Get Rid of Level Scaling

Unknown

What did your last two PVE events have in common?

1) Widely maligned and universally hated?

2) Ridiculous difficulty, necessitating expensive boosts/way too much time and effort?

3) Level scaling?

If you answered yes to all 3, congratulations! You are correct.

Level scaling is a joke. It was doable in Thick as Thieves because of buffed characters including Black Widow Original, Spider-Man, and a wolverine. All were necessary for quicker kills and battles, and Spider-Man's stun is universally recognized as being an absolute requirement for these events.

Now, in your new event, you've limited the roster and removed the buffs. Even with Spider-Man's stun, battles take FOREVER and they are NOT FUN.

Level scaling as a proposition is broken TO BEGIN WITH! Sure, people want a challenge. The occasional level 230 battle is a challenge, like at the end of The Hunt where the top battles are level 230. If you want to challenge end game players more, add in a bonus level where you can't use boosts. Or there's no buff. Or there's a level even higher than 230. But SCALING is wrong.

I don't play hard, or put a lot of time and effort into the game, just so I can face a higher difficulty than someone new. It should NEVER be the case that someone with 1* only can beat someone with 3* roster in PVE rankings. When I first started, and Unstable Iso was the PVE event, I sucked. I could barely beat the missions. You know what that made me do? It made me work harder and pump ISO into characters and play PVP and scratch and claw my way into the top, so that the missions could be easier.

Now, I'm penalized for all that work. I'm forced to play level 230 missions over and over and over. And they are not fun! Sure it was okay with bugged Patch and OBW, watching insane cascades happen. But to whittle down their health? That's the height of boring. There's no strategy or skill in stun-locking as Spidey and slowly nickel and dimeing my way through 8000 HP. And without Spidey? Downright impossible.

Get rid of level scaling. If you want to give end game players a bigger challenge, find a way to give them a unique challenge only they can do. But to penalize higher levelled players is an absolute mistake and ruins the game entirely.

The last two PVE events have been TERRIBLE. And what did they have in common? Level scaling and level 230 matches across the board.

Unknown

Yea, no one should see 230s unless they have a maxed out x force, especially with the increase in boost prices.

Unknown

I agree with everything except for you're being forced. Smart people just turned their back to this ****. Probably you should too. What you write is true, but utterly redundant. Guess who doesn't no that? Either among forum-readers or the developers? It's all old news.

Just as we moved to 2nd sub of thivies brokenness was evident and the event should have been canceled. Instead we heard just another lame excuse about testing with smaller groups, unexpected, whatever. Wasn't really convincing but tinikitty, the event ended eventually. They were not willing to change or cancel en-route. But no problem to do it afterwards, right?

But it didn't happen. Revealing that all this is intended and they keep to the design idea expressed a few times: you're supposed to lose more and win less. Consider all the setup. The only thing that changed toward this PVE is the intentional losing.

Guess you better re-watch War Games.

Unknown

Completely agree with this. so disappointing that these new players are dominating the leaderboards just because they have super easy fights.

Unknown

I agree wholeheartedly with this. My first pve event was The Hunt: Hulk. I had lvl 20-30s of the buffed characters. The Iso from that got my wovlie maxed and M.HE and Cap to the 60s. Did I get all Hulk covers? Hell no, Red Hulk is still my bane that I feel I'll never see. Did I feel bad I didn't get top place because of 230 boss fights? Nope. Was I able to compete better in the next event? Yes, yes I was.

I don't like that PvE is competitive to begin with, but since it is and since this has rpg aspects, it stands to reason that people with higher level characters should do better than those without.

Unknown

Level scaling is a good idea, but it should scale with level max heroes (those you can play with in each event of course), no other things. And lvl 230 should be only allowed to players who have a chance to beat them.
This is just a game, not a torture chamber !

Dayv

The only way level scaling would work well is on a repeating level or series of levels where you're trying to play it until it's just too hard to continue. If it tries to take anything into account other than your performance against *that mission*, it's going to be broken. If it takes other people's performance into account, or is based on secret factors (where they can only confirm what it's not based on, and is apparently overly complex or plain counterintuitive) it's a terrible idea and you should just scrap it.

The level scaling SNAFU in the last two events makes me seriously question the skills and judgement of the developers responsible.

Unknown

level scaling based on roster is a *horrible* idea.

congrats you have a lvl 141 magneto! feel like you should cut through opponents easily? nah, lets just give you lvl 230s in all events while others see 10s and match you with anyone else in pvp that has 141 x3... good luck in the tourneys and oh, have <snicker> fun! </sarcasm>

put in terms of any other rpg. I do 10 dmg enemy has 100 life. killed in 10 hits. Oo a new sword dropped it does 20 dmg now. <enemy scales based on weapons> i do 20 dmg enemy has 200 life. killed in 10 hits but now does more dmg to me... i've played one or two rpgs like that and they are no fun you feel weaker over time. more time = weaker? thats progression but negative progression.

level scaling based on wins, possibly

if there is any kind of level scaling it needs to be the same across the board. say theres 8 stacks per fight, all fights start at the weakest stack worth the least points. when you win, *just* that single stack increases in difficulty and in points. at the top it can be 230 sure but then you are getting max reward and you are being competitive. it naturally balances, if no one in the bracket can win scores will be similar, if one or two can win the 230s then they deserve the competitive edge.

Unknown

Catalyst wrote:

put in terms of any other rpg. I do 10 dmg enemy has 100 life. killed in 10 hits. Oo a new sword dropped it does 20 dmg now. <enemy scales based on weapons> i do 20 dmg enemy has 200 life. killed in 10 hits but now does more dmg to me... i've played one or two rpgs like that and they are no fun you feel weaker over time. more time = weaker? thats progression but negative progression.

A whole lot of RPGs do scale everything to you. Bethesda's fond of using it in some form for TES - I think Oblivion was the most contentiously dreadful. But yeah, it's a controversial area.

If it's "the same across the board", it's not really level scaling. I agree starting low and increasing difficulty on repeats would be a reasonable solution that lets anyone play everything, but only dedicated grindmonkies will be able to squeeze all the points out. That's not dynamic scaling but, then, as most of this forum currently underlines, no one asked for dynamic scaling and no one here seems much to want it. Static systems are much simpler, something I think this developer would benefit from shooting for, having seen happens when they implement complex.

mags1587

I agree, the level scaling should go. I'm actually convinced that their level scaling is broken -- not just a bad idea but not even working as they intended. Because there is no logical reason that I should have 3 Trivial missions and every other mission is Deadly. Ideally, I'd think you'd want a good mix of all difficulty levels presented to each player. Which is obviously not happening, so they need to take it back to the drawing board and out of the game so that the players affected can actually play the game.

Unknown

+1 to killing level scaling. It's absolutely ruining the PvE events for me, especially since I don't have a high level Spidey who can stun lock. PLEASE end this.

NorthernPolarity

Hopefully the (probably horrible) numbers for the heroic oscorp event will support this idea.