Poll: What are the most important things to fix for scaling?

Unknown

The PvE scaling carries from round to round because it doesn't scale up fast enough. You pretty much need the level 300+ stuff to even slow down the top end players and that'd be pretty insane scaling if your nodes hit level 300 after one day, which is what it'd have to do for 2 day sub brackets that reset at the end.

Right now the scaling encourages you to grind early to build a lead while the scaling is still low, since community scaling seems to inexorably take everyone out of the game. I don't think that's a bad thing since there should be value to playing early.

The most important issue is still balance because the scaling gets out of control when everyone is beating everything. There also needs to be balance on the opposite end, namely Daken is no ways comparable to the rest of the DA crew when you're looking at level 200+ enemies.

Nighthawk81

I voted for the community scaling and a few miscellaneous items that I have now forgotten when I hit reply. I just recently maxed out my first two star and have been able to beat some of the nodes with goons/DA at level ~90. But that is pretty much my limit without wasting boosts and health packs, which I am not going to do. I wish this would happen on day 8 of a 9 day PVE, but it is hitting me now on day 5, so I pretty much won't be able to play after today, which sucks because I love this game and want to build up my ISO.

Oh well,I guess I can just focus on PVP until the next PVE.

_RiO_

Jdberia wrote:

Oh well,I guess I can just focus on PVP until the next PVE.

Have fun inflating your MMR and facing Lvl 141 opponents.
(Yeah, PvP has its own version of 'scaling' and has had it for a good deal longer than PvE. Broken since its inception as well, similar to PvE scaling.)

Nighthawk81

_RiO_ wrote:

Jdberia wrote:

Oh well,I guess I can just focus on PVP until the next PVE.

Have fun inflating your MMR and facing Lvl 141 opponents.
(Yeah, PvP has its own version of 'scaling' and has had it for a good deal longer than PvE. Broken since its inception as well, similar to PvE scaling.)

Yeah, unfortunately, it is either that or just quit playing.

reckless442

Phantron wrote:

The PvE scaling carries from round to round because it doesn't scale up fast enough. You pretty much need the level 300+ stuff to even slow down the top end players and that'd be pretty insane scaling if your nodes hit level 300 after one day, which is what it'd have to do for 2 day sub brackets that reset at the end.

Right now the scaling encourages you to grind early to build a lead while the scaling is still low, since community scaling seems to inexorably take everyone out of the game. I don't think that's a bad thing since there should be value to playing early.

The most important issue is still balance because the scaling gets out of control when everyone is beating everything. There also needs to be balance on the opposite end, namely Daken is no ways comparable to the rest of the DA crew when you're looking at level 200+ enemies.

How do we know that the final day nodes won't be significantly more valuable? That commonly occurs, wiping out the benefits from early leads.

The problem with grinding early is that it basically means you can't grind at all later. Matches against 300+ level opponents take too long and require you to fight two battles in the prologue for every one you fight in the sub. Coupled with a rubber-banding system that rewards playing at the end of sub-events, players facing scaled opponents cannot compete fairly against newbies. Meanwhile, new players join all the time, have no idea about scaling, and grind away -- thereby increasing the effect of scaling on everyone else.

Admittedly, I'm annoyed that I finished 11th in a sub yesterday because I to skip the highest-value node after wiping out twice against it. That also means to try to keep up with the scores, I have to grind the lower-value nodes more than I would like, which, in turn, increases scaling. Dying didn't affect my levels at all, either.

Frankly, I resent the idea that playing optimally -- minimizing damage, controlling the board, preventing opponents from using their AP powers -- is considered anything other than good play. Last night, I took on a team with 395 Ares/Venom/Bullseye and beat them, but the only way to do that was using boosts and ensuring that nobody used a power. I never used Spidey. I used Classic Mags and managed to win with only one of my team suffering half his health in damage and another being hit for about 20%. I managed to kill Venom, Ares, and Bullseye in that order, each on the turn immediately before they would have used a one-kill power. Had I made a misstep or the board been different, my team would have been slaughtered. Yet, for scaling purposes, the game will assume I wasn't challenged enough and need an harder opponents in the future. Instead it's better for me to throw out a bunch of tanks who will take a lot of damage, ignoring that other teams would be more effective and efficient. That makes no sense and completely contravenes the concept of having differentiated powers.

Unknown

So far it seems like community scaling is quite inexorable. I'm sure not seeing scores in sub bracket that'd indicate that some really lucky guy is somehow able to avoid scaling and completely blow the field away. If you assume after a certain point (say level 300) the missions are effectively impossible, then you might as well try to get the points before all the missions inexorably goes up to level 300 from community scaling.

I haven't been doing as good on my sub brackets but that's mostly because I have less time too. I saw some really low numbers for overall leader on Savage Land, which has the highest level out of the 3 brackets, so it sure looks like everyone else is slowed down as well. Now as to whether missions might be worth more at the end, sure that has happened but that's actually not that important if scaling catches up first. It doesn't matter if there's a 10000 point mission at the end if it's level 400 for everyone by the time you get there. Of course the question to ask is that is it possible something that is just easy enough for someone who didn't grind earlier to beat that is unbeatable for someone who grinded earlier? But so far in the scaling events I've seen, the community scaling sure seems to catch up quite quickly. In The Hunt I'd see a mission at say the high 100s jump to the low 200s within an event, and that's a considerable jump in difficulty such that it is beneficial to do it while it is still in high 100s (for less points) rather than not being able to do it at all later.

Unknown

I have tried to vote for too many options.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

The PvE scaling carries from round to round because it doesn't scale up fast enough. You pretty much need the level 300+ stuff to even slow down the top end players and that'd be pretty insane scaling if your nodes hit level 300 after one day, which is what it'd have to do for 2 day sub brackets that reset at the end.

Right now the scaling encourages you to grind early to build a lead while the scaling is still low, since community scaling seems to inexorably take everyone out of the game. I don't think that's a bad thing since there should be value to playing early.

The most important issue is still balance because the scaling gets out of control when everyone is beating everything. There also needs to be balance on the opposite end, namely Daken is no ways comparable to the rest of the DA crew when you're looking at level 200+ enemies.

See, that's why community scaling is the problem. If everyone grinds harder to try to get a lead (which I will give you for this one, that the placements seem to be fairly static after each subs, but I'm not sure I agree with for other PvE events), then the community scaling goes up even faster. It's a vicious cycle

Especially if they grind multiple times to get 110% of the same points that rubber banding would give.

Unknown

I'd really like to know why community scaling is even necessary. If a player chooses to grind a node or finds it a breeze to get through, let he/she be individually penalized with a higher scale, not everyone else.

I've heard someone speculate once that community scaling is used to prevent players from jumping in at the end of an event and snatch up nodes at really low levels. Wouldn't their PvE rating be used to appropriately adjust the node difficulty? And if that presents a problem, why not apply a community scaling multiplier only once at the time of their starting entry to set their difficulty? This would help discourage players from purposefully starting late.

Bacon Pants

Community scaling is just downright stupid. Alienating part of your playing base makes no sense at all...unless the goal is a high turnover rate. If so, community scaling is working as intended. Fighting anything over a level 250 is not enjoyable...if it is for you, then you are a masochist.

Individual scaling I am fine with...but tweaks need to be made to it. Punishing players for using boosts that are provided in game is counterproductive. Just like punishing players for beating a match while taking minimal damage is. I would be perfectly fine with scaling having a direct correlation to my average roster level. (or something of the sort) I don't understand why this cannot be the norm. Most rpg's work like this, and this game has a handful of rpg elements when building your characters. As you progress in leveling up your characters, then the opponent difficulty should follow suit.

Spoit

Spoit wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The PvE scaling carries from round to round because it doesn't scale up fast enough. You pretty much need the level 300+ stuff to even slow down the top end players and that'd be pretty insane scaling if your nodes hit level 300 after one day, which is what it'd have to do for 2 day sub brackets that reset at the end.

Right now the scaling encourages you to grind early to build a lead while the scaling is still low, since community scaling seems to inexorably take everyone out of the game. I don't think that's a bad thing since there should be value to playing early.

The most important issue is still balance because the scaling gets out of control when everyone is beating everything. There also needs to be balance on the opposite end, namely Daken is no ways comparable to the rest of the DA crew when you're looking at level 200+ enemies.

See, that's why community scaling is the problem. If everyone grinds harder to try to get a lead (which I will give you for this one, that the placements seem to be fairly static after each subs, but I'm not sure I agree with for other PvE events), then the community scaling goes up even faster. It's a vicious cycle

Especially if they grind multiple times to get 110% of the same points that rubber banding would give.

You brought up Simulator in the other thread, I was #2 behind you in the last run of that. Sure you had a comfortable 6k point lead, but I was able to get 2nd fairly easily by just doing a clear, and then the essentials in the last hour, without killing my own scaling, much less everyone else's

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

You brought up Simulator in the other thread, I was #2 behind you in the last run of that. Sure you had a comfortable 6k point lead, but I was able to get 2nd fairly easily by just doing a clear, and then the essentials in the last hour, without killing my own scaling, much less everyone else's

You mean Unstable Isotope? That event had no checkpoints like most events so you can definitely wait until the end and not worry about scaling. In Simulator Basic, the two guys ahead of me never relinquished that lead after round 1.

It's difficult to say how the point structure will work since it varies from event to event but The Hunt actually favors the early grinders since community scaling can literally take a mission out of reach while you're waiting for the rubberband modifier to kick in. In this particular event you can be within 1000 points of the eventual #1 in a sub bracket even if you played all your games before the 2 hour to end mark, which means there's actually enough incentive to grind early if you think scaling is likely to take some missions completely out of the realm of beatable during an event. For example Bullseye 3 started at around 350 and ended at 395. While my scaling is obviously way higher than rest, it looks like people do see similarly crazy numbers relative to their roster strength, so it might make sense to go for it at 350 if you figure that nobody's actually going to beat it at 390 later. Of course you can easily guess wrong but nobody said it's guaranteed to work.

At least based on The Hunt, I'd say currently you'd expect the community scaling to overpower everyone at around where we're at, so it is actually meaningful to think about when you should make an early push before community scaling brings everyone's progress to a halt. As community scaling gets higher, it is increasing hard to have a breakaway bracket, which makes the early lead all the more valuable.

Unknown

Knock3r wrote:

I'd really like to know why community scaling is even necessary. If a player chooses to grind a node or finds it a breeze to get through, let he/she be individually penalized with a higher scale, not everyone else.

.

So >everyone< faces a paywall more often.

Eddiemon

Toxicadam wrote:

There's no, "The system is mostly fine." option.


That's what I would pick.

It's always the sign of a good poll when you give no options that disagree with your world view...

Eddiemon

Scaling exists so that events are not solely determined by how much time you have on your hands. That would be the biggest disincentive for most of the paying playerbase.

Sure, it's great for those who thing playing for free is some noble endeavour, and that their time advantage should give them an in game advantage. But the issue is that they don't actually contribute anything to keepiong the lights on and the game running. So while you still cater to their playstyle, you don't design the game so that they are the primary beneficiaries because you lose all of your paying playerbase, most of whom have jobs and families and can't afford 6 hours a day playing time.

Community scaling is fine. I know, people throw a hissy fit over how mean it is, but the secret is it is a multiplier. It takes whatever you did personally and expands on it. You grind every node down to get the 500 bonus ISO, it is that behavior that brings the mobs to level 400. The community may have added a 5x multiplier, but most peopel are still doing fine because they didn't push their personal level to ridiculous heights first.

I know, it is easier to blame Spiderman than to take any personal responsibility, but plenty of people with Spiderman are still taking on mobs between level 80 and 120 for most mission because they don't feel the need to try and beat the mission 20 times per sub to try an extract every possible reward.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

Scaling exists so that events are not solely determined by how much time you have on your hands. That would be the biggest disincentive for most of the paying playerbase.

Sure, it's great for those who thing playing for free is some noble endeavour, and that their time advantage should give them an in game advantage. But the issue is that they don't actually contribute anything to keepiong the lights on and the game running. So while you still cater to their playstyle, you don't design the game so that they are the primary beneficiaries because you lose all of your paying playerbase, most of whom have jobs and families and can't afford 6 hours a day playing time.

Community scaling is fine. I know, people throw a hissy fit over how mean it is, but the secret is it is a multiplier. It takes whatever you did personally and expands on it. You grind every node down to get the 500 bonus ISO, it is that behavior that brings the mobs to level 400. The community may have added a 5x multiplier, but most peopel are still doing fine because they didn't push their personal level to ridiculous heights first.

I know, it is easier to blame Spiderman than to take any personal responsibility, but plenty of people with Spiderman are still taking on mobs between level 80 and 120 for most mission because they don't feel the need to try and beat the mission 20 times per sub to try an extract every possible reward.

In PvE it's pretty prohibitive to P2W your way to win. Unless you found a gold mine in your backyard and bought 20 Stark Salaries so you stocked up on a few hundred +50% to damage all The Hunt only boosts, the advantage for even P2W pales compare to how quickly the enemy gets out of control.

At any rate grinding a node down to 1 gives you a rather sizeable lead in an event like this since right now it sure doesn't look like there will be a sudden influx of points at the end, so even if it comes back to haunt you later, you started with a pretty decent lead. Sure, you might be slightly worse off at the end with your scaling, but community scaling is doing a good job stopping everyone at the end. Suppose you added an extra 30 levels for taking a 1000 point lead early on. By the end of the event, someone still has to beat you by the same margin you're ahead by earlier on, but it's going to be much harder to try to jump to a 1K point lead when everything is level 300 compared to when they're level 30. In fact from what I can see in my sub brackets, it's clear that community scaling pretty much kills all chance of someone trying to break away. Trying to make up 1000 points right now is much harder than the first day because all the high point missions are at least level 200+ if not 300+.

reckless442

Eddiemon wrote:

Scaling exists so that events are not solely determined by how much time you have on your hands. That would be the biggest disincentive for most of the paying playerbase.

Sure, it's great for those who thing playing for free is some noble endeavour, and that their time advantage should give them an in game advantage. But the issue is that they don't actually contribute anything to keepiong the lights on and the game running. So while you still cater to their playstyle, you don't design the game so that they are the primary beneficiaries because you lose all of your paying playerbase, most of whom have jobs and families and can't afford 6 hours a day playing time.

Community scaling is fine. I know, people throw a hissy fit over how mean it is, but the secret is it is a multiplier. It takes whatever you did personally and expands on it. You grind every node down to get the 500 bonus ISO, it is that behavior that brings the mobs to level 400. The community may have added a 5x multiplier, but most peopel are still doing fine because they didn't push their personal level to ridiculous heights first.

I know, it is easier to blame Spiderman than to take any personal responsibility, but plenty of people with Spiderman are still taking on mobs between level 80 and 120 for most mission because they don't feel the need to try and beat the mission 20 times per sub to try an extract every possible reward.

But I don't grind every node and my scaling is still going through the roof. If I want to be competitive for the top-10 in a sub-event -- first-place is out of the question -- I do have to repeat some nodes two or three times, but I try to limit the number that I do. But it's not helping. Not to mention, I find it noxious that I should be penalized even more because I am forced to repeat winnable nodes if I want to win my bracket and compete for the top spot in the main event.

Meanwhile, here is the roster of the current leader of my Alaska sub-event:

38 0/3/0 Hulk (3*)
37 2/2/3 Classic Storm (2*)
36 5/4/4 IM35 (1*)
33 5/5 Modern Black Widow (1*)
30 1/0/0 Invisible Woman (4*)
29 5/5 Classic Hawkeye (1*)
16 4/5/3 Modern Storm (1*)
15 0/0/1 Human Torch (3*)
15 1/0/0 Modern Thor (3*)
13 0/0/1 Moonstone (2*)
13 2/0/0 Original Black Widow (2*)
12 3/1/1 Marvel Now Magneto (2*)
11 5/2 Yelena (1*)
10 0/3 Daken (2*)
9 1/1/1 Ares (2*)
0/0/1 Astonishing Wolverine (2*)

He doesn't even have any fully capped 1*s, but somehow has over 5800 points in Alaska. Do I resent that? You bet I do.

Unknown

reckless442 wrote:

Eddiemon wrote:

Scaling exists so that events are not solely determined by how much time you have on your hands. That would be the biggest disincentive for most of the paying playerbase.

Sure, it's great for those who thing playing for free is some noble endeavour, and that their time advantage should give them an in game advantage. But the issue is that they don't actually contribute anything to keepiong the lights on and the game running. So while you still cater to their playstyle, you don't design the game so that they are the primary beneficiaries because you lose all of your paying playerbase, most of whom have jobs and families and can't afford 6 hours a day playing time.

Community scaling is fine. I know, people throw a hissy fit over how mean it is, but the secret is it is a multiplier. It takes whatever you did personally and expands on it. You grind every node down to get the 500 bonus ISO, it is that behavior that brings the mobs to level 400. The community may have added a 5x multiplier, but most peopel are still doing fine because they didn't push their personal level to ridiculous heights first.

I know, it is easier to blame Spiderman than to take any personal responsibility, but plenty of people with Spiderman are still taking on mobs between level 80 and 120 for most mission because they don't feel the need to try and beat the mission 20 times per sub to try an extract every possible reward.

But I don't grind every node and my scaling is still going through the roof. If I want to be competitive for the top-10 in a sub-event -- first-place is out of the question -- I do have to repeat some nodes two or three times, but I try to limit the number that I do. But it's not helping. Not to mention, I find it noxious that I should be penalized even more because I am forced to repeat winnable nodes if I want to win my bracket and compete for the top spot in the main event.

Meanwhile, here is the roster of the current leader of my Alaska sub-event:

38 0/3/0 Hulk (3*)
37 2/2/3 Classic Storm (2*)
36 5/4/4 IM35 (1*)
33 5/5 Modern Black Widow (1*)
30 1/0/0 Invisible Woman (4*)
29 5/5 Classic Hawkeye (1*)
16 4/5/3 Modern Storm (1*)
15 0/0/1 Human Torch (3*)
15 1/0/0 Modern Thor (3*)
13 0/0/1 Moonstone (2*)
13 2/0/0 Original Black Widow (2*)
12 3/1/1 Marvel Now Magneto (2*)
11 5/2 Yelena (1*)
10 0/3 Daken (2*)
9 1/1/1 Ares (2*)
0/0/1 Astonishing Wolverine (2*)

He doesn't even have any fully capped 1*s, but somehow has over 5800 points in Alaska. Do I resent that? You bet I do.

Maybe that guy just started the event so he'd have nothing on his personal scaling? I'm sure not seeing any such guys leading the overall bracket. It's roughly a mix of level 85 and level 141s on my overall bracket. The sub brackets leader can be all over the place and I stopped caring about how bad the sub bracket leader's roster is a while ago.

Spoit

In my main bracket, the top 5 almost all have first pages which are almost entirely 2*s, with random 3*s only in the 70-80s missing a bunch of covers. Except hulk, they all seem to have decent covers for hulk for some reason

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

Scaling exists so that events are not solely determined by how much time you have on your hands. That would be the biggest disincentive for most of the paying playerbase.

Sure, it's great for those who thing playing for free is some noble endeavour, and that their time advantage should give them an in game advantage. But the issue is that they don't actually contribute anything to keepiong the lights on and the game running. So while you still cater to their playstyle, you don't design the game so that they are the primary beneficiaries because you lose all of your paying playerbase, most of whom have jobs and families and can't afford 6 hours a day playing time.

Community scaling is fine. I know, people throw a hissy fit over how mean it is, but the secret is it is a multiplier. It takes whatever you did personally and expands on it. You grind every node down to get the 500 bonus ISO, it is that behavior that brings the mobs to level 400. The community may have added a 5x multiplier, but most peopel are still doing fine because they didn't push their personal level to ridiculous heights first.

I know, it is easier to blame Spiderman than to take any personal responsibility, but plenty of people with Spiderman are still taking on mobs between level 80 and 120 for most mission because they don't feel the need to try and beat the mission 20 times per sub to try an extract every possible reward.

Sorry, I'm not buying this reasoning. Scaling exists because D3P wants to spend as little effort as possible on mission design. They hope that it will somehow balance out to give every player a reasonably challenging, maybe even enjoyable game experience. They are either blissfully unaware that they have failed in every regard possible or they simply don't care as long as the money keeps coming. Possibly both.

If you really believe scaling is fine and working as intended, please explain why we haven't reached any major progression reward for ages now. Do you want to imply those are just around to goad us along, never meant to be collected?