Season 2 Feedback by Mors

I want to start off and say I really enjoy racing, and anything I say is 100% about improving it overall for everyone involved.

I’m going to start off with some specific feedback for certain races.

135 signature format: I think this format is excellent, and I really hope that it continues into the next season.

Cutthroat: My other favorite potential format, however it needs some work.

1. Gateways: makes it impossible to find people who just switch gateways.
2. Demis awarded: based on XP currently and not kills or XP from kills (I’ve been told that’s being changed)
3. We need a way to maintain the pressure of the LACTIF races, in other words where you cant just run through monsters to get away, but we need to make leveling to 4 much much easier. Kripp suggested that each zone got progressively harder until you reached say lower prison in a 1 hour or 90 minute and it was impossible to do, putting a soft “cap” on leveling. Whatever is done, I really enjoy the dangerous monsters, but it is a detriment to the point of the league before Mudflats to have such crazy monsters.
4. Portals : should be a 5 second wait to teleport into town starting from the moment you click the portal and cannot move, not from when the portal is dropped initially.

BLAMT, LATI etc type of races: All classes need to be gifted a ranged weapon on the beach. It really is kind of a silly RNG fest otherwise.

General racing feedback.

I’m going to echo other posters out there, but I feel it is worth emphasizing that there were probably too many races in season 1, and we multiplied that total by 2.15 (when it was 233 races) and then eventually to 260 races it was x 2.4 for season 2.

Closed beta races were compelling for a number of reasons: Currency rewards and there was only one race a week. Having one race in a week, or maybe two, meant people took that specific race and really cared about doing well. There were far less “yolo” builds, since if you died well you lost your one chance at doing well for a whole week. I don’t think we need to go back and be like that, but it would be nice to capture some of the excitement that accompanied those races.

Currency Rewards: At this point with the obvious intent for Hardcore to become a “legacy” league, is there any reason to not reward currency in races in one form or another? If not, I’d petition to allow characters in season 3 to be able to be transferred to Onslaught\Anarchy at the end of that race.

Inside races: Currently points are rewarded for the first Brutus kill. I really think GGG is an amazing company, but the longer we have this stupid reward, and lets not beat around the bush with some stupid justification, it conveys to most people who know how racing works that someone at GGG is incredibly stubborn about removing what is the dumbest point reward. Has anyone other than a Shadow ever won this award in a normal or turbo race?

In party races the point rewards for clears or first kills need to be shared equally amongst team members. I think it should be 1 point to all team members who are present, and 2 points to the person who turns it in, or does the quest.

How races are structured in a given day: There needs to be variety in a given day and then the variety that is desired can be accomplished over the course of a week. I made two mocks ups:



I think a format like that would keep racing fresher for everyone involved, and people who couldn’t play the 3 AM CT would have a CT at 5pm for them later in the week. I do want to emphasize that having less races that people schedule for , once or twice a week, makes racing far more compelling than the current game where people feel compelled to make as many races as possible.

There should be some benefit to the top tier rewarded items. It’d be nice if I could use my astramentis and have no fear of it going to Standard if my character died. The items rewarded are not overly compelling and race participation overtime bears out this conclusion.

Agree with pretty much everything here. Couple specific points:

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Currently points are rewarded for the first Brutus kill...Has anyone other than a Shadow ever won this award in a normal or turbo race?

You meant Hillock of course, and its been won by a marauder once (iirc he had the shortest beach and rolled near 100% crits, while all the shadows almost certainly suffered multiple misses).

"

Currency Rewards: At this point with the obvious intent for Hardcore to become a “legacy” league, is there any reason to not reward currency in races in one form or another?

Indeed. Ive heard that part of the reason for their removal was that players would feel forced to race to compete economically, yet the same could (very accurately) be said about trading. Having alternatives to straight up orb grinding is a good thing.

"

Morsexier wrote:

2. Demis awarded: based on XP currently and not kills or XP from kills (I’ve been told that’s being changed)

I sure as fuck hope not. Cutthroat races should not force you into PvP, but simply allow others to force PvP upon you (if/when they catch up).

"

Morsexier wrote:

3. We need a way to maintain the pressure of the LACTIF races, in other words where you cant just run through monsters to get away

Strongly disagree. There is no reason for that not to be a valid strategy. It's not like those monsters don't have enough buffs already.

"

Morsexier wrote:

4. Portals : should be a 5 second wait to teleport into town starting from the moment you click the portal and cannot move, not from when the portal is dropped initially.

Meh, I'd say more like 2 to 3 seconds. Agree on the general premise, however.

"

Morsexier wrote:

BLAMT, LATI etc type of races: All classes need to be gifted a ranged weapon on the beach. It really is kind of a silly RNG fest otherwise.

Giving a Marauder a bow also has a silly feel to it. I see the problem, but I'm not enthused with your solution.

"

Morsexier wrote:

Spoiler

General racing feedback.

I’m going to echo other posters out there, but I feel it is worth emphasizing that there were probably too many races in season 1, and we multiplied that total by 2.15 (when it was 233 races) and then eventually to 260 races it was x 2.4 for season 2.

Closed beta races were compelling for a number of reasons: Currency rewards and there was only one race a week. Having one race in a week, or maybe two, meant people took that specific race and really cared about doing well. There were far less “yolo” builds, since if you died well you lost your one chance at doing well for a whole week. I don’t think we need to go back and be like that, but it would be nice to capture some of the excitement that accompanied those races.

Currency Rewards: At this point with the obvious intent for Hardcore to become a “legacy” league, is there any reason to not reward currency in races in one form or another? If not, I’d petition to allow characters in season 3 to be able to be transferred to Onslaught\Anarchy at the end of that race.

Agree with all this stuff.

"

Morsexier wrote:

Inside races: Currently points are rewarded for the first Brutus kill. I really think GGG is an amazing company, but the longer we have this stupid reward, and lets not beat around the bush with some stupid justification, it conveys to most people who know how racing works that someone at GGG is incredibly stubborn about removing what is the dumbest point reward. Has anyone other than a Shadow ever won this award in a normal or turbo race?

Agree strongly, but the limited scope seems weird: I think all extra-point rewards should be restricted to side areas and optional quests; there is already enough incentive to be the first person to beat a boss. First to kill Fairgraves would be more like it.

Great post Mors.

The only thing I have to say about cutthroat races is the final ladder placement for those races SHOULD BE BASED ON WHO EVER HAS THE MOST # OF PKS WITH TOTAL EXPERIENCE PROVIDING THE TIE BREAKER.

ARE YOU LISTENING GGG?:)

I will add PKs should not count if the player is a certain # of levels lower than yours. For example, in a 1 hour cutthroat...players who are lvl 6, give or take, should not get any xp/or kill credit for Pk a lvl 1.

How much of a level disparity until PKs count? Good question.

I don't agree on the point brought up with respect to Lethal races. In those races, melee characters are screwed at the start. I don't have a problem with this.

Just as ranged characters are screwed in No-Projectile races.

Rewarding first Hillock is silly, but this issue has already been addressed by a Dev. So unlikely they'll change it.

Here's the thread in case someone reading needs their hand held: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/364529

I like the suggestion to bring currency back into race rewards. Here's something for the Devs to ponder:

Continue rewarding items once players have reached a certain point thresh hold....BUT...instead of the reward...allow us to choose a random # of currencies instead of the item reward.

I gave my opinion on racing in another thread & I'm going to stick with it. Here's the post: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/368923/page/6

So I'm no ALPHA MEMBER..nor am I a known PoE streamer...but I really think my idea has very strong legs to stand on.

I do think there should be daily racing to help fill the time between our permanent & temporary leagues.

My idea changes racing so it's no longer about who can compete in 255 of 256 races available.

To add to my other post...I would imagine more than 50% of PoE player base works your typical Monday through Friday schedule...so with that in mind...let's run shorter duration races roughly from Monday through Thursday and run the longer duration races on Friday, Sat. & Sunday.

Yes...Yes...Friday in my country isn't Friday in yours...as it isn't in Australia...blah-blah-blah let's not state the obvious.

Aaannd to finally end this tl;dr I'd just like to add you're a cool dude Mors,
I stalk you everytime you log onto PoE:)

@ScrotieMcB
You aren't even racing.....

"

You meant Hillock of course, and its been won by a marauder once (iirc he had the shortest beach and rolled near 100% crits, while all the shadows almost certainly suffered multiple misses).

Actually a duelist won it once too because he found Dualstrike and a rare sword with eledamage in a chest.
The mara win dates back to CB when shadows were only used to get Phaserun.( I even think it was the first turbo race ever without any currency rewards)
But GGG doesn't even listen when I won Hillock in around 20% of the events I participated and started as shadow in normal/ranger on lethal.
The only mode where I haven't perfected my timing to kill hillock is blood magic.

"

1. Gateways: makes it impossible to find people who just switch gateways.
2. Demis awarded: based on XP currently and not kills or XP from kills (I’ve been told that’s being changed)
3. We need a way to maintain the pressure of the LACTIF races, in other words where you cant just run through monsters to get away, but we need to make leveling to 4 much much easier. Kripp suggested that each zone got progressively harder until you reached say lower prison in a 1 hour or 90 minute and it was impossible to do, putting a soft “cap” on leveling. Whatever is done, I really enjoy the dangerous monsters, but it is a detriment to the point of the league before Mudflats to have such crazy monsters.
4. Portals : should be a 5 second wait to teleport into town starting from the moment you click the portal and cannot move, not from when the portal is dropped initially.

Ofc course a bad mannered player as you forgets the most important point.
Noob protection.
Totally great moments if you got a Lactif or Blamt CT and level 6-8 camp Terraces to kill level ones instead of going ledge and fight other players.
I would even go that far to say biggest party size = max amount of players that can invade.
It was too common in 1h-3h CT party that there were like 3-4 groups of 4-6 and the rest were solo players. Ganging up 6 vs 1 is totally fair.

The first points seems to work partially if you enter a new town instance because your old one is full.

The 2nd point depends on the race. Currently those were CT races with exp. There is no CT race with kill scores yet because there isn't a score formula.
Meaning if you kill a level 1 with level 6 your points decrease, if you kill a level 6 you get some points, if you kill a level 8 you get many points. But what about party pushing?
Somebody kills all his friends in the last minute to win a demi. It needs work.
I suggested races that end at level 14 in A2 and everybody joins the PVP Arena to get scores.
Like 3h level 14 PVP, the majority of players should be in a2 after 90 min.
Players can feel free to grind gear during PVP time but they can't enter any A2 areas but forest and town.

And point 3 is total irony.Rushers run through monsters to get into areas earlier.
So according your suggestion Terraces must be filled with slow aura and necro totems in LACTIF races, so nobody is able to skip it aka run away from other players. Especially rushers tend to run away in terraces. I think it's funnier if a party of 6 tries to kill a single player who is able to run away and the party of 6 has no balls to follow him.
And believe if skipping terraces becomes as hard as skipping flats streams won't participate in a single race anymore because they get invaded right from the start.


The fourth point is entirely stupid. You only wish for cheap kills. How about a 5 second delay entering areas from town? Same lame idea for cheap kills. Prevent the party following from town and kill the single invader.
The portal/leave system must be improved in a totally different way.
You can leave portals/game instantly if nobody invaded your instance.
Especially in Lethal CT creating characters is a pain or leaving the game when you did Hailrake for example and nobody is there.
Especially doing bandits needs heavy reworking, since the WPs aren't close to the boss anymore you can't just start the fight you get invaded and you get "Waiting for x to enter the area"(one reason nobody was able to progress to oak in a 3h default CT) since Western forest got constantly invaded.

"

In party races the point rewards for clears or first kills need to be shared equally amongst team members. I think it should be 1 point to all team members who are present, and 2 points to the person who turns it in, or does the quest.

The devs already agreed to that in a thread by DLKY but they have to rebalance the overall rewards first.
So it might end with: 60 Points for a win of class 12 Points for sidequests shared equally among party members.

"

I think a format like that would keep racing fresher for everyone involved, and people who couldn’t play the 3 AM CT would have a CT at 5pm for them later in the week. I do want to emphasize that having less races that people schedule for , once or twice a week, makes racing far more compelling than the current game where people feel compelled to make as many races as possible.

The first events had a structure like that. There were 3 90 min ancestral races in 3 days in the earlier timeslot of the 3 Timezones.
But after some time the races got rushed and it became:
5 Races of the same type with one additional mod like TI TIA LATI LATIF LACTIF twice in 2 days.
Imo there should be a Poll and the community should be able to vote for at last 40% of the races.

"

Continue rewarding items once players have reached a certain point thresh hold....BUT...instead of the reward...allow us to choose a random # of currencies instead of the item reward.

It's not like anybody is playing HC anymore. Onslaught is only an economy reset league.
If the devs had the balls to make it a real Turbo league then several players would stick to HC because it's too hard for them but 20% makes no real difference to normal.
I don't see a problem giving currency rewards. Not to mention that it would also kill the botterboard because currency becomes worthless there.

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I gave my opinion on racing in another thread & I'm going to stick with it. Here's the post: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/368923/page/6

Your idea has a fundamental weakness, what if somebody creates numerous accounts and switches the account each race.
He gets points for each character and over the time he can play only the best scoring ones.
Playing multiple accounts on the same level makes weaker players score even weaker than they would on 6 independant events.
I liked the idea of parallel races but the parallel races had the weakness that players only ended up participating in both getting 6-7 points( they would work with participation restriction)

"

To add to my other post...I would imagine more than 50% of PoE player base works your typical Monday through Friday schedule...so with that in mind...let's run shorter duration races roughly from Monday through Thursday and run the longer duration races on Friday, Sat. & Sunday.

I started to dislike longer races simply because they give you the same amount of RP as a 60 min race.
I would rather have races in the same timeslot with saved progression.
This would open the possibility of races with 15h playtime without forcing you to play 1 weekers or 8h.

"

Hilbert wrote:

@ScrotieMcB
You aren't even racing.....

What's next, asking me if I even lift?

Forget about who said what. Focus on what was said. Discuss points on their own merits.

"

Hilbert wrote:

"

I gave my opinion on racing in another thread & I'm going to stick with it. Here's the post: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/368923/page/6

Your idea has a fundamental weakness, what if somebody creates numerous accounts and switches the account each race.
He gets points for each character and over the time he can play only the best scoring ones.
Playing multiple accounts on the same level makes weaker players score even weaker than they would on 6 independant events.
I liked the idea of parallel races but the parallel races had the weakness that players only ended up participating in both getting 6-7 points( they would work with participation restriction)

We agree to disagree then. I find this particular concern you raise invalid. Remember GGG allows people to create multiple free accounts, so if some n00b wants to do this simply to increase his odds that one of his accounts is secured a Demi..then by all means be a n00b twat & run with it.

I argue most folks who enjoy races for the competition & recognition won't make multiple accounts so they can secure all the Demis.

There's no way in HELL guys like Nugi, Kripp, Mors, CWU, Inva etc.etc. would be lame enough to do this. Gamers like these(myself included) want all the rewards & recognition on one account.

Any lame twat who wanted to make multiple accounts would find out the hard way it was all for nothing. No one would care if they showed off a Demi because there's no way to know if that person actually won the Demi or just bought it off a more talented racer.

I suppose the hypothetical n00b twat in question could spam various sources to those who he wished to prove something to but why go through all the trouble?

Besides if any n00b twat did in fact try this strategy all he'd have is a bunch of accounts with not many season points. Defeats the purpose of recognition gained from racing throughout the season.

I hope a Dev has stumbled across out exchanges here in this thread & decides to bring my idea up to the others so they can brain storm whether my proposed race structure would work in their eyes.

Much luv for GGG & PoE!:)