Story Difficulty Scaling - New Test: Meet Rocket & Groot

zulux21

Not a fan of the current scaling.
while the starting levels are better they just scale up to fast.
the last node went to 250 on my 4th clear from 202, in previous pve I was looking at 205-220. this is just a pain.

edit: at least they stop after 4 times. but still feels a bit to high.

auralgami

I just don't understand.

The difficulty goes up from too easy to punishing levels. The rewards stay the same and there's still a timer for full points.

All I wanted was the CP, but because luck wasn't on my side, instead of getting it, I got a bunch of **** rewards including everyone's favorite Critical Boost, team wipe and frustration. Thanks.

This makes we want to play exactly how? Tonight I was literally better off not playing.

KrisPWales

This time things are way better, particularly 4 clears to start the timer.

However, the 4th clear for me on the last couple of nodes (and the 4* essential node) are extremely difficult. I can only assume this is because I just rostered my 5* IM and Cap from Civil War. Now I have a 3* team with 3 1 cover 5* characters, which I blame for my intense scaling.

Gmax101

Been comparing notes with an Alliance mate...

my roster is basically championed 3* (all except 6 that are not relevant to the event) so my highest level characters are boosted 3's (R&G 272, Punisher 263, Cyclops 261, Blade 254) and then two boosted 4* (Thoress 227 and Bucky 225) before the Max Champ Boosted 2* (Storm 220 Magneto 212)

My hardest node in Luck be a Lady is level 268 across the board... my 4* essential is at 238

So all in all pretty manageable... still prone to cascades, but the Luck Be A Lady nodes are actually pretty straight forward... IM40 and OBW basically make anything without Mystique irrelevant, and mystique herself can be kept in check with a stun power...

But my team-mate has several max 4* and a Thoress who is level 270 before boosts... so looking at his roster, I would expect to see Thoress as his highest character (depending on boost calc... level 360 or 440, do they add fixed levels or a % increase?), then a bunch of champ/max 4* at 270, then R&G and the boosted Champ 3* and several unlevelled 5* before dropping down below 255...

He is seeing subs well over level 300...

This just seems to be a heavy penalty for doing the logical thing of levelling up your characters...

So I think scaling is about right for me... challenging but doable... with the enemies actually making the difference. And I can use lots of different characters as the nodes climb in difficulty... which is cool.

My team-mate however, is having a very different experience....

But this is why I am completely happy plodding through and maxing my 3* roster without going crazy in to 4* land... I don't do PVP competitively... and PVE is currently actually enjoyable... but adding 5* or heavily levelling 4* will negatively impact that I think...

Fratriarch

Currently playing casual, with about 12 3* champs, and 5ish 4* around 166.

Scaling from trivial to a decent challenge are definitely a fun and nicely challenging whole

This current rework is the best way of story I've ever played.
Even though the points go down after 4 clears, I did all 7 clears so far. Day 2 and I have a very reasonable LT.
I know I won't come in top 10 in the new system, but the renewed accessability make up for that in full.

donnel

I'd like to go into an overall comparison of the new vs. old system, because I'm still concerned with what the dev's are trying to accomplish:

Optimal clear method: Grind at the beginning of every sub and the end of every sub. Instead of 20-30 min every 8 hours and a 2-3 hour grind, spend a large block of time every day (maybe 3-4 hrs) grinding in one big chunk. I don't feel this necessarily adds any more flexibility than the prior system. I also think think this encourages player burnout (do you really think people can grind for that long of a period every day and still enjoy the game?)

Scaling: This might be closer to approximating roster strength than before (hard to tell until we get a test on a new char release). But I don't understand what the goal is here. Is it to make sure all roster types can compete for top placement? Recent changes increasingly make it seem like roster improvement is unnecessary/harmful to player performance. I think there's one big thing that scaling consistently misses in estimating "strength", which is differences in character quality. A soft capped roster has many choices that are somewhat competitive in ability. In contrast, 4*s vary widely in usability. My boosted elektra or chulk will never win a pve for me, and yet everything contributes to scaling.

All in all, I can take or leave the new format. It's not a dramatic improvement, but it's not much worse than the current system either. If the intention is to open up rewards to all roster types (through grinding the 20 pt node all day perhaps), then I will just lower my overall engagement. If the product you're trying to sell is live all day on your phone so that you can win an extra cover, I heartily refuse to play that game.

AsylumTKJ

I still really don't like to have to chain 2 grinds in a row in the evening (won t do this at work...).
It feels like I spent my whole evenings playing DDQ during the tests. My wife will definitively not accept that permanently.

WEBGAS

There is a simple solution:
MAKE PVE REWARDS ON PROGRESSION BASES

This is the only choice, if you want to make PVE like the mantra "Play when you want as much as you want"

and don't "YOU MUST GRIND AT THE VERY BEGINNING AND IN THE END LIKE YOU HAVEN'T OTHER CHOICE"

JVReal

I think it odd that they are testing a format that allows you to grind an easy node infinitely for 20 points, but removed the 20 Iso so you can't grind easy nodes for 20 iso each (locked prologue).

ShanePHallam

I dig this new format as an upgrade to the old one. Allows me as a semi-casual player to play on my own time and still do decently/have fun more than be aggravating. Nodes scale to a challenging, but not unreasonable level. I like it.

Ralph-Wiggum

I'm liking this new test a lot more than the previous tests. The difficulty seems about right and, as a player who doesn't play competitively to place, the ability to just play when I want rather than every 8 hours works much better for me.

The only negative so far is that the increasing node difficulty after each match can become a pain when playing the CP point nodes. It doesn't make a difference when you get the CP point on your first or second try, but when you've played 6 matches without the CP point and the difficulty keeps increasing, that 7th match isn't so fun. Especially when facing The Hood + Muscle...

Bowgentle

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:

The only negative so far is that the increasing node difficulty after each match can become a pain when playing the CP point nodes. It doesn't make a difference when you get the CP point on your first or second try, but when you've played 6 matches without the CP point and the difficulty keeps increasing, that 7th match isn't so fun. Especially when facing The Hood + Muscle...

The levels stop increasing after 4 clears.

Polares

Gmax101 wrote:

Been comparing notes with an Alliance mate...

my roster is basically championed 3* (all except 6 that are not relevant to the event) so my highest level characters are boosted 3's (R&G 272, Punisher 263, Cyclops 261, Blade 254) and then two boosted 4* (Thoress 227 and Bucky 225) before the Max Champ Boosted 2* (Storm 220 Magneto 212)

My hardest node in Luck be a Lady is level 268 across the board... my 4* essential is at 238

So all in all pretty manageable... still prone to cascades, but the Luck Be A Lady nodes are actually pretty straight forward... IM40 and OBW basically make anything without Mystique irrelevant, and mystique herself can be kept in check with a stun power...

But my team-mate has several max 4* and a Thoress who is level 270 before boosts... so looking at his roster, I would expect to see Thoress as his highest character (depending on boost calc... level 360 or 440, do they add fixed levels or a % increase?), then a bunch of champ/max 4* at 270, then R&G and the boosted Champ 3* and several unlevelled 5* before dropping down below 255...

He is seeing subs well over level 300...

This just seems to be a heavy penalty for doing the logical thing of levelling up your characters...

So I think scaling is about right for me... challenging but doable... with the enemies actually making the difference. And I can use lots of different characters as the nodes climb in difficulty... which is cool.

My team-mate however, is having a very different experience....

But this is why I am completely happy plodding through and maxing my 3* roster without going crazy in to 4* land... I don't do PVP competitively... and PVE is currently actually enjoyable... but adding 5* or heavily levelling 4* will negatively impact that I think...

They need to use more than 3 chars to calculate your team scaling level, they should use at least 5 or more. Or don't use buffed levels for the calculation, because this system is clearly broken.

In EotS I had OML (not usable most of the event), and cyclops and iceman both buffed, so the difficulty was off the charts. At least both iceman and cyclops are very good, so I could get the 25CPs but it was very hard.

In the next one it got a little bit better I think.

In this event I also feel penalized for having a maxed 4hor. Yeah she is good when used with IM, but my enemies are around 350+ so my IM lasts like two seconds against muscles+juggs, and 4hor is not that good on her own. All my enemies have 25k+ hitpoints, strikes are around 1.5k each!

I wonder what will happen when the buffed 4s are some not as good, and then difficulty will be really high without the help of those chars (I have a championed xwolvie, so imagine that in an event I just have him buffed, and all my enemy levels rise just because of him but he will still be mediocre, even when buffed, that is going to be really fun).


Difficulty AGAIN is wrong, and AGAIN benefits the most people not maxing their chars. If I had stopped leveling in the 170 range I would be able to use all 3s and all 4s at a very usable level, I would be able to chose between 40-60 chars! All usable. Now I could basically use my maxed 4s and 5, and in battles with three chars I could try to hide my 3s behind them (of course AoEs like muscle blue destroy me ). I lost a couple of times against jugs+muscle because any of my 4s that can deal with strikes are maxed (more iso please!?!??!!? And another antman blue as 1000 progression would be much appreciated).


So devs, I don't know what did you 'fix' this time, but IT DID NOT WORK.

Second sub was easier, but if the problem are the nodes, then fix the nodes before you change the scaling!!!!

I am really pissed, this format just benefits, the same people it has been benefiting since the beginning, I know the biggest group of players are in the 2-3 range but this is outrageous.


PS: This is the only game I know that penalizes for levelling your chars, it is really STUPID.

WEBGAS

PS: This is the only game I know that penalizes for levelling your chars, it is really STUPID.[/quote]


So SAD but so TRUE

FireWarrior71

Ok, so usually I would poo poo the PVE testing here. But I think you guys finally got it right. The scaling seems spot on so far. I still think that 4 clears on each node is still a little high, but I'm ok with it. I would like to see 3. But I would be ok with 4 if you keep it that way. The timer should keep early grinders in check. Overall, I feel that this test version is much better than the last few.

Fratriarch

WEBGAS wrote:

Polares wrote:

PS: This is the only game I know that penalizes for levelling your chars, it is really STUPID.

So SAD but so TRUE

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had similar scalling issues.
That's a 2006 game

mohio

Scaling here seems fine. I have Rulk and 4hor both championed, so even the hardest nodes aren't too difficult, but imo, that's the way it should be. I should benefit some from my championed boosted characters, not be punished for having them.

As for the 20 point trivial node fiasco. I can't imagine they are going to keep this. It falls squarely into the prologue healing category of "you have to do this but it's not fun". I appreciate the people that will continue grinding these 20 point nodes so the devs will have their precious data showing what is required for top placement and hopefully realize that it's ridiculous.

wymtime

Here is one suggestion I would like to make. Instead of 4 clears and a 24 hour timer make it 3 clears and an 8 hour timer. On 48 hour subs play 4 times then wait 24 hours is a really long time. The 8hr timer will set up time to play in the morning, lunch and evening and will cut down on the big grind at the end of a sub and the beginning. Players have said they don't like playing on a schedule, but the 24 hour timer is a schedule and is causing a very specific 3-4 hour time to play. The 8 hour timer does allow for more play through out the day.

KrisPWales

I actually like this test, but I really don't think the concept works with the 48 hour sub. It should at least reset after 24 hours, rather than having R to wait 24 hours for the max points to refresh and hen having to do it all again but with the difficulty already scaled to max.

actarus76

ok for the difficult increase and for not waiting 8 hours.

the problems arise when you arrive at the nodes by 20 points: the first day I tried to keep up coming to do 40 times the first node to accumulate points but it did not do anything. I admit that then I got bored and stopped but other players have continued coming to overtake more than 1000 points, then the game simply boils down to how many hours you can throw it when you get 20 points in the nodes.
in these circumstances, PvE is not more interesting.

i read what other players wrote and i agree with some of them: 100% progression based, but also with an alliance progression (like in boss events). players who wants competition and classification could do pvp