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

wymtime

Merrick wrote:

Are you seriously going to use Venom Bomb as the control event?

It has to be the most hated PVE ever.

Venom Bomb is just the next event. They have plenty of data from previous EOTS events that they can draw from.
If it makes you feel better though Venom Bomb will give out a new 4* though. My guess is it is Punisher for the new Dare Devil season.

Unknown

Epic failure with this test.
1.rewards are still the same with harder opponents makes completely zero sense.
2.limited to only using your strongest characters,where's the fun of testing out your characters who aren't fully covered.

In the end its all about the money on buying healthpack,hero points and ISO forcing the player to lvl up his character.

Player for 302 days currently loving the game but if this new pve system ever is permanently introduced expect plenty players to leave an sales would be zero.

It just ah pay to play/win game when you realise what this test about.

DFiPL

Jam_Adams wrote:

daily lurker, irregular poster

just figured I'd chime in with the majority.

schedule changes -> LIKE
progressive scaling -> DISLIKE (at its current level)

if scaling began lower, and didn't get so absurdly difficult so quickly, i wouldn't mind it. as it stands, the effort is simply not rewarded with the current rewards. even if they kept this difficulty and upped rewards, i still wouldn't be thrilled, as i enjoyed having a few menial nodes to hit. it made the hard ones tolerable.


i was on pace to champ a 3* by today or tomorrow (as i have 3 covers in my queue), but I've hit an ISO income wall with this new event. I MIGHT be able to champion by the end of the day tomorrow when the covers expire, but I'm having my doubts.

Bears repeating. I like the concept; I've rostered a couple of 5* I would otherwise probably have sold off to see how my roster would be affected here. But if the scaling is now progressive, starts high and increases rapidly, the ISO drought is going to be exacerbated by the change.

ilikecake

I'll chime in to add another opinion, but I think I'm mainly echoing what others have said already.

The scheduling change is great - I like that I don't have to plan out when I'm hitting PVE nodes.

However, the scaling changes are TERRIBLE. I've been playing the game for a long time, so I have a pretty well-covered and leveled roster - mostly max-ed out 3's, and slowly making the shift to 4*s (slowly due to terrible RNG mostly).

I used to like popping in to the PVE events to at the very least knock out a few of the low level nodes. Gave me a chance to use my few 5* toons, and earn a few points here and there, even when I wasn't really competing. I'd typically also try to earn the CP from each day's event.

Now I'm starting at close to level 200 mobs even in the lowest nodes, and their levels are going up by like 15 levels each time I complete it. The final node, which I'd need to potentially do 7 times to get one lousy CP? The mobs are already almost level 300 after one clear. Screw that. It's not even remotely fun and makes it way less likely that I'll be doing much if any PVE.

Kaazz

action711 wrote:

It's just too tinykitty hard. And that's the first round!

And it's supposed to get harder? Brilliant. Do the rewards go up too? No? Again, brilliant.

I've recently gone off pvp cos it's getting too hard, 270+ every battle drains the tinykitty out of you, and now they do this to what was a relaxing game.


Why even do this? Has anyone complained about PvE? Did it need "fixing"?

No.

Don't do it D3.

EXACTLY!! I don't want every single node to be "challenging" - I like to relax some when I play this game, and only tackle the hard nodes when I feel like a challenge. You've taken that completely away. Every node is hard. I can't play a diverse roster and it's not fun. You really tiny kittied this one, d3!!

NewMcG

Maybe if they sweeten the pot for playing this trial event, I'd play more than the one clear of the first leg. That's how far I got before realizing the level 350 (and up) EVERYTHING I'd eventually be facing with my iso-starved 4* roster wouldn't be a ton of fun, since the 230 to 280 enemies in round one already made it unbearable.

*cue the devs announcing a full-covered but unlevelled Cho Hulk for all players of the event*

ChattyWhacker

Well, in my personal tastes, I really enjoyed this type of gaming style for PVE. I enjoy replaying matches and the difficulty building with subsequent victories made it an interesting climb of challenge for the other item unlocks. Also, I got to climb up to around the 150 rank spot from playing the matches a lot. Still, I can see the issue pertaining to the fact that if the top rewards were given to the grinders like me, those who want to play every so often won't see much progression with event rewards. I'm not sure if there's a way to associate points with performance of the player (less turns/less enemy team having 4|5 color matches). I bet it's really hard to make an open event balanced for all playstyles and to make everyone happy.

Ludaa

I'm seeing lvls from 293-337 after hitting it 4x ( transitioning to 5* ). It only seems decent because of the great boosted list. Take out Cyc and Ice and you've got one hellish mofo grind ahead of you. The best part is clearing when you want, but then you see your rank and remember you're still trapped in here with everyone else...

Increase node rewards, and lessen the importance of ranked rewards. I suggested elsewhere to payout the average enemy level in ISO the first 6x or whatever, at least then our reward would scale with our roster.

UNC_Samurai

Orti wrote:

So much hate, so little love. Today I managed to get all rewards from eots sub 1. The increasing difficulty added a little variety to the grind. I used up more healthpacks than the rewards would suggest. Does that really bother me? No. I only have so much time and if I'm running out of healthpacks I do rl stuff.

I guess as long as all the playerbase faces similar challenges it can be considered fair.

Thanks devs for trying out new things and communicating!

That's the whole problem - we're NOT facing equal challenges. I feel like I'm being punished for having a few maxed 4* characters. 80% of my roster is useless against level 250+ goons. At least with the old "Trivial" nodes, I had a chance to play around with my lower 2*s and 3*s.

We're also upset because the increase in difficulty results in fewer rewards for clearing nodes, and lower placement yielding less ISO. The pace of amassing ISO was already unacceptably slow. The changes to PvE rewards and the elimination of the hated 20-iso were a godsend. This format change has the potential to undo most of that progress.

zodiac339

zodiac339 wrote:

What is fun?
1. Relaxing with the Trivial nodes before moving up to the difficult ones that will be more of a challenge to complete.
2. Being able to use my roster of 2-stars and undercovered Legendaries on those trivial nodes, using their underleveled abilities to see how fun they can be to use. The difficult top three are where I expect to take damage and really strategize what I'm doing.

I like the trivial nodes. I like having a place to go that isn't a constant struggle to succeed. I like going to the difficult missions and then going back to the trivial ones to refresh myself, whether by screwing around with things like Ant Man or Mr. Fantastic, or by trouncing the enemy with something really strong so I can smile after getting wiped by an unexpected cascade and a massively scaled attack. Now, there's no trivial. Mission one was chunking out my 2-stars for over two thousand when the Strength in Numbers went off. That's not fun. Why do you think that would be fun?

Bottom line: Leave the challenge where the challenge is supposed to be. If everything is a difficult challenge, that's not fun. It's exhausting.

An addendum on fun: The consecutive grind when trying for placement is horrible. It's been mentioned in other posts as well. Clearing 6 times at the beginning of a leg on 9 or more nodes, then 6 more times on nine nodes followed by an immediate 6 times on 9 nodes doesn't let you play when you want (competitively). It means having to play for about six hours or more (almost a full time job!) for the chance to get a character cover.
On the... hmm, not bright side. The boring side. On the boring side, heavy reliance on Recharge to generate the AP to use abilities quickly enough not to get murdered.
Not fun.

Edit: I can admit the fun of a challenge. I've personally used the "low level character on defense to get an attacker who isn't maxed out to counter-attack" method. Twice now in the Simulator, I've beaten a team that outclassed mine. This is occasionally fun, not constantly fun.

hodayathink

New McG wrote:

Maybe if they sweeten the pot for playing this trial event, I'd play more than the one clear of the first leg. That's how far I got before realizing the level 350 (and up) EVERYTHING I'd eventually be facing with my iso-starved 4* roster wouldn't be a ton of fun, since the 230 to 280 enemies in round one already made it unbearable.

*cue the devs announcing a full-covered but unlevelled Cho Hulk for all players of the event*

The reward for playing the event has already been announced, and you're going to be underwhelmed:

"David wrote:

Moore"]

What’s Next?
The event after Enemy of the State will return to the original difficulty system. We will be looking at how people did and listen to what everyone is saying about it. Once we are comfortable with our findings, we will touch base with everyone again and let everyone know how it went and what we are planning on doing in the future.

We’re all pretty excited about the new changes and hope you enjoy them as well. As part of a thank-you for helping us with testing this system, we will be rewarding users who participate in it. Just for playing in the event, you will get three extra Enemy of the State tokens. If you place in the top 50 of your leaderboard you will also receive 10 Command Points. These will be gifted to everyone that participated the day after the event ends.

As for my opinion of the even after finishing the first six runs. The nuts and bolts of it are actually okay. There's a lot of specifics that need tuning, but the core concept of it works for me. As for the specifics that need tuning:

1. Change the number of full clears from 6 to 3 (the amount of full clears you'd normally do in a 24 hour node). Maybe 6 would work in a 48 hour node, but to be honest you'd still hear complaints from the placement chasers about how they have to do six clears immediately in the node.
2. I'd decrease the amount of clears until minimum points down to 3 or 4 as well. That way, for people doing full grind, you'd actually be doing almost the same amount of clears (6 or 7) as before, just with the time shifted a little bit
3. There should still be easier nodes. They don't have to be as easy as they were before, but right now there isn't really any difference in difficulty between the first nodes and the last ones, which is a little jarring compared to what we had before

Oh, and the real complaint is that you need to fix the underlying issue leading to all of these complaints, which is the difficulty in getting 4 star rewards. If placing top 10 in PvE wasn't the "most reliable" way to get 4 star covers, you wouldn't have so many people looking to optimally grind to get them, so you wouldn't have so many complaints about having changed what the actual optimal grind is (because the truth of the matter is that only 2-4% of the people who play PvE actually optimally grind in the first place).

Smudge

This whole thread is a little tl;dr at this point to catch up, and I know this has likely been mentioned, but here are my thoughts on the new PvE scaling and points mechanic:

"Yo dawg, we heard you hate optimal time grinding, so we removed the value drop for the first few clears and made it harder to achieve your progression rewards plus implemented ridiculous scaling that starts high and gets much harder as you go. So now you can grind yo heroes' health while you grind yo time while you grind yo teeth while you grind yo nodes!"

Pharsys

Okay lets get this over with... I play for a darn long time now (when i started steam cross platform saves were still a thing...whish they were still... Devs! Make it happen I'm stuck on PC now!), and though i sometimes dabble in pvp, i mostly play pve. The "plan your 8-hour clears" method was acceptable for me and i got used to it, regularly placing top 1-3 depending on IRL schedule. So far my only real whines were targeted at useless heroics, with strictly restricted rosters.

Now about the changes...
- Let me get one single thing straight: Placement and Progression rewards are harder to achieve, while re-grinding increasingly harder nodes practically gives no reward. This way the pve feels like a very...very bad Gauntlet event.
That being said...
+ The 24 hour (+6 first clear) format is an epic win in my book.
+ The transparent scaling is a nice move.
+ I dont oppose harder (or even challenging or almost unbeatable) nodes. Hell Gauntlet is one of my favourites, and i still keep sweating just by remembering a few nodes there.

Summary. As i see the pve ranking is based now on progression (meaning: how scaled up nodes were you able to clear) and not on grinding (meaning: how many times, and how regularly were you able to clear), which is a good thing for the pve aspect of the game... The problem is the reward system: it still rewards you for grinding and not progression. IF you'd change it to reflect the Gauntlet-like "how far you've got?" mentality, with regular and meaningful rewards for clearing the same node, and rotate some of the ranking rewards into this system (like a granted 4*-3*-CP for doing a "now im done and waiting for the 24h reset" clear) I'd be happy to see the system go "live" or be the trend.

RyanL24

I haven't read many responses, and am probably repeating others, so I apologize for that.

First thought: We can play at our own pace now? Yay! No more waking up at 3 AM to clear the nodes (I have never done this; I have also never finished above 9th place or so). Yay! MPQ is the best!

Reality: The people who finish in the top 10 are going to have to grind every node as quickly as possible. So, instead of waking up at 3 AM, they will be up until 3 AM trying to clear the nodes to get their refresh clocks starting as quickly as possible. How does this help anybody? I don't know! MPQ is the worst.

Unknown

I agree with most of what everyone has discussed. I'm not a fan thus far with the new changes. My lower tier characters have been rendered virtually useless. After reading the negative/constructive comments, I hope D3 decides to come up with a better format that allows the use of lower level characters.

Milamber42

Dear Developers,

I applaud you for attempting to do something different.

Is there any way that you can apply these changes to only one event per season, so that we can choose not to play it? Possibly even make this single event per season with no ranking rewards?

You've taken grinding to a whole new level for competitive players. It's just not fun.

Cheers,
Milamber

JordanFromJersey

So after reading through most of the comments here(and skimming the rest, sorry, a man has to sleep sometime...) I think I may have a solution that would make competitive players happy, but also keep most of the changes the devs implemented here.

I should note that so far, I actually don't have that many problems with the event personally, but it seems I'm in the minority and I like solving problems, so I figured I'd put my mind to the problem.

1. Adjust the overall difficulty(and each win increase) down 15-20%. The general consensus seems to be that the difficulty is just too damn high. 15-20% is just a guess, but it would be a good start.

2. Increase the curve of difficulty from the easiest to hardest nodes. Currently, the hardest node is approximately 50% harder than the easiest node at start(71-107, 125-186, etc) Make that a 100-125% difference to allow for wider roster play.

3. Remove the countdown timer all-together. Make it so that you can beat every node 7 times(once for Survival Nodes) and then it locks.

4. Make Progression equal to the number of possible points available. If you beat every node 7 times(1 for Survival) you get your 25CP(remember, this is with the difficulty toned down). Alternately, make it equal to 6 out of 7 completions if you want to be nice.

5. Redo the ranking calculation to account for the removal of the countdown timer. In this event there are 13 "ranks" available. Make the ranks percentage based. Top 1% are rank 1. 2-5% are rank 2, 6-10% are rank 3, etc. In the case of a tied score(which there would be a lot of, due to the set number of points) round up. 300 people out of a thousand got a "perfect" score? 300 people are the top 1%(and thus no one would get ranks 2 through 4). No more fighting people for points in PVE, just a rank that tells you where you are in the percentile and rewards prizes accordingly).

Does that all make sense?

Crowl

JordanFromJersey wrote:

3. Remove the countdown timer all-together. Make it so that you can beat every node 7 times(once for Survival Nodes) and then it locks.

4. Make Progression equal to the number of possible points available. If you beat every node 7 times(1 for Survival) you get your 25CP(remember, this is with the difficulty toned down). Alternately, make it equal to 6 out of 7 completions if you want to be nice.

They need some mechanism for tiebreakers, they should lock the nodes after 7 clears, but then reopen them for the last hour or two for those who wish to battle for placements.

There is no need for the progression to be set as high as 6 or 7, previously you needed about 4 clears a sub to hit the LT progression and that seems like a reasonable target for them to retain.

pabasa130

Quick feedback, because hopefully the devs take each message to heart and consider a better plan going forward.

Background: Top 10-20 player, day 427, and I buy a Logan loonie a month. Have all characters, 3 5* which I do not use, and my highest levelled characted is 250 Hulkbuster.

1) Please return the 3 easy nodes to trivial. I have 3 utterly useless 5*s, and the only time I used them, up to pre-test, was to grind the easy nodes for points and rewards. With the 3 easy missions now actually going up in difficulty per hit, these 5* remain even more useless than before. We already have 6 other nodes that increase in difficulty. Please don't make players miserable by making *everything* challenging.

2) Intention to remove limit on optimal grind is very good, but needs some tweaks. I am actually not much affected by the pre-test timing, as it fits perfectly around my work and game time in the evening. Surely an improvement on this should have been beneficial for more people not just me. Doesn't look like it. Having to grind each node 11 times instead of 8 times under normal circumstances is a big change. I honestly think a quick and easy fix for this is just to start the point reset clock on the 3rd clear rather than the 6th, so that it brings the number of grinds needed to clear each node back to 8.

3( I like some of the implemented changes alreadyI am not facing much difficulty currently, (it is just the first subevent, and I haven't faced Gorgon yet), but I do like when Anthony said that mission difficulty is set at the beginning of each event rather than throughout the event. No more crazy hard nodes on the last day (I hope..?). And probably the very best change which I hope will be implemented in all 4*DDQ events immediately is a power cap of 13 for enemies. Ha!

Keep up the good work. Appreciate that you guys are looking for feedback rather than brute forcing these plans. Although I do desperately need that green X Force cover, so I guess I need to keep up my efforts to stay in the top 10 ><

ammenell

i really like this event, it gives me a break.
havent touched a single node after my initial cp grind. not even interested in the top 300 event token.