New Mission Difficulty For All Story Events *Updated

actarus76

i notice that d3 doesn't listen to players.. is it so difficult having real pve without placement rewards (but having only progression rewards)??

in this way, dear d3, don't be surprised if several players stop with you switching to other online games

__Adam

Vhailorx wrote:

--Adam wrote:

TxMoose wrote:

the only restriction was it couldn't all be done at once, so a minimum of 2 play sessions

This is a big deal for someone like me; I can schedule 1 block a day pretty consistently but I can't schedule 2-3, especially since they conveniently don't have a sub that ends in the early evening hours EST. For someone like me we put in the same effort and get neither the progression OR placement rewards. That sucks.

The newly proposed system isn't objectivity worse; it just seems that way on the forums because those that benefit from the current structure are politicking for keeping the status quo. The truly competitive will adapt.

I'm looking forward to the changes; I might get enough CP to actually mature my roster.

If cp is your goal from pve, then a single play session was sufficient to get almost all available cp under the old system. Optimal schedule only mattered at all if you cared about placement. And placement provides a trivial amount of cp. Progression rewards were always achievable with sub-optimal play.

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward, if I spaced that same effort out by the 8 hour schedule I would and had nodes to spare.

simonsez

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

mpqr7

So... level 500 enemies? Tell me again why we should bother to increase the strength of our roster?

__Adam

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter; the same # of clears gets you more points by following the schedule since the same node is worth more points 8 (and 16) hours later than hitting it 3x consecutively. That difference, for me, put me on the 'have not' side of the reward equation. In the past tests I generally got the progression reward.

My point being it's not just psychological.

Vhailorx

mpqr7 wrote:

So... level 500 enemies? Tell me again why we should bother to increase the strength of our roster?

If I am reading the statement from demi correctly, then new level 500 enemies will be weaker than old level 400 enemies.

I think issue is that over-leveled enemies got to take advantage of champion-level type scaling (notice that going from 270 to 350 does a hell of a lot more for 4*s than does going from 190 to 270), and were amazingly strong as a result. We will have to see the system in practice to be sure, but this should be an improvement for players.

Vhailorx

--Adam wrote:

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter; the same # of clears gets you more points by following the schedule since the same node is worth more points 8 (and 16) hours later than hitting it 3x consecutively. That difference, for me, put me on the 'have not' side of the reward equation. In the past tests I generally got the progression reward.

My point being it's not just psychological.

If your goal is the max prog reward, and playing each node 4x in a row will get you the max prog reward, then your problem is entirely psychological. Sure, you are theoretically leaving points on the table, but it doesn't matter if you can still achieve your goal. And in the vast majority of pve events under the old system playing each node 4 or 5 times at any time during a sub will get you the max prog.

Fortunately, the new system seems doesn't sound like it will require as much grinding for the max prog rewards as some of the earlier tests. But the underlying facts remain: players who only care about progression rewards are more or less in the same boat. And players who care about placement now have to deal with a noticeably worse optimal schedule (unles you like having to do 9 clears in a row every 24 hours).

OneLastGambit

Crowl wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

The scaling will massively discourage grinding after 7 clears.

Having played all the tests and placed t10 in all of them I can say that I never cleared more than 7 times in any test and still managed t10, the reasoning is that only a small few will be able to clear more than 7 and they will very likely get hit hardest by scaling.

I think you were very lucky then, I was nowhere near t10 on at least a couple of the tests after doing 7 clears.

In every test? One or two I would agree with you I could be lucky but you can't be lucky all the time..that's a pattern not luck. The only one where I had to clear everything 7 times was that horrible EoTS with x23 as prizes (and resulting compensation from d3) other than that I cleared on average 5 times per 24 hour sub and hit t10 In each. Though I'll state that I was only just t10 In most

OneLastGambit

Vhailorx wrote:

--Adam wrote:

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter; the same # of clears gets you more points by following the schedule since the same node is worth more points 8 (and 16) hours later than hitting it 3x consecutively. That difference, for me, put me on the 'have not' side of the reward equation. In the past tests I generally got the progression reward.

My point being it's not just psychological.

If your goal is the max prog reward, and playing each node 4x in a row will get you the max prog reward, then your problem is entirely psychological. Sure, you are theoretically leaving points on the table, but it doesn't matter if you can still achieve your goal. And in the vast majority of pve events under the old system playing each node 4 or 5 times at any time during a sub will get you the max prog.

Fortunately, the new system seems doesn't sound like it will require as much grinding for the max prog rewards as some of the earlier tests. But the underlying facts remain: players who only care about progression rewards are more or less in the same boat. And players who care about placement now have to deal with a noticeably worse optimal schedule (unles you like having to do 9 clears in a row every 24 hours).

Here's the real benefit for people playing max progression only...

In old system you can do 4 clears anytime to get max progression, this is true. However... In the new system it's possible to finish a day or two early using the exact same tactics meaning less time spent on pve.

In the old system if you want to get the cp early and quit youd have to play to the schedule. Otherwise you would earn it but only on the last day.

Small change sure but it's great for those of us who are hybrid players and have both PvP and pve to focus on

revskip

Vhailorx wrote:

--Adam wrote:

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter; the same # of clears gets you more points by following the schedule since the same node is worth more points 8 (and 16) hours later than hitting it 3x consecutively. That difference, for me, put me on the 'have not' side of the reward equation. In the past tests I generally got the progression reward.

My point being it's not just psychological.

If your goal is the max prog reward, and playing each node 4x in a row will get you the max prog reward, then your problem is entirely psychological. Sure, you are theoretically leaving points on the table, but it doesn't matter if you can still achieve your goal. And in the vast majority of pve events under the old system playing each node 4 or 5 times at any time during a sub will get you the max prog.

Fortunately, the new system seems doesn't sound like it will require as much grinding for the max prog rewards as some of the earlier tests. But the underlying facts remain: players who only care about progression rewards are more or less in the same boat. And players who care about placement now have to deal with a noticeably worse optimal schedule (unles you like having to do 9 clears in a row every 24 hours).

And if your goal was to both hit progression and hit top 50/100 then it totally wasn't psychological. You needed to play optimally with the timer to get there, if you did it all in one grind you left way too many points off your final score for the same amount of clears. Whereas now you won't and it will come down to the amount of clears you are willing to do. Does it suck for the top 1% of players going for those top ten rewards, sure. But for other people who just want to get check marks in one sitting and call it a day it is a superior system.

Vhailorx

I dunno revskip,

Its not clear to me that placement will be any easier. Any gains from not having to play an optimal schedule may be dwarfed by new competition from everyone else who can't play an optimal schedule, but can grind 5-7 times.

At the very top levels, placement is determined by ability to play the optimal schedule, but in most events placement past top 20 or so is just a function of how many people are willing to grind. It the rewards are good, then lots of grinding is necessary. If not, then top 50 is easy.

I played exactly 2 subs of prodigal sun (and only mined out the 4 cp, nothing else) and i finished inside the top 200. No one cared about those rewards.

I finished with 1.5x the max prog reward in peggy's release event and could crack the top 125 because I missed the final hour of grinding. That dynamic isn't going to change with this new system.

(also, is this the 50th time we had this discussion since testing started? we can't be very persuasive rhetoriticians, since neither of us have moved an inch, but at least we are persistent!)

__Adam

Vhailorx wrote:

--Adam wrote:

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter; the same # of clears gets you more points by following the schedule since the same node is worth more points 8 (and 16) hours later than hitting it 3x consecutively. That difference, for me, put me on the 'have not' side of the reward equation. In the past tests I generally got the progression reward.

My point being it's not just psychological.

If your goal is the max prog reward, and playing each node 4x in a row will get you the max prog reward, then your problem is entirely psychological. Sure, you are theoretically leaving points on the table, but it doesn't matter if you can still achieve your goal. And in the vast majority of pve events under the old system playing each node 4 or 5 times at any time during a sub will get you the max prog.

Fortunately, the new system seems doesn't sound like it will require as much grinding for the max prog rewards as some of the earlier tests. But the underlying facts remain: players who only care about progression rewards are more or less in the same boat. And players who care about placement now have to deal with a noticeably worse optimal schedule (unles you like having to do 9 clears in a row every 24 hours).

Sure, but if you play it by the optimal schedule you have to clear it less than 4-5 times. That's idiotic.

It can translate into things like getting the same points by clearing easy vs hard nodes since they have regained some value, which by definition makes the game harder by not playing by the schedule. Hell, clearing the sub by round-robin vs grinding each node down technically yields more points as they've regenerated some in the interim. It's just bad design.

It's only a worse schedule to those that the current schedule favors; the new schedule may well allow new players a chance to compete that are currently locked out.

KGB

As someone who tends to play in blocks of time this change is a Godsend. If enough T10 PvE placement players actually stop playing PvE as they threaten to do I might be able to jump from T50 into T10 on occasion when I have all the essential characters

That's the other thing that players who favor the old timer based method tend to forget: Players don't always have all the 'essential' characters. In those cases just doing 4 sub optimal clears doesn't get you progression. It's extra hard to get progression in the timer system when you miss an essential AND you can't do optimal clears because you can't easily figure out if you've 'on pace' for progression. The new method makes this much more achievable.


One thing D3 *should* have done to help with the timer system was to modify it by adding time based on the start of the sub rather than your first clear. For example if I start a sub after 8 hrs I should be able to do 2 immediate clears a full points before the points move down. That equates to someone doing a clear immediately when sub starts and another at the 8 hr mark. If both those clears were worth same points there would be FAR less complaints about the timer system (still wouldn't help someone who wanted to do 2+ clears at sub open obviously).

KGB

ZootSax

OneLastGambit wrote:

Crowl wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

The scaling will massively discourage grinding after 7 clears.

Having played all the tests and placed t10 in all of them I can say that I never cleared more than 7 times in any test and still managed t10, the reasoning is that only a small few will be able to clear more than 7 and they will very likely get hit hardest by scaling.

I think you were very lucky then, I was nowhere near t10 on at least a couple of the tests after doing 7 clears.

In every test? One or two I would agree with you I could be lucky but you can't be lucky all the time..that's a pattern not luck. The only one where I had to clear everything 7 times was that horrible EoTS with x23 as prizes (and resulting compensation from d3) other than that I cleared on average 5 times per 24 hour sub and hit t10 In each. Though I'll state that I was only just t10 In most

That's the problem with anecdotal evidence: I had the exact opposite experience, but there's literally no way to know which one of us had the fluke luck. I did 7 clears on the second-to-last test and it wasn't even Top 200 (maybe the 20 pt grind factored in there, but it's hard to imagine that many people doing it in a bracket for such poor rewards--I believe that's also the test with a 48hr sub that I "only" did seven clears on). Five clears on the last test wasn't even Top 400 (in one sub it was, but only barely and the rest all had me outside the Top 400) (for reference, I was in a bracket were all the top 10 had max points).

I'm really hoping what you saw is closer to reality in terms of what to expect, but frankly I'm not keeping my hopes up based on what I saw in the tests...

KGB

ZootSax wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

Crowl wrote:

OneLastGambit wrote:

The scaling will massively discourage grinding after 7 clears.

Having played all the tests and placed t10 in all of them I can say that I never cleared more than 7 times in any test and still managed t10, the reasoning is that only a small few will be able to clear more than 7 and they will very likely get hit hardest by scaling.

I think you were very lucky then, I was nowhere near t10 on at least a couple of the tests after doing 7 clears.

In every test? One or two I would agree with you I could be lucky but you can't be lucky all the time..that's a pattern not luck. The only one where I had to clear everything 7 times was that horrible EoTS with x23 as prizes (and resulting compensation from d3) other than that I cleared on average 5 times per 24 hour sub and hit t10 In each. Though I'll state that I was only just t10 In most

That's the problem with anecdotal evidence: I had the exact opposite experience, but there's literally no way to know which one of us had the fluke luck. I did 7 clears on the second-to-last test and it wasn't even Top 200 (maybe the 20 pt grind factored in there, but it's hard to imagine that many people doing it in a bracket for such poor rewards--I believe that's also the test with a 48hr sub that I "only" did seven clears on). Five clears on the last test wasn't even Top 400 (in one sub it was, but only barely and the rest all had me outside the Top 400) (for reference, I was in a bracket were all the top 10 had max points).

I'm really hoping what you saw is closer to reality in terms of what to expect, but frankly I'm not keeping my hopes up based on what I saw in the tests...

I'm pretty sure things are going to get better. I base that on the fact that competitive PvE players join a slice the second it opens because they want to maximize time spent in day 1 for points. These are the so called competitive brackets where you need 2*+ the progression reward to place T10.

But the new system doesn't require that. You can join your bracket in the last 3-4 hrs and do 7 full day 1 clears (if you have the roster). You have a much better chance of getting into a far less competitive bracket (or more than likely competitive players will end up spread around over more brackets rather than being jammed together since there is no rush to join the second an event opens).

Due to my schedule I always join an event late (ie last 8 hrs on day 1). I always get in 'easy' brackets where T50 is easy to get with 3-4 clears when I generally only have 2 of the 3 essential characters and 50% of the time I don't even get max progression due to not having all 3 essentials.

KGB

TxMoose

revskip wrote:

...who just want to get check marks in one sitting and call it a day it is a superior system.

for anyone with a usable 5, the scaling for that short, little, easy to type phrase means 4 hours of grinding (for green checks...not 4X for most of the best rewards and progression - that is much shorter). you make it sound so much easier than what I experienced it was in reality.

__Adam

TxMoose wrote:

revskip wrote:

...who just want to get check marks in one sitting and call it a day it is a superior system.

for anyone with a usable 5, the scaling for that short, little, easy to type phrase means 4 hours of grinding (for green checks...not 4X for most of the best rewards and progression - that is much shorter). you make it sound so much easier than what I experienced it was in reality.

But that's 4 hours of grinding no matter how you slice it. Why should the guy w/a 4 hour chunk get less rewards than the guy with 1+1+2 hour chunks? The current system is indefensible.

simonsez

--Adam wrote:

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter

That's absurd. If you're complaining that you think the timer keeps you from hitting the cp prog even though you "played every sub in 1 session", of course it matters how many times you cleared them. If you're talking 1 clear, and you think 18 minutes a day is ever going to get you an event's top prize, you picked the wrong game.

simonsez

aesthetocyst wrote:

What would solve the problem is a setup that TRULY let people "play on their own schedule". This ain't it. The closest this game has is the Gauntlet, and very rare, similar events, like Growth Industry.

Except for the absurd difficulty, the test with all the tied scores kinda nailed it, but god forbid they open the covers floodgates and give out a few extra in each event to cover everyone who maxes out.

__Adam

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

simonsez wrote:

--Adam wrote:

That wasn't my experience. If I played every sub in 1 session I wouldn't get the 25 cp progression reward

Every sub how many times?

It doesn't really matter

That's absurd. If you're complaining that you think the timer keeps you from hitting the cp prog even though you "played every sub in 1 session", of course it matters how many times you cleared them. If you're talking 1 clear, and you think 18 minutes a day is ever going to get you an event's top prize, you picked the wrong game.

The same number of clears gives different amounts of points depending on the timing, that impacts the number of clears it takes to achieve success. Equal amounts of effort should yield equal rewards.