It doesn't work because the top pets don't battle for less time.

We would need to do something like top x amount of pets from t8 to t13 get top prize. Fewer in t8 and more in t13. Shortening the time the boss is out would make it a more level playing field. Maybe not as short as two hours, but not a full day. People do stay up that entire time. I spent at least 12 hours on both hydragellos and Jaxon. Thankfully I did get one of the top prizes, but not the one from the jelly war. That was a solid 12+ hours of my life completely wasted

But temp capping pets isn't a good idea because it's just punishing the best pets.

Have two or three bosses, announce the time ahead of time. (Three different related bosses?) If the person cares enough they'll change their schedule to fit the announced time.

People are awake for ~14-18 hours, you don't necessarily need to cover a full 24 hour span. Especially if it's on the weekend.

idea: intead of "500 million HP + healing, it's done when it's done," switch to having 2 or 3 "???? HP" boss waves with each wave lasting EXACTLY x hours. then space each wave out to cover all time zones equally. battlers would be unbounded by the amount of damage we're able to do cumulatively, and our only limiting factor would be time. this would keep us from running into the "oh shit the boss is dying too quickly, better give him shitty full blockers/add on a huge chunk of HP" problem that we see every single time.

stipulation: allow damage from only one wave to count toward a user's total, so that campers (such as myself) can't pull an all-nighter and stack damage from all 2/3/4 waves (which is straight up an unfair advantage, even though doing exactly that has absolutely benefitted me in the past).

bonus: count the maximum damage from any given wave. example: i miss the first wave and only manage a few minutes of grinding at the tail end and wind up with a couple thousand damage. i sit around and wait for the second wave and spend several hours grinding and do a few million damage, then i go to sleep during the third wave (and do zero damage as a result). when tallying up scores, my damage from the first wave is dropped, and i am awarded based on my higher damage yield from the second wave.

bonus x2: announce the new format and allotted time slots ahead of the fact so users 1. will know what to expect, and 2. will be able to prepare and anticipate which wave best suits their schedule.

(i haven't had a chance to read through everyone's posts, so apologies if i'm repeating old ideas here)

I think you stated in a more thorough fashion what I have been trying to say :) Didn't even think of the whole "the boss is dying too fast let's heal and add awful blessings" nonsense

That makes sense. Shorter bosses won't need adjusting though, especially if they have ??? Hp like Satyr stated. I think anyway? I don't see why a boss with unlimited hp needs changed up midway through.

[edit] On the west coast, if you guys ever need some west coast representation... ;)

operating on fixed time intervals is the only way i can think of to avoid the panic-patching. because no matter how much the BAs try to plan for what's gonna happen when the fighting starts, we're always going to find a way to surprise then. we always, always do.

and i'd much rather sit and fight the same boss with the same strategies than suddenly see a bunch of underhanded tricks abruptly shoved in there for the sake of buying more time. i dunno, maybe that's just me.

only drawback is we wouldn't really have that "killing blow" moment where the last to strike gets a copy of the rare prize, but i feel like this method would have way more benefit at the cost of a single person not being able to land a final strike.

The final blow was hardly a good thing any way. Purely luck based.i guess you have a better chance at it the more damage you do but still.

The bosses could even switch up a bit from wave to wave if changes do need to be made because each wave should be separate and no one could double dip in them.

I think this would be a fairer method along with awarding some top prizes to pets based on tiers like I said a few posts ago. It just makes more sense to me than sitting at my computer for 12-16 hours

Or put a max amount of damage per pet or account and once you hit it you are done fighting a boss. That way people with huge pets/well equipped are done much faster but if you have a small pet/poorly equipped you still have a chance if you feel like grinding for hours. My reward for having invested over the years is I now only have to spend two hours fighting or can get the prizes with multiple pets. The reward for new comers who are willing to put in 12/24 of grinding is they have a real chance at top prizes, instead of having not a chance in hell of competing against the biggest/best equipped pets to get highest total damage.

But then you would get more people getting the top prizes than staff probably want.

I'm going to comment as someone who enjoys sitting for a good part of that 24 hour battle trying to go above and beyond the threshold for top prize and tries to do as much damage as possible. While I do enjoy the current system, most especially the sense of community and friendly competition it brings about, it is obviously flawed as everyone knows. I think the ideas of time slots makes the most sense, most especially preset and announced ones. IMO 6 hours to battle is not unreasonable for people who WANT to compete. There could be three 6 hour periods with 2 hours in between where after the first two time slots the boss goes away to heal up or something of the nature, and then the final one lasts until 0 hp. This would stop the need for beefing up defense and allow smaller pets to continue to get icons through. Right now the current system of beefing up defenses after a few hours to make the battle last longer can have quite a crippling impact on lower tiered pets especially. Capping pets stats at a lower point for the boss fight makes sense, but unless you give us a # of stats and allow us to pick our own build, or scale back by % until a pets total reaches the temp-cap, it really screws over people who have specialized builds that might have some stats lower than what a cap that covers stat by stat might entail. And I know more than a few people have said that they statted their pet(s) specifically for their own boss fight strategy. Prizes for top pets in a tier are a great idea in theory but as people have said they're likely to be dominated by top battlers alternate pets. I'm sure for the first boss fight it would inspire a lot more activity/effort/competition, but after the names showed up the same for the top battlers in all tiers, people probably wouldn't try as hard in the next boss fight. If a special prize could be made for the top 5 for each tier in a way that would only include a users top tiered pet that battled, that would work. releasing only 65 copies would give the item a bit more value and hopefully stir up more competition, as would locking out people from taking all tiered prizes. Of course a top battler could likely easily take a lower tiered top spot, but only if they didn't battle with their top pet. They would be sacrificing a chance at THE top prize.

I'm definitely against listing prizes ahead of time. I believe all this would accomplish is to make people reach that threshold and then stop.

I think the tier prizes are flawed, sadly. Firstly there's the brackets in the tiers themselves; most apparent with tier 12s and 13s, but also in the lowest tiers where stats giving the most bang for their buck, with lowest diminishing returns, means a tailored pet vastly outperforms an average build. It'd make sense invest nothing in health, defence or speed for a tier 1/2/3/4/5 or whatever as they're going to be wiped out in a single turn regardless. Stick a Lucky Scroll, your two best bombs, rinse and repeat for the top spot.

Just a small suggestion, but with any kind of future midway tinkering, could the only tinkered thing be healing? It doesn't affect our ability to deal out damage but can slow down the battle if required.