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

veny

Lol, what did you expect after giving new 4*s in TOP 100 - yes, people will grind or even exploit errors to get that - thats the point of placement rewards, isnt it?
Tho i wonder how doing a mission thousand times help - they get 1 point, or not?

astrp3

Am I missing something here? The difference between finishing 2-5 and finishing 4-10 (which IME, doesn't require such grinding) is one extra 4* cover. People are grinding a node a thousand times for one extra 4* cover? It hardly seems worth the effort.
Even if they're going for first, which hardly seems guaranteed, that's just 500 more ISO and an extra heroic/event token.

Or do they only do this for new character events? Even then, 1-2 is only two more covers than 11-20. Plus, with vaulting, even shooting for top 20 doesn't seem worth much effort, since you'll get the new characters fully covered in short order once they hit the store.

Maybe my limited experience with top 10 isn't typical and just doing clears 5-7 in the last hour won't get you top 10, but it did in the recent PvE that awarded Peggy covers, and I'd have thought that would have been one of the more competitive ones. Or maybe slice matters more than I thought?

TheDobot

Why not just have the nodes increase in difficulty endlessly? If people want to grind then they can, but eventually they won't be able to beat the nodes and a lot of health and health packs will be used.

chammidhan

I agree with most of the posters. The underlying problem will remain the same which is the PvP element of PvE gameplay. To fix such issues permanently, any PvP elements (rankings) should be removed from PvE. Rewards should be given based on reaching milestones which will get harder as we progress through an event. Not for placement.

Magic

This change doesn't affect me so I hardly care. I don't chase the top (last time I did was Captain Marvel and the pain is still there) and even then I would not grind the 1 point nodes.

For the problem that you have noticed this is clearly band-aid solution. Nothing great when you keep the 2* essential open. I would say - keep only the top essential (4*) and the hardest node open if something needs to be open. Or make them all 0 and deal with the many players getting max points. Or just increase the difficulty of all open nodes on each clear. There won't be many who can tackle 500+ opponents.

AlphaNik

fmftint wrote:

So instead of grinding a trivial node they'll grind a still ridiculously easy 2 essential

You guys REALLY need to get some input from the top pve players before making blind changes

Seems like they're trying to stop new player from grinding join forces nodes endlessy. I don't think a player with a decent rooster would choose a join forces node to grind his way to the top, the team combination in those nodes tend to be suboptimal. Newer player though may not even have the required 2* character. I don't know, just a thought.

Nick441234

I'm just astonished anyone cares enough about a mobile game to hit a node 1000 times. Do they ever leave the house?

Magic

nick_chicane wrote:

I'm just astonished anyone cares enough about a mobile game to hit a node 1000 times. Do they ever leave the house?

It's a mobile game - you can hit the nodes while driving the car, later at work or in school, under the table so your boss or teacher doesn't see it, during bathroom breaks (bad stomach again, John?), instead of you lunch break, on your way back, in the bathtub and while your wife is sleeping (easier if you don't have a wife and this game is helping in this regards if you are unfortunate to have one). MPQ is the name, grind is the game.

acescracked

alphabeta wrote:

Give up on competing PVE has been the call since you went to this system - this just makes the system less equal

But that's not a universal request. Many players don't mind competing PVE and understand going full progression may lead to overall less rewards.

Plus competing vs non compete isn't the topic here.

fmftint

nick_chicane wrote:

I'm just astonished anyone cares enough about a mobile game to hit a node 1000 times. Do they ever leave the house?

1 point nodes had been an issue for a long time but Thanos 3 and 5 has accelerated the grinding. Even litle Thanos does enough damage to wipe the ai in the trivial node in 1 turn
Load, make a match, aoe, victory, repeat

Pessi

What an incredible waste of time. Its been identified that people are doing it 1000's of times. So, you remove it from trivial nodes and increase it on non trivial nodes.

Just wait for a PvE with non trivial goon nodes - now you'd get double or triple the points for something you've decided to prevent.

It's half fix half fail.

Pants1000

I can see why the devs did this. They know what "perfect clears" should give, and a handful of people were scoring even higher. Have you ever done near-perfect clears and been beaten by 100-200 points? This is why. My guess is people have submitted complaints that those people were cheating, and when they looked into it they found they were grinding the easiest node hundreds of times.

Using the 2* essential to do the same thing may still be possible, but it will be much much more difficult.

I'm good with this change, even though the number of people affected is very small.

WEBGAS

Progression rewards only is the solution. Please aknowledge this

CrookedKnight

Pessi wrote:

What an incredible waste of time. Its been identified that people are doing it 1000's of times. So, you remove it from trivial nodes and increase it on non trivial nodes.

Just wait for a PvE with non trivial goon nodes - now you'd get double or triple the points for something you've decided to prevent.

It's half fix half fail.

The insistence on ignoring obvious optimizations is baffling sometimes, and this is one of those times. How could this possibly be considered an effective fix by anyone on the team when it doesn't even open a new loophole but leaves the existing one in place? Would the token exploit be "fixed" if it changed to be only usable with 5* pulls?

OneLastGambit

TheDobot wrote:

Why not just have the nodes increase in difficulty endlessly? If people want to grind then they can, but eventually they won't be able to beat the nodes and a lot of health and health packs will be used.

I actually suggested infinite scaling once before...not many people took to it very well.

OneLastGambit

Why take a half measure?

If you really don't want people grinding 1 node for 1 point 1000 times then make significantly less desirable to do so. All nodes except the final (and hardest) node reduce to zero. The final node reduces to 1 point but the scaling increases after every clear until either the player gives up or they smash their phone...or you know get a life instead.

Khanwulf

TheDobot wrote:

Why not just have the nodes increase in difficulty endlessly? If people want to grind then they can, but eventually they won't be able to beat the nodes and a lot of health and health packs will be used.

This would work. It's a "soft wall" that could be powered through based on roster strength--or not.

Otherwise... all nodes should hit zero, then harder ones regenerate from there; the first point should take at least an hour to show up. That would slow Thanos-bombing and deep roster clears alike.

I'd still like to see more intelligent matchmaking, perhaps adjusting scaling based on SCL... but be careful there, because SCL 7 is needed for 4* progression rewards and is one of the few non-random ways to advance the 4* roster open to transitioning players. (PVP is a waste of time.)

--Khanwulf

firethorne

Also, you should realize by now that this is a problem of your own making by how stingy you can be with rewards. You're on a schedule of releasing 4* and 5* new characters. Yet, for most events, you only give out 4* placement rewards to the top 10 out of 1000 players. How does that make sense? You've pushed the game into a 5* meta, and you will only give 4* placement rewards to 1% of players for a normal, non-release event. You've left people so starved for these resources, that bizarre desperation moves will be inevitable.

Sm0keyJ0e

Why not just have a cool down once the node has been ground to 1--it goes to zero, stays there for x minutes, and then starts to recharge again?

To me the problem seems to be that some people have the time and desire to grind endlessly. Having a cool down of 5 minutes, for example, where the node is worthless, would largely discourage this. At best someone can spend 2-3 hours getting a couple dozen points--unlikely event-changing. And if someone WANTS to do this, as unhealthy as it probably is (Dr. Joe here), more power to them.

bbigler

This entire problem is solved by simply removing placement rewards in PVE (like DDQ). In order to offset the loss of placement rewards, you can increase the progression rewards. Do this and we will all be happy and avoid burnout.