Summing Up Our Feelings After a Weekend of New PvE

edgewriter

puppychow wrote:

Some posters have suggested removing competitive placement from pve entirely a la Gauntlet. If the game devs feel the need to keep the competitive placement component, perhaps a simple chronological order of completion scoreboard may be a better approach. In other words, whoever finishes the complete clear 6x for all nodes first in a bracket should take first place, etc. The implicit time trial style of competition is as valid as the current scoring mechanism for placement. In summary, I'm proposing a placement system where whoever finishes 6x per node first should take the prize. That would eliminate the incredible time commitment for this new format, but still provide a fair method for player placement.

I feel this wouldn't work because with three hundred people trying to beat the clear, the odds are like trying to be caller five on a call in radio show. Nothing to do with skill, just dumb luck.

Smudge

edgewriter wrote:

puppychow wrote:

Some posters have suggested removing competitive placement from pve entirely a la Gauntlet. If the game devs feel the need to keep the competitive placement component, perhaps a simple chronological order of completion scoreboard may be a better approach. In other words, whoever finishes the complete clear 6x for all nodes first in a bracket should take first place, etc. The implicit time trial style of competition is as valid as the current scoring mechanism for placement. In summary, I'm proposing a placement system where whoever finishes 6x per node first should take the prize. That would eliminate the incredible time commitment for this new format, but still provide a fair method for player placement.

I feel this wouldn't work because with three hundred people trying to beat the clear, the odds are like trying to be caller five on a call in radio show. Nothing to do with skill, just dumb luck.

I completely agree with this sentiment, but also, I honestly am not understanding how this system would eliminate the huge time sink myself. If you still have to clear 6x on every single node multiplied by 9 nodes to get placement and it is taking 3-6 hours under the new PvE test, how is this proposal changing that?

This is an interesting idea, but another huge complaint about the new PvE format is that it only allows you to bring the strongest members of your roster with no room for experimentation on trivial nodes. By forcing players to play as fast as possible for placement, you would only be exacerbating this issue, forcing people to keep bringing the A team and nothing else. The old progression system is better than this, imo.

Crowl

Smudge wrote:

I completely agree with this sentiment, but also, I honestly am not understanding how this system would eliminate the huge time sink myself. If you still have to clear 6x on every single node multiplied by 9 nodes to get placement and it is taking 3-6 hours under the new PvE test, how is this proposal changing that?

PVE is a more time-intensive game mode than PVP and that is fine, people have the choice of which one to play, the crucial thing is that they should be trying to reduce that grind rather than increase it and at the same time they should be aiming to drastically increase the flexibility i.e. 3+ hours a day might be a lot, but if a large amount of that could be fitted into 5-10 min chunks then it would be much less disruptive.

matthatter

My thoughts on this test.

Pros: * I can play when I want * I can play how much I want * I can accumulate much points at one time * Gradual increase in difficulty Cons: * (quasi)Dramatic increases in difficulty * Placement awards being less attainable for me (I may be able to play when I want how much I want, so does everyone else and well over 100 people in my bracket play more than I do) Suggestions: * Cut out the placement rewards. Instead: - Have each node w/ 7 rewards -- 6 being your standard tokens/iso/etc -- 7th available only after having earned previous 6 and it is a Vault token - Have a vault for each event -- Vault has 300 (or more) rewards -- On new character releases have 3 covers in the vault - 1 of each color * Keep progression rewards similar to as they are now. Except: - add more tiers - increase value of iso rewards * "Scaling" - Start lower, like maybe 1/2 of the player's strength - Increase between matches so that when the 7th match hits the opponent level is maybe 1.5 times the players level (like when I take my championed mags/loki/lthor up against level 280 moonstone/jugs/rags) * 24 hours to complete all 7 attempts on all 9 nodes - Perhaps another vault token for completing all 63 matches per sub event so that each sub event awards a total of 10 vault tokens and a total of 70+ potential vault tokens over the course of a 7 day event (3 and 4 day events should be scaled accordingly on the amount of rewards in the vault) Benefits of my suggestions: * If it really is about income, people will buy 10 and 40 packs on the vaults to ensure the get all 3 covers of new charecters * PVE potentially becomes more popular as it is now challenging, but not difficult and the rewards are worth playing for * Players can play at their own pace and as much as they want depending on what they want * Everyone can be guaranteed a legitimate opportunity on getting new charecters

Here's my two cents. Feel free to give me one cent change.


*edit*
fixed my math on 7*9. It's 63, not 56 or 54

Deadpool369

Im not sure if this was mentioned but with the difficulty scaled up like this the pvp players kind of have to choose what to do. Before you could do a clear and maybe use 2 or 3 health packs and still have enough to do a push in pvp. Now I've noticed that I have to choose to try and do clears in pve or use my health packs and try to score well in pvp for my alliance

Cylaali

I came on here to comment on the PVE changes and give my two cents, but I'd literally be echoing what Tanis said. To me, the biggest things he touched on are I can only use basically any variation that involves my two best players as opposed to my whole roster. Also, the out of control scaling.

optimus2861

Add also that the 'Wolverine + red feeders' node structure is stupidly abundant in EoTS, and we also have 'Gorgon + all feeders' yet to come. Start scaling those nodes up and they get very painful, very fast. This may have been one of the poorer event choices to try out this new scaling structure.

I took my champion Cage, Fist, and LThor into a node marked 'Easy' against a pair of Kishus and Wolvie, leveled somewhere in the 140s I think. Easy my foot. Cage = dead. Fist = dead. Thor = 140 health. If Wolvie wasn't slashing me, I was tripping on Caltrops all over the freaking place.

I got better things to do than wreck my characters in these obscene nodes.

pheregas

Xenoberyll wrote:

tanis3303 wrote:

What We Don't Like About the New PvE Experience

1:) Increased time commitment
HUGE grind of 6-7 clears at the subs start (5-6 hours maybe?) + 1 grind down at subs end (~2-3 hours or more) AND another HUGE grind of 6-7 clears of the new sub for optimal scoring. This is far too much to ask. If the reward tiers were vastly expanded, this wouldn't be as big of an issue

I disagree here...There's NO way that kind of time commitment should be in the game. There's no reward worth giving up your life. People would probably still be inclined to do it but that's human psyche. If d3 feels any kind of responsibility for their players they will trash that concept.

First off, thank you Tanis3303 for a great synopsis.

As to Xenoberyll's point, I think OP was referring to what was necessary in order to get maximal points. Many people, such as myself, am happy to do a clear every 8 hours, then another clear or two in the waning hours of the sub (with priority on those CP nodes!) I usually rank about 25 that way, without having to grind everything down to 0. I know I could do more, but more would just not be fun!

New note:

Now that I have started the fourth sub, done one clear, and am currently ranked 20th overall in my slice, I'm still 90,000 points short of the final progression CP. I've been doing pretty much 5-6 clears on every node (I just don't have the health packs to do any more). Given that the points don't atrophy during that time, I feel like I should be closer to that final progression goal than I am. I know EotS is point heavier towards the back, but still. I'm not a fan of putting all my effort into trying to maintain top 50 to get that bonus +10 cp, which may end up being my only reward CP for the event (other than top node rewards).

Here's a handy link to what is upcoming for the event. It's a nice synopsis. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14484

TxMoose

tanis summed up my feelings nearly exactly. my biggest obstacle is the time increase. I cannot double my time commitment to PVE. that's basically what is required for similar placement (compared to brotherhood/unstable/meet grocket/etc). I used to place t50 easily and a similar effort has me in the upper 100s now. I think the roided up survival nodes play into this (time ROI), which is why EotS may not have been the best 'test' event to use. so basically a similar time commitment as before gets me a first clear and then some chasing down of cp from the nodes. then some repeat clears of a few nodes. I have no ability to string together 2-3 hours at sub opening and another 2-3 hours at sub end, especially on top of all the other aspects of the game that are more important to me.

the return on investment in pve had been enough to maintain t50 in most events. now will just be to go get cp from nodes and any big iso nodes at the top of a sub, and here that takes nearly as long as 4 clears/sub. the added time required for all levels of nodes will put a big dent in my iso production as well. at a time when the only thing that moves my roster along and impacts my playing experience is iso and OML yellow, this change has put a huge dent into the speed of progression toward both of those because, i'm not making nearly as much iso now and have no chance at progression cp at this point in pve, so only cp income will be pvp and nodes.

PeterGibbons316

I really agree with #6 and I think the devs really missed the mark on this one.

I've spent a lot of time/effort/money to get a pretty damn solid roster in just 500 days or so. And I'm really enjoying the diversity that I have created. After coming on here and reading about the excessive increase in difficulty I made it a goal to try and get through my first 6 clears without using a health pack.....and I actually did it (except for the wave nodes, why repeat them for no reward???), and I was feeling pretty proud of myself until I checked my leaderboard and was 155th. It took a LOT more time than previous events, and now more than ever I feel punished for spending so much time creating a diverse roster.

snlf25

1. The loss of trivial nodes is a complete trash fire. words cannot express how much that sucks especially when I've got champion covers dying on the vine for want of iso.

2. Somebody will literally die trying to deal with the 6 clear optimal system on a new character release PvE like the Korean kids who keeled over dead at their computers playing Starcraft back in the day. Look at how hard some of these people are going and look at the **** prizes for placement in this one. Multiply it exponentially if this was the system when Quake debuted.

3. Two of the top guys in my bracket are level 70 soft cappers. Congrats for making me feel like a tool still for developing my roster, devs. Once again, super punitive slap me across the face for trying to better my roster.

4. Scaling is absurdly **** now with 13-25 full level increases between victories. Full scale abomination! Three or Four clears and I've succeeded to the point where I'm out. My roster can't beat a node a fifth or sixth time. I don't see a path to the 25 CP anymore. The final prize is too far out with this difficulty. The way I see it, save up Deadpool points for a year or two and then pick a PvE I want to play and Super Whale the piss out of it?

5. Completely mundane playing experience now as I can only get by with my best 5 or so guys. Gone are the days when I could play with hundreds of different team combos. I will really miss that if this sticks around. It was how I experimented and learned the best way to use characters.

6. All of this extra difficulty hate piled up on us for the same trash tier rewards. Congrats, you beat a level 275 Wolverine 2 star and his 1star red feeder buddies that scale to levels your nerfed and impotent 3stars can't even dream of anymore. Here's 3 critical boosts. Come back again and we'll see if we can't get you 70 iso.

jobob

Great summary, thanks for compiling it! I totally agree with pretty much 100% of the content.

Crowl

snlf25 wrote:

1. The loss of trivial nodes is a complete trash fire. words cannot express how much that sucks especially when I've got champion covers dying on the vine for want of iso.

4. Scaling is absurdly **** now with 13-25 full level increases between victories. Full scale abomination! Three or Four clears and I've succeeded to the point where I'm out. My roster can't beat a node a fifth or sixth time. I don't see a path to the 25 CP anymore. The final prize is too far out with this difficulty. The way I see it, save up Deadpool points for a year or two and then pick a PvE I want to play and Super Whale the piss out of it?

The thing is, they could have still had scaling on the trivial nodes, start them as 40, 50 and 60 and go up by 10 a clear, still increases in difficulty but not taking the piss for a wolverine plus two red feeders node where people were starting at 200+.

I am sure I saw one node jump by about 40 at the start of the 3rd sub.

Wolarsen

What I Like About the New PvE Experience

1:) Communication of the change BEFORE it went live, so we knew what to expect
2:) Willingness to try something new
3:) Compensation tokens just for participating
4:) IMPROVEMENT of strict timed clears to promote a play-at-your-own-pace experience. But there is still an optimal gameplay that would force you to play around the clock (mass clear at start and end of each sub)
5:) Transparent enemy scaling and leveling
6:) Enemy power levels capped at 13/13 instead of 15/13


What I Don't Like About the New PvE Experience

1:) Increased time commitment; I used to do 3-4 full clears and it took me way less tan current 6-7
2:) Removal of the easier nodes. I'd rather keep a set of slowly increasing trivial-Green-yellow-red nodes (just make red start hard).
3:) Scaling too high; sometimes I faced a 3-4th turn adamantium slash that one-shot a weak character.
4:) Increased repeatideness makes clearing same node boring.
5:) Wave nodes offering nothing for repeated plays.

Unknown

I seriously dislike these changes. My roster needs almost 2m ISO to get everyone maxed to their current covers. These battles are getting too hard, too fast, and I cannot win them. And without the old 20-crystal battles in the prologue, there is nothing for me to do in this game anymore.

Smudge

To me, the biggest problem has nothing to do with placement. It has to do with progression. As a full time college student working two jobs in his early 30s, I don't have the time to sink into the game to compete for placement from the start. I didn't have the ability to pick any time slice that would allow me to clear every 8 hours; it was impossible.

However, under the old system, I could run a clear of nodes near the beginning of a slice, hit a clear sub-optimally maybe 1-3 hours early, then run another sub-optimal clear/semi grind towards the end. If I only managed a couple of complete sub-event clears for any particular sub, it didn't kill me for progression. For the Simulator event that closed right before EotS, I didn't have Quake for her essential node, and I know I only cleared the hardest node in each sub one time for the 2k ISO. I still managed to hit the trivial nodes enough to grind them to 1 pt each, and between that and maybe 3-4 clears of each essential plus the normal track, I hit the 30k progression for the 25 CP with no problem.

That strategy was good enough for T100+ placement, but like I said, placement was never a goal anyway. The new system with the ramped up progression targets is a significantly larger time sink. The weekend let me hit T50 in the first two subs with no problem, but I haven't even broken 75k points yet. That 25 CP is looking daunting despite the increased points in the next couple subs. Guess we will see.

I understand making the progression harder to hit with each initial clear being full points up to the first 6 hits, but this makes the time sink dramatically worse compared to the old system.

rawfsu

I played a little bit over the weekend and just a few thoughts. I'm sure many people have noticed/commented, but I wasn't about to read through everything. Here's my two cents...

1). Roster diversity is gone. My roster is pretty spread out, with some 3*'s at 40 all the way to my 5*'s as 255 and my Thoress at level 200. My "easy" node starts at level 100. My back roster that I used to use on that level 34 "easy" node in the past is now useless.

2). Health pack dilemma. You're in a PVP-focused alliance, but occasionally dipped in PVE in the past. For example, I placed top 100 last event and got my Quake cover. This was due to being able to manage health packs between PVP and PVE. That option is now gone. To get anywhere in PVE now, you're going to have to burn your health packs thanks to the scaling and possibly not have them ready for your climb in PVP (I do wait until the last day to climb in PVP). Either put up money, or decide between the two. There's really seems to be no other option (at this time).

3). The better, the worse. The better your roster, the worse it is for you. Look at point 1. This has never made sense to me before these changes. This system has made it worse.

4). Demands more. PVE has now become more time-consuming. If you don't do full clears of each node 7 times, you're being left in the dust. This brings up point 2 as well. You've got to keep up because there's literally thousands of points left out there if you don't do full clears. And you know someone out there is, so you better if you want to keep up.

5). Not worth the effort. With the same rewards structure, it's not worth it, at least from a veteran perspective, to invest such time and effort for such little pay-off. I'm simply doing the 1k ISO run with Beast, then checking out. Why go on? I'll have to kill the front end of my roster, burn my health packs, and start all over again. No thanks.

6). EotS. This was the worst PVE to use as a measuring stick. The Hand ninjas are a nightmare in and of themselves. Then, you're going to pile on upscaling to an already annoying and frustrating enemy set. I can't imagine much veteran participation reflected in the sample population D3 is trying to collect.

mohio

I pretty much agree with Tanis's summation of the forum feedback. One thing I wanted to add, which I found interesting, but obviously purely anecdotal...I am in s5 and was yet to start the sub as of about 11PM last night (it ended just 3 hours later), despite that, I was still in like 580th place (out of only 802 people in the event overall at the time). Found it quite telling that over 1/4th of the people in my bracket had already decided theyd had enough after just the first sub.

Calnexin

Getting to the meta...

A lot of people are saying they have to spend about twice as much time on the game for similar placement. I'm experiencing much the same thing.

Given that placement is relative to your competition, it follows that your competition is also spending twice as long, maybe more so, to make more points than you. I think that's a fair assessment. Everyone's starting from the same place, but getting to different reward tiers.

I've also read here that 2* teams are dominating leaderboards - their scaling is much more forgiving and can clear nodes way faster. Their heroes also heal quicker without health packs.

That information makes me ponder the design goal. It could be that, since PvP is so heavily dominated by 4* and higher, maybe PvE is being redesigned as a low-tier booster. Insane scaling for high-tier rosters ensures they won't take top place, alllowing lower-tier rosters a chance to earn the 3* and 4* cover rewards they so desperately need to advance in the game. Because they sure don't stand a chance while the developed 4* rosters are vying for top-10.

Twysta