How is the EoTS test going for you?

Redrobot30

So I joined and have run the nodes through a few times already and I have to say, this is a very boring grindfest.

My biggest dislike about this test run is that the rewards are diluted. Recently we had the change of "No more 20 Iso rewards", which was great. It did open up our current system of 7 rewards for nodes (waves aside). This was also fine. People playing for progression would play a node at least 3-4 times so most people would get the "juicy" rewards by just playing normally. Sure, sometimes you would have to play a node for that 7th time to get the CP, but it wasn't all the time.

Now with this current test I would potentially have to grind double the amount of nodes to get the rewards I really want? No, that doesn't sound fun to me. Also, the thing I liked most about EoTS was that you got event token rewards within each sub. Now they are lost in the shuffle.

Is there more Iso rewards? Yes. Do I want to grind the same ninja node over and over again for hours upon hours? No.

What do you think of the test run so far?

chamber44

I think that i'm not playing PvE anymore.

For the most part, my Alliance is top 100 PvP only, and I'm spending the majority of the time over there. PvE isn't worth it anymore. It's a great way for ISO, but you don't even get a measly recruit token until your second or third time through the nodes.

Not worth the scaling headache or the health packs.

mpqr7

When I see that I'm expected to grind a node up to 15 times in order to guarantee that I'll get all the good rewards, it's definitely quite overwhelming and not super fun.

How many hours per day do they expect us to want to play PVE? I'm curious if any of the devs have sat down to do maximum grinds for this PVE. Did they find it fun? Did they find it repetitive and boring?



One idea I had is that there should be more individual nodes, but you only need to complete each node 2-3 times at most. So that way it's more variety, instead of doing nine nodes each 15 times.

carrion_pigeons

I just joined and grinded down a couple nodes. I'll say I actually prefer doing the same node over and over in a row rather than running in sequence, so as far as that bit goes, this is nice (although the game still kinda punishes you if you want to use the same team over and over).

I don't remotely plan to grind out everything, but then I never planned to do that before, either.

Psychologically speaking, it bothered me that I was giving something up by playing anytime other than optimal times. I know that's not rational for someone who never competed for top placement and I also know there's still an optimal time, but I still like it better this way.

That is *not* to say I actually think it's well designed. Getting rid of the timer might remove some of the psychological discouragement about the old design, but the timer was also a strategic element. With that gone, there does still need to be some actual strategic element to how you attack a sub, otherwise the game isn't disguising the grinding well enough.

The current design divides players pretty starkly into "sane" players willing to grind for progression (or less) and "insane" players willing to grind for placement. There's no point where a person can go "if I want to place well, I need to do x" where x is anything but playing until their eyes bleed. If there's nothing to exploit about the game's structure, then all you get to do is kill time in the game while acting like a robot.

I like the scaling. For my roster, it's in a good place, and suits the amount of time I'm willing to devote to the game. There are still plenty of artificial barriers in the game I don't like that are related to scaling, but as far as specifically scaling goes, I think you're largely in a good spot here. I'll note, though, that the people most likely to have scaling problems are the people with the most uneven rosters. If you based scaling on the 4th-10th spots on a roster instead of the first several, people would be a lot happier with you in general.

The increased rewards are welcome. I was idly looking through some of the nodes' rewards and didn't notice any crit boosts. If those are gone for good I'll be very pleased. Those are the most useless boost imaginable. If the long list of rewards just made me less likely to notice them, well, that's a good thing too, I guess.

That said, putting those rewards in nodes is encouragement for grinding, which I thought you were trying to give people reasons not to do. I'd much rather see the quality of the rewards degrade as you grind, and the way to do that is to put more of that extra Iso in progression rewards instead of node rewards.

I don't actually hate this design (relatively speaking), even if it's unpopular among forum-goers. Grinding nodes in PvE has always been boring and now it's slightly more boring, but also more granular and less discouraging, both of which are good.

thanos8587

it will be very interesting at the end to see how many did full clears every sub.

progression looks reasonable at the outset given how many clears can be done without point value drops. well see in about 5 days.

(god i hate seven day events)

Tryke

Yay it took me a whole 15 clears to get the last CP out of the top node.

SpaceBearPig

I would not mid them having the PvE system being like this (more iso rewards is nice), however I would remove the placement rewards it should be progression only and progression rewards should also be added for alliences, these should be the juiciest rewards as well. Then PvE would be brilliant.

MissChinch

OJSP wrote:

mpqr7 wrote:

How many hours per day do they expect us to want to play PVE?

I think this is a very good question that has a complex answer.

From the current system and the previous 4 tests, from my personal experience and observing others (in a competitive bracket, joining from the start of an event):

• To rank in the top5: from 4-5 hours a day (any systems except the last test) to whenever we're awake (the last test).
• To get all the green ticks: from 3-4 hours a day (sometimes we'd still rank in the top 10, sometimes as low as top 50)
• To get max progression rewards and not care about placement rewards: 2 hours a day

In this latest test:

• I'd estimate 5-6 hours of play in a 48 hour sub and 3-4 hours in a 24 hour sub to get all the rewards. (I haven't started the event yet, but this calculation is based on beating a node in 3 minutes on average).
• To place competitively in a sub, we need to do all the nodes ASAP
• Ironically to place well for the event, we only need to be the fastest on the last day, so all the work in the first 6 days could be rendered useless with a bad board that requires us to repeat the node or worse, one that makes us unable to complete a survival node and receive only partial points.

The only way that the speed you clear the last sub will have any bearing whatsoever on your placement is if, you have done exactly the same, failed the same partial waves, completed the same number of the same node as someone else... so this isn't something to be concerned with in order to "place well". Its only something to be concerned with if youre part of the top 25 people or so in your bracket who want to vie for 1st place and you're up against some cyborg that wont miss clearing all their wave nodes in that week, perfectly (not failing once part way through) the 15+ times that they all give points for...

Miss just one through the entire week, or get one unlucky cascade in the middle of a wave node (anytime during the week) and all this concern for timing is rendered totally moot... and the simple addition of keeping rubberbanding (which they have done on these tests by accident) or allowing the clears to hit a floor of 1 point vs 0 points negates the whole panic to clear asap...

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not all gung-ho for this particular test, I just don't see a practical justification for all this concern to finish asap because theres a slim chance you might be in a bracket with someone or multiple someones who are going to mirror your entire week so exactly, and that your group will all fall on the break point of some rewards. Put in an event like deadpool with less (no?) waves, and only 2 2 day subs and I think the chances are actually worth talking about... Then we would have an event where timing would matter, albeit an event that happens so infrequently that its a very minimal impact...

brisashi

15 clears for half the nodes is just insanity. Even 8 is pushing it.

I just did 15 clears on the hard node and I think I'm done with this event.

BlackSheep101

You had two days to do those clears. What's your rush?

wymtime

SpaceBearPig wrote:

I would not mid them having the PvE system being like this (more iso rewards is nice), however I would remove the placement rewards it should be progression only and progression rewards should also be added for alliences, these should be the juiciest rewards as well. Then PvE would be brilliant.

I will say this. I have argued against progression only rewards because I personally like placement. I like seeing how high I can get on the leader board and being able to place in the top 10-20 in a new release PVE or place well in PVP. I am just that competitive.
With these new tests I am finally throwing up my hands and saying just make it progression only. They are doing things to take the grind out of the game and are just making it worse. If you truly want is to play at our own pace and let people earn rewards at the same time make it progression only. 7-8 clears and you get everything!!

I am now officially all for progression rewards you have broken me D3!!!

brisashi

BlackSheep101 wrote:

You had two days to do those clears. What's your rush?

Placement rewards are in place, and I'd like to get a decent score for the sub-event.

Stax the Foyer

So the scaling of the hard nodes was (for me), just a 12-13 level increase per clear. At very high enemy levels, the linear scaling of the enemy levels gets absurd when you get into the exponential scaling of enemy health and power.

I ground a wave node to 15/15 rewards. After my 9th clear, the second wave of enemies were level 447, with 40689 health. After my 12th clear, the second wave of enemies were level 484, with 54116 health. That's about a 31% increase in health and damage for only 37 extra levels.

Even with a championed Quake at 5 Yellow, a Rocket would do about 17000 damage to my team. Compare that to people at lower levels who have AoE damage almost completely negated by Quake's yellow.

The absurd design of 5*s, and the associated scaling curves have finally stretched the one-size-fits all event design past the breaking point. This linear scaling simply doesn't work at high levels.

If they're trying to drive people with good rosters away from the game, this test is going to work like gangbusters.

BlackSheep101

brisashi wrote:

BlackSheep101 wrote:

You had two days to do those clears. What's your rush?

Placement rewards are in place, and I'd like to get a decent score for the sub-event.

If you're concerned about your sub placement, sure. The overall placement will be determined on the last sub. I hope you're not in a bracket where clearing the hardest nodes 15 times doesn't get you at least top 50.

Eddiemon

SpaceBearPig wrote:

I would not mid them having the PvE system being like this (more iso rewards is nice), however I would remove the placement rewards it should be progression only and progression rewards should also be added for alliences, these should be the juiciest rewards as well. Then PvE would be brilliant.

I don't get why people want less rewards. They aren't going to take the placement covers for the top 10% and give them to everyone, so all that happens is we lose rewards.

I play it for progression and take whatever placement falls to me as a bonus, so I'm mostly playing your system now, although alliance progression bonuses could cause drama for non elite alliances if they just miss, whereas at the moment we're just taking the alliance placement rewards as free ISO...

And I do like the extra rewards per node so I can grind extra ISO if I have time. There have been plenty of times where I have run out of stuff to do waiting on an 8 hour timer so this is a nice bonus.

Mattjimf

When I joined the event I was 10th, when I got to the sub I was 500 odd. I've never had that happen before.

BlackSheep101

Mattjimf wrote:

When I joined the event I was 10th, when I got to the sub I was 500 odd. I've never had that happen before.

New tiebreaker algorithm confirmed!

zulux21

during a lot of events I just grind the trivial nodes and then maybe go for the CP.

with the new set up I will likely just grind the trivial nodes and maybe try a few times for the CP and likely not get it. (but I will likely overall get a bit more iso which is more important right now)

if this is the new norm without any changes I don't think I will ever go for progression rewards as I don't have 40-70 hours in a week to spend on a free to play game in order to get a top 100 finish to get a single 4 star cover o.O

MeatLoafX

I don't like getting just one reward on the wave node for each clear. I wanted the token but after round 9, it's getting too tough.

I like the concept of no timer, but I just can't get a handle on the difficulty.

Redrobot30

Agreed, difficulty levels are starting to get out of hand. Hopefully I don't have to leave too many of the larger Iso rewards on the table because I don't want to get hammered anymore by Caltrops and turn to smoke.

PeeOne

Loving it.... That is all