PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Prodigal Sun

mpqr7

Also the progression rewards themselves are total ****. I work very hard to get... 140 iso progression reward? a 2* cover that I'll immediately sell? It's hard to get too excited about those rewards. The only ones that matter are the 3* for championing and the 25 CP, and the event tokens and HP, but they are few and far between........... .... .
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......

Can we re-work those? With better rewards, PVE would have a much better sense of progression and achievement, and I promise it won't break the game! We all need millions of ISO to progress! Giving us another 10K iso or so per day with meaningful play won't hurt the meta!

Jam_Adams

SCALING IS FINE now

TIME REQUIRED FOR PLACEMENT IS STILL OFF THE CHARTS

seriously, sub 1, I played more than I usually do (historically, 3-4 clears per sub, getting CP more often than not), and now, i'm not even in the top 200. THIS BLOWS. you've created this environment where we have the option to play more, and for more points. before the new PVE system, I played way too much (3x day, 45 minutes each). now I'm even playing a couple hours more and it's not enough. since we now have this option to play more, those that are capable of doing so, WILL do so. while those of us that can't or don't have time to, and are still at the level of 3-4 clears, are placing WAAAAYYYYY down the list.

this freakin' sucks. and it's not just this Prodigal Son event. same thing happened on the first two test events.

goodbye placement rewards, it was nice knowing you.

Jam_Adams

so, with the old PVE, there are people whose complaint was that they couldn't structure their life around the 8 hour clears.

now, with the new PVE, we have a lot of people complaining that they can't keep up with the people who can sit around and play MPQ all day.

IDEA: run both styles of PVE side-by-side, allowing a player to enter one event (and only one).

I think this would be beneficial for two reasons: this provides both sets of people with an opportunity to compete. and, by having two events (and thusly, two sets of rewards systems for each event), it should allow more rewards to enter the environment, which we've been asking for.

I think this would appease the vast majority of the player base.

TLCstormz

MissChinch wrote:

If they're really into revamping PvE, I'd be for giving 3 attempts per node before they're locked out, regardless of completion. No concept of point decay or point refresh. No rubberbanding. One team up node per sub where the heros are provided at the same level for every person that experiences scaling after each completion with no limits on how many times it can be tried.

I'd like players only concerned with progression rewards to be able to get those with no regard to the timing of their clears. (in the 8 hour system simply clearing three times back to back didn't get it done, they would have had to time their clears more optimally, or spend more time... in the 24 hour system they upped the number of clears required to be a more substantial time requirement)for sake of argument I'd like progression rewards to be calculated in this hypothetical system at two successes for every node including the team up one across all subs.

I'd like players playing for placement to have some element other than timing introduced, and I'd hate for it to be how much money they spend in health packs, making the optimal path require a perfect clear rate IMO is the better option, bad boards will suck but RNG is always going to be a part of the equation.

Giving everyone an equal playing field in the team up node provides for a more fair way for the super competitive placement folks to compete, for that single node heros will be the same and scaling will be the same and its one that can be completed over and over with opponents scaling up on success until its too hard to finish.

Ties are fine, though I doubt across 1000 participants and 3+ subs there would be large number of ties if the points per node are chosen in an increasing manner while minimizing common multiples. Possibly clumped near the top, but I don't see that as a problem, just give the rewards out to anyone that's tied for the proper placement (if 5 people complete each sub perfectly and none of them can grind the team up node any more than the other, then give em all the top tier prize)

if they want suggestions on how to tweak the current implementation without anything too drastic: lose the refresh timer completely, keep the point drop mechanic, but let it kick in after 2-3 clears... keep a 1-20 point floor on each node depending on difficulty. The progression folks that are interested in gross number of points will find value regardless of timing and the placement folks that are interested in relative score will find value in the low points that others might not get once the node has been hit several times. Reduce the complexity rather than increase it, however unless scaling is amazingly good certain roster types will have an easier time of it no matter what framework is used.

THIS NEEDS ITS OWN THREAD!!!!! Amazing. Thanks for your contribution!

wymtime

So far I have only done 2 clears and the scaling has not been too bad. The first 3 nodes should still start lower, the the other 6 seem fine. I don't know where they will end after 6-7 clears though and it still worries me. I have to agree with others that the refresh timers made it a lot easier to hit top 10-20-50-100 for subs and the event. In order to place well you really need to play more and grind more. This is not a good quality of life change. No refresh timers is a good theory on paper, but in reality it is causing more pain.

To Jam-Adams point if you did this you would need to run the scaling as it is in the new test on both. Or at least run the scaling test separate from the no timer test so players can feel the difference with the scaling of the new system and the old system.

TxMoose

I guess i'll never get to use jugs again except for the one ddq node/day... and forget my under-covered level 70 newer 4*s that I'm curious about how they play. might be better, but doesn't mean its ideal.

mpqr7

How is a Thug's gun shot taking away over 2000 hit points, yet I only win 70 ISO and 160 points per clear??? It's just not worth it! Why do you punish us for having nice rosters???? Why bother doing anything? These "improvements" are making me miserable.

Philly484

The system isn't fixed. I don't understand why anyone keeps trying to argue the fact about scaling being the biggest issue. It's really not. The issue is rewards plan and simple. I haven't had any issues with scaling since the first test, and I still have the same beef with this one that I did with the initial test. If the intention is they don't want PVE to be competitive then just come out and say it, don't sugar coat it. Sorry but the rabbit players got what they wanted out of this system, Vet players are still seeing no benefit to this. I may be able to do the initial grind when I have time, but that to me pales in comparison to what I am getting as a reward. I mean clearly this looks like this will be the new system, so everyone just needs to get prepared for the final change when it occurs. The benefit to the company may not always be the benefit to it's clientele and D3 if they actually want to take our recommendation into consideration, they need to address the issues that a variety of us are complaining about. My favorite quote from clients and I myself use is "You cant **** a BSer" Thats the edited version of that.

Crowl

Astralgazer wrote:

1. Goons are mean, boring and deadly. If I had to lose against three villains, it will be because I play bad. If I had to lose against goons, it will be because the goons cheat. That is not nice. Some goons like Muscle, or nearly the entire set of symbiotes, need rework. You can rework the rate at which they create AP, or lenghten the CD on their placed tiles, or the condition on which their passives trigger. Especially when you pair a couple of Muscles with any villain; even 3rd rate characters become deadly with free APs and monster strike tiles. Scale down the goons please.

The way I look at it is that goons should never be paired with a hero/villain that uses the same ap colours as them, their free ap should be for their own use and not so they are monster batteries. Besides that change, goons should only gain ap if there was potentially a match-3 or better on the board when it was their turn i.e. no yellow matches on the board then no free yellow ap for that muscle.

There should also be caps on how far their powers can continue to scale, perhaps allow their hp to continue to scale up beyond a certain point but their ridiculously cheap powers should have max values.

Vhailorx

Nodes rewards are still much too low relative to the node difficulty.

"Easy" nodes are still a bit too hard.

Optimal clears require way too much time.

Prog rewards are still too high relative to the time commitment and frustration required.

Competitive pve is still annoying.

It's too bad; the need for iso and cp after the introduction of champions had gotten me back into playing pve regularly.
This new system will have me back to ddq only with the occasional PvP event for a key 1k cover.

Crowl

Jam_Adams wrote:

so, with the old PVE, there are people whose complaint was that they couldn't structure their life around the 8 hour clears.

now, with the new PVE, we have a lot of people complaining that they can't keep up with the people who can sit around and play MPQ all day.

IDEA: run both styles of PVE side-by-side, allowing a player to enter one event (and only one).

I think this would be beneficial for two reasons: this provides both sets of people with an opportunity to compete. and, by having two events (and thusly, two sets of rewards systems for each event), it should allow more rewards to enter the environment, which we've been asking for.

I think this would appease the vast majority of the player base.

If you have two flawed systems then the correct approach is not to use both of them and call it a day, assuming that the new system's main intention is to address issues with the old one then the correct approach is to continue to work on that new system until it manages to do that while at the same time does not introduce it's own issues which is not the case yet.

As far as test 3:

Scaling - this has improved through the three tests, the trivial nodes should still be lower at the start though.
Flexibility - improved from the old system, but the increased grind for t20 and above needs to be addressed.

Node rewards - these do not match up to the effort put in by people, either those with high-end rosters should get higher rewards or they should get much easier fights to make things fair.
Progression rewards - this might not be related to the test as it has been reported in other events too, but people are finding the max progression targets harder to reach these days, is this an intentional change or somebody messing up the numbers?
Event rewards - there are now almost 100 characters, so the chances of getting any particular one from a token are rare enough, so how about looking to give out more tokens to more people and increase iso rewards to recognise the sheer amount needed to have a broad roster.

Kojubat

Polares wrote:

Fix things that are broken like: Variable Rewards depending on rooster, iso draught, 5 randomness, chulk and SS super lame, etc. There are a lot of things that need fixing or improving, concentrate on those please, PvE was not one of those

I know it was a typo, but I find a male chicken based reward structure to be hilarious and completely within the realm of possibilities with this developer.

RoboDuck

I just don't understand the need to screw with the scaling on the easy nodes. Leave them alone.

The scaling on the essential nodes should he based off covers/level of the character required for that specific node.

Stop scaling up every single node when you beat it. And if this new punishment stays, the nodes should start scaling down when they get really high & you lose.

Remove the timers. Its not play when you want.

Remove placement rewards. 2 forms of PvP is dumb.

Nick441234

The scaling is fine for me, but 7 clears is not. Its day one, I've cleared them all 7 times, and I'm only 25th overall with 3 hours to go. I'm frankly shattered already. Another 6 days of this to achieve basically what I was achieving under the old system with just 3 clears and a bit of mopping up is a joke.

SnowcaTT

nick_chicane wrote:

The scaling is fine for me, but 7 clears is not. Its day one, I've cleared them all 7 times, and I'm only 25th overall with 3 hours to go. I'm frankly shattered already. Another 6 days of this to achieve basically what I was achieving under the old system with just 3 clears and a bit of mopping up is a joke.

Jam_Adams wrote:

SCALING IS FINE now

TIME REQUIRED FOR PLACEMENT IS STILL OFF THE CHARTS

Count me in this chorus. After two sets of subs, I've run all the "easy" (goon) nodes until rewards were done, and all the CP nodes (2nd time was bummer to not get it in first four times!).

Just that took at least an hour and a half: and I'm not trying to beat every node every time or have placement! The time required is just ridiculous.

Edith09

I'm making it short this time.
Scaling is OK for my roster (3x uncovered 5* and other 3* and 4* around level 140)
BUT DO SOMETHING WITH NUMBERS OF POSSIBLE CLEARS! 6X IS WAY TOO MUCH!!! I did 6x every node yesterday which took me 3 hours and ended up 17th. For top 10 I'd need 8-10 clears? This is game not side job. I need top50 in PVE's to get some iso, HP but at this cost I'm not sure if I can keep up.

tanis3303

I had a big long post written out in my head, but I don't see the point, it's all already been said. After a run thru the first sub, I can say that scaling seems better. If this new level setup meets whatever goal y'all were shooting for with increased difficulty, then so be it, I can live with it.

But the time commitment? No thank you. This game mode was already too time intensive, and you folks are hellbent on making it worse. The goalposts for CP progression continue to be moved back, and placement? Foggetabodit. It honestly just isn't worth my time to play this mode anymore when I can get better rewards from PvP in a mere couple of hours. Unless this part of the feedback is addressed, this signifies the end of my time with Story mode, I have better things to do with my life.

Nick441234

I can only hope the 7 clears don't stay. I enjoy story mode but I cant keep up with 7 clears a day for every event. I've played every story event for nearly 2 years, and this would end it forever, and I dont want that.

Calnexin

The difficulty seems much more reasonable this time around. I did an initial clear with a couple extra on the CP nodes at the start of the event. My roster was bruised but not enough to stop me engaging some PvP before turning in for the night. This morning I ground more of the high-value targets to start some clocks - I hit completion on 4 nodes and did a few extra clears on some of the harder ones. This required 4 health packs in process (and 5 damaged heroes healing up during work hours).

I'm happy with this level of difficulty. Progression rewards are another matter. I was ranked 23 in my bracket before leaving for work, but I'm < 10% of the way toward CP reward. The top player in my T100 alliance (who likely ground the nodes to 1 right away) is at ~25%. Getting another 10% in the sub is likely going to require 2-3 hours. I know subsequent subs will offer more points, but at this point in a new test it feels discouraging, given the testing history. We're not getting three free event tokens out of this one.

wymtime

wymtime wrote:

So far I have only done 2 clears and the scaling has not been too bad. The first 3 nodes should still start lower, the the other 6 seem fine. I don't know where they will end after 6-7 clears though and it still worries me. I have to agree with others that the refresh timers made it a lot easier to hit top 10-20-50-100 for subs and the event. In order to place well you really need to play more and grind more. This is not a good quality of life change. No refresh timers is a good theory on paper, but in reality it is causing more pain.

To Jam-Adams point if you did this you would need to run the scaling as it is in the new test on both. Or at least run the scaling test separate from the no timer test so players can feel the difference with the scaling of the new system and the old system.

I have now done 4 clears and am not even in top 50 in sub #1. Normally in the old system 4 clears would be good for top 50, the problem is you have to do 4 clears right away and be first to 4 clears. This means a lot of grinding right away compared to doing a clear or 2 then comming back to the game later.
Scaling has been good I did back to back clears and only had one node hit 1 character hard. It really helps with goons since there is no match damage and everything is a CD tile. The harder nodes are much better, I would still like to see the trivial nodes stay easier, but get rid of the no refresh timers. This does not make PVE more casual it makes it more hardcore grinding in the beginning of the sub