Story Difficulty Scaling - New Test: Meet Rocket & Groot

delita007

I think most of the problems with all of these tests come from the Dev misnomer of "play when you want". This creates an expectation in players that under the current system they will never meet. Play when you want means that when you clear your nodes does not affect your ability at rewards. By continuing to insist on placement prizes they will never ever have play when you want. All these tests are doing is changing up the timing, and hoping less informed players will be fooled by the removal of the constantly running 8 hour clock and assume freedom. They could remove the clock altogether and it still would never be "play when you want" as long as there is a placement leaderboard. Even if every node only required 7 clears and then locked out, the game's default tie breaking system of first to finish would still mean that in order to place well you need to hit all seven clears right away to hit optimal score fastest for placement tie break.

Cliff notes version: It will never matter what they do with timers or numbers of clears, they will never truly create play when you want as long as placement prizes exist in PvE.

mazerat

san-mpq wrote:

Hi TxMoose,

While I agree that there is a way to make this system a perfect run, for someone who goes solely after the LTs in PVE, this is ideal. It means that I can spread out my play if I wish and do a run every 8 hours (just as before, and just as you need), or I can do it all in one go, or a bit of both for my convenience. While this doesn't leave me competing for t10 rewards, I can easily manage top 100 and even top 50 with very little play. So this works for me.

A run every 8 hours doesn't put you anywhere near "top 100 [or] even top 50". Maybe top 400. You might as well say that top 50 feels like a bag of sand.

Zombionicdoom

The only system that really works for a fair balance of progression and placement awards is the old system.

If the devs are desperate to change it to the new system then this is by far the best iteration of it so far. However I will mourn the loss of placement rewards, as even though I've played hard I'm only just in t300 and for the amount I've played at this stage I would expect to easily be t50.

TheWerebison

Been playing the new format for a while.

My thoughts:

1) Thank you for realizing that you have 3 subs over 4 days and not making the progression ridiculous, since the amount of points for one of those days would be small.
2) Node-wise, I believe this to be the best iteration so far. 4 clears before countdown, with nodes jumping higher every clear, is great. Still provides the same feel, but without the incredible burnout of 6 clears per node.
3) Progression points COULD be a bit higher. I know it seems weird to ask for more of a challenge to get max progression, but I'm honestly going to hit this one real easily.
4) I am so glad to have easy nodes. It's a nice way for people without good rosters to participate. However, there's a caveat with this round of testing, which is...
5) Placement. I'm sure you've heard plenty about this by now. Now, me, I don't give a toss what I place as, because I will never get the top 10, and those are the only rewards I need now. But the hardcore placement people are figuratively killing themselves grinding out the 20 points per match. I've said it once, I'll say it again: we need to make it progression only, and increase the progression rewards. There've been a few good threads on ways to do this. But, if you have no plans to change the format THAT much, I would say that making the easy nodes only go down to 20 points per clear makes people go crazy trying to top each other, and invites bots. 1 point per clear on those should be sufficient.

All in all though, bravo, this is a good system for progression. I appreciate that you guys keep trying different things, and even though you don't seem to want a pure progression system, you seem to always be trying to find a happy medium with your playerbase.

WEBGAS

Leadggb wrote:

These all sound like great changes to the new system.

However, it is still advantageous to NOT level up your roster for PVE. You face easier opponents, and get the same rewards. You also get put into a weaker bracket, giving you greater rewards for less effort. Fundamentally, I would think players shouldn't be punished for progressing through the game.

As your opponents scale up, making each match more difficult, the rewards for beating them should also increase.

Competitive PVE is PVP, and the current rewards system is leftover from the 3* meta. The rewards system needs a complete revamp. (IMO to 100% progression based, but also with an alliance progression like in boss events.)

Is there any plan to address these issues?

I have quoted this great post that explain perfectly what the majority of us want:

PVE WITH 100% PROGRESSION BASED & ALLIANCE PROGRESSION REWARDS

Hope the Devs will soon listen to our prayers

revskip

mazerat wrote:

san-mpq wrote:

Hi TxMoose,

While I agree that there is a way to make this system a perfect run, for someone who goes solely after the LTs in PVE, this is ideal. It means that I can spread out my play if I wish and do a run every 8 hours (just as before, and just as you need), or I can do it all in one go, or a bit of both for my convenience. While this doesn't leave me competing for t10 rewards, I can easily manage top 100 and even top 50 with very little play. So this works for me.

A run every 8 hours doesn't put you anywhere near "top 100 [or] even top 50". Maybe top 400. You might as well say that top 50 feels like a bag of sand.

I think part of the disconnect that is occurring is that different vet brackets are completely different animals. I regularly play in slice 5 which is considered to be one of the easier overall slices and I regularly wait half an hour to join any event which is enough time for the first of the brackets to fill while still giving me enough time to get 1.25x progression easily and be able to farm the nodes for all rewards. I routinely finish in the top 20/50 group in the old system and have finished similarly in every test other than EotS where I was scaled out pretty early.

When the initial brackets fill they fill with the most competitive of competitive players. Even the bracket I usually end up in by waiting a short time before signing up is fairly competitive (although far less than the first bracket). If I wait until around 6pm the next day the bracket is FAR easier, I usually can hit top 20 by simply getting 5 clears in.

With such variance occurring it becomes very difficult to quantify what is required for placement both in the old system and the new. In some brackets hitting progression 1.6x is enough for top 10 finish. That same 1.6x in the same slice but a more competitive bracket won't get you top 50. I've seen posts in the this thread stating that they are hitting top 50 much easier than they usually do and conversely posts that say their same level of play is ending up outside the top 200. Very little of that has to do with the actual test since all that has to happen for easy placement is a bracket where very few people make a hard push past progression.

My own experience with this test is that I am finishing slightly behind where I usually do so far which I expected since I don't have Thoress. I got check marks on all but the final two nodes in the first sub which I took to 5 clears and the Thoress node which I didn't do at all since I didn't have her rostered. Sub 2 I've hit 5 times on all nodes except again the Thoress node and will hit two more times later tonight. Right now I am at 60 overall and 64 in the sub. I usually hit top 50 but only when I have all essentials rostered. So, for me things seem about average.

One of my alliance mates who regularly hits top 50 in slice 4 however has seen a much different spread in the test, he is sitting at 105 right now despite having all three essentials. Some of that is of course because of the 20 point grinding and some of it is just because his bracket is just more competitive.

Krongle

I like this test. When they ran with the 6 clear model I didn't really fancy it. The play-when-you-want aspect of things didn't really work for me, but I do think the 4 clear model represents a better play-when-you-want structure (yes, sinner, I am aware that I also can play when I want under the old system). I don't really utilize that option though.

What I do, and what I like about this system is that it's possible to do two grinds and nothing more, and still place favorably. Instead of scheduling my whole day around 8 hour clears for optimal play I can just bookend the subs. Four clears when the sub opens and three-four clears when it closes. First grind takes me about 90 minutes, and the end grind takes between 90 minutes and two hours. I usually play slice 3, which begins 23:00 in my timezone, so neither the beginning or the end of a sub conflicts with my life. The old system uses roughly the same amount of time, but it's spread out over a whole day, which i'm not a fan of because it's so easy to throw me off my clear schedule.

The 20-point grinding needs to go, though. If it was available only for the hardest nodes it could be alright, but having them on the trivial nodes makes it way to easy to for people to no-life their way to top placement.

Just my $0.02.

tizian2015

I understand, that competitive players are not "happy" with the new format, especially the 20 point-easy-nodes. But i think, that shows only, that a competitive pve is nothing else than a pvp-mode. transfer it all in a pure-progression (which really means "pve") and there is no problem, even the 20-point-nodes are no problem then.

To this test: First sub was hard, hood-maggia-combination is not fun and strike tiles with 1500 each are completely insane. and why we have to face 2*chars, which lvs are higher than full-leveled-champed-boosted? But ok, i make my 3 clears in the hard nodes and farmed down the others. second sub was easy because of the many only -goon-nodes.

I like your statement in the beginning "clear every node three times for full progression". it makes it more planable than before.

For scaling issues: to make the game real easier with progress, just take the original-levels of a char. without champ or booster, so every 2* counts max as lv94, 3* as 166 etc. so progress will feel like progress and not like self-punishment. ramped up difficulty is not a replacement for lack of content.

Philly79

While there are many mixed reviews regarding this new format test along with the pros/ cons, as a competitive player who normally places t5/ t10 I must say that this format does not work. The biggest issue I have is that people like me who have jobs, families, and responsibilities cannot spend 4-5 hours in a sitting playing the nodes over and over again, especially the 20 pt nodes. An alliance mate of mine has done over 7k pts from 20 pt nodes already so placement gets thrown out the window because people that have much more time on their hands have the ability to redo the 20 pts over and over again. Just for example, the guy I mentioned getting 7k for 20 pt nodes, that works out to almost 6 hours of doing nothing but hitting the same node again and again. That does not sound like "fun" to me. With the old system the ability to place well is determined on the skill of your play along with the strength of your roster and being able to do a clear as fast as possible to get the timer to reset and start building points back up. With this system it is all about who can sit and mindlessly play a 20 pt node repeatedly. Get out to an early lead and hit the 20 as many times as possible. I guess since I do not need t10 for the rewards maybe I am being bias but even if I did need those rewards I would not have the time nor patience to play that much.

I understand some people do not like the 8 hour cycle but this is the reason there are 5 slices, so everyone can find a slice that fits their schedule. I would much rather set aside 30-40 minutes every 8 hours than this constant grind - 4 clears at the beginning adds up to about 2-3 hours then a final grind at the end adds another 2-3 hours. This again is way more time than I want to devote to a mobile game, really any game for that matter. As others have mentioned above, make it true pve like boss events. Take the current event for example:

- 25cp at 30k, 3* covers at 40k, 60k, 80k, 4* covers at 50k, 70k, 90k with a bonus cover for an alliance achievement amount, given this model it would be somewhere around 200k.

Obviously I am just spitballing numbers as there would be no way to hit these amounts in this event, unless you have the time to do 20's 16 hours a day. Let's keep in mind that this is a game and should be fun, not a constant grind that we should put life on hold for to ensure you obtain certain digital content. Keep that for PvP...

Edit:

to quote Krongle from above:

"The 20-point grinding needs to go, though. If it was available only for the hardest nodes it could be alright, but having them on the trivial nodes makes it way to easy to for people to no-life their way to top placement."

well said...

TapperMalaz

I have played this one far more than I usually would. Civil War gave me my 14th XFW cover, so I've been farming ISO to go from 214 to 271 within 14 days before I'll enjoy a short MPQ burnout.

I won;t comment on the comparison with the old 8h system, simply because I believe it (and the much desired progression-only system) is going the way of the dodo for no better reason than someone somewhere with the seniority to make this decision decided this is the way to go, as much as the older system was better for those with limited playing time in a single stretch, like me.

So, for a comparison with last test:

The overall scaling is better than last time, when I had to bow out or would go out of health packs roughly after the 3rd clear. I could complete all nodes with 3*, despite having a maxed 4or. Then again, the nodes themselves are much more forgiving than survival nodes or symbiots.
The difficulty jumps are managable, ending up somewhere around Normal on all nodes. That's probably something they finally got right this time, at the least for my roster.
The amount of required clears before timer start: having the timer start after 4 clears is a big plus of this run, once again compared to last. I would not mind at all if it was decreased to 3, though.
Ranking effort: having cleared all nodes 7 times in the last sub (non-optimally), I broke into top 50 on the sub. That's a bit more effort than I'd usually have to make in those events where family life and work allow me to play for top 20-50 rewards. I can only imagine it gets much, much worse the higher up you go.
Progression rewards: I got mine pretty easily on the second sub. Pointless to comment on it, though. Somehow, I don't see them keep the 25 CP as exceptionally low as it was now.

Overall impression: this event and the Gauntlet prove that the whole idea of 'challenging PvE fights' that they started out with, is bankrupt. A majority of easier, more casual fights, spiced up with the occassional tough fight, is what the community requires, both for grinding and for casual play.

Jam_Adams

LOL --- "no-life their way to placement"

I echo the above sentiments, even as a quasi-competitive player. I usually aim for top 100, or top 50 if I'm feeling frisky. I can't (and won't) hit top 10, which would net what I need most (4 star covers). but the 3* covers I can gain from t50/t100 will still get me there more slowly since I've champed my 3*s and will eventually (but slowly) earn some 4*s by progressing those champs.

on these test events, I've finished pretty far out of the top 100 with more work/time than I'd usually put in. yes, I hit progression on all but one of the tests I think, and that's great, but I can still find a use for the 3* rewards. that's a pretty big gap in my progression.

DiscoStucat

I have gotten all 7 rewards for every fight so far in this event and am barely clinging to a top 100 spot overall. So tell me again how this is to help reduce grinding. Then pee on my shoe and tell me all about the rain.
Try some honesty. We are trying to make this game more newbie friendly and don't really care about the effect on the long term player base. Something like that seems much closer to the truth.

TxMoose

Disco Stucat wrote:

I have gotten all 7 rewards for every fight so far in this event and am barely clinging to a top 100 spot overall. So tell me again how this is to help reduce grinding. Then pee on my shoe and tell me all about the rain.
Try some honesty. We are trying to make this game more newbie friendly and don't really care about the effect on the long term player base. Something like that seems much closer to the truth.

that's because the timer still exists and there is still 'optimal'. its just a 24 hour timer now instead of 18. meaning you have to clear 4X at sub start to trigger the timer. then at the end of the sub, clear all remaining rewards out and get the pts to 20. if you have time between, grind the easiest node as often as you seem fit. just getting to green checks might not be enough, depending on your bracket. green checks optimally should do pretty well. this again depends on bracket and how many others are grinding the bottom node.

broll

Disco Stucat wrote:

I have gotten all 7 rewards for every fight so far in this event and am barely clinging to a top 100 spot overall. So tell me again how this is to help reduce grinding. Then pee on my shoe and tell me all about the rain.
Try some honesty. We are trying to make this game more newbie friendly and don't really care about the effect on the long term player base. Something like that seems much closer to the truth.

I completely agree with this. On the other events I could usually get the top 100 (at least on the subs) without too much effort. Now I'm struggling to stay in the top 200. I agree the 6 > 4 change is good, but it's still a major grind fest.

broll

Leadggb wrote:

These all sound like great changes to the new system.

However, it is still advantageous to NOT level up your roster for PVE. You face easier opponents, and get the same rewards. You also get put into a weaker bracket, giving you greater rewards for less effort. Fundamentally, I would think players shouldn't be punished for progressing through the game.

As your opponents scale up, making each match more difficult, the rewards for beating them should also increase.

Competitive PVE is PVP, and the current rewards system is leftover from the 3* meta. The rewards system needs a complete revamp. (IMO to 100% progression based, but also with an alliance progression like in boss events.)

Is there any plan to address these issues?

I have to agree with this 100% I'm a fairly new player, between 1-3 months somewhere. But I've been a very aggressive player. I also stupidly spent a good deal of IRL money supporting the game as did a few other people in my alliance. As a result I ended up with a roster that contained 3 5* characters (6 covers between the 3) and thew ISO at leveling at them before I had any idea what scaling was or even knew that champions existed... It made my game brutally hard, some reward for supporting the game... I actually recently sold 2 of my 5*s trying to help this and it's still pretty difficult, but a little better. They really need to adjust how the scaling plays out.

Alternate ways to handle scaling:
1. Let players choose a skill tier
How this would work. You would choose a tier level based on what you need currently for roster progression. This would be 1*, 2*, 3*, 4*, or 5*. The skill and rewards would be based off of this choice.

For example: For me I currently need to focus mainly on getting more 3* champions and I currently only have 2 3* champs with 0 bonus levels and 5 2* champs with 5-15 bonus levels. I would choose the 3* level and would get things in a skill range that some with a mix of high level 3* and 2* characters would do well in. The rewards would then be a 4* for like top 2 placement (if you kept the whole it's really pvp thing which I wish you wouldn't), 3* for 200+, 2*s below that and so on, close to how it is now. Then there would be a simular set of brackets for 4* people that would have harder enemies but better rewards topping out at a 5* or legendary token and getting 4*s as low as top 200. 5* rank should be brutal and require 5* champions to defeat, Top reward there should be a significant number of CP so they can chose tokens or buying more covers with CP. etc. etc.

2. Set scaling based on level average of top 3-5 characters with highest number of covers

The current system of top 3 highest levels is flawed due to 5* characters. In my case when I got my early 5*s I had a top 3 of 270, 266, & 255 with the next highest being about 80... I was crushed being put into battles with opponents in the upper hundreds and 200s and pretty much bound to using my 5*s with useless ability. If however you did it by characters with highest number of covers my average would have better matched my actual roster.

3. Set scaling based on level average of whole roster

I can see why you might avoid this one because it's exploitable (especially if you have deep pockets). but this would make level average be based on your entire roster. The exploitability would be that you could just keep adding multiple 1* level 1 characters to lower your average, but that would get expensive quickly.

lockvine

As a committed player but never shooting for T10. I would like to see something like 3 full clears for 12hr timer, points drop by 1/3, and t10 can be fought over the hardest node being worth 50pts for a min. All other nodes would go down to 1 point. This would make an optimal clear 3 initial + 1 at 12hr + 3 grinds at the end. This gives you exactly the 7 rewards. Placement for the majority of people would be how fast you can do 3 clears and sticking to the timers. The t10 could be fought out over who can finish their grind just a little early and then grind 50 points each out of the hardest node till the end. I like the scaling where it is at for this test.

Vomit Fountain

I'm coming at this as a quasi-competative player with a mostly 3* roster with a few barely covered 4*s.
I found the difficulty pretty reasonable this time around. I enjoyed the return of the truly trivial nodes; it gives me a chance to play a few rounds during my breaks! The scaling progressed nicely for me and by the end it was challenging but not impossible; I think capping the scaling after 4 rounds kept it from getting out of hand.
The 24 hour timer didn't bother me too much but if I was trying for placement rewards I'm not sure that I would appreciate the clumping of gameplay at the very beginning and very end to maximize points.
I very much enjoyed that the progression rewards were fairly easy to get without having to grind like crazy. My main goal is usually progression so it made the game a lot more relaxed and fun for me knowing that I would be able to achieve it without having to grind every node down to nothing.

xcience

Pros: You can obtain the progression awards at your own pace. The scaling seems appropriate.

Cons: The placement dynamic is still disrupted by the ability to farm 20 iso particularly on the easy goon nodes. Makes 48 hour nodes pointless and they become essentially a day off.

Overall: I like this pve the best so far from a casually progression rewards based standpoint, but you completely destroyed the competitive placement side of it.

Suggestions: After the first 4 clears have the scaling start ramp up exponentially to infinity. remove all point gain from easy nodes after 4 clears.

fnedude

My one observation about this event (as a Con).

The boosted 4* FThor and being able to use Winfinite has made it easy to rack up massive points.

If those weren't boosted, then it'd be a lot harder, at least for me as a 3* transitioning to 4*. If it was boosted 4* that wasn't as good as FThor (I'm looking at you TA Hulk) progress for a lot of people would be much different.

Jwhitmire36

broll wrote:

Disco Stucat wrote:

I have gotten all 7 rewards for every fight so far in this event and am barely clinging to a top 100 spot overall. So tell me again how this is to help reduce grinding. Then pee on my shoe and tell me all about the rain.
Try some honesty. We are trying to make this game more newbie friendly and don't really care about the effect on the long term player base. Something like that seems much closer to the truth.

I completely agree with this. On the other events I could usually get the top 100 (at least on the subs) without too much effort. Now I'm struggling to stay in the top 200. I agree the 6 > 4 change is good, but it's still a major grind fest.

I'm in the same position, I gave this test my full effort, spent a LOT more time on it than the typical PvE and am doing a LOT worse in rank. It seems 7 full clears on every sub is required to rank high and personally I will never have that kind of time. I already have a hard time competing in PvP with a half full 3* roster, so I rely more on PvE to get covers, now that's probably going to disappear too.

4 tests in and I can't remember anymore what the goal(s) were in changing the events, but for me personally the current 8 hour refresh system works better. Plus it helps to level the playing field so that no matter how much free time you have or don't have you have equal opportunity to compete.