What Grinds My Gears - Simulator Edition

rbdragon

Wanna know what really grinds my gears? Of course you don't - but this is the internet, so I'm gonna tell you anyway!

So why does the simulator have to be so over the top hard? Matches are hard enough when the scaling tops out (my left side is all 325), so why make them ridiculous (I'm looking at you )?

Why does Simulation 7 stay opened instead of going red like most big single reward nodes on every other PVE?

Why are the essential nodes scaled higher than usual on the simulator (this isn't a one off - this seems to always happen)?

Why is the 3* node usually scaled higher than the 4*? (All PVEs)

Why is the 2* node usually scaled the same as the 4*? (All PVEs)

On the first point - I honestly don't mind that so much as I do like a challenge. But so often they treat these nodes as troll nodes - designed to screw with us not only in the synergy the team has, but the fact they usually block out a key player we may be using. Speaking of that...

Why can't we use the same character as the ones we battle? If it's a SIMULATOR, they aren't "real" characters anyway, so our "real" versions should be usable!

wirius

What do you think of this here?

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=45223

The reason they have the scaling and grinding is because you have to weed out competition and limit rewards.

Nick441234

Simulator is the worst event, it just isn't fun whatsoever. If a new character wasn't attached to it I'd probably have given up at this point.

amusingfoo1

nick_chicane wrote:

Simulator is the worst event, it just isn't fun whatsoever. If a new character wasn't attached to it I'd probably have given up at this point.

It's better than most heroics (every so often you'll get a good set of characters for a heroic, and then it won't be so bad), and probably better than Venom Bomb, but those are definitely damns of faint praise.

scottee

I actually like that it's hard. It makes it easier to place high if you have a good roster. But yeah, stinks if you can't beat the harder nodes even once.

mazerat

The very second trivial node having a 2-red-cover Gwen team-up was pretty great. Kapow, 1900 damage for reaching 12 TU--more than the entire enemy team could ever hope to do in the fight.

Eddiemon

scottee wrote:

I actually like that it's hard. It makes it easier to place high if you have a good roster. But yeah, stinks if you can't beat the harder nodes even once.

I like it this way. I wouldn;t like it if all events were like this, but once in a while having order based on capability rather than time is nice.

A single clear of round 2 uses up 6+ health packs for me. But I'm still in the places because apparently it is burning other peoples resources similarly.

It also changes the strategy, because if you leave your clear for the last 2 hours, you are going to run out of health packs. So starting your last clear with 6 hours to go and doing half the nodes, then clearng the other half with your refreshed resources may actually be a smarter play.

Bowgentle

scottee wrote:

I actually like that it's hard. It makes it easier to place high if you have a good roster. But yeah, stinks if you can't beat the harder nodes even once.

In theory.

In practice you get lumped in with 50 people who have champed 5*s and have no problems doing every node 11 times.

Thanks, death bracketing.

mazerat

Eddiemon wrote:

scottee wrote:

I actually like that it's hard. It makes it easier to place high if you have a good roster. But yeah, stinks if you can't beat the harder nodes even once.

I like it this way. I wouldn;t like it if all events were like this, but once in a while having order based on capability rather than time is nice.

A single clear of round 2 uses up 6+ health packs for me. But I'm still in the places because apparently it is burning other peoples resources similarly.

It also changes the strategy, because if you leave your clear for the last 2 hours, you are going to run out of health packs. So starting your last clear with 6 hours to go and doing half the nodes, then clearng the other half with your refreshed resources may actually be a smarter play.

Yeah, I haven't managed to attempt the final node of sub-2 yet (I keep getting to Hood/Mags/Daredevil with like 8 and burning them all between that group and Kingpin/Iron Fist/SWitch) but I'm gaining ranks. Not having any real breather matches are making the grind feel especially grindy but it's not quite as bad as that Sentry PvE test where every node was trivial and you had to do seven clears.

carrion_pigeons

Every single event gets called the worst event by someone. Except boss battles I guess. I like that it isn't just fighting dark avengers and goons all the time. I do think it's too hard (in terms of scaling, not synergy), and I do think it's pretty uncreative to design event after event that all have exactly the same design flaws, and then run them over and over. I also think PvE being designed to repeat each node multiple times for progression rewards is incredibly lame of the designers. But if I had to rate the events against each other, as opposed to some hypothetical ideal in which all my preferences for the game were realized, Simulator would be high on my list.

Crowl

I quite like this event, fighting different opposition makes a change, but the combination of the scaling and the synergy makes it more annoying than it should be.

Scaling should take into account available characters on a node by node basis so if two of my highest level chars were for example cyke and jean grey then the scaling on the final node of sub 2 should be reduced.

It seems weird that the final node per sub doesn't lock after we get the single prize out of it, if we need to farm it for points then give us other rewards too.

Quebbster

I'd like the Simulator a lot more if we got some new teams to fight. They've been using the same setup ever since the second anniversary.

Crowl

Quebbster wrote:

I'd like the Simulator a lot more if we got some new teams to fight. They've been using the same setup ever since the second anniversary.

Do we really need them taking advantage of newer releases to produce even more evil teams than are in there now though?

Quebbster

Crowl wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

I'd like the Simulator a lot more if we got some new teams to fight. They've been using the same setup ever since the second anniversary.

Do we really need them taking advantage of newer releases to produce even more evil teams than are in there now though?

I wouldn't mind seeing an older Simulator being rerun... The same exact one gets bring though.

DalekGAF

Storm, Cyclops and Jean Grey? I really hope whoever came up with that team gets stomach flu this weekend.

The Herald

I'm hating it, but feel I have bad characters for it...

I suspect that people with good 4* characters will be doing best here, where I'm still durdling through Championing 3*s

Phumade

Bowgentle wrote:

In practice you get lumped in with 50 people who have champed 5*s and have no problems doing every node 11 times.

Thanks, death bracketing.

Even though I heavily rely on my 5* in PVE, I would be the first to admit that they fundamentally break pve events. You can totally see this when you compare an older event with a newer event Specfically, look at how the enemy teams are composed and you can pretty guess what a top tier roster looked at the time of PVE release. The 5* break the game because their damage output basically out paces the scaling curve .

Perhaps one suggestion would be to:

1. Limit PVE to 3* chars and below
2. gear the 4* and 5* chars for exclusive pvp play
3. For new character intros, allow people to use their full roster.

In my personal opinion, pve is a lot more fun when you do not have time pressure and you can think about how your chars work together. I would be willing to bet that alot of players would be more than happy to vault their champed 4*/5* in return for lower scaling. Of course for a new char event, allow people to use every single tool that they have acquired.

mpqr7

I actually love Simulator and find it tough but not unreasonably challenging. Yeah, it was tough when I was a noob, but now that I'm a vet, it's not so bad. I have enough characters that I can use fresh ones for each node, without needing health packs.

Different characters work well on different nodes. Strong AOE characters? Use Quake! I only have her at lv 70, but even there she makes a huge difference.

Rhulk node? Use Shulk to zap away their AP!

Stuck in cascade hell? Use Loki, JG or Hood to get some of that AP back or punish them for their good matches!

You just need to be strategic when picking your team. This is when I prefer pve over pvp, in that I can finally use players like hood who are weak in pvp defense but work great for certain levels of pve

We_are_Venom

How many times "randomly" 5 matches appear for your team when jg is on the opposing team

All three matches started with a 5 match on the board and all three ended with inadvertent ones being made to end my teams

thisone

We_are_Venom wrote:

How many times "randomly" 5 matches appear for your team when jg is on the opposing team

All three matches started with a 5 match on the board and all three ended with inadvertent ones being made to end my teams

Yeah, that made me rage quit and go down the pub last night. Weirdly, I'm still in t100 when I logged in this morning. So I guess everyone is having "bad luck".

Off down the pub again, will check back and do a shot every time I read "confirmation bias lol" later. I fear I may die though

scottee

They should bring back the Deadpool, Deadpool, Deadpool node.

And the secret for hard nodes (unless you're in my bracket, stop reading) is to bring Hood. He still beats anything that's not Hood. All those are easy when the AI never fires an ability.