Preemptive (No) Scaling Discussion

MarvelMan

Ben Grimm wrote:

Koko81 wrote:

Maybe my understanding of PVE is wrong... but I play other games that have PVP and PVE and PVE isn't COMPETITIVE. If everyone can do it, then so be it. Everyone plays against the ENVIRONMENT (ie AI) and the rewards should be upon completion of tasks, not if I beat others around me. Scaling is placed to create competition amongst players. It's there to make it hard for everyone to play the same way. Which in my opinion is against the whole concept of PVE.

As I mentioned before I might have a wrong idea of PVE, but the one that is implicated in MPQ has actually turned me off from it. I no longer play PVE even though I think I might have some really good ideas on how to make it interesting again.

All of this to say community scaling along with personal scaling should both be turned off and character levels should be set.

That's how a lot of us have been wanting them to do PVE since the start of the game. The game really has two PVP modes: direct and indirect, with the occasional "actual" PVE like the Gauntlet, Ultron, and DDQ.

And sadly Gauntlet and Ultron both were tarred with PVP as well.

I was too lazy to test, but I saw reports of nodes in the Gauntlet icnreasing without people playing (so that is community scaling which is somewhat related to PVP since someone doing well disadvantages others, creating a race) and there was the time they awarded prizes to the first to finish.....

And the botched first run of Ultron where they created limited points, fostering contention within alliances as not everyone could hit the progressions.

The good news? They havent screwed up DPDQ (yet)!




Strange that DPDQ is often cited as peoples favorite part of MPQ.....

Colognoisseur

The current system is scaling increases not only because of your wins but also the community wins. One of my assumptions is that the reason levels don't go down when you get wiped is the community scaling overrides the personal.

Which leads to what I think might be the problem with no community scaling. If your personal scaling goes up and down based on winning and losing there will be a lot of incentive to throw characters into battle like lemmings to lose and reduce your personal scaling. If you do it wisely with a big enough roster you might be able to keep your levels the same throughout the entire PvE. This was what community scaling was meant to help take care of.

I am looking forward to see what this looks like without the community scaling component. I am not sure what we will see but the only way to move forward is to let the devs experiment a little bit. This guinea pig is ready to give it a try.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Koko81 wrote:

Maybe my understanding of PVE is wrong... but I play other games that have PVP and PVE and PVE isn't COMPETITIVE. If everyone can do it, then so be it. Everyone plays against the ENVIRONMENT (ie AI) and the rewards should be upon completion of tasks, not if I beat others around me. Scaling is placed to create competition amongst players. It's there to make it hard for everyone to play the same way. Which in my opinion is against the whole concept of PVE.

As I mentioned before I might have a wrong idea of PVE, but the one that is implicated in MPQ has actually turned me off from it. I no longer play PVE even though I think I might have some really good ideas on how to make it interesting again.

All of this to say community scaling along with personal scaling should both be turned off and character levels should be set.

That's how a lot of us have been wanting them to do PVE since the start of the game. The game really has two PVP modes: direct and indirect, with the occasional "actual" PVE like the Gauntlet, Ultron, and DDQ.

And sadly Gauntlet and Ultron both were tarred with PVP as well.

I was too lazy to test, but I saw reports of nodes in the Gauntlet icnreasing without people playing (so that is community scaling which is somewhat related to PVP since someone doing well disadvantages others, creating a race) and there was the time they awarded prizes to the first to finish.....

And the botched first run of Ultron where they created limited points, fostering contention within alliances as not everyone could hit the progressions.

The good news? They havent screwed up DPDQ (yet)!




Strange that DPDQ is often cited as peoples favorite part of MPQ.....

there's only personal/roster scaling in Gauntlet, did u report this in the Gauntlet thread?

grunth13

Koko81 wrote:

Maybe my understanding of PVE is wrong... but I play other games that have PVP and PVE and PVE isn't COMPETITIVE. If everyone can do it, then so be it. Everyone plays against the ENVIRONMENT (ie AI) and the rewards should be upon completion of tasks, not if I beat others around me. Scaling is placed to create competition amongst players. It's there to make it hard for everyone to play the same way. Which in my opinion is against the whole concept of PVE.

As I mentioned before I might have a wrong idea of PVE, but the one that is implicated in MPQ has actually turned me off from it. I no longer play PVE even though I think I might have some really good ideas on how to make it interesting again.

All of this to say community scaling along with personal scaling should both be turned off and character levels should be set.

Everytime I quit, it is always because of PVE that is PVP with a grind component. I would much rather not quit every couple of months if it was just play as you go without worrying about getting left in the dust. If I play casually, I will not get all the rewards now, but I will in a year or 2 vs someone that wants them now. That should be what the PVE vs PVP difference should look like. But currently, I can't play PVE casually because you have to grind it for 3-7 days. Its just tiring and causes burnout.

Dauthi

daibar wrote:

I do agree that this will move the rankings less from skill based play to time based play, where 'skill' is defined as the ability to beat high scaled nodes.
For people who play just for progression, this change will be great.
For people who play for story, this change will also be nice (although how much new story is out there? )

I think anyone who makes t20 now will be able to compete for top 5, since they've limited the full point benefit of the grind and timing will be the main competition factor.

I agree.

Removing Community Scaling Helps:

-Those joining an old bracket and it having it scaled before they can play.
-Those with less developed rosters, since they have less tools to deal with hard nodes.
-Those with less skill at match 3s.

Community Scaling Helps:

-Stops players from being able to beat an easier node repeatedly because it autobalances nodes that were intended to be hard. This means everyone has to play them less too.


Personally, I am happy that I can only play the very hard nodes a few times because its the case for everyone else too. Make it easier and it's another node you will have to grind out, wasting everyone's time. I would rather keep scaling, because hard nodes put my skills and my roster to the test rather than force me to play effortless battles over and over.

tanis3303

Phantron wrote:

tanis3303 wrote:

I've mentioned this before, but I vote for keeping these crazy 395 nodes, but making them one and done, and actually worth the risk of fighting them. Set them at a difficulty proportional to each players roster, and community scaling is no longer an issue. Beat a lvl 395 Hood/Muscle/Don node? Cool. Here's 1,000 ISO or an event token or 25/50 HP, as well as a couple thousand event points, and now that node is locked for the rest of the sub.

Let overall event placement be decided by who has the essentials, and who can or is willing to play the event the most - not who can get the luckiest boards or who's willing to drop the most $$$ on health packs and rainbow boosts so they can clear these death nodes 5-6x at the subs end. We've all been clambering for a less grindy, time consuming PvE experience...as far as I can see, there's your answer right there.

One of the irony of scaling is that there are enough broken combos that even fairly ridiculous level 395 enemies are still beatable, at least beatable with some luck and there's always whales. I remember in the first Heroic Oscorp there's a 230 Daken + Ares + someone else, and even with pre nerf Spiderman on your side, virtually nobody beat that since your team was so bad, it'd take an hour to knock out Daken even if you had the entire team stunned forever. It certainly wasn't worth doing that node every refresh despite its very high base value point because you can beat 10 more nodes in the same time with far greater certainty. In Simulator Hard, I sure didn't hit every node on every refresh and still more than comfortably finished top 2 so obviously there is a point where a node gets hard enough that it is effectively one-and-done.

On an event like the one you reference, yes, you're right. What were the rewards for that one tho? Iirc, it was not a new character, and not even a particularly good older character. If the rewards are new, you can bet your kitty people will clear each node, every single time. Lvl 395 Hood/Moonstone/Doom on this current Brotherhood sub was pretty friggin insane, but if I hadn't managed to clear it down to 1 I would have fallen out of top 5 like a stone.

Another idea I had recently that would function like a true PvE experience, and take away all this crazy "compete with the whole world" nonsense, is this: Instead of playing with a leaderboard or even Gauntlet style with a pure progression based structure, we play for special event points, which can be redeemed for a cache of prizes of varying costs. Put a roster slot, one cover of each of whatever character is to be awarded, some event tokens, some HP, some ISO pools, health packs, etc etc etc in a little mini store-like setup, and as you play the event and earn event points, you can cash them in for whatever prizes you want. Set the maximum possible event points players can earn so that's it's possible to win everything offered if you are willing to grind for it, but this way you wouldn't have to. If you don't need the character on offer, you can play for the roster slot and some tokens/hp/ISO and call it a day. Or you can just play for the character and ignore everything else. Basically, it would let players get exactly what they want from the event, and remove the need to play on anyone's schedule but your own. Doesn't that sound sweet??

Wonko33

I thought they said turn off "community scaling" no the other scaling variables , no?

OnesOwnGrief

Wonko33 wrote:

I thought they said turn off "community scaling" no the other scaling variables , no?

The author of the title is really bad at giving information. The right information has been stated throughout the thread.

simonsez

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

The author of the title is really bad at giving information. The right information has been stated throughout the thread.

Has anyone with red type actually confirmed what the "right information" is? I haven't yet seen this clarified. Will didn't say "we are turning off community scaling". He said they're turning off "the system".

However, since turning off community scaling only would benefit low end players and not high end players, I have every reason to suspect this is what they're going to do. Still, it'd still be nice to get an official clarification.

Unknown

Wonko33 wrote:

I thought they said turn off "community scaling" no the other scaling variables , no?

never trust D3 until it's ingame

Also, why is everyone hung up on this? Scaling has gone off before, and may never come back. So unless u back from the future, focus on the present, mon amis

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Removing one variable should in theory make the effects of others more clear, so that's certainly a positive.

It's also a positive that 1* rosters that can pound the heck out of a node won't be able to drive someone from level 250->300 (or worse) on the same node.

How it will change the game, I'm not sure anyone has a good answer, including the devs (who basically said as much).

The only thing I want to see is more feedback on this "test" from the devs side. Past 'tests' have resulted in them collecting feedback and data, then hearing zero about what they learned from 'testing'. (testing in quotes because with few exceptions, they were changes that weren't rolled back).

Sure, we learned (finally) that the MMR change increased match length 30%, but that information only came back in relation to another change. Knowing what the devs are seeing/want to see will ultimately help the players understand how to give better feedback. It's win-win really.

Dear God, I feel like an idiot for not seeing this before.

All this time I was thinking that 270s were driving my nodes through the stratosphere, but it was actually 1*s?

I can't believe the logic escaped me, but it makes sense. It's not the fact that a 270 can beat a node handily, it's more the fact that if a 1* can grind a node down to a 1 point nub, it's got to be WAY to easy, right?

Son of a ...

DBC

Linkster79

daibar wrote:

Title semantics aside,
I'm not sure if it's me, but it seems that they've been moving away from having goons as the higher value nodes. I can't remember the last time I saw 3 goons at 395. The problem those nodes create are that anyone with board control heroes (Cap, Falcon) can win easily after a long match, whereas people relying on fast board damage die off eventually, creating a sense of unfairness towards certain rosters. My roster is heavily invested in board control, so I loved the 395 goon nodes or 1 villain, 2-non feeder goon nodes. Lots of points, and it weeds out some of the competition.

The main problem is at L395 goons Falcon won't last long enough to disperse all those enemy special tiles, especially if they are placed every turn and in hard to match areas.

L395 has to go, it really really does and against goons our superheroes or villains need to feel super. Some lowly intern working for Oscorp for a bit of work experience in the summer with a flamethrower should never ever be able to make Hulk, Iron Man or Captain America turn tail and run, maybe Squirrel Girl but not the Avengers "Earths Mightiest Heroes".

Punisher5784

Regardless of the results of turning off Community Scaling, it's nice to know that the devs are at least going to try something. It shows they have been listening, took them awhile but it's finally happening.

slidecage

if its fix like deadpool you might as well say it will be the first coffin in the nail for this game. Unless you have max out 2 stars and 3 stars good luck getting that 3 star cover in daily and if that is how they play it in the PVE meaning a very good number of people would not even be able to do PVE anymore. Add that in with how they screwed up PVP you might as well say any chance of getting new members to join is long gone..


ALSO loved how they showed up the new ultron event to get new people to join YET then take the event away, I wonder how many new members came in thinking that looks cool just to findout it was just a one week event and left just along with ulton

JVReal

I think it will be interesting. I look forward to dealing only with my own ridiculous scaling... hopefully less ridiculous as I typically join late and I assume the scaling is my own.

The only time Community Scaling has helped me was in TaT, there was a node that was Hard, killed me everytime and one time I came back to it and it seemed to be Normal after it was Hard the last time I checked it, without having played any matches between.

Unknown

slidecage wrote:

if its fix like deadpool you might as well say it will be the first coffin in the nail for this game. Unless you have max out 2 stars and 3 stars good luck getting that 3 star cover in daily and if that is how they play it in the PVE meaning a very good number of people would not even be able to do PVE anymore. Add that in with how they screwed up PVP you might as well say any chance of getting new members to join is long gone..


ALSO loved how they showed up the new ultron event to get new people to join YET then take the event away, I wonder how many new members came in thinking that looks cool just to findout it was just a one week event and left just along with ulton

slidecage, sometimes you post reasonable stuff, so I don't know why you're doing this here:

Yes, if it were static like Deadpool, some folks would have a harder/impossible time. But how is that different from now? I'm not gonna touch 300+ nodes in the current environment.

And anyway, you'd still have essentials, where the lion's share of pts are

Unknown

slidecage wrote:

if its fix like deadpool you might as well say it will be the first coffin in the nail for this game. Unless you have max out 2 stars and 3 stars good luck getting that 3 star cover in daily and if that is how they play it in the PVE meaning a very good number of people would not even be able to do PVE anymore.

<snip>

I couldn't disagree more with this statement. DDQ feels EXACTLY the way I would have assumed PvE scaling would feel.

The bottom 1/3 of players can comfortably compete in just North of the bottom 1/3 of the content, and win rewards that are relevant and useful to their current stage in the game (ie, maybe a 3*, but definitely 2*s).

The middle 1/3 of players can easily compete in the bottom, comfortably in the middle 1/3, and given some luck and/or boosts or T-Us, even start poking their heads into the top 1/3 (more opportunities to earn 3*s, or in other words, transition).

Players in the top 1/3, well, yeah, they're the top 33% of all the players in the world, so hopefully there is some point to that distinction, and they would be able to do as well as their effort allowed (ability to hone existing 3* rosters, potential to earn 4* characters).

If DDQ served as the blueprint for PvE, I'd know where I was, where I was going, how to get there, and how much effort I'd need to expend to do so. That would not by any stretch be "the first coffin in the nail for this game" for me.

DBC

Unknown

slidecage wrote:

ALSO loved how they showed up the new ultron event to get new people to join YET then take the event away, I wonder how many new members came in thinking that looks cool just to findout it was just a one week event and left just along with ulton

Yes those brand new 1 week players must have been DEVASTATED!

Punisher5784

slidecage wrote:

ALSO loved how they showed up the new ultron event to get new people to join YET then take the event away, I wonder how many new members came in thinking that looks cool just to findout it was just a one week event and left just along with ulton

If by "cool" you mean tons of game glitches, being locked out of nodes because new players don't have a majority of those characters and not being able to defeat Ultron due to raising levels then I would think they are quite happy it's not around. I don't know if I would be able to play Ultron PVE if I was a new player.

Although it was a new interesting concept, I don't think it will be used much. Maybe for the X-Men: Apocalypse movie but since Marvel is scaling back on Fox related properties, it's unlikely anymore.

Malcrof

Well.. the next 2 events appear to be Prodigal Sun and whatever Carnage event the are re-running (i think), so i am curious how this is going to go.