SCL Tethering

Ducky

I propose that players be tethered within 1 SCL of their highest available SCL. Doing this will help the lower SHIELD Rank players progress better as they will have access to more placement rewards and it makes the higher SCLs more active since more players will be forced to choose SCL 7 or 8 instead of dropping down to 6 or even 5.  

broll

This is a terrible suggestion.  For several reasons.

1.  SR is not a valid measure of roster strength.  I have a side steam account that I only occasionally play.  It just crossed over into having access to SCL7, yet it only has 3 3* champs and would struggle to clear SCL6 (I usually play it at SCL4).  People who only play casually (as this account was) would be wrecked because playing casual it's easy to get lots of XP via DDQ and low level PvE nodes, but get very little actual roster progress out of.

2.  As number 1 suggests putting a restriction like this opens the door to break the main thing SCL based scaling fxied, devs boxing players into bad scaling.  Choice is amazing and something there is far too little of in the game as whole.  Don't take it away.

One of the benefits IMO of SCL based scaling is the ability to choose your difficulty.  If someone wants to breeze through it for less rewards, let them.  If someone wants to play above their weight class and smash into a brick wall for tougher rewards, let them.  

The only reason people care about this at all (from what I can tell) is the placement rewards and the fact that better roster players can face roll through and get them easier.  There are several better solutions to that problem:

1.  Remove placement from PvE all together.  It shouldn't be there anyway.  

2.  Widen the gap in rewards so much that the cost/penalty of dropping down negates the time save benefit (at least for the ones gaming it for rewards)  

3.  Allow player to drop down more than 1, but if they do they are completely ineligible for placement rewards or they get some static reward instead.

Dormammu

Broll is right, SCL has absolutely no bearing on roster strength. By capping it out and leaving it stagnant for so long SCL is basically meaningless as an indicator of what a player is capable of doing in PvE.

Still, the idea is a sound one. The hidden and mysterious MMR could probably accomplish the determination of roster strength.

They could also do it based on past performance. Like, if you reach max progression at any given SCL you're locked into that level and can't drop more than 1 or 2 SCLs in any given event thereafter.

Ducky

Except SR are the measure by which SCLs are unlocked, so they are the only thing we have to measure grouping players into SCLs.

@broll They are never going to make PvE progression only, so that's not even up for discussion. 

They've already revamped the rewards for SCLs. To think they'll do it again, and change them significantly, is a pipe dream. Also, they'd have to adjust the economy in other ways, so what you'd potentially gain in placements, you'd lose elsewhere. 

Your third suggestion requires way too much coding on their end and how would you go about informing players in game that they won't be eligible for rewards? It's a logistical mess. 

@Dormammu CS won't even compensate lost rewards from server outage based on past performance within the same event, why would the devs then tie SCL availability to past performances in previous events?

SCL tethering is the easiest way to prevent sandbagging and logistically, all they'd have to do is fade out the ones you are too strong for so you can't select them. 

Both of you are also only focusing in on one side of the game as well. Sandbagging is also a problem in PvP and SCL tethering fixes that as well. 

SkadenFrudee

Maybe we need a new metric that truly reflects the strength of a given roster. That metric could then be used to determine the SCL(s) available to a player. They could even convert our current SCL to said new metric, so that SCL as a concept doesn't become meaningless. In any case, the number of tokens I've opened should have no bearing on determining how strong my roster is. 

Jaedenkaal

Ducky said:

I propose that players be tethered within 1 SCL of their highest available SCL. Doing this will help the lower SHIELD Rank players progress better as they will have access to more placement rewards and it makes the higher SCLs more active since more players will be forced to choose SCL 7 or 8 instead of dropping down to 6 or even 5.  

broll said:

This is a terrible suggestion.  For several reasons.

1.  SR is not a valid measure of roster strength.  I have a side steam account that I only occasionally play.  It just crossed over into having access to SCL7, yet it only has 3 3* champs and would struggle to clear SCL6 (I usually play it at SCL4).  People who only play casually (as this account was) would be wrecked because playing casual it's easy to get lots of XP via DDQ and low level PvE nodes, but get very little actual roster progress out of.

2.  As number 1 suggests putting a restriction like this opens the door to break the main thing SCL based scaling fxied, devs boxing players into bad scaling.  Choice is amazing and something there is far too little of in the game as whole.  Don't take it away.

One of the benefits IMO of SCL based scaling is the ability to choose your difficulty.  If someone wants to breeze through it for less rewards, let them.  If someone wants to play above their weight class and smash into a brick wall for tougher rewards, let them.  

The only reason people care about this at all (from what I can tell) is the placement rewards and the fact that better roster players can face roll through and get them easier.  There are several better solutions to that problem:

1.  Remove placement from PvE all together.  It shouldn't be there anyway.  

2.  Widen the gap in rewards so much that the cost/penalty of dropping down negates the time save benefit (at least for the ones gaming it for rewards)  

3.  Allow player to drop down more than 1, but if they do they are completely ineligible for placement rewards or they get some static reward instead.

Yeah the interesting part of this, to me, is that having SCL tied to difficulty (and rewards) seems to indicate that your SCL -should- be an indicator of roster strength. However, because it is easily possible to get experience without actually gaining roster strength (imagine the most absurd example of a player at SR 125 selling their entire roster. Their eligible SCL doesn't change but they now have no roster and would clearly have a hard time even on SCL 2), in practice there is no direct link between the two

I think Ducky's proposed system would work really well -IF- it could be shown that a player's SCL was much more directly related to their current roster strength. This could easily be unrelated to shield rank; currently shield rank is simply the "gate" to unlocking another clearance level, but this doesn't have to be the case.

That said, I don't know how hard it would be to accurately gauge a player's roster strength so as to put them in an appropriate SCL (+/- 1). Judging from previous roster-based scaling, it's apparently pretty hard, although at least the SCL system has an absolute cap instead of carrying on according to some formula into clearly ridiculous territory.

The other solution would be to more carefully examine the rewards at each SCL and tune them so they provide a more clear benefit for players of the 'intended' roster strength, while at the same time discouraging higher 'strength' players from dropping too far. I'm not sure how this would be achieved in practice, aside from drastically increasing the rewards at high SCLs. (I expect it would take guaranteed 5* covers. SCL9 anyone?).

broll

@Ducky

Yes SR is how they are unlocked and that's fine. Locking them to that is ridiculous. If they were to do that why even Leave roster based scaling. People asked for the ability to pick a difficulty level and they granted it. I'm not ok with it being taken away. There are better fixes for the problems it interfaces. 

You say progression only is never going to happen. People said that about fixing scaling in PvE and no point loss in PvP progression. Just be because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it couldn't happen and if its the best answer we should continue to ask for it rather than settle for lesser solutions. 

As far as they just tweaked rewards and they won't do it again. They've tweaked them like 5 times in the year and half I've been playing. That's like once every 3-4 months on average. Continual rebalance can and should be a think if they're going to keep the game going long term.