PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Unstable Iso-8

edgewriter

I still hate that the rewards don't scale with the difficulty. When a node is beaten and the enemies get tougher, I almost get wiped out and the reward is 70 iso? Pretty lame.

Also, I went through everything in a long marathon session on Saturday then I had to wait 24 hours for refresh, but there was less than 24 hours left in the round. Why even have a timer?

Keegan

edgewriter wrote:

Also, I went through everything in a long marathon session on Saturday then I had to wait 24 hours for refresh, but there was less than 24 hours left in the round. Why even have a timer?

You only have to wait 24 hours for full points again, at which point the timer will reset and subsequent plays will be for less points. You can continue to play nodes down to zero points at any time. In theory, the timer is to discourage endless playing for points.

mazerat

Final update for The Americas

My core roster is 4 championed 2s at levels 121/115/114/112, additionally I had a PMax and Daisy with one blue cover each boosted to 145 and a 110 2/5/2 boosted M-Storm for any scaling purposes, everything else is level 70 or lower.

Easiest node started at 69/69/69. Hardest at 77/78/77. My hardest node ended at 151/152/151. I had hit progression at that point and decided to watch Wrestlemania instead of grind out points so no idea how high my easiest would have gone but Mediterranean started and ended at similar levels so I'm guessing 117ish.

I got 8976 points from Americas which currently has me in 382 there and with 35954 overall I am in 354th. Top 9 all have 80k+ and 10th is at 78.6k. Six of those are 4 and 5 star rosters, one is 3-4 star, two are 2-3 star, and one is firmly 2 star (one championed).

I don't have any real complaints about difficulty. Especially since so many hard nodes on each day were goon only. It's just a grind even just getting progression. Sitting and clearing the same node over and over isn't something I enjoy doing--in the old schedule I'd do one pass every 8 hours and then maybe one or two in the last couple hours. In contrast, sitting there trying to grind out clears until I run out of health packs and then waiting and doing it again in a few hours until I've cleared everything six times is really tedious.

Honestly, I had no real complaints about the old system. If I was in a meeting or on the road or wanted to sleep a little more, I'd just push my clears back an hour or two. Not amazing for placement but just fine for progression and I was placing several hundred ranks higher than I am under this grind-a-thon.

actarus76

i think that new changes could be good only if:

node could be unlocked after 3 times that we do them: 6 times is overdone (we need hours to unlock and hours to grind... so we have to decide between pve or pvp because we have a real life and we cannot play 6-7 hours each day);

[list=2]ok the difficult increased but don't exagerate: 15-18 lvl each times are too much; if nodes are unlocked and difficult is set after 3 times you do the node could be accepatable and more gameplayable; actually i'm 6th in my bracket but i can play only with 4* (i'm on 3*-4* transiction and need several months to complete it cause of iso missing): i've never used 3* in this pve because nodes unlocked are over than 300 lvl[/list]
[list=3]pve will be formed only by passive characters? if we find active characters in every node of the pve, time and health pack will increase: 2 players of my alliance stop playing in this event and one of them quit mpq because he's afraid that all pve will be like this one;[/list]
[list=4]d3 inserts more rewards in nodes: please avoid getting 70 iso (totally useless) and insert better rewards (1000 iso or more);[/list]
[list=5]this kind of pve will be proposed once in a time: it is correct that you could play when you want (for 6 times the points are at max), but if want to get good pve rewards you have to play at the beginning of every time slice and unlock all the nodes. it is too much.
[/list]

Moon Roach

simonsez wrote:

If I weren't stuck in a hotel room 500 miles from home with wi-fi too slow to stream porn...

A flash drive with a Truecrypt volume and VLC with "show recent files" turned off are a viable alternative to streaming. Of so I've been told.

Polares

One thing I don't understand is why, after so many time saying that we have iso problems in this game, they didn't use a system where you win a base iso for each battle equivalent to the difficulty of the node and then you add the normal node reward. So if you fight a 120,120,120 team you get a base of 120+node reward (1 of 7). If on the other hand your scaling makes you fight a 240,240,240 node you get 240+node reward. If you fight 350s, then 350+node reward.

This is a very simple reward system that gives more iso to the people that needs it the most. I get that devs don't want to flood the game with too many iso, but if done like this, people in the 2-3 would get enough iso for their needs, and people in the 3-4 too without flooding the system.


I hate that this system thinks I am a softcapper because I just have 6 championed 4s, and like 20 cover maxed in the 120-170 level. If I had the iso, all my 4s would be championed (well, not you Chulk), but needing between 2 to 3 weeks to max any 4, it is impossible (and now I also have to level my 5s!!!) to level them all.

Gmax101

I general I have enjoyed the event... even to the point of just grinding it to see what I can achieve.

Should end up top 10 without too much hassle...

Bad:
1) Still missing the properly trival nodes that you can use any team on... mine started at level 110-120 which is fine for my wider roster but doesn't let my try out the 4stars I have with no ISO but some covers just to see what they look like in action

2) The rewards for nodes are still rubbish, but as that is not really being fixed here, it cant really be counted against the event itself

3) That I had to sell my 5 star to get good scaling... my 5 star (had 5 covers) was obviously skewing my scaling (my only character over level 180) and as I never used it, I decided to sell it and see... so while it worked as an experiment, I am annoyed I had to.

Good
1) Progress is achievable with 3 full clears a day... for the casual gamer that works fine

2) Scaling looked pretty decent for me. Harder nodes started reasonably straight forward and scaled up to Hard by the 6th clear, which it should do. Was able to use assorted teams for different nodes

3) Options for handling the biggest threats.
e.g. Ant-Man being boosted against Muscle Goons... that is hilarious steal both their Threaten tiles for 5 turns... get triple dip with attack tiles and the ant tiles at the start of the turn as well as the match.... just got to get rid of the Blue Tommy Gun
or Loki, and change the ridiculous strike tiles to defence tiles...

All in all this was a lot of fun, and if I was just chasing Progress then it would have nicely fitted my casual play style...

But having tried the grind, it is a huge time sink to push for top 1/2... and this has definitely made that grind worse... although more people appear to be hitting it with wider variety of rosters... which has to be a positive thing??? although more competition means more grinding I suppose.

MeatLoafX

My mainly two star roster finished top 50. Got my colossus covers and went to hit the juggernaut event because collecting the guardians of the galaxy is my #1 priority.

Team got wiped on node 2.

I'm really bummed.

Deadpool369

This pve was much more bearable than enemy of the state. It was easy to get all the progression rewards if you wanted them and nodes didn't scale out of control after the 3 play. Although to be fair e.o.t.s has the wave nodes which makes it a tougher pve just in general

Der_Lex

The positive about this event was being able to get top progression by doing 6 runs of the final sub. Only possible because rubberbanding was turned on of course, but still.

The downside is, well, everything else. Doing the six runs consecutively gave me an impression of what I would have to do for placement in future new character PvEs, and that is just awful. It's way too much of a time sink that you can't spread throughout your day, which is the opposite of what was intended with the changes, AFAIK. Scaling was manageable for me (L390 Phoenix, L345 OML, 6 champed 4*), but only because almost every node in the sub was a goon node. Otherwise the health pack drain of six runs that kept ramping up to L360+ levels would have become too much.

Whatever changes are made to scaling (and I would enjoy having trivial nodes back of course), the big chunk of play time needed for placement needs to go.

CaptainFrugal

Bwanis wrote:

Maybe this was addressed in the previous 13 pages or EotS feedback but the elephant in the room for me seems to be why are the devs changing the scaling at all? Why not just eliminate the 8 hr point refresh and leave all other elements of traditional pve the same as they have been?...

It seems like this is the only positive part of the new system that players are universally enjoying so keep this and ditch the rest.

.

Yes 1000 times yes.

pabasa130

I just realized I've been choosing the wrong time slice. I should pick a slice where I can spend more time after the subevent opens, rather than a slice where I can spend more time before the subevent opens.

Can we do another test?

And my final thoughts on this test, for the love of god, please do not try to 'smoothen' the difficulty. As someone with only 2 Championed 4 , 4 useless 5 and the bulk of my roster at around 160-180, I do not want to fight level 280 enemies on the "easy" nodes. Too much effort for too little reward.

Malcrof

Ok, yah, nodes got hard, and some started out harder than EoTS.. BUT.. i had earned the CP before the 24 hour mark in the 48 hour sub, so could have taken the 2nd 1/2 of the entire PVE off... But, i am ISO poor, so a grinding i went... then i noticed something.

The final sub, which is 90% pure goons.. easy easy nodes even with their levels, no muscle to make things ridiculous.. there i am farming iso, needing nary a health pack at any point, when i see my points for the final sub.. The 25 cp progression award is reachable by playing the final sub only.. you didn't even need to play the first 3 days if you didn't want to..

This was amazing, wish i had known it ahead of time.

Still very hard, and super high levels, but, progression was a win in this test.

hopper1979

I would just like to say this event has fixed many of the problems that the last one suffered from. The starting level was not to high this time and more importantly the level jump was not insane. I was able to complete most of the nodes this time around and get the CP which is the main reason I play pve. Now having said that I still think after 12, 18 or 24 hours you should reset the level of the characters back to their initial level, because some node do get very difficult. Thanks for the good updates and looking forward to veresion 3.0.

TxMoose

ok, after playing sat/sun much more than Friday, I can give some feedback. just to let you know, I'm a mid-4* transitioner with 6 champed 4s. most, other than the recent releases are covered, but like everyone else, mpq progress is all about farming iso at this point. I had recently found a groove in pve that I could easily t50 any sub/event and with some luck and good fortune, could t10 a normal event and t20 a release. I could do this without it eating into other, more important, parts of life too bad (clears in morning, lunch, and extended evening play). I could even clear and grind sometimes without it being too health pack reliant. I had written pve off once before but was recently coming to enjoy it and the iso/hp/cp that some nominal play would provide.

so, then the changes hit and EotS completely deflated me. if that was the future of pve, I would completely be disengaging and my roster progress (i.e. iso production) would take a pretty big hit. on a scale of 1-10, EotS was a 0 for player experience. so I entered unstable expecting more of the same. while it was much of the same (nodes starting/ending way too high), there are positives I've drawn as well.

first, though I'd like to point out the negative aspects of what I've experienced.
increased node difficulty is a huge negative for me:
* while previous pve setup clears could take 30-45 minutes, this takes much longer. not sure how much longer because I find myself concentrating on repeating nodes now instead of doing a clear of all nodes. I don't have the time to try any kind of optimal play schedule, so I just try and get cp and get to green checks by the end.
* the low end starts much too high for half my roster. the old setup allowed me to play every character on my roster. in venom bomb, I actually used 60 different character in the last sub. that is fun. in unstable I've tried some different combos and have used 20 characters, which is better than EotS, but not like normal.
* the high end of the nodes after 4+ clears really limits what can be done with them. any grinding will be miserably horrendous. this event is probably the easiest event to grind due to all the goon-only nodes and it was still horrible.
* 2-day subs will be horrendous in release events. by the end of day 2, all nodes will be green-checked and well into the 300s and every node will be a crapshoot to just beat, much less beat with a minimum of health lost.
* this is just a personal thing, but my schedule allows clears in the morning and lunch and some extended play in the evenings. that worked out pretty well with the old system. new system has no structure and this morning I got my 1 clear in but took the same amount of time I used to do a clear, ddq, and 1-2 pvp matches. so, it will require me to choose what areas to be active in, and the return on time investment in pve is getting less and less, not more. I like the speed and structure of the old system. mainly because it worked with my schedule (or I made my schedule work with it).

now, for the positive:
* the cp progression was completely reachable for what seemed like a similar time commitment to before. I wholeheartedly support the drastic reduction of progression levels if the nodes remain uber-difficult.
* I will admit the scaling is more workable here (partially from the adjustment and probably a lot of it because I don't have any characters boosted above my champs), but it doesn't go far enough. using 20 character is better than 10, but why do I have 90 on my roster?

one BIG problem I see after playing EotS and unstable, boosteds are no longer provide any kind of advantage. its the opposite, they affect scaling enough that it completely restricts what you can do with nodes and completely punishes those that have leveled a few 4s (or 3s) and are early-mid in the their leveling transitions. in EotS ice and cyke were both boosted (t3 avg = level 330). in the old system that would have been a solid advantage because nodes scaled differently and while they would have been higher, it would have only been slightly higher and considerably more manageable. with the severe scaling in place for EotS, it made every. single. node. require your absolute best team, no B, C or D teams really even had a chance. that is no fun at all. fast forward to unstable and none of my 6 champed 4s are boosted, which brings my t3 average down to 278. so to add to my champs, all in the 270s, I had an additional 8 other characters boosted into the 200s. this provided a roster where some different things could be done. if the scaling continues at its current levels, I think boosted characters should not count against scaling. does it give you an advantage over someone without that character, yes. I think its ok though because it will make it considerably more playable and when you have a strong character boosted, its a benefit, and not a punishment.

I really miss being able to use the bottom half of my roster. and that is directly tied to scaling. one of 2 things needs to happen. either all nodes need to start much lower to where we get to use the bottom parts of our roster for a couple of clears at least. or, the easiest of the 9 repeatable really need to start at a trivial level - in the 50-80 range and not reach the craziness of approaching 300. if those need to scale faster, fine, but let us farm some and use the bottom end of our roster some. pve will quickly become sooo boring if left as-is.

so on a scale of 1-10: EotS = 0. unstable = ~4. improvement, but a ways to go. I'm glad there has at least been some positive movement.

sorry about the length, there was much to say.

mpqr7

Yep, I hit the 25 cp reward pretty easily, but there's no way I'll get close to a decent placement reward, which is too bad. Usually in the past if I could get to 25 cp, I could get good placement as well, so I'm missing out on placement despite my strong effort. I'll just keep grinding for iso, I guess.

HaywireII

I played for hours yesterday and didn't even get all of the nodes to a 6th clear. Almost 2 more hours this morning and there are still a few nodes that have only been cleared 5 times. Starting to feel more like work than fun.

If this was the permanent format at this difficutly I'd be playing less.

Jaedenkaal

mpqr7 wrote:

Yep, I hit the 25 cp reward pretty easily, but there's no way I'll get close to a decent placement reward, which is too bad. Usually in the past if I could get to 25 cp, I could get good placement as well, so I'm missing out on placement despite my strong effort. I'll just keep grinding for iso, I guess.

This pretty much sums up my situation. Mind you, 25 CP is pretty nice.

Lboogie

As test 2 draws to a close I want to give my thoughts and here they are...
STOP MESSING WITH PVE. ...PLEASE.

I cant go too far into detail ill just be repeating others. I easily got the 25 cp...im barely t100. I ground sub 2 6 clears each and made t100 since I needed the 2k iso. I need to finish my ghost rider soon so I keep playing for poorly needed iso. Sub 3 im at almost 3 clears each and no where near t100. ..I wont get there. Old style pve has its problems but everyone of your loyal players deals with it and does it how they can and keep trucking. Many of my KA alliance are threatening to leave or play a lot less if this becomes the norm. Dont look at my participation or others as acceptance of this format. We are playing out of necessity. Please keep it how it was for the majority of my year and a half of playing and loving this game. I truthfully can't imagine playing this way for a new character. ..it would be terrible. Thank you for tweaking but it is not needed at this time pve wise. Again listen to your players.

DiscoStucat

I am at day 885 on my daily drop, so i am one of the people that you seem to no longer care about. I hate the new system that you seem so desperate to implement. The main problem with it stems from your laziness. I have 96 different characters on my roster and in any given event i can use maybe 12. You put up the same cookie cutter event after another using nothing but countdown tile npc's and the dark avengers. The new system means that I play the "How long can I keep the Falcon standing." as he is the only character truly suited to deal with the npcs. Changing the node to node match ups may make this system at least tolerable. I understand that this may not jibe with the story, but come on, story is not the most important thing in an match 3 game. It is a nice addition, but if it is handcuffing you than let it go.
You seem to have a total lack of respect for your players. You introduce new characters on EVERY holiday. You implement changes designed only to get us to drop more cash. You have horrible customer service when someone has an issue. Your in game chat is awful. You don't give alliance commanders, like myself, the tools we need to effectively run our alliances. Do you even play your game? I don't mean play test to work out bugs, I mean play like you are competing? I would be surprised to hear that you do.
If you need to work on something work on those issues.
I may not be an industry insider, but I understand how the gaming industry works. You are at a point where new players starting the game are decreasing, but don't take it out on your long term players. respect your community and the player base will remain stable. I am personally responsible for at least 12 people starting your game in the last 6 months because i enjoy the base game so much, but you make it more and more difficult to recommend due to what i see as not respecting your community.
I am sorry if I am coming off as rude, but you wanted feedback. Get some creativity. This would go a long way toward making any system work better.
And stop doing the Heroic events for the love of God. They are the purest embodiment of all of my previously stated complaints. Their scaling is based largely on characters I can't use. Please stop doing them, or at least fix how those events are scaled.
Thank you for your time.