exploiting for points creating multiple chars in single race

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Lyralei wrote:

Back in my day, we did practice runs on Hardcore league with no incentives.

Young'uns these days.

I did that for several days just last week practicing Templar because I've never raced as a caster except when Shadow could win as EK back in Season 1.

Good old days back in Closed Beta though. Back when Whirling Blades Shadow was a thing. Thanks, Devmoon.

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Lyralei wrote:

Back in my day, we did practice runs on Hardcore league with no incentives.

Young'uns these days.

Yeah, but I'm talking about incentivizing new players who are overwhelmed with the idea of competing against people who had hundreds of hours of racing experience under their belts prior to release and 1000+ hours of in game time.

Building a larger base of dedicated racers out of newer players requires some incentive. Unless the goal isn't building a larger base of dedicated racers. In which case, business as usual.

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Cataract wrote:

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Lyralei wrote:

Back in my day, we did practice runs on Hardcore league with no incentives.

Young'uns these days.

Yeah, but I'm talking about incentivizing new players who are overwhelmed with the idea of competing against people who had hundreds of hours of racing experience under their belts prior to release and 1000+ hours of in game time.

Building a larger base of dedicated racers out of newer players requires some incentive. Unless the goal isn't building a larger base of dedicated racers. In which case, business as usual.

The skill ceiling for racing is low.
As you've been told, all it takes is watching some vods, running a few practice runs on your own, and fumbling through one season of racing trying to put the information you got from vods and practice together.
Congratulations, you are no longer irrelevant for the next season, and can reasonably compete for the top.

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boof wrote:

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Cataract wrote:

Spoiler

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Lyralei wrote:

Back in my day, we did practice runs on Hardcore league with no incentives.

Young'uns these days.

Yeah, but I'm talking about incentivizing new players who are overwhelmed with the idea of competing against people who had hundreds of hours of racing experience under their belts prior to release and 1000+ hours of in game time.

Building a larger base of dedicated racers out of newer players requires some incentive. Unless the goal isn't building a larger base of dedicated racers. In which case, business as usual.

Spoiler

The skill ceiling for racing is low.
As you've been told, all it takes is watching some vods, running a few practice runs on your own, and fumbling through one season of racing trying to put the information you got from vods and practice together.
Congratulations, you are no longer irrelevant for the next season, and can reasonably compete for the top.

Don't disagree with what you are saying. Only point I was trying to make is that I likely wouldn't have raced enough to enjoy it without the incentive of the carry over rewards and a rather easy way of getting them. That is, this exploit.

Not really trying to argue that race rewards should be as easy to obtain as they were with this exploit, just that there could be considerations for inexperienced players who may only race for rewards in the beginning.

Rewards were quite easy to get, sans 600 and 1000 points rewards, without the exploit, assuming you could make 3-4 races a week, and not stupid fracture races where the majority takes 5 points or less.

I don't think it is -quite- as easy as boof thinks for a new player to be competitive, or maybe we just have different definitions of competitive. I think at this point it takes more than a season of racing to be able to compete for first couple spots in class regularly, unless you are fortunate enough to be able to make nearly every race.

At the beginning of this season I was lucky to make it to vaal in a 100 min sig, now I can have him dead in ~68 minutes, but that's still 8-11 minutes off from truly being competitive. I was not able to make nearly as many races as I would have liked to, though I tried to get 11-14 in races at work on breaks.

Its kind of a null issue now since you cant do it in 1.1.0, and it is still very easy to get points. Even if you only get 5-8 points a race (which you could probably do with ANY build off the top of your head) you could still get up to 1000 points if you play all season.

Many people who do a bit better than this reach 1000 faster, and it is still pretty hard to reach without a bit of dedication. When it is difficult to reach, that tells me the point rewards are quite good as they are.

I agree that you can practice the low levels, but that is the easiest part to obtain practice in, you dont want to miss out practicing act 2/3 (because you cant create a character at level 20). I think playing for the full race gives the most feedback, as you can compare results to the top (even if you are an hour behind, compare when you entered zones to when they entered them). If you stop midway through the race, post race, you only can get feedback for the first half of the race.

I don't really disagree with any counterpoints to what I have been saying. Just bored waiting for new leagues and discussing racing on the forums is like methadone. I'll play some more devil's advocate.

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reboticon wrote:

Rewards were quite easy to get, sans 600 and 1000 points rewards, without the exploit, assuming you could make 3-4 races a week, and not stupid fracture races where the majority takes 5 points or less.

Using this season's sig as an example, 3-4 100 minute races per week still amounts to 80-100 hours of /played time per league. Let's say you're a complete rook and somehow still getting the 7pt (lvl 27-31) bracket every race without dying but not placing top20 in class. That comes to around 450 pts in the season for 4.5 days played. And that's without dying. Add in deaths in say, 1/4 of races, and you have 340pts in favorable (non-frac/non-lethal) races for the season.

Exploiting point brackets allowed something like 12-16pts per sig. Easily 2-3x more efficient being that a complete loss of pts due to death was rarely and issue. So, you can have your shiny 135pt next league unique in 10 races or a more modest 16 hours played relative to 1.5 days.

If race rewards are to be the primary incentive (not saying this is necessarily a desirable model) to get new racers into the system, I don't think the point structure is sufficiently rewarding for complete newbies.

Of course that isn't to say that GGG doesn't have a modified or entirely new system for rewards in the coming season. I'm just looking back on season 6 and 7 with regard to this exploit and the amount of racing it potentially generated as a consequence of easier access to rewards.

Carry over race rewards are some pretty pungent bait when it comes to luring players into racing after all.

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reboticon wrote:

At the beginning of this season I was lucky to make it to vaal in a 100 min sig, now I can have him dead in ~68 minutes, but that's still 8-11 minutes off from truly being competitive. I was not able to make nearly as many races as I would have liked to, though I tried to get 11-14 in races at work on breaks.

Yeah, I was in the same boat. Whittling down Vaal times/Docks entry times is where I am now. Just didn't have the desire to progress a single character before I had locked up race rewards earlier in the season. It's likely because I am reasonably new (started palying 1 month after release) to the game still, but the idea of having a few crucial uniques (DD/Andi) for free makes my nips hard.

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Metronomy wrote:

I think playing for the full race gives the most feedback, as you can compare results to the top (even if you are an hour behind, compare when you entered zones to when they entered them). If you stop midway through the race, post race, you only can get feedback for the first half of the race.

100% agree. The main issue I had with playing for the full race is that I would be risking death and getting 0pts. If the season rewards are good, I'll want them. I'll want to live and get the rewards before I get better at the later stages of a race. Kind of an odd system.

In the end I suppose it all comes down to the gaming philosophy of the racer. I like the competitive aspect of racing, but I also like loot. Perhaps I just have the priorities of a loot goblin.

I think this has more to do with mentality rather than a risk/reward analysis. The primary goal for most decent racers these days is to win a race/set records, etc...

Personally I never really cared about the item rewards to an extent that the reason I did races was to win rewards. Because let's face it, not only is the system extremely unrewarding to begin with, but the rewards are mostly trash anyway.

I mean take Demis for example, outside of emotional value they aren't worth shit, they are complete trash items (especially the gloves) and never once did I enter a race thinking "my goal is to win a Demi" but rather "my goal is to win the race."

Now I understand that Demis add a small little extra incentive to winning a race, but I would much rather see players rewarded with visual rewards ingame, such as a number next to your name indicating how many races you've won. Ideally even a ranking system, like in SC2 that ranks players in leagues (just to show off really) and gives them some kind of visual representation in game.

For example, someone who won 50 races gets a grandmaster badge, someone who won 30 races gets a master badge, like here:

http://static.squarespace.com/static/4ff5909b84ae5f6d3e519ea8/5051ebbbe4b0d07e0e29544a/5051ebbbe4b0d07e0e2956d0/1300870880503/1000w

Something a little more creative, because let's be honest, outside of items you never use (Demis) racing pretty much rewards you with exactly bupkis.

As someone who doesn't trade their stuff, I would much rather see my accomplishments visualized ingame and not have them lazily sent to me in the form of some useless items I really don't care about.

With that said, it seems that we are stuck with current reward system, in which case GGG would do best to at least hold up the integrity of that system and not give away 1k point rewards to randoms (I'm talking about 1 week races here, again).

I see so much potential in racing, sadly GGG seem happy with the way it's going right now, despite the fact that so many people quit.

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Cataract wrote:

I don't really disagree with any counterpoints to what I have been saying. Just bored waiting for new leagues and discussing racing on the forums is like methadone. I'll play some more devil's advocate.

I'm feeling the same. I don't have it in me to do another silly unique grind I'm anxious to see if it is still there.

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Cataract wrote:

Using this season's sig as an example, 3-4 100 minute races per week still amounts to 80-100 hours of /played time per league. Let's say you're a complete rook and somehow still getting the 7pt (lvl 27-31) bracket every race without dying but not placing top20 in class. That comes to around 450 pts in the season for 4.5 days played. And that's without dying. Add in deaths in say, 1/4 of races, and you have 340pts in favorable (non-frac/non-lethal) races for the season.

That's true, I never really thought of it that way, because a race is a fun break from what becomes a sort of tedious grind.

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Cataract wrote:

Exploiting point brackets allowed something like 12-16pts per sig. Easily 2-3x more efficient being that a complete loss of pts due to death was rarely and issue. So, you can have your shiny 135pt next league unique in 10 races or a more modest 16 hours played relative to 1.5 days.

That's true, but it was/is against the rules. I would much rather wish they'd adjust the points brackets for some of the fractured stuff, and make it so you still get points if you die. The current system doesn't really encourage pushing yourself because as you point out, it can result in a large loss of time.

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Cataract wrote:

Yeah, I was in the same boat. Whittling down Vaal times/Docks entry times is where I am now. Just didn't have the desire to progress a single character before I had locked up race rewards earlier in the season. It's likely because I am reasonably new (started palying 1 month after release) to the game still, but the idea of having a few crucial uniques (DD/Andi) for free makes my nips hard.

There is no doubt I wouldn't have done any races - except Descent Champions and the occasional Endless Ledge - if not for the DD and the Andi. So many times I would not push myself because the loss of points was too great a risk.

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SlixSC wrote:

I think this has more to do with mentality rather than a risk/reward analysis. The primary goal for most decent racers these days is to win a race/set records, etc...

I think what you guys refer to as "decent racers" is really a pretty small group of players that the rest of us think of as race gods, when it comes to setting records. The difference between level 30 and level 34 is huge. It seems easy for you that can do it, but even watching vids, until you can pinpoint the few seconds here and there that you are losing every couple of minutes, there is a large gap between you and the rest of us. I would probably have to record myself and watch streams side by side to really get there. I may get around to it, but there are things I can identify that I need to do better first.

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SlixSC wrote:

I mean take Demis for example, outside of emotional value they aren't worth shit, they are complete trash items (especially the gloves) and never once did I enter a race thinking "my goal is to win a Demi" but rather "my goal is to win the race."

That's exactly the reason I would never buy a demi, they are trophies, but do you realize that idiots will pay out the nose for them? A guy in gameplay discussion? help? one of em, was really pleased he got a Demigod Stride in exchange for a damn headhunter belt. That belt cost me 18.5ex with ~3weeks left in nemesis. For someone who doesn't flip, that's a silly amount of farming.

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SlixSC wrote:

As someone who doesn't trade their stuff, I would much rather see my accomplishments visualized ingame and not have them lazily sent to me in the form of some useless items I really don't care about.

What are your thoughts on that one demi that makes you 10% larger? It made Mors instantly recognizable anytime I saw him in Sarn. I understand the sentiment, though, I would much rather have something in game for completing 8 stars than a T shirt in real life.

I do think the 360 point award should quit being shit, though. What amateur racer is going to aim for Sidhebreath or Queens Decree? when they could run on alternate accounts and get several Andis or Divination Distillates.

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reboticon wrote:

I do think the 360 point award should quit being shit, though. What amateur racer is going to aim for Sidhebreath or Queens Decree? when they could run on alternate accounts and get several Andis or Divination Distillates.

Queens decree at least made for a nice skin transfer, unlike sidhebreath which seemed like a misplaced 7 point reward.

360 point reward from season 2 btw: