Scaling for 5 char teams is broken, please fix it Devs!

Bowgentle

Vhailorx wrote:

I have a miderately deep 4* roster. So i am sort of in between camps on this argument.

But by and large i have a hard time believing that 5* players actually have a harder time in pve. Non-scientific examination of leader boards show a very healthy proportion of both 4* and 5* players putting up top scores. 5* rosters seems about as common as soft-cappers. Considering both 5* players and soft-cappers are small fractions of the overall playerbase, i would guess that such rosters are over-represented at the top.

This effect is even more noticeable in pre-boss rush boss events, when 5*s players are the only rosters that can go toe to toe with the round 8 bosses. Thos alliances that finished 16 rounds in civil war are chock full of 5* players.

All of that said, i buy that 5* players have a worse experience than lower level roster. They are forced to use just a few characters in every match because he gulf between 4* and 5* character is so big. Plus the massi e 5* tier health pools might make everything last a lot longer, and even 30 seconds extra ooer match adds a significant amount of time to each grind.

So all in all, i think quality of life improvements for 5* players would be good. But we should also keep the 'plight' of 5* players in perspective.

That's because 5* players know how to play PVE.
I'm pretty sure many of us won the latest heroic because we finally were able to clear as fast as lower rosters again.

Polares

Vhailorx wrote:

I have a miderately deep 4* roster. So i am sort of in between camps on this argument.

But by and large i have a hard time believing that 5* players actually have a harder time in pve. Non-scientific examination of leader boards show a very healthy proportion of both 4* and 5* players putting up top scores. 5* rosters seems about as common as soft-cappers. Considering both 5* players and soft-cappers are small fractions of the overall playerbase, i would guess that such rosters are over-represented at the top.

This effect is even more noticeable in pre-boss rush boss events, when 5*s players are the only rosters that can go toe to toe with the round 8 bosses. Those alliances that finished 16 rounds in civil war are chock full of 5* players.

All of that said, i buy that 5* players have a worse experience than lower level rosters. They are forced to use just a few characters in every match because he gulf between 4* and 5* character is so big. Plus the massive 5* tier health pools might make everything last a lot longer, and even 30 seconds extra per match adds a significant amount of time to each grind.

So all in all, i think quality of life improvements for 5* players would be good. But we should also keep the 'plight' of 5* players in perspective.

Edited for terrible typing

I think this is basically because we are the most dedicated players, so basically we are the ones that play the most. This is why most of us have 5 rosters when we are not super whales.

I don't think this means we have an easier or even the same difficulty than the rest of players, just that we love so much the game, and we want to win so much that we play as much as we need to win. And of course, we know the best ways to play and which are the best times, etc.

Polares

Orion wrote:

jobob wrote:

Also, let me say that a good way to help with this would be to make 4* covers much, much more common.

4* don't compete with 5*... or so I thought. Once I started getting some of the better ones into the 350 - 370 range, though... I found that, when boosted, they are often better than champed 5*. The problem is, however, most people won't agree with me because most people don't have multiple 4* over 350. As 5* tier becomes the meta, D3/Demi really needs to focus on helping players add champ levels to 4*, to continue to make them relevant to the game.

Exactly. A 4* at level 450 is WAY more powerful than a 5* at the same level. I'm starting to see this in PvP where the superwhales are using a boosted 4* in the level 450 range over their level 475-500 5*s.

I see this all the time in the Team-Ups that I receive. I ask for TUs of the 4*s that are boosted for that week. So when I get them at level 370, the boosted level is 479 and they are crazy! Like 4Pool red doing 36k crazy. Or Rulk green doing 18k unboosted / 36k AoE boosted crazy. Surgical Strike does 3705 per tile and so on...

So champion levels were designed to let 4*s compete with 5*s eventually. But for mere mortals, the amount of time it takes to get a 4* to that level could be years. They have to loosen the spigot a bit.

I agree too. I also mentioned in the main thread why this makes nodes like the ones in Simulator and Boss nodes so difficult. 450 4s are stronger than 450 level 5s.

A 450 level Rhulk has 90k hitpoints and does 25k+ AoE dmg for 18 green. This is better and Rhulk is way faster than BlackBolt's 10+25AP green attack.

Vhailorx

Polares wrote:

I think this is basically because we are the most dedicated players, so basically we are the ones that play the most. This is why most of us have 5 rosters when we are not super whales.

I don't think this means we have an easier or even the same difficulty than the rest of players, just that we love so much the game, and we want to win so much that we play as much as we need to win. And of course, we know the best ways to play and which are the best times, etc.

So in the current environment, 5* vets are the only players that can (1) reliably play above 900 points in pvp, (2) play through round 8 of every boss event regardless of boost list, and (3) are well represented or over-represented atop pve leaderboards.

But their scaling is awful and needs to be lowered? The (admittedly limited) data available to players just doesnt match the asserrtions in this thread.

Your math clearly shows that the level gap between player character levels and ai levels for 4* players is larger. But you dont mention that levels provide extra power in an exponential curve. The difference in power moving from 250-->300 is MUCH smaller than when moving from 400-->450. Does a 60 level gap between 320 and 380 equal the power gap between 420 and 450? I dont know the answer, but it seems like that information is important to this argument.

Full disclaimer: i am now firmly in the champed 4* scaling alot. Which does seem to be a bit of a sweet spot. Now that i have enough 4* champs that i almost always have at least one boosted every week, pve is much more tedious than challenging. even if i had a covered 5*, i dont lnow that i would level them up to 400+ right now. So that may be affecting my perspective.

I don't want to suggest that there are no problems with la vie en 5*. I just want to point out that it's not clear to me that 5* players actually have things quite as bad as portrayed in this thread.

nigelregal

The only thing I can comment on is that I had my 5*s at the mid 300s and a lot of 4* championed. All of the good ones I have championed. When Iceman was buffed I could 1 shot any team with his green power. I bumped up 3 of my 5*s to 400 or just below that and now the nodes have about 5000 or more hit points added on so my 4*s are less powerful. My 5*s are mainly for match damage and there powers do little damage compared to 4*s that are buffed.

So in that sense soft capping your 5*s to a level that is comparable to your 4*s when buffed will make PVE the easiest.

The one thing I will say about 5*s is that the match damage makes a difference. With a 4* team you rely on your abilities to do the damage but when I take my 5*s the match damage can really help.

The lack of roster use though sucks

Fightmastermpq

Vhailorx wrote:

So in the current environment, 5* vets are the only players that can (1) reliably play above 900 points in pvp, (2) play through round 8 of every boss event regardless of boost list, and (3) are well represented or over-represented atop pve leaderboards.

Are we reading the same thread? Scaling doesn't apply in PvP so your first point is irrelevant. 5* rosters had a hell of a time making it through rounds 7 and 8 of Boss Rush while 3* and 4* winfinite teams were able to complete it. 5* rosters are regularly beaten out for T10 by 3* and 4* rosters in PvE. To say they are "over-represented" because 5* rosters make up less than 10% of the player-base is disingenuous. The fact of the matter is that in the vast majority of events where myself and other 5* players have played as hard as possible we have been beaten by 3* and 4* rosters that are able to finish faster due to easier scaling, and several of us that actually played the Heroic event took top spots because the scaling was normalized by limited rosters.

Fightmastermpq

nigelregal wrote:

The only thing I can comment on is that I had my 5*s at the mid 300s and a lot of 4* championed. All of the good ones I have championed. When Iceman was buffed I could 1 shot any team with his green power. I bumped up 3 of my 5*s to 400 or just below that and now the nodes have about 5000 or more hit points added on so my 4*s are less powerful. My 5*s are mainly for match damage and there powers do little damage compared to 4*s that are buffed.

So in that sense soft capping your 5*s to a level that is comparable to your 4*s when buffed will make PVE the easiest.

The one thing I will say about 5*s is that the match damage makes a difference. With a 4* team you rely on your abilities to do the damage but when I take my 5*s the match damage can really help.

The lack of roster use though sucks

Perfect, this is exactly the problem with 5* scaling. When your advantage is match damage long battles become a death of 1000 cuts - they are slow. But boosted 4*s often only need to collect enough AP to fire 1 ability and consequently are much faster. The same teams can be used by 5* players sure.....but they are still fighting through greater health pools taking longer.

Again, I'm not asking for or suggesting that PvE be a cakewalk for all 5* players, just pointing out exactly why the current PvE scaling model puts 5* rosters at a bit of a disadvantage.

Vhailorx

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

So in the current environment, 5* vets are the only players that can (1) reliably play above 900 points in pvp, (2) play through round 8 of every boss event regardless of boost list, and (3) are well represented or over-represented atop pve leaderboards.

Are we reading the same thread? Scaling doesn't apply in PvP so your first point is irrelevant. 5* rosters had a hell of a time making it through rounds 7 and 8 of Boss Rush while 3* and 4* winfinite teams were able to complete it. 5* rosters are regularly beaten out for T10 by 3* and 4* rosters in PvE. To say they are "over-represented" because 5* rosters make up less than 10% of the player-base is disingenuous. The fact of the matter is that in the vast majority of events where myself and other 5* players have played as hard as possible we have been beaten by 3* and 4* rosters that are able to finish faster due to easier scaling, and several of us that actually played the Heroic event took top spots because the scaling was normalized by limited rosters.

That's not data fightmaster, that's anecdote.

I am a 3*/4* and i couldn't finish boss rush (another anecdote). It's true that my phoenix capped out at 60ish k health with 8k aoe and 19k single target. I think 5* players got her with something like 90k health, 19k aoe, and 45k single target. But relative experience was the same. 8k aoe followed by 19k single target wiped out my prof x/jg/gsbw team just as fast as 19k aoe/45k single target wiped out an oml/ss team.

A very small percentage of people beat boss rush, and it seemed split between 4* and 5* players. I don't think we have enough data to say which group succeeded at a higher rate.

Turning back to this topic, yes, i know polares was talking about pve. But that doesnt mean that 5* dominance of pvp is irrelevant. How do vets respond when 2* and 3* players gripe about not being able to conpete in pvp? Many of us tell noobs to go back to pve and build their roster patiently before braving the pvp deep end again. So whybisnt it vslid to make the same response in the othrr direction?

I am NOT saying that polares and the other 5* players here don't have a point. I am just trying to remind everyone that there is another side to this argument (and most players on that other side don't post here on the forums).

Fightmastermpq

Vhailorx wrote:

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

So in the current environment, 5* vets are the only players that can (1) reliably play above 900 points in pvp, (2) play through round 8 of every boss event regardless of boost list, and (3) are well represented or over-represented atop pve leaderboards.

Are we reading the same thread? Scaling doesn't apply in PvP so your first point is irrelevant. 5* rosters had a hell of a time making it through rounds 7 and 8 of Boss Rush while 3* and 4* winfinite teams were able to complete it. 5* rosters are regularly beaten out for T10 by 3* and 4* rosters in PvE. To say they are "over-represented" because 5* rosters make up less than 10% of the player-base is disingenuous. The fact of the matter is that in the vast majority of events where myself and other 5* players have played as hard as possible we have been beaten by 3* and 4* rosters that are able to finish faster due to easier scaling, and several of us that actually played the Heroic event took top spots because the scaling was normalized by limited rosters.

That's not data fightmaster, that's anecdote.

I am a 3*/4* and i couldn't finish boss rush (another anecdote). It's true that my phoenix capped out at 60ish k health with 8k aoe and 19k single target. I think 5* players got her with something like 90k health, 19k aoe, and 45k single target. But relative experience was the same. 8k aoe followed by 19k single target wiped out my prof x/jg/gsbw team just as fast as 19k aoe/45k single target wiped out an oml/ss team.

A very small percentage of people beat boss rush, and it seemed split between 4* and 5* players. I don't think we have enough data to say which group succeeded at a higher rate.

Turning back to this topic, yes, i know polares was talking about pve. But that doesnt mean that 5* dominance of pvp is irrelevant. How do vets respond when 2* and 3* players gripe about not being able to conpete in pvp? Many of us tell noobs to go back to pve and build their roster patiently before braving the pvp deep end again. So whybisnt it vslid to make the same response in the othrr direction?

I am NOT saying that polares and the other 5* players here don't have a point. I am just trying to remind everyone that there is another side to this argument (and most players on that other side don't post here on the forums).

There is no data on this subject so everything is anecdotal. Here is an anecdote for you - my alliance of 20 finished both sides of Civil War, but only 1 or 2 of us was able to finish round 8 of Boss Rush. Winfinite combos didn't work for us like it could have for weaker rosters. The difference is that if my SS/OML/PHX teams gets lucky and survives until turn 6 I can maybe get off another Psychic Flames for 9k more damage - less than 10% of her total health pool. But if a winfinite team gets a lucky board and survives that long it's enough to start the combo and it turns into a win. The same winfinite team is not available to me because match damage is so high that at least 1 of my 3 characters is dead after a couple turns. I know because I tried, and it's not hard for me to see that 3rd purple match on the board that gives me the win as Boss Phoenix downs my GSBW with a simple match that does 3k damage. I know for a fact that I could have easily beaten round 8 if my scaling wasn't as bad as it was.

As far as whether or not 5* rosters should be able to compete in PvE at all - that's absurd. Obviously PvP is meant to be a place where the strongest rosters are the most successful, and PvE is meant for players of all types to be able to compete together equally. Surely you aren't suggesting PvE should be the opposite of PvP where strong rosters struggle and weak rosters prevail. That's why we had n00b brackets, and now clearance levels.

And while 2* and 3* players can go back and build their rosters, what option do 5* players have? That's the whole point, there is no 5* roster building - even players that have all 5*s champed are scaled out of top PvE spots.

Polares

Vhailorx wrote:

So in the current environment, 5* vets are the only players that can (1) reliably play above 900 points in pvp, (2) play through round 8 of every boss event regardless of boost list, and (3) are well represented or over-represented atop pve leaderboards.

(2) is wrong. Boss Rush was a NIGHTMARE for 5 rosters. I could not win a single match against the bosses in round6 or round7 (I stopped at round7). Not even one. And all the Hulkfinite, etc. combos didn't work for us. People that gor to round8 was losing most (or all) the battles.

Vhailorx wrote:

Your math clearly shows that the level gap between player character levels and ai levels for 4* players is larger. But you dont mention that levels provide extra power in an exponential curve. The difference in power moving from 250-->300 is MUCH smaller than when moving from 400-->450. Does a 60 level gap between 320 and 380 equal the power gap between 420 and 450? I dont know the answer, but it seems like that information is important to this argument.

But I have, in my initial opening and in other posts here. In fact, because power scale in a quadratic curve is one of the main reason things are worse for 5 players. Think about it. 270 to 370 double max damage, then from 370 to 470 double damage again, so 5 teams that have to fight against 4s, have to fight 4s that do quadruple their initial max damage.

Check my other posts here.

I think things would be much better in general if scaling was linear.

Vhailorx

Fightmaster:

I had access to the full panopoly of winfinite teams. I have finished round 8 in every previous boss fight. My civil war scores are better than the average scores of players in alliances that finished 16 rounds (though i have never been in an alliance that did more than 15 rounds).

And i couldn't finish round 8 in boss rush with lower scaling. I finished round 7 with more than enough time to beat round 8. But i had too many wipe-in-3-turns for 700 damage rounds and ran out of attempts. So while it's possible that you could have finished round 8 with lower scaling, its also possible that your results would have matched mine.

And i never said 5* players shouldnt be competitive in pve. From what i can tell, they are currently competitive (provided they are willing to do the 3ish hours a day of grinding it takes to hit top 10 in most pve events).

You are right that rng-only progress for 5*s is a terrible game design choice for players (great for demi/d3cs budgets though!).

Polares: boss rush was very bad for 5* players. It was also very bad for 4* players. And for 3* players. I havent seen any compelling evidence that it was worse for 5*s (except insofar as 5* players trnd to have smaller benches and,linited options. That sucks. But it's also true for players with just a handful if 3*s or 4*s leveled fare above the rest of their roster.)

But i completely agree in essential nodes. Scaling on essential nodes that require lower tier characters should not stay at 5* levels. That is clearly imbalanced.

Devorer

I currently have 2 champed 5 *s in Surfer at 455 and PHX at 453 and an OML at 405 followed by 24 champed 4 *s.
I regularly finish top 10 or top 5 in PvE-Events, if I want to. But it surely has been less fun for me since I reached 5* champ territory, because of the scaling they net me.
Do not get me wrong here. I really liked the huge increase of power of 5 star characters at first but once you get used to it and realize the scaling forces you to use them it gets a bit bitter. The scaling of course does keep fights interesting, but my real concern and what mostly reduced the enjoment is the lack of variety. The high levels of the opponets basically force me to play with my 5 *s and maybe add a few specific lower tier utility characters if the strategic advantage is big enough.
Most of my roster is useless for the playing part of the game and serves mostly as an incremental growth battery by applying champion levels every now and then, except for essentials in pve and pvp plus daily deadpool.
Even most 4 Stars are only usable if the are champed and are part of the current weekly boost cycle.

That is why I really enjoy Heric events nowadays (after scaling was fixed so that your 5 stars you could not bring to heroics do not affect scaling anymore, before it was a dread). They reall mix it up and i get to use different characters and can still play competitively.

A solution, or at least a starting point to think about, that i am imagining would be a scaling that is also influenced by the team you bring to each specific battle though I am aware of the difficulties such a feature might bring into the developing process and I am not sure if it is possible.

jobob

Vhailorx wrote:

I am a 3*/4* and i couldn't finish boss rush (another anecdote). It's true that my phoenix capped out at 60ish k health with 8k aoe and 19k single target. I think 5* players got her with something like 90k health, 19k aoe, and 45k single target. But relative experience was the same. 8k aoe followed by 19k single target wiped out my prof x/jg/gsbw team just as fast as 19k aoe/45k single target wiped out an oml/ss team.

I would've loved to have gotten that Phoenix with only 90k health.

jobob

Vhailorx wrote:

Polares: boss rush was very bad for 5* players. It was also very bad for 4* players. And for 3* players. I havent seen any compelling evidence that it was worse for 5*s

It's an event that has ended that I hope to god we will never see again in that format... So it's not like we can reproduce any evidence.

I know that the teams that were recommended for beating Rd 7 & Rd 8, along with the rosters I saw making it through, coupled with my own experience and the experience of a lot of other 480+ rosters was "compelling evidence" enough for me.

Vhailorx

jobob wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Polares: boss rush was very bad for 5* players. It was also very bad for 4* players. And for 3* players. I havent seen any compelling evidence that it was worse for 5*s

It's an event that has ended that I hope to god we will never see again in that format... So it's not like we can reproduce any evidence.

I know that the teams that were recommended for beating Rd 7 & Rd 8, along with the rosters I saw making it through, coupled with my own experience and the experience of a lot of other 480+ rosters was "compelling evidence" enough for me.

But can we agree that some 4* and some 5* players finished round 8? I perused the leaderboards and saw some of both with 1.4million points (and also saw thay the very top alliances still had several players who didnt finish round 8).

I was clearly rembering your reports of an earlier round phoenix, but i dont think it changes my point. Round 8 phoenix could wipe your roster in just a few turns. And she could (and did!) do the same to mine. There are more bodies at the lower tiers, but don't think that 3*/4* players were are all sunshine and winfinite to peggy yellow. If we got lucky often enough we had a shot to finish. But it was all rng.

jobob

Yes, Vhailorx. Some 3* players finished, some 4* players finished, some 5* players finished. I don't have a percentage, but it's between 0% and 100%.

You've made up your mind, I don't have any evidence that will be "compelling" enough for you.

Polares

Vhailorx wrote:

jobob wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Polares: boss rush was very bad for 5* players. It was also very bad for 4* players. And for 3* players. I havent seen any compelling evidence that it was worse for 5*s

It's an event that has ended that I hope to god we will never see again in that format... So it's not like we can reproduce any evidence.

I know that the teams that were recommended for beating Rd 7 & Rd 8, along with the rosters I saw making it through, coupled with my own experience and the experience of a lot of other 480+ rosters was "compelling evidence" enough for me.

But can we agree that some 4* and some 5* players finished round 8? I perused the leaderboards and saw some of both with 1.4million points (and also saw thay the very top alliances still had several players who didnt finish round 8).

I was clearly rembering your reports of an earlier round phoenix, but i dont think it changes my point. Round 8 phoenix could wipe your roster in just a few turns. And she could (and did!) do the same to mine. There are more bodies at the lower tiers, but don't think that 3*/4* players were are all sunshine and winfinite to peggy yellow. If we got lucky often enough we had a shot to finish. But it was all rng.

Making to and even finishing round8 doesn't mean it was easier or funnier, just that people had the 'willpower' (and the health packs) to endure it. Both 4 and 5 teams could lose all the battles but get enough points hurting the bosses a bit to get to the final round, but that is not the point.

The point was that I was unable to beat the bosses, not even once in round6 and round7. I tried repeatedly with my 5s and with all the Xfinite teams people were mentioning here and I could not beat them. NOT EVEN ONCE. Other people in 3land or 4land using those Xfinite teams (and some luck) managed to beat the node, and they were able to do it more than once. I am not saying it was easy, just that they managed to beat the node. I could not, because my bosses were so strong (their match damage was enough to kill my 3s) and had so much life that those teams didn't work, just one bad turn was enough to lose, after 15min of very careful and tactical play.

Maybe other players like jobob or Colog managed to do it, I don't know. I know KDN beat the round8 node at least once (I think he did it once, just once).

I don't know any other player with at least 3 champed 5s able to do it, with any team. I asked people to give me feedback about it, and nobody with 3 champed 5s answered (of course maybe people just didn't see me asking, but the for now I have to assume nobody else beat the node). Maybe it was just me, but the conclusion I get is that in Boss Rush, 5 teams were the ones wiped the most.

jobob

Polares wrote:

Maybe other players like jobob or Colog managed to do it, I don't know. I know KDN beat the round8 node at least once (I think he did it once, just once).

I am pretty sure that between me, Colog, and KDN... that 1 victory in Rd 8 was the only one between the 3 of us. And even KDN will tell you that it took a luckly last-move cascade to win that one. KDN is the only one I know of who was able to beat Rd 8 even once playing "straight up." My scaling is based on 487 (avg of my top 3), Colog's is a little higher, and KDN's is of course 550.

Every other instance I saw of a player winning the Rd 8 boss rush required some sort of gimmick "winfinite" team, most of which were 3* and 4* characters. I know that was the only way I beat Rd 7 Boss Waves. So... if you are pretty much required to use 3*/4* characters to beat the Boss Rush, that should be proof enough that 5* rosters had it more difficult.

Is there any question that keeping a team of 3/4* alive vs level 600 bosses is harder than doing it against level 350 bosses?

Polares

New event and I need to resuscitate this thread again.

Dr Strange Event. Kaecilius level 513, but we need 3s or 4s to beat a 5 level buffed enemy. Sigh. Seriously Devs?

Oh and what it is even better, Ultron minions use, looks like, 5 level tables, so they have insane amount of hitpoints (100k+ at 410), and they do the same match damage as 5s. So when the one that puts two critical tiles in the board they do 8k damage (plus seriously buffed strikes) and all their attack tiles!

Man, this is nuts.