You are killing racing

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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asdfman wrote:

- I want races to be about competing and striving to improve, not a casual farm for points (a view that is probably not shared by all)

We need a point system for participation, so that new players can be encouraged to give racing a try without feeling like they're wasting their time detracting from their efforts in permanent leagues.

We also need a point system that measures skill, not participation, that only recognizes those who place very high in competitions, and is a solid metric for determining who the top players actually are.

The real problem is that the current point system is trying to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously. It is impossible to do so with any fairness; currently, the system fails on both counts, by placing too much importance on competition for participation awards, and placing too much importance on mass participation for competitive rankings.

What we need are two separate race point systems.

(By the way, OP is one of the top PoE racers and his opinion carries a lot of weight, at least in my book.)

I agree with this, and want to add that I believe part of the problem is that GGG is also trying to target an audience such as myself, who wants to participate in events but do not have a consistent enough play schedule to make racing appealing. They are doing so by adding a lot of races to the schedule, but it won't make a difference to me because the rewards still require consistent participation, which I cannot offer.

I think it would be better if season three returned to a more niche event that appeals directly to its base and focused instead on adding accessible non-race events to the default leagues. Things such as a(n otional?) weekend long +2 to all instance levels, or farming areas with Rhoas for Rhoa Feathers to exchange for a random quality drop only skill gem. Or whatever! Regardless, point is, adding more races wont pull me into their appeal, and I can see how doing so would also lessen the experience for those who love to race. Might be worthwhile to try something else for those who don't want to or cannot race.

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CanHasPants wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

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asdfman wrote:

- I want races to be about competing and striving to improve, not a casual farm for points (a view that is probably not shared by all)

We need a point system for participation, so that new players can be encouraged to give racing a try without feeling like they're wasting their time detracting from their efforts in permanent leagues.

We also need a point system that measures skill, not participation, that only recognizes those who place very high in competitions, and is a solid metric for determining who the top players actually are.

The real problem is that the current point system is trying to accomplish both of these goals simultaneously. It is impossible to do so with any fairness; currently, the system fails on both counts, by placing too much importance on competition for participation awards, and placing too much importance on mass participation for competitive rankings.

What we need are two separate race point systems.

(By the way, OP is one of the top PoE racers and his opinion carries a lot of weight, at least in my book.)

I agree with this, and want to add that I believe part of the problem is that GGG is also trying to target an audience such as myself, who wants to participate in events but do not have a consistent enough play schedule to make racing appealing. They are doing so by adding a lot of races to the schedule, but it won't make a difference to me because the rewards still require consistent participation, which I cannot offer.

You might want to check out my forum in the Race and Event Feedback forum here: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/369823

The result of ggg giving out multiple chaos, gcps, divines, exalts in early cb races: We actually used the orbs for their intended purpose! There was no fear of gambling a few chaos stacks on a nice 5L item or repeatedly hitting potentially great 4-5 mod items with exalts because we knew we could always acquire more. Wasnt this how players were originally intended to view orbs and crafting?

Now, due to the nerfing of various vendor recipes and the removal of event orb rewards, higher orbs are so rare and hard to come by that theyre essentially glorified currency until late, late endgame where your gear is so good you cant reliably trade for upgrades anymore.

Returning orb rewards to events would have a positive effect on both race participation and the economy.

I honestly think that the chaos recipe nerf was bad for the economy and ability to progress.
Before if you weren't super lucky RNG god, you could farm chaos orbs for currency to pay for stuff. Now you have to either get crazy lucky, merch, or farm alts.

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DJSpacedude wrote:

I don't race at all, but that logic seems extremely poor. You can only really compete in about half of the races? Do you really think that is the intent?

The logic isn't poor.

Racing in PoE is not a sport. I do not think anybody would ever argue that it was, truly.

However, you could say it is "sport-like" and at the least, it is modeled after a sport. Most of the top racers aren't racing for prizes. It's the sport of it. Winning, having fun, practicing, mastery, skill.

So now look at how things like this are handled in an ACTUAL sport.

Let's look at NASCAR as an example. That's a sport.

Imagine every NASCAR driver was awarded points in each race...Well, you don't have to imagine that. They already do. They have a point system.

So now imagine that there are just a giant slew of races thrown at the drivers. Races for every time zone! We have to be fair to all time zones, right? But there is no limit to how many races each driver can participate in...And only the driver with the most points wins.

So there would basically be an incentive to compromise your sleep schedule, push yourself hard, and ultimately threat of death because drivers would be racing themselves to exhaustion at all hours.

The drivers would obviously go on strike against such a system.

Of course now, back to reality. Path of Exile is not a sport, and there is no bodily harm done to anybody if they "crash" in one of the races.

However, what remains in reality is the unfair incentives to be up at all hours. Because somebody who IS up at all hours will be getting that many more points. It isn't really a human way to structure a competition.

How to fix this:

It can be fixed, and you can have the best of both worlds. Give each race a "weight" (say, if it was a long race with more points involved, it would have more weight. if it was a shorter race, it would have less weight.)

Then put a maximum amount of weight that each person can race in per week (or whatever unit time).

Even simpler would be to award each player "chips" each week. Participating in a race would cost chips. Races longer than a week can be opted in of or out of by the week, and have a weekly cost. All chips at the end of the week are wiped, and they are given a fresh set next week.

Meaning you couldn't "save up" races to race later (or maybe you could, for a limited amount).

There are a lot of ways to do this. Just a few ideas.

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Xendran wrote:

I honestly think that the chaos recipe nerf was bad for the economy and ability to progress.
Before if you weren't super lucky RNG god, you could farm chaos orbs for currency to pay for stuff. Now you have to either get crazy lucky, merch, or farm alts.

Or you could do side quests in races and/or farm alchs/chaos/regals to actually make your own gear.

The game needs more ways to generate orbs, not less.

You don't need to grind them all.
They put in the signature event so that if you still want the top prize - the unique demigod - you can get it with minimal grind required, provided you are skilled.
The large number of races is there so that people with various time restrictions can participate in as many as they can, thus increase overall race population participation.

If you are simply hung up on having your name on the ladder and don't care about the unique demigod, well that one is on you. Lowering the number of races and thus amount of people that have access to them due to time restrictions just so you don't have to grind as much to be in top 20 would be pretty ludicrious.

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boof wrote:

You don't need to grind them all.
They put in the signature event so that if you still want the top prize - the unique demigod - you can get it with minimal grind required, provided you are skilled.
The large number of races is there so that people with various time restrictions can participate in as many as they can, thus increase overall race population participation.

If you are simply hung up on having your name on the ladder and don't care about the unique demigod, well that one is on you. Lowering the number of races and thus amount of people that have access to them due to time restrictions just so you don't have to grind as much to be in top 20 would be pretty ludicrious.

I was expecting this argument to come up (surprised it took so long). I just want to compete against as many people as possible, it's not possible anymore since the races have so few participants. I feel like it's only going to get worse from here. There's races with less than 200 people actually leaving Twilight Shore, it's becoming a joke. Recently we had a party race with 80 people reaching lvl 2 (simultaneous solo and party races were a great idea, right?). There's no way I'll ever play a race with 80 participants so this is pretty much killing it for me. As I said before though, these views are a bit extreme and probably not shared by many people.

The other half of the argument is that whoever does most races shouldn't be top on the season ladder.. You might call wanting to see your name on the season ladder silly but it's still ridiculous that wanting to be on top pretty much means you have to play 24/7.

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asdfman wrote:

I was expecting this argument to come up (surprised it took so long). I just want to compete against as many people as possible, it's not possible anymore since the races have so few participants. I feel like it's only going to get worse from here. There's races with less than 200 people actually leaving Twilight Shore, it's becoming a joke. Recently we had a party race with 80 people reaching lvl 2 (simultaneous solo and party races were a great idea, right?). There's no way I'll ever play a race with 80 participants so this is pretty much killing it for me. As I said before though, these views are a bit extreme and probably not shared by many people.

The other half of the argument is that whoever does most races shouldn't be top on the season ladder.. You might call wanting to see your name on the season ladder silly but it's still ridiculous that wanting to be on top pretty much means you have to play 24/7.

I don't disagree with what you're saying but you have to understand that more races means more participation overall, even if it means less per race . Yes it negatively affects what it takes to be on top of the ladder and the top competitors who want more people to play against, but I'd hope eventually as the pool of players that are exposed to races grows, the racing scene would only benefit.

I was personally in favour of a solo/party ladder split, which would drastically cut down on the amount of races needed to be played to reach the top, while still allowing for many races to go on(though it might kill party race high end competition). They came up with the signature race, which is a step in the right direction at least. I don't really think they've done anything yet to go all out pessimist just yet. Let them bust through 3 or 4 seasons and test things around before declaring racing is being killed.