Veteran Dragonstar Arena scoring is worse than before Update 6

Saturn

alkoriak wrote: »

A death cannot be given a fixed value as penalty since it can be a "choice" from the players to go quicker. Example in the last seconds of a stage a healer will focus on dps at the risks of loosing one team member but assuring this way a better time that if he needed to also protect and heal allies at this moment. Just an example among others where a death doesnt mean less skill.

That might be the case, but as it stands there is not really a discernible skill gap between the top teams, as much as there was before. Making a death cause a penalty would effectively restore this "skill gap" as players with 10+ deaths would all of the sudden vanish from the top, leaving only the groups that have no deaths or very few. It should NOT only rely on speed, it is an obvious flaw that I hope we can all agree on. Personally I want the leaderboards to be punishing, because that way it feels rewarding to be on it. As it stands it is just whichever group kills stuff the fastest and groups are beating each other by mere seconds, which score-wise makes a huge difference.

I refuse to believe that they put very much thought into this point system, it really just is mind boggling.

pugyourself

Saturn wrote: »

I personally think that the way the scoring system is handled after Update 6 is worse than before. Since the change I have completed it as a tank nine times and from those nine completions it seems very evident that deaths do not in fact matter very much or if anything at all.

I thought to myself, "Well since ZOS have yet to release any sort of 'Formula' of how the scoring works I should try myself". I therefore took my nine completions all of which I have recorded and put them into a program called Graph to figure out what type of graph type would fit it the best to better get a grasp on how to approach a run through vDSA.


From lowest point score to highest, here are my nine plot points + sixteen submitted plot points (seconds have been multiplied by 1.67 to go from 1-100 instead of 1-60 to fit the graph):

1188 points --- 127.00 minutes *Originally 127m 00s*
2040 points --- 120.0835 minutes *Originally 120m 5s*
3119 points --- 111.3006 minutes *Originally 111m 18s*
4449 points --- 100.4843 minutes *Originally 100m 29s* -- Submitted @Garkin
4963 points --- 96.3173 minutes *Originally 96m 19s*
5364 points --- 93.5010 minutes *Originally 93m 3s* -- Submitted @Garkin
5942 points --- 88.3507 minutes *Originally 88m 21s* -- Submitted @Garkin
6904 points --- 80.5344 minutes *Originally 80m 32s*
7180 points --- 78.2839 minutes *Originally 78m 17s*
7424 points --- 76.3006 minutes *Originally 76m 18s* -- Submitted @Garkin
7654 points --- 74.4342 minutes *Originally 74m 26s*
7964 points --- 71.9185 minutes *Originally 71m 55s*
9290 points --- 61.1336 minutes *Originally 61m 8s*
10056 points --- 54.9185 minutes *Originally 54m 55s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10065 points --- 54.8350 minutes *Originally 54m 50s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10113 points --- 54.4509 minutes *Originally 54m 27s* -- Submitted by @ZeroIndex
10154 points --- 54.1002 minutes *Originally 54m 6s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10285 points --- 53.0501 minutes *Originally 53m 3s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10447 points --- 51.7348 minutes *Originally 51m 44s* -- Submitted as nr.1 NA Daggerfall Covenant score as of 04/21/2015
10459 points --- 51.6346 minutes *Originally 51m 38s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10569 points --- 50.7348 minutes *Originally 50m 44s* -- Submitted by @Jaerlach
10587 points --- 50.6012 minutes *Originally 50m 36s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10688 points --- 49.7682 minutes *Originally 49m 46s* -- Submitted by @Jaerlach
10714 points --- 49.5511 minutes *Originally 49m 33s* -- Submitted by @Katinas
10839 points --- 48.5511 minutes *Originally 48m 33s* -- Submitted by @Katinas

Deaths are not factored into this as I do not actually believe they make a difference. If deaths mattered there would be inconsistencies in the graph, which would show up in the "R" value, which determines the accuracy of the graph line going through all the plot points, the closer it is to 1 the more accurate it is, if it is 1 it is 100% accurate, i.e. the graph line fits all points perfectly.

Now, looking at the very first plot point there is a very important observation we can make, it passes beyond the 2 hour mark aka 120 minutes, which is the time where the points start degrading from your score gained from completing all stages i.e. 2050 (200 per stages 1-9 and 250 for stage 10). This means that the 5 extra seconds over the 2 hour mark makes the score degrade from 2050 to 2040, which leads to the conclusion that every 1 second is worth 2 points (to be precise it is more like 2.05).

Alright, here is a picture of the graph that came from these twenty-five plot points using a linear "trendline" function:



The Y axis is score (in thousands) and the X axis is time (in minutes).
*Keep in mind that some plot points are not a 100% visible as other plot points overlay them*

As mentioned before the "R" determines accuracy and here it states that it is 100% accurate, which again supports my theory that a death is worth nothing. Had this not been true there would have been deviant plot points as some runs were done in less than 20 lives and some in over 40.

Make of this what you will, I for one find it very absurd that deaths do not matter at all, no point reduction, but just the time lost from recovering. As I understood it, they wanted to alter the Trials and DSA from being Marathon sprints to something more complex and ended up making it even worse, at least for DSA.

Veteran Dragonstar Arena before Update 6 punished a death hard, but therefore also encouraged careful play. If you have been on a run with any of the highest ranking vDSA teams then you know it is all about doing it as fast as possible and no longer has that skillful play about it, as the DPS'es hit so hard that every single enemy melts before it fully emerges from its portal. It is a sad thing to see and those who are able to complete it without any deaths or very few are not rewarded as they should be.

I think what we need for vDSA is a hardmode like scoring system (like a trial hardmode completion) where a deathless run is awarded with a great sum of extra points that will offset the really skillful players from the really fast ones.


Eh, but these are just my thoughts on the matter and I will keep updating my graph. You are yourself welcome to provide me with a time and score in the form of a picture from clearing vDSA and it shall be added.

TLDR version?

Saturn

Rune_Relic wrote: »

Perhaps you should argue about the value of deaths.
What penalty should death bring.. exactly ?
Should time based leader boards simply include number of deaths and let you argue about what that means ?
As opposed to ZOS create a formula that some think are too penalising and some think don't penalise enough.
I mean if you cant come to a concensus.... how could ZOS ever make a formula you would be happy with ?

There does not need to be a concensus. It just has to be a fair system that rewards skillful play and not only completion time. There will always be people defending either, but you will mostly see people who have climbed to the top after 1.6 be the one defending it, because they are now considered the best, whereas the people that dislike it were the top before 1.6. Either way, from the reactions / comments on this thread it seems like the concensus here is that the system is too simple.

The scoring system is so simple that it does not do justice to a skillbased game such as ESO.

vDSA is the very top of PvE content in the game at the moment. Everything is punishing, which in turn makes a perfect run very rewarding to pull off. So why the hell would they take something like this and ruin it with a poorly constructed scoring system that is not multi-faceted like the game itself, but instead is so simple that a *** linear graph can be used to explain it.. It just does not make sense.

Saturn

@pugyourself
TLDR version?

Let me make it very simple:

Scoring = dumb (because it is too basic)

Only thing that matters for score = time (-2.05 points per second spent)

Yada, yada, yada, something about how stupid it all is, yada, yada..

pugyourself

Saturn wrote: »

@pugyourself
TLDR version?

Let me make it very simple:

Scoring = dumb (because it is too basic)

Only thing that matters for score = time (-2.05 points per second spent)

Yada, yada, yada, something about how stupid it all is, yada, yada..

Thank you sir.

Nifty2g

Death score penalties would make dsa much more competitive, but ZOS likes to cater for the people who can't play. I still hate this update and what they did to trials and dsa.

The_Saint

Garkin wrote: »

silentgecko wrote: »

Further Times from us:

61min 10 sek: 9286 Points
115min 31sek 2600 Points

Other Score i know:
52min 30sek: 10351

For Hel Ra / Sanctum:
I think in Hel Ra the timelimit is 30 Mins. And the Final Score is round about 6880 i think (was our last one). You get more Points in final when you kill all Gargoyles and stuff.

And i think for Sanctum it is 45 / 50 Mins. Don't know the Final Score yet, but will watch my recent streams to find out

Edit: Final Score for killing everything in Sanctum is 10.525 Points.

I have added estimated score for DSA and AA to RaidTimer. If you know numbers, you can add support for other trials - you will have to edit this two tables:

local timeLimits = {
    [0] = 0,    --none
    [1] = 0,    --Hel Ra Citadel
    [2] = 1200, --Aetherian Archive
    [3] = 0,    --Sanctum Ophidia
    [4] = 7200, --Dragonstar Arena (Veteran)
}

local raidPoints = {
    [0] = 0,    --none
    [1] = 0,    --Hel Ra Citadel
    [2] = 7300, --Aetherian Archive
    [3] = 0,    --Sanctum Ophidia
    [4] = 2050, --Dragonstar Arena (Veteran)
}

@Garkin
Normal and hardmodes have the same timelimits or?

We have done the hardmode SO yesterday in 33 min 13sek and have 40561 points. Hardmode points 50200.
So my math say timelimit is 30min 01sek...

((1801-1993)*(50200/1000)+50200)= 40561, 6 points

EgoRush

Saturn wrote: »

There does not need to be a concensus. It just has to be a fair system that rewards skillful play and not only completion time. There will always be people defending either, but you will mostly see people who have climbed to the top after 1.6 be the one defending it, because they are now considered the best, whereas the people that dislike it were the top before 1.6. Either way, from the reactions / comments on this thread it seems like the concensus here is that the system is too simple.

Mostly, yes. But just to defend myself and our guild (Hodor) a little. Hodor had one of the best scores worldwide for arena pre-1.6 and, to my knowledge, we're 1 of 2 teams getting 12K scores in arena now. However, we are all of a like mind that a death penalty should exist. Our best arena run had 3 deaths, but we are doing runs with zero deaths too. The top scores should be deathless in my opinion. As a healer I feel I can be lazy at times now - why heal someone when I know my Jesus Beam is out-DPSing them during the execute phase? Teamwork is nothing to me when a boss is <10% health (slight exaggeration...)

EgoRush

Ah also, with regards to the OP, this data is amazing! Keep it up! And @Garkin for the add-on. Brilliant work. For more data: our run of 38 minutes 37 seconds was 12,059 points in arena. We've topped this since, but I can't remember the time, apologies.

Xantaria

Just saying that what some people say here that deaths don't matter is ***. A death at a crucial point can cost you 10+ seconds (in some cases even a minute, for example in case of wipe or on stage 9/10) Which is absolutely devastating when going for a world top score. For a world top score deaths matter as much as they did before because you just HAVE to survive for a perfect run.

In addition to that a death makes you loose our beloved bugged Camouflaged Hunter for your stamina builds --> you loose a lot of dps (=time) if you can't get it up immediatly again in stage 3/6/7/9.

Erlex

This seems to be a clear and cut case of "They screwed it up and no one realized because they hide the "super secret formula", for absolutely no freaking reason". I doubt they intentionally made DSA different than other trials (thats extra work, and that's pretty uncharacteristic of ZoS).

Saturn

Erlex wrote: »

This seems to be a clear and cut case of "They screwed it up and no one realized because they hide the "super secret formula", for absolutely no freaking reason". I doubt they intentionally made DSA different than other trials (thats extra work, and that's pretty uncharacteristic of ZoS).

DSA isn't actually different, I have done the math on the other trials and you can see @Garkin has also done the calculations on it here in this thread. Same deal, super simple scoring system, the only reason why Trials are a bit different is because they have the extra score you can get from beating Hardmode.

Saturn

Xantaria wrote: »

Just saying that what some people say here that deaths don't matter is ***. A death at a crucial point can cost you 10+ seconds (in some cases even a minute, for example in case of wipe or on stage 9/10) Which is absolutely devastating when going for a world top score. For a world top score deaths matter as much as they did before because you just HAVE to survive for a perfect run.

In addition to that a death makes you loose our beloved bugged Camouflaged Hunter for your stamina builds --> you loose a lot of dps (=time) if you can't get it up immediatly again in stage 3/6/7/9.

I hate to be a prick, but your comment is idiotic. You are saying that a death does matter in time, however that is not the problem being discussed. A death should have a penalty score, which it doesn't, currently you are just being judged on the time you spend completing. If you have a death that is merely just more time spent completing, IT IS NOT AN ACTUAL SCORE PENALTY, which is what I think you are having a hard time understanding.

Further, you say that a death makes you lose Camouflaged Hunter, which is a broken skill at the moment that unintentionally lasts forever when you kill an enemy that is naturally affected by it. Guess what, you are not intended to have a skill that lasts forever because of a bug, not to mention it also procs multiple times, which is not intended either.

If a death had a penalty, like say minus 500 points, then the top scores wouldn't be runs with deaths in them, which they currently are. The whole premise of the vDSA score is based on just one thing, TIME, nothing more, nothing less. It is not a concept that by any means should be hard to grasp.

Saturn

EgoRush wrote: »

Ah also, with regards to the OP, this data is amazing! Keep it up! And @Garkin for the add-on. Brilliant work. For more data: our run of 38 minutes 37 seconds was 12,059 points in arena. We've topped this since, but I can't remember the time, apologies.

I have stopped inserting more times/scores into the graph since I did it initially just to prove a point.

The ironically funny part of this whole thing is that you could give me your score and just using a very simple calculation I could tell you your time spent

16810 - score = x
x / 123 = time spent in minutes
x / 2.05 = time spent in seconds

As simple as that..

ZOS_RichLambert

/lurk

Samadhi

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

When I saw your name pop up on the thread list I was excited to see what insights the new Creative Director had in store for us.

You definitely earned my Awesome with this.

Zapzarap

Samadhi wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

When I saw your name pop up on the thread list I was excited to see what insights the new Creative Director had in store for us.

You definitely earned my Awesome with this.

Guess he is here to see the "super secret formula" from ZOS They are not telling their employee how the scoring works because it's kind of embarrassing

After all, at least he is the first ZOS employee that cares for the broken leaderboard And if you are still here... Please remove the bug with all this "0" in the leaderboard which is in there since 1.6(!)...

If you don't know what I'm talking about:

1. Open the game
2. Log in with one of your character
3. Wait for the (very very long) loading screen to finish his work
4. Press "J"
5. Go to "Leaderboards" => "Trials"
6. Choose one

Hope this was detailed enough

Samadhi

Zapzarap wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

When I saw your name pop up on the thread list I was excited to see what insights the new Creative Director had in store for us.

You definitely earned my Awesome with this.

Guess he is here to see the "super secret formula" from ZOS They are not telling their employee how the scoring works because it's kind of embarrassing
...

Going to be honest, have no idea what is going on in this thread.
Have never run DSA.

Just saw his name pop up when refreshing General Discussion and was like "holy ***, the new Creative Director speaks!"

Then got in here and saw the comment -- checked the Dev Tracker and saw the post is not present there.

Rich trolled me.

Can agree that it is good that he is looking into it though; hopefully you guys see some progress on the issue.

Saturn

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

Wouldn't surprise me if this was the first time a ZOS employee looked at this thread.

Veteran Dragonstar Arena has a lot of issues, I think nobody in their right mind can deny this and it is currently one of the few things that are still competitive in the PvE side of the game. I think it could use an overhaul if you guys intend to continue spacing out the gaps between content updates like this.

HeroOfNone

Just a question, how would you want this scored? Just with the time and deaths factored in? How about with the armor, CP points, race, and skills used? Maybe a handicap given for vampires? Doubt we'll ever see a way to track a 100% skill in a DSA trial verses the folks that have subscribed to the simple chain, stack, and burn method that has taken over most end game strategies.

david31741

As VDSA is currently one only 2 or 3 "end game" "things to do" - I hope they work to address since many players are in the "end game" phase.

I and many others love the idea of VDSA- it a good time and the competitive scoring is incentive for many... I'd llove to see more VSDA type of events for 4 man groups.

To improve the "experience" I'd throw these ideas out....

• Do not allow damaging the portal to hit mob i.e. dealing damage while mob is spawning.
• Make deaths subtract from the score
• Increase need for healing role - no specific ideas in mind
• reduce time/speed from being as"weighted" as it is in overall score

Zapzarap

david31741 wrote: »

As VDSA is currently one only 2 or 3 "end game" "things to do" - I hope they work to address since many players are in the "end game" phase.

I and many others love the idea of VDSA- it a good time and the competitive scoring is incentive for many... I'd llove to see more VSDA type of events for 4 man groups.

To improve the "experience" I'd throw these ideas out....

• Do not allow damaging the portal to hit mob i.e. dealing damage while mob is spawning.
• Make deaths subtract from the score
• Increase need for healing role - no specific ideas in mind
• reduce time/speed from being as"weighted" as it is in overall score

And maybe one more thing: DPS shield or DPS cap at certain poits... It can not be that high DPS groups are skipping boss mechanics because of to high DPS... Maybe I am wrong but for me its not very skillfull skip phases with DPS. There should be a certain point where you "have to wait". Dont get me wrong, there should be a differenz between "high DPS" and "low DPS" groups...
But for example Mantikora... Some groups can just DPS hin down without going down to kill the mini Boss. Is this working as intended? I dont think so...
Maybe give him a DPS shield that says "as long as there is one member in the whole, manti will not get DMG from any attacks". With this, higher DPS groups still have an advantage in the phases between but they also have to deal with all mechanics...

But maybe I am wrong and "max DPS ignore all the mechanics" is what players want...

Suru

Saturn wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

Wouldn't surprise me if this was the first time a ZOS employee looked at this thread.

Veteran Dragonstar Arena has a lot of issues, I think nobody in their right mind can deny this and it is currently one of the few things that are still competitive in the PvE side of the game. I think it could use an overhaul if you guys intend to continue spacing out the gaps between content updates like this.

At face value yea, but i think vDSA and its scoring is understandable. Score = time, deaths don't affect score direoctly, but when you think about it, its how you die which affects your score. If you wipe, then, then bam you lost score, if you die at at the end of a round and rez you lost minimal time. Deaths indirectly effect score. Its pretty stupid to me that we get a super fast time and someone dies with only one or two deaths to tank an entire raid score. Time=score=time dead=lost time=lost score.

Saturn

HeroOfNone wrote: »

Just a question, how would you want this scored? Just with the time and deaths factored in? How about with the armor, CP points, race, and skills used? Maybe a handicap given for vampires? Doubt we'll ever see a way to track a 100% skill in a DSA trial verses the folks that have subscribed to the simple chain, stack, and burn method that has taken over most end game strategies.

You make a really valid point. My point is just that the scoring is too simple, there should be more variables and @david31741 in the post below yours made some really valid points.

First off I'm a big fan of the Death Penalty feature, I don't think time spent ressing someone is a severe enough penalty, I think top scores should be people who can do it deathlessly. Further, this kind of penalty would be more in line with the Vet Dungeon achievements / hardmodes.

Just having a score that's based on time is really only applicable in a racing game. To me ESO isn't a racing game

Saturn

Suru wrote: »

Saturn wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

Wouldn't surprise me if this was the first time a ZOS employee looked at this thread.

Veteran Dragonstar Arena has a lot of issues, I think nobody in their right mind can deny this and it is currently one of the few things that are still competitive in the PvE side of the game. I think it could use an overhaul if you guys intend to continue spacing out the gaps between content updates like this.

At face value yea, but i think vDSA and its scoring is understandable. Score = time, deaths don't affect score direoctly, but when you think about it, its how you die which affects your score. If you wipe, then, then bam you lost score, if you die at at the end of a round and rez you lost minimal time. Deaths indirectly effect score. Its pretty stupid to me that we get a super fast time and someone dies with only one or two deaths to tank an entire raid score. Time=score=time dead=lost time=lost score.

Your argument is one that a lot of people make, but I don't think the few seconds you waste ressurrecting or losing dps is a proper penalty. It has to be punishing, otherwise it isn't challenging or rewarding to pull off. I mean healers have begun almost not healing because their dps is more valued. Tanks in top groups are currently nothing more than glorified dpses with a taunt.

My point is just that this racing game that vDSA and other trials have turned into is a tiny bit too ridiculous and undoubtedly not intended.

Personofsecrets

The lowest common denominator of any competition is time. This can't be changed.

Saturn

Personofsecrets wrote: »

The lowest common denominator of any competition is time. This can't be changed.

The only denominator in this case is time (-.-' )

tordr86b16_ESO

Zapzarap wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

/lurk

When I saw your name pop up on the thread list I was excited to see what insights the new Creative Director had in store for us.

You definitely earned my Awesome with this.

Guess he is here to see the "super secret formula" from ZOS They are not telling their employee how the scoring works because it's kind of embarrassing

After all, at least he is the first ZOS employee that cares for the broken leaderboard And if you are still here... Please remove the bug with all this "0" in the leaderboard which is in there since 1.6(!)...

If you don't know what I'm talking about:

1. Open the game
2. Log in with one of your character
3. Wait for the (very very long) loading screen to finish his work
4. Press "J"
5. Go to "Leaderboards" => "Trials"
6. Choose one

Hope this was detailed enough

lol

Zapzarap

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

lol

What?^^ I reportet this bug ~5 times ingame, also guild members did... Then I wrote a message to a Mod and he told me "Report it ingame for a quick response". I told him that I did... he asked me "where does the bug appear"... i mean REALY?!

Saturn

Zapzarap wrote: »

tordr86b16_ESO wrote: »

lol

What?^^ I reportet this bug ~5 times ingame, also guild members did... Then I wrote a message to a Mod and he told me "Report it ingame for a quick response". I told him that I did... he asked me "where does the bug appear"... i mean REALY?!

That's not the only problem with the leaderboard actually. If you get the same score as another team those teams will blend together as one and just take the same spot. For example, I happen to have the exact same score as another team on the vDSA leaderboard, so now it looks like I completed it with them to people that have no idea. I have seen cases of it showing AD, EP and DC in the same team too, pretty silly.