This Game Isn't Fun Anymore

Dreylin

Riggy wrote:

The problem with expanding the prologue is that the actual story is being added via the competitive episodes.

Except it isn't. This game is what, 6months old now and we've had 5(?) event storylines added - that's less than one per month. Meanwhile we've had something close to eleventy billion new 3* characters added. Can we get some dev effort dedicated to the plot for once now...?

Unknown

While playing more should have an advantage, there's no reason to award playing more when playing more is mechanical. Right now playing more in this game is akin to guys spawn camping stuff in a MMORPG. There's nothing interesting or even monetized about a guy going back to Prologue to heal his guys up after every game. If healing is removed the game, and keeping pace at constant, playing more implies:

1. You're much better than other players (so you can get further on the same amount of health).
2. You spent HP on health packs.
3. You have a much deeper roster to fall back on.

Even Magneto runs into blue-starved board and the damage you take prior to establishing a Magnetic Field will catch up to you eventually in the absence of any healing. If we also remove Magneto from the picture then you either have to be way better than anyone else or spent more money than anyone else to play more, and that's the kind of behavior you want to encourage (players would prefer to simply be better, D3 would likely prefer you just spend more money). Right now it's neither. You don't have to get better at the game (if it's even possible) because you go heal in prologue, and you certainly won't be spending money on health pack the vast majority of the time even if you can afford it because it's not needed.

That said the game's PvE design flaws goes beyond healing being a broken concept. Even without healing you'd still have people trying to figure out how to game the rather obscure scaling system, though it'd be much harder to do so because you can easily get wiped out for playing later and then never have a chance to get back into the game if healing is eliminated. If we assume rubberbanding is fundamentally built into PvE events because D3 wants to encourage events where there is an illusion of competition, then scaling must be changed in some way. I'm not convinced scaling is unfair, but it does a pretty good job of appearing to be unfair. Transparency on the scaling factor would at least allow people to figure out how, if at all possible, to work with scaling.

Unknown

gamar wrote:

For me, it's not scaling, it's still that due to rubberbanding you need to set aside an hour at noon or midnight 8 or 9 times a week to be competitive, and playing at NOT those times just hurts you. (And as our European friends will point out, it's even worse for them.)

I'd rather have scaling and no rubberbanding than the other way around if one of those two concept has to go. Without rubberbanding, you can play at any time within 8/12 hours of an event ending (though having server based refresh time would be even better) and know that's the best you could have done. It seems to me rubberbanding is built into the PvE system at a fundamental level, even more so than scaling, though. Sure, without rubberbanding you no longer have the illusion of competition, but that's all it ever was, illusion. You were never beating the crazy guys unless you're the crazy guy.

Tharos

Rajjeq wrote:

Rubberbanding is actually good. It means you don't have to play as much to do well. Without rubberbanding, the only people who would ever win are the crazies who clear everything every 12 hours. That is not a positive outcome.

Scaling is the thing that saps the fun out of the game. It makes the matches much longer and harder, and potentially impossible, but not any more interesting or fun.

I do not agree for the rubberbanding part. It is good to achieve a nice amount of point and win the progression rewards. But with the rubberbanding, the people who can not play the last 2 hours of a pve event have no chance to perform well on the final leatherboard. Without rubberbanding, people that can not play a lot can't do well. I do not have a solution for the placement rewards. At least with rubberbanding everyone may have a change of having progression rewards, but I wouldn't call it something "good". Something much more like "less bad than nothing".

I don't care not winning or not doing well in an event. If I do my best, having a bad result should mean I am not good enough, others are better, my roster is not advanced enough, or a vast variety of reasons. I do not like when this reason is only "we were sleeping the last two hours, everybody went in front of you because they live on the other side of the world".

But I agree that the main issue, before the rubberbranding or the pve structure is the scaling. With this scaling, the rubberbanding issues have no chance to occur (no win = no points, no matter if there is a lot or a little points in play)

DD-The-Mighty

Phantron wrote:

While playing more should have an advantage, there's no reason to award playing more when playing more is mechanical. Right now playing more in this game is akin to guys spawn camping stuff in a MMORPG. There's nothing interesting or even monetized about a guy going back to Prologue to heal his guys up after every game. If healing is removed the game, and keeping pace at constant, playing more implies:

1. You're much better than other players (so you can get further on the same amount of health).
2. You spent HP on health packs.
3. You have a much deeper roster to fall back on.

Even Magneto runs into blue-starved board and the damage you take prior to establishing a Magnetic Field will catch up to you eventually in the absence of any healing. If we also remove Magneto from the picture then you either have to be way better than anyone else or spent more money than anyone else to play more, and that's the kind of behavior you want to encourage (players would prefer to simply be better, D3 would likely prefer you just spend more money). Right now it's neither. You don't have to get better at the game (if it's even possible) because you go heal in prologue, and you certainly won't be spending money on health pack the vast majority of the time even if you can afford it because it's not needed.

That said the game's PvE design flaws goes beyond healing being a broken concept. Even without healing you'd still have people trying to figure out how to game the rather obscure scaling system, though it'd be much harder to do so because you can easily get wiped out for playing later and then never have a chance to get back into the game if healing is eliminated. If we assume rubberbanding is fundamentally built into PvE events because D3 wants to encourage events where there is an illusion of competition, then scaling must be changed in some way. I'm not convinced scaling is unfair, but it does a pretty good job of appearing to be unfair. Transparency on the scaling factor would at least allow people to figure out how, if at all possible, to work with scaling.

Or we could just drop all this Faux Competitive nonsense from PVE altogether. Almost everything that has been criticized about PVE goes back to the PVP-esque elements shoved sloppily into a Player vs Environment events.

Unknown

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

Or we could just drop all this Faux Competitive nonsense from PVE altogether. Almost everything that has been criticized about PVE goes back to the PVP-esque elements shoved sloppily into a Player vs Environment events.

That describes Heroic Oscorp and as far as I know almost nobody liked that. There was no rubberbanding and no real scaling (might've been based on your roster at start, but it sure wasn't going up not that any of the nodes needed the help). Unfortunately people do like the illusion of being competitive and when an event like Heroic Oscorp let's you know that you'll probably finish #127 after the first day, people generally didn't like it very much.

Unknown

Was the game fun before? People might have felt the intrinsic need of hoarding covers, but beyond that, did anyone ask themselves if playing the game was enjoyable?

HailMary

Tharos wrote:

I do not agree for the rubberbanding part. It is good to achieve a nice amount of point and win the progression rewards. But with the rubberbanding, the people who can not play the last 2 hours of a pve event have no chance to perform well on the final leatherboard. Without rubberbanding, people that can not play a lot can't do well. I do not have a solution for the placement rewards. At least with rubberbanding everyone may have a change of having progression rewards, but I wouldn't call it something "good". Something much more like "less bad than nothing".

I agree that rubberbanding can be changed so that there's much less emphasis on playing just the last two hours. Even as a person who can usually play the last two hours, I'd love it if I could play optimally in a more flexible manner.

That said, I think scaling is a much bigger killer at present, because it seems rather arbitrary. You've got very similar players with similar playstyles fighting enemies that are 100 levels apart. That's simply ridiculous. Beyond that, I think one easy fix for community scaling would be a pervasive CMags + Spidey lockout (disclaimer: I have a L141 CMags, but no Spidey). Assuming that scaling is somehow mostly based on performance, not being able to use infinite-turn characters would likely lower top-end scaling drastically.

Unknown

Microtom wrote:

Was the game fun before? People might have felt the intrinsic need of hoarding covers, but beyond that, did anyone ask themselves if playing the game was enjoyable?

Sure. Whether explicitly or implicitly, I'm sure people did. The Match-3 combat mechanic has been fun for me for over 6 years now. I got several of my friends hooked on it. The original UI left a bit to be desired, but they've been making steady improvements (such as having all your ability bars at the top of the screen instead of embedded in the grid with your pulsing gems). You never hear people complain and say "matching gems sucks, you should get rid of it." Because everyone here presumably enjoys that mechanic to some extent. It's all the meta-mechanics that are grinding people down.

Unknown

Wow great feedback, much better than my amazing poetry threads that nobody likes

Seriously though, this community scaling has to go, i think that's what is driving people away and making them cray-cray. I don't understand how and why my levels should go up and up when i haven't even touched a node yet. It really should never have been implemented. Because most sane people don't stand a chance.

On one hand you have the low level guys grinding everything down to 1, just because they can. Because it's easy and they probably dont know any better. Then we have the crazies with their uber rosters doing much the same thing. Beating level 230's and then those who are able to beat the 395's has an effect on the rest of the community, some who, like myself, just can't do those levels or need an insane amount of luck to win.

I wish PVE could be more like PVP which at the moment is the only thing i enjoy with the game. You start off with low level enemies and progressively get harder ones, the more you win. None of this community scaling, just good old fashioned "progression" based on your skills and nobody elses. If you get stuck and cant beat a node after a few tries, then it should be lowered, NOT HIGHERD (is that even a word)

Today for instance i did ONE essential node and straight after i finished doing it that ONE time, my levels rose by another TEN. Seriously, it makes no sense. Why your forcing customers to NOT play your game is beyond me. It's almost as if you don't want our support and money, our time, our reviews.

I hope to god, someone higher up looks at this thread and the countless others and at least acknowledge there is a problem and something should be done to fix it, instead of papering over the cracks with new characters. People will eventually begin to realize, its not worth their time anymore.

edit: TheUnwiseOne's account did not get hacked by some weird serious type nerd. He is still here somewhere and he loves **** and breasticles.

LordWill

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

Wow great feedback, much better than my amazing poetry threads that nobody likes

Seriously though, this community scaling has to go, i think that's what is driving people away and making them cray-cray. I don't understand how and why my levels should go up and up when i haven't even touched a node yet. It really should never have been implemented. Because most sane people don't stand a chance.

On one hand you have the low level guys grinding everything down to 1, just because they can. Because it's easy and they probably dont know any better. Then we have the crazies with their uber rosters doing much the same thing. Beating level 230's and then those who are able to beat the 395's has an effect on the rest of the community, some who, like myself, just can't do those levels or need an insane amount of luck to win.

I wish PVE could be more like PVP which at the moment is the only thing i enjoy with the game. You start off with low level enemies and progressively get harder ones, the more you win. None of this community scaling, just good old fashioned "progression" based on your skills and nobody elses. If you get stuck and cant beat a node after a few tries, then it should be lowered, NOT HIGHERD (is that even a word)

Today for instance i did ONE essential node and straight after i finished doing it that ONE time, my levels rose by another TEN. Seriously, it makes no sense. Why your forcing customers to NOT play your game is beyond me. It's almost as if you don't want our support and money, our time, our reviews.

I hope to god, someone higher up looks at this thread and the countless others and at least acknowledge there is a problem and something should be done to fix it, instead of papering over the cracks with new characters. People will eventually begin to realize, its not worth their time anymore.

edit: TheUnwiseOne's account did not get hacked by some weird serious type nerd. He is still here somewhere and he loves **** and breasticles.

I'm with you 1000%

I am sure you have seen my posts regarding community scaling. It gets under my skin like nothing else. Anyway, I have said it all before in all my other posts. I agree with you and I hope for the love of everything good in this world they change it.

I really do think whoever came up with scaling is really a HYDRA agent and is trying to bring down Demiurge from the inside. They are just evil that way...

And as I have said, if they have run out of ideas on how to fix scaling without ruining the game further, I am sure all they need to do is look to the sheer volume of feedback and suggestions given to them to figure something out.

LordWill

dlaw008 wrote:

I am in the same position as TU1 (though I didn't realize he felt this way, too). And honestly, while scaling seems to be the major factor inhibiting my enjoyment of the game, it is just a lot of PvE elements swirled together that I find unfun.

For the last few days I've been reluctant to pick up my phone and dig in. I eventually do it every day, several times, but more out of responsibility than desire. I would rather spend my time in alliance chat than playing, and I often find myself doing exactly that.

The root of this feeling seems to be this: I know I need to knock down some high value nodes in the pve to contribute to the alliance score. So the first place I go is to my Simulator brackets and search out the highest value nodes. They are almost always the essential nodes. So I put together a team that may well exclude one of my most important characters (because they appear as an opponent), add in one required but virtually worthless character, start the fight in the node, play as carefully as possible by getting the colors I can while trying to deny my far superior foes of their colors, have one unfortunate cascade (even a small one sometimes, when it is the wrong color), get wiped. Then use three health packs and repeat the process. Then probably get wiped again. Or else eke out a victory and realize that I still need more points and use my last health packs and go back in again only to get wiped or barely eke out another victory and this time have no reasonable way of doing any more fights for at least an hour, whether I won or lost.

It's a chore, in the purest sense of the word; an onerous distasteful job. And that's not even grinding everything down for hours on end. That's playing for half an hour or so at a time. Are all of my ill feelings coming from scaling? Possibly. I never minded being forced to experiment with new character combinations when the fights weren't so nip and tuck. Actually, I used to enjoy the feeling of agency or power or what-have-you from battles that I could easily defeat my foes. When I could clear my opponents from one Rage of the Panther I used to feel satisfaction, as in - "This is why I spent all that time and effort maxing this guy, he rocks!" Now I feel outclassed by Hammer agents even when I throw a couple 141s in the ring. I suppose some people might enjoy the tension of a fight that they could lose at any moment from one bad break, or the long grinding fights against 3x250s or higher. Those people are not me.

And honestly, I think the devs do a great job on the game and I don't mean to give them a bunch of tinykitty about what they are doing wrong here. All in all, though, I don't like it and I could see it pushing me away if it continues like this a long time. And also for the record: personally I don't care what the roster looks like for the guys ahead of me. Let newbie and casuals win, for all I care. Just don't make me not want to play.

TL,DR - "+1"

I love the way you sum this up. Perfect.

I agree 1000%

I hope they change things. I'm certainly not liking this cold shoulder approach they have been taking.

NorthernPolarity

LordWill wrote:

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

Wow great feedback, much better than my amazing poetry threads that nobody likes

Seriously though, this community scaling has to go, i think that's what is driving people away and making them cray-cray. I don't understand how and why my levels should go up and up when i haven't even touched a node yet. It really should never have been implemented. Because most sane people don't stand a chance.

On one hand you have the low level guys grinding everything down to 1, just because they can. Because it's easy and they probably dont know any better. Then we have the crazies with their uber rosters doing much the same thing. Beating level 230's and then those who are able to beat the 395's has an effect on the rest of the community, some who, like myself, just can't do those levels or need an insane amount of luck to win.

I wish PVE could be more like PVP which at the moment is the only thing i enjoy with the game. You start off with low level enemies and progressively get harder ones, the more you win. None of this community scaling, just good old fashioned "progression" based on your skills and nobody elses. If you get stuck and cant beat a node after a few tries, then it should be lowered, NOT HIGHERD (is that even a word)

Today for instance i did ONE essential node and straight after i finished doing it that ONE time, my levels rose by another TEN. Seriously, it makes no sense. Why your forcing customers to NOT play your game is beyond me. It's almost as if you don't want our support and money, our time, our reviews.

I hope to god, someone higher up looks at this thread and the countless others and at least acknowledge there is a problem and something should be done to fix it, instead of papering over the cracks with new characters. People will eventually begin to realize, its not worth their time anymore.

edit: TheUnwiseOne's account did not get hacked by some weird serious type nerd. He is still here somewhere and he loves **** and breasticles.

I'm with you 1000%

I am sure you have seen my posts regarding community scaling. It gets under my skin like nothing else. Anyway, I have said it all before in all my other posts. I agree with you and I hope for the love of everything good in this world they change it.

I really do think whoever came up with scaling is really a HYDRA agent and is trying to bring down Demiurge from the inside. They are just evil that way...

And as I have said, if they have run out of ideas on how to fix scaling without ruining the game further, I am sure all they need to do is look to the sheer volume of feedback and suggestions given to them to figure something out.

I don't think they're seeing anything wrong on their side from a metrics perspective. Sure, the forumgoers are mad, but we represent a very small portion of the population and honestly do not much that much impact on their big decisions. The key thing to think about here is how scaling is affecting player retention, and I'm guessing for 90% of the players, scalings been working fine for them and they're seeing much higher mission completed numbers simply due to the fact that everyone can theoretically do all the missions. So what can you do if you're in Demiurge's shoes? A small subset of players are complaining about scaling, but the numbers probably show that nothing is wrong. Scaling obviously hasn't changed their retention numbers, so until it does, they aren't going to drastically change the system to appease the small, vocal minority.

Unknown

Part of the reason why community scaling exists because your missions are worth more the later you do it due to rubberbanding and that's also not fair to the guy who did it earlier.

You can't complain about being harmed by an arbitary mechanism (scaling) when people have been benefiting from an equally arbitary mechanism (rubberbanding) in the past. I'm guessing they're meant to try to cancel each other out so you don't get this scenario where the only last two hour matters, but they're not interacting in a predictable way.

Unknown

I still find the game fun, i.e. falcon is cool, but it has become exhausting. My time investment has nearly doubled and I'd feel guilty to take breaks due to alliances.

A form of level scaling has been suggested by players before it existed, myself included. My biggest issues are with community scaling and persistence. I don't think levels should raise because someone else plays, and I don't think an event should start at 200+ because you played a lot in the previous one.

I think scaling is too complex which leads to oddities. Tanking is terrible imo and needs to be removed completely, not merely diminished.

Unknown

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

Seriously though, this community scaling has to go, i think that's what is driving people away and making them cray-cray. I don't understand how and why my levels should go up and up when i haven't even touched a node yet. It really should never have been implemented. Because most sane people don't stand a chance.

SRSLY.

Last night, I looked at the Round 2 nodes. The Juggs, Rags, Storm node were all around lvl 50s.

Didn't play any of them, and yet today they're now 86, 87, 87.

****

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

I still find the game fun, i.e. falcon is cool, but it has become exhausting. My time investment has nearly doubled and I'd feel guilty to take breaks due to alliances.

A form of level scaling has been suggested by players before it existed, myself included. My biggest issues are with community scaling and persistence. I don't think levels should raise because someone else plays, and I don't think an event should start at 200+ because you played a lot in the previous one.

I think scaling is too complex which leads to oddities. Tanking is terrible imo and needs to be removed completely, not merely diminished.

The problem is they treat scaling like difficulty is a "gradual" thing, and it isn't. Everyone recognizes that in a goon battle you either defeat them ""easily"" (according to what seem to be the scaling metrics) or they annihilate you. The thing is, the same is true of most "character" battles. Usually you either defeat them (or ap-steal, or stun, etc) before they get their dangerous abilities off, and thus don't take much damage, or they completely wipe your team. Secondly, everyone is going to re-fight battles they can win (all-goon, or desert) rather than fight battles they can't.

So far from scaling to where it gives you a "challenge," it merely crosses a verticle line between "can handle without much problem (ie you won't die from match damage and any abilities you can't deny don't kill you outright)" and "can't handle" and then just... sits there and doesn't come back down

Unknown

The level of the enemy has to go up because they're intended to be very low at the start. Unless you're one of those guy who started with level 300 enemies due to some bug, the enemy start off way too easy. I accidentally beat the level 200 Daken on the team I sent out to lose on purpose (Hood/BP/Captain all maxed) and it wasn't even an incredibly awesome board either. If missions are too easy they'd have to go up because otherwise you just end up with a grind fest if they're too easy for at least two guys in the same bracket. Right now the level increase seems roughly 50/50 between community scaling and personal scaling. That is, you go away for a while and you see all your missions are 10 levels higher, and then you beat a few missions and they're now 10 levels higher. But that +20 level total is still needed, so if there was no community scaling your missions would just go up by 20 levels from your personal scaling to compensate.

The level increase has to be pretty fast because the bar starts at very low. Back in the days where there was no scaling, you'd have a hard time beating the level 230X3 DAs that are the standard enemy in the hard sub brackets if you're not running multiple level 141 characters, and since the bar started that high it doesn't need to be raised throughout the event because most people are already knocked out by that bar. But you can't keep the bar low forever, because otherwise you'd get something like The Hulk's easy bracket where 30 guys are tied for first for the exact same score (every mission done) since those are missions you can win in 30 seconds.

Unknown

Guys...let's get this post to the top of the forum! I was about to rant my **** balls off before seeing this and thought...thank **** for that! I'm not the only one tearing my hair out at the complete inconsistency of this piece of **** game. Seriously...they've got the recipe for one of the most basic, yet enjoyable games here and they're just killing it slowly...day by fuckng day!

Last PVP (falcon event) they obviously tweaked something...suddenly players are eclipsing the 1.3k mark! The winner of my bracket hit 1.7k as did a couple in my alluance! I was chuffed I'd hit 1.1k and immediately shielded in the joy of securing that worthless yellow falcon cover...but having actually enjoyed the thrill of the chase for once! I then set about the new simulator event with some kind of purpose!

I lost that 2 and a half days later....I lie....I lost that 2hrs into the event!

I tried to rubber band a good score 2hrs from the finish but failed as unsurprisingly the bots had warped into undefeatable objects in a number of hrs. Surprise, suprise...

However, I wasn't dismayed as the pvp beckoned and I'd enjoyed the last event that much I thought I'd dedicates some real playing time to this next pvp, 'Army of One''.I''d set my self up ready to commit 2/3 hrs of my meaningless weekend/Friday night to achieve the same small slice of enjoyment I had 2/3 days ago.

OMFG! What a complete waste of time! I cruised to 800 odd pts before hitting a solid wall of the same 6/7 players! I must have spent 2/3k sin ISO skipping battles only to see the same players pop up again and again! The same 6/7 players on **** rotation? Why am I paying ISO for that? Eventually, I bit the bullet and boosted my team. The first battle...the first **** colour match... the CPU had unleashed it's powers! Seriously! ****! second colour match I was a player down blah blah blah...

Now..I've scrolled through teams around me...and there are players on as many, if not more pts, that I could beat...but I can't **** beat them if I'm not matched with them! FFS! If I skip a battle 10 plus times...don't **** match me with them...at a **** cost to ME! It's a seriously flawed system. It seems to change inconsistently and to only the benefit of those who already have top teams!

Worst part of this ****, is in my anger, I quit the pvp and though I'd start the pve...

Are you **** **** me!

Storm/Jugs/rags in first node! Haha. **** OFF

Unknown

gamar wrote:

The problem is they treat scaling like difficulty is a "gradual" thing, and it isn't. Everyone recognizes that in a goon battle you either defeat them ""easily"" (according to what seem to be the scaling metrics) or they annihilate you. The thing is, the same is true of most "character" battles. Usually you either defeat them (or ap-steal, or stun, etc) before they get their dangerous abilities off, and thus don't take much damage, or they completely wipe your team. Secondly, everyone is going to re-fight battles they can win (all-goon, or desert) rather than fight battles they can't.

So far from scaling to where it gives you a "challenge," it merely crosses a verticle line between "can handle without much problem (ie you won't die from match damage and any abilities you can't deny don't kill you outright)" and "can't handle" and then just... sits there and doesn't come back down

With the recent increase in 3* power, even a level 230 Headbutt is no longer a guaranteed kill. Ares and Moonstone are both featured in this event, providing you with a cheap way to get someone who can take a monster hit (and still survive) for cheap even if you don't have someone like Thor/Captain/BP to tank. So far the quality of the opponents in Simulator Basic is fairly even and I don't see any 'can't win with infinite turns' setup until they're at least in the level 300 range. Now there are certainly a lot of matchup where you'd feel pretty uncomfortable fighting them straight up but it's not secret the game doesn't want you to resort to using the broken blue power guys. I think the punishment is a bit excessive but it needs to be there because otherwise it'd just be a Spiderman/Magneto slugfest.