Prodigal Son was it harder than other tourneys?

Unknown

Hey guys,

The torunament has just ended and it was a bit frantic towards the end but I think I'm in the top 50 and have managed to win one purple Unkillable Elektra Nachios cover. If I'd done things better I may have possibly been able to get top 10 and get two covers, but nothing more than that given the need for sleep and rest etc

What are peoples opinions of the difficulty of obtaining this 4* cover compared to the last one, 4* Thor?

Unknown

In one word... easier. It's been a chunk less insanely competitive than lady Thor's PvE was, at least in my bracket. Whether that's pure luck on my part, lower activity cause of lower interest or harder nodes (hello hell's kitchen) I couldn't say...

fmftint

I wouldn't say harder, most broken? Yeah I would say that

IlDuderino

I entered towards the end of a bracket filling up and was never able to recover on the leaders who were about 100,000 ahead - very very frustrating though I suppose this is my fault for not wanting to grind all working week, sneaking off for 20 minute toilet breaks at work every three hours to maintain position

For me the Thor PvE was easier

OnesOwnGrief

I would say easier. Thor, I dropped out my alliance so I wouldn't weight then down in PvE. This time they were at top 10 in PvE with me being able to coast and mostly focus my time on PvP.

Unknown

For me there was a wall around top 50 that I couldn't overcome, so will just have to be patient for an Elektra cover.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

In one word... easier. It's been a chunk less insanely competitive than lady Thor's PvE was, at least in my bracket. Whether that's pure luck on my part, lower activity cause of lower interest or harder nodes (hello hell's kitchen) I couldn't say...

I agree with you that it was easier because I haven't got a 4* Thor in my roster and it's unlikely I'll be getting one any time soon. So then if it was easier to get this particular 4* character, why was this tournament different from the last one?

X-Force had no tournament, nor did Invisible Woman or Nick Fury, so what's going on with D3 and why have the last two have given these characters?

Unknown

It was both. The grind was the same as the Thor event for me. Top 10 is mental. But because of the broken scaling, and some people not having points registered, I have been able to sit top 50 without too much bother.

I am amazed that so many events recently have hit problems though. Game seems to be getting less stable.

Bowgentle

JusticeB wrote:

X-Force had no tournament, nor did Invisible Woman or Nick Fury, so what's going on with D3 and why have the last two have given these characters?

Baglady had a PVE where she was first given out as a prize.
Nick Fury was given out for the first 3 PVP seasons, but had an introductory PVE in season 4.

So releasing a 4* in PVE is the regular thing for D3.

Unknown

This one was much easier. I only played the Loki2 node this morning (first shard) and I didn't grind the nodes down before bed and I ended up at 27ish. I also missed playing several refreshes right on mark and didn't enter one story event for about 3 hours after it opened. Before this would have spelled doom.

Quebbster

Didn't think it was that bad. Competing for Thor was definitely worse.

Mawryk

It was probably about the same. I am looking at finishing outside the top 50, but I think I would be comfortably in the top 50 (as I was for Thor) IF I actually had Loki on my roster.

With a max 2* team working on getting enough covers to actually start the 3* transition, the biggest two problems I faced were 1) no Essential nodes, and 2) weird low scaling in the first few subs meant many people who simply had time to play were able to grind comfortably past me whenever I missed a refresh. I started making up ground with Hell's Kitchen and Thunderbolt Mountain having more regular scaling, as apparently the ability to beat some harder nodes balances out the lack of the essential character.

Unknown

Depends what you were going for, but for top 50 in Prodigal I almost stopped playing (by my standards) after the first couple of subs and still ended up 16th. I could see that the guys in the top 5 were playing fairly hard though - certainly not missing very many refreshes and definitely grinding hard at the end of the subs.

In terms of node difficulty, I think it depended what slice you were in but it was insanely easy for most of the event and only spiked a bit in Hells Kitchen and Thunderbolts Mountain for me. I'd say there were only about 3 or 4 nodes that I found challenging.

IamTheDanger

Bowgentle wrote:

JusticeB wrote:

X-Force had no tournament, nor did Invisible Woman or Nick Fury, so what's going on with D3 and why have the last two have given these characters?

Baglady had a PVE where she was first given out as a prize.
Nick Fury was given out for the first 3 PVP seasons, but had an introductory PVE in season 4.

So releasing a 4* in PVE is the regular thing for D3.

Don't forget about Too Many Secrets. The Fury PvP from season 5.

Unknown

It was a gigantic mess.

Aside from the no scaling bugs, etc...7 days is way too long for a PVE event, especially with multiple subs at once and during the freaking holidays.

Really burned me out from this game tbh.

Lidolas

I actually was busy during the third subs and hardly played at all and I was going to give up. But after I played through the next one, I was within striking distance. I've been grinding and I should be able to hit top 50.

Colognoisseur

I found Prodigal Son much easier to play from the lead.
I started right away and have pretty closely done optimal clears for the entire seven days.
I was able to slowly build a lead and now twelve hours from ending I have an uncatchable 41k lead over second.
This means I worked harder and have now given myself a stress-free final part of the Event.
Ever since the rubberband has been adjusted so any late comer can get the progression awards but not the best placement awards this has pretty much been the case and I think it is fair that those who grind the hardest should get the best placements while anyone who puts in a decent effort should get the top progression. This is where I think PvE is right now and I think D3 got this right.
A new side effect of placing us in brackets immediately and sharing the sub brackets with the same people in the main is if you are grinding out at the top of the leaderboard you can see exactly what your competition is doing and of course they can see you. I really like this. It became clear that my ability to keep doing full clears in Hell's Kitchen was extending my lead over those chasing me because they weren't scoring as well as me. It encouraged me to put the hammer down and try and build the lead I have now.
I have played from this position of wire-to-wire leader before and there was a lot of late stage shuffling in the t10. With the way Prodigal Son was laid out it looks to me that my t10 is going to be those who I saw working hard right next to me and that feels right to me. If it wasn't an extra Elektra cover for first I would have laid off the gas to let the two players chasing me have the 4Hor/Fury/XF/IW cover.
Another thing at least in our bracket eight of the ten players are high level with multi 3* rosters. Then entire top 5 is high levels and in the next five one 2* roster in 10th and a 2->3* transitioner. It is a small sample but I haven't had any pressure from a mid-range roster for a long while.

There are definitely some glitches to be worked out but bottom line is Prodigal Son was a grind but one which rewarded my grind.

Unknown

Prodigal Sun, along with Unstable Isotope and Simulator Basic, seems to be the only competitive PvE event where enemies scale quickly enough to not have a virtual tie. What Colo described wouldn't normally be possible because I doubt he's the only person who can play every refresh in his bracket and on most events you'd go into the final day with a virtual tie for first since any small differences in your total scores is insignificant compared to the point ramp up. In this event, it's quite clear that every guys who don't sleep sometimes get wiped out by the hardest nodes on Hell's Kitchen and Thunderbolt Mountains so even though the points are still ramping up like usual, you can easily build a significant lead by being able to complete the nasty missions that your opponents skipped or wiped on. Well, there's still the problem of losing a significant lead while going to sleep, but that's a universal problem.

Events with very high scaling is slightly more favorable for the strongest roster for the simple reason that things cannot possibly get higher than 395. I'm guessing several nodes on Hell's Kitchen can easily be level 495 if they're allowed to go that high, but of course they can't go past 395 so this lessens the effect of unfair scaling from a mid range character. Something like 'twice your level' scaling factor isn't fair for the highest level guy, but since 'twice your level' is already 395, you make that up when the scaling factor increases to 3X your level because it can't go any higher for you but it can definitely go higher for the mid range guy.

Unknown

The timing of it made this one much harder for me - I was able to do #7 in the Thor PVE, and I"m going to end up 35-40 in this one in all likelihood. The hardest PVE is going to be easier for me than the easiest one is if the hardest is on a weekend and the easiest is during the week. I just don't have enough time to play during the week. There's a reason the only time I've come in #1 was during the Deadpool event; it was run Friday-Sunday.

Whub Whubz

hermanbloom wrote:

It was both. The grind was the same as the Thor event for me. Top 10 is mental. But because of the broken scaling, and some people not having points registered, I have been able to sit top 50 without too much bother.

I am amazed that so many events recently have hit problems though. Game seems to be getting less stable.

As a see it there has been bugs but this is a good thing, MPQ seems to be going through some growing pains with the release of the time shards; yes some people were effected by negatively but overall I feel they were stamped out in a timely manner. Programming time sharding costs the studio money and is zero sum because everyone is entitled to it and they don't sell the time option for hero points . I hope the time shard programming didn't run way over budget with the bugs that snuck in and they continue to press on with quality of life changes.

That aside as a 2* roster player I sat out the 4thor release because that was the first 4* release event i've participated in and didn't research if the 4* would be an essential so I didn't gun for it and having Capt. Marvel as one of my most covered 3* I went for that. This time tho i'm off work and wanted to compete in a 4* release that I could put my full effort toward since it might be the only one before back to work. AS of right now sitting top 5 and fairly ahead of 6th, I have to watch out tho my breakdowns don't seem as good as the 3* rosters.

Unknown

Colognoisseur wrote:

Another thing at least in our bracket eight of the ten players are high level with multi 3* rosters. Then entire top 5 is high levels and in the next five one 2* roster in 10th and a 2->3* transitioner. It is a small sample but I haven't had any pressure from a mid-range roster for a long while..

This is largely due to sharding, not necessarily because veteran rosters outperform in PvE. I know this because my beginner alt is in a cupcake bracket where the top10 is full of non-3* rosters.