The eternal Discussion about Reactor Challenges

[Vesperion]

Oh boy... i better enhance my shelter a lot by even creating this post cus i have the feeling it will drag a lot of hate towards me but as always i don´t really care about this and you should be familiar with my post by now already so here we go
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The (now known) Situation
Ok so after we finally get some more insight of the Reactor challenges we have some offical information about the ranking system and how it works (even when not in full detail) and cus i think it is better to move this discussion and brainstorming outside of the section for >>> #10 Tau Ceti Part 4<<< to keep it clean we should take a seat and look into this information.

It was more by pure luck that a dev replied to my post about the commonly thought of how the Reactor Reward System works

I think the 1st goal you should tackle here is more changing the reward system to be a "bit more generous" in terms of reward places. Last info i know is that only every 10th place another place will be rewarded from the 1st one counted on what translates into at least 20 scores required just to have 1st and 2nd place reward while all the others leave empty handed.

Nope that is not correct, it is depending on the unique participants of the challenge, not the actual places. the rewardsystem has to work so that it is not easy to just spam new teams with just different combinations of players to trick more rewards.

So with this bit of information we know the following basics at least:

• The number of pilots is the determination when another place will be rewarded while the number of squads is irrelevant if pilots show up just in a different order/name of the Squad/different squads where they may have helped others

The still unknown Situation
What we don´t know however is the "actual number of pilots" that is required to reward the next place during any Reactor run. The system is however smart enough to see the highest place a pilot has scored in squad so that he will not be able to receive rewards for maybe 2nd and 3rd place if they would have been selected for rewards as well.

The ever returning Discussion
However this now creates the eternal discussion that always and mostly breaks out during the RDX events (for some weird and unknown reason considering the Reactor Planets in Vega and Drac exist and no one seems to have an issue with them while they use the same system with an way higher timeframe between the reward cycles) with always the same outcome. At the start of the event a lot of pilots to the Reactor part during the start of the event. After some time it starts that pilots have gained enough Signets so that they start Mission A and with that less pilots will register for the challenge resulting in less reward places until the point that only 1st place and eventually 2nd place will get rewarded while everyone else leaves empty handed.

In my server (Kalgan), only the first squad always get the points. I've never seen a second squad getting at least 1 cortex part. So we won't get nothing in return when making round e.g. 10 if another squad can literally leave us empty handed with 1 more point.

A solution would be adjusting the thresholds depending on each server active/daily players. Or distribute the cortex parts depending on the score/position. E.g. Round 10 6k score gets 5 parts guaranteed

The possible Solution
So to what does us this lead and what would be the best course of action SSG could take here?

Imo rather then simply looking on the absolute number of different Pilots the system should focus around the highest Score the players have achived during their runs but will require a lot of recoding the system i assume but would at least still give the benefit of that you can always do an reactor challenge and will get rewarded somhow and in return maybe even revive the reactor challenges in Vega/Drac.

The actuall difficult part of course would be how to make it "fair" in terms of how many signets you should gain for your score or if it should get "fixed" intervalls of points you need to get another Cortex part in return like for example 1500 points = 1 Cort part and as extra 1 cort every 5th wave completed (Again who knows my posts i take rndm numbers without much of giving it a proper thought.
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With that i will fnish this post so that you all have time to rant against me and my weird ideas

Regards - Vesp

 

[lukety]

The ever returning Discussion
However this now creates the eternal discussion that always and mostly breaks out during the RDX events

So which is the real problem? Low rewards? People can rush the event so hard that half the time one of the main parts of the event is almost empty?

Maybe this dynamic doesn't have much attraction to the players to keep a significant number playing at the same time. But this is a completely different discussion where we could propose/brainstorm. Having any other currency besides signets to farm and even more could help.

The possible Solution
So to what does us this lead and what would be the best course of action SSG could take here?

I liked your proposals. I'm a bit more at the "fixed" rewards side but the others seems pretty solid.

I don't see why you would receive any hate for this. It's a very good post.

Also, I agree that we should move this conversation to somewhere else because is not directly related part of Tau Ceti 4 update.

 

[dragonarh]

What I don't get tho is why ppl complain about not getting rewards when they don't even try to go for them themselves; talking mostly about the event reactor challenge. Cortex is, at least in my opinion, meant to be something exclusive, especially the ifrit one. So.. if its literally meant for the cortex to be rare and that's what devs made it be, then why are we even talking about mechanics being unfair? To draw a parallel with real life it would be almost the same like complaining for not getting a job that u applied for, even tho many people applied for the position. lol

 

[destroier6]

What we don´t know however is the "actual number of pilots" that is required to reward the next place during any Reactor run. The system is however smart enough to see the highest place a pilot has scored in squad so that he will not be able to receive rewards for maybe 2nd and 3rd place if they would have been selected for rewards as well.

I guess since u didnt participated in the event at all u don't know, but reading is a really powerful tool that lets u know amazing information.

The event itself tells you which is the "actual number of pilots" required:



You dont need to do a lot of maths to determine that 20 different pilots on scoreboard equals to 2 squads getting prices.

 

[Vesperion]

I guess since u didnt participated in the event at all u don't know, but reading is a really powerful tool that lets u know amazing information.

The event itself tells you which is the "actual number of pilots" required:

View attachment 49821

You dont need to do a lot of maths to determine that 20 different pilots on scoreboard equals to 2 squads getting prices.

To be fair i was expecting this kind of feedback so let me clearify some things 1st.

• I was not talking about the RDX Reactor Challenge itself i was when the talking about ALL reactor challenges
• I have participated in previous RDX Events and also in the Reactor Challenges in Vega and Drac and the rules for all of them are the same

In terms of the "explenation" or better said "rules" it only states "Members of Top 10% Squadrons receive Cortex parts" but does not state any real number of required Pilots until the next place is rewarded.

If the system would really determine the reward places based on the "Top 10%" of Squadrons based on players it would mean that if we take 10 Squads a 5 different Pilots each that would translate into the places 1-5 should get rewarded with 50 different pilots. From my experience in the other RDX events i did participate this translation does not fit at all and for the Vega/Drac Challenge it is rare to see even more then 10 pilots until the rest.

What I don't get tho is why ppl complain about not getting rewards when they don't even try to go for them themselves; talking mostly about the event reactor challenge. Cortex is, at least in my opinion, meant to be something exclusive, especially the ifrit one. So.. if its literally meant for the cortex to be rare and that's what devs made it be, then why are we even talking about mechanics being unfair? To draw a parallel with real life it would be almost the same like complaining for not getting a job that u applied for, even tho many people applied for the position. lol

Again i did not mention the RDX event alone cus i litteraly marked the interesting thing that no one complains about the other 2 Reactor planets and the discussion alone only comes up all the time during an RDX event cus obvious is obvious aka more pilots play a certain mechanic of the game during an event and complain more about this rather then the ones who already exist and are available all the time.

Maybe i should phrase it here in a different way or give further insight as well.
I did the reactor Challange at Arkon mainly for Eagle Eye Cort cus i need it for some of my ships. I did it with the Clan and Ally a couple of times and we did score an relative good place with an investment of at least 2 hours minimum what is already draining and tedious.

Then some other Squad shows up and maybe got a bit more out of the round due of better spawns, more crits, etc. aka RNGesus was more in their favor so they take the 1st place while our squad then moved to the second and in return we did not get any reward at all translating into 2 hours of time "wasted" cus not able to help others with their stuff and an relative low reward in term of Cryos if we would reduce it only to this. In the end it starts to demotivate doing those challenges when you know that you may be pushed into a lower place and in return get nothing as reward. Just look at the Reactor Planets and you see that mostly just a handfull of Squads (mostly 1 man) made an attempt in hope no one will do the reactor so that they get the Cort Parts.

Another difference is as i always point out the time it takes to receive the rewards. For RDX it is always a window of just a couple of hours (3 if i remember it correctly) while for Vega/Drac it is an 14 day window (since the last time of an actuall attempt i made) so the statement of "Ifrit should be exclusive" is not really an convincing explenation or defence point cus they are given out in way higher numbers in compare what i assume is only some sort of compensation considering that the RDX Event occurs every 6 months (this time 12 months due the March/April RDX event did not happen cus of the CQ rework update).

For the always available Reactor Planets an easy solution would be to give some sort of limit how many Corts you can obtain by Score and completed waves while the reward payout would give extra Corts to give a reason to attempt an high score until reset.

So please try to "ignore the RDX event" and only boil it down to the Reactor Challenges and their current mechanic