PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Prodigal Sun

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi everyone,

We will be testing new scaling changes in the Prodigal Sun Story event beginning this Thursday, April 14th.

Here's the lowdown from Anthony at Demiurge:

"Thank you to everyone that participated in the Unstable Iso-8 Story event which featured the latest iteration of the new mission difficulty. A trend we noticed from the last couple of times we have run the new difficulty system is that players with higher level teams are not performing as well as we expected them to. To help with this, we have adjusted how enemies scale against higher level teams and increased the difficulty spread by making easier missions much easier. I will outline these changes below.

High-Level Team Advantage - With the new mission difficulty system, we intended to make it so that enemies scaled up slower as your roster improved. The current implementation wasn't giving high-level teams enough of an advantage as we wanted so we further decreased the speed that enemies scaled.

Increase the Spread of Difficulty - In the past two runs, there wasn't enough difference between the easiest and hardest mission. Also, we felt that wasn't enough difference between the first time you beat a mission and the 6th (the maximum difficulty a mission can be). We increased difference in both areas by making the easiest end (on both areas) much easier and made the hardest end only slightly easier than previous runs.

We will return to the previous system for the next Story event as we continue to collect data and feedback. Thank you again for all your feedback!

Updated Mission Difficulty Details:

• Adjusted how enemies scale as your roster gets better.
• Much larger spread of difficulty

o Every mission has a different difficulty. The previous run had the same difficulty for the last three non-required missions. o Easier missions are much easier and harder missions are slightly easier. o Missions start off easier and have a maximum difficulty that is slightly easier."

As Anthony mentioned, thank you for your feedback! Please provide your testing experiences and opinions in this thread once the new test is live. Your ongoing feedback has been extremely helpful.

TxMoose

at least it sounds like they're trying to move in the right direction. really would like to keep the ability to use 40-60 characters in any given event.

Tryke

This is gonna be good. *grabs popcorn*

BlackSheep101

These are the changes I was hoping to see after the first two tests. Lets see if they turned the dials far enough.

CaptainFreaky

Any plans to adjust the placement rewards so that the amount of times needed to replay missions isn't higher than the last run of this PVE?
I believe that the last two times the "new" PVE was run, players had to replay nodes more (like 5+ instead of 3+) over a 24 hr period in order to achieve the highest level of progression. While being able to play at any point in the 24 hour (typical) period is nice, having to play more for the same reward isn't as awesome.

hex706f726368

Still 6 clears plus final grind? Not addressing the increased time req at all? At what point will you address that feedback, or is it non-negotiable?

It doesn't matter how much easier you make the nodes, if you continue to ask me to play for another hour or more, I'm going to pass if that is the new format. This game needs to be less of a grind, not more.

Jam_Adams

uugghhh.... y'all kept the 6 clears?

this was a major point of contention in BOTH of the previous tests. your numbers may show people cleared nodes 6 times, but I didn't see too many posting about how they enjoyed doing it. In fact, most people hated the idea of the time commitment required for 6 clears.

I hope max progression is not set at 6 clears worth of points.

Leadggb

Listen to your players.

Get rid of competitive PVE (aka PVP), and replace it with a revamped progression rewards system, including an alliance progression (like the alliance rewards in ultron/galactus events).

No matter how easy you make nodes relative to roster strength, you still get punished for leveling up your roster because it puts you in a more competitive bracket.

madsalad

How about node rewards that aren't static and actually pay out according to difficulty?

I see you have been trying to address the new scaling but not the complaints about the new structure which requires 6 grinds up front and then more in the back end, per node, to be optimal, along with no increased payouts for increased difficulty.

Thoughts?

Edit: fixed typo

mpqr7

What about having better rewards for players who need to face tougher scaling?

So a player who fights lv 100 enemies receives 100 ISO, which isn't so bad, when it's only 28K to max out a 1* or 70K to max out a 2*.. or even 120K to max out a 3*...

But when a player who flights lv 300+ enemies receives 100 ISO, that doesn't do much to level up a 4*, which requires 365K, or a 5* that requires 553K.

Can we get some sort of prize scaling in PVE?

Also, we spend a long time playing PVE already... we shouldn't be required to play PVE even more than we do now. We need a break!

halirin

Sounds good. Glad they're trying incremental changes!

DapperChewie

Leadggb wrote:

Listen to your players.

Get rid of competitive PVE (aka PVP), and replace it with a revamped progression rewards system, including an alliance progression (like the alliance rewards in ultron/galactus events).

No matter how easy you make nodes relative to roster strength, you still get punished for leveling up your roster because it puts you in a more competitive bracket.

This is my big thing too. If all pve events were more cooperative instead of competitive, where you work with your alliance for alliance progression rewards, and placement was only for alliances (for a bonus reward, same way it is now is fine), it would be a lot less stressful. The last couple Galactus Hungers events were the most fun I've had in this game, because they had me working with my friends and saw all of us benefit.

Malificant

Will rubberbanding be on again? I actually really liked having it back with this new system on the Unstable ISO 8 run.

fmftint

7 day test hell...

On second though, Red Hulk essential and Hulkbuster weekly boosted, this almost plays itself

thanos8587

make it so i can hit progression around day 4 so all i have to do is come back on day 7 and get my sentry cover. thanks.

Linkster79

This is going to be fun, almost as much fun as the last time I heard "Here hold mah beer."

TxMoose

fmftint wrote:

7 day test hell...

On second though, Red Hulk essential and Hulkbuster weekly boosted, this almost plays itself

yikes! scaling off those 2 will basically require both of them on nearly every dang node though. not looking forward to that aspect.

Nick441234

DapperChewie wrote:

Leadggb wrote:

Listen to your players.

Get rid of competitive PVE (aka PVP), and replace it with a revamped progression rewards system, including an alliance progression (like the alliance rewards in ultron/galactus events).

No matter how easy you make nodes relative to roster strength, you still get punished for leveling up your roster because it puts you in a more competitive bracket.

This is my big thing too. If all pve events were more cooperative instead of competitive, where you work with your alliance for alliance progression rewards, and placement was only for alliances (for a bonus reward, same way it is now is fine), it would be a lot less stressful. The last couple Galactus Hungers events were the most fun I've had in this game, because they had me working with my friends and saw all of us benefit.

Yes, I do like these suggestions. The cooperative aspect of Ultron made the event a lot of fun, would love to see this in all PVE events. More rewards for alliance progression would certainly help with the lack of ISO.

jackstar0

Echoing the 6 clears criticism.

I again state that if it was 4 to start the countdown and then keep the 7 rewards and we're good enough to keep it. Also, adjusting progression rewards to compensate, OBVIOUSLY.

Thank you for continuing to try and improve this experience.

Stax the Foyer

hex706f726368 wrote:

Still 6 clears plus final grind? Not addressing the increased time req at all? At what point will you address that feedback, or is it non-negotiable?

It doesn't matter how much easier you make the nodes, if you continue to ask me to play for another hour or more, I'm going to pass if that is the new format. This game needs to be less of a grind, not more.

This. If you raise the performance ceiling, people will meet the new ceiling, especially for new releases.

Fundamentally, bracket luck has too much of an effect on PvE rewards. This will further amplify that problem. I'm very disappointed that we're on the verge of a third PvE test, and there's no indication that changes to the reward structure are on the table.

It's concerning to me that the changes which are nominally quality-of-life changes are being viewed with such trepidation by at least the competitive section of the playerbase. I'd hope it would be concerning to the developers as well.

Ducky

Last time they claimed easier enemies, mine went up...just sayin'.