Placement vs progression rewards

grunzadin

We've now had back-to-back progression-only events, and I think this forum has been saltier than at any point since the first Galactus run. This despite the fact that the forum is constantly filled with posts stumping for more emphasis on progression and less emphasis on placement.

The complaints have now shifted to the scaling being too intense. I think the common denominator of both complaints (placement and scaling) is that people feel the events are too difficult; either because you have to grind manageable content for hours to place near the top or because you have to attempt health-pack-sucking god-scaled nodes every time.

It's important to understand that it will always be this way.

D3 has metrics to track the rosters of its playerbase, and I'm sure that D3 has a target in mind for roster distribution. For example, they may want .5% of the population to be in 5* land, 5% in 4* land, 35% in 3* land, and the remainder in 2*s and 1*s. D3 will never let this distribution warp because it's integral to the buying of in-game currency. If getting to the top became more attainable, there would be less incentive to spend money to get there and stay there.

When the primary rewards for an event are distributed by placement, it's easy for D3 to maintain this status quo -- they just hand out 4*s to the top 5%, etc. But when the primary rewards are progression, then D3 has to maintain the status quo by making the event difficult enough that only 5% of the population will be able to reach the 4* reward.

In short, this game will always be "too hard" and the rewards will never be plentiful, be it through placement or progression.

mohio

The majority of complaints I see essentially boil down to effort vs rewards are not in line with player expectations. It's certainly valid to say we are out of touch and want to lower the effort/reward ratio too low for the devs to accept it, but it's also the point of the forums to provide feedback to the devs about it. So people don't want to slog through 50-ish nodes of overscaled opponents just for a single 4* cover. But maybe they would for 2 covers, or 3, or maybe a 5* cover. They are simply saying the effort required of this current event is not reasonable given the rewards. Same goes for the overall argument of progression rewards in general. If you know you will get all 3 4* covers in the rewards if you do your 3 clears plus 5 more in the end of sub grind you might be willing to buy into that as opposed to having to hope that no one else does that much or more, or is just faster at it than you so you put forth the effort only to lose out at the end and feel like it was a huge waste of time.

Frankly the gauntlet has kind of always been this way. Sure it wasn't as hard the first 3 or 4 times, but it was still a bit much for a single 4* (and the first couple times didn't even have 4* rewards). I think this is one of the reasons why the devs haven't tried more "progression only" events. The gauntlet doesn't get the best participation numbers due to difficulty and rewards choices, so the devs can write it off as the players not liking these type of events.

grunzadin

aesthetocyst wrote:

The forum will always be salty as players with beef are motivated to take the time to gripe. Players less peeved are presumably too busy playing to post anything complimentary.

There HAVE been posts celebrating the return of progression-only events. Did you miss them?

And dialing up the scaling on Gauntlet IS new. Finishing Gauntlet was already a badge of honor....it was already scaled and already served as a great roster measuring stick. No change was needed.

Sure, the CW event got compliments, and I was one of the ones who enjoyed it. However a lot of those compliments were given before the scaling switch got flipped. As soon as the subnodes stopped featuring level 30 teams, the complaints heavily outweighed the kudos. And while the forums will always skew negative, it's clear that the scaling on these last two events has riled people up more than usual.

As for the gauntlet, you say that no change was needed; from the players' perspective, that may well have been the case. But the devs may have been seeing that too many people were completing the gauntlet to maintain roster distribution and thus increased scaling was needed.

My point in the original post was that "too hard" or "too easy" is objectively measurable for the devs, and it has nothing to do with perceived difficulty by the players. For progression events, the devs want X% of the population to be able to achieve certain milestones, and they will turn their difficulty knobs until they get those numbers as close possible. In that sense, placement rewards should actually be encouraged by the population because then the devs are free to make an event as hard or easy as they want knowing that no matter how easy it is only the top 1/5/10/etc players will get certain rewards.

Uthgarprime

Your argument would make more sense about percentage of players if the top levels were not received through random luck only. It just makes people mad and they quit so I guess that makes the devs happy that people quit the game cause they can't progress. That makes no sense. It shouldn't matter if more people had better rosters, we still have to all buy roster slots and compete for new characters. Plus compete for placement so the money still comes in from that. Plus you can just buy your way to a top shelf roster which also blows your argument out of the water. The truth is the devs enjoy making the players miserable in this game. They didn't boost scaling to prevent roster growth, they did it to try and generate health pack sales, its that simple.

TheWerebison

I think that's the issue. It's a rich get richer, poor get poorer situation. The game has progressed into championed 4 and 5* characters now, and there's still only one pve event at a time. So the scaling gets bumped up to take into account the increased rosters of the old players and whales, but the rewards stay down at a level that only appeals to 3* and 4* transitioners. The low folks flounder to keep their heads above water and progress, while the older players scramble over the backs of the fallen to fight over rewards that barely register as a help to them.

The game is stretched too thin, as it is right now. They're still sprinkling cheese for an 8" pizza over a 20" extra large. People will still enjoy it, I mean, hey, it's pizza! But others are rather disappointed.

HaywireII

aesthetocyst wrote:

And dialing up the scaling on Gauntlet IS new. Finishing Gauntlet was already a badge of honor....it was already scaled and already served as a great roster measuring stick. No change was needed.

When I first read your post my brain read it as "Badge of Horror". That's not even a thing but I guess that's how I feel about the new scaling.

uthgarprime wrote:

They didn't boost scaling to prevent roster growth, they did it to try and generate health pack sales, its that simple.

Do people actually spend money for health packs? I thought that's what DDQ tokens are for. I can see spending money to roster a new character or to try to get something good from a vault but if I needed to spend money on health packs I'd find another game.

wirius

Your point bears repeated mentioning. However, I would argue its not progression awards that are the problem, it is D3's current way of figuring out how to do them correctly.

The problem isn't the gauntlet scaling, or even having the last section be difficult. Its the fact that with 1 maxed 4* at 275, I have level 300 enemies on node 12. Yeah, that's a problem.

Its not that scaling for CW for hard rewards bothers anybody, its the fact that they went from level 50 nodes to level 200 nodes after 24 hours.

So again, I think they can fix HOW they scale progression rewards, but I am MUCH more in favor of progression awards once they do figure it out.

Thevipper

I am a newer player in solid 2* land making the transition to 3* I have 1 10 cover 1 9 cover 6 8 cover and 6 7 cover 3*'s I never should have expected to reach the 5* reward in cw but I felt that r6 was right. This was my first time in alliance event I know I complained. the main reason was I went in with too high expectations after my alliance picked cap. I was hoping to finish so we could double dip for 1 hb cover and I would get bp. after it opened and seen bp was a black cover for the first reward and we made it to r5 after 24hrs It motivated me even more till the scalling kicked in. thank you for the event and I hope you run more events like this in the future

Chief270

I love the gauntlet. Probably my favorite event they do. But, as others stated, even loving the event the effort for the rewards given(single 4* at its best) is pretty bad.

Guantlet for me this cycle would provide a little iso and hp. Wouldnt even provide any champion levels. This event needs to either provide more 4* up for grabs, or provide a legendary token as the final progression. While fun, i need a reason to justify the health pack sink into it instead of other events which net me more with less effort / time.

The infrequency of the guantlet event makes it even more obvious that the event should produce higher rewards than it currently does.

TxMoose

grunzadin wrote:

When the primary rewards for an event are distributed by placement, it's easy for D3 to maintain this status quo -- they just hand out 4*s to the top 5%, etc. But when the primary rewards are progression, then D3 has to maintain the status quo by making the event difficult enough that only 5% of the population will be able to reach the 4* reward.

gauntlet has NEVER given out more rewards than a standard pve event. FAR less players complete the gauntlet for ONE SINGLE 4* cover than complete normal pve progression for 1.2 4* covers (with a chance at a 5*). so tell me how it make sense to drastically increase the difficulty of an event that give less rewards than normal to begin with? and this doesn't even take into consideration the slash in iso, hp, and cp production that the gauntlet doesn't provide compared to normal events. it just doesn't make sense. which is becoming more and more common. but its exacerbated by the enjoyment of the CW event followed by a big FU. I still haven't learned to always expect the worst.

Wolarsen

by aesthetocyst » Mon May 09, 2016 8:45 pm
Look, the rewards need to match the difficulty. Only masochists are going to tackle dozens of battles that are scaled far beyond what the loot is worth. Considering the difficulty to rewards ratio being offered, why bother even having the Gauntlet visible to players at a certain level?

Exactly; the difficulty of this gauntlet is insane, and I am giving a lot of effort to it (burning almost all my health packs and using loads of boosts) just because I have none of the power G/P characters and this reward will put me on 4/4/4. There are vey very few covers that i would find worth putting so much effort into.