Plea to address pve scaling

DFiPL

Yeah. Not at all a fan of community scaling. If permanent chapters aren't going to be added, PVE is basically the majority of my play. If PVE scales out of the range where I can enjoy the fight, I just go play something else. If I go play something else, I'm not earning covers, and if I'm not earning covers, I'm not spending money on new roster slots.

Look, my wallet has zero ****s to give if I don't spend money on MPQ anymore. But that's where PVE is pushing me. I get told 'well, if you don't have the essential, put the time in and you'll earn the progression reward.' Then I see nodes that scale beyond my ability to play them. If they're minions, I MIGHT be able to survive them (just survived a 3x300 with two assassins and a soldier, with all of one hero and 716 health left). If there's even one active AI player in those nodes, I'm boned. So, sure, I can put the time in, but it won't do me any good after the community starts grinding the node down.

And if that's the case, there just isn't any point in putting the time in unless I have the essential. It's a vicious cycle. I'd like to have something to play, but there's a wall eventually for me in PVP (usually in the 300-400 point range when I start seeing maxed 3* and 4* teams), and it seems there's going to be a wall at least half the time in PVE, too.

I hate to sound like a whiny you-know. I love the idea of marrying Puzzle Quest with Marvel. But PVE should be a place I can go to enjoy the game without having to worry about competing with the rest of the community. That's what PVP is for. If the rest of the community can impact my enjoyment of the game whether or not I play PVP, that quickly becomes a game I'm not all that excited about continuing to play. A significant part of why I play currently is because a friend of mine also plays, and it's fun to talk to him about ideal builds and who's pulling what characters and whatnot. He began play after I did, and his roster is weaker than mine, so how do you suppose this stuff makes him feel? More than once he's had his tap-out moment where he's had enough, and I've pulled him back in. Not necessarily because of HIS enjoyment of the game (and admittedly he does enjoy it when he doesn't feel like it's actively trying to screw him over), but selfishly because of mine. Because if he keeps playing, I have someone to share my enjoyment with. If that leaves, what I'm left with is frustration in PVE and PVP, and occasional frustration in DDQ whenever the frigging ninjas show up. Not a lot of daylight there for good times.

MarvelDestiny

Twombley wrote:

Ha ha, it went from level 303 to 309 while I made a mug of tea.

This is supposed to encourage me to attack, or drink more tea? If I am not attacking at 250, do you think I will when it gets to 350? Cough.

Chai is recommended by 3 out of 4 transitioners when taking on obnoxious goons.

MarvelDestiny

Phantron wrote:

If there is no community scaling then whoever plays last always wins. It's because nodes get harder over time that playing at the end is very dangerous because while it's advantageous play later in terms of points, they're also harder (sometimes much harder) to beat. Looking at the rate people climb it's pretty clear most people are still thinking they can get away with clearing at the end which only works if you have god mode. Of course the event involved matters too. THe worse the scaling the more it favors playing early because the quicker the nodes get to a point where nobody can reliably beat them. The same strategy would not work well for say Deadpool vs MPQ which has very low scaling. But really in general having points earlier is almost always better than having points later in PvE unless you're planning to buy health packs to make a run at the end when everything is at their highest scaling.

Community scaling is atrocious and doesn't work. Unlike PVP, wherein players compete for position; PVE does not have direct competition for position. PVE should be a grind based on individual roster strength and/or most frequently used characters and/or most covered characters. Since my gaming experience scales based on how well other players do, community scaling is really just a synonym for MMR. It's like saying that because all my friends beat God of War on god mode, I must now do the same; oh, but without all the upgrades, I have to earn them somehow by throwing myself into hopeless fights. There is another game out there like this: Lemmings and it was hella fun. (Of course, in my example, WE are the lemmings.)

Community scaling doesn't belong in PVE. Please fix this.

thisone

I know people are grinding down goon (at least them) nodes in my bracket. You can tell who they are as in sub they were a ridiculous x points above, but not overall. Thing is on last clear I overtook them in sub too. Was it worth it? I've gotta go with a no, but is it worth grinding down to 1 on a 48 hour sub. Then refreshing 24 hours later to go again? Gotta be time effective but you must only be getting less than 75% of the points if you clear every 8 hours. So is it a holidays thing or what?

Some nodes gonna hit 390 soon. Never seen them go that high before!

Xenoberyll

Eddiemon wrote:

the winner isn't the person who clears every node religiously according to a clock. As nodes become 'unbeatabale' for you you drop back in the placings. The idea is to prevent the game from becoming a pure time sink. Although if you are willing to waste the money on Health Packs the game won't actively try to stop you.

It also encourages people to play early and join brackets, because they can clear all the missions and get all the rewards, whereas leaving it til the last 3 hours and hoping to snipe placement rewards may leave very few nodes that can actually be cleared for ISO rewards.

Looks like you think scaled nodes become unbeatable at some point except for a tiny portion of top players. That's not the case. It IS a timesink of religiously clearing nodes on schedule and grinding. What's worse is that it is very much about luck too. Bad boards or enemy cascades costing you healthpacks. Bad brackets where the top spots are out of reach already because you couldn't join in the first minute. Or an easy bracket where your winning score isn't even good enough for top 25 in other brackets.

At least the 300+ Ares, Juggernaught, Bullseye nodes give a correct lvl 40/94 teamup reward now.

Unknown

I'm curious. Would a lot of the scaling problems be fixed if they start retrofitting story modes with survival nodes like in enemy of the state? That way they can lower the levels of the enemies to something reasonable. Of course none of this matters if community scaling screws that up to something even worse.

Malcrof

As someone sorta new, and with a transitioning roster, can someone explain the scaling to me? I was going to try and grind out my last 20k , but now even goon nodes outlevel me by 200 levels. The Ares/jugs/Moon level, i did easily with Doom owning the board, but not enough points left in that one to bother with doing again. Goon boards are all marked deadly now..

Why does this happen? Does this happen alot? (have not noticed it before, never seen a "deadly" board before)

thanos8587

Malcrof wrote:

As someone sorta new, and with a transitioning roster, can someone explain the scaling to me? I was going to try and grind out my last 20k , but now even goon nodes outlevel me by 200 levels. The Ares/jugs/Moon level, i did easily with Doom owning the board, but not enough points left in that one to bother with doing again. Goon boards are all marked deadly now..

Why does this happen? Does this happen alot? (have not noticed it before, never seen a "deadly" board before)

all goon nodes increase dramatically in level when the subs are greater than 24 hours. this is because there are many teams capable of defeating goon nodes without damage. as many people "grind" these nodes, since they are a relatively easy source of points, "community scaling" kicks in increasing the node difficulty for everyone. shorter sub times keep this from happening to the degree you see now, but goon nodes will almost always scale much higher during all events vs non-goon. with the right team (mag/storm still works very well) you can beat these nodes as well. if you see a countdown tile (sniper coutdowns in particular) that you cant prevent from going off, be sure to retreat rather than taking the instakill from the countdown. youll lose health on all characters but you can go back in immediately looking for a better board. your starting health typically doesnt matter, you either beat the node without damage or you retreat.

Malcrof

thanos8587 wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

As someone sorta new, and with a transitioning roster, can someone explain the scaling to me? I was going to try and grind out my last 20k , but now even goon nodes outlevel me by 200 levels. The Ares/jugs/Moon level, i did easily with Doom owning the board, but not enough points left in that one to bother with doing again. Goon boards are all marked deadly now..

Why does this happen? Does this happen alot? (have not noticed it before, never seen a "deadly" board before)

all goon nodes increase dramatically in level when the subs are greater than 24 hours. this is because there are many teams capable of defeating goon nodes without damage. as many people "grind" these nodes, since they are a relatively easy source of points, "community scaling" kicks in increasing the node difficulty for everyone. shorter sub times keep this from happening to the degree you see now, but goon nodes will almost always scale much higher during all events vs non-goon. with the right team (mag/storm still works very well) you can beat these nodes as well. if you see a countdown tile (sniper coutdowns in particular) that you cant prevent from going off, be sure to retreat rather than taking the instakill from the countdown. youll lose health on all characters but you can go back in immediately looking for a better board. your starting health typically doesnt matter, you either beat the node without damage or you retreat.

I appreciate the info. Wondered about that. I have been going in with OBW and trying to get blues to increase timers and steal AP to use skills. No mags or Cap to overwrite the tiles (well , none high enough to be of any use). Hadn't thought about storm, going to bring her in.

AaronTheLuigi

I run a maxed roster.
Please, anyone on the development team, justify this:

Not to mention I've been playing since the event started and NO ONE IN MY BRACKET has hit Kamala yet.

Nick441234

Scotland Yard VII now up to 329, and I still haven't fought them even once!

The scaling should be done on your roster. If you beat them fairly comfortably than it should crank them up a little bit every time you beat them. I have 3 characters at 128 and the rest under 100, they simply have no chance whatsoever trying to fight 329's!!!

Arondite

OP
"I think it makes sense that with a developed roster, you players have to slug it out with level 270 monsters that could kill you on a lucky cascade on any given turn. More than that, I think it's fair that every game is a Pyrrhic victory."

"I think it is unfair that my PvE nodes get more difficult over time in the same way everyone else's do, scaled proportionately to my in game performances and roster level."

Only one of these could ever be true at a time to a logical person. I'm not saying you're wrong in what you're saying in this thread (you're entirely correct). I'm just saying that it stands in stark contrast to your other, previously expressed views.

Malcrof

AaronTheLuigi wrote:

I run a maxed roster.
Please, anyone on the development team, justify this:

Not to mention I've been playing since the event started and NO ONE IN MY BRACKET has hit Kamala yet.

Try OBW, Torch, Ares. get blues and purples as fast as possible to counter timers, then work on blacks for dmg per turn. It will take a while, and some luck, but you can do it.

simonsez

AaronTheLuigi wrote:

I run a maxed roster.

You've got more than half a million ISO. Why not max some 3s? In the meantime, just use OBW on goon nodes.

Unknown

AaronTheLuigi wrote:

I run a maxed roster.
Please, anyone on the development team, justify this:

Not to mention I've been playing since the event started and NO ONE IN MY BRACKET has hit Kamala yet.

Cap/OBW (2/5/5)/Storm*

Relatively easy, as they generate blue/green/purple to steal and their ability costs are high. Just time consuming.

Malcrof

Moonstone is actually useful in taking their tiles!

AaronTheLuigi

Er, thanks for the advice from posts above, but between the out-of-reach rewards on progression and scaling and me not having much time to devote to it I'm passing. I already did it once at 180 when the sub began, and lost 1 guy instantly to one out-of-reach . It's more to illustrate a point about why the scaling is broken beyond repair.

simonsez wrote:

You've got more than half a million ISO. Why not max some 3s? In the meantime, just use OBW on goon nodes.

I can only get a handful of 3's up (Doom, Loki, Gamora, R&G, Torch) and they go anywhere from 114 to 140. I'm not prepared to potentially jeopardize any sane scaling which remains by leveling up partially-to-mostly complete 3's and need better users, although in the near-future I may push to 100-110 to sort of ease my way into it.

Or I wait and get sandyboxed by the automatic system in place.

stowaway

My team for difficult goon nodes is always the same: OBW, 2* Storm, and Thor. Yes, I have a maxed 3* Thor that does more damage and makes it go more quickly, but it's the same strategy with 2* Thor, who I still will use when I'm out of health packs. I agree that you shouldn't be facing level 300+ opponents. None of us should! But the reason these goon nodes have scaled up so high is people are beating them. Even 2* players. Level 300+ Juggs and Ares are a different story.

Malcrof

So the final node is only a 24 hour node? still 4+ hours on the node i am currently on, and 1 person just got Kamala, do you think there is even a chance at obtaining her? sitting around 48k right now

Unknown

There had been a lot of talk about scaling based on level or performance, but largely overlooked is the scaling based on events.

Every event has a scaling setting. The same event, for example Thick as Thieves, seems to have the same scaling pattern. This has not changed from Thick as Thieves being 3 hour refreshes to 8 hour refreshes. Thick as Thieves has the highest goon node levels ever recorded, out of all the events. If you have a max 2-star roster, you can still expect level 390 goons.

Now that it is no longer running 3 hour refreshes, Thick as Thieves is actually pretty much the best event ever in terms of effort per day required to place on top. If you take away the really high scaling, you can pretty much expect the top 10 to have scores within a thousand points. Is that a bad thing? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on if a lot of player actually want events that are won with better timing and speed rather than roster depth and ability to deal with over leveled enemies.