PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Unstable Iso-8

David [Hi-Fi] Moore
David [Hi-Fi] Moore Posts: 2,872 Site Admin
edited April 2016 in MPQ General Discussion
Hi everyone,

The MPQ dev team have been assessing user results and feedback gathered during the recent Enemy of the State Story scaling testing. We are now ready to run an additional test in the upcoming Unstable Iso-8 event.

Here’s the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:
    “First of all, I’d like to thank everyone that participated and provided feedback on the Enemy of the State event we ran last week. In general, we saw better win rates and people were playing the event more. However, we also saw that missions were too difficult and reaching particular progression rewards took longer than we’d like. We’ll be testing the new system again in the Unstable Iso-8 Story event with some changes. We’ve lowered mission difficulty, and made it easier to earn progression rewards. The event after Unstable Iso-8 will return to the old system again. We don’t expect that these changes will address all of the issues we’re seeing, and we have another test planned after this. (In particular, having a high-level team isn’t providing as much of an advantage as we’d like.) Keep the feedback coming as we appreciate all that we get!
    Updated Mission Difficulty Details:
    • Every mission got easier.
      o The easy missions more so, increasing the range of difficulty.
    • Essential missions have a range of difficulty across the different star tiers
      o All are easier than the previous run of the updated mission difficulty. o 2-Star Essential missions are the easiest and 4-Star Essential missions are the hardest.
    Progression rewards for the 3-Star cover and Command Points have been lowered.”
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    Comments

    • Punisher5784
      Punisher5784 Posts: 3,845 Chairperson of the Boards
      I have not been playing so I have no opinion on this but I am happy to see that they are trying to make the necessary attempts/changes to make this a much more enjoyable game. I hope the new tests work out for everyone.
    • adamdivine
      adamdivine Posts: 136 Tile Toppler
      Sounds great. Thanks for listening.
    • ZeiramMR
      ZeiramMR Posts: 1,357 Chairperson of the Boards
      edited March 2016
      "David wrote:
      Moore"]
        o All are easier than the previous run of the updated mission difficulty. o 2-Star Essential missions are the easiest and 4-Star Essential missions are the hardest.
      We'll have to see this in action, but one thing that concerns me is how this would impact PVEs immediately after a character release if this change continues in the future. People will be forced to use a character with only a few covers, if not one, and a high level fight is disproportionately difficult.
    • Bulls
      Bulls Posts: 141 Tile Toppler
      Nice to get 2nd run of tests, Im just not sure how good of a motivator is chulk as a reward for 7days event. Anyway cant wait to see this new adjusted scaling.
    • GrumpySmurf1002
      GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
      Very much appreciative that you listened to the changes.

      While I still feel the 24 hour timer does not solve the overall problem with PvE (bracketing and competition), these do sound like positive improvements. Looking forward to testing it.
    • stochasticism
      stochasticism Posts: 1,181 Chairperson of the Boards
      Was hoping to see the number of required clears to start the timer AND the number of clears to reach the minimum point value lowered. It's just too much of a clustergrind with the 24h timer the way the numbers are configured now.
    • wymtime
      wymtime Posts: 3,758 Chairperson of the Boards
      For the essentials I understand making them scale for difficulty but shouldn't it be based on the number of covers or levels in the essential character? If someone has a 1 cover punisher and he is essential why would this be the hardest essential node? You are already playing 2 vs 3 since the 4* will be fairly useless. Now if someone has a 13 cover 4* and have not put ISO into them that should increase the difficulty to encourage players to level their 4* if there was enough ISO given in the game.
    • fmftint
      fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
      Still 6x before 24 hour recharge? That still feels on the high side
    • Smudge
      Smudge Posts: 562 Critical Contributor
      ZeiramMR wrote:
      "David wrote:
      Moore"]
        o All are easier than the previous run of the updated mission difficulty. o 2-Star Essential missions are the easiest and 4-Star Essential missions are the hardest.
      We'll have to see this in action, but one thing that concerns me is how this would impact PVEs immediately after a character release if this change continues in the future. People will be forced to use a character with only a few covers, if not one, and a high level fight is disproportionately difficult.

      Hopefully it shouldn't be too much of an impact with the thought that the number of covers on a character will affect the level of the opponents.

      If it's a return to the 13-cover max opponents with lower scaling and improved rewards structure, I'm all for it. Those were by far the worst pieces of the EotS style.

      As to the note from Anthony that people were playing the event more... didn't we kind of have to?
    • waywreth
      waywreth Posts: 303 Mover and Shaker
      I feel like the (not) Awesome Hulk as the top reward may cut down on the players/grinding. I certainly don't want the cover.
      That said - thanks for listening to the feedback and testing again. Hopefully this one requires far less grinding.
    • Malcrof
      Malcrof Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
      This sounds amazing, plus, no locked out chars this time either (looking at you claw boy). I have a feeling this is going to be a much better run, plus, rewards for every time you clear the node, instead of no reward waves, yes pls. Perfect event to try this out in, Kudos!
    • mindsuckr
      mindsuckr Posts: 154
      Nice to see you taking the feedback on scaling. I don't see any mention of changing the 24 hour timer/grind 6. Is it correct to assume that you are not looking at modifying this at all? It's nice for casual events, but new releases are going to be H-E-C-K with 5 clears at sub end and 6 at sub start back to back for maximum points.
    • Mawtful
      Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
      Malcrof wrote:
      This sounds amazing, plus, no locked out chars this time either (looking at you claw boy). I have a feeling this is going to be a much better run, plus, rewards for every time you clear the node, instead of no reward waves, yes pls. Perfect event to try this out in, Kudos!

      I thought it was really odd that EotS was picked for the test, since it's really very different to every other event. You're right, this is the perfect event to run a test against.
    • CNash
      CNash Posts: 952 Critical Contributor
      Thanks for listening to our feedback regarding node difficulty. Are there any plans to address the altered node timer and the effect of promoting an "optimal clear" involving at least six clears of every node plus grinding - representing a far greater time commitment than with the current PVE system?
    • fmftint
      fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
      Mawtful wrote:
      Malcrof wrote:
      This sounds amazing, plus, no locked out chars this time either (looking at you claw boy). I have a feeling this is going to be a much better run, plus, rewards for every time you clear the node, instead of no reward waves, yes pls. Perfect event to try this out in, Kudos!

      I thought it was really odd that EotS was picked for the test, since it's really very different to every other event. You're right, this is the perfect event to run a test against.
      EOTS had everything, 24 hour subs, 48 hour subs, goon only nodes, villain only nodes, mixed nodes, survival nodes.
      Aside from length it's a good test event
    • The Viceroy Returns
      The Viceroy Returns Posts: 493 Mover and Shaker
      ZeiramMR wrote:
      "David wrote:
      Moore"]
      Updated Mission Difficulty Details:
      • Every mission got easier.

      o The easy missions more so, increasing the range of difficulty.

      Hopefully the easy missions are once again truly Trivial as their difficulty label describes. I'm talking under Level 50, even for advanced rosters. These "easy" nodes being jsut as high levels as the 3 hard ndoes is what made the EotS test take way more time than normal to do clears, as well as prevented roster flexibility.
      ZeiramMR wrote:
      "David wrote:
      Moore"]
      • Essential missions have a range of difficulty across the different star tiers

      o All are easier than the previous run of the updated mission difficulty.
      o 2-Star Essential missions are the easiest and 4-Star Essential missions are the hardest.

      Progression rewards for the 3-Star cover and Command Points have been lowered.”
      We'll have to see this in action, but one thing that concerns me is how this would impact PVEs immediately after a character release if this change continues in the future. People will be forced to use a character with only a few covers, if not one, and a high level fight is disproportionately difficult.

      It depends on what one's definition of "harder" is.
      Harder in relation to the three essentials I'm guessing. But what's the baseline difficulty?
      If the 2 Stars are still in the 170+ range (which is lower than the mid-200's I was seeing), I wouldn't call that easier. Hell, even in the the 140 range I wouldn't label as "easy".
      And yeah, usually after a new release, most have only 1 cover of the new character (like what's currently the case for me with Punisher MAX in the current Heroic PVE). It's pretty savage to be forced to use a **** character in what is usually one of the highest leveled nodes of a sub. Would like to see this taken into account with the scaling. The current PVE scaling is actually pretty close IMO, at least initially before you start scaling it up trying to get that damn 1 CP reward.

      I also would have liked to have seen the max number of clears/rewards before the lowered from 6 to 4, so 5 total rewards.
      Get rid of the Crit Boost reward, the two lowest ISO rewards, and increase the remaining ISO rewards to compensate.
      So rewards should be something like this:
      Trivial Rewards (3 Total per sub) = 300, 150, 100, 100, Standard Token (newbs still need this)
      Medium Rewards (5 Total per sub) = 500, 250, 150, 100, Heroic Token (it's way past time for this upgrade...)
      Hard Rewards (2 Total per sub) = 500, 250, 150, 100, 1 CP
    • TheOncomingStorm
      TheOncomingStorm Posts: 489 Mover and Shaker
      GG!
    • puppychow
      puppychow Posts: 1,453
      fmftint wrote:
      Mawtful wrote:
      Malcrof wrote:
      This sounds amazing, plus, no locked out chars this time either (looking at you claw boy). I have a feeling this is going to be a much better run, plus, rewards for every time you clear the node, instead of no reward waves, yes pls. Perfect event to try this out in, Kudos!

      I thought it was really odd that EotS was picked for the test, since it's really very different to every other event. You're right, this is the perfect event to run a test against.
      EOTS had everything, 24 hour subs, 48 hour subs, goon only nodes, villain only nodes, mixed nodes, survival nodes.
      Aside from length it's a good test event

      The problem is that EoTS locked out wolverine for a few subs, and since he is a staple for a good portion of the player base, it became harder to clear the nodes w/o him.

      I agree that this upcoming unstable iso event is ideal testing grounds for the scaling recalibration.
    • Ducky
      Ducky Posts: 2,255 Community Moderator
      Unless the difficulty is ramped WAY down, I don't see myself playing PvE competitively anymore because the biggest issue is the MASSIVE time sink for optimal play in the new format. Please, please, please, reconsider it.

      And for those who say it wasn't a problem during EotS, just wait until a new character is released with the 24 hour CD format and see your placement plummet compared to what it was for the test events.
    • Tie El Min
      Tie El Min Posts: 36
      Guys, I'm so sorry to read this news, what changes compared to the previous test, not so much. Very poor reward (OMG it's Chalky) and there is no a gift covers for participation in testing. It's not Legendary tokens, but just Event tokens.

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