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Few Observations about the Galaxy Phase of the Recent Triple Hybrid Event
Irial
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in The Bridge
A good number of players – and I think especially those who do not like Galaxy Events – feel that when we have a 2 phase Hybrid Event beginning with a Faction phase and ending with a Galaxy phase, that it is like a full (i.e., non-Hybrid) Galaxy Event with respect to trying to finish higher up in the Rankings. Put another way, for those players in these 2 phase Hybrid Events who are going for a result beyond just acquiring the Threshold Rewards, then the Galaxy phase dominates what their final standing will be. With this in mind, I was curious to see what effect the Galaxy phase would have at the top of the Rankings for our recent 3 phase Hybrid Event.
In particular, I took a snapshot of the top of the Leaderboard just prior to the end of Phase 2, and then wanted to see how much change there would be at the top at the conclusion of Phase 3. Here is how things played out:
- the player who finished 1st at the end of the Event did substantially increase their total Victory Points during phase 3, but most of this was unnecessary, as they were the leader after phase 2, and had a total score at the time that ended up being just below the final total of the player who finished 2nd
- the player who finished 2nd also added a significant amount of Victory Points to their total in phase 3, and all of this was unnecessary with respect to their final Ranking, as their total after phase 2 was higher than the total of the eventual 3rd place finisher
- the player who finished 3rd also was the same player who had been in 3rd place after phase 2, but in their case their efforts in the Galaxy phase were more needed to maintain their ranking; if they had done nothing at all in phase 3, they would have dropped down to 10th spot
- the biggest movement near the top of the leaderboard occurred by the player who finished in 4th place at the end of the Event; they acquired over 1,600,000 Victory Points during phase 3, all of which moved them up from the 8th place position they had held at the end of phase 2
For those players who aspire to achieve a top ranking in an Event, these results seems to be telling me that the finishing Galaxy phase in a 3 phase Hybrid Event like the one we just had is nowhere near as critical as it normally is in a 2 phase Hybrid. The key to finishing at the top was actually racing out to a large number of Victory Points prior to the Galaxy phase. Unfortunately I did not grab a screenshot at the end of phase 1, but I suspect it was actually the Expedition phase of the last Event which played the biggest role in determining who finished in the top 3 spots.
The other interesting observation for me was how, despite so many players clearing the Threshold Rewards well before the start of phase 3 and skipping the final phase altogether, the Community Rewards were still achieved relatively comfortably.
In particular, I took a snapshot of the top of the Leaderboard just prior to the end of Phase 2, and then wanted to see how much change there would be at the top at the conclusion of Phase 3. Here is how things played out:
- the player who finished 1st at the end of the Event did substantially increase their total Victory Points during phase 3, but most of this was unnecessary, as they were the leader after phase 2, and had a total score at the time that ended up being just below the final total of the player who finished 2nd
- the player who finished 2nd also added a significant amount of Victory Points to their total in phase 3, and all of this was unnecessary with respect to their final Ranking, as their total after phase 2 was higher than the total of the eventual 3rd place finisher
- the player who finished 3rd also was the same player who had been in 3rd place after phase 2, but in their case their efforts in the Galaxy phase were more needed to maintain their ranking; if they had done nothing at all in phase 3, they would have dropped down to 10th spot
- the biggest movement near the top of the leaderboard occurred by the player who finished in 4th place at the end of the Event; they acquired over 1,600,000 Victory Points during phase 3, all of which moved them up from the 8th place position they had held at the end of phase 2
For those players who aspire to achieve a top ranking in an Event, these results seems to be telling me that the finishing Galaxy phase in a 3 phase Hybrid Event like the one we just had is nowhere near as critical as it normally is in a 2 phase Hybrid. The key to finishing at the top was actually racing out to a large number of Victory Points prior to the Galaxy phase. Unfortunately I did not grab a screenshot at the end of phase 1, but I suspect it was actually the Expedition phase of the last Event which played the biggest role in determining who finished in the top 3 spots.
The other interesting observation for me was how, despite so many players clearing the Threshold Rewards well before the start of phase 3 and skipping the final phase altogether, the Community Rewards were still achieved relatively comfortably.
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Comments
Obviously the expedition had the biggest impact as it adds to almost 700k VP even without spending for any additional tickets (double the VP of top 1k in a regular 4day galaxy)
1) Length of event leading to Apathy and fatigue.
2) The Expedition having the high VP impact on the event.
In a Faction/Galaxy, you can easily crank out more VP in the Galaxy in a quicker time, should you choose to. Even with a kick start (and it now being castrated) Faction events simply don't have the VP gain ability without serious DIL that Galaxy and Expeditons (with Event Crew) do.
And really this event broke the will of a lot of my fleet. Not annoyed enough to spend for the character, but annoyed enough to be apathetic to really not try that hard.
I posted it earlier elsewhere but I’ll post again here: I usually drop several thousand ranks (sometimes 10,000 or more) when threshold-and-outing in a Faction/Galaxy hybrid but I only fell about 500 ranks from the last event shuttles collected to the end of the event. That there was less competition for the top 1000 due to a 5* with mixed reviews is one thing, but to see so little movement well below the top 1000 is what screams to me that event fatigue set in very badly for most people.
I achieved a personal best with this event. I ranked under 500 and i spent 80 dilithium on expedition tickets and used around 750 chrons (with a supply kit. 500 for the first big chunk and another 250 or so topping up just before the event end) during normal galaxy events i spend way more chrons than that just to get 2-4 copies of the ranked SR. My previous best galaxy rank was 1501. if there's another expedition I would probably spend more on additional tickets tbh, to get my vp at a better level.
My OH ranked just under 3000, and this wasn't because of apathy or event fatigue, It was because he has a job, often working 12 or 15 hour days and just did not have the time. add that our wifi can be a PITA on an evening and sometimes refuses to connect, so a couple of evenings he couldn't actually get the game to work. Although he had hoped for 2 copies of Riker he just couldn't make up the ground lost during the expedition part.
I've enjoyed it, although I'm certainly glad we don't have such long events as a matter of course. Generally speaking, however they are made up i seem to prefer hybrid events to all the others (except, perhaps, for skirmish) Galaxy use all my chrons, faction requires me to check every 3 hours and carry a notebook everywhere I go, and (although I enjoyed it) after every tier on a expedition I'd have to do something else as there was a danger I'd fall asleep
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Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I ended phase 1 at around rank 130. There was alot less movement during phase two, but I was sill able to rise to about rank 110 during the second day of it when 4K shuttles made more of a difference. I had about 5.5K chronotons reserved for phase three, it was enough to rocket to the mid 50s. The higher ranks were new territory for me, there was alot more spacing between people and hardly any movement. I fell to just below rank 75 in the final few hours, and the daily cadet challenge wasn't going to be enough to stay in the top 75. I was worried I would have been bumped out of the top 100 in the last half hour so I bought extra cadet tickets; managed to end it at 87.
I would participate in an extended event again, but out of respect to the majority, they should be at least six months apart.
If you played expedition you already cleared threshold, so there was no need to play unless you wanted to rank.
If you didn't play expedition you were so far behind you had no chance at climbing rank.
There were so few people that played expedition, that there was very little push by people to move into top 1k which meant people in the top 1k didn't need to push hard to stay there.
I like O'Brien and I badly need engineering. If he'd had good stats I would have pushed a lot harder, especially if I'd picked him up in a pack or her was a top threshold reward.
I'm not sure what the 6 day event exercise was about, I only played a 4 day event essentially, and my rank was pretty much normal for me. I sort of feel the expedition was crammed in there to make expedition lovers happy and the event only went for 6 days because of some miscommunication in DB's system. Or maybe the engineers couldn't figure out how to change the coding from standard 2 day runs in hybrids down to 1 day, so all three phases ended up being 2 days each instead of 1/2/1 which I think would have made a lot more sense and been a lot more fun.
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That would be an interesting change, if only because it would throw a monkey wrench in the practice of hoarding the rare rewards until the end of the event.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I think it was both but with the VP disparity being a primary issue, the fatigue being secondary.
I know I took advantage of the fatigue in the end and made moves I normally would not have been able to in the Galaxy going from ~1200/1300 to 525 with about 2.5k chrons.
I was a threshold and done person as well. I got my Threshold by mid day Friday, and did not do anything else. I left 3 tickets unused that I got Midnight, end of Friday. I didn't use any boosts for shuttles, and did nothing at all in galaxy.
Ended about 4100 in rankings. Reward for such a long event was not worth it. I enjoyed the 10x pulls in threshold and community. But, nothing in the event was worth my time or money.
My perspective is simple ; I received 3 beholds for pretty much zero resources. I feel that as a midrange player (I can push into top 1000 if I have the time but real life ...) this took no more effort than any other event to get there.
Now I do understand that if for some reason you sat out of the expedition phase then this was much harder - but frankly it was obvious from the start that expeditions were the highest value part of the event - why sit out ?
For the top players/those pushing for a high finish - the playing field is level. They participated in all three phases to maintain that rank - expedition simply provided a high starting base - but unlike the other phases - unless you buy tickets - this phase gives you EXACTLY the same number of points - no luck or saving zillions up.
To summarize : Mid range players (the majority) received 3 x beholds for limited cost. Only DB will know if they made more money from the top players and ultimately they are what will determine if we see more of this or not.
Wait, 3x beholds? I'm sitting on no beholds and ranked top 1000. Packs do not guarantee beholds.
A significant portion get them, but I'm not sure that all the Mid Range players who competed had the same experience you did.
Ah, my bad. Let me clarify - 3x10 packs as opportunities for beholds. For mid range players that’s 650x 3 = 1950 dilithium plus the guaranteed event crew/super rare - not insignificant. The point was that no other event offers mid-range players anything like that.
I still feel like I'm missing something here.
Ok so there was an Event 10 pack at 300k and a Premium 10 pack at 400k, where's pack #3? There were a boatload of Standard portals (90k credit cost packs) which is normal on a galaxy.
So 1300 Dilithium of packs extra, which is nothing to shake a stick at, but again, just seeking clarity here.
Pack three was the community pack from the galaxy portion?
Gotcha, yes. I was looking for things not normally there, but yes the SOP Galaxy Community reward Premium would be #3.