Why do I keep facing tough foes in PvE events?

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

placing around 75th in the last event dropped levels by 100+ in this event for me

feel free to quit the game tho
come to think of it that would also lower your scaling

I never said I was quitting. My roster is medium strong, so I don't currently have the problems those with medium rosters are facing. HOWEVER, I can see what it's like for them and empathize, which you clearly do not. If the best possible advice to someone wanting to get into the game and do well is "don't play much and lose a lot", the game itself has serious problems.

NorthernPolarity

Lyrian wrote:

The trick to managing PvE mission levels:

Disclaimer: YES, this is annoying is all tinykitty to maintain, but it does work.

1) Gather up everybody in your roster that you are NOT planning on playing with over the next few hours.
2) Enter into any of the sub-events and choose a non-Essential mission. (First one is just fine - "Indonesia I").
3a) Pick three of the roster that are irrelevant for you currently.
3b) Start match.
3c) Immediately retreat out of the match to register a loss.
3d) Repeat steps 2-3c a total of three times for each character. (4 if you really aren't going to play with the character and don't care about the downed timer)
4) Repeat steps 2-3d for the next set of three characters, and so on until your run out of characters to throw under the bus.
5) Repeat all of the above as needed to keep encounter levels to a minimum.

Notes:
** At first, you may have to register several dozen losses (this does not need to be done all at once, but preferably before you start winning matches again), if you are seeing very high level mobs. Essentially, you have to "convince" the game that you cannot handle the missions at the current levels by losing repeatedly. Initially, this can take a long period of time, as you are balancing all of your wins previously with accumulating losses.

** On average, with the "community scaling" applied to this event, between 9-12 retreats are needed to generate a 10% reduction in mission levels. Technically, the number of losses needed to reduce mission levels is high because community scaling partially blocks the efforts of trying to reduce mission levels. Minimum mission levels tend to be around the 40s-50s with community scaling in play.

** For maximum efficiency, use teams of low health characters. Level 1 1* and 6 2** characters are best to use.

** Avoid retreating more than three times with a set of characters to avoid the downed timer. I don't believe there is any benefit in PvE to downing over retreating, but you will definitely have to wait for downed timer to expire plus healing time. Also, do not begin the set of three retreats unless the team has full hit points. Anything less that than full life on the first retreat will lead to the team being downed on the third retreat.

I hope this information helps everyone out there.

What levels are your mobs currently? This was pretty effective during TaT, but I'm not seeing the same results with this PvE event: I ran 15 characters into the 223 mobs to no avail.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

The trick to managing PvE mission levels:

Disclaimer: YES, this is annoying is all tinykitty to maintain, but it does work.

1) Gather up everybody in your roster that you are NOT planning on playing with over the next few hours.
2) Enter into any of the sub-events and choose a non-Essential mission. (First one is just fine - "Indonesia I").
3a) Pick three of the roster that are irrelevant for you currently.
3b) Start match.
3c) Immediately retreat out of the match to register a loss.
3d) Repeat steps 2-3c a total of three times for each character. (4 if you really aren't going to play with the character and don't care about the downed timer)
4) Repeat steps 2-3d for the next set of three characters, and so on until your run out of characters to throw under the bus.
5) Repeat all of the above as needed to keep encounter levels to a minimum.

Notes:
** At first, you may have to register several dozen losses (this does not need to be done all at once, but preferably before you start winning matches again), if you are seeing very high level mobs. Essentially, you have to "convince" the game that you cannot handle the missions at the current levels by losing repeatedly. Initially, this can take a long period of time, as you are balancing all of your wins previously with accumulating losses.

** On average, with the "community scaling" applied to this event, between 9-12 retreats are needed to generate a 10% reduction in mission levels. Technically, the number of losses needed to reduce mission levels is high because community scaling partially blocks the efforts of trying to reduce mission levels. Minimum mission levels tend to be around the 40s-50s with community scaling in play.

** For maximum efficiency, use teams of low health characters. Level 1 1* and 6 2** characters are best to use.

** Avoid retreating more than three times with a set of characters to avoid the downed timer. I don't believe there is any benefit in PvE to downing over retreating, but you will definitely have to wait for downed timer to expire plus healing time. Also, do not begin the set of three retreats unless the team has full hit points. Anything less that than full life on the first retreat will lead to the team being downed on the third retreat.

I hope this information helps everyone out there.

It worked. Took more than 20-30 retreats..... from 230 to 226.... baby steps.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

What levels are your mobs currently? This was pretty effective during TaT, but I'm not seeing the same results with this PvE event: I ran 15 characters into the 223 mobs to no avail.

It definitely does work, but it is definitely less drastic as before.

My rates are similar to Mikey above. 30 retreats = reduction of about 5 levels.

It's not something you can do just once spontaneously. You have to implement it as part of your strat and do it consistently for it to be effective.

Unknown

I suspect retreating lowers the mission simply because if you died enough times you may become a significant factor on the global deaths on that encounter. I'd assume most people just wimp out when they see a 230X3, and if you don't play the game, the game has no way of telling that mission is too hard.

As far as I can tell, if you ever finished anywhere near top 10 in a sub bracket, don't expect to see anything less than 230X3s unless your roster is extremely weak. The game really has no reason to assume why you shouldn't face 230X3s if you placed near top 10, as that's above 90% of the the people in your sub bracket, so it figures you must be fine.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I suspect retreating lowers the mission simply because if you died enough times you may become a significant factor on the global deaths on that encounter. I'd assume most people just wimp out when they see a 230X3, and if you don't play the game, the game has no way of telling that mission is too hard.

As far as I can tell, if you ever finished anywhere near top 10 in a sub bracket, don't expect to see anything less than 230X3s unless your roster is extremely weak. The game really has no reason to assume why you shouldn't face 230X3s if you placed near top 10, as that's above 90% of the the people in your sub bracket, so it figures you must be fine.

That's not entirely true. I've been top 10 on probably 1/2 at least of the subs, and top 5 in several, and I've only seen a handful of 230s. I think it depends in part on your top level, because I don't have anyone over 75th (by design; I have about a dozen between 69 and 75). I think top level plays a big part in these. I seem to be getting lower levels in PVEs - and this goes back to Thick as Thieves - than nearly everyone else at my experience level, and that's because most people my experience level have multiple 85s.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

What levels are your mobs currently? This was pretty effective during TaT, but I'm not seeing the same results with this PvE event: I ran 15 characters into the 223 mobs to no avail.

It definitely does work, but it is definitely less drastic as before.

My rates are similar to Mikey above. 30 retreats = reduction of about 5 levels.

It's not something you can do just once spontaneously. You have to implement it as part of your strat and do it consistently for it to be effective.

That's what I get for not looking at this thread for awhile.

I'll quote Iheart here, and bold the most relevant part. Once you get your mission levels down to whatever reasonable level you desire, you do have to work at keeping them there as they will want to jump right back up to high levels again after a short while.

@NorthernPolarity: It depends... as I noted in another thread, I believe that the levels of missions people see is based on some form of (X + Y) as a oversimplistic model to describe what is going on here. X is your PvE MMR rating, while Y is the community MMR rating. In general, even if you can keep X to a value near zero, Y tends to always be increasing as players complete missions. Over time, the levels of all of the missions tend to increase, especially towards the end of the event. That being said, when X is very low, you can see some interesting observations on how Y is affecting each mission. Missions with three mooks tend to receive very high scaling amounts. At the moment, on my screen, most events in Spain are 30-45, but the Psylocke doombot mission is level 70.

@MikeyMan: In another thread, I postulated that although enemy levels are capped at 230, your personal rating that determines event levels is not. Thus, it is very possible that if enemies were not capped at 230, many would see level 300 or 400 enemies because of constantly clearing 230s. The drop to 226 is a likely sign that your value for X (PvE MMR) is finally dropping out of the stratosphere.

@Phantron: This is likely, but at the same time, many people with new accounts are winning much easier versions of the missions at the same time. In my experiences, the effects of a few people on a mission are not sufficient to significantly influence the community rating for the event enough to make a serious negative impact. I don't think people are trying and losing in the style of the Devil Dino missions in the Simulator. People might lose once and are moving on with the event. I would also assert that event fatigue at this point also plays as significant role in reducing the willingness of many to fight very hard fights to lose and lower the global rating on the event.

Heading off to do a run on the two subs before they close for the night.

kensterr

Puritas wrote:

placing around 75th in the last event dropped levels by 100+ in this event for me

feel free to quit the game tho
come to think of it that would also lower your scaling

Good idea! Am gonna take some time off after hopefully getting Black Panther. Gaming has become a chore instead.

Unknown

Pretty sure losing a matchup by getting wiped out doesn't help with levels. I ran all of my roster that i'm not using in the PvE or PvP event in to die (21 heroes, so getting wiped out 7 times) and the levels for my fights didn't change.

Basically all my fights are 230 (and have been for days) apart from the first fight in the easy subs which is mid 20's and the odd random fight in the low 200's. I assume it's based on your roster levels and previous results because if it was results only there are a fair few ppl in my main bracket who are taking out 230's with fairly **** rosters .

Sitting at 149k and 21k ahead of 2nd so I think i'll only do this set of subs once just before the end to save myself the pain of doing ANY of the fights with Hood in them any more than I absolutely have to

Unknown

Agre that the msot annoying thing is the fact, that ,,mid,, players are fcked up in the PVE events.
Low lvl player with few lvl 15-30 heroes? easy mode, and im talking about ULTRA easy mode
High lvl players with rare and high lvl heroes? /spidey, magneto, punisher etc/ ist okay for thgem cause their heroes are extremly powerfull
Mid lvl players with some mediocore heroes like lvl 70-85 /storm, wolvi etc/? sometimes impossible to play, because you face agains the same opponents as high lvl players

srsly just hwy should i battle agains a lvl 230 Juggernauth-Hood-random enemy hero trio? This is sick.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

The trick to managing PvE mission levels:

Thank you, your advice was very helpful. I was able to open the final hard sub by tanking enough to cut the enemy team from 175ish to 135ish and then with boosts and a good board, beat them. It seems like a major PvE skill is managing the relatively opaque mechanics of rubberbanding and MMR, just as much as quickly recognizing oddball potential crit-match patterns and team synergy.