Tubemen Of Riggor (Ps4)

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

See what I did there? Hue.

I am also pasting this in from a google doc, so forgive me if I need to make some color or formatting fixes along the way. Preemptively, I know this should probably go in PS4-specific feedback, but I believe the advice given in it could be applied to all platforms and to future events. I'm going to put it in General for that reason. Some dutiful mod will move if if necessary.

Tubemen of Regor, on the surface, was an event meant to be decided by the players. From a certain perspective, it was. From that same perspective, waving a sandwich in front of a starving man is also a clean negotiating tactic. I want to break down where the event went wrong and try to help events go right in the future.

Did our choices actually matter?
There are casual players and there are devoted players. Those devoted players are likely to be more wealthy than the casuals due to more farming and more trading. They will have more plat because their devotion led them to buy some or because they got it through trading. A devoted player can more easily pass up a pack of rare cores to participate in the event by choosing a side.

However, like with any game, casual players will vastly outnumber the devoted players. A casual player who just wants to avoid buying plat will be much more easily swayed by conflict rewards. Subjectively, I would not call them ignoring the story and just picking rewards an actual choice in the context of the event. Logically, it is a valid choice, but it's like randomly filling out a ballot to get a free cookie. You voted. It's legitimate, but you didn't make a choice other than to get the cookie. Despite what Rush might lead you to believe, abstinence is not making a choice between A and B.

In the end, whether the choices of devoted players actually mattered could be determined by the ratio of devoted to casual players. If it's 1:100, then devoted players' choices could not ultimately sway the end result of the event unless they felt like doing 300 runs each. I don't have the information needed to make a proper conclusion, but the sweeping victory on potato vs. credits conflicts, combined with the abundant pro-Nef sentiment, is enough for me to say that people who didn't care buried the people who did.

While it is still true that all individual choices were counted, In the end, devoted players' choices didn't seem to matter all that much under the deluge of abstaining, reward-hungry casuals. Decisions were made only when the rewards were poor enough not to interest the masses.

Was the event rigged?
We can just start by saying that nobody but DE will ever know unless they really want to tell all. That said, we can look at the results and see if it appeared to be rigged or why people would think it was.

First, let's establish some expectations for how it was supposed to work:
1) Nef and Alad offer competing battle pay
2) When one side is ahead or the scores are even, they are not under pressure to increase rewards
3) When one side is behind in total score, simulated desperation would lead them to offer better pay
4) The further behind one side is, the better their rewards will become

These expectations are not intended to represent the standards advertised for the event, but the interpretation most people would have of them. I am willing to revise based on feedback here, but these look pretty solid. In short, people expected this to operate similar to reality.

The actual events did not match those expectations. Nef's pay offers never increased to compete with Alad's as one would expect of a bidding war. Alad's reward increases did not diminish as the scores got closer together, and then there was the infamous Round 25 wherein Alad offered three times the credits as Nef despite the scores being equal.

There is a feature in some racing games called rubberbanding. Just to cover bases, rubberbanding is when leading racers are given a speed penalty (usually in multiplayer) or trailing players are given a speed boost (AI players usually get this) in an effort to "keep the race close." It could also be equated to items in Mario Kart, where losing players tend to get Lighning and Blue Shells. The reason systems like this are disliked is because they override skill. It doesn't matter how good you can drive if you have a speed limit and your opponent doesn't. Rounds 8-11 and 22-25 were Alad's Blue Shells.

Nef never fired back, though. Nef never put up rare cores. He never put up a Catalyst. He never even upped from fifty to seventy-five thousand credits. After losing three consecutive rounds (starting at 8), Nef nonsensically reduced his reward from uncommon cores to credits, ensuring another loss. The same process repeated in Blue Shell #2.

The result of these events, rigged or simply illogical reward programming, was that Nef would take a natural lead and then get torpedoed by clusters of highly imbalanced rewards. It didn't feel like Nef and Alad were competing. Instead, it felt like a cosmic parent, we'll call them DE for short (because I'm so subtle) insisted that a bigger, older sibling let the younger win one for a change.

Right at the end, the rules were changed. When the scores were tied, it would be a test of loyalty and both sides would offer the same. That's noble, perhaps even how it should have worked in the first place, but the timing of the change couldn't have been worse. Alad had just been put into the lead and the one time he should have offered credits and Nef something better than uncommon cores, credits were taken off the table. Both sides just offered the minimum reward. Nef had previously won every instance of equal rewards and every instance of same tier rewards (see the chart) but one. This didn't make the competition fair, it just swung it the other way. Nef was still the bigger brother.

Factual or not, it felt as though the event was rigged one way to push for even scores and then at the end it was rigged the other by dropping Mike Tyson in to fight a party clown on even footing. Both parties had the same gloves, but one was Bozo and the other was Iron Mike because it was all fired up by the percieved rigging of rewards.

 

In the end, no, it probably wasn't. But it shouldn't feel like it was.

How could this style of event be improved?
Fellow PSforeplayer (thanks Rob) Kosis181 made a suggestion that I really quite liked. I will quote him here:

Honestly, DE should have designated 2 employees as Nef and Alad, given them a pool of rewards (limited quantity of each), and then had them make blind bids on each mission. As in:

"I don't know what the other guy is bidding THIS time, but the last two were potatoes. He only has four of those, so if I bid potatoes for the next two, maybe I can get him to run out. Then I'll still have two in reserve for the final push."

I know it requires the dedication of a couple living, breathing humans who want to eat food and sleep at night and such, I think this sounds amazing. They could provide the plotting element that was missing from the RNG system we had. The set budget would also have made playing either side rewarding. Even near the end, if one side had locked in their win and still had resources to spare, they could have rewarded the loyal by putting them up, solving another issue with the event (that is, the players who did the most to propel Nef to victory got pretty poor pay compared to the losing side).

To break this down:
1) Each side is run by a human "team captain" in the guise of Alad or Nef
2) These captains play rewards against each other from set budgets
2) Players are free to choose their own side and can freely switch based on rewards

I can't speak for everyone but that sort of arrangement addresses everything I would want addressed, as long as the two captains aren't making deals under the table. Failing that, the event could be designed to match more closely with the four expectations in the previous section.

I believe it would also be beneficial to have head-count type events (such as Tubemen, that only seem to count the total number of runs) temper that number with some other factor. I'm a little lacking on suggestions here, but having the skill/quality of a run play a part in addition to the number of runs would prevent the "casual decision override" from section one. Power should come with numbers, but those numbers should need to do more than simply exist.

 

Update: PC Player Osuman has provided a pretty good suggestion for this.

 

I suggest making everyone's vote have a low value at the beginning, which increases the more you do run (capped at some value). This way casuals can have their rewards while dedicated players can actually contribute to what they feel is right.

 

Gaelic Flame added:

 

What if we got our vote multiplier increase each time we support the same side in a conflict. Increase is not per run, but per conflict. So for example you start at 1 vote per run, after completing a conflict siding with Nef, your multiplier increases by 0.5, so you have a 1.5 votes per run for the next conflict, if you support the same side. After the next conflict you get 2 votes. But as soon as you go for Alad your multiplier resets and your runs count as 1 again.

 

I like this idea because it helps break free of the 1 dedicated player against 100 that simply want to save 20p. A momentum factor will also make events more volitile. If one side gets fired up and does a lot of runs, they can close a deficit or pull ahead without needing lop-sided rewards.

 

*NEW* Can we reward loyalty?

PS4 Player Gaelic Flame (I'm not putting in your silly dashes, Flame :| ) has provided a good idea of how players can be rewarded for their loyalty to one side:

 

Each time you complete a run for Nef, your reward multiplier increases by 0.25. If you run for the other side, your multiplier resets to 1. So let's assume Nef offers 50,000 credits, 20U cores and 50,000 in the first three conflicts. If you run all three conflicts for him, you'll get 20x1.25=25 cores on the second run, and 50,000x1.5=75,000 on the third run. Furthermore, if Alad then offers a Catalyst or other greater reward, you'll think twice before ruining your multiplier for Nef, making a choice a little bit more tough, and encourage loyal supporters to stay by their side.

 

Instead of an amount multiplier, I would suggest a tier multiplier. Completing a number consecutive conflicts for one side would get you Uncommon cores instead of credits, Rare cores instead of uncommon, or Catalysts instead of Rare cores. Switching sides resets your multiplier back to zero. Ideally, the multiplier would be small enough that high rewards from the other side are tempting, but it would still pay off in the long run for dedicated players.

 

I think the correct multiplier would be one that makes it more profitable to try to get rewards out of each side, but still provides rewards for loyal players. It's going to depend on how long each conflict lasts, how many there are, and the overall event length. I personally finished the event having done 100% of my missions for Nef (18/4 required for the gun, IIRC) and the majority of those conflicts had totals of five to seven times the required three runs. Went completely unappreciated by Neffy.

 

 

 

Below, I will include the data I gathered for the event and some calculations I did because spreadsheets are fun (don't look at me like that).

Overall Event Data:

*Times calculated from decimal hour listings, possibly imperfect

*Biased rewards are not inherently bad, but the abundance of them on one side may be
*Reward tiers as follows, value descending
4: Catalyst / Reactor
3: R5 Cores
2: U5 Cores / Anomalous credit amount
1: 50k or 75k credits



Reward Totals

 

Older chart version, saved just in case:

Edited June 26, 2015 by (PS4)ElZilcho

[.-KG-..-Ragulab-.]

3k mastery is 3k mastery

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

3k mastery is 3k mastery

 

Sure. I don't care about the conflict or weapon rewards as much as a good feeling to the event.

[(PSN)The-Captain-388]

3k mastery is 3k mastery

^ Lolz, butthurt PC player

Thank you OP, for tracking all this and the breakdown is quite nice. Even though I'm pretty sure this was rigged at some point, DE still did the right thing and let us/Nef win in the end. I also really like the suggestion posted for any future events like this.

Edited June 25, 2015 by (PS4)The-Captain-388

[(PSN)Gaelic-_-Flame]

+1 Nothing more to say here

[NovusNova]

^ Lolz, butthurt PC player

 

Or he could just not like using either Dera or Karak. doesn't immediately mean he's butthurt. 

 

I could say the same thing about PS4 players and the Nemesis Nyx skin even if people charge in claiming its different.

[(PSN)timbob90210]

 

I could say the same thing about PS4 players and the Nemesis Nyx skin even if people charge in claiming its different.

 

*casually strolls in*

 

That actually is different. The people complaining are just impatient, but it is coming. 

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

I would say that, while most would agree that 20UCores are better than 50k creds, the game seemed to believe these cores to be lesser than the 50k creds.

Nef was never favored, by the game, in these conflicts.

[(PSN)Th3C0Effici3nt]

Judging from the data collected, matches won and lost, it certainly would appear that we were suppose to let Alad win as he had the edge with the better rewards. Or perhaps everything was placed perfectly to tie up 26 rounds of invasions. Then the final one would take place on equal footing letting the community truly decide who was to win and who was to lose. I did find it interesting that whenever I was about to start a new run and with Nef trailing considerably a few times, he never once offered those prized catalysts or reactors, which means he was never suppose to. I guess DE really wanted to make getting the Dera Vandal interesting but that was an incredibly close way of doing it.

[(PSN)ZammnZaddy]

*casually strolls in*

 

That actually is different. The people complaining are just impatient, but it is coming. 

nope it's been confirmed we will have to wait even longer lol for a skin

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

I would say that, while most would agree that 20UCores are better than 50k creds, the game seemed to believe these cores to be lesser than the 50k creds.

Nef was never favored, by the game, in these conflicts.

 

Doing my best to be impartial with the analysis. Nef w/ Cores vs. Alad w/ Credits went to Nef 3/3 times. I mentioned it in the other thread but I forgot to here so, for the sake of the thread: the tiers are an attempt to represent the draw power of a reward. It won, so I've gotta call it better.

 

Judging from the data collected, matches won and lost, it certainly would appear that we were suppose to let Alad win as he had the edge with the better rewards. Or perhaps everything was placed perfectly to tie up 26 rounds of invasions. Then the final one would take place on equal footing letting the community truly decide who was to win and who was to lose. I did find it interesting that whenever I was about to start a new run and with Nef trailing considerably a few times, he never once offered those prized catalysts or reactors, which means he was never suppose to. I guess DE really wanted to make getting the Dera Vandal interesting but that was an incredibly close way of doing it.

 

This is kind of what did in the event for me. As I said, it didn't feel like a competition, but it did end up feeling (true or not) like an attempt to manufacture uncertainty. It missed the mark in that I wasn't worried about losing, I was worried about falling victim to the Ethniu Screwjob.

 

A landslide victory would have been fun and I would have kept playing to get the stance.

A crushing defeat might have convinced me to switch sides.

A close match in a more natural form as detailed in the post would have made me feel competitive.

 

...But having it tied up on both PS4 and Xbox for the final round is too convenient and artificial to be coincidence. I'd assume it was an attempt to "improve" the event by making it more exciting than one side leading by 7 on the last day, but it makes the prior 26 conflicts pretty meaningless. That's why I think the captains idea is so good. It would add a strategic intellect to it so that maybe someone could recover from being several behind rather than just ensuring a tie.

[(PSN)gino1313]

This is really not new info. We knew exactly what the devs were doing. We are essentially mercenaries, despite our label of ninja.

[(PSN)StillbornKumquat]

All I know is PS4 got stuck with a Dera Vandal... I hope you Nef supporters and true mercenary battle pay chasers are happy; I hate you. *bitterly wanted a Karak Wraith*

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

This is really not new info. We knew exactly what the devs were doing. We are essentially mercenaries, despite our label of ninja.

 

Granted, many people felt strongly that the rewards were being tailored for a certain outcome.

 

But I also wanted to summarize the improvements possible for events of this type and share the final logs for anyone interested.

 

 

 

All I know is PS4 got stuck with a Dera Vandal... I hope you Nef supporters and true mercenary battle pay chasers are happy; I hate you. *bitterly wanted a Karak Wraith*

 

#CANTWRANGLETHEDANGLE #DEFANYO #DANGLERDOMINATION

Edited June 25, 2015 by (PS4)ElZilcho

[(PSN)Kosis181]

Could have also tied in the captain with the forum accounts and let them toss propoganda up, maybe gotten them on twitter. Would have been a great opportunity to stir up interest.

[(PSN)teh1tank]

Who cares? Both weapons are mastery fodder and the lore doesn't matter.

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

Who cares? Both weapons are mastery fodder and the lore doesn't matter.

 

 People who want better events. This is not feedback on the weapon

[(PSN)jwernecke]

Who decided that a potato is better than Rare 5 Cores???

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

Who decided that a potato is better than Rare 5 Cores???

 

I did. Maybe not to me, since we recently had that 2-for-1 sale on them, but cores are farmable and catalysts are not. That would make them a more desirable battle pay. Of course, we never saw R5s vs Potato to know for sure.

[Phatose]

Having humans deciding rewards in an event like this, that runs 24 hours a day for 7 days but without a fixed schedule, simply isn't practical. 

 

Devs are used to long hours, but a full week without sleep is well beyond that.  Since the number of rounds that take place in a certain time period is based on the time of completion - which is based on the players, you'd have to have a full plan for the entire event before you could take a break.  At which point you might as well just run from a script from the get go.

 

 

 

If you would, please add additional columns to your spreadsheet.  A summary column for each match, overall advantage, that indicates who's ahead in score at that round.  Another column right next to it, for easy comparison, should indicate who the reward 'favored'. 

[(PSN)ElZilcho]

Having humans deciding rewards in an event like this, that runs 24 hours a day for 7 days but without a fixed schedule, simply isn't practical. 

 

Devs are used to long hours, but a full week without sleep is well beyond that.  Since the number of rounds that take place in a certain time period is based on the time of completion - which is based on the players, you'd have to have a full plan for the entire event before you could take a break.  At which point you might as well just run from a script from the get go.

 

In an event exactly like this, yes, it's not really feasible. With a bit of planning we could probably come up with something that was. Each conflict could be a full 24H, so they would only need to select one per day and timezones aren't really an issue in it. Instead of counting to a limit, points just count up and whichever side has the most when time runs out wins the battle. Since there is a set time for the overall event either way, it would just mean the pay doesn't come as fast..The rewards should still have the same draw-power though.

 

I'll see what i can do about the columns.

 

 

If you would, please add additional columns to your spreadsheet.  A summary column for each match, overall advantage, that indicates who's ahead in score at that round.  Another column right next to it, for easy comparison, should indicate who the reward 'favored'. 

 

 

I also added the degree to which, based on the tiers, that side was favored. Based on this, an advantage of 1 tier resulted in a win for that side in every case (separating the 50k and 75k credits would change that). While it's reasonable for Alad to offer better rewards while he is losing, Nef's rewards didn't even try to keep up. The "better rewards while losing" works, but there were some pretty large gaps in pay. Nef could have offered more cores, or Rare cores to compete with Catalysts.

Edited June 26, 2015 by (PS4)ElZilcho

[(PSN)Silverback73]

Who cares? Both weapons are mastery fodder and the lore doesn't matter.

After EoB, the PS4 community REALLY wanted to know that they could actually influence an outcome. DE Can't underestimate how important it is that a large part of this community places paramount importance on being immersed in, and a genuine part of, the Warframe Universe and story and artwork.

Even to the extent that events will unfold in the same way (Alad survives with a convenient twist, and becomes Super Alad and builds his Mutalist Super Soldier Army to once again become a threat and bring us new goodies), this minor outcome is huge for community confidence.

Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

[Phatose]

In an event exactly like this, yes, it's not really feasible. With a bit of planning we could probably come up with something that was. Each conflict could be a full 24H, so they would only need to select one per day and timezones aren't really an issue in it. Instead of counting to a limit, points just count up and whichever side has the most when time runs out wins the battle. Since there is a set time for the overall event either way, it would just mean the pay doesn't come as fast..The rewards should still have the same draw-power though.

 

Mechanically, with a proper set up it could probably work.

 

That said, there's still some question as to whether it's wise.  The thought that immediate occurs to me is that this will end up resulting in a certain amount of sour grapes from the losing side, directed at whoever the team planner is.  The losing side will absolutely blame to DE employee who's running the show, and I would expect that a portion of the community would quite bitterly call an event rigged, saying that their captain was as good as the other team's captain.  And I'm not even sure you could reasonably rule that out as a reason for loss.

 

The human element possibly adds a reasoned strategic level - but since the players don't choose their leaders, it also means it's still very much open to protests of it being rigged.  Scapegoating will be a major problem.

 

I'd wager we'd all be happier simply improving the algorithm.  Though, with different player priorities, I doubt we'd ever reach a consensus.

[(PSN)Kosis181]

Having humans deciding rewards in an event like this, that runs 24 hours a day for 7 days but without a fixed schedule, simply isn't practical.

Devs are used to long hours, but a full week without sleep is well beyond that. Since the number of rounds that take place in a certain time period is based on the time of completion - which is based on the players, you'd have to have a full plan for the entire event before you could take a break. At which point you might as well just run from a script from the get go.

True, a week is a long time to do that, but this event was, in my opinion, too long anyway. It wasn't really challenging, even with a PUG, and the novelty wore of quickly. I participated in almost all of the conflicts, and ran the mission about 65-70 times. I was thoroughly sick of it by the end, and was running them on autopilot. Even the voice acting had gotten stale.

An event doesn't need to be that long, and, as noted by others, steps can be taken to regulate the amount of time each conflict takes. Set them to 8 or 12 hours, timed for when devs get in and out of the office.

Besides, it only takes a couple of minutes to make that decision. Watch how the last one went, think about it for a few minutes, plug in the choice. Takes us longer to RUN the missions than it would to set up the battle pay. It's okay for us to be awake at 5:30 in the morning because our phones just beeped at us about a new conflict, but setting up a way to let a dev log in from home at 5:15 and start the conflict is somehow less okay? Or heck, if you know one is going to start overnight, make the choice of pay for that one ahead of time. Thinking one step ahead isn't a big deal, especially if it's only by a few hours.

These suggestions aren't a "change this and only this, and do it exactly as I say" kind of thing. If they need to alter some of the basic assumption (run time, completion criteria, etc.), then go ahead and try it. If they need to modify the suggestion rather that follow it verbatim, go ahead. The point isnt to change as little as possible, but to make it more streamlined and interesting.

Tldr; these are raw suggestions, intended for events similar to ToR, but are not intended to be implemented as is. Trying to work them into an event would require careful thought on DE's part, but would make the experience much better than ToR was.

Edited June 26, 2015 by (PS4)Kosis181

[(PSN)Kosis181]

Heck, the two teams idea could even be a lot of fun for the devs. Set it up for multiple conflicts running parallel each day. Let the two teams bicker and trash talk on the forums or twitter during the day. Then, at the end of the day, the team goes to a bar or something to talk about how the days conflicts went, and strategize what they want to do for tomorrow.