Change Arena Payout time - have they looked into this?
April 3, 2018 3:28PM
edited April 2018
I've been playing the game for about four months and I'm wondering what history, if any, there is with negotiating Arena payout times with the developers.
I assume everyone's payout is at the same time relative to their timezone, so 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. currently. But then obviously payout times are different for someone in the US vs someone in Europe or Asia. For me personally, the payout times are really inconvenient. I've got a family with children and I don't want to be spending time on this after work before they're in bed. I also imagine that being locked into your payout times would screw someone who moved overseas, for example.
There are two ways I think the developers could improve this.
1) Allow players to pick a convenient payout time - I know some will cry that it could be manipulated, but if you put in place a maximum of one time change per month or 3 months, it would solve that issue. People wouldn't be able to change time payout daily and collect multiple payouts per day.
2) If the developers won't budge on the first option, then I'd recommend moving the payouts back at least one hour, and possible two. I'd personally prefer 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., but even 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. would be much better. I can't imagine anyone would not prefer the payouts starting at 8 p.m. over 7 p.m.
Is this something the developers have ever addressed. There seems to be a lot of goodwill right now, and the recent changes have been awesome. This is something I'd really love them to address, but given that I'm new I'm wondering if I'm beating a dead horse here.
I assume everyone's payout is at the same time relative to their timezone, so 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. currently. But then obviously payout times are different for someone in the US vs someone in Europe or Asia. For me personally, the payout times are really inconvenient. I've got a family with children and I don't want to be spending time on this after work before they're in bed. I also imagine that being locked into your payout times would screw someone who moved overseas, for example.
There are two ways I think the developers could improve this.
1) Allow players to pick a convenient payout time - I know some will cry that it could be manipulated, but if you put in place a maximum of one time change per month or 3 months, it would solve that issue. People wouldn't be able to change time payout daily and collect multiple payouts per day.
2) If the developers won't budge on the first option, then I'd recommend moving the payouts back at least one hour, and possible two. I'd personally prefer 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., but even 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. would be much better. I can't imagine anyone would not prefer the payouts starting at 8 p.m. over 7 p.m.
Is this something the developers have ever addressed. There seems to be a lot of goodwill right now, and the recent changes have been awesome. This is something I'd really love them to address, but given that I'm new I'm wondering if I'm beating a dead horse here.
Post edited by Kyno on
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Replies
All right. I appreciate the response. Hoping they're more open to something like this in the future but won't get my hopes up.
Only pretty much?
I don't think you can find a more dead horse on the forum.
They may or may not have looked into this. But they have not made any official statements about this topic, not that I can recall.
The issue with that is that then a shard chat divides up the day and you go from 20 people being in 3 hours, to 20 people spread out over 12-14 hours and put a lockdown on a shard.... then you can't do anything for a whole year.
Saving a players arena rank every full hour and at payout time rewarding the best saved rank of the day would still be my suggestion to solve this. Maximum flexibility for the players. No net increase oft the rewards for CG.
Not necessarily true. Do you have a person at the top every hour for PO? It would probably increase PO for top 3 spots by 50%. Our chat has 8 hours representing 36 or so players. 3 hours account for 26 of those players. Most peoples days are 12-16 hours long (average awake time) I'm sure we could coordinate that so the group would take top 3 every day and that's not accounting for the people who we dont know and work there way up to the top. Just as an example.
Not saying it's not a bad idea or that it doesn't need to be looked at, but we need to keep in mind they do want to have some "exclusivity " to top rewards and not just hand them out.
Everyone beating this horse is just wasting their time, but ok.
But yes, you are right that it could increase PO if the top spots don't change often during the day anyway. Especially with coordination in chats. Tbh i don't monitor the top 10 very much since I normally only fight my way up to the top 50 or top 20 if I have a lucky day.
But still. Since it is possible already, that evey hour those spots are paid out to someone It is still half way WAI.
Considering its timezone based, it has nothing to do with the design "WAI". It's about physical location and the population density.
while I agree with the premise of maintaining competitive shards (i.e., not allowing a group of 20 to gain a competitive advantage by exploiting payout adjustments) I personally think that's a difficult conclusion to reach. It assumes that all members of the chat are competitive enough to hold those positions when they have fewer allies in their payouts. Plus, it really only interferes with other people in the shard chat. In my time in the game, I've never seen someone at the top rank that wasn't in the shard chat, regardless of payout time. There isn't some magical time of day where all of a sudden non-shard chat players are taking the top 5 spots.
We have 2 separate hours where that happens. 3 in one and 2 in the other.
If you think about it though if you had 20 people in a constant rotation it would be harder for anyone to penetrate. Our group doesn't mess with anyone if we dont have to. I drop all the time until I start to move up. But if a few from the group are moving up each hour that's a lot harder to get up there unless someone knows you are coming.
In each hour holding isn't an issue of how many, since you would be shielded by th moves of the previous groups the hours before.
Edit to add : yes I realize I am generalizing, just my experience and trying to make a constructive thought out process.
It's not always easy to see why things can't always be changed.
I agree with that. Higher probability of non-shard chat members simply sniping each other on the way up if there are 3 colluding to protect one another, but if the current non-shard chat members started to collude they'd outnumber the ones that moved.
You're also right that it's tough to know why things can't be changed. Could be a technical thing, could be a gameplay thing. I tend to look at this from a biased position because I moved from west coast to east coast and now it costs me more crystals to keep up with the 600 because the last bonus energy drops after bed time. Also, my shard doesn't play nice and won't let me into the chat or the top 20, but that's a non-issue for me. I just want the bonus energy.
Is the horse extra dead yet?
We are nothing if not thorough.
the answer from the Q&A
Dr_Alan_Grant: Is there any thought about having a players highest rank throughout the day count for their payout?
[NR] The answer is no. This sort of system ultimately doesn't reward the play pattern we believe drives competition, which is players should battle for the top spot at a specific payout time. This also likely facilitates collusion behavior that we think is detrimental to the game.
i frankly can hardly believe that's their answer; i don't think i could disagree more. are they saying collusion isn't exactly what we have now? the top spots are determined not by competition, but by arrangement.
Now mebbe I'm too simplistic , but think about it, if all you need to do is hit rank one or whatever for a minute at any point in the day, that will lead to massive chats , here it your turn, hit one for a minute, or five, then it's the next etc etc , the specific time for payout does make it harder because there are xx amount of people on that time, you can't just have a chat and expect to tank with junk, cuz there is always folks that aren't in a chat that are playing as well,.
They can't control payout coordination and cooperation outside the game. They can control/prevent inside the game by denying any payout time shuffling within the game.
The problem is this happens in all shards already, it's being "denied" as detrimental to the game, yet the current method facilitates just as much collusion right now! I don't get what the difference is?
I also made a post about a PVE option, which, would prevent collusion, because well, it's PVE =p.
They want competition, but with the number of threads and calls for changing the arenas as there are, it doesn't seem like a whole lot of competition.
The current design doesn't discourage collusion, in fact, it encourages it just as much as the "highest in 24 hours". Maybe even more so because you have to "defend" your spot.
Absent changing how the arenas work, there probably isn't a good way to discourage nor prevent collusion.
My PVE idea would at least give people a chance at some better rewards, even if they can't get the "top of the shard" rewards.