PVE Scaling Feedback & New Test : Prodigal Sun

BigRussian

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.

1000x this.

Esheris

Besides other flaws that have been listed by others, Please please please stop scaling off boosted levels. Those boosted characters should be there to help, not hinder you.

rbdragon

sinnerjfl

Wow, you really want to implement this new garbage system don't you?

Majority is telling you we don't want it, stop it. PVE is already a huge timesink, this makes it require more time and every fight gets harder for no reason besides you want it to.

wymtime

via Imgflip Meme Maker

rbdragon

Seriously - why bother asking for our feedback at all?

Go through and read what the biggest complaint as been. Don't just look at the numbers, because in this case, the numbers do lie. Player engagement may have increased, but not by choice, but by "force". No one wants to feel forced to play a game that is meant to be fun. Yet the only change you made both times was to "reduce" difficulty (which, by the way, the difference between level 415 and 405 is not really noticeable).

No change to the grindy aspect of the test, even though the biggest complaint was that for optimal play you would have to play for potentially 5 straight hours. That's insane! Just because someone is willing to do it doesn't mean they want to nor does it validate it as a good idea.

And before you say that wasn't happening and it won't - try the new PVE game mechanic on a new release. People will do it, and I can almost guarantee that it will be the deal breaker for many of your loyal players.

You've been given many good solutions that could work, and definitely would be better than what you've chosen. Why not prove you give a tinykitty about the playerbase and PROVE you're willing to listen to them, instead of telling them what you think they want.

The alternative - don't bother asking for our opinions. There are many of us who feel lied to every time we're ignored. As a father of a teenager, I get enough of that **** at home.

Dragon_Nexus

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.

Oh my God, this.
FFS this! Devs, for crying out loud, please get this into your heads. WE DON'T WANT TO SPEND 3 HOURS CLEARING NODES 6 TIMES IN A ROW.

Good lord, why are they so focussed on the damn level scaling and ignoring the common feedback of the awful 6 clears requirement!?

Thank goodness I'm away for a while when this PvE goes on, I won't feel so guilty about completely skipping it.

Mawtful

I guess I'm grateful that you're at least continuing to make adjustments, but I think I can give you my feedback in advance:
Scaling is still too hard, too many clears are required, rewards don't match the challenge, pve is still really a pvp competitive format, etc.

For everyone else, here's my advice on the "best" way to play the test if you really want to deliver in-game metrics to support your feedback. Remember that Demiurge loves to track player engagement, so you want to make sure that you leverage those metrics to your advantage.

Interestingly, not playing at all isn't the best plan. Although they'll still recognise that you didn't walk away from the game entirely (you played PvP and DDQ, right?), but it's kinda rich if you're going to comment on something that you didn't even play.
So you've got to play, and you've got to create metrics that show you gave up. So what you want to do is play a few nodes, take damage, etc. and then finally loose a mission and then stop playing that sub. I like to create a low-mid level team, usually based around a theme (the Guardians of the Galaxy team is pretty fun) or some attempt at a full rainbow, synergised team, and then just play as many nodes as I can without any healing in between. I'll usually make it to the 2nd hard node. Then repeat for each sub of the event. That's the trick. You gotta keep coming back to "try to make progress" but become disheartened when your team gets wiped out. For a 7 day event, you could probably even skip the last day, to make it look like you just gave up completely.

Yeah, you're going to miss out on a tonne of rewards - ISO, HP, CP, and covers - but the alternative is that one of these tests actually passes well enough for Demiurge to say, "right, well, let's just leave it at that".

Starsaber

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. Our last genuine PVE other than DDQ was in February

cyineedsn

Nobody thinks that scaling up enemies after every fight is fun, because rewards and the progression points earned sure don't scale up. Stop punishing me for playing the game!

djvkool

I don't mind the new PVE but I very much dislike the 6 clears in a row - this encourages hard core grinding and particularly unfair for those of us with full time work and family with small kids, granted, you can 'clear whenever you want' but the last 2 new PVE I have never been able to do full 6 clears, and with the same amount of game time I can only finish around 150th, whereas in the old style PVE I can comfortably finish around 50th-60th

Suddenreal

djvkool wrote:

I don't mind the new PVE but I very much dislike the 6 clears in a row - this encourages hard core grinding and particularly unfair for those of us with full time work and family with small kids, granted, you can 'clear whenever you want' but the last 2 new PVE I have never been able to do full 6 clears, and with the same amount of game time I can only finish around 150th, whereas in the old style PVE I can comfortably finish around 50th-60th

I usually end up somewhere around 160th, which is fine since I'm transitioning to 3* and they help boost my roster. Now I feel I'll be lucky to end up between 200 and 300. Well, I still have some 2* champions that need covers to level but it would be nice to see some more rewards in the progression, like another 3*, so I don't miss out on my rank reward.

Still, I hope I'll be able to use more than my A-team this time. I'd prefer to clear the lower nodes with my mid level characters, something that's hard to do if the enemies are all at least 50 levels higher.

kaelad

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?

halirin wrote:

Sounds good. Glad they're trying incremental changes!

I agree with both of these. Although the number of clears is still a problem, I like the fact that they are tweaking one thing at a time. Once they get the scaling correct, then they can move on to tweak the number of clears. For the first test they made a lot of changes all at once and it was a bit of a mess. Changing that much all at once, something is bound to go wrong. Nice to see they're now making a change to one area to get it right, then hopefully, move on to address the other big complaint.

Linkster79

rbdragon wrote:

The alternative - don't bother asking for our opinions. There are many of us who feel lied to every time we're ignored. As a father of a teenager, I get enough of that **** at home.

Oh I know that feeling and my eldest isn't even a teen yet. I told her the other week that I had done all her chores for her so all she needed to do was get her night clothes on and brush her teeth, she accused me of making her do everything and was going to report me for using child, slave labour.

Twysta

Lukoil

The scaling is not the issue... The issue is REWARDS for increased difficulty. Critical boost for the hardest node iteration? Yeah sure - perfect reward... Change reward structure please.

OneLastGambit

Don't take this as an inflammatory remark because it is genuine curiosity.

Why do people keep playing these tests competitively if they are unhappy with them?

First one...I competed and failed miserably.

Second...I knew it was going to need a change of Both attitude and tactics so I played fairly casually and sniped a very late bracket and finished t5 for the event.

The new system is definitely better if you're not able to stick to the rigid timescale of the current system and are happy with just the progression rewards.

If that's not you then I imagine that new pve will either make people change their expectations and playing style or make them retire from pve

DTStump

This is like a rollercoaster. Every time there is a test I quickly give up on the PvE because of the 6-clear thing. Then when the old system returns I'm so happy about it that I grind to make top 50 in every sub regardless of the rewards. Then another test comes and I take another break.

Admit it: you're doing this on purpose just so people like me play a lot between tests

bbf2

The difficulty is an issue, but it's not the main issue.
Unstable Iso-8 was incredibly easy because there were so many goon nodes and I have a team that can make sure 90% of the time that no CD tiles go off and my team takes zero damage. Those nodes were easy as hell, and the max prog was super low, so I was able to get it partway through the second sub.

But it was still a SLOG. A boring slog that took up a bunch of time. It was easy for me to beat the nodes six times, but it was not fun. Grinding multiple nodes six times in a row (even if I can do it without my guys taking any damage) was not fun at all. It felt like a chore.

Linkster79

Time for some serious feedback from me. I could do this after the event but I have time now and in possession of a crystal ball.

Points refresh timer: I like the new system. I am not ultra competitive and certainly aren't able to log in every 8 hours so keep this.

Scaling: Why is this even part of the game? As we get better, stronger characters the game should get easier not harder. At least adjust the node rewards according to how high the enemies we face. That off my chest the scaling this time isn't as bad as the first 2 tests but the difficulty is still going too high too fast.

When you have finished with these experiments of yours please ease off the character releases and put more resources into addressing the chronic ISO shortage. I have 6 3* character at 13 covers still at L40, it's no good winning these covers but still have the characters in an unplayable state due to their level. 2 years ago it wasn't an issue as new releases were fewer allowing us more time to level them, as the game changes and evolves so must the resources offered.