Firstly, I want to say a big congratulations to @SHIKAOTOKO for his first ever 1st in UC! He’s got 2nd twice before and was unlucky to get 4th last time despite getting a tie with 2nd and 3rd. This time he got lucky and was given 1st despite getting a tie with 2nd… which leads me on to why I’m creating this thread.
The Ultimate Challenge leaderboard is having big problems differentiating between the top 10 positions! In recent times it is more common to have a tie and we’ve now had it giving places purely based on RNG:
May 2022 - 2 players tied for 1st, 2 players tied for 10th
Feb 2022 - 3 players tied for 2nd, 2 players tied for 10th
Nov 2021 - No ties!
July 2021 - 2 players tied for 3rd, 2 players tied for 10th
May 2021 - No ties! (literally stepping down 1 loss for 2nd → 3rd → 4th and 10th → 11th)
Mar 2021 - 2 players tied for 2nd, 3 players tied for 10th (only one got it)
I hope that makes the point very clear… almost every time we’re getting ties. Given how these people are using all their tickets for 5 days straight, often making sacrifices in their personal lives, it’s incredibly frustrating for them when they get fewer rewards than someone else who won the same number of battles.
@Dev_VKC I’ve brought this up with you many times but I hope you will consider changing it. To be clear, there are two problems:
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It makes players unhappy when they miss out on rewards they feel they deserve.
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The competition has problems if it cannot differentiate enough that it always creates ties. UC has historically been the PvE place for competition.
Solution 1
Simply change it so when people tie they all get the highest reward for that score. This fixes problem 1, but doesn't do anything about problem 2 and may get exploited by people purposefully getting a tie for 1st.Solution 2
Make levels 2001+ be “hell mode” where the battles are much tougher. For example, the enemy teams could become 24 monster teams, with the first half of the person’s team duplicated and added to the back.
This solution solves both problems and won’t be exploitable. It’s what I really hope, @Dev_VKC, you will do. I suggested it long ago but didn’t have a good idea at the time for how to make the battles tougher. If anyone else can come up with good ideas then please share them!
Bonus problem + solution
The end of the event is horrible timing for all European and African players. This is already being discussed in terms of PvP, but I had to get up at 3:20am to do my final tickets! The fix for UC is easier than PvP… simply extend the length of the event by, say, 8 hours and make us not gain any more tickets for those last 8 hours. It might be awkward to code, but would be a very nice solution for the players!
My sad ramble
As it stands right now, I’m going to stop competing in UC. Instead I will settle for top 50 with the last gatekeeper (lvl 2000). It’s difficult to do 5 days of grinding and with the current setup I cannot reliably differentiate myself from other competitors. I don’t want to always get 1st, I just want us to be challenged properly rather than it being a case of RNG + whether you can focus on the grind properly (e.g. I usually lose 1-2 battles each UC from falling asleep while playing or being distracted by an outside influence because I’m needing to use tickets at awkward times - same for many people I’m sure). This UC we had two people with 1 loss and me with 2. That’s nowhere near enough to differentiate! So if I do grind UC my position isn’t really based on how good my team is and how well I play, it comes down more to whether I get those 1-2 losses from outside influence… which is frustrating. After 5 days of grinding the last thing you want is to be frustrated with the outcome!
Side note: this UC I’m almost glad I got one loss from distraction because otherwise it would’ve been a 3-way tie for 1st. I hate that RNG more than I hate getting an unnecessary loss!
If UC can have this “hell mode” added, I will definitely compete once more. Otherwise, after three years of being in the top 10 I guess I’ve burned out haha.