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

GrumpySmurf1002

MrTrix wrote:

I am actually quite happy with the scaling changes. I'm a fairly new player, my roster contains mainly 1* and a few 2* characters. But I have a couple of 3* characters (with 2-3 covers) and 1 4* character (1 cover). Before, those 3* and 4* characters used to determine my difficulty level, which meant I was hardly ever able to get very far in a PvE event, as it quickly got too difficult.
This time I was able to actually make it all the way to the end, though by the end, the fights did get considerably more challenging.

So yes, from what I've seen of it so far, this definitely is an improvement to what it used to be.

This isn't surprising. From what I'm hearing from alliance mates and such, lower rosters are dominating leaderboards, yet again.

TheOncomingStorm

Random thoughts.

1) The points rewarded for node clears are for equal amounts. I think it should reward points on a scale on par of the level of difficulty.

Let's say there were 5 clears of a node for a total of 300 points (5 is easier math than 6 for me). The 1st and easiest clear should be 20, then 40, then 60, then 80, with 100 for hardest.

2) Scaling should start lower because "fun." Even Super Mario would have sucked if it were all underwater levels.

The current starting level should be for the 3rd or 4th clear, with the max for 5th clear. The 1st 3 clears of a node should be at more enjoyable levels. Maybe trivial, easy, normal, hard, then deadly (which actually makes sense).

3) It'd be nice if I had enough health packs to also play dpdq, lr, and pvp.

Unknown

When missions get harder, playing them becomes no fun at all, becouse it is to difficult to win. Also it is unclear how much stronger opponents in wave missions becomming. Please, let us see who exactly we will be fight in wave missions.

Tatercat

My initials impressions after the first day, by no means final:

I'm feeling strangely unmotivated so far. I think that due to some outside factors like bit of burnout after grinding to Top5 in Simulator PVE, knowing I'll be traveling this weekend so I'm going miss some time on this, or not needing any of the cover rewards. But in a weird way I think it's because of the lack of the 8 hr refresh. I play 8 or so fights at a time then just.. feel like doing something else. Instead of being left wanting more, I don't feel.. anything. I think this is just force of habit though (Stockholm Syndrome?), we've played like this for years now, it just takes time to adjust .

The non-loaner, trivial nodes are all starting at 200 lvl or so, which hasn't been a problem even though I've only got one maxed 4* on the roster (next highest is 219lvl). The high level of the trivial nodes hasn't really bother me per say (so far). But one thing that should be changed in future PVE which this structure is the rewards pts for them. If I'm having to use my top characters (all 4*'s above 200 lvl plus champed 3* AP feeders) to clear a node and spending health packs on enable them to do to, then it really needs to give more than the bare minimum of node points. Right now, it one of the things contributing to my lack motivation to keep playing overall.

On a somewhat related note though, I have gotten a & the from the EotS vault so far (one from the Enemy Agents survival node and one from the daily deal). The LT got me a , which I very much needed (he's now 5/3/1 and lvl 192). I've still got a and a in the the vault too I can use, so the playtest HAS been good to me so far.

UNC_Samurai

This scaling is absurd. I've been able to maintain T50 or T100 in most PvEs without spending inordnate amounts of time grinding like clockwork. But this system is impossible. I burned through most of my health packs, and for what? I'm in the 300s. The rewards-to-node-difficulty were fine under the old system (minus the crit boosts, which needed to be replaced long ago). But I'm not going to slog through level 200+ goons for 70 ISO.

I give the devs credit for trying something, but the results are below unsatisfactory.

It's time to address what a lot of your players are saying; the fundamental problem with PvE is competition for placement rewards.

This is why Ultron and Galactus (after the play balance was fixed) are some of the more fun events; the only thing people are playing are progression rewards.

Unknown

I played every mission 6-7 times, and now i have nothing to do, because all the opponents became to strong and my best characters got downed.

TheOncomingStorm

Uthgarprime wrote:

I am calling it right now, all this feed back is going to be ignored because the one and only factor that will determine if this change stays or not will be how much is spent in real money. If the number of boosts and health packs purchased went up by more than a little, this change will be made permanent asap. Just like championing where they made it sound good then nerfed over half the characters to the ground this is a slight of hand as well. This whole change screams bean counter. when 90% of the feedback is negative you would think they would of already responded but they don't care. They just care if sales went up.

Not really. Long term, money is tied to player retention which is tied to player satisfaction which is measured by player participation.

More importantly, you've read the comments. I'm pretty sure most ppl will not be spending more money if this change was kept as is.

MPQ has had tests before with mmr and scaling. Typically, they tend to err on the side of making it too difficult at the start then they dial it back (or in some cases totally scrap it).

Let's face it, pve needs improvement. You gotta start somewhere. I'm relieved it's not for a new character.

Square-Chopper

Is it beatable? Yes. Is it fun? Not in any way, shape or form.

I cleared everything and got all of the rewards in the sub, but there's absolutely no chance I'll revisit any of the nodes again for no reward. It's just not remotely worth the time investment. It really does feel like anyone with a high level roster is being punished for progressing to the point where an aspect of the game might be "too easy". If it stays this way after the test run, the decision to quit pve altogether is a no brainer.

St1nkf1st

Next step in process announcement:

"Due to higher importancy of Health Packs we have decided the Hero Points required to buy them should reflect this importancy, so 1 Health Pack will cost now 200 HP, 5 will cost 500 HP. We hope you are as excited as we are about this change!"

freakygeek

I am primarily a PVP player so here is my perspective on this. Hitting high level matches right out of the gate is neither fun nor interesting. Having to break out the big guns almost immediately and getting destroyed on the final level is also neither fun nor interesting. As I focus on PVP as soon as I see a health pack depletion that would affect PVP I quit out. I noped right out at the final node as the chance of 1 CP was not worth the effort. Normally I would play through every node and grind out the 2 CP's. Were I to be a PVE player I would be very upset. I appreciate the nodes not losing point value allowing grinding on your own schedule as none of the PVE end times work for me.

Nylarx

I wonder if this is happening to anyone else - In the 48 hour sub, there are some nodes I haven't hit 7 times. Yesterday it was working fine and the points did not lower until the 7th clear, but today the other nodes that I didn't hit fully (with 4-5 rewards left) are dropping in points as if it was my 8th clear and beyond.

Calnexin

Another data point here.

I entered at the 11:00 slot last night, but didn't actually start until 6 am. I'm working with a solid 3* roster, 28 champions (my roster sig is mostly up to date). No useful 4*, and I only engage 2* when they're boosted.

First trivial node, the enemies were ~ lv 110 (used to 35-40 in normal events)
Last Hard node, lv 235 (seems about equal)
The only node I ground down was the 4* essential, which started at 145 and went up to 245 after the 6th clear.
~ 1.5 hours of playtime. I ended at position 36 on the leaderboard in the slice.

My impressions - I haven't decided whether it's good or bad yet. Some things I do like about the changes
- The leaderboard score seems more like a real number. With the timed optimal clear, it could have a very large swing because you don't know what percentage of people are just before or just after you to initiate or finish their countdown. Here, until all your nodes are ground down to timer status, there's a set number that everyone will reach, so until you hit that your score is an up-to-date literal interpretation of your placement, indepdenent of the current value of your oppositions' nodes (up until the end).
- I like that the nodes stay fixed value. I'm the type of player who likes to harvest the CP and big prizes first. When they're on clocks you can't do that without losing points for your endgame. This enables that strategy. I also like playing one node over and over with the same team, because occasionally I hit a hard one that the boosted characters don't handle well, but swapping out a teammate or two can make all the difference. Stuttering the completions meant I had to remember what I was using when I came back to it.

One thing I didn't like
- That strategy also meant I ran out of health packs pretty quick. My last 30 min were with non-boosted champs or boosted 2*s on lighter nodes. Just going through the ladder with the increased scaling I'd already gone through 5. So I'm not certain a full-7-clear run is within my reach in a 24 hour sub (it will be here, since it's 48).
- Not sure if it's the test or EoS, but for my current placement I feel behind on progression. I think I only got to 7k, and you need 150k for the CP. Yeah, it's a 7 day event, but somewhere around day 2 the ability to get full points for the clears in the first sub goes away, and you're back to diminishing returns.

How it's affected my competitiveness is hard to gauge. I'm used to placing top 100 with a standard effort (2-3 full clears per sub with a light grind clearing out the easier nodes). I skipped 7 hours of playtime and made it to top 50 with a score that's less prone to systematic leaps. That could just be because a lot of upper tier players decided they didn't like it and stopped playing. It could be because I focused on the highest value nodes first. Still a lot of time left to experience the change.

loslupus77

I'm just to gonna give to my thoughts on this monstrosity. They echo what some (if not most) people have said, but if the devs want feedback, so they shall have it.

This new system isn't without it's good points (making it possible to play when you feel like it and limiting AI's covers to 13), but negative ones far outweigh them.

EOTS also seems like a wrong PVE to try this thing. It has survival nodes, which only give rewards on their first completion. After that, I'm just gonna have to grind them for harder opponents... no thanks, at least until later rounds, when survival nodes are worth more points. Also starting the PVE with 48h sub-event is a bad idea itself. In the old system, 48h worked a lot better, during that time I got to clear the round 6-7 times; so I got all (the relevant) rewards, without having to grind the nodes for no reward at all. Now after about 12 hours I had completed all of the nodes (minus survival ones), so after 24 hours wait I'm only looking at one reward per node and after that it's just playing for "fun" With this new scaling system in place, I'm not too interested about that idea.

The new scaling has also made about 90% of my 88 characters more or useless. Lucky for me that I have my Charlie's Angels optimally covered and last week 4hor became by second championed 4-star, so now IM40/4hor-combo is ready to take on anyone. But it get's boring really quick. At least in the old system, I could use my 2-stars for first three, maybe four nodes. Now they are useless except for one character for 2-star-essential node... really happy for me that all of them except Cap are championed (Bagman doesn't count as playable character). And what's the point of using 3-stars, even buffed ones, because even they aren't fast as previously mentioned combos? And by fast I mean that they can finish the node with minimal amount of damage taken, therefore saving health packs. So what was the point of spending all that iso to champion 2- and 3-stars when now almost all of them are used only on their Essential nodes?

Heck, I don't want use my whole day writing about the flaws in this new system, so here's some suggestion (I know most of them have already been mentioned):
- decrease the difficulty on first 3 nodes and make them 2-star only, just like in DDQ. Make some of other nodes so that you can't use 4- and/or 5-stars on them. This promotes roster depth, not just the best combos. And the way championing nerfed 2- and 3-stars, devs should give us reasons to still use them. It would make me less angry, if I still had some uses for them.
- limit the number of full-point clears to less than 6. I would say three times is enough, although not all will agree. Even three full clears takes time, only people with serious issues (and/or no life) have time and mind-set to complete all the nodes more times than that within 24 hours.
- for survival and other one-reward nodes, just stop using them as such. I don't want to grind them just for event points; give me more rewards for seven completions, just as in other nodes.
- make all of PVE's rewards progression-based, not placement (and not by ditching placement-rewards, but giving them as progression rewards). This would also make some of the previously mentioned flaws less obvious. It also would be more in line with "Play when you want"-mantra. Under this new system, competition for the top spots is going to be really ugly.

I'm just hoping that devs will learn a lot from this test run and it's feedback and come up with (a lot) better PVE-system. The old one isn't without it's flaws but it's still way better than this.

WEBGAS

bataglia wrote:

My team has a lot of 2* Champions and some 3*, so let me give my 2 cents:

- The scaling is killing me. I used to use a team on the trivial nodes, a 2nd team on the 4th node and my strongest team on the last two. Now, I need to use a 2nd tier team in the first nodes, and my strongest team on the rest of the nodes. After the second cleaning, I need to use my main squad on every node and probably die once or twice. Didn't try after it, anyways, but my score sucks and I probably wont make the CP.

- The health packs are bottlenecking my advances. I completely stop playing pvp, because there are no Health Packs left to heal my heroes.

- The time spent on a single event increased a lot.

Come on, make it easier. I dont want to devote my life to a game just for 25 cp.

You hit the main point : Health packs....the more are needed the more they think (hope) we use our HP and spend our real money on buy them....but they failed (on my part) I will not spend another cent into this mess


A little (but important) suggestion : make all of PVE's rewards progression-based, not placement (and not by ditching placement-rewards, but giving them as progression rewards). This would be more in line with "Play when you want"-mantra. If this is the way you are aiming to, with this new system, competition for the top spots is going to be really ugly.

Sambuca

Figured I'd throw in my two cents too, while everyone else is at it.

My background: I started playing in August or so of last year, fully in the 3* range trying to transition into 4* land. I have about 6-8 fully-covered and leveled 3-stars that I use which helps keep the health pack cost down, but I don't have the ISO to fully level all of the chars I have. I enjoy PvE more than PvP but do both.

I liked the old system because I could clear all of the nodes every 8 hours in about 20-45 minutes using roughly 3-8 health packs. With 2-3 clears, I could usually be in the Top 200 of the daily placements, if not Top 100 due to almost always having 2 of the 3 essential characters (since you can always earn the 2* and 3* essentials during the event). So every day I'd at least get a heroic token. If I lucked out and had the 4* essential, then I would be a little more grindy so I could get into the Top 50 for the dailies and earn some HP. I'd always get all of the event progression rewards and overall I'd usually be able to make at least Top 100 for an event if I was playing regularly. I was pretty pleased with that state of affairs and felt like I was making slow but steady progress.

In PvP, I tend to shoot for the 400 point mark for each event so that I can get the heroic 10-pack pull. I rarely shield hop because I'd rather save my HP to increase my roster size, so my max PvP points ever was 800 before I got busted back down to the 500-point range. I tend to end events around 300-600 points. Why am I even mentioning PvP in a PvE discussion thread? Because if I have a lot of leftover health packs after a PvE clear, I'll go play PvP. If I don't, then I won't.

With this latest EotS, I'm out of the placement running unless I use all of my health packs and just grind out all of the nodes as much as I can. Looking at the leaderboards and doing the calculations, I don't have the time to do that many clears. The scaling after every completion just ensures that I spend more health packs meaning that I play less. I guess that's good in the sense that I can do other things with my time.

Maybe there's a way to tune the events better or reduce the scaling increase per node completion. I don't have a good answer there. I think of myself as a semi-casual player so maybe I'm not the intended audience for this change. I can't imagine trying to make the 2 to 3* transition with these new changes as they currently are. Had these changes been in when I first started playing, I think I would still be in 2* land and I feel sorry for any new players or people with lesser rosters who these changes would be affecting.

WelcomeDeath

So...a.i. l.evels increase with player levels, but not as quickly. So at some point your roster will be good enough that's it's easier...but it doesnt.
I know someone with max champ 5* and 4*... and he was wiping to nodes. So if it's impossible at the highest possible levels in the game....when will it get easier? Where's the curve level off? Serioisly?i

TheOncomingStorm

loslupus77 wrote:

I'm just to gonna give to my thoughts on this monstrosity. They echo what some (if not most) people have said, but if the devs want feedback, so they shall have it.

This new system isn't without it's good points (making it possible to play when you feel like it and limiting AI's covers to 13), but negative ones far outweigh them.

EOTS also seems like a wrong PVE to try this thing. It has survival nodes, which only give rewards on their first completion. After that, I'm just gonna have to grind them for harder opponents... no thanks, at least until later rounds, when survival nodes are worth more points. Also starting the PVE with 48h sub-event is a bad idea itself. In the old system, 48h worked a lot better, during that time I got to clear the round 6-7 times; so I got all (the relevant) rewards, without having to grind the nodes for no reward at all. Now after about 12 hours I had completed all of the nodes (minus survival ones), so after 24 hours wait I'm only looking at one reward per node and after that it's just playing for "fun" With this new scaling system in place, I'm not too interested about that idea.

The new scaling has also made about 90% of my 88 characters more or useless. Lucky for me that I have my Charlie's Angels optimally covered and last week 4hor became by second championed 4-star, so now IM40/4hor-combo is ready to take on anyone. But it get's boring really quick. At least in the old system, I could use my 2-stars for first three, maybe four nodes. Now they are useless except for one character for 2-star-essential node... really happy for me that all of them except Cap are championed (Bagman doesn't count as playable character). And what's the point of using 3-stars, even buffed ones, because even they aren't fast as previously mentioned combos? And by fast I mean that they can finish the node with minimal amount of damage taken, therefore saving health packs. So what was the point of spending all that iso to champion 2- and 3-stars when now almost all of them are used only on their Essential nodes?

Heck, I don't want use my whole day writing about the flaws in this new system, so here's some suggestion (I know most of them have already been mentioned):
- decrease the difficulty on first 3 nodes and make them 2-star only, just like in DDQ. Make some of other nodes so that you can't use 4- and/or 5-stars on them. This promotes roster depth, not just the best combos. And the way championing nerfed 2- and 3-stars, devs should give us reasons to still use them. It would make me less angry, if I still had some uses for them.
- limit the number of full-point clears to less than 6. I would say three times is enough, although not all will agree. Even three full clears takes time, only people with serious issues (and/or no life) have time and mind-set to complete all the nodes more times than that within 24 hours.
- for survival and other one-reward nodes, just stop using them as such. I don't want to grind them just for event points; give me more rewards for seven completions, just as in other nodes.
- make all of PVE's rewards progression-based, not placement (and not by ditching placement-rewards, but giving them as progression rewards). This would also make some of the previously mentioned flaws less obvious. It also would be more in line with "Play when you want"-mantra. Under this new system, competition for the top spots is going to be really ugly.

I'm just hoping that devs will learn a lot from this test run and it's feedback and come up with (a lot) better PVE-system. The old one isn't without it's flaws but it's still way better than this.

You broke the code. With Caltrops and wave nodes, EOTS is one of the most notorious pves for damage, along with heroic venom, which iirc was the original pve slotted for this test.

Basically, they are testing under worst case scenario. Probably because if they can take the data and correctly calibrate the difficulty of this pve, it should be no problem to do it for the other pves.

DTStump

Hello,

This is my first post here. First I would like to express how much I enjoy this game! I have been playing (almost religiously) for exactly 204 days now and it has been a blast.

In fact, I enjoy the game so much that sometimes I feel like I play too much. One of the things I dislike in PvE events is that I have to pick a suitable time slot so that I can play a lot right after the event starts, and also a lot right before it ends. With the 8-hour recharging times, this also meant that I had to find the time to play at least a little bit in the middle. In contrast, with PvP events, I only have to worry about the "final sprint" - if I can manage to grind during the last few hours, great, if not, there are still good progression rewards that I can get anytime I want.

Another thing that I disliked about PvE events is that the availability of possible starting (or finishing) times is limited. Living in central Europe, the best time for me is usually 11 PM - I'm used to beating all nodes as quickly as possible as the event starts, then go to bed. In the morning, about 8 hours later, I beat all the nodes again. Then after work I may have the time to really empty the recharging bars and have a decent shot at finishing in the top 50. This already feels a little bit like a chore.

When I started reading about the PvE changes, I got really excited when I read the title "Playing When You Want to Play". Then I read a little bit more and became somewhat skeptical. Then I tried the event (starting at 10 PM due to daylight saving time in the US, I guess). Well... around 2 hours later I was still not done beating every node 6 times. This meant that I couldn't even get all the recharging bars started before I went to sleep, and therefore I had no chance of being competitive in this event. Doing this for several days in a row for the whole EotS seems unthinkable and not fun at all.

As many people said in this thread, I think this change did not produce the desired effect, and in my perspective things got worse, because the initial effort is even greater (beating every node 6 times instead of once before the "break"). In fact, I am mostly ignoring changes with regards to other aspects (scaling, scoring, difficulty), because to me the mission replay system is what's killing PvE for me.

May I suggest at least increasing the number of possible starting times, or at the very least make them variable from week to week? Those would definitely help players play when they actually want (or when they have the time).

I hope this adds to the conversation

pheregas

Dear Forum Users:

We, the people of the forum have come together, gave the EotS scaling update a chance, and come to a conclusion.

This being, it did not address the true problem with PVE, which is the placement requirements for rewards.

We the people know scaling needs to be addressed and that in this instance, the test failed.

The D3 offices are about to open on the west coast. Let's just chill a bit, do a little PVP, gripe about the Mr. Fantastic DDQ node, and let the devs catch up on 19 pages of comments while they sit down with a cup of coffee, which will sit undrunk, while it slowly cools down to room temperature and the horror of what has unfolded slowly sinks in.

That is all and I do so appreciate the communication that went with this events unveiling, the actual thought process behind why to test, and the fact that testing happened at all!

I look forward to the impending dev response.

Sincerely,

Pheregas

wymtime

I have 2 things to add to my previous feedback. As I play EOTS, an event I don't really like because the survival nodes just take a lot of time, the devs are trying to do one thing and the players do another.

Devs view: remove the trivial nodes. This has to be a sore point for the Devs because as designers they want all matches to be competitive and fun for players not a walk through the park. 2nd the Devs want us to use our whole roster not just our top 3-6 characters. This is the puzzle in puzzle quest to them. Look a buffed dare devil with 5 purple can get rid of turn to smoke!! He can stun to stop a CD tile! Electra can use shadow step to avoid big damage. The fun is finding differs combos that can take out big opponents!

Players perspective: how can I win the most, the fastest and take the least amount of damage? Opponents 100 levels over me use A team and only A team. Players will use winfinity, 4Thor, IM40 combos or A team combos only because when we experiment and lose we get super frustrated and go back to what we know will win. We are in it for the competition and rewards not what else will work against this combo.

The big scaling rally isn't that bad in goon nodes because you don't have to worry about match damage and cascades of death. I can only imagine a heroic scaling like this with multiple nodes with active characters. That is when we will see real rage from players. If they lowered initial scaling my 50-75 levels to start it would be a good first step.
With no refresh timers I have concerns about it, but will see how it goes with the 24 hour subs. trying to grind down subs early and at the end does not feel like it is the way they intend us to play, but players are hyper competitive and will do what it takes to win. This is causing major grinding. 7 clears of a node at once is just too much, but players will do it because they want to win!