PVE shield

Unknown

A shield for PVE that generates some amount of points when you aren't playing.
Can be

A percentage of of your current score.
A set amount.
A percentage of the maximum progression score.
A percentage of the current top scorer.

Whichever one it is the points you can would be a walk compared to actually playing which is a sprint.
So a node is worth 1000 then the PVE shield gives 1000 an hour. Just enough that you aren't going backwards quite so fast.

_RiO_

While the idea is good, I cannot get behind it if it ends up costing players HP (or ISO):
The core concept of rubberbanding the scores is broken. It should be fixed. It should NOT be exploited as another profit-avenue.

Ofcourse, instead of adding hourly points like this, you might as well disable rubberbanding and get a similar effect, because scores won't inflate as quickly as they do now.

Unknown

kerravon wrote:

A shield for PVE that generates some amount of points when you aren't playing.
Can be

A percentage of of your current score.
A set amount.
A percentage of the maximum progression score.
A percentage of the current top scorer.

Whichever one it is the points you can would be a walk compared to actually playing which is a sprint.
So a node is worth 1000 then the PVE shield gives 1000 an hour. Just enough that you aren't going backwards quite so fast.

It would make things worse. You'd be grinding as much as you are now, only you'd be paying HP on top of it.

simonsez

In other words, you want to pay them so you don't have to play?? Wow...

Marty17

I had this idea before, but like most of us pointed out, it's not very sound to put MORE money into the game with roster slots, health packs, shields, TU, covers, etc.

Unknown

I think there should be a bonus applied if you do not play for 8hrs. They used to do this for a game called Utopia that I played. It was to create an incentive to allow players to 'not play' for a period of time (SLEEP) while not being totally penalized for not checking in every hour.

Maybe minimize the existing rubberband and apply a one time +5 or +10% to each node to compensate? Or maybe something in line w/ a node reward refresh? For PvEs, there is just so little gained after the node rewards are achieved and most of the time you end up w/ double or more of the progression reward.

Unknown

I still think the best way to fix PVE is eliminate all ranking awards and make all awards node or progression based. They could completely eliminate all of the problems of PVEs by removing their competitive aspects.

CrookedKnight

If they don't want to go that far, even scaling things back so the prizes are primarily ISO and HP, maybe with a four-star cover for the top 1-5 finishers, and putting the rest of the "missing" rewards on progression/nodes, would make a world of difference.

simonsez

Ben Grimm wrote:

I still think the best way to fix PVE is eliminate all ranking awards and make all awards node or progression based. They could completely eliminate all of the problems of PVEs by removing their competitive aspects.

And how do you give people high end prizes? They don't really seem very good at anticipating PvE point totals. Hopefully the solution isn't to save the 4* awards for 1300 pt PvP scorers...

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

I still think the best way to fix PVE is eliminate all ranking awards and make all awards node or progression based. They could completely eliminate all of the problems of PVEs by removing their competitive aspects.

And how do you give people high end prizes? They don't really seem very good at anticipating PvE point totals. Hopefully the solution isn't to save the 4* awards for 1300 pt PvP scorers...

If they'd use a more consistent scoring system, they could pinpoint it a lot more carefully.

But more to the point, so what if everyone gets the new guy to 1/1/1? More HP sales for people wanting to get them leveled up. It's not like that breaks the game.

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

I still think the best way to fix PVE is eliminate all ranking awards and make all awards node or progression based. They could completely eliminate all of the problems of PVEs by removing their competitive aspects.

And how do you give people high end prizes? They don't really seem very good at anticipating PvE point totals. Hopefully the solution isn't to save the 4* awards for 1300 pt PvP scorers...

If there's no competition, there's no real need for rubberbanding (you want to reward those who play more), so the node values can be fixed. From there's it's easy to establish correct totals. 1 cover for reasonably casual yet consistent play, 2 for more intense play, and all 3 for the hardcore grinders.

For a simple example, take a 24hr sub with 1 node worth 100 points. 1250ish is the max (100x9 refreshes + 100-90-70-50-30-10 finish in the last 2:24). 600 for 1 cover (two full clears every 12 hrs, or hitting the 2:24 six times). 8500 for 2 covers, 1100 for 3 covers. Extrapolate/adjust that as you will for longer events/bigger nodes.

I could be wrong, but I'd imagine given the effort in PvE's now, that's reasonably close to how the grinding goes for each reward tier, so it's not going to be changing the gameplay much to switch to that type of system.

simonsez

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

If there's no competition, there's no real need for rubberbanding

You'd think so, but I'd anticipate the same kind of complaining we have now (eg, "I wasn't able to play yesterday, and now I have no chance to get the 3rd cover")

simonsez

Ben Grimm wrote:

But more to the point, so what if everyone gets the new guy to 1/1/1?

I was referring to 4*'s like the Fury they gave out to the top 2 in the previous two PvEs. You can't be giving THOSE out like candy, and like I said, if you only give them out in PvP, that'd be a b.s. move.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

But more to the point, so what if everyone gets the new guy to 1/1/1?

I was referring to 4*'s like the Fury they gave out to the top 2 in the previous two PvEs. You can't be giving THOSE out like candy, and like I said, if you only give them out in PvP, that'd be a b.s. move.

No, I figure they set a "reasonable maximum" - basically, how much you could get if you played optimally and still slept - and set the 4* cover at about 95-100% of that amount - and that gets the 4*. Very few people could reach it (and if a too many do, then they raise it).

Dayv

simonsez wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

If there's no competition, there's no real need for rubberbanding

You'd think so, but I'd anticipate the same kind of complaining we have now (eg, "I wasn't able to play yesterday, and now I have no chance to get the 3rd cover")

This is basically how PvE worked when the game was new, and it was AWFUL.

If they get rid of rubberbanding or anything like it, I hope they get rid of competitive PvE entirely. Constant, timed grinding is the worst.

SunCrusher

DayvBang wrote:

simonsez wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

If there's no competition, there's no real need for rubberbanding

You'd think so, but I'd anticipate the same kind of complaining we have now (eg, "I wasn't able to play yesterday, and now I have no chance to get the 3rd cover")

This is basically how PvE worked when the game was new, and it was AWFUL.

If they get rid of rubberbanding or anything like it, I hope they get rid of competitive PvE entirely. Constant, timed grinding is the worst.

... But allowing the late-joiners to rubberband themselves to the top with minimal effort isn't the answer, either - not for something that has exclusive event-only ranking rewards.

But I guess that's what you mean by 'competitive' PvE or do you mean PvE in general?

I love PvE... but this whole rubberbanding system for this last event plus the addition of event-only ranking rewards as opposed to progression rewards unfortunately highlights the problems and in some cases, even magnifies it (like this last Venom event).

Dayv

SunCrusher wrote:

But I guess that's what you mean by 'competitive' PvE or do you mean PvE in general?

Ranked PvE is what I mean. With rubberbanding, it becomes a question of who can game the rubberbanding and the end timing best. Without rubberbanding it becomes an endurance challenge to see who can grind the hardest and give up on any semblance of a normal life. All tweaks of this system have moved the competition somewhere on the spectrum between those two poles. We're not competing to be better at the game, we're competing to be better at the metagame.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe a completely different take on what "competition" means in PvE...

I'd like to see time-limited PvE that's more like the Prologue was when I started: a fun reveal of unexplored content and new, increasing challenges. Maybe it shouldn't matter how well other players are doing at all. There could be one-time challenge nodes with a chance of winning a cover for the new character -- complete them all and unlock a final node with a guaranteed cover, but randomize the color.

_RiO_

simonsez wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

If there's no competition, there's no real need for rubberbanding

You'd think so, but I'd anticipate the same kind of complaining we have now (eg, "I wasn't able to play yesterday, and now I have no chance to get the 3rd cover")

That would be a misguided complaint based on players themselves not having played enough over the entire course of the event and coming up short a day to tap all the progression rewards. What we have now is a complaint based on having played a lot; more than enough to consistently keep a top placement, only to be knocked out of the relevent reward tier because you couldn't play those last few hours. And that's a valid complaint. If you can get cheated out of the reward for a lot of 'hard work' in such a simple and trivial way, then it shows that the system as it is currently designed is simply broken.