Damage to enemies should persist in heroic mode

Unknown

I understand heroic mode is meant to be hard, but it's really discouraging to have battles that you might not be able to beat at all without loading up on boosts. If damage persists, that'd mean you can at least take multiple tries to beat something. Yes some guys might just retreat when their character is down to 1/2 and then heal up in prologue, but I thought we have scaling to counter that. Even if not, it seems to me you'd be spending a ton of time if you have to retreat whenever a character is down to 1/2 (which would take very little time in a hard fight). Although I don't like extended playing without a good reason, even this would be preferable to the 'only play at the end', and if enemies take permanent damage it'd definitely help to play earlier (any damage you do ahead of time is a bonus) on hard fights. While this is just putting a band-aid on the underyling balance problems of the game, I'd think having this band-aid would at least make some of the rather cheap heroic missions at least tolerable when you know the damage you do is permanent, at least when Daken and lieutenant isn't on the other side.

Arogntbastrd

Makes sense, like when you got 3 chances in pvp sometimes I'd try to take on teams I probably wouldn't beat bc I could always just try again. This was incredibly unfair to the higher ranked players but if you're just beating up goons who cares? They have no feelings bc their parents didn't love them

wirius

Then there would have to be another way to evaluate points so that people who beat it within the first try got more. The game isn't designed for you to win. Its competitive. Its designed for you to lose, with your job to triumph over it better than all the other players.

Unknown

It's an interesting idea. I can see the potential for abuse there, though. Before my last run, I would whittle down all the nodes and then retreat before killing the last enemy. Then at the buzzer I could get a full clear of the entire board in no time flat, allowing me to time my run even closer to the end for max rubberbanding and a massive head start on the final grind.

Nemek

walkyourpath wrote:

It's an interesting idea. I can see the potential for abuse there, though. Before my last run, I would whittle down all the nodes and then retreat before killing the last enemy. Then at the buzzer I could get a full clear of the entire board in no time flat, allowing me to time my run even closer to the end for max rubberbanding and a massive head start on the final grind.

I was just about to post the exact same thing. There would have to be some other sort of considerations to prevent that sort of thing...

Unknown

Good point about saving this for the end, so how about just make damage on enemy heal if you go to any other node? At most you can have one mission banked ahead of time, and I don't think it's unreasonable to have a slight edge for people planning way ahead. This would also eliminate the ability to retreat and then heal up in prologue (that counts as a different node).

DD-The-Mighty

wirius wrote:

Then there would have to be another way to evaluate points so that people who beat it within the first try got more. The game isn't designed for you to win. Its competitive. Its designed for you to lose, with your job to triumph over it better than all the other players.

You must love the lottery and going to casinos.
Rubber-banding? Scaling? leader-board completely negating progression rewards? Poorly designed nodes to make it "more of a challenge" to the smaller top end set? The competitive nonsene in PVE is the primary cause of almost all of the constant issues.
But then its crack to folks like you. For some of us, not so much.

walkyourpath wrote:

It's an interesting idea. I can see the potential for abuse there, though. Before my last run, I would whittle down all the nodes and then retreat before killing the last enemy. Then at the buzzer I could get a full clear of the entire board in no time flat, allowing me to time my run even closer to the end for max rubber-banding and a massive head start on the final grind.

Simple: a retreat is a forfeit. It' not a loss. exactly like how they do now, in regards to the PVE MMR lowering. Only total losses count.

Unknown

How about the game over screen gives 2 options: retreat or retry.

Retreat acts as the continue button normally does. Enemy health goes back up and you return to the mission screen.

Retry allows you to jump back into the fight right away. Enemy health is the same where it left off. However, you cannot heal and have to choose new heroes. This promotes roster diversity and prevents brute force through infinite health packs. If you try to back out, the enemy healths are restored.

An alternative to not allowing to heal would be to allow health packs but points are reduced for every retry. So you can effectively get as many tries as you want, but you still want to avoid it for maximum points.

Unknown

walkyourpath wrote:

It's an interesting idea. I can see the potential for abuse there, though. Before my last run, I would whittle down all the nodes and then retreat before killing the last enemy. Then at the buzzer I could get a full clear of the entire board in no time flat, allowing me to time my run even closer to the end for max rubberbanding and a massive head start on the final grind.

I think a way to counter this is to make winning on subsequent try worth significantly less point. Like how they had it before with PVP. On second and third try you get a lot less point than winning on first go.

Unknown

Justdangit wrote:

I think a way to counter this is to make winning on subsequent try worth significantly less point. Like how they had it before with PVP. On second and third try you get a lot less point than winning on first go.

Yep, we had similar system on PVP. It sucked bigtime. It's gone and good riddance. It just must not grow back.

And I don't get OP's idea at all -- why on earth should everyone be able to beat every node in a PVE, and even hands down without bothering to use up boosts?

Come on!

This game is supposed to be about progression -- so having better roster and better skills resulting in winning more battles and gain more points. Without all the "compensation" measures that ruin it, it would make way more sense and fun.

Unknown

Even easier counter would allow for enemies to regen over time - like the one time your team was about to take damage from a countdown so you retreated instead of dying completely. When you go back in they aren't all at 8-10k anymore

But you also couldn't knock everything down to under 1k and retreat

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

If damage persists, that'd mean you can at least take multiple tries to beat something.

I'm not sure I like the idea. This approach basically means you can beat any node, you just need to throw enough backup troops or health packs at it. Takes away the challenge, there's really no need to play good any more. Galactus still up after attempt number 30? No problem, Yelena, Bagman and Hawkeye next please, your turn to whittle down another 50 health.

I'd rather see persistent health loss and downing removed, all fights start at full health. That would make scaling a lot less harsh and lead to players actually attempting the impossible fights they are getting. Make health packs a health buff instead, so they still have their use.

MarvelMan

There is definitely an issue with the scaling creating some fights that just arent worth attempting. Part of that is the min/maxing where we find the weakness and exploit it, but part of it is the lack of reward (aside from tourney points) driving us to try everything.

Personally, I like the idea of persistent health loss unless you use a health pack or play another node/event/match. I can see that on some of the really tough ones you might throw in B-team to whittle some health off before returning with your A-team, but that would be fighting twice for one reward so I see no problem in leaving the same reward for those who beat it one off versus the chain strategy.

Unknown

I think most people aren't actually fighting the missions I'm talking about here. This isn't about letting everyone win or whatever. The harder missions of this heroic mode for higher scaling people are borderline impossible. You pretty much don't even have a shot at them without boosts because you need about twice the health that can be obtained in the game to outlast Daken. And by boosts we're talking about +3 AP all or even the ultra expensive +50% damage to all moves ones. If you need things that cost HP then using health packs (which also cost HP) would simply be another option to tackle on content that pretty much requires HP expenditure.

Currently a mission like Interference featuring level 260 (or higher) Daken/Venom/Ragnrok is something you would never attempt without full boosts. If you throw your B team at it you'd be lucky to take 2000 HP off anyone before Daken rolled over your team. This is a mission where you can't even expect to reliably down one guy let alone trying to down Daken, so right now nobody on the higher end of scaling will attempt this without full boosts, and even with full boosts it's a huge risk and you're probably better off sticking to HT missions. But you shouldn't have an event with 15 nodes and you only do 4 of them because everything else is too hard. Right now you don't really have a choice, but if damage is persistent, you can at least try the harder nodes.

Dayv

If this was implemented, scaling would just go even higher to compensate.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

If this was implemented, scaling would just go even higher to compensate.

That depends on what you think the purpose of scaling is. If it's to slow down the point gain and increase damage taken, I disagree. If it is to make a mission completely unbeatable, I agree however I think it's odd to want such a thing.

Unknown

Scaling seems to be done purely on a number of win basis. That is, beating an easy mission 5 times seems to have the same effect on your scaling as beating Interference 5 times.

So if you can burn health packs to beat a harder mission that'd actually reduce the scaling, since a mission like Interference is worth a lot of points too. Right now I'm quite certain anyone on the high end of scaling is just doing the 3 HT required missions + 2 goons only mission because those are the only ones that are remotely beatable. After first pass of the HT required mission they'd all be lower than Interference, and the 2 goons only missions are significantly lower than Interference. But even with scaling and lower points, there's really no reason to attempt Interference where you have like a 1% chance to win without boosts and maybe 10% with boosts. I don't know if persistent damage will make me want to do Interference instead, but at least I'll think about it.

wirius

Again, this game is designed around being competitive. Its not designed around you being able to beat all nodes, as this cuts down on grinding. If some people can't beat all nodes, that means the people who CAN beat them, don't have to grind as much to stay in position.

Its called moving the bar, here's an example

Lets say there are 30 nodes, and the middle percent can only beat 15. That means to be in the top half, you just need to beat all nodes once.

Now lets say all people can beat all 30 nodes. How do you separate the top half from the bottom half? You go for grinding. You require those who want to finish top, to do even MORE node grinding.

And the guys in the middle now have to do 30 missions to get the middling prizes, instead of 15 like before.

Its all about ensuring the game isn't a grind, while still allowing differing placements. If you aren't addressing this point in your argument, your missing the mark in the discussion.

DD-The-Mighty

pasa_ wrote:

Justdangit wrote:

I think a way to counter this is to make winning on subsequent try worth significantly less point. Like how they had it before with PVP. On second and third try you get a lot less point than winning on first go.

Yep, we had similar system on PVP. It sucked bigtime. It's gone and good riddance. It just must not grow back.

And I don't get OP's idea at all -- why on earth should everyone be able to beat every node in a PVE, and even hands down without bothering to use up boosts?

Come on!

This game is supposed to be about progression -- so having better roster and better skills resulting in winning more battles and gain more points. Without all the "compensation" measures that ruin it, it would make way more sense and fun.

if this game is so about progression, why have most to all progression elements been systematically nerfed? (LR rewards, Loss of multiple cover opportunities to the general population, Scaling to ensure no matter what level you are you will be stacked heavily to lose. etc.)

wirius wrote:

Again, this game is designed around being competitive. Its not designed around you being able to beat all nodes, as this cuts down on grinding. If some people can't beat all nodes, that means the people who CAN beat them, don't have to grind as much to stay in position.

Its called moving the bar, here's an example

Lets say there are 30 nodes, and the middle percent can only beat 15. That means to be in the top half, you just need to beat all nodes once.

Now lets say all people can beat all 30 nodes. How do you separate the top half from the bottom half? You go for grinding. You require those who want to finish top, to do even MORE node grinding.

And the guys in the middle now have to do 30 missions to get the middling prizes, instead of 15 like before.

Its all about ensuring the game isn't a grind, while still allowing differing placements. If you aren't addressing this point in your argument, your missing the mark in the discussion.

Yet you ignore that there is already a crapton of grind as it is. the last 2 hours of the PVE events are the worst.

wirius

And your change would only make it worse DD. Cool idea in theory, but in practice, it would be against the design of the game.