So character levels don't effect scaling?

brisashi
brisashi Posts: 418 Mover and Shaker
edited February 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
I've kept my xforce at 166 for a long time thinking raising him any higher would make pve too difficult.

Am I correct in understanding that levels do not have any bearing on enemy scaling? Has this always been the case?
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Comments

  • NorthernPolarity
    NorthernPolarity Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    papa07 wrote:

    You are wrong actually.

    Character levels only indirectly scaling for all PvEs except Simulator, which we have directly from IceIX's mouth. The idea is that the only thing that matters is how much net damage you take during a match, so increasing your X-Force would mean you take less damage if you played normally. It CAN not affect scaling if you force yourself to take more damage to offset the scaling, but people don't like doing that.

    If you don't believe me, SHIELD has this guy called Beee, and his scaling is always pretty damn low because he plays all his guys and takes a ton of damage in every single PvE, but this isn't suitable for everyone since its usually more time efficient to just steamroll.
  • papa07 wrote:

    You are wrong actually.

    Character levels only indirectly scaling for all PvEs except Simulator, which we have directly from IceIX's mouth. The idea is that the only thing that matters is how much net damage you take during a match, so increasing your X-Force would mean you take less damage if you played normally. It CAN not affect scaling if you force yourself to take more damage to offset the scaling, but people don't like doing that.

    If you don't believe me, SHIELD has this guy called Beee, and his scaling is always pretty damn low because he plays all his guys and takes a ton of damage in every single PvE, but this isn't suitable for everyone since its usually more time efficient to just steamroll.

    And the statement is that starting value is based primarily, but not entirely, on highest leveled character. It is still a black box as to everything that goes into it. If character level did not play into the starting value, then we would not see starting values of 250 on a node for a higher level player, while starting values on that same node are 50 for a beginning player.

    Again, personal and community scaling are not affected by character levels, only starting values. To make a comment that character levels do not directly affect scaling is 100% consistent with my comments.

    You have to be careful with your use of the word scaling. Some people define scaling as all 3 parts of enemy levels, while others define it as only the change from start to finish during a subevent.
  • Character levels only indirectly scaling for all PvEs except Simulator, which we have directly from IceIX's mouth.

    As for the IceIX quote, it is from over 1 year ago (things do change in this game) and there is no context for which definition of scaling he is referring to. If his definition of scaling is only encompassing personal and community scaling, not starting levels, then his statement is still supportive of the definitions that I laid out.
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    brisashi wrote:
    I've kept my xforce at 166 for a long time thinking raising him any higher would make pve too difficult.

    Am I correct in understanding that levels do not have any bearing on enemy scaling? Has this always been the case?

    We don't know for sure one way or the other. We do know that if it does have any impact, it is on starting levels and not levels gained per completion.
  • Omg! Why do people pick up rumors and Spread them like truth. Granted the developers answers are spread out over many threads, so if you have not read those over the past year, you can't really blame anyone but still. The answers have been provided, so I got no clue why they are ignored in favor of baseless speculation.

    1. Only the gauntlet looks at your character levels as a factor in determining your scaling.

    2. There is no community scaling in gauntlet.

    3. Your true health loss directly affects your scaling. Levels, boosts, temp healing, the boogieman, etc. do not directly affect your scaling.

    In simpler terms, let's look at boosts. If you use boosts, but suffer a massive ai cascade that kills two of your characters and seriously hurts your third, scaling will not be affected. If you use boosts and win faster and thereby take less damage than the game thinks you should have, it will impact your scaling. Not because of your levels or using boosts, but because you took less damage.

    4. Because of increased health and damage output, scaling and levels are proportional. This means that if a level 166 thor fights a level 166 node he'll take proportionally the same damage and the same amount of time to beat the node as a level 94 thor fighting a level 94 node.

    In other words, if a higher level character is kicking the tail of a lower level node, it tells the game the node is too easy for you and scales up. Conversely, if you have a lower level character and easily beat a node it scales up.

    What does this mean? You'll see a mix of veteran and newer rosters in the pve leaderboard bc proportionally they are fighting the same level of difficulty opponents.

    Bigger picture. If you don't gain or lose an advantage by keep your character levels lower, why raise them? Because pve, which is once a week, is balanced, pvp, which is three times a week, is not balanced. You are cutting off your nose to smite your face.

    5. Each pve is not tabula rasa (or however you spell it). Meaning if you do extremely well in a pve that carries over jm part to future pves. This means even if you don't level your characters, your scaling will increase until the ai finds a scaling level proportional to how well you and your characters play the nodes.
  • I don't understand what the problem is with calling the changing starting levels of your opponents as scaling. The starting opponents are 'scaled' to your level. How is that not scaling?

    Scaling need not be purely a dynamic thing over time.
  • daibar wrote:
    I don't understand what the problem is with calling the changing starting levels of your opponents as scaling. The starting opponents are 'scaled' to your level. How is that not scaling?

    Scaling need not be purely a dynamic thing over time.

    Again, levels only affect your scaling levels at the start on the gauntlet bc each gauntlet is tailored to reach individual player.

    Second, because such inaccurate statements lead to confusion. You have players who have not leveled their characters, but face higher scaling compared to other players with similar roster levels. Therefore, the statement that increased levels directly cause scaling misleads them into thinking (1) my scaling is broken or unfair compared to players with the same level characters and (2) people **** their pvp ability because they are horrified that of they increase in their character levels they'll be scaled out of pve and not able to compete in it any more.

    It's the same thing as saying eating cookies directly makes you fat. The truth is actually taking on more calorie than you burn directly makes you fat. If you burn more calories or decrease in your intake of calories on other areas, then just eating cookies will not make you fat

    It's the same difference saying leveling characters directly cause scaling.

    You do realize telling other people this is not helping me, np, or others. We tell people this because that's what this forum is for and because we'd like to see other people have as much fun and success as we do. We're not on it to continually argue with people that we are trying to help. We are not saying there is only one way to do things or you couldn't level your roster how you want.

    Just as an example, colog and locked max everyone, np maxes some and levels others to just 135, and i do a really weird 166/141/118/102 thing. We're just trying to make sure players have the best information possible to make their own decisions. So if all level 94 ' s work for you and you have fun that way, great. However, it's equally important other players get a chance to decide what works best for then based off the best information and advice this forum and their alliance mates can provide.

    I know it can seem like a gripe fest here sometimes, but really strategies, character discussion, and event discussion is what 90% of this forum is used for.
  • Omg! Why do people pick up rumors and Spread them like truth. Granted the developers answers are spread out over many threads, so if you have not read those over the past year, you can't really blame anyone but still. The answers have been provided, so I got no clue why they are ignored in favor of baseless speculation.

    1. Only the gauntlet looks at your character levels as a factor in determining your scaling.

    2. There is no community scaling in gauntlet.

    3. Your true health loss directly affects your scaling. Levels, boosts, temp healing, the boogieman, etc. do not directly affect your scaling.

    In simpler terms, let's look at boosts. If you use boosts, but suffer a massive ai cascade that kills two of your characters and seriously hurts your third, scaling will not be affected. If you use boosts and win faster and thereby take less damage than the game thinks you should have, it will impact your scaling. Not because of your levels or using boosts, but because you took less damage.

    4. Because of increased health and damage output, scaling and levels are proportional. This means that if a level 166 thor fights a level 166 node he'll take proportionally the same damage and the same amount of time to beat the node as a level 94 thor fighting a level 94 node.

    In other words, if a higher level character is kicking the tail of a lower level node, it tells the game the node is too easy for you and scales up. Conversely, if you have a lower level character and easily beat a node it scales up.

    What does this mean? You'll see a mix of veteran and newer rosters in the pve leaderboard bc proportionally they are fighting the same level of difficulty opponents.

    Bigger picture. If you don't gain or lose an advantage by keep your character levels lower, why raise them? Because pve, which is once a week, is balanced, pvp, which is three times a week, is not balanced. You are cutting off your nose to smite your face.

    5. Each pve is not tabula rasa (or however you spell it). Meaning if you do extremely well in a pve that carries over jm part to future pves. This means even if you don't level your characters, your scaling will increase until the ai finds a scaling level proportional to how well you and your characters play the nodes.


    Ha!!!! Been playing for 300 days and never knew that. Thanks for the info!
  • Are people defining scaling now as only scaling over time?

    That seems vastly inaccurate to me.

    I think that is the only core of the disagreement, and everything else seems superfluous. If I am wrong then please tell me.
  • famousfoxking
    famousfoxking Posts: 245 Tile Toppler
    You are cutting off your nose to smite your face.

    Pssst, it's "cutting off your nose to spite your face".

    Also, you win at screennames.
  • You are cutting off your nose to smite your face.

    Pssst, it's "cutting off your nose to spite your face".

    Also, you win at screennames.

    Smite (4or) = MPQ version of Spite? You got me on that one icon_lol.gif
  • hurcules
    hurcules Posts: 519
    You are cutting off your nose to smite your face.

    Pssst, it's "cutting off your nose to spite your face".

    Also, you win at screennames.

    Smite (4or) = MPQ version of Spite? You got me on that one icon_lol.gif
    And I thought Vale was being intentionally clever with that pun :/
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    If you don't believe me, SHIELD has this guy called Beee, and his scaling is always pretty damn low because he plays all his guys and takes a ton of damage in every single PvE, but this isn't suitable for everyone since its usually more time efficient to just steamroll.
    Is it possible to rank highly while doing that? Seems like you'd run out of time and characters during a final grind.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    daibar wrote:
    Are people defining scaling now as only scaling over time?

    That seems vastly inaccurate to me.

    I think that is the only core of the disagreement, and everything else seems superfluous. If I am wrong then please tell me.
    I don't want to have this semantics argument again, but you have to realize that starting difficulty and how fast the levels increase over the course of a sub, are two distinct things, which can (and probably are) affected by different things. So just calling all of it "scaling" muddies the water. It's already confusing enough as it is.
  • hurcules
    hurcules Posts: 519
    simonsez wrote:
    If you don't believe me, SHIELD has this guy called Beee, and his scaling is always pretty damn low because he plays all his guys and takes a ton of damage in every single PvE, but this isn't suitable for everyone since its usually more time efficient to just steamroll.
    Is it possible to rank highly while doing that? Seems like you'd run out of time and characters during a final grind.
    The guy won top 3 in all 3 recent Gauntlet speed run without boosts.

    Oh, Gauntlet is not regular PvE, you say? Well, you wouldn't want to be in his bracket in regular PvE, put it this way...
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yeah, gauntlet has no grinding, which is what I was wondering about. Taking ISO Brotherhood as an example, I don't know how you'd grind 10 nodes 5-6 times each, while sticking to this strategy.
  • hurcules
    hurcules Posts: 519
    simonsez wrote:
    Yeah, gauntlet has no grinding, which is what I was wondering about. Taking ISO Brotherhood as an example, I don't know how you'd grind 10 nodes 5-6 times each, while sticking to this strategy.
    Thing is, he doesn't just grind and get as much points as possible. As long he can distant himself far enough from 2nd or 3rd place, he can keep doing whatever he is doing. He may not even need to grind the nodes down 5-6 times at the end if he is already 10-20k away from the nearest competitor, when he knows grinding everything down to 1 can give him/her 10-15k tops.
  • simonsez wrote:
    daibar wrote:
    Are people defining scaling now as only scaling over time?

    That seems vastly inaccurate to me.

    I think that is the only core of the disagreement, and everything else seems superfluous. If I am wrong then please tell me.
    I don't want to have this semantics argument again, but you have to realize that starting difficulty and how fast the levels increase over the course of a sub, are two distinct things, which can (and probably are) affected by different things. So just calling all of it "scaling" muddies the water. It's already confusing enough as it is.
    I do, but redefining 'scaling' to not include scaling seems like the very start of confusion and ridiculousness. Couldn't we just stick to the English language equivalent and realize that we're not absoluting everything when we talk? When someone says scaling is ridiculous, I think we know that they're not talking about the starting level of the enemy at the beginning of the event.

    If scaling is a multiplier, then having lower starting levels WILL help in PVE. None of that changes the ability to game scaling by taking more damage etc. I don't get what the benefit is in not calling the starting scaling, scaling, unless you're trying to convince heavy PVE participants to contribute more in PVP by confusing them.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    hurcules wrote:
    Thing is, he doesn't just grind and get as much points as possible. As long he can distant himself far enough from 2nd or 3rd place, he can keep doing whatever he is doing. He may not even need to grind the nodes down 5-6 times at the end if he is already 10-20k away from the nearest competitor, when he knows grinding everything down to 1 can give him/her 10-15k tops.
    In that case, I need to know how he picks brackets. I have to grind the **** out of everything, and it's still a dogfight. If I only hit the ISO Brotherhood nodes 2-3 times each at the end of each sub, I would've needed a telescope to see the top 10.