Community Scaling is harming the game

Arphaxad

What will it take to convince the developers to turn off community scaling for good? As a newer player, almost 5 months into the game, I get disheartened every time I play a series and see community scaling pushing nodes out of reach within minutes of opening them.

In The Hunt, getting the Thing is out of my reach, even with top 100, because there where 3 nodes that out leveled me before I could get to them. I don't mind a challenge, but making content out level players just because others, with more time in game and higher level rosters, get to the content first. It turns the story mode into an indirect PvP event.

I know this topic has been brought up before, and from the videos I understand the devs are aware of the problem. I'm hoping that they read this is recognize that community scaling is sucking the fun out of the events it is involved in. Turn it off and let the players play the content.

Polares

Yes please, turn this invention from hell off.

In PvE like this the hunt with a 4 reward community scaling is a nightmare. Playing againt 350+ teams is not fun, and having to do it repeatedly is even worse. And the time you need to do it is a big disadvantage

So pretty please, turn it off forever!

Unknown

Last time I enjoyed PVE was when they turned it off, now that's it back on I havent even touched it.

Merrick

I am mixed on community scaling. During the last event, the game became a matter of who could devote the most time to PVE, rather than who could finish.

I just wish we would never see 300+ level 2* characters. They have a hundred different characters that we could fight against, but they always put in the same few enemies and overpower them so much that they can single shot most of your team.

When they power up our 2*'s they only go to 150. The AI should be held to the same. If they want to increase difficulty, the AI should use boosts, just like we can.

Unknown

Can someone explain me who this community scaling works? if I understand it right without scommunity scaling Ares/Daken/Venom will not rise lvls every few hours?
Or their lvls will rise anyway?

For me its immpossible to defet 300lvl+ Ares/Daken/Venom with my rooster.

dkffiv

hector83 wrote:

Can someone explain me who this community scaling works? if I understand it right without scommunity scaling Ares/Daken/Venom will not rise lvls every few hours?
Or their lvls will rise anyway?

For me its immpossible to defet 300lvl+ Ares/Daken/Venom with my rooster.

From my understanding, community scaling means the levels will go up as people clear the node, basically as a function of time. With community scaling off you should only see your node levels increase after beating them. If you're struggling to clear the nodes as is, you may get 1 or 2 more clears in with scaling off before you reach a point where you feel its unbeatable.

_RiO_

snlf25 wrote:

Anybody who votes in favor of Community Scaling should be forcibly removed from their beds in the dead of night, relocated to internment camps for reeducation and forced to grind PvE 23 hours a day with scaling on with a roster consisting only of Quicksiler, Bagman and Beast until such time as they are found fit to reenter society, That is all.

No no no. The idea is to confront them with the error of their ways, right? Make it so they actually have to win first prize with that roster to be granted re-entry into society.

DFiPL

all I know is having seen what it can be with community scaling off, I don't play events where it's on anymore. It's not worth my time, it's not worth the aggravation, and I'm going to lose my hair through genetics as is. I don't need the game giving me a head start.

Dragon_Nexus

hector83 wrote:

Can someone explain me who this community scaling works? if I understand it right without scommunity scaling Ares/Daken/Venom will not rise lvls every few hours?
Or their lvls will rise anyway?

For me its immpossible to defet 300lvl+ Ares/Daken/Venom with my rooster.

Essentially it's meant to balance out the node difficulty. If the community is capable of taking a node down with ease, it'll increase in level. If they can't, it'll decrease.
I imagine each node has a limit, so the earlier ones will not suddenly jump from 33 at the start to 300 at the end.

Problem is most people will look at Ares, Ragnarok and Daken at level 310 and say "Nope, not gonna bother" so there's no "lose" statistic. Only people who tried because they were likely to win...or were just crazy enough to try. So generally people win on these and the difficulty goes up to compensate.

Turning community scaling off means the matches are scaled only to your own abilities. It works by how often you personally can beat the nodes, as a result the difficulty is much closer matched to your own skill level and roster type.

I found the PvEs with scaling off to be a lot more fun.

Dauthi

Arphaxad wrote:

What will it take to convince the developers to turn off community scaling for good? As a newer player, almost 5 months into the game, I get disheartened every time I play a series and see community scaling pushing nodes out of reach within minutes of opening them.

As a veteran 4* player, I can play those nodes. That means that I have a higher chance to get a 4* I need, vs a 5 month player who doesn't need it. This isn't the correct way to rewards players?

I get disheartened when new players take rewards I need, when they would be just as happy with a 3* or an older 4*...

This is why many veterans have quit PVE. It's not worth it not because of community scaling, but because they have to compete with every player despite having an enormous amount of time invested in this game.

Unknown

As a veteran 3* player, who has no realistic path to getting more 4*'s, I'm pretty sure scaling in the Hunt has convinced me to stop playing MPQ after this event, especially with the even further nerf'ed Taco tokens.

Linkster79

Dauthi wrote:

As a veteran 4* player, I can play those nodes. That means that I have a higher chance to get a 4* I need, vs a 5 month player who doesn't need it. This isn't the correct way to rewards players?

I get disheartened when new players take rewards I need, when they would be just as happy with a 3* or an older 4*...

This is why many veterans have quit PVE. It's not worth it not because of community scaling, but because they have to compete with every player despite having an enormous amount of time invested in this game.

I'm sorry but what?! Surely anybody who does not have the reward "needs" it. Going by that mentality then those alleged veterans have been "stealing" covers from newer players in PvP as I usually see those in first place on the PvP leaderboards already in possesion of the 4* 1st place rewards and max covered. That is a complete and utter non argument.

DFiPL

theHappyDance wrote:

As a veteran 3* player, who has no realistic path to getting more 4*'s, I'm pretty sure scaling in the Hunt has convinced me to stop playing MPQ after this event, especially with the even further nerf'ed Taco tokens.

I don't feel like Taco tokens have been nerfed. I mean, look: you had an 80%'ish chance of pulling a 2* with the old taco tokens. That's down to about 61% now. So for the sake of convenience, let's use whole numbers and say that out of the 300 items in the vault, that's 60 fewer 2* covers for you to pull. What replaced them?

1x 10,000 ISO (40x the sale value of a 2*)
2x 5,000 ISO (20x the sale value of a 2*)
30x 1,500 ISO (6x the sale value of a 2*)

Just a bit over halfway there and we're already looking at an average value on the ISO rewards of 1,800 and change - 7.2x the value of a 2*, on average.

42x health packs (5x each). sale value: 200 HP/1,200 ISO, depending on how you want to convert that. STILL 6x the value of a 2* cover in monetary terms.

3x 4* covers, which were never there before.

9x random 3* covers which previously (mostly) could not be drawn from a taco when the character's rotation wasn't up.

Now I can understand being disappointed because there aren't more 4*, or fewer 2* still, or because you feel like the "odds get better as you pull items out" is oversold since most people are going only going to be able to pull between 5-10 items from the vault before it refreshes.

But "nerfed"? Oh, John Ringo, no.

Tacos haven't been nerfed.

Dauthi

Linkster79 wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

As a veteran 4* player, I can play those nodes. That means that I have a higher chance to get a 4* I need, vs a 5 month player who doesn't need it. This isn't the correct way to rewards players?

I get disheartened when new players take rewards I need, when they would be just as happy with a 3* or an older 4*...

This is why many veterans have quit PVE. It's not worth it not because of community scaling, but because they have to compete with every player despite having an enormous amount of time invested in this game.

I'm sorry but what?! Surely anybody who does not have the reward "needs" it. Going by that mentality then those alleged veterans have been "stealing" covers from newer players in PvP as I usually see those in first place on the PvP leaderboards already in possesion of the 4* 1st place rewards and max covered. That is a complete and utter non argument.

What use is a a 4* cover that will sit in their roster taking space? The only folks that need it are those who can regularly hit 1k so they can actually build that character.

When I say veterans need it, it is because they cannot gain progress in the game except by getting the new covers. Once you get to a point late game where you rarely gain progress, allowing new players to take covers that could allow us to progress gets frustrating, especially when they would be just as happy with an older character that veterans do not need.

Almost all games follow a reward structure where veterans gain the high end prizes so they can progress, for example PVP in MPQ. PVE is utterly backwards in this regard and again, is why many quit PVE.

MikeG72

hector83 wrote:

For me its immpossible to defet 300lvl+ Ares/Daken/Venom with my rooster.

I'm wholeheartedly in favor of the devs turning the community scaling off. It's making the game not fun at all.

Also, I'm sorry - I'm tired from grinding Florida today and feeling a little goofy, but that typo is making me have a mental image of you playing with a rooster for a character.

"Activate ****-A-Doodle-Do Power!"
*ARES DOES RAMPAGE**SPLAT*
"ROOSTER HAS BEEN DOWNED"
"Well, that was even shorter than usual..."

Der_Lex

I can't speak for the Oscorp Heroic because I didn't play that, but in the first community scaling-less pve there was way more grinding going on than usual at the end of each sub. And personally I prefer wiping a few times on a couple of hard 300+ nodes over having to grind for at least two hours at the end of each sub for every PvE. I had expected to love community scaling being turned off, but instead I felt it made pvE a lot less fun.

I also don't think it's community scaling that's really the problem, but rather that for some long-term players their personal scaling has become insane, and that community scaling makes that even worse. I think a regular reset of personal scaling (at the start of every season?) would do a lot more to make pve more fun and more fair for veteran players. It wouldn't fix the issue that the OP is compaining about... but to be honest, I don't feel that's an issue that needs fixing: you shouldn't be surprised that you're not in the top 100 as a new player in an event for a new 4* character that has pretty much every veteran player participating. Put in the time/effort (or money, if you prefer) to get a solid 3* roster first, and then move on to 4* territory. That's how everyone else playing this game did it.

Linkster79

Dauthi wrote:

What use is a a 4* cover that will sit in their roster taking space? The only folks that need it are those who can regularly hit 1k so they can actually build that character.

It allows the player access to more essential nodes in PvE, are you suggesting that only "top elite" players who are willing to get 1000 points in PvP are worthy of gaining 4* rewards in PvE? Also by gaining the top ranking rewards in PvE it allows the stepping stone from 3* player to 4* player and when they get to those heady 4* heights they can in turn look down their snooty noses at us low life casual players who want to play for fun.

Der_Lex

Linkster79 wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

What use is a a 4* cover that will sit in their roster taking space? The only folks that need it are those who can regularly hit 1k so they can actually build that character.

It allows the player access to more essential nodes in PvE, are you suggesting that only "top elite" players who are willing to get 1000 points in PvP are worthy of gaining 4* rewards in PvE? Also by gaining the top ranking rewards in PvE it allows the stepping stone from 3* player to 4* player and when they get to those heady 4* heights they can in turn look down their snooty noses at us low life casual players who want to play for fun.

So basically you want to play casually, but get the same or better rewards as those who put more time/effort into the game? That doesn't really seem fair, does it?

Arphaxad

Dauthi wrote:

Arphaxad wrote:

What will it take to convince the developers to turn off community scaling for good? As a newer player, almost 5 months into the game, I get disheartened every time I play a series and see community scaling pushing nodes out of reach within minutes of opening them.

As a veteran 4* player, I can play those nodes. That means that I have a higher chance to get a 4* I need, vs a 5 month player who doesn't need it. This isn't the correct way to rewards players?

I get disheartened when new players take rewards I need, when they would be just as happy with a 3* or an older 4*...

This is why many veterans have quit PVE. It's not worth it not because of community scaling, but because they have to compete with every player despite having an enormous amount of time invested in this game.

This is the elitist attitude that kills many MMOs. First, none of us NEED any of the covers, we want them. Secondly, new players want 4* covers as much, if not more, than veteran players, and have as much right to earn them as anyone else.

How are new players supposed to progress and become veterans if not given the chance to earn the covers?

I have played many MMOs and have been on the elite side of the scale. I never backed the idea that allowing new players to catch up was a bad thing for the game. The devs know you need new players to grow the game, that is why they are looking at turning off community scaling. I only hope the majority opinion of those on this poll shows them they are on the right track and turn it off completely soon.

Oldboy

In the past, during this point of the argument, someone will mention about how the devs should have different tiers for beginners, 2* transition, 3* transition and 4* transition or any other equivalent model with different covers and prizes awarded for the events. This allows for some progression in the game and avoids lumping everyone together.

Personal scaling and community scaling is bad when the prizes remain the same across the board. If my difficulty goes up, i should at least get better prizes to go with it. That would at least justify having opponents of higher levels.

Dauthi

Arphaxad wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Arphaxad wrote:

What will it take to convince the developers to turn off community scaling for good? As a newer player, almost 5 months into the game, I get disheartened every time I play a series and see community scaling pushing nodes out of reach within minutes of opening them.

As a veteran 4* player, I can play those nodes. That means that I have a higher chance to get a 4* I need, vs a 5 month player who doesn't need it. This isn't the correct way to rewards players?

I get disheartened when new players take rewards I need, when they would be just as happy with a 3* or an older 4*...

This is why many veterans have quit PVE. It's not worth it not because of community scaling, but because they have to compete with every player despite having an enormous amount of time invested in this game.

This is the elitist attitude that kills many MMOs. First, none of us NEED any of the covers, we want them. Secondly, new players want 4* covers as much, if not more, than veteran players, and have as much right to earn them as anyone else.

What is elitist about wanting to progress in a game? Would it be fair if lvl 50s could get elite raid gear for lvl 80s in WoW? Let's exacerbate this and say there is only so much elite gear too, so if a lvl 50 obtains it a lvl 80 out there doesn't. This is PVE in MPQ.

How are new players supposed to progress and become veterans if not given the chance to earn the covers?

They can, and deserve to fight for new 4*s when they are transitioning to 4*. Doing so before makes little sense and is inefficient for both sides. It's equally ridiculous as a lvl 50 seeking lvl 80 gear (etc) in WoW when they can't use it until lvl 80 (and lets add in they have a static inventory that has little space too!). Why not get level 50 gear?

Oldboy wrote:

In the past, during this point of the argument, someone will mention about how the devs should have different tiers for beginners, 2* transition, 3* transition and 4* transition or any other equivalent model with different covers and prizes awarded for the events. This allows for some progression in the game and avoids lumping everyone together.

Personal scaling and community scaling is bad when the prizes remain the same across the board. If my difficulty goes up, i should at least get better prizes to go with it. That would at least justify having opponents of higher levels.

I said that in my thread I created about the whole situation being inefficient for everyone.

If you can complete a node that a new character cant though, that is the same as you getting better prizes than them (given you try to get the prizes). The cards are stacked in your favor, as they should be.