Lyrian wrote: My personal opinion here... Are players punished for using certain tools available to them to win matches? Absolutely. Are players at fault for using these tools to win matches? No. The whole current meta in regard to PvE Scaling is to avoid using these characters and to incur damage. Is this silly? Absolutely. To me, the situation is analogous to placing a Band-Aid on a wound that needs a tourniquet and then smothering the wound with Limburger cheese in the hopes that the horrid smell will prevent anyone from looking in that general direction to notice that the Band-Aid is woefully insufficient to close the wound. The core problem is that when the game originally launched, Gen1 (pre-Punisher) characters were not designed with any real balance in mind. Some of the most glaring issues were addressed (Rags, CStorm, Thor, Wolvie), but some of them still remain to this day (CMags, Spidey). Public backlash was so bad over the previous rebalances, that I believe the devs got cold feet over CMags and Spidey. With the game now in its 7th month, so many players possess CMags and Spidey at playable levels that any real change to either character is going to significantly impact many players in a very real way. These two needed to be rebalanced months ago to minimize the already significant balancing damage those two cause. What ended up happening in response is "scaling". Instead of fixing the core issue, the devs implemented a system that punishes players for using these characters in PvE events. Again, Band-Aid on a decapitated limb. Spidey stunlocking was still viable at 230, so now the mooks scale to 400, in some sort of obscure attempt to scale match damage so high that a stunlock cycle cannot be reasonably started or the utter pain of needing to play a match for 20-30 minutes to win becomes so obnoxious that players throw away their Spideys. Stunlock should never been allowed in the first place. Note that all of the stunning characters originated in Gen1 (MWidow, CStorm, Spidey, Cap). Stunning either should not have existed at all, or there needs to be some mechanism (such as a 3 turn immunity to stun after being stunned) to prevent lockdowns from occurring. If lockdowns cannot occur, then astronomical scaling is unlikely to occur and this whole mess becomes a non-issue. From the PAX news thread, it sounds like that the devs are finally realizing that fixing the stunlock issue really does need to be a Priority 1 issue for the long-term health of the game.
walkyourpath wrote: I just have to say I'm really confused as to why people are still saying that Spidey and C. Mags are the cause of PvE scaling issues. We've had 2 Heroics now where neither character has been allowed and scaling still smacked everyone in the face. Mid-tiers are being punished just as much with or without them in the mix. High-tiers have it second worse, and low tiers are running away with the top spots in this one if they have any HT covers at all. People who never had or never relied on the broken characters are being punished in both types of PvE. The problem is the rate of scaling in all roster compositions.
IceIX wrote: Player 1 sees that a couple of his Hard pins went to Deadly 200s from 180 as a result of being near the top of scaling while his bretheren is knocking down 230s like nothing. Player 1's game just got harder even though it shouldn't have, but the system has little way of knowing that without adding in much more complexity to the scaling system. Player 3 sees their nodes go from 180 to 185 since their rating isn't as high, so they're affected fairly little but still hit. A theoretical player 4 fighting 90s may be fighting 91s, so no big deal there.
KevinMark wrote: I can't say either, so I didn't vote. I'm just glad I was able to do all the nodes once in deadly because at the start of event I wasn't sleeping. If I was, I doubt I would be able to do every node even once.
Moghwyn wrote: Anybody else get the impression that scaling received a minor tweak for the second Heroics round? I'm seeing several minor increments in levels now as opposed to the large jumps in the first round. The large jumps are still around, just less often, leading me to believe that community scaling now factors in slightly differently. It now seems to get added in as a flat extra on top instead of being multiplied by personal scaling progression. It also seems to react more aggressive, needing less community effort to increase node levels.
LordWill wrote: I posted something I think is relevant to this in another thread, and I hate double posting but I feel this topic is important enough Just had a quick thought....maybe I should paste this in suggestions.... So what if you had like a choose your own difficulty? So you see the match of 3 enemies-You do not see their levels. Before you go into the match you select, easy, medium, hard, deadly or whatever. Then based upon what YOU select and what challenge YOU want, the rewards/points scale accordingly. This eliminates the need for Demiurge to sufficiently challenge me because I can challenge myself and play how I want to play. This eliminates the needs for scaling because if I only do the easy, then I don't make a lot of points or iso. Just like how we can get 20 iso from a prologue mission. I'm in control of my scaling. This eliminates people complaining about their individual PVE rating because they will be more in control of it. If they want to do deadly and get the 300 iso reward plus mega points, then go for it. It would reward strong rosters without punishing the weaker ones. And it would give people something to strive for.... Also it allows EVERYONE to do the content to whatever degree they feel they can handle. So this way they don't miss out on the content/storyline. What do you guys think?
Phantron wrote: For the question on whether level 230 villians are beatable straight up (no ultra cheap tricks), the question is who and what combination. If it's Daken, that's not happening. Venom with purple generator is not happening. Moonstone with an analyst would still be borderline impossible. Ares would be extremely unlikely.
gamar wrote: Phantron wrote: For the question on whether level 230 villians are beatable straight up (no ultra cheap tricks), the question is who and what combination. If it's Daken, that's not happening. Venom with purple generator is not happening. Moonstone with an analyst would still be borderline impossible. Ares would be extremely unlikely. It takes a bit of luck and I can't guarantee I'll beat them every time, but there's no shortage of ways to crowd red tiles and hamper daken, and getting enough blue for an early cStorm blue is usually enough to take down a 230 Daken or Bullseye before they become insurmountable, and you can often manipulate your team HP to pull off a massive Raging Tempest to boot. And what counts as "ultra cheap"? Using Berserker Rage when you can eliminate all the purple? Having Hulk tank to get cascades into multiple Judgements or a LazyThor Call the Storm?
NorthernPolarity wrote: LordWill wrote: I posted something I think is relevant to this in another thread, and I hate double posting but I feel this topic is important enough Just had a quick thought....maybe I should paste this in suggestions.... So what if you had like a choose your own difficulty? So you see the match of 3 enemies-You do not see their levels. Before you go into the match you select, easy, medium, hard, deadly or whatever. Then based upon what YOU select and what challenge YOU want, the rewards/points scale accordingly. This eliminates the need for Demiurge to sufficiently challenge me because I can challenge myself and play how I want to play. This eliminates the needs for scaling because if I only do the easy, then I don't make a lot of points or iso. Just like how we can get 20 iso from a prologue mission. I'm in control of my scaling. This eliminates people complaining about their individual PVE rating because they will be more in control of it. If they want to do deadly and get the 300 iso reward plus mega points, then go for it. It would reward strong rosters without punishing the weaker ones. And it would give people something to strive for.... Also it allows EVERYONE to do the content to whatever degree they feel they can handle. So this way they don't miss out on the content/storyline. What do you guys think? Too much work for the devs to implement for too little benefit. Would be good for the playerbase, but I'm not seeing this at all from a business perspective.
Phantron wrote: gamar wrote: Phantron wrote: For the question on whether level 230 villians are beatable straight up (no ultra cheap tricks), the question is who and what combination. If it's Daken, that's not happening. Venom with purple generator is not happening. Moonstone with an analyst would still be borderline impossible. Ares would be extremely unlikely. It takes a bit of luck and I can't guarantee I'll beat them every time, but there's no shortage of ways to crowd red tiles and hamper daken, and getting enough blue for an early cStorm blue is usually enough to take down a 230 Daken or Bullseye before they become insurmountable, and you can often manipulate your team HP to pull off a massive Raging Tempest to boot. And what counts as "ultra cheap"? Using Berserker Rage when you can eliminate all the purple? Having Hulk tank to get cascades into multiple Judgements or a LazyThor Call the Storm? I consider Spiderman, Magneto, and Storm on desert/forest as ultra cheap since these all allow you to take a ridiculous number of turns in a row and/or generating an almost arbitary large amount of APs. Everyone else is fair game. I assume you start with no boosts. You don't have to do that, but there has to be a baseline somewhere. Daken is someone that you think you have a shot but 9 out of 10 times it just doesn't work and you die because his strike tiles are just so potent and there's no reliable way to deny them because it's usually a color you need badly for board control as well. Bullseye is quite beatable at 230 on a stand alone basis because he has no real offense so while you'll quickly be doing 1 damage, you can still collect tiles and setup the moves you need to break the clear the protect tile. I realize people seem to just associate Bullseye with Daken since those two are usually together, but Bullseye is nowhere as dangerous as Daken.
bloodwars wrote: any time you see daken or bullseye and have access to loki, they're easy wins, regardless of level. people just don't take him for some reason (i know you can't in this pve, but with all the complaining for the last one, there was a really easy answer).