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

seekie

Yeah, it's not perfect now, easy nodes are too difficult and not worth the effort now, but I think it's an easy number fix.

pheregas

Druss wrote:

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.

Didn't even think of that! Good pickup!

GrumpySmurf1002

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)

As I said earlier in the thread, theoretically speaking, scaling out players would work fine. Gauntlet basically works on this principle, and is fine (except for only rewards one 4* cover). The Gauntlet gets something else right, however. You've got to throw them a bone before that, and give them some easy to obtain rewards. Starting nodes at level 220 isn't anyone's idea of 'easy,' regardless of your roster strength, and to boot that's where the nothing rewards are.

Also, we already saw this with Galactus Part I. "You're supposed to lose" isn't a way to generate worthwhile competition, it just pisses people off. This thread is becoming the evidence of that (and that's with 3 slices not even started yet!)


Now while progression is a solution to this, another solution (or maybe in addition to progression only) could be to scrap the stupid deteriorating points, leave the scaling, and award points like they do with Galactus/Ultron. The amount of health you clear is how many points you get. That will eventually give you the separation needed, and it wouldn't make wiping and burning health packs feel like such a kick to the crotch.

The overall point is there're lots of things that could be done. Sticking to this countdown and grind system, despite verbally acknowledging that isn't your goal, is just banging your head against a wall.

Kingofpopcorn

I hate the change !

Pve was already way too hard for me. Now it's worst than before. For me, longer and harder matches are not fun. I won't finish a single first clear in enemy of the state.

If the change becomes permanent I won t play Pve Anymore.

Actually, since the introduction of 5* I play less than before and joined a light alliance. If you add that scaling system to every Pve, I will only play Pvp 3 days aweek and ddq.

Thank you D3 for helping me to get rid of my Mpq addiction

Legasher

Personally, I love the sound of these changes. The last few weeks I've been trying much harder to place well for iso, but that's meant that the only slice I could even close to clear optimally was the one that kept me up until 1-2 in the morning. A handful of times, I've missed the majority of a first or third clear because I fell asleep in the middle of a match. Sure, now more people are going to clear every node down right away, but that means that many of us will end up with more of the prizes that we were missing out on because we didn't finish grinding each node in that last two hours. From my first impressions, I say thumbs up.

Philly79

JVReal wrote:

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.

Oh no I won't be passing completely, I will give it a shot and see how my roster is affected by the "new and improved" scaling, I will try for the extra cp from nodes and maybe go for progression but man that is a hell of a lot of points

Vhailorx

Legasher wrote:

Personally, I love the sound of these changes. The last few weeks I've been trying much harder to place well for iso, but that's meant that the only slice I could even close to clear optimally was the one that kept me up until 1-2 in the morning. A handful of times, I've missed the majority of a first or third clear because I fell asleep in the middle of a match. Sure, now more people are going to clear every node down right away, but that means that many of us will end up with more of the prizes that we were missing out on because we didn't finish grinding each node in that last two hours. From my first impressions, I say thumbs up.

given the reported scaling changes, I wouldn't expect to be grinding out all the rewards from each node. and it's not yet clear how this affect placement.

whoami

JVReal 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.

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?

Ditto for me. I'm not a top 10 PVE player, but I do try for the CP reward in most events. Being able to play when I have time, rather than the 8 hour clock is up, is excellent. The nearly-insane scaling is horrendous.

Starsaber

A couple extra things working against this test:

7 days already have slow progression

Wave nodes are annoying to begin with, especially since you get no rewards from them after the first clear

I was thinking this would reduce my time playing PVP, but now I think I might end up doing more than usual this week

ammenell

this thread is growing fast!
overwhelmingly negative reactions except for the communications part.

im really excited to see how the devs react to that feedback or if that communication thing was just a fluke

mindsuckr

Crowl wrote:

Green83 wrote:

I'm a player that had a hard time to fit clears in an 8 hour schedule, with the current slices it was just impossible for me. But still I do not like this change if this means I have to clear each node 6 times in order to hit max progression (which is my main goal for a pve event)

I would bet that clearing in the 3-4 per node range is still going to be enough for max progression, the total has gone up because people will tend to be scoring more points per node.

It used to be that clearing the nodes 3-4 times got you max progression. If you hit them at the 8 hours marks, you would be getting the same approximate points as you do under the new system. Except now the required points are 38% higher. Going to be a few more clears now, and no trivial to grind to dirt for points too.

Unknown

I strongly dislike this test. It punishes me for triyng to collect and max all characters.

more about completing challenging-but-fun missions rather than playing missions quickly, at set times during the day.
Find way to support players, who liked playing missions at set times during the day. I loved play MPQ in morning, in dinner and before sleep, but you changed that. I planned my day for your game, and now you punished me for this.

Now, the game will take into account both your heroes’ power levels and heroes’ levels into account when establishing the difficulty of the mission.
This can make disadvantegeous to use covers for training powers of your rarest characters. You spend cover for the character you want to level up later, but game takes it into account and gives you stronger enemies. For example - I have 93 characters (with exception of Green Goblin and Nova) and I try to max all of them, and already maxed all 1*, 2* and almost all of 3*. I don't level up 4* characters, cause i want to max all 3* characters first, but i keep winning covers for them and spend them on training, so games takes it into the account and gives me stronger enemies.

Missions get harder each of these times.
It can make more difficult to collect all the rewards, if you can beat mission first time, but not sixth, especially if you purpousely collect command points.

The amount of times it takes for a mission to be restored to full points after one play is 24 hours
You will have to make events longer for this change to be really meaningful.

In the old system, some players saw a big jump in difficulty between the easier missions in a chapter and the harder ones. That's been smoothed out.
BRING IT BACK! Make this jump on purpose. It allowed us to play easier missions with our lest rare or not maxed characters. I try to collect and max ALL characters in the game and spent a lot of time to do it, but now all my maxed 1* and 2* characters are useless, cause I have a lot of maxed 3* heroes and games gives me enemies for them. I spend some money to buy places for every single character, and now you punished me for this by making many of them useless.

Please, make different missions to adjust its dificulty, so it was possible to win easiest with maxed 1*characters, and hardest - only with your best characters, if they are featured in this event.

TheOncomingStorm

Wonder how far along Daveomite is on the HP Suck for this?

PorkBelly

From a competitive PvE perspective, this sounds terrible in that it will require more timed grinding of harder (on average) nodes for optimal placement.

If you made this all progression based, these problems would all be eliminated.

If this becomes the norm for PvE, I will only be participating in Gauntlet, Galactus, & Ultron PvE events.

Skygazing

I'd like to weigh in as someone who plays PvE competitively. As in someone who manages 1st in regular events and typically T2 in new character releases (provided my schedule allows for it).

I was incredibly excited when the reward structure was adjusted to include 4*s, and in fact top placement is my primary source of 4* covers at the moment. If I play seriously enough in PvP I can usually hit 1k, but that does take a level of timing and investment all its own. 1300 only really happens if I start early and commit to multiple hops, and getting top placement is completely impossible. The way PvE has worked up until now basically guaranteed me 4* covers for my effort, whereas in PvP an unlucky hop might destroy my progress entirely.

Combine this with scaling that doesn't seem too terrible to me, and overall I'm pretty ok with PvE at the moment.

That being said, I recognize the positive change brought about by the idea of "play when you want". I've played long enough to remember when 3 hour refreshes were a thing, and to remember the sense of relief and happiness that came along with the jump to 8 hours.

But this change is nothing like that.

My big question is: who does this actually benefit? Casual players will have more competition and hardcore players are almost completely alienated. Also it's a little early to be sure, but hitting progression looks like even more of a headache now.

If this actually benefited 90% of players I'd grudgingly accept it, but as of now I can't see how it does.

I'm ok with changing PvE, but not to this. I would absolutely love a 100% progression reward structure, and I think that's the only way to really accomplish the "play when you want" goal without leaving at least one player group dissatisfied.

firethorne

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.

Exactly. It's the D3 mantra.

You're supposed to lose.
You're supposed to lose.
You're supposed to lose.
You're supposed to lose.

RWTDBurn

I'm still waiting for Slice 4 to open, but unless something changes from what I've read so far I don't think I'll bother with trying to hit each node more than 1 time in the first sub and then likely be done with this event.

I'd like to make a serious recommendation to the developers for this and any future test events you run. It's always better to test your changes to difficulty levels starting off too easy and scale up the difficulty as the event goes on than to start it off way too difficult. By starting at such a high difficulty level you've chased off a chunk of your testers in the first few hours of a 7 day event. You're not going to get the metadata you would like to collect now. Start easy and scale up the difficulty each sub to very difficult by the last day so you can see at what point the difficulty level gets to be too much and your player base starts to drop out. That would give you the metadata to decide at what level 2* rosters, 3* rosters, 4* rosters, etc start to struggle so you have a base to work with on your scaling.

Hopefully you change the scaling difficulty ASAP so the other changes to this event can actually get tested.

Tarheelmax

So, I was excited about trying out these changes. Then I joined and started playing. Now I wish I had skipped the event all together.

A lot of the ideas are good ones, but they need to make some significant changes.

- Wasn't one of the ideas that you should want to progress your roster? Right now I see a lot of newbies in the top 10. I see it's very difficult for me, presumably because I have a champed 4pool boosted and ramping up my scaling.

- Where did the trivial nodes go? A smoother ramp up doesn't mean it's a good idea to starting the ramp a mile high. Give us the trivial nodes back. Not having quick nodes to beat make a single clear take way too long.

- I understand you don't want to specify that people need to play every 8 hours, but... You do realize that you have made made it so instead of spacing out when we play (to play optimally) to a short-ish time every 8 hours and a long-ish time every 24, to playing for 4-6 hours as soon as a sub opens and 4-6 hours before the sub ends. That also means that when the next sub opens, to play optimally, you better plan on having at least 8 hours of time to grind down one sub and clear the next. If you want to appeal to anyone with a job (like the ones that can actually spend on your game) you may want to rethink this concept.

Recommendation: Have two types of PVEs. The type you have been traditionally running, and one similar to the type you have now. For the type you are trying out here, Lock the nodes after a certain amount of times played (6-10) give back trivial nodes, remove incremental scaling (or greatly reduce) for essential nodes. Remove placement rewards and go to a progression only reward system. Make it a true PVE like gauntlet or Ultron/Galactus.

philosorapt0r

While the particulars of scaling amounts / progression target values may need to be tweaked, the principles are 100% good for reducing the mandatory-play-schedule. Thumbs up.

(Though really, point regen should just be removed entirely, to eliminate the advantage of full clearing at start + end of sub, vs on other time schedules.)

carrion_pigeons

Okay, so this is actually closer, but you still need to get rid of regenerating points over time if you want people to be able to play when they want. That mechanic makes your goal fundamentally impossible. I hope that's obvious enough.

As for whether or not the scaling is fun, I hope you realize that people want to be able to use their whole roster. PvE is capable of being the ideal place for that, but not if you lock in every node at "challenging but fun" for the absolute best team every player can field. You're actually getting pretty close to a point where nodes *are* challenging but fun for each player's best team, but that makes it really hard to make the whole roster feel meaningful.

I feel like if you set a limit somehow to how may nodes each character can be used on (maybe, 2 nodes for 4*s, 3 nodes for 3*s, and unlimited nodes for 2*s and below), then the scaling doesn't have to be nearly so punishing.

I do like that you're willing to try a new design for one event to see how it plays. I wish you would do one-off attempts to improve things like this more often. It makes the game feel much less static, which is a huge deal for a game that's asking for as long-term a commitment as this one does. If I can offer any feedback at all about this test, the fact that you're running it at all is by far the best thing about it.

The other thing I want to point out is that you're putting competitive point-grabbing far too close to progression point-grabbing. ~4 clears seems like more than enough to get full progression if you're going to make the nodes this hard. That's still in excess of 2 hours of playtime every day. I don't think that's unreasonable.