Scaling seems more broken than ever

simonsez

gamar wrote:

Why would he say this:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5451&p=95493

I already answered that directly a few posts above, and since you're writing it off as semantics, why are you asking me again? My answer isn't going to change. So I'll say it again. It's not semantics. The verb "scale" means "to climb" or "ascend". As defined, there's no implication at all relative to starting point. If I tell you I left my office and ascended the stairs to the 27th floor for a meeting, would you be impressed by my physical fitness? Or would you first want to know what floor my office is on?

simonsez

Davyx wrote:

It was very exciting watching you duke it out with Malorick. Nice fight guys.

Thanks... and I've got to admit, even though it was total hell, and I hated having to throw in the towel with a full 24 hours to go, I'm really going to miss it. PvE isn't going to be the same with 8 hr refreshes (and yes, I know 99% of you are saying "thank god")

Arondite

Phantron wrote:

Arondite wrote:

See, you say that "that hasn't existed for a long time", yet ice referred someone to that post in the past week. Why would he bring up a post that was no longer relevant? His referencing said post is the only reason I discovered it - I certainly haven't even been playing that long.

Even with high scaling, most games with X Force do look like complete demolition, partly because if you didn't totally demolish a 300+ team it's likely the reverse happens as soon as they have enough to use any of their moves, but I can't even get my scaling to 395 even if I tried on most recent events not counting any nodes with built-in especially high scaling modifier (goons only or shorthanded). The 'winning too easily' is like back when Magneto can infinite combo on turn 2, you notice you beat a node and then it went up by 30 levels immediately. In fact, that was so obvious that you quickly learn to switch to a strategy like 'match only top row' to make sure you took enough damage to not trip it before you win the game. For the weaker rosters, it's a good thing they got rid of these things because the more powerful your roster is, the easier it is to fake any difficult battle you want.

So, essentially, you're saying that that mechanic has been done away with, despite a developer saying the exact opposite. Am I correct?

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

gamar wrote:

Why would he say this:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5451&p=95493

I already answered that directly a few posts above, and since you're writing it off as semantics, why are you asking me again? My answer isn't going to change. So I'll say it again. It's not semantics. The verb "scale" means "to climb" or "ascend". As defined, there's no implication at all relative to starting point. If I tell you I left my office and ascended the stairs to the 27th floor for a meeting, would you be impressed by my physical fitness? Or would you first want to know what floor my office is on?

My point is that if initial levels ARE affected and the devs only mean to say the changes during the event aren't affected, why would he say "you're not gaining anything by not leveling up"?

And "scaling" in the context of its use in PvE has nothing to do with "climbing," it has to do with "the relative size of" enemy levels

simonsez

gamar wrote:

And "scaling" in the context of its use in PvE has nothing to do with "climbing," it has to do with "the relative size of" enemy levels

Just because some people are misusing a word and creating unnecessary confusion, that doesn't entitle them to change the definitions of words and expect everyone else to follow.

And for you to say it has "nothing to do with climbing" is completely disingenuous. The entire thread has been how opponent levels rise during a sub. Maybe you never realized it before, but that IS what people are talking about when they refer to a PvE "scaling", whether they know it or not.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

gamar wrote:

And "scaling" in the context of its use in PvE has nothing to do with "climbing," it has to do with "the relative size of" enemy levels

Just because some people are misusing a word and creating unnecessary confusion, that doesn't entitle them to change the definitions of words and expect everyone else to follow.

And for you to say it has "nothing to do with climbing" is completely disingenuous. The entire thread has been how opponent levels rise during a sub. Maybe you never realized it before, but that IS what people are talking about when they refer to a PvE "scaling", whether they know it or not.

Maybe you never realized it before, but people ALSO use "scaling" on the forums to refer to when levels go DOWN. And what do you mean "misusing"? That IS a definition of the word!

scale
skāl/
verb
gerund or present participle: scaling
1.
climb up or over (something high and steep).
2.
represent in proportional dimensions; reduce or increase in size according to a common scale.
3.
(of a quantity or property) be variable according to a particular scale.

simonsez

"Reduce" and "increase" are still verbs related to MOVEMENT, which is completely consistent with what I've been saying. Referring to it as "difficulty" is a static state, and is not the same thing.

I'm sure you'll have more to say, but between you and the troll, I'm tapping out. Nothing constructive is going to follow at this point.

Raffoon

simonsez wrote:

"Reduce" and "increase" are still verbs related to MOVEMENT, which is completely consistent with what I've been saying. Referring to it as "difficulty" is a static state, and is not the same thing.

I'm sure you'll have more to say, but between you and the troll, I'm tapping out. Nothing constructive is going to follow at this point.

I think you're both right. Scaling is an appropriate term when difficulty increases or decreases for a node. You're simply setting your base point for when to start counting that movement in different spots.

For example, if I've never played PVE before but have a level 500 (using crazy numbers because the value doesn't matter) XForce and so the game starts me with level 500 enemies, then the enemies have been scaled to fit my roster.

If I play some games and the enemies increase to level 550, the enemies have been scaled to account for my play.

Both of these are scaling. The size/level/difficulty of an enemy/node is changed to better fit some criteria such as roster, play, or community.

Unknown

I don't know if devs consider the initial levels as part of scaling, but from a game design perspective, if in the configuration the initial enemy level of a node is defined only once, then every variation of the initial enemy level is "scaled" from this configuration. Scaling in this context means to increase or decrease in some proportion of the original value, and relates to the mathematical notion of scale, rather than the act of climbing.

This is from IceIX (source: http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10735&p=177108#p177108)

Having levels of characters directly influence your PVE scaling or PVP MMR directly penalizes you for leveling if you can figure out the right balance ahead of time. So we simply don't do that.

There's probably some typos in that quote so it doesn't make complete sense to me, but I assume that the spirit of the design is to NOT penalize you for leveling your characters. Having your roster affect the initial enemy level would contradict that design goal, so ideally that's not what the game is doing. That said, I could see some loopholes where initial enemy levels being based on PvE rating would break if the player somehow sells their entire roster, so I don't know if it's wise for the game to ignore the roster completely either.

I do hope that the devs chime in and tell us if the roster does in fact affect PvE initial enemy levels for events other than Gauntlets. There's a lot of advice currently floating around that says not to level your roster past certain points, or not to level your highest character pass a certain point, all of these resulting from anecdotes or rumors that leveling up penalizes you, which is not what the devs want.

Unknown

Speaking of scaling (slightly different than topic), if I have one 3* maxed to 102 and then a bunch of 2*s, if I sell the 3* will my scaling go back down?

Trisul

I want to believe IceIX. It's hard because we've got a decent amount of anecdotal evidence pointing to immediately higher starting levels when you raise character levels.

I guess for me, I'd just like a little clarification.

"No, starting levels and scaling are both not affected at all by your level, except on Gauntlet." <--- something like that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gauntlet does indeed scale to your roster, right?

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

"No, starting levels and scaling are both not affected at all by your level, except on Gauntlet." <--- something like that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gauntlet does indeed scale to your roster, right?

Gauntlet does scale to roster, according to a post by Will (that hopefully is still accurate):

"Your difficulty is set based only on your roster when you first enter the event.
Missions in the finale have a minimum difficulty that increases as that chapter goes on, so folks with a better-developed roster will have a much, much easier (though hopefully still very challenging) time there compared to newer players."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=16321&p=223216#p223216

cosmicsteve wrote:

Speaking of scaling (slightly different than topic), if I have one 3* maxed to 102 and then a bunch of 2*s, if I sell the 3* will my scaling go back down?

From IceIX:
"Difficulty is not set according to how many/who/what level of characters you have in your roster. It would be a very poor idea to sell your characters just to test this."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2973&p=45707#p45707

Unknown

Davyx wrote:

From IceIX:
"Difficulty is not set according to how many/who/what level of characters you have in your roster. It would be a very poor idea to sell your characters just to test this."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=16321&p=223216#p223216

Unless of course you don't have enough roster slots for all your characters. Then it becomes very fun trying to decide which characters to sell!

Spoit

Davyx wrote:

Trisul wrote:

"No, starting levels and scaling are both not affected at all by your level, except on Gauntlet." <--- something like that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Gauntlet does indeed scale to your roster, right?

Gauntlet does scale to roster, according to a post by Will (that hopefully is still accurate):

"Your difficulty is set based only on your roster when you first enter the event.
Missions in the finale have a minimum difficulty that increases as that chapter goes on, so folks with a better-developed roster will have a much, much easier (though hopefully still very challenging) time there compared to newer players."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=16321&p=223216#p223216

cosmicsteve wrote:

Speaking of scaling (slightly different than topic), if I have one 3* maxed to 102 and then a bunch of 2*s, if I sell the 3* will my scaling go back down?

From IceIX:
"Difficulty is not set according to how many/who/what level of characters you have in your roster. It would be a very poor idea to sell your characters just to test this."

Source: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=16321&p=223216#p223216

Thank you for digging those posts up. But yeah, the whole "roster sets your scaling" thing only seemed to really pick up steam after that post by will. And anecdotally, my scaling did seem to increase more after I took my x-force from 220 to 270, even though most people would agree that the actual gameplay effects of that level difference is pretty darn negligible (like 10% more power damage and 3 tile damage?)

ballingbees

you know what will magically solve the problem? - rewards.

if the rewards are meh, it's a scaling issue preventing the XF/4T rosters form populating the top.

if the reward is a 4T, there's no stopping the XF/4Ts grinding their way to the top, scaling or no scaling. It's happened when 4T was the rewards, it's happened when Fury was the rewards.

All other times, its "scaling".

dr tinykittylove

ballingbees wrote:

you know what will magically solve the problem? - rewards.

if the rewards are meh, it's a scaling issue preventing the XF/4T rosters form populating the top.

if the reward is a 4T, there's no stopping the XF/4Ts grinding their way to the top, scaling or no scaling. It's happened when 4T was the rewards, it's happened when Fury was the rewards.

All other times, its "scaling".

Lol, you have a point. It does look like vets are just lazy and don't like to grind unless there's something really attractive on offer. But really it's not that simple: scaling makes things not fun so they don't play, so 2*s rosters who find themselves walled off in pvp dominate.

What happens when a 4* reward gets put up on offer is that, despite scaling, the vets have vastly more resources to handle it. More options to pick from their roster, better covered characters, more experience dealing with funny things, even as simple a thing as having more hp to throw at the problem until it goes away. So given incentive they can indeed compete. But it sure is unpleasant as a very small cat.

Scaling tends to ramp up in later subs, especially at the end. I get lvl 300+ enemies all over the map too, yuck. But now imagine having the 300+ enemies right from the start and having them just keep going up to 395, who really wants to play that?

Arondite

dr tinykittylove wrote:

ballingbees wrote:

you know what will magically solve the problem? - rewards.

if the rewards are meh, it's a scaling issue preventing the XF/4T rosters form populating the top.

if the reward is a 4T, there's no stopping the XF/4Ts grinding their way to the top, scaling or no scaling. It's happened when 4T was the rewards, it's happened when Fury was the rewards.

All other times, its "scaling".

Lol, you have a point. It does look like vets are just lazy and don't like to grind unless there's something really attractive on offer. But really it's not that simple: scaling makes things not fun so they don't play, so 2*s rosters who find themselves walled off in pvp dominate.

What happens when a 4* reward gets put up on offer is that, despite scaling, the vets have vastly more resources to handle it. More options to pick from their roster, better covered characters, more experience dealing with funny things, even as simple a thing as having more hp to throw at the problem until it goes away. So given incentive they can indeed compete. But it sure is unpleasant as a very small cat.

Scaling tends to ramp up in later subs, especially at the end. I get lvl 300+ enemies all over the map too, yuck. But now imagine having the 300+ enemies right from the start and having them just keep going up to 395, who really wants to play that?

I don't think anyone has enemies that start at 300.

dr tinykittylove

Arondite wrote:

I don't think anyone has enemies that start at 300.

Some do. And before you start again on how it might be all because of how people are xthoring and boosting through level 30 enemies, the comparison was with people who don't play much pve if at all. Because their scaling sucks.

Arondite

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Arondite wrote:

I don't think anyone has enemies that start at 300.

Some do. And before you start again on how it might be all because of how people are xthoring and boosting through level 30 enemies, the comparison was with people who don't play much pve if at all. Because their scaling sucks.

No fresh node in a brand new event ever starts at 300.

*(any event not named "the gauntlet")