Did someone actually calculated how many epic tasks we have in this race? Because I lost count.. you see them at least once every lap.. we have had more than ten races thus far and this is getting more and more ridiculous. Team race has lost its essence. The fist three races were fine, we have many craft runes, feed, collect gold etc, the kind of tasks that involve team work, not TEAM SPENDING GEMS AND MONEY!!! Why dont you call this CASH race instead by the way things have been going lately? Also, forget about those "you dont have to use gems, you can breed the epics" or "everyone share the gems" statements.. First, its true that 30 players can share the gems BUT the number of individual breeding 11 tasks (cost 240 gems, IT WENT UP!) has skyrocket to a point where players dont see a point of using gems because nobody knows how many more of this task is coming.. And forget bout the p2w players please, no offense to you but you got your cash to spend, not everyone has the ability to throw cash like that. Yes, SP needs to pay their bills too but it has gotten to a point where it makes the event lost its essence and the game worse. I am guessing not many people are buying chests and the heroic orbs for warmasters so they need to get more money from races, as reflected by the amount of epics tasks in this race. They know most teams want to win, hence would pay however much it takes to win. Races used to be fun, but nowadays with the changes in tasks, it takes away the fun. To make things worse, the old issues are still there- unfair kicking, using people for gems, so many morality issues. Does SP care? Or would they care? No, they only look at the $$$ rolling in, plus they would say that's not their issue. Now everyone seems to be rolling out race teams, and it also makes the growing team stand no chance to winning, and more issues. Does SP know this? yes. Do they care? No. Sadly. Just another reason for people to quit this game. @Fox

Like in my post about it, we had 5 epic nodes IN THE SAME LAP, so EVERY NODE had one ...
There's something really wrong right now.

The way I see it, the race system has been poisoned now for a long time by race teams creation, team hopping, leads exploiting hoppers to get their gems... basically many players ready to sell their mother just to get an easy rank 3 monster, whatever the cost in term of morale or dignity. I see the increase in Epics tasks from a certain point in the race as simply an answer to that: players do whatever they can do to exploit the flawed system, then SP analysis results in increasing task difficulty thus still getting what they expect from race. I certainly don't blame SP for that: they react to what the races have become. And if i were to put any blame, i would blame the players as their actions and the way they approach race event is likely the reason of this epics tasks inflation.

@xargul

you are talking about poisened by players
when the race would be much more fair there would be no need to make race teams, team hopping is also a typical result of the total unfair event.
The difference between the reward for place #1 and #2 and so one is the reason why everybody is looking for a solution to pass only 14 laps to get the 3star monster.
Why should I ran 40, 50 or more laps to finish totally frustrated as second with such a bad reward, when the #1 get 3star monster with only 1 lap more? You have only a chance to win, when you pay with GEMs and Money. Nothing else.

As I said in other posts, I was against race teams at the beginning. But now I am looking for all possibilities to win the race with less invest of GEMs.

When SP will make same changes we told SP often, nobody will need race teams again. Don‘t blame on player who only use the game possibilities, blame on SP which is until now not willing to make changes to make the race much more fair.

@TCML-Lead

and in this race absolutely new a hugh number of PVP fights( single and team jobs). One more thing which is only able to pass, when you invest GEMs.
You are absolutely right. To pass 14Laps is more expensive than at the beginning. I think this race we had in 14 laps 14-20 E requests. And very often the same job directly in the next step. First E in lap 2 all small teams will stop there

At the moment I calculate for my team between 2000 and 3000GEMs for 14 laps.

@Claudius-DC-Sailer said in Team Races- What is the point of this event?:

As I said in other posts, I was against race teams at the beginning. But now I am looking for all possibilities to win the race with less invest of GEMs.

when we realize that we will have no chance to win, we won‘t invest GEMs and stop racing.

At the end SP will get less GEMs and money when the teams react like this. So do it like in Dragon City. Every Team which reaches 14 laps will get the 3star Monster. the difference between #1 and #2 should be Elementium or something like that.

@Claudius-DC-Sailer What's unfair seriously? there are 20 teams, 1 winner: that's the standard rule for a race as far as I know. I don't see the point of an event in which everyone can get the first prize (unless this prize is an old monster eventually..). You compare to dragon city's races but the big difference is that in dragon city you are competing alone in the race and the prize is a specific rarity of dragon that you can't get in other events: that's a different setting than in ML. If they were to do that in ML, many players would probably just focus on the 3 star race monster and don't bother with the other events (unless they are hardcore collectors). I know it is frustrating to finish 2nd, I've been there but still that's the way it is, you're second because someone managed to do better than you, or simply are at a level you can't compete with: that's still not a valid reason to run away to go to steal an easy prize from a baby's mouth. By jumping to race teams you are going to do to other teams the same thing that you are complaining about, isn't it paradoxical?
So overall while i can understand that other players do it that way, I still think that yes races are poisoned by players, not SP: it is poisoned by the inability to accept losing. That's my opinion, i am not attacking anyone here, just saying my thoughts.

@xargul
And I’m saying my opinion. nothing else.
The other team is not better, the other team wants to invest more money. Not the better team wins. The team with more money wins.
And when I see teams after 3rd Race in war with full 3star race monsters, and the team is much weaker than my team (no other ranked L Monster in the complete team) and because of this Race monster we lost the war I decided to do something that this won‘t happen again.

We don't fuss over the races anymore. We get our 4 laps to qualify for the minimum rewards and that's all we worry about. Our team spends very little.

The two top teams we are up against in this race are battling it out right now with over 50 laps. No 3 star monster is worth the kind of money you have to spend to get 50 laps. And one of those two teams with over 50 laps will end up with just a one star monster.

From a "bang for your buck" perspective, the races are one of the worst things in the game to spend your money on.

I say relax and don't lose too much sleep over the races.

@GrnXnham said in Team Races- What is the point of this event?:

No 3 star monster is worth the kind of money you have to spend to get 50 laps.

Completely agree.

@GrnXnham
we will do the same, when all my teammates will have 3 star monster minimum in all categories and books. It is not necessary that this monsters are coming from race. we are working on this goal outside from race much more intensive

@xargul no the race is poisoned by SP from the very beginning. They know what the issues are. The common race issues have been there since day 1- unfair kicking, abuse, unfair race rewards.. we have talked about this since Hercule, Learnean race.. so many suggestions yet SP doesnt bat an eye. Players have no choice but to live with it hence you see so many race teams. There is absolutely no problem with the race format, and you cant expect everyone to win, BUT you didnt even hit the root of the problem- SP knows these common race issues but because the race gets them so much money, they decided not to do anything about it and let the players figure it out- hence lead to your statement of "players poisoning the race" which is completely untrue. You said nobody wants to lose, and that's a problem, well i see it more as players need to find a way to catch up with the p2w players. Some people see the 115 monsters as a big help in wars and pvps, hence teams want to go hard to win, but of course with the current races, you need to spend a ridiculous amount of gems to win it, hence it favors the p2w teams- that's what's unfair. And I fully agree with Claudius' statement. The best team doesnt win the race anymore, its the most spending team wins the race, and the ultimate winner is $P. You asked what's unfair? The essence of the current race is unfair. So many gems task which favors the p2w players/ teams, so the growing, work hard teams stand no chance at all. The gap between p2w and f2p players got even bigger, and you see so many f2p good players leave the game. Its easy to speak from p2w teams point of view, because when you have a few players who can throw out gems and money like changing clothes, the race becomes easy. And then you see the bad leads and co leads who use players just to gem tasks. The race has created more and more issues. We have talked about so many possible ways to solve this issue yet has anything changed? No, the race got worse instead.

Conflicting thoughts on this.

Blame goed both ways imo. SP creates a bad system. Players dodge the bad system, creating discord among and within teams, while giving the finger to smaller teams. SP reacts by making races more expensive instead of fixing the problem they created in the first place. So poison all around.

Not sure why the complaint about this favouring p2w teams. You invest time and money in this game to advance. If. there were more time consuming tasks it would be to the disadvantage of people who don't have much time. If you face an elite team you will mostly see players who have both the money and the time, so you will lose. C'est la vie. When I was in AMAB however, we regularly lost to well organised smaller teams, who had more of an incentive to win. AMAB was a hardcore, Spartan war team with excellent communication and discipline, but badly organised when it came down to races.

Furthermore: if 30 players can gem two epic breeding nodes or similar for 400 gems you can still go a long way in many races. 400 gems is not a skyrocketing price for a lvl 115 monster and it's perfectly possible to save that many gems in between two races without spending a dime.

@Ekto-Gamat

totally agree

from my individual point of view. When you have in all books and categories 5star monsters, there is no need to fight for an 3star monster. I am only racing for my lower teammates. the most race monsters are there for producing gold on my habitats

@Ekto-Gamat There is indeed one thing I forgot to mention. I would blame SP for what you explained very well: it has been more than year now that SP told us they were working on a solution for these team races... so far we are still waiting and that's a big issue as it has created waves of disturbances across the game.

ML's current direction, since the beginning of the year, has obviously been to bolster the mid order. Lots of free low to mid ranked monsters, low ranked VIPs and Nemesis. And Tijen an outlier that any dedicated mid level player could have fully ranked, allowing players of all levels to complete the balancing of Volt.

And at the same time slowing Elite team progress. Warmasters require insane amounts of money AND hardcore dedication to rank immediately, and can't be ranked with Elementium - but are useful even at no or low rank due to area Traits, and attainable by anyone through patience.

Elementium itself is flowing in higher amounts over time, but no longer available in big spurts for Elite teams to gorge on.

Relics are easily obtainable for all (with some excellent ones in Bronze and Silver), and lend another layer of strategy, with Diamond (for the Elites) not being completely OP.

All of those are good things, which slow rather than drive the gap between p2p and f2p players. These things increase commitment by low to mid level players and so sustain and grow the base - and so are good for the game.

But races remain a cancer.

Much negativity (not all) comes from the greediness of players who want more. That is mostly healthy for the game (envy and desire are indicators and drivers of a successful entertainment product and player retention) but in the race context, the greed of players all expecting the race prize, compounded by SP seeing and embracing the spending metrics and not understanding (or just being slow to address) the corresponding social metrics, have created a poison that brings out the worst in all involved. The races simply cannot remain in this form. Frankly, they are beyond mindlessly tedious to me and I detest them, but in some form they have a role to play. Just not in this form.

@C0ntr1v3d you hit the nail on the head once again. Nicely worded

They should just remove races until they find a solution that works better.

Poison or not , players are humans, and humans have a good history in evolution to find the best way to survive.

AS long races works this way, the "posion" will just spread more and more until every team have one for race and one for war and the others probably quit for something else.

I choose to survive and i can be "poison", "cheater" or any fine complement to explain what we are until SP fix the issue.

pretty easy solution. make the rewards for 2-20 better. it gets more teams trying to get 4 laps and makes people not care as much about having to get first no matter what.