Perspective of a new player... kind of... (updated 1)

dr tinykittylove

I'm on day 11's rewards for my fake noob account, and life is really good for someone who knows what they are doing. I didn't play the falcon pvp, but once I got a few useful covers on my 1*s, I hopped into sim and pvp to get more. Went up to nearly 300 in sim and stopped because the rewards beyond that were useless.

I've been killing pvp with loaner+lvl 10, then later lvl 15 1*s. Was able to get the 300 token progression and top 50 in Fly Fight Win, hp progression at 400 and top 25 in Stay on Target, got 400 again in Most Wanted but not bothering to fight for placement.

Today I managed to scrape together 300 hp for my next roster slot bundle, then feeling brave, raised my juggs, im35 and minithor (2/1/1) to lvl 20 and took on the ninja wave node in ddp for the taco token. Opened it because I needed more 2*s... d'oh. Got a Scarlet Witch who installed herself in the new empty slots.

Have levelled up my core team (juggs, im35, mstorm, thor) to 25 and recruited the groot and deadpool in my cover limbo. I will see how this affects my mmr and scaling later.

Still need to collect 400hp for my next 3 slots and make some "fun" decisions on who I should keep/drop of the covers still waiting. Already sold poor mbw.

Currently very conflicted in pve as I want the hp sub rewards, but getting it means I am in the running for Carnage when I really want Magneto...

Ign: A N00b in alliance trollpack (I just skipped around in public alliances until I found one with reasonable good ranking.)

Moon Roach

Vhailorx wrote:

I would be interested to know how many days in the average player spends money (if they are going to spend money at all). I am sure that it is AFTER the game makes you choose between spending real cash or selling 2*/3* covers.

You could do a poll. I know that Wolveroach held out until day 86 before buying HP to "buy" a roster slot, and that was only because I got Fury yellow from a token. Before that I was selling 3* such as Punisher and Rags, because I was determined to be F2P on that account, and couldn't justify dumping a covered 2* just to make room for a single 3* cover that would be useless for a long time. Yes, I know, it applies double for a 4*, but this was October 2014, and Fury was cool.

zeddicus

As I did not keep record as well as yourself. I did when I replied last start new game. I got 4 star fury, 3 star quicksilver, daken, doc oct,various 2 stars at moment.

dr tinykittylove

Update on the life of A N00b:

Yes, you can achieve the season 10 pack with a 1* roster. Watch out for those sneaky 3*s that hop into your roster if you buy a new slot and don't put anyone in immediately though. They will hurt your mmr. I had to level up my 1*s to 40 to be able to continue playing pvp once that happened.

Pvp tip for real newbies:

Don't use your 2*s before they are ready - even at level 40 they make you instantly visible to maxed 2*/transition 3* rosters. :) A truckload of them pounced on the tasty snack in starfall and carnagr - in previous pvps it was more unmaxed 2*s and fellow 1* rosters. When I get the inevitable 4* I will try it out and report back.

Have had absolutely awful luck with 2*s though - I have a nearly full 2* cap floating in cover limbo waiting in case he becomes essential, but none of the rest are ready for action yet.

Once I got some essential 1* covers from prologue, I've been ignoring it except for occasional visits to try to get the hp. Not worth hitting it over and over only to get 20 iso when there are no progression or placement rewards. Go pvp or pve. I've only passed the Venom prologue and started the next, none of them have been fully cleared of the real rewards.

Pve has been comically easy once I managed to get a 3* essential. They tank, the 1*s do the rest. My 1/1/0 Beast has been a revelation though. He's awesome when boosted this much, at least compared to my 1*s.

Ddq is amazing. You can get a taco from the 1st wave node easily if you have a fully covered 1* hawkeye, juggs and im35. So far it has earned me 1500hp and a lot of 2* caps.

A N00b is f2p and on Day 26 of daily supplies, in alliance Carebearforest.

Unknown

johnaaron33 wrote:

PVP MMR

Top useful characters at this moment to use in PVP are 2* Thor (4-1-2) at level 45, IM35 (2-4-5) at level 31, or Hulk (1-0-0) at level 40, or MBW (3-5 by choice) at level 22. Those are the best characters I have in PVP. So why is a brand new account being subjected to maxed 2* teams out of the gate (after seed teams). I will occasionally get a maxed 1* line up with loaner, but even that is beyond what should be matched with such an under-leveled brand new account. So this is not only a problem for long time players, but for brand new players as well.

This is basically because no one who only has 2* Thor, IM35 and a single 3* cover hero should be playing PvP at all. So there is no one of your "level" to match you with. I mean you haven't even maxed your first 1*, you are still in prologue land.

Unknown

I think the biggest thing for me was when i discovered about scaling and "Don't level your 3*s or you will get screwed in scaling".

I only discovered that like 3 months in the game, browsing in the forums. I had a 114 Cap.America and i felt panic when i read about it and all the other scaling horror stories.
200 days later he still is lvl 114 and all my other useful 3*s are lvl 93, including 7 other guys with maxed covers and sitting on 750k ISO.
And i still get some absurd nodes sometimes, can't even imagine what it is for people with maxed 3*s or worse, maxed 4*s.
I may upgrade these characters when i have more top tier characters fully/optimally covered. MAY upgrade.

This for me is the biggest problem and reflects how poor scaling is. It's totally not intuitive and goes contrary to every game in existence. Who is gonna figure that when you enter the game?

It's like: Hey, don't level up, don't change your sword and armor for better ones, don't learn better spells, don't get a mount.
If you do,

Unknown

Lanko8 wrote:

I think the biggest thing for me was when i discovered about scaling and "Don't level your 3*s or you will get screwed in scaling".

I only discovered that like 3 months in the game, browsing in the forums. I had a 114 Cap.America and i felt panic when i read about it and all the other scaling horror stories.
200 days later he still is lvl 114 and all my other useful 3*s are lvl 93, including 7 other guys with maxed covers and sitting on 750k ISO.
And i still get some absurd nodes sometimes, can't even imagine what it is for people with maxed 3*s or worse, maxed 4*s.
I may upgrade these characters when i have more top tier characters fully/optimally covered. MAY upgrade.

This for me is the biggest problem and reflects how poor scaling is. It's totally not intuitive and goes contrary to every game in existence. Who is gonna figure that when you enter the game?

It's like: Hey, don't level up, don't change your sword and armor for better ones, don't learn better spells, don't get a mount.
If you do,

This is not even close to true. Scaling is affected most by placement, which you tend to place better with higher level characters. You should level your Captain America and a few others, join the rest of us in PvP land.

dr tinykittylove

Lerysh wrote:

johnaaron33 wrote:

PVP MMR

Top useful characters at this moment to use in PVP are 2* Thor (4-1-2) at level 45, IM35 (2-4-5) at level 31, or Hulk (1-0-0) at level 40, or MBW (3-5 by choice) at level 22. Those are the best characters I have in PVP. So why is a brand new account being subjected to maxed 2* teams out of the gate (after seed teams). I will occasionally get a maxed 1* line up with loaner, but even that is beyond what should be matched with such an under-leveled brand new account. So this is not only a problem for long time players, but for brand new players as well.

This is basically because no one who only has 2* Thor, IM35 and a single 3* cover hero should be playing PvP at all. So there is no one of your "level" to match you with. I mean you haven't even maxed your first 1*, you are still in prologue land.

You can play pvp to 300 points with level 10 1*s. You just need to be the proud owner of a genuine 1* roster, but it can be done. Level 25 1*s will get you to 500 points. Then your first 3* will kill you.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

This is not even close to true. Scaling is affected most by placement, which you tend to place better with higher level characters. You should level your Captain America and a few others, join the rest of us in PvP land.

I saw that topic, and a lot of people complained that it did not had any similarities with how people reported their results in the forums.
Then it started getting suspicious because the account never played a game and months later the author never replied to that.
Then, at the end of the topic:

grunth13 wrote:

lukewin wrote:

link to reddit

PvE Event Difficulty Scaling (self.MarvelPuzzleQuest)
submitted 4 months ago by Don_Tiny
Hello all.
I have a question dovetailing on a comment I saw in another thread.
It said that PvE Difficulty is scaled to your highest-level character. Assuming that is the case - and I have no reason not to - I was wondering if someone might clarify that statement for me.
I am curious as to how your 'highest-level character' is chosen ... is it based on:
- your overall roster?
- your most recently-used team?
- highest-level character you have used in that event?
- something else entirely?
My experience seems to be to that I usually get a few lev 1/2 opponents, then some 11-14, then after a half-dozen rounds or so I start seeing folks around 94, 166, occasionally some over 200 (yikes).
If it happens to matter, I try to use "lesser" characters to knock off the lower-level teams, and wait until the difficulty is closer to my better team(s) not only because it seems logical, but also because I was made to understand that one's representative 'team' that others will face in these events is based on the most recent team you utilized ... ergo when everyone's all beat up and it's time for a break, my (presumably) best team is presented to others.
Thanks in advance for any help you are willing to offer!

Response

[–]Demiurge_Will 7 points 4 months ago
Hi, Don_Tiny!
The difficulty in a Story mission is based on the best team you could bring to bear on that mission. Story events don't look at your most recently used team (Versus events do, though).
Some missions in Story events also have minimum difficulty levels, and other missions have maximum difficulty levels. So some missions will only get to be a certain difficulty no matter what your roster looks like, and other missions might require a high-level roster.

I read this as your roster does play a factor in your initial levels. So who to believe, lead game designer or a forum mod posting the site admin's screen shots of a test account that has never been played?

Jamie Madrox wrote:

...So level up those characters and have fun.

Have fun? Have fun playing higher level enemies, those that choose to level up those characters.

Does anyone else find it funny that the answer that was given was much more informative on a non-official website vs the answers we get here on the "official" forum? How long have we been asking for them to tell us something about the scaling issue and get cryptic answers. Instead we get this silly non played account with all maxed characters and get the proverbial "So level up those characters and have fun". One would think that if they wanted to give answers, they should give it to everyone or no one. Just like when they let us know that nerfs are coming but don't make an in app acknowledgment. Its very strange that the left hand doesn't know what the right foot is doing.

Like someone said, who should i believe? Forum moderator with an account with 0 games played or one of the game lead designers?
So i kept them at 94, just to be safe until i get a few more covers for some characters.

I also enjoy PVE. Prodigal Sun was really good and ISO-8 is being really bad.

Unknown

The statement by Demiurge_Will and the one by Jamie Madrox (who reposted the experiment by IceX, also a red name) are not exclusive. Both can be true. In fact in Jamie's post it says your roster strength does have an effect... of 5 levels.

Bottom line is, and my experience backs this 100%, level of roster does not mean anything meaningful to PvE scaling, placement does and community scaling does more than either of those things making the whole thing pointless. Plus, if you can't beat a node with 94s and you could beat it with 166s, who are you really saving?

Jamie Madrox wrote:

...So level up those characters and have fun.

Believe The Legend.

Lanko8 wrote:

Like someone said, who should i believe? Forum moderator with an account with 0 games played or one of the game lead designers?
So i kept them at 94, just to be safe until i get a few more covers for some characters.

I also enjoy PVE. Prodigal Sun was really good and ISO-8 is being really bad.

Keeping your guys at 94 is wise for PvP as well as PvE until you are ready to level 3 of them that work well together to 166

Lanko8 wrote:

including 7 other guys with maxed covers and sitting on 750k ISO.

You are ready. Pick 3 and take the plunge.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

The statement by Demiurge_Will and the one by Jamie Madrox (who reposted the experiment by IceX, also a red name) are not exclusive. Both can be true. In fact in Jamie's post it says your roster strength does have an effect... of 5 levels.

They kinda contradict each other. One is saying that it's based on the top characters for the mission, your three most powerful characters available. The other says roster increases nothing more than 5 lvls.

Lerysh wrote:

You are ready. Pick 3 and take the plunge.

Probably, but i'm in no hurry, specially since they are testing events without community scaling. If they take that off and PVE becomes enjoyable as it was in Prodigal Sun, sure, i will level them, maybe even buy a 5th needed cover, stuff like that.

Meanwhile, patience...