Progression up 13K, scaling through the roof. Why?

deadtaco

Last run of Thick as Thieves full progression was 50k. The highest it ever was (as far as I can tell) was 54k. It is up to 63k now.

Scaling that was scaled back several events ago has been increasing steadily since and it is now as bad or worse than ever.

What is the point of making it worse to play your game?

Gmax101

In heroic Juggernaught and the event before, I capped out at about level 310 bad guys in the hardest node, 305 in the nodes below (4* essential)

In Thick as Thieves I am looking at level 320 and 310

Thing is, last two events I have had 3 characters well over level 300, including 2 boosted 4* star champ... This time I have only 3 characters over 278.... And nothing over 300...

Just don't get it....

Quebbster

Four clears of each node is supposed to get you to the final progression reward. In the first sub, that's around 10,000 Points. The Points probably need to increase around 30% in each sub to hit the final progression with four clears.

STOPTHIS

The devs said they would be adjusting the points to make it so it takes 4 full clears to get top progression. I imagine the increase is a result of that.

I sincerely hope the scaling isn't a result as well. I assumed it was an accident before it came half way through an event after the patch. Has there been any official word on the scaling?

Mr_Sinister

I could be wrong but I believe it still breaks down to max progression hit at 4 clears per sub with all 3 essentials.

Sluggo

I'm sort of repeating what others have said, but in the past max prog was tuned around 3x clears a day, now they've stated they're tuning it around 4x clears per sub. So going forward we should expect max prog totals to be about 30% higher than previous runs.

Scaling, I don't know. I wondered if scaling suddenly bumped up halfway through H Juggs, but I wasn't sure if I was imagining it.

madok

Maybe the scaling "tweaks" are an attempt to bring the PVE experience in line with the new PVP experience?

Everyone needs to have as much fun as possible.

OneLastGambit

Have to admit I noticed this too, very high for a 4 day event.

Of it takes more than 4 clears then I'm happy to only take whatever prizes I get from 4 clears and leave the rest.

Dragon_Nexus

Gmax101 wrote:

In heroic Juggernaught and the event before, I capped out at about level 310 bad guys in the hardest node, 305 in the nodes below (4* essential)

In Thick as Thieves I am looking at level 320 and 310

Thing is, last two events I have had 3 characters well over level 300, including 2 boosted 4* star champ... This time I have only 3 characters over 278.... And nothing over 300...

Just don't get it....

This is literally my identical experience.
I have lower level characters dealing with higher level scaling. Last night took me 2 hours to do 4 clears of each node so I'm pretty much out at this point. I cannoy be arsed with doing that every night for the next four nights, CP be damned.

Orion

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Gmax101 wrote:

In heroic Juggernaught and the event before, I capped out at about level 310 bad guys in the hardest node, 305 in the nodes below (4* essential)

In Thick as Thieves I am looking at level 320 and 310

Thing is, last two events I have had 3 characters well over level 300, including 2 boosted 4* star champ... This time I have only 3 characters over 278.... And nothing over 300...

Just don't get it....

This is literally my identical experience.
I have lower level characters dealing with higher level scaling. Last night took me 2 hours to do 4 clears of each node so I'm pretty much out at this point. I cannoy be arsed with doing that every night for the next four nights, CP be damned.

At the top end, my scaling is slightly higher in this Thick as Thieves event from normal. Usually it caps out in the 400-410 range, but today the last node is maxing out at 429.

The 2* essential used to max out at less than 100, but it seems to top out at 222 now for everyone. It's still not too hard, even with the 1-cover Storm I had last time, but it's far from the trivial node it used to be.

carrion_pigeons

I would play pve if progression took 1 hour per night to hit. I think that's a reasonable design.

2-3 hours per night is just not going to happen.

Gmax101

I am cool with 4 clears for progression, that is a reasonable level to target it at...

I know it is possibly controversial, but I have actually liked the level in PVE was pitched out over recent events. The games were fun, and the nodes climbed to a reasonably challenging level, especially if we want to farm the extra nodes So picking the right team helped massively.

I have hit progression without too much issue.

My only real concern has been the increase in scaling... I know the 2* Essential seems to bjorked since R110 but I can still beat them with the right companion team...

But I just don't get how my scaling has been calculated... to have higher nodes with lower level characters is confusing me

aa25

I still don't understand why I'm punished for having some weekly-boosted characters rostered that causes the scaling off the chart and makes my other characters less useful.

PS: TaT sub4, Overboosted Cmag+Hood...

Punisher5784

Regardless of the increased Progression, it is still 10000000x easier to reach full progression under the new PVE system than the old PVE system. I never have to worry about missing progression anymore even if I do not have the essential 4*.

It is not too difficult to clear each node 4x. Although the 5th and 6th can be troublesome, they are not often required for max progression. Also keep in mind that in order to gain experience you need to fully clear a node 6x.. so if you're looking to level your SHIELD rank then you will not have to worry about reaching max Progression ever.

broll

Punisher5784 wrote:

Regardless of the increased Progression, it is still 10000000x easier to reach full progression under the new PVE system than the old PVE system. I never have to worry about missing progression anymore even if I do not have the essential 4*.

It is not too difficult to clear each node 4x. Although the 5th and 6th can be troublesome, they are not often required for max progression. Also keep in mind that in order to gain experience you need to fully clear a node 6x.. so if you're looking to level your SHIELD rank then you will not have to worry about reaching max Progression ever.

As far as it not being too difficult to clear 4x, I agree, but it is way too time consuming. Typically takes me 2 hours of straight playing each day. I used to hate the 2 day subs, now I breath a sigh of relief for getting a light day...

As far as the SR thing I've been trying to do 5th and 6th queues on at least the easy ones, but unless its a light weekend and the wife is off doing something there's no way to realistically get 6 clears of each node without it feeling like an hour 8 job that you should get paid for.

All that being said, I agree it's a lot easier than is used to be. I just want to highlight that easier =/= easy/fun. It's still way too grindy IMO, but this is definitely better than before.

monsieurmojo

As stated above, the progression thing makes perfect sense. If the stated goal is to make max progression attainable with 4x clears and all essentials for every event, this is right on track. (sub 1 4x clear = 10,300, sub 2 = 13,721 (1.33x), sub 3 projects to about 17,500 (1.67x), sub 4 21,500 (2x) = ~63k)

But like everybody else has said, the difficulty seems to be very messed up. The 2* "trivial" node used to max out for me at around level 100. I think it started around there for sub 2 of TaT. Back when the devs said their goal was to reduce the amount of time players are having to spend on the game, I could clear 4x between 90 and 120 minutes. I'm lucky if it takes 120 now. This is becoming really obnoxious.

Mechahamster

Oh boy, 15000 health muscles that can put out 2 700 strike tiles every other turn or so. And you need to break your face on not one, not two, but FOUR nodes containing them.

Can someone go to the devs booth and tell them that

1) the scaling is too high
2) the grind for progression is too high
3) muscles are the biggest pieces of *bleep* in the game so could they please stop having such a desire to put them in every single event, or at least make their threaten more expensive so they can't spam them to such a crazy extent?

Warbringa

I have seen a dramatic increase in scaling. I quit playing PvE over the last two event - new character and heroic and played some PvP to change it up. Now after starting Thick as Thieves again I have noticed a very large increase in scaling from when I was playing a week and a half ago. Even the trivial nodes have increased quite significantly. Not sure why but it has been at least a 20-40 level increase depending on the node.

I am guessing they felt too many people were reaching progression too easily?

I can actually confirm that the easiest trivial node has actually doubled in difficulty for me. It used to be around high 30's maximum at four clears and it is now at 70. There has been no major changes to my roster either in the last 1 1/2 weeks. The reason I noticed is that the trivial node was now dealing not insignificant damage to my boosted characters! Whereas before it was always a cake walk. They should let us know if this is intentional or not.

shartattack

Mechahamster wrote:

Oh boy, 15000 health muscles that can put out 2 700 strike tiles every other turn or so. And you need to break your face on not one, not two, but FOUR nodes containing them.

...
3) muscles are the biggest pieces of *bleep* in the game so could they please stop having such a desire to put them in every single event, or at least make their threaten more expensive so they can't spam them to such a crazy extent?

Muscle dudes do get overwhelming. Thankfully original black widow is boosted. start with +2 blue. +2 all. make 2 blue matches, keep firing anti gravity device and keep kicking that can down the road, while healing a bit too.

Dragon_Nexus

Warbringa wrote:

I am guessing they felt too many people were reaching progression too easily?

Then the consumer friendly, quality of life thing to do would be to keep scaling as is, raise the required point score and add an extra prize to make up the difference.
instead they just beat us with the rolled up newspaper and say "No! BAD players! You'll grind and you'll LIKE IT!"

I just don't get it. This seems to always happen, we get a bunch of really good design changes and everyone's happy and pleased with the devs...and then they say "Wait, you're happy? Well, can't have that." and make some awful sweeping change that just wrecks all the positivity in one go.

Kishida

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

I just don't get it. This seems to always happen, we get a bunch of really good design changes and everyone's happy and pleased with the devs...and then they say "Wait, you're happy? Well, can't have that." and make some awful sweeping change that just wrecks all the positivity in one go.

^Absolutely 100% this. Utterly and totally baffling. I was wondering if they do it so that there's always some room for improvement, but that makes no sense because they make great changes and then walk them back.

Player contentment isn't a zero-sum game, but I guess they want to make it one.