New Mission Difficulty Test: Enemy of the State *Updated

chadledford169

Being the FOURTH time you've run this test, you should understand by now, this new format is unwanted by players. Quit wasting our time and yours with this sorry development. How bout you focus on creating new stories instead of creating new ways to drain our health packs. You've taken all the fun outta pve for me with this. I hate re doing the same node 10 times for the reward i want. I'm now only doing four nodes repeatedly and ignoring 2/3 of the essentials.

Ducky

DuckyV wrote:

Finished first 2 subs in 3rd place. Finishing this sub as late as possible to see how many maxed pts. Will report back.

RL got in the way of me completely finishing, but I was close enough to see that 25th was ~200 pts w/in max score. So ~25 ppl hit max scores.

OneLastGambit

bbtrpt1 wrote:

My story so far:

I don't have to work this week so I figured, what the heck, lets go all in!

I am a solid 3 -> 4 star transitioner. I have all but 8 3stars champed and have 5-8 4stars with 9+ covers between levels 130 and 175 (JG, HB, XFW each have 13 covers). I also have 5 5stars still at 255 with a cover or two except OML who is irrelevant for this PvE anyways. My highest char for this event is a boosted IF at lvl 283.

I waited for S1 to flip twice before joining. I was still able to completely clear the 1st sub and ended up 16th I believe in my bracket. Scaling did't seem to be too ridiculous and I was optimistic.

Finished the 2nd sub and placed 3rd. Same for the 3rd sub. Burned through all health packs in the 3rd sub but did finish later that night after using another 7-8 health packs. Scaling for the 3rd sub starting getting very bad and I had to use Winfinite for the 7th through 9th clears for the final two nodes.

I am now in the 4th sub and have hit a wall. The last node with Wolvie, Gorgon, and the guy who feeds red turned Deadly after the 3rd clear. By the 5th clear they are all 100+ levels higher than my highest char, IF. The node before that is not that far behind. The scaling has ramped up well over 200 levels!!! My teams featuring combos of IF, HB, JG, Daken, IM40 and KK can't keep up, they are done. I got lucky with Winfinite for one clear, but only after a very lucky board. For the other tries, Wolvie gets his adamantium slash off after four turns and I'm done.

With the current scaling, it will be impossible for me to clear this sub unless I buy a bunch of health packs / boosts which I am not going to do. I don't even want to think about the next two days after it ramps up some more with those Gorgon waves.

I am a 550+ day player who probably has spent around $200 total since I started playing. I don't really do PvP other than finishing Sim and getting enough points for the Heroic 10-pack each season. PvE has been my main thing, but if this is the future of PvE then I don't see how I will be able to keep up without pouring some serious money in.

You would think I was the type of player that the devs would want to keep. I am actually foolish enough to put the time in for this test, but can't finish due to the ramped up scaling (40 to 50 levels per clear). This test is not the answer. To echo many others, the time required and scaling issues make this not fun at all. I am up for a challenge but this is ridiculous!

It is clear that the developers do not play this game. Either that or they are sadistic, lol!

I can second this. ^^^^^

I am a 3-4* transitioner. I've been vocally supportive of previous tests and am an advocate of the new system.

The scaling on this test massively sucks ****. My hardest node is now Level 426, the highest character on my roster is as follows:

Oml level 300 (locked in this event)
Imhb 275
Thing 271
A bunch of 1 cover 5* at 255.

This is the highest my scaling has ever been (I'm including the time gauntlet was bugged) and is 126 levels above my best character who can't be used anyway.

The max from first sub was 356, my max cap has increased in each sub. Its hard not to feel like this is a "you're supposed to lose" moment. I also can't help feeling this is my fault since a while ago I made a post (half jokingly) advocating infinite scaling.

fmftint

4.5 hours from end of sub 3, S4, only 10 players are perfect for the duration

I'll report back at the end of the sub

snlf25

Late 3* to 4* for me too and it is plainly evident that the devs have no idea how to scale for us or Demiurge_Gandalf has decreed we shall not pass. I can't tell you what my maximum opponent level is because I sure as hell cannot reach it. I can't beat these bastards once they get over 363. I very much like this way of doing PvE overall because it looks like it is a dry run for progression only which I very much support and I don't have to play on a schedule but right now the cons way out weigh the pros.

We Do Not want this kind of difficulty Devs! Stop this ****! Now!

I shouldn't see my enemies going up 40 levels after I beat them and this drastically reduces my rewards because I can't beat a node 7,8,9 times much less 11 or 15. I don't want to have to either but it seems I do because the **** rewards are coming through first, HARD. I've earned my 1.1 billionth through 1.3 billionth critical boost rewards in this event.

Finding it very hard to carry on now that I have earned my Mighty Kung Fu Man cover.

Why in the name of Christ do you guys think we want to have to play PvE like it's a full time job? How many hours do you guys play a week? Just how much grinding do you really expect us to friggen do? How does 5 or 6 hours per sub sound right or good to you? You've already got people playing in **** traffic and staying up all night to play - do you want blood on your hands? Will it take a news story that a guy got pulped by a train because he was playing with a mobile app instead of focusing on his driving before you exhibit some reason? Because it WILL HAPPEN if this system goes forward with placement reward attached to it.

Ryudoz

Why oh why in the 3rd sub did half of the nodes go from 7 clears to 9 clears? Also, I thought scaling was supposed to stop before the points diminished, not after/during. I swear I've seen stealth scaling increase between clears with 1 or 2 left to go.

Also, placement in this sub is whack.

Smudge

Alright... time for more musings on this garbage now that I'm done for the day on the X-Mansion sub finally. I feel like I've been playing MPQ all day. Probably because I have.

I work four 10 hour days during the week, so I'm still on my weekend until tomorrow night (Central time). I also like rewards. This test has a fair amount of award, so I've been max clearing it mostly for that reason.

Seeing "Deadly" on my second to last node is not encouraging, so I've been working through a single clear of all nodes, then I've been burning out the hardest nodes first to try to minimize my frustration and so I can relax on the easier nodes.

The thing is, by the time I get to the easier nodes, I don't even want to use more fun combinations or anything. I used my boosted CMags, Scarlet Witch, and Deadpool to get through the trivial wave node as fast as I possibly could, and I switched to SWitch, Phoenix, and LDaken to fly through the other two trivials.

When I'm so tired of clearing nodes that even the trivial nodes aren't relaxing, that's not a good thing. The funny thing is, I was not an optimal player, nor did I spend more than maybe 10-20 minutes grinding the lowest 20 point nodes in Meet R&G for the last test, but playing those baby nodes 20 times or so was actually kind of fun. This is not. Now that I'm done max clearing, I'm thankful the next sub doesn't open for another 7 hours... sigh. 7 hours and counting...

PeeOne

Update:
sub 1 41st
Sub 2 12th
Sub 3 8th
Sub 4 7th

Therefore 7th overall

I'm in the 9pm slice so play for 2 hours then go to bed.... When I run out of health packs
Usually leaves me 3 replays of the 2 hardest nodes to do in the morning - the last on Deadly

Got them done with 10 refreshed life packs only repeating 1 deadly when I woke up.

I'm a 3* transitioner so The Gorgon node was up to level 344

Easier nodes I use IF, SW and BP - all feeding into each other for gem collection
Harder the below combo

PS - again I have to thank OJSP for the KK, Lcap, IM40 combo

jredd

Bad enough having to clear 7 times for guaranteed rewards, but now, 9-15 clears on some nodes? and the scaling gets to the point where beating them if not impossible, means that you need to use 3 health packs to heal the only characters that can beat the node.

with the other versions of pve, even if i wasn't hitting the event, i could still grind the cp nodes and be sure to get at least 2 per sub. with this, not so much.

i vote no for ever doing another event like this.

horrible

kidicarus

I'm going to do a "Babs" here by saying that the difficulty is currently too easy.

Currently there are too many people hitting max points in the pve. I'm in a slice 5 bracket where 50ish (maybe?) hit max after 1st sub, 20+ after 2nd and it looks like 15 will get max in the 3rd sub. I missed clearing the yellow node in the main page on 1st sub so I'm just outside of the max pointers (although I've been 3rd for every sub). My point is, it's clearly too easy if that many are clearing all the nodes for the rewards.

Scaling up difficulty more quickly has the effect of stopping people from playing. I think we can all agree that this is a good idea. After all, I don't see too many people clearing the nodes in the gauntlet for all the rewards once they have reached their personal progression.

My suggestion:

1. Implement scaling difficulty based on your progression at the same rate. I know this is hard to do but currently we all know that the underlevelled rosters are having an easier time than the mega 5* whales at the highest difficulty.

2. Scale up faster so people stop sooner.

3. Scale up to higher levels than currently.

4. Communicate to player base that reaching maxed progression only requires 3 or 4 clears.

5. Don't stop scaling up (heck maybe even increase rewards based on difficulty)

This way, progression rewards will then go to the players who maximise their rosters to go as far as possible. Eg if I can use my boosted to 370 4* to take down a lvl 550 juggernaut. or if using championed 5* maybe a lvl 750 ares, shouldn't that person deserve to take the prize.

Or to put it in another way:
1st Clear: Casual palying for iso/bored.
2nd Clear: hey I noticed that if I play just a bit more I get more progress and slightly better progress.
3rd: Ok this is difficult but doable. But if I clear it, I'm on target for max progression.
4th: Ok just used 10 health packs, I've gotten as far as I can
5th: HOLY **** I CANT BELIEVE I JUST DID THAT. AND I'M IN 1ST NOONE IS GOING TO CATCH ME BECAUSE ITS IMPOSSIBLE.
6th and beyond: ...probably hacking

smkspy

Nine tries to get that **** token on the last node of sub 3. That's forty five waves that I had to fight thru...well, forty because I ran out of time during my 8th play and got a cb for fighting 350 level enemies. Oh yeah, and the fact that none of CP waves would reward that either until the 8th or 9th time.

Not that the token would have done my any good anyways as out of 12 i have opened, I've gotten two measly 3 stars.

lucky this board doesn't have a bird emogie.

Kevin61

MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!!!!

fmftint

I like that the last 3 nodes of sub 4 all got a bump in final scaling. Guess our reward for no survival nodes was an extra 20 levels

Oldboy

Just joined the event, played half of one sub and decided that there are other better things to do with my time

Gmax101

fmftint wrote:

I like that the last 3 nodes of sub 4 all got a bump in final scaling. Guess our reward for no survival nodes was an extra 20 levels

Yeah, I noticed this....

The final 3 nodes have scaled insanely in Sub 4....

Sub 3 I could do everything except the very final scaled wave node with effort but it was achievable (barring a crazy cascade, but that is fine as its part of the game)

Sub 4 the final node after 5 clears, so with at least one more increase to go (probably an extra 30 levels as its been +30 each clear so far) is 324/324/325

My highest Characters are:
Iron Fist at 288
Scarlet Witch at 264
Deadpool at 263
Magneto 259
*Locked* OML 255 (1 yellow cover)
Daken 251
Kingpin 240
Bucky 240
Jean Grey 220

If they were goons then fine, I can probably do it... but with Gorgon and Wolverine and a Feeder then frankly its ridiculous.

Most Wanted, the "easiest" of the 3 hard nodes is 289/290/290 after 5 clears. Tough but beatable I guess...

Adamantium and Steel is 272/273/273 after 4 clears, so likely to be 300+ after the 5th...

mind you, happy I have got all the choice rewards so not sure I can be bothered to clear them.... progression will be got on the first clear next sub, and I have cheerfully kissed goodbye to placement.

Things is, up until things got so ridiculous on these nodes, I was enjoying the test. Admitedly only because I decided to just play as much as I wanted and target progression, rather than try to grind for placement...for that "casual" approach, the play anytime and reasonable scaling is good...

Just PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop burying the best of the still fairly meagre node rewards under 8 or 9 clears of hellish nodes.

I Have said it before and will say it again, by all means have an extra 4 or 5 clears for those that want to grind... say 250 or 500 per clear, but only let people do that once they have cleared it enough times to earn progression.

For example:
Set Progression at 4 clears of every node and 1 clear of each Wave node.
First 4 rewards for each normal node are the usual mix of rubbish (70 ISO, Critical Boosts) and booty (Event Tokens, CP, 500/100 ISO) earnt randomly.
Wave node is tough and has a juicy reward at the end of it. (the original EOTS rewards of loads of ISO and an EVENT TOKEN were ideal)
Then once all 4 rewards are unlocked, then grind mode is engaged.
4 more clears per normal node. Reducing in points after each clear as per now. With ISO per clear reward. (Easy nodes - 100/250 Essential/Hard nodes - 250/500/1000)

Scaling climbs as per the current test.

The people who want to grind can, and there is ISO there to be grabbed, those who want simple progression can still get all the decent progression aiding rewards.

ZeroKarma

I just cleared the 4th sub, and despite my concerns, I am actually starting to appreciate this format quite a bit more. I think there are certainly some issues with running such a test during Enemy of the State with it's wave nodes and goon feeders for Wolvie and Gorgon. These may not be quite so severe in other PvE formats.

My suggestions for improvement, some of which have already been stated here:

1. Lower the scaling a touch. I'm running a single 5* with my OML on the shelf during this event. So I'm running a level 461 Silver Surfer with 3*. Gorgon at level 459 has 67k health which is absurd. Maybe we need to have another cap in place, higher than the latest 320ish to 420ish.

2. Reduce the number of clears by 1 or 2. This is just taking way too long especially with wave nodes. PvE should take not take more than 2 hours a day of work. Just my feeling.

3. To better utilize the rosters, why not lock out based on tier like we do in DDQ? 2* essential can only use 2* or lower, with scaling matched to that. Same with 3* and 4* essentials.

4. Locked in placement rewards for full completion. If this was a new character release, I would be doing fine, but I could see people taking there time, finishing at the last minute and getting a 3*. If you complete every node in the time allotted you should finish no lower than 20th or....

5. Don't do placement at all. Progression based with the final reward available for clearing every node the requisite amount of times. Again, if this was a new character release I should expect to get all of the covers for clearing everything. Just makes too much sense not to do it. Throw in a bonus for fastest clear if you must.

6. Alliances. Need to do something here, or PvE alliances as they exist will disappear. That means something like the boss battles has to happen, where you are locked into an event with the alliance you start with. This means that hardcore PvE alliances will stick together and have something to work towards. Make it a progression and not placement, just like the individual rewards. Again, if you want to throw in a bonus for fastest clear knock yourselves out.

I think we're close. I don't want to grind anymore. I'm tired after two years of placing in every event. This is a breath of fresh air that just needs a few more tweaks.

Quebbster

I don't particularly mind this system. I'm usually only aiming for top 50, and that's simple enough to reach it seems. It is annoying when the best reward doesn't drop until the very last playthroughs though.
I definitely liked the Rocket&Groot variant better though, all that was needed there was to remove the 20 Point cap from the easy nodes.

GrumpySmurf1002

kidicarus wrote:

Scaling up difficulty more quickly has the effect of stopping people from playing. I think we can all agree that this is a good idea. After all, I don't see too many people clearing the nodes in the gauntlet for all the rewards once they have reached their personal progression.

I agree as a theory, but if you're going to scale difficulty to "none shall pass," random rewards have to go away. First clear is 70 iso, 2nd is std token, 3rd is 140, etc.....up to thousands of iso, not just a 1k reward.

The only way the player base will accept "you're supposed to lose" is if you make the incentive to not lose really worth it.

PeterGibbons316

The JG essentials are killing me. Even though I have a champed JG, everything is scaled to my 454 Phoenix which I can't use. I wish they would open up essentials to all versions of characters like in Boss events.

DiscoStucat

Today was day 955 on my daily drop. Haven't missed a day yet. I Lead with this, not to say my opinion is more valid than anyone else's, but to prove that I have seen all of the changes that this game has undergone. This "New Format" that you keep testing does one thing that all of the other changes didn't: It makes the game less fun. The True Healing update was one of the more controversial updates. People hated that it changed the way they were playing, but it didn't make the game less fun. This new format sucks the joy out of playing this game. With the original format there was grinding for placement at the end of the event. An ending time chosen by the player to be the most convenient for him/her. With this format there is grinding for grinding sake through the entire event. It is not fun, and fun is what a game is supposed to be at it's core. This is an opinion that I have found to prevail in my alliance. Even the members that start off saying that they like the new format, eventually complain about it sucking the fun out of the game. Every slight tweek that you make in each subsequent test has done nothing to fix this core issue.
Please consider this: No matter what you are hoping to achieve with the new format, it is not worth killing the joy of playing the game to get. This is how game communities die. Age of a game inevitably brings a shrinking player base. A lack of fun kills it.