Season 7 Stats Rundown

[Note that this initially covered the first 172 of 190 races. I updated everything relevant when they added the last 5 days.]


While planning every season, i've made a private breakdown of the races that fall outside the norm from my perspective. Started posting them since Season 6.

(all times PST)
Fri 28 Mar 5pm 3 Hour Party (S07C002)
Tue 1 Apr 7pm 1 Hr Exiles Everywhere (S07F022) - The only thing new this season.
Sat 5 Apr 3pm 1 Hr Exiles Everywhere (S07F038)
Sat 5 Apr 11pm 3 Hour Party (S07C040)
Tue 8 Apr 11pm 1 Hr Exiles Everywhere (S07F053)
Fri 11 Apr 10am 150 Minute Party (S07C064) - Interesting because "long" races are rare now.
Sat 12 Apr 6pm 1 Hr Exiles Everywhere (S07F070)
Mon 14 Apr 10am 1 Hr Exiles Everywhere (S07F078)
Fri 18 Apr 11am 2 Hr Fracturing Party (S07F094)
Sat 19 Apr 7am 1 Hour BLAMT Solo (S07F097)
Mon 21 Apr 9pm 1 Hour ELBLAMT (S07F108)
Tue 22 Apr 9am 150 Minute TI Party (S07C111)
Wed 23 Apr 1pm 3 Hour Party (S07C116)
Fri 25 Apr 10pm 1 Hour Turbo EL (S07F126)
Sun 27 Apr 2am 1 Hr Fracturing Party (S07F132)
Sun 27 Apr 8am 2 Hour LR Party (S07F133) - Must not again miss this once-per-season race!
Thu 1 May 4pm 1 Hour ELBLAMT (S07F151)
Mon 5 May 9pm 1 Hour ELBLAMT (S07F168)
Tue 6 May 5am 1 Hr Exiles Everywhere (S07F170)
Thu 8 May 1am 3 Hour Party (S07C177)
Fri 9 May 3am 1 Hr Fracturing Party (S07F182)
Fri 9 May 8pm 1 Hr Fracturing Party (S07F185)

* From the 1.1 patch notes: "Fixed a bug in the race prize awarding where multiple characters on the same account could receive points prizes for the same race. Now, the highest level (alive) character that participated counts for points. Multiple characters can receive points in Descent, Descent: Champions and Endless Ledge races."
* There's a strong pattern of shortening and simplification: shorter races, with far fewer crazy mods.
** Even ignoring week races, there is a 15% decrease in racing time: 224.3 hours of racing, down from 264 hours. The average race is 71 min, down from 91 min. Very bad change.
* Many, many more timeslots used: 24/24, up from 15/24. Great change, much celebrate.
* ZERO Cutthroat. They will thankfully occur alongside the season, which indicates a commitment to enacting long-term Cutthroat at some point this season. Though i'll believe it when i see it.

* 80 (42%) [C]ompetitive, up from 50 (28%). This is because of D:C (see below).
* 60 (32%) [F]un, down from 75 (42%).
* 50 (26%) [S]ignature, "down" from 50 (28%).
* 0 (0%) [W]eek, down from 2 (1%).

* Legacy Descent is back, OMGWTFBBQ! Under the [Competitive] tag as they were when last seen. This means a larger proportion of Void League races, which i love.
** S05 had 55/177 (31%): 14 Endless Ledge, 27 Descent: Champions, 14 Descent.
** S06 had 39/177 (22%): 18 Endless Ledge, 21 Descent: Champions, 0 Descent.
** S07 has 67/172 (39%): 26 Endless Ledge, 28 Descent: Champions, 13 Descent.
* Descent: Champions has been promoted to Competitive, awarding Demigods, with the same level brackets. Cue rage. I'm ambivalent as i very rarely win demis anyway.
* 9x BLAMT (5 Party, 1 Solo, 3 EL), up from 5 (1 Party, 1 Solo, 1 EL, 2 Fracturing Party).
* 4x Fracturing races: Fun 1hr & 2hr Party with no other mods. Much less than anticipated, though few will complain. I would have liked to see a few more Fracturing and a few less BLAMT.
* 6x Exiles Everywhere races. Presumably utter insanity. Perhaps spawning in place of rares? I suspect it's in addition. :P

* 15x 12 Min Solo Burst [Fun] races (45 in all), up from 9. I'm happy with this as Bursts are a very nice change of pace. Though i'm not happy if it's at the expense of 3 hour races.
** ZERO Turbo Solo Bursts again.
* 105x (55%) 1 hour races, up from 69 (39%). Wow, what the fuck is this change from out of left field? Do not like. I'd rather have e.g. 27x 40min, 40x 1 hour, 27x 80min or something. Variety please.
* 9x 2 hour races with various mods, down from 20!? Very, very bad change.
* 4x 3 hour Party races [Competitive], down from 12!? What in the actual fuck happened to races longer than 1 hour?!
* ZERO 4 hours, down from 1. Again, i do not approve. Just when mere humans got the taste of Cruel progression races, you take it away.
* ZERO 8 hours again. Bring back my favorite race length!
* ZERO 12 hour races again. Happy with that, but not if it's at the expense of 8 hour races as well.
* ZERO 1 week races, down from 2. Congrats to SlixSC for finally getting his voice heard. Those who like week races are left with nothing, but we can pray they were moved to offseason, with a non-silly reward structure.
* ZERO 1 months again.

* First legacy unique reward (Headhunter), contributing the lion's share of this season's record value of race rewards.


While the schedule and rewards appear quite bland, the schedule is improved, the quantity was increased, the formats are more streamlined/focused and i like the higher proportion of Void League races. The only thing i find very disappointing is the massive shortening of race lengths. I'm hoping that is in preparation for a parallel PVP season and perma Cutthroat league.


Edits:
* Added the 1.1 patch note.
* Updated the numbers to include the last 18 races. Not much difference. Notable: 15% decrease in race hours rather than 21%; 39%(!) Void races; 2 more Fracturing; a 3 hour race.

* Demigod's Bounty (Unique Golden Obi) introduced. Rumored to be a L12 belt with 20-30 implicit rarity.

* Signature level brackets are almost identical despite 15 minute shorter duration. Strictly harder in fact - 2nd bracket needs 1 more level. Can shrines and corruption really make that big of a difference in fixed seed? What did Chris' testing reveal? :P
* Descent top level bracket requires 1 more level (24).
* 3 hour party races top 2 level brackets require 1 more level.

* Signature and Competitive races now reward random prizes. 15/10/5 of the first 3 season rewards. Possibly because D:C became Competitive?
* Fun race random prizes scaled back for the 2nd season in a row, massively this time. Instead of 91 spread among the first 7 rewards, 60/30/10 of the first 3 season rewards. Bursts go from 32 spread among the first 7 rewards, to 20/10/3 of the first 3 rewards.



Season 6 Rundown - What's New or Interesting

Pretty sure the longer races had less participation, which is probably why they dropped them. It's easier to set aside an hour to race than it is 3 hours.

The fact that Descent Champions is now competitive is hilariously bad given that that race type has very little skill component at the top end. Descent isn't very much better imo, but at least that one has an endpoint that nobody has reached in a 1 hour setting.

Glad that 1 week/1 month got removed personally. More races to be scheduled in those times, and because those races have historically been dictated more by number of hours and your map drop luck more than traditional racing skill.

No 1 week races makes me reall happy. Really hope to see them as part of the off-season or maybe even perhaps during season 7 but not as part of it (given that most races this season seem relatively short I think this would be a viable option).

As for D:C being a competitive race, personally I think it's a joke, but what can you realistically do, it was bound to happen eventually and pretty much what I expected (I even thought it was going to be the sig for season 7, so D:C "only" being competitive funnily enough gives me reason to be happy.)

I might be alone in this but I think S7 is a step in the right direction compared to S6, at least schedule-wise. No 1 week races, less 2h+ races (boring docks grind).

But if shrines make it into races on top of Vaal Zones none of it counts for shit as far as I'm concerned.

It almost seems that GGG have this habit of accompanying every potentially good change with 2-3 bad or at the very least questionable changes.

"

Kheffin wrote:

Pretty sure the longer races had less participation, which is probably why they dropped them. It's easier to set aside an hour to race than it is 3 hours.

Yeah i suppose. Looking at my stats 1 hour races are far, far more popular than any other length.

Slix makes a good point, all that most of us really lost is tons of Docks grinding. Though what would have been nice to see in its place are some longer progression races, like a couple 4 hours, 6 hours, and 8 hours. Or progression-based races, as has been suggested repeatedly.

I guess i'll just have to savor the 2hr plus races more:

8x 120min (s06 = 19x)
4x 135min (s06 = 7x)
2x 150min (s06 = 1x)
3x 180min (s06 = 12x)

17x total (s06 = 40x, incl. a 4hr)

"

unsane wrote:

"

Kheffin wrote:

Pretty sure the longer races had less participation, which is probably why they dropped them. It's easier to set aside an hour to race than it is 3 hours.

Yeah i suppose. Looking at my stats 1 hour races are far, far more popular than any other length.

Slix makes a good point, all that most of us really lost is tons of Docks grinding. Though what would have been nice to see in its place are some longer progression races, like a couple 4 hours, 6 hours, and 8 hours. Or progression-based races, as has been suggested repeatedly.

I guess i'll just have to savor the 2hr plus races more:

8x 120min (s06 = 19x)
5x 135min (s06 = 7x)
2x 150min (s06 = 1x)
3x 180min (s06 = 12x)

18x total (s06 = 40x, incl. a 4hr)

Yeah they could have certainly tried some 4h+ races, the only problem is that it's very hard to get people motivated for longer races (especially in party races longer than 2h), I guess if there was money on the line it would be much easier, but since it's only "race rewards" and/or demis most people simply can't be arsed to invest several hours into 3h+ races, which don't reward players with substantially more rewards than shorter races. Most of the time it's the same reward structure irrespective of race length, so there really is no added incentive to playing longer races.

I don't blame people for not wanting to invest several hours at a time for effectively nothing of real value. I mean you look at most competitive games such as SC, CS or DOTA the most extreme length for a single match is somewhere between 1 or 2 hours. Compare that to racing where there is pretty much nothing to be won and it's understandable that most people will have motivation issues to play races longer than 1 or 2 hours. And we are talking several races a day (up to 6 or 7) and not just 1 or 2.

But yeah at least 1 or 2 cruel races would have been nice, but I think GGG are aware that most people simply won't have the motivation to participate in such races or perhaps might not even have the time to participate even if they wanted to.

"

SlixSC wrote:

don't reward players with substantially more rewards than shorter races. Most of the time it's the same reward structure irrespective of race length, so there really is no added incentive to playing longer races.

In that case they could give better rewards for longer races. Would it really break the system? Never knew why they give the same rewards regardless of length.

"

unsane wrote:

"

SlixSC wrote:

don't reward players with substantially more rewards than shorter races. Most of the time it's the same reward structure irrespective of race length, so there really is no added incentive to playing longer races.

In that case they could give better rewards for longer races. Would it really break the system? Never knew why they give the same rewards regardless of length.

I honestly don't know. I think both sides have good arguments in this debate. The people in favour of longer races will argue that "longer races should give better rewards because they are more of a commitment" whereas the people who dislike longer races will argue that "they shouldn't be mandatory races to make it to 1k points or into the top 20".

It's kind of a pointless debate though, because there aren't any longer races on the season schedule, so it's whatever... at least until season 8.

"

unsane wrote:

* 8x 2 hour races
* 3x 3 hour Party races

Nice, thanks for this post and info. I am pretty happy with the new race season schedule. Shorter racers are much more enjoyable in my opinion plus normal Descent is back. More Endless Ledge as well which is great.

Nice breakdown.

Hearty lol for D:C being competitive, and I heartily lol as someone who's won 1st in class in almost all the D:Cs I've done.