[PVE] scaling [Merged Thread]

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

SnowcaTT

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

Great news!

Note though that the Gauntlet complaints were the breaking point - scaled down across all events would be appreciated by all.

fmftint

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

But they say they play test... how does this slip through? Just looking at the locked starting nodes should've raised some alarms

Stax the Foyer

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

Thanks for the update, David and Anthony.

Please ensure that whoever is responsible for this scaling is referred to internally as Humperdinck. For at least a week.

JarvisJackrabbit

Player: "Hey dealer, I'm not getting the same buzz I used to off this stuff you're selling me."

Devs: "Hey man, you've just gotta' buy more of it."


F2P games are not supposed to be fun. They're designed to foster addictive behavior patterns which amount to chasing fun rather than actually experiencing it. This whole thread is an inevitability disappointed customer base still chasing that high from way back when.

That said, this Gauntlet event is tiny kitty litter.

lockvine

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

David I'm still a little confused on one point, was the increased scaling intentional and just the amount was too much or was this a unintentional side effect of some of the changes made for CW. The Gauntlet was one of the PVE events that in general the community liked as is.

John Wayne74

First I would like to thank David for getting back with us and informing us this was a glitch of sorts.

Devil's advocate is next. I find the timing of this to be the most humorous out of everything. This announcement was made just minutes after I watched a level 550 champed roster get completely annihilated in and essential match in the alpine tactics. The 1st essential node in the chain and yet this announcement is two days into the week directly after that had gone public! So curious where loyalties are layed in the adjustment of scaling. Could it be complete coincidence or not????

hodayathink

fmftint wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

But they say they play test... how does this slip through? Just looking at the locked starting nodes should've raised some alarms

Because their significant isn't how hard people are saying things are or aren't. It's how many people are actually progressing through the event. They looked at the data and it said that people weren't doing as well as they wanted, so they're changing things.

Conversely, this is why they keep testing the new PvE changes even though people keep complaining, because their internal metrics seem to say that people are playing more and progressing more during those tests, which is the most important thing for them.

Vhailorx

lockvine wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

David I'm still a little confused on one point, was the increased scaling intentional and just the amount was too much or was this a unintentional side effect of some of the changes made for CW. The Gauntlet was one of the PVE events that in general the community liked as is.

This! While Anthony's statement is appreciated, I would still like to know if this run of the gauntlet was intended to have different scaling in place at all. If so, why wasn't it announced? And if not, why didn't Anthony say the scaling issue was a mistake?

Additionally, I would still like some information from demiurge about the intended end point for scaling. There is a very significant gap between the game experience that players seem to want (judging by the comments here at the forums, which is an admittedly small fraction) and the "fun and challenging" experience the devs seem to be targeting with the pve test runs. It would be nice to hear something on that topic from the dev team.

thisone

Well done everyone that played til it got stupid then sat it out. Absolutely the correct decision. This is the only way they will learn it seems.

Props to people who posted vids of gauntlet scaling also

theo199

So pathetic. Just hire a game tester from now.

huktonfonix

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

Cool. Can I have my whales back please? I've cleared all but a handful of nodes against opponents 100 levels higher than my roster.

mazerat

JarvisJackrabbit wrote:

Player: "Hey dealer, I'm not getting the same buzz I used to off this stuff you're selling me."

Devs: "Hey man, you've just gotta' buy more of it."


F2P games are not supposed to be fun. They're designed to foster addictive behavior patterns which amount to chasing fun rather than actually experiencing it. This whole thread is an inevitability disappointed customer base still chasing that high from way back when.

That said, this Gauntlet event is tiny kitty litter.

That's Stockholm Syndrome talk. There are plenty of f2p games out there that are fun where microtransactions are wholly optional--Hearthstone, League of Legends, Avengers Academy, Puzzle & Dragons all jump to mind.

Pongie

aesthetocyst wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

Nice acknowledgment.

No chance at showing any love to those who were nutty enough to slog through it?

MPQ versions of decorations for bravery, valor, going above and beyond? Perhaps a couple s?
____________

NOTE: Heck no, I have not completed Gauntlet. No conflict of interest here

I did, and would love another shot at it

firethorne

hodayathink wrote:

Because their significant isn't how hard people are saying things are or aren't. It's how many people are actually progressing through the event. They looked at the data and it said that people weren't doing as well as they wanted, so they're changing things.

Conversely, this is why they keep testing the new PvE changes even though people keep complaining, because their internal metrics seem to say that people are playing more and progressing more during those tests, which is the most important thing for them.

And perhaps this was/is yet another scaling test, and they just didn't tell us. I remember a few people had voiced concerns on the announced tests that by simply announcing it was a test and telling everyone to try and give feedback, participation metrics would be tainted, and of little use for A-B comparison. So, if that's what they're doing, a blinded experiment would be of more value to them. (If so, devs, please feel free to elaborate after the test.)

My big concern with this is what in the name of Odin would they be testing by making the event more difficult for every level of player? If they don't understand increasing difficult is the opposite direction of where they should go, then they're more blind than the test participants.

RoboDuck

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

Thanks for the response.

My only question would be, why was the Guantlet scaling messed with at all? It was already purposely hard. Who in their right mind thought it needed to be harder?

Bryan Lambert

I find this fascinating. Because the thing is, speaking generically and hypothetically, there are three basic theories behind why things like this happen.

First, incompetence. A developer wants to make the experience enjoyable to the players, but are either clueless about how to do it, or do a very bad job of implementing it.

Second, malice. The developers SAY they want to make the experience enjoyable to the players, but their actual goal is to see how unpleasant they can make it before people make too much noise.

Third, malicious influence. The developers want to make the experience enjoyable to the players, but are constrained by a business model or some other factor imposed on them from higher up the chain that makes it difficult or impossible to do so.

If there are other possibiities outside these three, I can't think of any. And which category the scaling being discovered on a Friday, implied as intentional late on Monday, acknowledged as some kind of mistake late Tuesday, and allegedly fixed early Wednesday belongs in is something I'll leave as an exercise to the reader, since clearly, any discussions about the intent or reason behind various changes is either unwelcome or forbidden.

Moon Roach

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi,

Here's the good word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"We heard from everyone that they were having a hard time with The Gauntlet this time around. When looking at how people were doing, we confirmed that people were not progressing through The Gauntlet and looked into the difficulty. The difficulty was tuned to be far more difficult than what it should be and we are going to scale it back. Our plan is to test the change today and tomorrow and to update the difficulty in tomorrow's daily patch (as long as the testing doesn't reveal any issues)."

Thank you.

Interesting. Will the Gauntlet event be extended to give those who were stopped cold by the scaling time to try to complete it?

Demiurge_Anthony

Hey everyone,

I wanted to take a moment to explain what happened with the Gauntlet level scaling. There are a couple different things that you will see in this run of the gauntlet that are different from the previous runs of the event. The first is that you will see 5-Star characters. This is new because we were not able to have them scale below their minimum level (which you'd see if you were a new player). The next is that the levels are taking advantage of the new levels system that was introduced with the champion feature. When updating The Gauntlet for these features, the levels for players ended up being too high and thus too difficult.

We apologize for the unintended change to the difficulty to the Gauntlet. It was our intention to have the difficulty similar to previous runs and hope the update tomorrow will alleviate that frustration for a lot of players.

Vhailorx

Bryan Lambert wrote:

I find this fascinating. Because the thing is, speaking generically and hypothetically, there are three basic theories behind why things like this happen.

First, incompetence. A developer wants to make the experience enjoyable to the players, but are either clueless about how to do it, or do a very bad job of implementing it.

Second, malice. The developers SAY they want to make the experience enjoyable to the players, but their actual goal is to see how unpleasant they can make it before people make too much noise.

Third, malicious influence. The developers want to make the experience enjoyable to the players, but are constrained by a business model or some other factor imposed on them from higher up the chain that makes it difficult or impossible to do so.

If there are other possibiities outside these three, I can't think of any. And which category the scaling being discovered on a Friday, implied as intentional late on Monday, acknowledged as some kind of mistake late Tuesday, and allegedly fixed early Wednesday belongs in is something I'll leave as an exercise to the reader, since clearly, any discussions about the intent or reason behind various changes is either unwelcome or forbidden.

You think there is basically no difference between "attempting and failing to implement a positive change" and "incompetence"?

It seems to me that players might as well assume good faith from the devs. Sure, they have financial incentives that aren't always player friendly, but that's triebof any commercial enterprise. We should keep this in mind, but we should think it makes the devs bad or malicious. And if they really are activing in bad faith and trying to trick or scam omayers, then absolutely nothing we say on these forums will make any difference anyway.