Feedback: I spend more time suiciding in PvE than playing it

Unknown

Beginning from the last Prodigal Sun, through Deadpool vs MPQ, to the current Simulator event, I find myself spending more time tanking battles than actually fighting in them. Due to the way PvE scaling works, the optimal way to play right now appears to be:

1. Start a few hours late and get a fresh bracket. Don't wait too long however or community scaling will stop you cold in the tracks.
2. Clear nodes from highest value to lowest.
3. If an essential character is damaged and needs healing, stop! Do not heal him right away. Grab two sacrificial lambs and suicide them all on an essential node before you apply the heal to the essential character instead.
4. At the end of the clear, suicide your entire roster on the nodes, from highest scaling to lowest. If you have spare health packs, use them to suicide some more. Do not retreat, as you need to actually take damage for this to work.
5. Come back in 4 hours and suicide your entire roster again.
6. Heal up your A-team, and then suicide some more with any remaining health packs.
7. Start your next clear in 8 hours.

This is all incredible gamey, and detracts from the otherwise superb match-3 gameplay in MPQ, but it works so well that there is little else one can do in order to actually get a fair game. In the current Simulator Hard subs for example, enemy levels can increase by as much as +14 for every battle or two I win, and there is no one with a higher base level than 90 on my roster. By constantly suiciding my team on the nodes, I have managed to reverse the upward scaling by 5 times already (that's 70 enemy levels), which is the difference between getting a hard but fun battle versus an impossible and unfun battle (I still face enemies up to level 190).

Why does the personal scaling need to be so harsh? Players can already separate themselves in PvE rankings by clearing faster, more often, and with less health packs. There is really no need to have so much upscaling to frustrate players and prevent them from just playing the game.

PvE upscaling right now is fundamentally a punishment on good play, and that cannot be good game design. Increased difficulty must be matched by a corresponding increase in rewards. If upscaled nodes would produce more points, more Iso-8, or have a higher chance to drop team-ups and boosts, it would at least justify part of the frustration that it inflicts upon players.

Unknown

When the day comes where my strategy to win is to purposely lose over and over, that will be the day I delete the game from my phone. I just play pve as it comes, when it scales too much and I can't win then thats my limit.

KrazyKeylime

This is a good sign that scaling is horribly wrong when a a fail strategy seems viable. I hope the devs take notice cause this might be the point where everything starts to go into its death spiral.

Bowgentle

There are actually people going to such lengths just to have Level 370 enemies instead of 395?

Personal scaling isn't the big problem in PVE, it's negligible most of the time.
The problem is starting levels (scaled to your roster in whatever way) and community scaling that drives up nodes while you don't play.
And there's nothing I can do about those factors - well, all those PVE-only alliances are gimping their rosters to avoig highly scaled starting nodes, but that it madness of a different sort.

It's totally absurd to waste my health packs and chars even AFTER a PVE clear just to keep nodes at 370 instead of 395 when there's always PVP to play, where those HP are of better use.

over_clocked

I'm also incredibly curious now, can I see your roster, OP?

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

Personal scaling isn't the big problem in PVE, it's negligible most of the time.
The problem is starting levels (scaled to your roster in whatever way) and community scaling that drives up nodes while you don't play.

I do not know how much personal scaling you are experiencing, but your description of PvE scaling is far from the truth for me. Starting levels have always been very reasonable for me, and more or less hit the sweet spot in terms of difficulty. Community scaling typically accounts for less than 5 additional levels per clear with the new 8 hour refreshes, whereas personal scaling will increase all node levels by 10–15 levels for every two battles that I win (for Prodigual Sun, DP vs MPQ, and Simulator Hard), with some nodes going up by as much as 20 levels after a win.

To give you an example of what I am seeing, the last non-essential node in Simulation Hard round 3 (Dino/Colossus/OBW) started at level 142 for me. This is a harder than average node since one cannot use OBW to deny AP, but it is still doable with featured characters and some boosts. For each full clear of the subevent, personal scaling will typically increase this node's level by 10–15 two or three times, so that can account for anywhere from 20–45 additional levels. By repeatedly tanking battles at this node and others however, I can reduce its level to 158. This means that community scaling on this node accounts for only 16 levels, less if there was still room for more tanking, or more if the initial level already contained some community scaling. Compare that to driving up levels by 20–45 per full clear due to personal scaling however, and it is clear that community scaling is by far the lesser of two scaling effects.

locked wrote:

I'm also incredibly curious now, can I see your roster, OP?

First page of roster is this:



Beyond the first page, the only characters that get any real play time are a level 66 Loki (1/2/2), a level 45 Blade (1/1/1), and a maxed Juggernaut.

DaveR4470

Vynyv wrote:

In the current Simulator Hard subs for example, enemy levels can increase by as much as +14 for every battle or two I win, and there is no one with a higher base level than 90 on my roster.

The Hard branch isn't meant or designed to be easily playable by a team of maxed 2*s. It's designed (in theory) to present a legitimate challenge to 3*-4* teams. That sort of scaling is appropriate in the Hard branch -- that's why it's "Hard". It sounds like you're actually gaming the system by suiciding to make what (for you) shouldn't be an achievable set of nodes more achievable.

Which is fine... hey, if they leave the loophole in the game, I can't blame you for taking advantage of it. But I don't think it necessarily means there's anything fundamentally wrong here. If you're seeing excessive scaling issues in the Easy branch... well, that's certainly an issue given your roster. Ditto if you're seeing it in regular events, where early nodes with level 45 opponents suddenly become level 144 opponents after one win. But "I can't play the Hard nodes with my all-90 team without suiciding a lot, and then the levels jump way up when I win" probably isn't going to gain you a ton of sympathy, frankly.

I wish you good luck, though.

Unknown

DaveR4470 wrote:

The Hard branch isn't meant or designed to be easily playable by a team of maxed 2*s. It's designed (in theory) to present a legitimate challenge to 3*-4* teams.

... "I can't play the Hard nodes with my all-90 team without suiciding a lot, and then the levels jump way up when I win" probably isn't going to gain you a ton of sympathy, frankly.

This snark is unnecessary, especially since I pointed out that the same personal scaling was observed in Prodigal Sun (possibly even worse) and Deadpool vs. MPQ (slightly less here). I suppose you could argue that both those events are designed for 3–4 star teams, but then running three consecutive PvE events for vets while making the game miserable for 2* players would seem like a rather unwise decision that should be worth complaining about.

DaveR4470

Vynyv wrote:

This snark is unnecessary, especially since I pointed out that the same personal scaling was observed in Prodigal Sun (possibly even worse) and Deadpool vs. MPQ (slightly less here). I suppose you could argue that both those events are designed for 3–4 star teams, but then running three consecutive PvE events for vets while making the game miserable for 2* players would seem like a rather unwise decision that should be worth complaining about.

Sorry. No offense intended.

Prodigal Son actually does have two tiers for part of the event (where there are two different "areas" in play, one is Hard-level and one Normal-level, but they're not identified as such), and the single-area phases have easy and hard branches, and those hard branches ramp up quickly in difficulty. Deadpool vs MPQ is supposed to be a linear progression in each phase.

You say you're suiciding all the time -- have you tried playing things straight for an event, to see what happens? The problem might not be as bad as you think. I don't do anything special to change my scaling, and I've definitely seen ridiculous nodes (like the level 190 opponents you noted) from time to time. (I'm mostly 94s, with one 154 and a couple of 105ishes.) But it's not often -- in fact, it's almost always in new character introduction events, and I think it's due to community scaling issues as high-end players pound away easily-cleared (for them) goon nodes repeatedly while pushing for top individual/alliance results. The run-of-the-mill events are pretty reasonable. Not great, but reasonable.

You're clearly not enjoying things, and I'd hate for you to be doing all that stuff to solve a problem that only exists occasionally....

Zen808

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23911&start=20#p298940

That's a link to a post by Colognoisseur, where he describes how he manages his scaling.

I employ a similar strategy, with the addition that I keep a lot of my roster underlevelled. So effectively, I have my A-team of maxed 3*'s, my maxed 2*'s, and a zerg horde of mid-level guys to deal with the Trivial nodes. I'm convinced that annihilating the Trivial nodes with one's A-Team is what causes the most egregious personal scaling.

To compare to your situation, my Simulator Hard Round 3, Node 7, with 8 hrs to go is currently 173. Granted, I built up enough points going for the HP bonuses for the subs in the first two rounds that I've been slacking this one, doing only once clear and a couple hits of the Essentials.

Unknown

DaveR4470 wrote:

Prodigal Son actually does have two tiers for part of the event (where there are two different "areas" in play, one is Hard-level and one Normal-level, but they're not identified as such), and the single-area phases have easy and hard branches, and those hard branches ramp up quickly in difficulty.

This is indeed noticeable in Prodigal Sun, where some nodes will remain at trivial or easy difficulty while others quickly turn deadly. I am not a fan of hiding easy nodes behind hard ones, since players must have meta knowledge to know they should try to boost pass the harder gateway nodes.

DaveR4470 wrote:

Deadpool vs MPQ is supposed to be a linear progression in each phase.

I think there are a couple of high scaling nodes mixed into Deadpool vs MPQ as well. In the Deadpool vs Heroes subevent for example, Stars and Stripes Forever (190 points Falcon/Cap3/Sniper) went from level 91 to 164, and The Last and the Furious (220 points Pyro/Fury/GSBW) grew from level 99 to 165 for me. I did not tank much here because these two nodes happened to have weak compositions, but it could have been very unpleasant otherwise. For comparison, a node like Logan's Heroes (310 points Storm3/XForce/Mag3) only scaled from 70 to 76 over the entire sub.

DaveR4470 wrote:

You say you're suiciding all the time -- have you tried playing things straight for an event, to see what happens?

I did do this in fact during the previous Prodigal Sun in December, due simply to my ignorance of PvE scaling. Unfortunately, I quickly hit a wall of impossible nodes. My main 2* team was in the level 60 range at the time, while nodes went as high as level 150 or so. I don't think I was able to even clear a single subevent once, although this could partly be attributed to me having a very weak OBW at the time.

DaveR4470 wrote:

... I've definitely seen ridiculous nodes (like the level 190 opponents you noted) from time to time.

The Simulation 4 node in Simulator Hard round 3 (960 points Mystique/DP/Colossus) was at level 219 for me by the end of the sub. Given the high point value and relatively easy team composition however, this is still within acceptable range, even though I had to tank quite a bit to prevent it from going higher (personal scaling jumps by roughly 20 levels per tick for this node).

DaveR4470 wrote:

You're clearly not enjoying things, and I'd hate for you to be doing all that stuff to solve a problem that only exists occasionally....

I can still wring some enjoyment out of all the tanking as I satisfy my academic curiosity about PvE scaling, but I imagine at some point I will just stop playing PvE when all the fun gets scaled out of it. The goal of this thread is just to give the developers some feedback. I hope they will considering toning down the personal scaling a bit to keep the PvE experience enjoyable for all players.

Bowgentle

Vynyv wrote:

I hope they will considering toning down the personal scaling a bit to keep the PvE experience enjoyable for all players.

Lol.
I honestly think the devs are going at this from the other angle - trying to make PVE a miserable experience across the board for all players except the players on day 1-30.
Everyone else gets scaled into oblivion and has the most frustrating experience possible.

So your scaling is working as intended, I think.