Poll: What are the most important things to fix for scaling?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
41

Sorry, I’m not buying this reasoning. Scaling exists because D3P wants to spend as little effort as possible on mission design. They hope that it will somehow balance out to give every player a reasonably challenging, maybe even enjoyable game experience. They are either blissfully unaware that they have failed in every regard possible or they simply don’t care as long as the money keeps coming. Possibly both.

If you really believe scaling is fine and working as intended, please explain why we haven’t reached any major progression reward for ages now. Do you want to imply those are just around to goad us along, never meant to be collected?

42

Not to rain on your parade, but they are. D3P proved that the top progression awards are meant only as a dangling carrot when they nerfed the Shield VS ladder rewards, right when the then recently introduced shielding mechanic allowed players to finally reach those rewards.

43

If I could vote just once, it would be just to know how scaling works. I feel like I could handle any system, if I just knew what the rules are!

44

Snapshot of current top 5 with their notable key/high level characters:

#1 93.7K 102 Punisher, 79 lazy Cap
#2 93.0K 137 Patch, 106 LT, 106 Magneto classic (max cover), 90 HT (5 red)
#3 91.0K 141 LT, 128 HT
#4 90.8K 130 Patch, 120 Hood, 102 LT
#5 89.6K (me) - 141 LT, 128 lazy Cap, 126 Magneto

Not sure how the guy at #1 is currently #1, but certainly all the 4 guys behind him have respectable rosters.

45

Progression rewards are hard to reach because rubberband is difficult to predict when combined with scaling.

We’re actually on pace to hit 170K for the top finishers about 3 days into the tournament, and we’ve steadily fallen from pace due to scaling. However, missions in Alaska have increased in points, which offset the scaling such that it still looks feasible to hit 170K for the top halfway through the event. Then Bullseye 3 pretty much shattered any hope of hitting 170K and possibly even 150K as that mission seem to absolutely destroyed the top score in Savage Land sub bracket (seems like 5K was a high score?)

46

Personally, I find scaling to be fine as is. The scaling curve is working great, and good to see that I’m still below the level 200’s. I didn’t see an option for its fine as is, so I would figure that I would place it here.

On a side note, the poll seems rather narrow in direction, and geared only to those who think it is unfair to the player being asked. If looking for insight from players to devs, I would suggest opening up the poll to include it’s fine as is, because scaling isn’t really bad at all. This poll is also subjective to each player that answers, meaning they will most likely pick the options that would benefit there own self the most. Please don’t take this as an attack on the poll, but I believe you will get more useful insight and debate when the poll itself does not seem weighted against certain viewpoints.

47

I appreciate your feedback. Since it’s been brought up a few times, I have now added the option, “Scaling is fine the way it is”, so that the polling can be fair. But I’m really curious and I’d like to know your thoughts; is there really nothing that you guys would change or improve to make it more enjoyable?

For example, do you think that it’s balanced that someone who needs to spend 10-15 minutes on a lvl 395 match gains the same amount of points as someone who spends 2-3 minutes on the same node but with lvl 50 enemies instead? Or how low PvE rating players (and therefore less community scaling) are able to inflict a larger percentage of damage and receive lesser damage with lower leveled enemies, compared to higher end players who are more fearful of miracle cascades and one hit kill skills from higher leveled enemies? Which of these player groups are more likely to consume health packs faster?

It can be argued that those low PvE rating players will eventually become high PvE rating players in due time, but there will always be new players joining with low PvE ratings. A high PvE rating player will always be a high PvE rating player, unless you decide to tank events or stop playing overall.

48

Whelp. Making that poll change seemed to wipe out all the previous stats. Oh well.

49

While I can only assume some answers for your scenarios, I would like to add another fact to what may be lending a helping hand to those lower on the character roster level spectrum: the amount of downtime each character has to become full health again. As a player grows in experience, roster variety, and roster rarity level, they either have the means to keep a team healed (as you see with OBW or Spidey teams), or try to minimize damage per battle so that health pack use is at a bare minimum. But! These same players are the ones more likely to use health packs. For example, a downed im35 compared to a downed hulk will be up to full health much, much quicker, eliminating the urgent need to use a healthpack, like a hulk user may need to.

I think scaling works fine as it is because the level increase is much smoother now, and creates the opportunity for all players to be on relatively equal footing according to challenge. A level 50 match will not be the same challenge to a 141 team as it is to a 50 team, so to simulate the same challenge, you have to scale the encounter accordingly. So yes, it’s just as fair for a higher level team to get the same amount of points on the same node with the assumed challenge happening… except for my previous point of health regen.

I believe that with scaling they seriously should consider looking at equalizing regen times, at least in regards to pve sections. That’s where I believe the problem lies, not with scaling.

50

Yeah, that seems a lot more reasonable

51

I would just like it to be more fixed to my average level so that easy was 50% of my average nominal was 100% of my average hard was 125% of my average and deadly was 150% of my average. I thought it was like that for a minute but seems to change so frequently. I figured that was why so many people had handfuls of level one people.

52

Who voted it’s fine the way it is?

Burn The Heretic.
Purge The Unclean.

53

Its pretty simple.

Mechanics that encourage players to play less, lose health/games on purpose and scales without you playing is poor design. That cannot be argued with.

Design a system so that isn’t true. Period.

54

Yeah, but then they’d lose all the new player cash which they generate from low level rosters having yet another character they can’t use without putting the hp in. So good or bad, mostly bad, I predict this mechanic stays.

55

I was just now able to confirm something I had never noticed happen on previous pve’s. I had just started the Savage node about 45 minutes to an hour ago, once there was 6 hours left or so.

Once I unlocked the first bullseye node, I saw 1 sniper at 251, and a Pyro and sniper at 252.

Bullseye 2: all were 273

Bullseye 3: all were 299.

I played each one back to back. And managed to win.

Once I finished bullseye 3, I moved onto the essential nodes, which I hadn’t done yet. I played the first one, then the second one. Both totaled about 10 minutes combined roughly.

I was curious about the bullseye nodes, and clicked on bullseye 3 again. Ares at 315, venom/bullseye at 314.

Bullseye 2: 278 sniper, 277 bullseye/moonstone.

Bullseye 1: All are now 260.

So, in about 10 minutes after I finished playing all 3 bullseye nodes, and less than one hour after I started, the nodes increased.

Maybe I wasn’t paying as close of attention in Brotherhood, Hulk or Torch pve’s, because those nodes were always so high, etc…but I don’t remember levels changing that much until after a “refresh”.

EDIT: I meant to add that I had originally noticed on the round of Alaska previous to the current one, and the last Alaska round.