New Mission Difficulty Test: Enemy of the State *Updated

OneLastGambit

Malcrof wrote:

Posted this in worst day as well


Finishing every node, collecting every single point , including the opening repeatable in EotS, while maintaining t3 and yesterday somehow 90 points below the leaders.. and no-one can figure out how.. losing any chance at t10

Have screenshots of everything.. but it isn't just me, others have shown me screenshots of magic extra points, missing 10 - 30 points from nowhere, etc..

So, they found a way to break some of the ties.. with a glitch..

My apologies malcrof I stole t5 from you

Even though I've benefitted from this system it's wildly unfair

Bowgentle

I just grinded out third place by playing for over 4 hours straight at the start of the sub.

Whoever came up with this system needs to talk to some vets to understand how high level PVE works.

Yeah, it was totally not to be expected that people would grind the maximum amount of points, indeed.

I'll never play PVE again for placement if this abomination gets implemented.

Tatercat

Ok, I just finished it, max points at 4th place for my bracket. My final thoughts on this playtest:

To be clear here, I didn't start this test for placement rewards. I needed ISO to max and champ before a 4 star cover died and these rewards speeded that process up for me. (And I did max him over the weekend) Today is the only day I "raced" through clears, since it was the only day you actually needed to finish quickly if you fully cleared the previous subs. (This was the only day it felt like actual grinding. The rest of the week I just played when able to or bored.) If I was that close, so why not go for them? and I genuinely wanted to try this - if only once- just fully go all in a playtest, to really "test" it and see if the seems could handle the stress.

So an interesting experiment that got me a lot of needed ISO but not something I've like seen made into a habit. 9+ clears was simply too much for a survival nodes , turning competitive thrill into monotonous routine. I had the roster to handle it (boosted Teen Jean went along way here, but Antman was a surprise MVP for me too), but its very understandably while some just gave up on this event. Even playing whenever you liked, this felt like too much. Would I do it again? And Again? And again? er....... no.

Hopefully this was a good data test for the devs if nothing else. Indeed, judging from their reaction to the how many cleared full points, it may have been a very necessary test for them. I'm not sure why they were surprised by that, past metrics aside, ISO is the one thing everyone needs, especially at the higher levels and they've seen that the mob will grind and grind to get it.

wymtime

I would just like to congratulate everyone who did all clears on the last sub. A 6 wave survival node and a 5 wave is just too grindy for me. You all are rock stars for doing that much work.

DFiPL

So I'm satisfied that this format allows me to hit progressions since I don't have to worry about scheduling, but my fear is that the (entirely foreseeable) rush to max clear everything for placement is going to lead to the devs going "we need to up max progression."

I'd really rather not be punished for their lack of foresight.

mega ghost

Please do not implement this into future PvE events! I will honestly stop playing them, this has been so painfully unfun. The worst part of this is that the already paltry node rewards have been buried even deeper and require too much grinding to earn. It was disappointing before to have to play through every node just to get to the last node, which rewards an event token, and then have to play it 5 times because the one reward you wanted came last. It's absolutely grueling to have to do the same thing (on a node comprised of 4 to 6 waves no less!) when the sole worthwhile reward is one of 9-15 rewards and the RNG just isn't in your favor. And to compound that, the scaling would be fine if enemy difficulty didn't increase with each failed pull of said reward. I didn't get the event token my first 7 of 9 tries. Beating the node an 8th time was exceptionally difficult, and took all of my stored resources and health packs. And guess what? I still didn't get the token! It is, naturally, the only remaining unclaimed reward of the 9. After all of that, it's getting left on the table.

So basically the end result is "Oh, you've had bad luck with the RNG? Guess what, NOW YOU HAVE EVEN WORSE LUCK / WE HATE YOU."

A better system would be to keep the scaling as is, but make the rewards decent to good rewards out of a group of 3. If someone wants to play beyond that set of three, their efforts can be rewarded with set amounts of ISO. For example, if you can beat the nearly-impossible 9th try, you get 7,500+ ISO. It's a way to reward that kind of grueling play, without creating a situation in which someone puts in the time and suffering and still comes out empty-handed.

PeeOne

Here's a bizarre thought ....

Handicapped placement...

Rank drawn players by roster strength!!!

I finished 4th but the top 3 have 4 and 5 star champions littering their rosters.... They would have had a higher difficulty but I missed top 3 by 10 minutes!!

So far only 7 have completed with a few more approaching completion with 5 hours left

Vomit Fountain

I liked the general freedom of no timer but that's only because I didn't even attempt placement. Having to grind that much as fast as possible to land a top placement is just too insane for me.
I missed out on a lot of the prime node rewards too because the difficulty ramped up too high well before I could finish every round. Maybe consider distributing the fight prizes from highest to lowest so those who just want the tiken or CP aren't forced to grind. The whole point of this is to end grinding, right?
The scaling for the last Rocket and Groot test was way better than this one, I really wish that you had stuck with that if you're intent of doing scaling at all.
To sum it up: I grit my teeth, participated in this test just long enough to get the progression rewards and bailed on the rest. I like the idea of losing the timer but if that just means that I'm going to have to grind more then I'd gladly have it back.

DTStump

Vomit Fountain wrote:

The whole point of this is to end grinding, right?

My best guess is that the point is actually very different from that - it is actually to encourage a larger amount of players to grind, thus enhancing the likelihood that people buy stuff.

From that point of view, Story events have to be attractive to the average player (e.g. no timers), they shouldn't be too difficult to avoid scaring average players away (e.g. scaling fixes), while still putting enough pressure on health pack needs (e.g. increasing number of possible rewards to make players play more for the best ones).

In a nutshell, I think developers would prefer finely-tuned systems that make players want to buy health packs, tokens and roster slots, without making them go away in disgust. The grind is never going to end.

optimus2861

Tedium. Just, tedium. All I'm trying to get is the 25 CP and, so. Many. Clears. So. Many. Waves.

Thank kitty that Fist is the featured. Makes things go quicker, knowing that every turn you're whittling someone down. Pair with boosted Daken for easy strike tiles to add it up.

For my level of play I found the R&G version of the test far more enjoyable. 3 clears of a sub seems manageable for me. 5+? Ugh.

Meander

I enjoy the new lack of timer, but the ranking is worry some. I am on track to clear all nodes max times, yet will fall outside of t10. The difference between me with no x-23 covers and someone with 3? Who did it first. Not a good look.

to gun

I started the final sub the second it opened. Used my best characters and boosts almost every mission to speed things up. I only got delayed once when the game refreshed for the day with the new deadpool dailies. My sub started at 1 AM central time, and I finished all clears by 5:15. That got me third overall, and obviously tied point wise for 1st. No idea how much sooner the people in front of me finished, but had to be really fast clears. They both have decent leveled 5 stars, so that probably helps.

I really hope they move to something better than a mad blitz in the last sub to get 1st.

ngoni

There's no reason to repeat a wave node the same number of times as a normal one. Just scale up the rewards and reduce the required wins accordingly.

Vomit Fountain

DTStump wrote:

Vomit Fountain wrote:

The whole point of this is to end grinding, right?

My best guess is that the point is actually very different from that - it is actually to encourage a larger amount of players to grind, thus enhancing the likelihood that people buy stuff.

From that point of view, Story events have to be attractive to the average player (e.g. no timers), they shouldn't be too difficult to avoid scaring average players away (e.g. scaling fixes), while still putting enough pressure on health pack needs (e.g. increasing number of possible rewards to make players play more for the best ones).

In a nutshell, I think developers would prefer finely-tuned systems that make players want to buy health packs, tokens and roster slots, without making them go away in disgust. The grind is never going to end.

Good point, I get it. Maybe add more missions or story content rather than just making us repeat the same mission over and over then? I would personally find that more engaging.

udonomefoo

ngoni wrote:

There's no reason to repeat a wave node the same number of times as a normal one. Just scale up the rewards and reduce the required wins accordingly.

Quoted because how is this not the most obvious thing in the world?

LXSandman

The obvious solution is to make ties give out the top reward rather then rank it based on who did it faster.

I think that would solve a lot of the issues people seem to have with this test.

SnowcaTT

Going back to a normal PVE right after the test I realize how much it scaled up. I was getting level 435 Gorgon and friends with one more difficulty increase to go, and it was getting ridiculously difficult and long. Back to regular: I can actually use something other than my one 5* again, horray!

I still enjoy the tests - I'd much rather have one grind than two or three. But boy oh boy, when you increased those rewards it -really- increased the difficulty...and the time! I wasn't going for placement - just for the CP - and it still seemed to take way to long.

Cthulhu

Thank you all for the feedback, as David stated Demiurge is reviewing what went wrong and we would like to know what you guys did like about the test as well. Since it's ending Friday the discussion will be done tomorrow and we should have an update early next week after making decisions.

Please let us know the following:
- What did you like
- What do you wish was different

Definitely will help for this discussion tomorrow.

Thank you!

Cthulhu

Malcrof

Loved the play at your own pace aspect, which is something i have liked about all the tests.. .but everyone getting identical points kind of negates that.

I also liked the fact that you got a reward every time you cleared a node for points, no wasted efforts.

Did not like the way placement was handled at all with the new test. First come first serve doesn't really help anyone much.

mpqr7

Cthulhu wrote:

Please let us know the following:
- What did you like
- What do you wish was different
Cthulhu

What I liked: More prizes and ISO, True ability to play at any time, since points were always the same no matter what, not too hard to get top progression



What I wished was different: Less clears required to get top placement, Less time commitment, less **** prizes for hard nodes (plz no more crit boosts and 70 ISO prizes, should be at least 250 ISO min),

-difficult to get top node prizes (event tokens, cp), due to top node scaling going completely out of control (enemy attacks taking away 10,000+ hit points per turn)

-playing for hours, but still not even making top 300 in the sub



Basically it took too long, and prizes were too small to justify the time increase. This will lead to major frustration and burnout.