Difficulty Levels Based on S.H.I.E.L.D. Clearance Levels - Update (8/4/17) *Updated

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  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    New McG said:
    sh81 said
    Part 2 is this, while its great 5*s can play PVE, how BORING IS THAT?!  Seriously, Ive made the comparison to DDQ but I think its valid.  I play DDQ in about 10 minutes daily, its a procession, its not interesting, and I do it only for the rewards.  That is what PVE will be to 5*s now.

    I mean, are you really playing PVE because of how engaging and interesting it is? It's the same events, same enemies, over and over again, and you get maybe two new events a YEAR. PVE is a mindless slog, and it just got a whole lot less time-consuming for a whole lot of people.
    At least it's story mode, so you get the option to slow down and read story instead of facing an endless procession of Medusa.
  • FokaiHI
    FokaiHI Posts: 272 Mover and Shaker
    You guys are right. They should keep it the same. Weaker rosters should be able to place higher than better rosters. That makes sense. My bad. Placement trophies for everyone. 
  • zodiac339
    zodiac339 Posts: 1,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    What if PVE was changed to brackets of 10? Would anyboody hate brackets of 10?
  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 1,158 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2017
    acescracked said:
    Wumpushunter said:
    Any time there is a change the side that likes the change will always accuse the other side of whining and not understanding how awesome the change really is, however they don't care they just want the change without modification. Right now SCL scaling boosts a certain group unreasonably and damages another group. No matter the size of those groups or how morally superior the group that won believes itself to be, the change must be altered to bring balance.  You can't run a business by pleasing one group.  Change will come eventually.
    Your being shortsighted and adding a bunch of bloat to your argument. "Morally superior"...lol bring it down a few notches.

    Roster based pve scaling was broken in that it made pve a slog as your roster progressed, to the point people would stop playing it. This affected all rosters to a varying degree.

    It also allowed an exploit in the game for players who didn't progress their roster to have an advantage.

    SCL based scaling fixes the exploit and makes pve more enjoyable for all rosters (cept soft cappers). Even "mid-tier" rosters will save a ton of time on their pve clears.
    Yeah pretty much this.  I am a 4* player and looking forward to dropping down from SCL 8 to 7 for the quicker clears in all but the 7 day events (those have too many progression rewards to drop down).   I was able to hit top 5 a bunch in the last six months or so but it meant pretty much devoting a huge chunk of my day to do so.  

    Short term my progress will slow a tiny bit but as a QOL upgrade going from 1 hour to 1 and 1/2 hour grind to 30-45 minute grind is absolutely worth it.  And that is worth ~10 covers a month.  

    I don't mind 5* rosters swamping SCL 7 and 8 for placement even if it means I take a small hit on placement.  They put in the time and money to get there they deserve a playable game mode.  I would however like to see something to keep them at the highest two SCLs.  I don't like the idea of top rosters slumming it in SCLs designed for 3* rosters.   
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2017
    Wumpushunter said:
    Any time there is a change the side that likes the change will always accuse the other side of whining and not understanding how awesome the change really is, however they don't care they just want the change without modification. Right now SCL scaling boosts a certain group unreasonably and damages another group. No matter the size of those groups or how morally superior the group that won believes itself to be, the change must be altered to bring balance.  You can't run a business by pleasing one group.  Change will come eventually.
    Yup. And that's probably the funniest thing to me. One week it's "Oh boo hoo! Quit complaining! Just go match candies then!" Then D3 does a new test and that same person will threaten to quit the game forever because D3 completely destroyed said person's enjoyment of the game with some little test run. That test ends and they go back to "Oh boo hoo!" the next time someone disagrees with them on another new test or feature.

     Fix for pve - progression only with current placement rewards built into progression and bonus progression missions. New overall event placement rewards for those that can finish all clears the fastest, this is for those that don't want to lose the competition aspect of pve, and maybe earn special rewards for completing special objectives like beating a 7 day event in under 3 days or beating a sub with only 2* characters.

     Fix for pvp - dual system (wins/points) to achieve max progression while keeping current placement rewards intact.
  • JSP869
    JSP869 Posts: 847 Critical Contributor
    I have a Championed Star-Lord and Medusa, and teamed up with a half-covered R&G, all boosted, I've managed to do sub 1-hour clears in the three Howard the Duck Chapters. This morning after doing the first 4 clears I was 4,000 points over what I needed for the 22 CP, being the top Progression reward. In spite of this, I'm not only 8-10,000 points behind the top 10 players but I'm not even in the top 25. How can the top players can be that far ahead of me?

    Even repeatedly grinding a node that rewards 1-3 pts per clear, it's still got to take them 30 seconds per clear, after factoring in selecting the Node, hitting "Fight", making the match and having it resolve, etc. I know with Star-Lord, Medusa, and R&G I was completing some nodes with the very first match if I got a lucky cascade, because R&G's boosted Strike tiles would just wreck the other team, while being able to match away Medusa's counter on the second turn would often result in a second turn victory, but still. 3 pts per clear per 30 seconds equals 6 pts per minute, equals 360 pts per hour, being 8,640 pts in one 24 hour day.

    Okay. So I guess during a 3 day event, if someone literally spent several hours per day repeatedly grinding the 1-3 point nodes, they could accrue 10,000+ points over 3 days. Are people actually doing that? Are there people playing the same match over & over & over again for several hours every day? If they are doing that, then kudos to them, they deserve the top spots and prizes. They've bloody well earned them, in my opinion.

    But maybe they're not? Maybe the top players, or at least some of them, are "cheating" by using a third party program, or an App on their phone, that autoplays the game for them. Of course this isn't WoW, so there's probably no way to catch the botters. If they are botting, that is.
  • JSP869
    JSP869 Posts: 847 Critical Contributor
    I certainly didn't clear anywhere near optimally. I stupidly entered the 4am bracket so I could do my first clears on the train into work, but that meant not starting my first clears until 4:30am, which also meant I couldn't do my final clears at 3am but had to do them before going to bed, so they were being done 5-6 hours early. I can't recall what position I was in when I entered, but I think it was in the 100's, but no higher, and after my first 4 clears in the first chapter I was in the top 10. After my first clears in the second chapter, I was in the top 20, but high teens. 24 hours later, after first clears in the third chapter, I'm in the 30's. I understand optimal clears, especially the final clears done as late as possible, has the highest reward, but it's still mindboggling to me that the difference is that extreme.

    My final clears were all done to completion plus one more.

    I not only didn't miss or lose in any wave nodes, but boosted Medusa, Star-Lord, and R&G were such a kick **** team that I didn't have to use any Health Packs during my clears, or even afterwards. Even the Kingpin/Venom node was a cake walk. Normally I hate going up against Kingpin because he's always seemed so OP, especially after 3-4 clears when he was level 300+, but this time around my team just tore him apart. It was actually a lot of fun.

    Don't misunderstand me. I'm not complaining or whining that I should be higher. The players above me have obviously played a better game than me, they absolutely deserve their prizes. I guess I'm just more in shock that in spite of how well I've played this event (and I have played it significantly better than I've played any others to date) that I'm still not even close to a T10 spot.
  • Milk Jugz
    Milk Jugz Posts: 1,122 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yeah, agree with bowgentle. Your leaving LOTS of points on the table clearing early
  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 1,158 Chairperson of the Boards
    Also having a half covered R&G isn't helping.  For the first sub of Webbed Wonder I did the initial grind with the exact same team you used but my R&G is at 305.  I finished that sub's initial clear in 27 minutes.  I was about 5 minutes slower than the 1st place team.  

    R&G being boosted makes goon nodes trivial real fast.  Someone who wanted to overgrind with them would be able to grind each fight in under a minute.  
  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,649 Chairperson of the Boards
    JSP869 said:


    Don't misunderstand me. I'm not complaining or whining that I should be higher. The players above me have obviously played a better game than me, they absolutely deserve their prizes. I guess I'm just more in shock that in spite of how well I've played this event (and I have played it significantly better than I've played any others to date) that I'm still not even close to a T10 spot.
    in SCL8, T10 leader board is predicated on zero wasted time.  I.E.  Putting aside any discussion of 4*/5* advantages, they all begin within 20 min of the sub starting and all finish their grinds with less than 20 min left.  It would be a shocking if even a 2hr delay in either the opening or closing grind got you closer than T15 in any of the scl8 brackets. 


  • Wumpushunter
    Wumpushunter Posts: 627 Critical Contributor
    acescracked said:
    Wumpushunter said:
    Any time there is a change the side that likes the change will always accuse the other side of whining and not understanding how awesome the change really is, however they don't care they just want the change without modification. Right now SCL scaling boosts a certain group unreasonably and damages another group. No matter the size of those groups or how morally superior the group that won believes itself to be, the change must be altered to bring balance.  You can't run a business by pleasing one group.  Change will come eventually.
    Your being shortsighted and adding a bunch of bloat to your argument. "Morally superior"...lol bring it down a few notches.

    Roster based pve scaling was broken in that it made pve a slog as your roster progressed, to the point people would stop playing it. This affected all rosters to a varying degree.

    It also allowed an exploit in the game for players who didn't progress their roster to have an advantage.

    SCL based scaling fixes the exploit and makes pve more enjoyable for all rosters (cept soft cappers). Even "mid-tier" rosters will save a ton of time on their pve clears.
    I did not soft cap and without scaling i score top3 to top 5 placement in my slice EXCEPT when they ran the 2 tests once I was Top 20 once I was top 50. Sniping costs me Iso, Hp, tokens, and covers. So don't say only soft clappers are hurt by this change. 5 star slumming in lower CLs to feed farms and finish in 25 minutes hurts the progression of lots of people.
  • Silverblade
    Silverblade Posts: 51 Match Maker
    The ammount of mathematicking involved in all this means what I have always thought and the current model promotes. The Mighty get mightier while the weak will be fodder.
    Hopefully the new model will fix that and soon the SCL 9 and 10 will leave my PVEs free of snipers...
  • Rod5
    Rod5 Posts: 598 Critical Contributor
    revskip said:
    New McG said:
    Wumpushunter said:
    I did not soft cap and without scaling i score top3 to top 5 placement in my slice EXCEPT when they ran the 2 tests once I was Top 20 once I was top 50. Sniping costs me Iso, Hp, tokens, and covers. So don't say only soft clappers are hurt by this change. 5 star slumming in lower CLs to feed farms and finish in 25 minutes hurts the progression of lots of people.
    What? Unless you're sniping brackets yourself, (and not doing it as well as others), joining at the start of the slice makes sniping irrelevant. Everyone starts on the same foot. Fastest player wins.
    I believe he is using the term sniping to mean 5* rosters dropping down in SCLs rather than as the commonly used forum term for jumping into a bracket late.  He's used it in several of his posts that way.  

    He also seems to have an unrealistic idea about why 5* rosters drop down for placement in the first place.  It isn't to feed their farms but rather to collect extra champ covers to accelerate their CP/legendary token progress and because it saves them a bunch of time.  And they need that ISO, HP and CP just as much if not more than lower rosters do because of the cost gating of 5*s.  3*s and even 4*s cost a tiny fraction of what it costs a 5* to champ.  

    I'm in favor to gating off some of the lower SCLs from 5* players but pretending that their need for resources is somehow less than a newer player is simply incorrect.  I think the other thing that pops up is that because PVE was broken for so long people became very used to being able to clear faster than 5* rosters could even though they probably shouldn't have been.  Now that those rewards are being redistributed to the bigger rosters the people who had been "earning" them are miffed at rewards that in all likelyhood shouldn't have been falling to them in the first place.  

    I say all of this as a person who was frequently able to receive those rewards in SCL 8 with a 4* roster.  Will I miss them, sure but I probably shouldn't have been getting them over guys with multiple 550s to begin with.
    Hear, hear. Really good to see someone who can see the other side of things, thank you.

    I play PvE, but I'm not competitive as my schedule doesn't allow it. All I ask is to be able to play it and not have to face lvl 440+ enemies a ton of times just to get prog rewards. 

    Changing also allows all the 5* guys to use their 4* characters if they want to, which is just great.

    To the softcappers, you can't really be aggrieved as you've been tricking the system the whole time. Don't worry though, I won't steal anyone's placement...I just get an hour a day back!

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