Updates to Story Mission Minimum Points (3/28/17)

Punisher5784

Or you can simply expand the placement rewards so players wouldn't feel forced to grind 1pt nodes to maintain T10. It's ridiculous that the 4* still isn't for the T100.

Jaedenkaal

I agree with many of the posters here. The logical conclusion that is being revealed here is that it is the existence of placement rewards in PVE, not the minimum number of points per node, that encourages "unhealthy" ("optimal") play behavior. Changing the minimum number of points a node is worth only creates a new "optimum" way to get the most number of points, to continue to win the placement rewards.

ClydeFrog76

Another band-aid on a gaping wound.

Killians8

If the goal was to make play more healthy, then reducing the minimum to zero on all nodes would be the minimum place to start. As long as any nodes offer any points, it incents the addicts to continue to grind for those points.

ZeroKarma

I consider myself a top PvE player and this is an elegant way to ensure an added level of stress to every event.

I always hit one pointers, though not generally 1,000 times. That's annoying.

As high level players know, there are two "strategic" elements to PvE. The first is clearing each node 4x as fast as possible in a specific order to maximize points 22 hours later.

The second element is to clear said nodes 3x and try to finish with a minimum amount of time left in the sub. Now, it's not always easy to gauge how long those clears will take. (I'm looking at you Venom Bomb) If you finish early, however, you can clear the easy nodes for a few points and then grind the super easy node to try and maintain placement in the last 5-10 minutes.

Now, if you make a mistake on your clearing speed and you are TOO FAST you will be penalized. That doesn't make a whole ton of sense.

A general revamp of the prize and event structure really needs to happen when we get to this point of micromanaging every little player habit aimed towards higher placement.

hodayathink

It's fairly easy to see that the reason they left the other nodes unlocked is that they consider them high enough that they aren't super-easy targets. the easiest one would be the 2* essential, and I want to say that caps out at lvl 177 or so. In other words, they wanted the ones with points left to be hard enough that beating them that many times would still require health packs (as long as they weren't all goon nodes).

As to the overarching problem, they've already said that they're working on tying difficulty to CL instead of roster, so until that rolls out we're stuck with what we have now.

matthatter

I posted a long time ago - I think it was in the testing phase of EotS for the new play model - a simple solution to the placement prizes, especially for new releases.

Have a Vault of 150 - 300 rewards.
In the Vault have your smattering of covers, tokens, Iso, HP, etc. On new releases, put 3 covers in there - one of each color.

In each sub event have your 9 primary nodes able to be cleared 6 (per 24 hours. on 48 hour subs they reopen for another 6 clears... or just get rid of 48 hour subs) times and lock it. Once a node is closed, get a vault token. After clearing all 9 nodes get a 10th vault token.

This way people can play throughout the day, they won't feel as though they have to sacrifice their families, work, or pets on new release events and still have chances to nab new releases when they are ... released. Also, folks who spend lots of money on the game can clear the vaults and refresh them if they so choose and clear them again if they want.

I see this as a win for everyone who plays from new players to Vets. Me, I tend to spend HP trying to get covers I want when they are in the Vaults (heck, I just bought 2 10 packs on a taco vault trying to get that Teen Jean Green I need to champ her! Side story, 150 tokens total opened and I didn't get her. Sad Panda.)

But, that is just my uninformed opinion.

ZeroKarma

Not to beat a dead horse again, but we all know the answer to this damn problem. It's progression PvE.

I still want all the prizes, so continue with the requirement of hitting a node 6x. Once all nodes have green check marks, you unlock the next sub.

Maybe you clear the whole event in one day. Who cares?

No stress. No timers. Use difficulty as the gate to the rewards, and base the difficulty on the Clearance Level.

Done. Everyone loves it unless you have the **** rewards provided by the Gauntlet now.

So you lose revenue on health packs, but you gain goodwill. Hell, I would bet you that people would pay an entry fee for those events if you want a way to replace the revenue.

Uthgarprime

I am so glad this is such a priority. I will bet any amount of money they fix the token exploit bug before they fix the crash bug which has been going on so long I forgot when it started. Had it happen twice in about 30 minutes. I really wish I had worked for this company when I was a programmer, I would never have to worry about losing my job no matter how bad I was at it.

drayviper32

Great change! Thanks!!!

Mordee

Grinding 1 pt node, reminds me of Cartman and company killing boars in the Warcraft Episode.

I wish they would just set the placement like progression. Reach this point, you get all of this. No more grinding, just play as you go.

snlf25

So basically you guys decided to treat a symptom caused by poor design with yet another alienating non fix? Gotcha. If somebody is grinding a node a thousand **** times it isn't because he wants to, it's because the poor addicted son of a **** feels he has to to get the prize he wants from your stingy ****. Let pve be pve and get rid of the placement prizes. Stop acting all gobsmacked when people literally risk their health and lives trying to succeed in this **** system. You still have people play in traffic ffs.

Borstock

People play a mission 1,000 times?!!!! They can have the higher reward. That's insanity.

zodiac339

Okay then. I did this on Venom Bomb run. Just tagged the first trivial node on day one. I figured that's the only reasonable time to do it. Some people say "The 2-star node isn't that hard," but even when it isn't hard, it's worth 3 times that of the trivial or more and requires considerably more effort in grinding to make up from the points lost from allowing the mission to regenerate. From what I saw in Venom Bomb, even the 2-star mission was worth more than the final non-essential mission. The number of people who will actually (or did) grind out those tiny points should be whittled down a decent amount.
I would appreciate a fully progress-based system as much as others, but the D3 answer to that seems to be the much stupider difficulty with much worse rewards of Gauntlet, or the intense play of Boss events requiring not just personal stregth, but strong allies to get through. Decreasing the viability of grinding is at least a step forward.

xavierixeq

Maybe it's an early April fools joke.

GrumpySmurf1002

killerkoala wrote:

they tried that once and had to give high placement prizes to like 250 places for 1000 peeps, if i rememeber right

They tried it with no regeneration, which led to ties, which led to placement. Different than what I'm suggesting.

rc35

Brigby wrote:

• The 3 harder missions will be worth 1, 2, and 3 points respectively. • The 2-Star, 3-Star, and 4-Star missions will be worth 1, 2, and 3 points respectively.

Hopefully in these two points Brigby meant "missions will be worth minima of 1, 2, and 3 points respectively", otherwise it totally changes PvE!

hodayathink

ZeroKarma wrote:

Not to beat a dead horse again, but we all know the answer to this damn problem. It's progression PvE.

I still want all the prizes, so continue with the requirement of hitting a node 6x. Once all nodes have green check marks, you unlock the next sub.

Maybe you clear the whole event in one day. Who cares?

No stress. No timers. Use difficulty as the gate to the rewards, and base the difficulty on the Clearance Level.

Done. Everyone loves it unless you have the tinykitty rewards provided by the Gauntlet now.

So you lose revenue on health packs, but you gain goodwill. Hell, I would bet you that people would pay an entry fee for those events if you want a way to replace the revenue.

So you want the return of "You're supposed to lose" then? Because if they're going to gate rewards based on difficulty, then that's what's going to happen without a doubt.

Pongie

To be honest, I have to admit to farming the 1 point node during the Medusa release event. It was because our alliance is named after her and I wanted to get the #1 spot. Several of our alliance members did the same but I don't think anyone went as far as to farm thousands of points. It was perhaps 2-3 hours top for a couple of hundred points. Just enough to catapult us some somewhere within top 10 to top spot. Taking this to the extreme for thousands of outs if insane and that effort should be rewarded. Unless of course, this was achieved through some sort of botting

GurlBYE

It's bad design, face it, accept it and improve it (hint this is not how you improve it)