"The Gauntlet" is wonderful

Eddiemon

've enjoyed it and got all the way through and passed 42 with 2* Thor, Wolvie & lvl 78 Deadpool! Purple boosted and got a favorable board to drop whales on them. Took me 3 attempts.

I call shenanigans!

Mostly cause 42 has an X-force so you couldn't have used wolvie. So you had one of 40 odd other fill in characters.

Punter1

Eddiemon wrote:

've enjoyed it and got all the way through and passed 42 with 2* Thor, Wolvie & lvl 78 Deadpool! Purple boosted and got a favorable board to drop whales on them. Took me 3 attempts.

I call shenanigans!

Mostly cause 42 has an X-force so you couldn't have used wolvie. So you had one of 40 odd other fill in characters.

Ahh you're correct - it was some other random 2*! Essentially the first 2 characters were moot - they were OBW & Wolvie...

SunCrusher

Lerysh wrote:

babinro wrote:

I absolutely LOVE this PvE structure.
My only potential concern is the reward structure for 1 star and 2 star players.
Do the node levels scale back for their roster enough for them to at least reasonably obtain 1 *** cover? If not, this is a problem.

That concern aside I really hope this format becomes the new norm in PvE.

Without a Punisher rostered and player's can't earn many of the covers, period. That's a huge problem. I trust the level scaling to be within reason, as it's solely based on roster, so as long as there is a Punisher, BP, and GSBW on the list to clear the required nodes I wouldn't doubt a could get at least the BP cover.

The best solution for this is a "The Guantlet" event that keeps a running tally of points, and has 3 subs, and not 3 separate events that have to be full cleared to get the cover reward.

Without Punisher, players can't get Classic Storm post Villains.

Without Punisher, Grey Suit Black Widow, and Black Panther, players can't get Black Panther post Heroes.

I'm a transitioning 2* player and I got stonewalled in Heroic because of the lack of Black Panther.

Unknown

I do think the structure of this is a great idea, rewards and scaling could do with some adjustments but at props for at least something new over the 2h24m grind-a-thon's.

atomzed

_RiO_ wrote:

atomzed wrote:

However, I want to say that the gauntlet appears to be created because people want pve to be PURE pve. It was fixed, according to what ppl want.

Uhhmm.. no?

Whenever the concept of a pure PvE came up and whenever the idea of gradually increasing node levels within such a PvE came up, invariably multiple posts would surface that explicitly talked about the balance aspect and the fact that it would be critical to properly manage the risk vs. reward balance as well as difficulty across roster types. What Demiurge delivers is an event that was obviously designed with callous disregard for those warnings, or they'd have been more conservative with the level scaling for the initial run. Better to give your players too many rewards one or two times while tuning difficulty than to have players run face first into brick walls.

(I almost wonder if this level of screw-up is intentional, so that Demiurge can later cite lowered metrics for player engagement as a basis for an argument to not run a 'pure' PvE again.)

Sigh. We are back at the same topic again.

Let me explain my perspective again... heck, I probably should open a new thread to do it. Probably a futile effort, but meh.

Eddiemon

Phantron wrote:

I see players making the same wrong assumption on difficulty as the devs that tuned them in the first place with statements like "well XYZ worked on level 260 guys so you just got to be creative against level 3XXs". It's like this article I read where guys stationed in Antarctica would always get these question like 'how much colder can Antarctica be compared to (Canada/Minnesota/Siberia)?' and the answer is 'you'd know if you had to live here'. After stuff gets higher than 300 there's basically a clock that gets shorter the higher they go because you're talking about match damage that can kill your team. A level 395 OBW does about 600 damage on her colors and Espionage is 580 or so. This means she gets about 1200 damage on her primary match, and usually 900-1100 on any cascade of her color. Imagine you had a game where the enemy team just makes a black match 3 for the entire game and have no outlet for black. You'd still be taking about 1200 damage every turn. A tanky character can still only take 8-9 of those, and a support character like The Hood can only take 4-5. You can get lucky but a lot of time you won't even beat them even if the 395s somehow was unable to collect any AP the entire game and only had match damage, and of course just about any move they use will definitely kill you.

Except that all of that is exactly the point.

Up until the brutal matches it was possible to ride out the enemy attacks behind a Patch until you had your killed combo(s) set up and then annihilate your opposition. I think I rolled 70% of the nodes with Patch/Hood/Panther because they just didn't have the damage potential to get through Patch. Sometimes I used a Loki or an OBW or a Punisher depending on which characters I was denied, but it was mostly offence with a splash of denial thrown in.

Then we hit those 'antarctic' nodes. I don't think any amount of pure offence could win, absent the luckiest cascades known to man.

So I had to flip tactics to board manipulation, defense and opponent management, and hope that the TU wasn't a killer. To beat the last few battles I loaded up with Lazy Cap and MN Magneto and went full defense. Getting the first defense tile on the board earned me breathing space and the second one made the fight fair. Mag's purple was used to trigger as many cascades as possible instead of clearing lines and generating crit nodes, because it was free AP at a time I couldn't afford to be hit.

That clock you talk about changed the game and the way I had to view the board. 'You must be safe in 12 moves or you are dead regardless' was a totally different game to 'deny them and let Hood deal with any accidental AP gained'.

Oldboy

Being stonewalled in PVE because of a missing essential charactor is nothing new. I used to miss out on 3* covers all the time when i was starting out 2* --> 3* phase because i couldnt get enough points to rank high enough or collect progression rewards. But i continued to accumulate HP and spent it only on roster slots instead of shields and health packs and just collected whatever 3* covers i cld get my hands on from tokens (standard and 2* ones). Even Spider Man. I soon started getting lucky breaks in PVE when the 3* character i had became Essential. It helps if you take note of which characters are featured in Essentials

Yes it sucks. But it's not a new thing. Just gotta stick it out and play smart. It's been almost 5 months for me to grind and collect 3* and only now i have my first 11/13 covered character (Patch) and a few sub-10/13 covered 3*. I'm not saying it's the best strategy but i knew it was gonna be hard and take a long time to even get a fully covered 3*.

Ryz-aus

Eddiemon wrote:

Except that all of that is exactly the point.

Up until the brutal matches it was possible to ride out the enemy attacks behind a Patch until you had your killed combo(s) set up and then annihilate your opposition. I think I rolled 70% of the nodes with Patch/Hood/Panther because they just didn't have the damage potential to get through Patch. Sometimes I used a Loki or an OBW or a Punisher depending on which characters I was denied, but it was mostly offence with a splash of denial thrown in.

Then we hit those 'antarctic' nodes. I don't think any amount of pure offence could win, absent the luckiest cascades known to man.

So I had to flip tactics to board manipulation, defense and opponent management, and hope that the TU wasn't a killer. To beat the last few battles I loaded up with Lazy Cap and MN Magneto and went full defense. Getting the first defense tile on the board earned me breathing space and the second one made the fight fair. Mag's purple was used to trigger as many cascades as possible instead of clearing lines and generating crit nodes, because it was free AP at a time I couldn't afford to be hit.

That clock you talk about changed the game and the way I had to view the board. 'You must be safe in 12 moves or you are dead regardless' was a totally different game to 'deny them and let Hood deal with any accidental AP gained'.

I couldn't agree more with this post. The hardest levels bring back a demand for board control, but lazy cap paired with modern mags or im40 make these matches doable and IMO make them almost trivial if you use boosts.

Phantron wrote:

I see players making the same wrong assumption on difficulty as the devs that tuned them in the first place with statements like "well XYZ worked on level 260 guys so you just got to be creative against level 3XXs". It's like this article I read where guys stationed in Antarctica would always get these question like 'how much colder can Antarctica be compared to (Canada/Minnesota/Siberia)?' and the answer is 'you'd know if you had to live here'. After stuff gets higher than 300 there's basically a clock that gets shorter the higher they go because you're talking about match damage that can kill your team. A level 395 OBW does about 600 damage on her colors and Espionage is 580 or so. This means she gets about 1200 damage on her primary match, and usually <a href="tel:900-1100">900-1100</a> on any cascade of her color. Imagine you had a game where the enemy team just makes a black match 3 for the entire game and have no outlet for black. You'd still be taking about 1200 damage every turn. A tanky character can still only take 8-9 of those, and a support character like The Hood can only take 4-5. You can get lucky but a lot of time you won't even beat them even if the 395s somehow was unable to collect any AP the entire game and only had match damage, and of course just about any move they use will definitely kill you.

If you boost with an im40 and cap team you make one yellow match and can start throwing red and blue shields willy nilly by turn 4. With hood as a 3rd it's unlikely they will get off any dangerous powers before this starts and Cap tanks yellow which is the most important color for this team. At most OBW would get five matches, if they only matched her strong colors. I tried it without boosts and made it through with hood near death (he did take blue and black with my team) and cap at medium health - I had to deal with one world rupture but nothing else significant. If I used boosts the match is almost trivial barring a really poor board or enemy cascade. IM40 didn't take a single hit, because mine is underleveled.

Polares

Eddiemon wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I see players making the same wrong assumption on difficulty as the devs that tuned them in the first place with statements like "well XYZ worked on level 260 guys so you just got to be creative against level 3XXs". It's like this article I read where guys stationed in Antarctica would always get these question like 'how much colder can Antarctica be compared to (Canada/Minnesota/Siberia)?' and the answer is 'you'd know if you had to live here'. After stuff gets higher than 300 there's basically a clock that gets shorter the higher they go because you're talking about match damage that can kill your team. A level 395 OBW does about 600 damage on her colors and Espionage is 580 or so. This means she gets about 1200 damage on her primary match, and usually 900-1100 on any cascade of her color. Imagine you had a game where the enemy team just makes a black match 3 for the entire game and have no outlet for black. You'd still be taking about 1200 damage every turn. A tanky character can still only take 8-9 of those, and a support character like The Hood can only take 4-5. You can get lucky but a lot of time you won't even beat them even if the 395s somehow was unable to collect any AP the entire game and only had match damage, and of course just about any move they use will definitely kill you.

Except that all of that is exactly the point.

Up until the brutal matches it was possible to ride out the enemy attacks behind a Patch until you had your killed combo(s) set up and then annihilate your opposition. I think I rolled 70% of the nodes with Patch/Hood/Panther because they just didn't have the damage potential to get through Patch. Sometimes I used a Loki or an OBW or a Punisher depending on which characters I was denied, but it was mostly offence with a splash of denial thrown in.

Then we hit those 'antarctic' nodes. I don't think any amount of pure offence could win, absent the luckiest cascades known to man.

So I had to flip tactics to board manipulation, defense and opponent management, and hope that the TU wasn't a killer. To beat the last few battles I loaded up with Lazy Cap and MN Magneto and went full defense. Getting the first defense tile on the board earned me breathing space and the second one made the fight fair. Mag's purple was used to trigger as many cascades as possible instead of clearing lines and generating crit nodes, because it was free AP at a time I couldn't afford to be hit.

That clock you talk about changed the game and the way I had to view the board. 'You must be safe in 12 moves or you are dead regardless' was a totally different game to 'deny them and let Hood deal with any accidental AP gained'.

But you still depend A LOT on luck. If the AI gets 1 cascade, just one, you are screwed up. Or if the AI can get a power before you, you are again screwed up. This is not chess, or even Magic, you depend A LOT on luck. So maybe your team is 'prepared' for a battle but you still depend too much on the luck factor.

Then of course, if we 'have' to use 2* against cheated 2* characters of 299 level, this is very unfair. And not everybody has all their characters maxed. My hood is at 134, my cap at 114, I have 7 characters at 166, but not all of them, and I started selling my 2* because I usually don't use them. So again, if you have to use an exact combination to beat a node, then this is going to be impossible for the great majority of players.

The thing is, scaling in 1*, 2 * characters is completely broken. XForce 270 does 89 tile match, OBW 299 does more than 150 !?!?!?!? How is that fair ? A 3* does around 120 wich is way more than a 4* but not that broken. This has to change in the future.



So I love the concept, I loved the first two subs, but the third is a pain. I think it would be better if it was a little bit longer (so we have mor time to try more combinations, etc)


PS: I am stuck at level 39 (Deadpool, OBW, Ares). I have tried with XForce, LThor, LDaken, The Hood, Spidey and Punisher but nothing, in all the matches something happens, and I keep losing. I suppose I am not creative enough so, any indications?
Edit:
I just passed this node with Spidey, XForce and The Hood. I ve been lucky and some cascades gave a lot of blue. It is the first time since Spidey nerf I have used Spidey blue to constantly stun a target
And now, node 40, BW, Juggs, IM35 lvl 318 :_( Juggs does 181 match tile damage (!!!!!)

Unknown

I really liked the Gloves. He played and really enjoyed it. Congratulations to the developers, so much more! It was not easy - it was a real challenge! (I'm not a whale, one 166lvl characters, Lthor.)
The format is also very pleased. This is necessary: the more diverse types of tournaments the be presented to users. I hope other - a different analysis types - tournaments racking their brains. Good work!

Unknown

For pretty much the last 5 or 6 nodes (up to node 42) I've just run Hood, Ldak and Sentry and hoped for a favourable board to get a decent Sentry-Bomb off then finish with a Chemical Reaction. Even cheesing it like that usually makes for a close match with the insane match damage and the issues with Sentry tanking too many colours.

Up until the enemies hit around lv300 I was still using actual tactics to select my team, but as I don't have a high level Falcon or Mags (Shieldbro takes too long) it just became a nukefest past that point.

Wolarsen

I liked the format very much, mainly having the chance to play at the time best suits me, for as long as I want/can. Not having to repeat nodes gives a great feel of advancement.

Comments:
- I would like it to last longer; maybe not as long as a season, but as much as other PvE events (5-7 days)
- Needing to clear ALL nodes to get last rewards looks a little too constraining; as there are already side node branches, maybe use them as alternative or bonus to advance?
- I appreciate a challenge, but scaling seems too overwhelming (my OBW dies with enemy 3-match + a 4-match)

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

So I had to flip tactics to board manipulation, defense and opponent management, and hope that the TU wasn't a killer. To beat the last few battles I loaded up with Lazy Cap and MN Magneto and went full defense. Getting the first defense tile on the board earned me breathing space and the second one made the fight fair. Mag's purple was used to trigger as many cascades as possible instead of clearing lines and generating crit nodes, because it was free AP at a time I couldn't afford to be hit.

Did you boost +3 blue/purple - +3 all? If not, how did you deal with MNMags tanking blue and purple? I'm thinking particularly about the last node, with L300+ Sentry/XForce/OBW. That's the only one one that gave me serious problems. In the end I didnt use a +3 all boost, but I had to take the Hood along to counteract OBW's Espionage and still I needed a bit of board luck to get to the end (with BP and Hood dead and LThor barely alive to send out the last CotS)

over_clocked

DrUnpleasant wrote:

For pretty much the last 5 or 6 nodes (up to node 42) I've just run Hood, Ldak and Sentry and hoped for a favourable board to get a decent Sentry-Bomb off then finish with a Chemical Reaction. Even cheesing it like that usually makes for a close match with the insane match damage and the issues with Sentry tanking too many colours.

Up until the enemies hit around lv300 I was still using actual tactics to select my team, but as I don't have a high level Falcon or Mags (Shieldbro takes too long) it just became a nukefest past that point.

You got both Hood and Shieldbro and still think Shieldbro takes too long? Not cool, man, not cool. He might take a little longer than Sentry-bombing, but he also plays more strategically and safely.

Unknown

Unfortunately, I lack a shield generator (Spidey, Bullseye) to get past some of the nodes without repetitive favorable board searching. Though this event isn't really for my roster, I'm glad D3 is trying out different modes.

Unknown

locked wrote:

You got both Hood and Shieldbro and still think Shieldbro takes too long? Not cool, man, not cool. He might take a little longer than Sentry-bombing, but he also plays more strategically and safely.

19 yellow is still a hell of a lot of AP to generate even with Hood stealing what he can. Blue is OK at 12 ap but doesn't absorb much damage if the enemy gets off a power and if unlucky enough to get destroyed it's virtually game over. Even in a best case scerario you're probably looking at getting out with damage you need to heal... so why not just Sentry Bomb?

*EDIT* tried node 40 (lv340 opponents) with Shieldbro and Hood - got completely destroyed before he got close to useful amounts of Yellow / Blue.

Phaserhawk

For all the whiners,complainers, etc. yes the scaling is insane, yes it doesn't cater to 2* rosters, but this is also the first time they ran this event, cut them some slack, of course it wasn't going to be perfect. They played it safe in terms of what rewards were given, they just threw together some nodes, and they slapped hardcore scaling because they were going into unknow territory they just set some factors and let it go. Assuming this gets a positive from the community, (which I think it is) they will start tweaking and correcting and adjusting until it gets better. I mean look at normal PvE, it's been almost a year and they still are having problems. Obviously the best thing to do is allow 1* rosters to get far enough they can increase their 2*'s and walk away with some ISO and HP, you want 2* rosters to obtain more 2*'s to round out their roster and at least snag 1 3* before hitting the wall. Then the next part is the most difficult and that is adjusting the scaling so those with 2* working on 3* can finish the event with a hard challenge, but also so that the developed 3*'s can also have a challenge without destroying the ability for 2/3* decks to obtain more 3*'s.

1*---Should finish 1st event and a few nodes into 2nd
2*---Should finish 1st event, have a very hard 2nd, and only get a few nodes into 3rd
2/3*Should finsih 1st event, 2nd with moderate difficulty, and 3rd event with high difficulty
3*---Should finish all events but 1st opponents lvl 100-166, 2nd opponetns lvl 166-220, 3rd opponets lvl 220---270.

This event is great, yes it needs tweaks, but so do all events, it encourages roster depth, this was so refreshing and is a great starting point for further expansion, great job D3

Unknown

There isn't some kind of strategy to beat the 395s. On the highest scaling (270 on roster) you run into 395 by the time you hit Juggernaut/MBW/IM35. Star Spangled Avenger does about 1500 damage per turn factoring in recycle time and it'd take you 20 turns to kill Juggernaut, which is an awful long time. Headbutt will do 9975 damage on this level, more than enough to kill anybody through protect tile in any realistic situation since you should've already taken some damage from match damage immediately and their average tile damage is around 200 (think it's 225/200/175 at that level). Just because you beat them once doesn't mean you figured out something because if you go back again you might find you have The Hood dropped on turn 3 from a cascade or you take an AP consuming move on turn 10 on Captain or whatever.

Unknown

I know I'm in the minority, but I just don't see what's so great about the event. It seems like you need to boost up and bring team ups to the majority of the battles just to stand a chance. I don't really see the fun in having a downed team more than 50% of the time.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

I know I'm in the minority, but I just don't see what's so great about the event. It seems like you need to boost up and bring team ups to the majority of the battles just to stand a chance. I don't really see the fun in having a downed team more than 50% of the time.

It probably depends on where you're at. I've only used team-ups two or three times (and replaced them with better team-ups), and no boosts, and I've cleared everything but the last one and the last three essentials. This is more "challenging" hard than "have to grind like a madman" hard, which I find a lot more fun. It's also friendly to my schedule; I do a few missions every so often, and don't have to stay up late or anything to get what I want. I've already gotten two 3* covers, might get another, as well as a bunch of tokens, some ISO, and a bit of HP, without having to stay up late or get a single 20 ISO reward. And while the missions are hard, they're static - if I can't beat it, it won't be 50 levels higher the next morning.

I've gotten downed a handful of times, but only on a few missions, and it hasn't been the problem it is in normal PVE, where you might miss a refresh because of it. And I'm liable to finish up this evening, get a bit more ISO, and a sense of pride, and get to bed on time.