Heroic Chapter 3 PVE Change

Unknown

I remember when Oblivion came out circa 2006. There were many a tough enemies, so we leveled our hero up in order to become powerful enough to beat them. Except when we got to that level, the enemy was replaced with a more powerful version, and when you got even more powerful, it was replaced yet again. And everyone was all like "why the hell are we leveling our character for." Yeah good times that was... eight years ago. I feel like we've gone back in time.

reckless442

Regalis wrote:

I remember when Oblivion came out circa 2006. There were many a tough enemies, so we leveled our hero up in order to become powerful enough to beat them. Except when we got to that level, the enemy was replaced with a more powerful version, and when you got even more powerful, it was replaced yet again. And everyone was all like "why the hell are we leveling our character for." Yeah good times that was... eight years ago. I feel like we've gone back in time.

That brings back memories. You could kill vampires at level 1, but be killed by rats at level 50.

DaveCazz and Ben Grimm said most of what I was going to say, but I also think the developers fail to take into account the strategic use of boosts to avoid damage in these battles that essentially are one strike and you’re out. What seems fundamentally bizarre to me is the developers’ idea that if you don’t take massive damage, you are not being challenged by the game. That just isn’t true. There are plenty of times when I might come out seemingly unscathed, but only because I killed the last level 230 goon just before a flamethrower went off or I triggered a power to knock out level 230 Juggernaut before he could headbutt one of my guys into oblivion.

I’ll admit that I often use boosts as part of my strategy. But I don’t understand why spending on boosts before the battle to evade damage is something to penalize, whereas taking massive damage and paying for health packs means I’m playing the “right way.” It’s utter idiocy. The developers make money both ways. If they don’t want us to use boosts, don’t have them in the game. But don’t assume that, because I plan my attack, choose teams based on the environment, and tailor my boosts to the team, the game is not providing a challenge.

Unfortunately, I’m now paying the price for playing strategically. It took me two hours to do one clear of Heroic Venom because, without characters who can effectively control the board or generate AP (Modern Storm doesn’t live long enough), I had to keep going to the prologue to heal. Currently, I’m only facing level 159s as my max opponents, but I’ll be well past 230 by the end. If weren’t for my alliance, I’d just say tinykitty this PVE. It’s not fun to slog through these fights, knowing that, next time, the flamethrower I just barely survived will be even more powerful.

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...

That would be nice if there was an alternative to grinding through those 230s to progress.

I don't think the devs are taking into account the time factor for how much longer it takes "powerful" players to defeat a 230/230/230 node, and the lack of fun factor, and the limited rosters you're forced into to do it. I'm not THAT far removed from beating level 100-130s with some level 50 1 and 2* characters to know that was way more fun and not a grind, even if it was difficult and I could get wiped on occasion. If I Spideylock a 230/230/230 team I'm not going to get wiped and I'm not going to need to use a health pack, but it'll take forever and it's not fun, it's mechanical.

Unknown

The biggest problem with the scaling is this.
If I see a node that I think I can't beat I will NOT fight that node. So how does the scaling take that into account? It only seems to increase the difficulty when you win and lowers it when you lose. What happens when you simply stop playing because its gotten too hard?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

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.

So, to sum this up, anybody new to the game is now given a guaranteed top placement for their first PvE event. Afterwards individual ratings will have climbed high enough for those players to stand no chance in future PvE events against the next wave of new players. Long time players will be able to compete again once the game fails to attract any new players at all.

What did we do for D3P to hate us so much?

paralistalon

I hope what the devs are getting out of this thread is that they HAVE to start incentivizing being able to beat 230+ opponents or else no one will be motivated to continue with the game. I don't think anyone minds having to face a higher challenge, but when you get the same prize as a newcomer, it's like, what's the point? My own rating is skewed because if I see a level 230 team (especially if has Ares), I just won't even attempt it! This inflates my ratings, however, so I guess the best thing I should do is intentionally play and lose so I tank, which is the opposite of fun, IMO.

Twysta

I definitely have my gripes and IceIX has said that they're discussing the implementation of scaling the rewards - this can't come soon enough short of a giant mutiny (at least on the forum).

I suggest for one that as levels get higher, increase the chance of receiving one of the remaining rewards. It seems a lot more reasonable to fight a level 230.. well I guess the max will be 400 now, that you have a 100% chance of receiving the reward. So your reward chance scales with the levels. While it starts at 50 % - this can be frustrating enough as is for some players - that this gradually increases after something like level 100. Like an extra 5% every 6 levels from this point?

Or if you're feeling nice and generous even make it 100% to receive the reward once you hit level 300

I feel this would go a small way towards rectifying the situation.

Unknown

paralistalon wrote:

I hope what the devs are getting out of this thread is that they HAVE to start incentivizing being able to beat 230+ opponents or else no one will be motivated to continue with the game. I don't think anyone minds having to face a higher challenge, but when you get the same prize as a newcomer, it's like, what's the point? My own rating is skewed because if I see a level 230 team (especially if has Ares), I just won't even attempt it! This inflates my ratings, however, so I guess the best thing I should do is intentionally play and lose so I tank, which is the opposite of fun, IMO.

With no extra incentive to beat 230+ mobs at the beginning of each event break I out the old pen and paper and try and work out how to minimize the number of node I hit hence minimize the scaling. As we have win quickly in the final hour, for these non sub events, you have to try and keep your part of the scaling as low as possible. I used to enter events close to be begin but its now getting later and later. Until the last but one refresh I will not even do a node unless it is a maximum rubber band length so I can get the maximum number of points per win possible.

Alliance scores make it even easier to know where the leader is and with base node point values makes working out when to close the rubber band down depending where you want to place.

This game has become all about gaming the current system that's in place and not playing it.

Unknown

Twysta wrote:

I suggest for one that as levels get higher, increase the chance of receiving one of the remaining rewards. It seems a lot more reasonable to fight a level 230.. well I guess the max will be 400 now, that you have a 100% chance of receiving the reward. So your reward chance scales with the levels. While it starts at 50 % - this can be frustrating enough as is for some players - that this gradually increases after something like level 100. Like an extra 5% every 6 levels from this point?

I'd get rid of the whole randomness and either let people pick their reward or hand them out in a predefined sequence. Independent of the whole scaling fiasco, slightly upping the chance at receiving a pitiful reward instead of an insulting one for the effort spent isn't going to help with that. Given that the average time required for newcomers to finish an encounter seems to be around 1 minute at low risk to fail, for significantly enough scaled players 20 minutes at very high risk to fail, rewards should at least be increased up to a factor of 25 to get anywhere close to fair. Let's see, that would be 500 ISO for the dud, 6250 ISO for the average ** reward. Feels about on par, considering that you'll be boosting like crazy and spending a health pack or three, most likely several times without succeeding. Still not quite as good a payout as you would get for doing Lightning Rounds instead, so there's definitely room for more.

Unknown

I'm not getting any of these crazy levelled opponents (probably because I haven't levelled my roster past 85 even on 3* chars) but given the 'fun' experience of getting repeatedly smashed by 230's in the last event I can't imagine how unpleasant an experience lv400's must be.

Coming still fairly fresh to the game, I'm still not sure why the game should reward success (either in terms of wins/losses or PvE record) with making the game less enjoyable to play. As long as you're being matched in groups with people having similar level / covers characters in their roster I don't get why you shouldn't be rewarded for your ability to play the game better or pick better teams. If everyone was bracketed by their roster only, then scaling on the nodes wouldn't be necessary on the basis that everyone has a roughly equal chance of winning. Of course, some characters are 'more equal' than others - but thats a character balance issue rather than game engine issue.

The biggest single facing all games of this type is the 'power creep' that progression creates, and negating the self perpetuating cycle of winning = better rewards = more winning = big gap between top and bottom. I'm sure these changes are trying to address these two major issues, but it seems to be at the expense of a fun while better bracketing (even if it meant a small wait to join an event while brackets are being created) would solve many of the issues.

Unknown

I tried again this morning. Couldn't beat Level 60s yelena bullseye and venom because I have no desire to level wolverine to 85 and don't have enough covers for psy and panther and torch is just 1 1 1.
Tried 2nd node barely beat level 55 goons and got pissed how iwasn't having any fun so I think I am done with this event. I'll just play PvP and Diablo 3 and enjoy the break from grinding

mags1587

kerravon wrote:

The biggest problem with the scaling is this.
If I see a node that I think I can't beat I will NOT fight that node. So how does the scaling take that into account? It only seems to increase the difficulty when you win and lowers it when you lose. What happens when you simply stop playing because its gotten too hard?

Exactly. I don't think they take this into account, or if they do, it's not enough. Losing is not fun, so I'm going to avoid it as much as possible. In PvE, that usually means avoiding certain nodes after I clear them once. If I want to rack up points, I'm going to clear the nodes I know I can clear easily (i.e. all goon nodes with someone who can help control countdown tiles.)

Right now, my intro "Deadly" mission and 3 of my "Easy" missions are completely impossible with my roster. Of the missions in "Easy" that are possible, I'm still losing two or three times for every clear. If the intent of scaling is to give me enough of a challenge to make me want to spend money on this game, let me say, it's having the exact opposite effect for me right now.

Tharos

Thanks for this event, I needed it to take a break from this game!

I have a my mid-range roster: maxed 1*, maxed 5 of most of the "useful" 2*, but not hawkeye or bagman), a 1/1/1 torch and my 3* only have 2 or 3 covers. It's a real pain to advance in this event, even the "easy" one.

Opponent levels scale from about 40 (for the first nodes) to 90 at the last node. I can only do 3-4 missions at a time, before running out of health pack. There really is no fun in this event from me. It's really frustating to have all these wipe, and when I finally win a mission, there is no satisfaction, and very poor rewards: I know that a win is due to luck with cascade, and have nothing to do with my way of playing.
On the other hand, the simulator was a really nice event: the last nodes were challenging, but really fun. Event the wipe were fun, because I was so close to victory!
After a lot of wipe/health pack, I didn't notice a difference in difficulty. Shouldn't it be easier due to all my difficulties?

For information, I only cleared the first two nodes in deadly mode: level 90+ ennemies are way too difficult for my roster. (but it's ok. even if I managed to clear the deadly simulator or jugg heroic, I understand that I need more 3* to complete deadly mode).

So after a lot of frustration, I came to the conclusion that I'm done with this event, until the last refresh. I was really addicted to this game, because it was fun. Now, I'm done, the fun is gone. Good news, because doing only pvp will give me a lot of free time!
I really hope next pve event will be more fun.

Twysta

Yeah all my Heroic deadly nodes still look like they're 260+ for me.
Not sure I can do anything with that

Unknown

Tharos wrote:

For information, I only cleared the first two nodes in deadly mode: level 90+ ennemies are way too difficult for my roster. (but it's ok. even if I managed to clear the deadly simulator or jugg heroic, I understand that I need more 3* to complete deadly mode).

Your scaling seems to be pretty high. The topmost guy in my deadly bracket only has a few 1* and a single HT cover, he leads by more than 1000 points. You might actually need less 3* in order to stand a chance.

Twysta

Thinking about it, it doesn't make sense to me why they'd have a "deadly/hard" mode, when the fact is that the people who do best in this are the people with low level rosters.

Surely this harder mode is designed for people with better rosters hence why there are two seperate sections.
Instead I find this isn't the case and the guy on top of my 'deadly" bracket has 8 heroes in his roster the highest of which is a level 50 IM35.

When the first created 2 seperate brackets I thought this was a step forward but now it kind of plays on me a bit when.... meh nm

Unknown

Twysta wrote:

Thinking about it, it doesn't make sense to me why they'd have a "deadly/hard" mode, when the fact is that the people who do best in this are the people with low level rosters.

Surely this harder mode is designed for people with better rosters hence why there are two seperate sections.
Instead I find this isn't the case and the guy on top of my 'deadly" bracket has 8 heroes in his roster the highest of which is a level 50 IM35.

When the first created 2 seperate brackets I thought this was a step forward but now it kind of plays on me a bit when.... meh nm

It's early in the event. Every PvE we get a bunch of people complaining in the first half that most of their top tier are newbies and concluded from this that the newbies are winning everything!

but in my experience I've noticed by the last 12 hours of the event they're all gone except for maybe one or two guys riding a buffed hero on the (lower-scaled) essential nodes

Twysta

From my experience those newbies normally litter my top 10 at the end...
Normally I'm on top though

I'm just disappointed that my levels are so high.
I just heard some peoples nodes dropped from 260 to 72 though, alas... not for me

JamieMadrox

gamar wrote:

but in my experience I've noticed by the last 12 hours of the event they're all gone except for maybe one or two guys riding a buffed hero on the (lower-scaled) essential nodes

I'm riding a buffed HT right now to #1 in my bracket. I doubt that this will keep over the next few days, but it was surprisingly easy to jump back to the top this morning after the nodes refreshed.

That said, the buffed HT means I can complete the nodes that require him which are worth big points. Even now with 10k+ points one of them is worth 120, one worth 90, and one worth 88. Some of my regular nodes are in the high double digits too and only two are at 1.

Twysta

Which nodes require HT?
I can't even get past the 2nd node...