Prodigal Sun, Episode 4.5

HailMary

sms4002 wrote:

While I admit I didn't read any of the previous pages because I was tired and pissed, Miucat hit the nail on the head. It's pretty ridiculous how literally EVERY PVE event before this I could save the sub till the last refresh and then join up and rubberband back into top contention, only grinding the essentials. Yet with this event, I do that and somehow can't even hold top 50 in the subs. If they want to change it back to the first hulk event where its just a straight grind, let them. But at least tell us first so we know we have to grind it down to 1 everytime just to stand a chance. Enjoy your level 400 scaled enemies though Carthl!

It's now a middle ground. The rubberbanding has been dampened, but it's definitely not a pure grind, either. I was #6 in your Wakanda bracket, and I did two fairly casual sweeps.

Bowgentle wrote:

If they don't want people to game the system, then they're doing exactly the right thing in shaking things up and keeping people in the dark.

This. It makes no sense for the devs to specifically tell us forumites exactly how to win with minimal effort.

Unknown

I think it helps if we have some perspective of what is 'insane scaling' relative to your score. I have a roster of 141s so I assume nobody has a higher baseline (maybe they give higher weight to 4*s for starting point, but that'd be downright cruel).

Currently I have 38397 points and #1 in my main bracket. My opening node in Hell's Kitche is 270 (it went down between the last time I posted because I finished killing everyone I have before taking a break).

So I don't find facing level 210 enemies to be outrageous broken if you're also behind by a decent chunk of points.

Arogntbastrd

"Oh ****, didn't see human torch in this node... OH ****! That goon makes green"

Death

Thus ends today's mpq dramatic reenactment

Unknown

Arogntbastrd wrote:

"Oh ****, didn't see human torch in this node... OH ****! That goon makes green"

Death

Thus ends today's mpq dramatic reenactment

Like BP that's a quantity over quality node. Sometimes HT will save his green AP for Flamethrower which is infinitely easier to deal with than his instant killing Flame Jet, and sometimes he does a Flame Jet by turn 2 and you die horribly.

Unknown

I'm glad the Mayhem Meters turned out to be a copy of the Iso-8 Brotherhood mechanism and nothing more nefarious. Of course, not unlocking them in Wakanda means that thousands of points for the event were completely lost, which may or may not come back to completely bite everyone in the ****.

That said, I am suspicious about the "Free Parking" Sentry Team-Up mode in each sub as a mechanism to intentionally drive up community scaling. After all, losing in the Sentry pins is almost impossible, especially on the normal mode sub, which in turn has to be generating a strong community scaling effect. The pins are free points and virtually risk-free every refresh.

Moving on, Hell's Kitchen.... wow the difficulty level on this sub just went through the roof, straight right up to what normally is "final round" hard difficulty. As Phantron noted earlier, there's the DD who is being red as a gatekeeper for the rest of the sub and to get to the "Free Parking" Sentry node. But that's not where the real "fun" is... that comes afterwards. HT + DD, while being fed, anyone? Yummy. And if that is not masochistic enough for everyone, try out the HT + 2 green generators (4 green per turn) for some true insanity. (Yes this is **technically** beatable; bring Ares, max boost, pray for a favorable board for an Onslaught + Sunder to down HT - you have about 4-6 turns (depending on whether or not HT picks up any greens naturally) before HT gets 2 max power, self-sustaining flame jets going that will melt 141s in 2-3 turns each at superhuman PvE levels).

This should be the point in the event where the perfect clearing comes finally to a screeching halt and points dry up to a trickle. For most, if the sub is not completely unplayable now, it will be after a few more rounds of community scaling.

Nighthawk81

Arogntbastrd wrote:

"Oh ****, didn't see human torch in this node... OH ****! That goon makes green"

Death

Thus ends today's mpq dramatic reenactment

I got hit in the falcon node with bird strike on turn four and then again on turn five feeding off of the goon's auto purple ap, then he fired inspiration two turns in a row! After I finally whittled the protect tiles down, GSBW fired off her purple. Two turns, then two sniper rifles, death. It sucks that the devs put these goons with characters that fed off the auto ap. you can't compete in the long run with that advantage.

Nighthawk81

Jdberia wrote:

Arogntbastrd wrote:

"Oh ****, didn't see human torch in this node... OH ****! That goon makes green"

Death

Thus ends today's mpq dramatic reenactment

I got hit in the falcon node with bird strike on turn four and then again on turn five feeding off of the goon's auto purple ap, then he fired inspiration two turns in a row! After I finally whittled the protect tiles down, GSBW fired off her purple. Two turns, then two sniper rifles, death. It sucks that the devs put these goons with characters that fed off the auto ap. you can't compete in the long run with that advantage.

Auto ap strikes again! On the daken node in Washington, GSBW fired off her sniper rifle on turn three! She might have made one green match of her own.

Arogntbastrd

Phantron wrote:

Arogntbastrd wrote:

"Oh ****, didn't see human torch in this node... OH ****! That goon makes green"

Death

Thus ends today's mpq dramatic reenactment

Like BP that's a quantity over quality node. Sometimes HT will save his green AP for Flamethrower which is infinitely easier to deal with than his instant killing Flame Jet, and sometimes he does a Flame Jet by turn 2 and you die horribly.

I brought hood, thinking I was smart. Cascade gave him TEN green. Death. Alright HT... **** got real

Arogntbastrd

Jdberia wrote:

Jdberia wrote:

Arogntbastrd wrote:

"Oh ****, didn't see human torch in this node... OH ****! That goon makes green"

Death

Thus ends today's mpq dramatic reenactment

I got hit in the falcon node with bird strike on turn four and then again on turn five feeding off of the goon's auto purple ap, then he fired inspiration two turns in a row! After I finally whittled the protect tiles down, GSBW fired off her purple. Two turns, then two sniper rifles, death. It sucks that the devs put these goons with characters that fed off the auto ap. you can't compete in the long run with that advantage.

Auto ap strikes again! On the daken node in Washington, GSBW fired off her sniper rifle on turn three! She might have made one green match of her own.

Haha, the worst i remember was spidey and iw with a blue / yellow making goon. Not deadly but annoying. Turn one, no blue match...stun. I almost punched a baby

That being said, it adds a little flavor to the same ole same ole but come on, make these the last node not the first like spidey was or middle like ht is!

Unknown

So far all my wins against HT looks like this:

HT saves up for 10g
Flamethrower gets placed
HT immediately matches Flamethrower tile
More stuff happens
HT puts down Flame Jet
HT immediately matches Flame Jet tile

It's pretty much if he places a Flame Jet tile that isn't immediately destroyed, someone's going to be dying in 2 turns, if not 1.

Actually the tendency for nodes to get harder over time (in terms of just team composition) is another good argument for gambling early via grinding. Terrible scaling doesn't mean much when you've nodes like HT + 2 Pyros. Nobody's going to be beating them reliably even with lowish scaling, so your terrible scaling is suddenly not that bad. Of course you'd get burned if the later nodes turn out to be really easy, but I don't recall any event that ever worked like that (nodes get easier in team composition the closer you get to the end).

Bacon Pants

On an actual serious note for once...What is the general consensus on Sentry? He seems to already be ridiculously overpowered and in line for a nerf before we even have him.

Unknown

Bacon Pants wrote:

On an actual serious note for once...What is the general consensus on Sentry? He seems to already be ridiculously overpowered and in line for a nerf before we even have him.

World Rupture's interaction with strike tile is just downright broken. He's otherwise about on par with lazy Thor, which is pretty darn broken too but, we do have lazy Thor so there's obviously a precedent for that.

Arogntbastrd

What of his sustainability? Or complete lack thereof?

When you use green, even if the first cd knocks out your opponent, the rest keep going off and keep hurting your team. Now if at 5, the abilities stop hurting your team or hurt them a negligible amount then sweet ****, that'll be scary. For d though he'll be a monster

For those keeping score at home , bringing in over 21k worth of health to face ht helps. Die ht die!

Spoit

Arogntbastrd wrote:

What of his sustainability? Or complete lack thereof?

When you use green, even if the first cd knocks out your opponent, the rest keep going off and keep hurting your team. Now if at 5, the abilities stop hurting your team or hurt them a negligible amount then sweet ****, that'll be scary. For d though he'll be a monster

For those keeping score at home , bringing in over 21k worth of health to face ht helps. Die ht die!

I wonder how much damage it scales up to? Because at the lvl 77/4 green, the self damage really is quite manageable

Arogntbastrd

In other news. I thought "ht and two Pyros" was hyperbole. I didn't know it was the next node! Haha. Wasn't bad though. He broke his own cd tile and no issues at all

Unknown

You can't just say 'well his attacks do damage to you', because all his attacks also do a lot more damage than anything comparable, probably because they also hurt you. Killing the enemy quicker ends the game quicker, which prevents you from taking additional damage. Now since you can't exactly save the game and find out what happens if you didn't use some of his self-damage attacks to compare what would've happened there's obviously a gamble, but if the enemy is anywhere close to getting their moves off, then the self-damage you take is nothing compared to the damage you'd take if the enemy got enough AP. A level 141 Punisher would do close to 2000 damage to your team with a single Molotov, for example, so taking 2000 damage to stop him from using a Molotov is an even trade assuming you don't have an option of simply killing him without any drawback.

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

If they don't want people to game the system, then they're doing exactly the right thing in shaking things up and keeping people in the dark.

If they don't want people to game the system then they shouldn't make the system susceptible in such a way. There's a well known term for this, it's called "design flaw", most companies try to avoid it. Changing the core rules and not telling players about it is plain rude and switches the reward scheme from "best player" to "inexperienced player lucky enough to follow the new rules by accident". Sort of like playing darts and getting told after your turn that this time whoever got closest to the outer rim wins. It's not just random, it intentionally tries to keep the good players from placing well.

Unknown

Moghwyn wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

If they don't want people to game the system, then they're doing exactly the right thing in shaking things up and keeping people in the dark.

If they don't want people to game the system then they shouldn't make the system susceptible in such a way. There's a well known term for this, it's called "design flaw", most companies try to avoid it. Changing the core rules and not telling players about it is plain rude and switches the reward scheme from "best player" to "inexperienced player lucky enough to follow the new rules by accident". Sort of like playing darts and getting told after your turn that this time whoever got closest to the outer rim wins. It's not just random, it intentionally tries to keep the good players from placing well.

PvE has always been a 'play more = more likely to win'. Sure, with rubberband you need to play as close to the end as possible, but it's not like this is rocket science. You still need to play more to beat someone who is also playing in the same ending time as you.

I remember a long time ago I was in a chat on MMORPG encounter, and it went like:

A: "Okay encounter XYZ is hard. What's the secret to trivially beat it?"
B: "There's no trick."
A: "Haha, no seriously, you can tell me."
B: "Seriously, there is no trick. It's just hard."
A: "But there is always a trick to trivially beat everything!"

Even with all the weirdness of this game's PvE system, over the long run the winners of the PvE event tend to be guys with a ton of play time, strong roster, and in particular strong characters that are boosted in the said event. Even when rubberband is strong, all the rubberband strategy is really about how to do relatively well while keeping your sanity. You're still going to lose someone who grinds a lot and knows the same tricks, because he'd do exactly the same thing as you on the last refresh, but he'd start with a huge lead for his earlier grinding. It just happens that there are very few guys that grind that hard so the chance of encountering such a guy is very rare, so the old tricks is usually good enough.

Unknown

sms4002 wrote:

Ok, can someone explain this ridiculous event for me?!? I joined both subs around 14:30 -14 hours left. (around 7pm my time) Did one of each node plus maybe 2 times of each high point node. then left it till now (3am) because I am not setting up an alarm for 8 am to do all these an hour before the end. How in the hell do these guys have so many more points than me?!?! my highest point missions are only ~120 points each. If the refresh is 12 hours how does this guy have 3000 points? I joined at 14 hours so there is no way he could have gotten an extra refresh in right? I am only 29th in main after making all my pushes before the subs end and I have a feeling when I wake up I will be in even worse shape. It makes no sense. Can someone explain this to me? I recognize a lot of names at the top here, what did you guys do to get so many points? I am going to miss out on sentry because of this tinykitty.

lol Sauce I like that screenshot. I joined with 8 hours to close with only like 20 spots left in that bracket. Then I spent 3 hours grinding every node to 1 in both subs. And then went to sleep, thats the score I got. Since I only ended up top 50 I guess its because I was in a bracket that allowed people to get more than one refresh in which is not fair. So don't blame me.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I remember a long time ago I was in a chat on MMORPG encounter, and it went like:

A: "Okay encounter XYZ is hard. What's the secret to trivially beat it?"
B: "There's no trick."
A: "Haha, no seriously, you can tell me."
B: "Seriously, there is no trick. It's just hard."
A: "But there is always a trick to trivially beat everything!"

Admit it, you had that conversation with yourself, didn't you?