New Mission Difficulty For All Story Events *Updated

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Comments

  • jredd
    jredd Posts: 1,387 Chairperson of the Boards
    If the mission rewards are rewarded in a fixed order, maybe just show what the next reward for beating the node is, rather than scrolling though all the rewards remaining...
  • nezhina
    nezhina Posts: 2
    I apologize if my English is weird, I'm not a native speaker.

    So, I joined the game about 2 weeks ago and was just shocked at how friendly it is to a new player. I tried pvp in hope to get Peggy, using 35lvl 1* Widow and 35-39 2* Ms.Marvel, both not capped in skills obviuously. Yeah, I didn't realize 800 points was too much hope, but I didn't know that and tried really hard and ended on 5th place, which was just wow. I thought it was some really smart bracketing system that allowes everyone to compete and get nice rewards. Never seen this in other f2p games. And in Story events I was always able to squeeze into first 50 with some effort and time, like 5-6 hours a day, I dunno. My highest lvl characters are one 78 and some 70s.

    And in this new event I did what I usually did, cleared the missions once, which would get me somewhere in the first 150 before, but now I am almost 600th. I have like 2k points and people on the top list have 10-13k. And I'm just... How? How on earth am I competing with that? The answer is probably I don't. The difficulty was the same, the time spent on easy/normal missions was the same, but my score became five times worse. It's just a huge waste time now. I'm getting a cover for 4.8k points and then I'm out of this event, I guess. For comparison, in Dark Avengers: heroic I managed to end up on 29th place, even though I didn't have required 4* character for their missions.

    And I think it's maybe because I happened to be on the other end of this scaling issue, where people with a lot of strong characters have a hard time playing if they messed up the roster balance. But honestly, if this remains as it is, I'm out of pve. No fun in spending time for nothing. Thankfully, I'm still in that lucky spot in pvp system. Hope they don't break that for me as well icon_e_biggrin.gif
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    aesthetocyst wrote:
    jredd wrote:
    If the mission rewards are rewarded in a fixed order, maybe just show what the next reward for beating the node is, rather than scrolling though all the rewards remaining...

    The "scaling preview" would be a great place to display this. Here's what next ... and what you have to do to get it.

    Give that screen a purpose! icon_lol.gif

    But wouldn't it just better to get rid of that useless screen?
  • Astroy
    Astroy Posts: 8 Just Dropped In
    I have just started the new pve and i only have 2 words for it. "Total ****"

    Seems like with every new tweet to the system D3 is penalizing spending players who spend real $ and time on the game.

    Sorry to say I'm not buying it and will scale down my spending on this game.
  • sinnerjfl
    sinnerjfl Posts: 1,276 Chairperson of the Boards
    Keegan wrote:
    Okay, I see. I was reading the post as "Five hours before, five hours after" which would be ten hours.

    So, if it is a solid block of 3 to 4 or 5 hours all told, that's not really different from the old system of thirty minutes to an hour and a half first clear of a sub after a three hour grind, is it? If I'm understanding your point correctly, that is. The old system tossed in two 8hr clears that you had to play optimally as well if you wanted decent placement.

    Time investment wise, it's relatively the same amount of time. Except now it's in one solid inflexible block of grinding per day if you want placement. I don't have 5 hours in a row to dedicate to this game nor do I want to do it either because it's super boring.

    Before it was spread out way better and wasn't too demanding (except the end grind of a sub). Now it's all an end grind basically... As if the game wasn't repetitive enough as it is.
  • blargrx
    blargrx Posts: 150 Tile Toppler
    sinnerjfl wrote:
    Keegan wrote:
    Okay, I see. I was reading the post as "Five hours before, five hours after" which would be ten hours.

    So, if it is a solid block of 3 to 4 or 5 hours all told, that's not really different from the old system of thirty minutes to an hour and a half first clear of a sub after a three hour grind, is it? If I'm understanding your point correctly, that is. The old system tossed in two 8hr clears that you had to play optimally as well if you wanted decent placement.

    Time investment wise, it's relatively the same amount of time. Except now it's in one solid inflexible block of grinding per day if you want placement. I don't have 5 hours in a row to dedicate to this game nor do I want to do it either because it's super boring.

    Before it was spread out way better and wasn't too demanding (except the end grind of a sub). Now it's all an end grind basically... As if the game wasn't repetitive enough as it is.

    I'm in the same boat. I hated the old format but it worked for me. 3 times a a day I put in 15-20 min (sometimes I had to hit early or late due to work) then at night I would grind for an hour or two if I had time. I for sure won't have 4 straight hours to dedicate to the game.

    The problem is still the fact that we are competing in a broken system. Progression based scoring for pve has been mentioned and recommended so many times that D3 is either choosing to ignore it or not reading the forums at all.
  • Nick441234
    Nick441234 Posts: 1,496 Chairperson of the Boards
    I plan to play the game exactly the same way as I did with the old system. 4 clears over the 24 hours. I'll see where it gets me and complain at the end of the event if I'm nowhere near the ranking I'd normally achieve under the old system. icon_lol.gif

    Theres simply no way people can keep up hitting them 4 times as soon as an event opens. You'll just end up hating the game in a few events time.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    nick_chicane wrote:
    Theres simply no way people can keep up hitting them 4 times as soon as an event opens. You'll just end up hating the game in a few events time.
    And given the way the devs interpret data, when they look at how far fewer people are spending time grinding under the new system, they'll high-five themselves and consider this mess a success.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    nezhina wrote:
    I apologize if my English is weird, I'm not a native speaker.

    So, I joined the game about 2 weeks ago and was just shocked at how friendly it is to a new player. I tried pvp in hope to get Peggy, using 35lvl 1* Widow and 35-39 2* Ms.Marvel, both not capped in skills obviuously. Yeah, I didn't realize 800 points was too much hope, but I didn't know that and tried really hard and ended on 5th place, which was just wow. I thought it was some really smart bracketing system that allowes everyone to compete and get nice rewards. Never seen this in other f2p games. And in Story events I was always able to squeeze into first 50 with some effort and time, like 5-6 hours a day, I dunno. My highest lvl characters are one 78 and some 70s.

    And in this new event I did what I usually did, cleared the missions once, which would get me somewhere in the first 150 before, but now I am almost 600th. I have like 2k points and people on the top list have 10-13k. And I'm just... How? How on earth am I competing with that? The answer is probably I don't. The difficulty was the same, the time spent on easy/normal missions was the same, but my score became five times worse. It's just a huge waste time now. I'm getting a cover for 4.8k points and then I'm out of this event, I guess. For comparison, in Dark Avengers: heroic I managed to end up on 29th place, even though I didn't have required 4* character for their missions.

    And I think it's maybe because I happened to be on the other end of this scaling issue, where people with a lot of strong characters have a hard time playing if they messed up the roster balance. But honestly, if this remains as it is, I'm out of pve. No fun in spending time for nothing. Thankfully, I'm still in that lucky spot in pvp system. Hope they don't break that for me as well icon_e_biggrin.gif

    Looks like you did well enough in some events to get shifted from baby brackets over to the regular vet brackets. That generally happens to everyone sometime in their first few months. It can be a pretty big shock the first time it happens. It will suck in the short term, but it should get better as your roster continues to develop.
  • BlackSheep101
    BlackSheep101 Posts: 2,025 Chairperson of the Boards
    Vhailorx wrote:
    nezhina wrote:
    And in this new event I did what I usually did, cleared the missions once, which would get me somewhere in the first 150 before, but now I am almost 600th. I have like 2k points and people on the top list have 10-13k. And I'm just... How? How on earth am I competing with that? The answer is probably I don't. The difficulty was the same, the time spent on easy/normal missions was the same, but my score became five times worse. It's just a huge waste time now. I'm getting a cover for 4.8k points and then I'm out of this event, I guess. For comparison, in Dark Avengers: heroic I managed to end up on 29th place, even though I didn't have required 4* character for their missions.
    Looks like you did well enough in some events to get shifted from baby brackets over to the regular vet brackets. That generally happens to everyone sometime in their first few months. It can be a pretty big shock the first time it happens. It will suck in the short term, but it should get better as your roster continues to develop.
    Also, this event (and all future Story mode events) uses a different scoring system. The people above you cleared all the missions 4 times. If you do that, you'll notice that the points you get from the fights will be lower, with a timer indicating when the points will be "full" again.
  • loslupus77
    loslupus77 Posts: 38 Just Dropped In
    There are some good and bad things in this new format. I'm kind of meh on removing 8h timers because it's good that you can play when you want but it's bad because it more or less forces you to play more than before. Before I got to top50 with 3 clears plus whatever it took get cp (I might even try for 500 iso if the node was worth fighting, ie not including Juggs or Hood with feeders), now the format is set so that you're pushed for 4 clears (because the best rewards are earned fourth time and points remain the same during those clears) and after that you have to fight for your position. Ok, the scaling makes it so that it's going to cost a lot of health packs. And only crazy people are gonna do the 7th clear for the marvelous prize of crit boosts or 70 iso. Removing the RNG from node rewards is good thing, but why not apply it to one-time nodes as well.

    From a developer's point of view I understand the short-term gains from having people play more but in the long-term it might turn into loss since people get bored/burnt out with even more grinding than before with no new game modes and/or rewards.

    And even though it's nice that enemy attributes will scale less significantly less after level 287, it's still crazy for some enemies. And this time I'm referring to Muscles, in the previous event level 287 Muscles produced two 1106 strike tiles and blue did 2766 to all team members. Once those strike tiles were out, you either had to win the match without taking any damage or you lost. So you might want to think about scaling those Muscles down even more.
  • Nick441234
    Nick441234 Posts: 1,496 Chairperson of the Boards
    simonsez wrote:
    nick_chicane wrote:
    Theres simply no way people can keep up hitting them 4 times as soon as an event opens. You'll just end up hating the game in a few events time.
    And given the way the devs interpret data, when they look at how far fewer people are spending time grinding under the new system, they'll high-five themselves and consider this mess a success.

    I'd argue that it would be success. If you can create a system that is that unpleasant to grind, then people will stop doing it. We'll eventually end up with scoreboards where the top scores will likely just be people who have cleared the nodes 7 times maximum. The optimum players/grinders will stop doing it.
  • Nick441234
    Nick441234 Posts: 1,496 Chairperson of the Boards
    My one complaint so far is that my scaling is going too high. My hardest fight is looking like it will top out around 280ish. Under the old system it would usually top out around 245.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    simonsez wrote:
    nick_chicane wrote:
    Theres simply no way people can keep up hitting them 4 times as soon as an event opens. You'll just end up hating the game in a few events time.
    And given the way the devs interpret data, when they look at how far fewer people are spending time grinding under the new system, they'll high-five themselves and consider this mess a success.

    This was the exact thought I had. This is the same group that was SHOCKED when a fixed number of points led to a whole bunch of people that went and got them.

    There's two results:

    a) player engagement goes down - devs congratulate themselves that players aren't on a schedule.

    b) players still grind the heck out of it - devs congratulate themselves that scaling is set well.

    There's no outcome that leads to c) players get a system that's friendly for competitive and casual players.
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
    nick_chicane wrote:
    I'd argue that it would be success. If you can create a system that is that unpleasant to grind, then people will stop doing it. We'll eventually end up with scoreboards where the top scores will likely just be people who have cleared the nodes 7 times maximum. The optimum players/grinders will stop doing it.

    Top scores are still going to be near optimal. Unpleasantries have never been a stopping point for people to grind.
  • Born2DieNPvP
    Born2DieNPvP Posts: 163
    I don't mind the new system but the scaling is still way too aggressive. It's manageable to a degree in this event but only because of so many goon nodes. In future pves with 3 villain nodes it will be back to skipping pve again for me. It's so frustrating.
  • KrisPWales
    KrisPWales Posts: 21
    As someone at the early-ish stage of the 3-4* transition, I like it. I never had the time to grind for a T10 and the 3* covers for 150th - 11th weren't important to me. If I can do 4x clears spread however I want throughout he day and get the 25CP I'll be more than happy with the change.
  • Kishida
    Kishida Posts: 310 Mover and Shaker
    As a newish player (a little over 100 days), I was glad to see a revision of PvE because in the old format there would often be nodes, often next-to-last on a given stage, where I couldn't win to access the final (often easier) node. So I was looking forward to the new difficulty, particularly as the tests were generally more enjoyable and I could often make it through all nodes repeatedly and often top out on progression rewards. But this new scaling is just lousy. Total ****. Now I get the pleasure of clearing all nodes once and watching half of them slip out of my reach, unable to even grind to the same placement levels I was easily reaching before.

    Like I said, I haven't been playing long, but has there always been this frequency of poor testing and patches that break as much as they purport to fix? After 3 years, shouldn't this be running more smoothly, not less so?
  • Nick441234
    Nick441234 Posts: 1,496 Chairperson of the Boards
    GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:
    nick_chicane wrote:
    I'd argue that it would be success. If you can create a system that is that unpleasant to grind, then people will stop doing it. We'll eventually end up with scoreboards where the top scores will likely just be people who have cleared the nodes 7 times maximum. The optimum players/grinders will stop doing it.

    Top scores are still going to be near optimal. Unpleasantries have never been a stopping point for people to grind.

    For every single PVE event from this day forward? I'd like to meet someone who could keep that up for even a month.
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    KrisPWales wrote:
    As someone at the early-ish stage of the 3-4* transition, I like it. I never had the time to grind for a T10 and the 3* covers for 150th - 11th weren't important to me. If I can do 4x clears spread however I want throughout he day and get the 25CP I'll be more than happy with the change.
    Nothing stopped you from doing that previously, the difference now is, you're going to fight higher level enemies

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