New Mission Difficulty Test: Enemy of the State *Updated

Keegan

Cthulhu wrote:

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

I liked the Iso-8 and the numerous vault tokens.

I wish that - if we must go with a change to PvE - we go with the Meet R&G format without the 20 point node. My actual wish would be not to change the format after all these tests, but Demiurge has likely invested enough money into the tests that they're at the point where they won't turn back, even if doing so is a good idea, because of the sunk-cost fallacy.

Tjason1

There were more positives than negatives for me in this test. 8 hour node resets are always a killer for me from a timing perspective and almost always meant that I never a had a shot at the top progression prize. It was nice to earn that way ahead of time for once. Scaling felt fair for my team as well.

Of course, like just about everyone else I feel it was way too much of a grind. It's also incredibly annoying to finish one of the tough battles only to get a 70 iso reward. Give the token or CP point upfront on those nodes would be much appreciated.

westnyy2

The main pro was definitely playing at your own pace. Placement should be changed but it's definitely the way to go.

The things that bothered me most by the last sub were the amount of times needed to clear and the final scaling of enemies. I think 7 clears is still a lot but manageable if you really want the prizes. It didn't help that the wave nodes in the last sub had 5 and 6 waves each either. My final scaling had me facing enemies over 500. A 100k health Gorgon isn't fun for anyone. I felt that the final 4 clears were too tough and were a **** shoot if I could even finish the match. That was with OML back also. I would have quit a lot sooner if Quake had not been boosted to negate caltrops and clear cd tiles. She made it manageable.

I did full clears in 6 of the 7 subs. I was unable to play much in the last sub and ended up 21st for the event. I didn't feel the rewards were adequate for the amount I played the event.

GrumpySmurf1002

Cthulhu wrote:

- What did you like

Playing at my own speed.
Rewards for clearing waves more than once.
More lucrative iso rewards per node compared to normal

Cthulhu wrote:

- What do you wish was different

Placement rewards
Too many iterations of the nodes for 48 hour sub.
Too many iterations of the waves (If an essential takes 9 clears, the wave nodes should 9/number of waves per battle)
Lack of 4* in progression
Lack of iso rewards (I know this appears counter to above, but better than normal is still not enough)
Crit Boost rewards
Random node rewards

Xrethx

Cthulhu wrote:

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

Love the points not regenerating.
The sheer number of clears should be reduced by a few.

Finished in a 9 way tie. everyone should get top rewards if they had the same number of points.
One or two extra covers isn't a big deal, but after grinding so much, would be nice if speed didn't matter

BlackSheep101

Did not like:
Too many clears of wave nodes.
High value rewards buried under 8/14 other rewards and high scaling was not fun.

Did like:
No timer
Trivial nodes
Low initial scaling on essential nodes when the essential character is low level

xxWR1GHT3OUSxx

I liked that it gave me a break from playing the game. Completely lost interest halfway through sub2 and grinding the same nodes 900 times. Took most of the rest of the event off. Gave me much needed rest. Got my cps and chilled.

Didn't like that I had to grind each node into the point of boredom less than 48 hrs into event. Normally a t10 finisher and didn't care at all about placing.

CFacto

I'm similar to a few others but will add my vote. Overall I much prefer the test format, so thanks for that.

Liked:

- Playing at own pace is by far the best thing. I hate the 8 hour recharge so much that I often avoid PVE. (I have a work and life schedule that often doesn't fit playing MPQ!)
- The approach to scaling is better for me, i.e. you can clear a couple of times before things really start wiping out your roster. I can't normally face grinding the constant high difficulty on decent scoring nodes in the old style format
- Easier to get a fair amount of ISO
- Not too many unfair feeder nodes and absence of overpowered Dakens, Juggernauts, Areses or Bullseyes (I get that is because of the event rather than anything to do with the test )
- Good mix of boosted characters e.g. IF and CMags made it fun

Disliked:

Rewards not great for the amount of effort required (aside from the 25CP)
Stop it with the critical boost rewards, unless you intend them as a running joke...
Probably too many wave repeats
Lvl 300+ caltrops (see above )

TxMoose

Cthulhu wrote:

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

Liked -
1 - More iso. addition of the 250s was good.
2 - No timers.
3 - reasonable progression. ~3 clear level on progression to the cp is perfect. please keep it there.
4 - reasonable starting levels, truly trivial nodes (letting me play anyone on my roster on something, somewhere, is a huge plus)

Wished was different -
1 - time requirements. 9 clears seems way too much. or scaling made matches take way too long. or EotS is just a bad test event with all the wave nodes. overall just took way too much time. I didn't clear everything and spent way too much time on it. I can't imagine the countless hours it took to clear everything on the whole event. if pve ends up requiring this much time, i'll be disengaging.
2 - the tie issue for those who did the entire sub/event. pretty messed up that some ended up 20th or worse that did the same amount of work as the guy who finished first. that's a huge discrepancy in rewards for just a faster go of the last sub. speed can count for something, but the difference between first and t20 or t50 is too wide a gap. this would be a huge issue in a release event. if the tie issue can be successfully handled, the 'play when you want' aspect would be there. as it is, for top performers, this still falls short of 'play when you want'. and it necessarily condenses what was spread throughout the day into one long, extended play session that has to start at the opening gun of the last sub.
3 - double iso. last 7-day was double iso and to me, all 7-day events should be double iso to make up for the lack of a second set of placement and cp progression for the week. this should be standard.
4 - unboosted roster. the boost list really skews the experience of the players. this particular event had so many top-tier characters boosted and ones that most everyone in that tier of play, has maxed. hb/jean and mags/fist/witch are characters that most everyone who is at that level of play, has maxed and they are very powerful. this can really affect the experience compared to cho/starlord and quicksilver/sentry/ragnarok. to me these tests should be run unboosted because the scaling aspect is part of the testing. what might be a positive experience with this group might be decidedly negative with a different group boosted.

good luck in the meeting tomorrow.

revskip

Liked

- no timer
- initial scaling through about 4th playthrough
- low progression total set for CP, I ended with nearly double progression without doing anything past 6-7 clears after day 3

Disliked

- scaling in final couple of fights on pretty much every node was unmanageable to the point where I no longer even tried after day 2
- having the best rewards particularly in the wave nodes not dropping until the final rounds. In several cases this meant missing out on tokens because I simply could not finish a final wave on the wave nodes.
- sheer number of available playthroughs, 9 clears is far too many. Rocket and Groot was so enjoyable primarily because of the ease of 5 clears.

mpqr7

Also, I'm taking the next pve off. I don't care that it's a new release.. I just don't have the energy, plus I'll be on vacation over the weekend.

Stax the Foyer

Cthulhu wrote:

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

I liked:

1) The potential of the format. With some tweaks, it could be the foundation for a fine progression-only format.

I wish the following were different:

1) The scaling.
- This is really two interrelated issues. Scaling difficulty without a benefit in terms of rewards.
- A tweak to either would be fine. Either less brutal scaling, or a reward multiplier that rewards you for playing tougher matches. Increased ISO costs at higher tiers devalue the fixed node rewards. 500 ISO is worth much less to a 5* roster than it is to a 2* roster, but we're all playing for the same rewards. Scaling combined with fixed rewards has a punitive effect on people who build their roster, and has driven me away from being a paying customer.
- Plus for anyone who was capped out on scaling, this scaling was a shock. I'm not looking forward to level 500 enemies becoming the norm

2) The overall time commitment
- 48 hour subs now require more time commitment, 24 hour subs require about the same. I'm disappointed that the developers apparently feel that amount of time commitment is reasonable, whatever the schedule.

3) The continued skew towards ranking awards in PvE rewards
- Many of these other issues would be less important if ranking rewards weren't so good compared to the progression rewards.
- Bracket luck plays far too much of a role in PvE reward distribution.

Finally, it can't be said enough. As long as there's a ranking component to the rewards, the playing schedule will matter. The only way in which it wouldn't would be if everyone was eventually scaled out of rewards, and there's simply no way to balance that fairly when players across four different roster tiers are competing in the same events for the same rewards.

The Viceroy Returns

It looks like I'll finish top 50 in my bracket (Time Slice 5).
I only did well is because I used Charlie's Angles for every non-easy, non-essential fight, and then when Wolverine became available, I used OML when I couldn't use my full Charlies Angles team. There was no way I could placed as well with the scaling and numbers of clears required for decent placement & final progression.

Additionally, if the PVE format must keep some type of final placement reward system, I felt the Rocket & Groot PVE test was VERY close to passable, and almost good enough to replace the current non-test PVE format. I felt this test took many steps back in comparison.
Explanations below:

Cthulhu wrote:

- What did you like

1) Another attempt at the "play on my own schedule" concept
How I played this was for all of the highest point nodes, I fought them all as quick as I could until they started to degrade in points. So in this test, 6/9. After that initial grind, I could actually "take a break" and not worry about losing tons of placement and play the rest of the event when I wanted. But that initial grind was so demanding time wise that I doubt I'd be willing to do it again, especially for a 7 day event.


2) Easy nodes present again.
Always welcome, and gives you somewhat of a break, as well as lets newer players actually feel like they can do something.
However, more comments on scaling below...


3) No exploitation of replaying an easy node over and over again for essentially limitless points.
In the Rocket & Groot event, a fully grinded node after all of the rewards were earned was still worth 10 points. It should have been worth nothing. This was probably the worst part of that test honestly. When the rules for this test were announced, this 10 point loophole was obvious to most on here. I think we've learned that if there is ANY place players can grind, they will. So in the future try to mitigate or flat out remove as many of these as possible. This is mostly why so many are asking for a PVE format that does not have a final placement reward structure. And don't say Gauntlet. That is its own special type of event

Cthulhu wrote:

- What do you wish was different

1) Increased difficulty = bad
I doubt you would have found anyone that said "ya know, the last PVE test was too easy. Can you make it harder? And with MORE clears??"
I have real idea why the level cap was increased above 395. This is potentially why scaling got so crazy for people so fast, because the top value is now so much higher, that each clear increased a node's levels much more than in previous tests.
More on scaling below...


2) WAY too many clears needed = ridiculous time investment
The Rocket & Groot test was just about perfect here. Previous tests were 7 full clears, and I think the R&G test it was 4 total. Spread out over the course of a day, playing on the player base's own time frame, now THIS is manageable. With high numbers of clears, it is completely unrealistic to "force" your player base to have to play this game 3+ hours a day just to get the necessary rewards for decent rewards. Notice I didn't say "great rewards". The rewards still don't match the time invested.
Oh, and combine this with the placement tie issue, and you basically had to play that 3+ hours in one sitting right at the start of the a new sub bracket opening.
That is the exact opposite of "play on your own schedule".


3) Scaling is STILL too high
This is the most important feedback, as it touches pretty much everything else.

The Rocket & Groot test was just about right for this IMO, but even there it could have been a bit less.
However, PVE Scaling in general is completely out of touch with everything that a successful RPG-heavy game revolves around.
The whole point in content advancement/progression in an RPG is two fold.

1- Increase skillset and ability options of the player's content.
This works, and works very well. Getting new powers & covers and raising character levels does feel very rewarding. It is the main driving force in this game really, to collect and level as many heroes as you can. The simple Pokemon "gotta catch 'em all" philosophy.

2- Use newly upgraded content to perform better in the game's playable content, be it levels/story/missions/etc.
This gives the player little sense of progression in a "look how powerful I am!" mindset. It's mostly psychological, where it feels very rewarding to be able to beat an encounter that used to beat you, and then to eventually trivialize it.
This is more or less non-existent thanks to PVE Scaling (and PVP MMR, but won't get into that here but the concept is similar). Scaling basically levels up the enemies along with you. The only place this can be found is for essential nodes. Eventually those dead weight 1 cover characters will get covered and leveled, thus making the fight easier in noticeable ways, but only to a point thanks to over the top scaling.
And the enemy levels are often way higher than your own roster. An example of this is requiring a 2 Star character to beat stupid over-scaled opponents in the last two sub brackets Gauntlet, especially the last one.

Data point time = For me, the final node in the Nick Fury Rescue sub I have at 6/9, and the levels are 353-380.
The only character I have even remotely close to those levels is my 335 OML. the next lowest is a 273 4 star champion. This makes no sense.


4) Little control over placement = ties a terrible idea
The problem with ties completely eliminates the "play on my own schedule" concept. When a sub bracket opens, I had to grind all nodes down as fast as I possibly could to "win" any tie breakers. With there being 9 clears for at least half of the nodes, this took an unrealistic amount of time. I mean, we are talking 3+ hours, possibly more.
Again, make a system where grinding is obvious, and people will do it.


5) Random rewards after winning a node
This has been an issue since the release of the game, so not specifically a call out to this PVE test. Just more noticeable due to the scaling.
Now that the dreaded "20 ISO" is gone, people still sometimes have to grind a node fully to get the best reward, be it 1 CP, an Event Token, or 500/1000 ISO. The next step logical improvement to this system would be to have the rewards given in a predictable order to ensure that the best rewards aren't the absolute last or even 2nd to last rewards given.

FYI, talking about "quality of life" features in the other thread, the rewards display of a node could use an update. It's unchanged for 2+ years, even as its structure around it has changed many times. When a node has so many rewards, like the 9 & 11 this event has seen, just showing one at a time, with no reasoning behind the order they are shown in, is pretty terrible really. This should be similar to the Champion Levels screen, with list of "these are the prizes you earn in this specific order" with the ones you've earned checked off. The button to view the list could still be a rotating slide show of available rewards, just have the order ALWAYS be the same (with a X/Y number display above it to show where it is in the list), and it's a button that brings up this new sub-menu.


6) Nerf Caltrops. It is time.
It's some **** really, because once it's cast, the fight turns into a luck-based encounter. If you happen to make the wrong matches, your whole team gets savaged. Even if you win, it's 3 Heath packs. It feels like a passive aggressive way to make players use health packs, as well as have goons deal "attrition damage" across multiple fights that also eventually require Health Packs. Sure, "attrition damage" happens against non-goon fights, but that doesn't feel cheap like it does here. Notice how almost all of the newly created Symbiote goons have an additional way to deal damage that doesn't involve their countdown tile going off (Making Attack tiles every turn, the Guard Dog passive, that yellow passive that boosts special tiles, etc.).

The fix is Caltrops shouldn't be AOE; it should only hit the character in front.
It doesn't even make sense conceptually = why would my friend take damage when I step on a spike and they don't?? Drastically lowering its damage scaling or decreasing the number of trap tiles that get placed would help.

DeNappa

Cthulhu wrote:

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

My $.02:

Good:

• No timer system, so play when you want
• More prizes
• Wave nodes give prizes each clear (but also see bad points)

Bad:

• High end scaling was off the charts. With my 3* roster, the 3 difficult nodes became way too hard.
• The 'special' reward (typically the big rewards at the end, like the event tokens and the 1K or 2K prizes) were 'drowned' by the number of rewards. Combined with point #1, this meant it was impossible to get CP/1K/Token prizes sometimes based on RNG.
  I already proposed a fix in this thread, but I'll re-include it here:
  You already have the mechanism in place to fix this. Make it so that the first time you win a node, you receive a 'first time clear'-prize. This is already done in every prologue mission! You can set this to the 'special' prizes you want the nodes to have.

[/*]
[*]Feeder nodes. I know this isn't new, but goons feeding colors into chars like Wolverine or Gorgon are very unfair. You're just giving the enemy free attacks every X turns. This is especially bad if the opponents are scaled to your level or worse (+50 or +100 ). I stopped playing one of the Wolverine-red feeder nodes at the point where his upscaled adamantium slash would just about 1-hit kill everyone I would bring.[/*]
[*]This scoring model encourages grinding and as others pointed out, when it includes wave nodes this is even worse from a time perspective. Having to clear, say, a 5 wave node for a total of 14 times... is just too much.[/*]
[*]Crit boosts as rewards.[/*]
[*]Low tier rewards in general. Getting 70ISO for killing Gorgon who is 50 higher levels.. . Or worse, fighting a 5-wave node then seeing a bleeping crit boost as your 'reward'.[/*]
[*]Wave nodes might give a reward each clear, but you're still not rewarded for each wave[/*]
[*]While I did reach the top progression reward, the bar for it was too high in my opinion. I spent hours of playing each day and only reached it on the final day[/*]
[*]Placement rewards.... so I didn't clock my play time, but it was a *lot*. Final placement? #114. Reward? A 3* cover (champ level, luckily) and some chump change in ISO/HP. . That rewards seems awfully out of proportion based on the time I had to sink into that.[/*]
Let's leave it at that for now, I hope you'll be able to address these issues

DrLemniscate

With the huge amount of ties, will be people be compensated at all for the rewards they missed?

Ie, if I was tied for 1st with 29 other people, make sure everyone gets those rewards?

Honestly my favorite solution would be to put all the high placement rewards as further progression rewards beyond the LT, and make the real competition around alliances by increasing allianve placement rewards. Also increase the cooldown joining alliances so it is abused less.

PolarPopBear

Pretty much this^

babinro

Having just finished the event here's my feedback:

1) Reduce the number of clears for survival nodes
This event was a slog to grind and that last survival node in the final sub had 1.25 MILLION health to defeat by the last clear. Even with my championed 5*'s this takes a good 20 minutes and showcases that it's only really possible because of all the goons. Cut number of clears to maximum of 4 for Survival nodes.

2) Scaling and number of clears were too high
Even in subs without survival nodes the time investment expected from a player were absurd. This event easily demanded twice the effort of a typical PvE. I'm in a hybrid alliance and many of our players were feeling burnt out with only ONE event.

Remember that this is predominantly a mobile game. If you want to give us 5+ hours of daily PvE content then do it through hosting 2 or 3 unique simultaneous PvE's rather than one massive grind fest.

3) Why are we increasing scaling in the first place?
The non-test PvE environment actually rewards players who expand their roster by opening up roster diversity and giving them a sense of progress through their efforts. The new pve scaling changes restrict choice at best and make players regret leveling certain characters at worst.

It's not like difficulty plays a major role in determining placement. Whether it's the old PvE or test PvE system what matters most has always been playing quickly at the right time(s).

4) Rewards on every battle
This is great and it acted as my main draw to grind the nodes as much as I did. I still feel that the rewards themselves should scale up with enemy levels but this change is much appreciated.

5) Ties
I'm in the minority here but I actually like this point system more than the traditional PvE take on it. Why is that? Simply put, I love knowing what place I've finished when I'm done my clear. No more wasting time grinding nodes only to drop placement in the last 15 minutes. No more 'pressure' to ruin sleep schedules.

Let's be honest...this test PvE change in no way removes timers from the game. People who want to play competitively are simply on a different timer now. It just so happens that I prefer this timer driven system to the old one.


Conclusion:
This event was a nightmare to play. There's a reason the top 2 alliances of Enemy of the State have the name 'thistestsux'. Despite this there's a LOT of promise with this test.

For me to genuinely love this test all you'd need to do is:
- return scaling to the non-test pve system
- limit survival nodes to 4 clears
- return back to the 7 clears per node system
- keep all other changes the same

irwando

Good:
- "Play when i want"
- Much more reasonable levels of ISO rewarded

Bad:
- Ties - I earned the same points as the person in "1st" place, but they earned 3 covers and I got 1 for being in 6th? BLAH. Still makes this game about when you play.
- Most progression rewards are of little interest at my level - really only the 25cp and the tokens. And I blew way past it.
- Scaling. Once I hit a certain point the only team I used was Winfinite. Long, boring 5 wave battles, but it meant I could keep playing.

If you're going to do a system like this consider points tiers:

Max Points = 3 covers
MaxPoints - 10,0000 -> MaxPoints -1 = 2 covers
etc...

The Herald

Liked:
Play when you want
Better iso8

Disliked:
More clear nodes

DrLemniscate

babinro wrote:

5) Ties
I'm in the minority here but I actually like this point system more than the traditional PvE take on it. Why is that? Simply put, I love knowing what place I've finished when I'm done my clear. No more wasting time grinding nodes only to drop placement in the last 15 minutes. No more 'pressure' to ruin sleep schedules.

Let's be honest...this test PvE change in no way removes timers from the game. People who want to play competitively are simply on a different timer now. It just so happens that I prefer this timer driven system to the old one.

This raises a good point. I would be fine with the ties as is if some of the basic placement rewards were added to progression rewards. Add more beyond the 25 CP, or make the earlier ones beefier.

Then let the hyper competitive people who want to grind 3-6 hours in a row compete for addituonal 4* covers and hp.