Race Season Two Announced!

i need 360 points !!!!

I'm glad for the "easier" rewards as I am no experienced player to really race against others. I'm happy to be able to come away with a couple of reward just to say I've taken part :p

Looking forward

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Hochep wrote:

What if you got all top 3 experience in one class? Do you get all 3?

No, only your account record for each class counts.

So--just a disclaimer, I am a relative noob and didn't really get to do much in season one. It may be this is the same as season one, in which case I am rehashing old info. If so, I apologize.

I am not sure how it is in other countries, but in the United States, working professionals often work from around 9:00 a.m. to around 5:00 p.m. with some commute time on either end; I personally work those hours with a one hour commute on either end, but that time will vary on a case-by-case basis.

I also want to preface this by saying I am not a "casual"; I spent a LOT of my free time gaming, and I don't feel the need to be hand-held or catered to. I personally have a good job that takes a decent amount of my time and that I need in order to make my way in life, but that doesn't mean I resent people who can play games more than me. I understand that people can play 3-4 times as much as me on a weekday and am ok with that.

The reason this is relevant is it looks like there are seven "timeslots" that races can fall in to; in Pacific Standard Time, they are 12:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m, 5:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and 8:00 p.m. The problem, in a nutshell, is that these times don't have an even distribution. As someone with the "standard" U.S. workday I described above, and who understands the health perils of severe sleep deprivation, the only race slot I will EVER have the potential to do on a weekday is the 8:00 p.m. one. This isn't just an issue for someone on the West Coast of the U.S either; someone on the East Coast with the same schedule would have it even worse, as the slot that is 2:00 p.m. for me would be 5:00 p.m. for them (when they are getting off work and still have to go through their commute) and the slot that is 8:00 p.m. for me would be 11:00 p.m. for them (which if it is longer than say an hour, would seriously cut into their sleeping time.)

Not only that, but there isn't even an 8:00 p.m. race on a large majority of the days. Only 8 out of 14 of the announced days (not counting the days for in-between seasons) have a race at that time.

The reason for this is the extremely uneven distribution of events. Someone in a timezone eight hours before the Pacific Coast with the same schedule as me would have three race-slots in their "strike zone": 7:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., and 11:00 p.m. Not only that, but they are GUARANTEED minimum one race a day, and have two more than not.

Basically, as I stated at the start: I know some people have more free time than me, and will be able to race more than me. That's a fact of life, and there's not much GGG can do about it. I am totally cool with someone who has 3-4 times the free time participating in 3-4 times the races.

What strikes me as odd is that someone who plays the EXACT SAME AMOUNT OF TIME as me at the EXACT SAME LOCAL TIMES as me gets the chance to participate in 2-3 times as many races as me simply because they happen to live in a different timezone. Now, again, I didn't participate in season one, and the announcement mention more races for people in New Zealand and Australia, so maybe it was skewed the other way around last season. Even in that case, reversing who is getting screwed doesn't seem like the optimal solution; I would think making the races evenly distributed over the major gameplay timezones would seem to be the best, not simply changing who gets the short end of the stick.

Just my two cents on this matter, take it like you will.

TLDR: 'Mericans are screwed this season :(

I think the Ultimate solution is to run every Race type every hour, with a separate Race Ladder for each Race type. :-)

It's nice that you guys added the signature event and the random unique draw (which doesn't really make sense to me yet), but it still saddens me that the solo and party ladders are not separated, or the events run in parallel.

Chris what are the item levels for the Season Two Rewards?

Good stuff!

Will there be a signature event ladder?
Will there be any sort of class specific ladders for events and/or signature events?

I think the signature events are a big step in the right direction. I still worry that the huge wash of races means that very few will see the full force of competition brought to them, but having running records as a form of inter-race event seems like a good way of solving the timezones problem.

Is that a millipede Quill Rain? That's badass.

The alternate artwork of atziri's mirror receives 3d artwork before the normal version of atziri's mirror? I'm so confused right now.