The Truth about PVE scaling and Roster Levels

Unknown

Really cool post, appreciate you putting this together. I've always leveled my characters but like seeing common community myths busted.

Unknown

Ludaa wrote:

I'm not well versed in the theories on scaling but it seems like...

Leveling up and having fun means doing more and more damage, killing teams faster. Damage output for a 2* roster probably isn't enough to make PvE scaling an issue. 3/4* rosters get bigger nukes, and are "nudged" accordingly (300+). Then it's a cycle of "You used a 12k smite to take out a 4k health goon, your scaling goes up." Followed by, "Damnit, Ares has 20k health! My only chance is with 12k Smites."

It's less likely that you scale up by overkilling (dropping Whales Whales Whales on the level 15/40/15 low level nodes) than it is that you scale up by killing everything without taking a set percentage of damage relative to your characters health. This is why goon nodes often scale up faster. Many people kill them without ever taking any damage, and then it gets to the point where you have to win without taking damage.

This is why many of the upper level PVE gurus (ones who didn't **** their rosters for no reason) advocate actually (gasp) using their full roster in PVE. Using 1 and 2* characters in the easier nodes so that the damage you take is actually a more significant percentage of that characters overall health. Taking 100 damage from level 15s is actually substantial on your level 15 team. It's nothing at all on maxed 166/270 characters.

Vankysher

j12601 wrote:

Ludaa wrote:

I'm not well versed in the theories on scaling but it seems like...

Leveling up and having fun means doing more and more damage, killing teams faster. Damage output for a 2* roster probably isn't enough to make PvE scaling an issue. 3/4* rosters get bigger nukes, and are "nudged" accordingly (300+). Then it's a cycle of "You used a 12k smite to take out a 4k health goon, your scaling goes up." Followed by, "Damnit, Ares has 20k health! My only chance is with 12k Smites."

It's less likely that you scale up by overkilling (dropping Whales Whales Whales on the level 15/40/15 low level nodes) than it is that you scale up by killing everything without taking a set percentage of damage relative to your characters health. This is why goon nodes often scale up faster. Many people kill them without ever taking any damage, and then it gets to the point where you have to win without taking damage.

This is why many of the upper level PVE gurus (ones who didn't **** their rosters for no reason) advocate actually (gasp) using their full roster in PVE. Using 1 and 2* characters in the easier nodes so that the damage you take is actually a more significant percentage of that characters overall health. Taking 100 damage from level 15s is actually substantial on your level 15 team. It's nothing at all on maxed 166/270 characters.

This is true though you have to have the roster depth to do this though and for those early in the 2* -> 3* transition it is a semi-viable strategy.
I personally found it hard to juggle my roster & health packs between PvE and PvP ending my experiment after 1 event.

notamutant

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Eh, that's just a test environment.

I volunteer to try it out in production, just grant me a new account, 10 million iso, and 1million in HP and I'll report out my findings.

That wouldn't be enough for you to max out every character. Trust me, I've tried. Spent millions of HP trying to get that last cover or two for certain characters.

Raffoon

This is exactly the info that we needed for so long. Thanks for posting this!

Now, just to be entirely sure...... That level 6 venom was because it added 5 levels, not because it multiplied something times 6, right? So for example, that is the difference between level 50 venom vs a level 55 venom, not a 50 venom vs a 300 venom. I know it's silly, but I have to ask

JamieMadrox

Raffoon wrote:

This is exactly the info that we needed for so long. Thanks for posting this!

Now, just to be entirely sure...... That level 6 venom was because it added 5 levels, not because it multiplied something times 6, right? So for example, that is the difference between level 50 venom vs a level 55 venom, not a 50 venom vs a 300 venom. I know it's silly, but I have to ask

I don't think it matters for base scaling. Any multiplier would be built in to the formula used to calculate your personal and the community scaling I think. I am not a developer though so I couldn't say for sure.

Raffoon

Yeah, I think you're right. Depending on how they set it up, the "Scaling" so to speak, could actually be a scaling of that base number. So, say your play experience made it so that you multiplied all the base values by 50, then that level 6 venom would be a level 300 venom, while a level 1 venom becomes a level 50 venom.

The reason I think this is very unlikely is that if it were straight multiplication like that, it would make Rags level 2000, haha.

Actually, come to think of it, when they did the level shift (230-270,140ish-166 and such), didn't they shift it to start 1 star characters at level 6, or something like that? Or maybe I just made that up.

Unknown

Raffoon wrote:

Now, just to be entirely sure...... That level 6 venom was because it added 5 levels, not because it multiplied something times 6, right? So for example, that is the difference between level 50 venom vs a level 55 venom, not a 50 venom vs a 300 venom. I know it's silly, but I have to ask

I like to pretend I'm pretty good at math, so let me try this out. Level 270 roster resulted in level 6 venom. If I have a level 90 roster, that is 1/3 of 270, so I should get a level 2 venom, right?

fmftint

Davyx wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

Now, just to be entirely sure...... That level 6 venom was because it added 5 levels, not because it multiplied something times 6, right? So for example, that is the difference between level 50 venom vs a level 55 venom, not a 50 venom vs a 300 venom. I know it's silly, but I have to ask

I like to pretend I'm pretty good at math, so let me try this out. Level 270 roster resulted in level 6 venom. If I have a level 90 roster, that is 1/3 of 270, so I should get a level 2 venom, right?

IF you have never played a match and have "base scaling"

Unknown

Joking aside, I think those 5 levels are the base setting, which means if scaling hasn't kicked in at all, it starts at level 5. The level 15 is because a 2-star character cannot go below level 15, and the level 40 is because a 3-star character cannot go below level 40.

Sure, the screenshot doesn't show what happens after you beat the node once with a level 270 team, but the general assumption is that once an event starts, the game no longer looks at level and only looks at performance. If you believe that the roster used in a match determines scaling, then you'll have to wait until the next event to see if it suddenly jumped from level 5 to level 200+.

Unknown

lukewin wrote:

How many times have I seen a 395 enemy? I'll let people guess before I answer.

0

I have a max XF and level 240 4herf, and 11 max 3* chars. How many times did I see a level 395 enemy in the Gauntlet?

Simulation 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, Essential 16, 17, 18, for a total of 9 nodes.

27 level 395 enemies.

Arondite

I'm glad this puts to rest the whole "my Pve is crazy hard right from the start because I'm the only person in the game with level 270's " schpiel

GuntherBlobel

This either proves that Roster strength does not affect scaling or...

That was Jamie's account with the max level Roster and base scaling. I think we all know the truth...

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I'm pretty sure it's your performance and an average of the levels of the characters you used recently to achieve that performance. It cannot be strictly performance based because there are guys who run a 'everyone at level 100' who easily does better than someone with a maxed roster. At some point, those guy should hit scaling equal to that of a max roster, and yet their characters are roughly 50% as strong, rendering the game unplayable for those guys.

Let's say my team is Lv.120 max (it is), and with that team I got Bullseye III in Savage Land 2 to level 320 (it did), is that explainable under performance plus average level? At what point would scaling qualify as not possible for your average level? Do the nodes need to hit level 395? Even then, maybe that's still explainable under performance plus average level.

My point is, if scaling can go so high even with average level in consideration, the limiting effect of average level is pretty negligible compared to the effect of performance. You might as well just ignore the average level part of the equation and call it performance based. If the theory for average level is that you need to play some battles with guys of that level, you might as well call that performance based.

Unknown

The truth? All what I'm seeing in this "explanation" is: if you made a new account tomorrow, buy and max all characters in game, scaling doesn't be affected but that is not obvious? YOU ARE STILL A NEWBIE whit money to max your roster, so computer still see you like a newbie guy. The only thing here is: if you are new obviously your scaling will be like that.

Please play whit that account for at least 1 month and give us a better explanation.

By the way that ISO 8 Brotherhood wasn't the glitched event? Where a lot of players play whitout scaling?

One more thing here, we all know, if you level up your character in the middle of the event your scaling is not affected until next event.

turul

The screenshot only proves that roster level isn't the only part of the formula, like

scaling = roster strength * account days played * figths won

Actually, if it does not consider roster strength and still does scaling, the situation is even worse...

Zen808

Phantron wrote:

I'm pretty sure it's your performance and an average of the levels of the characters you used recently to achieve that performance. It cannot be strictly performance based because there are guys who run a 'everyone at level 100' who easily does better than someone with a maxed roster. At some point, those guy should hit scaling equal to that of a max roster, and yet their characters are roughly 50% as strong, rendering the game unplayable for those guys.

You're assuming, of course, that scaling is a linear event, i.e. You win, scaling increases a set amount, you lose, scaling decreases a set amount.

Conceptually, the ideal scaling is a curve. What it's looking for is a performance equilibrium.

Your first match, you might annihilate the opponents in four turns, taking only a fraction of a percent of damage against your team's total HP. As a result, your scaling will shoot up.

As you progress, you will start taking more damage, your matches will take longer. As your performance approaches whatever arbitrary definition of equilibrium the programmers set into the algorithm, the scaling will taper off. At a certain point, your performance should reach an over-under: half of your matches you'll over-perform, half of them you'll under-perform. At that point, you're pretty much just seeing community scaling, and the occasional hot/cold streak.

The details of what defines "performance" are, of course, the secret ingredient; along with the failsafes (how the system can tell between a close match and sandbagging).

In practice, I would be willing to bet that a hypothetical player using only level 125 Beast/Doc Ock/IM40 will have lower scaling than a player using only a team of level 94 Ares/OBW/CStorm. The actual levels are irrelevant, because performance is the sole determining factor.

It should be noted that X-Force and MagStorm are both incredibly over-performing characters in the context of PVE. It should come as no surprise that people who rely on these characters a lot are reporting that their scaling is killing them.

Unknown

Doesn't a new account get pushed into newbie brackets that have broken scaling as well? I remember when I was starting game I was able to place 1st in some subs while missing essential and had no idea how to play efficiently. Also would like explanation how my levels in Gauntlet are still low-ish (230lvl for Sim42 when I cleared it) while some people have them at 395. And it's not like I haven't been doing well, for at least 4 months I finished every pve t10-t50. And yeah, I was riding on boosted MagStorm most of time.

Spoit

Ludaa wrote:

I'm not well versed in the theories on scaling but it seems like...

Leveling up and having fun means doing more and more damage, killing teams faster. Damage output for a 2* roster probably isn't enough to make PvE scaling an issue. 3/4* rosters get bigger nukes, and are "nudged" accordingly (300+). Then it's a cycle of "You used a 12k smite to take out a 4k health goon, your scaling goes up." Followed by, "Damnit, Ares has 20k health! My only chance is with 12k Smites."

Exactly, once you dig your hole, it's neigh impossible to climb back out, since at that point your B teams, much less your C or D teams, don't have a realistic chance of clearing the nodes once, much less every refresh

Flare808

Spoit wrote:

Ludaa wrote:

I'm not well versed in the theories on scaling but it seems like...

Leveling up and having fun means doing more and more damage, killing teams faster. Damage output for a 2* roster probably isn't enough to make PvE scaling an issue. 3/4* rosters get bigger nukes, and are "nudged" accordingly (300+). Then it's a cycle of "You used a 12k smite to take out a 4k health goon, your scaling goes up." Followed by, "Damnit, Ares has 20k health! My only chance is with 12k Smites."

Exactly, once you dig your hole, it's neigh impossible to climb back out, since at that point your B teams, much less your C or D teams, don't have a realistic chance of clearing the nodes once, much less every refresh

Yep, sounds about right. I'm about as far down that hole as I can get. My entire last Gauntlet line (all 20 nodes) are at 395. If taking damage is a requirement to keep scaling down, then I'm screwed. Fighting 395s doesn't give you much wiggle room. My experience has been one of the following: AI gathers enough AP to launch a few attacks and I die pretty quickly (even match damage adds up) OR I get a good synergy with X-Force/Mags chaining board shakes/cascades or Patch/Loki can put up enough tiles. There really aren't many games where I squeak by to have damage show for my win.

Maybe wiping with my B/C/D teams is necessary to bring my scaling down, but that just seems like it shouldn't be needed. If there is a strong team that can deal with a node in 3 minutes, why should I have to take more damage with my weaker pairings to finish the same node in 7 minutes? Most games would reward you for being efficient and getting a task done as quickly as possible.