New Mission Difficulty Test: Enemy of the State *Updated

Dragon_Nexus

"David wrote:

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

o Each sub-chapter has a minimum of nine repeatable missions: Three Easy, three Hard and three Required Character missions. 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. o Each mission has rewards equal to the amount of times they can be beaten for points.

• Difficulty Changes

o No changes have been made to Easy missions. o All missions start at the same difficulty as Meet Rocket & Groot (the last event to use the new mission difficulty). o Hard missions have a maximum difficulty higher than Meet Rocket & Groot. o Required Character missions have a maximum difficulty slightly harder than Meet Rocket & Groot."

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Okay, as I see it, yay the points don't regenerate. This removes the demand on doing 3 or 4 clears as soon as the sub event opens in order to maximise your points, waiting 20 hours and grinding like hell at the end. That's good.

However, instead of that we now have to find the time to beat the nodes more times. Now the required and hard nodes must be beated 9 times each in 24 hours for an optimal play, not even including the grind down time to get them to 0 for the truely hardcore? Wasn't the original goal of these changes to kill the scheduled play and to remove the sense of grinding out rewards? I could be mis-remembering. Still, it's good that these nodes have 9 rewards on them, so I'd likely stick to my normal strategy of just trying to get all of the rewards for Required and Easy, then mopping up some hard ones with whatever time's left.

I could be mis-reading this, however. "Worth points" as in...worth maximum? Or is it more that after 9 clears they'll be worth 0? That's a little more acceptable.

However, if it's the latter, this means everyone who grinds down all the nodes will end up with the same score. And if that's the case you'll end up with dozens of people with the same score all vying to have hit that score first to end up in first place. This screws up the placement system, does it not? In light of that, surely ditching placement and just vastle improving the progress rewards would be a better solution, yes? Make it purely PvE at last.

Final point, PLEASE stop assuming we like fighting these really difficult and challenging nodes. I felt the difficulty for Rocket & Groot was a *teeny* bit too hard in places, but then that event has always had its moments when a bad board just murders you. Overall I felt the difficulty was fine. I don't remember ever seeing threads complaining about this game being too easy.

firethorne

Alright. I have to say, this is one of the most bizarre and counterintuitive tests I've seen yet. First they say they want to make playing at your own pace a priority, and then they turn around and set up a system where first place will be decided upon a race condition on who will first clear all the points on the final day, even if everyone ends up with the same score? What the hell, man?

Devs, seriously, you are wearing the patience of your users very, very thin. Realize that doing things like this makes many people see your relationship with your players as an increasingly adversarial one.

We've been begging for forms of non-competitive play and advancement opportunities for over a year. And since the level of ineptitude required to miss that would be unfathomable, we can safely assume you've seen and dismissed them. Since the calls for non-competitive events are so common, at the very least you owe an explanation to your players as to why you refuse to explore such modes, modes that work clearly work to easily achieve your stated goals of playing at your own pace.

the_apologist

I think these changes will benefit the casual fan base quite a bit. No one likes playing a node to get no rewards, and I get to play whenever I feel like it.

TimGunn

So how does the tiebreaker scheme work with alliances given that an alliance can go down in score? Take this example:

Alliance Alpha reaches 1,000,000 points at 11:30; Alliance Beta reaches 1,000,000 points at noon - Alliance Alpha is #1

At 12:30, a member of Alliance Alpha leaves (to participate in a buy group?), so now Alliance Beta is at 1,000,000 and #1 and Alliance Alpha is at 950,000 and is #2.

At 1:30 the Alliance Alpha member rejoins Alliance Alpha and both alliances are at 1,000,000 - but Alliance Beta stays at #1?

IDK, seems like a raw deal? Since the members of Alliance Alpha were the quicker players.

Probably wouldn't affect any except the top alliances. I'm in a top 50 PVE alliance (Logans Loonies) and I doubt all 20 of us would consistently be maxing points in this scheme.

snlf25

This sounds like a dry run for formulating a system for true PvE, no placements only progression. If so I welcome it with open arms. If placement is still a thing with this system it will suck **** and be a complete cluster diminutivefeline. Time will tell I suppose and I wish raisinbman was still here. He's tell us what was going on.

Varg138

Pylgrim wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

You are so close to just getting rid of placement rewards altogether -- take the final step and do it! Please! Immediately!

All that's left to do as the majority of players have been saying even from before the first test is to remove placement rewards. The proposed test is almost arbitrarily going to assign them!: The first people to join a sub will likely be the winners, unless they don't have fast characters or combos. Bizarre cascades on the opponent's side and unfair wipes will now hurt MORE because they will set you precious seconds or minutes back! In other words, all competitive players will be grinding just as hard, but the placement rewards will be assigned mostly by circumstance and chance.

Pylgrim's last point here is what sticks with me. Getting Top2 placement was the only way to guarantee covers for a certain character, plus when they came around at 1K in PVP. Everything else is up to RNG in tokens, and He is not a merciful God.

Now with this model, earning those covers which once could be guaranteed by a certain placement is left to "circumstance and chance," like every other cover in this game.

Others argue that changes like this only affect the hardcore grinders, not the majority of the player base. If the casual players are not concerned as much with placement, than why would progression only rewards make any difference to them? It would make everyone happy. Hardcore players continue their grind to get to the desired, clearly marked rewards, and casual players...well, play causally. The placement rewards outside of Top100 are such a joke anyway that they wouldn't even notice.

What is the developers' aversion to progression-based rewards? What is wrong with many more players getting a couple more covers for one character by working toward it in an event? Every other cover is up to token chance anyway after their introductory PVE event.

I've never played a game where developers were so stingy with rewards. Every day they continue to not listen to suggestions that make sense and add new tests like this one (which, IMO, is the dumbest one by far), I give this game less of my attention.

Vhailorx

Varg,

The reason that demiurge doesn't want to give out more prog rewards is that doing so would mean giving out more prizes. Every cover they give out is one they don't sell via token packs or cp direct buy. I think it's possible to argue that better rewards lead to more player engagement/good will which is good for the game; but it's also possible to say that more rewards = less revenue.

With placement rewards we fight each other, and only a set % of players get anything. The rewards rate is fixed. With prog rewards, demiurge has to calibrate the difficulty appropriately (too low and everyone gets them, too high and no one does). It's more work them, and it (arguably) generates less revenue.

Varg138

Yeah, I know it would mean less people buying X number of token packs, but the whales would still whale, and would continue to buy packs to finish covering the character. And the amount of work they spend putting together these new scenarios for testing would be much better spent doing what you mentioned about them having to figure out how to translate the placement rewards to progression rewards.

Legasher

For my own two cents worth, aside from progression only PVE, this is pretty much exactly what I've been advocating for. Granted, I'm not in a top alliance, but I try to place well for myself and have really been against systems that you need to play at specific times to do well in. Sure, as the ranking tiebreaker is time-based, the best strategy is to grind at the beginning and get there fastest. But really? On a one-day sub, that's hitting 48 nodes and for a two-day sub, 78! I think EotS has two 2-day subs and two 1-day subs? If that's correct, that's 252 nodes. As it's already been established, no matter what system is in place, someone out there will do whatever it takes. But even though I want to do well, there's not a chance on earth I'm going to complete 250+ nodes for a single event placement. If Suicidal Joe really wants to grind almost 80 nodes in a single sitting, just so he can beat my tiebreakers, have at it. But I'm extremely glad that I can go to work and to sleep on a sane schedule and still have the opportunity to place according to how much effort I put in, rather than when I put that effort in. I look forward to this test.

P.S. People honestly need to read the announcement entirely before getting up-in-arms, too. They're saying that you can't grind an easy node for infinite points (which was the major gripe in the last test) and that you're not going to complete a node (especially one as long and involved as the wave nodes) for no reward at all (criticals excepted) like everyone was upset about during the last EotS test. This indicates that they are listening, at least a little. They've increased ISO a little recently and made progression easier. It's not perfect, but it's moving in the right direction. The least one could do if they're going to get butthurt is to get butthurt over what is actually being said, rather than what you expect them to say or how it's being said. /rant

fmftint

So, are we going to get any follow up on this? A lot of questions have been asked in the last 24 hours.

Thevipper

fmftint wrote:

So, are we going to get any follow up on this? A lot of questions have been asked in the last 24 hours.

they don't follow up until the next test usually espicially if there's negative feedback to see what we do during the test cause there trying to see the flaws for them selves

jgomes32

X-23, Storm mohawk and Cap are the rewards.

Redrobot30

Um, hey everyone...
So we want you to do join in on another test run. I know it seems like we've done alot of these but, um, we want to do another one.

You have to play each node 1,000 times give or take, so that way you get like, all the rewards and stuff.

Oh, and once you finish the event you will probably place well enough to get a 3* Storm...

(And that's where everyone tunes out.)

generalTsobot

jgomes32 wrote:

X-23, Storm mohawk and Cap are the rewards.

I need one red cover to finish X-23, which is only rewarded by placing 1st. Not gonna happen.

How does the final progression reward (116k) align with previous runs of ETOS? If I remember correctly, the bar was set relatively low during the last ETOS test run; prior to that, I seems to remember that it was set very high. Granted, with the point value changes between the different runs, it may not be easy to compare directly.

fmftint

generalTsobot wrote:

jgomes32 wrote:

X-23, Storm mohawk and Cap are the rewards.

I need one red cover to finish X-23, which is only rewarded by placing 1st. Not gonna happen.

How does the final progression reward (116k) align with previous runs of ETOS? If I remember correctly, the bar was set relatively low during the last ETOS test run; prior to that, I seems to remember that it was set very high. Granted, with the point value changes between the different runs, it may not be easy to compare directly.

Last Enemy of the State progression was 156k
Before that was 114 k

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=41440

theshadeofopal

This would be great for me if ties resulted in everyone tied getting the same rewards regardless of finish time. It's not as good as pure progression but its a step closer. Its a shame that stinginess with high level rewards ruins what should be a pretty good shot at making guaranteed returns for effort. It makes me kinda glad that x23 and 3* storm are the prizes, don't feel like I'm missing much skipping this.

fmftint

Is EotS scaling going to count my 390 Phoenix and championed JG, who can't be used together? What about my 375 OML, who can't be used at all in the first 4 days?

ClydeFrog76

I believe this to be relevant.

Pylgrim

Vhailorx wrote:

Varg,

The reason that demiurge doesn't want to give out more prog rewards is that doing so would mean giving out more prizes. Every cover they give out is one they don't sell via token packs or cp direct buy. I think it's possible to argue that better rewards lead to more player engagement/good will which is good for the game; but it's also possible to say that more rewards = less revenue.

With placement rewards we fight each other, and only a set % of players get anything. The rewards rate is fixed. With prog rewards, demiurge has to calibrate the difficulty appropriately (too low and everyone gets them, too high and no one does). It's more work them, and it (arguably) generates less revenue.

They could at least make one of these tests to try to see how badly going all progression could be. Make the rewards for that event Bagman, Ragnarok and Chulk if you are afraid of putting too much power in the player's hands. If they are happy to toy with our patience and test the limits of the tedium and time investment that we're willing to put towards these tests, surely ONE test that has the risk of benefiting the players cannot such a blow to their bottom line.

fmftint wrote:

So, are we going to get any follow up on this? A lot of questions have been asked in the last 24 hours.

Last test we were promised open communication and got /one/ post from a dev. This time they promised nothing sooo...

Vhailorx

Pylgrim wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Varg,

The reason that demiurge doesn't want to give out more prog rewards is that doing so would mean giving out more prizes. Every cover they give out is one they don't sell via token packs or cp direct buy. I think it's possible to argue that better rewards lead to more player engagement/good will which is good for the game; but it's also possible to say that more rewards = less revenue.

With placement rewards we fight each other, and only a set % of players get anything. The rewards rate is fixed. With prog rewards, demiurge has to calibrate the difficulty appropriately (too low and everyone gets them, too high and no one does). It's more work them, and it (arguably) generates less revenue.

They could at least make one of these tests to try to see how badly going all progression could be. Make the rewards for that event Bagman, Ragnarok and Chulk if you are afraid of putting too much power in the player's hands. If they are happy to toy with our patience and test the limits of the tedium and time investment that we're willing to put towards these tests, surely ONE test that has the risk of benefiting the players cannot such a blow to their bottom line.

There's a certain irony in our respective positions in this argument pylgrim. . .

But in point of fact, I think we are on the same side here. And demiurge has already done a prog test. Its called the guantlet; they have fun several times, and until this test was announced, they didn't show any interest in making pve more like the gauntlet. Now, unfortunstely, they have apparently decided to make pve like one of the worst gauntlet runs (when they offered 10- packs for the fastest 10 finishers).