Tanking - Developers' view?

Zifna

Since IceIX is on the prowl, I thought this would be a good time to see how the developers felt about tanking (intentionally losing in order to bring enemies into a beatable range).

It's pretty openly discussed and frequently suggested around here between players, and I know that from other posts, IceIX has said the intention for scaling is for the player to face matches that are "Challenging, but doable." However, you can currently face three L230 heros/villains even if none your best character is an 85**, a situation that is generally untenable (maybe you can win if you are clever/lucky, but with five health packs, I'd be shocked to hear anyone could win sustainably against that with a ** roster).

I am generally against anything like that (tanking), but at present it seems like scaling is very broken and tanking is the sad "workaround".

Is it simply the hope that scaling will be fixed and there won't be a need for tanking? Is there any kind of timeline on this? Tanking seems necessary right now, but also exceptionally lame.

Unknown

Tanking worked quite well during the Brotherhood event, but as far as I can tell, it does not work for the Hulk event.

IceIX

We've made changes on the Hulk event that limit tanking so it's not as effective. We also made changes at the top end so that not as many people get hit with the 230 bomb and we'll continue to scale that as necessary. One of the issues that we have there is that once an Event has started, if we make changes it doesn't retroactively affect players who are already at higher scaling unless we lower the ceiling for everyone. Some of whom are quite legitimately beating down on 230s with their 85-ish teams without issue (Spider-Man included or not), so it's not a great way of fixing things. Just as things have gotten better since our first Event that featured scaling, it'll get better over time as we dial things in. One of our main problems that we're dialing in on, and the reason some of you are hitting scaling when you "shouldn't", is that the system allows for players that play well but within the manner in which they "should" play. It doesn't do so well with people that play at superhuman (relative to the general playerbase) levels where they're winning matches every time quickly with no/little damage for whatever reason. Basically, if you're at the far end of the bell curve, you get hit harder then have a harder time recovering once you're there. That's bad.

Eddiemon

Thanks IceIX,

It's good to know the metric for success is more complex than win/loss.

Now I need to work out how to abuse it.

Unknown

Sounds like you should be leaving your matches with damage and then healing in the prologue instead of at the end hm...

IceIX

jozier wrote:

Sounds like you should be leaving your matches with damage and then healing in the prologue instead of at the end hm...

It accounts for that somewhat. Pretty easy for the system to see that you went out of one match in the Event near dead then entered the next one pretty quickly at full without Health Pack usage.

SunCrusher

IF you have a healing character.

Also, people with healers and near-perpetual stunners have a huge advantage in terms of progression... But especially healers.

Team NO Healer gets a beat-down and stays down for 30 minutes... Team Healer can just hoard up healing abilities and heal up as they go or... run to Prologue to heal up.

Hot Dog Stands (I love them just because the imagery is awesome - Mags flying out to buy hot dogs for everyone mid-battle) can do similar but far far less effectively.

Now I understand how the advice for being able to withstand Juggs' Headbutt makes sense; if you can heal up the damage then you should be able to take it.

Except the problem is, if you DON'T have a good healer, that damage either sits you out for a long time or eventually kills you.

So the game decides that because there are people taking near zero total health loss (minuses and heals calculated together), then scaling needs to go up for everyone and not just them?

Unknown

I don't know about tanking, but I've been playing this event a lot more casually than usual, and I notice most of my missions are in the low 100's rather than 230 all the time. Some missions are still all 230's, but I guess the original Hulk event was that way too. I don't think the scaling is that bad if you're taking longer breaks between sessions.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

jozier wrote:

Sounds like you should be leaving your matches with damage and then healing in the prologue instead of at the end hm...

It accounts for that somewhat. Pretty easy for the system to see that you went out of one match in the Event near dead then entered the next one pretty quickly at full without Health Pack usage.

So new alternative: run through my roster and don't heal up for awhile

Zifna

IceIX wrote:

Some of whom are quite legitimately beating down on 230s with their 85-ish teams without issue (Spider-Man included or not), so it's not a great way of fixing things.

That's been me since around L30 if you're talking about minions,* but it just doesn't carry over well if there are actual enemy champions in the mix. With minions, I can be clever/strategic and simply not let abilities go off (at least abilities that directly damage me) and slowly wear them away.

But if there are enemy champions, it's a whole different ball game - if they cast ANY ability, there's a good chance one of my characters is dead. It gets very dicey when enemy champions get around 140 or so, and not very fun. I hope this difference is taken into account?


*Basic BW, Basic Hawkeye, and Modern Storm slew many L230 minions together. Very, very slowly.

Talahamut

Since were talking about the scaling...
If I use ISO to level up my guys, is that gonna up my MMR and cause the Hulk event enemies to jump in level in the middle of the event? Cause I'd hate for leveling to end up making the event MORE difficult for me towards the end.

IceIX

Zifna wrote:

That's been me since around L30 if you're talking about minions,* but it just doesn't carry over well if there are actual enemy champions in the mix. With minions, I can be clever/strategic and simply not let abilities go off (at least abilities that directly damage me) and slowly wear them away.

But if there are enemy champions, it's a whole different ball game - if they cast ANY ability, there's a good chance one of my characters is dead. It gets very dicey when enemy champions get around 140 or so, and not very fun. I hope this difference is taken into account?


*Basic BW, Basic Hawkeye, and Modern Storm slew many L230 minions together. Very, very slowly.

That's taken into account by the initial scaling, yes. You see minion groups sitting at say, 150 while a named group sits at 60-ish, adjusted up or down depending on the concept for difficulty of any given group.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Some of whom are quite legitimately beating down on 230s with their 85-ish teams without issue (Spider-Man included or not), so it's not a great way of fixing things. Just as things have gotten better since our first Event that featured scaling, it'll get better over time as we dial things in. One of our main problems that we're dialing in on, and the reason some of you are hitting scaling when you "shouldn't", is that the system allows for players that play well but within the manner in which they "should" play.

I mised several OBW covers at the beginning of the hulk event which got her to low 50s. Her, along with a 72 Thor (both boosted for the event) and m.Storm could take out groups of 190-230 via infinite resource looping + AP denial. It was excruciating and cannot possibly be how you intend the game to be played.

Unknown

@IceIX: I've been trying to figure out why I get jammed with 230s on day 2 until final day of the last 4 PvEs. I have a couple questions if you'll be so kind as to ease some curiousity.

1. is the level of enemies you face based on your global main bracket rank?

it's hard to pinpoint but generally the enemies seem 230s once i break the top 200 in main bracket on day 2, this could be a side effect of the play style needed to get there.

IceIX wrote:

... It doesn't do so well with people that play at superhuman (relative to the general playerbase) levels where they're winning matches every time quickly with no/little damage for whatever reason. Basically, if you're at the far end of the bell curve, you get hit harder then have a harder time recovering once you're there. That's bad.

I'm a grinder, I'll freely admit that and i play trying to take as little damage and heal what i do take. I also have a 5/5/3 patch and like to go glass cannon over slow and steady chipping. this often means if i can get 9 green 14 red the match is over very fast.

2. does damage you heal count as damage taken or only how hurt you leave battle?

IceIX wrote:

jozier wrote:

Sounds like you should be leaving your matches with damage and then healing in the prologue instead of at the end hm...

It accounts for that somewhat. Pretty easy for the system to see that you went out of one match in the Event near dead then entered the next one pretty quickly at full without Health Pack usage.

I like to heal with obw or spidey to keep going before a finishing move. more than a few times I've been slammed with 230s ares wiping panther or patch, sometimes i go to sleep other times i used 4-5 health packs. after the health packs it seemed lower on refresh.

3. is the scaling about damage taken, being downed, or just about # of health packs used?

4. is the scaling up/down instant or only next refresh of the stack?

kensterr

IceIX wrote:

We've made changes on the Hulk event that limit tanking so it's not as effective. We also made changes at the top end so that not as many people get hit with the 230 bomb and we'll continue to scale that as necessary. One of the issues that we have there is that once an Event has started, if we make changes it doesn't retroactively affect players who are already at higher scaling unless we lower the ceiling for everyone. Some of whom are quite legitimately beating down on 230s with their 85-ish teams without issue (Spider-Man included or not), so it's not a great way of fixing things. Just as things have gotten better since our first Event that featured scaling, it'll get better over time as we dial things in. One of our main problems that we're dialing in on, and the reason some of you are hitting scaling when you "shouldn't", is that the system allows for players that play well but within the manner in which they "should" play. It doesn't do so well with people that play at superhuman (relative to the general playerbase) levels where they're winning matches every time quickly with no/little damage for whatever reason. Basically, if you're at the far end of the bell curve, you get hit harder then have a harder time recovering once you're there. That's bad.

Does the system take into account that my roster beat the level 230 DA with boosts, and that I only did those mission once? I'm trying to figure out the best way to get points without the need for boosts, or best way to avoid 230s again.

With that said however, some sub events do give me manageable DA levels after closing the game and starting it again, while one sub event made the DA jump 50-100 levels.

Unknown

Basically you are saying dont buy/use health packs because using them will make the game harder, which seems silly if you're trying to make money. Dont use healers because it will make the game scale up faster. Die alot or take alot of damage, then wait for natural healing and it wont scale as harshly.

This all seems counter-productive to me. Why would you want people to play/pay less?

Shadow

Madjam wrote:

Basically you are saying dont buy/use health packs because using them will make the game harder, which seems silly if you're trying to make money. Dont use healers because it will make the game scale up faster. Die alot or take alot of damage, then wait for natural healing and it wont scale as harshly.

This all seems counter-productive to me. Why would you want people to play/pay less?

Actually, they want people to use health packs rather than healers

SunCrusher

In terms of balancing, the scaling as described kind of makes sense because otherwise, the only players who would ever get anywhere in terms of both progress and rewards are ultimately the ones who have access to certain hardcore character groupings and who can simply play, take minimal damage unless it's a bad board, and recharge health to their hearts' content while everyone else who doesn't have that access gets to either sit and wait or spend on Health Packs after getting repeatedly cremated.

Given that these PvEs ALREADY limit participation by making Essential Missions locked to certain characters only, that adds another dimension to the deepening of the divide between those who have XYZ characters and those who do not.

Everyone wants to play more for fun, but not everyone has the access to the right characters to do it. So just because of certain character combinations, the people who have them should be allowed to play in perpetuity (and gain crazy rewards for this because playing in perpetuity would affect ranking and rewards in something like PvE if scaling wasn't implemented) while everyone else gets to sit and wait?

It really makes me wonder why healers were introduced into the game when there are Health Packs to be sold.

Additionally, it makes me not want to touch Health Packs myself because why bother when other people are healing up (and not Hot Dog Stands brand of healing) for free?

over_clocked

You don't have to heal to be good at PvE, because rubberbanding exists. Not sure about PvP, but as long as you have at least some decent characters you should be able to do several pushes at off-hours and shield to your liking. It's not like those who have healers don't have to shield if they want to place well. Like some have noted (and they are right to an extent), healers slow you down if the only thing they bring is their healing. If you only run oBW for her blue and not even against countdown tile enemies, it's a bad character choice. It's not like those who have healers are able to finish all or most of their fights at full health and are never in need of a healthpack. I am quite stingy with my healthpacks and I have both healers but I still never have more than the standard 5 healthpacks for longer than one evening. At the moment I'm usually able to finish my fights in the Hulk relatively unharmed but when I start having lvl 230 enemies it's bound to get much tougher, and 'safe' retreating still leaves characters heavily wounded. Healing won't help much when there are 5 minutes left to a sub and my major players are downed or hurt by 33% or 66%. Charging into battle with even 66% health is extremely risky as I can attest.

edit: actually I have a friend who doesn't use either Spider-Man or oBW and regularly places top 1 (!) in both PvE and PvP. I have both healers and have never been able to place top 1. He also tanks quite thoroughly, but that's not the matter, my MMR is still pretty adequate and I don't face much stronger PvP opponents every day. His only maxed characters are Moonstone, cStorm, Ares and Wolverine**. And a bunch of 1*s.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

We've made changes on the Hulk event that limit tanking so it's not as effective. We also made changes at the top end so that not as many people get hit with the 230 bomb and we'll continue to scale that as necessary. One of the issues that we have there is that once an Event has started, if we make changes it doesn't retroactively affect players who are already at higher scaling unless we lower the ceiling for everyone. Some of whom are quite legitimately beating down on 230s with their 85-ish teams without issue (Spider-Man included or not), so it's not a great way of fixing things. Just as things have gotten better since our first Event that featured scaling, it'll get better over time as we dial things in. One of our main problems that we're dialing in on, and the reason some of you are hitting scaling when you "shouldn't", is that the system allows for players that play well but within the manner in which they "should" play. It doesn't do so well with people that play at superhuman (relative to the general playerbase) levels where they're winning matches every time quickly with no/little damage for whatever reason. Basically, if you're at the far end of the bell curve, you get hit harder then have a harder time recovering once you're there. That's bad.

The description well matches the experience. Doesn't anyone there do design reviews and pointed it out as braindead concept to start with? Someone who plays well -- killing stuff and healing up in the meantime shall be punished by killing his time and nerves? REALLY? SERIOUSLY? Healthy games reward the good play. And punish the sloppy one. Not the other way around. How about pushing MPQ in that direction?

tl;dr: just stop giving good players hard time for heaven's sake You can throw the addiction pills to newbies without that.

paralistalon

I also share concerns over having to tank to do well and how this practice cannot be good for gameplay. There is nothing fun about intentionaly losing over and over again. Also, I've seen in other games how veteran players essentially made new accounts to compete in tournaments because of the overwhelming advantage and eventual necessity of doing so for a top reward. I don't think anyone found this fun (fun is getting to rock out with your strongest team!).