How scaling SHOULD work

Unknown

Hey Devs, you know how scaling should work? Like this:

Start off with matches at the easy grade. First win, first upgrade. Higher level, more points. Proceed like this until you reach a point with high points/high level. Once you stop, it starts slowly auto-deleveling the event, but also lowering points gain. This allows two separate strategies. One, the hard grind where you just keep bashing and trying to win against higher teams, or two, a slow, steady trickle of points.

Right now, level scaling is broken. Levels vary wildly with no readily explainable reason. Why did my free PC account, highest level 40, have all green fights to start the hulk event, yet my mobile account with level 50's have a level 40, then two level 70 fights to do the same? Yes yes, you did a ninja update and "fixed" it, but I still have higher matches than my other account there. And the points go DOWN while the level GOES UP. So I'm taking MORE damage for LESS gain, therefore invalidating my levels.

Yes, I know, with stunlock and heals, you could grind tons of points. Simply have a point where points DO start to decrease at some mark. Or just keep leveling up fights making it less and less worth the harsh grind time to earn the points. Blow the cap off, let fights scale into the thousands. But make every increase a little less on the points side, making it less and less worth grinding higher.

However, is the current rubberband system actually good? No. If your playtimes aren't in the "golden" window, you will never, ever, EVER win. Those who can customize their playtime to live around your schedule can easily pick up all the points they need to lock down win after win, and with each win strengthen their play position and continue to hold that lead. Hell, your change to the HP reward on covers shows people were literally farming top spots. It's obvious that the metagame is trumping the fun aspects of this game. Just by having a proper scaling system that works on a fixed timer will help alleviate it. Hell, put in diminished grind returns as well, it would still be better.

The current system, like MMR, is broken, and favours the two ends of the spectrum (either those who have everything and therefore can toss in powered up characters at high levels to bash away, or lowbies who get enemies so scaled down they can easily win). The middle is taking it up the rear, and hard.

Mawtful

Pawkeshup wrote:

Simply have a point where points DO start to decrease at some mark.

Devs! Scale points up! Except then scale points down! People should be able to get points, but not too many points!

Unknown

Mawtful wrote:

Pawkeshup wrote:

Simply have a point where points DO start to decrease at some mark.

Devs! Scale points up! Except then scale points down! People should be able to get points, but not too many points!

Need a chart?

Just tossing out random numbers but here

First match 100
Second 200
third 275
Fourth 325

Et cetera. Have it taper down, but steadily increase. As it stands, here's what happens

Match one 1000
Match two 800
Match three 600
Match four 400
Match five 200
Match six 100
Match seven+ 1

Wait 8-12 (or how ever many hours)

repeat

Oh, and scaling randomly occurs or doesn't occur. So you may face the same matches or you may get all deadly matches when you hit 600 points.

At least with a system that levels slowly gather, and points increase on a curve, then you have something more malleable and predictable in results.

Plus, if you have it just scale endlessly and at a constant rate, you will get stunlock teams that can run the board indefinitely and earn ungodly amounts of points, never to be touched. By scaling both up and down, it becomes a bigger risk/bigger waste of time to endlessly rank the enemy up to headhunt points. It would be a bit of a balancing act, but as it stands now, with the random scaling and scheduled refreshes, the system is utterly broken. It benefits no one but those who can live around the game.

Unknown

And when do you hit 0 points in your system?

Or does it just go up and up forever? Or does it hit 0, and then you whack at a top level enemy for 500 points each and every fight till it hits 0 again? So there's absolutely no way to distinguish between the various players that can handle the top level enemies?

Unknown

Why hit 0 points? Why deadlock? See, that's the issue with the current system. The more you grind, the less you get. The more you play, the less you get. The more you play off schedule, the less you get. Punish, punish, punish.

The system I propose would need to be balanced on how much you could gain, but by making fights ludicrously hard after, say, 10 times or so in a row, the issue would take care of itself. Make it so you can win with a ton of luck, sure, but make it more likely that you will lose and get crushed. Make it so that those who have the skill in teambuilding and the resources win over those who just so happen to have a lifestyle conducive to play. By up and down scaling, you have the ability to cater to both.

Let's say you cannot grind until you are blind. Fine, grind a few, come back. Rinse, repeat. You could even have a steadily diminished return overall, so those who challenge the heights gain a bigger reward for the bigger risk. There is a balance that could be struck within there. It would take time and effort, but the current system has no balance, rhyme or reason. You have a fixed refresh schedule based on your last playtime, requiring a rigid adherence to a schedule. You have utterly random scaling of levels as far as I've seen, with point totals that don't even relate to this scalings. On the Sim event, I saw a match go from Normal to Deadly after a win, but because it was a win on that match, the reward pretty much halved. What sense does that make? "Let's triple the difficulty and half the rewards!"

I had figured it for a bug, but seeing the recent scale screw-up, it's an issue with them not testing this in any way, shape or form. Hell, they obviously didn't check the Hulk's scaling for the last event (7500 HP on a level 20-something? I cannot fathom what you higher levels saw).

Reduction of points doesn't help anyone. It may look like less points = better system, but in reality, if that were the case, then there would be no anger over the 20 ISO reward for every single solitary fight. People want progress. They want their efforts to mean something, not be arbitrarily decided by factors very much beyond their control.

A risk/reward system that benefits both sides is very much possible. It would take some playing about with to get it to both scale and be reasonable so that you didn't have utter runaways with vast margins of points needed to even come close. But by the same token, wouldn't you rather have your fate in your own hands vs. being relegated to living by a set timer? In essence, it would be like saying in Hockey, you should only score in the third period because only the third period matters. That's what the system is now. Wait for that last minute rush, zerg, wait for the next last minute rush.

Unknown

That's a lot of words to say "bring back Heroic Juggernaut where people who had all the free time in the world could grind and beat everyone else."

Your system is worse than the current one. Forget "a schedule", your system requires constant play to maintain a position.

Mawtful

Pawkeshup wrote:

Fine, grind a few, come back. Rinse, repeat. You could even have a steadily diminished return overall, so those who challenge the heights gain a bigger reward for the bigger risk.

That's... that's almost exactly the way it works right now.

Also, "diminish" means "reduce", so diminishing returns overall would mean that "those who challenge the heights gain [less] reward for the bigger risk".

Unknown

Mawtful wrote:

Pawkeshup wrote:

Fine, grind a few, come back. Rinse, repeat. You could even have a steadily diminished return overall, so those who challenge the heights gain a bigger reward for the bigger risk.

That's... that's almost exactly the way it works right now.

Also, "diminish" means "reduce", so diminishing returns overall would mean that "those who challenge the heights gain [less] reward for the bigger risk".

Actually, no, no it doesn't. Right now, I did three fights on my free account. The levels started at 41, finished at 47. The points went down each win. So no, you don't get more points the higher levels go. You get less for more work.

And when I say Diminish over time, I mean when you allow the characters to scale back down and repeat. That way, people don't just do what they do now, find a sweet schedule spot and work to a scheduled "golden hour" of points gain. By offering up the ability to outdo repeated events by going for broke, you'd have more movement in the rankings. As it stands now, I'm sure if someone set their mind to it, and had the resources, they'd just forever have the top slot. All you need is the right team and the right play schedule.

Unknown

"As it stands now, I'm sure if someone set their mind to it, and had the resources, they'd just forever have the top slot. All you need is the right team and the right play schedule."

Your system doesn't change that dude. Your system just replaces this one with a grinding system that has no end and makes it MUCH harder for anyone but the top teams to win anything.

Mawtful

Pawkeshup wrote:

Actually, no, no it doesn't. Right now, I did three fights on my free account. The levels started at 41, finished at 47. The points went down each win. So no, you don't get more points the higher levels go. You get less for more work.

So you've earned X points for 3 fights on one account but only Y points for 2 fights on your other account? That sounds suspiciously like more points for more work.

Pawkeshup wrote:

And when I say Diminish over time, I mean when you allow the characters to scale back down and repeat.

So... you want the missions to have "stacks" that "refresh" after a certain amount of time has passed? Hmm, I can see that working.

Unknown

So... you want the missions to have "stacks" that "refresh" after a certain amount of time has passed?

Can anyone suggest what the downside would be in a combination of the current stacks/rubberbanding system with fights that scale up a bit every time you (and not the community) beat them? It seems to make sense to me, but I might well have missed something in how the parts would interact.

Unknown

Still not sure why we need scaling at all.

Just make content that gets harder the further you progress.
You have a good team? Great, then you're able to tackle all the content!
Your team is not good enough yet? Well here's some medium rewards to help you get better for the next run!

People with 1 star rosters should be able to get into 2 star price range.
People with 2 star rosters should be able to get into 3 star price range.
People with 3 star rosters should be able to get into 4 star price range.

At least you would get a sense of progression the better your roster gets. Right now this feeling is almost completely gone or negated by the fact that you need certain characters (i.e. Spidey with 5 blue) to progress reliably. In some cases you even feel punished because you get tougher content, while people that just started a while ago seem to breeze through the same content.

You only feel the progression ever so slightly in PVP events, but even there you see people with weak rosters placing well, because they fight in another MMR range, but are put into the same bracket as you regardless.

Same goes for rubberbanding to be honest. Don't have the time or dedication to play the cycles, well tough luck, then you won't place the same as someone who does. I know that sounds awfully elitist, even though I'm actually one of those people that just can't find the time or can't play because some cycles are in the middle of the night for me... but it's still a fair system. Maybe you would need to change the cycles to 12 hours for all events though. 8 hours is pretty tough when it comes to sleep schedule.

Unknown

Dayraven wrote:

So... you want the missions to have "stacks" that "refresh" after a certain amount of time has passed?

Can anyone suggest what the downside would be in a combination of the current stacks/rubberbanding system with fights that scale up a bit every time you (and not the community) beat them? It seems to make sense to me, but I might well have missed something in how the parts would interact.

The issue is now that there are these golden times to act, a set clock that ticks down from the first fight, a clock that is fairly long and favours those who can schedule their playtime to be at certain hours.

With this system, the reduced points would last throughout the remainder of the event, putting somewhat of an upper limit on how many points can be earned (which does exist now, in the form of those limited windowed times), but do so on a shorter timer. This would allow people to play when they are able to, rather than adhering to a set ideal schedule.

The current stacking/rubberbanding doesn't work. The level scaling either is non-existent or scales far too fast. Plus it seems to randomly scale regardless of what actions the player, individually, takes. My freebie account saw marginal level growth at highest 40. My mobile account saw no growth, just a brick wall of "too high" matches.

Let me explain again, and try to make you see how this would work. There would be two base mechanics.

Mechanic One:
Level up, Reward up on a sliding scale.

Each time you win a match, the points reward and the level of the enemy would rise. However, the amount of the increase of points each go round would slightly decrease at first. The idea here is that if you were to just leave it as an unbounded increase, people could spam one match that was to their advantage and just endlessly gain points from it. The idea would be to balance the level of the characters versus how many points gained. Matches could start off as Easy for say 100, and top out at Deadly in thousands. This would favour those who have higher level characters, but then isn't that sort of the concept?

Right now, the current system rewards the low and the high end based on the arbitrary time schedule. This would weaken the entry level side, but it would give mid to high level accounts an advantage in team depth and level. No longer would it be just "Be low level or have X power team". So long as you could repeatedly fight the groups up to a certain tier, you'd be guaranteed to be in the running for certain rewards. And as those rewards come in, you gain power, and do better every event. As it stands now, unless you play to the schedule, even with a good team you will get shoved off the leaderboard for having missed out on optimal points.


Machine Two:
Repeated grind, Lowered cap

The other side of the mechanic would be that after you did push the level of the enemies higher, if you stop battling them, then slowly, over time, their levels and point reward would lower back down to their starting points. However, because of low end abuse (just spamming the Easy-Normal then laying off), you can't have that unbounded in gains either. So there should be a calculation made there as to how many runs up the ladder should be allowed for each node. A maximum tries limit. Each time you let it delevel, the overall cap would reduce, meaning that the node would eventually "burn out" to be next to worthless. This would still give lower accounts an option to be somewhat competitive, but encourage them risking a few higher fights to get the most out of each node before it burns out.

Right now, that's not the case. The scaling has been broken in that some nodes never level up. On the Sim event, I could reliably redo certain points that were stuck at the same level, where as others were constantly leveling up far past my means. That's why initially I thought there was a direct correlation with success and increased levels. However, on the last event, no matter how often I won, the levels were locked at a certain point. Either I could do a node, or I couldn't. Period. There was no adjustments either way for my mid-level account.


The current system is obviously a riff on the "rested EXP" system of MMOs, where you are rewarded for taking breaks. However, that system exists in a untimed environment. The resting takes far too long to max out your points, and while just like the rested EXP does for MMOs, it encourages you to schedule your playtime. The downside is that because of the timed nature of these events, without the perfect golden windows you need, you will never secure a set place higher than the X number of players ahead of you who do.

This system would have a lower timer overall, and with the diminished overall rewards would still impose the points limit they are seeking to have, yet allow for a more customized experience. It would allow players to use their roster and play the odds better, giving them more control over where they rank than the current system. As for adjusting the current rubberband time, it's pointless. It would simply lead to players adjusting their playtimes, and larger leader margins occurring. A scaling event, which adjusts both levels and rewards is a better, more reliable, and more customizable option that could be tailored to match longer and shorter timed events.

Edit:

PandaCore wrote:

Still not sure why we need scaling at all.

Just make content that gets harder the further you progress.
You have a good team? Great, then you're able to tackle all the content!
Your team is not good enough yet? Well here's some medium rewards to help you get better for the next run!

People with 1 star rosters should be able to get into 2 star price range.
People with 2 star rosters should be able to get into 3 star price range.
People with 3 star rosters should be able to get into 4 star price range.

At least you would get a sense of progression the better your roster gets. Right now this feeling is almost completely gone or negated by the fact that you need certain characters (i.e. Spidey with 5 blue) to progress reliably. In some cases you even feel punished because you get tougher content, while people that just started a while ago seem to breeze through the same content.

You only feel the progression ever so slightly in PVP events, but even there you see people with weak rosters placing well, because they fight in another MMR range, but are put into the same bracket as you regardless.

Same goes for rubberbanding to be honest. Don't have the time or dedication to play the cycles, well tough luck, then you won't place the same as someone who does. I know that sounds awfully elitist, even though I'm actually one of those people that just can't find the time or can't play because some cycles are in the middle of the night for me... but it's still a fair system. Maybe you would need to change the cycles to 12 hours for all events though. 8 hours is pretty tough when it comes to sleep schedule.

But you see, that's not what happens as far. The low end can just rack up wins, and are rewarded for not progressing. By staying low level, you can just keep getting scaled matches that suit your team far better. Gaining roster and levels doesn't put you up tiers. Gaining certain character combinations does. By having those combinations, you are able to ascend much faster in the rankings, where as if you get screwed on covers by either missing guaranteed ranks or by never getting good covers from your tokens, you have great difficulty progressing passed a certain limit.

The current system is very broken, and you can say what you will, scaling already exists, and is a very abusable mechanic in this situation. By adjusting it to react to the player as an individual, rather than whatever scaling is doing now, it would make much more sense, level the playing field, and allow for actual team growth to mean something beyond consuming ISO.

KaioShinDE

PandaCore wrote:

Still not sure why we need scaling at all.

Just make content that gets harder the further you progress.
You have a good team? Great, then you're able to tackle all the content!
Your team is not good enough yet? Well here's some medium rewards to help you get better for the next run!

People with 1 star rosters should be able to get into 2 star price range.
People with 2 star rosters should be able to get into 3 star price range.
People with 3 star rosters should be able to get into 4 star price range.

Exactly THIS.

And that is how it was pre-scaling. The system worked absolutely fine.

Unknown

I am fine with scaling in events, but what I find difficult to believe is that they designed a system like this for players of all tiers (* - ***) and didn't add a level cap which depends on the player's roster. For example, a player who has only 2* heroes at levels 60-85 shouldn't be forced to fight enemies with levels higher than 90-110. A player who has a couple of 3* heroes at level 80 should fight enemies no higher than 130-140.

What makes things even worse is that players are called to fight against characters they own, but with levels far higher than those the players have. A Juggernaut for example is a very capable character in the hands of a player but is limited to 40 levels. Give him 230 levels instead and he is just silly. Add to this the randomness of the setup board and in many cases there is almost nothing you can do to beat him even with a maxed 3* team.

If we believe what is written on the forum and the level of the enemies you face depends on your success rate and the success other players have in this mission, things become even more complicated. A mission that is impossible for many players keeps climbing in levels because some with an elite team can beat it consistently. However, the fact that the level of enemies is irrelevant for some heroes (mostly Spiderman) is not the players' fault, but the devs' fault for allowing them to taint the balance in the game for so long. At the same time, they find the time to release new heroes every 2 weeks, or the new star of the team, the gold characters. If only they spent some of that time to balance the game properly.

Unknown

KaioShinDE wrote:

PandaCore wrote:

Still not sure why we need scaling at all.

Just make content that gets harder the further you progress.
You have a good team? Great, then you're able to tackle all the content!
Your team is not good enough yet? Well here's some medium rewards to help you get better for the next run!

People with 1 star rosters should be able to get into 2 star price range.
People with 2 star rosters should be able to get into 3 star price range.
People with 3 star rosters should be able to get into 4 star price range.

Exactly THIS.

And that is how it was pre-scaling. The system worked absolutely fine.

Agreed
Bring it back the way it was before