The Gauntlet.... Really?

Unknown

Something that might make the challenge on an event like this a bit more palatable would be to give it it's own stock of health packs that don't decrease the stock for PvP, etc. I' don't like feeling like I have to choose only one event to work on in the chunks my free time comes in.

This idea could even apply In a bigger way with any given event having like 3 health packs that regen at the normal rate but are for that event only and then players having like 2 universal health packs that get used in an event after the event-specific ones are spent and regen at the normal or even a slightly slower rate. Allow more splitting of effort while still encouraging a moderate amount of resource management.

Dauthi

Phantron wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

This is not a good comparison, unless the game was free to play. Also, it is only an opinion that people have unfair advantages in this PVE. I believe this PVE is extremely hard for everyone across the board, and even if there are discrepancies it would be like (in your analogy) one person having the heaviest metal on earth the the other the second heaviest and it being possible for either person to topple it over time.

The battles are crazy, and many of them require a good amount of luck and planning. I enjoyed that, after defeating the node, I moved on to a different fight. I thoroughly hate grinding essential nodes.

It's not an opinion that people have unfair advantages in this event. If they say for the duration of this event you get pre nerf Magneto back then it'd be solidly in favor of the max rosters again. You simply can't say 'max 2* with boosted characters versus 275 is totally the same as max roster versus 395'. This game is far too complicated to make sweeping statements like that, and if max roster included a pre nerf Magneto or Spiderman it'd actually be very easy for the max roster while the 2* would be screwed. Usually the game is in favor of those guys with maxed out roster but having maxed out roster should have some kind of advantage because otherwise why even bother? This event the balance is solidly in the opposite way and while anomalies are okay, you can't have a system where people with superior rosters are routinely punished.

I haven't played the final levels because I (and probably many 3* completed rosters) don't need a black Psylocke. I got partway through the final stage due to being busy, and plan to try some more tomorrow. If you could elaborate why scaling doesn't work at higher levels that would help. Is it that damage scales faster as levels escalate?

If your analysis is correct, I would still be happy that blooming 2* rosters are not being slapped down for trying to progress, and that 3*s who are unlikely to progress with the given rewards get a challenge instead. If the prizes were newer characters I would be (again if you are correct) outraged.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

I haven't played the final levels because I (and probably many 3* completed rosters) don't need a black Psylocke. I got partway through the final stage due to being busy, and plan to try some more tomorrow. If you could elaborate why scaling doesn't work at higher levels that would help. Is it that damage scales faster as levels escalate?

If your analysis is correct, I would still be happy that blooming 2* rosters are not being slapped down for trying to progress, and that 3*s who are unlikely to progress with the given rewards get a challenge instead. If the prizes were newer characters I would be (again if you are correct) outraged.

From what I can tell a 2* use level 134 characters (2* are boosted 40 levels) versus 275, while a maxed roster (270) faces somewhere around level 450 on the final node if not for the fact that levels are capped at 395. A 3* maxed roster (166, but no 270s) fight somewhere in the upper 300s at the end.

On a fundamental level, the game is far too complicated for you to simply slap level modifiers like that and expect the result to be fair. It can easily be in favor of the 3*s, if pre nerf Magneto or pre nerf Spiderman are available or, better yet, a pre nerf Ragnarok. Those characters will not be available to a 2* and those guys can all overcome level 395s with some difficulty (probably have blue boost every fight but it's a small price to pay). In the past PvE events the 2* generally comes out behind by the same mechanism + community scaling, and this time the role is reversed. Now I know people say think about the little guys and sure I get all that, but the game does not make sense if you end up doing worse absolutely the better your roster is. Even in PvP your PvP score is generally strictly better the better your roster is. Stuff like sharding might make it harder for you to do well relatively but at least you're not doing worst absolutely. But a maxed roster facing 395s is going to do far worse absolutely compared to a 2* fighting level 200s. Yes this event is a fairly unique isolated incident (though some heroic events have a simlar effect), but events like this shouldn't ever happen. When you've a noncompetitive event like this, the person with the better roster should, at worst, be no better off than any person with a worse roster. This can be accomplished with a Combined Arms type buff while keeping node difficulty static, since if they buff say Juggernaut too much, there's nothing stopping all the max rosters from using their own Juggernauts.

kidicarus

ark123 wrote:

I don't think that happens. See, the reason I got this far is pretty simple - cstorm+mnmags. These guys together mean that I can beat pretty much any node if I get lucky. Since that includes a bunch of nodes with characters like lvl100++ fury/sentry/etc that can give me comically high damage TUs, I just used those to get past the nodes where I couldn't use the combo. I imagine next time Gauntlet comes around I'll have more than one possible combo (sentry bombing always sounded fun, and so does falcon+cmags shennanigans). If not? Eh. It's not like there won't be another placement PvE in three days or so. Plus hulk covers in pvp? Fun for the entire day if I wanted to ignore the Gauntlet.

I did give up a couple times. I proclaimed the last node of the first part to be impossible. Then came back and beat it. Did the same on Node 34. Stupid Sentry. I just got through beating node 42 though, so clearly I was wrong, and beating those nodes?

Way more fun than grinding one regular PvE node six times before moving on the the next one.

Sounds nice in theory, modmag and ctorm are an effective couple. Trouble is your health does not scale as fast as match damage.

I've got 10 166s, a usable xforce and most of my 3*s fully covered and above 100. I'm a vet, and having the roster depth that I have, I have to use a lot more grey matter to win my matches unboosted, and it's certainly more complicated than collecting 9 purple tiles to get 11 blue - in fact I only used sentry bombing once if you think that's the solution to every tough node. If you're expecting things to get easier the more levelled/covered your heroes are, than you are in for a rude awakening.

Perhaps I'm being elitist, but completing a gauntlet should be left to the vets and not the transition/2* teams. They definitely need to fix "essential" hero availability for newbies but ss it is, it's just welfare pve if everyone can complete it.

h4n1s

I am still trying. Takes a lot of patience but I still am. The Gauntlet finale is tough though. I am in 2*->3* transition desperately wanting those progression 3* covers, but time is running out and I am afraid I will not be able to finish it... Gauntlet is a great game mode and I wish it would stick to prologue chapters (indefinitely). Or at least gave me an option to re-start in few weeks when my roster is a bit more competitive to deal with max Storm, Punisher and Sentry.

Yep, the last group is a bit frustrating to me as the only fully boosted character (Pun) is locked and storm (who is also boosted) is locked as well...

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

I'm at Simulation 40 and I don't have a single character over 94. I might not be able to finish it but I'm walking away with a screen full of lvl 200+ TUs, a grey widow cover, a BP cover and some HP. I can't fathom why people are being such babies about this..

You're right. You can't fathom why. You have no clue at all what it's like to face the sort of opponents that a 3* roster forces you to face. Level 200 is a challenge but it's beatable. Once you get close to 300, everything changes unless you are fortunate to have the right roster to counter the team or you are just lucky and get a set of awesome cascades.

Accusing people of being babies when you outright proclaim that you don't know what you're talking about makes you ... unpleasant.

FaerieMyst

The upside? I've had fun playing The Gauntlet. The rewards are a bonus. Maybe you don't do things simply for the pleasure of doing them . . . . however, isn't that why you play games?

The uber-levels? It's a challenge figuring out how to beat them. I like challenges.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

A transitioning player facing 160 teams has a far easier time than a maxed roster facing level 300+ enemies. They have it easier than the max 3* players but of course they'll still complain. Yes if you don't have the right 3* for the essentials or support it can be pretty tough, but it still doesn't compare to fighting guys that can kill you by just matching tiles.

But the level 166 has twice the health of a 94, so the match damage of the last 7 nodes is effective against all roster types. For nodes 36-40 (so far), if I don't have my bombs going off, I am dead by turn 10. A 225 enemy chews a level 94 for match damage in just a few turns.

OnesOwnGrief

<.< Got more out of The Gauntlet than the top 5 finish off the Colossus PvP. Even had to buy health packs for that. The Gauntlet had given me more ISO and a no need to buy Health Packs to complete. I much appreciated being able to exercise the full extent of my roster because at the end of the day, it's still Sentry+Hood/Daken at the top of PvP.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

<.< Got more out of The Gauntlet than the top 5 finish off the Colossus PvP. Even had to buy health packs for that. The Gauntlet had given me more ISO and a no need to buy Health Packs to complete. I much appreciated being able to exercise the full extent of my roster because at the end of the day, it's still Sentry+Hood/Daken at the top of PvP.

For all the complaints I have for this event, today I was looking at whether to go around in circles some more in a PvP event or try a few nodes to get a 1000 iso progression and decided the latter is probably a better deal, though I had fairly favorable boards so that I was able to go 2 out of 3 against the 395s.

I think it'd be better if more nodes on the gauntlet have special restrictions. Essential being an obvious kind but something that requires a PvP event subset (Avengers, DAs, etc) would be good too, provided they actually tested the difficulty and not just say 'level 395 enemies against DA only, go'.

Dauthi

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

<.< Got more out of The Gauntlet than the top 5 finish off the Colossus PvP. Even had to buy health packs for that. The Gauntlet had given me more ISO and a no need to buy Health Packs to complete. I much appreciated being able to exercise the full extent of my roster because at the end of the day, it's still Sentry+Hood/Daken at the top of PvP.

I can see that. While my roster is very complete, I have leveled them all evenly as possible so I have 4 pages of characters from 150 to 100. Perhaps this helped in scaling, in any case it was difficult but doable. I had to plan ahead and play at the top of my game, while luck had a bit to do with it (come on, this is bejewled after all anyways). I can easily say, especially in the final event, getting all those 1k iso prizes was easily profitable and I got a needed Panther to boot. My final round of XF, Sentry and OBW is sitting at lvl 312. Maybe I will complete it for fun regardless of not needing black Psylocke.

I can see how high end rosters may rage, but even so I can only imagine they don't need these covers anyways, just the challenge.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

<.< Got more out of The Gauntlet than the top 5 finish off the Colossus PvP. Even had to buy health packs for that. The Gauntlet had given me more ISO and a no need to buy Health Packs to complete. I much appreciated being able to exercise the full extent of my roster because at the end of the day, it's still Sentry+Hood/Daken at the top of PvP.

I can see that. While my roster is very complete, I have leveled them all evenly as possible so I have 4 pages of characters from 150 to 100. Perhaps this helped in scaling, in any case it was difficult but doable. I had to plan ahead and play at the top of my game, while luck had a bit to do with it (come on, this is bejewled after all anyways). I can easily say, especially in the final event, getting all those 1k iso prizes was easily profitable and I got a needed Panther to boot. My final round of XF, Sentry and OBW is sitting at lvl 312. Maybe I will complete it for fun regardless of not needing black Psylocke.

I can see how high end rosters may rage, but even so I can only imagine they don't need these covers anyways, just the challenge.

I think it's only your highest level character so having 1 level 166 or 10 level 166 is the same, or at least the increase for having multiple 166s sure isn't much when I compared the levels to other characters with mutiple 166s.

Now, if you got a level 270 character, that'd really suck. Compared to some of the other players with a bunch of 166s I had up to +80 levels (395 vs 315). Yes X Force brings a lot to the game but you probably don't need him if enemies aren't 80 levels higher, though the difference gets smaller later on since enemies can't possibly go higher than 395, though you're doing strictly worse on any node that had Wolverine in it and there were quite a few of them. Looking at the way the nodes been going up I"m guessing my final node would be somewhere around level 430-450 if it was allowed to go that high, though since it cannot it was of course just 395.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

This opinion is really confusing to me.

This is finally a true PVE event where you don't need to compete for your prizes, you simply play to get them. Because of this, logically it should be scaled steeply. You should have to earn your prizes whether there is competition or not.

People think the prizes aren't worth it? That is hilarious, I will gladly take down some random AIs to earn a bunch of ISO AND needed 3*s.

It's nice to play an event stress free because of no time restraints and no worrying about your prizes getting taken away by other players.

Yes, there are some positives in The Gauntlet, like less time restraints and fighting different character combiniations, but I don't find the rewards that .... rewarding.

What 3*s are offered in the Gauntlet? I dont remember the
progression reward(s). The only rewards I see are the same ol 4/4 rewards for each node. Clear a node once and you'll run into a wall of 20 ISO if you replay that node.

simonsez

I just hope that when the next PvE starts, everyone who loves the gauntlet will play it exactly the same way they're playing this one... clear nodes whenever you feel like it, and get all the progressions (without having to beat anything close to lv395). Try to forget that there are also ranking awards going on. Just ignore it. Convince yourself it's just another gauntlet with no rank awards. No need to complain about grinding, rb and end times... just play at your own pace, on your own schedule, and get all the progression awards and ISO with way less aggravation. Let the grinders do what they do, while you enjoy it the same way you're enjoying gauntlet.

Eh, who am I kidding... this'll never happen...

h4n1s

simonsez wrote:

I just hope that when the next PvE starts, everyone who loves the gauntlet will play it exactly the same way they're playing this one... clear nodes whenever you feel like it, and get all the progressions (without having to beat anything close to lv395). Try to forget that there are also ranking awards going on. Just ignore it. Convince yourself it's just another gauntlet with no rank awards. No need to complain about grinding, rb and end times... just play at your own pace, on your own schedule, and get all the progression awards and ISO with way less aggravation. Let the grinders do what they do, while you enjoy it the same way you're enjoying gauntlet.

Eh, who am I kidding... this'll never happen...

While I pretty much agree with what you wrote up there, there's one thing necessary to highlight. In many cases reaching progression awards requires community scaling especially if you want to play it casually. Reason? The deeper you are in the ranking influences how much points certain nodes are worth - so you would need to grind your a** off if you wanted to reach your progression award anytime close to the beginning of the event. While at the time approaching the end of the event, the nodes bear such high amount of points that you would need to complete just 'few' of them to reach out to the top progression award - and such play would be more casual and effective.

If we did not have grinders through out the whole event, we couldn't casually reach the progression awards. Grinders be praised!

simonsez

h4n1s wrote:

While I pretty much agree with what you wrote up there, there's one thing necessary to highlight. In many cases reaching progression awards requires community scaling especially if you want to play it casually. Reason? The deeper you are in the ranking influences how much points certain nodes are worth - so you would need to grind your a** off if you wanted to reach your progression award anytime close to the beginning of the event. While at the time approaching the end of the event, the nodes bear such high amount of points that you would need to complete just 'few' of them to reach out to the top progression award - and such play would be more casual and effective

You meant rb not scaling, but yes, you're right. Jumping in too soon and trying to finish too fast would make it take longer to hit all the progressions, but for people who want to play casually and sporadically, that shouldn't come into play.

h4n1s

simonsez wrote:

h4n1s wrote:

While I pretty much agree with what you wrote up there, there's one thing necessary to highlight. In many cases reaching progression awards requires community scaling especially if you want to play it casually. Reason? The deeper you are in the ranking influences how much points certain nodes are worth - so you would need to grind your a** off if you wanted to reach your progression award anytime close to the beginning of the event. While at the time approaching the end of the event, the nodes bear such high amount of points that you would need to complete just 'few' of them to reach out to the top progression award - and such play would be more casual and effective

You meant rb not scaling, but yes, you're right. Jumping in too soon and trying to finish too fast would make it take longer to hit all the progressions, but for people who want to play casually and sporadically, that shouldn't come into play.

yep RB, you're right. Common typo, those keys are right next to each other

CrookedKnight

Would I get three guaranteed 3* covers and ~12K ISO for playing a "competitive" PVE like that?

(Plus, as mentioned, rubberband mechanics means I still wouldn't be playing on my own schedule - it'd have to be backloaded, plus the entire challenge/fun factor would be much reduced. It's no great achievement to finish your first run through an ISO-8 Brotherhood sub.)

GrumpySmurf1002

simonsez wrote:

I just hope that when the next PvE starts, everyone who loves the gauntlet will play it exactly the same way they're playing this one... clear nodes whenever you feel like it, and get all the progressions (without having to beat anything close to lv395). Try to forget that there are also ranking awards going on. Just ignore it. Convince yourself it's just another gauntlet with no rank awards. No need to complain about grinding, rb and end times... just play at your own pace, on your own schedule, and get all the progression awards and ISO with way less aggravation. Let the grinders do what they do, while you enjoy it the same way you're enjoying gauntlet.

Eh, who am I kidding... this'll never happen...

If they change the rewards such that you can get three 3* covers by just playing the event, then sure, you can stop worrying about grinding.

The only recent PvE where the rewards mirrored the Gauntlet rewards was the Hulk event, where simply clearing the nodes gave Hulk and Spidey, and then you could get Psylocke for top 150. (which is probably achievable if you get the Spidey progression).

rednailz

quadiak wrote:

Justdangit wrote:

Seriously?

I feel sorry for scottee already.

Seriously, yes.

There is nothing worth playing for in that event. There is more ISO to be made in 4 simple lightning rounds than the gauntlet can supply through its entirety.

There is absolutely no competitive factor at all, not even a friendly one. People keep saying there is no "grinding" yet the same people keep complaining about burning health packs up anyway.

The newbies who still need that c.storm cover, that don't yet have bp or even punisher are completely screwed and left to the token lottery just so they can complete an event that can easily prove to be as frustrating as the hunt, when trying to take down sentry/laken/hood with ½ leveled wolvy/c.storm/obw boosted to the nines.

I mean come on, where is the upside to this event? The developers need to know that even though there were a bunch of good first impressions for the gauntlet, its not all coming up roses now that we have gotten in to it.

Lastly I guess if my rantings looked bad on my alliance mates, I suppose I should just quit the fabulous "F2P Veterans" and apply to the flock of sheep.

The upside is it's different, challenging, shows a little creativity for the MPQ crew. Not a chance I could finish with my roster, but I had fun trying, and gave me a slight break since there weren't any positional rewards, so I could play at my own pace. You just sound bitter in general, it also makes your alliance look bad. I get not digging something, but the flock of sheep comment really isn't necissary