scaling on essentials need to be looked at

TheOncomingStorm

I'll go further it's time to junk scaling altogether on both levels.

1. Individual scaling - If I play well or get lucky enough to win without taking significant damage; then, I am penalized with higher scaling. Whereas if some one else does not play well or gets unlucky, they get a scaling break. Why are players penalized for playing well?

2. Community scaling - This has been the worst thing about this game from almost day 1. If some other knuckleheads grind the nodes to a pulp, then other people playing correctly or more casually, they get punished. As bad as individual scaling is, at least it is based on how capable I am of beating the nodes. Community scaling does not care how tough the nodes are for me already. If other players (especially those that have easier individual scaling) have no problems with their scaling, I get unjustly and disproportionally penalized. I will be blunt. This mechanic is outdated and needs to go.

And it's not just PVE scaling.

1. Gauntlet - Every time you beat a node, scaling goes up. Good luck getting all four rewards from each node. It is tough enough beating each node once. Not only that, as you beat nodes, others that you have not even played once yet, scale up.

2. Ultron Event - Yes, even the first run of the Ultron event. Scaling in the first run started out okay, but it scaled up way to quickly. It was not a gradual smooth progression in scaling up from level 1 to 8.

Why is 395 scaling still here?

We were told they added 395 levels because of C Mags and Spidey. They are fixed, but level 395 is still here. It's time to follow through. The cause of the 395 is gone, it's time for 395 (the product) to go as well. In fact, it's past due.

If PVE's are not going to be true PVE's, if its going to go by player ranking, then it's time to fix PVE scaling.

I was previously fine was PVE scaling because if vets had an advantage in PVP; then, it made sense for other players to have a leg up in PVE. Well, vets have much less fun in PVP due to MMR that makes PVP better for other players. It is time to make the converse adjustment to PVE scaling. It is time to stop the outrageous and many times ridiculous scaling of veterans. Scaling that starts so high, vets are forced to only use certain characters to have a chance. Scaling that never goes down and only gets worse with each PVE. Scaling that forces the highest scaled vets to use boosts to have any hope. No one can convince me that the status quo is not broken. Honestly, that it has gone this long without being addressed is just what seems to be shocking ambivalence.

Different Perspectives

There seems to be a major difference in perspective on pve. MPQ seems to view nodes as independent events. If players have strong enough characters (principally highest levels) and can manage to win a node despite the amount of devastating damage taken; then, the node and scaling is correct.

Players seem to view nodes as sequential events. Players think they should be able to defeat nodes and still have the capacity (health left from the fight, health packs left, other strong characters, etc.) to play the remaining nodes. Furthermore, for the end of subs, players want to be able to compete with others and be able to play the nodes multiple times.

TL;DR Too tired to type more.

Vinmarc43

Scaling is frogging ridiculous, a 250lvl nod is called easy, not saying it s not beatable, saying it s a waist of time, effort, and hpack. PVE is now unplayable, PVP is close to being unplayable, so I guess we are left with DDQ and LR.
Time to play something else soon, no sense putting money into this now.
D3, wake up man.

Unknown

Good, good,

All ya'll can rage-give up on simulator.

It'll make it easier for me to get top 10.

Unknown

Scaling seems to be a warped way to implement the equivalent of a difficulty selector. Back when Simulator had a hard/normal sub bracket, you can see that each sub does have a distribution of what you'd expect from the name. The normal sub has a fairly random selection of people at the top in terms of roster strength, while the hard sub is heavily concentrated toward stronger rosters. While it feels weird that the strong rosters do not dominate normal (because it's just a pure grind and anybody can grind hard when the nodes are trivial), the hard sub are worth more points so doing well on hard almost guaranteeds doing well overall. While the hard sub still uses the same scaling mechanism, the scaling factor for hard is set at the 'everyone is screwed' level so nobody gets a meaningful advantage there, and it's not unusual for scaling to hit the 'can't possibly go any higher' level which favors stronger roster greatly.

Community scaling may have been needed back when they start out the nodes way too easy and need to have a mechanism to make sure you didn't have 100 guys virtually tied for first because the nodes are too easy. Of course this hasn't been a problem since forever because D3 quickly got very good at making sure the nodes start out hard anyway and the recent nerfs pretty much ensures that nobody will ever have to worry about nodes being too easy.

A very rough approximation is take the level for the highest scaling seen and subtract 100 and you get the scaling for someone with favorable (level 94-low 100 range) scaling, but this breaks down in the 200 range, as max roster vs 200 is nowhere close to fair compared to 2* versus 100. Note that there is a cap on how low scaling can go which is why you don't see someone with just a couple of 1* dominate. Any 3* has to start at level 40 and any 4* has to be at least 70, and in fact without that we'd probably be seeing 1 star rosters completely dominating PvE. Having a higher minimum level would also fix this issue, though if you set the minimum level to say 150, you might as well not have scaling to begin with because at that point the weaker rosters cannot compete with the stronger rosters (which I don't think is a problem) which is roughly the same result compared to not having scaling in the first place.