Updates to S.H.I.E.L.D. Rank and Player XP (11/7/17)

BoyWonder1914

Based on the overview, I am inclined to say I like these changes, but I know certain things are going to give me pause and will need to be evaluated after some personal play-testing. 

• Taking XP away from "time spent" activities. This makes NO SENSE to me. You award points, and want rank to be a reflection of roster progress, yet roster progress is a direct result of the "time spent" in PVE/PVP. Iso and HP for roster slots don't fall out of the sky, they have to be earned from playing to progression and earning sub rewards. So as someone who hasn't been playing PVP as hard with the win-based changes, and don't really do LRs like that, those specific XP changes don't hurt me there, but I know that's gotta devastate a lot of people. 
• The increase in XP for rostering-related activity seems nice, though as someone who now almost exclusively gets this XP from champing and champ levels (which received the lowest increases), it's hard to say that will "make up" what I'm losing in daily clears and PVP wins. 
• It's nice that they're keeping the ISO bonus there at 125 for someone who hasn't reached it yet, and that retroactive XP is being given, but that makes the cap being raised to 200 kind of a head-scratcher. I'm sure there were a decent number of folks that had been at 125 for a while, so who knows how many levels they are about to jump after the change. Then we'll kinda be right back to square one. It is nice though, to see that they do in fact have this capability of raising the cap. 
• Taking XP away from opening tokens also seems pretty backwards when opening those tokens is yet another activity in the game that has a direct correlation to roster progression. Those covers are going to be used to roster, train powers, champ, and add champ levels to people. I can get that the double-dipping XP would allow people to get through certain levels quicker, especially if they've hoarded, but punishing people for hoarding seems counter-intuitive as well when hoarding still leads to roster development. 

Gotta decide now if I wanna just blow my CP/token hoard to take advantage of the XP while I still can, even though it will put me in an even tighter ISO bottleneck. 

broll

@BoyWonder1914

Point #1 - Someone who does DDQ only gets a lot of XP with little gain.  Add to that anyone who joins low SCLs and/or only does the easy missions 6 times, and people who do low SCLs in PvP.  It's totally possible get a lot of XP through grinding and get nothing but 1* and 2*s from it that dont' advance a roster for anyone playing for more than a few months.

Point #4 - RNG determines if opening a token advances your roster or not.  It's totally possible to open hundreds of tokens and get only a very small amount of roster progression out of it and a lot of throw away covers.  If you only have 1 3* that isn't max champed then you could open 10,000 ETs and get almost no roster progression from it.

This method makes way more sense then the current system.  

BoyWonder1914

broll said:

@BoyWonder1914

Point #1 - Someone who does DDQ only gets a lot of XP with little gain.  Add to that anyone who joins low SCLs and/or only does the easy missions 6 times, and people who do low SCLs in PvP.  It's totally possible get a lot of XP through grinding and get nothing but 1* and 2*s from it that dont' advance a roster for anyone playing for more than a few months.

Point #4 - RNG determines if opening a token advances your roster or not.  It's totally possible to open hundreds of tokens and get only a very small amount of roster progression out of it and a lot of throw away covers.  If you only have 1 3* that isn't max champed then you could open 10,000 ETs and get almost no roster progression from it.

This method makes way more sense then the current system.  

I'm not following.....what exactly was the issue with a player earning XP for those activities? It's not like that was gaming the system somehow to only get the XP that you were capable of, or felt like getting. There's also nothing inherently wrong with opening a bunch of hoarded tokens that you've earned fair & square for your efforts. Earning XP still brought you closer to earning and ISO sum that helps your roster regardless of where it's at. Why does them weighing XP heavier on the actual roster development itself somehow mean that the old way was wrong or didn't make sense? 

DAZ0273

Devs: "So we hear some of you have some spare Hero Points since win based PvP was introduced..."

maguirenumber6

So I should open my elites and heroics now but apply any covers tomorrow?

Rick_OShay

maguirenumber6 said:

So I should open my elites and heroics now but apply any covers tomorrow?

Yes. As long as you won't suffer with a huge number of covers you will have to sell.
If you can add them for power levels and champ levels tomorrow, that's a win.

Starfury

maguirenumber6 said:

So I should open my elites and heroics now but apply any covers tomorrow?

If you're not in risk of pulling a lot of covers you won't be able to apply within 2 weeks - yes.

smkspy

If you were dropping down scl levels to get easy clears either you were dropping to your appropriate scl level or where going for better placement without concern for xp points. Daily deadpool was just a slight bonus.

I also would hope that they roll back 2 star drop rates in PvP since xp gain was the reason for less pulls from random matches.

Also, how long will the game consider a person a "new player" since xp will still be awarded the old way to them up til a certain point?

And this really gonna promote hoarding for people with well developed rosters in the 2 and 3 star farming phases. I have both lazy cap and patch first champ level covers for my dupes on the vine. I was content to sell them as I'm working on champing my war machine right now, but since roster xp is the only way to earn xp now, I have to hoard tokens until I have no other characters to champ. Likewise having to rebuild 2 star farms where previously selling off a couple of 2s was small when it came to champing a 4 in their place.

Overall, it's a huge push to roster dupes even if you don't have the iso to champ lower level characters fast enough in a farm.

broll

BoyWonder1914 said:

broll said:

@BoyWonder1914

Point #1 - Someone who does DDQ only gets a lot of XP with little gain.  Add to that anyone who joins low SCLs and/or only does the easy missions 6 times, and people who do low SCLs in PvP.  It's totally possible get a lot of XP through grinding and get nothing but 1* and 2*s from it that dont' advance a roster for anyone playing for more than a few months.

Point #4 - RNG determines if opening a token advances your roster or not.  It's totally possible to open hundreds of tokens and get only a very small amount of roster progression out of it and a lot of throw away covers.  If you only have 1 3* that isn't max champed then you could open 10,000 ETs and get almost no roster progression from it.

This method makes way more sense then the current system.  

I'm not following.....what exactly was the issue with a player earning XP for those activities? It's not like that was gaming the system somehow to only get the XP that you were capable of, or felt like getting. There's also nothing inherently wrong with opening a bunch of hoarded tokens that you've earned fair & square for your efforts. Earning XP still brought you closer to earning and ISO sum that helps your roster regardless of where it's at. Why does them weighing XP heavier on the actual roster development itself somehow mean that the old way was wrong or didn't make sense? 

It causes confusion on new/causual players who get SCL7/8/9 opened up waaaayyyy sooner than they should, they try them and then get super frustrated that they can't play due to SCL based scaling.  If SR isn't a good measure of roster level (which it's not today) it kinda breaks SCL based scaling.  Many people have proposed locking people into top or top few SCLs to prevent people trolling down, but with the current setup that would make the game literally unplayable for these causal players who have over-inflated SRs due to getting lots of XP with little roster progression.

The rockett

With the changes in PVP (removing CPs from Progression), and now removing XP from winning matches it is clear they want to slow down player progression unless money is spent to grow your roster. 

twistmonkey

So to maximise XP, open all your tokens now, keep the covers in queue, then apply the covers on Thursday after the patch hits, correct?

smkspy

broll said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

broll said:

@BoyWonder1914

Point #1 - Someone who does DDQ only gets a lot of XP with little gain.  Add to that anyone who joins low SCLs and/or only does the easy missions 6 times, and people who do low SCLs in PvP.  It's totally possible get a lot of XP through grinding and get nothing but 1* and 2*s from it that dont' advance a roster for anyone playing for more than a few months.

Point #4 - RNG determines if opening a token advances your roster or not.  It's totally possible to open hundreds of tokens and get only a very small amount of roster progression out of it and a lot of throw away covers.  If you only have 1 3* that isn't max champed then you could open 10,000 ETs and get almost no roster progression from it.

This method makes way more sense then the current system.  

I'm not following.....what exactly was the issue with a player earning XP for those activities? It's not like that was gaming the system somehow to only get the XP that you were capable of, or felt like getting. There's also nothing inherently wrong with opening a bunch of hoarded tokens that you've earned fair & square for your efforts. Earning XP still brought you closer to earning and ISO sum that helps your roster regardless of where it's at. Why does them weighing XP heavier on the actual roster development itself somehow mean that the old way was wrong or didn't make sense? 

It causes confusion on new/causual players who get SCL7/8/9 opened up waaaayyyy sooner than they should, they try them and then get super frustrated that they can't play due to SCL based scaling.  If SR isn't a good measure of roster level (which it's not today) it kinda breaks SCL based scaling.  Many people have proposed locking people into top or top few SCLs to prevent people trolling down, but with the current setup that would make the game literally unplayable for these causal players who have over-inflated SRs due to getting lots of XP with little roster progression.

But again, just because it's open to them doesn't meam they'r forced to play them. They try it out, see it's too hard, and drop down to levels their rosters can handle. That's the fault of the devs not appropriately having reasonable levels for each scl, not players for gaining xp for playing the game.

The iso bonuses were huge for many players in advancing their rosters, now with potentially slower scl advancement, that avenue to increasing your roster has been take away. So, in theory, this change should also gone with an increase of in event node rewards to adjust for the lack of that iso bonus that actually helped players progress their rosters.

BoyWonder1914

broll said:

BoyWonder1914 said:

broll said:

@BoyWonder1914

Point #1 - Someone who does DDQ only gets a lot of XP with little gain.  Add to that anyone who joins low SCLs and/or only does the easy missions 6 times, and people who do low SCLs in PvP.  It's totally possible get a lot of XP through grinding and get nothing but 1* and 2*s from it that dont' advance a roster for anyone playing for more than a few months.

Point #4 - RNG determines if opening a token advances your roster or not.  It's totally possible to open hundreds of tokens and get only a very small amount of roster progression out of it and a lot of throw away covers.  If you only have 1 3* that isn't max champed then you could open 10,000 ETs and get almost no roster progression from it.

This method makes way more sense then the current system.  

I'm not following.....what exactly was the issue with a player earning XP for those activities? It's not like that was gaming the system somehow to only get the XP that you were capable of, or felt like getting. There's also nothing inherently wrong with opening a bunch of hoarded tokens that you've earned fair & square for your efforts. Earning XP still brought you closer to earning and ISO sum that helps your roster regardless of where it's at. Why does them weighing XP heavier on the actual roster development itself somehow mean that the old way was wrong or didn't make sense? 

It causes confusion on new/causual players who get SCL7/8/9 opened up waaaayyyy sooner than they should, they try them and then get super frustrated that they can't play due to SCL based scaling.  If SR isn't a good measure of roster level (which it's not today) it kinda breaks SCL based scaling.  Many people have proposed locking people into top or top few SCLs to prevent people trolling down, but with the current setup that would make the game literally unplayable for these causal players who have over-inflated SRs due to getting lots of XP with little roster progression.

Ah good point, did not think about SCL-based scaling at all. Definitely doesn't make sense for someone who is Rank 47 to be able to play SCL 8, or someone Rank 100+ to be able to play CL6. This explains the "event improvements we're hoping to make in the future". Let's just hope they line up, which I'm afraid I have to be skeptical of given the data they have so far. 

smkspy

Looking into the future also. If the devs decide to adjust ranking for each clearance level. I'm level 116, and could play scl 9 but don't because it's just too much trouble for me (time and health pack usuage), not because I couldn't do it.

What if they raise the level to play that rank to 150-200? I'm locked out of a tier that I could potentially compete. Also if they raise scl to 125-150 (low balling for my example). I'm locked out of a tier that I now play regularly. 

GigerHR

If they would go one step further and eliminate xp for dupes, it would give them a MUCH better ability to control SCL based scaling/rewards etc. If the only source of xp was a one-time gain from rostering/training/champing/champ leveling, then you end up with a fixed maximum pool of xp; 432,250pts under the new system, if I'm not mistaken. You could easily calculate the xp of any given roster, and hence the SR of that roster, and use that information to determine appropriate enemy levels based on the average roster strength of your player base. 

This would also let them set the maximum Shield Rank, and you'd never run into a situation like we just had with people hitting SR125 months before SR126+ was available. The max SR would be adjusted whenever enough new characters have been added to the pool to warrant a change, e.g. a new 4* adds 3,625pts to the max possible xp, so just make sure that the max SR covers that new possible total.

They may need to either add xp for standard character level increases, or increase the xp reward for champing (a 13-cover unchamped 4* is worth 1,000xp, champed is only 1,125xp... not sure that's enough of a difference to indicate the difference in roster strength). They'd also need to do a one-time normalization, to reassign SR levels to existing rosters. But from then on, they could compare roster strength at a glance and make much more informed decisions regarding SCL scaling/rewards.

Right now there is too much variance in roster strength at each SCL because there are too many uncontrolled avenues to gain xp. If they lock it down to a fixed maximum, you'll never have a case where a 2* roster could pvp-grind their way into a Shield Rank that gives them access to SCL 8 (for example). When you know that all the players who have access to a given SCL have roughly equivalent rosters, it's much easier to determine what rewards and enemy levels would be appropriate (in theory).

You could still farm 2*s and 3*s (it was worth doing it even before there was xp tied to it), and grind pvp for ISO (players have been doing that since before champ levels), you just wouldn't get xp for it.

Oh, and change the name of the points! ISO-8 is this game's "XP"... you play matches to earn it, and use it to level your characters... that's XP. Call these Roster Points (RP), then we can stop with the argument that we should earn them for doing every little thing in the game.

Beer40

aesthetocyst said:

In general I agree that Rank should reflect roster strength, not in-game grinding.

BUT #1 ... Too bad all our ranks were built on "tainted" foundations. Let's just all agree to forget about this.

BUT #2 ... Earning XP for farming seems to counter this design goal.

I think you and others hit the nail on the head with farming. Which leads me to believe the next step in this process (days? weeks? months?) down the line will be an implementation that tries to stop farming. My guess is that they feel like farming is taking away from their bottom line and this is a plus (and two or more negatives) to soften that announcement...when it comes.

halirin

It doesn't seem like they're against farming. That's why they increased the max champ sell value. 

firethorne

@Brigby I think you might be able to clear up some of the debate here if you could elaborate some more on this topic: why are we going one step forward in one area and one step back in another?  If the development team wanted to increase the amount of experience gained through roster development, more in that area certainly could have been added without removing experience gained elsewhere.   

Ultimately, the change is giving the impression devs think something was inherently wrong about giving players experience from playing missions.  If it isn't broke, you don't fix it.  So, what about giving experience from playing the game was so broken that it warranted removal?

Rick_OShay

How does the XP change affect the XP i would be gaining from Taco tokens?  Should I run them out before tomorrows update? Because that's a huge amount of XP that is just going to disappear.
Of course I have around 260 in each taco vault, and in the time it has taken to build that up, I've champed most 4*s that have been offered in them already (waiting for the holy crud moment where one contains a cover 13..).

smkspy

@GigerHR,

I don't get why artificially raising your level is even an issue. A two-star player isn't farming, and even if they could get their level high enough to play say scl 8, they still can't compete in it, and if they try it works out for those of us that can compete. 

From its beginning levels has been more about giving an iso boost every now and then, so slowing down progression just feels like the devs wanting to curb that bonus, which actually hampers roster development.