Is the problem with 5* scaling really scaling?

Vhailorx

Disclaimer: i am a 4* player. I understand from alliance mates and others that the 5* pve experience right now is not good. I am not trying to argue otherwise. There is no need to post snarky "you just dont understand how bad we have it" messages. I feel your pain!

The 5* playerbase is getting increasingly agitated about their pve experience. Their concerns seem very legitimate! Typically such concerns are expressed here on the forums as conplaints about scaling.

But i think framing the problem as one of scaling misses the mark. Back-of-the-napkin math suggests that outrageous health/match damage for 500+ enemies is challenging, but not out of proportion with lower tiers of play (though 5*s do have much higher match damage relative to their health pools, which can make things quirky). I think the problem is roster depth, and by extension the 5* transition.

Most 5* players only have 2-4 viable 5*s st or near the level of their scaling. If your scaling keys off your oml/phoenix, and they are your only 2 5*s abive level 400, then you are basically **** if you have to fight a boss that counters that team. This probken is made worse jy the exponential power curve of higher levels. Going from 400 to 450 is a much bigger jump than going 255 to 305. So that means that your level 375 GG may not even be tough enough to play high level pve scaled to your 450s. Even though only .5% of the playerbase even has a gg @375 or better. This remains true with 5* champ levels. A 480 5* is much much stronger than a 450. Moreover, 5* land is shallow. There just aren't as many options available to build different teams. This is a problem that will solve itself over time,* but that's little comfort to players now. Finally, it takes forever to build 5*s, so if a player finds themselves trapped in terms if scaling by their 2 400+ 5*s, there is basically nothing they can do to solve the problem except maybe selling their 5is and losing perhaps a year of game progress.

So IMO, dropping scaling down now is a short term fix that may cause problems later on. What demi should really do is make it easier to build a deep 5* roster, and maybe smooth out the leveling curve for both players and ai. More players and more characters at the 5* tier would be better for everyone. Better data for demi to use calibrating scaling, better mmr options in pvp, more tactical choices for challenging pve nodes.

P.s.: i am aware that a very small number of players, including the king who shall not be named, have access to almost the full 5* bench and still have struggled with scaling. This may scuttle my argument tha5 scaling isnit the main problem, but i think at this point that there are so few players from which we can collect data that we need more info before deciding that 550 is totally broken.

*well, it will solve itself in theory as the 5* tier grows. But since it's so hard to build 5*s, the troubles may persist for a while.

mohio

This is a good post that provides some things to actually think about, so I thank you for that. As for my own experience, it's really a "chicken or egg" kind of thing. What we're talking about here is what most people with maybe 2-3 high level 5* are saying, and that is scaling in pve is making it unfun. In my personal experience (452 phx/435 OML - and with lower level combinations along the way) what happens is I basically have to bring at least one of them because of their power level and ability to soak up damage. I generally bring both, but there are occasions where it might be right to bring just one (i.e. boosted Iceman, you bring IM40 to power him up quickly, maybe sw/boosted rulk, you get the idea). That leaves me only able to pick a single "3rd wheel" to help support the 5*. For various reasons that's going to be someone like IF, SW, Quake, Iceman, Peggy, Rulk, Nova - someone either really good in support or someone with powers that complement phx/oml (or they're just too good boosted to ignore).

Since PvE then boils down to OML/PHX and best 3rd for the situation, you aren't left with a lot of "puzzling" to do, and most of the matches all play out the same way and it gets boring. Not to mention the enemies scale up really high, so you can't even win quickly without a few lucky cascades going your way.

To fix this problem (the problem being lack of choices, hard enemies, no fun), they could either lower scaling, or somehow make obtaining usable 5* easier so you have more choices when making your team. The latter option would require a huge change in the prize structure of the game, because classic tokens are so diluted now it's going to take ages to get newer 5* covered to a usable state (which is probably 10+ covers at least once you've got 3 others that high). The former option is really problematic for developers. Let's say they base all scaling off only your 4* roster, or maybe instead of your top 3 characters it uses characters 4-8 or something. Sure that would open up a lot of players to being able to use their 4* characters now, but with the scoring system based so much off speed, how many people will actually experiment with different teams? Wouldn't those 5* players just bring the same teams they were before and steamroll these easier nodes? I think most competitive players would do that, which defeats the purpose of lowering the scaling in the first place.

tl;dr - I think both scaling and lack of 5* roster diversity are working in tandem to create the problem, but scaling gets the blame because it's the thing that's most easily changed. Sadly I see no quick fix since changing either option requires a lot of fine-tuning.

Polares

Thing is, you are right, but you are also very wrong

Having a deep roster would certainly help in some cases, at least we would be able to accommodate our team to the enemy team, but the problem of the scaling still remains.

One thing that makes scaling so much worse for 5 teams is that 450 level 4s are stronger than 450 level 5s, probably even 430 level 4s are stronger than 450 level 5s. On the other hand a 370 level 4 is not stronger than a 370 level 4 (I know, this is obvious, but it needs to be said ). This is very easy to see when Balance of Power comes. Everybody use 4 teams. They might use a 5 maybe, but 4 teams are the strongest there is.

This means, that people in 4 land fighting against teams of 4s, 3s, and 2s doesn't have any problem most of the time, they still have the upper hand (and even more when we see that teams of 370s fight against teams of 310 level). But teams of 5s fighting against teams of 4s have A LOT of problems, and to make things even worse here the difference in level is shorter (450 against 430 enemies !!!). Why ?!?!?!?

Then some goons like Muscles and Sentries are crazy hard when they are 430+ level. New chars like Strange might help against those though.

Other big problem is combos. Someone like Kaecillius showed this very easily. We had to fight a 530 level enemy with 3s, just because 5s still don't have the tools to deal with him (and they might not have these tools EVER, because Devs don't repeat powers that much). But this crazy scaling doesn't let us use those 3s because they die super fast. I had to use PH as meat shield, just so the other two 3s could win the match :S Which lead us to the other big problem, once you go to 450 you can't use 95% of your roster.

And even people with all chars could not beat Boss Rush. If people with the best roster in the game can't beat a fight, not even once, something is very wrong.

Also, one other problem derived from scaling is that matches last for so much longer, and this is a big deal for PvE. Hit point pools also scale A LOT and this time around for goons, 2s, 3s and 4s. At least powers just scale like crazy with goons and 4s.

So, you say that reducing scaling now might be a problem in the future. Well, let's fix the present first, and if a problem appears in the future, then we will fix the problem in the future, but not fixing something that makes the game experience so much worse for some of us just because it might break something down the line is not a clever way to go.

mohio

Thinking about it a little more there really are 2 different problems. Scaling itself is a big problem. When leveling your 5* means your fights become more difficult and even longer than before, there is a problem. This is where dialing down the scaling can really help. Make those fights just a little quicker by lowering the health pools some. You'll still have to bring your best teams to beat them, but at least you're not fighting 10 minute battles because you're facing 100k+ hp ultron sentries that take forever to kill and spam passive abilities every turn.

The second problem is the roster diversity issue. Even dialing down the scaling to an acceptable level will render most of your roster useless since you'll still need all your 5* to win. This is a much more difficult problem to tackle. As I went into in my post above, you can either dial down scaling even more making fights almost too easy for your 5*, or you can somehow distribute 5* covers better so people have more options. Neither of these seem all that likely to happen, which is just leading me (and probably many others) to play much less.

Vhailorx

mohio wrote:

Thinking about it a little more there really are 2 different problems. Scaling itself is a big problem. When leveling your 5* means your fights become more difficult and even longer than before, there is a problem. This is where dialing down the scaling can really help. Make those fights just a little quicker by lowering the health pools some. You'll still have to bring your best teams to beat them, but at least you're not fighting 10 minute battles because you're facing 100k+ hp ultron sentries that take forever to kill and spam passive abilities every turn.

The second problem is the roster diversity issue. Even dialing down the scaling to an acceptable level will render most of your roster useless since you'll still need all your 5* to win. This is a much more difficult problem to tackle. As I went into in my post above, you can either dial down scaling even more making fights almost too easy for your 5*, or you can somehow distribute 5* covers better so people have more options. Neither of these seem all that likely to happen, which is just leading me (and probably many others) to play much less.

Match length is a big issue, especially in a game that wants you to play 36+ pve matches a day.

But surely some of the match length and difficulty problems could be solved with more diversity. E.g, play the gsbw pvp with cage + kk, then play it with im40 + peggy or ice. The all 3* tean actually has more health nd similarly strong powers. But the peggy/ice team will win more easily and much faster. In 5* land grinding down muscle ir symbiote nodes is hard with very little board control and only a few team combos. But add strange to your roster and goons look a lot less menacing. So does demi need to reduce the scaling on goons, or make it easier to build strange to a useful level (eg maybe in 3-6 months, rather than 1.5 years, and several hundred dollars instead if several thousand)?

carrion_pigeons

Do you suppose they could invent a pve only buff that said "if you bring a character to a fight that is more than 100 levels below than the highest level character you bring, it automatically gets a buff up to your highest level minus 100."

i.e. Bring a 170 Switch and a level 450 5* Cap to a pve match and Switch gets an automatic buff to 350 for that fight. That would stop your roster from becoming irrelevant as you level up higher tiers, while still giving you a reason to level them.

TheOncomingStorm

I've always said the scaling should be based on the characters you use for a node, not who you have in your box.

it makes zero sense to have a game with so many characters, but you can't use them because the game difficulty dictates you should use your best monsters only.

this would be the fairest thing for all players regardless of how long they have been playing.

rbdragon

The biggest issue with scaling is the fact that you're, for lack of a better term, punished for improving your roster in the name of fairness. Why? Especially now with Clearance Levels, why not make the nodes a static level and let those who are at similar levels compete on the same level? We're all competing for the same prizes at that level, so why should 4* player A fight level 285 baddies while 5* player B fights level 415 baddies for that same prize? It makes no sense.....

5* were supposed to be like a bonus if you got them. Until there's a more clear path to obtaining them other than praying for that sweet purple pop up when cashing in CP/a legendary token, they shouldn't even be part of the equation. Have a few 5* champs? Good for you - go dominate like you should!

Stax the Foyer

There are two particular issues with scaling that have been touched on, but not stated explicitly so far in this thread:

(1) The toolkit at the 5* level isn't as robust as the toolkit at the 3* and even 4* levels. It's slowly getting fleshed out, but we still don't have a character like IM40 or Switch at the 5* level. Peggy and Revamped Star Lord have been gamechangers at the 4* level, and they're both very useful to bring, but we still don't have accelerators on the level of IM40 at either the 5* or the 4* level. This matters because:

(2) 5* scaling makes your lower tier characters worse. Each character brings some combination of utility, attack, and survivability. 5* scaling reduces both their attack and their survivability relative to someone with a lower-tier roster. As your 5*s get stronger, it actually accelerates the obsolescence of your 3*s.

The idea of a ride-along/sidekick buff is a great one. It would help both the attack and survivability of lower-tier characters while still keeping them at a lower tier.

It would also address one of the other issues with 5* scaling, which is the 2-on-3 nature of most 2* and 3* essential nodes. Until then, it seems fair that the featured character on the other side should have their scaling capped at the championed ceiling of your featured character. So if it's a 2* node, the featured enemy couldn't scale higher than 144, or 266 for a 3* node.

zodiac339

rbdragon wrote:

The biggest issue with scaling is the fact that you're, for lack of a better term, punished for improving your roster in the name of fairness. Why? Especially now with Clearance Levels, why not make the nodes a static level and let those who are at similar levels compete on the same level? We're all competing for the same prizes at that level, so why should 4* player A fight level 285 baddies while 5* player B fights level 415 baddies for that same prize? It makes no sense.....

5* were supposed to be like a bonus if you got them. Until there's a more clear path to obtaining them other than praying for that sweet purple pop up when cashing in CP/a legendary token, they shouldn't even be part of the equation. Have a few 5* champs? Good for you - go dominate like you should!

When Clearance gets high enough, maybe. Right now, I was able to see HIM in my Strange Sights bracket. I have some Legendary champs, the highest at 279. Should I be completely unable to get the top 10, to get covers I need and whales don't because of being in the same SCL? (No, HE didn't go for top 10. The argument stands.)
Static PVE levels belongs in Gauntlet. Not to the hard level cap of... 550? Is it higher? I don't expect I'll ever see it without winning the lottery. Static levels for Gauntlet I'd suggest being maybe into the 300 zone where a fresh champion 270 Legendary can still win with good play. No competition, so whales aren't "stealing" from the lower and middle class base of players who actually have to play for their prizes. Yes, they have to put effort into getting the top spots, but without scaling, 5 star champions would make a full clear in less than an hour and leave everyone else in the dust.
Super scaling for heroes (bringing them up to match your big guns instead of the current boost limit) has merit. Less necessary for 2-stars, since there's a required nod cap, but good for the 3 star nodes that scale much higher. (Well, maybe for 2-stars as well, considering the Kingpin + 2 goons from Strange Sights. I shouldn't have needed Hulk Bros to get through that busted high damage).

Phumade

Polares wrote:

Other big problem is combos. Someone like Kaecillius showed this very easily. We had to fight a 530 level enemy with 3s, just because 5s still don't have the tools to deal with him (and they might not have these tools EVER, because Devs don't repeat powers that much). But this crazy scaling doesn't let us use those 3s because they die super fast. I had to use PH as meat shield, just so the other two 3s could win the match :S Which lead us to the other big problem, once you go to 450 you can't use 95% of your roster.

Agree with this 100%. As a compromise, some modes should really be tied to the characters you actually use vs can Hypothetically use.

edit:
In all honesty, heroics are a good example of a possible solution. Why not let us pretend to be shield director and preselect 10 chars to use over a course of an event? We select our usable mission roster at the same time we chose SCL and time shards. Then the AI calculates scaling just like it normally does.

I actually think the scaling is very reasonable in heroic events and most peoples frustration with that event is the incredibly bad synergies as selected by the devs.

Add a new layer of play and let us pick who the usable chars are.

smkspy

I sometimes wonder how much fun this game would be if I would just delete all my 4 and 5 stars. Well, maybe soft cap the 4 stars for their essential nodes.

Even with only 2 champed 4 stars, I've noticed my scaling jump 20 levels or so and I think well why do I want to keep leveling these guys up.

I definitely won't be leveling up my 5 stars any time soon even though I know I'm safe after champing a few 4 stars.

Guess when it comes down to it, the incentives to level are present, but the basic game play issue have never been fixed. And in fact have gotten worse since easy nodes have been hulked.

wanghiking

it's very true that the problem with this game now is that once you go to lv450 5 star land, 95% of your roster can't be used...it's like after a whole year you build up a viable five star, only to get yourself punished after championing the five star...

This is really bad, this really happened to me when I champed my Silver Surfer, and suddenly my PVP is super hard, and basically 99% of enemies consists of two lv 400 five stars...

snlf25

Thankfully my progression has been slower than others so I've learned before it was too late for me that it's a game wrecking catastrophe to develop your roster too much in this game and I've become convinced that the truly sweetest spot to soft cap is level 280. You can champ all your 4*s, your 5*s aren't too high that they fatally screw you and your 3*s max out at level 266. My plan keeps my entire roster relevant and competitive in both PvE and PvP from 3* level up. That's 90 characters I have at my disposal while people who leveled their 5*s can now really only use 3 to 5 of theirs. It's a broken system and scaling can suck all the fun out of the game like a black hole.

smkspy

That's what confuses me. People that have and can champ fives know the system is broken. Then why level up your 5 stars just to enter that broken system? Ironically, this is the very thing so many early 5 star roster people berated 2 and 3 star roster people of complaining about when the first 5 stars were introduced.

And before the "well I don't want to waste a five star cover" rebuttal comes, either don't pull or sell it if you draw. Again, the same arguments told to lower roster players for ages. I know I had to sell off at least 6 different 5 stars before my roster was ready, but LTs were the best way to get 4 star covers.

Guess I was lucky to have been a 3 star developing roster with 5 stars were introduced. I learned the hard how just two 5 stars each with 2 covers made my game unplayable. Now that I'm a solid 4 star transitioner, I see how badly leveled up 5 star are and I can wisely avoid these mistakes. Of course, it'll probably be 2 years before I get more than one 5 star with more than 7 covers

Polares

smkspy wrote:

That's what confuses me. People that have and can champ fives know the system is broken. Then why level up your 5 stars just to enter that broken system? Ironically, this is the very thing so many early 5 star roster people berated 2 and 3 star roster people of complaining about when the first 5 stars were introduced.

There are some reasons, at least for me.

First - I didn't think it was THAT bad. At the time I leveled my 5s also we didn't have boss fights tied to scaling, Galaktus, Ultron, IM and Cap have fixed levels, so at least I could do more or less fine against bosses (it was much harder the nodes before the boss).
Second - I play this game to have the best possible roster. I guess this is because in my mind I still think this game is similar to an RPG even though it is not. But, What is the point of playing if I can level my chars? What is the point of playing If I can use the strongest chars?
Third - We still have some advantage in PvP. It is not as big as it was, but we still dominate PvP.
Fourth - It is quite difference than what happened with 3s and 4s, so experience was not that easy to apply.

In the end, THERE SHOULD BE NO REASON FOR SOFT-CAPPING YOUR ROSTER!

stewbacca

with the addition of scls.. levels of enemies should now just be set for the entire scl. No more scaling at all, everyone in that scl is on equal ground.

If you can't compete and finish that scl, , build your roster till you can .

Eliminates all the scaling complaints, and all the soft cappers out there.

Crowl

stewbacca wrote:

with the addition of scls.. levels of enemies should now just be set for the entire scl. No more scaling at all, everyone in that scl is on equal ground.

If you can't compete and finish that scl, , build your roster till you can .

Eliminates all the scaling complaints, and all the soft cappers out there.

That is a highly flawed approach when rng plays such a major role in whether or not people get usable 5*s in the first place, you do not fix the real issues with the scaling by throwing it away entirely.

The target they should be aiming at with any scaling should always be that improving your roster is beneficial, but doesn't result in the game being trivialised for a player that has already been lucky with rng to get too much extra benefit from that good luck.

Phumade

smkspy wrote:

That's what confuses me. People that have and can champ fives know the system is broken. Then why level up your 5 stars just to enter that broken system? Ironically, this is the very thing so many early 5 star roster people berated 2 and 3 star roster people of complaining about when the first 5 stars were introduced.

Lol, Ultimately people want to move up the ranks to access other game modes/resources. To do that you need to be able to compete effectively in all the various game modes that offer rewards. 5* players keep pursuing 5* because even as one's placement suffers in PVE, its more than offset by the rewards from LRs and PVP. For example 1 4* covers and 8k placement iso would be an amazing result from a 3day pve. But thats effectively 3 LR rounds.

The perspective you need to consider is that there are 3 distinct game modes that value 3 different types of rosters.

LRs: are basically no 5* no point playing. Your free to keep playing seeds, but I can promise you the 5* players are tripling the iso and covers that an avg 3/4* roster generates out of LR days. Its actually a pretty well known secret that the 48 hours of LR matches, are really the key to generating the consistent covers and iso to power a functional 2*, 3*, 4* farm.

PvP: If you don't use 5*, you basically cripple your ability to compete over 1200. In the long run, giving up the 1200 award cripples your ability to grow your 4* tier. Putting aside all the issues related to 5* draws rates, I think most players would agree that they get as many 4* out of LT/CP pulls as they do from direct progression/placement awards.

PVE: 6 months ago, the top PVE alliances in the game ie. groot,AXE,MPQU, Italia, battlecats etc... all would have told you to a player that 5* rosters have a near insurmountable speed advantage. Nowadays, that lead isn't very pronounced and 5* players are definitely losing placement slots to weaker rosters. In many ways the heroic events have become the easiest pve events for the simple reason that the 5* players have wide and deep 4* rosters, and once their 5* are locked out, they have an incredibly deep 4*/3* tier at levels that easily approach the 5* power curve.

Vhailorx

Phumade wrote:

smkspy wrote:

That's what confuses me. People that have and can champ fives know the system is broken. Then why level up your 5 stars just to enter that broken system? Ironically, this is the very thing so many early 5 star roster people berated 2 and 3 star roster people of complaining about when the first 5 stars were introduced.

Lol, Ultimately people want to move up the ranks to access other game modes/resources. To do that you need to be able to compete effectively in all the various game modes that offer rewards. 5* players keep pursuing 5* because even as one's placement suffers in PVE, its more than offset by the rewards from LRs and PVP. For example 1 4* covers and 8k placement iso would be an amazing result from a 3day pve. But thats effectively 3 LR rounds.

The perspective you need to consider is that there are 3 distinct game modes that value 3 different types of rosters.

LRs: are basically no 5* no point playing. Your free to keep playing seeds, but I can promise you the 5* players are tripling the iso and covers that an avg 3/4* roster generates out of LR days. Its actually a pretty well known secret that the 48 hours of LR matches, are really the key to generating the consistent covers and iso to power a functional 2*, 3*, 4* farm.

PvP: If you don't use 5*, you basically cripple your ability to compete over 1200. In the long run, giving up the 1200 award cripples your ability to grow your 4* tier. Putting aside all the issues related to 5* draws rates, I think most players would agree that they get as many 4* out of LT/CP pulls as they do from direct progression/placement awards.

PVE: 6 months ago, the top PVE alliances in the game ie. groot,AXE,MPQU, Italia, battlecats etc... all would have told you to a player that 5* rosters have a near insurmountable speed advantage. Nowadays, that lead isn't very pronounced and 5* players are definitely losing placement slots to weaker rosters. In many ways the heroic events have become the easiest pve events for the simple reason that the 5* players have wide and deep 4* rosters, and once their 5* are locked out, they have an incredibly deep 4*/3* tier at levels that easily approach the 5* power curve.

This kind of post leaves me with a lot less sympathy for 5* players. It basically reads as: we already completely dominate LRs and PVP, but 6 months ago we also dominated pve; now we can only finish top 50 and have trouble making top 10!

I can absolutely believe that 5* play isn't as enjoyable (especially when players are forced to use just a few characters over and over again). Thats a problem that demi/d3 should fix.

But the i am much less thrilled about the idea that 5*s have some moral right to absolutely dominate all game modes. Improving your roster absolutely should improve your game experience. But the game will suck for everyone if 5*s are just an instant win button that costs several thousand $.

Vhailorx

aesthetocyst wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

It basically reads as: we already completely dominate LRs and PVP, but 6 months ago we also dominated pve; now we can only finish top 50 ajd have trouble making top 10...

5* players don't choose to play in the same pool as all other players, all the way down to complete beginners.

The devs make that choice for them.

Ancient complaint about MPQ .... fretting over size of playerbase, the devs have always opted for half-measures and work-arounds where "normal" games have various levels of play in completely separate pools.

Bracketing, MMR, now SCLs; all seem overly complicated, all have their compromises, their ups and downs.

Agree that in the abstract, the game doesnt have to work this way. But that doesnt change the fact that the game does currently work that way. And making the 5* players too dominant will be bad for everyone. 5*s need lower tier players to keep the game well populated (they have to beat someone).