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  • JVReal
    JVReal Posts: 1,884 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    While scaling varies from event to event, Simulator Basic has always had some of the nastiest scaling in the game. Was it just so easy on the lower end rosters that people are finally starting to notice this? It was an event where hard usually started at 200 as soon as the bracket opens and hits 300 by the second day and ends at 395. But since you can generally comfortably keep pace for top 10 on Hard doing just 3 essentials, that implies there sure aren't other people who can easily beat every node in there every refresh, so I don't see where this surprise is coming from. Normal is always super grindy but that's expected. Hard is surprisingly relaxing in the sense that you'll most likely try a node and get utterly owned and that lets you chill for the next 3 hours, or you win and laugh at all the other guys getting owned as you chill.
    Since I've only ever played the Sim one other PVE event before where I was able to clear them all repeatedly, I figured it was the fact that I was using all boosted characters that was giving me the advantage... I remembered thinking that it wasn't too hard until at the end when 4 of the 10 were Deadly.

    So when I started this one, it threw me for a loop because it wasn't this way last time... not realizing last time was broken.

    This actually seems to be about right as far as difficulty. Normal goes from Trivial to Normal matches now that they reset the scaling, and Hard is ... well... hard. My only concern with it is if the next few subs of this Event are just as difficult, how on earth are we supposed to get to 110K to get the top progression reward?
  • _RiO_
    _RiO_ Posts: 1,047 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    While scaling varies from event to event, Simulator Basic has always had some of the nastiest scaling in the game. Was it just so easy on the lower end rosters that people are finally starting to notice this? It was an event where hard usually started at 200 as soon as the bracket opens and hits 300 by the second day and ends at 395. But since you can generally comfortably keep pace for top 10 on Hard doing just 3 essentials, that implies there sure aren't other people who can easily beat every node in there every refresh, so I don't see where this surprise is coming from. Normal is always super grindy but that's expected. Hard is surprisingly relaxing in the sense that you'll most likely try a node and get utterly owned and that lets you chill for the next 3 hours, or you win and laugh at all the other guys getting owned as you chill.

    It only did that in the last two iterations.
    Before that, the hard sub was perfectly playable, but ... well; hard. The way it was meant to be, really.
    Now it's just completely unplayable unless you have either top of the line veteran-level roster (and even then it tends to be preposterously hard and more a matter of luck than of skill) or have a low level beginner roster and can abuse the boosted essentials. Anyone not in either of those categories need not apply. That includes the bulk of the playerbase stuck in the middle ground.

    stephen43084 wrote:
    For starters, the OP has really never been happy with MPQ for as long as I can remember. Therefore, I am not surprised by their post.

    I enjoy the game enough to care.

    There's a difference between being critical of screw-ups and overall lack of initiative on D3P/Demiurge's part, and just plain old hate and rage.
    If I fell in the latter category, I would've passed up on this game loooooo---ng ago.

    I do admit the game has undergone positive changes as well; once most of the bugs were ironed out of the time-slice feature, I was very happy with it. It's not perfect for everyone, but it sure improves the situation for non-US players immensely compared to what we were facing before.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Yup, youre actually right, i cleared the nodes once and felt no desire to clear it again, they need some new content cause im not really a roster chaser, the game is starting to become stale, even pvp.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Did the change for the scaling to account for your boost character goes in? Because that's the only thing I can think of that might account for this. Hard sub in Simulator Basic was always barely doable if you boosted on every fight, and even then you need some breaks going your way to pull that off. On a bad day you can boost on just the essential nodes (lowest level) and use up 5 health packs and while barely beating them. Now at my level higher scaling just means I see 395s a few hours earlier than usual so I don't actually notice anything if that is indeed the case, but I imagine it might be rough for the people not used to this kind of stuff.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    I don't think this level of scaling can be intentional. This is the product of an intern being the last guy at the console before the they turned the lights off and left for the holidays.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?

    My hard leaderboard is like this:
    27476 Furos Fury
    25951 ArkPrime (yours truly)
    21744 loyo

    then everyone else is under 19k, #10 being under 15k.

    In my easy one guy is at 19k, me and 3 other guys are at 14k, everyone else is under 10k

    I stopped doing the non essential nodes in hard, and I'm the top score in an alliance ranked #2 overall. Doing 3 out of the 10 nodes worth the most in a pve for a new character. This is not a normal score curve. People are not playing.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    ark123 wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?

    My hard leaderboard is like this:
    27476 Furos Fury
    25951 ArkPrime (yours truly)
    21744 loyo

    then everyone else is under 19k, #10 being under 15k.

    In my easy one guy is at 19k, me and 3 other guys are at 14k, everyone else is under 10k

    I stopped doing the non essential nodes in hard, and I'm the top score in an alliance ranked #2 overall. Doing 3 out of the 10 nodes worth the most in a pve for a new character. This is not a normal score curve. People are not playing.

    That looks similar to my leaderboard as I'm sitting at #2 in my main and I'm only doing the goon one, Gorgon, and 3 essentials in Hard. Isn't it a good thing you don't have to play 10 nodes every cycle because you're strong enough to beat them at all? This is one of the lightest schedule I've played for hard nodes (normal is usual grindfest but pretty trivial) and isn't that good? I think it's actually pretty nice to go to sleep and not worry about too many people sneaking up on you because they can't beat the nodes anyway. I see absolutely nothing wrong to allow you to substitute roster strength for grind.
  • atomzed
    atomzed Posts: 1,753 Chairperson of the Boards
    Phantron wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?

    My hard leaderboard is like this:
    27476 Furos Fury
    25951 ArkPrime (yours truly)
    21744 loyo

    then everyone else is under 19k, #10 being under 15k.

    In my easy one guy is at 19k, me and 3 other guys are at 14k, everyone else is under 10k

    I stopped doing the non essential nodes in hard, and I'm the top score in an alliance ranked #2 overall. Doing 3 out of the 10 nodes worth the most in a pve for a new character. This is not a normal score curve. People are not playing.

    That looks similar to my leaderboard as I'm sitting at #2 in my main and I'm only doing the goon one, Gorgon, and 3 essentials in Hard. Isn't it a good thing you don't have to play 10 nodes every cycle because you're strong enough to beat them at all? This is one of the lightest schedule I've played for hard nodes (normal is usual grindfest but pretty trivial) and isn't that good? I think it's actually pretty nice to go to sleep and not worry about too many people sneaking up on you because they can't beat the nodes anyway. I see absolutely nothing wrong to allow you to substitute roster strength for grind.

    I actually manage to catch up, despite missing several refresh. I have a diverse roster and was able to do 2 full clears, and viola, I was able to catch up.

    I have always enjoy sims because it's a challenge icon_e_smile.gif
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Phantron wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?

    My hard leaderboard is like this:
    27476 Furos Fury
    25951 ArkPrime (yours truly)
    21744 loyo

    then everyone else is under 19k, #10 being under 15k.

    In my easy one guy is at 19k, me and 3 other guys are at 14k, everyone else is under 10k

    I stopped doing the non essential nodes in hard, and I'm the top score in an alliance ranked #2 overall. Doing 3 out of the 10 nodes worth the most in a pve for a new character. This is not a normal score curve. People are not playing.

    That looks similar to my leaderboard as I'm sitting at #2 in my main and I'm only doing the goon one, Gorgon, and 3 essentials in Hard. Isn't it a good thing you don't have to play 10 nodes every cycle because you're strong enough to beat them at all? This is one of the lightest schedule I've played for hard nodes (normal is usual grindfest but pretty trivial) and isn't that good? I think it's actually pretty nice to go to sleep and not worry about too many people sneaking up on you because they can't beat the nodes anyway. I see absolutely nothing wrong to allow you to substitute roster strength for grind.

    I mean pick one. You're either saying people are keeping pace or that it's a light schedule because people aren't playing. You can't be saying both things. I tend to look at the big picture. Sure, I'm having a relatively easy time (though I continue to get the odd party wipe every couple clears), but a sim where people stop playing midway through hard 1? Last sim people started having trouble clearing at hard sim 3. The scaling seems broken.
  • _RiO_
    _RiO_ Posts: 1,047 Chairperson of the Boards
    ark123 wrote:
    The scaling seems broken.

    If it's not, and this all is 'working as intended', then I think I'm packing my bags and moving on, tbh.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    _RiO_ wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    The scaling seems broken.

    If it's not, and this all is 'working as intended', then I think I'm packing my bags and moving on, tbh.


    People aren't playing. By default that's not intended.
  • Hulk11
    Hulk11 Posts: 435
    ark123 wrote:
    _RiO_ wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    The scaling seems broken.

    If it's not, and this all is 'working as intended', then I think I'm packing my bags and moving on, tbh.


    People aren't playing. By default that's not intended.

    Loki:That was the plan.
    Tony Stark/Iron Man:Not a great plan. When they come, and they will, they'll come for you.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    The scaling for Simulator is supposed to be the same all 3 subs so if you were able to clear it all in the past on hard I'd say that's because your scaling is unusually low, not that scaling is unusually high now. I'm still not getting where all the 'I used to be able to clear all of hard' stuff come from, because Simulator Basic has always been an event that doing 3 essentials is enough to keep pace for top 10 on hard, which implies less than 1% of the people can even do that, otherwise this strategy wouldn't work. Maybe there's some unusually low scaling shard out there, but I sure can't recall the last time I see scores in my Simulator Basic main that'd indicate more than 10 guys can clear the essentials every refresh.

    People are free to give up the hard sub because there is still the normal sub to grind it out. If you're able to do anything in the hard sub it tends to greatly reduce the amount of grind you need, though that comes at a very considerable risk of utter wipeout in the hard bracket. By the way, if you can't clear all 3 essentials, you can still clear 2, or even 1. They're still worth a lot of points, plus the freebie goon only node. I can't see the places below me, but I'd imagine doing even the goon node + 1 more essential should be able to get you a top 100 finish very comfortably looking at how low the scores are at the top. Of course even beating a single node can be hard, but that's why there's a huge payoff too.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    You know it's bad when I slept for 10 hours and didn't even drop a spot.
  • Dauthi
    Dauthi Posts: 995 Critical Contributor
    ark123 wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?
    This is not a normal score curve. People are not playing.

    They are, its just that they are probably dying a lot too. I can say that I have wiped several times and gave up until health packs refresh. Since everyone else is moving slowly I'm not worried about it either, its nice. Like others have said, this is the lightest I have had to play a PVE and still get a decent score.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Dauthi wrote:
    ark123 wrote:
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm looking at 371 for the iso 8 jackpot node (all goons), 337 for Gorgon, and 259-280 for the essential nodes. This seems a bit higher than normal but the activity on my sub/overall bracket shows people are still keeping pace (or rather not keeping pace) like usual. Certainly I'm not seeing any score that'd indicate anybody is doing the hard nodes on a consistent basis and if everyone is stuck on them, what's the problem?
    This is not a normal score curve. People are not playing.

    They are, its just that they are probably dying a lot too. I can say that I have wiped several times and gave up until health packs refresh. Since everyone else is moving slowly I'm not worried about it either, its nice. Like others have said, this is the lightest I have had to play a PVE and still get a decent score.

    Maybe. But a LOT of the people in my bracket have the same points I quoted before, and I'm way (way) past them.
  • SnowcaTT
    SnowcaTT Posts: 3,492 Chairperson of the Boards
    Finally went in to see how it was.

    Reminds me very much of my 2* days - hitting the easy essentials and really not worth even attempting hard mode, or the harder nodes of easy mode.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Doing pretty much hard anything at all tends to require you to not even play PvP for the duration because there's almost no possible way your health pack will work out. I'm sure a lot of people just gave up on hard while making some late seasons push. I don't think I was able to get any PvP done while doing Simulator Basic, which is okay since I was bored out of my mind on Cat-5 but if that wasn't the case, that'd have been a pretty big sacrifice.

    I think it'd have made more sense for the nodes on hard to be on 4 hours/3 stacks or even 6 hours/2 stacks and worth more points correspondingly. Wouldn't really change the relative placement because people who can't do them still can't do them but it'd at least give you a little bit of time to do something else. Right now my health pack is pretty much permently tied up on hard and I've been on a pretty lucky streak recently (no wipes and not even any close fights), but just the attrition damage on my support easily eats up 5 health pack every 3 hours.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Yeah there's no way people are still playing my bracket. I have a 10k lead. Everyone else is around 28k - yep, about one or two nodes over what I said before.

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