Summing Up Our Feelings After a Weekend of New PvE

BecomingDitto

Smudge wrote:

nate461 wrote:

4) Drastic increase in overall difficulty for the same rewards as before
If the difficulty ramps up after each fight, the rewards should increase also. Finally beat that node that you lost to several times rewards you by gaining more than 20 levels and here's 70 ISO for clearing it! That's not positive reinforcement, that's just frustrating, and it does not foster repeat. If you lose a node the program should scale down.

*snipped*

This test does the exact opposite. While it gets harder and harder, you have no recourse against the game. There is eventually a wall you hit, and it loses its fun and interest factor quickly. If difficulty scaled back on a loss even half as much as it increased on a win, it would be a completely different story.

As has been reiterated time and again here, this model explicitly punishes players for developing their rosters. Every other game out there starts the challenge appropriately or allows you to bring yourself up to the challenge eventually rather than building up until you can no longer even compete.

The problem with this, is it would be completely open to abuse.

Scale up a bit, toss some single covered characters at it to lose intentionally. Or better yet, start off by losing all but your top few characters at the sub, then start in ernest, making the whole thing a bit easier. People would start rostering 1 stars again, just because they have the fastest revival time.

That said, your overall sentiment is correct. The game punishes advancement, and doesn't offer any meaningful way of getting your characters stronger. Which of course, will be punished even more.

Instead what they should do is completely get rid of the competitive nature of PVE. Instead of finishing in a bracket, everyone starts off the same, and progresses through a given sub. Once you finish going through it all, the sub scales up, as do the rewards.

This would show true progress in the game, because as you get a stronger roster, you can go through it more times, and get the better rewards.

Each 'tier' would be able to be completed by someone in a given stage in the game (starting out, 1-2 transition, fully 2 roster, 2->3 transition, 3 roster, etc.), and have rewards that are meaningful at that stage of the game, so when you hit a wall, at least you will have likely received a reward that will help you move forward in the game.

Perhaps they even still allow multiple clears (though like gauntlet, you only get points for the first clear), with multiple rewards, but you would be incentivized to go forward, to get the more meaningful rewards, and better progression rewards.

This would make PVE actually be PVE, and not PVP in disguise.

There really are so many ways they could have done this better, ways that have been suggested on these forums for ages, and instead of coming up with any meaningful solution they come out with the most soul crushing, time consuming solution possible.

Jaedenkaal

BecomingDitto wrote:

Instead what they should do is completely get rid of the competitive nature of PVE. Instead of finishing in a bracket, everyone starts off the same, and progresses through a given sub. Once you finish going through it all, the sub scales up, as do the rewards.

This would show true progress in the game, because as you get a stronger roster, you can go through it more times, and get the better rewards.

If the issue is that they don't want to increase the number of people that get the best reward, they could also add a lottery that divvies up the "end-of-event" rewards among everyone that finished, based on the highest progression reward 'bracket' that you achieved. With large ISO consolation prizes for the people who don't actually get the covers/tokens, of course. (What ISO shortage?). An infinitely-deep progression reward system wouldn't hurt either (+500 ISO for every X points beyond the last bracket)

simonsez

Jaedenkaal wrote:

they could also add a lottery that divvies up the "end-of-event" rewards among everyone that finished

MORE randomized progression??? GTFO, please...

simonsez

BecomingDitto wrote:

The problem with this, is it would be completely open to abuse.

What would be the point of abusing it? If you can already beat a level, just beat it. Why waste time tanking to make it easier to beat?

Khaoz77

Long story short... I like the changes but not their numbers.

If only it was more deep roster oriented and not so time consuming...

Jaedenkaal

simonsez wrote:

Jaedenkaal wrote:

they could also add a lottery that divvies up the "end-of-event" rewards among everyone that finished

MORE randomized progression??? GTFO, please...

Some might feel that random progression is still preferable to what they get right now (guaranteed nothing)

TxMoose

I'm concerned that most of the talk is - deal with scaling and everything is ok. I'm still not ok with progression being extended by 50%, even if the scaling thing gets adjusted. every time we asked for any kind of adjustment to pve, none of it included "I'd love to be required to play even more"...

simonsez

Jaedenkaal wrote:

Some might feel that random progression is still preferable to what they get right now (guaranteed nothing)

If you're getting "nothing" from PvE, I would suggest playing it.

BecomingDitto

simonsez wrote:

BecomingDitto wrote:

The problem with this, is it would be completely open to abuse.

What would be the point of abusing it? If you can already beat a level, just beat it. Why waste time tanking to make it easier to beat?

I suppose it all depends on how it would be implemented. Specifically, what is the floor of points you could reduce it to, and what happens when you do finally defeat a node.

Say we start off at level 100.

I win, it goes up to 120.

If I lose, how far down can I take it? Can I drop it below the previous 100?

Say the floor is the difficulty of the previous level (so, 100).

I lose, and it goes down to 110, then 100.

When happens if I win when it's at 100? Does it go up to 120? Or does it increase based on where level 3 would be (140)? What is the new floor at this level, is it 120 now, or is it still 100? Can we bring it below the original 100? But, doing this, would allow people to defeat nodes with weaker characters in their roster, than the node or event might require.

Mind you, this is arguing details of a system that doesn't exist, but the implementation of such a system could be abused by tanking depending on how it was done. And honestly, D3 seems to really struggle with systems that don't require some kind of gaming to get around.

That not withstanding, the need for something like this would simply say "Ooops, we overshot the difficulty; here, try something a little easier", and I can't think of a game I've ever played that as you lost, made itself easier to beat.

simonsez

BecomingDitto wrote:

doing this, would allow people to defeat nodes with weaker characters in their roster, than the node or event might require.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you, but there aren't supposed to be nodes that are unbeatable. That's the whole reason for personal scaling. Like I said, I still don't see any advantage to tanking a node you can already beat.

Smudge

simonsez wrote:

BecomingDitto wrote:

doing this, would allow people to defeat nodes with weaker characters in their roster, than the node or event might require.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you, but there aren't supposed to be nodes that are unbeatable. That's the whole reason for personal scaling. Like I said, I still don't see any advantage to tanking a node you can already beat.

I'm with you on this one. I do understand the potential for abuse, but it would be easily mitigated by setting a floor for scaling, and if a player retreats from a fight, scaling doesn't change.

Most people are already upset about the grind time required. Deliberately tanking a node you can beat is not going to gain you anything other than 3 characters who need to revive and a bunch more wasted time. It is when you hit that proverbial wall where you can't beat a node that things need to start dialing back. As someone who used primarily 3 boosted, championed 3* characters (Blade, Hood, and DD) to run through EotS, I can tell you that my team hits a wall around level 300 for scaling whether it's goons or Gorgon/Wolverine combos. If scaling dialed back to ~275, I can beat it with moderate difficulty. I stopped trying against 300+ because 17k health on a Gorgon plus 10k+ on his feeders is just too much to handle with the amount of damage they dish out compared to my nerfed 3*s.

Yes, I could roll my whole 78 character roster including my 1 cover level 70 4*s against the level 300 node until it scaled back dramatically, but then my whole day has been wasted on one node. If that is abusing the system, so be it. People with more time than I have already can grind much higher than I can, and a dial back in difficulty isn't going to reward them more or punish me less than the current system anyway.

BecomingDitto

simonsez wrote:

BecomingDitto wrote:

doing this, would allow people to defeat nodes with weaker characters in their roster, than the node or event might require.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you, but there aren't supposed to be nodes that are unbeatable. That's the whole reason for personal scaling. Like I said, I still don't see any advantage to tanking a node you can already beat.

If no nodes are supposed to be unbeatable, then it's a moot point, as the scale back shouldn't be necessary then.

Kevin61

The only positive thing was the elimination of the timers. Otherwise, in order to make the 25 CP progression reward, you had to play each and every node 6 times (7 if you wanted all the rewards) just to get to 156,000. As much as I love playing this game, I just don't have that kind of time to put into it. Life just gets in the way!

kaelad

Kevin61 wrote:

The only positive thing was the elimination of the timers. Otherwise, in order to make the 25 CP progression reward, you had to play each and every node 6 times (7 if you wanted all the rewards) just to get to 156,000. As much as I love playing this game, I just don't have that kind of time to put into it. Life just gets in the way!

This is what ruined it for me. I had fun replaying the wave nodes because Blade stealing all that red AP was glorious. I just didn't have the time to hit the nodes that often to make the 25 CP progression reward. And with all 3 essential characters I have always hit that with 3 clears per sub + 30 minutes of grinding at the end in previous events. Sure, I'm only 163 days in so that's only 6 or 7 times, but still. Not this one. The "play when you want" part is a great goal for PvE, just poorly executed in this test.

JVReal

I enjoyed this event.

I liked that how I did in one node did not scale up the next node. Fixed scaling increase after beating it is much preferred for me than playing a node, doing well, and seeing that the next one went up again from hard to deadly without me touching it.

darkestcurse

I fully agree with all of these statements. I found I was using my top leveled characters instead of having fun. Also did not help that Old Man Logan is my top character by far and he was locked out for 3/4ths of this event making the battles all that much harder. I found that after clearing the nodes 2-3 times I was board and no longer wanted to even do it. Not to mention I didn't have enough health packs to continue and I wasn't going to buy more for the minor rewards that were offered.

lymang

THis put a few things into words that I was having trouble formulating, and one poster said it best: I'm scaling up so fast on CP nodes that i'm using way more resources to get the CP than I was previously.

Unknown

I'm probably in the minority, but I really liked the new changes except for the fact they bumped up the points required to get 25 CP. If they kept everything from the new version except bumped the CP required back to original, I think it'd be great.

abmoraz

BecomingDitto wrote:

simonsez wrote:

BecomingDitto wrote:

The problem with this, is it would be completely open to abuse.

What would be the point of abusing it? If you can already beat a level, just beat it. Why waste time tanking to make it easier to beat?

I suppose it all depends on how it would be implemented. Specifically, what is the floor of points you could reduce it to, and what happens when you do finally defeat a node.

Say we start off at level 100.

I win, it goes up to 120.

If I lose, how far down can I take it? Can I drop it below the previous 100?

Say the floor is the difficulty of the previous level (so, 100).

I lose, and it goes down to 110, then 100.

When happens if I win when it's at 100? Does it go up to 120? Or does it increase based on where level 3 would be (140)? What is the new floor at this level, is it 120 now, or is it still 100? Can we bring it below the original 100? But, doing this, would allow people to defeat nodes with weaker characters in their roster, than the node or event might require.

Mind you, this is arguing details of a system that doesn't exist, but the implementation of such a system could be abused by tanking depending on how it was done. And honestly, D3 seems to really struggle with systems that don't require some kind of gaming to get around.

That not withstanding, the need for something like this would simply say "Ooops, we overshot the difficulty; here, try something a little easier", and I can't think of a game I've ever played that as you lost, made itself easier to beat.

I think a more realistic result would be people using their chars with a single cover (or for those of us that are masochistic: our Yelena and Bag-Man that we still have rostered) to purposefully lose to drive the node level down without sacrificing a usable character.

nate461

The worst thing about the two tests that have been run, is that when you win the system ratchets up your opponents, but does not ratchet them down if you lose and can't beat them. If you are going to ratchet up, then you should ratchet down as well.
Most of the other problems can be fixed by better scaling and increasing the rewards. Under either system you have to grind each node to nothing to get the better rewards.