Get rid of scaling. It's killing the game

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

Okay, I’m officially fed up. It simply isn’t fair.

I have a mid-tier - slightly better than mid-tier - roster. I’ve been playing constantly since last evening, trying to ace that tinykitty Simulator. And, after spending hour after hour battling, I’ve placed in 6th.

I’m not angry because I placed in 6th, but because ALL the players who placed above me have a much worse roster than I do. Some of them have barely a **-star cover. The first place guy had, as the strongest player, a 5-cover Thor.

I know the devs have explained the reason why, but I insist, it isn’t fair. What’s the idea here? They want to lose money, is that it? Because this system empowers those who haven’t spent a cent on the game, whilst I, who have spent quite a lot, can’t seem to get any value for my investment.

It kills the game, this idea that the better roster you have, and the better player you are, the harder it is to make it to the top. It’s just the same as if, after studying a week for a test, you were given a harder version than the guy next door, because he had spent the weekend partying and thus had studied less.

When I started playing the game, I knew I wouldn’t make it to the big league first thing. I accepted the fact that I would have to invest time and money till I placed in the top ten. It’s logical. What the devs are doing, though, is not. They’re reversing the natural order of things.

I think they should bring back the Hulk tournament. I don’t care a hang that I didn’t read all of the story - they said it was a big problem, that people couldn’t go through all the stages of the story because some battles were too hard. I understood what happened nevertheless. And I had fun - something that’s been overlooked lately.

2

I absolutely agree. In the current simulator missions I have all enemies over 200 lvl, mostly on the maximum 230. Most of them can kill me just by single shot of almost any power. In the same time I can’t use in some of them my 2 strongest characters. There are now lot of mission which can be done only with the maximum boosts used and only if I am lucky with the right tiles on the board. Some are lost for sure and nothing can help. Not even investment can help me with this, it is simply impossible. My friend has characters up to level 40 in the same missions byt he has roster not that much weaker than I have. Looks we are punished for enjoying the game, this way I can’t win any interesting prize, I can’t even earn any ISO as I spend much more on boosts. Would devs be so kind to explain, what is the meaning of this ? I’m not going to invest in this game anymore because any investment is then made worthless by devs. Probably the right time to get rid of this and redirect my game spendings on any other, fair game.

3

Yeah, it’s driving me nuts too. I have one playable 3* character (a level 110 Patch) and a nice roster of 2*'s. However, I can’t compete with folks in my bracket whose best heroes are level 55 Wolverines or 60 Thors. It’s very frustrating because my progress is being slowed so lower level players can be sped up. Now, don’t get me wrong: low level players absolutely need ways to progress, and there should always be missions in PVE events that are simple for them to complete and that offer attractive ISO and 2* cover rewards. However, they should not be given so much of a handicap boost that they win their brackets. That should be the end game goal, something that those with the strongest rosters achieve. Do I have such a roster? No, and I don’t expect to win a major event any time soon. Neither should they.

4

They don’t care as the only people they are interesting in are those who spend 500$ to have a chance of having a full roster of lvl 140 3* heroes to beat this nonsense lvl 230 packs. And this event is far worse than its predecessors as you need here far more full & high levels heroes than ever.
Nonsense but whatever, D3 is enjoying this crap a lot, players don’t but who cares about players but players ?

5

To make it worse, it’s all timing. I happened to luck out and have a chunk of time to play within minutes of this current round going live. I was able to easily complete all of the easy tier. For round 2, I didn’t get in until a couple of hours in, by which time, most of the battles were way out of my range.

6

What exactly are you gaining by being in first place versus 6th place? A few more Moonstone/Captain America covers?

Is that really what a ‘mid-tier’ player needs?

7

I’m with you except for the story. I think that if the story is important, it does need to be accessible to everyone. This is the only good reason to scale content to individuals, as far as I’m concerned.

…but that doesn’t mean rewarding everyone with the same values. Everyone should be able to get through the story, but rewards should be in line with the effort to do so, and should be directly related to the level and type of enemies, nothing else.

I’d actually love to see a “story” mode and a “challenge” mode so that those who just want to plow through the story and maybe pick up a single cover for the featured character can do so with minimal fuss. Challenge mode can be the real cutthroat PvE race with a range of enemies to topple. Neither of those, though, would scale to the player, they would just be there, and players would pick their own fights.

8

Best Solution And Fairest. Every TimeYou Beat A Level It Resets At A Higher Level. This Way Everyone Gets A Chance To PlayAnd Have Fun. If You Want To Scale, Scale Based On NumbeR stars Of The Team Used And The Boosts Used. The Lower Number Of Stars, The More Points. ThE More Boosts, The Less Points.

This Encourages Different Team Groupings And Discourages Boosts Uses. Both Of Which The Developers Continue To State Are Some Of Their Main Goals.

9

I agree with you, of course. Everyone should read the whole story. What I meant was, they can’t do this to us players just for the sake of the story - in fact, I think that is quite ridiculous. I’d have liked to have read the whole Hulk storyline, sure, but I mostly understood what had happened by inference; and I had tons of fun nevertheless. Nowadays, they give us a PVE with no storyline (why scaling then?), and it’s simply not fun, because it’s not fair.

I spent the afternoon yesterday trying to come up with a better solution. I think, maybe, they could do something like this: divide all tournaments into Easy, Medium and Hard. Winning Easy would give you a small amount of Iso-8, and **-star covers; Medium, a somewhat larger amount of Iso-8, and ***-star covers; and Hard, ****-star covers and lots of Iso-8 (I understand the major concern amongst high-level players is Iso-8 after all). Once you entered one of the tournaments, of course you couldn’t switch to another difficulty, otherwise the best players would reap all the rewards. They could let you browse through the three difficulties before choosing one, so that you wouldn’t happen to enter under the wrong one.

What do you think? I welcome suggestions.

10

Maybe they should just introduce hero capping, meaning that the level of your hero gets reduced to the cap in case it is higher. Cap easy mode at 50, medium at 85, hard at 141. This will encourage using *-heroes in easy mode (because **-heroes and ***-heroes at level 50 are somewhat less strong than *-heroes), same for **-heroes in medium mode. Allow players to participate in all three modes, most won’t bother and just concentrate on the mode that best suits their roster. A top ***-team capped at level 50 will definitely not breeze through easy mode for a quick reward grab, if you have to invest time and effort it’s best spend in the area that offers the best reward.

11

I’d do something more radical and make every tier of rarity sit on the same power band. Levels 1-50 for each and every character. Then make basic and heroic versions of the mission sets; the basic one has minimal rewards, but everyone can complete it, and the heroic one can have challenges and commensurate rewards for those so inclined.

…that said, if they want to keep the rarity power bands (something which works contrary to the goal of making every character interesting and useful, I think), having starred content tiers is a great solution. As in, a set that’s geared for one star characters, a set for two stars, that sort of thing… and maybe even constrict which characters can be used per the star rating.

I’m not sure that I’d lock players into one, though. I’d just separate out the rewards so that the leaderboards are unique to each tier. It wouldn’t bother me to have high level players puttering around in the lower tiers since they would be using the lower starred rosters.

12

I think both are good suggestions, either separating players by difficulty level or by character stars. The problem with star-bracketing is that people do use 3-star characters with OBW, for example. Maybe it would force us to have ampler rosters? That said, I think that allowing players to move to and fro would still cause turmoil. If the aim is just to let people read the whole story, OK. But if they want noobs to build up their rosters, then veteran players would still have the advantage. They’d have all *-star characters maxed out, and yes, they would bother to place high in order to get more Iso-8.

Anyway, whether you go by difficulty or by stars, you’ll be solving the scaling problem. The mission level wouldn’t need to escalate if all players met on equal terms. I’m all for new players getting a little help, but not at the cost of making the game unfair to old hands.

13

The scaling should max out based on your team. I run two stars, I shouldn’t see anything over 120 unless its worth 1000+ points. And the rewards shouldn’t decrease, the enemy should get stronger until that max out point, when its difficult for your team to win, but not impossible. And rewards should be based solely on the difficultly of the enemy. Players who use one stars will see weaker enemies and get less rewards, as it should be.

Edit: also make enemies weaker if you lose or drop over a certain number of ranks

14

Only two people have benefits from the actual level scaling:

Those who don’t have many covers and only low level heroes, their fights are the easiest you can have these days.
Those who have 140+ heroes and so are far better in fighting level 230 opponents.

Others are screwed as they encounter level 230 ennemies too, but have nothing to fight them fairly.
I have only two level 85 2* heroes and as i’ve got a lot of covers (almost every heroes but at best level 40 or 50, nothing really useful nor deadly) and i’m unable to do almost half of the pve events as ennemies are far too powerful to be downed with my teams. The other half is really really difficult…

So yes present level scaling has killed the game, and the worst part, D3 doesn’t care.

15

Exactly. Why in heaven’s name would they design a system where you have a tournament that lasts 8 days, but there’s only 4 ~6 hour time windows in which you aren’t functionally locked out of half of the event?

16

Devs: A fantastic game, but I couldn’t agree with this thread more. Scaling only works in open world single player games.

Games with leveling/roleplaying elements like MPQ are about deserving rewards from hard work/time/money.

When you start any MMO (or even the original Puzzle Quest) there are areas you simply can’t adventure to until you’re powerful enough. You accept it because it’s like a VIP club or gated community. So you work your ass off (or spend $$$) to not just get access to those areas - but to ultimately RULE those areas. That is the real thrill and reward for all your hard work. Your ability to earn your place. Hard work or money = reward.

But using scaling in an attempt to allow all-access for everyone devalues your middle (2*) and end game (3*) and removes player incentive.

I’ve pushed through the prologue and maxed out a great team of 2-stars and I’m staring down the barrel of three stars. I accepted I wasn’t ready for top rewards for the Hulk tournament (I hope to get more next time!) and I don’t mind finishing lower in a tournament if everyone above me has a better team, more time or more skill - because I can still beat them. I can pay or grind a better team. I can accept how much time I have or I can just simply get better. But when it’s a newbie who’s been scaled for an easy win it’s just a kick in the teeth for all my hard work and money. Because what can I do to beat them? All my powers… And there’s nothing I can do. Nothing. That newbie will always beat me no matter how many hours I put in or how much money I spend.

And you do want me to spend money, right?

So give me a reason. Remove scaling.

17

FWIW in this simulator event I personally did not encounter so terrible a scaling. At least in rounds 2-4.

Maybe because I learned the lession, entered several hours after start, first only to hard, played my targets only then entered the basic and played immediately as much as possible.

In this last sub 12 hours before end my levels in normal are way lower than those in hard. Only a few reached 230.

So they like found some adjustments that kinda work. At least incomparably better than the previous pves.

18

Don’t bet on it. From what I’ve seen so far this scaling seems like the PvE equivalent of MMR. Which means it will likely persist through future PvE events, you’ll get increasingly difficult fights until you can’t do well any longer or hit the cap.

19

Scaling is hands down the worst thing in the game. It gives low players rewards they don’t deserve. I realize everyone wants to see the story, even though I personally don’t care about it, so here’s a solution that is FAIR.

  1. difficulty of battles is based solely on your roster. As you win an individual level, that level and that level only gets stronger until they reach a max out point based on your team. When you lose, try decrease in difficulty. No other outside sources effect the difficulty, like it does now with each person who beats a level raising it for everyone.

  2. point rewards are based solely on the difficulty of the fight. Strong players who see strong enemies get more points and the rewards they deserve. Weak players see weak enemies and get less points and the rewards they deserve. This way any cheaters will be obvious.

  3. to allow everyone to see the whole story even more than steps 1&2 have, the required character levels should provide the character as minimum level to anyone who doesn’t have it.

I realize there are some holes in this. For one thing it’s harder to up in strength. But it’s painfully easy to max out the good 2* covers, so new players won’t be locked out. They’ll be with the majority of people. Now, if they increased the probability of 3* in heroics, it may fix this problem.

20

Agree. The scaling and “rubberbanding” is just insane. Okay, so yeah…very nice of them to give me 3500 points in one fell swoop…IF I manage to win against three LVL 230 enemies! Yeah, right…like that would ever happen? icon_eek.gif

I would be much more comfortable with playing three “easier” missions, pounding a team of LVL 100s three times each, earning me 1100 points each time. Sure, it takes more time…but it’s DOABLE! Fighting LVL 230 is not. No way.

So yeah, skip the scaling and the rubberbanding, it’s not fair to those who have played and grinded a lot that someone can sneak in late in the event and run like crazy and grab the first prize right before the noses of all who have actually FOUGHT to get high rankings. It’s also not fair to make people play against ridiculously hard enemies, fights they can never win.