This Game Isn't Fun Anymore

Twysta

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Or when your enemies are level 200+ because other people cheesed them the whole way
Or beating All-Goons battles without taking much damage
Or using AP denial, or LazyCap protect tiles, or Patch/Loki, or OBW healing, or any other non-stun strategy that lets you actually win a battle besides sticking in LT and Hulk to damage-sponge

If your enemies are level 200 solely from community scaling (like they are for me) you've level 141 characters and level 200 isn't some kind of unbeatable barrier for 141s. This isn't The Hunt where Daken is in every other node.

It's never just any one battle that drives up your scaling. After you beat the goons without taking any damage do a harder battle to balance it out. The goon battles are rarely worth good points anyway so not sure why you'd grind the same one over and over. In R3, OBW/Psylocke/Storm is a great way to balance out any flawless victory because it's a relatively easy fight but you'll definitely fill the quota for necessary damage taken just on Raging Tempests.

3000 total damage taken is more than enough to keep scaling in check, which is roughly 10 match 3s on level 200+ enemies. You're telling me you can alawys get 12 blue for Captain before the other side made 10 matches? Or 11 black and 9 green for Patch/Loki combo?

over_clocked

How did you arrive at the 3000 figure? Did you compare the results after receiving less damage? At certain 200+ levels or so.

Spoit

I still think you're systematically overstating rosters effect on scaling. Conflating cause and effect

Unknown

locked wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Since Daken is not on every other node like The Hunt, the 395s are mostly beatable with the same tricks even if they don't go away, but since you don't have Daken everywhere, there's no need to ever resort to using broken tactics to get scaling out of control.

I dunno, Human Torch fed black or Devil Dino/Patch fed green seem rather broken in their own right to me

HT with black feed pretty much always satisfy the damage quota you need to keep scaling low unless you're trying to always kill him before he gets fed 10 black. You can actually just wait until he puts Inferno on the board and then unload whatever cheap combo. He gets his black so quick that sometimes you don't even have to hold back, as he'd get 10 black before you have enough for your combo anyway and once Inferno hits the board, you're set on your damage taken quota and is free to retaliate with any cheap ability you got.

Devil Dino seems to be Spiderman only yes.

If you're talking about Patch + Loki with the green/black feed, Hulk works well on it. Deny the black but not the green so that they'll put a Berserker Rage without having Trickery. Hulk's Anger will do massive damage and knock out the enemy strike tiles (if he survives). I accidentally won that battle with just a lucky cascade after Berserker Rage, and Berserker Rage alone does more than enough damage to satisfy your damage quota too, so again no worries there about scaling if you do win.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

If your enemies are level 200 solely from community scaling (like they are for me) you've level 141 characters and level 200 isn't some kind of unbeatable barrier for 141s. This isn't The Hunt where Daken is in every other node.

Er, I don't. My personal scaling is only at level 60 (I assume because level 102 Ares murders enemies AND himself quite effectively). "102 Ares + 120 buffed guy of the sub + third depending on the node" has been letting me beat the level 200 nodes I've been seeing because Ares is a BAMF and 2* chars heal fast in prologue (and because X-Force wolvie sucks ), but if community scaling is taking nodes from 60 to 200 for me, it's definitely doing it for people who don't have a prayer of beating them. And BTW, I've gotten quite a few losses against the 200+ teams too and my scaling doesn't go down from it

Phantron wrote:

3000 total damage taken is more than enough to keep scaling in check, which is roughly 10 match 3s on level 200+ enemies. You're telling me you can alawys get 12 blue for Captain before the other side made 10 matches? Or 11 black and 9 green for Patch/Loki combo?

Often enough, apparently, because I'm winning nodes, not using Spidey or Mags, and scaling isn't being "kept in check"

(And repeating your hypothesis that "taking 3000 damage will keep scaling in check, and you'll do that just by playing 'normally' " doesn't make it fact)

You're arguing that levels reach 200 solely from community scaling, that people should intentionally "go get beaten up on OBW/Psylocke/Storm," and of course handicap themselves by avoiding healing and stunning moves, and you think that SUPPORTS your argument that the scaling system isn't broken?

Twysta

Because if you're not taking damage you're doing something wrong...

over_clocked

Phantron wrote:

HT with black feed pretty much always satisfy the damage quota you need to keep scaling low unless you're trying to always kill him before he gets fed 10 black. You can actually just wait until he puts Inferno on the board and then unload whatever cheap combo. He gets his black so quick that sometimes you don't even have to hold back, as he'd get 10 black before you have enough for your combo anyway and once Inferno hits the board, you're set on your damage taken quota and is free to retaliate with any cheap ability you got.

Devil Dino seems to be Spiderman only yes.

If you're talking about Patch + Loki with the green/black feed, Hulk works well on it. Deny the black but not the green so that they'll put a Berserker Rage without having Trickery. Hulk's Anger will do massive damage and knock out the enemy strike tiles (if he survives). I accidentally won that battle with just a lucky cascade after Berserker Rage, and Berserker Rage alone does more than enough damage to satisfy your damage quota too, so again no worries there about scaling if you do win.

it's all good and nice, but my levels are so high that any enemy ability will kill my entire team in no time, even HT's black or Rage + the following matches. That's why I'm Magnetoing my way so far - no other way really - and STILL taking heavy damage sometimes when the mission does not really call for Magneto - e.g. did some missions in R3 with Pun-Hood-oBW, barely survived the match damage alone. That's the uncomfortable part - do I even play at this point? What if this had alliance sub rewards? I would really screw myself more and all without knowing if my scaling gets better for the next PvE.

Zifna

Phantron wrote:

People need to stop spreading the myth about how you're punished for being 'good'. No you're punished when you take 50 turns in a row without the other side getting to do anything, and the game rightfully suspects that there's something weird going on and then punishes you for it. There's no way you can come close to hitting the crazy scaling factor without using Magneto, Spiderman, or Modern Storm on desert/forest.

So... you're not being punished for being good, you're being punished for being good?

If certain character combinations are very powerful and successful if played correctly, and you acquire, play, and successfully use those character combinations... you are doing something bad and weird and should be stopped? Not by nerfing the characters, no, but by presenting you with an impossible level of difficulty?

This is a terrible argument, because it relies on players saying "Yes, I've been trying so hard to win and improve, and now I finally am! There must be something horribly wrong with what I'm doing."

That is stupid. Players should try to win, developers should adjust the characters themselves if they make winning too easy.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

People need to stop spreading the myth about how you're punished for being 'good'. No you're punished when you take 50 turns in a row without the other side getting to do anything, and the game rightfully suspects that there's something weird going on and then punishes you for it.

Com on now, don't you see the contradiction in what you write? The best way to kill an opponent is to get him pants down. Only **** Z-order kung-fu movies use the "put my gun down and let's punch each other for half an hour before the bad guy reaches for it" ****. The best possible play in this game is when you enter all characters with 1 HP and come out on the first turn fully healed.

If I can play 50 abilities without passing a turn so allow the opponent do something is GOOD PLAY. And interrupting the sequence is suboptimal (barring special cases when the opponent provides you some benefit).

So what you admit in the second sentence is admission for the first.

Phantron wrote:

There's no way you can come close to hitting the crazy scaling factor without using Magneto, Spiderman, or Modern Storm on desert/forest. And no you can't get punished for grinding 'efficiently' either because you'd go through 10 level 141 guys in 10 games even if you only took 3000 total damage per fight (10 match 3s for level 200+ enemies, and generally less damage than one AP consuming move at that range).

Taking 3000 damage instead of 0 *is* suboptimal play. If I must take it to avoid scaling then the design *is* punishing better play. And if it does it applying secret rules instead of coming out with the formula all the worse. It's really bad all this is indeed in "legend" category instead of being a transparent rule.

And if the long sequences are not welcome the game should have addressed these -- a ton of trivial ways are available from per-ability use limit through all-actions limit to banning the combos completely.

Phantron wrote:

And while it'd be good if the game actually addresses the mechanism that lets you take an unreasonable amount of turns in a row, it's hardly a secret that this kind of behavior is extremely frowned upon, so don't act very surprised when your enemies are level 395 because you cheesed them the whole way.

The goal of a strategy game is exactly to cheese the enemies the whole way and beyond, and where it is frowned upon intstead of being praised is an anti-strategy game really.

Unknown

But isn't the point of the thread that scaling isn't fun? Does it matter whether we know how it works (and, just for the record, I think the matter of fact way we're talking about scaling mechanisms is a bit generous) or not? Consider: in round two of the simulator Loki was buffed to bejesus, which made playing with Loki/Patch a desirable strategy to employ. Loki/Patch can be incredibly efficient, and if things don't go wrong you can walk out of a match with minimal damage incurred. What's more, it's intoxicating to have an overwhelming field of strike and protect tiles, watching your opponents' cascades inflict strings of 1 point damages to your lead character while you prepare to mash them into paste with simple match damage. It's fun to play this way.

If I want to avoid the long arm of scaling, I need to play in such a way that I don't walk out of my encounters unscathed. I have to reign in this kind of behavior, even though it's fun, so that I can still play effectively in later rounds. I submit to you that if a system requires me to stop playing in a way that is fun (or play in a way that's slightly less fun, though similar), then by definition that is not a fun system. And that's all there is to it. Scaling takes the fun out of the game--or at least punishes you if you don't carefully take the fun out of the game on your own--regardless of whether you understand it or not.

Unknown

Twysta wrote:

Because if you're not taking damage you're doing something wrong...

Indeed the game might be called Damage-taking Puzzle Quest or something to match what it is. I thought it is about annihilating the bad guys (or sim targets) -- devs thought it must circle around losing health. Too bad.

Unknown

All the arguments about being too good reminds me of all the guy saying using Thunderclap over and over is a result of great strategy. I'm not the person who decides why Thunderclap is nerfed but ATU is not. You'll have to ask D3 for the answer to that. D3 doesn't want people use 2 AP Thunderclap so they nerfed that. D3 doesn't want people to use Wolverine/Thor forever so they got nerfed too. D3 doesn't want people to use Spiderman/Magneto but instead nerfing him they put this modifier to greatly increase the level of the enemies for those who do use him. The fact is if you're doing something not wanted by devs they can always stop it. I don't know why they chose this method which seems way worse than just nerfing the character.

Since Gamar has level 200 enemies I'm pretty sure now that the community scaling overwrites your personal scaling if your personal scaling is too low. In that case you can simply bring out all the cheap tricks you want since your personal scaling is way low, though you probably should just save your low scaling for the last refresh. It'd help if there was actually a way to know when you have a few extra emergency Magneto/Spiderman bailouts as opposed to guessing.

_RiO_

Lyrian wrote:

40-packs are up... 15 THOUSAND Hero Points (with discount!)

You'd think that PR-wise it would be smart to try and actually fix the game's mechanics so that it'd be generally fun to play again. You know; softening the blow on your users for when you start to introduce a money grab as obvious as this.
Pulling such a stunt at this time is insulting to everyone stepping up to post their displeasure at the recent turn of events with the game. But then again; the lack of a reply from either the publisher or developer to this very thread shows exactly how much these people care about community building and player engagement, doesn't it?

Are their metrics telling them that making PvE frustrating to the point of becoming unplayable would increase cover sales? I hope that if this is really the case, they'd have the required ounce of brain-power to realize that there must be a problem with their KPIs (and/or their moral compass).

Unknown

Phantron: The game, scaling, and mechanics are BROKEN. It shouldn't work like this. They have taken the fun out of the game with each update. It's not how we play that should matter. We play with what we are given. They make us pay for been good. That is just absurd. Half of what you are saying just doesn't make sense. The simple point is that scaling is all over the place, nobody knows why. it's affecting players of all levels, with or without broken heroes.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

But then again; the lack of a reply from either the publisher or developer to this very thread shows exactly how much these people care about community building and player engagement, doesn't it?

RIO, didn't you read earlier in this thread?

kensterr wrote:

guys, IceIX mentioned that D3/Demiurge ... rely more on feedback from the forums and social media.

We obviously just need to talk louder

_RiO_

Riggy wrote:

_RiO_ wrote:

But then again; the lack of a reply from either the publisher or developer to this very thread shows exactly how much these people care about community building and player engagement, doesn't it?

RIO, didn't you read earlier in this thread?

kensterr wrote:

guys, IceIX mentioned that D3/Demiurge ... rely more on feedback from the forums and social media.

We obviously just need to talk louder

No. I think we need to make our wallets talk. It's becoming ever more obvious that those are the only things they are actually listening to. And that's sad.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

Riggy wrote:

_RiO_ wrote:

But then again; the lack of a reply from either the publisher or developer to this very thread shows exactly how much these people care about community building and player engagement, doesn't it?

RIO, didn't you read earlier in this thread?

kensterr wrote:

guys, IceIX mentioned that D3/Demiurge ... rely more on feedback from the forums and social media.

We obviously just need to talk louder

No. I think we need to make our wallets talk. It's becoming ever more obvious that those are the only things they are actually listening to.

In that regard, I haven't had to purchase anything in quite a while. I think I bought a $20 HP pack during the last sale just to help get my alliance to 20. I've forgotten when that was, but I haven't spent a dime since then.

But in that regard, there's also not much to spend money on. Hence my gripe about the game being 1 dimensional. Give me something like headquarters or costumers or something - anything besides covers and roster slots - to buy and I'd still consider it (as I really do enjoy the match-3 combat system.

Unknown

I see Riggy mentioning cosmetic purchases all the time and think, "That sounds like something people would really enjoy." Then I never upvote those posts or comment on them. So I'm doing both now.

That sounds like something people would really enjoy.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

I see Riggy mentioning cosmetic purchases all the time and think, "That sounds like something people would really enjoy." Then I never upvote those posts or comment on them. So I'm doing both now.

That sounds like something people would really enjoy.

Only if I can put OBW in a GSBW costume

"Heh... look at this nub running level 85 GSBW. Easy victory. wait ****"