Are shield cooldowns making pve more competitive?

RemoDestroyer

Please forgive me if this has already been beaten to death. Are shield cooldowns making pve more competitive? Why do I get the feeling players that would otherwise put up 1500+ points in PvP are now spending more time with pve?

Thick as Thieves may be a bad gauge since a new 4* character is being rewarded but I'm remembering most of the top pve spots being occupied by mostly 2* rosters not too long ago. In my current and relatively early top 10 there are only 3 2* players and 5 4* or transitioning to 4* players.

I used to think weaker rosters could make up for pvp disadvantages in pve but now I'm thinking they will get squeezed out of pve too.

Unknown

In this PVE yes, others probably not. The problem is two fold.

1. A lot of players seem to not have tough enough scaling so they just keep playing, while a handful (mostly veteran players) have out of control scaling from the outset. I'm probably somewhere in the middle. My scaling is not too low, but it usually does not get as bad as a lot of players with similar rosters.

2. The rewards tiers for 4* releases is insulting. I think especially for a lot of lower level rosters this is there best chance get one of these covers because they cannot compete for them in PVP. Therefore, I feel the shorter player and alliance reward tier is just horrible.

I undertand 4* covers are supposed to be rare. However, PVE's for these covers is rare--rare as in a one-time occurence per character. For this reason, I do not understand why players are punished when a new character who happens to be 4* is released. I'll say it again. No one can convince me that a regular rewards tier for a one-time pve is going to break the game.

Mawtful

stephen43084 wrote:

I'll say it again. No one can convince me that a regular rewards tier for a one-time pve is going to break the game.

Take it away Demiurge_Miles:

The main thing we were worried about is that a larger than average number of players would be able to play "perfectly" and get the maximum number of points possible. This would mean that we'd have a lot of people essentially tied for the top scores.

Uh oh, tied for top scores? That sounds bad. Thanks for saving us from a fate worse than death!

Dauthi

RemoDestroyer wrote:

Please forgive me if this has already been beaten to death. Are shield cooldowns making pve more competitive? Why do I get the feeling players that would otherwise put up 1500+ points in PvP are now spending more time with pve?

Thick as Thieves may be a bad gauge since a new 4* character is being rewarded but I'm remembering most of the top pve spots being occupied by mostly 2* rosters not too long ago. In my current and relatively early top 10 there are only 3 2* players and 5 4* or transitioning to 4* players.

I used to think weaker rosters could make up for pvp disadvantages in pve but now I'm thinking they will get squeezed out of pve too.

Weaker rosters may have an advantage, but in the end the hardcore will win at PVE. This is why I made a thread saying that dumping 4*s or new 3*s into PVE (a place for weaker rosters to make progress) is counter productive to everyone:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22522&p=284242#p284242

Unknown

Most of the recent events are relatively lowball on the scaling. In general if the strongest players are not encountering 395s then nothing on the lower end is even remotely challenging relative to what the strong player is facing, because 395 is pretty much the break even point where stuff gets harder for weaker rosters (because they can't go up any more for the strongest guys). If the missions are not challenging then it boils down to grinding, and there's no shortage of hardcore grinders with a weak roster. Sure, the overall most hardcore guy will generally win but the number of hardcore guys that don't have maxed roster easily outnumbers those who do, so of course it looks pretty even. In TaT I cleared every node about 5 times even with Magneto one shotting anyone (useful) but Thor and it's got to be way easier for anyone with a decent scaling where you don't have to worry about Magneto one shotting someone as early as turn 3, so I'm not surprised other people are able to clear every node 5-6 times too.

RemoDestroyer

Dauthi, I agree that hardcore players playing refreshes optimally ultimately have the success and rewards from pve.

My point is while players who a month ago couldn't be bothered with pve because they spent most of their game time shield hopping pvp events and putting up crazy scores are now waiting for cooldowns to expire and now have some extra time on their hands. So now there are more players playing hardcore and playing pve in general.

Are there a lot more players playing pve hardcore now than before shield cooldowns who used to be almost exclusively pvp players and maybe used to just play pve for a little extra iso or some progression rewards?

scottee

Don't forget 8 hour refresh timers in PVE will give people more time to play PVP.

I'm downloading Hearthstone right now to try out because they're making MPQ into a game you can only play every once in a while. Even when you want to play more.

lukewin

R&G with Thor rewards showed us that the if the vets wanted to dominate PVE, they could. I don't think there's been any increase in vets playing more PVE. The reason they don't play PVE is because it is easier for them to win the covers in PVP, so they don't want to be tied to the game every 2.5 hrs.

RemoDestroyer

lukewin wrote:

R&G with Thor rewards showed us that the if the vets wanted to dominate PVE, they could. I don't think there's been any increase in vets playing more PVE. The reason they don't play PVE is because it is easier for them to win the covers in PVP, so they don't want to be tied to the game every 2.5 hrs.

Exactly. However soon they will only have to play once every 8 hours.

FierceKiwi

As someone who's been dominating PvEs for months now there doesn't seem to be any real change in the Top 10. Even 8-hr refreshes didn't seem to change much (I'd assume at least a few vets would try for Red 4hor) as my Top 10 in The Hunt looked almost the same as the Top 10 in Oscorp. The only thing that's ever made a significant change was the nightmare 4hor event.