30%
Tier 4: 40%
If there are only 100 players entering, 10 people will win tier 1.
If 500 people enter, 50 people win it and so on.
Combine this with a necessary revision of the point scoring system to widen the difference between win and loss scores so that late entry players would be disadvantaged. At the moment, there is very little disadvantage to a late entrant.
Edit: changed title, from late entry to last minute entry. This is what i meant. A few hours to go is fine with me. 30 minutes to go is not imho
I believe there may be a solution here, and would like to open it up for discussion.
I believe that the best way to run events is to have a single server bracket for each region. The key difference however, is that the bracket expands as new players enter.
The event could have a pre-determined percentage of players for each tier of prizes.
For example
Tier 1: 10%
Tier 2: 20%
Tier 3: 30%
Tier 4: 40%
If there are only 100 players entering, 10 people will win tier 1.
If 500 people enter, 50 people win it and so on.
Combine this with a necessary revision of the point scoring system to widen the difference between win and loss scores so that late entry players would be disadvantaged. At the moment, there is very little disadvantage to a late entrant.
Edit: changed title, from late entry to last minute entry. This is what i meant. A few hours to go is fine with me. 30 minutes to go is not imho
Post edited by RobGripes on
Comments
Late entry benefits very few players, and even fewer competitive players. However, knowing the issue exists and that some players can win the lottery doesn't feel great. It feels like it invalidates the time and gold you have invested in the event.
So anything we consider should fix the issue and fix how the issue looks to other players. Late entry should be less rewarding and seem like a bad idea.
Solutions we've looked at:
Min number of races to claim prizes - examined a few thresholds, none made a big difference to number of late entrants winning prizes (as most do a good number of races), and it wouldn't affect the optics of late entry
Stop people joining in the last x hours - if it's the last 3 hours, you'll still get late entry at that point of 10-15 races, if it's much larger than that, lots of more casual players miss out.
Dynamic prize tiers, single leaderboard - more work than the other options, not as intuitative. The gap between prize tiers would be so wide, and players would be gaining and losing places constantly. We're looking to have more prize tiers eventually, so that more players can strive for better prizes, this goes in the opposite direction.
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I don't want to detract from this thread, but put the discussion into a wider context. All of these features are maybe a week's development time, and we're not even confident any would fix the issue or how the issue looks to players. With limited resources available, we want to be confident our efforts will fix an issue.
Additionally, attempting to fix an issue that directly affects a few players ultimately replaces or delays a feature like locking cars, a small thing that could benefit lots of players. Bigger features still like a campaign extension would come at least one week (or even one update) later.
Of course, regardless of what features are added, it is good to bring up smaller issues, or issues that feel like they damage the experience, and talk about solutions. Sometimes there are quick solutions, sometimes there are features that can solve multiple issues.
I understand that late joiners seemingly are a small problem, but sooner or later all the early joiners will come across players who have garages far superior than they ought to be. Someone wins a 918 today, is able to win the dakar rally next time using the 918. It will snowball.
My lack knowledge around coding prohibits me from understanding the technological constraints you guys have to work within. I was hoping it would be simple, expand the brackets by setting a larger number permissible. Code a percentage of players rather than a set number.
In my eyes, if late joining to bag top tier prizes is wrong, then we should stop it. It is for me even more important than car locking. I don't mistakenly fuse cars anymore. Do it once or twice and you learn from it.
That sounds feasible.
@tichoblin are you one that uses late entry to your benefit to win the top tier? I'm not getting into any kind of blame game, merely want to understand why you might have that opinion.
to know that someone can enter with a silly hand, minutes before the end of an event and win a game changing Legendary - that myself and others obtained with a lot of effort and sacrifices (In my case 18A class cars and 30B class cars)!
Hutch is right, it happens to a small number of people. But the word is out and many people instead of participating in the event are rolling the dice entering last minute (and eventually crashing the servers). And more will do that in the future and this will
a) cause all earlier brackets to be much more difficult because they will consist of people actually trying to play the game properly and
b) become a self-fullfilling prophesy as a big number of people joining late will cause many new brackets to open in the last minutes making this nonsense to get prize cars with 5 races a possibility.
Two excellent proposals are on the table:
a) As @ppedras suggested brackets should stay with let’s say 80% completeness (400/500 or something similar) and should be filled in with people joining the last 6 hours,
b) Event entrance should be restricted X (eg, 6) hours before event ends. Casual players that are sooo casual that will not enter 2.5 days after the event started probably don’t care at all about the trophy cars and should not be expected to have a chance to win it.
1. If your hand sucks, this is pretty much the only option and i think it must exist as one of the strategic choices.
2. If you hand is mediocre and you are not sure - you have two choices - a) join right away and work hard, spend gold or b) gamble with late entry and gamble, as well as hard work, must be rewarded. As we all know gambling always gives you better results (EuroJackpot vs ~60 years of work) than hard work - problem is that they are not guaranteed. In real life people are playing lottery, wining and those who work don't advocate for banning the lottery because it is not fair to them.
3. If you have a strong hand - whatever....
4. There will be what? - 10 people like that thru out the world... damn, this was not even worth my effort typing it all up...
P.S.
i did try late entry once, it did not work and since i'm not a gambling person (don't buy lottery or go to casinos) i don't do it as i see no point in chancing the chance vs creating yourself a chance.
Only those that don't deserve the car take that route, so why should they be allowed a chance to win it via that method?
Just to clarify, the situation you speak of is not what I was talking about.
You are a little late, but not so late that no one has a chance to race against you.
With your strategy, you're using your garage and gold and negotiated your way up a relatively full table. Other players can then race you, and if your garage didn't deserve 5th place, you wouldn't get it because at some point you will meet 6 players you can't beat. There's your plateau.
I am only talking about last 5-30 minute joiners who race 5 tickets in an empty bracket and get tier 1 because there aren't any players/isn't enough time for players to beat them.
They will have a hand that only would get them tier 3 or 4 in other brackets but use this exploit to win.
If you read what i wrote i do refer that cases like yours are still possible. You can either spend on CF´s and try to max your hand or take the risk of a late entry nowing that you'll have to spend gold to get to the top. This is different. You made 40 races and if you got to the top its because your hand was still good enough for top8. Otherwise you couldn't keep on top right?
So the answer is pretty simple, stop entry 1hr before end then?
My OP's idea was to have brackets that just keep increasing in size as more players join.
Then prizes are given out to the top xx% and that number increases accordingly.
Then the top players always win, the weakest hands lose and all is right in the world
Only way to police it in my mind, would be to have continuously expanding brackets as per Rob’s suggestion. Either with % based prize categories, or set number prize categories, based on overall participation stats from previous events (ie much bigger brackets, top 100 get prize 1, next 500 get prize 2, next 2000 get prize 3, etc.) and then the last bottom prize is infinite in number.
Eric for example could take his, as well as other whales, and as more people join more top tier prizes would become available.
Yeh, i figured that might be a problem, although i was unsure how much of an obstacle it would be.
How about that? Would encourage people to join in early. And once you know it you know that if you join on the last day you might jot get the better prizes.
Would need to know how much of the player base is in non-full brackets at the end of an event, but I would think a small percentage.
Would require a disclaimer as long as the bracket is not full.
yes, even some of the early brackets never get full. as far as I understand it has something to do with matchmaking and thresholds. as long as we don't know exactly how this works it's difficult making a final suggestion on extending brackets.
or those someone know how matchmaking works in details?
Only thing would be to do infinitely expanding brackets (as per Rob’s idea), unless someone comes up with another idea.
the question is if players would accept this randomization, it could be interpreted as chaotic.
Some player drive 3 days. In some brackets the first 8 have 200 points. In other 1000. So the player there fight 3 days and have 250 points lost his place in the top 8.
Why Hutch don’t close all brackets 12 to 24 hours before the event end? When you in ok. When not be unlucky.