Overscaling *Update new scaling*

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

The new PVE format doesn’t fit veteran player or 4/5* rosters. I was already frustrated from the fake “play when you want” feature when basically it’s play several hours in a row everyday or say good by to the top 100(I did it and ranked at 200+). But what really makes me give up on competitive PVE is the scaling. Since the beginning of the game I thought that ranking well to collect rewards, investing time and money to level up my roster will eventually give me an advantage and ease my fights later. Wrong! I’m being punished for that! I face now ridiculously over scaled opponent. The fights are long (facing 200K health pool), health pack consuming and not fun.

Here my 1st page roster:

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Now for example the infamous IW essential node for Wasp release:

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I lost more times that I won and did only 5 clears. I had my best character locked and a level 110 IW (no way I’m putting Isos in one of the worst 4stars). My BSS was not that useful in this fight and all my champ 4* were one-shot by Jean Grey. So basically I was fighting this team only with OML. I learned that a champ OML is a puppy against Lv 450 Cyclops and Jean Grey.

Now 2 other exemple on the current PVE.

Ares node

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The hardest node has 200K health pool. Of course I can manage it with my roster but at what cost? The fight takes for ever and if Ares got a green board he can take easily 10k+ with onslaught for 6 green AP and 10K AOE with his Rampage ( + Venom cheap stun + Daken strike tiles + Daken chemical reaction…). So if I was playing in a competitive way, I’ll need to use health pack often.

Finally the Wasp node.

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It’s a new release so under covered and under levelled for most of the players. Same as above but basically in a 2 vs 3 fight.

Maybe some people like it but I don’t find it fun at all. Add to that the broken PvP ( A.K.A pay 10 isos in loop to face the same 3 opponents) I can understand why more and more veteran are tired of the game.

Update new big roster scaling

So I started the Hulk Event and cleared 4 times the hardest node and the 4* essential node.
First of all, there is now only 6 rewards per node and for the hard one the critical boost is still there…don’t know which one drop off…

Hardest node :

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I faced a Lv 589 Hulk with 200K health. I will not say it was a hard fight, since he is alone and any stunner will do the trick. Easy fight but still 200k Health.

4* Essential node :

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Once again not the hardest team I’ve see. My XFW is at 273 with the boost. Enemy levels picks at 432 (against 451 last event). Roughly 20 Lv less but I’m still waiting for harder opponent to judge. A LV 432 node with OML locked and against a JG/PX/4Cyc would still be tricky.
We will see with the next Sub.

2

Check the stickied announcements here. They are already addressing this:

  • Tweaked how enemies scale as your roster gets better. Higher level rosters will experience easier enemies than before.

We’ll see how much they actually tweak it…

3

I just read it. I hardly believe it’ll be much better but we will see. I’ll gladly delete this post if the scaling become fair icon_e_smile.gif

4

Wow, not something to look forward to in a few years, when I hopefully have some championed 5*s…

As has been said before, if nodes are scaled, rewards should scale as well. A very challenging node should give much higher iso and other better prizes as well. Not this 70 iso deal that noobs facing lv 50 enemies receive.

5

Yet another reason why I don’t play PVE. It’s just an incredibly bad and poorly executed format.

6

I agree. Essentials are pretty damn difficult to 2v3 your way through.

I find non essential triple Dark Avengers pretty easy though with Ares + Daken being the best kind. I run Oml, 4*DP with a third (usually SW) and take a nap while the game plays itself icon_lol.gif
. Moonstone however is true terror.

7

I dont have an Spidey maxed, just OML and PH, so my scaling in that node was not that bad, just 410 or something like that icon_razz.gif

Thing is, the third 5 makes also quite a big difference in the scaling. With just OML I was fighting against 405-410, with OML+PH 425-30 and I see that with 3 champed 5s you jump to 450. This is why I would never champ SS until you have at least other three 5s champed, he would just make things worse.

Then what I was not expecting when I levelled my PH (she was my second 5 to champ) is the brutal change in my MMR. It has been just a week, so I really hope it is related to not popular 4s buffed this week, but in my new MMR I always see a champed 5, and most of the time two champed 5s. I need A LOT of iso to find a fight that it is not against my exact same team. Fights were much much easier with just OML champed. I think I get attacked a bit less often, but the difference is not as big to justify this big change in my MMR. This is really really annoying. I am still getting to 1300 but I need to spend a lot of my iso in the stupid SKIP button.

Now I am basically thinking why I was so stupid to level my 5s. Yeah they are super strong and very fun to use, but it has basically made my life harder in both PvE (expected) and PvP (not expected). So yeah, I get why veterans like me stop playing (day 1000+ here). I will continue until the third anniversary but if things don’t improve I will move to greener pastures…

PS: Why the fuck do we still need to pay 10 iso to skip now that iso is so precious ?!?!?!?!

8

Wow,…after seeing your opponents I will never level any cover above 300. I don’t want matches to go on forever.
Tinykitty that.
Thanks for posting
#nuffsaid

9

Polares’ post is truly terrifying. I don’t get the point of struggling to champion 5*s, and then pvp becomes more and more unbearable.

Championing your 5*s should make your pvp experience easier, not significantly worse. Then there’s truly no point to bother.

Yet not championing your 5*s means that you’re just spinning your wheels.

I really hate pvp matches against extremely strong characters who take away massive damage. The fights get very long and stressful.

10

I really really hope things improve when popular 4s are buffed. This week the only popular 4 that was buffed was ProfX, and he is not that used in PvP, so I guess with my new MMR I can’t see any normal 4 team (not buffed). I always had to fight against 420+ level opponents, and 99% of my fights had at least one 5 champed, from those 99% of the time it was OML or PH (seeing an SS makes you really happy). I have still to see any Spidey, GG or IM46 champed.

Another problem is that I have not seen any cupcake in my last two events, not even one, and I guess it is because people with my MMR can’t win against other teams with a cupcake team or they don’t even bother. This is also a big problem, because cupakes really help to get an easy win while hoping.

PS: I have been playing with two champed 5s just for a week, so again, I really hope things improve when IMHB, Jean or other popular 4s are buffed, but right now I am not that optimistic… icon_cry.gif

11

Horror stories like this and the OP are why my 8 cover (5/3/0, blech) PHX and now max covered Surfer sit at 255ish. I like my MMR. I see no reason to change it. Even bringing them even with OML (@375) seems like a terrible idea.

12

I have dealt with this by not leveling any 5s at all. (Well, I did put about 4 levels onto Silver Surfer, but that’s it.) Nor will I until I have a good reason to do so (e.g. “this 5* will let me plow through PvE and PvP like buttah.”) With one maxed 4* and a couple about 75% maxed, I’ve seen difficult scaling, but manageably so. Nothing obnoxious.

13

Honestly I feel 5*s were poorly thought out, both in distribution and design. They’re so powerful as to be unbalancing - now the devs are having trouble finding a middle ground for pve that offers appropriate challenge not trivially easy (325 cap) or painfully hard (450/500).

In pvp people talk about mmr hell, but the fact is that everything is a cupcake to 5s, including other 5s. I feel bad when I get matched to mixed 4*/5* teams (though not bad enough to turn down the match at least the first time). I don’t think 5* rosters should be allowed to stomp on 3-4* teams the way 4s used to stomp 2-3 teams.

And because of the random distribution, there is no reasonable way to progress out of this trap where you can only reasonably use the same 2 characters in pvp until you get lucky enough to cover one more, then you get to choose between a whopping 3 characters besides the featured!

Still waiting to see if they have any real plan to deal with the many issues that vets have raised. I’m tempted to go back to playing noob, or starting again to see how things work now.

14

They almost certainly won’t tweak it sufficiently, if they wanted to encourage people to keep progressing their roster then the game should always try to avoid becoming harder with a better roster, ideally it should become marginally easier, but not too much that you lose all challenge.

Realistically, they have to get out of the mindset that a 1/1/1 4* is such a huge reward that only the top 1% should get it from pve and make the change to a progression-based system.

15

My experience with moving my second 5* up (Phoenix to 375) is a bit less frustrating than yours. The bad part was that I raised her when she wasn’t ready. At 375, she really was underpowered for what I was facing, so I struggled for a week or two using OML and a 4* (usually Deadpool) against tougher opponents than I’d yet faced with that combo. Luckily, I ran into a glut of her covers (five in two weeks, IIRC), and she quickly became worthwhile. I know, that’s not exactly what you want to hear for a solution. But once she was over 400 as well (OML was either 405 or 420 at the time), things went much better.

5* MMR, though… It’s very weird, with upsides and downsides. The upside is that, if few people are out, you can queue people at 2k when you’re still at zero (which is awesome when you’re queuing friends who are hopping; just wait till they shield and hit away). The downside is that, if a bunch of people are out, and are above you, but worth less than the cupcake, you won’t see the cupcake at all. Last event, I wasn’t able to see any cupcakes until I was around 1300; I was getting really… angry about it. At one point, I was like, “Ok, only queuing five people now (the one node was cycling only three), so as soon as someone bakes or shields, I’ll see everything.” And then two more people broke shield.

As for the PvE scaling, I’m hopeful it’ll improve a lot. That IW node was just miserable. The first clear or two weren’t too bad; I used Iceman/IM40. But after that it was a nightmare; the match damage got too much for those two, and I had to slog it out with OML/Xpool. Which worked, after a fashion, but I had several wipes (I think with other teams, but they were very narrow wins with those two, even).

The Wasp nodes for the second and third sub of Hunt are not as bad, but also bad (I had to change teams to a slower, but more reliable, one) as Wasp keeps getting knocked out. One shot of Rags’ green can take her out, and it’s difficult to keep him from getting that much green when he has 60k hp (my scaling is almost as high as Kensh’s, although his top three have 30-odd levels on my top three).

16

This thread is the exact reason that I’m capping everything at level 280. I already can’t get anywhere in PvP - I can’t lose PvE too.

17

I was talking about pve because the IW node really frustrated me. But like polares, amf and others here said, yeah pvp is also broken. At the moment a 3 or 4 stars roster can reach 500, 600 or more facing 3 or 4 stars rosters. I’m not saying it’s easy but they have enough target to choose from. With a 5 stars roster you face the 3 same 5 stars opponent from beginning. And if you join mid event you don’t even have seeds. In a game when you progress you’re suppose to have more fun or at least a different challenge, here I sometime feel the game tells me “wow nice roster you have , it would be a shame if from now on you’re supposed to lose”

18

Because of the mess from MMR, I have gone back to championing the rest of my 3*'s and will probably just save my ISO for when something is actually fixed with this. Only 1.3 million ISO needed to level the rest of the 3s on my roster. Should have the rest of the 3s fully champed by Jan 2017.

Thanks for posting this as it provided me incentive to not level any more 4s and never any 5s.

Appreciate that and good work Devs!

19

I am painfully aware I need to softcap my 5*s O.o

I’m just merrily durdling my way through champing all my 3*s. I don’t want any of what the devs are selling for the end game…

20

WOW!! Now I am not sure I want to put any more ISO into my 5*'s if this is going to happen. As it is, the only 4* I have champed is Hulkbuster. I did raise my Silver Surver and OML to around 270ish and by the time I cleared the fourth round, the scaling of my enemies had gone up to 304. Don’t need the 70 ISO that bad! It will still me a while (read: years) before I get enough ISO to level my 5* so in the meantime, I have about 5 3*'s left to champ so I will continue working on those.