PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Unstable Iso-8

SnowcaTT

Agreeing with the vets that say these tests make PVE impossible (and wonder why good rosters means harder times in PVE.....)

I already had given up on PVE due to the grind, only went to 3* progression at most, tried to get a few heroics and so ISO out of them.

With this scaling, the ISO is gone and so is -all- interest.

Like: The idea of making the grind not come in 8-hour increments. Maybe I'd play!

Dislike: PVE was already so difficult I often had to use only "best" team. Now it's even worse, no trivial nodes and must use best team from the get-go. This makes me give up the very, very little bit of PVE that I even bothered playing.

TheWerebison

Okay, I've done the event.

The progression reward was much more achievable, perhaps maybe too much. I know you guys forgot to turn off scaling, which probably helped. But overall, it made it nice and easy to get it out of the way and do other things with the remaining time. Enemy difficulty seemed right on for my roster where the highest leveled people are mostly 3*. Enjoyable.

Sadly, it still doesn't address the major bugbear in the room, which is that the people who fight for placement will still have a ridiculous amount of grinding to do to remain competitive. This new test format, which I enjoyed very much, must be mutually exclusive from placement rewards. It's the only way I can see it. Otherwise, it will drive the PvE placement folks away from the game. It's possible that two forms of PvE will have to run at the same time - one for progression, one for placement. I know that's a lot to ask.

Ideas for such a model:

The progression model would be like the test model you guys are doing. Increase the amount of progression rewards offered. It was crazy easy to get to 33000 this time. Offer stuff beyond that, so people can achieve a goal that still feels like making progress, and then offer even more for the folks who are really into the grind. Keep the enemies leveling up, but start them off at lower levels and allow them to level up infinitely, until people eventually hit a wall that they may decide to use money to overcome, which would benefit you. Don't have the points per node decrease, let the leveling enemies decide when the player stops hitting a node.

For the placement model, you might want to create some sort of new mode, strictly for competition. Offer progression rewards for it, but the rewards should strictly be things like iso, HP, CP, stuff like that. No covers, the covers and the majority of the HP and CP rewards are obviously going to go to the top scorers, but I feel the progression rewards are still necessary to fuel the desire to keep going.

Just my 2 cents. I appreciate the fact that you folks are trying to find a favorable model to increase player enjoyment, and that you're willing to test things out rather than just implementing stuff a lot of people hate.

snlf25

Jaedenkaal wrote:

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.

Me too, when I got the 25 CP I was in mid 300's for placement. Usually puts me top 50-100. Basically my roster consists of a ton of three star champs, two 4*s over level 200 and four 5*s total of 9 covers between them. The scaling at my level is absurd. I'm lucky to clear a node 5 times, 6 is absurdly brutal. Under this system I would have to give up my 5* dreams and sell them or not make placement in new character events. Both choices suck.

Three of the top 10 guys in my bracket once again had teams consisting of characters level 100 or less. This does not do a good job of making me feel rewarded for advancing my roster.

Realstuff_NameChange

The progression was a lot nicer, much easier to reach than the previous test even with the higher difficulty enemies, but I think a large part of that was because of the massive amounts of goon nodes.

Increased difficulty, especially on the "easy" nodes, is still way too much.

And the placement scoring is ridiculous, I finished the event with 44,000 + (11,000 over max progression) points and ranked somewhere in the 200's, top scores were insane, top 10 all over 100,000 points and top 2 at nearly 140,000 points each.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

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..

I'd be careful to anyone judging this test based on this. The devs already said it was a mistake and the points available were higher than intended.

Soitswritten

It still doesn't work. My easy nodes still require my best characters. I have row champed 4's and having to use them over and over and over again doesn't work. Sure he final sub was fine as I managed to use just one Heath pack and hit progression ONLY playing the high level goons nodes. I didn't even bother with the other over scaled nodes. This even does not work for the test. You guys will show more "winning" easily against higher nodes. Yet they're all easy goons. Anyone with switch/Jean can fly through them with little effort. Not an adequate test. And scaling remains way too high on early nodes.

Keegan

MeatLoafX wrote:

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.

Heh, yeah, our progression and rosters are in similar places. I *almost* went down on the first node, but that shiny new Colossus just stood there like an idiot while Juggs headbutted himself to death against him. I haven't even tried the second node; after the last event's grind and my limited ability to play in the Heroic I'll probably rest up for Duck Season.

But back to the topic at hand, in reading the posts here and looking at rosters, as well as the rosters as I moved up in the bracket to finish t20, I'm pretty sure that most all these complaints about levels being too high are due to covers, and pretty much that cause alone.

Calnexin

My feedback on Unstable Iso-8.

Reaching progression was much easier. Maybe too much. I got it about 12 hours before the end of the 48 hr sub. Better than Enemy, in which I only got ~ 1/2way there, but being shorter and over the weekend made Unstable easier to sink time into.

Grinding nodes is still tough. "Easy" means I select non-boosted characters, but I'm only getting 2 uses out of a given team, on average, before I have to swap out characters or whole teams. It's manageable because I have a pretty even roster, but without that depth I doubt I'd be doing full completions on every node. The harder nodes require 1-2 boosted characters with a complementary 3rd and drain health packs. Between the easy and hard nodes the grind to full rewards leaves me with no health packs and a devastated roster - as such, I'm not doing much in PvP.

I continue to appreciate the "play when you want" idea. If I find the time tonight I might place top 20, which I haven't managed in about a year. Hitting nodes at critical times for optimal points just isn't possible for me at any time slice. I'm used to Top 100 placement, this scheme makes me slightly more competitive.

Pinko_McFly

I am getting a little confused, is there rubber-banding going on here?

I thought for your first 6 clears of any pin, you got the same amount of points each time. This is not what is happening to me.
I clear a pin and I am receiving ~20 points less than were advertised, and if I go to play the pin again it's now listed at the points which I just received for it (previous listed - ~20), and when I clear it the process repeats, so the value keeps decreasing. This is before I have cleared the pin 6 times, I am positive of this as I have yet to clear a pin six times in any of these tests.

tizian2015

Finally:

I made the 25 cp and immediately stop playing. The scaling is still too hard, my 2* boosted full leveled Champs (which are mostly useless because of the 2* 3* nerf) were at 220/212 and the reason for my high scaling (see my other post in this thread).

The only positives:
-fast reaching for the max progression, but this was only about the accidently rubberbanding.
-madeable nodes but only because they are mainly just goons. IM40, Beast and IF are my team for this. With ai-heroes i made just an attempt or two, as i said, played mainly the goon nodes (but the muscles where too much, their attack tiles were ridicoulous)

Negatives:
-without rubberbanding i know i wouldnt play very much, because too much grinding
-scaling still to high
-champions and boosts are no advantage, for collectors like me they are a punishment, because boosted 2* champs scale out more usefull chars
-rewards still a joke

Suggestions:
-Take out champion and boost for scaling (2* are lv 94 for scaling matters etc.), it should be an advantage, not a punishment (or give us a trigger to lock out chars for an event so they dont count for scaling)
-Reinstall rubberbanding
-Scale rewards with the difficulty and the levels of the roster. I have 9 3*champs and many full covered 3*s which need iso and i get the same rewards as the 2* beginner (and i have more difficulties to get them). Or are you really thinking, that the broad player base buys overpriced-iso?
-dont raise levels after every clear, raise them, when the rewards are gone for the "placement players"
-install real easy nodes, not nodes which are called easy but my scaling relevant 2*champions wipe. that is not easy, that is not fun.

mpqr7

I think they accidentally turned rubber banding on by mistake.

Keegan

Pinko McFly wrote:

I am getting a little confused, is there rubber-banding going on here?

I thought for your first 6 clears of any pin, you got the same amount of points each time. This is not what is happening to me.
I clear a pin and I am receiving ~20 points less than were advertised, and if I go to play the pin again it's now listed at the points which I just received for it (previous listed - ~20), and when I clear it the process repeats, so the value keeps decreasing. This is before I have cleared the pin 6 times, I am positive of this as I have yet to clear a pin six times in any of these tests.

Yes.

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi everyone,

The dev team wanted to let players know that rubber banding was accidentally turned on for the event. This would account for unexpected behavior some players may be seeing with points going up and down when beating missions. Apologies for any frustration this may have caused.
(A small benefit from this error is that missions are currently worth more than what was intended.)

Thanks.

revskip

After finishing the event I have to say I am much happier with this test than the EotS test. Scaling seemed much more dialed back and the nodes were playable to the end. I love the change to not having 8 hour intervals determine who places highest, this system rewards the people who play the most not just the guys who are best at setting an alarm clock and who have the roster to speed run for the final hour of a sub.

Still a little worried about the scaling when it is against board movers rather than goon only nodes, in EotS I was rarely able to get to the 7th clear because I would run out of health packs after 3 or 4 fights, but definitely a great step forward in this test.

MPQ_Daywalker

My thoughts....

• Rubber banding being accidentally left on resulted in a crazy easy climb to the 25 CP progression mark, especially if you didn't play nodes until close to the end (I was travelling all day Saturday and didn't really play at all in the 48-hour sub until Sunday afternoon, which enabled me to get a ton of points with very few clears). So I can't judge the points/progression at all due to that.
• Basing scaling on the levels & covers of your characters to determine the levels of your enemies is really only accurate for when the enemy team is made up entirely of moving characters (Ultron goons not included).

MPQ players can take on the same level, or slightly higher level moving characters without an issue -- see The Gauntlet, or PVP for example. But when a moving character, or two moving characters, is/are paired with an AP-generating goon, everything goes out the window. Those enemy moving characters just became way overpowered than your moving characters because they're getting free AP to use with every turn. You're not playing on the same level anymore because of the free AP generation, so those enemies starting at a level that's approximately close to your rosters' average means nothing. On the flip side, nodes made up completely of non-moving goons can be ridiculously easy for an MPQ player to tackle, regardless of how high the level of the enemies. Because the characters aren't moving, it becomes just management or destruction of countdown tiles, which can be accomplished with characters from every * tier of play.

When you are evaluating the effectiveness of this test, please keep the above in mind. Look at how often people cleared the goon-only nodes vs. the ones with moving characters. Personally, since I was only playing for progression and didn't care about placement, I just concentrated on the nodes with non-moving characters and played the others sparingly, to conserve health packs (for use in other aspects of the game -- i.e., PVP).

TxMoose

one more thing: t10 filled with 3* players again. 7 of my t10 are 3* rosters. 1 is a 4* player with 2 high 5*s (lots of time and healthpacks on his hands - one of the top alliances), 1 is a 2* player and one is actually a 1* -> 2* transitioner in 8th place. that is nuts that his limited roster is able to keep up with the wide rosters of the 3* guys. you go little guy. its a messed up system that still punishes leveled rosters.

madok

I really wish we could see the new formula being used to calculate the initial scaling. I would really like to be able to see why mature rosters are being decimated or rendered useless.

Is it the few 4*s I have champed, the un-leveled 5* JG with 11 covers or all those 4*s with a lot of covers but no levels?

Even if I did find the magical pot of ISO to level up all my 4*s, I would still want to use my 3*s because they are fun and different. I really like using my entire roster in PVE events. Even Chulk is fun to use so I can get him all beat up.

Warbringa

So after reading two huge topics from last test and now this one (plus several smaller posts) there seems to be quite a few people who prefer the new system (myself included) and many who don't. You won't be able to please both crowds at this point so why not run two separate PvE events going forward and let people play in the style they prefer? In addition this would thin out the slices as people have been requesting to allow more people earning higher placements. If someone wishes to play both so be it but they won't have the time nor the roster to probably compete in both (if they do congratulations or more accurately I'm so sorry...for them). This would seem to effectively also split the PvE's by tiers too. Most 4* and greater players tend to like the old system and most 3* or lower players seem to prefer the new one (I know this is a generalization). Can it be that difficult to run two events at the same time? Perhaps it is impossible for a technology reason?

GrimSkald

I really don't get why they haven't tried either test with easy nodes. The non-test format has three easy nodes, they decided for whatever reason that the *easiest* node should be at about the level where you really do need to take it seriously, and only get harder from there.

I am so very not a fan it isn't even funny.

TLCstormz

Eddiemon wrote:

I don't think there are that many obsessisives who will put in the 8 hours a day, and if they really do, well good on them, they deserve it, it's probably all they have going for them.

You have no right to say something like that, and should have been moderated for it.

WelcomeDeath

So...don't thin I've posted here yet. My scaling went UP this pve, rather than down as promised. I hated it during EOTS, I hate it now. Use the new set-up for how pve runs, but something similar to the old scaling so that there's 3 easy, 3 medium (essential) and 3 hard nodes like it's always been. Keep the leveling info when we beat the nodes, keep the max level at 6 clears, all that is fine. Just cap them much much lower as it was before. If you're punished everywhere for leveling, why the hell should you level your characters? Why play at all?