Point Disparity Between Phases
AviTrek
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in The Bridge
I thought the experiment of a 3 phase event was interesting, but as most of us saw, the event wasn't very competitive. A lot of this I think is because of the point differences between phases. Effectively it turned into a 2 day expedition event and then 4 days of spinning wheels.
Lets look at the numbers:
Expedition Event: 9 tickets * 56k/ticket = 504k
Faction: 48 hours / 3 hours/shuttle * 4 shuttles * 4k/shuttle = 256K (likely less with sleep and ramp up)
Galaxy: Chrons
Initial 200
Accrual 240 * 2
Bonus 20 * 3 * 2
Starbase 100 * 3 +
Cadets 6 * 25 * 2 + 25 * 2 * 3
Voyages Estimate 4 * 400
Gauntlet Estimate 100
Total = 3250
Assume 30 chrons/recipe. 108 recipes * 1025/recipe = 110k
Prefarming can change the galaxy number a lot, but the trend is clear, this event was decided by the expedition portion.
If DB wants to run another 3 phase event, it needs to rebalance the VP potential between each phase so that each phase is significant for the event, Players shouldn't be able to play one phase and coast through the rest, and players underperforming in one phase shouldn't be so behind in points that the rest of the event is meaningless.
Lets look at the numbers:
Expedition Event: 9 tickets * 56k/ticket = 504k
Faction: 48 hours / 3 hours/shuttle * 4 shuttles * 4k/shuttle = 256K (likely less with sleep and ramp up)
Galaxy: Chrons
Initial 200
Accrual 240 * 2
Bonus 20 * 3 * 2
Starbase 100 * 3 +
Cadets 6 * 25 * 2 + 25 * 2 * 3
Voyages Estimate 4 * 400
Gauntlet Estimate 100
Total = 3250
Assume 30 chrons/recipe. 108 recipes * 1025/recipe = 110k
Prefarming can change the galaxy number a lot, but the trend is clear, this event was decided by the expedition portion.
If DB wants to run another 3 phase event, it needs to rebalance the VP potential between each phase so that each phase is significant for the event, Players shouldn't be able to play one phase and coast through the rest, and players underperforming in one phase shouldn't be so behind in points that the rest of the event is meaningless.
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Also even on galaxy with bad crew you gain at least half as much from other side, usually at least as much so double that 110k.
Expedition 510,350, rank 1228.
Faction 186,380 (includes 26,395 as squad leader & 28,800 from 8 post-phase 2 shuttles), rank 1131 (at phase change).
Galaxy 148,815, final rank 1129.
I did a kickstart pattern but w/o time boosts. I used ~4000 chrons.
So my empirical experience is consistent with your projections. That said, had I been trying for the legendary, I easily would have doubled my galaxy effort and would have earned more in faction.
I guess the underlying question is - should "reasonably standard" effort in each phase be expected to yield equivalent point results (i.e., ~33% of total VP in each phase)? And would this expectation be reasonable for all rank ranges / crew strengths?
I don't have answers for those questions.
I would point out that we all knew the event structure weeks in advance, and one could have chosen to accumulate boosts and/or chrons to off-set the known point structure of the expedition phase. Not sure that addresses the issue, but it is the only existing work-around to underperformance in any phase of any event - outperform in the other phase(s).
[As an aside, I realize that I typed all of this without reading the other more-replied-to thread on this topic. Off to read that one now and see what everyone else is saying.]
Prefarming can change the galaxy number a lot, but the trend is clear, this event was decided by the expedition portion.
If DB wants to run another 3 phase event, it needs to rebalance the VP potential between each phase so that each phase is significant for the event, Players shouldn't be able to play one phase and coast through the rest, and players underperforming in one phase shouldn't be so behind in points that the rest of the event is meaningless.[/quote]
Couldn't of said it better myself, the first phase basically decided the event, unless you wanted to waste a ton of resources with no guarantee of placing much better, and for very little reward. I was able to main under 1k rank, without spending chrons, and the faction portion of the event, barely made a dent in ranks.
This statement seems contradictory to me.
Arguing a player should not be able to 'coast through a phase' implies a player should be punished in the Rankings in a non-recoverable manner for their decision to not achieve a high amount of Victory Points through that phase. That is, the first part of the statement says if I coast through phase 1 of a multi-phase Event, it would be wrong to allow me to achieve a high Ranking at the end of the Event by performing very well in a later phase of the Event.
Arguing a player should be allowed to 'underperform in a phase' implies a player should be allowed to recover in the Rankings and catch up to others who did better than them in the phase in which they underperformed. That is, the second part of the statement is arguing that if I do poorly in phase 1 of a multi-phase Event, it would be wrong to not allow me to perform very well in a later phase of the Event and improve my Ranking.
What is the difference between 'coasting through a phase' and 'underperforming in a phase'? The answer is, from the perspective of 'mental intent' there is a difference, but from the perspective of gameplay accumulation of Victory Points they are practically equivalent.
I do not know how you could design this game differently so as to punish someone who scores low in a phase because they were not trying in the phase, and at the same time not punish someone who scores low in a phase because they were not capable of doing better despite their best efforts.
Scoring low because you can't -- -well that means its time to upgrade your crew or spend more resources to get there in the next event.
The idea is that you win Expedition you with the whole rest of the event is at issue from the OP. One phase should not matter more than the other two combined from a VP Standpoint on the same amount of effort/skill/strategy/wallet spending.
Let's assume that somehow all the 3 phases were perfectly 100% balanced with respect to how much VP you could collect based on "effort/skill/strategy/wallet spending". Could it not be argued that instead of making it more difficult to 'coast through a phase' (i.e., for the most part not participating in the phase), under these circumstances it would actually be easier to do so? That is, if I know that my participation is equally valued in each phase of an Event, then it does not really matter whether I contribute equally in all three, more in one than another, or all in just a single one.
If you think about it, when you have unequal return on your participation investment amongst 3 phases, could it not be said this actually puts a little bit more strategy into the overall Event versus what would be the case with equally valued phases? I read your comment in another thread where it sounded to me like you took advantage of the opportunity presented to you by the different dynamics in the recent 3 phase Event to strategically with a smaller amount of investment achieve a better result than would have been likely/possible in a 2 phase Event.
At the end of the day, I think there are pro's and con's to any type of setup, and the better players will be the ones who understand these and strategize how best to maximize their results in any/all scenarios.
I took advantage of it due to other folks fatigue. If folks played a normal galaxy I would not have been able to do it. if it had been a 2 phase event, I would not have been able to do it the way I did it.
My point breakdown was very similar to what the OP posted, though I had around 550k in the Expedition, ~225/250k in Faction and about 150k in Galaxy.
I played the faction with no jump start
Over half my points came from the first phase in a three phase event.
I'm really trying to follow the logic here and not trying to be an **tsk tsk** about it.
But seriously, I don't see why it is a good thing for the event VP returns to be so out of balance.
Yes, strategically it means if you can you play the best return one, but that's not justification for having it out of whack in the first place.
I'm not saying it should be razor thin equal, but right now we're talking about punishing folks who like two kind of events and rewarding another in something that is supposed to be a hybrid of all of them.
You might like that. Maybe because you like Expeditions better. (Personally they are my favorite type of event even after Christmas.)
And incidentally, just because I got rewards for it, doesn't mean I think its right. It just means I know how to exploit a hole when I see it.
I agree, let the person who put put for the effort win. maybe expeditions were their favorite event type and they went all out for it when one finally came up. let them have the win.
and to go with the point of Althea, if you have good enough crew to score so high in faction and enough chrons to score so high in galaxy, there is no reason you could not have done very well in expedition...the only reason is you didn't want to...so step aside and let the person who wants to put forth the time and effort win. I have no problem with that.
Overall I think the main effect of having 3 phases was that my progress in expedition (and the fact that it seems like a lot of people hit threshold during expedition and then phoned it in the other 2 phases) kept me afloat during faction. Typically in a faction event I would see my ranking steadily drop after the initial kickstart (EDIT: case in point, I was just under 1000 in this week's Faction-only event after kickstart and in less than 3 hours have fallen over 2000 spots to around 3200), since I usually only have as many time boosts as I am able to farm out of the 6 tickets I get for the A Certain Formality cadet missions, but in this case I was able to hold my position despite having a pretty standard success/fail rate on my shuttles.
Based on the points I was getting per ticket, if I had run all my expedition tickets fully, run shuttles every 3 hours and used time boosts to get to 4,000 VP quickly and used all my chronitons on the galaxy portion, I would have easily placed in the top 100. I just chose not to do so.
It's all about choices
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Galaxies are incredibly chron costly and quite tedious but deliver a huge amount of VPs if you put the effort in.
Factions require a huge effort requirement with regular checking in throughout the phase, and they deliver a lot of VPs if you have good crew.
I did nothing different for this event than I would have for a hybrid. Go big before galaxy and then sit it out completely until close to finish and decide if I want to put the chrons in to place higher.
I didn't have new O'Brien but I had all of the other bonus crew, and levelled threshold purple mid event before going back in with tickets to maximise VPs. I didn't put any extra tickets in and probably missed two on Friday. I was sub 2000 rank at the end of expedition and had completed threshold by the final ticket with ~425k pts.
Faction, I pulled max tranmissions and then just ran them with no 350VP shuttles speeded up, and then I continued to run shuttles like clockwork and didn't add a single skill boost during the entire event since I had already gotten threshold. I pulled extra shuttles at the end of phase 2 and ran those off as well. I added around 150k pts and was ranked around 1300.
I didn't complete a single galaxy recipe but with the faction shuttles I got community rewards. And I finished up rank 2500. I was told that 850k was needed with 12 hours to go, so decided that I wasn't going to put 300k pts worth of chrons in to get fake O'Brien.
If a phase has a fairly fixed range of values (like the faction half does) then while you can hurt yourself by doing very poorly on that half, you can't win because of it. Quick starting, staying on shuttles, using boosts and crew, everyone who is remotely competitive will be in a pretty tight window of ~50k points.
On the galaxy side, since how much you spend in chrons determines how you win, you can easily overcome an edge on the faction side when this phase starts. Thus it is effectively just a galaxy event when it comes down to placing.
Another way to think about this is
top 1% phase 1: Top 20% phase 2 you will finish pretty badly
Top 20% phase 2: Top 1% phase 1, you will probably finish around 1%
Not sure how to fix this issue, but a faction/galaxy hybrid is really just a galaxy in sheeps clothing.
edit: The only reason I VASTLY prefer hybrids to straight galaxy events is that I can usually threshold and out without having to spend a chron in the galaxy half.
I think we're saying similar things.
The point variability between the phases is what causes the point disparity in the phases.
I ran every free expedition ticket (daily and rewards), only running each mission the minimum 2 times, and was ranked around 500 after phase 1.
I fully participated in the faction event, including a kickstart, and was ranked 380 after phase 2.
I only built a single recipe during the galaxy phase, and wound up dropping just 400 spots, to finish 766.
In this case yes, but you can have huge point disparity and have the phases balanced, or you have low point disparity and have them unbalanced, it is the variability that is key.
Hypothetical examples to demonstrate extremes:
Phase 1 avg score 500,000 +/- 20k: Phase 2 avg score 100,000 +/- 50k Phase 2 will drive event win
Phase 1 avg score 500,000 +/- 20k: Phase 2 avg score 100,000 +/- 20k Phases are balanced
The question should be how does the range of points in phase 1 compare to the range in phase 2, not the total point value.
Imagine a football game. Touchdowns are normal 6 points each, EXCEPT in the 2nd quarter where they are tripled.
That's what it feels like for the Expedition vs other events in the end of the mega.