PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Unstable Iso-8

fmftint

More punishing success.
I thought you guys wanted players to improve and level thier roster? All you've done is demonstrate, again, that soft capping is better

BlackSheep101

Since it seems many people missed it:
viewtopic.php?p=503920#p503920

Hi-Fi announced that rubber banding was mistakenly turned on for this event, which is why point values are changing on full value nodes.

cyineedsn

Eddiemon wrote:

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.

Um... if you are doing 4-6 clears of nodes I think you might quality as a grinder?

rubxcube3742

The new format is horrible. I started playing mpq to get away from games that had me grinding for 5-6 hours a day. I have actually spent $ on this game because it felt like i was actually getting somewhere, but no longer. The scaling is HORRIBLE, and now i have to log on every time my guys are at full health in order to remotely stay competitive. Since i don't play PvP, if the PvE format stays like this, i have no reason to play anymore. Fix it or lose players, period.

Meander

Scaling is still horrid for high rosters. In the last node (Bullseye and 2 muscle), if the goon resolves a yellow, I have little to no hope of winning while using a team of OML, GT, and IM40. I've wiped 3 times this morning alone. Meanwhile I hear people talking of using 3* teams like Patch, Storm, DD and rolling. Seems to still greatly punish high rosters.

Magnetorules

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.

This is how I feel as well. The scaling should start at the same level for everyone then build in difficulty for each clear. A noob should not be ranking as high as a 2 year player.

Jam_Adams

cyineedsn wrote:

Eddiemon wrote:

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.

Um... if you are doing 4-6 clears of nodes I think you might quality as a grinder?

yeah, and bracket makes a huge difference. I'm at 4 clears on each node in the first sub and i'm at #192.

I would normally be around 100 (or better) at 4 clears in the usual PVE system.

placement isn't my normal top goal. I value the progression rewards above the placement rewards, but I DO like getting top 100 for the extra 3* covers. i'm satisfied with that. with this new system, i'm so far down the placement ladder, i'm left wondering how this will affect my future progress if this is the new system.

devs, most people here have a life. i'm in my mid-30s. I have a career. I have a family. I try to donate some of my time to beneficial things. BUT I AM STILL WILLING TO GIVE YOU three clears+ worth of my time, because I like the general idea of this game. but my time is a FINITE resource. I can't, and won't, give you 6 clears worth of my time. and this sucks, because it looks like you want this from me. I think that's pretty selfish, to be honest. it sucks, because you expect that, and I can't give it to you. and if I can't give it to you, then my progress in this game truly stalls.

big thumbs up. thanks guys /sarcasm

westnyy2

Fail, fail and fail some more. Terrible tweaks. I would take an 8 hour clear version any day over this. I have a high level roster with 3 champed 5's and about 2/3 of my 4's champed. I typically play all PVE's to place top 50 or better. This is simply not fun.

It's been said many times that the best way to improve PVE is to take the PVP element out of it and make everything progression based. Am I wrong that is what the majority wants? I want a way to use more of my roster. The scaling for these nodes means that I need to bring OML and Phoenix every time. Even my best 4's have issues winning without the aid of the 5's. Some great characters have been released lately such as Nova, Quake, etc but I find myself using them in DDQ only. Not exactly a great use for my 350K iso investment.

Offer the same event with 3 or 4 difficulty levels. First clear has to be done by 2 stars, 2nd 3 stars or lower, 3rd clear 4 stars or lower and 4th clear have high scaling and leave our entire roster to beat it. This solves the play when you want complaint, the competitive nature of PVE complaint and it would likely mean more $$ for you as we are forced to use deeper rosters and forced to roster characters. I guarantee more people from my alliance would play PVE if this type of format was implemented.

pheregas

I design, execute, and publish scientific tests/results as a living. With that in mind, when designing a test, you need to set a few different criteria.

1) Only change one variable at a time. i.e., change scaling, or change the playtime format. Not both. You cannot get a metric of one or the other since one variable can affect the other. You'll need to run a separate test for each variable will all other components static.

2) What is the baseline comparison? Is it a standard PVE, or the previous run of the Unstable Iso-8? Are the rewards exactly the same? Are the boosted characters the same? If not, see point #1.

3) If there is an error in the implementation of the experiment (i.e., if something like rubber banding is accidentally turned on) all results are null and void and the experiment has to be repeated.

I'd be happy to help with any statistical analyses.

Good luck with future testing!

nonnel

Not every node needs to be level 200+ from the start. I want to play pve causally. The current system ruins that. I just won't play at all

heckbringer

In the Arctic Circle, my points rewards are decreasing across all the nodes as I'm grinding a single node.

I was under the impression that my point rewards stayed entirely static for all nodes, including the one I was grinding, until I got to my sixth repetition of a specific node, and then only in that case would that one node's reward be lowered. I've completed Sam Wilson five times, and the points for all nodes dropped one point on my fourth playthrough and 22 points on my fifth.

The thing I liked most about the new system was that I was informed of changes as they happened, as opposed to the old system where rewards were lowered and difficulty was increased by some arcane system into which I had no visibility.

fmftint

Perhaps they should edit the OP and add the bit about rubber banding being on for this event, maybe then people will stop asking about point fluctuation

Unknown

I can't stand this new system. I only played EOTS for the CP then stopped because I hated it. For Unstable iso-8 I'm playing/grinding for literally 10X longer and placing 10X worse than usual! What's the point? I made 7 full clears for each node and am ranked about 50th, id usually do half that for all the nodes and I'd be in the top 10. So I really cba to do that for 3 more days. Like the last test I'll just go for CP then quit.
Playing every 8 hours was good and didn't take up much of my day but this is horrendous. I'll never be able to get top 100 rewards again unless I spend the whole day playing.. The only reason I had time to do that for the first sub is because it's the Easter holidays and I had nothing to do yesterday. When I'm back at work though I'll never have time to get good placement rewards, making everything so much more of a grind. Bring back the old system please or make this system a lot less of a grind.

bataglia

Come on, guys. To maximize my points I need to do a 3-4 hour rush, cleaning each node 6 times, and then 5 more times EACH before the round finishes.

In other words, now we can play when we want, but we need to play all the time.

firethorne

pheregas wrote:

3) If there is an error in the implementation of the experiment (i.e., if something like rubber banding is accidentally turned on) all results are null and void and the experiment has to be repeated.

No, please, no! I mean, regardless of how much they screwed up their test metrics (and you are correct, they absolutely bungled them in multiple ways) I think we have managed to gather one piece of important information that means this test should not be repeated: increasing difficulty for zero increased rewards is, and will always be, a total failure and despised.

Meander

Meander wrote:

Scaling is still horrid for high rosters. In the last node (Bullseye and 2 muscle), if the goon resolves a yellow, I have little to no hope of winning while using a team of OML, GT, and IM40. I've wiped 3 times this morning alone. Meanwhile I hear people talking of using 3* teams like Patch, Storm, DD and rolling. Seems to still greatly punish high rosters.

By the way, after 2 clears, this node features level 291's. The highest level in my roster in this event is 277. Seems legit.

PolarPopBear

This event just feels awful. I'm in the 4* transition, i have a couple of maxed 4* and full covers on every 3*. It used to be to get decent progression i could do regular clears in the 8 hour increments which would use a few of my health packs and grind the 2 CP nodes with my A team and use any decent combination out of my roster to grind the easy nodes to hit targets and get some iso (which is wayyyyyy to scarce given the cost of leveling 4s).

But now with all my nodes starting at 210+ I feel like I have to take my A team (luckily for me is JG HB plus essential/other boosted 3) and every node puts a serious dent in my health packs. Because the cost to level is so high and you need to grind nodes to get iso I feel like im going to be stuck in the cycle of can't keep grinding because I only have 1 viable team, can't level any other characters to get more viable teams because I can only beat nodes repeatedly with my A team. I feel like I was penalized for levelling some of my characters, and far more so than the old system. With the old system my easy and essential nodes were still grindable to zero using a some b teamers such as 166 if/lc vs a 200 ish node.

tizian2015

Boosting is a big punishment in the scaling matter.

My relevant scaling team is (posting top8):
lv 242 Ragnarok, 220 2*Hawkeye, 212 2*torch, 212 2*magneto, 177 3*hulk, 172 3*magneto, 170 3*widow, 168 beast.

Two aspects: first there are characters i did not use, i just collect them, but they are relevant for scaling and scale out others i would use (solution? do i have to sell them and rebuild them with just the covers for essential nodes?). second even i use them, the damagenerf hits me roughly. a 220 hawkeye should be able to be a killer if he is getting relevant for a high scaling (which means harthitting goons), but he isnt. he is with 50 levels more on the same damage-niveau before champions. this is so demotivating, because his 50 levels more hit the scaling in an evident matter. pls dont use boosting and chamionship for scaling matters. this should be a bonus, not a punishment! or give us a button for not-using specific chars in an event. you lock out chars, let us lock out chars too if we dont want them use in an event.

Druss

Already given up for the same reasons as Eots.

Limited to top 4/5 characters of roster - unable to use anything else - It doesn't matter if Jugs/Bullseye/Daken are Lv 240 or 300 only top tier teams stand a chance & even then matches are soooo long vs Bullseye, take loads of damage vs Jugs or Daken.

Pretty much only teams that are reliable vs these opps are also the go-to characters for PvP - forcing us to choose between PvE & PvP (as I dont like PvP I wont bother with either).

There is an instant win fix for PvE - MORE VARIETY in opps - there is 96 characters not just Daken, Jugs & Bullseye - I dont care if the story doesn't make sense (never read em anyway & even if I did, this is its 5,000-ish outing anyway!)

revskip

I'm actually enjoying this test a lot more than EotS. The scaling seems a little more dialed back than the last test. I was able to grind all the goon nodes 6 times and the final node three times with each of the essentials once before running out of healthpacks.

I jumped into slice three around 1pm and played for about 2 hours using 3 different main teams and of course the essentials, it helped that the goon nodes were much more forgiving than the kishu were in EotS. I really like the play when you want addition, before I was stuck only being able to play slice 5 since I could do my first clear before bed then wake up and do my second clear and finish things up after work with my third clear which would usually get me into the top 50/100 depending on whether it was a new character release. Now I can play any slice with slice 3 being perfect for me since I can clear just before I go to work, rather than after work. The only big complaint I have with this system is I seem to have to do a lot more clears just to get to that same placement.

I'm not one of the players who grinds nodes down to 1 point for top 10, in fact since moving to vet brackets I rarely crack the top 20. I don't have the time or inclination to grind nodes once I am no longer getting rewards (outside of course of the placement rewards). I do like that the placement awards will now go to the people who play the most rather than people who were more diligent with the clock refreshes, even if I won't make top placement because of it. Seems like a more fair way to hand out the top rewards.

It seems like top progression will be attainable for me so that is a nice bonus.

I understand that some players who have been here longer than I have are having a much harder go of it, my alliance mates have definitely voiced concerns but for my experience this test is vastly superior to the last one and I like this PVE better than the old style. If the clears dropped to 4-5 instead of 6-7 I would love it rather than just like it.