SCL Difficulty Feedback - Developer Request

Coubii

Replied. Resume: update is beneficial for std and easy node. But for hard node, it's too hard. I don't want champed 5* to be able to enter in SCL 8. After >3 years, even having a single 4* champed, I'm still considering myself as a vet and don't want to be forced to take SCL 7.


Side note, I think that if the game was designed that way from the beginning, that would have be a great thing. But now, with 3years background, this update which modify our (bad?) habits is felt like a slap in the face.
Or Having 400 lvl wave node, inside SCL 10 ?

Warbringa

I basically replied similar that SCL scaling was good but that incentives and/or hard set restrictions were needed to keep 5* players in appropriate SCLs as opposed to simply moving down and scarfing up all the placement rewards in lower SCLs.  

WEBGAS

I am not against scl difficulty, God knows how I hated to be forced to sell my first 5star pulled from tokens,( back in the days)
because my 2* - 3* transitioning roster could not afford the increased difficulty in PVE (it was over 1 and half year ago) so the change in difficulty is a MUST.......But the solution given by the latest tests has been awful, a relieve for the 5*rosters but a nightmare for all the other players : ONE STEP FORWARD.....THREE STEPS BACK 

Jaedenkaal

WEBGAS said:

I am not against scl difficulty, God knows how I hated to be forced to sell my first 5star pulled from tokens,( back in the days)
because my 2* - 3* transitioning roster could not afford the increased difficulty in PVE (it was over 1 and half year ago) so the change in difficulty is a MUST.......But the solution given by the latest tests has been awful, a relieve for the 5*rosters but a nightmare for all the other players : ONE STEP FORWARD.....THREE STEPS BACK 

Playing in SCL 7 instead of the 8 you're usually accustomed to is a nightmare?

WEBGAS

@jaedenkaal placing top5 in scl8 and then 11 in scl7 (for only 10 points) despite all the grinding is quite a nightmare that I would like not to live anymore.
If this should be the New and Improvement experience of this game, I doubt that I will be fine with it.
 It's just my opinion, but I think that this is not the right way to fix the game.
it will be better to low a bit the difficulty for scl8 and increase the rewards so players will not be forced to drop down.
Or even better, make PVE on progression rewards only

Sm0keyJ0e

@Brigby Any ideas if/when this will be made permanent, or are further tests planned?

Brigby

@Sm0keyJ0e
Unfortunately as of this moment, I am unaware of any upcoming plans for the state of SCL-based difficulty levels. Once I receive any communicable information, I'll be sure to pass that along to the community.

Rod5

I once entered into CL2 by mistake. That was an interesting experience. Fighting goons/enemies with 5* scaling and yet the rewards were just absolutely paltry. Were it not for intercepts I'd have just forgotten about it.

Got me thinking though - how could it ever be fair that I am competing with (and struggling to beat) players with 1/2* rosters. Guys who have picked the game up 2 weeks ago with the upper hand against someone who's been playing 3 years...

Enemies' scaling must be tied to CL, it's the only way that PvE could be fair.

WEBGAS

@Rod5 I totally agree, but the real problem is that rewards for scl8 are not worth the extra efforts they require to achieve them, so players decided to drop down and the Test has been a totally mess

Saxomophone

How about tying difficulty to your shield rank rather than the scl you choose? Might be more accurate than looking at rostered characters and takes away the motivation to drop down for easy placement. 

Nepenthe

Saxomophone said:

How about tying difficulty to your shield rank rather than the scl you choose? Might be more accurate than looking at rostered characters and takes away the motivation to drop down for easy placement. 

Hahahaha, no.  Seriously, No.  Shield rank is a horribly inaccurate way to judge roster strength. Way too many things that give xp to raise your rank that don't necessarily improve your roster. And you know what doesn't raise your rank? Spending iso to level up your highest tier of characters.

MissChinch

Nepenthe said:

Saxomophone said:

How about tying difficulty to your shield rank rather than the scl you choose? Might be more accurate than looking at rostered characters and takes away the motivation to drop down for easy placement. 

Hahahaha, no.  Seriously, No.  Shield rank is a horribly inaccurate way to judge roster strength. Way too many things that give xp to raise your rank that don't necessarily improve your roster. And you know what doesn't raise your rank? Spending iso to level up your highest tier of characters.

Or selling off your 5*s to reduce scaling...

Shield rank scaling would be going in the opposite direction, it would have all the things they're trying to fix with roster based scaling but abstracting it one more level so its even less accurate. 

Using shield rank even as a means of qualifying for SCLs is silly.  If SCL difficulty and rewards are adjusted so that its a good difficulty vs reward tradeoff at each level, restricting people from selecting an SCL would be unnecessary. 

You just need to give them the freedom to pick what level they think is best for their roster, its bad design if a low level roster is better served by selecting an SCL where they fail everything but the trivial nodes, and likewise bad design if a higher roster is better served selecting an SCL where they stomp every battle in a turn. 

Since shield rank is just a very poor quantification of roster strength, the only thing its really good for is metering out simple rewards...  like the ISO we get every time we level.

KGB

Warbringa said:

I basically replied similar that SCL scaling was good but that incentives and/or hard set restrictions were needed to keep 5* players in appropriate SCLs as opposed to simply moving down and scarfing up all the placement rewards in lower SCLs.  

Easiest way to do this is simply to restrict 5* characters to SCL8+. In essence SCL7 and below would be like the old Heroic events with restricted rosters only now it would be restricted by character tier.

That would let 5* players still play in SCL7 if they wanted but they'd only be able to use their 4* and below which is what SCL7 and below was designed for.



I see a lot of posts about how adjusting rewards would make players chose higher clearance levels. I'm not really sure that's going to happen unless the reward difference between 7 and 8 literally doubles (2 4* progression, double CP, double ISO etc).

The reason is the time commitment factor. You can do SCL7 in about 1/2 or 2/3 the time of SCL8 for 5* rosters so you need double rewards to justify it. Even then, it may not help that much because a  lot of players now don't play PvE at all because of the time commitment. But if they could suddenly breeze through 4 clears against weak enemies for a bunch of rewards they weren't getting before you might see a flood of players in lower brackets simply for the resource grab that weren't there before.

That's why I think ultimately they have to restrict 5* from SCL7 and below.

KGB

Rod5

Trouble with that KGB is that those players with 5*s also have huge 4*s...many have a lot of lvl 370 4s, so it's not a solution. Huge 4s are very strong, in some cases stronger than 5s. Try fighting a lvl 479 boosted Bl4de, Peggy, C4rol or Iceman and tell me it's not a huge advantage.