Heroic Chapter 3 PVE Change

Unknown

Increasing the maximum level for enemies is going to be a tough sell. Irregardless of roster size and strength, hacking away at a level 400 goon and their 20,000 Hit Points takes a lot of time and one of the most appealing aspects of this game is being able to play it in short bursts throughout the day. But yeah. I won't hate on it til I have tried it. Many of the changes to the game have seemed shocking at first but turned out to be very good for the game in the long run. I will try to keep an open mind until I have experienced it.

Unknown

In any other game, if i face a super lvl400 enemy and win, I expected to be rewarded accordingly (more gold! More xp! More rare weapons)

So am I going to get legendary characters or 10000iso if I beat a lvl 400 daken?

If the answer is no, then what the tinykitty....??!!

IceIX

Here's what happens right now with 230s in-game:
Player 1 can fight 230s but will come out of it pretty damaged. They're the intended audience for "230s = HARD". They've hit the point where their Deadly/Impossible pins are at that level. Great, fine for just those pins.
Player 2 can fight 230s and win fairly easily. They may be healing in battle, they may be stunlocking, they may be that good. They're still beating the 230 encounters without issue.
Player 3 can't fight 230s but they can win against 180s decently well.

The game sees that the Deadly pin for Player 1 is being beaten regularly by players that are capable of taking down 230s (Player 2). They're both at the high end of PVE rating, so there's no real difference in difficulty as far as the system can see. The game *does* know that users are still defeating those pins pretty easily though, so it raises the floor to try and help difficulty go up for everyone on nodes that were apparently too easy.

Player 1 sees that a couple of his Hard pins went to Deadly 200s from 180 as a result of being near the top of scaling while his bretheren is knocking down 230s like nothing. Player 1's game just got harder even though it shouldn't have, but the system has little way of knowing that without adding in much more complexity to the scaling system. Player 3 sees their nodes go from 180 to 185 since their rating isn't as high, so they're affected fairly little but still hit. A theoretical player 4 fighting 90s may be fighting 91s, so no big deal there.

By raising the bar to 400, we've left room for Player 2 to grow while essentially pushing Player 1 into the same position Player 3 now enjoys. It's also the reason you see newbies hanging out in the points ranking for so long. They get hit by scaling less because the people that are pushing the community scaling up aren't hitting them as hard (as they shouldn't). They still hit difficult fights relatively quickly though as their individual rating climbs, so that ends up being self balancing by the end of any given PVE Event.

Edit: Adding this to the original post for new readers.

Unknown

This mechgouki thread is going to be legen... wait for it....

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Here's what happens right now with 230s in-game:
Player 1 can fight 230s but will come out of it pretty damaged. They're the intended audience for "230s = HARD". They've hit the point where their Deadly/Impossible pins are at that level. Great, fine for just those pins.
Player 2 can fight 230s and win fairly easily. They may be healing in battle, they may be stunlocking, they may be that good. They're still beating the 230 encounters without issue.
Player 3 can't fight 230s but they can win against 180s decently well.

The game sees that the Deadly pin for Player 1 is being beaten regularly by players that are capable of taking down 230s (Player 2). They're both at the high end of PVE rating, so there's no real difference in difficulty as far as the system can see. The game *does* know that users are still defeating those pins pretty easily though, so it raises the floor to try and help difficulty go up for everyone on nodes that were apparently too easy.

Player 1 sees that a couple of his Hard pins went to Deadly 200s from 180 as a result of being near the top of scaling while his bretheren is knocking down 230s like nothing. Player 1's game just got harder even though it shouldn't have, but the system has little way of knowing that without adding in much more complexity to the scaling system. Player 3 sees their nodes go from 180 to 185 since their rating isn't as high, so they're affected fairly little but still hit. A theoretical player 4 fighting 90s may be fighting 91s, so no big deal there.

By raising the bar to 400, we've left room for Player 2 to grow while essentially pushing Player 1 into the same position Player 3 now enjoys. It's also the reason you see newbies hanging out in the points ranking for so long. They get hit by scaling less because the people that are pushing the community scaling up aren't hitting them as hard (as they shouldn't). They still hit difficult fights relatively quickly though as their individual rating climbs, so that ends up being self balancing by the end of any given PVE Event.

Edit: Adding this to the original post for new readers.

Thanks for laying this out! This actually makes sense now, and I can see what it is that you are attempting to accomplish. Good to know!

Unknown

The problem with increasing the levels is that there are two distinct kinds of fights in PVE, goon-only and real heroes.

Against goons, you might as well make the level be 1K, because a level 230 only means one thing: Do you have a team that can avoid ever getting hit? If you do have that team, the levels are not relevant, because as the game drags on, your AP stashes get bigger. I can farm 230s like that with a team that sports a level 83, a level 40, and a level 35, all with the right covers. If I survive the first 6 turns, I can't get hit. If I don't, I retreat before the first hit, go heal, and try again. All more levels do is make me grind more slowly.

Against, say, a Daken, the game is the same, but instead of needing this low team to succeed, One needs a Spiderman, and you do take a bit of damage before you put on the lock.

So the first thing you have to make sure happens is to make sure the two types of nodes scale differently. If I grind down level 230 goons, that doesn't mean you can raise the levels for the heroes, because then you made my game impossible to play, because I am missing a few spidey covers.

It'd be very interesting to see the kinds of teams that win and lose vs specific nodes at specific levels, to see if my situation can be generalized over most of the population. If I was working for you guys, that's the kind of question I'd be asking.

Unknown

That still doesn't address the rewards issue. If I'm fighting at level 400 (and I'm sure I will be), then why should I only get 20 ISO. There should be some rewards scaling too!!!!

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Sounds like they are giving the entire system more flexibility, and players a bit more control over it.

If you grind through so many 230's you push yourself up to 400 the game is literally telling you to slow down...

If someone can beat so many 230's with ease, the game is telling the devs to "sandbox that fella".

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Here's what happens right now with 230s in-game:

There's a problem with using the basis of how damaged/undamaged you are: with some of the goon nodes - especially anything with a massively damaging area-of-effect like flamethrower or tommy gun - I'd come out of the battles either undamaged or completely wiped out - there was rarely, if ever, any middle ground. The "win but damaged" scenario would never come up unless I deliberately started taking selective damage (which is what I've started doing).

Unknown

pve becomes enjoyable when you feel powerful. When you feel like a mouse taking on a bear, the game is telling you 'go try something else'

warcin

So we are back to only low level players being able to compete again since their fights take significantly less time, and are significantly easier. I still think scaling is horrible and this is just making it so much worse. Please do not do this and not during a Heroic chapter when people are already screwed on the characters they can use...

Clintman

IceIX wrote:

Here's what happens right now with 230s in-game:
Player 1 can fight 230s but will come out of it pretty damaged. They're the intended audience for "230s = HARD". They've hit the point where their Deadly/Impossible pins are at that level. Great, fine for just those pins.
Player 2 can fight 230s and win fairly easily. They may be healing in battle, they may be stunlocking, they may be that good. They're still beating the 230 encounters without issue.
Player 3 can't fight 230s but they can win against 180s decently well.

The game sees that the Deadly pin for Player 1 is being beaten regularly by players that are capable of taking down 230s (Player 2). They're both at the high end of PVE rating, so there's no real difference in difficulty as far as the system can see. The game *does* know that users are still defeating those pins pretty easily though, so it raises the floor to try and help difficulty go up for everyone on nodes that were apparently too easy.

Player 1 sees that a couple of his Hard pins went to Deadly 200s from 180 as a result of being near the top of scaling while his bretheren is knocking down 230s like nothing. Player 1's game just got harder even though it shouldn't have, but the system has little way of knowing that without adding in much more complexity to the scaling system. Player 3 sees their nodes go from 180 to 185 since their rating isn't as high, so they're affected fairly little but still hit. A theoretical player 4 fighting 90s may be fighting 91s, so no big deal there.

By raising the bar to 400, we've left room for Player 2 to grow while essentially pushing Player 1 into the same position Player 3 now enjoys. It's also the reason you see newbies hanging out in the points ranking for so long. They get hit by scaling less because the people that are pushing the community scaling up aren't hitting them as hard (as they shouldn't). They still hit difficult fights relatively quickly though as their individual rating climbs, so that ends up being self balancing by the end of any given PVE Event.

Edit: Adding this to the original post for new readers.

This comes down to time, a fight taking 10 minutes is terrible. It is not fair to make me use a stunlock team that takes forever to beat this node. The risk vs reward is the piece that you are missing.

-Warning WOW reference inc.-
When I took out Lich King on Heroic Mode I got incredible rewards, Joe Casual and his guild of casuals who took out the 10 man normal version did not get the same level of awesome rewards because he did not have to work as hard to get it. What you are doing now is making me fight at the cutting edge of character specialization, using team compositions that are not fun, but required for the same rewards that Joe Casual is getting.

Unknown

So from what I understand is that if you're able to push enemy level to 400 this makes everything harder for everyone else too? That is, currently beating 230s is not enough of an impact on the lower scaling people so they still get their easy fights the whole time?

If that's how it works I've no problem with it. I don't mind beating the hard stuff, as long as other people gets affected by it too, since it makes no sense for me to continue to beat 230s while other people still get easy stuff.

I think people greatly underestimate how adding additional match damage really changes your ability to collect a certain threshold of blues before the match 3s took you out. Especially with this roster available in the next event, I can guaranteed most people don't 'have to worry about seeing level 400 enemies anytime soon.

Unknown

Even if they get the scaling right for this event, the next event is going to drive an even deeper gap between those with full covered Spideys and those without.

Unknown

Lycra wrote:

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Sounds like they are giving the entire system more flexibility, and players a bit more control over it.

If you grind through so many 230's you push yourself up to 400 the game is literally telling you to slow down...

If someone can beat so many 230's with ease, the game is telling the devs to "sandbox that fella".

This isn't really true. Would you sandbox a player just for stunlocking with spidey?

I cleared 230's in the last event as well pretty easily enough and came out the other end virtually unscathed with a team that was half the level of the encounter.

You cannot instantly assume that because they are doing something better than what you are seeing on your end, that they need to be on their own.

Unknown

The way that I'm interpreting this is you're ideally not supposed to reach or beat lvl 400. Lvl 400 is kinda like when you're running out of bounds in a video game and it's telling you to go back or you're dead. You're supposed to get your teeth kicked in and take heavy damage so that the scaling system kicks in and lowers the difficulty afterwards.

In an ideally functional scaling system with a balanced roster, your enemies should level out to an appropriate range that you can beat them. Or in simpler terms, if you don't use Spidey you shouldn't be hitting these high ranges.

Unknown

Conundrum Kid wrote:

Even if they get the scaling right for this event, the next event is going to drive an even deeper gap between those with full covered Spideys and those without.

This is why a lot of us want them to go ahead and do whatever they're going to to fix Spidey so it stops hurting those of us without.

IceIX

Clintman wrote:

-Warning WOW reference inc.-
When I took out Lich King on Heroic Mode I got incredible rewards, Joe Casual and his guild of casuals who took out the 10 man normal version did not get the same level of awesome rewards because he did not have to work as hard to get it. What you are doing now is making me fight at the cutting edge of character specialization, using team compositions that are not fun, but required for the same rewards that Joe Casual is getting.

Err, you got 271s instead of 253s. Hardly amazing. But point taken in any case.

Unknown

hibikir wrote:

The problem with increasing the levels is that there are two distinct kinds of fights in PVE, goon-only and real heroes.

Against goons, you might as well make the level be 1K, because a level 230 only means one thing: Do you have a team that can avoid ever getting hit? If you do have that team, the levels are not relevant, because as the game drags on, your AP stashes get bigger. I can farm 230s like that with a team that sports a level 83, a level 40, and a level 35, all with the right covers. If I survive the first 6 turns, I can't get hit. If I don't, I retreat before the first hit, go heal, and try again. All more levels do is make me grind more slowly.

Against, say, a Daken, the game is the same, but instead of needing this low team to succeed, One needs a Spiderman, and you do take a bit of damage before you put on the lock.

I'm going to be very interested in how this turns out, because I've been hypothesizing that there really isn't much difference for non-goons either... if your team can handle 3x230s you have some way of stunlocking, infinite comboing, or depriving AP so they can't use their abilities... so the only thing that really matters is if their match damage is so high that they're nigh-impossible to defeat, or if they get a lucky cascade. I think all that increasing levels to 400 will do as opposed to level 230s is let the enemy team live longer so they have more chances to happen upon a cascade, which doesn't sound like fun. I wonder if I'm right?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Clintman wrote:

-Warning WOW reference inc.-
When I took out Lich King on Heroic Mode I got incredible rewards, Joe Casual and his guild of casuals who took out the 10 man normal version did not get the same level of awesome rewards because he did not have to work as hard to get it. What you are doing now is making me fight at the cutting edge of character specialization, using team compositions that are not fun, but required for the same rewards that Joe Casual is getting.

Err, you got 271s instead of 253s. Hardly amazing. But point taken in any case.

so if you get the point about the rewards, is something going to be done?