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

apmonte

Yea, pretty much what the two posts above me stated. I had two different teams wiped out on the first clear of the second (easy) mission in Hell's Kitchen. All I can say, is go **** yourselves. I finally made it to the end with a lot of health packs to attempt the command points (didn't get it). I won't be doing another pass, and I'm not even going to attempt the essentials. I've had enough.

DeNappa

I don't know if it's been said in this thread already (probably has ), but I think this new scaling test only once more serves to illustrate the fact that pairing feeder goons with characters is a fundamentally broken concept; especially when feeding colors in characters' active powers.

When you're fighting a goon-only node, they will generate AP automagically to fire their powers, but at least those powers are mostly behind countdown tiles what caltrops? *cough* oh sorry you just downed my team. This gives you some time for a chance to match the countdown tiles or come up with other counters (stunning, delaying, etc). Generally speaking, you can't block *everything* but with some smart play you probably won't die if the board isn't too sucky.

When you're fighting a character-only node, you can make an assessment of the enemy powers and prioritize who you will deal damage to or what colors you will (attempt to) deny in order to maximize the chance of winning.

But mix those two, and you cook up a recipe for a match where the opponent is given an unfair advantage.

tizian2015's post is a perfect example; I've also given up on nodes myself after losing more than once to a barrage of adamantium slashes by Wolverine backed up by two red feeding goons.

jvasses

ONE WORD.....HORRIBLE

Barbarizenow

These changes are terrible.my championed two stars couldn't even beat the second node of the first sub. They were about fifty levels higher than the computer opponents and they still got their butts handed to them. It's really frustrating to want to play the event but get shut down before I can accumulate very many points. It's enough to make me want to tear out my already diminished hair.

MLDB

I am chiming in the say I strongly dislike the PVE changes. I am a regular t10 PVE player (came in second for recent Quake event) so I am not adverse to some grinding grinding or difficult PVE challenges (i.e. the horror that is Venom Bomb). However, the changes have not improved my game experience at all.

The changes, as far as reasoning goes, is to reduce the minor advantages gained by softcapping rosters and to release players from an 8 hour grind cycle. Those ideas are great in theory. BUT, their implementation has greatly missed the mark. Here's the reality of my experience so far.

1) I can ONLY use my A team to clear nodes. I have a rather unbalanced roster (8 cover OML, no maxxed 4 stars, a couple of champed 3 stars) and the scaling proportionally higher because of my OML and Iceman, despite being completely unable to use OML during the event. For reference, my highest level nodes cap around 315, whilst my highest leveled characters are a 250 (329 boosted) Iceman and a barely usable 270 Phoenix. My alliancemates who have much weaker, lower level rosters that are softcapped, are able to use a much wider variety of characters than I can. I have no hope of beating lvl 315 Wolv/goon node with any team that doesn't have my Iceman on it. So much for increasing roster variety. I used to be able to try new teams on easy nodes, or splash in weaker niche characters with my stronger ones (ie. Antman vs. muscle goons), but can't really afford to anymore.

2) Releasing players from the 8 hour cycle. Great success /s Yes, I don't play every 8 hours on the dot, but now optimal clearing feels more like a horrible chore. Optimal clear is frontloaded now, so instead of grinding 2.5 hours for sub end then hitting each node once in the next half hour, I'd have to sit 2.5 hours grinding at end + 2.5 hours grinding at sub beginning. That's 5 hours of grinding in a row! No fun at all (going for placement rank against other PVE grinders had a rush to it, but not under this new system). I haven't bothered to do an optimal clear once because I don't feel like struggling through a thousand Adamantium slashes to the face. The PVE ranking rewards aren't worth the loss of RL time. Instead of playing at my leisure, I just feel like not playing PVE at all because of how much of a drag the difficulty and grinding is.

As far as I'm concerned, might as well change all events to Galactus style events. Going for placement in PVE is now more of a punishment than ever. Ridiculous scaling, ridiculous amounts of grinding required, inflated progression reward threshold levels...

I will be more than happy to go back to the old system and have D3 never speak of it again unless they want to change it to Growth Industry or Galactus style events. For the amount of effort you have to put in just to play through a few clears of the event, I better get a friggin' 4 star character for it.

fmftint

I thought scaling would not change through the event, Hells Kitchen has the highest starting and max levels I've played all event

Previous final nodes have topped out at 363, The Goron is at 377

babinro

Figured I'd give my feedback even though it's been echoed by other players plenty of times now.

I'm a 5* tier player with Surfer and Phoenix at 450 and OML at 420.
I also have all 3*'s championed and 17 4*'s championed.

My 7th clear on Hell's Kitchen "The Gorgon" Node contains level 473 goons including:
- Konran at 62,146 health
- Gorgan at 74.626 health
- Wolverine at 57,075 health
Total Health: 193,847

A couple of facts about the PvE:
- Kishu's have been dealing nearly ~4800 AoE damage with their Caltrops.
- I've put more time into this event than I do a new character release and rather than comfortably finishing in top 20 I'm struggling to hold on to top 50.
- My brackets top 10 overall are all 3* tier players with either no fully leveled 4*'s or under three 4*'s fully covered (seemingly random ones at that...not your typical powerful JG/HB/Rulk groups)
- I've gone from using 2-4 or so health packs per full 7 round PvE clear to using around 15-20+

My Opinions on the new format:
The new format is not fun. Health pools like the one posted above all but prevent the existence of roster diversity. Assuming I could survive with a 4* team it would just be absurdly time consuming. Match lengths with 5*'s have increased dramatically. The challenge feels unfair at times and we have absolutely no improved rewards to show for any of this.

Even if the scaling numbers were adjusted so leaderboards reflected more variety I wouldn't enjoy the changes because optimal play means grinding subs immediately and then doing so again at the end of the sub. The old system was flawed but much better than the new one.

Suggestions for a better Competitive PvE:
1) Remove timers entirely.
Timers are to blame for this whole clear early or clear at the end mentality for optimal play. Removing them is the only way you achieve a sense of 'play on your schedule'.

2) Start nodes at a much lower level but scale them up faster.
This lets people take advantage of roster diversity which is a large part of the fun for me. This also lets people feel a sense of natural progression for their efforts. I don't want to play for 2 years and yet instantly struggle for wins.

3) Add a reward multiplier based on scaling.
This is the MOST important lesson I've learned from this test.
Simplified Example: Level 40 node for 2* roster is worth 70 ISO. That same scaled node for my roster is going to be level 340 and should be worth 3 times more thus rewarding me with 210 ISO. When my node scales to level 440 it's now worth 280 ISO.
This just fixes so many problems.
- It rewards players for leveling their roster.
- It targets increased ISO to the players who need it most for higher tier characters.
- It doesn't devalue the natural progression or lower tier players by giving them so much ISO that they skip tiers to quickly.

Note: None of these changes would address the fact that placement in a competitive PvE is an incredible grind that requires FAR more time than similar rewards in PvP. As such I strongly recommend the following...

Switch over to a Non-Competitive PvE:
1) Add a reward multiplier based on scaling.
For the same reasons mentioned above.

2) Roll most if not all placement rewards into progression.
You can already calculate how much effort is needed for the typical player to make top 10 in the old PvE system. Emulate that amount of effort in an entirely progression based system. If you don't want to give out so many 4* covers then so be it. I'm sure people could live with a compromise that's more rewarding than the Guantlet but less rewarding than competitive PvE.

3) Incorporate Alliance progression into the rewards system.
Have an overall alliance reward like we do in competitive PvE because this is a social game and it should promote co-operative play. It could be as simple as giving out tiered rewards based on the number of players reach the CP point of progression. If 5 out of 20 player make this they unlock ____. If 10 out of 20 players reach it they get a greater alliance reward. Maybe one of the 4* covers could be given out as a top prize for the equivalent of 15 players reaching the CP progression point.

Lilith

One thing that I notice hasn't been addressed:

In previous iterations of PvE, whenever I ran into a node that scaled too high for me to handle, I would go back to the bottom of my roster and systematically murder the teams in repeat waves of 3 that lost over and over until the scaling went down. Since they were the 1-cover 3*s and 4*s, I didn't mind them losing that much since they're not ready to be used properly yet anywhere any way. Yes, kind of a time suck, but it usually made the rest of the sub manageable.

Tried that with this model, and the scaling never came back down. Not sure if that was intended or not, but it seems that once the number on those little counters goes up... it stays there.

Phumade

babinro wrote:

3) Incorporate Alliance progression into the rewards system.
Have an overall alliance reward like we do in competitive PvE because this is a social game and it should promote co-operative play. It could be as simple as giving out tiered rewards based on the number of players reach the CP point of progression. If 5 out of 20 player make this they unlock ____. If 10 out of 20 players reach it they get a greater alliance reward. Maybe one of the 4* covers could be given out as a top prize for the equivalent of 15 players reaching the CP progression point.

This is actually pretty insightful. The real difference between WaG and the number 10 alliance is that they put out 20 similar scores and the number 10 alliance can only put 15 equivalent scores and then 5 scores that might not have qualified for a top 1/2 alliance.

Altering the scoring criteria would also solve another big problem with PVE. Specifically, reducing the need to continually get scores in the 1.5 to 1.75 X LT. I strongly suspect that if you polled the top 100 pve players, 99 of them would tell you that they only grind to that extreme level because of alliance requirements. If alliance rankings were tied to "achievements" then their would be less pressure to score absurd points and more incentive to beat a level 400 team or devour a 5 star (oops forgot they got rid of that achievement).

hodayathink

Lilith wrote:

One thing that I notice hasn't been addressed:

In previous iterations of PvE, whenever I ran into a node that scaled too high for me to handle, I would go back to the bottom of my roster and systematically murder the teams in repeat waves of 3 that lost over and over until the scaling went down. Since they were the 1-cover 3*s and 4*s, I didn't mind them losing that much since they're not ready to be used properly yet anywhere any way. Yes, kind of a time suck, but it usually made the rest of the sub manageable.

Tried that with this model, and the scaling never came back down. Not sure if that was intended or not, but it seems that once the number on those little counters goes up... it stays there.

I'm fairly sure it's intended. Before, they didn't just scale down that way, they scaled up too. So if you breezed through a couple nodes, then all the rest of the nodes in the sub got harder at the same time. Now everything scales independently, and only scales up, not down.

Nodtveidt

This is the only game that i know, that punish you when more strong you are. What its the final intention of game? The idea isnt that if you get better rooster the game turns more funny and easy? Because the direcction is going to inverse way. Why if my 3 strongest chars are lvl 353,282 and 280 i have to fight vs enemies with lvl 370-389 ? It is an insane , my enemies have 25k+ hp, and hit very strong, and i only have 1 char with 20k+.
I hope that this test doesnt apply never.

Phumade

hodayathink wrote:

Lilith wrote:

One thing that I notice hasn't been addressed:

In previous iterations of PvE, whenever I ran into a node that scaled too high for me to handle, I would go back to the bottom of my roster and systematically murder the teams in repeat waves of 3 that lost over and over until the scaling went down. Since they were the 1-cover 3*s and 4*s, I didn't mind them losing that much since they're not ready to be used properly yet anywhere any way. Yes, kind of a time suck, but it usually made the rest of the sub manageable.

Tried that with this model, and the scaling never came back down. Not sure if that was intended or not, but it seems that once the number on those little counters goes up... it stays there.

I'm fairly sure it's intended. Before, they didn't just scale down that way, they scaled up too. So if you breezed through a couple nodes, then all the rest of the nodes in the sub got harder at the same time. Now everything scales independently, and only scales up, not down.

Fully intended behavior. Each win should scale the node around 15 levels (losses won't change the event scaling). But they eventually cap after the 6th win. This was discussed by demiurge anthony in one of his responses. I think its 2nd or 3rd page. If you look at the chart he wrote, you can pretty much determine what the final scaled node will look like if you win out to 20.

Quebbster

It seems to get easier and easier to Place for each sub that passes. I assume this is because more and more players are saying "screw this" and dropping out...

Quebbster

OJSP wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

It seems to get easier and easier to Place for each sub that passes. I assume this is because more and more players are saying "screw this" and dropping out...

I agree.. just playing to get all the green ticks, playing survival nodes once except a few Beast essentials while waiting for the next sub to start got me from 130ish after the 1st sub, to 100ish after the 2nd, to 70ish after the 3rd and now 36th after doing 6 clears on Hell's Kitchen's nodes with 79k.

Now comes the dilemma.. shall I start grinding in the last 3 days to get to 156k or not? By my calculation, it's still achievable.. whether I have it in me to do that and waste so much time and many health packs for 25 CP is a different issue.

I'll be on a train most of Thursday. I fully expect to be able to grind all the nodes to dust if necessary.

Kevin61

So, if the devs are actually reading all the feedback on this new PVE testing, I will go ahead and throw my hat in the ring. I have been playing for about a year and a half. I currently have 78 characters in my roster with several champed 3* and 2*, a lot of mid-range 4*'s and three 5*'s (SS, OML and Phoenix). I have Hulkbuster at 266 and a red cover that will expire in a week so I will be able to max and champion him in the next few days. He will be my first maxxed 4*. So, on to the feedback:

Pros:

Elimination of the timers is the biggest plus! My usual style of play was to pick a slice that would allow me to start and do a clear before I go to work in the morning, a second clear after I get home and a third clear with perhaps a bit of grinding (for any CP I may have missed) the next morning before work again. The always put me in the top 200, and depending on weekend play, close to top 100.

I have actually enjoyed the challenge because previously, although I have quit a diverse roster, I would usually play with only about 8-10 characters. Never used 5*'s in PVE, only PVP and then only when I got above 800 points (still have never hit 1000!). This new style has made me think about my roster and use different team combinations than I would have previously. I still have my favorites (IF, Cyclops, Magneto and LThor, BP, GSBW, and LCap, Gamora, SW - this is one of my favorites because I get three different colors of stun) but I find that I am using more of my roster, rather than keeping most of them only for essentials.

Cons:

Scaling is too much! I don't find that I have been using an excessive amount of health packs, but I have been using much more boosts. I have also purposely been using my 3* characters in an effort to try to keep the scaling to a minimum. Can't say that I have won every node played but my average is probably in the mid 80%.

The rewards remain the same for the node even when it has reached max! Seriously?? If you are going to scale the opponents up, then scale the rewards up accordingly. As has been voiced by many others in this thread, fighting a 275+ level team and only getting 70 ISO is simply not worth the effort. Sure, I need the ISO like everyone else but that smacks of the 20 ISO reward that was recently done away with.

Opponent abilities - namely caltrops! Tinykitty caltrops!! Again, I agree with everyone else that says caltrops should NOT be an AOE effect. Simply looking at the nature of how they are actually used, the effects they have in this game are ludicrous! You are not attacking with you entire team! Only one character at a time, so if they trip the caltrops, that character should be the only one taking damage.

Play time - although the elimination of timers is better for my life schedule, I find that I am spending more time playing than before. I play every day and my alliance is pretty casual. We have hit top 100 a few times and are usually in the top 150 but I can't really see myself playing 3-4 hours a day just to clear all the nodes for rewards.

Wave nodes - You get the prize for the first run but nothing for the second. Not worth the points to run through a 5-wave node of 200+ opponents for no reward. Add more rewards for multiple runs.

Progression (25 CP) - I hit the 25 CP progressions about 95% of the time but for this one, I am not even going to get close. After 3 days, I am only at about 45,000 points. Even though I know that EotS has very high point nodes in the latter half of the event, I don't see myself getting 100,000 points before the end.

So, overall, I feel that the cons outweigh the pros in this event but hopefully the devs will work on it and present us with something better on the next go-round.

bbf2

OK, I have definitive proof that the "enemy levels will stay the same for the entire event" thing they said was a lie.

I was about to play the second-to-last node on this sub for the first time, with a level 150 Wolverine and ninja friends. I realized that my extra Blade cover was about to expire, so I decided to bite the bullet and pay the iso cost to make Blade (who is boosted in this event) my very first three-star champion.

I figured that it would be nothing but a boon to me because I was promised that the enemy levels were determined and fixed at the start of the event. Went back to the node, now Wolverine and friends were at level 159. It made me severely regret my decision to champion Blade instead of just selling that 14th cover for iso, because while before I was able to beat at least a few of the nodes with different characters to save on healthpacks, now I'm forced to use him in every single node because the enemies adjusted to his level and no one else's.

I always thought that my first championing of a three star should be an event that I celebrated, instead it has demonstrated to me that it is nothing but a burden. If the goal was "we want to discourage weird strategies like not leveling up your characters" then you have failed MISERABLY because it is now the exact opposite. Under this system, leveling up your characters is a bad thing that makes you more reliant on those characters and discourages roster diversity, which in turn forces me to eat up healthpacks because no one else on my roster could possibly stand a chance. Which further reinforces the idea that this entire thing wasn't intended to "fix scaling," but the true goal was to do everything they can to make loyal players spend money on healthpacks.

It's so disheartening. The only reason I'm still playing this event is because I've become loyal to the people in my alliance and I don't want to let them down by not hitting full prog. But now, this game feels like a chore and an incredible burden that I'm only still playing for the sake of my alliance mates. I hate it. I've started before in this thread that any and all sense of accomplishment is gone and these changes deprive you of the sense of accomplishment of a full clear, and do nothing but tell you "You failed because your best isn't good enough." Instead of being a fun game that I played for fun, MPQ PVE now feels like an excruciating unending chore that I feel obligated to complete but does nothing to help give me a sense of progress or entertainment...

y4747

my 2 cents (probably repeating everything, but what the heck) - obviously a personal opinion.
background: steam player, have access to the game for about 5 hours once a day on weekdays and most of the weekends.

the good:
1. getting rid of the 8-hr timers - since i can't hit them on time, i could never be competitive for top placement in pve. now i can.
2. first clears don't reduce points - allows to get the majority of the points and (not just) rewards in one go.

the bad:
1. double grind - optimal play now requires grinding at start AND at end, so one big fat grind per day. too much.
2. scaling - hard nodes should be hard, easy nodes should be easy and not slightly-less-than-suicidal. since i have champed iceman and 4clops, one of the easy nodes is a lvl 324 wolvie with feeders - forces you to use the same top characters every time, instead of switching things up.
3. number of grinds - previous system required ~9 full clears for optimal play (2 of those separated in time from the others), new one requires 6+5=11 clears per 24 hours. add that to bad thing #2, and it gets a bit crazy.

suggestions:
1. reduce number of required clears, at least back to 9.
2. make easy nodes easy again.... definitely lower the cap, possible start at lower level and scale faster. if you're worried about people grinding the 20 points from there, make the easy ones worth 1 as minimum.

CNash

bbf2 wrote:

I figured that it would be nothing but a boon to me because I was promised that the enemy levels were determined and fixed at the start of the event. Went back to the node, now Wolverine and friends were at level 159. It made me severely regret my decision to champion Blade instead of just selling that 14th cover for iso, because while before I was able to beat at least a few of the nodes with different characters to save on healthpacks, now I'm forced to use him in every single node because the enemies adjusted to his level and no one else's.

In practical terms, nine levels doesn't translate into that much greater power. A 2* team should just about be able to hold their own, even more so if they've got a decent amount of champion levels.

defixu

9 levels are nothing though. That is less than one tick up of the nodes after a successful clear for many of us. The general problem that levelling your roster makes the game harder and less diversified stands, though.

TapperMalaz

Well, registered to give my 2 cents. Not that they differ much from everyone else's...

My roster: your average ISO-starved 4* transitioner (TapperMalaz2 for those interested)
- 10 championed 3* as mules (lvl 168-175), the rest sits between 41 to 130, mostly fully covered.
- 21 total 4*, with all the wrong ones well covered (4or (lvl 180), XFW (166) at 13, Elektra, IW and Nick at 11 covers each) everyone else at mostly 1-3 covers);
- OML (0/0/1 yellow), PH (0/1/1).

The Good: Timing
1. removal of 8 hour refresh. With a meeting-intensive job plus family life, I could never stick to an optimal clearance schedule: in fact, I was stuck with a 12 hour window only, less than that on weekends.
2. It's nice to get max points for most clears.
3. I have hit the CP-rewarding nodes heavily (some to 7/7) and somehow managed with a limited team and the normal amount of health packs plus whatever I got from daily rewards and the occasional Taco fishing.
I have no clue how I will manage in an event in which I have no boosted champs and/or well-covered 4*, though.

The Bad
No roster diversity at all. This event forced me into Blade (boosted to 250), Beast (boosted to 191) and Elektra (boosted to 247). 4or (for Beast), Punisher (for Blade) and DD (for Elektra) as sidekicks. After 4 clears, The Gorgon (Gorgon, Konran + 2* Wolvie) is at 300. Of course, CP hasn't dropped there yet.

The Ugly:
1. 2. Being able to hit a node 7 times for max points is great, being required to do so is not.
To illustrate: an average of 3 minutes per fight makes for 21 minutes of play for 7 victories. The reward for this is 1.15% of the maximum progression, with increasing difficulty on each fight.
(Numbers have been taken from my version of today's Listen Up, 3rd regular node: 256 pts per node. 168 Konran, 169 Wolverine, 169 Konran after 1 fight - basically, every node is at or above my roster's average level).

Add the removal of 60 second Trivial nodes for grinding and... well. Suffice to say I will barely make 70k in points this event.

Recommendations to 'fix' the new system:
1. Lower the starting difficulty of each node - plenty of suggestions already. If Demiurge want better ones, they should give insight in how they calculate the starting level of each node;

2. PVE is already a time sink (and a bit boring one, too - when is diversity introduced into timed events other than Simulator and Gauntlet?). There really is no need to make it worse: people want to do other stuff (and that includes in-game).
If you stick to this system and the 7 rewards per node, then maximum progression should be reached somewhere between 3 to 4 clears of each node, no more.

3. Make the point-gain evenly weighted: when total points one can earn on day 1 are equal to day 2, 3 (and all the way up to 7), having a bad day is easier to compensate for, which helps towards progression.

4. Look at your reward system.

a. progression ladder: if the percentage of players who reach max progression is below 5%, something is wrong in the long term. Players who fail to do so will probably not stick around long term, especially if there is no other way to draw 4* covers.
Transitioners can be moderately helped by adding 5 CP on top of the existing rewards (worst case, take it from the max prog reward): 1 CP (+ 2* cover) at 25% progression, 2 CP (+ 3* at 50%), 2 CP (+ vault token) at 75%.

b. Placement rewards: Like 1057 others have already said: make PvE truly PvE. Do away with the ranking altogether by adding these rewards to the progression.
By now, you should have a decent idea of what % of progression a top 500/top 100/top 50/top 10/top 2 requires. Do away with the daily placement tokens (add instead extra ISO to the rewards of the final node and 4* star node) on each day. Keep the end-of-event placement covers/tokens and add them to the progression instead.

c. Vaults: these are already a significant improvement over utterly random tokens. Just do away with 50% of the 2* covers in vaults. Replace them with 500 ISO instead (which is a 2-star reward, after all).

d. Purchases: Nearly everyone on this forum is ISO-starved. Almost no-one says they will even consider buying ISO. Some might have made an initial investment and then go F2P, some might always be F2P, but with the game shifting to 4*s as its base and the ISO required for them raised as well, why not shift gears and significantly increase the ISO-gain per purchase and see if this increases purchases?