Scaling Suggestion

OneLastGambit

Ok so I've been thinking about scaling these last few days and how it's a tricky situation. For early players (like me) with our low level rosters it's a dangerous knife edge deciding what to do with accidental tokens. I've personally pulled a 4* token three times from standard or heroic tokens, for a player who's not ready for that level what do you do? Sell the token? Nope. You roster it and pray it doesn't affect you too much (and that you'll conjure up some HP for the roster slot).

While it's effect on PVE is debatable (and has been) it's effect on PVP is well known. The old man logan I just pulled will ruin my PVP experience for quite some time.

If I understand currently the way you scale is by using an average of your entire teams level (correct me if I'm wrong) which is fine when all your characters are around the same level(something I was very diligent about) but then when you pull a level 256 character it ruins your average and pulls it up significantly.

Averages are notoriously unreliable in the field of research and statistics and are not really appropriate for scaling on this game. It's better to use the mode of someones roster instead (the most commonly occuring level) to decide their scaling. This would mean that abberant tokens would not affect scaling as it would still be determined by the most commonly occurring level and therefore more accurately reflect their roster strength.

Unknown

OneLastGambit wrote:

If I understand currently the way you scale is by using an average of your entire teams level (correct me if I'm wrong) which is fine when all your characters are around the same level(something I was very diligent about) but then when you pull a level 256 character it ruins your average and pulls it up significantly.

I think it was stated that scaling of TUs is based on average of your 5 strongest characters and it's been stated (and later denied) by devs that scaling in PvE is based on the strongest team (ie 3 characters) that you could bring in to a match.

At the moment my strongest 5 characters are 270, 127, 127, 127, 127 and I'm receiving TUs at level 162. This would suggest to me that TU scaling is based on an average of top 4 characters rather than top 5.

So exactly how it is calculated is anyone's guess.

Actually I seem to have stumbled upon the one positive effect that a 5* has on scaling.

simonsez

OneLastGambit wrote:

It's better to use the mode of someones roster instead (the most commonly occuring level) to decide their scaling.

No, it's not better. Sorry, but this is a horrendous idea. It would allow people to game the system far worse than they already do. You'd see people making sure that their number of lv40 characters was always more than their number of maxed 4s. Every node would be like playing a seed node for them.

Why does no one want to accept that the right way to do scaling is just to base it on the 3 characters you bring to the fight?

Sixpak

How can you base it on the 3 characters you bring to the fight when the scaling is done before you even select your matchup. I didn't really understand the scaling aspect of the game since I just started about 4 months ago and was extremely excited about getting the Surfer on my first legendary. I only had a few max 2* and from then on, all my matches were lop sided against me. It was tough to win anything! I almost sold him just so i could enjoy the game again.

Unknown

Sixpak wrote:

How can you base it on the 3 characters you bring to the fight when the scaling is done before you even select your matchup.

Either re-shuffle the information on the sequence of pages so you don't see the levels until after you've picked your team, or have the levels change by stealth after you've seen them and wait for the complaints to start coming in.

Sixpak wrote:

I didn't really understand the scaling aspect of the game since I just started about 4 months ago and was extremely excited about getting the Surfer on my first legendary. I only had a few max 2* and from then on, all my matches were lop sided against me. It was tough to win anything! I almost sold him just so i could enjoy the game again.

While a lot of people seem to agree that Surfer is upsetting scaling, I've yet to see any real proof. How many levels above your top hitters would you say the hardest PvE nodes are? As a rough estimate a 30 level surplus seems to be normal for 2*-3* transition rosters without a 5*.

simonsez

Sixpak wrote:

How can you base it on the 3 characters you bring to the fight when the scaling is done before you even select your matchup.

What does "done" even mean in this context? Just because they show us fixed levels now, doesn't mean it needs to be that way. They could just set the levels to a function of whatever our three characters are. Eg a node rated as "trivial" will give you opponents at half the level of what you're using; if rated as "easy", it'll be 80% of the character levels you're using. Etc.

Crowl

Grantosium wrote:

While a lot of people seem to agree that Surfer is upsetting scaling, I've yet to see any real proof. How many levels above your top hitters would you say the hardest PvE nodes are? As a rough estimate a 30 level surplus seems to be normal for 2*-3* transition rosters without a 5*.

I saw clear evidence of the impact SS has on scaling, my tablet version of the game had a drastically worse roster than my pc version, the addition of a single cover SS resulted in it getting higher level nodes than the pc version in every subsequent pve event until I was eventually forced to sell it to try and return that version to playability.

OneLastGambit

simonsez wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

It's better to use the mode of someones roster instead (the most commonly occuring level) to decide their scaling.

No, it's not better. Sorry, but this is a horrendous idea. It would allow people to game the system far worse than they already do. You'd see people making sure that their number of lv40 characters was always more than their number of maxed 4s. Every node would be like playing a seed node for them.

Why does no one want to accept that the right way to do scaling is just to base it on the 3 characters you bring to the fight?

It's an interesting point which I had not considered but personally speaking if people want to waste roster slots on useless lvl 40 characters and leave themselves with only a couple of usable characters then I'm ok with that.

Most people wouldn't do this because people on this game and forum are collectivists and seem to want not just all the characters but all of them multiple times so I feel confident in saying that people will not trade roster slots to lower their scaling. It was something I had not considered though so thanks for that.

As for the idea of using the 3 which you bring to the fight what's to stop anyone from just bringing two level 40's and one maxed out surfer? This would be far worse than other suggestions I think.

simonsez

OneLastGambit wrote:

It's an interesting point which I had not considered but personally speaking if people want to waste roster slots on useless lvl 40 characters and leave themselves with only a couple of usable characters then I'm ok with that.

It all depends on what you're trying to get out of PvE. If you're looking for no worse than T10, and hopefully a T2, ending up in brackets with people who gamed their roster that severely can ruin the entire event. For players such as yourself who aren't trying to rank that high, you're right, it wouldn't really affect you.