Story Difficulty Scaling - New Test: Meet Rocket & Groot

MarcusGraves

Gmax101 wrote:

-snip-

Maggia Muscle will and has always been just a broken, overscaling goon and the fact that Hood is specifically designed to synergize with Maggia doesn't help either with being fed free yellow for TP on top of any he steals, not clashing on blue with their 2 most fatal powers (Sniper Rifle and Tommy Gun) and if all that wasn't enough to make you sweat, Intimidation lives up to it's name by shaving off 1 turn from these oh so deadly powers.

Muscle alone makes me cringe at the thought of dealing with Maggia at all and I'm amazed after all these years players aren't screaming at D3 to rebalance him already since Threaten is just a stupid power with it's scaling at 3 cost and a 4 turn CD.

Here's the stats of a level 275 Muscle in one of my nodes, I'm having fun right?:

-16758 HP
-Threaten strike tiles strength 1049 for a total of 2098 (I have rage for days over this)
-Tommy Gun damage of 2623, Threaten on top makes it a lovely 4721 damage

-Tanky: yep
-Fast: yep
-High Damage: yep
-Not Fun: yep

Quebbster wrote:

Lukoil wrote:

easy fix - make 3 trivial nodes minimal to 1 point. All other nodes keep at 20 points.

I like this idea.

2nd, PvE's will just turn into whose the fastest 20 grinder right now from what I'm seeing on the scoreboards

SnowcaTT

Well, I see a nasty return in the 2nd set of subs.

Oh, the easy nodes are there. Level 16 to start with!

But it took churning through three sets of level 160 nodes to get to them. Why are the intro (one-time-only) nodes scaled up to get to the easy ones?!?

mpqr7

I'm surprised to say this, but I actually like this new version!!!

You only need to clear 4 times before points go down, difficulty isn't off the charts, and the easy nodes are actually easy! And if you start late, then you can still do plenty of clears to score enough points to get the 25 cp.

FYI I'm in this for progression mostly and to try to make at least Top 300 per sub to win that extra event token.

So I'm not too concerned about getting top 10 or anything crazy like that.

Also I'm sad because by playing decently well in this pve, I think I'm going to ruin my chances to win WM through the next pve. Oh well, c'est la vie!

optimus2861

MarcusGraves wrote:

Muscle alone makes me cringe at the thought of dealing with Maggia at all and I'm amazed after all these years players aren't screaming at D3 to rebalance him already since Threaten is just a stupid power with it's scaling at 3 cost and a 4 turn CD.

Thing is, that is the rebalanced Muscle. Sort of. A while ago they turned down the AP generation of all Maggia goons to 1 AP / colour / turn. Used to be 2 or 3, I forget, which was absolute murder when they were paired with Magneto, Hood, etc. So you had the fun experience of eating a Twin Pistols or Magnetized Projectiles by turn 4 or so, no matter what the board looked like.

Except now when paired with a board mover, it can take just one match for Maggia to start firing powers

The entire concept of goon + board mover is flawed. Deeply. (And let's not get started on Ultron sentries...)

Nick9819

i know they were toying with the idea of changing the scaling to be not just your top 3 lvls but powers also. are they still doing that or is scaling just soley based on lvl still?

HaywireII

I can't tell if the new scaling is working or not because the Hood/Muscle combo ate all of my health packs. Nothing like watching a championed and boosted Rocket and Groot die in 3 or 4 moves.

Nick441234

I'm still finding the scaling a bit too high. My hardest fight maxes out at 256. My highest boosted character is R&G at 264. All the characters in my roster who have the sort of synergy to beat a team of 256's are all way below that level. R&G (264), Cyclops (247) & Blade (243) are clearly not going to fend too well together. My next boosted are 200 and below.

pudd1es

I get the intent of the new point system, but it has to go. It's great to say, 'hey its a casual game, let people play when they want'. The problem is that the old system did a better job of that then the new one. Instead of playing for a little bit every 8 or so hours I now have to play for 2 hours straight at one particular time. (4 if you count the grind at the end followed by a grind at the beginning). You aren't actually making things more flexible... it's making them (a lot) less flexible.

I think there is a road somewhere paved with intentions like these.

Lboogie

Alrighty another test another post. Again I'm not looking for people to aggree with me or not...this is my thought. I've spent 636 days perfecting how to get what I want out of pve ( still my fav play mode btw) I've learned how to work with the 8hr timer and maintain sanity and a happy marriage and family. Now as test 4 starts I look into my crystal ball of pve future and am not happy.

Old character event.
I forsee playing 3 clears like before and extra hits for cp in the nodes. Yielding maybe t300 sub placement and a 3* participation award at the end instead of t100 each sub and multiple 3 stars to grind into iso at the end.

New character.
Maybe go 7/7 each node like before but refusing to grind the start and end of each sub so 0 chance of getting even 1 cover of the new character and waiting a week to win 1 at 1k in their pvp then waiting for them to be added to tokens for a miniscule chance at pulling them. Instead of playing every 8 hours and 2.5 hour grind netting me my usual t10 and occasionall t20 if a competitive bracket. Cause no matter what optimal ends up being I wont do it.

I know people don't like the 8 hr timer but it works for a lot of people giving structure to playing...and not requiring perfection to be successful. I hope you either move to all progression or leave things as is so we can continue to play in the manner we know and are comfortable with

Ducky

DuckyV wrote:

So for kicks I hit the lowest trivial a bunch of times for an hour while watching TV.

End result? 1,500 extra points. That's ridiculous.

So doing this allowed me to win my sub handily. That is NOT a good precedent for new release PvEs.

TxMoose

TxMoose wrote:

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

For this run of the event, 3 clears of each node will yield the max progression reward.

ok, this kind of information is gold for the players. any opportunities to provide this moving forward would be veeeerrrrrryyyy appreciated

just an assumption here that you failed to consider the middle 2-day sub. 3 clears per sub or 3 per day? makes a difference. just a question for clarification.

all seems pretty reasonable so far, but the end grind will still be very, very high with hoods everywhere well into the 300s, and then into the flip is a HUGE time requirement if you want to attempt to play competitively.

MarcusGraves

TxMoose wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

For this run of the event, 3 clears of each node will yield the max progression reward.

ok, this kind of information is gold for the players. any opportunities to provide this moving forward would be veeeerrrrrryyyy appreciated

just an assumption here that you failed to consider the middle 2-day sub. 3 clears per sub or 3 per day? makes a difference. just a question for clarification.

all seems pretty reasonable so far, but the end grind will still be very, very high with hoods everywhere well into the 300s, and then into the flip is a HUGE time requirement if you want to attempt to play competitively.

If it's true that doing the all the nodes until the timers starts for each sub bracket will let you reach all progression rewards this is great on the casuals.

In the competitive sense, investing the extra time to grind the nodes down in the timer mode while the enemy progressively gets harder is good for the hardcore crowd.

Ignoring any other fine tuning for this like enemy scaling, the 20 point minimum on the trivial nodes needs to go, cause when you think about it, it ruins the competitive aspect when you can just grind away a super easy node when the others have gotten too hard. DuckyV also confirming that doing so can win your sub really is pretty lame when someone can just grind something easy like that and win, yeah they invested the time, but it's not like it was a challenge.

DrStrange-616

TxMoose wrote:

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

For this run of the event, 3 clears of each node will yield the max progression reward.

just an assumption here that you failed to consider the middle 2-day sub. 3 clears per sub or 3 per day? makes a difference. just a question for clarification.

Is a v important point. I find it hard to believe they'll let us enjoy and relax with only 3 clears in a 48 hours sub. But fingers crossed.

TxMoose

DrStrange-616 wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

Demiurge_Anthony wrote:

For this run of the event, 3 clears of each node will yield the max progression reward.

just an assumption here that you failed to consider the middle 2-day sub. 3 clears per sub or 3 per day? makes a difference. just a question for clarification.

Is a v important point. I find it hard to believe they'll let us enjoy and relax with only 3 clears in a 48 hours sub. But fingers crossed.

personally I'm not taking a chance. trying a quick start so I can focus on LRs more during their days. I just wish the top rewards were all out during the first 4 clears. every node has either a 250 or a 500 iso left.

illusionist_KA

i really hope they stick with the old format. this new way of playing is just not working for me. i played the first day of each test to play devil's advocate. now, i'm just tired of each test that doesn't provide any new material. i really think they went (far) away from what we originally wanted. Which was better scaling, not to include the 5* with beginner rosters, better awards and some new content.

Instead we get this terrible scaling of 30+ levels, no progression change awards, harder to predict where to put the time in. I can't play 3 hours in one sitting, but easier to manage an hour throughout the day.

This is becoming like a second job with no monetary value in return. Stick with the old format, make the awards better and more iso. Double iso forever will work, or at least make the buying iso more affordable. $100 for 70k. i'm sorry i can earn that in 5 days or so. for 500k iso, another story, now we are talking business.

squaredbear

I'm also finding the scaling a bit rough. After 5 clears, my last node is at 250. While not impossible, it's very prone to bad board rng and kind of all or nothing. Even the essential nodes seem to be a bit high, but this may be partly due to the overtuned muscle and muscle+hood combos.

Due to CW changes, I dumped a bunch of tokens and now the top of my roster is a collection of 1-2 cover 5*s, which definitley seem to be determining the levels. The 2* and 3* essentials are both champed and maxed for me, but not terribly useful in synergy (both with the yellow a passive, seems well thought out). My next highest characters are the other boosted 2*s.

For reference: https://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/squarebear/

Smudge

I'm so confused. I can actually get through these nodes in a reasonable amount of time, even up to the 6th clear (haven't done 7, may not go that far, but I still have time to decide). The nodes actually stop scaling up to ridiculous levels after 4 clears.

It's actually kind of fun, and I can get through it fast and get on with my life. There are still issues, but nothing is perfect. I'm still very much not looking forward to this style competitively for new character releases, especially if trivial nodes allow you to grind 20 pointers continuously. Still, much improved over the previous tests for a semi-casual, semi-competitive player.

Am I playing MPQ?

Full disclosure: My only fully covered, fully leveled 4* character (Thor) is featured in this event and may well be clouding my judgment. Is that the case? Probably. It's still a marked improvement in my opinion over the previous tests, and it's much more of a step in the right direction.

Edit: Now that I'm mostly done with the first sub, the only thing I have negative to say about the scaling is that the baseline difficulty on each node is disarmingly easy. Level 120-140 nodes that scale to 250-290 get that "cakewalk" feeling on the first couple of plays, and then one quick AI cascade later and only your IM40 is standing next to two smoking craters wondering what the tinykitty just happened. It gives you a sense of "oh, well then, that was beyond easy" and then pulls the rug from under your feet to reveal a concrete floor 50 meters below you (to throw you metric folks a bone here). Maybe not a complaint, but definitely an observation I've made playing each of these nodes.

PuceMoose

I love the fact that all the nodes are trivial for the first time they are fought. It makes it nice and breezy to run through all of the nodes to get the story & the dialog. I usually only clear all nodes once each sub, with the exception of the two that hand out a command point.

mazerat

Background: I hit CP every event even with my limited roster. Just took 6th in Hearts w/o Iceman (sadface) but I usually hit top 50-100.

My normal strategy is to do a full clear every 8 hours and then about 2 hours before refresh I will hit every non-named node four additional times (seven total) and then start working on the other nodes based on difficulty/points/gut until I get to 5 health packs on normal days and 0 on final days. Then I'll hit the team-up node 4 or more times depending on how I'm doing on time / how it's looking on points.

EotS was miserable and I didn't even hit CP due to difficulty / me not farming the wave nodes enough.

Unstable ISO-8 accidentally had rubberbanding on. I hit CP and stopped. CP was at 35000, top player was at 80k the last time I checked and I ended up being top 400 or so.

On Sentry, I hit every node seven times and was top 150 and was already completely burnt from all those clears. Difficulty was pathetic--my roster average was about 120 and enemies topped out around 70 after six clears.

Right now I've done one clear of every team-up and one-time node and four clears of each regular and essential node and have 24698 points (82% of CP) after two subs. I placed top 300 on the first sub. Top player has 34512 (140% of my score) and 10th has 30956 (125%) Node difficulty feels like it's in an okay spot--about average for a PvE, the two Hood/Bulls/feeder nodes in sub-1 still suck.

I think the tl;dr is that the new system makes me want to play less. Three full clears plus some grinding is about my limit but seeing all these people grinding out thousands of points in 20 point increments makes me just want to hit CP and quit. Especially when it's like Sentry where I'm putting in the max amount of time I care to and not even breaking top 100.

wymtime

I have done 4 clears in the 2nd sub and am tied for with a bunch of people. I cleared the first sub 5 times and the easy nodes 7. I stopped on the harder nodes because I had gotten the cp and the health packs I was needing wax not worth the critical boosts. I will probably hit round 2 7 times and round 3 similar to round 1. Normally 5 full clears would get top 50 in a regular PVE but I think I will be top 100. Overall this test is telling me to level X-23 to run with OML so I can just keep running true healers. A year and a half ago it was all about Daken patch in PVE, now it will be OML and X-23 for true healing. Somethings never change.