SCL10 in 2019? How should it be implemented?

babinro

SCL10 has been 'Coming Soon' for a while now...as in we've officially entered Blizzard parody levels of 'soon - trademark' by now. I thought it might be fun to discuss what you'd like to see with this ultimate end game level difficulty either in terms of challenge, reward or both. 

My thoughts on SCL10 execution in PvE:

This is admittedly a little extreme but I'd like to see this as an opportunity to shake things up.  Since SCL10 represents the most challenging end game content I think it's important to make this reasonably challenging but NOT grindy.  Imagine if SCL10 PvE had only 2 clears per sub down from the current 6+.

• First Clear:  Each Node has level 500 enemies.
• Second Clear: Each Node has level 550 enemies.
• Node rewards are clearly enhanced to surpass those of SCL9 in terms of ISO/CP/RISO/etc

SCL10 is an opportunity to provide a real challenge to the ultimate end game.  I think its actually okay to alienate the vast majority of the player base here in order to give people a goal to push towards.  Besides, PvP difficulty doesn't change with SCL and so SCL10 will still be opened to everyone who meets the minimum rank requirements to enjoy.

Specific Rewards:

The key thing I'd like to see added to SCL10 in both Pve and PvP is a focus on Support tokens.  The game is sorely lacking accessibility to these right now and awarding a purple support token to top 10 PvP and top 10 PvE with golden support going to the top 100 of both PvE and PvP would really help a lot and serve to make this a stand out from the SCL9 rewards.

Bowgentle

I think if they even tried changing the structure between SCLs, their code base would simply implode.
At best you can hope for higher levels with slightly better rewards, at worst even trying to finally add that 10 to the SCLs will create a black hole that'll suck Will into another plane of existence.

HoundofShadow

Adding Master Support token to top 10 placement is too far-fetched. I can probably see it happening for top 1, but definitely not top 10.

If you want a challenge, I can think of some:

1) If you lose or retreat, the node will be closed, which means you earn zero point and there isn't any second chance.
2) Enemies can't be stunned or sent airborned.
3) Players' aps and basic special tiles will be reset in wave nodes, but enemy teams get to keep theirs.
4) All players' characters won't be boosted.
5) There will be countdown tiles similar to Snowball Fight or Fight for Wakanda PvE.
6) Players can't use healthpacks, team-ups, ap boost and damage boost.

It's probably too challenging for most, so I think realistically speaking, they will probably increase the level of the enemies an add Advanced support tokens to placement, 1 or 2 more LTs, more CPs, more HPs.

bluewolf

Was it this year that they added the “halt enemy cascades” modifier to pve?
Add harder pve?  Not sure that’s in the plans.

Pvp was also made easier with the wins hybrid implementation.

The first step for scl 10 would be to halt the exodus of top end players who would actually play/qualify.  Then expand the number of players at that level.  Otherwise they are just expanding the rewards available for the top end players as that population shrinks or at best stays the same. 

Bowgentle

bluewolf said:

Was it this year that they added the “halt enemy cascades” modifier to pve?
Add harder pve?  Not sure that’s in the plans.

Pvp was also made easier with the wins hybrid implementation.

The first step for scl 10 would be to halt the exodus of top end players who would actually play/qualify.  Then expand the number of players at that level.  Otherwise they are just expanding the rewards available for the top end players as that population shrinks or at best stays the same. 

You got that backwards.
Top end players leave because THERE IS NOTHING TO DO.
Except the stuff we've been doing for years.

Tony_Foot

I don't want CL10. I don't play CL9 and that's despite me saying I want more challenge in the game. So why don't I play CL9. Because I want more of a challenge but I don't want to do it 6 times per day every day. I'd much rather instead of adding a new CL they remove a trivial node or two and add one deadly node that is a real challenge 500+ or scales infinitely until you can't do it anymore. Risk your roster and heals to get the most points.

More of a challenge would be great but not for 40 rounds per day, just on 4-8 or the time sink becomes too great for the rewards.

AardvarkPepper

babinro said:

I think its actually okay to alienate the vast majority of the player base here in order to give people a goal to push towards.

Assuming that wasn't a typo (which it may well have been) that won't sell the idea to MPQ developers.  You alienate the "vast majority" of the player base, implicitly you alienate the majority of pay-in players, implicit is you lose money.

As to the idea of only 2 clears per sub - mmm I can't support that idea for an exclusive PvE SCL.  If that's applied to all SCLs great, but exclusive to the top tier?  The consequence is newer players not only are stuck at lower rewards (they can't beat the stronger players that play down in their SCLs anyways) and the newer players aren't going to break out of that, there's also an "exclusive" club that's sort of post-grind.   Smacks of elitism.

I'm sure "elitism" wasn't the goal, but you can see how it could be construed that way.  Make ALL PvE 2 clears per sub, or even 1 clear per sub.  Everyone can go about their day sooner.

babinro said:

Specific Rewards:

The key thing I'd like to see added to SCL10 in both Pve and PvP is a focus on Support tokens.  The game is sorely lacking accessibility to these right now and awarding a purple support token to top 10 PvP and top 10 PvE with golden support going to the top 100 of both PvE and PvP would really help a lot and serve to make this a stand out from the SCL9 rewards.

Conceptually there's something there - making supports more widely available would be nice, sure.  But in practice I don't think the exact described implementation for making RARE supports widely available will work out.  A purple support token to top 10 PvP and top 10 PvE?  On the one hand, players that have been grinding like crazy to get high level supports see their efforts devalued as high level supports become more commonly available.  On the other hand, players that don't grind like crazy see themselves falling behind as more and more players get the high-level supports that they won't get.

Yes, all right, of course if changes are being made, then of course they're *changes* so everything won't be the same.  But the proposal is a pretty big step in terms of making high level supports widely available.  it's a BIG change.

bluewolf said:

The first step for scl 10 would be to halt the exodus of top end players who would actually play/qualify.  Then expand the number of players at that level.  Otherwise they are just expanding the rewards available for the top end players as that population shrinks or at best stays the same. 

I think fundamentally the game is just too grindy and requires too much of a real-time commitment.  Yes, the more you play the game, the more significant you feel your purchases in-game are as you use the assets you purchased.  But real progress in the game, and maintaining progress, eats up a lot of real time, and players have other interests.  That is, I think rather than trying to design *just SCL 10* to incentivize veterans to stay, I think the game would have to be largely reworked as a whole, to allow different players with different personal situations to feel they're making a significant contribution to a significant alliance.

Borstock

I assume it'll just be scaled a little higher with a bit better rewards.

I'm not looking forward to that Inhumans node at lvl 616 or whatever. 

Nick441234

Tony_Foot said:

I don't want CL10. I don't play CL9 and that's despite me saying I want more challenge in the game. So why don't I play CL9. Because I want more of a challenge but I don't want to do it 6 times per day every day. I'd much rather instead of adding a new CL they remove a trivial node or two and add one deadly node that is a real challenge 500+ or scales infinitely until you can't do it anymore. Risk your roster and heals to get the most points.

More of a challenge would be great but not for 40 rounds per day, just on 4-8 or the time sink becomes too great for the rewards.

I feel similar to this. I'm in 5* land, but choose SCL7 purely because we have to clear it 7 times to place highly. I have no time for hard nodes when I have to clear that many times. If I only had to do it once, or twice, I'd have a good crack at CL9. I'm not playing hard nodes though when I have to put in so much work to place well. 

broll

I’m not holding my breath on seeing SCL 10 at all. It’s been “coming soon” for what like 2 years now?  They clearly either dropped their idea or have no idea how to implement it. As they continue to make bad decisions the alienate the only people that could play at that tier is their really a point anyway?

JHawkInc

I presume that the only reason SCL 10 (and 9 and 8) were announced at the time SCL launched is because those are the clearance levels from the movies (outside of special Alpha/Omega level options for people like Fury, at least). I kinda figured "Coming Soon!" meant "as soon as it's ready to implement", and for whatever reason (I would guess the number of players capable/willing to play at that level) it's taken longer for it to be appropriate to add them than was originally anticipated.

Honestly, I don't expect SCL 10 to be much different from the others, slightly harder, slightly better rewards, but I don't really see it coming unless there's a huge boom to the game, or an overhaul of the existing SCLs. For example, if there were some change that encourage people to push as hard as they are able (so no 5* players are dipping down to SCL 7/8 for better placement like they do now), then it would increase the population of players at SCL 9, and it would become more viable to split them between 9 and 10 (letting those move up who are capable). 

But I'm not exactly sure how they do that. You could just lock people out of lower SCLs at a certain point, but I know some 5* players who play lower SCLs more because it takes less time to play (such players are likely to benefit from better placement because of it, but people willing to play SCL7 instead of going for SCL9 because it means a third of the play time aren't going to be happy with being locked into higher SCLs). Not exactly sure how you increase the difficulty going up SCLs but also keep the playtime proportional so that people are willing to make the leap.

In regards to rewards going up, I'd like to see something beyond the max progression. I'd kinda like to see that in general (like, keep everything exactly where it is, then just add some more stuff on top, so currently Hearts of Darkness has the top CP reward at 54k points, but people are going to have more than that in this event, so add more rewards at like 60k and 65k or whatever, a support token, another event token maybe, little drops of ISO or Red ISO or HP that'll be tiny for one event, but add up over time, that kind of thing) Another progression 4 in SCL 10 would be nice. And another shift down in placement rewards (t100 get the 4*, t10 get an LT, etc, maybe t10 alliances get the 4* and t200 get the 3*, first will encourage 10 alliances to push harder, the latter will reward die-hard players that are capable of SCL10 even if they aren't in competitive alliances). If they ever finish rolling out Supports, Beginner tokens should at the very least be in SCL 9, if not 7-9, so I'd drop an Intermediate into SCL 10 (might make more sense in top placement even though I'd like to see it in progression). Even then, it'd take ages to acquire all of the supports at a high level, so I don't think it's too unreasonable for a "more Supports/tokens" request.

The rockett

As a top end player in SL 9, always 1.9.1, we really need something.  The top end player base is bored.  No Heroics, nothing new for pve, just same old same old. We need a challenge, and the raid events were NOT it.  SL 10 would be something for sure but I really don’t know what else at this point.  

Rockwell75

There should be a 5* progression reward.  And they should make you work for it.

Straycat

I think all levels should focus on support tokens, assuming they want to make them a thing. If they want to make the game less grindy, they don't have to limit it to the top players. I would like a mode with one time clears that locked out characters after you play them, but that would be something else, not SC10. I really have no thoughts what sc10 should or could be

broll

Straycat said:

I think all levels should focus on support tokens, assuming they want to make them a thing. If they want to make the game less grindy, they don't have to limit it to the top players. I would like a mode with one time clears that locked out characters after you play them, but that would be something else, not SC10. I really have no thoughts what sc10 should or could be

I would quit so fast lol.