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

Steve111

This new pve format is awful. No entry level or trivial nodes so inexperienced players find it hard. Then if that's not bad enough difficulty increases. Goons hit for 4000 damage sucking up health packs. It crushed all the fun out of it for me.

CT1888

Currently I feel like I'm in a bit of a goldilocks zone, where things get challenging, but not too hard, and I'm using different Tactics for different nodes (5/3/0 XFDP boosted to 226 for last node to nuke Wolverine, Bullseye and friends for Survival modes (natch) and the essentials are letting me play around - beast + 94 Falcap + 94 RHulk for example). As I'm not looking to be uber competative, this is good for me, with some reservations - I had the day off work so could come and go as I pleased, and the 48 sub gives minimal pressure on me, but on a normal working day and a 24 hour sub, chasing points for final progression is pretty daunting the way it's set up just now. I know the points normally go up nicely across the subs, but 15 - 20k after 2 days out of 7 vs target of 156k seems well steep...



For reference, final node is 292 enemies after 5 clears, I've got 20 + Championed 3*s, 4 x 4* > 185 undoubted, 13 cover Hulkbuster at 227, 4 x 5* with no iso investment as of yet.

Noobulator

Congrats, take a bow, you made PVE worse. Fix the damn scaling.

jackstar0

Not adjusting the rewards structure when adjusting the play format is something that needs attention.

To be clear, I am calling this format get the CP and run.

I started out trying to do the clears optimally and just remembered that this event is going to be featuring a few Gorgon nodes and yeah, I'm out.

One and done for most nodes. Get CPs as able and then be done. And just not give a **** about my rank, which means that whole competitive aspect of PvE was broken by this change.

AND you broke my desire for the progression rewards by using this event because those goals seem astronomical to me.

scottee

Now that I think about it, this whole change would be mostly fine if they just started the scaling lower. Have 3 easy nodes like before that start around 30, 40, and 50, and 3 hard nodes around 160, 180, 200. Then have them increase 20 levels each clear.

I like the timer changes, as if I stopped playing PVE except to top 100 on new characters. But that's mainly because in the old system, I couldn't play at the same times everyday. The timer change is still better for the bottom 90%.

I feel like we just keep going back and forth between people wanting to be able to grind in PVE, and people saying to stop making them grind. It's the been the same argument for 2 years now. (oh, and scaling)

JVReal

I used to believe that PVP stood for Player Vs Player because you were up against an individual's set team that they left for defense (or retal).

I thought PVE meant Player Vs Everyone, because you were racing for placement against everyone in your bracket... I never once felt like it was actually an individual event... so when I found out that was how they perceived it, I was surprised.

Unknown

I REALLY dislike the increase in difficulty with each fight. If I'm lucky enough to have the 4* character for a particular mission, they're generally low enough that they're not much use in the fight, and it's bad enough fighting tough enemies at the level they're starting, but after a couple of fights, I can see it getting phone-throwingly frustrating. It was getting ridiculously hard doing any damage at all to those friggin' ninja in the Ghost Rider fight.

The other stuff I'm okay with, but leveling up the enemies for already-hard fights makes me very unhappy.

jobob

JVReal wrote:

I used to believe that PVP stood for Player Vs Player because you were up against an individual's set team that they left for defense (or retal).

I thought PVE meant Player Vs Everyone, because you were racing for placement against everyone in your bracket... I never once felt like it was actually an individual event... so when I found out that was how they perceived it, I was surprised.

PVE is Player vs Enviroment, i.e. pre-programmed opponents.

Vhailorx

jobob wrote:

JVReal wrote:

I used to believe that PVP stood for Player Vs Player because you were up against an individual's set team that they left for defense (or retal).

I thought PVE meant Player Vs Everyone, because you were racing for placement against everyone in your bracket... I never once felt like it was actually an individual event... so when I found out that was how they perceived it, I was surprised.

PVE is Player vs Enviroment, i.e. pre-programmed opponents.

To be fair to demiurge, they call it story mode. So pve is language the players imported from mmos. But when one mode is called 'story mode' and the other is called 'versus mode' it seems fair to assume that story mode is less competitive than versus mode. . .

MPQ_Daywalker

jobob wrote:

JVReal wrote:

I used to believe that PVP stood for Player Vs Player because you were up against an individual's set team that they left for defense (or retal).

I thought PVE meant Player Vs Everyone, because you were racing for placement against everyone in your bracket... I never once felt like it was actually an individual event... so when I found out that was how they perceived it, I was surprised.

PVE is Player vs Enviroment, i.e. pre-programmed opponents.

Yes. And technically, PVE and PVP are gaming industry terms. Those terms/abbreviations are not, and as far as I know have never been, used by the MPQ devs (either D3 or Demiurge). The forumites call it PVE, the devs (and the the text in-game) call them "Story Events." They never say you're just competing against the computer. Instead, MPQ story events almost always have players competing against all other players for placement. Which means the cries of "Make PVE really PVE" actually mean changing the way most* story events work.

* The "true" PVE events, as have been listed by others would include Gauntlet, and the Ant-Man and TAHulk intro events. They are exceptions in MPQ PVE, though.

Personally, I enjoy progression-based play way more than the competitive -- but I realize that this is how the game has been since I started playing it, so I have little expectation it would change.

To bring things back to the 20-page topic at hand, I've played a couple clears and honestly have not hit the wall of terrible scaling that many others in this thread have.

Since the scaling appears to be based on how many cover-maxed characters you have in each tier, my personal theory is that the people with multiple cover-maxed 4*s see the worst scaling -- and many of those players only have a handful of level-maxed/championed 4*s due to the lack of ISO in the game for most high level players. So the test scaling sees them as "soft-capping" their cover-maxed 4*s and ups their enemy levels accordingly.

My roster is in my signature and is current as of today... I have zero cover-maxed 4*s (my best are 12 covers on Nick Fury & Thoress), and some covers for 5*s. But I have all 40 3*s cover-maxed, with 33 championed.

My enemy levels on my first pass was as follows:

Sub 1 Join Forces: 100,100,75
Sub 1 Node 1: 97-138
Sub 1 Node 2: 138
Sub 1 Node 3: 155
Sub 1 Node 4: 164-174
Sub 1 Node 5: 184
Sub 1 Essential 2*: 130,131,130
Sub 1 Essential 3*: 52-53
Sub 1 Essential 4*: 130,131,130

Second pass:
Sub 1 Join Forces 100,100,75
Sub 1 Node 1 106-151
Sub 1 Node 2 150,151,151
Sub 1 Node 3 169
Sub 1 Node 4 179-190
Sub 1 Node 5 200,201,201
Sub 1 Essential 2* 142,142,143
Sub 1 Essential 3* 57-58
Sub 1 Essential 4* 142,142,143

None were unreasonable for unboosted 3*s ranging from level 168 - 178, and not difficult at all with weekly boosting factored in. Each pass is adding approx. 12-13 levels (except for the weirdly low essential 3* Beast node), which means pass 6 for these will be in the 240-ish range or so.

Can someone with multiple cover-maxed 4*s weigh in with their experience, showing their roster, and what their enemy levels were?

FireWarrior71

I don't care for this scaling thing. It feels like your rewarding hardcore players, and punishing the casual ones. The casual players have no chance at getting covers. I have a job, a kid, and I am a firefighter. The eight hour spacing was good enough for me to finish in the top 50 just about everytime. I'm finding now, I'm really having to play all the time to keep up. Do away with this nonsense.

hkattman

I just started on a second run through. I am an extremely casual player although do usually end up in the top 50 in pve. I just attempted the final node for the second time. Wolverine who doesn't need much ap to hit was hitting for over 5k per hit, now I don't know in what world this would be acceptable, but it definitely isn't acceptable in my world. There aren't very many 3* that do that much damage in one hit. If you are going to continue to make 2* and 1* characters be boosted to the point that they are ridiculously high. I will take my money, my time, and my effort elsewhere. This is ridiculous scaling that is unacceptable.

Kaazz

I'm a casual player and this new scaling sucks. Why do I want to hit nodes repeated times when they get harder and harder each time, with no increase in rewards??!? This totally makes me not want to play thru more than one time. Surely that was not the goal here?!? First you bork ddq, now this. Are you trying to make the game suck more for the casual player?!?

elwhiteninja

Kaazz wrote:

I'm a casual player and this new scaling sucks. Why do I want to hit nodes repeated times when they get harder and harder each time, with no increase in rewards??!? This totally makes me not want to play thru more than one time. Surely that was not the goal here?!? First you bork ddq, now this. Are you trying to make the game suck more for the casual player?!?

Unfortunately casual players are obviously not the priority, they don't spend money so d3 literally loses money from them. The goal from a business standpoint is to get us to spend money.

D3 makes money from hp and iso sales. Health pacts cost hp which costs money. Iso is super scarce and now we have expiring covers worthwhile because of championing. So we spend an obscene amount of money on iso. And think about this they got rid of thier biggest money maker in cover sales.

From a player/development viewpoint I think this sucks. I will probably quit pve entirely. It takes wayyyyy you more time than pve and is super boring.

I'm all for increasing challenge but it also needs DIVERSITY, and increased rewards. What pve needs is the 24 hour time (I love that change) but much fewer clears maybe 3 for optimal before clock starts. This is a puzzle game not a freaking grind fest

puppychow

tizian2015 wrote:

Well, I see some contradiction. For me, you smooth out the scaling for easy and hard nodes by making the easier harder. Nice work (/sarkasm). You say, difficulty is set at the beginning of the event and does not change by performance. Yeah, now the performance is nothing, just beating a node makes it harder, because you add levels to the enemies (so difficulty is changed in the duration of an event). Before everyone needed three clears with full points to get the progression rewards. You add many points with this six-times-clear-rule, but if it means, we need more then three full clears its a backstep for the progression players. You want us to play when we want, then give us the full roster of an event with all goons/enemies and with the points the nodes will grant so we can see what to clear if we want the progression reward.
Take out the competitive aspect in pve. With it its just another form of pvp. I´m one of the guys who love Galactus. This was a pure pve.

It's not a contradiction. Smoothing out scaling means exactly what you observed: make trivial/easy nodes harder. Game devs intentionally made those nodes harder at the very beginning, and I think most players are unhappy with that decision.

jobob

Vhailorx wrote:

jobob wrote:

JVReal wrote:

I used to believe that PVP stood for Player Vs Player because you were up against an individual's set team that they left for defense (or retal).

I thought PVE meant Player Vs Everyone, because you were racing for placement against everyone in your bracket... I never once felt like it was actually an individual event... so when I found out that was how they perceived it, I was surprised.

PVE is Player vs Enviroment, i.e. pre-programmed opponents.

To be fair to demiurge, they call it story mode. So pve is language the players imported from mmos. But when one mode is called 'story mode' and the other is called 'versus mode' it seems fair to assume that story mode is less competitive than versus mode. . .

Very true.

I wasn't implying anything one way or the other, just responding to the person who wasn't sure what the PVE term meant.

JVReal

I did my first run through. Noticeably lacking the fights you can do in your sleep, but otherwise personally my scaling seemed about right. But it was a bit unnerving seeing the levels tick up at the end. I did have the good fortune of every Wolverine node having the other red goon use their attack instead so I never had to suffer the Adamantium Slash to the face... but I did take a few Caltrops. I played Blade (boosted), SW, IF. I switched out SW for the essential when required. This group got me through the first run using 1 health pack for blade after the wave where I ate a couple Caltrops.

I'll see how this second wave comes along, but I can see this getting out of hand by clear 3 or 4, and it'll surely take a turn when Wolverine decides to use his Special instead.

My roster is in my sig in a Google Doc. Should be pretty much up to date, though I did add a couple levels to Thoress thinking I'd have to use her... but I fortunately didn't have to... yet.

Malcrof

Well, i have now finished my first 6 clears of all nodes, and 2 clears of the loaner nodes. It wasn't too hard, baddies were up @ lvl 370 or so on the final sub. I don't mind the new format, and i 100% understand why they chose EoTS to test it on, all types of nodes, 7 day event, more data, etc...

All in all, not too horrible.

Here is the caveat to my praise:

I only used 3 teams the entire time.
1. Winfinite.. on all wave nodes, all the time.. got boring and tedious.
2. Energizer Bunnies (4Thor, Im40, KK) . Fun actually, once it gets going.
3. Jeanwitch.. another that gets boring and tedious.

So all in all, i used, not counting essentials, 7 characters from my 90 character roster....

May as well have been a heroic for all the roster diversity i got to play with. I did toss deadpool in one run of beast essential for his points, but not counting him.

Merrick

I wanted to post my thoughts after doing the initial 6 hits on the nodes.

There are some good things and bad things about these changes.

I was very happy with the initial communication both on the forum and in game. (The use of the word "fun" scared the **** out of me because it does not mean what they think it means)

And I was right to be scared. By evening out the levels, we all expected a level increase in difficulty from the easiest to the hardest nodes. Instead of the step system that used to be in place (first 3 nodes in the 30's, next 3 in the 100's, and last three in the 180's); I had been expecting the first node to still start at level 35, the second to be 55, the third 75, the fourth 95, and so on.

I like the idea that each node increases in difficulty after each win. However six initial clears is too many. I would think that 3 or possibly 4 clears would have been better.

The next problem is that while difficulty has increased and the number of plays has increased, the rewards are the same. If we are expected to play each node 13 times on this 48 hour sub, you should get something each time. The progression rewards should also be increased.

The time requirement is insane. But this could be addressed by reducing the initial hits on each node to 3 or 4 or by making every sub except for the final day a 48 hour sub.

I also have to say that the developers chose poorly in the rewards for this event. Not many players would have ground for seven days for XFW covers under the old system. If they were giving out Hulkbuster, Jean, or any of the newer characters as a reward, the competition would have been more intense and they would get better results for the test.

I will wait until the event is over to see if any of my initial thoughts change.

edgewriter

This reduces grinding, because of heath pack necessity. In my case this also means reducing ISO. Grinding PVE was one reliable way to gain ISO. Now I can't switch to my lower level characters to play longer because the enemies are leveled up to high. Therefore, I gain less ISO which means I level up characters slower and the frustration level with the game has increased to the point where I have no choice but to play casually if I keep playing at all. Takes out the fun.