The Simulator: April 29 - May 6

daveomite

gobstopper wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Jkells wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Is the Simulator over yet?...please?

I seem to remember really loving this event last time around. Such a shame.

Don't like it because it's a challenge..? Personally, I like this Sim just as much as the last one. This sim just seems to be a bit more challenging. It has harder character combos to fight. I'm not sure why people seem to want a cake-walk for every event, but I welcome the challenge this event is presenting.

I love challenge. Why would you assume it's something related to that? The Sim stopped being a challenge, it's more frustration inducing at this point due to the same thing over and over, scaling issues, and simply no longer having much fun value.

I am still playing it, just will be glad when this one is over.

So are you saying that the challenge in front of the Devs is figuring out when something goes from challenging to frustrating

not sure I follow what you mean.

The easy way to provide so called "challenge" is to scale up nodes constantly, at least, that seems to be their running business plan.

It really wouldn't be that hard to actually try to make it challenging though. Change up the people you fight, don't make hard mode a duplicate of easy mode, stop screwing with people's scaling. Sub 2 could have been completely different, but it wasn't, just filled in with 200+ nodes. Is that supposed to be inventive or something?

Not everyone has sub 100 levels. Hell, give me a bunch of 100 nodes, I'd be much happier about that. But, forcing people to accept something like this method as a "challenge" is just causing some people to give up on it as its no longer much, if any, fun. All it really leads to is more health packs, boosts...or, should I just say money?

Whatever, neither here nor there. It is what it is. It's just simply no longer fun.

fedlex20

I dont know you guys but i'll take The Simulator over any of the latest 3 or 4 pve events we have, maybe more.
And yes, it does turn our own "techniques" against us. In the desert node now we cant use MStorm, for example, but at least they are not doing that in every sub. You could use mstorm on a desert node on the last subs.
Scaling is starting to hurt, the only way to beat freaking devildino may be using ragnarok to absorb his bites while killing the assasing as fast as possible, and if patch uses his green attack on the hard sub you are pretty much done, but im still enjoying it
If im desperate enough i'll try using a 2/5/2 lvl 50 spidey but thats not a guaranteed win, he is to squishy and matches tend to take a lot of time with stunlock.

daveomite

Phantron wrote:

I find the overall difficulty of this event to be pretty high but there are also less cheesy combinations like 'Thor + 2 green AP generators". There are less cakewalks but there are also less 'don't even bother trying without Spiderman/Magneto' nodes.

Yeah, the overall difficulty is nice, don't get me wrong. Cakewalks are boring. But they could have made this actually challenging, not just throw in more and more scaling to bash your face in repeatedly.

Unknown

It's FPS bulletsponge mentality. Greater "challenge" just comes in the form of higher health and harder hits. This does not produce greater fun.

reckless442

I think I have the ultimate illustration of the idiocy of scaling. My scaling has been going crazy largely because of community, with the nodes jumping 70 levels between when the sub began and when I joined last night. I only did partial clears -- some of the regular nodes and the essentials. I skipped the Spidey/Wolvey/LT node too, but decided to try it today.

In hard sim, that node was level 361/362. I attempted it with three high-level teams and each got slaughtered. Their combined health loss was around 60,000 HP. The levels never dropped. I just beat the node using LT, Human Torch, and Classic Mags, taking little damage because I controlled the board to prevent Wolverine's 2,500-pt Feral Claws, Spidey's 2-pt stunlock, and the LT's 2,000-pt healing. So what happened to the node? It immediately jumped 34 levels to 395s.

So dying multiple times has no effect, but managing to win gives a 10% increase. Tinykitty this game.

I'm ready to boycott the next PVP until this is fixed.

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I find the overall difficulty of this event to be pretty high but there are also less cheesy combinations like 'Thor + 2 green AP generators". There are less cakewalks but there are also less 'don't even bother trying without Spiderman/Magneto' nodes.

Yeah, the overall difficulty is nice, don't get me wrong. Cakewalks are boring. But they could have made this actually challenging, not just throw in more and more scaling to bash your face in repeatedly.

In the past the levels are limited to 230, and it seems like they can easily go up to the current numbers seen if it was actually possible to go past level 230 prior to the changes to enemy levels, so I don't think scaling was easier back then, just they haven't been able to get past 230 until recently due to a limitation.

The fights themselves are probably near the top of the difficulty. While overall the enemy can't compare to The Hunt where Daken single handedly prevented half of the nodes from doable, it's also because Daken is pretty much impossible at level 300+ that you also don't have to worry about anyone else beating those nodes and can pretty much act as if those nodes didn't exist because nobody was beating them. The nodes this time around are roughly at the edge of possible without Magneto/Spiderman, which ironically makes it harder for most players because now you have to be able to beat those barely possible nodes to stay competitive.

Unknown

gobstopper wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Jkells wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Is the Simulator over yet?...please?

I seem to remember really loving this event last time around. Such a shame.

Don't like it because it's a challenge..? Personally, I like this Sim just as much as the last one. This sim just seems to be a bit more challenging. It has harder character combos to fight. I'm not sure why people seem to want a cake-walk for every event, but I welcome the challenge this event is presenting.

I love challenge. Why would you assume it's something related to that? The Sim stopped being a challenge, it's more frustration inducing at this point due to the same thing over and over, scaling issues, and simply no longer having much fun value.

I am still playing it, just will be glad when this one is over.

So are you saying that the challenge in front of the Devs is figuring out when something goes from challenging to frustrating

I'm just not sure what people are expecting/want. What would you do to make this event less frustrating but still challenging? I do understand the frustration when scaling gets out of control and the enemy levels are at astronomical levels, and luckily I'm not at that point yet.

fedlex20

reckless442 wrote:

I think I have the ultimate illustration of the idiocy of scaling. My scaling has been going crazy largely because of community, with the nodes jumping 70 levels between when the sub began and when I joined last night. I only did partial clears -- some of the regular nodes and the essentials. I skipped the Spidey/Wolvey/LT node too, but decided to try it today.

In hard sim, that node was level 361/362. I attempted it with three high-level teams and each got slaughtered. Their combined health loss was around 60,000 HP. The levels never dropped. I just beat the node using LT, Human Torch, and Classic Mags, taking little damage because I controlled the board to prevent Wolverine's 2,500-pt Feral Claws, Spidey's 2-pt stunlock, and the LT's 2,000-pt healing. So what happened to the node? It immediately jumped 34 levels to 395s.

So dying multiple times has no effect, but managing to win gives a 10% increase. Tinykitty this game.

I'm ready to boycott the next PVP until this is fixed.

I think its the CMag scaling factor kicking in.

Unknown

Its frustrating not because its challenging.

Its frustrating because if I compete to win then scaling will take over then I cannot play anymore in this event nor the next. In fact it seems once you have high scaling it will never truly come down. So I coast unable to play to win, just to participate.

All I want to due truly is to play in an event, try to win and not get punished because I tried to win. Its not that hard of a concept really.

So my go to for enjoyment is pvp but suddenly 141's out of the gate are trying my patience there too. It used to be a problem where I couldn't win against that consistently a few months back and had to tank. Now I can but that why am I fighting at 141's with 20 total points? Because I did well last event? I cannot even drop my levels, starting to sound familiar. IMO pvp was in a golden age before kyipgate, and we lost it now.

Unknown

I think I realized how insane this game is making me when I realized last night I was spending all night intentionally trying to match away my own sunder tiles and sitting on stocks of 30 AP because I COULD kill the last opponent in one blow in about 3 different ways but I wanted to do it with match damage so it would take longer and I would lose more HP

mohio

Chimaera wrote:

Its frustrating not because its challenging.

Its frustrating because if I compete to win then scaling will take over then I cannot play anymore in this event nor the next. In fact it seems once you have high scaling it will never truly come down. So I coast unable to play to win, just to participate.

All I want to due truly is to play in an event, try to win and not get punished because I tried to win. Its not that hard of a concept really.

This is almost precisely what I've been wanting to say about the scaling issue. It hasn't hit me all that hard, so my levels are quite reasonable, but I'm the type of person that would probably grind down nodes to try to win, only I can't (okay, won't) do that out of fear of not being able to play later. The horror stories of level 300+ villains are enough to keep me playing just 1 or 2 refreshes and riding rubberbanding to top 50. Maybe I shouldn't complain cause I am still getting essentially the best rewards, but when a game mechanic keeps me from playing the game how I want to play it (i.e. as much as I want to, health packs permitting) then I don't see that mechanic as a good thing for the game.

daveomite

mohio wrote:

Chimaera wrote:

Its frustrating not because its challenging.

Its frustrating because if I compete to win then scaling will take over then I cannot play anymore in this event nor the next. In fact it seems once you have high scaling it will never truly come down. So I coast unable to play to win, just to participate.

All I want to due truly is to play in an event, try to win and not get punished because I tried to win. Its not that hard of a concept really.

This is almost precisely what I've been wanting to say about the scaling issue. It hasn't hit me all that hard, so my levels are quite reasonable, but I'm the type of person that would probably grind down nodes to try to win, only I can't (okay, won't) do that out of fear of not being able to play later. The horror stories of level 300+ villains are enough to keep me playing just 1 or 2 refreshes and riding rubberbanding to top 50. Maybe I shouldn't complain cause I am still getting essentially the best rewards, but when a game mechanic keeps me from playing the game how I want to play it (i.e. as much as I want to, health packs permitting) then I don't see that mechanic as a good thing for the game.

Chim and Mohio - exactly what I mean. And @Reckless - I completely understand what you posted about. That is the types of things I mean. What was a fun game, has become more of a "grind" - which you can't "grind" in, or it completely throws your scaling out of whack. It's like walking on egg shells, and it simply shouldn't be like that. It shouldn't be rocket science just to be able to play the game. What's the point if it's really that hard?

1. It causes you NOT to use AP Powers to prolong matches,
2. You avoid using characters like OBW, Spidey, cMags because they are "broken" - but yet never fixed?
3. You purposely and actively SUICIDE your own team, maybe every character in your roster - just to TRY to get your scaling to reduce. Only to find it really doesn't do anything, or if it does, it lasts all of about 10 minutes.
3. Just to clear all three Essential nodes, you may have already used all of your health packs, and may have at least one roster character downed.
4. You find you are actually spending more time in the prologue HEALING characters than actually doing anything towards the competition itself.

If I wanted to continually play prologue nodes I had already completed a long time ago, then why would I even need to play PvE or PvP? That's pretty much the only reason those nodes are still there and in use by large number of us - as a place to heal characters instead of wasting health packs. Either way - means more time invested replaying matches again and again to get everyone healed up - and less fun as it's just more of the same thing again and again.

Basically, if the "system" thinks you are a "good player" - you are pretty much screwed. If not now, you most likely will be soon enough. If you perform too well, come out of matches with little to no damage, play too often, be active in too many events, place too high in any event - if you're not getting hit with it now, it's coming.

The problem is, trying to trick the system into thinking you're not a good player... not so easy, and really - should we even NEED to do that? Ever?

Just imagine - a swimmer gets to the Olympics. He does great, wins a bunch of events, keeps encountering harder and faster opponents, like expected. But then, all of a sudden the Olympic commission thinks "Wait, he's not challenged enough! He's simply too good!". So, in the next event, they replace all of the water in his swimming lane with molasses, but leave all other contestants with water in their lanes. If, by some chance, this swimmer is able to somehow win that race, even in molasses, then they add even more. Maybe in toss in some tar, feathers, even sand... whatever the commission feels is necessary to ensure this swimmer is not "too good".

Yes, it's a bit of an off the wall comparison, but I'm simply not sure how else to put it.

Even with the new changes in PvP - facing level 141 characters almost immediately, really sucks any chance of hope some players have. When you are in a fight with someone else, and it's a level playing field - then you always feel like you have a chance, and maybe even confidence in defending yourself better. But, if the person across from you is twice as tall, basically a giant, with a Gatling gun pointing straight at your face... you don't feel as confident. Basically, if you don't have a team with 141's on it, the likelihood that you can actually win your bracket is most likely slim. It, of course, depends on your bracket and who else is in it. But if you've crossed whatever "line" the system seems to think you have - welcome to being outclassed in virtually every match you walk into. Always a great feeling. Also when "defense" is a joke - because you're little maxed 85's don't stand a chance defending countless 141 level teams who come in to grab some easy points.

NO offence to any 141 teams - it is the system that is causing these things. It just so happens that D3P runs that system and have now renamed it Skynet.

Spoit

it's not just the scaling that is discouraging playing. The rewards suck too. With how down activity is, you barely even have to do the essentials to stay top 50 in the main, and the sub tokens boosted chance characters aren't worth messing your scaling up for, like they were last event. Not to mention the removal of the first play bonus making the bottom branch pretty much not worth it

daveomite

Spoit wrote:

it's not just the scaling that is discouraging playing. The rewards suck too. With how down activity is, you barely even have to do the essentials to stay top 50 in the main, and the sub tokens boosted chance characters aren't worth messing your scaling up for, like they were last event. Not to mention the removal of the first play bonus making the bottom branch pretty much not worth it

Right. They've stripped away ISO collection as a good way to help get enough to level more characters, on top of the scaling.

what you talk of on the essentials...just earlier, I did my first node in hard mode, and it put me in the top 40 instantly. Just one node. Obviously, other people in my bracket are playing so little and/or encountering a lot of the same issues. Blows my mind.

Unknown

yeah i'm at the point where i just dont think i can rank high anymore, without a thorborg or joki to even do essentials, and the lack of playing the past two days with the last round, i can't do much anymore.

i just won one level and now i have a hard node with a level 90 hulk and my only high level bulk character is Thor at level 106. everyone else is going to be hulk's punching bag. i'm just better off going back to working on my points for the Versus season. Dont think i'll be able to bring the levels down to any good level any time soon.

daveomite

Pamizard wrote:

yeah i'm at the point where i just dont think i can rank high anymore, without a thorborg or joki to even do essentials, and the lack of playing the past two days with the last round, i can't do much anymore.

i just won one level and now i have a hard node with a level 90 hulk and my only high level bulk character is Thor at level 106. everyone else is going to be hulk's punching bag. i'm just better off going back to working on my points for the Versus season. Dont think i'll be able to bring the levels down to any good level any time soon.

I hear ya. SIM05 for me is 177/178. Having Torch fully ramped up in that makes me second guess it.

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

Pamizard wrote:

yeah i'm at the point where i just dont think i can rank high anymore, without a thorborg or joki to even do essentials, and the lack of playing the past two days with the last round, i can't do much anymore.

i just won one level and now i have a hard node with a level 90 hulk and my only high level bulk character is Thor at level 106. everyone else is going to be hulk's punching bag. i'm just better off going back to working on my points for the Versus season. Dont think i'll be able to bring the levels down to any good level any time soon.

I hear ya. SIM05 for me is 177/178. Having Torch fully ramped up in that makes me second guess it.

yeah shame i wont be able to update falcon. Will probably have to rely on Doctor's Orders but when i try to rank high in those kinds of PvP events at the end, everyone goes for me

well on the bright side, I can finish up my daken, even if he isn't the top 10 best characters to have. Still, I'll probably use him once in a while.

HailMary

Pamizard wrote:

well on the bright side, I can finish up my daken, even if he isn't the top 10 best characters to have. Still, I'll probably use him once in a while.

Daken is one of the strongest 2* characters available, especially on defense. Don't be fooled by his lack of active abilities; his passive healing is very annoying for 2* opponents, and his strike tiles are completely free.

daveomite

HailMary wrote:

Pamizard wrote:

well on the bright side, I can finish up my daken, even if he isn't the top 10 best characters to have. Still, I'll probably use him once in a while.

Daken is one of the strongest 2* characters available, especially on defense. Don't be fooled by his lack of active abilities; his passive healing is very annoying for 2* opponents, and his strike tiles are completely free.

agreed. He's not to shabby to have. I'm still planning to level mine once I get some free ISO available.

Unknown

Daken's problem is that due to his lower level cap he usually won't be tanking anything and yet part of his value is his ability to absorb damage. Given OBW is by far the best 2* who takes black/purple from Daken, this means the only color he can tank is green, and you'd be pretty crazy to not run a level 85 character with a green power too.