Funbalancing Queue Update?

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jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

Is this applicable to people who preferred the old hulk event pre-scaling. The one you usually refer to as grinding bonanza?

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jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

Thank you for confirming my belief that you have no idea what you're talking about.

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DaveyPitch wrote:

jozier wrote:

The Devs did you give you characters to play with and win easily in these subs. None of them are Spidey . Use them and you'll see the same scaling I'm seeing instead of scaling worth complaining about.

Two points....

1. I'm not complaining about the scaling I'm seeing. I'm only using Spidey sparingly, so the scaling isn't affecting me too badly.

2. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a well developed roster capable of tearing through the opposition. I have a level 100 Patch, Mags and Lazy Thor, so I'm happy. Others aren't so lucky. Other people have a 5 Blue Spidey and are more reliant on him. Why should they be punished for using a character the devs gave us?

There are a couple of issues here that only the forum goers will be aware of and not the wider community...

1. If you constantly beat teams with high levels, your opponent levels will increase

2. If you come out of matches with virtually no damage, your opponent levels will increase

Spidey helps people do both of these things at the same time, yet nowhere does it say we'll be punished for using him. We know it because we're on the forum, we read what the devs say and are aware of how scaling works. Not everyone is so lucky, yet they will be punished for that. Please explain to me how that is fair.

The majority of the community likely doesn't have a 5 blue cover spidey. He hasn't been given out on a regular basis in a long time.

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DaveyPitch wrote:

jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

Thank you for confirming my belief that you have no idea what you're talking about.

You're whining for the sake of whining. You're not "punished" for using 5 blue spidey. The game thinks you're having too easy a time so its giving you a challenge. Otherwise there is zero reason to play the game if it's incredibly trivial for everyone.

Maybe instead we should all fight 10 level goons, get to use any team we want, and not have to worry about any challenges? How about that? That system sounds awesome doesn't it?

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jozier wrote:

The majority of the community likely doesn't have a 5 blue cover spidey. He hasn't been given out on a regular basis in a long time.

I'll concede that, but it still doesn't change my points. The players are being punished for using a character we've been given without any indication that doing so could cause severe scaling issues. I don't see in any way how that is fair or right.

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jozier wrote:

You're whining for the sake of whining. You're not "punished" for using 5 blue spidey. The game thinks you're having too easy a time so its giving you a challenge. Otherwise there is zero reason to play the game if it's incredibly trivial for everyone.

Errm, there is some big deal of ground between the 'challenge' and trivial. Even on individual level.

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jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

That's pretty freaking ironic coming from the guys who criticize anything that might move the winning strategy away from "just play a few matches at the very end of the sub, hope your team can handle the community scaling and your schedule can handle the timing" as "a return to grinding"

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jozier wrote:

You're whining for the sake of whining. You're not "punished" for using 5 blue spidey. The game thinks you're having too easy a time so its giving you a challenge. Otherwise there is zero reason to play the game if it's incredibly trivial for everyone.

Maybe instead we should all fight 10 level goons, get to use any team we want, and not have to worry about any challenges? How about that? That system sounds awesome doesn't it?

I have no issues with the game being challenging. I have issues with a system that punishes people for using the tools that it gives us. Nothing more, nothing less.

The game thinking I'm having an easy time if I use Spidey to win also completely disregards how close to defeat I might come during that match. I know I've been close to death and then ended up with a miracle blue cascade that gave me enough AP to stunlock the opposition into defeat. During that stunlock I can get enough yellow AP to heal myself. As far as the game is concerned, I breezed through the match, yet I could've been one move away from defeat. That's the kind of scenario the game doesn't account for, and I would imagine that it happens on a fairly regular basis.

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DaveyPitch wrote:

jozier wrote:

The majority of the community likely doesn't have a 5 blue cover spidey. He hasn't been given out on a regular basis in a long time.

I'll concede that, but it still doesn't change my points. The players are being punished for using a character we've been given without any indication that doing so could cause severe scaling issues. I don't see in any way how that is fair or right.

The only challenge a team fielding Spidey has is when their opponents are level 230s that have the chance to destroy them in one or two moves if they have the AP. He trivializes the battles, so in return, the system scales the difficulty so they are no longer trivial. It's not punishment, it's called levelling the playing field. Otherwise you just sit with Spidey all day every day and there's zero reason to do otherwise.

Right now though, if you use a team that isn't built around Spidey, it takes damage, it doesn't win every fight with ease and full health, the system recognizes that you are being adequately challenges and again, scales accordingly.

That's it. That's all. There's no punishment, unless you think there's no reason to ever have a PVE battle over level 10 like I said.

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pasa_ wrote:

Riggy wrote:

Two players, one with Spidey and one without, are competing in a tournament. With all other things being equal, the player with spidey will always win the tourneys b/c his roster can survive longer due to timely stuns/stunlock and healing.

If you talk about PVP as we have now, it's not so. For starters the winner will be decided by who tanked better, and the less is mostly irrelevant. And if they are similarly well tanked the winner will be the one with better DPS. Especially if shield-jumping is involved.

Stunlock indeed allows you a win over "impossible" teams, but it's way easier to just avoid them and fight possibles. And you gain more points by winning more in shorter time. And teams without spidey will likely have better DPS. It also makes healing more irrelevant and you kill faster than get hurt. And can heal up outside the game.

If you talk about PVE the picture it's even worse, what count most is to play battles in proper order and start at proper time. On the player part. And the game adds its weirdo based on rosters so the guy with no spidey, and best thig a lvl30 IM35 but a 1-cover boss in collection will win hands down.

I will agree that I don't believe spidey is an issue in PVP. He is very much an issue in PVE, which is where the majority of this thread's conversation takes place. You're showing a flaw in your logic though. You're saying stunlock allows you to win over an impossible team in PVP. The question isn't "how do I beat this impossible team?" but rather "Why am I facing this impossible team in the first place?" The problem is with matchmaking, but you attribute the solution to stunlocking and thus only address a symptom of the problem not the problem itself.

The problem though is trying to identify symptoms vs. problems. Scaling is a solution for the problem of player equality, but it exposes problems with other mechanics such as stunlocking. Most veterans agree that without stunlocks, scaling wouldn't be as much of an issue.

pasa_ wrote:

Riggy wrote:

In an attempt to equalize the amount of effort expended between these two players, they have implemented scaling. You're not being penalized for playing well, you're being equalized so that your veteran status (i.e. more developed roster) doesn't marginalize other players and / or roster choices.

It's not so much a question of "penalized for playing well" so much as it is "keeping the competitive environment as equal as possible".

Nice play with words, how about just calling it the proper name. "Equalizing" by taking away and giving it to others is "penalizing" alright.

In some arenas thing like "handicap run" exist, but it is hardly the norm and is really ruin to fair competition. Where separation is applied by skill or ability (say weight groups) they are never tabulated as a mix and get different prizes too.

I'm not saying it's not a penalty. That doesn't mean that the devs' goal is anything other than equality. And you're right, you see this same argument in all spectrums of life (a charge levied against the EEOC and affirmative action daily if not more often). For all people to compete on a level playing field, then yes, some people get penalized.

However, it seems like you're again conflating arguments. The problem isn't with the scaling or with spidey's stunlock but the fact that we're all lumped into a "first come, first serve" bracket where player A's 1* roster can compete against player B's 3x141 roster. So I think we would actually agree that the root issue is the tournament bracket design over any of the other things that have come up. The devs seem to give a head nod to this by creating a hard mode of sim, but then bring all the baggage we've been discussing into the hard mode which sort of undermines their position and what they're trying to accomplish.

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DaveyPitch wrote:

jozier wrote:

You're whining for the sake of whining. You're not "punished" for using 5 blue spidey. The game thinks you're having too easy a time so its giving you a challenge. Otherwise there is zero reason to play the game if it's incredibly trivial for everyone.

Maybe instead we should all fight 10 level goons, get to use any team we want, and not have to worry about any challenges? How about that? That system sounds awesome doesn't it?

I have no issues with the game being challenging. I have issues with a system that punishes people for using the tools that it gives us. Nothing more, nothing less.

The game thinking I'm having an easy time if I use Spidey to win also completely disregards how close to defeat I might come during that match. I know I've been close to death and then ended up with a miracle blue cascade that gave me enough AP to stunlock the opposition into defeat. During that stunlock I can get enough yellow AP to heal myself. As far as the game is concerned, I breezed through the match, yet I could've been one move away from defeat. That's the kind of scenario the game doesn't account for, and I would imagine that it happens on a fairly regular basis.

Yeah, most Spidey matches involve miracle cascades and last second healing alright now let's be realistic here, I've used Spidey a ton and until this PVE hadn't seen a level below 230. I know exactly how Spidey plays and your scenario is an exception not the rule.

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gamar wrote:

jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

That's pretty freaking ironic coming from the guys who criticize anything that might move the winning strategy away from "just play a few matches at the very end of the sub, hope your team can handle the community scaling and your schedule can handle the timing" as "a return to grinding"

No offense dude, but we are the guys who win regardless. We prefer a system that doesn't require an entire life scheduled around an event like the Hulk did. But by all means, bring back old systems of PVE. Not going to change the fact that I (and those who are fine with the system as it stands) will win anyway.

I also don't usually just play a few matches at the end of a sub. I like playing the game. I joined my brackets on Day 1 of Simulator.

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jozier wrote:

gamar wrote:

jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

That's pretty freaking ironic coming from the guys who criticize anything that might move the winning strategy away from "just play a few matches at the very end of the sub, hope your team can handle the community scaling and your schedule can handle the timing" as "a return to grinding"

No offense dude, but we are the guys who win regardless. We prefer a system that doesn't require an entire life scheduled around an event like the Hulk did. But by all means, bring back old systems of PVE. Not going to change the fact that I (and those who are fine with the system as it stands) will win anyway.

I also don't usually just play a few matches at the end of a sub. I like playing the game. I joined my brackets on Day 1 of Simulator.

So? That doesn't in any way contradict my assertion that the reason you like the scaling+rubberbanding system is that it allows people with high-level rosters to win with less effort. Indeed, it supports it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but again, ironic considering your post.

Unknown

@Riggy: You lost the context somewhere. My point I argue for is pretty simple, like "this game is full of braindead design". What covers both the big picture and details of PVP end PVE. What you state as supposed contradiction are all good arguments for my position.

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Riggy wrote:

The challenge of a fight is scaled so as to equalize the players. Because there is no primary or secondary markets for this game, a player can't "catch up" to the veterans. The only hope a newer player (even just 1 PVE event behind) has for competing is through scaling. That is the primary purpose of scaling. To try and create a level-ish playing field on which people can compete.

This is a little unfair. I think MMR does a good job at lower levels of grouping people together, thus making PvP a fairly level playing field. As for PvE: maybe it shouldn't be a competitive thing at all. They could add permanent PvE chapters to introduce new characters without an artifical time-limit and competition. Or they could try to use the Heroic Oscorp system again but make the numbers work, so that the best prizes were progression-based rather than competitive. Then scaling would be irrelevant, and top players could compete for things like ISO 8 and HP while everyone got their hands on new characters.

I understand the goal of scaling, but my fear is that it's an inadequate solution to a problem that could be fixed in more satisfying ways.

Riggy wrote:

Design space is subjective. There are some abilities that shouldn't be in the game that are obvious (anything that literally says you win). What the devs are forcing us to discuss is the nature of the abilities that warp the meta-game. The difference between this game and the original PQ is that it is a directly and indirectly competitive game. Broken abilities in the earlier game were fine b/c multiplayer didn't give additional or special rewards. Abilities that warp the meta-game in this incarnation of PQ are bad b/c it significantly hurts people's ability to compete. I still think Wizards of the Coast sets the gold standard for meta-balancing. They've consistently banned or restricted cards in various formats for the overall health of the game, regardless of how much it hurts individuals. They've gone for the nuclear option before when they banned Arcbound Ravager and all the artifact lands from standard (e.g. the Rags nerf for us), and have even gone so far as to pre-ban a card before it was released - Mind's Desire would have destroyed standard at the time. The health of the meta above all.

In the digital world though, you have so much more flexibility and we should appreciate that they're trying to work with the flexibility so as not to restrict design space while still not preventing players with character X from dominating those who don't have character X (the special restricted nodes are your benefit for having character X - when X is stupid powerful, you're essentially benefiting multiple times over).

I agree; there are definite limits here. Rags was bad news, and I do ultimately think there's room for modifying both Spidey's Stun and Magneto's blue ability. The problem is that, in a strict competitive sense, stun locking as a road to victory doesn't help that much. It's just plain old slow, and that time lost really adds up. This is more obvious in PvP, but if PvE weren't so competitive (see my first response) then it wouldn't be an issue at all. Spidey and Magneto fill somewhat unique roles, and I think it's dangerous that that puts them in danger of nerfing. Similarly dangerous is the fact that OBW (another fairly unique character) is often discussed as an OP nerf target. It is frustrating to see interesting characters with unique abilities targeted for elimination.

Riggy wrote:

Personally, I feel that if spidey's stuns capped at 3 turns, or if the ability cost even 1 more AP, a significant portion of the content would not be so trivialized.

I think a one AP increase would be a great modification.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

The Devs did you give you characters to play with and win easily in these subs. None of them are Spidey . Use them and you'll see the same scaling I'm seeing instead of scaling worth complaining about.

While this might have been true up to now, there's no guarantee it still is. I suspect there would be a lot less complaints if the small print in regards to scaling were disclosed, preferably immediately after each change. As it currently stands, you may either get penalized or lucky without ever knowing why. Who knows, tomorrow personal scaling might increase for matching green and red, decrease for matching purple and yellow. And whoever gets access to this insider information early will have an incredible advantage. This might be fun for the players close to the information source, I'd rather prefer a system that puts everybody on equal grounds though.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

jozier wrote:

gamar wrote:

jozier wrote:

Really what it sounds like is you want an easy path with zero effort to the top position. Just be honest instead of couching this as a complaint against the system.

That's pretty freaking ironic coming from the guys who criticize anything that might move the winning strategy away from "just play a few matches at the very end of the sub, hope your team can handle the community scaling and your schedule can handle the timing" as "a return to grinding"

No offense dude, but we are the guys who win regardless. We prefer a system that doesn't require an entire life scheduled around an event like the Hulk did. But by all means, bring back old systems of PVE. Not going to change the fact that I (and those who are fine with the system as it stands) will win anyway.

I also don't usually just play a few matches at the end of a sub. I like playing the game. I joined my brackets on Day 1 of Simulator.

So? That doesn't in any way contradict my assertion that the reason you like the scaling+rubberbanding system is that it allows people with high-level rosters to win with less effort. Indeed, it supports it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but again, ironic considering your post.

It's not ironic. I'm not asking for less effort in battles which is the major distinction. Of course I'm happy with less grinding to place. If I wait too long, I could face difficult battles. That's my choice not to grind. But what I am seeing is people asking for easy battles to get to top position. Which is exactly the opposite of what I want. That's basically the Hulk event which was a joke difficulty wise when it first ran.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

The only challenge a team fielding Spidey has is when their opponents are level 230s that have the chance to destroy them in one or two moves if they have the AP. He trivializes the battles, so in return, the system scales the difficulty so they are no longer trivial. It's not punishment, it's called levelling the playing field. Otherwise you just sit with Spidey all day every day and there's zero reason to do otherwise.

You're missing my point entirely. The issue isn't whether Spidey trivializes matches (he can), it's that people are effectively being punished for using him how he was designed to be used. Take a look at Spiderman and his skills. He is designed to stun opponents, to create defensive tiles to deflect damage, and to heal people up. By doing that, he creates the impression that every match is being breezed through. If you've used Spidey as much as you claim, you'd know that often isn't the case. The match can be difficult, you can take a ton of damage, and you can struggle to get the blue AP you need to stun Juggs before he headbutts you into oblivion. If you get that blue AP, you can return your team from near death to full health. You've had a really hard match, taking a load of damage, but because of the skillset of Spidey, you can walk away with next to no damage. The system thinks you breezed the match and scales you higher because of that. The system is flawed. The system is what I have the issue with.

Unknown

The whole 'my games with Spiderman are close even when I never lost any health' reminds me of the MMR argument about how MMR is giving opponents that are too tough but you still never lost a game against them for whatever reason.

If you usually walked out of a fight with 100% health, that fight is not really that tough.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The whole 'my games with Spiderman are close even when I never lost any health' reminds me of the MMR argument about how MMR is giving opponents that are too tough but you still never lost a game against them for whatever reason.

If you usually walked out of a fight with 100% health, that fight is not really that tough.

You're right, sometimes the fights aren't that tough, but you can't deny that some times they are.

Wouldn't a simple solution be to scale your opponents based on the overall damage you took during the match, rather than how much health you left with? That would cater for everyone then. If you use boosts and Spidey to stunlock the opponents from move 1, you take no damage and you get high scaling. You took lots of damage and use Spidey to heal at the end, you get less scaling. That's a system I could get behind.