Story Difficulty Scaling - New Test: Meet Rocket & Groot

BearVenger

Sluggo wrote:

I can't speak for everyone's bracket, but in my bracket with the TA Hulk rewards, I did 6 clears a day whenever I felt like it and finished top 50. It seemed clear most people in that particular bracket said "screw this, I'm not grindiing out 6 clears to start each sub", For Totally Awesome Hulk and only the most hardcore going for T10 went that route.

Bryan Lambert

Gotta say, if they keep 4 max point clears, and 3 max point clears as the calibration point for max progression, and just changed the way they handled new character releases, I'd be happy.

I mean, absolutely, the competitive rewards in PvE are a problem because of the way that high end competitive play ramps up play time for high end competitive players, but a new way of distributing that first single cover of new character releases would remove a huge pool of players from competitive PvE. I would love to never do more than three clears per sub on any PvE again, and new character releases would be the only thing stopping me from doing that if this became the new system going forward.

an1979

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

3 pages already! Alright, let's get to it...

fmftint wrote:

What is the stack total? 6x or 4x to 1 (20)?

4 Clears for full points, each clear is worth 1/4 less points (and takes 24 hours to recharge) to a minimum of 20 points.

So instead of
1+1(8h mark)+1(16h mark) + ~6(before 24h mark) = ~9 clears
now we will have:
EDIT.
UGH. Brain fart.
4+4(before 24h mark) = 8 clears
?

But those 20pts.
Bots, human "bots", or maniacs will be grinding that for 24h in the easiest node.

P.S.
The "only 3 clears needed for 25CP" won't stick - it is a carrot for you to participate in the test's run.

TxMoose

an1979 wrote:

P.S.
The "only 3 clears needed for 25CP" won't stick - it is a carrot for you to participate in the test's run.

just wait until they announce it as a special 'double iso' event....

lockvine

an1979 wrote:

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

3 pages already! Alright, let's get to it...

fmftint wrote:

What is the stack total? 6x or 4x to 1 (20)?

4 Clears for full points, each clear is worth 1/4 less points (and takes 24 hours to recharge) to a minimum of 20 points.

So instead of
1+1(8h mark)+1(16h mark) + ~6(before 24h mark) = ~9 clears
now we will have:
4+7(before 24h mark) = 11 clears
?

But those 20pts.
Bots, human "bots", or maniacs will be grinding that for 24h in the easiest node.

P.S.
The "only 3 clears needed for 25CP" won't stick - it is a carrot for you to participate in the test's run.

It is not 11 clears it is 8. 4 initial + 4(before 24hr mark) = 8

They said that points drop 1/4 per clear after timer not the current 1/6th.

Stax the Foyer

Bryan Lambert wrote:

Gotta say, if they keep 4 max point clears, and 3 max point clears as the calibration point for max progression, and just changed the way they handled new character releases, I'd be happy.

I mean, absolutely, the competitive rewards in PvE are a problem because of the way that high end competitive play ramps up play time for high end competitive players, but a new way of distributing that first single cover of new character releases would remove a huge pool of players from competitive PvE. I would love to never do more than three clears per sub on any PvE again, and new character releases would be the only thing stopping me from doing that if this became the new system going forward.

You could make the first cover low enough in progression rewards that anyone playing competitively could get it. If they're not making a threshold progression reward, they're not playing competitively.

GritsNGravy

Sounds promising. I'm excited to try.

Nick441234

Sounds good. Thank god they've got rid of the 7 clears.

fmftint

nick_chicane wrote:

Sounds good. Thank god they've got rid of the 7 clears.

There are still 7 rewards, nothing's changed if you've been playing for green checks

Quebbster

fmftint wrote:

nick_chicane wrote:

Sounds good. Thank god they've got rid of the 7 clears.

There are still 7 rewards, nothing's changed if you've been playing for green checks

You do four clears at the start of the sub and three at the end now instead of six at the start and one at the end. Psychologically that's a significant difference.

Druss

imo removing the 8hr clock seems a great idea but is in fact awful.

Current system means that you have to play every 8 hours & grind for 90 mins or so at the end of a sub if you are interested in good placement. If you are interested in only achieving the 25 CP you can ignore this & do your 3/4 clears pretty much when you like.

new system means that you have to start event straight away & be prepared to play for at least 2 hours straight to do all the clears, followed by another 2 hours solid at the end leading into another straight 2 hour grind at the start of the next sub. To gain the 25CP however, nothing has changed from above.

Very few rosters can manage a 4 hour straight grind even if you wanted to do it (I know I don't!).

So in summary, for the progression seekers the clock is largely irrelevant but for placement seekers there is even less flexibility.

an1979

@TxMoose
@lockvine
You are right. Fixed my "math"

wymtime

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

3 pages already! Alright, let's get to it...

aesthetocyst wrote:

EDIT: WAIT WAIT. "Once a mission has reached its max difficulty, the mission starts losing points until 24 hours have elapsed." So you hit it 4x for full points, then it just starts draining in value? So you can just hit it over and over and over??? Chasing it down the drain?

I apologize for the confusion. This part of the system has not changed. After beating the mission 4 times, the mission is worth 1/4 less points and regenerates over 24 hours.

Stax the Foyer wrote:

When you say "performance," what do you mean? Final ranking? Victory rate? Participation?

And is better measured relative to other players in the same event, or themselves or other players in previous events?

All the above? We measure roster strength against placement, mission length, success rate, etc.

fmftint wrote:

What is the stack total? 6x or 4x to 1 (20)?

4 Clears for full points, each clear is worth 1/4 less points (and takes 24 hours to recharge) to a minimum of 20 points.

Razamataz wrote:

Will rubber banding be turned off so everyone scores same per node as it's still on at the moment?
How many clears of each node is needed for max profession(25cp) will it be the 4hits per node or more than this?

Rubber banding has been turned off. For this run of the event, 3 clears of each node will yield the max progression reward.

Anthony,
I appreciate you being on the forum and taking the time to answer these 3 questions in one post, but there have been many other comments no questions. Part of the comments of having you be on the forum is having more of a back and forth conversation.
From the comments from players there is a real split between people who like the 8hr refresh and those who don't. In the tests that you halve run why do you feel eliminating the 8hr refresh is a good idea?
You ha e other players asking for a more progression based PVE system. When you see events like the gauntlet that is sole progression what is the player engage the like from the numbers? Does it make sense to go to a more progression based system, or would you see more engagement if you included an alliance progression system to go with placement?
Why did the team feel increasing the difficulty of the trivial nodes was a good idea or why did you feel it was right for the game?
Other then a double ISO event when are you going to have a permenant fix for the ISO shortage?

These are some of the big questions that have been posted in the past month or 3 that the players would appreciate you insight and feedback.

Thanks for answering some questions.

Pylgrim

DuckyV wrote:

I have a simple question. Why do you insist on the nodes stopping at 20 points instead of 1? This is going to cause a lot of your high end PvE players to hit those trivial nodes all day, or worse, they'll create a bot and cheat.

I'm pretty sure it was set like that because now that a perfectly optimal clear is easier to set up, if more tedious, (1 long sitting per day as opposed to 3, shorter but perfectly timed ones) it would be easier for top players to tie in score (or resulting in ridiculous 1-point difference because someone managed to clear the first 4 runs 1 minute earlier and the such). 20 point grinds help break ties but obviously, as you point is prone to be insanely gamed by people willing to sacrifice hours and hours grinding. Yet ANOTHER shot against placement rewards in PVE.

Mawtful

The new PvE format is here to stay.
We're just putting the final touches on the rate of scaling now.

Vhailorx

Mawtful wrote:

The new PvE format is here to stay.
We're just putting the final touches on the rate of scaling now.

This is true. Demiurge seems committed to the basic outline of this new system.

But they did exceed my expectations by dropping the number of clears from 6 (11 per sub for optimal scores) to 4 (8 for optimal scores). I didn't think they would do that after making no changes in the previous 3 tests.

I still think the new optimal schedule is at least as bad, and probably worse, for top competitions.but at least they don't have a worse schedule AND more clears to get done for the same rewards.

I still think true pve would be superior to this competitive hybrid.

But with the boundrues that demiurge has defined for this test, the stated changes for this (4th) round are at least promising.

OneLastGambit

DuckyV wrote:

Also, if the new trivial nodes are still extremely low level, I sincerely hope they don't stop at 20 pts and continue to 1 point. Otherwise the optimal strategy will to be to hit them as often as humanly possible.

If there are people willing to grind a trivial node worth 1 point 10 thousand times to add a significant value to their score they deserve their placement because that is absolute madness

OneLastGambit

Ok let's see then...

In the previous tests

I finished t5 with. 7 clears of every node and a tiny grind (camt remember the prize think it was Mr f)

Then in pve following directly after (non test and old system) I finished t10 doing largely the same (think the prize was falcap)

At the time I posted that it the change in system did very little to affect my eventual prizes but did mean I could play when I wanted (great quality of life change) but people shot down my post saying "it's only because the prizes were **** and I wouldn't be able to do that on a new release"

Lucky me I don't care about war machine so I'm more than happy to guinea pig this new test using the exact same tactics and time commitment as I did previously to give you a sense what it's effect is during new release.

BTW : you all complain that this new system makes your grind longer.... Well in the Bucky pve I finished with max prog +50% and still didn't make t20 (21st dammit) and that cost me 3 hours of my time at the end of every sub so the old system is just as guilty of swallowing time on new rleases you're just accustomed to it

revskip

OneLastGambit wrote:

Ok let's see then...

In the previous tests

I finished t5 with. 7 clears of every node and a tiny grind (camt remember the prize think it was Mr f)

Then in pve following directly after (non test and old system) I finished t10 doing largely the same (think the prize was falcap)

At the time I posted that it the change in system did very little to affect my eventual prizes but did mean I could play when I wanted (great quality of life change) but people shot down my post saying "it's only because the prizes were **** and I wouldn't be able to do that on a new release"

Lucky me I don't care about war machine so I'm more than happy to guinea pig this new test using the exact same tactics and time commitment as I did previously to give you a sense what it's effect is during new release.

BTW : you all complain that this new system makes your grind longer.... Well in the Bucky pve I finished with max prog +50% and still didn't make t20 (21st dammit) and that cost me 3 hours of my time at the end of every sub so the old system is just as guilty of swallowing time on new rleases you're just accustomed to it

I agree with the heart of your post as I like the new system (especially so with the changes to 4 clears from 6 clears) but the test will be running in the next PVE (Meet Rocket & Groot) not the War Machine PVE (ISO-8 Brotherhood).

Dark Nova

I always view PvE as having a choice between rewards.
- If you want the top progression reward, anyone with normal life commitments can achieve it with 3-4 clears of each mission, but you'll be a long way outside t100.
- If you want the top placement reward, you just ignore the entire event until the last hour, then join a slice to play all the 'qualifying' nodes and do 1 full clear of the final mission. I've achieved t10 placement with this method, about 90% of the time (otherwise t50).

The fact that I can game the system like this only illustrates how flawed the placement reward system is. I shouldn't be able to get top rewards for playing the least amount of time. The devs can adjust scaling/timer/points elements until the sky turns green, but the most obvious change needed to PvE (which has been said MANY times before) is to make it entirely progression-based. Play when you like, then be rewarded if you play enough.

Alternatively, split the event into leagues with capped team levels and fixed difficulty.
- Play with a 2* team or lower (easy nodes), earn a 3* cover.
- Play with a purely 3* team (normal nodes), earn a 4* cover.
- Play with a purely 4* team (hard nodes), earn 15 CP.
- Play with 4* or higher team (deadly nodes), earn 25 CP.
ISO rewards would increase as difficulty increases so that the rewarded higher-level covers can be powered up and become usable in a reasonable amount of time. This would allow players to choose their desired level of difficulty and remove the incentive of soft-capping characters in order to get easier matches. It would also create a clear progression path for new, established and veteran players alike, so would prevent burnout.