The Truth about PVE scaling and Roster Levels

Unknown

I havn't partaken in a ton of PVE but in regards to community scaling never seeming to go down. I'll skip a node I know I would lose or get seriously messed up on. And I'm unlikely to try a node again if I ever do lose on it.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I mean, you're suggesting say a typical level 100 roster fighting say 120 enemies take 4000 damage which is 50% of their total HP, and then somehow when you move that to a 166/270 mix roster fighting level 300 guys, we somehow takes less damage both absolutely and as a % of our character's total HP?

This is absolutely not what I was suggesting, and I am completely baffled by this reply.

Phantron wrote:

The maxed roster takes both more absolute damage and more % damage because level 300 versus 166/270 is a lot harder than level 120 versus 100. If damage taken actually dialed back scaling it'd take no time at all for all our scaling to unwind without even trying.

Why are you under the impression that the necessary amount of damage taken to hold personal scaling in check would be a universally fixed number? In any scaling system this threshold must clearly depend on some hidden PvE rating of the player, and would thus be excepted to correlate with enemy levels. If a player is supposed to take 4k damage against level 100 enemies to hold personal scaling at bay, he may very well be expected to take 12k damage against level 300 enemies to do the same.

Phantron wrote:

[playing poorly and taking damage] does used to work, which made manipulating scaling trivial.

And yet this still works. It may well take more effort than it used to in the past, but the experiments are conclusive. Personal scaling can be reversed by tanking, and the effectiveness of tanking is directly proportional to the amount of health you lose in battle. I cannot say for sure whether it is absolute health loss or percentage health loss that matters since I only have access to matchups in a narrow level range, but damage taken in battle is absolutely relevant to personal scaling.

Phantron wrote:

Programatically, it's practically impossible for to discern the difference between just playing badly or purposely playing badly and the devs wisely stopped rewarding people for playing badly via losing a lot of health.

This I can agree with. The current system hardly rewards tanking at all. Tanking is no fun and any inroads you make against personal scaling can still be erased if you bring out your A-team again. It is much easier to manage personal scaling just by playing with a diverse roster right now, but that does [edit: NOT] preclude one from tanking a node if it should be necessary.

Phantron wrote:

You don't need a lot of help taking a lot of damage when a villian/goon combo can do a 1K match 4 and a Chemical Reaction can hit you for 5K+. If taking damage beats scaling, Ares/Daken/Juggernaut would easily keep anyone's scaling in check.

You might very well need some help taking damage if the game is expecting you to take 30k damage for that battle. Please discard this notion that there is a fixed damage threshold that can be applied at all levels.

Spoit

Linkster79 wrote:

So to sum up. Level characters as much as you want to, just don't use them efficiently. Is this right?

I absolutely refuse to believe that any game developer would come up with a system that punishes efficient use.

Have....you actually been paying attention. That's totally their exact MO.

scaling, death brackets, the new MMR. Their ALL ABOUT punishing you for succeeding nowadays

StevO-J

Phantron wrote:

StevO-J wrote:

When you say scaling only goes up do you mean to say that it goes up for all nodes, or just for the more difficult ones?

In any PVE there are usually a few trivial/easy nodes and a few normal/hard (and sometimes deadly) nodes in my experience. And then there are the essential nodes which are mostly rated easy/normal for me when a sub starts. Normally for me the easier nodes tend to scale down during the event, while the harder and the essetial nodes do indeed only scale up. Maybe this is an effect caused by not having any maxed out characters or something like that, was just wondering if I'm understanding you correctly.

It seems to me at some point there's this 'just keep increasing levels' mode activated for all the high point nodes. Back in the older days you can see a node in a heroic that's say Daken + goon + goon or The Hood + Muscle + Juggernaut fluctuate going up and down and it's not hard to imagine that people are having varying success beating this, but at some point it'll just keep on go up and I doubt this is because people suddenly put on their hardcore hats and start beating it easily. It feels like community scaling is some kind of lever but at some point it's just taped to the 'up' direction for the rest of the sub, and given we've mostly 24H subs now, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just permanently taped to the 'up' direction. Now there's still an issue of how fast it is going up and that does matter, but I haven't seen a hard difficulty node go down at all in a very long time.

Yes, I think I understand what you mean. It seems the higher point nodes, which are the difficult nodes I mentioned before, do seems to go up only in most/all events. The only times I have seen any nodes scale down would probably have been during a Simulator event. Last time it ran I think there were very few people bothering to play in the Hard sub and there was some downward scaling (in the beginning of the event) on the Essential nodes, but I think that would not be a very representative example for general comparison.

Main reason I was asking is because I was wondering whether or not it was just me experiencing downward scaling on the easiest nodes, but I think that is something that everyone has. Thanks for clearing that up.

Unknown

Not sure this seems accurate and I will explain why.

My roster is fairly decent I've got several 100+ chars, though of late I've basically dropped to doing deadpool dailies and not much else. During recent events I was facing 200+ level chars in the PVE and I haven't top 50'd an event in months. At one point I was doing the 4K run for the 10 season covers but even that has become clogged with 200+ level guys, I really don't have the time or want to spend the effort to get 1 timed by these people/AIs.

At the same time, my wife has mostly 2 star chars and a smattering of decent 3 stars. Her roster is puny compared to mine. Without much effort she easily top 50s events and doesn't have to face 200+ level dudes to do it. She plays about as much as me, sometimes a little less.

IF what you were saying were true, how is it that she is facing easier enemies than I am?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Damage taken is an irrelevent portion of scaling. It may have been at one point it is no longer so

Phantron you need to revisit this "fact" that you keep reiterating on. Based on our experiments damage taken (as a % of HP) can still influence scaling, although it mostly applies to really difficult nodes and seem to have thresholds and brackets. There are multiple instances where the enemy level doesn't change if I beat it while damaged, but if, for example, XForce heal resolves and then I beat the node with no damage taken, level jumps up. It takes multiple dead teams to reset this jump, and since the number of dead teams is variable, I'm guessing that you need to accumulate some kind of negative rating enough to be dropped back down in scaling. With the same reasoning, even if you beat a node with perfect health, if that hidden rating does not bump you up a scaling bracket, then you would see no change in enemy level (you can't perform a single sample test and make a conclusion one way or the other, and there may be caps on how high or how low you can move among the scaling brackets).

Anecdotal, I heard that there are people who intercepted data packets sent by the game after they beat a node, and HP values of your characters were one of the data points sent.

And a tip for others that are investigating scaling. As far as I know, scaling settings are event based. It's no good to look at successive events and guess if scaling went up or down. It's only useful to look at re-runs of the same event to see the actual effects of scaling. Rubber band settings seem to be set on an event basis as well. Every run of Enemy of the State we had seen some sort of rubber band effect, with around 10k to 15k point difference to leader as thresholds for activation.

For clarification, "performance-based scaling" does not refer to rankings you gain in an event but rather the damage % difference from entering a fight to exiting that fight.

Unknown

Do people even know that 2000 damage is about all you need to take to avoid any 'damage taken modifier' even when they used to track this stuff? All that means is you wait for 5 turns before you do your infinite combo with Magneto instead of on turn 2 and you'll not see any significant scaling. That was the days where the max rosters can have their cake and eat it too as you got guys like Magneto who can deal with 395 anyway but you don't have to because you can lower your scaling by taking Magneto with anyone, take about 2-3K damage on purpose on the person that isn't Magneto and then win the game walk away with no scaling. They got rid of this stuff because it was dumb and trivial to go around once you figured out the threshold the game was looking for. The 'damage taken' the game is looking for is surprisingly modest, which is why Ares is a scaling tanking champ as his Sunder alone is enough to drop your scaling. And even if they increased the threshold, how can you possibly have a hard time hitting it when you're fighting Muscles/Juggernaut/Ares/Daken who can wipe out a guy and sometimes the team if you blink at the wrong time? I was doing a Yelena + 2 Muscle node, so Yelena went down but a Muscle got a Threaten off followed by a Tommy Gun for 5K on everyone. That's not enough to hit a threshold for you? What does the game expect, 2 Tommy Guns for 10K on everyone?

The level 300 stuff isn't as hard as people claim but to suggest that they're that high because people fighting them somehow failed to take enough damage is absurd. If a guy like Ares who can easily wipe out your team isn't doing enough damage to lower your scaling than what is enough? The weekly buff list has made it such that the max rosters aren't hopelessly outclassed in scaling since higher level characters now get a bigger absolute/relative increase and that buffed levels do not count for scaling (if it does then any buffed character would immediately destroy a purposely built low level roster) to make up for some of the scaling advantage. I don't think it's fair but it's at least tolerable.

Here's an example just from playing. Anderson 5 is level 305.

First attempt with Blade/Prof X/Iron Fist, complete wipeout (got about 50% health done on Ares and Bullseye). Health lost = 27K out of 27K. Level is still 305.
Second attempt won, health loss is 9K out of 27K. Level is still 305.

Can someone care to explain to me how taking a total of 36K damage and using 3 health pack is not enough to lower scaling? I don't expect the scaling to be lowered, but if it can be lowered, what would it have taken?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I don't expect the scaling to be lowered, but if it can be lowered, what would it have taken?

From my experience, it can be lowered ONLY if it has raised from performance-based scaling. I had the node drop in level in as few as 2 teams dead, to as many as 11 teams dead. My observation is that the HP % damage required to increase a node level depends on the node's difficulty. A easy node will not scale up no matter how many times you beat it at full HP. A hard node could scale up even if you only take 1/3 damage on one guy. I don't know the exact threshold but my guess is that for the hardest nodes the game expects you to lose at least 1/3 of your health, and if you don't, depending on how much health you have over their "expectation", you rack up some rating that eventually results in a jump of around 30 levels.

Because there are a lot of factors going into this, it is difficult to predict when exactly the levels will increase or decrease, but for now I'm leaning towards that some sort of performance-based scaling is still in effect, and how much damage you can take to scale up or down depends on how difficult the node is.

[Edit] Just beat Anderson Bio-Technic V with 1 dead (down from 70% full) and the other two mostly unharmed. Node level went from 256 to 282. My previous fight on this node resulted in all 3 unharmed and no level change. I would guess that I finally accumulated enough hidden rating to scale up.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Can someone care to explain to me how taking a total of 36K damage and using 3 health pack is not enough to lower scaling? I don't expect the scaling to be lowered, but if it can be lowered, what would it have taken?

For the same reason that you would not expect the developers to invest monumental programming effort into detecting the true skill level of players, you should not expect them to implement a system that could be easily manipulated by the last battle played. This is even in agreement with your own assertion that tanking was "fixed" because the previous system was too easy to exploit.

While we know from experiments that damage taken in battle is a big factor for personal scaling, we do not know the exact function that determines scaling based on damage taken. Of the infinitely many possible ways in which such a function could have been constructed however, it is easy to imagine that a developer may desire a smoother output from the scaling system, and may have therefore used some kind of weighted moving average of your absolute or percent health losses in battle.

Should anything remotely resembling such a system be in place, your test—consisting of only two consecutive battles—would be completely incapable of detecting any parameter of the system at all. The last time I was testing how tanking could reverse personal scaling, I was suiciding my entire roster of ~50 characters on two or three node every 3 hours for almost the entire duration of a sub event. This is how I discovered that every uptick in personal scaling could be reversed with sufficient tanking, and came up with estimates of the damage threshold at 10–20 points per total enemy level, at least for the nodes that I tested.

If you wish to test the system too, then you have to put in some effort. Start recording all the enemy levels in your nodes, then when you detect a level increase due to personal scaling in a particular node, start suiciding your roster on that node. Repeat several times and you can get a rough estimate of how much health you are supposed to lose in battle to keep that particular node's level in check.

During these tests, you may notice that personal scaling is not a purely local effect: if you play well in one node, your scaling may be adjusted in other nodes too. This is suggestive of the game trying to keep track of overall player skill levels. So in order to tease apart any local vs. non-local effects (i.e. you play this node well so let's make it harder vs. you play well in general so let's make this node harder), you can now repeat all the above tests, except that you now suicide your teams on nodes other than the one under observation.

Sound like a lot of work to you? Good! Because maybe then you can sympathize with those of us who actually tried to test the system, and why we might be exasperated by claims that are based on two screenshots or two battles.

Unknown

So if I win hard nodes, my personal scaling increases things.
And if I lose, the community scaling keeps the node artificially difficult through no real fault of my own?

Seriously considering taking my money elsewhere...

Unknown

Nereb wrote:

So if I win hard nodes, my personal scaling increases things.
And if I lose, the community scaling keeps the node artificially difficult through no real fault of my own?

Seriously considering taking my money elsewhere...

I remember beating nodes in rapid succession multiple times with Thor/X Force and the levels didn't go up noticeably, sometimes not at all, so I don't think personal scaling is a strong factor. You have no way of telling whether the level went up because of your personal scaling or if community scaling just kicked in at that time, but it's actually pretty hard to see any immediate level going up even when you had characters like pre nerf Magneto. It almost feels like a version of getting sniped in PvP, as you can beat a node at say level 300 with pre nerf Magneto 5 times and it'd be easy, and you'll see that it is still level 300, and then you come back 5 minutes later and found out it went to 350. Is that because community scaling just kicked in or was your personal scaling kicked in late? But unlike the PvP analog you already beaten the nodes, so if your personal scaling is somehow delayed, it doesn't matter because you're done with the node already!

simonsez

The big problem is that there seems to be no contingency for your personal scaling to ever drop beneath a specific floor that has been computed via your prior "strength"... which would make sense if there was no way for your actual, non-tanking performance to ever get worse, but with repeated nerfs to characters, limits on boosts, health buffs to overbuffed opponents that are out of proportion to the buff YOU'VE gotten, there are PLENTY of reasons why your performance could've have gotten worse. But the scaling calculation doesn't seem like it has the capability to ever take that into account.

Bowgentle

At this point, the only fair thing to do is a complete reset of scaling for everyone.

Most of us got our scaling sky-high in the days of Patchneto/Sexgoddess, and it's clear it will _never_ go down to a reasonable level again, unless we stop playing for a few months.

So reset everyone, turn scaling off for an event, and let everyone use the lower level chars, which, in theory, should keep scaling in check.
Or jack up scaling for people who use their Hulkbusters etc.

Of course, it would be preferable to go back to the system before scaling - nodes with (fixed!) high levels that requires high leveled characters.
But since apparently it's unthinkable to lock people out from high level content (which is what 95% of other games out there are doing), this is never going to happen.

Unknown

With regard to "personal vs. community" scaling, I can say that from many, MANY experiences, including this morning, that the first appears to be dramatically influenced by the second, to the point where I would question the existence of the first.

One SY goon node wiped out THREE different teams (all my boosted characters first, then two "desperation" teams) last night, and again this morning, likely because the goons' levels were HIGHER than they were previously.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, if I cannot beat the level the first three times, that shouldn't indicate that it's too easy for me. If it's too easy for someone else in the community, awesome. Increase THEIR scaling, not the guy who couldn't beat it in three attempts the way it was.

DBC

Unknown

I wonder if they stopped with the static nodes because in The Hulk a lot of people were asking what happens at the end when you've to fight the 230 Juggernaut + Ragnarok (pre nerf even) because it was too hard and it's part of the story battles. Of course they could just not tie story battles to level 230 or 395 guys...

TxMoose

not sure what to believe. the recent IF node climbed every time I checked on it and I know for a fact that the vast majority of players that I know either wiped or limped out. I limped out with one downed and 2 barely hanging on pretty much each time. but still went up and up and up...

oh, and basically if you ever get your 5th red on steve, goon nodes go crazy. facing 320 goon nodes with a trio of ~100 guys. takes forever and its a crapshoot - wipe or come out unscathed. pretty much nothing between.

Unknown

All i know is that i am getting really tired of wiping on medium difficulty missions that have characters all higher level than any that i have. They really need to cap the level scaling of medium missions to the 166. Or if they really want to make a difficult rating system force star ranges for missions. But what they are doing with scaling is frustrating, limiting play time and plane just pissing me off enough to put it down. Not saying i am entitled and expect them to fix it, just assuming this is not what they want players to do.

Unknown

I personally think that people should just be sorted into tiers based off of their collection alone. And then have each tier have a difficulty level, and let only people within the same tier be paired off in PVE queues.

Say, your four tiers are:
1-2 star only
2-3 star only
3*'s maxed
3*-4* transition & 4* whales.

You could have the higher nodes in 1-2 town at level 75, 2-3 at Level 125, 3* maxed at 150, 4* transition at 175-200. And then scale the lower nodes accordingly.

Being a player with 3 leveled 4*'s, PVE's are simply not playable. I have no desire to grind level 300 / 350 nodes just so maybe I can win something that pales in comparison to the rewards for playing PVP, which actually rewards me for having a roster as opposed to punishing me for it.

Meh.

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

At this point, the only fair thing to do is a complete reset of scaling for everyone.

Most of us got our scaling sky-high in the days of Patchneto/Sexgoddess, and it's clear it will _never_ go down to a reasonable level again, unless we stop playing for a few months.

So reset everyone, turn scaling off for an event, and let everyone use the lower level chars, which, in theory, should keep scaling in check.
Or jack up scaling for people who use their Hulkbusters etc.

Of course, it would be preferable to go back to the system before scaling - nodes with (fixed!) high levels that requires high leveled characters.
But since apparently it's unthinkable to lock people out from high level content (which is what 95% of other games out there are doing), this is never going to happen.

IAH, I, as a 2* level 94 player would have ZERO problem with that. Those nodes are for level 160+? Cool, I'll play these level 100 nodes and hope for T100 until my roster is developed enough to run 3*s.

It's the very definition of simple. If I can't hang with the big boys, I can't. No big deal. I'll get there eventually, and I'll have a reason to try harder. If this is supposed to handicap nodes for lower level players, it simply isn't working.

DBC

Skorche

I don't understand the concept of community scaling. So If I farm the nodes really fast at the start then I face lower nodes then if do one play through every 8 hours? The one time I've seen community scaling happen and was like wha?! is the gauntlent. I usally kind of take my time to get through and it usually finish it on the last day. It was amazing to me to go to bed with the last node open thinking I'll tackle tomorrow when I have more health packs etc. and watch it go up over night. Unless someone was on playing me efficiently why would a node on a non-competive PvE scale up based on the community.

I get personal scaling. I guess I don't get community scaling especially since they fixed rubber banding so the points for the node don't seem to go up when the community scales up the node.

Bit bitter after getting yeah getting hit by a 11K power by Cmags, could well be over 11k my hero only had 11k health so who knows.