Thick as Thieves (1 Apr - 8 Apr 2015)

slidecage

Ben Grimm wrote:

I thought I remember there being nodes that were 2k individually last time, though that may have been with rubber banding.

I'm currently at ~58k - I ground 6 nodes down tonight because I won't have time to tomorrow morning - and feeling pretty confident about hitting 65k. Less confident about getting top ten, but I think top 50 is close to a lock at this point.

would not count on that unless people are doing massive grinding in my nods. I was 15th at 6pm checked at 10pm (still have 6 hours before total refresh) and im down to 80th

Unknown

There might have been 2K nodes when the nodes weren't repeatable, but since they're not repeatable they technically could've been 200K and it wouldn't have mattered because everyone was going to get that amount.

Oldboy

Phantron wrote:

There might have been 2K nodes when the nodes weren't repeatable, but since they're not repeatable they technically could've been 200K and it wouldn't have mattered because everyone was going to get that amount.

It would matter for progression rewards but not so much for placement/ranking rewards.

Unknown

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

Quebbster

Phantron wrote:

If you have 50K at the end of Scotland Yard that should be a fairly comfortable pace to hit 65K. Looking at my bracket the top 10 will hit that easy and I can't see any further below. I'm guessing most people aren't going to do significantly better than 15K in the last day of Scotland Yard (that'd be close to 4 total cycles) so you can that as a very rough estimate.

Good to know. I hit 40K with 10 hours left in the phase, so I should at least be able to hit 45K next pass and at least get close to 50K before Scotland Yard closes.
I'm assuming they will do what they did last time and have The Meeting as an independent 24 hour sub.

optimus2861

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

Ditto. I think mine are lvl 313 or something stupid like that.

That tinykitty Juggs/Ares node just wiped me out twice! First time I focused on Ares, then Juggs proceeded to Crash me to death. Every Crash led to a hell-cascade that generated enough AP to Headbutt or Warp me. Ares just sat back & laughed.

So second time I try taking out Juggs first. Ares then Onslaughts, Rampages, and Sunders all of my team but Thor before I can down him (Juggs' final Crash fed Ares a nice burst of yellow. How nice). Then Moonstone Warps Thor out on a board that was tailor-made for her. Purple & black everywhere, along with now-useless-to-me blue, not a yellow or green to be seen. She Photon'ed him to death at the end as a final insult.

I pretty near threw my phone out the window.

I'm not hitting that last progression

Malcrof

What happened to the goon nodes while i was sleeping?.. they were levels 160 or so when i went to bed, woke up and they are now 100 levels higher and marked deadly... is this normal? (btw, my best team got roasted by them

SnagglePuss

optimus2861 wrote:

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

Ditto. I think mine are lvl 313 or something stupid like that.

(

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

320 here. 2* 94 roster.
This has put on 200lvls since i started New Scotland Yard.
Punished for playing the game (OBW) too well.

My strategy has gone out the window. Full clear takes me too long plus some of the nodes i'll be down health packs.
Double clear for the last day

Malcrof

SnagglePuss wrote:

optimus2861 wrote:

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

Ditto. I think mine are lvl 313 or something stupid like that.

(

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

320 here. 2* 94 roster.
This has put on 200lvls since i started New Scotland Yard.
Punished for playing the game (OBW) too well.

My strategy has gone out the window. Full clear takes me too long plus some of the nodes i'll be down health packs.
Double clear for the last day

So i take it this is not normal then. I am about 22k away from the final reward, really wanted it badly. This will be the first PVE reward i miss.. as for placement, not going for kingpin, i need that daredevil blue cover ^^

StevO-J

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

I am no expert on the workings of scaling, but I think it's mainly this event that has some over the top scaling. Especially the second sub goon nodes go way up in levels when the sub is about to end. My max characters are lvl 70 (without boost) and I'm seeing lvl 321 goons on Scotland Yard VII, but as with most goon nodes the levels become irrelevant if you can field the 'right' team (3/5/5 LCap, 3/2/2 IM40, 5/5/3 MNMags, +2 r/y boost, +2 b/p boost for me). Well not completely irrelevant, but the opponents health is just about the only thing that matters, if I don't get LCap rolling before the first Sniper Rifle or something else is about to one shot someone it's a quick retreat and try again, and most of the CD tiles that do large damage are one shotting from lvl 150 or higher. It has been suggested that scaling is to do with how much damage you take when you win a match, more damage is less levels added to opponents, and those goon nodes are turned to 'lose or win without damage' so that could very well be why they scale so ridicilously.

For comparison, my Scotland Yard V is at 131/132/132 so not impossible at all, but too high to clear repeatedly for me (especially because top 50 is as high as I'm going to get anyway). But I can have nothing but the utmost respect for those people who grind this sub down to 1 or under 100 even, basically anyone going for top 10 or higher.

The thing that irks me is that the final progression is out of reach for me, I started in a late sub so partly my own fault but I don't think it would have been easy to get it outherwise. Reading the posts by Phantron it would seem that maybe they set the bar a bit too high.

Malcrof

StevO-J wrote:

Griv74 wrote:

Have they changed anything with the scaling lately ? I have goons lvl 303 when my highest guy is lvl 94...
I don't recall seeing nodes so high in lvl before...

I am no expert on the workings of scaling, but I think it's mainly this event that has some over the top scaling. Especially the second sub goon nodes go way up in levels when the sub is about to end. My max characters are lvl 70 (without boost) and I'm seeing lvl 321 goons on Scotland Yard VII, but as with most goon nodes the levels become irrelevant if you can field the 'right' team (3/5/5 LCap, 3/2/2 IM40, 5/5/3 MNMags, +2 r/y boost, +2 b/p boost for me). Well not completely irrelevant, but the opponents health is just about the only thing that matters, if I don't get LCap rolling before the first Sniper Rifle or something else is about to one shot someone it's a quick retreat and try again, and most of the CD tiles that do large damage are one shotting from lvl 150 or higher. It has been suggested that scaling is to do with how much damage you take when you win a match, more damage is less levels added to opponents, and those goon nodes are turned to 'lose or win without damage' so that could very well be why they scale so ridicilously.

For comparison, my Scotland Yard V is at 131/132/132 so not impossible at all, but too high to clear repeatedly for me (especially because top 50 is as high as I'm going to get anyway). But I can have nothing but the utmost respect for those people who grind this sub down to 1 or under 100 even, basically anyone going for top 10 or higher.

The thing that irks me is that the final progression is out of reach for me, I started in a late sub so partly my own fault but I don't think it would have been easy to get it outherwise. Reading the posts by Phantron it would seem that maybe they set the bar a bit too high.

They are leveling while nothing is happening, the goon node has gone up another 10 levels since my post earlier, and i haven't played a single board.

jojeda654

I think I'm gonna have to write off this event now. I'm in Slice 1 and the last sub just started. I'm currently 4.5k behind #50 with 29,633 pts. Can't see myself grinding on time to make up the loss, and I don't believe there are enough points left for the last progression reward.

Not too crushed by it, as I did not earn a Khan cover from her intro, nor was I playing optimally. I thought I could squeak by with the one earned from PvP, but by then I had already dropped out of Top 50.

SnagglePuss

StevO-J wrote:

It has been suggested that scaling is to do with how much damage you take when you win a match, more damage is less levels added to opponents, and those goon nodes are turned to 'lose or win without damage' so that could very well be why they scale so ridicilously.

This is the vicious circle of Goon nodes.
You do everything you can to avoid the CD, someone like OBW is setup to stop CD going off. Unfortunately this means you may take no damage, which sets the bar higher next time. It's not strictly here as Goon node scaling towards the end of ISO Brotherhood was also beginning to creep up to the mid 200s.

Malcrof wrote:

They are leveling while nothing is happening, the goon node has gone up another 10 levels since my post earlier, and i haven't played a single board.

This will be community scaling in effect.
It seems, at least in my slice, people have been double/triple/grinding nodes. Either because of time or desperation for the top progression rewards, fight for top 10. This in turn bumps up the difficulty

That Daredevil Blue might have been the better option if you're not getting top 10. At least DD would have been usuable immediately than the roster spage hog that is a single cover 4*

StevO-J

Malcrof wrote:

They are leveling while nothing is happening, the goon node has gone up another 10 levels since my post earlier, and i haven't played a single board.

That will most likely be the 'community scaling' at work. Again no expert myself, but the more people are playing and winning the node the higher it gets. Sometimes it can go down too, I've seen that happen occasionally myself, probably when most al lot of people lose on a certian node.

But I feel your pain, it sucks, I know. All I can say is good luck trying to beat those difficult nodes, that's what I do (the trying part at least, the winning not so much).

SnagglePuss wrote:

This is the vicious circle of Goon nodes.
You do everything you can to avoid the CD, someone like OBW is setup to stop CD going off. Unfortunately this means you may take no damage, which sets the bar higher next time. It's not strictly here as Goon node scaling towards the end of ISO Brotherhood was also beginning to creep up to the mid 200s.

Yeah, I think I already forced myself to forget that, it can get nasty towards the end in most events probably. Thick as Thieves stands alone in my opinion though, as it is the only event where I beat 395 goon nodes (last time it ran, 3 hr subs IIRC).

Scoregasms

Looks like there's 6,720 points in the last sub, but as expected, the last 2 are ridonkulous, I'm not even gonna attempt them now that I was able to get the KK cover during the first pass. Keep in mind, I've been playing this with 110/94 characters the entire event, the last two nodes are as follows:

The Who: Hood (192)/Rags (193)/Ares (192) worth 860 points
Business Partners: CMags (247)/Hood (248) worth 740 points

My top characters are 192 that I normally play with, I see that level a lot in the first pass of hard subs as my enemy levels labeled as "Normal" difficulty. Not sure if that is attributed to my past PVE play and that's just how the game algorithms have me set as a starting level. I'm sure I could bang my head against it and pull a couple wins with my lowbie team, but I somehow managed to find myself in 9th place currently and have no qualms dropping out of top 10 into top 50 range if that means no more playing, lol.

Good luck to the rest of ya, hope you're having fun

Unknown

I've done one clear of all of the last sub except the last mission (going to let people rest up a bit for that one; not like it's getting ground down to 1 point), and overall am in 11th place with 66,666 points, which, if a 4* wasn't at stake, I'd be tempted to leave my point total at. Because it's awesome.

I'll be able to grind to the end in this one, since I'm taking tomorrow off, but unless someone ahead of me either hits the wall or can't grind tomorrow, I suspect I"m going to find myself just out of the top ten.

Ironically, despite the 4* at stake, this felt a fraction as grindy as the last event, thanks to not having 12 hour subs.

Unknown

One pass through the last sub netted me 6720 points, if that helps anyone gauge better whether they will make the progression or not. but remember, there's lots of bullseye, a fair bit of Hood, and that nasty HoodNeto match at the end of it.

Edit: Well, I was well and truly beaten to that. Hehe

stowaway

Ben Grimm wrote:

Ironically, despite the 4* at stake, this felt a fraction as grindy as the last event, thanks to not having 12 hour subs.

Not having 12 hour subs definitely helps. But I think a lot of people are burned out or outright boycotting the event. People playing at the top levels probably don't notice the difference, but down at the bottom end of the top 100 things seem to be a lot less competitive than normal, judging from my alliance being just outside t100 with only about five of us of really trying. I have the second most points, and I skipped the entire first sub. (Happily it looks like I'll still get the final progression reward.)

Malcrof

I just checked, in my bracket, i am ranked #69, and not a single person has hit the 65k yet. If i finish top 100 and do not get the final progression reward.. that will be a serious first.

TxMoose

Malcrof wrote:

I just checked, in my bracket, i am ranked #69, and not a single person has hit the 65k yet. If i finish top 100 and do not get the final progression reward.. that will be a serious first.

I'm in the same boat Mal - almost done with my first clear of the meeting (last sub), sitting at 49th place at 45,295 - don't think I can make progression, but might get close. The thing is I want progression and the daredevil blue, not another cd 4* guy. if I make it to progression I'm 99% sure I will be top 50, which I do NOT want, so meh. unless node points start scaling with the opponent levels, I might be done with this pve soon.