Ticketed and time limited "chess clock" races, please.
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Hello,
I love poe and gaming but as a family father I seldomly have really that much time to spare for racing even though it is great fun. Even when there is time for an event, interruptions are frequent which means you can't really be that competitive there (and I don't even want to go to the loading times and people's reaction times when it comes to shopping and swapping gear. I must say some of the top players are just unbelievably fast in that, salute to them.) This is why I thought it could be of great benefit for this game and community to offer more diversity to types of races which would be more fair when it comes to time the event takes place for those who cannot play 24/7 uninterrupted.
Format proposal 1: Ticketed events
Event would take place on certain time, you could only start it after certain date and time and you have to finish it by certain deadline. Difference to the current neck-to-neck racing was that players would complete asynchronously by getting admission to the race by "ticket" which could be world drop, race reward, microtransaction purchase etc or combination of these (this would open up a lot possibilities).
Ticket Races could consist of several rounds allowing players to attend the same race (e.g. descent) multiple times with multiple tickets. When needed the admission could be limited so that you could race at max certain times per round or race. If the reward points were only given for best achievement per account you could even allow sales of "re-buys" to events where you get another chance to do better with another ticket which costs you some money. (I am not at all so much in favor of everything costing money but allowing some people to spend some extra to get more tries after first 1 or few being free is not all that bad) Optional: Sponsor/buy in only events (e.g. visiting sponsor site, buying sponsor products or using microtransactions give bonus tickets to events like this) Optional: World drop only tickets to special events, tickets may be bound to account
Format proposal 2:Chess clock events
Another idea which could be combined to the current neck to neck starting events and ticketed events was chess clock event where you would have certain amount of time to spend bashing monsters. Twist would be that this time stops when you are in town. This would allow you to complete the race in few parts, decreasing the impact of interruptions. It would also allow more casual players to compete in longer running events when you had for example chess clock time of 8 hours total in 2 week long event. For shorter events you could limit the "off time" easily by setting an deadline to for example 120 minutes in 100 minute event allowing 20 minutes total to be spent "freely" in town without penalty or start the race 20 minutes late with still that 100 minutes to compete. At 120 minutes from race start the race would end anyway.
Optional: Set time penalties for visiting towns, place awards for reaching furthest area in main questline with fewest returns to town. Optional: For party races: Whole party has common timer (all penalties will be deducted from the party playing time left, timer stops only when all party members are in town, must be in town to join a party). When new member joins a party, time left to play will be determined from the less left (joining new parties after beginning practically always shortens the time you have available). Optional: Set limits on player level difference on joining a party (to prevent unfair boosting of new characters), though this might not be needed if the time limit is adjusted according to party member with least left on the chess clock. Current style events would stay as "Neck to neck" -races where everyone started the same time (or at least have chance to) and finished the same time. And as earlier mentioned, these could be combined so that tickets would be required to enter neck to neck races (which could have 1 or more start but everyone competed without chess clock), or as free monthly chess clock ticket event which you could start whenever it fits you and you have certain amount of time to use outside town but you have to use it before end of the month. Today I've been mostly harmless. Last edited by Jabla on Jan 25, 2014, 8:49:34 AM
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Your chess clock event would, as I see it, only work for solo events with muling disabled (or only 1 entry / chance). Otherwise, players with time to participate several times would stash up some good gear and then finish with a "perfect rng" run due to a stash filled with goodies.
Last edited by Hassefar60 on Jan 25, 2014, 11:12:41 AM
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Yes, would have to be solo or fixed party, probably requiring also level (and used time) difference limit which gets tagged according to highest level and time used team member you partied with. (So, if you go fetch good gear from someone who has played longer effectively you would be tagged as high level and as long played when it comes to party restrictions and joining games/instances).
For solo events this would not really be an issue, for fixed parties it could be set that the chess clock runs for whole party when any one of the party members is outside of town. Also if it was allowed to re-form parties later on the party member with least time left on clock would be used to determine how much time the party had left for playing. A time deduction (dependent on race length and total time in use) which would take place when Joining and Leaving a party right after could help (to prevent partying in town in order to trade items across parties with no time cost) - basically encouraging the people to play together if they decide to even out their findings to be stronger in the race together (thus, if you form a party and just play together longer than the potential deduction penalty was, you would not pay any penalty, that would kick in only if you join a party and immediately leave). Already in current system it is possible that group of people with several parties gather stuff and concentrate the best gear to couple characters in order to boost them towards the end with perfect RNG stuff. Muling and use of stash between different ticket entries should obviously be prevented, thus when new ticket was used the previous characters for same race would become obsolete and unplayable and stash for the was wiped. It is true that measures against abuse and cheating should be in place but these should be set so that they don't make the racing miserable for everyone ;-) Today I've been mostly harmless. Last edited by Jabla on Jan 25, 2014, 8:34:31 AM
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