Frustratingly opaque tournament rules

Unknown

I definitely agree with eddiemon on this one. I feel there are just too many players out there attempting to brute force their way out of problems instead of thinking it through. There seems to be a lot of players going around with the idea that they can just get a team of what people believe to be the most broken characters and they will breeze through everything in the game instead of analysing the problem and finding a solution through switching up their teams, which is what is required and encouraged in pve events. Heck, sometimes just the simple thing of changing who you attempt to kill off first can change how tough a battle is.

I am doing rather fine this event with the most often used team being 85 C storm, 85 OBW and 64 IM40 (3-2-2 at the moment). While the matches can be pretty tough and require a few tries sometimes, this team served me rather well. IM40 and C.Storm are both boosted and they both have AP generating skills. C.storm also has her blue AOE + stun (I'm still short on covers for IM40 so his blue has no stun). OBW is there for the AP stealing/denial and her blue helps with healing and dealing with enemy countdowns.

The main idea is to make use of C.Storm's boosted blue as much as possible. I would look out for purple and yellow matches as a priority while snapping up as much blue (followed by green) as possible. Depending on the board and my own AP situation, I would change my color priorities e.g. if I'm closer to 12+ green then I will be getting to the required yellow, blue and/or purple skills. Stunning priority will change with my enemies' situation as well but usually I would stun the character with the cheapest and/or most damaging skills first. If an enemy character is pretty close to having enough AP to fire off a damage skill, I will often switch to stunning that character first as a pre-empt.

And I retreat to heal up a lot and often really early in a battle. If I see Dino managing to get his 1 bite KO up and ready and I don't have a steal of stun ready for it, it's a retreat to countdown only mobs to heal up. If any one of C.Storm or OBW goes down and I'm unlikely to finish the battle with the other 2 characters, it's countdown city time as well.

And to keep my post relevant to the OP, a lot of games prefer to keep rules like this opaque as revealing exactly what is being done and how they do it gives rise to a lot of chances for massive amounts of players to abuse the system and make a game unplayable. Also, as much as I empathise with the feeling of being unable to properly compete in an event, a lot of times it's about understanding that you're probably not ready enough and aim a little bit lower. Just wait it out a little, you will get stronger and the developers will get more data + feedback and hopefully more ideas as well to improve their system for all players. Despite what some other people think, the devs have actually been learning and improving on what they are doing but a lot of these things cannot happen at a snap of the fingers.

Unknown

Skyedyne wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Skyedyne wrote:

Scaling as a whole isn't bad. It gives the appropriate challenge, and makes the game more enjoyable (nothing feels better than taking down a 230 team with a sub 100 team, imo).

The scaling this time around seems not based on the community as a whole, but I believe in relation to your main bracket. My friend in the last subset had the Punisher battle at around 170, while mine was 230. As for the notion of it going up in level when completed by anyone, you can blame the ones higher up on the ladder for making the Easy simulator 200+ due to essentially grinding out "easy points" until Hard is easier.

I don't think basing it off of roster would be a good idea, mainly for the fact that most people level 2-3 characters and then the rest become benchwarmers. You can't even average enemy level out according to that because then missions become too easy, when it's supposed to be a challenge to get to the top.

Scaling is fine. They are slowly but surely getting it right. It went from atrocious in the beginning, and it's getting to tolerable, but not liked status. Once the tweaking is done, then it's will be a really good system.

This is true to a certain extent. However, I feel like there needs to be a cap on the scaling in normal mode. If all PvP opponents just end up scaling to 230 because you have a powerful roster, then it makes the player feel like they leveled up their roster for nothing. Scaling hardmode up to this level is fine since hard mode is supposed to be hard, but cap out normal at 100-150 so that at least the mission rewards are farmable and veterans can feel like completing the mission wasn't a waste of time.

I agree with this totally. The easier of the two mirror areas should have a level cap. Probably cap it at 160-170, though. That's roughly double the level of a 3 ability 2*, and gives a sufficient enough challenge. And obviously if those become easily overcome, then Hard mode is ready for them, and with it the better chance at a higher prize(s).

I also agree with NP. But rather than capping any characters at 160-170 in Normal mode, I think they should be capped at their natural max. I don't see why 1* and 2* characters are getting bumped to 230, when your versions naturally cap at 50 and 85. What's 'normal' about it, when they are exceeding the levels that are possible to the human player? It's pretty farcical that Normal mode now contains characters at Lv230. Keep the uber scaling for Hard mode, if you must.

230s in general have gotten on my proverbial **** right now, I put my phone down this weekend and barely even touched the Simulator. Quite liberating to do something else for once.

Unknown

Susra wrote:

I've been enjoying MPQ a great deal. Spent some money on HP to expand my roster, and will probably spend more in the future. I don't get motivated by much to go to forums and post, but I just had a moment of massive frustration and dismay.

In round 3 of the simulator (hardmode), I had fought my way to Simulation 04 (the one with the single big ISO8 reward). The baddies were 66 and 67, and I was hurt, so I had to wait to heal up. I judged that, with liberal use of boosts and a little luck, I'd be able to take them down. I very much looked forward to trying. Also, I'd run into an ISO8 brick wall this weekend, with almost no more progress possible in any tournaments or SHIELD training, so the big ISO8 reward was going to be a godsend.

Anyway, I wait to heal to full, click Simulation 04... and now the baddies are up over level 100. The big fight I'd prepared for and waited on... no more. It'd be suicide to try now.

Devs, I understand that you have a difficult balancing act to perform with this game. But if this is working as designed, then I think you've made a design error. Whatever else you believe this inscrutable-bar-raising mechanic is doing, it has succeeded in infuriating me and making me not want to give you any more of my money.

I'll cool down and come back to it, but you should rethink this.

Frankly, if lvl 100 enemies are impossible for you, you shouldn't be in Hard mode in the first place. It's there for the veterans, not the newer players. That's why there are two modes.

Unknown

The Ladder wrote:

I also agree with NP. But rather than capping any characters at 160-170 in Normal mode, I think they should be capped at their natural max. I don't see why 1* and 2* characters are getting bumped to 230, when your versions naturally cap at 50 and 85. What's 'normal' about it, when they are exceeding the levels that are possible to the human player? It's pretty farcical that Normal mode now contains characters at Lv230. Keep the uber scaling for Hard mode, if you must.

I'd rather like to see a different approach, remove the caps entirely. Currently low level and top level players are at a huge advantage, low level players don't get opponents anywhere near the cap, top level players don't face that much of a challenge going against level 230 mobs. It's the mid level players that encounter hell unleashed, most just don't have access to a roster that allows them to compete against those level 230 mobs they are set up against, and two hours combined downtime for each failed attempt doesn't really help. Now, if the caps were removed those top level players would be facing mobs level 1000 and higher. This may sound tough, but given the stated intent behind scaling, top level players should by all rights be facing a tougher challenge than mid level players. And once every top level players gets outright annihilated with zero chance to beat any PvE level at all D3P can finally work on introducing proper scaling that is fair across the board.

Sorry if this sounds slightly frustrated, but I'm seeing level 230 groups in easy mode on every node, maybe one or two exceptions. My highest level hero is around level 100, no damage wonder like GSBW or CMag available. Thanks for dynamically adjusting my difficulty level to the same level as those 141/141/141 teams. My playing skills must be considered godlike.

Eddiemon

Moghwyn wrote:

I'd rather like to see a different approach, remove the caps entirely. Currently low level and top level players are at a huge advantage, low level players don't get opponents anywhere near the cap, top level players don't face that much of a challenge going against level 230 mobs. It's the mid level players that encounter hell unleashed, most just don't have access to a roster that allows them to compete against those level 230 mobs they are set up against, and two hours combined downtime for each failed attempt doesn't really help. Now, if the caps were removed those top level players would be facing mobs level 1000 and higher. This may sound tough, but given the stated intent behind scaling, top level players should by all rights be facing a tougher challenge than mid level players. And once every top level players gets outright annihilated with zero chance to beat any PvE level at all D3P can finally work on introducing proper scaling that is fair across the board.

Sorry if this sounds slightly frustrated, but I'm seeing level 230 groups in easy mode on every node, maybe one or two exceptions. My highest level hero is around level 100, no damage wonder like GSBW or CMag available. Thanks for dynamically adjusting my difficulty level to the same level as those 141/141/141 teams. My playing skills must be considered godlike.

I don't know how many players you think are 141/141/141, but there aren't many. Plus as has been pointed out multiple times, it is the boosted 2 stars who are key to this event. People who are trying to brute force it with high level characters just die a lot.

A mid range player could easily have a 50 Daken, C Storm and OBW. That's enough to beat most 230 events and will do it far easier than a set of 141s would.

Unknown

Eddie your advice is great, really smart and helpful but you could be less of a prick about it. Just saying.

Eddiemon

Crazyeyeskiller wrote:

Eddie your advice is great, really smart and helpful but you could be less of a prick about it. Just saying.

Yeah I know, the analytical part of me isn't very touchy-feely and likes getting to the point.

At work I go back and edit stuff for tone once I have all the information on the page, but this isn't work, so I figure you get what you pay for.

optimiza

Eddiemon wrote:

Crazyeyeskiller wrote:

Eddie your advice is great, really smart and helpful but you could be less of a prick about it. Just saying.

Yeah I know, the analytical part of me isn't very touchy-feely and likes getting to the point.

At work I go back and edit stuff for tone once I have all the information on the page, but this isn't work, so I figure you get what you pay for.

As someone who does a bit of customer service work, I love this response.

The whole low level roster bit with those people having having reduced scaling and taking over the top 10s does have me a bit salty too, as someone who trudged and worked their way up in PVPs from just getting standard tokens, to getting the 2* rewards, to finally being able to crack top 45s, and occasionally top 10s. I think the cynics are probably right in that things are designed so that new players will be getting more covers than they have space for and being forced to either grind for HP in the prologue or pay up.

kensterr

Eddiemon wrote:

Crazyeyeskiller wrote:

Eddie your advice is great, really smart and helpful but you could be less of a prick about it. Just saying.

Yeah I know, the analytical part of me isn't very touchy-feely and likes getting to the point.

At work I go back and edit stuff for tone once I have all the information on the page, but this isn't work, so I figure you get what you pay for.

I was initially put off by the tone as well, but any free advice is welcomed.

I'm really happy that you take time to really reply and give proper solutions/combo, rather than just hinting or implying what characters to use.

Unknown

Pretty sure the scaling is also tied to your MMR but victories don't affect your MMR, so if you make a deep run in a PvP before you try the PvE you will suffer for it. If you take a PvP off to tank you'll see much better mobs in PvE for a while. (I think).

Unknown

I agree in general that the tournament rules massively suck.

However on the particular matches I agree with the opposition -- there are ways to win them, and they force some thinking. I actually like the simulator setup itself with good variations in the opponents while locking some of roster out and buff others. It makes you part with usual patters and put various teams to work. E.g. my CStrom was benched at level 6 this long. Now I noticed how insanely buffed she is and dropped some of the currently won ISO on her, and at just level 35 (~10k iso use) she won me a plenty of battles. Doom was also quite helping, this round his buff is over the top so I switched to him in many non-forced battles too (level 28 with just 3 covers recently obtained, 6k life and 155 attack tiles? yes please . In 1st round the 1 black cover Loki was not much help really

I still consider it nuts and not even matching the described goals that levels scale without my play from others playing up. So those who enter and play hours instantly get tremendous advantage over those who entered for one battle and play more only few hours later. That should not be the case ever, and when it is, it should be announced and explained right on entry.

NorthernPolarity

The Ladder wrote:

Skyedyne wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Skyedyne wrote:

Scaling as a whole isn't bad. It gives the appropriate challenge, and makes the game more enjoyable (nothing feels better than taking down a 230 team with a sub 100 team, imo).

The scaling this time around seems not based on the community as a whole, but I believe in relation to your main bracket. My friend in the last subset had the Punisher battle at around 170, while mine was 230. As for the notion of it going up in level when completed by anyone, you can blame the ones higher up on the ladder for making the Easy simulator 200+ due to essentially grinding out "easy points" until Hard is easier.

I don't think basing it off of roster would be a good idea, mainly for the fact that most people level 2-3 characters and then the rest become benchwarmers. You can't even average enemy level out according to that because then missions become too easy, when it's supposed to be a challenge to get to the top.

Scaling is fine. They are slowly but surely getting it right. It went from atrocious in the beginning, and it's getting to tolerable, but not liked status. Once the tweaking is done, then it's will be a really good system.

This is true to a certain extent. However, I feel like there needs to be a cap on the scaling in normal mode. If all PvP opponents just end up scaling to 230 because you have a powerful roster, then it makes the player feel like they leveled up their roster for nothing. Scaling hardmode up to this level is fine since hard mode is supposed to be hard, but cap out normal at 100-150 so that at least the mission rewards are farmable and veterans can feel like completing the mission wasn't a waste of time.

I agree with this totally. The easier of the two mirror areas should have a level cap. Probably cap it at 160-170, though. That's roughly double the level of a 3 ability 2*, and gives a sufficient enough challenge. And obviously if those become easily overcome, then Hard mode is ready for them, and with it the better chance at a higher prize(s).

I also agree with NP. But rather than capping any characters at 160-170 in Normal mode, I think they should be capped at their natural max. I don't see why 1* and 2* characters are getting bumped to 230, when your versions naturally cap at 50 and 85. What's 'normal' about it, when they are exceeding the levels that are possible to the human player? It's pretty farcical that Normal mode now contains characters at Lv230. Keep the uber scaling for Hard mode, if you must.

230s in general have gotten on my proverbial **** right now, I put my phone down this weekend and barely even touched the Simulator. Quite liberating to do something else for once.

I think the idea behind 230s is that it enables the devs to buff some characters to feature for the tournament. If you kept them at their natural cap, then a buffed Daken would just stomp over everything.

Unknown

The buffed characters would absolutely slaughter a natural level cap character.

Now overkill is fine, but overkill means on the easy bracket you'd have to grind every mission down to 1 to have a chance at placing and that'd be dumb. The community scaling is fine, even on cases where it leads normal to be harder than hard. If that happened, just do hard instead. The scaling prevents unnecessary grinding which is what will happen if everyone can beat these missions easily, because then the only thing that separates the top is how often you can grind.

Unknown

But why accomplish that through community scaling? Why not just have individual scaling per node or even just have each node be harder than the last? What is the advantage/motivation behind having my nodes increase in difficulty because someone else beat them?

Unknown

I think community scaling works because it punishes people like me who purposely wait until near the end of the sub-event and try to snipe a top 5 place by reaping in rubberband points.

Katai

The way the tournament works, if you don't play within the first hour or so, don't bother because everything is way too hard.

Katai

Toxicadam wrote:

I think community scaling works because it punishes people like me who purposely wait until near the end of the sub-event and try to snipe a top 5 place by reaping in rubberband points.

Except points are worth **** at the beginning. You can beat all the people and get less than 2000 points, but someone at the end can beat the high level dudes and get 3000 in one battle.

Unknown

Katai wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

I think community scaling works because it punishes people like me who purposely wait until near the end of the sub-event and try to snipe a top 5 place by reaping in rubberband points.

Except points are worth **** at the beginning. You can beat all the people and get less than 2000 points, but someone at the end can beat the high level dudes and get 3000 in one battle.

That was my point. If you play at the beginning, you get low points for your effort. If you play at the end (like I do) you are getting way more points. But with community scaling, I am facing much harder battles.

Unknown

I've got to agree that the most frustrating part of this is the opaqueness.

I guess i got into the Simulators early on the first round, which worked well for me. I only have a mediocre team (85 2* Wolverine, 60ish OBW, nothing else above 50) but i was able to use the boosted characters to do well, and even though i wasn't able to keep it up for the entire round i ended up in the top 50 for both sub-events. (Though i _still_ haven't gotten the rewards for the second sub-event.)

In the second round i guess i got started late or something? Because the enemies at the end of the _easy_ Simulator were 230. I think most of the other people in my bracket for that sub-event had the same issue, because i still manged to end up in the top 50, if only barely (and that time i got rewards for both sub-events!) but i was getting slaughtered in the main event bracket.

In the third round it wasn't as bad as the second, but the fights looked pretty tough before i even fought anything. I decided to wait a little bit to try them since i was guessing that maybe they were being scaled by the same method as the rubber-banding, and maybe if i went down more in the ranking some the fights would get easier. Now that i've had the chance to check the forums however it seems that i may have made exactly the wrong decision and the fights are only going to get worse as time goes on. I'm worried that by the time i get home the fights will be completely impossible for me, after having already (unknowingly) passed up on the opportunity to get the early easy points.

As others have said, there's nothing inherently wrong with scaling the fights in general, but i'm not convinced that they're using the right metrics for it at the moment, and the fact that the players have no clue what's going on except by reading analysis by other players on the forums is horribly stupid and aggravating! I'm not objecting to things being made more difficult in general, i'd just like to have some idea of what the best way of dealing with the higher difficulty is!

The closest i've been able to find to any official announcement in the "News and Announcements" board is "Altered scaling slightly for some missions in Simulator Round 1 sub-event, which will also ripple forward into future Simulator Rounds" which tells us exactly nothing except "whatever you thought you'd figured out before, it may be different now."

I was contemplating spending another $5 so i'd have roster space for Psylocke, but at this rate the difficulty is ramping up in this event it looks like there's no way i'm going to be able win any of her covers, so whatever.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

But why accomplish that through community scaling? Why not just have individual scaling per node or even just have each node be harder than the last? What is the advantage/motivation behind having my nodes increase in difficulty because someone else beat them?

+1 to that, Andy.