The Hulk - Aug 13 - 17

Amazeballs

Spoit wrote:

Is it just me, or does the 'hard' sub this time only have 1 essential?

Same here. And these subs are 24 hours.

Unknown

Amazeballs wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Is it just me, or does the 'hard' sub this time only have 1 essential?

Same here. And these subs are 24 hours.

Excellent! I have literally nothing better to do at 6am on a Saturday morning

Except maybe sleep.

Dranwin

For both the lower bracket and higher bracket nodes I am receiving around 350 points maximum. This seems really low compared to the 1000 points you would recieve in previous events. Reaching that 35000 for the free spidey looks tough.

Unknown

Dranwin wrote:

For both the lower bracket and higher bracket nodes I am receiving around 350 points maximum. This seems really low compared to the 1000 points you would recieve in previous events. Reaching that 35000 for the free spidey looks tough.

It's still kinda early. Also, this is a shorter PvE event than usual.

Marty17

Does that mean Nick Fury is gonna be a required character for the next PvE (node)?

MojoWild

cjsutt1 wrote:

Dranwin wrote:

For both the lower bracket and higher bracket nodes I am receiving around 350 points maximum. This seems really low compared to the 1000 points you would recieve in previous events. Reaching that 35000 for the free spidey looks tough.

It's still kinda early. Also, this is a shorter PvE event than usual.

It's a shorter PVE but the refresh rates are still the same? So it takes twice as long to refresh, relatively speaking, so less points earned. Unless they cut the top progression in half as well...

MojoWild

Marty17 wrote:

Does that mean Nick Fury is gonna be a required character for the next PvE (node)?

I would hope not. That'd be like requiring IW or X-Force...
Only a small percentage of the player-base will have any kind of usable NF, esp one with more than one cover...

Unknown

MojoWild wrote:

cjsutt1 wrote:

Dranwin wrote:

For both the lower bracket and higher bracket nodes I am receiving around 350 points maximum. This seems really low compared to the 1000 points you would recieve in previous events. Reaching that 35000 for the free spidey looks tough.

It's still kinda early. Also, this is a shorter PvE event than usual.

It's a shorter PVE but the refresh rates are still the same? So it takes twice as long to refresh, relatively speaking, so less points earned. Unless they cut the top progression in half as well...

The points earned from nodes have still about double since yesterday, so there is some sort of progression. I wouldn't think the refresh rate would ever change, in any case.

HairyDave

MojoWild wrote:

Marty17 wrote:

Does that mean Nick Fury is gonna be a required character for the next PvE (node)?

I would hope not. That'd be like requiring IW or X-Force...
Only a small percentage of the player-base will have any kind of usable NF, esp one with more than one cover...

It's been done before - IIRC baglady was required in a few nodes for the Hunt the first time it ran.

Spoit

HairyDave wrote:

MojoWild wrote:

Marty17 wrote:

Does that mean Nick Fury is gonna be a required character for the next PvE (node)?

I would hope not. That'd be like requiring IW or X-Force...
Only a small percentage of the player-base will have any kind of usable NF, esp one with more than one cover...

It's been done before - IIRC baglady was required in a few nodes for the Hunt the first time it ran.

Yeah, I was about to say that.

(Realistically, psylocke will probably be the featured character)

FierceKiwi

Spoit wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

MojoWild wrote:

Marty17 wrote:

Does that mean Nick Fury is gonna be a required character for the next PvE (node)?

I would hope not. That'd be like requiring IW or X-Force...
Only a small percentage of the player-base will have any kind of usable NF, esp one with more than one cover...

It's been done before - IIRC baglady was required in a few nodes for the Hunt the first time it ran.

Yeah, I was about to say that.

(Realistically, psylocke will probably be the featured character)

I wouldn't be surprised to get a rerun of the Simulator and have the 3 featured characters be Fury/Psylocke/some one else (probably Deadpool).

Unknown

Dranwin wrote:

For both the lower bracket and higher bracket nodes I am receiving around 350 points maximum. This seems really low compared to the 1000 points you would recieve in previous events. Reaching that 35000 for the free spidey looks tough.

Cannot be that hard people have already got 35K and there is still over 2 days to go.

Nellyson

I would enjoy a rerun of the Simulator. That thing is always fun! So far, this Hulk event isn't too bad. I've been using a lot of different people and haven't had to use too many healthpacks. Plus, I've totally been ignoring the PVP. For once, I don't want to finish above 100 in Hollowpoint so I can get that red Johnny Storm!!

Unknown

Ever since scaling got dialed back, all PvE events have been a massive grindfest because the encounters never get hard enough to stop someone who can simply do every mission. Outside of extremely weak limited event roster or 'a level 390 Hulk is as strong as 3 level 130 guys' anomalies in design, we've top scores that look awfully close to just grinding every mission down to 1 at every opportunity, and that's just not fun at all to compete.

I was doing yet another node of level 120ish guys and it occurred to me how messed up the difficulty of this game is in both directions. On one hand I'm running level 190 guys with broken combos against guys who only have 2/3 of my level, and on the other hand since I accidentally selected the wrong guy (picked Punisher instead of Daken) I took a massive cascade for 4K damage on Punisher and that's going to set me 3 hours back or a health pack (Daken is both stronger and can regen that damage). So even though my opponents are far weaker than my both in quantity (levels) and quality I still sort of 'lost' that fight. And does anyone ever stop and ask the question 'why are all our enemies usually lower than level 166'? This is a game with a huge advantage for the first move and yet we rarely fight anybody that's even on the same level as maxed 3*s. When you play computer in most games, you're usually playing against guys with a resource/stat advantage but you overcome them somehow. It's the opposite in MPQ. Most of the time the computer operates from a stat and quality disadvantage (some goon + villian combo can be quite nasty, but they still don't have anything that can match Magneto) and often quite significant one as well.

The issue here is that the AI isn't good enough to have a finer control on enjoyability. If you look at the matching ability of the computer it's effectively unbeatable for a human when factoring in the time constrains of this game. That is, you can match it if you're not pressed for time, but you're ALWAYS pressed for time in this game when competing at the top end. The computer plays one dimension (matching) far above what a human can and to make that up it literally has no idea what its moves do and the end result is an opponent that has very erratic swings in quality. If it randomly guessed right on the colors/abilities to use it'll spank you, and if not it ends up doing very little. When the computer gets a good move, it obviously doesn't stop to think about how devastating that move can be to the player. It'll just take it and it doesn't care if it's going to lead to an angry post on the board and possibly a lost customer later. But maybe it should care. Each of the nodes, at least for PvE, should have its own difficulty setting beyond just always taking the best moves. If you got Venom + 2 purple generator, the AI should know to take less purple, not more purple. Why less? Because it adds absolutely nothing for an AI that just stuns you forever. But the AI has to be good enough to know that having 2 purple generators is totally unfair so that it'll focus less on purple compared to normal.

The best chess AI is believed to be far stronger than the best human (nobody plays top chess AIs in a fair match anymore) but they can still play a meaningful game against human because they are strong enough to know how much of a handicap they need to give to make the game reasonably challenging. MPQ needs to do the same thing. They need to make the AI even stronger, because right now it's not good enough to know how much it has to dial back to create a meaningful experience, and that's also why they're usually operating from a deficit from quantity (level) and quality (roster) because they have to be heavily handicapped to not make people quit the game in frustration. But then we end up handicap it so much that PvE turns into a pure grindfest. Ideally I'd imagine the highest point node should have AI playing to the best of its ability while using characters stronger than you, but for the generic fodder nodes it can definitely go easy, especially since this game's definition of an easy node is often 'Venom + 2 purple generators'.

Unknown

They can't ramp up the AI unless they revise the healing system. The game punishes you way too harshly for losing as it is. If people started losing more regularly, there would probably be a lot more ragequitting, as it would likely become literally impossible for many people to play the game at all after 15 minutes.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

They can't ramp up the AI unless they revise the healing system. The game punishes you way too harshly for losing as it is. If people started losing more regularly, there would probably be a lot more ragequitting, as it would likely become literally impossible for many people to play the game at all after 15 minutes.

The AI has to be better to know how much to dial back in the first place. Right now the AI will always take any match 4 and it doesn't care if that's going to lead to a massive cascade and completely spank you or if it's something that's just a standard 8 AP. If it knew how good that match was, it may be able to evaluate as a function of the node's difficulty on whether it should take it or not. Each node can have some kind of quota set as a % of your team's total health and once it's exceeded the computer can play weaker than normal. Right now the AI doesn't ever relent regardless of what the node is or whether it's operating from any unreasonable advantage (Venom + 2 purple, HT + 2 green, etc), even though it should, but that cannot happen unless the AI is good enough to know that it's already achieved whatever its programmed goal was.

Dreylin

Ben Grimm wrote:

They can't ramp up the AI unless they revise the healing system. The game punishes you way too harshly for losing as it is. If people started losing more regularly, there would probably be a lot more ragequitting, as it would likely become literally impossible for many people to play the game at all after 15 minutes.

Indeed.

The other problem is that if games are close then the "Randomness" factor becomes even more important - as we've seen recently with the lengthening of matches the longer things go on the more likely a cascade tips the balance one way or the other.

Unknown

I think people are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying make the AI stronger to make the game harder. I'm saying the game can only become easier if the AI is better because currently it has no idea how to throw a game. The strongest chess AI is much stronger than the strongest human player, but you can play the strongest chess AI precisely because it is so strong that it knows how many pieces it can 'accidentally' lose and still keep the game close. If MPQ AI was controlling chess AI it'd just pick a random piece to lose on purpose and sometimes it'd lose the queen and get spanked, and other times it'd give up a pawn and spank the player, because the MPQ AI literally has no idea what the value of key concepts like your AP moves are.

Suppose the PvE node features Daken + Sentry. Right now, the computer will just collect tiles at whatever its priority is, and it tries to get the match 4s and fire off whatever ability it happens to have enough. It can't say 'World Rupture is pretty overpowered and maybe I should look the other way when there's this massive green cascade sitting around', because it has no idea what World Rupture even does. If it has some clue as to what moves are better than others, it can, as a function of perhaps the node's value, decide to play less optimally than normal. This allows you to create a finer control on difficulty so that you can still have nodes that are hard (or even harder) but it doesn't become a case where every node is hard even though some of the nodes are worth less than 1/3 the point of the highest node. Let's say there is a 100, 200, 250, and 500 point node in an event. It'd make sense for the AI to play worse on the 100/200 and play better on the 500 compared to normal.

killerkoala

looks like event goal is about to be made.

Flare808

Quick PSA: The progress bar has been filled. What's our prize? A green hulk and 2 more subs that will run for approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes. So get off the forums and start grinding those new nodes.