Season 14 (Soulthirst) Retrospective

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I also did not like the shortening of Descent Champions. That race was already too short at 40 minutes and now players are forced to rush even more with it being only 30 minutes. Just because a few players can kill Grav after full clearing the last 3 zones in 40 minutes doesn't mean everyone can. Now it is near impossible to kill Grav in time as it seems like only 1 or 2 people can actually do it now. This race really needs to be made longer again, as unlike Descent, it is a rush to the end zones as opposed to efficiently farming the early zones.

I enjoyed this race season but i have to agree that shortening Descent Champions was a bad choice.
GGG should have made it a boss kill race like Merveil Kill. That way the crab_dads won't have to idle through the last zone given the race is longer again while mediocre racers like me actually have a chance to finish the race. I rather spend double the time than the top racers in reaching the objective than being stranded upon reaching hatestorm.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

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I also did not like the shortening of Descent Champions. That race was already too short at 40 minutes and now players are forced to rush even more with it being only 30 minutes. Just because a few players can kill Grav after full clearing the last 3 zones in 40 minutes doesn't mean everyone can. Now it is near impossible to kill Grav in time as it seems like only 1 or 2 people can actually do it now. This race really needs to be made longer again, as unlike Descent, it is a rush to the end zones as opposed to efficiently farming the early zones.

I enjoyed this race season but i have to agree that shortening Descent Champions was a bad choice.
GGG should have made it a boss kill race like Merveil Kill. That way the crab_dads won't have to idle through the last zone given the race is longer again while mediocre racers like me actually have a chance to finish the race. I rather spend double the time than the top racers in reaching the objective than being stranded upon reaching hatestorm.

So you are then saying the top racers should just have to full clear every zone and then hope they had better density/blue packs than the others to win the race? That doesnt seem very fun at all. Not many people finish the race anyway, its perfect how it is.

I actually don't like any of the impovements you seem to praise. Let me go over them quick.

1) not losing points/rank at the moment of your death
2) shortening endless ledge to 30 minutes
3) general rework of system rewarding you points (how many and what for)


Getting points is easy, way too easy, to the point where high tier uniques are losing on value because too many people can (and actually do) obtain them. I am surprised no one else is concerned by this, reward for which you worked so hard loses on value (both in economical and "one of a kind" bragging rights way) a lot by more people having it in the end. Only season that had so many people winning 1k unique was season eight. This argument of course also applies to 500 points rewards, they are basically going to have value of non-alt art without any additional value. Personally I don't really care much because there is nothing to gain for selling alt-arts in challenge leagues anymore(t-shirts were canceled, rip), might as well remove that 1 month period(during which you have no access to your remove only tabs with rewards) in temp leagues as Bada_Bing said in other thread.

Ironically, with this generous amount of points available to players, it is actually harder for people who don't participate in every single race to stay in top 20 overall for alt-art demi. It is not necessarily a bad thing, existence of this system is there for the sole purpouse of rewarding bad players(like me) that can't achieve signature record. But with these changes, it became even more so. Your general difference of points gained per race between you and your competitor is on average measly 4 points now. Everyone half-serious gets 10 points rewards and 98% of time won't lose them by dying. So what matters is points you get for placing in your class, you win and most you usually get is 4 points on person either second after you or on person that did quests instead of pushing for rank (usually you get 4-8 points for doing 2 to 4 quests). I don't mean to sound salty, I used to have time to attend every race, but I want to pinpoint that it became even more unfair towards people that attend "only", say, 2/3 of season.
I actually have a proposal how to make this more competitive, instead of it being just measurement of pure time investment. Asynchronous races. Once they proved to be good idea - and I believe they are. Award points toward overall ladder ONLY from asynchronous races, they can easily make 1/2 of the season and you have decent competitive enviroment for them. I hate comparisons with real world, but it is quite unheard of that some World Cup(in format that you attend 2358347589345 races/tourneys, get points for placing and then win based on the final ladder) of whatever sport would be attended by participants only half of the time.


And one last thing, endless ledge. This will be just selfish personal remark I guess.
But to me, they feel like bursts now, you have to rush like madman disregarding your survivability to even hope for decent rank. Not to mention in 1 hour luck in drops stabilised bit better, you could catch up to either people dying(dying to having low resists against certain type of monsters - probably due to laziness to switch rings/belts etc) or to people mismanaging their gear in general(disregarding dmg upgrades intentionally) or to people with shit density, shit kind of monsters :^). Anyway, if GGG plans on keeping at 30 minutes in lieu with descent champions, they should really add some chests, like they said(in that one podcast) they consider it.

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lPeeps wrote:

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Bada_Bing wrote:

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I also did not like the shortening of Descent Champions. That race was already too short at 40 minutes and now players are forced to rush even more with it being only 30 minutes. Just because a few players can kill Grav after full clearing the last 3 zones in 40 minutes doesn't mean everyone can. Now it is near impossible to kill Grav in time as it seems like only 1 or 2 people can actually do it now. This race really needs to be made longer again, as unlike Descent, it is a rush to the end zones as opposed to efficiently farming the early zones.

I enjoyed this race season but i have to agree that shortening Descent Champions was a bad choice.
GGG should have made it a boss kill race like Merveil Kill. That way the crab_dads won't have to idle through the last zone given the race is longer again while mediocre racers like me actually have a chance to finish the race. I rather spend double the time than the top racers in reaching the objective than being stranded upon reaching hatestorm.

So you are then saying the top racers should just have to full clear every zone and then hope they had better density/blue packs than the others to win the race? That doesnt seem very fun at all. Not many people finish the race anyway, its perfect how it is.

What? No. In boss kill races it ain't the level reached but the time it takes to kill the final boss that decides over the ranking.
That way GGG won't get into the predicament that the race is either to long for the top racers (as they run out farmable zones) or too short for the vast majority of mediocre racers (as they never come close to the end zones).

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passofexhale wrote:

Getting points is easy, way too easy...

Afaik they inflated the points due to some classes (ranger) being less competitive in races than others.
I expect them to deflate the point rewards to season 13 level again once they have revamped the tree in the shadow/ranger areas.

Ledge/Descent Champs length: Maybe I'm the only one who read into these changes in a different way, due to the fact that it was Descent's turn in the rotation and these two were always paired together in back-to-back hours. The way I took this was that GGG was accomplishing two things - they were keeping with their desire to rotate the three races, having one featured each season with many events, while at the same time silencing the complainers who let them know every season when their favorite race "X" isn't on the schedule, by tossing them a few here and there in shorter form. So, what I would expect to see next season is the full-length Descent Champs, as it is its turn in the rotation, with the combo of Descent/Ledge in 30-min form, again paired together in back-to-back hours. I could also be way off on this.

Sig: Improvement over the previous, although a bit ho-hum (which maybe isn't necessarily a bad thing with a sig). Length could have been slightly shorter. I think the 50-60 min range is ideal, as that extra 10-20 mins can often mean the difference between participating and not, for those with smaller windows of potential play time.

Changes to descent: Good

Schedule: There seemed to be several particular hours of the day that had races 5-7 days a week, every single week this season. Targeting a certain time is fine and good, but varying them from that time by, say, +/- one hour each day throughout the week would help to not screw certain people with set scheduling conflicts quite as much.

the season was quite good.

-imo the signature mod was not enough for a signature race.
-loved headhunter but sadly there where too less of those races.
-endless ledge was kinda meh (increase the skillgem drop rate in that race by aloooooot, that wud prolly help)
-24h blamt, awesome! wudnt have hurt to have 2 or 3 of those.
-still think the reward gaps are too big. 100-250-500-1000. wud like to see a few more tiers in there again.
-bursts started to annoy me, rather playing ~1h races and such.
-torment, exiles, descent, descent champs, all cool.
-disliked that evening where we (EU time) had merveil kill at 8pm and brutus at 12pm, the 2 shortest races (apart from bursts) at one evening was too less for my taste.
-keeping points after death is also a good thing. i was still pretty annoyed when i died like 10mins before the end, losing position and class ranking points is enough punishment already.

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Bada_Bing wrote:

Afaik they inflated the points due to some classes (ranger) being less competitive in races than others.
I expect them to deflate the point rewards to season 13 level again once they have revamped the tree in the shadow/ranger areas.

While necessary, given their stated intent, i'm skeptical they will keep up with this. The fine-tuning required is likely beyond their interest or even their capacity.

With Talisman, it would seem likely that early bows will make Ranger no longer the worst class. At what point do they figure out whether it truly isn't the worst class anymore? And who does the testing to figure out what the worst class now is and what the new lowest thresholds should be? This kind of information is more likely to come out during a race season, when it's too late (at least until the next season). I'm just very skeptical.