Story Difficulty Scaling - New Test: Meet Rocket & Groot

wanghiking

It's just pathetic for those competitive players, to grind the first easy node again and again for 20 points...what's the point of such a system?

I am in favor of the play at your own convenient time mechanism, but to see those players in my slice just repeat those meaningless battles again and again for 20 points, it's just the failure of the system.

Lukoil

xcience wrote:

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.

bad idea. If you screwed to get CP on last nodes in 6 runs - ggwp

Here my thoughts:
This is first time ever in this test events i tried to be competetive (4 clears versus 6 is good decision)...and....well...it sucks. With old system i don't grind much - do 1 clear(15-25 minutes) once every 8 hours and in the last 2 hours clear nodes 4 times for all rewards...sometimes skip hard nodes if there is only crit boost left. That play usually get me to the top 10-20. I tried to play effeciently this event - 4 clears at the start of the sub (1,5 hours) and 3 clears at the end of the sub (2h because all nodes are at max scaling). That 3,5 hour nonstop grind! And you know what? I am in the top 100-200....what the hell???

spectator

I think people are forgetting that this test pve rewards Cyclops covers which may explain the more competitive brackets

zulux21

so my updated thoughts on the event.

while the first wave had messed up scaling, the later two felt more in line with what I am used to.

being able to get the progression reward with just putting in 90 minutes a day or so is better than most other events and I really hope it stays this way as in general at this point the rewards for the nodes + the CP are better than placement rewards.

that being said if I was going for placement I would be out of luck. with getting my progression reward I am sitting in 224th. the top places have nearly double my score (likely having ground the 20 point nodes a lot) I think I am with others that it's about time that we move away from competitive PVE and move to more of a gauntlet like PVE where we merely get progression rewards and have so much time to work on each node ect.

I mean... here is a really really really crazy idea.
instead of pushing more characters down our throats... how about just working on some true PVE events, add another tab to the choices and have a tab for the prologue, competitive pve, progression pve, and then Vs. Some pure PVE events would be great, as one of the top things to make me want to rage quit this game is when I grind for hours and hours to try to get a PVE placement only to near the end discover I can't get that top 100 (the second most likely thing to rage quit is when I am doing well and then all of the sudden the computer makes like 8 5 matches to get a ton of AP and do a ton of damage )

but yeah... overall I don't hate this, but only because the progression was doable. for actually competing for a place, even ignoring the 20 point oversight, this seems like it will be way worse as to maximize points now you need to devote a ton of time at certain points. I mean you do your base clear of 4 times until the points drop, and then wait until the end to clean out, the first round isn't horrible, but then the second round where you just finished your clear out, you need to continue to grind out 4 hits on every node right away so that points can recover.

this any time type thing just seems like it would work so much better as a pure progression reward system.
Just move all the nodes down to 4 rewards, combine some of the iso rewards together, and then make a progression based system that expects you to clear every node 4 times for each wave giving players 24-48 hours per node to do so and then as soon as the clear a node 4 times it locks.

it still requires players to devote an ungodly amount of time to the game, but it would also mean that players would for sure get X rewards which would be far more enjoyable than missing out on top rewards because you get placed in a bad bracket... assuming it's not as much of a grind as the gauntlet.

Either way I still hope this is just one of many changes to come, as the progression between tiers hasn't been this bad since right before DDQ was introduced. as other people have said, I really wish you would slow down the new characters and take the time to make and release new modes/gameplay stuff.

Lukoil

spectator wrote:

I think people are forgetting that this test pve rewards Cyclops covers which may explain the more competitive brackets

I didn't forget that.... With old system with good 4* cover as top 10 reward i usually finish top20 (for top 10 i usually need to farm nodes more then 7 times). But with so-so 4* reward i usually finish top 10. This time a around clearing the nodes 9! times (2 clears for nothing but points) only get me to the top 50! that what i hate in this new system. very frustrating for competetive scene.

LLohm

To all the people who liked the new format, welcome to the reality of slightly competitive play. Believe me, this isn't even the level of play which will be exhibited on new toons covers yet.

Your overall position was improved simply because the previous test pve held undesirable covers.

This game rewards grinding and it appears that the floodgates became truly opened when they made the 20pts grindable till dust.

It is also naive to think that a 24hrs timer has no optimised play. It will exist in any form as long as point regeneration is a thing.

So support on this format will give you your progression just as the old format with the same amount of work. However, expect your placement to suffer even more as a mere 20pt grind can only push you that much further down in a never ending spiral depending on how badly you want the placement.

As feedback to the dev with regards to scaling, you definitely want to consider capping the highest end significantly lower. Punishing your best spenders with level 500+ scaling isn't making a lot of sense considering that we spend for covers and iso to help support the company and we did spend to win. I personally don't see any reason why you would want to discourage people spending to win.

Quebbster

I am enjoying this format quite a bit. Farming all the rewards from nodes is enough to get me top 50 in the subs, which is the benchmark I usually shoot for. I rarely have time to do an end grind under the old system, so this means I get more node rewards and still have good enough placement.
Obviously the 20 ISO easy node grind needs to go, but other than that there's very Little to complain about for me. Well, possibly that the 48 hour node was a bit boring since I only had one clear to do on Tuesday...

dider152

I hope this is the last test and you guys at Do scrap the whole thing. The core if these tests, which forces you to grind nodes down to 20 as soon as they come out, is what is wrong. To try to find a system that works for everyone you would have to scrap this. If you actually implement this new format, I predict that player burnout will increase and this will be the beginning of the end for your player base.

Figure15

The new optimum is clear all 4 times. First goon node grind to dust, then if it's say 200 points another 10 times. That takes care of refresh and you can hit the twenty anytime for a little boost. Do it enough and you can overcome an entire sub point disadvantage.

The 20 needs to be cut to 1 to remove most of the incentive. Crazies can farm 1 point for all I care.

Quebbster

dider152 wrote:

I hope this is the last test and you guys at Do scrap the whole thing. The core if these tests, which forces you to grind nodes down to 20 as soon as they come out, is what is wrong. To try to find a system that works for everyone you would have to scrap this. If you actually implement this new format, I predict that player burnout will increase and this will be the beginning of the end for your player base.

Every system can be argued to "force" players to play optimally. After all, the more optimal your play, the better rewards you get.

Xenoberyll

Quebbster wrote:

Every system can be argued to "force" players to play optimally. After all, the more optimal your play, the better rewards you get.

True, but the claim was the new system is there to put less restrictions on the players when you should play. In reality the new system needs more of a time commitment and is more open to abuse...and the players could tell so just by reading the setup, why can't the devs?

Smudge

Now that this is almost done, I have some better constructive feedback on the test.

1. The difficulty still gets a little harsh on the upper nodes compared to normal (I'm used to seeing all of the essential nodes top out around level ~190ish and now they're pushing 250). It's a dramatic improvement over previous tests.
2. Unfortunately, having 4* Thor boosted might easily be clouding my judgment on 1. She's... well... godly when she's boosted to 350 compared to my normal 3* roster. Blade has made things ridiculously easy, too.
3. Placement is going to be stupid under this system. I'm easily holding T50 and can still climb into T20 since I have plenty of clears to do today. #1 in my bracket desperately wants his 4 champion levels on his 4Cyc though. Flipping insane how much this guy has been grinding 20 point nodes. He and #2 in the bracket are 7000 points over #3... and the #2 guy doesn't even have Cyc championed yet.
4. You are actively penalizing lower tier players through point 3.

A final observation I have about this test is one that I feel is important enough to be highlighted separately.

Progression is set at 30,000 points. I am in 42nd place in the overall bracket with 45,930 points. The only incentive to even keep playing this is to farm the ISO and other rewards from the nodes and then grind stupid 20 point nodes ad nauseum to hope for placement for those of us who are insane enough to do so (hint: I'm not). I fully plan on gathering all of the rewards to 7/7 from the remainder of sub 3 today because 4Thor makes it stupid easy, but aside from these rewards, I have absolutely no further incentive to keep playing.

Aside from testing the difficulty, you guys need to be testing reward systems and possibly bracketing. Some of us are punished through brackets (I'm not really, but others' experience shows otherwise). Some of us are punished by stinginess in rewards. Why not even consider putting a 4* cover at double the max progression (for this event it would be 60K)? I promise you, not a ton of people are going to hit that because the grind is so real, and you can see how much it would even impact your bottom line at that point.

Your "battle pack" idea isn't going to encourage me to spend a dime more on the game when I can't even keep up with the psychopaths who are willing to spend every waking hour playing MPQ to make sure they get their 4 champion covers, by the way. Some means of helping me progress that doesn't involve being a slave to a pseudo-random number generator or spend ridiculous amounts of disposable income that I don't have in order to build up enough CP to whale characters would be nice every once in a blue moon.

WEBGAS

Get rid of the 20pts at trivial nodes and make 4 stars covers as progressive rewards at 1.25 - 1,45 - 1,60 the score requested for 25cp rewards ....

this way you will make the fanbase happy and people willing to spend some money in a game that is challenging but worth their time and efforts

Khaoz77

I've only played the latest two tests. The first one was too difficult for me. This two PVEs were the only in which I was able to get the top progression (and, of course, finish equal or higher in competition). So, for me, the new system is great.

I finally can play against the machine whenever I want as it should be. Using an example, if Blizzard tells people that Diablo only spawns 5 times a day, they will have a very serious issue with their customers, don't you think?

Said that, I found this event extremely easy but just one Thor sub, in which I was wiped 4 times in a row. I think the difficulty was right in the previous test.

For the competition part... I think the problem lies beyond the system. First of all, I think it shouldn't exist in PVE, or make 2 different PVEs (one competitive and one for progress with different rules). And even that way, people will grind, because competition in a game equals to time to play. I don't have enough time, so I can't compete at all.

broll

This test had some good and bad.

Good:
- Level of difficulty of each fight seemed better than most.
- The lower progression cost was very nice

Bad:
- The 24 hour cool down after 4 runs is way too long. It should be lowered back to 8 hours (if not even shorter).
- Having the optimal run be to do 4 clear runs right off the bat is way to much time to spend at one sitting. In additional unless I had a full 10 health packs it was pretty much impossible even if I had the time.

bataglia

I dunno if there is a bot or something, but I used to be a top 20 player and now I am fighting for a top 50 spot. Some players made a hella more points than my optimal play style, so I believe they are grinding a lot in the easiest node. And I meaning A LOT, since its only 20 points, damn.

TxMoose

the non-stop play requirement for optimal scoring is just ridiculous. first 2 subs I endured (sub 2 gave a break), but requiring everything in one long, never-ending play session is craziness. horrible design. scaling seems ok, but the timer design is awful. and the 20 pt floor is dumb / grinding the bottom node design is really cheesy.

WEBGAS

bataglia wrote:

I dunno if there is a bot or something, but I used to be a top 20 player and now I am fighting for a top 50 spot. Some players made a hella more points than my optimal play style, so I believe they are grinding a lot in the easiest node. And I meaning A LOT, since its only 20 points, damn.

One simple fix....GET RID OF THE 20 POINTS

Tatercat

Managed to get top 10 for my bracket when it finished this morning and yes, I ended up spending that last 90 minutes grinding a easy node for 20 pts a pop to stay there. (I need red covers for my now 2/5/4 90's boy band Cyclops). Not looking forward that becoming a regular thing though. It would drive me away in the long term.

hamsup_sotong

i say bring back the good old 20 iso rewards if you expect us to grind the 20 pts notes to dust.

Hats off to bren 86 as well. You my friend are a machine lol. Congrats on your t1 i give up


cheers hamsup