New PvE Scaling - Relative vs Absolute Issues

KGB

I posted this in another thread but wanted to highlight this issue for better feedback for future PvE

The 10th place player in my slice has 157K points with the following roster:
Ghost Rider (1 cover)
4Thor (1 cover)
Hulk (3 covers, L63)
Daken (9 covers, L62)
Beast (3 covers L53)
IM35 (13 covers, L50)
Mohawk (3 covers, L45)
Hood (3 covers, L45)
BW (10 covers, L40)
GSBW (1 cover)
Daken (1 cover)
Daredevil (1 cover)
IM40 (1 cover)
Sam Wilson (1 cover)
LThor (1 cover)
Vision (1 cover)
Ms Marvel (6 covers, L38)
Magneto (5 covers, L38)
Wolverine (5 covers, L31)
Storm Modern (5 covers, L25)
Thor (5 covers, L25)
Moonstone (4 covers, L15)

Which is insane or they have achieved what they wanted in terms of newbies being able to be top 10

It also confirms something from my own experience in this PvE. I didn't have Beast rostered but I did have 1 cover from the last PvE. I added him with 1 cover just so I could do his essential character nodes. What the new scaling seems to do, at least with the essential character nodes is WAY under value your roster if your essential character is weak. My Beast was a 1 cover L40 character so all Beast nodes for me started with enemies around L35 even though my roster average is around L100 (1 char at 104, 2 at 98, a bunch more around 85-90) which is where regular nodes in the PvE were for me (trivial around 75, easy around 85 and normal around 100).

Because Beast is a boosted character (to L134) and I had other boosted characters (Thor) that meant I could easily do max clears (7+) of Beast nodes before the level of the enemies got into the mid 90's (where I still won but the points value for clear was diminishing rapidly). So of my 80K score I bet 40K of it was Beast node clears and another 20K was Ms Marvel (I have her at L65 so again enemies in her nodes started in the mid 50's).

I suspect the 10th place guy feasted even more than me on repeated clears of the essential nodes in the same manner.

That brings me to my point about Relative vs Absolute scaling especially as it relates to the essential Boosted characters. If you boost Beast to L134 and I fight L35 enemies (with potentially 2 more boosted characters) I am roughly 4x their level. I suspect for people with a maxed Beast (L166) that even after boosting that he is not facing enemies 1/4 of his level. The scaling for the essential nodes probably needs to take this into account so that the scaling is relative (maybe in essential nodes *everyone* starts with enemies 1/3 or 1/2 their level *after* boost). Otherwise players who have weak essential characters are going to clean up in PvE because those nodes award many more points than regular ones and will be much easier to complete.

KGB

Pylgrim

The thing is that your Beast is "undervalued" because he has only one cover. His level seems to be a much smaller component of the equation. Which is par for the course and one of the good changes introduced in this test: beginners that for some reason have a highly levelled character (such as a 5*) don't get punished for it, while soft-cappers lose much of the advantage they had.

The fact that a beginner was able to take top 10 is not surprising when you take in account that, in this tested new system, neither roster, skill, planning or any other factor you can come up with beats time expenditure as the defining factor of a high score. The top 10 is literally a list of the people willing and capable to play the most times.

Dragon_Nexus

Pylgrim wrote:

The top 10 is literally a list of the people willing and capable to play the most times.

Capable is a loose term here.
Because my roster of entirely championed 3*s should be much better equipped to take on the challenge, but after a few runs the enemies have levelled up so much I just groan. Oh goody, now EVERY node is as hard as the final nodes used to be!

Given better fights, I'd be capable of grinding these things down, but I definitely don't have the patience to hit each node 6 times in 24 hours.

KGB

Pylgrim wrote:

The thing is that your Beast is "undervalued" because he has only one cover. His level seems to be a much smaller component of the equation. Which is par for the course and one of the good changes introduced in this test: beginners that for some reason have a highly levelled character (such as a 5*) don't get punished for it, while soft-cappers lose much of the advantage they had.

The fact that a beginner was able to take top 10 is not surprising when you take in account that, in this tested new system, neither roster, skill, planning or any other factor you can come up with beats time expenditure as the defining factor of a high score. The top 10 is literally a list of the people willing and capable to play the most times.

I don't see how the current PvE helps at all.

As mentioned, my Ms Marvel is at L65 even though she's fully covered. I'm not soft capping, I just don't want to spend ISO to level a 2nd tier character. But in all her nodes, the enemies are starting under (L50ish) where they are starting in my 'trivial' nodes (L70ish). On top of that she's boosted to L150+ so she's facing enemies that are 1/3 her level.

As for the guy who is in 10th, think about his roster. Much of it is boosted (3 essential characters, Thor/Daredevil etc). My Beast is 134 (6000 health), his is going to be 150+ because has has more covers. Yet I bet he faced enemies in the L20 range to start off given his roster. When the enemies are THAT low, covers don't matter because just the match-3 damage is 180+ so he will be downing enemies with 3-4 matches (my enemies in Beast nodes started with 1100 health and were often downed in 5-6 matches). That's what happens when you are 5x the level of your enemy.

That's where things are out of wack compared to players who have L166 Beasts. He isn't boosted to L700+ so that he's 3-4x their level.

KGB

aa25

Just want to add a data point for those who are interested.

My Ms. Marvel was at 115 and boosted to 190. The enemies in her essential node on the first sub started off at Lv 110 110 110. The top 10 chars of my roster were Phoenix Lv 270, SS Lv 270, Ms. Marvel Lv 190, Psylocke Lv 180, OBW Lv 176, 2*Thor Lv 176, Quake Lv 153, 4*DP Lv 140, Moonie Lv 115, SW Lv 115. Characters who are at 1 covers are in bold. Quake is at 3, Psylocke and SW are at 9, and the rests are at 13. I did not grind the node down, so I don't know how high the level would go. Let's say it's scaled 15 Lv per clear, that will probably add about 90 after 6 clears. So that will be 200 which is only ~50 higher than my last node before the first clear. While the last node skyrocketed to almost Lv 300 after 6 (or 7?) clears.

Set that aside, even in the old system, the essential nodes are always easier and yield more points, aren't they ? I've been telling myself that if I don't have at least 2 essentials, I might as well just take it easy. There is no way I will get far in the progress rewards or can be competitive for the placement rewards.

Warbringa

Beast is one of my weaker characters as I didn't roster him until late in the 3* process. Boosted I think he was around level 134 for me (normally level 40). On the first event wave node my enemies only started at level 55. However from all subevents onward, the Beast nodes started at around level 120, even though I didn't make any significant changes to the roster.

My issue was I have a one cover Ghost Rider (level 70) and his nodes started out at the same difficulty as my level 129 2* Captain Marvel (boosted to like level 202 for the event)! Ghost Rider was useless except for some minor tanking whereas Captain Marvel was actually really good. Why are these nodes the same difficulty when the usefulness of the characters and their levels for each essential were very different? The only reason I can think Ghost Riders nodes were just as hard is because his nodes have CP rewards?

Warbringa

aa25 wrote:

Just want to add a data point for those who are interested.

My Ms. Marvel was at 115 and boosted to 190. The enemies in her essential node on the first sub started off at Lv 110 110 110. The top 10 chars of my roster were Phoenix Lv 270, SS Lv 270, Ms. Marvel Lv 190, Psylocke Lv 180, OBW Lv 176, 2*Thor Lv 176, Quake Lv 153, 4*DP Lv 140, Moonie Lv 115, SW Lv 115. Characters who are at 1 covers are in bold. Quake is at 3, Psylocke and SW are at 9, and the rests are at 13. I did not grind the node down, so I don't know how high the level would go. Let's say it's scaled 15 Lv per clear, that will probably add about 90 after 6 clears. So that will be 200 which is only ~50 higher than my last node before the first clear. While the last node skyrocketed to almost Lv 300 after 6 (or 7?) clears.

Set that aside, even in the old system, the essential nodes are always easier and yield more points, aren't they ? I've been telling myself that if I don't have at least 2 essentials, I might as well just take it easy. There is no way I will get far in the progress rewards or can be competitive for the placement rewards.

Yeah essential were always easier than the hard nodes but tougher than the trivials with scaling in the old system could still get to be fairly difficult depending on the node.

Warbringa

KGB wrote:

I posted this in another thread but wanted to highlight this issue for better feedback for future PvE

The 10th place player in my slice has 157K points with the following roster:
Ghost Rider (1 cover)
4Thor (1 cover)
Hulk (3 covers, L63)
Daken (9 covers, L62)
Beast (3 covers L53)
IM35 (13 covers, L50)
Mohawk (3 covers, L45)
Hood (3 covers, L45)
BW (10 covers, L40)
GSBW (1 cover)
Daken (1 cover)
Daredevil (1 cover)
IM40 (1 cover)
Sam Wilson (1 cover)
LThor (1 cover)
Vision (1 cover)
Ms Marvel (6 covers, L38)
Magneto (5 covers, L38)
Wolverine (5 covers, L31)
Storm Modern (5 covers, L25)
Thor (5 covers, L25)
Moonstone (4 covers, L15)

Which is insane or they have achieved what they wanted in terms of newbies being able to be top 10

It also confirms something from my own experience in this PvE. I didn't have Beast rostered but I did have 1 cover from the last PvE. I added him with 1 cover just so I could do his essential character nodes. What the new scaling seems to do, at least with the essential character nodes is WAY under value your roster if your essential character is weak. My Beast was a 1 cover L40 character so all Beast nodes for me started with enemies around L35 even though my roster average is around L100 (1 char at 104, 2 at 98, a bunch more around 85-90) which is where regular nodes in the PvE were for me (trivial around 75, easy around 85 and normal around 100).

Because Beast is a boosted character (to L134) and I had other boosted characters (Thor) that meant I could easily do max clears (7+) of Beast nodes before the level of the enemies got into the mid 90's (where I still won but the points value for clear was diminishing rapidly). So of my 80K score I bet 40K of it was Beast node clears and another 20K was Ms Marvel (I have her at L65 so again enemies in her nodes started in the mid 50's).

I suspect the 10th place guy feasted even more than me on repeated clears of the essential nodes in the same manner.

That brings me to my point about Relative vs Absolute scaling especially as it relates to the essential Boosted characters. If you boost Beast to L134 and I fight L35 enemies (with potentially 2 more boosted characters) I am roughly 4x their level. I suspect for people with a maxed Beast (L166) that even after boosting that he is not facing enemies 1/4 of his level. The scaling for the essential nodes probably needs to take this into account so that the scaling is relative (maybe in essential nodes *everyone* starts with enemies 1/3 or 1/2 their level *after* boost). Otherwise players who have weak essential characters are going to clean up in PvE because those nodes award many more points than regular ones and will be much easier to complete.

KGB

I think there are two things needed to address this issue:

1.) initial scaling needs to start lower, especially for the old trivial nodes and essentials (this will help players with better rosters much more than new players in this new format)
2.) for very underdeveloped rosters, simply place them in a separate bracket so they compete against each other if it ends up being they really do have an advantage

Also, you may yourself be in a noobie bracket OP as while I did see a couple of 2* maxed rosters and many 3* rosters at the top of my bracket (along with some 4* too), I didn't see anyone with that weak of a roster any where near me and I only ranked in the 300s in my event as I didn't play it competitive. I am in a veteran bracket of course.

Druss

The idea that high score is determined by time played & no other factor is not true.

For the stronger rosters (I have 7 champed 4* & all 40 3* in the 180+ bracket) all nodes started at lowest level of 290 odd, quickly scaling well into the 300's meaning 95% of my roster was effectively scaled out (any 3* teams I did try usually died very quickly).

It is not possible to do multiple clears without expanding a heavy amount of health packs - a complete clear of each node ONCE usually required anywhere between 7-10 health packs. Six straight clears just wasn't possible.