Why Signature Races should award Demigods.

History
We've now had 4 seasons of Signature races. Season 2 awarded Demigods on every single race that season. Season 3 began designating races as "Fun" and "Competitive" along with making Signature races award only a season ending top 3 finish Demigod (Coinciding with Descent being the Signature).

Season 4 and 5 have continued those traditions began in season 3, perhaps in that season begun for the right reasons, but continued for the wrong reasons in these subsequent seasons.

Current Trends
What occurs now in Signature races is that players "yolo" to the max, in the hope that they get great zone layouts, and great currency\item drops so that they can put together a top 3 finish.

What this ends up meaning though is that in reality almost every racer that has a realistic shot to set top 3 finish, and there are about 4 people per class currently (some people on two - four classes) knows approximately 25 minutes into the race whether they are going to have a chance to set the record. I say 25 minutes because that's the current approximation of the best Merveil kill time, with all classes near that in their best runs.

Yes, I do realize you can kill her at 30 minutes, and get incredible mind shattering RNG and have a real chance to set a record. I did this myself recently, and I fell 3-5 minutes of docks farm short of setting the third place record.

What this says is that not only do you need to have that better run, you ALSO need some mind shattering RNG to make it happen. That aspect of it I am ok with for the best in that season demigod, it rewards players who are good at racing who should at least once, twice or thrice a season have that kind of race.

Best Season and Why
Season 2 was universally regarded as the best Signature season, and perhaps some people have preferences now for the Turbo version, (the current version, season 5, is a mirror of that season, with times adjusted for tree\weapon buffs). Part of the value implied with that is that you could have a non signature setting race, but still have an incredible race, and win a Demigod for your efforts. In the current system someone not only could have that incredible race, perhaps winning 25 of them! but through a facet of the game beyond their control could end up at the end of the season with nothing, no signature record (losing by 40,000 XP which is about 6 mobs in docks). Do they really deserve nothing for this season?

Awarding a Demi for the individual race hedges the bets for the players, and gives them incentive to play. For all the people who have no shot to win the end of season Demigod, there is little to no incentive to play this race since the points rewarded are equal to every 1 hour race.

Recently a player posted :

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kyuzoudono wrote:

literally just strolled around, couldnt believe i got top 20 this race yet alone first duelist

Continued No Demigod tradition
If this player had won a Demigod as well, what an amazing feeling for them! This is how you hook people on racing, not worrying about "awarding too many Demigods" which was the perception from season 2, but that was the effect and not the cause. The cause was having twice the number of races on the schedule. As often happens in those situations, people double down on their solutions. You split races as discussed earlier, AND you also removed Demigods from Signature Races. This segmented the racing population even further.

Quoting Chris:

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We have specifically tried to address the following pieces of feedback about the last two Seasons:

We gave out too many Demigod's Triumphs, diminishing their short-term value
Season Two event density was too high
Too many events had complex sets of mods like BLAMT that not everyone enjoyed
None of the events offered a massively different game experience (like our new Descent races do!)

The first point was only caused by point number two. The point that people might play differently if a Demigod was rewarded is a perspective based on no current fact and influenced by Closed Beta racing mindsets when there was at best 1 race a week and then 1 race a day for December 2012. Players who are in a position to set the top 3 finish Signature record, win multiples of demis every season. Winning a demi in an individual race playing cautiously and then not setting the top 3 finish record is a choice none of them would make. However it does reward people who for factors outside their control have the best possible race they could have, and then rewarded for it, which in my mind is the point of racing.

Conclusion

Awarding Demigods based on individual race successes for racing in the normal game of PoE is the correct way to handle prizes. In fact I think this season should award top 3 finish prizes for Descent Champions, as that type of reward structure is appropriate for that type of race. For anyone where the choice of Individual Demi vs Signature Season record is a real choice, not a single person would choose Individual Demi (they would assume they would get both). The community kept track of these achievements before anyone at GGG did, so you can trust us to prize "Record Runs". Awarding the Demigod lets racers continue to play with a real sense of accomplishing something in a race they know they will not set a record in after only a short period of time in the race.

Good post!

Great post, hoping for demis in next season signature race.

First you regular racers cause this crappy S/F/C System by creating this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/368923/page/1


And now the first ones want the old system back....


Now tell the devs to fill the calender and to do something about race variety.

Season 2 was full but it had weird expermenting such as TI->Lethal TI->LATI->LATIF->Lactif.
1h fs 2fs 3fs sig 1h fs party 2h party 3h fsparty.

A good balance for each time zone so each time zone gets 2 sigs a week and the rest will be split into normal/barely/heavily modded party/solo races.

Hilbert is going to bring up that thread for the next 2 years now, just as he is still posting stuff from CB times ;-D

"

Hilbert wrote:

First you regular racers cause this crappy S/F/C System by creating this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/368923/page/1


And now the first ones want the old system back....


Now tell the devs to fill the calender and to do something about race variety.

Season 2 was full but it had weird expermenting such as TI->Lethal TI->LATI->LATIF->Lactif.
1h fs 2fs 3fs sig 1h fs party 2h party 3h fsparty.

A good balance for each time zone so each time zone gets 2 sigs a week and the rest will be split into normal/barely/heavily modded party/solo races.

The sound of my post and its specific discussion of this very topic and Hilbert's head.

more demis and more races plz ggg_gg waking up once/twice a night to do races because there is none scheduled for your timezone is more tiring on the long run than season filled up to brim with races (assuming you are not one of very few who feel its necessary to do 90%+ of races each season)

Agreed would love to see Demis back for this just so it would bring back more racers and attract newer ones.

Just sharing my own experience and thoughts on signature races here.

I just thought about this yesterday and I really have almost no motivation to participate in 2h solo races, even with great RNG I'm not sure I could set a record and just waking up for points doesn't seem worth it.

I try and do all the oldschool Descents because I regularly win or at the very least have a chance at winning Demis in that race and party races aswell, but 2h solos just aren't motivating at all.

To set a ranger record you basically need MS boots somewhat early, ideally a second quicksilver and a good weapon for docks. You will always ping 33 or at least 32 even with shit RNG because ST is just OP, but to really set a record you need alot of good RNG, else you might aswell just log out.

I solo'd the party race yesterday and pinged 34 at the 2h mark roughly (granted it was fixed, but I had to tp out and refill pots at ledge/forest for both merveil and weaver so that cost me quite some time - on that note, fuck famine), but that was without a second quicksilver for the entire race and ms boots in act 1 and up to mid-act 2. So I guess it would be possible for me to hit 35, but what are the odds, they are astronomical and it mostly just ends up being frustrating.

I did one signature race as templar and won, but it actually felt like a waste of time, I didn't feel like I accomplished anything (didn't set a record, knew it wasn't going to happen so just played it safe... so yeah). And to tell you the truth I really didn't accomplish anything, because most people don't play the 2h solos, so winning a signature doesn't mean anything. Winning or even just participating in a race should never feel like a waste of time. But 2h solo races are a waste of time.

So yeah, the few 2h solos I've done this season just weren't fun at all, so I guess I'm just boycotting them now.

edit: Oh yeah, just to throw this out there, I know it's really offtopic, but I think famine races are complete bullshit for all classes that don't use leap slam. Your farm speed in both docks and sarn is slowed down so much because you can never refill your quicksilver in town when you make a new instance, that alone costs classes that depend on quicksilvers for run speed several minutes compared to leap slam classes who don't need quicksilvers. I know it's really offtopic, but I just really don't think that mod should even exist for exactly that reason.

"

Hilbert wrote:

First you regular racers cause this crappy S/F/C System by creating this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/368923/page/1

You do realize that Morsexier did not post a single post in that thread? Also, Asdfman, the creator of that thread has not posted in this thread. They may agree, and they may not.

And finally, the first post on the linked thread (by Asdfman) has nothing to do with netiher demigods nor signature races in particular. Asdfman was unhappy with the number of races. In this thread, Morsexier agrees that there were too many races and then points out that the problem was "solved twice" resulting in a non-optimal situation:

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Morsexier wrote:

As often happens in those situations, people double down on their solutions. You split races as discussed earlier, AND you also removed Demigods from Signature Races.

Please stay on topic.