Are there "magic" numbers for scaling?

hesjingixen

I was reading a thread recently, and one guy said he hadn't taken his XF/4hor over 222 because it would mess with his PvE scaling. Another said 225. I've heard all these horror stories about lvl 395 scaled PvE fights, and I want to avoid them, so I was just curious, are there "magic" numbers, where as soon as a char hits them, your scaling goes haywire? I know that, at least partially, it's based on your average level, but it seems that some people think there are other magical factors. For instance, if you have a single 270, is that, scaling-wise, worse than 2 135s?

I'd like to level up my XF/4hor a bit, but I don't want to trigger some freaky scaling explosion.

Unknown

The scaling formula is almost certain something like (a factor determined by event) * (a level that's determined by your characters) + (another factor determined by event). That is, if you were running level 40 3* with max covers you'd find your enemies are still level 120-150 because of the additive constant which is 3 times your levels so that's not that great (and why you don't see guys with level 40 max characters winning events). On the other hand if you had everyone maxed out you'll probably see level 300+ stuff, which is around twice your level and that's still not that good either. Somewhere in between you can roughly balance the effect of the multiplicative and additive factor to minimize the level of your enemy relative to your characters. Since nobody knows what those numbers it's anyone's guess but assuming that you have absolutely every character that can possibly be used in the game max covered, I'm pretty sure there is absolutely no benefit to have anyone past level 166 since 4* gets a very small increase in ability damage at that point which cannot possibly match an equal increase in your enemy's levels. That is, whatever X Force gains from level 166 to 186 is not going to be close to what your enemy gets for another 20 levels. In fact since he's only one guy while your enemy have 3 guys and 4*s get roughly half the ability damage, that'd mean every 6 levels X Force get is roughly as good as your enemy getting 1 levels (+1 levels on 3 guys, each level is twice as effective for them being 1/2/3*s). Based on anecdotal evidence there's no way this is true, because if it is then nobody would ever see level 395s to begin with (166->270 would be a ~17 level increase in enemy levels if it worked like this).

Based on PvE alliances that run underleveled rosters it seems like somewhere around 100-130 might be the optimal point, but of course keep in mind this can change every event too. For Prodigal Sun or Simulator Basic Hard, the optimal level is almost certainly 166 because of the huge scaling factor that favors high roster due to enemy levels being capped at 395 (both events should have level 500 enemies easily but cannot due to the cap). There isn't a sudden explosion of scaling but it'll just get slightly harder for each level you add. Of course on the flip side having those levels make PvP slightly easier assuming it's someone you use in PvP, so you got to think about whether the increase in difficulty in PvE is worth it.

hesjingixen

Phantron wrote:

Of course on the flip side having those levels make PvP slightly easier assuming it's someone you use in PvP, so you got to think about whether the increase in difficulty in PvE is worth it.

That's the big question I'm considering. Does having a 270 XF/4hor give me enough of an edge in PvP to justify what it'll do to me in PvE?

Unknown

hesjingixen wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Of course on the flip side having those levels make PvP slightly easier assuming it's someone you use in PvP, so you got to think about whether the increase in difficulty in PvE is worth it.

That's the big question I'm considering. Does having a 270 XF/4hor give me enough of an edge in PvP to justify what it'll do to me in PvE?

If you already have them at 220 or so and are using them then it's not like you'll suddenly see an insane jump either. Again it also depends on the event because I'd assume you already see 300+ stuff for a particularly high scaling event like Prodigal Sun or Simulator Basic Hard if not outright 395 and in that case it's obviously still better to have a 270 than a 220 against something that's going to hit 395 anyway. It's impossible to quantify how having 270 versus 220 matters in PvP but it has to have an effect, so it depends on what you're shooting for. If you're trying to hit T10 or better consistently you're going to need every edge you can, and really having a 270 X Force shouldn't even be called an edge at that range. That's more like the minimum requirement for anybody in that range and you sure don't want to be competing at a handicap.

Arondite

Jamie Madrox has already provided definitive proof that character levels have an almost non-existent impact on bode levels (having every character maxed increased a one star from level 1 to level 6).

Max everything.

Bowgentle

Arondite wrote:

Jamie Madrox has already provided definitive proof that character levels have an almost non-existent impact on bode levels (having every character maxed increased a one star from level 1 to level 6).

Max everything.

The problem with this is, that yes, you can max everything, but as soon as you _use_ the maxed chars in PVE, your scaling goes balistic.

So "max everything" is only half of the truth.

Maxing something and then using it for PVP only is... not very intuitive.

Unknown

It is far easier to face level 270 scaling with X Force in PvE as opposed to not using X Force at all to avoid scaling. Anyone who's worth raising to level 270 for PvP is almost certainly a cornerstone of your PvE team too. Unless you're sitting around with multiple copies of the same character it just makes no sense to try to avoid PvE scaling by not using your most powerful characters.

Unknown

What does seem to be another factor is how beat up you get in PVE, so there is also some sense in not using your best in PVE unless absolutely necessary.

Arimis_Thorn

Bowgentle wrote:

Arondite wrote:

Jamie Madrox has already provided definitive proof that character levels have an almost non-existent impact on bode levels (having every character maxed increased a one star from level 1 to level 6).

Max everything.

The problem with this is, that yes, you can max everything, but as soon as you _use_ the maxed chars in PVE, your scaling goes balistic.

So "max everything" is only half of the truth.

Maxing something and then using it for PVP only is... not very intuitive.

What I've been doing, per other advice I've read on the forums, is using level appropriate characters in PVE. Lvel 30ish goons? Grab my Juggernaut and 3*'s that only have a cover or two. They tend to take appropriate damage. Lvl 80ish? Grab a fully covered 2* team, etc.

As I understand it, the scaling is more based off of the damage your team is taking and doing vs their opponents than your level. I've been boosting my levels on my high tier 3*'s as they've been gathering covers (thank you DPD), and in the last couple of PVE events my scaling has been fine. No ludicrous 375 nodes like I've seen previously when I was speeding through with my best/highest team.

Polares

Arondite wrote:

Jamie Madrox has already provided definitive proof that character levels have an almost non-existent impact on bode levels (having every character maxed increased a one star from level 1 to level 6).

Max everything.

He demonstrated nothing. The chars were leveled without doing any match. If he had leveled them and then did 25-30 matches scaling would have kick in and we would have the real level these chars would really face.

For me 222 was the best level for 4*, because it has a good ratio between hps, damage, etc. It is the point were match damage reaches the same level as 3*. But now, after 4hor was nerfed and If XForce is nerfed too I am afraid that scaling would be to great for regular 166 3*. I hope that if I stop to use 4* scaling will lower but I am not sure...

orbitalint

Yeah, the cited 220, 222 levels is really to keep 4*'s from tanking all their colors from 166's. That way, you can mix in more combinations of characters and XF doesn't wear down as fast.

Scaling, totally different animal, but seems it has been covered already. Though, I will add, I don't think they turn on scaling for those "easy" nodes in PVE. My goto has always been patch, daken and psy (soon to be IF when he's covered) for those level 30 nodes. And never seen anything happen no matter how hard I crush them and with what level.

The ones they turn on scaling for are the harder nodes where they seem to turn on community and personal scaling for 2-3 nodes per sub. Its those that I see an impact of how my roster did on that node relative to the levels. If I killed it in 2 turns, better bet I saw a 10 level jump my next pass. At this point, I think % damage taken in a fight and community win ratio are the two that cause the fastest scaling of a node rather than actual level of a roster but who knows.

Side note: anyone notice scaling being toned down since the character changes? My Family Reunion with Mags/IM/Don has stayed relatively quiet the first 3 passes. Barely above my roster level of 135 (they were like in the 150's). Anecdotal observation but lack of Winfinite/4hor and MNMags/Storm keeping scaling down? "Working as intended"?

Arondite

Polares wrote:

Arondite wrote:

Jamie Madrox has already provided definitive proof that character levels have an almost non-existent impact on bode levels (having every character maxed increased a one star from level 1 to level 6).

Max everything.

He demonstrated nothing. The chars were leveled without doing any match. If he had leveled them and then did 25-30 matches scaling would have kick in and we would have the real level these chars would really face.

For me 222 was the best level for 4*, because it has a good ratio between hps, damage, etc. It is the point were match damage reaches the same level as 3*. But now, after 4hor was nerfed and If XForce is nerfed too I am afraid that scaling would be to great for regular 166 3*. I hope that if I stop to use 4* scaling will lower but I am not sure...

Scaling is performance based, which has actually been plainly stated by the developers. Higher level characters tend to perform more solidly, thus increasing scaling indirectly.

You can always max every character, yet still use your lower leveled characters, and there will be virtually no change in your scaling.

What I said is very plain and irrefutable - the simple act of leveling your characters does not greatly impact your PvE. Using characters that exceed the level of your previous ones may have a notable impact, sure, but that's not what I said.

Unknown

It's easy to see the performance cannot be the dominant factor by doing a simple mental exercise. We know there are guys who do extremely well in PvE using an underleveled (level 100-120 rosters) roster and, in particular, finish better than the guys who see level 395s. If it is solely performance based then these guys will be seeing level 395s at some point because they have a better performance. It is absolutely outside the realm of possibilty to be running level 100-120 characters against 395s let alone being able to win efficiently at the pace high end PvE demands. Further, since repeated efforts to suck at PvE has never produced anything meaningful (plenty of testimonies for that), this means the guy running such a roster will be stuck with 395s for a long time and might as well uninstall the game. If something like this ever happened you can be sure you'd see a lot of angry posts, but to date no such post existed. Also, note that extremely high scaling events like Prodigal Sun and Simulator Basic Hard generally shuts out someone with a roster built in the 100-120s, which suggests that such rosters cannot compete if scaling gets past a certain point. After all, if a 166/270 roster is facing 395s and a 100-120 roster is facing 300s, the former is still greatly advantaged since a level 166 character is about 66% stronger than a level 100 one (and the level 270 X Force is even more than that), but a level 395 enemy is only about 30% stronger than a level 300 enemy.

Likewise taking damage, aka 'controlled sucking', cannot be a dominant factor in lowering scaling. If it is really that important, people would either be able to fake it, or that even if it's somehow immune to faking, then you'd get that people who genuinely suck at the game winning events easily with their expertise.

Zen808

Phantron wrote:

It's easy to see the performance cannot be the dominant factor by doing a simple mental exercise. We know there are guys who do extremely well in PvE using an underleveled (level 100-120 rosters) roster and, in particular, finish better than the guys who see level 395s.

You're confusing Match Performance with Event Performance. Say that there's a guy that beats 20 nodes, taking an average of 50% damage per victory. And there's a guy that beats 10 nodes, taking an average of 10% damage per victory. The first guy has poorer Match Performance, despite better Event Performance. He'll also probably have lower scaling.

Phantron wrote:

Likewise taking damage, aka 'controlled sucking', cannot be a dominant factor in lowering scaling. If it is really that important, people would either be able to fake it, or that even if it's somehow immune to faking, then you'd get that people who genuinely suck at the game winning events easily with their expertise.

But even with better scaling, the guy who genuinely sucks, will still suck. All scaling is, is a handicap to balance his suckiness, so that he can at least win some matches. He still has to put in the work of grinding, same like everyone else.

Unknown

808SpicyToro wrote:

Phantron wrote:

It's easy to see the performance cannot be the dominant factor by doing a simple mental exercise. We know there are guys who do extremely well in PvE using an underleveled (level 100-120 rosters) roster and, in particular, finish better than the guys who see level 395s.

You're confusing Match Performance with Event Performance. Say that there's a guy that beats 20 nodes, taking an average of 50% damage per victory. And there's a guy that beats 10 nodes, taking an average of 10% damage per victory. The first guy has poorer Match Performance, despite better Event Performance. He'll also probably have lower scaling.

Except it's trivial to take 99% damage on a game you've already won by just matching the wrong tiles and not doing any moves. This used to work quite well when the system did account for the damage taken and it was scrapped because it is trivial to downgrade a winning performance into any arbitarily worse winning performance. This is also ignoring the fact that nobody needs to fake a bad performance when level 395s used to drop 1K from a match 4 but getting pummeled by unavoidable match damage still never drove down the scaling. At any rate, it's not even feasible to take significant damage per victory because you'll just run out of characters and there aren't enough top tier PvE characters to rotate through. Take Iso 8 Brotherhood. You'd probably have to do at least 5 passes for a top performance and looking at just the hard bracket that's 25 games in a span of less than 4 hours. If you're taking 50% damage per fight there's no possible way you'd ever win 25 games in the first place and we know people sure aren't buying health packs in that kind of quantity.

Arondite

Phantron wrote:

808SpicyToro wrote:

Phantron wrote:

It's easy to see the performance cannot be the dominant factor by doing a simple mental exercise. We know there are guys who do extremely well in PvE using an underleveled (level 100-120 rosters) roster and, in particular, finish better than the guys who see level 395s.

You're confusing Match Performance with Event Performance. Say that there's a guy that beats 20 nodes, taking an average of 50% damage per victory. And there's a guy that beats 10 nodes, taking an average of 10% damage per victory. The first guy has poorer Match Performance, despite better Event Performance. He'll also probably have lower scaling.

Except it's trivial to take 99% damage on a game you've already won by just matching the wrong tiles and not doing any moves. This used to work quite well when the system did account for the damage taken and it was scrapped because it is trivial to downgrade a winning performance into any arbitarily worse winning performance. This is also ignoring the fact that nobody needs to fake a bad performance when level 395s used to drop 1K from a match 4 but getting pummeled by unavoidable match damage still never drove down the scaling. At any rate, it's not even feasible to take significant damage per victory because you'll just run out of characters and there aren't enough top tier PvE characters to rotate through. Take Iso 8 Brotherhood. You'd probably have to do at least 5 passes for a top performance and looking at just the hard bracket that's 25 games in a span of less than 4 hours. If you're taking 50% damage per fight there's no possible way you'd ever win 25 games in the first place and we know people sure aren't buying health packs in that kind of quantity.

Yeah...I've brought my node levels down several times by ramming poorly constructed teams of guys I wasn't going to use into nodes to be slaughtered, firing the occasional skill poorly just in case there were any tanking-detecting algorithms in place. There's very clearly performance-based scaling in effect, as confirmed by easy-to-test practice and developer statements. It's pretty well concrete, observable fact at this phase.

Eddiemon

Arondite wrote:

Yeah...I've brought my node levels down several times by ramming poorly constructed teams of guys I wasn't going to use into nodes to be slaughtered, firing the occasional skill poorly just in case there were any tanking-detecting algorithms in place. There's very clearly performance-based scaling in effect, as confirmed by easy-to-test practice and developer statements. It's pretty well concrete, observable fact at this phase.

I don't even both with that. I just skip events that don't have a reward I like and my scaling craters. Add to that the fact that I am happy to be #35 and don't grind to try and hit #1 and it makes a massive difference.

The only people I don't have in my roster as Starlord, Prof X and Kingpin. My X force is in the mid 200s somewhere and only because I prefer to spend the ISO on the featured characters than buy him more HP.

I've never seen an opponent over 300. I don't think I have seen one much over 200, and that's on the aggressively scaling events, normally they top out around 170 for me.

Your roster plays a minor role in scaling. How aggressively you play is the major determining factor. And as pointed out it is historical, so complaining that the 2* guy is romping it in so it must be roster based is omitting history. He may have skipped events he couldn't compete in, or this may be his first or second big push, so he doesn't have any historical scaling from the last 4 or 5 events pushing his numbers.