New game mode: The Gauntlet

Unknown

The Gauntlet

A once a month challenge that can be completed at any time within the month. The reward? A voucher for a free cover of a three star character.

Why? Stagnant play is boring, and a challenge is needed.

What? A continuous mode of your three characters of your choice used against all of the characters in MPQ at max level. To counteract the difficulty, a level buff would be given. Also, after a set of three random enemies are defeated, a spinner could possibly pop up that could grant a temporary bonus or status , such as refilling a random special attack for one character, or stunning a character on your team for three turns. These could change match to match or monthly, and tweaked based on what works.


The level buff would need to be significant, as I'm not figuring any health packs would be used.

I would also think for a benefit of the player that ap stays between matches, meaning if you finish with 13 green ap, you begin with 13 green ap.

If the challenge turns out to be too difficult, the perfectionist that find a way could be recognized in some way shape or form, or the player that completes the gauntlet the most in the month gets a bonus prize. Maybe special point totals for using a random set of characters from your roster (all buffed to whatever the max level is)

It could be tweaked in so many different ways. Let me know what you think.

Unknown

If they were buffed in such a way as Health Packs would not be used, it would just add to the stagnant play that already exists. Match, match, match, power, death. That's not a challenge.

Beating all the characters in MPQ in a row with the same 3 guys is impossible in the era of True Healing. Doesn't matter what boost you gave them, eventually they would die.

I like the concept, but it would have to be more like an Iron Man (pun intended) challenge where you have a whole month to beat these challenge nodes using 3 required characters. Have a counter that starts at 0/20 or whatever and a timer on the "event" of 1 month, or 25 days. Could even run it alongside the Seasons. Every time you beat the node counter increases. Make the end reward not a voucher but maybe the featured character of the month or something. So like this month would be Colossus (and Beast maybe).

Unknown

I think if the buff is high enough, it is possible. And on the contrary, a continuous match actually makes true healing relevant. And health packs don't matter, because this mode doesn't translate to the others. Essentially, if they chose to do it this way, you could do it once only each month so theoretically, it wouldn't be a daily grind. It's like achievements on xbox...pointless of you already have covers, but still gives players something to work towards if they're recognized. I think the increased difficulty, and the real possibility of a loss keeps people interested.

Unknown

There would only be about 3 or so viable teams regardless of the underlying mechanism if you've to stick with the same team and that wouldn't be very exciting.

I'm thinking a gauntlet should be more like node 1, you must use all female characters. Node 2 must include Bagman and Yelena, and so on. You'd be loaned with a token character of the requirements so that you don't have to rearrange your roster just to have Bagman, though of course the loaned guy is unlikely to do anything useful toward beating the node.

If we don't care about scaling the difficulty for different rosters, what you can do is simply make all the characters loaned so health pack becomes irrelevent. You can make it like say make a team out of the following max 3*: Loki, Punisher, She-Hulk, GSBW, and Magneto against a high level Muscle + 2 other guys (that's why I had Loki). You can put a small cooldown between reattempting the same node because otherwise people will probably just quit immediately with the loaned character if the board doesn't look good since it'd cost you nothing to retreat and try for a better board.

Nellyson

I really like this idea squirrel....

Except maybe do it as an endurance gauntlet. You only get to use one team of 3. Now whether you can select the 3 or have the 3 be chosen for you is debatable. I say chosen 3, kinda like they have been doing with the PVEs recently. Here are the 3 characters. Use your or use the loaners. However, the loaners only have 1 cover in each ability so it encourages you to use your roster without excluding people for not having said character. These 3 characters would then fight increased opponents for each node. After this, all my ideas are up for debate. For instance, you could make it so you only get 3 healthpacks to use. Like that's it. Because of that, you can't change to the loaner character or to your character. Who you choose is who you get. Now, this could be an Infinity Gauntlet (HA! see what I did there???) or it could be a 10 stage gauntlet. The final reward could be for ranking who got the furthest in an Infinity, or it could be a cool 3* for a 10 stage one. Also, I liked the idea of AP carry-over. That would help make the harder stages a little easier for people with under-leveled characters. Plus, I think there would be no boosts or Team Ups. Or maybe 3 total Team Ups/Boosts. Once used, they're gone. Anyways, awesome idea!!! I'd love to see this grow and ideas debated.

NorthernPolarity

Yeah, one thing that has to be addressed is true healing, because otherwise everyone is just going to run X-Force / Daken / X. There is no point to running anyone besides X-Force / Daken in an endurance based event because of their ability to true heal.

Unknown

I disagree and here's why:

Obw/she hulk/beast/Spider-Man other are relevant again if the healing doesn't matter match to match, and if the amount they heal is scaled.

This was meant only as endurance, with no break or match results in between. A true endurance fight with only the best winning. If there's a reward like stun or punishment like lose mana on x color, those would come in effect after the next 3 characters.

Unknown

I also don't think loaners are necessary. I think, much like current pve, the enemies level will scale, so noobs still have a fair chance.

Kiamodo

Gonna have to agree with Polarity on this one. If the characters are buffed so much it won't be fun anyway. It would largely just be xforce and daken. Maybe if you got to use your whole roster and could switch out one person per round or something like that. Good idea though. It may just be too hard to program.

NorthernPolarity

squirrel85 wrote:

I disagree and here's why:

Obw/she hulk/beast/Spider-Man other are relevant again if the healing doesn't matter match to match, and if the amount they heal is scaled.

This was meant only as endurance, with no break or match results in between. A true endurance fight with only the best winning. If there's a reward like stun or punishment like lose mana on x color, those would come in effect after the next 3 characters.

I would say more like "required": the mode would devolve to matches where you would kill off the 2 most threatening guys, and then take your time on the last guy to heal as much as possible before moving onto the next match. While you could say that this is strategic to bring a healer, I'd argue that it's completely necessary to, and leads to some very un-fun gameplay (no one likes prolonging a match as much as possible to maximize healing). There needs to be some sort of action taken against this, or else the mode would just be very unfun.

Unknown

Endurance mode with the same team just doesn't make much sense with this game's structure. You either turtle your way or you bring the best offense team you can and hope you can win enough games before you run out of gas. I don't think you should be able to heal up at all, including the passage of time, but you should be able to switch team members. Maybe you can submit a roster of 15 unique characters and they'd be copied for the duration of the event (so you can't heal them but they also doesn't affect you on any other event) because otherwise someone might try to build a roster with 30 copies Sentry/The Hood/Daken and just rotate them around.

Nellyson

Well, if this does get any consideration, it would be a new mechanic. I agree, Phantron, that this mode would work terrible with the current structure. Which is why if this does happen, it would be completely new. Something like you get these characters, no health packs, and I like the idea of a roster of peeps. Say 6-9 different ones that you can rotate in. However, since this would be separate and not affect their health in other modes, there would be no healing other than the true healers. And kinda make it like the Heroics, in terms of which characters you can use. This would mean no prologue healing, no waiting for characters to heal and just a gauntlet of how well you can do.

Unknown

Nellyson wrote:

Well, if this does get any consideration, it would be a new mechanic. I agree, Phantron, that this mode would work terrible with the current structure. Which is why if this does happen, it would be completely new. Something like you get these characters, no health packs, and I like the idea of a roster of peeps. Say 6-9 different ones that you can rotate in. However, since this would be separate and not affect their health in other modes, there would be no healing other than the true healers. And kinda make it like the Heroics, in terms of which characters you can use. This would mean no prologue healing, no waiting for characters to heal and just a gauntlet of how well you can do.

You can't have true healing at all, otherwise what you'll do is run Daken + X Force + ??? and have those two try to take as much damage as possible. Unless one of them gets downed you'd never need to rotate anyone except for the third guy. True healing is already quite overpowered in general, but if you have an endurance mode it is going to be the only thing that matters.

Nellyson

Phantron wrote:

Nellyson wrote:

Well, if this does get any consideration, it would be a new mechanic. I agree, Phantron, that this mode would work terrible with the current structure. Which is why if this does happen, it would be completely new. Something like you get these characters, no health packs, and I like the idea of a roster of peeps. Say 6-9 different ones that you can rotate in. However, since this would be separate and not affect their health in other modes, there would be no healing other than the true healers. And kinda make it like the Heroics, in terms of which characters you can use. This would mean no prologue healing, no waiting for characters to heal and just a gauntlet of how well you can do.

You can't have true healing at all, otherwise what you'll do is run Daken + X Force + ??? and have those two try to take as much damage as possible. Unless one of them gets downed you'd never need to rotate anyone except for the third guy. True healing is already quite overpowered in general, but if you have an endurance mode it is going to be the only thing that matters.

Well you don't get to choose them everytime either. That's what I meant with it being like Heroics. Here are your characters you can use, now go.

Unknown

I think the best part of this is that there are infinite ways it can be tweaked, and everyone has ways they can see it being spun.

Maybe instead of new characters, a new game mode is exactly what they need to spice things up. I still say endurance non stop mode would be the most challenging, but I appreciate you guys even reading and talking about this. It'd be something new and rewarding either way.

CrookedKnight

Now pending on the Story tab - The Gauntlet: Villains.

Well well well.

CrookedKnight

Holy moly. Progression rewards only. No ranking or alliance rewards listed.

It's a brave new world!

Unknown

So I guess this is a thing now. It's not a 3 man Guantlet of doom, but it is pretty close to what was discussed as a viable game mode.

But seriously D3, Classic Storm for all that work? That's all we get?

CrookedKnight

I'm assuming there are bigger rewards at the end of the later subs. With MMN, CStorm and BP all boosted, this event is going to be an orgy of destruction, so I expect few problems getting there.

fight4thedream

haha nice call squirrely!! any other cool predictions?

El_Dude

Quite a coincidence. Makes me think squirrel85 is a D3 spy! A "secret squirrel" if you will.

Or could it be he/she is from the future. A future where mpq players have been separated from society and put in mpq work camps. Beaten. Tortured. Experimented upon. The mind of Squirrel's future self, sent back into squirrel's present day body...somehow...don't question it...to warn us. Warn us of Season VI. But will we listen?