SCL10 Mission Changes

IceIX
IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,308 Site Admin

Hey all,

Wanted to take a moment and announce a change in mission structure for SCL10 that will be going into effect with this next PVE, Fight For Wakanda. Since the addition of SCL 10, we have been looking at how many people play SCL 10 and how much time it takes them to complete playthroughs. We would like to make playing in SCL 10 attractive to more players so we are making some quality of life changes to SCL 10. 

SCL 10 Mission Changes

Starting in Fight For Wakanda, we’re making the following changes to missions to reduce player’s overall play times.

  • Changed total points draining on missions to 3 (from 4).

  • Mission difficulty scales more between each mission, but the max difficulty remains unchanged.

  • Changed mission node rewards to 4 (from 6) and re-scaled rewards so they give out roughly the same rewards as before overall.

With these changes, missions will give out roughly the same rewards over a fewer number of clears, and offer the same difficulty increase over those clears. Overall, the goal is to reduce the overall amount of time the player spends refighting each mission for each set of mission clears.Our goal is to put the playtime players are experiencing at SCL10 close in comparison to SCLs 1-9.

At the same time, we changed the reward structure for Progression slightly. The highlights are:

  • Moved the 4-Star Cover reward from T6 to T15

  • Moved the 50 5-Star Shard reward from T12 to T9

  • Moved the 75 5-Star Shard reward from T14 to T18

  • Broke up the T18 4-Star Shard reward into 2x50 and moved them to T6 and T13

A few of you astute players may have noticed a change in mission rewards through the event preview (see here). While these rewards are in fact correct, the changes to the gameplay structure make these changes a bit easier to understand.

These changes overall make it easier for people breaking into SCL10 to get the first 5-Star shard rewards faster, get more 4-Star Shard rewards faster, and moves the second 5-Star Shard reward a bit further down, but still in a place that players who are able to clear the event can still reach fairly easily. We’re pretty confident these changes overall will make SCL10 better for players not only just starting out in it to gain more rewards, but also for players that are crushing it to not take quite so much real world time in doing so.

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Comments

  • killercool
    killercool Posts: 279 Mover and Shaker
    Sounds like a positive change.  To clarify - optimal play is now 3 initial clears, followed by 3 clears at the end, correct?
  • bowla33
    bowla33 Posts: 203 Tile Toppler
    3 and 3 doesn't seem like major reduction in time. 
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,191 Chairperson of the Boards
    So max difficulty on the 3rd try right?

    I appreciate the lessen time it will take to complete, but some characters health pools are so big at max difficulty, it still takes forever to complete. Granted one less time is nice. 

    I will cast judgment after I try it out.
  • bowla33
    bowla33 Posts: 203 Tile Toppler
    Will points be correctly adjusted to reflect less clears needed for progression?
  • MrPlow
    MrPlow Posts: 237 Tile Toppler
    So the reduction in the lower SCL levels is to encourage more people to go to SCL 10?
  • grunth13
    grunth13 Posts: 608 Critical Contributor
    Changed mission node rewards to 4 (from 6) and re-scaled rewards so they give out roughly the same rewards as before overall.

    Does this mean we still have to do 6 clears for optimal points,  but we get rewards for only 4 of those clears?   Or will end clear grind also be reduced by 1 to make it 5 total clears to get optimal points? 
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,239 Chairperson of the Boards
    @IceIX

    Would you be able to explain a little how wave nodes will behave under this new structure?  We have some coming up in Strange Sights.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,239 Chairperson of the Boards
    MrPlow said:
    So the reduction in the lower SCL levels is to encourage more people to go to SCL 10?
    It appears that all the progression rewards for all other SCLs are remaining the same.  Based on my comparisons for 7, 8, and 9, that is what I see.

    New Release placement rewards are always different so we need to see a normal PVE to compare to VB's rewards, but I assume they are not doing anything there since they didn't mention it.
  • SourCream
    SourCream Posts: 101 Tile Toppler
    @IceIX What will happen to the point structure ? 

    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL10 = 3 X 100 = 300
    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL09 = 4 X 100 = 400
    or
    CL10 points will be adjusted ?
    If nothing is adjusted, then you're punishing CL10 players even more with more playing-time needed to achieve progression and lower alliance ranks as well.
  • kennn712
    kennn712 Posts: 69 Match Maker
    Quick question - will 3x clears be enough for max progression?
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,601 Chairperson of the Boards
    SourCream said:
    @IceIX What will happen to the point structure ? 

    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL10 = 3 X 100 = 300
    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL09 = 4 X 100 = 400
    or
    CL10 points will be adjusted ?
    If nothing is adjusted, then you're punishing CL10 players even more with more playing-time needed to achieve progression and lower alliance ranks as well.
    That was my first worry as well. It won't matter to SCL10 players competing with each other, but if an SCL10 player is suddenly not scoring as many points as an SCL9 player for their alliance, it could be a huge mess.
  • SourCream
    SourCream Posts: 101 Tile Toppler
    JHawkInc said:
    SourCream said:
    @IceIX What will happen to the point structure ? 

    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL10 = 3 X 100 = 300
    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL09 = 4 X 100 = 400
    or
    CL10 points will be adjusted ?
    If nothing is adjusted, then you're punishing CL10 players even more with more playing-time needed to achieve progression and lower alliance ranks as well.
    That was my first worry as well. It won't matter to SCL10 players competing with each other, but if an SCL10 player is suddenly not scoring as many points as an SCL9 player for their alliance, it could be a huge mess.
    CL9 with higher score than CL10 is nothing new.
  • bowla33
    bowla33 Posts: 203 Tile Toppler
    JHawkInc said:
    SourCream said:
    @IceIX What will happen to the point structure ? 

    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL10 = 3 X 100 = 300
    Total points draining on node A of 100 in CL09 = 4 X 100 = 400
    or
    CL10 points will be adjusted ?
    If nothing is adjusted, then you're punishing CL10 players even more with more playing-time needed to achieve progression and lower alliance ranks as well.
    That was my first worry as well. It won't matter to SCL10 players competing with each other, but if an SCL10 player is suddenly not scoring as many points as an SCL9 player for their alliance, it could be a huge mess.
    This was already the case. Since 10 is not worth more points, SCL9 players frequently have higher scores than all of 10 due to speed.
  • Mayo
    Mayo Posts: 156 Tile Toppler
    All seems to me to be reduced rewards and faster difficulty increase, as others have stated this changes will probably not bring more players to scl10 but populated more scl9. Will i play long enough to see increase on rewards or at least reduced red iso in favor of purple iso? Me thinks never ever. 
  • axmoss
    axmoss Posts: 230 Tile Toppler
    edited July 2020
    DarthDeVo said:
    My crazy suggestion? Make the Challenge node start at max level and worth points on the first hit, then take all the points that would have been gained in subsequent hits and divide them up amongst all other nodes.

    I like this idea. Then the devs can go back to 4 clears for everything else since the challenge is what usually takes up the most time.