Community Scaling is harming the game

Philly79

UPDATE:

Well for those of us in favor of having it turned off, here you go:

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=30994

They listened!!!

Unknown

Der_Lex wrote:

Today I've learned that not only should newbies have the exact same chances or better to win a competitive game mode than established players with a solid roster, but also that having a advanced roster means that you shouldn't be allowed to play said game mode altogether, because heaven forbid that a veteran player who wants to expand his roster further with a freshly released character, which is the only real way to progress at all in the game at the top level, should do so at the expense of a poor little newbie who want to jump straight from 2* to 4* without putting the work in that vet players have.

Yet apparently it's veteran players that feel entitled.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to check outside if I can see any cats chasing dogs, and possibly worry about hamburgers now eating people instead of the other way around.

I would start by saying that a clear definition of "veteran" should be established. I'm not yet 200 days in yet I have every 2 star and above, not fully covered yet but I'm at 66 full roster slots. Does this make me a veteran?

Secondly we are talking about PvE here. You clearly don't understand the acronym so I will spell it out for you completely. Player versus... Now this part is important... ENVIRONMENT. A players score vs computer opponents should not be skewed one way or the other in response to level of their rosters. When playing against computer controlled opponents for score, the win is what should count. This is not PvP (player vs PLAYER) where your roster strength and size should and DOES count.

To wrap up, I will finish by saying that if you didn't level your roster evenly enough give you an actual advantage in usable characters (man power) over a newbie, then that's your fault. My 66 person roster puts me in the top whenever I decide to go there. You wanted a PvP roster, so you have one.

Unknown

optimus2861 wrote:

BBTBob wrote:

I wonder how many 3 star covers you have won that you didn't need and sold for 500 ISO? Covers that are taken from players putting in just as much time (per day) that you do, working just as hard to earn them but can't because "veterans" need another 500 ISO. Not to mention the reward covers you win for being in a great alliance.

A roster like yours should stick with PvP instead of feeling entitled to the right to farm lesser players. The covers are faster and if you can beat others with like equipped rosters, even more rewards. 1000 points is a 4 star, everytime. Players of your apparent strength can win everywhere else in the game. Turn off the scaling and you can still win in PvE, it will just take you the same amount of grinding that it takes for everyone else.

I'd happily opt out of 4* competition in their release events. Give me a bracket where only the 3* prizes are awarded and I'll play that instead. Then the vets can chase their 4*, and I can avoid the feeding frenzy to chase a 3* reward that I do need.

But that would make too much sense, or something. Better for D3's bottom line to pit the entire playerbase at each others' throats

I couldn't agree more with you and have made that exact post! There could easily be events that allow for proper divisions or even invitationals that you need to qualify for.

Vets vs Noobs is getting lame.

Clintman

I want to keep enjoying the game, but Scaling period is just sucky. We can argue nuance as much as we want and get rid of extra sucky community scaling, but the fact that you are penalized for advancing your roster is just stupid. I don't want to have to dedicate so many hours just to get a stupid thing cover.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

I want to keep enjoying the game, but Scaling period is just sucky. We can argue nuance as much as we want and get rid of extra sucky community scaling, but the fact that you are penalized for advancing your roster is just stupid. I don't want to have to dedicate so many hours just to get a stupid thing cover.

You're not penalized for advancing your roster. You're penalized for not EVENLY advancing your roster. Playing only with your best characters leads to a difficulty that only your best characters can defeat. Level as high as you like but don't forget how beneficial, and in fact essential, it is to have a strong bench.

Good news.... No more community scaling!

Now we can start complaining about how the computer rates individual difficulty.

Der_Lex

BBTBob wrote:

Der_Lex wrote:

Today I've learned that not only should newbies have the exact same chances or better to win a competitive game mode than established players with a solid roster, but also that having a advanced roster means that you shouldn't be allowed to play said game mode altogether, because heaven forbid that a veteran player who wants to expand his roster further with a freshly released character, which is the only real way to progress at all in the game at the top level, should do so at the expense of a poor little newbie who want to jump straight from 2* to 4* without putting the work in that vet players have.

Yet apparently it's veteran players that feel entitled.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to check outside if I can see any cats chasing dogs, and possibly worry about hamburgers now eating people instead of the other way around.

I would start by saying that a clear definition of "veteran" should be established. I'm not yet 200 days in yet I have every 2 star and above, not fully covered yet but I'm at 66 full roster slots. Does this make me a veteran?

The general definition of 'veteran' around here (or high level player, or whatever you'd like to call it) is someone in the 3-4* transition or above. Someone whose main active roster consists of multiple cover-maxed 3*/4* characters. I'm purposefully not adding the level-maxed criterion because purely PvE-oriented vets keep their levels low to get a leg up on pvE scaling, which already points out what's amiss here: which other game forces its players to refrain from progressing their characters if they want to be able to do well in a particular game mode?

BBTBob wrote:

Secondly we are talking about PvE here. You clearly don't understand the acronym so I will spell it out for you completely. Player versus... Now this part is important... ENVIRONMENT. A players score vs computer opponents should not be skewed one way or the other in response to level of their rosters. When playing against computer controlled opponents for score, the win is what should count. This is not PvP (player vs PLAYER) where your roster strength and size should and DOES count.

Although I'll give you a gold star for spelling out an acronym correctly, the true issue here is that only three game modes in MPQ are truly PvE: DDQ, The Gauntlet and Ultron. In every other story event, your score is still competing against that of other players. And I actually agree with you that story event scores should not be skewed by roster level... but the problem is that they are, and that people with a broad, leveled roster actually get the short end of that stick because of computer opponent scaling going through the roof.

BBTBob wrote:

To wrap up, I will finish by saying that if you didn't level your roster evenly enough give you an actual advantage in usable characters (man power) over a newbie, then that's your fault. My 66 person roster puts me in the top whenever I decide to go there. You wanted a PvP roster, so you have one.

You know what they say about people who assume things, right?

It's not really a matter of personal advantage. I have a broad roster that gets me top 10 in any event that I dedicate myself to, whether it's PvE or PvP. It's not so much a matter of 'can my roster handle this' but rather 'can I put enough play time in for this' (and 'do I want to', because I'm not enough of an addict to let the game take priority over social engagements, which is why I rarely do well in weekend events).

The recent changes in PvP have made that a much more time-intensive form of play if you want to place well (although the scoring changes have improved that somewhat), and my biggest concern about the removal of community scaling in PvE is that it will make those grinds at the end of each sub even longer too, because a lot of players who previously had to bow out due to overall scaling will now be able to hang in there, and it becomes a very real possbility that not just the top 2 guys will have to grind each node down to 1, but the rest of the top 10 and maybe even the top 20 as well. That's no fun for anyone, least of all for more casual players.

What I really take issue with, though, is your weird attitude that PvE should be all about new players, and that anyone with a half-decent roster should stick to PvP, or should be PvP-oriented. Because for me personally, PvP is my least preferred form of play, I dislike the stress brought on by the whole push your luck nature of shield hopping as soon as your score starts to approach that 1k, and how taking even 30 seconds too long to finish a match can cost you over 100 points.

I wish there were more true PvE game modes like the 3 I mentioned at the start of my post, but instead I'll have to settle for the current PvE system where I have to beat the scores of others. And I'm actually for an level playing field in PvE, but the removal of community scaling doesn't create that. For PvE to become completely fair, personal scaling should be competely reset at the start of each event as well, with the increase in CPU difficulty after each clear dependent on how much damage you take and clear time. That way everyone starts at the same point, but newer players will have the advantage of having less steep scaling as the event progresses, and vets will face an interesting choice: do I steamroll these nodes with my 3/4* characters and risk very high level opponents at the end of the event/sub, or do I use my 1/2*s first? That way a broad, leveled roster becomes something that gives you options rather than a liability, yet it doesn't give you an extreme advantage over newer players.

Unknown

I have to give you a gold star on patience. You handled that remarkable well and answered in detail. Since this is likely a dead thread, I will only comment on one part.

PvE is the only place besides the prologue where newer players can compete with any real hope of consistent success. You seem knowledgeable about this yet fail to acknowledge correctly the flow of this game through transition and posted a complaint separating vets from noobs. You did this on the basis that it takes too much time, like this is what separates the players. Though stating many other reasons instead until you were called on them by many.

It takes just as much time for noobs as it does for vets, that's the theory behind why they can call it PvE and get away with it. Because it is a question of how many victories you can acquire against computer controlled enemies that scale in difficulty to you, not the community. The fact that you can win at will yet still post something so negative starts you down the path to being a troll.

Der_Lex

Considering the fact that you go right back to assuming and throw in a closing statement that comes pretty close to being an ad hominem to boot, I think I should get that application for sainthood out the door pretty soon.

(I also get the feeling that you are attributing some things Dauthi has posted to me, but even if so, I'll let that slide for now because I agree with him on many points).

I think the central problem here is that we both have difficulty seeing things from the other's perspective. It's difficult for me to accurately judge the what the game is like for a current 1*-2*-3* transitioner because I started out when the game was released. Back then, instead of a vet/noob difference you had a big difference between people who put money into the game and those who didn't, because the former were the only ones with 3* characters (and they often had the completely broken ones to boot. Trying to get a win against a maxed Ragnarok with his original powerset was suicide). And even though the 'establishment' of 3* players was a lot smaller than it is nowadays, and 2* Thor and Wolverine were more than a match for most 3* characters back then, it's hard for me to overall not get the impression that transitioners have it a lot easier right now than we did back then: these days, leveling costs are lower, iso rewards/cover drop rates from individual matches are higher, placement/progression iso and HP rewards are higher, the devs have made sure that up to a certain amount of points, new players aren't even visible to vets in PvP, and you have DDQ. Heck, when I started playing we didn't even have PvE events, never mind weekly ones.

I know I sound like one of the old Yorkshiremen when I put it like this, but I just want to make clear that the game has changed to such a degree that my own transitioner experiences were very, very different. But what was also different, is that I had no expectations in that phase to place top 50 or higher in events, and I do think that it's a sign of a sense of misplaced entitlement if new players expect to be able to do that well without having put in the time to develop their roster. I also don't feel there's much of a need for me to champion newer player, since almost all of the changes implemented to the game in the past few months have been mostly to completely to their benefit: the devs have pretty much got you guys covered. All that has happened on the vet side of things are a cap to roster slot prices that's still set way too high, a slightly improved chance of getting the 4*'s you need to progress your roster, and slightly easier achievement of prog rewards in PvP, although the latter comes at the expense of placement having become much harder.

But because I've never been pay to play and 'did my time' getting my roster to where it is today, I don't think that new or transitioner players should expect to do extremely well in any event, but rather I think they should be able to do 'well enough', with top 100 or even top 50 in any event being within their reach, but placement in top 20 or higher being a very rare exception. This is already the case in pvp, and there is only one reason that it's not the case in PvE: because scaling of any kind heavily favors low-level players. Even when you have boosted 4*s and 3*s, a L300+ node is considerably more difficult and time-consuming for a vet player than a L150+ node is for a player with L94 characters, because characters that were originally low-level (goons, 2* dark avengers) scale incredibly poorly when boosted way beyond their intended level max, whereas your average 4* won't even become all that more powerful. That means that a top end player will face much more difficult odds to do well in a PvE than a low-level player, simply because they have a more developed roster: in short, the game effectively penalizes you for being a long-time player and having done well.

And before you try to counter that with 'but you guys do well in PvP', that's a non-argument (and not just because being competitive in one play mode shouldn't preclude you from being competitive in another): the advantage vets have in PvP is a natural one that comes with a more developed roster, and even then high end play comes with huge pitfalls of its own (like being able to lose over 100 points during a single fight because even someone who just joined the event will be able to target you once you score over a certain amount of points, which is pretty broken in itself), whereas the advantage newer players have in PvE exists because the playing field is unfairly slanted in their favor. If removing community scaling is to be a first step in making the PvE side of things more fair and fun for everyone, the devs need to go all the way and tackle individual scaling as well, and possibly adjust the reward system to make sure a larger amount of 2*/3* players will be able to get at least one cover.

Because even though I'm personally able to deal with those odds (mostly because my scaling hasn't gone completely through the roof because I never used any winfinite combo's in the past, so I'm not facing 300+ right out of the gate like some), it doesn't make that fair or right, and if pointing that out makes you think I'm trolling, try and see the game from the perspective of a veteran player who has to play a much more difficult game for the exact same rewards as a low-level player does, and will even have a hard time competing directly with them for those, and how that throws any significant feeling of progress right out the window (and yes, having separate play levels with their own prizes would solve absolutely everything to everyone's satisfaction, but the devs have made it pretty clear that they have nor the intention, nor the manpower to implement such a drastic change). I think that's as much a sign of a piece of broken game design as a game that doesn't allow newer players to make any significant progress.

The only personal dog I have in this fight is that I don't want PvE to become even more of a grind than it already is because community scaling no longer filters out some of the players who were no longer able to beat scaled nodes. When time spent on a game mode becomes the only decisive factor, it becomes a lot less enjoyable to all but the most hardcore of players, and despite what you might think, I'm not one of those... this game take up enough of my time as it is, I don't need to add daily two-hour grinds on top of that.

Dauthi

BBTBob 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.

Who really cares how much time someone has "invested" in a game? Time in-game, as with a persons age, tends to lose relevance quickly. I have to say, it sounds like you really need these PvE covers when compared to the rest of the players.
[/quote]

I could name thousands of games where veteran players compete for veteran rewards.

I wonder how many 3 star covers you have won that you didn't need and sold for 500 ISO? Covers that are taken from players putting in just as much time (per day) that you do, working just as hard to earn them but can't because "veterans" need another 500 ISO. Not to mention the reward covers you win for being in a great alliance.

I have sold more 3*s than I can count. If you want to get mad about it, get mad at the season systems. I have to take characters I don't need regardless if I want 1 or 2 extra 10 packs at the end. It's part of the system, not my choice.

So again, why does that 3* transition roster need that 4*?

A roster like yours should stick with PvP instead of feeling entitled to the right to farm lesser players. The covers are faster and if you can beat others with like equipped rosters, even more rewards. 1000 points is a 4 star, everytime. Players of your apparent strength can win everywhere else in the game. Turn off the scaling and you can still win in PvE, it will just take you the same amount of grinding that it takes for everyone else.

A 4* roster needs 4*s and new 3* characters, these are the elite prizes you get at the end of any game because you compete at a high level. You must have missed my other posts, but a 4* sitting in a 2* or 3* transitional's roster only takes up room because they can't hit that 1k mark in PVP to build it, so why are we they allowed to compete for it at the same level?

Arphaxad

Dauthi wrote:

So again, why does that 3* transition roster need that 4*?

If new players don't have the option to earn 4*s then how are they supposed to climb to your lofty heights and challenge veteran players... oh, wait, that's issue isn't it? You're afraid that if more players get the 4*s and equal your roster that you will have to work to earn prizes, and you don't like that.

Elitism, thou name is Dauthi.

'nuff said

Zen808

Arphaxad wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

So again, why does that 3* transition roster need that 4*?

If new players don't have the option to earn 4*s then how are they supposed to climb to your lofty heights and challenge veteran players...

By getting their 3*'s developed and using them to earn 4*'s.

First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.

Arphaxad

808SpicyToro wrote:

Arphaxad wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

So again, why does that 3* transition roster need that 4*?

If new players don't have the option to earn 4*s then how are they supposed to climb to your lofty heights and challenge veteran players...

By getting their 3*'s developed and using them to earn 4*'s.

First learn stand, then learn fly. Nature rule, Daniel-san, not mine.

You may want to re-read my question. I asked:

If new players don't have the option to earn 4*s

If there is no option for 3* players to get 4*s then how are they to earn them?