s8 signature

Practice mode would be nice, especially for people who won't be able to attend as many races as others. I get GGG wants to make this race feel "unique" from the normal gameplay but increasing it to 50 races throughout the season isn't really making it all that much "unique"

Descent Champions - The shit in my poop

"

Morsexier wrote:

My biggest concern is how much shorter the race is.

I was personally pushing for a 45 minute or ideally 50 minute race.

As for the topics Throzz addressed, I agree 100%. DC is a different type of race, and while its not ideal in the classic sense, of what racing has been, as a test of those skills, it does have it's own skill set that can be practiced and perfected.

I wholeheartedly agree re: length. I love the idea of reducing dead ends on map layouts to make progression rates less luck-based... But I really don't see why they need to compensate by cutting out that last third of the race. There's already a huge range in previous D:C races in terms of the lvl/total exp of the winner, the gap between 1st and 2nd, the class with the most top 10 slots, etc. Presumably, a lot of those top players lucked out and didn't lose much or any time to dead ends, and it looks like there's plenty of room for competition at the top. They're basically just removing one element of randomness from the equation by giving everyone the equivalent of really good luck avoiding dead ends, and it seems like the race would work fine at 1 hour with that element removed.

I agree that D:C has a skill set of its own, and that players can do better by practicing. However, the only way to "practice" is by doing live races. I have a busy schedule and can't make all that many races most weeks. I practice for 'normal' races extensively - trying different builds, doing speedruns of early game content, etc. It would probably take me half the season to get as much practice in for D:C as I would normally try to before the first sig race. If we had the ability to practice the "weird" races on demand, I would be a lot more interested in Descent/D:C/EL/OMGWTFBBQ type races.

1 hour D:C is awful. 50 minutes or 45 minutes seems fine. 40 minutes, don't see why they had to cut it to such an extreme.

Now, I'm not saying 40 minutes won't work, I can't possibly know that. I would just like to know why 40 minutes and not 45 minutes or even 50. Honestly can't think of any reason why 40 minutes would be better than 45 minutes. Surely those 5 or 10 extra minutes could have helped alot reducing variance...

"

Rithz wrote:

Practice mode would be nice, especially for people who won't be able to attend as many races as others.

Don't expect this to happen for the foreseeable future, maybe ever. IIRC, in the State of Exile podcast with Chris, he said something to the effect of: D:C doesn't have *that* much content, so a practice mode would make the format stale very quickly.

That said, i wouldn't be shocked to see a 24hr D:C before s08. Probably a lot more likely if someone makes a thread and it gets some love.

"

solistus wrote:

I haven't been more disappointed in a GGG decision, and I've been playing since CB. It makes me worried that they have no clue what parts of the race system do and do not work well for competitive play. I'll be sitting this season out and hoping for a less terrible season 9.

For every one of you, there is someone else who has been sitting out (what I consider to be the more boring seasons) waiting for this. I'm glad they are rotating it so that every group has a turn.