PVE scaling and "Roster Diversity"

Unknown

Now that I have a few 166 characters (Spidy sadly and Hulk) My PVE nodes are instantly in the 130's... This already makes the use of almost ANY impossible. I tried using max OBW, Ares, Daken and got SMOKED by the node...

I get it needs to get harder to keep people with max rosters from steam rolling through stuff, but at the same time if you want "Roster Diversity" and not "Use the best team you have" then something needs to be adjusted with the PVE system.

Add to this the number of absolute TROLL nodes lately with goons feeding Jugs and Venom or Sentry etc... This doesn't make the game fun or enjoyable. Not everyone has the perfect roster to combat this. PVE should be PVE. Awards shouldn't be based on basically a PVP system...

TLDR: PVE needs changed and 342 days played I've seen a lot of ups and downs... But there really needs to be more of a PVE system than PVEvP.

MarvelMan

Welcome to the 3* PVE world. It sucks. Get used to it.



The PVE system is built to help 2* (and transition) rosters compete, which has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes causing issues for those with one, or more, full 3*s. You win some, you lose some generally evening things out, but you are ahead because you will do better in PVP.

Good luck! (yes, Im sincere)

Unknown

Firebat86 wrote:

Add to this the number of absolute TROLL nodes lately with goons feeding Jugs and Venom or Sentry etc... This doesn't make the game fun or enjoyable. Not everyone has the perfect roster to combat this.

If having a complete maxed roster is considered as perfect, then I can tell you that even if you have that perfect roster, it is even worse...

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Welcome to the 3* PVE world. It sucks. Get used to it.



The PVE system is built to help 2* (and transition) rosters compete, which has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes causing issues for those with one, or more, full 3*s. You win some, you lose some generally evening things out, but you are ahead because you will do better in PVP.

Good luck! (yes, Im sincere)

So a 166 Spidy from back when he was "OP" and a Hulk takes me out of transition? Because according to my roster I'm not really in the land of yet...

GrumpySmurf1002

Firebat86 wrote:

So a 166 Spidy from back when he was "OP" and a Hulk takes me out of transition? Because according to my roster I'm not really in the land of yet...

By all accounts, PvE scaling now is based largely on the max character on your available roster. So yes, having 1 or 2 166s will really distort your difficulty.

There's basically a divide now:
Max 1-2 characters, and your roster is built for PvP
Max no one but level everyone, and your roster is built for PvE.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

There's basically a divide now:
Max 1-2 characters, and your roster is built for PvP
Max no one but level everyone, and your roster is built for PvE.

I've been doing the even leveling since probably February, now, and I've rarely found PVE all that difficult, and when I have, everyone has, and I've still done well. Admittedly, I may hit 166 before the end of the year (I'm on 151/152 now), and then comes the (internal) debate over leveling X-Force.

GrumpySmurf1002

Ben Grimm wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

There's basically a divide now:
Max 1-2 characters, and your roster is built for PvP
Max no one but level everyone, and your roster is built for PvE.

I've been doing the even leveling since probably February, now, and I've rarely found PVE all that difficult, and when I have, everyone has, and I've still done well. Admittedly, I may hit 166 before the end of the year (I'm on 151/152 now), and then comes the (internal) debate over leveling X-Force.

Do you happen to remember at what level your roster was best equipped to deal with the 166 wall in PvP?

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Do you happen to remember at what level your roster was best equipped to deal with the 166 wall in PvP?

Best equipped is always going to be highest, and it will get easier in the future.

First equipped was when it was still the 141 wall, and I think I started on the easier 141 teams (which were often Punisher + 2*) around 105, and was comfortable fighting 3*s in general by the time of the level shift (when my people jumped up from 110 to 135). In retrospect, I probably could have taken some earlier, but I never really needed to, since I've always been a pretty diligent tanker.

Unknown

This is an issue with level shift not scaling. The whole point of level shift was to ensure you can't possibly use your 2*s with any success against enemies tuned for max 3*s. Prior to level shift, level 125 boosted 2*s held their own versus against level 141 normal 3*s, and why shouldn't they given their levels are essentially the same since each level in 2* is worth more raw stats than each level in 3*?

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Firebat86 wrote:

So a 166 Spidy from back when he was "OP" and a Hulk takes me out of transition? Because according to my roster I'm not really in the land of yet...

By all accounts, PvE scaling now is based largely on the max character on your available roster. So yes, having 1 or 2 166s will really distort your difficulty.

There's basically a divide now:
Max 1-2 characters, and your roster is built for PvP
Max no one but level everyone, and your roster is built for PvE.

I felt the PvE wall is more of result of increased grinding and not so much as the actual levels. I can beat my nodes fine but 3 months ago I had to do about 1/5 the total effort for the same placement as now, and no it's not that in these 3 months everyone have become way more hardcore. You're not getting top 2 by just doing rubberbanding tricks on an early bracket, so I clearly still outgrind everyone else who knew the same tricks on a consistent basis. But now it's more like I have to work 5 times harder for the same reward so I might as well not bother at all because I sure don't need the vast majority of the rewards offered. I'm looking at Prodigal Sun again and noticed that I fell into a huge hole again because I stopped grinding and why should I even bother trying to get out of it when the reward isn't something I need? And unless they release Sentry 2.0, I don't see this changing anytime soon so why slave over a game for stuff that won't even be a sidegrade?

Sandmaker

Phantron wrote:

1/5 the total effort for the same placement as now, and no it's not that in these 3 months everyone have become way more hardcore.

I've been thinking about this, and the conclusion I came to is that there must be a population of grinders who don't understand, or can't take advantage of rubberbanding. They grind throughout the event and then miss the last couple refreshes. Previously you could outplay them by taking advantage of rubberbanding and now you can't.

Otherwise it makes zero sense. The scores are relative to other players. In order for you to drop in average placement, either the people around you are starting to put more effort, or you're starting to put in less effort.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

Phantron wrote:

1/5 the total effort for the same placement as now, and no it's not that in these 3 months everyone have become way more hardcore.

I've been thinking about this, and the conclusion I came to is that there must be a population of grinders who don't understand, or can't take advantage of rubberbanding. They grind throughout the event and then miss the last couple refreshes. Previously you could outplay them by taking advantage of rubberbanding and now you can't.

Otherwise it makes zero sense. The scores are relative to other players. In order for you to drop in average placement, either the people around you are starting to put more effort, or you're starting to put in less effort.

People don't just grind the whole time and miss the final refresh unless it's some kind of emergency because after that happened to you once it'd be pretty clear you're wasting your time and stop doing it.

The difference between now and then is that grinding gives you an advantageous position for the final 12 hour or so in the past, but now it gives you an insurmountable advantage. The problem is that scaling has always been bad but with a strong rubberband it is likely that rubberband will undo most of the unfair advantage people piled up due to favorable scaling until community scaling eventually gets to a point where it is roughly equally hard for everyone. With a weak rubberband the lead you pile up while scaling is favorable/unfair (biased to you) can no longer be made up, which means anyone that starts with unfavorable scaling should not bother unless they want to grind super hard. It used to be that a max roster starts out with pretty crazy levels that only gets slightly more crazy by the end sometimes because nodes can't possibly get higher than 395, and you can count on rubberband to even things out until the difficulty is fair. With this rubberband it doesn't matter if the nodes hit 395 for some guy in a 2* roster because the lead he piled up while the nodes are still easy is something you can't possibly make up even if that guy can't beat any node at all for the last cycle, and it'll rarely be this bad to begin with.