5* Scaling in PVE is Broken

dan54321

I've held off of champing my 5* until because of concerns about mmr, but my 4* are getting enough champ levels that my mmr is getting worse anyway.

So I did some playtesting in my sandboxed account to see just how things would change, and I found that, with about half a dozen champed 5* on my roster, on the last node of PVE (after hitting it 4x+) my opponents would be Moonstar, Ragnarok, and Venom with about 60k health each. Meanwhile my guys -- OML, PHX, and Bolt -- have 40k health each. Even with my supposedly amazing team, taking the enemy team down requires way more time and effort than if you have a 4* roster, and my guys take way more damage, relatively, while doing proportionally less damage. I don't feel in the least bit more powerful than when I played with 4* -- I feel significantly weaker. I feel penalized.

So what is the point of even trying to get 5*?? Why are we all putting in this effort? Aren't you supposed to feel like a badass when you get those amazing 5*?

I know people don't usually have much pity for 5* players, but more and more people are getting 5*, so hopefully this will get some attention. Otherwise... there's kind of no point to developing your roster, at least as far as PVE gameplay goes, seems to me.

fmftint

This is nothing new to the players, to the devs however... they don't test on high level character so, yeah

OneLastGambit

Want to enjoy and dominate pve? Stick to the 4* level (300-380 max)

Want to dominate PvP ? Max your 5*

Want to dominate both? Currently you cant really without affecting your scaling/MMR too much.

Punisher5784

Don't worry, the devs are listening

LordXberk

dan54321 wrote:

I've held off of champing my 5* until because of concerns about mmr, but my 4* are getting enough champ levels that my mmr is getting worse anyway.

So I did some playtesting in my sandboxed account to see just how things would change, and I found that, with about half a dozen champed 5* on my roster, on the last node of PVE (after hitting it 4x+) my opponents would be Moonstar, Ragnarok, and Venom with about 60k health each. Meanwhile my guys -- OML, PHX, and Bolt -- have 40k health each. Even with my supposedly amazing team, taking the enemy team down requires way more time and effort than if you have a 4* roster, and my guys take way more damage, relatively, while doing proportionally less damage. I don't feel in the least bit more powerful than when I played with 4* -- I feel significantly weaker. I feel penalized.

So what is the point of even trying to get 5*?? Why are we all putting in this effort? Aren't you supposed to feel like a badass when you get those amazing 5*?

I know people don't usually have much pity for 5* players, but more and more people are getting 5*, so hopefully this will get some attention. Otherwise... there's kind of no point to developing your roster, at least as far as PVE gameplay goes, seems to me.

The sad thing is that the SHIELD CLs are sorta designed to address this problem. Sure, it takes the 5* rosters more time to clear each node and compete in PVE, but if they limit access to CL9-10 to high rosters (>80? >100?) AND the rewards are materially better than CL8, then it still makes sense to level your roster and compete (in harder matches) for better rewards. The thing is that they've take their sweet **** time rolling out the higher CLs AND that CL8 was a complete and utter joke.

Also, I do agree w/ the rest of OP and Aesth's points - I still don't like having to clear opponents with 100-200k health 4-6x for each node in each PVE regardless of the prize (unless they really scale up the ISO rewarded). PVE is so much of a grind already.

Dekliko1978

You could even argue about the usefulness of scaling in general. I believe that the nr 1 reason for people to continue playing this game is to improve their roster. The fact that in a large part of the game you are actually punished by doing so, is just plain silly.
The alternative of eventually facerolling everything isn’t a good alternative either. But at the very least rewards should scale with the scaling of your roster. In real life you would never work countless more hours for the same salary.
Like LordXberk mentioned CL’s were supposed (not sure if this is a player assumption or an actual dev statement) to resolve this. But the reward improvement in the higher CL’s is a joke, it’s not even beginning to come close to the extra effort needed.

Fightmastermpq

Dekliko1978 wrote:

You could even argue about the usefulness of scaling in general. I believe that the nr 1 reason for people to continue playing this game is to improve their roster. The fact that in a large part of the game you are actually punished by doing so, is just plain silly.
The alternative of eventually facerolling everything isn’t a good alternative either. But at the very least rewards should scale with the scaling of your roster. In real life you would never work countless more hours for the same salary.
Like LordXberk mentioned CL’s were supposed (not sure if this is a player assumption or an actual dev statement) to resolve this. But the reward improvement in the higher CL’s is a joke, it’s not even beginning to come close to the extra effort needed.

The game should remain challenging as you progress, but you shouldn't have to compete against people that aren't challenged as much for the same rewards. CLs sorta kinda help with this in PvP where you face other's rosters, but it's horribly broken in PvE where placement in the highest CLs is still dominated by weak and/or soft-capped rosters.

GurlBYE

Its obvious they should have come up with more linear scaling and altering ai behavior to make it more "difficult" as you progressed (more combo powers, more firing multiple powers in a turn, stuns etc + matching 5's more often)\

But as it stands, champing 5's, especially when you have 2-3 limits you to pvp. where you'll run into others running the same 2 characters, so you can get 4 star covers.

dan54321

aesthetocyst wrote:

How highly champed are your 4*s? In your testing what level were the 5*s? On the worst node, what level were the DAs on each clear? Will explain why i ask below.

Aesthetocyst, in my regular account my highest 4* are also in the low 300s, like yours, and I've been noticing PVE getting harder. My highest 5* is a softcapped OML at level 330, and all the others are at level 255 except a level 280 softcapped PHX.

In the sandboxed account, my highest 4* are about the same level as in my regular account, and my highest 5* are level 450, champed. I've got five level 450 5*, a level 435, a level 420, and two level 405. On the last node in PVE, after six clears they're facing lvl 439 Moonstone, Ragnarok, and Venom, each with about 60k health. Level-wise, they are lower than my guys, but they have scaled up to be much stronger than them (except in match damage).

I've found that the game has taken a while to scale up my enemies, as if it has been looking at my average roster strength over the past fifty matches or something. My first matches when I leveled the 5* were not against such strong DA rosters. I'm not sure if the game is done scaling up my enemies, or if it's going to keep scaling them up if I keep playing more matches, but the scaling is already at pretty yucky levels.

Daiches

OneLastGambit wrote:

Want to enjoy and dominate pve? Stick to the 4* level (300-380 max)

Want to dominate PvP ? Max your 5*

Want to dominate both? Currently you cant really without affecting your scaling/MMR too much.

PVE can still be dominated by 5star players. Currently the top 2 in my S2.8 Hulk bracket are 2 multichamp 5star players. It's just a LOT harder for us. But as long as you have a good time slice, there's no reason you can't dominate.

I did drop down to only playing for t5-t10 now with the new format of forced 4 clears at start. I had to move to an earlier slice that I can't play optimal in, but at least can play in without sacrificing sleep.

dan54321

Oh, just to be clear -- about five days ago I champed a 5* on my regular account, so my description of my PVE experience with a 4* roster relates to my experience before then. It was champing that 5*, and how I found my PVE scaling ramping up and getting harder in response, which prompted me to playtest with a full roster of 5* to see just where this was leading!

WelcomeDeath

It's the ramping up clear to clear thats the biggest / most glaring issue. The first clear is usually pretty easy, the last one is often very very difficult, and there's a potential for wiping if you're not careful.

Pvp is about the same. Sure, you can climb higher, but thats mostly a result of the face that the people who have been competing for top scores for...forever...are running champed 5s as well. But matches definitely take longer and its not nearly as fun. This is a big reason why so many 5* players loved the Combined Arms pvp. by took more hits, sure, but you could actually use more variety in teams, and matches were much much faster (at least IME).

This is and has been a known issue for 5* players, but there hasn't been a damn thing done about it. Guess they must think we're just whining. Ah, well.

GrumpySmurf1002

Welcome Death wrote:

This is and has been a known issue for 5* players, but there hasn't been a damn thing done about it. Guess they must think we're just whining. Ah, well.

It's less likely this and more likely that their decision making is entirely data driven.

One assumes that, given the difficulty, they're looking at total time cleared across all nodes, and balancing the scaling that way, rather than balancing it over the individual nodes. 5* rosters can clear the easiest nodes near instantaneously, so the time they're saving there is likely the cause of the longer matches at the top.

Of course, there's no data for how annoying those high level matches to clear....

TLCstormz

dan54321 wrote:

5* Scaling in PVE is Broken

How is it possible that people are JUST NOW finding this out?

Even if someone JUST NOW moved into 5* land......people have been saying this for AT LEAST a year.........

dan54321

TLCstormz wrote:

How is it possible that people are JUST NOW finding this out?

Even if someone JUST NOW moved into 5* land......people have been saying this for AT LEAST a year.........

With the changes to PVE, I had actually thought that these issues had been fixed. I only discovered they weren't when I did my playtesting. Since we've been reassured recently by the devs that "[they] are listening," I wanted to add my voice to the chorus!

Polares

dan54321 wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

How is it possible that people are JUST NOW finding this out?

Even if someone JUST NOW moved into 5* land......people have been saying this for AT LEAST a year.........

With the changes to PVE, I had actually thought that these issues had been fixed. I only discovered they weren't when I did my playtesting. Since we've been reassured recently by the devs that "[they] are listening," I wanted to add my voice to the chorus!

I created a thread just after the nightmare that was Boss Rush for high level rosters and after noticing how much easier things were in a Heroic afterwards where my 5s were all excluded, explaining basically the same thing, that scaling is broken in PvE. A lot of people with stronger rosters than main also explained their experience and it was obvious that PvE right now is dominated by 4 rosters, then at a big distance 3 rosters and 5 rosters. I think it is something like this:

4 >>>>>> 3 > 5

4s are amazing when buffed, and enemies at that level still doesn't scale that much, so the speed of 4 rosters is amazing (when any in the top tier is buffed, it is ridiculous). On the other hand, 3s and 5s rosters are much closer between them, 5s have their incredible match damage to help, but 3 rosters are buffed and they have a lot of different chars to chose.