New Mission Difficulty Test: Enemy of the State *Updated

WelcomeDeath

I know Ive chimed in twice already, but i have to once more. Test 1, players complained scaling was too high and progression too hard. Test 2 you lowered it, good, but wasnt enough, people complained. Test 3, 4 clears, reasonable scaling, but the one glaring issue of 20 pts repeatable forever. Test 4, remove that because its ridiculous, but add back higher scaling and put clears up to 11? Because of one glaring flaw take back everything else? Just seems crazy and seems like nobody keeps a history of past tests.
Ideal pve: caps set at old levels. Let us feel like were progressing by making more nodes seem easier once we graduate past max scaling for that node.
7 rewards, 7 clears. Many do this on old system, seems to work out fine. Hell, make it 5 and itd be even better.
3 clears/day = cp progression. Worked with old system, no need to change it.
5 clears / day = all 3 3* rewards, added to progression.
7 clears/day = specific 4* reward(s).
Alliance and daily rewards = alliance and daily progression awards. Would encourage people to stay in their alliances. We'd still use health packs some, but quality of life would be far better and player satisfaction would go up. The last few tests showed progress. Please finally listen to us and give us a product worth paying for.

Bwanis

Under normal pve conditions, I can play for 45 minutes, get both CP and the node token AND come away with enough points to place top 300 in the sub to earn an extra event token.

Under this test, I have been playing twice the amount of time, earned neither of the CPs, nor the node token and am currently rank 600 so I won't get the sub token from placement.

There are some nice ISO rewards but you can't earn them without insane luck or the patience to play the same node 15 times. Don't think there are many players who find that task to be anything other than a horrible slog reminiscent to the days of 20 ISO.

Devs, why on earth do you think this is fun?! Games are supposed to be fun, first and foremost are they not? I literally do not understand the direction of this test. It makes no sense and feels like work.

Inarius

Smudge wrote:

My feelings after playing some on day one, slice 5:

"Better rosters are starting to perform better, but people were still grinding the easy nodes a lot."

Solution: Grind ALL the nodes a lot!!!!!!!

basically this, having to grind the damn nodes like a mad man else risk of loosing the 25CP reward at the price of half the day spent in this damn game is straight up nope for me

thanks but no thanks devs, if this is your idea of fun in terms of PVE, I'll just have to settle with full on PVP.

Buret0

A lot of people are forgetting that their score on day 1/2 of a seven day event matters, but the time it takes to finish doesn't.

So long as you finish your grind over the two days, you are tied with everyone else, even if their score is shown as top for now.

All that matters for the "perfect" score is how fast you can finish the seventh day. The first person to finish their grind on day seven will win the event. So while grinding early gets you higher sub rewards (2000 iso, 250 HP, and 3 CP for top 2), the actual event score is cumulative, so the first person to finish the grind on the last day gets the top event reward, so long as they have kept up their gradual grind.

So for the "best" possible outcome, you can play anytime you like during the sub, except for the final sub where you need to optimize your grind to finish first without losing partway into a wave node.

For the events that have no wave nodes, failure will never punish you. You are free to play anytime over the course of the sub, so long as you complete your grind. This will suck for the people who were in first for the whole event and then lose on the last day because someone inevitably makes the jump from 250th to 1st.

The conclusion is that this event, while super grindy and time consuming because of the survival nodes, permits players who make the commitment to play for every prize available to have the chance to take first place, no matter what time they play (except for the final day). And you have to assume that, while many people are starting the event with full clears, fatigue will set in and the number of perfect scores will drop off over the course of the event.

For those who only care about progression, this is amazing. For those who can't log in every 8 hours, this is amazing. For those who want a challenge, the leveling up with each clear gives players that. It has something for the grinders (significantly more iso for every clear), it has something for the casual players who don't want to be stuck to a timer, and it has something for the hard core players who want to play PvE events for prizes.

The alliance scores are going to be tricky, because if multiple alliances max out the points, the tie will go to whichever alliance was in the earlier slice. It means you can't recruit a slice 5 merc to round out your perfect score and it may lead to top PvE alliances dropping players who can't start their final day grinds at the slice 1 starting time (which is necessary to lock in top scores earliest). I like the no merc part, but I don't like the punishment of later slices (which already happens when they launch a new required character right before Boss events) and there needs to be a remedy for tie-breaking that doesn't punish late slice alliances (but maybe also prevent mercs?).

The five hour and twenty-seven minutes it took for me to lock in second place in the sub was unnecessary. I could have played more casually and saved some clears for tonight (instead I get a day off of PvE while maintaining my position). Going forward, I will probably only do the insane grind on the final night of the event, and only if I care about the top prizes (in this case, I am missing the top two X23 covers). Otherwise, I will happily join late and just work for progression CP and node CP.

Required changes:

(1) reduce the number of required clears for survival nodes by 2-3. The first node I cleared to death was the Iron Fist RC survival node... which took a full hour and was almost enough to make me quit the test;
(2) lower the number of attempts at the hard nodes by 1-2 or cap their levels slightly earlier, the final node would have killed all of my health packs if it weren't for my only high level 5* being a level 405 5/2/3 Surfer who could tank all day;
(3) have a bonus event vault cover for completing all of the nodes (it isn't much);
(4) don't make the last day a required speed grind when the purpose of the test was to have your players spread their play out more, you either need to resolve ties as everyone getting the same higher reward or you need to move those covers from placement to progression... the best part about the system is 100% "play when you want", but having the final placement determined by a 2-3 hour sprint to the finish line defeats the purpose of the test and will really screw up alliance rankings for later slices.

Despite all of the negative feedback for the event, I think there is a lot of good in this test. I never played competitive PvE because my life can't be modeled around 8 hour windows, so I always joined just late enough that I could still get max progression by triple tapping each node and then triple tapping again in the last hour. I think finding a way to get rid of the 8 hour timers for optimal play is a good thing for this game, you just need to find a way to resolve ties and/or to make ties less relevant (please don't do this by making the nodes scale to level 999 to cause party wipes, "you are supposed to lose" was not really popular).

The only other thing to consider is that 7 day events need to have more progression rewards. You can earn 25 CP in three days in a three day event or 25 CP in seven days in a seven day event. That doesn't make sense. There should be a second 25 CP prize possible for those who grind the full seven days, since you already give 50 CP over seven days when you run 3 day/4 day events back to back. Toss in a few more event tokens, covers, HP, and cap it all off with the top two prizes being 25 CP and 25 CP (116,000 and 135,000 or something).

seraphiel

Jwhitmire36 wrote:

22 hours into my slice 4 and the top 4 are at max points. What's everyone else seeing?

Within an hour or so of me starting it (at 8pm my time), somebody had already gotten the maximum score. So I had barely had time to finish clearing 1 round of nodes and already I could tell it was going to be impossible for me to get a placement reward.

By the next day, a few more people had done it as well, but the joke's on them: they can't get the 1st/2nd anyway.

I guess I will continue picking at these for the star points and maybe the progression. The whole "whoever clears it first is the winner" method doesn't work for me when other people in my bracket were clearly given a head start, and (as expected) it was someone with a substantial chunk of 5 stars and champed-out 4 stars.

None of this messing with the point system is actually going to solve anything as long as everyone's still mixed into the same pool.

The players need to be split up and grouped with people of comparable rosters to compete against.

WEBGAS

Smudge wrote:

What is the purpose of setting up a system that is perfect for only progression-based rewards without only progression-based rewards?

Kudos to you Smudge, this is the point:
The new system is perfect for ONLY PROGRESSION-BASED REWARDS.
This way we can repeat the mantra " play as you want whenever you want"

These were the exact words by demiurge at the time of the first test, weren't those?
So please Devs, take this final step and give your loyal players what we deserve:
Make PVE with ONLY PROGRESSION-BASED REWARDS

Buret0

seraphiel wrote:

Jwhitmire36 wrote:

22 hours into my slice 4 and the top 4 are at max points. What's everyone else seeing?

Within an hour or so of me starting it (at 8pm my time), somebody had already gotten the maximum score. So I had barely had time to finish clearing 1 round of nodes and already I could tell it was going to be impossible for me to get a placement reward.

By the next day, a few more people had done it as well, but the joke's on them: they can't get the 1st/2nd anyway..

Wrong.

The score is cumulative, it is only a race to the finish on the final day.

BryanMc82

I love this! I can actually play when I have time. I can play when I wake, have a brake, get of work, and when I want in any of my free time! My time not a set time! Said it at the start of this message I love this freadom!

dr tinykittylove

OJSP wrote:

[
I'm sorry again if that's what you took from my statement. However, I know from my own experience, that it's very easy to take the gas of the pedal and allow others to overtake me when we don't need the rewards (I have been both the overtaker and the one being overtaken )

I agree. I play for t10 pve only for new release events. I feel no urgency to grind for any character I already have fully covered. Maybe if it's quake or one of the few I that I need just one or two more covers for to complete. I feel bad when I rob transitioners when they're playing for covers to build their roster and it's just iso or an extra champ level to me.

Kjeldbjerg

Love it. Take the # of available clears down a bit, and it is great.

Alsmir

This event makes me hate myself for playing it and hate devs for designing it.

Forget the placement rewards, especially when top ranked guys in my slice have developed 5* characters, while I'm leveling my 2*. I've been slowly leveling my 2* for over a week now. After few good PvP runs, game decided to kick me into vet bracket, so my only hope of getting ISO is PvE now. In DDQ I can clear two nodes, getting close to clearing third one - that's not much.

Here I have an event, with plenty of weak enemies and potential to gain lots of ISO. Ignoring that event seems mad, but it's just no fun at all. It's a massive grindfest and I hate it, but I keep playing it, because I don't know when I'll get another chance to get so much ISO.
Nodes that require 15 clears, multiple waves, multiple enemies. Jesus Christ, how many hours does it take for a full clear?

bataglia

Alsmir wrote:

This event makes me hate myself for playing it and hate devs for designing it.

Forget the placement rewards, especially when top ranked guys in my slice have developed 5* characters, while I'm leveling my 2*. I've been slowly leveling my 2* for over a week now. After few good PvP runs, game decided to kick me into vet bracket, so my only hope of getting ISO is PvE now. In DDQ I can clear two nodes, getting close to clearing third one - that's not much.

Here I have an event, with plenty of weak enemies and potential to gain lots of ISO. Ignoring that event seems mad, but it's just no fun at all. It's a massive grindfest and I hate it, but I keep playing it, because I don't know when I'll get another chance to get so much ISO.
Nodes that require 15 clears, multiple waves, multiple enemies. Jesus Christ, how many hours does it take for a full clear?

Developing rosters have no space in the new PVE. We are now supposed to fight only for 2* covers and no more, since we can't play on an optimal strategy to overcome our lack of featured chars.

Fratriarch

"David wrote:

Moore"]
• More missions (and more rewards!)

o In one-day sub-chapters, Easy missions increase in difficulty 4 times and are worth points the first 7 times they are beaten. Hard and Required Character missions increase in difficulty 6 times and are worth points the first 9 times they are beaten. o In two-day sub-chapters, Easy missions increase in difficulty 8 times and are worth points the first 11 times they are beaten. Hard and Required Character missions increase in difficulty 12 times and are worth points the first 15 times they are beaten.

I feel like you've heavily overestimated how much people want to play. Especially considering all the wave nodes of eots.

Crowl

ngoni wrote:

Why is it important for the developers to punish people who have spent the time (and probably money) to develop their roster? Any other game gets easier instead this game tells you to quit playing.

I think part of the reason for scaling is that they want people to remain challenged by the game and that is probably a fair aim since if everything was too easy then people would get bored, the bigger problem is that they do not increase rewards relative to that challenge and don't have the balance right as ideally the challenge would remain at about the same level or be reduced as your roster improves which isn't the case right now.

Skymedium

This has probably been mentioned before but....15 rewards on 1 node? Especially on the cp nodes!

Are you completely out of your mind?

How many do actually have heroes to beat 300+ enemies? A wolverine in this case with 2 ninjas.

Jesus

Crowl

Skymedium wrote:

This has probably been mentioned before but....15 rewards on 1 node? Especially on the cp nodes!

Are you completely out of your mind?

If they use this style in the future, they need to do two tiers of rewards on nodes, the first one gets you the top 3-4 prizes and then you have a secondary tier of just iso rewards.

wymtime

So I did all clears on sub 1 in a 24hr time period. I did a lot yesterday and finished up this morning. I am 23rd but tied for first. The difficulty is not bad. I think having a championed JG and a level 195 quake with 5 in yellow was a big saver on health packs. Overall it is just a grind. I did it to myself, but I wanted to see what was the right amount of play for me and what would it be like at the end of this event. Overall this stay of PVE is do all the clears and then a big race to see how much you can play at the start of the final sub. Having true healers, anti AOE, or special tile removers, and you are crazy enough to spend the time grinding that long to win.

This test would be great for progression only. Think about this D3 place the top 100 alliance and top 100 placement for each sub in a sub progression reward. Then take a 4* cover, 25 CP, 50 HP, and 5k ISO and add that to the progression rewards. For new releases add in an alliance based progression where your alliance can earn 3 covers of the new character. This way for PVE on new releases you can earn 4 covers but your alliance has to do well not just you. There will be no timing, no race at the end, the only grinding will be because individuals choose to grind instead of feeling they have to grind at a certain time of day to place well.

The extra rewards are really nice and the ISO is really appreciated. The order you get the prizes can be structured better. For a 24hr sub 4 clears should get you the CP or token, and in a 48 hr sub 8 clears should get you the best reward. The fact that it sometimes takes 15 clears to get the best reward is just a grind.

awarnica

Xzasxz wrote:

PeeOne wrote:

I haven't read all the entries here... So not sure if I'm the only one.... But.....

I love this!!!

20,000 ISO earned by not playing any more than usual... Definitely worth it!!

madsalad wrote:

Joking or what? The total ammount of ISO to be earned from all nodes is 22 430 in 89 matches. You can add 15 RT to the total of nearly 24k ISO in 104 matches. Plus 8 other rewards. Are u telling me, u are playng ca 100 matches every day?
It's true, that there is more iso to earn, but definitely playing more than before.

awarnica wrote:

Well I'm pretty annoyed. Joined shard 1 about 5-6 hours ago, at 833.
Finished grinding every single node for the maximum number of times. Tedious, and took hours (3-4 maybe?).
Now I'm third in the sub, with 1 day, 8 hours left. No chance to play more to get 1st/2nd.
Can't play again until Sunday morning.

If I was in a tie for first - id be all in on this system. Weekend saved, play whenever I want. But now im just annoyed.
Id love to give D3 the benefit of the doubt here, but I cannot. Now instead of a 2 hour race at the end of the sub it's a 4 hour race at the beginning of the sub.

You averaged 2 minutes per match, playing straight through? There are a 112 clears at 4 hours that is 2.14 minutes per match. not counting the 4 clears from the node on the main event. That's seems insane and super fast matches. And that doesn't account for any time between matches. I know I was playing a lot last night, definitely not straight through, and I only did 46 clears.

People lie (why ?) or cannot count. 41 of these 112 clears are waves. One would be insanely lucky to make it in such a short time. Even if not loosing one single match (in such rush not possible), not usinng health packs, no changing teams between matches etc. So talk about reality, not dreams.


Not sure why anyone would think I am lying or cannot count. Even more confused why anyone cares enough to accuse me of either one. For those who DO CARE - pm me on line, username awarnica - or visit the pve bracket count room where I posted when I joined, and a screenshot of when I finished. You can do the math to count hours, you shouldn't need a calculator to do so.

And I do keep the same team for the whole of most events, it means you just keep the same strategy. Im on about day 830, yes I can clear nodes in my sleep, the difficulty seems to be toned down this event for me (only one character over level 300 who is OML and not useable this event).

firethorne

Skymedium wrote:

This has probably been mentioned before but....15 rewards on 1 node? Especially on the cp nodes!

Are you completely out of your mind?

How many do actually have heroes to beat 300+ enemies? A wolverine in this case with 2 ninjas.

Jesus

No kidding. I did twelve clears of the wave node to get that bloody token.

Devs, I hope you realize that there are people who have already given up on this grinding hellscape you've created from your continued compulsion to force a competition where it doesn't belong. Our few areas we actually feel like we might make progress are from the meager scraps of CP or a token. If twelve clears for a single CP or draw that will probably end up giving a Moonstone becomes the new standard, I'm out.

Zappa

Sub 2 is somehow more miserable than day 1.
We have 24 hours to clear this, and one of the nodes is a 5 wave node!!!!!! With 9 clears available!! 45 waves to clear a single node out of 10. Whoever came up with this idea clearly has no concept of what anybody would find entertaining. Not to mention that there is still an infuriating delay after countdown timer placement.