Elsa SHIELD : First one might not finish

HoundofShadow

Back then in late 2017, as a new player, I could only access one node in ST, and that's the loaner node. Now, new players are enjoying many more nodes.

Also, the last LT was locked behind Whale$. Now I, and many other players, can access the entire nodes without whaling. 

If 3*/4* players can't beat these 5* nodes, they have at least Whales teamup/3* Deadpool or Invisibility to fall back on. 

Expecting the dev to give almost full access (in terms of difficulty level) to all 4* players is unlikely to happen, unless they remove the last LT token. The 5* essential node level is meant to target 5* players.  I think this compromise is fine for players deep in 4* land.

BlackBoltRocks

HoundofShadow said:

Back then in late 2017, as a new player, I could only access one node in ST, and that's the loaner node. Now, new players are enjoying many more nodes.

Also, the last LT was locked behind Whale$. Now I, and many other players, can access the entire nodes without whaling. 

If 3*/4* players can't beat these 5* nodes, they have at least Whales teamup/3* Deadpool or Invisibility to fall back on. 

Expecting the dev to give almost full access (in terms of difficulty level) to all 4* players is unlikely to happen, unless they remove the last LT token. The 5* essential node level is meant to target 5* players.  I think this compromise is fine for players deep in 4* land.

This ties back into what I said in the "2020 Anniversary is bad" thread. Newer players today don't know how good they have it.

DAZ0273

HoundofShadow said:

Back then in late 2017, as a new player, I could only access one node in ST, and that's the loaner node. Now, new players are enjoying many more nodes.

Also, the last LT was locked behind Whale$. Now I, and many other players, can access the entire nodes without whaling. 

If 3*/4* players can't beat these 5* nodes, they have at least Whales teamup/3* Deadpool or Invisibility to fall back on. 

Expecting the dev to give almost full access (in terms of difficulty level) to all 4* players is unlikely to happen, unless they remove the last LT token. The 5* essential node level is meant to target 5* players.  I think this compromise is fine for players deep in 4* land.

There is a difference between difficulty and dull repetition. Never changing the opponent's is a missed opportunity and in fact undermines the concept. It is great that Legion, Hellcat, Nega and Elsa all know how to get knocked airbourne by Riri and then call on new best pal Valkyrie for some free AP but what happens when they meet a different type of opponent? I would have thought that this is where SHIELD might'a wanted to shake it up a bit with different scenarios.

Bad

Mr_F said:

With such cases, 5* players would just bam through them and 4* players would be challenged.

If these event was for new 5* then ok, 4* players shouldnt be able to do them. But its opposite.

That is not accurate because I am a 5* player and I am relying on a 4*. Most accurate would be shargeting the right 4*,but that is the knowledge of each player.
Today with the loaner GE I dont think that would make much difference against hyper thing mordo and lordstar, so possibly another time xavier will do the job.
As hound of shadow said, with just the 5* required it is posible to eat the pie, not like it was before.

Mr_F

My problem, as a 4* player, with new SHIELD Training is not the difficulty. I do not expect it to be easy, or should I say too easy. My problem is they are designed for 5* players not the 4* players as they should be. Remember: those are new 4* not 5*.

For example: 4* node day 2 is difficult. It requires me few tries to pass it. Sometimes even I have to use all the healthpacks I have. Annoying as hell, repetable but lets say its ok. Also that is the difficulty level I expect from day 2 and 3 5* nodes.

And then, in day 4, the last node, that gives us LT, should have a diffulty level of current 2&3 day 5* nodes. I SHOULDNT be able even to whale through it even with 3 whales TU (as whaling 3 waves every 4 weeks is not that easy and cheap) and Invisibility should be doable but hard and long as toilet paper.

That is the problem. 5* nodes diffulty levels arent well distributed now. In all days pass the 1st one. The "my way" 4* players would get all the shards or most of them but LT would be a problem. Not I can Valkyrie/Whale them and got all the goodies.

BlackBoltRocks

DAZ0273 said:

HoundofShadow said:

Back then in late 2017, as a new player, I could only access one node in ST, and that's the loaner node. Now, new players are enjoying many more nodes.

Also, the last LT was locked behind Whale$. Now I, and many other players, can access the entire nodes without whaling. 

If 3*/4* players can't beat these 5* nodes, they have at least Whales teamup/3* Deadpool or Invisibility to fall back on. 

Expecting the dev to give almost full access (in terms of difficulty level) to all 4* players is unlikely to happen, unless they remove the last LT token. The 5* essential node level is meant to target 5* players.  I think this compromise is fine for players deep in 4* land.

There is a difference between difficulty and dull repetition. Never changing the opponent's is a missed opportunity and in fact undermines the concept. It is great that Legion, Hellcat, Nega and Elsa all know how to get knocked airbourne by Riri and then call on new best pal Valkyrie for some free AP but what happens when they meet a different type of opponent? I would have thought that this is where SHIELD might'a wanted to shake it up a bit with different scenarios.

I too wonder how hard it would be for the devs to give us different opponents in SHIELD training. I mean, they already do it for the Simulator PvE. Even changing just one character in every match shouldn't be too difficult. Like for the nodes featuring Elsa, Vulture as an opponent would have been ideal. It'd be race to see if you can get 7 Red before Vulture gets 6 Blue. Instead of what we currently have, which is always to wonder how on earth we're going to get past Thing, St4rlord and Mordo with the new 4* and the required 5* (actually no need to wonder. Just use the same methods: whales or invisibility).

HoundofShadow

At least half of the nodes are accessible to 3* players. They are huge improvements.

Regarding variety of opponents, initially, I thought they would change the opponents for each ST, since they are doing it for Simulators. But, the only thing that they have time to change is the opponents' teamups. A shakeup of the opponents in ST is definitely welcomed, even if they change it every quarter or simply port it from SCL 10 Challenge Nodes. It helps keep things a little fresher, especially for those who can't access SCL 10 yet, rather than dreading getting sent airborne, Bombshelled, getting blasted by Magnetic Repulsors and Remote Control Gauntlets repeatedly into defeat.

Seeing how they are focusing on UI  changes and putting a fresh coat of paints on MPQ for the next few months, I think we will still see the same teams for the next few STs.

DeNappa

The problem with this node is that its design is very unfair. The feeder bot is just a poor artificial difficulty modifier. Even if you focus on taking out the bot first (which you always should), scaling makes it likely that it will feed at least one activation of Riri's powers.

I used a champed apocalypse as 3rd. First time I retreated after 2 or 3 turns after a monster cascade on the AI side left my Apocalypse half dead and the AI with 3 or 4 powers ready to fire. Second time was easy enough: the AI used green to fire a bot countdown instead of Riri's power, and by then I already had Apo's yellow out, and plenty of red on the board for some heavy hits fast.

(My level 400 4/3/3 GED only helped with AP stealing)

Bad

Changing the nodes would be nice to add some variation but it will not change anything more.
Actually the difficulty of that node is that the player only has one free slot.
So one more time the game reveals as a mixture of power roster and tactics.
If the new 4* is exceptionaly good there is no problem. If not, it comes to the classic 5* that being a classic, not much he can do.
And finally all depends of the free slot, being a really strong one or a tactical one.
Any variation on the nodes on  this same concept will be the same (except adding enemies harder to beat yet).

DAZ0273

BlackBoltRocks said:

DAZ0273 said:

HoundofShadow said:

Back then in late 2017, as a new player, I could only access one node in ST, and that's the loaner node. Now, new players are enjoying many more nodes.

Also, the last LT was locked behind Whale$. Now I, and many other players, can access the entire nodes without whaling. 

If 3*/4* players can't beat these 5* nodes, they have at least Whales teamup/3* Deadpool or Invisibility to fall back on. 

Expecting the dev to give almost full access (in terms of difficulty level) to all 4* players is unlikely to happen, unless they remove the last LT token. The 5* essential node level is meant to target 5* players.  I think this compromise is fine for players deep in 4* land.

There is a difference between difficulty and dull repetition. Never changing the opponent's is a missed opportunity and in fact undermines the concept. It is great that Legion, Hellcat, Nega and Elsa all know how to get knocked airbourne by Riri and then call on new best pal Valkyrie for some free AP but what happens when they meet a different type of opponent? I would have thought that this is where SHIELD might'a wanted to shake it up a bit with different scenarios.

I too wonder how hard it would be for the devs to give us different opponents in SHIELD training. I mean, they already do it for the Simulator PvE. Even changing just one character in every match shouldn't be too difficult. Like for the nodes featuring Elsa, Vulture as an opponent would have been ideal. It'd be race to see if you can get 7 Red before Vulture gets 6 Blue. Instead of what we currently have, which is always to wonder how on earth we're going to get past Thing, St4rlord and Mordo with the new 4* and the required 5* (actually no need to wonder. Just use the same methods: whales or invisibility).

Exactly - why not design to showcase the new characters powers? This is why I described it as "lazy" (possibly a bit strong I admit) earlier in the thread - it really shouldn't be that hard to introduce some variety at least.

DAZ0273

Bad said:

Changing the nodes would be nice to add some variation but it will not change anything more.
Actually the difficulty of that node is that the player only has one free slot.
So one more time the game reveals as a mixture of power roster and tactics.
If the new 4* is exceptionaly good there is no problem. If not, it comes to the classic 5* that being a classic, not much he can do.
And finally all depends of the free slot, being a really strong one or a tactical one.
Any variation on the nodes on  this same concept will be the same (except adding enemies harder to beat yet).

This is possibly true but think of how many characters we have in game as potential opponents - there are literally thousands of combinations we could have. Some of the most lively discussions on the board are about players coming up with interactions and ways to overcome difficult opponents but that wont continue if boredom sets in to the playerbase. This is really a chance to encourage players to try different things but they are not going to do that if they find a true and tested method of winning they can trot out every 4 weeks because the challenge never alters. But that is just my opinion.

Vhailorx

Legion works against Thing/Mordo/Star-Lord too.  But it takes ~30-40 minutes. 

Vhailorx

DAZ0273 said:

This is possibly true but think of how many characters we have in game as potential opponents - there are literally thousands of combinations we could have. Some of the most lively discussions on the board are about players coming up with interactions and ways to overcome difficult opponents but that wont continue if boredom sets in to the playerbase. This is really a chance to encourage players to try different things but they are not going to do that if they find a true and tested method of winning they can trot out every 4 weeks because the challenge never alters. But that is just my opinion.

The game has thousands of options, but these pick-1 welcome to shield nodes only have a few hundred options, basically 1 per character in the game (of course, all 1*-3* characters are a huge risk, and the trash tier 4*s and 5*s aren't much better, so it's really even fewer than that).

I actually don't mind welcome to shield, as these challenging nodes are more difficult than standard gameplay, but could actually be MUCH worse if they included the most dangerous 5*s to play against (carnage, gritty, ih, etc).  It's hard to get that balance just right, and it seems likely that if Demi started switching the teams each month, they will miss and shoot too high or too low.  Is everyone ok with that?

DAZ0273

Vhailorx said:

DAZ0273 said:

This is possibly true but think of how many characters we have in game as potential opponents - there are literally thousands of combinations we could have. Some of the most lively discussions on the board are about players coming up with interactions and ways to overcome difficult opponents but that wont continue if boredom sets in to the playerbase. This is really a chance to encourage players to try different things but they are not going to do that if they find a true and tested method of winning they can trot out every 4 weeks because the challenge never alters. But that is just my opinion.

The game has thousands of options, but these pick-1 welcome to shield nodes only have a few hundred options, basically 1 per character in the game (of course, all 1*-3* characters are a huge risk, and the trash tier 4*s and 5*s aren't much better, so it's really even fewer than that).

I actually don't mind welcome to shield, as these challenging nodes are more difficult than standard gameplay, but could actually be MUCH worse if they included the most dangerous 5*s to play against (carnage, gritty, ih, etc).  It's hard to get that balance just right, and it seems likely that if Demi started switching the teams each month, they will miss and shoot too high or too low.  Is everyone ok with that?

I can certainly understand the desire to go the "safe" route but it just feels a bit unsatisfying. But it is what it is.

JimboJambo

Polaris worked again for me on day 3, alongside my level 300 Doom. Even unboosted she is impressive. Her stun helped against starlord today too.

Dogface

JimboJambo said:

Polaris worked again for me on day 3, alongside my level 300 Doom. Even unboosted she is impressive. Her stun helped against starlord today too.

I already finished the node, but I might try Polaris just for the sake of it. How many tries did you need?

PiMacleod

I would like them to change the nodes each time too.... 

 Because it would shake it up a bit!  Something new each time gives us something new to talk about/gripe about.  Let's face it... people WOULD gripe about it, because it'd be JUST like Simulator, where the newer characters get thrown into the mix, at levels that most of us aren't ready for.  But it would be a welcome gripe, all the same.  Make the enemy team something hard, but something that our new Shield trainee has a trick up their sleeve to handle.  For instance, if in one of these nodes, Vulture and Karolina Dean were teamed up... that'd let Bloodstone show off her red ability!  Potentially stun BOTH opponents?  How cool would that be?!

But, I'm not mad with the way it is now either.  If you can't complete this, you aren't missing out on TOO much.  And look back at the OLD Shield Training... remember after you got ONE cover, there were those bottom 5 nodes that required an increased amount of covers for each?  I think I may have gotten as far as the 4th node ONCE.  Those bottom 5 nodes were DEFINITELY for paying customers (since you couldn't target someone that new, there was no way to hoard a resource for them).  This newer Welcome to Shield stuff doesn't have anything like that.  Sure, it's harder, but it's not like you're missing out on too much.  At least you get to TRY your hand at these, unlike the old ones, where you couldn't try some of the bottom nodes without enough covers in this untargetable new character's training.

JimboJambo

Dogface said:

JimboJambo said:

Polaris worked again for me on day 3, alongside my level 300 Doom. Even unboosted she is impressive. Her stun helped against starlord today too.

I already finished the node, but I might try Polaris just for the sake of it. How many tries did you need?

First time again today so no health packs needed Elsa took most of the damage too, I think that might have been my most comfortable win on day 3 shield events.

Bad

I did it on my first try with my champed apoc. Elsa took 2 killer blows, apoc took 1. That was the third tactic indeed, using the maxed new 4* as a punching bag, if the player is getting lucky or skilled enough(or both).

Vhailorx

For those of you having success with Polaris, what do your respective GEDs look like?  My GED is basically useless at 2/0/0, and I am struggling to get enough blue to make polaris viable.