PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Unstable Iso-8

Philly484

Ok well from what I can deduce of why they did another test of this and only addressed the scaling issue, which to me doesn't seem any better than the first test, people basically stated in the comments of the questionnaire that scaling was there only problem. If you legitimately detest this new pve then you need to be very critical on the next questionnaire.

The issue of scaling still needs to be addressed in that "We are fighting Titan like nodes for a grind and get no benefit after the 7 clear of the node" that is what needs to be addressed. I don't see how this is not a problem for players. I personally don't need the bragging right of being number 1 in this game, not that kind of geek, but the fact I'm grinding for nothing seems ridiculous to me. This only helps rabbit players. I'm sorry that I like to play optimally, but If you lose your top spot for grinding early and missing out on more pts thats not my fault you choose to play that way. if people can remember last year in the forums Rabbit players were complaining about this, well now that they are having their problem fixed the optimal players are being hurt. The reward factor is a must need major fix, not scaling, not the 24hr timer, its the rewards. i'm sorry but fighting a lvl 350 Moonstone with her lvl 350 buddies for nothing, and or 70iso after a 7th clear pales in comparison to the fact that vets like me and others are having to use their whole rosters to complete clears and grinds.

mpqr7

One good thing about this mode is that the progression rewards actually seem pretty attainable. I haven't played too too much, and I've already passed 9000, so I'm well on my way to hitting the 33000 required for 25 cp.

The bad news is that my placement opportunity is very, very very low. Normally at this rate, I'd probably be at least top 50 or better. Right now, I'm barely at top 200.

But I care much more about winning the 25 cp than some additional 3* and 4* covers and hp, so I guess it all works out.

Placement will be basically impossible unless I actually do each clear 7+ times, which is way too much work work work work work /rihanna/.


Another thing I noticed is that rubber-banding *IS* in effect. The required nodes were first worth 430, then 410, then 398, then 392 etc. So the longer you wait, the more the nodes are worth. And the more you play, the less they are worth.

Polares

This is nuts, after clearing the essential 6 times, I decided to try with the hardest node to get the CP with the intention of stopping to play this sub. When the new sub opens I plan to do the same, 1 clear, do the essentials 6 times, and the hardest until I get the CP. This is all I am going to play. And as soon as I get the 25 CPs then just the nodes with CPs. Because of this scaling I am going to loose a lot of iso. Thanks devs.

So, with this plan in mind I started with the hardest node, using 370 OML, 255 Jean, 255 iceman, three victories, every time I needed to use at least one health pack with Jean, and sometimes two (another one for iceman). 4 clears, still no CP, so I needed to continue. Enemies were over 395, muscle strike tiles were doing 1500+.

After using 5 health packs I though, lets try with a different team, OML, Rhulk, Cyclops, which is usually a very good and fast team. Complete disaster, everybody killed, I didn't stand a chance. I thought ok, this team is not very good when there are muscle and a char (this is a completely unfair team, when muscles can a put a new strike tile countdown every turn and the char just kills you with his match+strike damage).

Let's try with Elektra, she is supposed to be great against muscle. Small problem, because iso is a big problem right now, my Elektra (and also Antman) are just leveled to 152-170, in a range where I can win their DDQ4, so they don't have a lot of life. Then the team was OML, Elektra, iceman. I start matching purple, I made a mistake, and it was elektra matching the purple (even with the level difference she has stronger purple), so when I have enough for her purple she has already lost 2k. Then bullseye decides that he wants to match all yellow countdowns, so I can't still any strike, a couple of blues go down before I can match them, Elektra is dead. Now all yellow countdowns start to go off. My team dies.

At this point the scaling of the node has been reduced around 360 or something like that. I try again with OML, Jean, iceman and I win again, two health packs needed (both iceman and jean are around 50%), Jean was dead by the fourth turn because of a lucky cascade for the AI with a couple of strike tiles in the board, but iceman blue saves the day.

I get the CP, I close the game. I won't play again until the next sub (And I hate myself, I should wait until this **** ends).

So Basically I can just play a team of the two best 4s in the game and my good 5, and just for the same rewards. Great work guys!

THIS IS A NIGHTMARE.

I HATE THIS FORMAT.

THIS FORMAT IS COMPLETELY UNFAIR.

DON'T EVER MESS AGAIN WITH THE FORMAT, DON'T TOUCH IT, JUST LEAVE IT, GO ON HOLIDAYS, DON'T DO ANY MORE TEST.

PS: We already have the Gauntlet for hard fights, I don't know what the f. are they doing.

Bowgentle

Devs, you seriously need to take a long hard look at difficulty vs reward in your game, in both PVP and PVE.

it's ok if you make my "easy" nodes scale to 308 after 7 clears, 4or/im40/JG can handle those nodes.

What is NOT ok, however, is giving me 70 ISO or a critical boost for it.

Look, I didn't luck into my roster of 11 champed 4*s.
I gave you 876 days of my life and about 700 bucks over that timespan.
Stop punishing me for having a good roster in BOTH PVP and PVE.
In PVP I get run over by people who are drawing at the advertised 10% rate while I'm below 5%.
In PVE I get punished by having insane enemy levels.

Start giving me appropriate rewards.

Add a zero to all ISO rewards, replace standard tokens with event tokens (or heroics, if event is too generous), throw in an extra CP or 5 per sub, make a one and done node that gives a legendary.
Do this either by scaling the rewards to the level of the node, or set the levels so that starting rosters are locked out of some nodes.
People know this from pretty much every other game, you need to build your characters before tackling harder stuff.
Be brave. New players will understand.
At least consider running another test with static difficulty for everyone.

Stop catering exclusively to beginners and mega whales while making life hell for vets.
Please.

Sm0keyJ0e

It seems pretty obvious that if you review the comments in BOTH tests, those with newer rosters are having an easier time of it and generally seem to enjoy it more. Those with very mature rosters in the 4 to 5 star range hate it and are having a miserable time. I'm somewhere in between with half my 3's maxed, a couple of maxed 4's and a couple of usable 5's in the mid 300 levels. As a paying customer, I transitioned quickly and so the memories of my "young" roster are still rather fresh.

And what I remember about those early days is that clears and matches in general went very fast. I could clear an entire sub in 30 minutes easy, with the trivial nodes being nearly mindless. Now, with the health of the enemies so ridiculously high into the 20k range, and EVERY battle edging on difficult, one match can take 10 minutes, a lot of strategizing, and occasional stress that an unlucky cascade might wipe my team. Multiply by 9 nodes, then multiply by 6 clears, and you have an enormous time suck for your longest tenured customers. It also shouldn't be lost on anyone that the people here, complaining on the forums with their mature rosters, are generally your BEST customers. I understand the need to suck in new players and give them something fun to play, but this general concept should NEVER go away for any of us, new or vet.

My father was tough on us as kids, and he used to always say "You're hardest on the ones you love the most." I think that sentiment applies here and I really hope D3 listens to all of this criticism. It sounds like first world complaints, but we all really want to enjoy the game, keep playing (leisurely), and some of us will continue to pony up $$ for a fun experience.

As it stands, I will not play PVE beyond jumping in and looking for a couple of easy fights to pass the time (if this is the new format). I will continue to focus on PVP where I can play for an hour a day, earn some decent rewards, and get the feeling of progression/advancement in what amounts to 2 day events.

<clink> <clink> my 2 cents...

mpqr7

Polares wrote:

THIS IS A NIGHTMARE.

I HATE THIS FORMAT.

THIS FORMAT IS COMPLETELY UNFAIR.

DON'T EVER MESS AGAIN WITH THE FORMAT, DON'T TOUCH IT, JUST LEAVE IT, GO ON HOLIDAYS, DON'T DO ANY MORE TEST.

A classic Christmas tale

That last node with bullseye and two muscles is particularly demoralizing. It's almost impossible to stop them from unleashing threaten after threaten, tommy gun after tommy gun. It can be harder than galactus, even with combos such as oml/rags/am or other tile stealers.

huktonfonix

Something is definitely bugged with the scoring for this event. I'm not yet through 6 clears in the first sub node, and everything shows "Full Points", but the # of points is dropping after each clear.

I don't recall how many points the Hawkeye essential started at, but after my first clear it was worth 446 points. Then 433. Now it's worth 419.

Other nodes that I haven't even touched seem to be dropping too.

What gives?

Dragon_Nexus

I was going to give this one a God's honest try and get all the prgression and stuff, maybe even try to place well.

Know what? I did a clear when the event opened last night, noticed the nodes were a little easier but still seeing them be level 180+ for my roster after one clear. I then thought about clearing each node a further 5 times in the next 7 hours now that I'm back from work and I just felt utterly unenthused. Again.

The thought of this mammoth grind to get the best points out of this event leaves me utterly cold. Now...if they'd made every node start out like the trivial nodes of the usual PvE and work their way up to the hardest node *maybe* I could justify putting in some effort. The problem with this re-release is it doesn't address the core complaint that was shouted out loud and clear within hours of the announcement of the first test. People don't want to feel mandated to doing six clears a day!

The old format required 3 clears and a couple of hours of grinding. Now, I always felt the clears were the holding pattern and the amount of grinding you wanted to do before the sub event ended was the measure of how high you wanted to place, as such I tended to play them pretty casually and placed alright. That was fun for me. This, however, just fills me with dread. Never mind doubling the amount of required clears, you're also making the clears take longer simply by virtue of making all of the nodes much harder when averaged out. It's not fun to beat the node, it's not fun to clear, so it certainly isn't fun having to play these 10 un-fun nodes 6 un-fun times in 24 un-fun hours.

Why 6, anyway? Who's idea was that? Works on a 48 hour model, sure, but not a 24 hour one. Make it 3 at most. That way you keep the same 3-clears-a-day format as before, you get your more obvious scaling increase, you get your apparently important "challenge" (that being a buzzword whenever new features come out, some of like to just relax, ya know). Thing is we still lose out on the relaxing trivial nodes (or the home stretch, as I like to think of them) and you lose out on roster diversity, too, just throwing in the same boosted characters for every node. So even then the PvE isn't an improvement on the old model.

Really the change should focus on making PvE actually about PvE and less about placement. You've had so many good ideas from the community about how to go about it and it seems none of them have been given any real attention. The changes made to this second run are so small as to be barely noticable. So after less than a day I'm already out.

In EotS I at least did a single clear of the sub event to beat all the survival nodes. Unstable ISO-8 doesn't even have that going for it.

Twysta

waywreth

First off and most importantly - Am I having fun? And the answer is no.
It feels like a grind. I don't want to have to play each node 7x with the same few characters.

For me, it is easier than Enemy of the State - but the PVE itself is easier than Enemy of the State, so that's a factor. I am able to use more characters than Enemy, but no one off the first page of the roster. I miss the trivial nodes where I can randomly select characters to try out. There's no longer a place in game to do that.

I will also note this is not being helped by the rewards. and do not excite me.

stowaway

"David wrote:

Moore"]In particular, having a high-level team isn’t providing as much of an advantage as we’d like.

This is the part I'm getting fixated on. 2* players are saying their levels cap out at 75% of their highest characters. Mine are capping out at 115%. Having a high level team seems like its a bigger disadvantage than ever!

"David wrote:

Moore"]2-Star Essential missions are the easiest and 4-Star Essential missions are the hardest.

They're like 8 levels different from each other! Which is weird, because I look at my roster and my 4* characters are a lot more than 16 levels higher than the 2* ones.

FireWarrior71

If anything, this test has enraged me further. Once upon a time, I used to make progression, get my covers, life is good. Then you added command points. And made progression a little tougher to obtain. I was cool with that. The last test we did as a team, we tried and hated it. So we took that event off. So I decided to sound off about the timer. A lot of us have jobs, lives, and a lot more outside of the game. My co-commander is flying to Vegas at the end of the month for some R&R. Like I said we all have lives. We are a top 50-100 PVE alliance. Where are we going full bore in this event???

IN THE 650s!!!!

Take this test and shove it up your rectum...

We are frustrated as players...Every last one of us posting. The scaling sucks, the 6 clears before the timer appears suck, and you guys are sucking the life out of this game...

It was great for PVP, but your f'n it up in PVE...FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP SHOVING THIS DOWN OUR THROATS!!!

C20Percent

Sm0keyJ0e wrote:

It seems pretty obvious that if you review the comments in BOTH tests, those with newer rosters are having an easier time of it and generally seem to enjoy it more. Those with very mature rosters in the 4 to 5 star range hate it and are having a miserable time.

See...I just don't know if that's true. I've been playing for 180 days, so I'd argue that I have a newer roster. Five championed 2 stars. A few usable 3 stars. And, no usable 4 or 5 stars. When I rostered OML a few months ago, my scaling went to hell. So, when they announced scaling changes, I was hopeful that I would benefit, but it's been ridiculously harder. Scaling is even worse. I have to use OML, 2*Mags and 2*Storm for 90% of nodes, and pray for a good blue/pink board. I was already stretching the amount of time I had to play, and this new format requires that I play more. I'll probably hit top progression, but good placement has helped fill out my 3 star roster -- can't do that now because the nodes scale too high. I can't really compete in PVP right now, so PVE is my best option, and I just hate this format so much. As a relatively new player, I prefer the regular format.

AE_Fios

I am dropping out of the PVE this morning. Not worth the hassle but I'll share my thoughts.

-I like the idea of clears becoming less dependent on timing. It would allow players to play of their own time.

-I hate the scaling difficulty. It doesn't make it more fun, it just makes it much more of a hassle.

-Even though clears aren't as dependent on timing, you would still have to play more for rank rewards. Besides a very small, sick portion of your user base is anyone out there really saying "I sure wish I needed to play this game more to reach the same rewards." ?

-The node rewards are terrible. Adding difficulty to clears for 70 ISO or Crit Boosts? Bad idea.

-More grinding? This isn't a good idea for any party involved. You're going to burn people out.

So I'm going to take the next few days off from PVE. Good luck with your testing, however this was not an enjoyable experience. Adding CP as a progression reward pulled me back into PVE, these potential changes will drop me back out.

sinnerjfl

This isnt fun, stop it with these tests.

Nodes starting at 300 and +10 at every clear is just idiotic. Just stop it, go back to the old format.
You are driving people away with these tests.

huktonfonix

I just finished clearing the Hawkeye and Daredevil nodes 6x each, and now the Flaptain essential, which I haven't touched once, is worth 316 points for the first clear. It started at over 450 points.

Someone screwed up. Points are NOT staying flat through the first six clears. They're dropping across the board but still showing "full points."

JimmyKick

The comment below describes my feelings and behavior exactly.

AE_Fios wrote:

I am dropping out of the PVE this morning. Not worth the hassle but I'll share my thoughts.

-I like the idea of clears becoming less dependent on timing. It would allow players to play of their own time.

-I hate the scaling difficulty. It doesn't make it more fun, it just makes it much more of a hassle.

-Even though clears aren't as dependent on timing, you would still have to play more for rank rewards. Besides a very small, sick portion of your user base is anyone out there really saying "I sure wish I needed to play this game more to reach the same rewards." ?

-The node rewards are terrible. Adding difficulty to clears for 70 ISO or Crit Boosts? Bad idea.

-More grinding? This isn't a good idea for any party involved. You're going to burn people out.

So I'm going to take the next few days off from PVE. Good luck with your testing, however this was not an enjoyable experience. Adding CP as a progression reward pulled me back into PVE, these potential changes will drop me back out.

Bryan Lambert

OK, one other thing.

I'm very deliberately playing this event the same way I play old-style PvE. Three max-point clears of every node, plus replaying essential and last node until I get the CP. In this case, it was three times for the last node (thank tinykitty) and a full seven times for the Faptain node. So that covers the spectrum of possibilities nicely.

In old PvE, with careful managing of my entry time, this would put me at around 80th place. If I jump i right at the start and don't care about placement, that puts me around 120-150th place.

Here, jumping in right at the start? 202nd place. Some of this is due to the rubberbanding error, I'm sure. But if this persists, what it could mean for me is never getting top 100 in a new release PvE again, because if top 100 now requires five full clears of each sub, well, I can't do that without abandoning (more) friends, family, work, other hobbies, etc. Ain't gonna happen.

I'm a collector. The only way I keep "score" in this game is by trying to get all the characters. I've been mostly successful except for Goblin, who I cannot seem to pull. If I don't have a guaranteed way to at least recurit one cover of new characters, and have to rely on random 4* pulls from an increasingly diluted pool just to acquire characters, then I'm done. I'm out. With every change, my attitude has been "if I can still reasonably progress by playing an amount I'm comfortable with, I'll keep playing". That's my quit line. This PvE change may be the first to actually break that barier.

Square-Chopper

I have maxed/champed OML and Phoenix, plus several champed top tier 4*'s on my roster. Been playing for over a year. So basically, what I take from all this is that the second the game starts to get easier after all of the time and embarrassing amount of money I've spent on this game, they think it should jump 10x in difficulty to reward me for progressing to this level. I was even able to make top 2 on the much hated Venom Bomb, but on this? Somewhere in the 600's to 700's because it's just simply not worth the time and frustration for something that's supposed to be fun.

It's painfully obvious that every suggestion posted on here falls on deaf ears, so not even gonna bother with that.

Suffice to say that if anything that remotely resembles either of these two tests become what is required for new character covers from here on out, I'll just live without them.

It's a game. Games are supposed to be fun. This. Is. Not. Fun.

Eddiemon

I'm loving it and loving the scaling. Being able to play a match at any point in the day without stuffing up my final score is fantastic, plus now that you have lowered progression rewards it looks like I can achieve them with reasonable effort.

The increased scaling seems to be cutting down the grinders, so I should be able to get top 50 with only 4-6 clears of nodes depending on difficulty.