Too high scaling makes PVE boring and random

Unknown

PVE has turned into a game of chance now. On the hard sub, I can do fine - sometimes a flawless victory - when the board is ok. A bad board means my team gets wiped out. There's no real in-between. And scaling is going to continue to go up.

At that point, the game isn't a contest of skill, or roster composition, or anything really except blind luck. Is there too much red on the Blade node? Might as well retreat. One good cascade? Your team's wiped out. And I"m less than halfway through the current sub.

I'm sure their response is going to be something contentless and zero-information that refers to challenge, but this isn't even challenge at this point. It's a coin flip, with a side of pay-to play (please insert coin to buy health packs to continue). I can beat the essentials occasionally, but there's little point.

This PVE has been a major step backwards for D3. The subs are too long, the scaling is too high, the refreshes are too short, and the result is a game that's too dull. It's all grinding in place to maintain position. Is anybody actually enjoying this?

radav

Ben Grimm wrote:

Is anybody actually enjoying this?

NO! Too many nodes, scaling is too high, and the entire event is too long. Not fun, not even a little bit. Nobody seems to be really playing this event all that hard in my brackets either. Woke up this morning to find I was still top 25 when I hadn't even cleared the new set of subs. With a new character offered for people to go after that actually looks like he'll be halfway decent. Seems like this event is a complete fail all the way around.

tanis3303

No, no one is. That much is clear by the fact that I started almost 3 days after the event began, did one clear of the insanely easy sub, cleared the left side of the insanely over-scaled hard sub, and ended up in like 50th place. No one is playing, because of one simple reason. It. Is. Not. FUN!

But I'm not sure I see the point in telling D3 about it, they will continue to not care what their customers think as long as the $$$ keeps rolling in. Which it will, because there will always be new players to whom the game is still fresh, the ridiculousness of the scaling, constant stream of new characters, roster slot costs, mmr, etc hasn't set in yet. It's all good tho, because if I remember correctly, D3 said they were going to flood the game with 4*s this year, and without an increase in reward structure/iso payout, its quite simply going to kill the game. I don't think there are enough players with a high enough bankroll to keep it going once it becomes 100% necessary to pay $300+ just to get a new character. You'll have your whales, who will pay it, you'll have your new players, who can have a bit of fun with the game before they reach that point, and that will be it. The rest of your player base is going to say f-it and be done. We tried to warn you, but well...its obvious how well they listen to players

Unknown

Don't forget there are a total of 20 nodes total for both modes.

Also, the greater the difficulty the longer each clear takes.

Lastly, just because I have 1-3 high leveled characters, this does not mean the scaling should require that I only use those characters. In theory, the hardest nodes should require them, not 8-13 of them. If I just wanted to use 2-3 characters, I would play pvp, not pve.

dr tinykittylove

What's your team level up to now, though, and the enemy levels on sim 4 with Jugs and colossus? I know scaling is based on roster and it gets nuts if you have high level 4*s, but it's still on the hard side of "consistently doable" for my 150s vs 217 juggs on hard sim 04, though I'm far too lazy to take advantage and grind.

Wondering if they adjusted scaling again, and what levels are people with different rosters are facing.

Unknown

In my time slice this event also seems to be not very popular. I haven't been playing much because as stated it seems to be pretty much luck in the hard nodes so not much fun. My team on a bad board gets wiped, same exact team on an OK board and I clear. Something is wrong when that is what keeps happening. I also do not like the insanely long event, at this point PvP is clearly better for rewards just wish the zombie horde wouldn't drop me 200 points in last 24hrs unshielded.

Personally I would rather see more repeated story events for PvE with shorter times. I suspect that's why they are so long. A weekly Juggernaut would be fine with me.

simonsez

Ben Grimm wrote:

Is anybody actually enjoying this?

No, and I'm the resident PvE apologist. You're exactly right about the all-or-nothing aspect that's totally board dependent. I'm already dreading what the end of this sub is going to look like, with Mystique anchoring the essentials. And I do mean anchoring. At least Patch could do some consistent damage.

Bowgentle

dr tinykittylove wrote:

What's your team level up to now, though, and the enemy levels on sim 4 with Jugs and colossus? I know scaling is based on roster and it gets nuts if you have high level 4*s, but it's still on the hard side of "consistently doable" for my 150s vs 217 juggs on hard sim 04, though I'm far too lazy to take advantage and grind.

Wondering if they adjusted scaling again, and what levels are people with different rosters are facing.

I did Hard Sim 4 exactly once - because Level 329 Juggs simply isn't fun.

rixmith

Usually Simulators are very well liked PvEs, but I agree this one isn't so fun. At least when the Essential nodes required Patch I felt like I could make headway (I have a fully leveled Patch and his regeneration made it possible to not need healthpacks every node), but with Msytique well, I have little incentive (my Mystique is level 91 with 9 covers and pretty much needs a healthpack after every fight but the node levels seem as hard as the first subs).

I agree that 20 nodes every 2.5 hours is way too much. I'd much prefer a 6 hours refresh cycle, then I could do three clears a day and sleep through the fourth. And, as many have mentioned, I'd prefer 24 or 48 hour subs so that all subs end at my preferred time.

Pylgrim

Yeah, I'm positive that metrics of player engagement for this event will end being an all-time low. I just hope that they don't just chalk it to happening during end of year, or to the reward being an unexciting (if new, and decently powerful) character.

thanos8587

starting from last night at 6:00 pm est you could watch the difficulty climb almost immediately. finish a node every other node ramped up. the event is less than 33% in and nodes are hitting deadly and apparently no one is really playing.

im only playing for the patch progession award which i hope to hit by sunday. i could care less about opening a roster slot for luke cage and never anticipated getting him when the event started but this may be the first pve i have seen in my short time playing that getting the top progression got you top 150, and im currently sitting 9 overall in my bracket. only a few guys are really grinding and i assume theyre going for the lady thor more than anything.

Unknown

Enjoying? Not overall, but one sense I am, since there is no constant grinding to stay in the upper ranks. Due to the scaling I haven't even cleared anything other than essentials in HARD. I refuse to spend HP on health packs when I'm already in the top ranks. I don't need to be #1, so I'm not spending money.

Whub Whubz

Hard PvE for another new character right around the holidays, combined with it being the very end of a PvP season after a hectic and competitive string of PvEs.
I think most people are taking it easy for this event and putting most of their time and healthpacks into PvP; I know I am.
Don't think I can even make it past the Blade on hard side to even make it to that juicy iso node, is my strat of going for blade first bad?

Vohnkar

It's been a long time since I've enjoyed a PvE event. 2'5h refreshes plus absurdly scaling makes those events boring. Improving my roster and seeing it destroyed due to scaling is not fun so I try to avoid as much as I can to play those events, the thing is they have rewards I need, so I'm crippling my roster for not playing enough

Unknown

The problem is that characters are not particularly balanced in this game and there are some unusual results from extremely high level opponents. For example She-Hulk goes from an average character to 'fastest team kill move' when Power of Attorney does like 4K damage + cascades which is pretty much guaranteed to wipe out your team. Same with Psylocke who can often two match black kill someone just because doing 15000 damage to a single player character is no better than doing 6000 damage for all practical purposes. They really need to have scaling consider the quality of the your opponents. I'd propose make all the previously super high scaling node have an automatic 'no characters with multiple identities'. That is, you can't have Wolverine because he has more than one identity (2*, 3*, 4*), no Thor, no Storm, Captain America, Magneto, and so on. This isn't necessarily meant to be a reflection of character's power (HT and Spiderman have multiple identities too) but that'd cut out enough of your roster to lower the scaling to something reasonable like level 200.

SnowcaTT

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Is anybody actually enjoying this?

No, and I'm the resident PvE apologist. You're exactly right about the all-or-nothing aspect that's totally board dependent. I'm already dreading what the end of this sub is going to look like, with Mystique anchoring the essentials. And I do mean anchoring. At least Patch could do some consistent damage.

So many regular names here commenting about difficulty vs fun. I'll add my voice to the "no fun" aspect on this PVE. Hard nodes make for long grinds, which you need to repeat every 2.5 hours...for seven days....very bad.

Unknown

SnowcaTT wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Is anybody actually enjoying this?

No, and I'm the resident PvE apologist. You're exactly right about the all-or-nothing aspect that's totally board dependent. I'm already dreading what the end of this sub is going to look like, with Mystique anchoring the essentials. And I do mean anchoring. At least Patch could do some consistent damage.

So many regular names here commenting about difficulty vs fun. I'll add my voice to the "no fun" aspect on this PVE. Hard nodes make for long grinds, which you need to repeat every 2.5 hours...for seven days....very bad.

And if the hard nodes are capped at level 200, that is somehow not a grind to do all 10 of them every 2.5 hours instead of 3-4 every 2.5 hours? And yes you can be quite sure that someone will grind them all every 2.5 hours which means you'll have to too if you are competitive, and if you don't want to be competitive there's nothing stopping you from grinding less now either.

Now I wouldn't mind if the points/refresh time are doubled on hard (so double points and 4H 48M refresh) so that I'm not perpetually waiting for health packs to come back while not doing anything else. Would also make it more adantageous to take risks in general under this system compared to now.

mohio

Phantron wrote:

SnowcaTT wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Is anybody actually enjoying this?

No, and I'm the resident PvE apologist. You're exactly right about the all-or-nothing aspect that's totally board dependent. I'm already dreading what the end of this sub is going to look like, with Mystique anchoring the essentials. And I do mean anchoring. At least Patch could do some consistent damage.

So many regular names here commenting about difficulty vs fun. I'll add my voice to the "no fun" aspect on this PVE. Hard nodes make for long grinds, which you need to repeat every 2.5 hours...for seven days....very bad.

And if the hard nodes are capped at level 200, that is somehow not a grind to do all 10 of them every 2.5 hours instead of 3-4 every 2.5 hours? And yes you can be quite sure that someone will grind them all every 2.5 hours which means you'll have to too if you are competitive, and if you don't want to be competitive there's nothing stopping you from grinding less now either.

Now I wouldn't mind if the points/refresh time are doubled on hard (so double points and 4H 48M refresh) so that I'm not perpetually waiting for health packs to come back while not doing anything else. Would also make it more adantageous to take risks in general under this system compared to now.

Phantron I don't disagree with your comment but I'd like to give a little rebuttal. I even almost made a joke that knowing the way d3 tries to fix issues this was their attemp at 'fixing' grinding in pve. Anyway, lowering scaling would just make the grinding more ridiculous although somewhat less frustrating as you point out. The thing is that they should be looking for a change that keeps scaling mildly reasonable while limiting grinding in a different way. Your double points, double refresh time is a great idea for that.

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

I'd propose make all the previously super high scaling node have an automatic 'no characters with multiple identities'. That is, you can't have Wolverine because he has more than one identity (2*, 3*, 4*), no Thor, no Storm, Captain America, Magneto, and so on.

Are you saying the nodes shouldn't use those characters, or we shouldn't be allowed to use any of them? This is either a fantastic idea, or the most preposterous thing I've ever heard.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

Phantron I don't disagree with your comment but I'd like to give a little rebuttal. I even almost made a joke that knowing the way d3 tries to fix issues this was their attemp at 'fixing' grinding in pve. Anyway, lowering scaling would just make the grinding more ridiculous although somewhat less frustrating as you point out. The thing is that they should be looking for a change that keeps scaling mildly reasonable while limiting grinding in a different way. Your double points, double refresh time is a great idea for that.

Well, there has to be losers for there to be winners when it comes to scaling. Most events everyone is a winner because scaling isn't high enough so everyone has to grind. In order for people to not grind, someone has to lose. I know I'm definitely effectively losing a lot of nodes in hard (all the ones I skipped is implicit acknowledgement that I'm not beating them), if not outright losing them when the board is bad, but I'm losing less than most people so that makes me a winner relatively speaking. Unlike say, Texas Hold'em, it's awfully hard to give the players the perception that the average player is doing better than the average because leaderboards exist. If we measure success as having at least 1 3*, then only 15% of the players can 'win'.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I'd propose make all the previously super high scaling node have an automatic 'no characters with multiple identities'. That is, you can't have Wolverine because he has more than one identity (2*, 3*, 4*), no Thor, no Storm, Captain America, Magneto, and so on.

Are you saying the nodes shouldn't use those characters, or we shouldn't be allowed to use any of them? This is either a fantastic idea, or the most preposterous thing I've ever heard.

That was a very simple roster restriction I came up with to limit scaling because not having any of those characters means you wouldn't need stuff at level 395 to keep things interesting. Just not having Wolverine and Thor should be able to drive down scaling considerably. Is that a good idea for roster selection? Of course not, but I'm not paid to figure this stuff out. There's probably some combination of limiting what characters you can use and what characters an enemy can use that achieves the optimal result and that's what devs get paid to figure out. A more refined solution might be to make the hardest nodes all team-up nodes that imposes some character requirement (team-up so that people without the characters aren't locked out) which limits the player's power but also ensure you don't pick enemy combination that requires the broken combos in the first place. Instead of fighting a level 300 Juggernaut, maybe we can get away with a level 200 Juggernaut if one of your characters has to be Daredevil and you can't use Wolverine.