Event Category Chip Out Dysfunction!

I have now seen several threads where people are giving away skills for free to stay in a certain Mayhem event category. This is SAD! Event categories should not cause people to do this!

Particularly this seems to be a problem with people afraid to move into cat 10. I am in the same boat. Cat 10 needs to be split up!

I don't want to chip out! Again, SAD! Please fix it!

Also, while you are at it MA, please lock items to avatars when they enter the competition instance the first time so two or three guns don't dominate an entire category.

Xen said:

I have now seen several threads where people are giving away skills for free to stay in a certain Mayhem event category. This is SAD! Event categories should not cause people to do this!

Particularly this seems to be a problem with people afraid to move into cat 10. I am in the same boat. Cat 10 needs to be split up!

I don't want to chip out! Again, SAD! Please fix it!

Also, while you are at it MA, please lock items to avatars when they enter the competition instance the first time so two or three guns don't dominate an entire category.

Click to expand...

The problem is, splitting cat 10 doesn't solve the issue as far as I can tell.

As in all cats, it comes down to money and availability of the optimal gun. Just at Cat 10, the investment requirement for a event winning gun is huge, compared to at previous cats.

I am not sure what a good solution can be. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to having everyone compete in a single pool.

Jhereg said:

The problem is, splitting cat 10 doesn't solve the issue as far as I can tell.

As in all cats, it comes down to money and availability of the optimal gun. Just at Cat 10, the investment requirement for a event winning gun is huge, compared to at previous cats.

I am not sure what a good solution can be. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to having everyone compete in a single pool.

Click to expand...

The solution should be quite simple if MA put there head to it. I am still surprised at the lack of there vision in this regards. All they need is to make the prizes much better as you move up the ladder. Current configurations are stupid as hell in this regard. Cat 10 should be at least 3x the prize that it is at right now or add 5 more categories above it cause for all the lvl 120+ players they are pretty much screwed currently. Hell there is no reason to go beyond cat 7 in the current scheme of things and kudos to Mindark for making skilling a pain. Soon they will have to provide mission where u can skill out for free instead of giving skills.

Congratulations Mindark on creating a game where getting skills is a curse.

Cat 10 is difficult and it should definately split up.

Other side 10 cat´s is more then enough, adjust lower cats to a little wider range so that there is room for at least to more cats, that actually are in cat 10.

People will chip out anyways if they are in the lower section of their cat, so they can hunt at upper section in the cat below.

Actually I don´t mind that much, that keeps MU for ESIs up

Most likely solution from MA at this point would be to start selling untradeable ESI's in the web shop.

Dab said:

Most likely solution from MA at this point would be to start selling untradeable ESI's in the web shop.

Click to expand...

That exactly would kill ESI MU, don´t think high end hunters who mainly cover their loss with ESI MU would like that.

Well easy to chip out then and quit for good

they could easily do what a lot other games do. make you able to lock a profession level. like you are level 49 laser sniper and you lock it. after that you dont get any exp to any of the connected skills. and if you wanne change it again you can unlock it again. problem solved.

Me Really Never said:

they could easily do what a lot other games do. make you able to lock a profession level. like you are level 49 laser sniper and you lock it. after that you dont get any exp to any of the connected skills. and if you wanne change it again you can unlock it again. problem solved.

Click to expand...

New rare ring with -100% skill gain debuff.

I should stop giving them ideas.

Lock lvls? How do u imagine that? Dozen skills are contributing to one profesion, lets say u lock that prof, what then u dont gain any of those skills? Lets say u do what ever u want and never gain serendepity? U will stop advancing in mining if u have combat prof locked

Haruto Rat said:

New rare ring with -100% skill gain debuff.

I should stop giving them ideas.

Click to expand...

Make it -100% skill gain Laser Weapons and it would genuinely fetch an insane price tag

I think best way is to balance other end of the scale give a point to skills again, to incentivise people to buy them or keep them. Looter skills was a good start but right now people can gain looter and chip out combat profs with very little downside. Another way would be to have seperate prizes for each cat (example a cat 3 placement token could only purchase the lowest 3 weaps in mayhem trader or w/e).

If people want to stay chipped down to compete in a cat i think it should be viable but should come at a cost whereas right now theres no downside as the day to day game offers little incentive to keep skilling vs the money that can be made in events.

People that decide to chip out now to enjoy few extra pecs will be the first one who will quit the game when they will see shiny level 150+ guns.

Crig said:

Lock lvls? How do u imagine that? Dozen skills are contributing to one profesion, lets say u lock that prof, what then u dont gain any of those skills? Lets say u do what ever u want and never gain serendepity? U will stop advancing in mining if u have combat prof locked

Click to expand...

its ur decision to lock it so yea. upside is you dont have to pay for ESIs to downgrade and downside is you dont get anymore exp in all relevant professions. seems fair to me. you dont have to use it

I do understand the upset it would cause to change them now, but I sure always thought ESI should be a TT item.

It's a major advertised feature of the game and they make it hard/expensive as fuck.

Carry on.

(to answer a few posts)

Here's the thing, I don't want to chip out, and I think many others don't like that idea either. I want to continue to progress past level 105. I enjoy my avatar becoming better. But being in the low end of cat 10 sucks, your avatar is much different than the level 130, 150, 180 avatars. For Summer Mayhem maybe it didn't matter as much since with the winning weapons mobs were dead before they reached you most of the time, but in general skills matter.

I think consolidating some of the lower cats is maybe a good idea.

Better prizes for the top 10 in category 10 should be added.
Worse prizes for the top 10 in categories below 10 should be added.
Higher level weapons with higher requirements should be added.

Mercury said:

Better prizes for the top 10 in category 10 should be added.
Worse prizes for the top 10 in categories below 10 should be added.
Higher level weapons with higher requirements should be added.

Click to expand...

there is already a too big gap in M-token prices for the very low categorys. widening it even further would make the problem even bigger. people who complain now that they dnt have a chance in their category and chip down for it wouldnt even do that anymore and thus resulting in nobody participating anymore. bad idea

messi91 said:

People that decide to chip out now to enjoy few extra pecs will be the first one who will quit the game when they will see shiny level 150+ guns.

Click to expand...

HaH Give the man a Bells!

For starters the current 10 cats should be reduced to 7 cats with each cat below cat 5 getting 1.5x the number of M tokens then the previous one. Add 1-2 cats post 100. After cat 5 however the ratio of M tokens changes to 2x and finally 3x making people really work hard for the top categories. Also please Mindark you have the most information about who does events and i would think its not too hard to figure out the category distribution considering you have the data about levels of all players.

Base Mayhem categorys on Agility.


Skill problem solved...

I'm in favor of a proportional reward system

The proportional reward system:

- Before events start, MA decides how many tokens there will be divided. Let's say 500.000 for example.

The amount of tokens will be divided among ALL participants, proportionally.
This means that EVERYONE gets rewarded according to his/her score.

Each avatar can choose (for instance out of 3 cats closest to his lvl). Obviously a low category for a higher lvl player will not work out well, because he'll be running/aiming to the next mob more then he'll be shooting.


Categories are set with mob maturities, to accommodate each level of hunting. Perhaps more then 10?
Your category10 points count for 1 each (category number +- matching your professional lvl)
Your category20 points count for 2 each
Your category30 points count for 4 each
Your category40 points count for 6 each
Your category50 points count for 8 each
Your category60 points count for 10 each
...
Your category100 points count for 18 each
...

Or maybe double the point value for each category even.


You can hunt in different categories, the system will auto calculate your point for each category and make the total.
The higher category you go, the faster and more points you will generally get (balancing required).
Top category hunters will have more points then the hunters in the category below.



This solve many problems:

- imagine having 22000 points, and someone else has 22010 points. In the current system you might be at 11th spot in your category and get zero reward.
In the proportional system you will get a fair price for your effort.

- This will solve the skilling and chipping out problem

- This will solve the player abandoning event problem (due to not able to compete in their forced category)

- This will change the 'winner gets all' mentality to 'participate, have fun, and get reward' mentality.

- This solved the problem that a top3 spot in cat8, gives a better reward then 10th spot in cat9

- With very good points, a cat7 hunter can get among cat8 hunters' scores.

Naomi said:

The proportional reward system:

- Before events start, MA decides how many tokens there will be divided. Let's say 500.000 for example.

The amount of tokens will be divided among ALL participants, proportionally.
This means that EVERYONE gets rewarded according to his/her score.

Each avatar can choose (for instance out of 3 cats closest to his lvl). Obviously a low category for a higher lvl player will not work out well, because he'll be running/aiming to the next mob more then he'll be shooting.


Categories are set with mob maturities, to accommodate each level of hunting. Perhaps more then 10?
Your category10 points count for 1 each (category number +- matching your professional lvl)
Your category20 points count for 2 each
Your category30 points count for 4 each
Your category40 points count for 6 each
Your category50 points count for 8 each
Your category60 points count for 10 each
...
Your category100 points count for 18 each
...

Or maybe double the point value for each category even.


You can hunt in different categories, the system will auto calculate your point for each category and make the total.
The higher category you go, the faster and more points you will generally get (balancing required).
Top category hunters will have more points then the hunters in the category below.



This solve many problems:

- imagine having 22000 points, and someone else has 22010 points. In the current system you might be at 11th spot in your category and get zero reward.
In the proportional system you will get a fair price for your effort.

- This will solve the skilling and chipping out problem

- This will solve the player abandoning event problem (due to not able to compete in their forced category)

- This will change the 'winner gets all' mentality to 'participate, have fun, and get reward' mentality.

- This solved the problem that a top3 spot in cat8, gives a better reward then 10th spot in cat9

- With very good points, a cat7 hunter can get among cat8 hunters' scores.

Click to expand...

good suggestion, i spent thousands on this event and i got 11th place (or atleast very close) and get nothing.. so boring that people chip out to own the lower category and it really sucks for us that are the lowest of our cat atm

So I did some thinking regarding this yesterday.

1) I personally as a player about to enter cat 7, like this system. It provides those below cat 10 a chance to get a good reward for competing in a event that's partially about luck, and partially about what gear they have at their disposal.

2) No one is really talking about WHY cat 10 is not competitive, and only a select few can compete. Here's how I see it:

When it comes right down to it, this is about the cost/networking to compete in terms of gear. Taking networking out of the equation, the cost of the gun to compete in cat 10 is on the order of several 100k's of peds. In Cat 7-9, this is may be several 10k's of peds, and in the lower cats, its on the order of several 1k's of peds. So you have an exponential growth in the pricing of guns in the categories.

However, the reward for the categories are currently scaled linearly.

Hunt costs mostly scales linearly, in terms of dpp/decay.

Mayhem rewards scale linearly.

This means that a cat 5 player or cat 6 player moving up in categories has a chance to get a gun that is good enough for him to use in the future, and not just one that would have been okay to use at a lower level. So it gives them a reason to do the events.

If the rewards were made exponential by category to reflect the required MU cost of gear to compete in cat 10, this means that those in the lower cats would see their rewards get slashed and have less incentive to try. Which I see as defeating the purpose of mayhem events. I always think Mayhem events should be about providing players who would otherwise have no chance of having a small chance at getting ultimate gear a chance to get some. This would essentially kill it. Current system encourages participation.

My view is, if you want to solve this issue, you need to scale the MU of the guns available at Cat 10 so that it does not cost 10x that which is available for use in Cat 9.

I'm going to catch a lot of flak for this, but the market value and availability of the competitive guns at Cat 10 is the reason why people don't want to jump up into cat 10. So that has to get fixed. Cat 10 right now is a small replication of previous mayhems without categories, for those above lvl 105. In the end, it is all about affordability and availability of gear.

Zho

imo they could add like 2 more categories above cat 10 to scale that a little bit better. the rest is quite good. the only problem is the uber guns from mayhem vendor are either far too cheap or the low guns are far too expensive. so either adjust that accordingly (2x the tokens needed for the big guns) or at least give a permanent possibility to farm m-tokens. if you cant work towards your goal you kinda lose interest.

Not sure why everyone whining about cat 10, and splitting it up, while cat 6 & 7 are the ones with most competitors.

About the fact that a few guns own it all, well... Same issue in other categories. Sure there is terminator and XTLC1000 in cat 10, but same issue with XTLC 600 in cat 6 for example, not a single other gun can compete, so the owners of that gun rent it out.

Same issue in every single category. So I don't see what all the fuss is about for cat 10, it's everywhere... But people only care about themselves. The issue is global.



Imo they should
- add a softcap to damage instead of a hardcap
- Make sure the softcap is lower than multiple weapons in that level range. So multiple weapons can actually compete
=> This used to be impossible, cause then your damage would be lowered, while your cost remained, so it would cost you more to kill a mob. But with current loot system, loot is based on cost, isn't it?

Then also make lower cats earn much much less tokens than they do now, and higher cats more than they do now, to disencourage the chipping out. People who then still want to... Well, sure, but with the softcap, more can compete anyway, so it's not a certainty for them to win there either then...


Also, I agree that the low lvl guns are way too expensive compared to the high level guns. My guess is that at current rates, nobody will ever buy the lower guns, cause they simply ain't worth it at all.

Rampsy said:

Not sure why everyone whining about cat 10, and splitting it up, while cat 6 & 7 are the ones with most competitors.

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Because in cat 10 there is up to 100 difference in pro standing while in all other cats except cat 1 the maximum difference is 10. Similar problem with health, and defense levels.

Xen said:

Because in cat 10 there is up to 100 difference in pro standing while in all other cats except cat 1 the maximum difference is 10. Similar problem with health, and defense levels.

Click to expand...

can you give example of where this makes a difference if you are lvl 200 laser sniper or lvl 105? i dont think there are many guns out there who would benefit from higher levels. evade might be something else but thats about it.

I have been a little frustrated by this as well. Stuck with cat 9 gear, and feeling bullied into cat 10.

Currently, I am 104 BLP was cat 10 last time but chipped 14k worth of ESI to compete with my gear. Thankfully that worked, I placed actually got tokens that can convert to PEDS, and sold the ESI's,but If I didn't place it would have been a loss. Which was another lame situation to be in, take a gamble that moving down you will actually place.

My t10 slugstorm, and a mod evil amp is essentially on the shelf until the next round.

What boggles my mind is why MA would promote people from using 3k an hour weapons to go down to 1k an hour weapons for a large majority of the time outside of mayhem. Literally they have forced me to not cycle as much, to not spend as much, while I work up junk side skills on lower DPS options.

This is like going to the restaurant and having the waitress tell you you will only be getting toast, no up sales, no coffee, no pie, just toast for you today, despite having a wad of cash, ready to consume.

If I decide to have fun again with the weapon I invested so much into, I have to plan to use a chip to keep my BLP at a level that will keep me in cat 9. Which feels like I am being throttled.

Whatever they come up with in my opinion, they need to hire a super math data guru to come up with an algorithm that properly delivers points on a completely fair and balanced basis across the board we could only throw guesses at from outside the system. No cats, just points, PM tokens and weighted results based on whatever the guru sees would make it work. (stats, some skills, dps, whatever the variables necessary)

Guys like this exist, hell you could use machine learning to have an AI make sure it is always making the right adjustments to keep it fair, and get better at it as it goes. Hire an AI dev to come up with a system for that.

So many possibilities that they could come up with and solve it once and for all, but it seems they don't really have the initiative or will to do it. They certainly are not thinking when people are ultimately forced to spend less, for the rest of the year.

Sometimes I even wonder if anyone from MindArk even monitors/plays/'whatever: does something'/... with this game.

If I see all the shitty updates they do, usually with tons of bugs that everyone could see coming, except for them. And even worse, if I see they don't fix the real big issues that everyone whines about.... And if I see the lack of support and the lack of communication with their community... That really makes me wonder if anyone in their team even ever opened Entropia...

Xen said:

I have now seen several threads where people are giving away skills for free to stay in a certain Mayhem event category. This is SAD! Event categories should not cause people to do this!

Particularly this seems to be a problem with people afraid to move into cat 10. I am in the same boat. Cat 10 needs to be split up!

I don't want to chip out! Again, SAD! Please fix it!

Also, while you are at it MA, please lock items to avatars when they enter the competition instance the first time so two or three guns don't dominate an entire category.

Click to expand...

100% agree with u

almost all prizes of cat 10 are split by same group of item sharer/renter. will just make all top players run away.