Another scaling post... Solutions, no complaints.

Khaoz77

Everyone agrees that this game makes difficulty levels the wrong way, right?

Difficulty shouldn't be scaling with progress, becouse you know... that's not progressing at all. It's called make numbers bigger. The whole game is like Balance of power. If I have someone really powerful the game throws me his archenemy.

It's not even that rewards have to scale with difficulty. I has to be the other way round. Difficulty must scale with rewards. If I want to get a 4*, I shouldn't be able to get it with a 2* roster, but be manageable at high level 3*s. It's soooo easy to get rid of veteran/noob brackets and make us choose the classic Easy/Medium/Hard brackets... Easy? You'll get a 3* if you do very well. Medium? Maybe a 4* for the top or 3*+ISO, whatever you want. If you play, and play well you are going to progress, and next time will be easier, which is the point of having the greatest heroes of Marvel at your disposal!

Also, it would make players to put themselves to test and push towards an objective. If I don't have time this week, I'll take the medium. If I'm sick at home I'll push for hard! It's an easy way to gate progression without frustration, because eventually everyone will have a chance to better rewards.

What do you guys think?

If you want to merge this thread with another similar it's ok, I'm kinda new in the forums...

Dragon_Nexus

Demiurge seems to be on a kick for making the game challenging. Their recent PvE tests bare this out. The idea of fun or simplicity isn't in the cards any more, instead they want us to feel challenged with every fight.

Honestly, if that's the way the game is being mandated into, I might actually end up leaving.

See, the original Galactus run had the same issue as Civil War. A misunderstanding of what makes the game enjoyable and a complete disconnect between player expectation and the developers' design philosophy. As a result we got insanely difficult enemies before an even more insanely difficult boss.
They learned from that though and made the node enemies way weaker and easilly defeated so as to make them more of a pest that distracted you before you took on the big bad of Galactus, who was not as tough as before but could still kick your butt if you screwed up or got a bad board.

The same should have been true here. You're on the side of Cap or Iron Man, those are the two heavies in the fight and anyone else that comes along is a mere distraction while you try to catch up to your foe and stop them. This is thematically what they should have gone with and it's what we had. Okay, by round 5 the enemies being level 40 is a little under powered, I'll agree to that. I was enjoying stomping on weakling Jean Grey though, gotta say. Even got to see the pheonix transformation. But then the scaling was TOTALLY out of wham and jumped all the enemies up to 240. It only got worse as time went on to the point where my alliance gave up on Team Cap and jumped over to Team Iron Man because the boss was easier and we sometimes managed to beat the minions.

But then the minions ended up at level 310+ for me on round 5 (meaning it's not a progress thing) and even that's lost all sense of fun. We got two Captain Falcons, one Hulkbuster and a Team Cap legendary token out of it...guess we should be happy with that.

For the next run though D3...just don't do the scaling any more. Keep the minions weak. It made progress much faster, WAY more fun and it put the challenge squarely where it belonged. On the boss node.
Nothing like battling your way through six level 312 characters, getting a **** reward and then having the worst board imaginable for Iron Man and barely doing 5k damage to him, making the effort feel completely wasted.

TL;DR
1) Lower the scaling to trivial levels. Makes the fights quicker and makes the boss the main threat, like he should be.
2) Tweak the progression rewards. Not sure about anyone else but I was miles away from the final progression on the last day. Only one person in my alliance hit the final reward.
3) Listen to the community. Metric data is a useful tool, but it cannot be the only tool in your box. Sure, you can use a hammer for nails, but you can't really use it for screws. Or for planing wood. Or for measuring a plank. That's why you have more than one tool to use. Listen to our opinions here, this is the only place where you get actual communication in words from human beings playing your game. USE it.
4) Hire a community manager. IceIX left and no-one seemed to fill his position. When things got bad here, he at least stuck around to ferry information back and forth between the community and the devs. Now we're cast adrift with the occasional "Things are working just fine" message which makes us feel no-one actually cares.

Crowl

The approach I think they should have would be as follows:

Keep trivial nodes trivial for everyone, they harm nobody being like that.
Scaling on essential and hard nodes should be reduced a bit further from the last test (and the rate of increase reduced too), any scaling should be applied to the rewards as well as the character levels.

Tryke

My main problem is that the rewards don't scale with the difficulty. Making the game challenging would be good if we got some sweet rewards for beating said challenges. Stacks of 70 iso and crit boosts make me sadface .

theo199

No reward, no player.

Vhailorx

Crowl wrote:

The approach I think they should have would be as follows:

Keep trivial nodes trivial for everyone, they harm nobody being like that.
Scaling on essential and hard nodes should be reduced a bit further from the last test (and the rate of increase reduced too), any scaling should be applied to the rewards as well as the character levels.

What if demiurge thinks they harm the bottom line by allowing players to avoid buying healthpacks or deeper rosters? There was a reason that old arcade games were very very hard: more deaths meant more quarters spent. . .

theo199

Vhailorx wrote:

Crowl wrote:

The approach I think they should have would be as follows:

Keep trivial nodes trivial for everyone, they harm nobody being like that.
Scaling on essential and hard nodes should be reduced a bit further from the last test (and the rate of increase reduced too), any scaling should be applied to the rewards as well as the character levels.

What if demiurge thinks they harm the bottom line by allowing players to avoid buying healthpacks or deeper rosters? There was a reason that old arcade games were very very hard: more deaths meant more quarters spent. . .

Bet on that.

Dragon_Nexus

Vhailorx wrote:

What if demiurge thinks they harm the bottom line by allowing players to avoid buying healthpacks or deeper rosters? There was a reason that old arcade games were very very hard: more deaths meant more quarters spent. . .

Except back then the argument was "Where else are ya gonna go? The OTHER arcade in town? Pffth, please."

Whereas now...there are a LOT of games on Steam, free or otherwise, that people could go and play instead. Likewise for mobile. Hell, even in the Marvel license there are free to play games that don't feel like forcing the player into spending money to just be able to *play*.

Pay to win is bad enough, but pay to play is when you start seeing people give up and leave. If you make playing your game arduous, people will go to the path of least resistence.

theo199

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

What if demiurge thinks they harm the bottom line by allowing players to avoid buying healthpacks or deeper rosters? There was a reason that old arcade games were very very hard: more deaths meant more quarters spent. . .

Except back then the argument was "Where else are ya gonna go? The OTHER arcade in town? Pffth, please."

Whereas now...there are a LOT of games on Steam, free or otherwise, that people could go and play instead. Likewise for mobile. Hell, even in the Marvel license there are free to play games that don't feel like forcing the player into spending money to just be able to *play*.

Pay to win is bad enough, but pay to play is when you start seeing people give up and leave. If you make playing your game arduous, people will go to the path of least resistence.

^

wymtime

The last test scaling he the right idea where every time you clear the node it gets harder. What needs to happen next is every time the node gets harder you get a bigger reward. No more of this critical boost on hard and essential nodes.

Next double or triple the ISO available to win in the game. First by increasing the ISO won individually.
2nd by creating an alliance progression reward for each PVE like the civil war event. This way you get rewarded for playing as a team. There can be ISO, HP, 2*, 3* and a CP at max progression. This rewards everyone for playing and balances out competitive rewards.
Keep the placement rewards but increase the ISO won. If you look at the gauntlet event that is progression only players stop playing once all the progression is reached or it gets too hard. There is little replay value in the event. Keeping placement creates replay value which is good for the game.

Crowl

Vhailorx wrote:

What if demiurge thinks they harm the bottom line by allowing players to avoid buying healthpacks or deeper rosters? There was a reason that old arcade games were very very hard: more deaths meant more quarters spent. . .

They won't sell many packs if people stop playing the game entirely though.

Just look at the latest gauntlet, it is well under halfway in the medium gauntlet when scaling hits 'hard' and we all know that their definitions of normal and hard are idiotic in the first place too.

Khaoz77

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Pay to win is bad enough, but pay to play is when you start seeing people give up and leave. If you make playing your game arduous, people will go to the path of least resistence.

THIS. But maybe is time to realize they will never change, so it's take it or leave. Sadly, because I've never played a mobile game for so long (almost 600 days). Thay have everything to make a great game that is only good on average, and increasingly frustrating.

Bryan Lambert

The discrepancy between scaling and rewards has never been as sharp as it is right now.

I shouldn't need a maxed 4* team to win a 3* cover.

I shouldn't need a maxed 4* team to win enough ISO to level up a 2* character.

I shouldn't need a maxed 4* team to win a chance at a cover that, 80% or more of the time, gives me a 2* cover.

That's not how any decent game works. Halfway through an RPG, if you go back to the starting area, the slimes or rats aren't as dangerous as they were when you started the game but are still granting you 2XP, 3 gold, and a basic healing herb.

Dragon_Nexus

Bryan Lambert wrote:

Halfway through an RPG, if you go back to the starting area, the slimes or rats aren't as dangerous as they were when you started the game but are still granting you 2XP, 3 gold, and a basic healing herb.

Never played Final Fantasy 8, have you? =P

Actually that would be a good analogy. Random mobs levelled up with you regardless of where you were in the game, but bosses had a cap. Just like the Civil War event!
Only difference is mobs actually did improve their drops and magic as they went past certain levels. You didn't run into a level 90 starting enemy still holding Fire. They'd upgraded to Firaga by that point.

Smudge

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Bryan Lambert wrote:

Halfway through an RPG, if you go back to the starting area, the slimes or rats aren't as dangerous as they were when you started the game but are still granting you 2XP, 3 gold, and a basic healing herb.

Never played Final Fantasy 8, have you? =P

Actually that would be a good analogy. Random mobs levelled up with you regardless of where you were in the game, but bosses had a cap. Just like the Civil War event!
Only difference is mobs actually did improve their drops and magic as they went past certain levels. You didn't run into a level 90 starting enemy still holding Fire. They'd upgraded to Firaga by that point.

This model does hold pretty true in MPQ. Unfortunately, FF8 also coupled aesth's idea...

aesthetocyst wrote:

Higher level opposition drops fatter loot. As a gaming concept, its at least 50 years old.

Games are idealized worlds in which higher risk and greater effort yields greater returns.

The phat lewt doesn't exist in MPQ as the opposition scales with you like it does in FF8, with the exception of those awesome crit boosts.

OneLastGambit

The simple truth is this....you can blame one thing for the lack of trivial/easy nodes to experiment on...


OML that characters insane healing means that you can quickly nip onto a trivial node and heal all damage. Thus saving healthpack. Trivial nodes are the new prologue healing, that's why they've gone

BlackSheep101

Instead of using 3rd and 4th string characters to clear trivial nodes to save health packs we're using OML, so the game has to get harder? If I were them, I'd be more concerned that OML/Iron Fist teams are clearing trivial nodes in under 30 seconds.

The opening scaling for Gauntlet plus the sharp increase after 24h in Civil War both tell me the devs have a very different idea of what difficulty is supposed to mean than do the players.

The Bob The

aesthetocyst wrote:

Higher level opposition drops fatter loot.

This. Right here. Stop the thread. This is the only change that needs to be made. If everything progressed as it currently is, but with this idea built in, everything would be fine. Sure, people would still complain, freebeggars would still be freebeggars, magical cascades and non-random pulls would still be claimed by the tinfoil hat crowd, but the game would work.

mazerat

I don't understand why scaling takes boosted characters into effect. Having a boosted character should feel like a perk in PvE, instead they feel like a giant anchor. Especially when it's a single-cover 4-star you're having to use for essential nodes anyway.

JVReal

Harder nodes wouldn't be so bad if maybe on all nodes Hard and Deadly, if you wipe, you get your Health back to where it was at the start of the match to try again. If you win, the health stays where you finish at, and you can use health packs afterwards.

I wouldn't mind banging up against Hard & Deadly nodes if I knew there wouldn't be a penalty of Health packs for losing, and they still get their health pack purchases from people healing afterwards. AND you get Iso for winning equal to the value of the Health you have remaining.

DeNappa

OneLastGambit wrote:

The simple truth is this....you can blame one thing for the lack of trivial/easy nodes to experiment on...


OML that characters insane healing means that you can quickly nip onto a trivial node and heal all damage. Thus saving healthpack. Trivial nodes are the new prologue healing, that's why they've gone

Because everyone has an OML yellow. (glares at his 1/0/0 OML )