Please end level scaling in PVE

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

That'd work if Heroic Oscorp lasted a month instead of 5 days. Otherwise the result is that most people never get anywhere close to the PvE progression rewards. Did anyone posting on the forum even got to the halfway point to the Wolverine X-Force covers (25K)? I hit 15K and that was helped by a rather drastic reduction in difficulty on the last day.

I think it might work if you have like paid PvE progression like paid $5 to unlock Heroic Oscorp that you can complete at your own leisure (and the mission rewards reset every 3 days or whatever), though if they're good at coming up with PvE content in general this wouldn't be needed anyway. Doing something like Heroic Oscorp should be considered a matter of desperation, not a model of something you want to do every day.

IceIX wrote:

walkyourpath wrote:

Levels scaling some, but only a small gradient (Thugs in first easy node began at 25, are now at 30). Not sure if scaling is per node or cumulative yet.

Cumulative. Although with a much better gradient and something that we looked up called a "ceiling". Progression rewards were tuned to be more in line with what harder core players are capable of earning. We went a bit too far last time around on them. Although there were people that got them all, it wasn't as many as we would have liked.

Unknown

How Is This Not Double Scaling? The Points Are Scaled For Normal And Hard. So If You Scale The Normal Again For How Players Are Completing The Challenge, Then The Normal Event Is Scaled A Second Time. Thus Has Resulted In Two Hard Events, Which Seems To Defeat The Purpose Of Having Two Events. Maybe A Lower Level Cap..

Then Let The Hard One Get As High As You Want. But The Normal Event Players ShouldBe Given A Chance To Reach Good Progressions. The System Is Set Up So That Players With Good Covers Who Don't Need The Better Rewards As Much As The Worse Teams Get Them, While Worse Players Fall Further And Further Behind.

kensterr

Let's cut to the chase. The game doesn't reward those who grind or spend time with missions. It rewards those with 5 blue Spidey.

Eddiemon

kensterr wrote:

Let's cut to the chase. The game doesn't reward those who grind or spend time with missions. It rewards those with 5 blue Spidey.

So a game that is about developing and levelling rosters rewards people who have a better roster? That sounds like it is working as intended.

Also using Cap and Iron Man 40 or even, heaven forbid, Modern Black Widow can also generate stunlocks. But no, that would actualy be rewarding people who know how to use all their characters and not lean just on min-maxed results.

The ideal customer is a person who has a job and can drop money into the game from time to time and has a few hours to play a day. The ideal customer is not the person who can play 3 times a day every 8 hours and grind and grind. Getting away from grinding for victory is a massive step in the right direction.

Eddiemon

LoreNYC wrote:

It's really simple Jozier. Make it a pve reward system instead of a pvp reward system. Progression but not ranking. No rubberbandinding. No scaling up to 230 half way into the event

New people shouldn't be able to get the best reward right off the bat with a higher success rate than established players who have put in time doing all the prior content.

Start with easy enemies, sure, and each reset make them harder. But no one should get screwed out of an event because by the time they get back from work the community scaled them through the roof.

The vast majority of the people playing this prefer something to play on their time rather than when someone halfway around the world might kick off the start.

This event granted started out better than the last two so we can give it a chance but it's not enjoyable when luck has more of an impact than strategy. Atleast we can kill normal and heroics this time around for atleast part of the event

Who are these people who are 'screwed out of the event'?

The 'I can't get the 5K ISO reward from the hardest mission in the game so I am screwed out of the event' people?

With rubberbanding if you were just to grind the non villain missions you could get 200+200+400+147+147+245 = 1339 multiply it by 3 for the total for all reruns is just over 4000 points per reset. In my bracket that's definitely good enough for Wolverine covers and may be low end Psylocke. After 3 resets fifth place is still just over 14,000 in my main bracket.

And that is without winning even a single villain mission. If you can take 3 of the easier missions (IW, Moonstone, Juggernaught) that's an extra 1200 per reset. And that is just beating each of them on easy once, with level 100ish opponents. That will get you up to a Patch cover in progression and into the Psylocke placings as it stands at the moment.

The top end fights in this event are hard, but they aren't pointlessly unfair like Heroic Oscorp. Yeah you could have gotten 5k ISO easier at kickoff, but you didn't get the rubberbanding bonus at kickoff. That's not 'forcing you to play to their time'. And if the current difficulty persists and there are no more 'kickoffs', the time you play no longer matters. As opposed to other events where you needed to grind at set times to get extra grinds in and to get as many points as possible before the sub bracket shut.

People moan about how Hulk was so much better than this. I remember that small cat of a competetion over Christmas. Play every 8 hours. Play at 4 in the morning every morning. That was the antithesis of casual play. And I slept late on the final morning and missed out on the second place I had been holding throughout the tournament. And none of the fights were challenging, it was purely a time soak and unsustainable if you had a job or family.

kensterr

By all means reward those with better roster eg. Blue Spidey. Problem is that in my bracket there are players with high scores that don't have Spidey or MBW in good level or full covers, and their roster does not have maxed **.

I'm coming in from the perspective of the middle-level player. It seems to me that currently good roster and bad roster are mostly the main beneficiaries of the system.

Dragon_Nexus

There's got to be some kind of happy medium between "play the events over and over again, grinding for points every 8 hours" and "Play for a bit carefully, hoping not to play too much or every enemy will be bumped up to 230 and you won't be able to continue".

Isn't there a way to work it on a player-by-player basis? Some way of increasing the challenge for the individual to match their own skill set? I mean I cannot beat level 230 guys at all because I have nothing to stun lock them with (and surely the idea of this game is to try out many combinations and see which work for you. Not maxing out stun lock characters to prevent the opposition from having a move at all as the one and only strategy?).

It's not so much the "missing out" idea, it's more than I'm kind of excluded. Is the aim of the game to include as many players as possible into the event to keep it competitive, so everyone from a fairly low ranked team to the guy with the *** team can compete in this PvE? If that's the case there should be a way of scaling challenge for each player set. The game will always favour the hardcore over the casual, that's just the nature of things. It's a time sink kinda game. But I'm a guy with the time to spend and no characters able to put up a fight. If the 5000 ISO fight wasn't the Wolvies at 230, but maybe at 180, maybe I could beat them. It would be difficult, but with the right combination I could manage it. But 230? It just isn't going to happen. It goes beyond challenge and enters the realm of impossible.

So...some kind of middle ground would be nice. Some way of keeping things competitive without the game inturpretting my success as a cue to ramp the challenge up to impossible levels and never bring it back down again.

Puritas

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Isn't there a way to work it on a player-by-player basis? Some way of increasing the challenge for the individual to match their own skill set? I mean I cannot beat level 230 guys at all because I have nothing to stun lock them with (and surely the idea of this game is to try out many combinations and see which work for you. Not maxing out stun lock characters to prevent the opposition from having a move at all as the one and only strategy?).

You mean like... scaling? They're still tuning it.
Also if **** wolvie is at 230, you grinded lower levels too much.
I beat him at 179, and he's still sub-200 for me.
Just wait and his level'll drop..

edit: hoo boy he just skyrocketed to 229
unless things drop tmrw morning I'm not gonna bother with more than top 50 lool

Unknown

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

There's got to be some kind of happy medium between "play the events over and over again, grinding for points every 8 hours" and "Play for a bit carefully, hoping not to play too much or every enemy will be bumped up to 230 and you won't be able to continue".

Isn't there a way to work it on a player-by-player basis? Some way of increasing the challenge for the individual to match their own skill set? I mean I cannot beat level 230 guys at all because I have nothing to stun lock them with (and surely the idea of this game is to try out many combinations and see which work for you. Not maxing out stun lock characters to prevent the opposition from having a move at all as the one and only strategy?).

It's not so much the "missing out" idea, it's more than I'm kind of excluded. Is the aim of the game to include as many players as possible into the event to keep it competitive, so everyone from a fairly low ranked team to the guy with the *** team can compete in this PvE? If that's the case there should be a way of scaling challenge for each player set. The game will always favour the hardcore over the casual, that's just the nature of things. It's a time sink kinda game. But I'm a guy with the time to spend and no characters able to put up a fight. If the 5000 ISO fight wasn't the Wolvies at 230, but maybe at 180, maybe I could beat them. It would be difficult, but with the right combination I could manage it. But 230? It just isn't going to happen. It goes beyond challenge and enters the realm of impossible.

So...some kind of middle ground would be nice. Some way of keeping things competitive without the game inturpretting my success as a cue to ramp the challenge up to impossible levels and never bring it back down again.

Spider-Man makes everything easier because he's broken, this is acknowledged and long known to be queued for fixing. Don't give too much credence to people claiming he's required, though. People have been calling 230/240 missions "impossible" without him at least since Hunt: Ares, and it's usually not true. He was buffed but not even necessarily that helpful in TaT if you had a moderately leveled Patch, since he slowed you down, and hasn't yet been necessary in this, arguably excepting the challenge mission. He's just the easiest way to shut down anything, buffed or not, so obviously a lot of people use him for everything. What is true, and has been true for every event, is that if you haven't leveled buffed characters or some of the staple crutches (which also include OBW/Hood suppression, maybe Patch & Loki paired, IM40 on battery duty, Punisher for his red), you're not going to do very well.

Puritas wrote:

You mean like... scaling? They're still tuning it.
Also if **** wolvie is at 230, you grinded lower levels too much.
I beat him at 179, and he's still sub-200 for me.
Just wait and his level'll drop..

Levels go up as well as down without clearing anything. Probably depends what everyone else is doing, but only Demiurge knows for sure, and I wouldn't put money on that.

Katai

If the characters are supposed to be level 230, then just set them to level 230. I don't see any point in having them be level 170 for the first hour, then level 230 afterwards.

Unknown

Veracity wrote:

Spider-Man makes everything easier because he's broken, this is acknowledged and long known to be queued for fixing. Don't give too much credence to people claiming he's required, though. People have been calling 230/240 missions "impossible" without him at least since Hunt: Ares, and it's usually not true. He was buffed but not even necessarily that helpful in TaT if you had a moderately leveled Patch, since he slowed you down, and hasn't yet been necessary in this, arguably excepting the challenge mission. He's just the easiest way to shut down anything, buffed or not, so obviously a lot of people use him for everything. What is true, and has been true for every event, is that if you haven't leveled buffed characters or some of the staple crutches (which also include OBW/Hood suppression, maybe Patch & Loki paired, IM40 on battery duty, Punisher for his red), you're not going to do very well.

The thing is that with Spidey, just having him with 5 blue covers is enough (and maybe enough health to not die to one or two hits). My Spidey's level is still only in the 40s. If you require something like high level Patch and Loki paired or high level Hood or whatever, you're restricting these kind of events to an even smaller subset of people. I acknowledge Spidey is broken and needs to be fixed, but when that crutch is taken away the devs need to be more careful with difficult content to offer a wider variety of boosted characters or implement boosts so that the character's level is not so important, you can't expect people to have that many different high level characters.

Unknown

I don't have problem with the scaling itself, I have problem with the fact that its community scaling and that I can be **** over by joining the wrong bracket by having my game scale out of my control to the level that I can't even play and then have that scaling stick throughout the event.

Unknown

Does fighting in easy mode affect enemy levels in hard mode?

kensterr

Veracity wrote:

Spider-Man makes everything easier because he's broken, this is acknowledged and long known to be queued for fixing. Don't give too much credence to people claiming he's required, though. People have been calling 230/240 missions "impossible" without him at least since Hunt: Ares, and it's usually not true. He was buffed but not even necessarily that helpful in TaT if you had a moderately leveled Patch, since he slowed you down, and hasn't yet been necessary in this, arguably excepting the challenge mission. He's just the easiest way to shut down anything, buffed or not, so obviously a lot of people use him for everything. What is true, and has been true for every event, is that if you haven't leveled buffed characters or some of the staple crutches (which also include OBW/Hood suppression, maybe Patch & Loki paired, IM40 on battery duty, Punisher for his red), you're not going to do very well.

I prefer helpful advice like this. Thanks!

In an ideal game world the system would take into account the levels and covers each player has before setting the difficulty level. What is a good combination to go against level 130++ Doom/Hood/Magneto?

Bacon Pants

gobstopper wrote:

Does fighting in easy mode affect enemy levels in hard mode?

They are separate entities.

Unknown

Spiderman is an enabler. But in TaT Patch and OBW still did most of the heavy lifting. If you were given Yelena and IM35 instead of those two for TaT, you'd have a hard time getting anywhere in TaT even with a maxed Spiderman. Likewise in The Hulk you got Wolverine 2* who does the vast majority of the work. As powerful as Spiderman is, you generally still need to kill one guy the old fashion way because it's very hard for even Spiderman to keep all 3 enemies stunned, and Spiderman sure isn't going to do anything useful in getting the first guy to die.

The difference is that in this event the boosted characters are NOT the broken ones, and further they're not the most popular characters either. In my games Moonstone has been doing most of the heavy lifting. She's generally responsible for taking down the first person (needed to get Spiderman some breathing room for stuns), and she certainly tanks quite well with her 6400 HP. I usually bring Patch along but Patch really doesn't get to do much on most fights since he only has one color of tiles (green) and these events you can't really use Berserker Rage on the bosses until the fight is effectively over.

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

What is a good combination to go against level 130++ Doom/Hood/Magneto?

That's an evil team I can't get a guaranteed win against with anything I have, but just cleared it again with Patch, Loki, OBW at just under 140 to confirm they'll still work. Widow doesn't help much at 3/5/5 with buffed Loki matching purple, because she can't delay Magnetic Translocation at all, but she can at least keep Doom at bay and feed Trickery. My Loki's only lv25 and has no purple, both of which are annoying, but with the buff for this sub round he's good enough.

I think what throws people might in part be that, unlike a lot of higher level PvE, it's not a dragged-out poking battle so much as a damage race. Boosting can obviously help with that - I've been using G/B stockpile as a matter of course for it, though you have to watch tile counts to stop The Hood siphoning it off you. If Hood's still standing by turn 6 or so, you might as well retreat and save yourself some time. In my case this means Berserker Rage gets used in suicide mode before Trickery's loaded - Patch can weather match damage at least for a while with purple strike tiles up, and The Hood and Magneto both die quickly. Doom's just mop-up; you don't want him getting either of his abilities off, but you won't die immediately if he does. Leave open red matches (which he should rarely take after Magneto's dead) hanging around if you think he's going to get to Summon Demons and you should be able to match one or two attack tiles off as soon as they go up.

Alternatives: Daken would stand in well where I'm using Patch, and stops you needing Loki. Buffed Moonstone has enough damage on purple and red to tear Hood down quickly, and her purple can remove Magneto protect tiles or Doom demons. GSBW can use the purple you have to take for denial to scrawl green all over the board and prevent the enemy team getting colors any of them can use. If you want to use stun, I think C.Storm's buffed (also of note: her retaliatory AoE is nasty combined with strike tiles, especially vs low-HP opposition). Or even an underleveled 3-4 blue Spider-Man can lock down at least one target reliably if paired with IM40 Recharging. Not easy to get a heal off if you're diverting yellow for that, but can always Prologue heal afterwards.

Unknown

Bacon Pants wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

Does fighting in easy mode affect enemy levels in hard mode?

They are separate entities.

That's not how I understand it. Scaling in one sub-event affects the scaling in the other sub-event according to Demiurge_Will.

For me the biggest problem with scaling is the community scaling. Why should the fact other people are doing well on their game affect the levels of enemies I see? What if I'm ill, or on holiday for a few days and can't play? How is it fair that I'm being penalised for not playing? I understand the idea behind it, that if I start later I'm getting more points due to rubberbanding, so the community scaling is meant to counteract that. It just strikes me as unfair though, especially if you've not even started your run yet.

How about this as an idea - on your first run through each sub-event, all enemies levels and points are preset and unaffected by community scaling. That way, you can start late and rubberbanding and scaling doesn't affect you, giving you the same chance as anyone to beat all the fights and get the rewards for it. After you beat each node, it then becomes affected by the rubberbanding and scaling. People will still moan about it, but at least you're not potentially locking out latecomers from even enjoying a first run through the missions, especially when there is so much ISO on offer that would no doubt help most players immensely.

Unknown

DaveyPitch wrote:

Bacon Pants wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

Does fighting in easy mode affect enemy levels in hard mode?

They are separate entities.

That's not how I understand it. Scaling in one sub-event affects the scaling in the other sub-event according to Demiurge_Will.

For me the biggest problem with scaling is the community scaling. Why should the fact other people are doing well on their game affect the levels of enemies I see? What if I'm ill, or on holiday for a few days and can't play? How is it fair that I'm being penalised for not playing? I understand the idea behind it, that if I start later I'm getting more points due to rubberbanding, so the community scaling is meant to counteract that. It just strikes me as unfair though, especially if you've not even started your run yet.

How about this as an idea - on your first run through each sub-event, all enemies levels and points are preset and unaffected by community scaling. That way, you can start late and rubberbanding and scaling doesn't affect you, giving you the same chance as anyone to beat all the fights and get the rewards for it. After you beat each node, it then becomes affected by the rubberbanding and scaling. People will still moan about it, but at least you're not potentially locking out latecomers from even enjoying a first run through the missions, especially when there is so much ISO on offer that would no doubt help most players immensely.

In a separate thread IceIX stated that normal does not affect hard, they're completely separate. What Will was referring to was that normal 1 will effect normal 2, 3, 4 and 5. Hard 1 will effect hard 2, 3, 4, and 5. So you can play them independently without consequence, but I'm like you hating community scaling (hell I don't like scaling to begin with, but if we must have it, at least tie it to my actions).

Unknown

I dont understand the need for scaling at all, cant get my head round even the concept of needing to scale my enemies based on what some kid half way around the world has already achieved on his game. No rubber banding, no scaling must be the way to go coupled with no points loss on progression rewards (not ranking). I know i cannot get top place till i am good enough or am willing to put in the time and that is fair enough. In the meantime i want to have fun (the main reason I play games after all) and build my heroes and roster through gained ISO and the progression rewards.

Getting all the rewards in a mission is frustrating enough as it is what with all the 20 ISO results I have to put up with. If the levels get higher every time I play and get only 20 ISo then gaining the mission rewards gets to be no fun at all and this is made even worse when this happens because of other people playing the game!

If anyone can explain a good, valid reason why rubberbanding and scaling are needed and also why we have to bounce up and down the progression reward ladder i would appreciate it