Recently, there have been multiple changes to the game in order to promote “varieties/diversity in PvP team composition”, “pleasant atmosphere for transitioners in PvP”, “to bring some un-popular characters to the spotlight”, and so on. I know that before this we just had the “8 hours cooldown change” in PvE and that was indeed one of the changes that got a lot of positive feedbacks from the community. However, there is still one concern that I, and perhaps many other veteran players still have in mind regarding the current situation of PvE in the midst of these recent changes to the game.
Yes, that concern is about the PvE “Scaling”. I know that the actual scaling formula still remains mystery until now, but I’ve been checking with different sources and played with some numbers enough to finally have some gut to make this post and taking some smites.
As some (or most) or us here in the forum know that the main beliefs of the personal PvE scaling are generally:
- You first page of roster
- 3 of your highest level characters
- Level of the characters that you use to win the matches
- Other ideas or whatever that might be
Now some of you may strongly disagree with me, but there are some that seriously think that their 4s are not much stronger than some of the 3s now especially after these changes. Before this, many of the 3*->4* transitioners and the high lv players were working their hands off to max XF and Thoress since they were the ultimate duo in meta game. So obviously those who managed to complete Xhor combo will be using them in PvE as well to counter the brutal PvE scaling. They might lived through Thoress nerf and managed to get their hands on this parade of new characters, but what will happen to them after XF nerf on the D Day 4/17? The difference between enemies level in PvE of the players who have maxed 4* and other 3s VS players who have maxed 3s is big. I strongly believe that players who spent so much resources and time to attain lv270 characters did not expect to be put in disadvantages in PvE by the scaling function since they already suffer enough on the nerf(s) themselves.
What I would like to suggest might not be too difficult to do, so please hear me out on this, I hope it’s fair enough.
I know it’s almost impossible to do anything with the current scaling without creating an uproar (when you top the balance toward one side of the players, the other side will rise up), so how about you “reset” the starting level for personal scaling for once, and use the function of “Level of the characters that you use to win the matches” and other usual indicators (like battle performance, Hit point remaining and etc.) to determine the personal/starting scaling afterward. This way no matter what kind of roster that you have, if you use use lv94 characters, you shall have same scaling as 2* players. BUT you must be consistent on this, so if you suddenly use lv166 characters in the hope to get matches done faster than those 2* players, you may get off with it for a few games, but after the game pick up that “your average level” has increased, your scaling will go up as a result, so you cannot take advantage of that level of scaling anymore.
P.S. One note that I would like to add regarding my personal scaling is that my starting level in Prodigal Sun PvE are completely the same between the event on (Apr 8 -14) and (Feb 24 - Mar 3) (the first one I played during Dec 15 - 22 has lower level because I only have Thoress as my only 4* character). Please note that my roster has greatly improved within this month time frame (lv220 Xhor, 7 maxed 3s, a lv166 Nick, and a few above lv115 in the beginning of April; lv220Xhor, 4 maxed 3s and a lv120 3* in the beginning of March). What’s remain unchanged between 2 events is the “average level on first page of my roster”. However, since March 27 on the ISO Brother hood event, I’ve started to use only 3s in PvE, only a few matches (can count and name them) I resorted to Thoress OR XF, this was done after I read NP’s post about not using maxed 4 in order to maintain the scaling. It’s been a few events since then and I’m enjoying using the 3*s so far. Please also excuse my language, as I’m not the native speaker. Thank you for reading and comments.
TL;DR I would like to suggest to “reset” the “starting PvE level” and let the game determine it later based on the characters that you use to complete the nodes. The main objective of this idea is to promote the fair ground between players who use similar level of characters in PvE, but their rosters have different “highest level characters”.
With this suggestion, it can at least help the veterans who have lv270 characters and don’t intend to use those characters in PvE to be able to compete with manageable scaling when they try to play with their 3* characters. And if they decide to constantly use those lv270s, their scaling will rise back up again as a result.