Heroic Chapter 3 PVE Change

JamieMadrox

Twysta wrote:

Which nodes require HT?

The ones that have the red rings around them. One on top and two on bottom.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

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

Perhaps the reason the newbies don't finish as well as they start is because they don't understand how rubberbanding and point resets work yet so they aren't able to game the system.

Unknown

gobstopper wrote:

gamar wrote:

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

Perhaps the reason the newbies don't finish as well as they start is because they don't understand how rubberbanding and point resets work yet so they aren't able to game the system.

Or they are able to go nuts at the beginning with the buffed hero, but then scaling gets a hold of them and they hit a wall

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

gamar wrote:

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

Perhaps the reason the newbies don't finish as well as they start is because they don't understand how rubberbanding and point resets work yet so they aren't able to game the system.

Or they are able to go nuts at the beginning with the buffed hero, but then scaling gets a hold of them and they hit a wall

Luckily, this new PvE change has torn down that wall

Unknown

We are not even half way done yet...

JamieMadrox

I just noticed that in this last refresh one of my nodes went from Normal to Hard and the bad guys got a level boost. Somehow though the node is still worth less than most of my o0thers.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

We're trying out a change to help out scaling overall starting in Heroic Chapter 3, to go Live very soon.

- Smoothed scaling over all brackets of PVE rating so that players will see a more gradual bump on enemies

- Keep in mind that some pins will still be harder than others, this just makes the huge instant bumps less prevalent, although if you join on second one then come in 20 hours later, you should expect to see a change due to Community Scaling.

- Smoothed the route back down in PVE rating if you're losing in missions so that enemies will get easier quicker. We've put in brakes however so that you can't just retreat your way to easy-dom.
- Increased the maximum level of enemies from 230 to 400. >230 enemies are intended to only regularly be seen by those players that are already beating up on 230s.

Increasing the maximum enemy level allows us to provide more challenges for the players that are higher in overall roster level and not create a roadblock where those players that are beating down 230s with ease are making scaling work harder for all the other players who aren't there yet.


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: Yes mods, there's supposed to be a Shadow Topic in General that leads to Events for this. Don't kill it.

The moment I see a level 400 Daken or level 400 Lazy Daken; i'll be ready to say tinykitty to this game.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

kevind722 wrote:

Does this sound like communism to anyone else? Those who have more must work harder so that those that have less can reap the same benefits.

No, it's a way to fix an underlying issue. Players are abusing characters, ie. Magneto and Spidey in the PvE enviornment. But....in PvP they are not that big of an issue and most high level players dont use them in some cases because they are slow. It's much easier to adjust one enviorment than redesign a character, because players don't spend time or money in an enviornment, but they do on their characters and considering the heat they feel when characters are messed with, I see why they are trying this first.

How can you "abuse" characters that aren't allowed in certain events? I don't think spidey or magneto were allowed in the heroic Juggs event and they aren't allowed in the current Venom event either.

I also hate this idea that we "abuse" characters. We play with what we're given.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

morgh wrote:

And bottom line is:

Nothing we write here will make them change their mind - get used to high levels of enemies and people with weak rosters/new players grabbing everything...
Has there been a single time that D3 changed anything based on forum feedback?

...

Thought so...

Give the devs more credit. Anyone remember back when the skip tax was initially planned and they scrapped it entirely and changed it to the victory bonus?

And I still say it's rude to take our hard earned ISO away just because their MMR sucks. I hate trying to play a new PvP event and seeing 3 choices of battles against teams that are signifigantly higher than my team. I do well enough that I don't have to skip much, but I also retreat on purpose because I don't want to throw away any ISO. What about when you're in the top 10 of an event and you skip, only to be matched up against the same player? That's totally messed up and happens a lot.

NorthernPolarity

MikeHock wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

morgh wrote:

And bottom line is:

Nothing we write here will make them change their mind - get used to high levels of enemies and people with weak rosters/new players grabbing everything...
Has there been a single time that D3 changed anything based on forum feedback?

...

Thought so...

Give the devs more credit. Anyone remember back when the skip tax was initially planned and they scrapped it entirely and changed it to the victory bonus?

And I still say it's rude to take our hard earned ISO away just because their MMR sucks. I hate trying to play a new PvP event and seeing 3 choices of battles against teams that are signifigantly higher than my team. I do well enough that I don't have to skip much, but I also retreat on purpose because I don't want to throw away any ISO. What about when you're in the top 10 of an event and you skip, only to be matched up against the same player? That's totally messed up and happens a lot.

Yeah, but the point was that they had an original implementation of the skip tax. We didn't like it and offered a suggestion to make it feel better, and they took the suggestion and they did it. Whether or not the change was good to begin with doesn't really add anything to the original discussion, and should be discussed somewhere else. That being said, I love the skip tax: I'm getting so much more iso off the victory bonus in LRs and farming at low point totals than I am losing iso for skipping people.

LordWill

I've been stewing on this all night. I don't know why this issue bothers me more than any other issue in the game but community scaling really gets under my skin.

I guess I just don't like the fact that other people can affect my game and make it harder for me. It just rubs be the wrong way.

Now I am ALL for community scaling IF they put in Community rewards. Not just individual and alliance rewards but have a 3rd tab that was community rewards that are progression based. So since we are all lumped together and essentially affect each other, we should have something to work towards. To me this would make it a bit easier to swallow. I have asked what purpose does community scaling serve if you aren't rewarding us as a community? Why not just make it individual based scaling instead?

I understand they are trying to monetize the game more, I have absolutely no qualms about that. If they don't make money, there won't be a game but to punish players that strive to be better by making their roster stronger and more powerful (which is what they want us to do) makes no sense to me what so ever. Yes throwing a bunch of wet noodles (bad ideas) against a wall, some will eventually stick. Not because they are good ideas, its because if all you give them is 2 BAD limited choices, doesn't mean they like either one. It's just the lesser of two evils they are forced to live with. Again, try an in game poll. Heck for that matter, try a forum poll? See what your paying customers think? Always a smart move to know why your customer is spending money on your product/service...

After the PVE disasters that have plagued us in the past due to scaling issues and the slogging through the level 230 fights and the feedback of that wasn't very fun and at least IceIX acknowledging that it's not very fun, how can they honestly say that increasing the enemies will be fun? Please someone, help me to understand this. It's like smashing your hand with a hammer and saying ouch, that wasn't fun, then the doctor gives you a sledge hammer and say's "Here try this, this should be fun!"

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

MikeHock wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

morgh wrote:

And bottom line is:

Nothing we write here will make them change their mind - get used to high levels of enemies and people with weak rosters/new players grabbing everything...
Has there been a single time that D3 changed anything based on forum feedback?

...

Thought so...

Give the devs more credit. Anyone remember back when the skip tax was initially planned and they scrapped it entirely and changed it to the victory bonus?

And I still say it's rude to take our hard earned ISO away just because their MMR sucks. I hate trying to play a new PvP event and seeing 3 choices of battles against teams that are signifigantly higher than my team. I do well enough that I don't have to skip much, but I also retreat on purpose because I don't want to throw away any ISO. What about when you're in the top 10 of an event and you skip, only to be matched up against the same player? That's totally messed up and happens a lot.

Yeah, but the point was that they had an original implementation of the skip tax. We didn't like it and offered a suggestion to make it feel better, and they took the suggestion and they did it. Whether or not the change was good to begin with doesn't really add anything to the original discussion, and should be discussed somewhere else. That being said, I love the skip tax: I'm getting so much more iso off the victory bonus in LRs and farming at low point totals than I am losing iso for skipping people.

Yes, they ignored dealing with the actual problem; MMRs that suck and instead gave us an ISO bonus/tax.

Unknown

Here's a specific case I would like the devs to respond to.

Lately, a lot of the goon nodes have attacks that can either kill the entire party, or at least insta kill the hero in the forefront.

The only way to get past these nodes is to prevent them from attacking meaning if you win, you likely are not taking any damage.

Now let's say we have a board that has 2 of these nodes and the other nodes are random 240 lvl tough matchups, like doom, c mags, loki.

If you have a team that has the right board control to beat the snipers but cant win against the other nodes, what are you supposed to do?

the natural impulse would be to grind down the sniper nodes to 1 and use those to gain progress in the event and not bother playing the other nodes because they will be too expensive to give you useful points. but since damage taken effects level scaling, you will end up doing a disservice to yourself because your levels will just keep climbing.

Its been said a bunch of times but I dont want to throw my roster at really hard nodes and spend my health packs until my mmr comes down to a reasonable level.

the game is supposed to be based around ingenuity and tying to use strategy, the tools at your disposal, and the board you are given in order to place well in events.

Given the length of PvE and the rewards, PvP is way more lucrative. this change pushes the value proposition even more in favor of PvP.

I really think we should at least get diminishing MMR for not choosing to fight certain nodes. Not choosing to fight because you know it will be close to a guaranteed loss says a lot more than having the tools to beat a high level goon fight.

LordWill

davecazz wrote:

Here's a specific case I would like the devs to respond to.

Lately, a lot of the goon nodes have attacks that can either kill the entire party, or at least insta kill the hero in the forefront.

The only way to get past these nodes is to prevent them from attacking meaning if you win, you likely are not taking any damage.

Now let's say we have a board that has 2 of these nodes and the other nodes are random 240 lvl tough matchups, like doom, c mags, loki.

If you have a team that has the right board control to beat the snipers but cant win against the other nodes, what are you supposed to do?

the natural impulse would be to grind down the sniper nodes to 1 and use those to gain progress in the event and not bother playing the other nodes because they will be too expensive to give you useful points. but since damage taken effects level scaling, you will end up doing a disservice to yourself because your levels will just keep climbing.

Its been said a bunch of times but I dont want to throw my roster at really hard nodes and spend my health packs until my mmr comes down to a reasonable level.

the game is supposed to be based around ingenuity and tying to use strategy, the tools at your disposal, and the board you are given in order to place well in events.

Given the length of PvE and the rewards, PvP is way more lucrative. this change pushes the value proposition even more in favor of PvP.

I really think we should at least get diminishing MMR for not choosing to fight certain nodes. Not choosing to fight because you know it will be close to a guaranteed loss says a lot more than having the tools to beat a high level goon fight.

Dave, I think part of it is they do not play the game at our level. Sure a few of the dev team MIGHT play some(although playing on the dev server and playing on the live server are two totally different experiences), I see IceIX has a mid level roster but nothing over 100, so he may not be hit with scaling as much as other people. I think the other part of it is because they do not play and invest such time and money into their rosters as we do, they are basing these changes purely to increase their revenue and not really anything else. There isn't any rational reason why they are doing what they are doing other than for pure profit. Maybe their idea of fun and ours is WAY WAY different...

Unknown

I'm not that cynical, I do believe they want to make money and by all means that's great. I want the game to make money. but I also think they are doing their best to try and make it a fun game as well.

It's hard being in their position. like you said, they dont have anyone that plays at our level so they probably have no idea if we are wining about not be able to win as much as we used to vs us having a legit gripe.

but I think the best way to effect change is to communicate about it. The more airtime a given issue gets. the more likely something will be dont about it. The devs read these threads. The best we can do is keep providing good arguments in a rational matter so they don't think we are just blindly asking to make things easier because we feel entitled.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

The bottom line is that some of these changes that are being made have a theoretical purpose but they don't increase the fun factor of the game. Someone thinks that the game needs to present more "equal" matches to players and they are completely missing what makes the game fun.

Long drawn out matches are not fun.
Matches where I barely squeak past a victory but I need 3 healthpacks to recover is not fun
Winning 1 out of 3 matches is not fun.

Being on a roll where you feel like a hero winning 5 matches in a row is fun.

I seem to be a bit late to this and I agree with pretty much everything everyone has said so far. This is absolutely a horrible idea. I completely agree with this point right here. I'm not sure if you guys are trying to increase the revenue from us guys at the top with maxed characters being able to do 230x3 matches or what but It's not going to work. Raising the levels to make us take 10-15 min for every match so one mistake or bad board makes us lose our whole team in one attack is not refreshing or fun to us. It will also not make people buy more health packs iso and HP in order to win because we are already sitting at maxed characters. There is nothing to do but stop playing and never come back.

As many have said, community scaling needs to be dropped completely. The two main reasons for this are 1. If people see impossible nodes, they are not going to even try it, they are going to skip right over it and do ones they know they can do. and 2. Why the hell should my levels be pushed up (from already level 230x3) even more because some new guy is able to grind away his level 20 guys 5 times in 10 minutes with no problem. There shouldn't be any connection between me and other players. The other major thing is that everyone should start equally regardless of the placement in the previous events. This Is self explanatory.

The other thing that seems to be pretty horrible is the explanation of how scaling is determined. In the way it is now, there is absolutely no difference to the computer if I win a match with no damage or if I fight and claw my way to a win with all my guys one match away from death(but then heal right before the final blow.) The second match was not by any means easy. It took lots of careful planning and trying to figure out cascades and the right abilities to use at the right times in order to survive and heal at the end. But I will still be greeted by even higher leveled guys my next match. This is ridiculous. IF you want to have this crazy scaling You really need to up the stats tracking first. Keep track of the total damage delt, total turns taken, abilities used ect ect. Also, as someone else said, Goon battles are normally all or nothing. Either you win unscathed or you come out all horribly injured (or dead) from ONE flamethrower or rocket. This would have to be taken into account also.

Just my thoughts ATM on this thing, In the end it seems like the devs just go for the laziest fixes sometimes with no research or common sense if you actively play the game, If that's case, just make magnetos blue move appear on random tiles and make spideys stun cost 6 ap. I guarantee nobody will be reliably beating level 230 daken / bulls / ares nodes then, let alone level 400's!

morgh

I actually believe that all the arguments against community scaling and the shape of this current event etc. have already been raised... just need to wait now I guess

LordWill

davecazz wrote:

I'm not that cynical, I do believe they want to make money and by all means that's great. I want the game to make money. but I also think they are doing their best to try and make it a fun game as well.

It's hard being in their position. like you said, they dont have anyone that plays at our level so they probably have no idea if we are wining about not be able to win as much as we used to vs us having a legit gripe.

but I think the best way to effect change is to communicate about it. The more airtime a given issue gets. the more likely something will be dont about it. The devs read these threads. The best we can do is keep providing good arguments in a rational matter so they don't think we are just blindly asking to make things easier because we feel entitled.

I agree, I think they want to make a better fun game and my comments were to these specific changes being money related because there is no way on planet earth the changes could have been for the sake of fun.

Here's an idea, if they are hard pressed for ideas on how to make the game fun and exciting for higher level players or all players in general, maybe hold a contest. Top 3 ideas get some prizes.
Hold a contest for designing a PVE event, or a PVP event, or new mechanics etc. The possibilities would could be endless and I am sure a lot of people would contribute. Tap into the unlimited creativity of your playerbase, crazy right?

reckless442

davecazz wrote:

Here's a specific case I would like the devs to respond to.

Lately, a lot of the goon nodes have attacks that can either kill the entire party, or at least insta kill the hero in the forefront.

The only way to get past these nodes is to prevent them from attacking meaning if you win, you likely are not taking any damage.

Now let's say we have a board that has 2 of these nodes and the other nodes are random 240 lvl tough matchups, like doom, c mags, loki.

If you have a team that has the right board control to beat the snipers but cant win against the other nodes, what are you supposed to do?

the natural impulse would be to grind down the sniper nodes to 1 and use those to gain progress in the event and not bother playing the other nodes because they will be too expensive to give you useful points. but since damage taken effects level scaling, you will end up doing a disservice to yourself because your levels will just keep climbing.

Its been said a bunch of times but I dont want to throw my roster at really hard nodes and spend my health packs until my mmr comes down to a reasonable level.

the game is supposed to be based around ingenuity and tying to use strategy, the tools at your disposal, and the board you are given in order to place well in events.

Given the length of PvE and the rewards, PvP is way more lucrative. this change pushes the value proposition even more in favor of PvP.

I really think we should at least get diminishing MMR for not choosing to fight certain nodes. Not choosing to fight because you know it will be close to a guaranteed loss says a lot more than having the tools to beat a high level goon fight.

Dave, you make a great point. Let me use my last clear of the Deadly heroic to illustrate what you just described. I'm mostly running 141 Black Panther/141 Psylocke/89 Human Torch (boosted to 179). Clearing all the nodes yesterday was a slog, so my strategy today was just to clear enough nodes to score enough points to move to the top of my bracket. I mostly want a top-20 finish to get the two Steve Rogers' covers, which will finish my red and yellow build. So I focused only on nodes that were worth 550 or above (most were due to rubber-banding.) Then, I skipped every node that had three villains who could match tiles and only did two with two villains. I did one Bullseye/Yelena node and one Daken/Yelena node. Why? Because with boosts, I can usually take out one villain and typically take out the second before he or she can do much damage. However, for the most part, I did the nodes that had goons. My roster can survive one or two assault rifles -- though I then had to go to the prologue to heal -- but better yet, if I could stop the countdown attacks from triggering, I could avoid damage altogether. Meanwhile, I see no point to playing the 188 Rags/189 Daken/189 Bullseye node, even if it is worth 444 points, or the 160 Venom/Daken/Rags node, worth 395. Can I win those fights with this limited roster? Probably. But it's not worth the time or effort, or the cost/time needed to heal. And when those fights go up even higher due to community scaling -- without taking into account that many of us are just skipping them due to the annoyance factor -- the problem with those nodes get completely overlooked.

Twysta

Well I keep dying and my nodes aren't moving down from 260+ at all

Oh yey, they just dropped!

... to 245...