The Truth about PVE scaling and Roster Levels

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JamieMadrox
JamieMadrox Posts: 1,798 Chairperson of the Boards
edited February 2016 in MPQ General Discussion
Hey all. So I'm sharing this with permission of IceIX and therefore not really spoiling/leaking anything; more sharing information. On their testing servers, IceIX built a new account from scratch, gave it a PVP name, and populated the roster with at least one of every character at max level. In case you're wondering, it looks like this:
PgQjh7A.jpg?1
Man I love that layout on Steam.

This account has played no matches in PVE and therefore has base scaling. IceIX tool it in to the Hard side of the ISO-8 Brotherhood event and checked the ISO node. This was the base scaling for that node:
eaMqOzf.jpg?3
So there's how much the roster increases your scaling. 5 levels on a 1* character. The rest of what you see when you enter the node with your roster is based on your personal scaling and community scaling. So level up those characters and have fun.
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Comments

  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    o legendary jamie, the one above all, are u telling us, that all the talk about "dont lvl ur char over lvl 105 or else all hell will break loose" is ****?
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,609 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Yeah, I'm not sure why everyone kept gimping their rosters when they've said consistently that performance is the biggest factor, not roster strength.
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Jamie Madrox wrote:

    This account has played no matches in PVE and therefore has base scaling.
    How many players well have "base scaling"?
  • evil panda
    evil panda Posts: 419 Mover and Shaker
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    Ice, if you're done using that account....can I have it?! icon_mrgreen.gif
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    You say that. But I see your bagman is only level 15.

    You're yelena also has been given no iso.

    This is obviously a trick!
  • Talahamut
    Talahamut Posts: 231 Tile Toppler
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    Maybe it's changed over time, but I know back in my transition days, I could see the opponents levels increase as I leveled up chars...
  • IceIX
    IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,313 Site Admin
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    Don't mind the random ability levels on the characters, I was just hitting buttons. 4/5/4 Captain America? I'm having vapors!
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
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    @ Talahamut - Nothing has changed, you were witnessing community scaling taking place in the same frame of time it was taking you to level your characters.
  • JamieMadrox
    JamieMadrox Posts: 1,798 Chairperson of the Boards
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    curlymustache wrote:
    o legendary jamie, the one above all, are u telling us, that all the talk about "dont lvl ur char over lvl 105 or else all hell will break loose" is ****?
    Yes. I've been saying this for months as often as I could be bothered to say it again. In another thread. And then again. And again.
    fmftint wrote:
    Jamie Madrox wrote:
    This account has played no matches in PVE and therefore has base scaling.
    How many players well have "base scaling"?
    All of them when they first start. as soon as they win a match the system starts recalculating their opponent's levels based on the scaling algorithm. But this is the absolute maximum impact that roster has on your scaling. After this it's all performance.
    The_Valeyard wrote:
    You say that. But I see your bagman is only level 15.

    You're yelena also has been given no iso.

    This is obviously a trick!
    Quiet troll!
    IceIX wrote:
    Don't mind the random ability levels on the characters, I was just hitting buttons. 4/5/4 Captain America? I'm having vapors!
    noobs will be noobs.
  • dr tinykittylove
    dr tinykittylove Posts: 1,459 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Out of curiosity, how is scaling calculated then? How do you account for the differences in node levels at the start (before community scaling kicks in)?

    As for personal scaling - typically, if I'm busy/feeling lazy I will end up top 20 or top 50 in pve. Why are my starting levels still considerably lower than my 4* roster alliance mates who play as little pve as possible?
  • GrumpySmurf1002
    GrumpySmurf1002 Posts: 3,511 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Eh, that's just a test environment.

    I volunteer to try it out in production, just grant me a new account, 10 million iso, and 1million in HP and I'll report out my findings.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    I'm pretty sure it's your performance and an average of the levels of the characters you used recently to achieve that performance. It cannot be strictly performance based because there are guys who run a 'everyone at level 100' who easily does better than someone with a maxed roster. At some point, those guy should hit scaling equal to that of a max roster, and yet their characters are roughly 50% as strong, rendering the game unplayable for those guys. As far as I know nobody has ever reported this, and we already know tanking your PvE performance takes a long time to drive down your scaling (otherwise you could just place very poorly for a few events, and as far as I know people already tried this and found this to not work).

    So while it's technically true that your roster doesn't affect your scaling, it only matters if you don't use your highest level characters, which would mean you probably need multiple copies of the same guy.
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,609 Chairperson of the Boards
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    scottee wrote:
    Yeah, I'm not sure why everyone kept gimping their rosters when they've said consistently that performance is the biggest factor, not roster strength.

    Jamie Madrox thumbs upped my post one time. I gained +578 reputation.
  • MyFeetStink
    MyFeetStink Posts: 55 Match Maker
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    This is one of the most useful threads that I have seen posted here in a very long time.

    Thank you.
  • Vankysher
    Vankysher Posts: 324 Mover and Shaker
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    Since what we're seeing is just the base level when no nodes have been played - all that demonstrates is that the scaling algorithm has not taken effect.
    If performance is what determines the base levels increasing, then the algorithm has to be taking our roster levels into account or else how does it know where to start?
    After months of playing an essentially **** roster, the starting base levels for PvE nodes rated "Easy" typically start by matching the top end of my roster while "Normal" matches the boosted levels.
    I level up the bottom end of my roster, the starting node levels don't increase; while if I level up the top end, the base node levels increase along with it because I was successful in beating nodes the last PvE.
    Performance is certainly taken into account or those base starting node levels would never increase (which would be an absolute guarantee with this test roster).
    A better demonstration is to actually grind that node to 1 and see if the levels increase at all...but then again I've noticed that not all nodes scale the same in the last several PvE events.
    I would think that the best test would be to essentially split one's roster into PvE and PvP - 2* roster being PvE exclusive & 3* being PvP exclusive save essential nodes - over the course of several events.
    If true, then PvE nodes will always stay within the level range of a max 2* without factoring in community scaling and the starting levels of the nodes will not match a max 3*.
  • DaveR4470
    DaveR4470 Posts: 931 Critical Contributor
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    I suspected as much when I leveled my X-force up to 172 and didn't see any huge change in my scaling (since I usually take buttloads of damage...) Glad to see it confirmed.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    I'm still holding out hope demiurge_will will put on a scaling clinic next month.

    Although to be honest, I should tell him don't waste his time because people won't listen any way.
  • lukewin
    lukewin Posts: 1,356 Chairperson of the Boards
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    dr tinykittylove wrote:
    Out of curiosity, how is scaling calculated then? How do you account for the differences in node levels at the start (before community scaling kicks in)?

    As for personal scaling - typically, if I'm busy/feeling lazy I will end up top 20 or top 50 in pve. Why are my starting levels still considerably lower than my 4* roster alliance mates who play as little pve as possible?
    Phantron wrote:
    I'm pretty sure it's your performance and an average of the levels of the characters you used recently to achieve that performance. It cannot be strictly performance based because there are guys who run a 'everyone at level 100' who easily does better than someone with a maxed roster. At some point, those guy should hit scaling equal to that of a max roster, and yet their characters are roughly 50% as strong, rendering the game unplayable for those guys. As far as I know nobody has ever reported this, and we already know tanking your PvE performance takes a long time to drive down your scaling (otherwise you could just place very poorly for a few events, and as far as I know people already tried this and found this to not work).

    So while it's technically true that your roster doesn't affect your scaling, it only matters if you don't use your highest level characters, which would mean you probably need multiple copies of the same guy.

    I am in the camp with these 2. I can't 100% get behind you JM, no offense. Give me an option to de-level my characters, even if it costs ISO, and I will level my characters.

    I play quite a lot of PVE. Finished a bunch of Top 2s with a few Top 10s mixed in, then decided to hang up my hat, made a post on the forum and everything. Then the 8 hr refresh kicked in. And I put it back on my PVE hat, because it made PVE a lot more playable for me. Finished #1 in my brackets, in The Hunt and DA Heroic.

    Roster
    My highest characters are a 156 Fury and Xforce, followed by my 140 team of of PVP players and good PVE characters; Blade, LCap, R&G, She-Hulk, Hulk, Thor, Patch, Doom, Luke Cage, 131 failed PVP scarecrow experiment of Devil Dino, 128 Deadpool (will be 140 soon), 127 Mystique (to tank for Mag in winfinite, no more icon_cry.gif ), 127 Thor, then my 105s.

    How many times have I seen a 395 enemy? I'll let people guess before I answer.
    0
  • Scoregasms
    Scoregasms Posts: 373
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    Phantron wrote:
    I'm pretty sure it's your performance and an average of the levels of the characters you used recently to achieve that performance. It cannot be strictly performance based because there are guys who run a 'everyone at level 100' who easily does better than someone with a maxed roster. At some point, those guy should hit scaling equal to that of a max roster, and yet their characters are roughly 50% as strong, rendering the game unplayable for those guys. As far as I know nobody has ever reported this, and we already know tanking your PvE performance takes a long time to drive down your scaling (otherwise you could just place very poorly for a few events, and as far as I know people already tried this and found this to not work).

    So while it's technically true that your roster doesn't affect your scaling, it only matters if you don't use your highest level characters, which would mean you probably need multiple copies of the same guy.

    I'm with Phantron on this, I think this post is misleading if it's telling folks to go forth and max out all your characters because "Hey look, low PVE node with all maxed 4* roster! Proof!". There should be a link to that forum thread on PVE by Phaser or NP about using lower level characters in PVE to keep scaling down to reasonable levels.

    A test account with zero past PVE history with that roster isn't exactly a normal situation, it only proves that performance and community scaling really are a big deal. Sure, go ahead and max them all but don't use them in PVE and crush nodes because you won't be seeing those levels ever again.

    Wasn't it ISO-8 Brotherhood that also had scaling completely turned off a little while back? Lol, ok, so maybe it did happen in game.

    Anyway, I think if a post like this is going to be put up by a Mod and a Red, more comprehensive information should be provided as well, not just this one very specific scenario that outright tells folks to max characters and then later they wonder why all their nodes keep increasing in difficulty. You can't undo a change like that.

    However if any of this is incorrect, I would love a better explanation.
  • Ludaa
    Ludaa Posts: 542
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    I'm not well versed in the theories on scaling but it seems like...

    Leveling up and having fun means doing more and more damage, killing teams faster. Damage output for a 2* roster probably isn't enough to make PvE scaling an issue. 3/4* rosters get bigger nukes, and are "nudged" accordingly (300+). Then it's a cycle of "You used a 12k smite to take out a 4k health goon, your scaling goes up." Followed by, "Damnit, Ares has 20k health! My only chance is with 12k Smites."

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