The Simulator (PvE) - (May 30 - June4)

Unknown

I've somehow managed to do pretty well in this event. Just hoping I can keep myself in the Top 50 when it ends for 2 covers.

Unknown

is scaling non existent for everyone in this event? my nodes were harder in the previous sub than this one

Unknown

Sumilea wrote:

Red Panda wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Are you seriously clearing all of the nodes every time they reach 300 points?

In normal I would clear it from 150 down to 60, hard mode I would clear from 240 down to 60, but it's tedious when the average is about 100 points and I'm always in the lead so no rubber band effect to slingshot from. 150k amounts to 500-700 fights over 5.5 days... I think my brain gave up after the 250 fights lol

500 fights ouch. This event since I planed not to finish in top 20 - might just make top 250 - I am only do like 80 fights - 13 per sub. It will be interesting to see what cover are in the next event as if they not sentry, HT, Daken, or falcon I be taking that one off too.

And that's the core problem with the new system in a nutshell.

Under the previous system, there were a defined number of maximum non-zero stacks on every pin per sub (5 x number of scoring cycles in sub). Thus, you could relatively predict the points on each cycle or sub and plan accordingly.

Under the new system, there is a potential for nearly unlimited refreshes on every pin (technically, its the number of minutes in a sub divided by 5 minutes) for a non-zero score. Whereas under the old system, a player would clear a pin 20 times under a 4 refresh sub, under the new system a player could be clearing that bin 30, 40, 60, times or even more. The limiting factor of 1 point nodes no longer exists. The only limiting factors now are a person's tolerance for score (how much of a score is required for me to clear this pin again?) and being able to endure the scaling that ensues.

Apparently, as this event is demonstrably proven, people will play pins as much as realistically possible, should their point values not be 1. Personal appetite may vary from player to player, but the hunger to grind every last point that spawns every five minutes off every node is quite real. Of course this results in the obscene scaling that has really affected this event quite harshly.

Taken to a logical conclusion, if everyone is scaled to oblivion through sheer grinding and resulting community scaling, then the winner of the event will be the players that are the last ones scaled out of the event. That would be the newest accounts, as they would possess the least amount of personal scaling.

/looks at the top 10 in his main bracket and sees nothing but 85s or lower on every roster
/shakes head and sighs

kensterr

@lyrian how else would MPQ make money? From the newbies of course! Vets or those with higher roster have more problems with PVE because they are unlikely to spend anymore unless they belong to the whale category.

Bacon Pants

I have been horribly lazy in this event. The grind hasn't been worth it, just playing nodes here and there is much more fun. After day 1 of this event it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to be competing for a good score in the main. There are some straight up psychopaths out there grinding every node into dust.

daveomite

#1 in my bracket has 136,588 and ONLY has one 2* at lol 85, Wolvie. Their cstorm is 73, and Mthor at 62, obw at 61.

And I have just under 115k right now, but not even in the top 90.

Lol.

daveomite

Bacon Pants wrote:

I have been horribly lazy in this event. The grind hasn't been worth it, just playing nodes here and there is much more fun. After day 1 of this event it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to be competing for a good score in the main. There are some straight up psychopaths out there grinding every node into dust.

Agreed... Definitely a lot of psychopaths out there

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

Bacon Pants wrote:

I have been horribly lazy in this event. The grind hasn't been worth it, just playing nodes here and there is much more fun. After day 1 of this event it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to be competing for a good score in the main. There are some straight up psychopaths out there grinding every node into dust.

Agreed... Definitely a lot of psychopaths out there

Yup I'm a psychopath but still can't reach that elusive Magneto cover at 150k points, I'm currently at 135k

daveomite

Red Panda wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Bacon Pants wrote:

I have been horribly lazy in this event. The grind hasn't been worth it, just playing nodes here and there is much more fun. After day 1 of this event it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to be competing for a good score in the main. There are some straight up psychopaths out there grinding every node into dust.

Agreed... Definitely a lot of psychopaths out there

Yup I'm a psychopath but still can't reach that elusive Magneto cover at 150k points, I'm currently at 135k

wow.

um, Red Panda. Is that like Hannibal's Red Dragon? I mean, they were psychopaths too, lol.

Unknown

kensterr wrote:

@lyrian how else would MPQ make money? From the newbies of course! Vets or those with higher roster have more problems with PVE because they are unlikely to spend anymore unless they belong to the whale category.

Well... yes, I agree with that and in concept do not have any issue with the practice in general, I do believe that the pendulum has swung way too far in the other direction. The community is looking at a situation where previously the vets were winning every PvE because stronger roster could endure higher scaling better than the newbie accounts, which were eventually scaled out of the final set of subs in an event. Now, it is the other way around. The vets are the now the first ones scaled out of the event, handing the field the newbie accounts.

If scaling is adjusted to accommodate for the insane grinding, then this is a fair compromise under the new system. On the other hand, I am already visualizing the equivalent of PvE "death brackets", where the vets are going to find placing for a single PvE cover to be quite difficult when the next required character is released a few days or weeks. Then, the tinykitty will hit the fan for sure. Perhaps the devs are using these events before the next character release to fine tune the system. Maybe they are not. Who knows?

But, I do fear that the same issues that plague the vets in PvP have now been implemented in an functionally equivalent form in PvE.

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Under the new system, there is a potential for nearly unlimited refreshes on every pin (technically, its the number of minutes in a sub divided by 5 minutes) for a non-zero score. Whereas under the old system, a player would clear a pin 20 times under a 4 refresh sub, under the new system a player could be clearing that bin 30, 40, 60, times or even more.

Hm? There is nothing unlimited, the refresh rate is a fixed thing. Just in a 12h period you could harvest base x 3 points now you can base x 5. So we have an overall 60% increase of potential measured in points, and optimal play has the same amount of games just put at different timepoints to get that max.

Unknown

I'm about to do my final run through for the different Modes and was wondering which would be worth more points for Normal. Should I do each of the Mags required nodes a couple times first, then play through the Path ones once? Or do the two paths once, then do the Required Nodes a couple times?

Mawtful

Bacon Pants wrote:

I have been horribly lazy in this event. The grind hasn't been worth it, just playing nodes here and there is much more fun. After day 1 of this event it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to be competing for a good score in the main. There are some straight up psychopaths out there grinding every node into dust.

Yep. Finished around #20-25 for each sub so far, only at #160 in my main.

over_clocked

Barely played the event at all compared to the 300 people above me (have what, 88k points?) and am indeed scaled out of the event as my levels reached the uncanny territory (level 207 Dino). Of course any developed roster could beat that 5 times more, but I don't want to, as the fights take 5 minutes.
I am lucky for not needing BP covers and being able to 'sit' this one out in the end.
I am all for making progression for newer players easier but preferably some other way please Like actually making tokens worth your time.
Maybe this time around the reward structure (only top 75 get a 3* cover, although top 250 alliances get another) and the reward itself (an 'older' character) are geared this way to test people's willingness to grind, to grind for blue Magneto (well that one is *the* best cover in the game, so not surprising), to grind for whatever they grind for (not sure why Phantron grinds as he probably doesn't need BP covers either).
By the way my leader only has 140+k points atm, seems unlikely they will get Magneto.

Unknown

Since the event is about to be over I can share the optimal strategy, which is clear the essentials once every 2 hours 24 minutes and nothing else (well, technically you could do more if you're really a glutton for punishment...)

Problem is that if you don't do that you'll soon be hopelessly behind because the rubberband is actually weak in this event. It seems strong because the guys doing this have ridiculous scores relative to the weak rubberbanding, so to you it feels like you have strong rubberband. When you start getting up there and realize the sub leader is still ahead of you by 5000 points when your mission are worth 500 you'll realize that the rubberbanding is actually pretty weak. If you miss even a couple of those 2 hour 24 minute refreshes you'll see the sub leader run away with an insurmountable lead. Now I'm not opposed to the idea of people being able to build crazy leads, but requiring you to play every 2 hours and 24 minutes to keep up is insane. I missed roughly 2 of the 2 hour 24 minutes refresh on round 3 and can't possibly catch up to leader because that's the time I can't play at all, and I'm not talking about a small lead either. I'm sitting at #20 in my hard bracket with 26K points, but the #1 has 31K! Someone who is doing this method consistently will have a lead that is greater than doing every mission to 1 very quickly.

Note that while you can sort of cruise for now if people don't know about this strategy and get like #20 or so, provided you don't miss any refresh either. Though as more people find out about it you'd have to end up doing the same thing to compete. This is far worse than anything before because you sure didn't need to play every 2 hours 24 minutes to stay competitive even when there is no rubberbanding.

over_clocked

I read about having to play every 2,5 hours and only was able to think 'cray-cray'.
What interests me is what about the amount of missions? Is it to clear Essentials once or more?
People with 130-140+k scores obviously played more than just '9 missions' per refresh and more times than simply every 12 hours.

mags1587

Well, I'm not going to get my final Black Panther cover in this event. I missed playing a good portion of the middle subs, including the last few hours, and have just not been able to catch up. In prior PvE's I had no problem catching up from a break in play like that, but not this time. I seem to have landed in a bracket full of grinders.

I'm not going to be playing a PvE more than a couple of times a day, and certainly not every 2 and a half hours, so if this is the norm going forward I'm going to have to be far luckier with brackets because I'm not even going to try keeping up with the grinders. Seems like a bit of a catch-22 with scaling, too.

Unknown

For this event, my strategy was to play the Required Nodes two or three times every 12 hours. And I usually did the Node Paths in Normal one time through each. It's gotten me a little over 120K in points, right right now in 29th place.

I'm pretty pleased with how I did in this event. My Black Panther will be up to... 1/3/2. I really need more Yellow and Black covers for him. But I did save up Iso-8 to level him.

daveomite

Ok, so I just finished at 125,996...didn't even make top 75.

Last I saw, leader of the bracket had over 141k and not one character at or over 85.

But, got from just under 85k to almost 126k. I didn't even start these subs until 6hrs remaining in the event.

Unknown

locked wrote:

I read about having to play every 2,5 hours and only was able to think 'cray-cray'.
What interests me is what about the amount of missions? Is it to clear Essentials once or more?
People with 130-140+k scores obviously played more than just '9 missions' per refresh and more times than simply every 12 hours.

People with the 130-140K score would be hitting essential once every 2 hour 24 minutes over a period of 12 hours, which is equivalent load of grinding all essential down to 1 once. The amount of mission itself is not particularly high. The timing of the missions, however, is likely pretty tough.

To illustrate with points the round 3 essentails are 450 points a piece, and the other mission are something like 300 base (Sumilea probably has the exact numbers, but the base point for the non essential is less than 80% of the essential but more than 60%). Let's say you grinded essentials to 1 and 2 more missions down to 1 under the old way. That'd get you (450*3+300*2) * 3 = 5850 base points.

With this method if you'd just do essential 15 times at their full value (3 every 2 hours 24 minutes), or 15 * 450 = 6750 base points. Note that you also did 10 less missions (you didn't have to toucvh the other 2 missions at all).

And this is base points we're talking about, so that is the minimum margin the latter guy would be ahead by. 900 points is a huge lead for 12 hours. This also builds up over time and sure it will quickly hit an amount equal to the maximum point you can be behind sub leader and still not get full rubberbanding.

Note that since this guy is doing less missions overall compared to a guy who cannot do missions every 2 hours and 24 minutes, he'd also have less scaling despite having more significantly more points, so the lead is likely to get even worse as time passes.