PVE Scaling Testing - Enemy Of The State (03/17/16)

fmftint

Thanks for taking trivial nodes that never changed level and:
Starting them significantly higher (35 previously, 190 now!)
Increasing their level each clear
Keeping points/rewards the same. Crit boost, standard token, 70 iso, 70 iso, 100 iso, 100 iso, 200 iso

Vhailorx

haven't read every comment yet, so this is just adding to the chorus.

I applaud demiurge for recognizing that optimal playtimes were a pain in the **** and turned what should be a fun game into an irritating chore.

I also applaud demiurge for recognizing that scaling was completely batshit crazy. Why have a game with leveling at all if leveling was sometimes actively detrimental to progress.

And it's good that deimurge has noticed that 5*s and newly super-powerful boosted 4*s basically break pve scaling right now anyway.

Unfortunately, that's about where the good news ends. The new scoring systems sounds significantly worse in many ways. It keeps the only "grind everything like made for hours" at the end of each sub aspect of PVE that really sucked, but now it requires everyone to complete 6 fulls clear on at least 9 nodes (so 54 matches) every 24 hours BEFORE they do another 5 clears grinding the points down and then start chasing 20 point nodes for a final bump. So each sub is now requiring something like 100+ matches every day at the high end (and no matter how hard they make the nodes, some one is going to find a way to squeeze every point because there's always someone willing to waste their life on this sort of thing). With match times getting longer on average, that's something like almost 6 hours per day just for pve (assuming an average match length of 3.5minutes, which might even be a bit low). Terrible!

Plus nodes will now scale above 325/395. That could be good or bad depending on how it is implemented, but it potentially puts the game right back where it started by punishing players for leveling their rosters. Seems like one change too many at this time. Change the point structure first, and then tackle scaling in the next sprint. Doing both together will just make it harder to sort out the individual effects of both changes.

pheregas

Previous comments:

pheregas wrote:

Finished the first sub completely, replaying the GR essential twice (just to see how scaling would be affected).

All in all. Not fun. Some notes/feedback:

1) It took me twice as long to complete as before.

2) I used twice as many health packs as before.

3) Based on difficulty increase, it is no longer worth it to farm the "trivial" nodes. They take far too long and award far too little points for their effort.

4) The only node worth repeating are the CP top node and essential nodes. (and I'm worried that they will be so over-scaled by that point that I won't be able to finish them.)

5) My championed 3*s are going to rot on my bench if this system continues. They simply do not have enough hit points to take a hit. I could only use my Championed 4*s and they almost fell towards the last node. A level 299 2* Wolverine is ridiculous with a healer and red feeder. Got hit for ~6,000 damage in the THIRD TURN.

6) Since the nodes take so much longer to complete, the "play whenever you like" mentality doesn't work, since a node took me over 10 minutes, which makes me trepidatious to even starting a node since I may not have time to finish it with kids/work/life. And blocking out an hour or more to play is not easy. The previous 8 hour wait was nice since it gave my health packs time to regenerate and pounding out a full clear in 30 minutes was not all that bad. The real problem was the grind after the third clear. But I could control that depending on how much I really cared about the placement prizes. As it stands with this test, placement prizes may be all I get without getting all the progression prizes.

7) I fear that this will be the first time since the introduction of Command Points that I will not receive the top progression prize.

*Just for reference, here is my team: http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/Pheregas/ I only used boosted Xpool, Hulkbuster, Jean Grey, or Thoress in the upper nodes. It was after the third node that I realized Scarlett Witch didn't do enough damage, nor have enough hit points to be useful. I did not try boosted Blade as my champed 4*s were above him in level (and probably damage/hit points.)

8) My iso income will now take a substantial hit. I would hit all the trivial nodes all 7 times to get max iso-income. Now that I will be skipping this, that hundreds, per node, less per day. And since I had to spend extra time on the initial clears, I missed out on the Lightning Round iso.

Hayek

This change is good for the casual player but awful for the competitive player. Please reconsider. The new optimum is actually grinding at the start, then taking the cheapest node down to 20 points and literally playing it all day long, then grind at the end. Let me reiterate - optimum play consists of a 24/7 grind.

Here's an alternative - Make the nodes playable 6x with increasing difficulty and then they are worth no more points. Period. Casual players can play whenever they want. Even competitive players can play all but the last sub casually since they will all end up with the same amount of points in the end. Placement will be decided by who manages to reach that final total first - meaning the last sub grind will be a race for people who want placement.

Imagine being able to enjoy a 7 day PvE playing whenever you want, knowing that there's only one grind that matters and that you have to time.

tanis3303

Ok, so I finished one clear of the first sub event, and my thoughts very closely echo Pheregas post from the previous page:

1:) There are no more "fun" battles. The "easiest" node started, STARTED! a lvl 227. +20 levels x 6, that thing is going to be over lvl 350, and then stick there for the rest of the sub event? No thanks.

2:) All but my best three characters (and possibly one support character in this case - seriously, have you tried Iceman/M40 together? Gross.) are completely, utterly worthless for this event. The scaling is so high, that taking anything other than my strongest team in is suicide. Not fun.

3:) It didn't actually take me any longer than usual to clear this sub, but that's due almost entirely to Iceman being boosted. His green is silly, doing something like 12,000 AoE damage. Had I not been so lucky as to have a great boosted 4* to use, this could have easily taken me over an hour to clear. I have a job and a life man, and you want me to do that 6 TIMES at the start of the sub AND 5+ more times at the end?? No. Just no.

Kudos for trying something new, but this is not the droid we were looking for. If this PvE model sticks, I'm done playing it. EotS has good rewards for the first clear of each sub, but that's going to be all I do for this event. Anything beyond that is not worth the effort or the headache, lvl 350 Iceman or not.

mpqr7

A real kick in the teeth is that my best character is OML, so my scaling is off the charts, with mega-high powered enemies.

Yet I can't even use OML!! So I'm getting both the high scaling AND a low available roster!

I appreciate the new graphics for the enemy level increases. However they are like pouring salt on the wound. After I've done a 5-minute single match (they used to be around 2 minutes), I have no interest in doing longer and longer matches.

I'm sad because I'm going to miss out on a lot of iso and cp this week. But I'm also happy because I'll have more time to spend on life outside mpq!

PVE used to be a quick way to boost your ISO a bit. Now it's an interminally slow slog. Not exactly a fun gaming experience.

Vhailorx

scottee wrote:

People are looking at this too theoretically.

This is intended to scale out 99% of players. The difficulty increases each clear, hopefully to the point that most people become unable or unwilling to keep grinding. All but the top 1% are never going to make it to "ideally" grind down to 20 points at the end of each sub.

I will bet most players will not make it the initial 6 full point clears, meaning for the majority of players, your placement will depend on ability to beat hard nodes. Not on how willing you are to grind.

This is exactly what they want, and this should be what most top rosters should want. Those with better/deeper rosters will place better. Play more efficiently and walk out with more health, and you place higher. The timing and speed you play by will have 95% less effect than it did before. (save of course except for the top 10ers)

Except that making the game so hard as to scale out 99% of the player base means that 99% of the player base can't get the node rewards that were just added a month ago. With iso as precious as ever, pve was one of the best ways to get it, to say nothing of CP.

I really don't understand all this bending over backwards to keep a competitive PVE system in place when the answer is just sitting in the garage waiting to be updated. PVE = the gauntlet. It's challenging, non-competitive, fun to play, and is also presumably a good source of healthpack revenue since people crash and burn on those nodes frequently. Forget about trying to fix the scaling system. develop more gauntlet-style events with randomized opponents (a la the new DDQ). Keep the old style PVE for character release events and a little variety. end of story. . .

thanos8587

really feels like the people that make the game dont actually play it, at least not to the point that a person grinding for top 2/10/20 or even top 100.

feels exactly the way galactus run number one did.

seshoma

I've never been a pve person but lately I've been playing all pve's just to get the rewards and covers from them
But seriously this new pve is HORRIBLE.
The high lvl nodes are destroying my teams and wasting all of my healtpacks.

rkd80

There are so many simple fixes here that I am astonished they have not been thought of by the dev team.
Since you make the claim that you want players to play any time and not on a set schedule, get rid of the 24 hour timer. No timer, period.

So then what determines awards? Every award is progression based.

xxxxx points gives you LT
yyyyy points give you a 3* cover.
some more points give you another 3* cover.

Etc. etc.

That way those who commit more and more time to the game get more rewards.

I am rather confident that anyone reading this thread will agree to these changes and completely ignore all the scaling problems. Now scaling become a challenge itself instead of figuring out when the best time to wake up/go to sleep is.

I also feel that a large element of the scaling is the pervasive problem of this game's reward structure. Getting a critical boost for defeating lvl 390 enemies makes zero sense. Scale the rewards internally to award increasing levels of iso/boost/chance at a 3*.

All of that will completely revamp PvE, end bracket sniping, end the angst and hate.
Leave the placement and agony to PvP.

Druss

Ok, going to try to be objective here:

Pros:

1) Communication - great a step in the right direction.
2) Innovation - Trying something new is never bad if willing to listen to your customer for feedback
3) Trying to address the problem of game being about "when" you played rather than "how"

Cons:

1) Way over the top scaling from the start
2) Elimination of easy content in the game that many used casually to gain some iso (no-one asked for this)
3) Excluding all but your top-tier characters from competing (as an example, I tried my long-term DDQ survival team - Panther, Rodgers & Falcon - against the "easiest" survival node - panther & falcon were dead before I had even got half health down on the 1st goon in the first wave)
4) Limping out of a node with Hulkbuster on 20% health & Iron Fist dead & receiving 70 iso.
5) After situation described in point 4, getting notification that the thing has now boosted another 20 levels (I thought if you beat the school bully he went away, not came back with all his mates?)
6) I suppose it does kind of fix the issue of "when" as opposed to "how" as I cant see anyone able to grind these nodes down to 20 points then immediately being able to clear the next sub another 7 times. If anyone does manage it I say they fully deserve their cover (however anyone with a roster able to do it, wouldn't need the cover anyway).
7) I hope I never forget to use Deadpool in the 1 DDQ node that he's eligible as now its impossible to get his daily points.

Vhailorx

I should add that taking away the pve trivial nodes AND locking us out of the prologue nodes as was done last month means there is nowhere to play a quick, low-stakes match on demand.

No more prologue healing (presumably the intended purpose), no more showing the game to a friend, no more quickly grinding out iso, no more letting your kids play the game without absolutely crushing your roster and/or PVE placement, no more banging out a node with 3*pool just to get his whale points.

The problem with the three hard nodes and three easy nodes in the old PVE system WAS NOT that the easy nodes were too easy. . .

Philly79

While I like many of us certainly appreciate the detailed information and early release, I have yet to start this event (normally start slice 4) and am seriously contemplating skipping altogether by reading the previous posts. As my boy Nwman pointed out a few posts back, increased levels = increase play time = added time to the amount most competitive players already commit to this game. This boils down the the game becoming less fun. It was also posted by Anthony that a fully covered and maxed 5* roster will encounter ai capped at 478 on the hardest mission. Did they not take into account that champion 5*'s are 550? More than likely it is because there are only a few players with fully maxed 5* rosters, but still. Even though I could use the Thor covers to add to my champ'd one, I am thinking I will pass on this event...

scottee

Vhailorx wrote:

scottee wrote:

People are looking at this too theoretically.

This is intended to scale out 99% of players. The difficulty increases each clear, hopefully to the point that most people become unable or unwilling to keep grinding. All but the top 1% are never going to make it to "ideally" grind down to 20 points at the end of each sub.

I will bet most players will not make it the initial 6 full point clears, meaning for the majority of players, your placement will depend on ability to beat hard nodes. Not on how willing you are to grind.

This is exactly what they want, and this should be what most top rosters should want. Those with better/deeper rosters will place better. Play more efficiently and walk out with more health, and you place higher. The timing and speed you play by will have 95% less effect than it did before. (save of course except for the top 10ers)

Except that making the game so hard as to scale out 99% of the player base means that 99% of the player base can't get the node rewards that were just added a month ago. With iso as precious as ever, pve was one of the best ways to get it, to say nothing of CP.

I really don't understand all this bending over backwards to keep a competitive PVE system in place when the answer is just sitting in the garage waiting to be updated. PVE = the gauntlet. It's challenging, non-competitive, fun to play, and is also presumably a good source of healthpack revenue since people crash and burn on those nodes frequently. Forget about trying to fix the scaling system. develop more gauntlet-style events with randomized opponents (a la the new DDQ). Keep the old style PVE for character release events and a little variety. end of story. . .

Oh, I don't disagree that Gauntlet style would be better for all PVE. I'm assuming that they've chosen the competitive PVE style since the beginning and are planning to stick with it.

JVReal

Philly79 wrote:

While I like many of us certainly appreciate the detailed information and early release, I have yet to start this event (normally start slice 4) and am seriously contemplating skipping altogether by reading the previous posts. As my boy Nwman pointed out a few posts back, increased levels = increase play time = added time to the amount most competitive players already commit to this game. This boils down the the game becoming less fun. It was also posted by Anthony that a fully covered and maxed 5* roster will encounter ai capped at 478 on the hardest mission. Did they not take into account that champion 5*'s are 550? More than likely it is because there are only a few players with fully maxed 5* rosters, but still. Even though I could use the Thor covers to add to my champ'd one, I am thinking I will pass on this event...

Don't pass... join, play a couple nodes, then quit. Don't miss out on the 3 extra tokens for playing it.

seekie

I actually like that I can cherry pick and play the nodes I want again and again without having the pressure to wait for optimal time to hit. This is a yes for me.

JVReal

seekie wrote:

I actually like that I can cherry pick and play the nodes I want again and again without having the pressure to wait for optimal time to hit. This is a yes for me.

Yes, the actual concept of the changes appeals to me too... but the scaling seems to be the issue. Hopefully they can at least tweak the scaling calculations for the next sub... they have 48 hours right?

Vhailorx

seekie wrote:

I actually like that I can cherry pick and play the nodes I want again and again without having the pressure to wait for optimal time to hit. This is a yes for me.

It's true that being able to play nodes multiple times at the player's option without penalty is a real improvement.

Do you really think that benefit outweighs the other (mostly negative) changes that have been made? I don't mean to say you are wrong; just that your post didn't say anything at all about all the other changes.

and JVReal: the scaling seems to be one issue. But I don't think we should overlook the fact that these changes have basically doubled the number of matches that need to be played for an "optimum" score. the announcement kind of buried that fact behind a lot of other changes, but it's a huge increase in the time investment required.

TheWerebison

Initial thoughts after one run:

I have a well-developed (but not maxed) 3* roster. Everyone is max covered, but not max level.

My first enemies were about 103-187. This was no big worry for my characters, I used the boosted Blade/Beast/Hood, which when boosted are 213/225/247 respectively. I took down most enemies fairly easily. Yes, I used health packs on Logan. I will remind people that Wolverine has ALWAYS been a beast when he's boosted in this event. I hated fighting him with his heavy damage red ability combined with 2 ninjas that keep generating red energy.

Total health packs used in the full run was about 3, maybe 4 (forgot to keep track). And enemies are now 110-207. And even if I use all my health packs, I've got several other boosted characters in decent level range.

I don't see a problem here, on my end. Obviously your mileage may vary, and I realize this is still going to upset the competitive players. If we want real statistics, though, we have to put all our info out there to see how different everyone's experience is. For me, this is great. I can do two runs with the health packs I've got, not worrying about losing points because I'm not playing at optimal times. 2 runs, then go to work while my health packs regenerate, then come home and do some more. I'm enjoying it so far.

My consensus: Despise me if you wish, but from (I can't stress this enough) my OWN PERSONAL DATA, this is a positive change from a strictly PvE progression perspective.

JVReal

Vhailorx wrote:

seekie wrote:

I actually like that I can cherry pick and play the nodes I want again and again without having the pressure to wait for optimal time to hit. This is a yes for me.

It's true that being able to play nodes multiple times at the player's option without penalty is a real improvement.

Do you really think that benefit outweighs the other (mostly negative) changes that have been made? I don't mean to say you are wrong; just that your post didn't say anything at all about all the other changes.

I say yes. 99% of the population (if they get the scaling right) will benefit from ALL the changes laid out in the OP.

The only problem with this new model of PVE is the current broken scaling, and if you are the 1% who feel obligated to grind optimally for top 10 position.

Granted everyone can promise that they won't grind down to 20 and nobody will "have" to... but people will continue to do what they "want" to do under the guise of "needing" to do it.