PVE Community Scaling Update

puppychow

Stax the Foyer wrote:

If the player in third place sees the writing on the wall and lets off the gas, you can get some serious separation, since the top player may still need to grind for a while to make sure that the lead is secure. That can happen even when things are tight through the first few subs.

I've been in this position myself when carnage debuted. Was in third place trying to break into second. Saw that there was no way to move up, and slowed down my grind.

Unknown

Thank goodness.

Arphaxad

It's good to know the voices of the players is being heard. The scourge known as community scaling will not be missed.

Can we can an official announcement on the board once the final decision is made to unplug community scaling, never to let it return?

Looking forward to adding more 3* and 4* covers through fair play on PvE, and then when I am ready, in top PvP.

Once again, thank you Devs for doing the right thing to make MPQ a quality game that everyone can enjoy.

Unknown

A change I can wholeheartedly applaud, and I do.

The community scaling is dead... long live the community scaling.

DBC

whitecat31

turul wrote:

Waiting for personal scaling to dissapear too!
Don't punish us for leveling characters / playing better or more than others!

I have seen a competitive advantage that is insurmountable due to low level teams getting weaker teams to face. Based on defeat times per fight.

Warning below is math. Basically the summary is teams that are designed to stay low in level for PVE can complete nodes faster in events and get more points on the final sweep because of this.

Example:
Player A: Is a high end player who has a couple of 4 stars fully leveled and will face teams that take longer to kill due to higher levels and higher hit points.
Player B: Is a PVE player who cleverly does not level anybody past level 94 including fully covered 4 star characters and will face teams with less hit points and less levels leading to faster kills.
Example: An event has 8 nodes.
Kill times for player A average about 4 to 5 minutes per node. Average time for a sweep of the 8 nodes is 36 minutes.
Kill times for player B average about 3 minutes per node. Average time for a sweep of the 8 nodes is 24 minutes.

Full points occur after an 8 hour regeneration. After that each node will give about 16.5 to 17 percent less points the next time they are hit. 100% 83.5% 67% 50% 33.5% 17% 1 point (minus recovery time minutes) so its worth maybe 5%.


That 12 minutes difference for a node sweep is a big advantage based on the grind at the end.
Assuming Player A and Player B have timed everything perfectly in a 36 hour node with 8 hour time periods. 2160 total minutes

Player A did a sweep of the nodes every 8 hours and 36 minutes. Start took 36 minutes and can do a sweep in 480 minutes (plus another 36)
Player B did a sweep of the nodes every 8 hours and 24 minutes. Start took 24 minutes and can do a sweep in 480 minutes (plus another 24)

So Player A singular node sweep times occurred at start. 0, 516 minute mark, 1032 minute mark, 1548 minute mark add 36 minutes and you get 1584 minutes used with 576 minutes left.
So Player B singular node sweep times occurred at start. 0, 504 minute mark, 1008 minute mark, 1512 minute mark add 24 minutes and you get 1536 minutes used with 604 minutes left.

Both players are not going to wait another 480 minutes to do a final grind down because they won't have enough time to do final sweeps

On the final grind down Player B needs less time to grind (168 minutes) versus Player A (252 minutes) so Player B can start later to grind down, and will actually get more points to grind down on since the final nodes are worth more. Both can grind down to 1 point nodes, but player B's nodes were worth more on a start value.
So
Player A starts his grind down with 252 minutes left. His start nodes have roughly 2.1 hours left to regenerate.
Player B starts his grind down with 168 minutes left. His start nodes have roughly 0.7 hours left to regenerate. All of his nodes will be worth more based on the final start value.
For example Player A's normal 200 point node. With 2.1 hours left it is roughly 190 points. Each hit on that node will be worth roughly 16.5 to 17% less. So 190, 156, 127, 95, 64, 31, and then recovery time minutes so maybe 12 points then 1 point.
Player B's normal 200 point node. With 0.7 hours left it is roughly 196 points. So 196, 164, 131, 98, 72, 33, and then recovery time minutes so maybe 15 points then 1 point.

Player A will get a total of 675 points for that node grind.
Player B will get 709 points for that node grind.

The player who has invested less time iso and effort in the game can guarantee a win in the current PVE system.

Asmodius37

simonsez wrote:

Can you confirm whether the Venom Heroic has scaling turned on or off?

In the interest of providing you feedback, I'm finding this event to be unplayable. The problem, aside from the typical crippled, no-synergy roster, is that the initial opponent levels are being based on the levels of my Fury and Carnage, two characters that are of no help against muscle goons. And despite wiping multiple times, I still don't see levels going down at all.

In other words, while turning off scaling is appreciated, you still need to rethink how the initial difficulty levels are being set and modified.

As always, you are on point so it seems. There definitely needs to be a reevaluation of how initial difficulties are set. Usually I find them set too high even WITH max levels of featured characters. This isn't counting the fact that this is a heroic on top of it. Glad someone else had the same thoughts I did. I do however like the changes that seem to be over the horizon.

dkffiv

Davyx wrote:

I think the devs' fear is the points would be bunched up at the top because of the lowered difficulty.

I personally think as long as the reward is worth the effort, points will be bunched up at the top, especially with the 10 health packs + health packs from vault. It's basically a bid for the top rewards with time and resources spent, and the better the reward, the more players are willing spend trying to outbid their competitors. My bracket for The Hunt is only 5k difference from #1 to #10, with top 3 only 750 pts apart.

I also don't mind the points looking like they are very close. In reality, the distance from 98% to 98.5% score is extremely large when both players are playing near perfectly. I am 300 pts behind dkffiv with 1 sub left and I know there is no way I'll be able to pass him.

Yep.

Pylgrim

whitecat31 wrote:

turul wrote:

Waiting for personal scaling to dissapear too!
Don't punish us for leveling characters / playing better or more than others!

I have seen a competitive advantage that is insurmountable due to low level teams getting weaker teams to face. Based on defeat times per fight.

Warning below is math. Basically the summary is teams that are designed to stay low in level for PVE can complete nodes faster in events and get more points on the final sweep because of this.

Your whole analysis fails to consider that higher levelled characters deal much more damage than 94* level ones. We have an easy way to compare this with two top characters in their categories that have identical skills: Ares and IMHB. At 10 AP, Ares deals 2300 damage, while Iron Man deals 6300, almost 3 times as much; 2.74 times to be exact. For a node to be harder for a player with a roster of 270s than the same node is for a player with a level 94 roster, the HP of the enemies would have to be higher than 2.74 times. Using a 4*s' HP for reference (no idea if goons or buffed 2* characters behave differently, please feel free to illuminate me if so), that means that if the 94 level roster gets a 70 level enemy, the 270 level roster should get a 199 level enemy, if level 100, then around 300. That sounds fair to me and similar to what we see with the community scaling off?

Bowgentle

Pylgrim wrote:

Your whole analysis fails to consider that higher levelled characters deal much more damage than 94* level ones. We have an easy way to compare this with two top characters in their categories that have identical skills: Ares and IMHB. At 10 AP, Ares deals 2300 damage, while Iron Man deals 6300, almost 3 times as much; 2.74 times to be exact. For a node to be harder for a player with a roster of 270s than the same node is for a player with a level 94 roster, the HP of the enemies would have to be higher than 2.74 times. Using a 4*s' HP for reference (no idea if goons or buffed 2* characters behave differently, please feel free to illuminate me if so), that means that if the 94 level roster gets a 70 level enemy, the 270 level roster should get a 199 level enemy, if level 100, then around 300. That sounds fair to me and similar to what we see with the community scaling off?

Thing is, 4*s scale horribly with levels.
Most of the damage of 4*s comes from covers, not levels. So gimping a fully covered 4* at 94 keeps your enemy levels down and still gives you an extremely powerful 4* character.
That's the problem.

Der_Lex

Cool, now reset personal scaling at the start of each event and we're good.

Pylgrim

Bowgentle wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Your whole analysis fails to consider that higher levelled characters deal much more damage than 94* level ones. We have an easy way to compare this with two top characters in their categories that have identical skills: Ares and IMHB. At 10 AP, Ares deals 2300 damage, while Iron Man deals 6300, almost 3 times as much; 2.74 times to be exact. For a node to be harder for a player with a roster of 270s than the same node is for a player with a level 94 roster, the HP of the enemies would have to be higher than 2.74 times. Using a 4*s' HP for reference (no idea if goons or buffed 2* characters behave differently, please feel free to illuminate me if so), that means that if the 94 level roster gets a 70 level enemy, the 270 level roster should get a 199 level enemy, if level 100, then around 300. That sounds fair to me and similar to what we see with the community scaling off?

Thing is, 4*s scale horribly with levels.
Most of the damage of 4*s comes from covers, not levels. So gimping a fully covered 4* at 94 keeps your enemy levels down and still gives you an extremely powerful 4* character.
That's the problem.

Hmm, I guess this is right. Now I check, IMHB at level 94 will deal around 350 damage per AP, quite higher than Ares's power. However, isn't the cost of doing that becoming much less competitive in PVP?

Unknown

DuckyV wrote:

Also, if this change is going to be permanent, I'd like to see something put in place to prevent people from intentionally under-leveling their characters so they can game the scaling system.

Fair is fair.

Even as a guy who is only just starting to break the level 94 barrier, I find it ridiculous that this is a thing that not only works, but can be seen as necessary. I have a small handful of characters that can go above level 100, and I have around 400,000 ISO, but I don't level those guys because as soon as I do the game gets harder for all my characters; my top guys stay at the top and quickly leave behind all my fully-covered 2*s as useless. If I just go for covers, the game doesn't get so much harder. And worse, if I am lucky and get a lot of covers for one 4* and level them up.. the rest of my roster gets screwed as the enemies all become impossible to beat.

So for what it's worth, I'm not keeping my guys low to "game the scaling system." I'm keeping them low to compensate for a completely broken scaling system, to keep the game fun/interesting/playable. You'd think that getting more covers and adding levels to characters would be a reward, but in PVE it's a punishment. That's a fundamental flaw in the way the game works and to call it "gaming" is just to be bitter that you're on the **** end of a **** system and some of us have gone the totally stupid route of not using the rewards we have earned because the game will screw us if we do.

Of course to do this we trade off success in PVP, I can barely break 650 points in there even with the new scoring.

In short, the game should work so that every reward IS a reward. Every new level should be in your favor as a player. If there must be some scaling to keep the game playable for all it should be done based on the average levels and/or number of covers for a large percentage of the roster. Maybe it includes the total amount of ISO spent, weighted for different class levels or something, who knows.

Of course the related problem is that we are all competing against each other, which means you have to find a way to keep the game playable for everyone, offering opportunities to earn rewards, without just handing all the best rewards to the best rosters. In my view this should mean that it's not a ranked system of how your success is against the success of other players (which results in **** rosters having a better chance to win things than the best rosters), but simply how well you play. Redesign PVE so it's not another PVP mode in disguise, and instead simply place all (or most) of the cover rewards as progression rewards, and keep everyone's difficulty the same, with some easy nodes, medium nodes, and hard nodes. Then every time you level you are one step closer to taking on nodes that were too hard for you before. You have options for more points, and you have a better chance at getting those covers based on your own performance rather than your performance as compared to some scaled version of other people's.

I also take issue with the point regeneration mechanic, which means that to play competetively you have to play on a clock. Have kids? a job? a life? Too bad, you must sacrifice them to the game or do poorly. Have a whole saturday where you have nothing to do and you just want to match tiles all day? Too bad, you must play on our schedule and then find something else to do for 8 hours.. but don't miss the clear time or other people will edge you out!

The whole PVE structure feels like a punishment. And yet I prefer it because it can actually be played without spending tons of money on shields and my progress cannot be reversed by other people playing... at least now that community scaling is off.

whitecat31

Pylgrim wrote:

Hmm, I guess this is right. Now I check, IMHB at level 94 will deal around 350 damage per AP, quite higher than Ares's power. However, isn't the cost of doing that becoming much less competitive in PVP?

Define competitive. Are you going to make first place or even top 10 with that roster? Most likely no? Then again, most people won't anyway unless they are in a high end alliance and can communicate to get easy q's.. or they burn a lot of iso to find them and burn a lot of HP in doing shield hops.

BUT...and here is the kicker. Most of these "on purpose low level" players can get to into the top 50 and sometimes top 25 because they are "Unhittable" by higher level rosters until they break a point threshold that is between 750 to 850 points and can be seen. Some of them don't even have to shield.

IF you want covers the cheapest and most effective way in the current system is to NEVER level your characters above 94.

Unknown

I keep telling ppl the game should just be scaled like deadpool daily - that way no scaling shenanigans and no "haha I'm 94 suck it".

If they really wanna do a hard event they can just run Gauntlet....alot, I guess.

Spoit

Der_Lex wrote:

Cool, now reset personal scaling at the start of each event and we're good.

Or at least every time they do a massive game changer, like say nerfing rags. Or thoverine. Or spidey. Or mags. Or thorverine

Arphaxad

whitecat31 wrote:

The player who has invested less time iso and effort in the game can guarantee a win in the current PVE system.

That player will never be able to win PvP. If winning PvE is their life's goal, then good for them. Even if there is someone doing this, and it would be very few people, is not reason enough for the monstrosity that is community scaling.

whitecat31

Arphaxad wrote:

whitecat31 wrote:

The player who has invested less time iso and effort in the game can guarantee a win in the current PVE system.

That player will never be able to win PvP. If winning PvE is their life's goal, then good for them. Even if there is someone doing this, and it would be very few people, is not reason enough for the monstrosity that is community scaling.

Even if there is someone?
This is not a small amount of people doing it.
Have you ever looked at the top 10 PVE alliances and their rosters.
The top PVE alliances school their players to level characters only if they have to, to take advantage of the system.
Also many of these players can still make top 50 and on occasion top 25, because their rosters are so low that they don't take hits from the higher end players due to the invisibility match making system. Many don't even have to shield hop and sit at 700 points invisible and untouchable by the majority of the rosters battling it out in the time shard.


But really that is besides the point. The idea is to have somewhat equal competition, if people put in equal effort. We are talking about PVE and not PVP.

Pylgrim

whitecat31 wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Hmm, I guess this is right. Now I check, IMHB at level 94 will deal around 350 damage per AP, quite higher than Ares's power. However, isn't the cost of doing that becoming much less competitive in PVP?

Define competitive. Are you going to make first place or even top 10 with that roster? Most likely no? Then again, most people won't anyway unless they are in a high end alliance and can communicate to get easy q's.. or they burn a lot of iso to find them and burn a lot of HP in doing shield hops.

BUT...and here is the kicker. Most of these "on purpose low level" players can get to into the top 50 and sometimes top 25 because they are "Unhittable" by higher level rosters until they break a point threshold that is between 750 to 850 points and can be seen. Some of them don't even have to shield.

IF you want covers the cheapest and most effective way in the current system is to NEVER level your characters above 94.

Top 25 should be impossible for those rosters now that 1k points sometimes doesn't even get you top 25. And yeah, forget about the 4* cover at 1k. Not to mention that once they go over 600, they will be seeing maxed teams with a Health pool of 30k+ that will be very hard to defeat and that will eat them back like candy. Not achieving high scores in PVP will also diminish their likelihood of being in a top 100 alliance, missing dozens of rewards.

Sacrificing PVP to PVE seems like a losing proposition to me; In PVE you can earn up to 5 covers (but more realistically 3-4) with 3/4/7 days of effort. If you have a competitive PVP team, on the other hand, you are likely to get 3-4 3* covers PLUS one 4* every 2.5 days.

Unknown

if winning PVE matters so much, and you're so hardcore, pretty simple what the answer is - delete all your characters and make level 94 versions of them

DFiPL

DuckyV wrote:

Also, if this change is going to be permanent, I'd like to see something put in place to prevent people from intentionally under-leveling their characters so they can game the scaling system.

Fair is fair.

If this happens permanently, I fully intend to level my characters to 166. I mean, obviously not all at once because lol 2 million ISO.

But I've been keeping my characters at 104 to avoid getting COMPLETELY boned in the butt by community scaling. If community scaling goes away, I don't feel like there's a reason at that point to stay at 104.