DA Heroic PVE vs The Gauntlet PVE

Unknown

I have to say, you make some good points there. What they need is to design (or redesign) some event to be the "New Character Event" that awards a 3* participation cover of the new character to basically anyone that wants one. Maybe redesign all the heroics to do this. Hell, start with redesign of Juggernaut and Venom Heroics to include sub events.

Or put the new character as the end progression reward, above the existing 3* reward. In the current PvE, make it 150,000, Doc Oct Green or something.

To address some of your points tho, first one is just flat wrong. Easiest way to place top 15% in PvE is to have it be your first event ever, if you know what you are doing already. IM35, Storm, and your 2 cover Thor sailing your way to victory. Heroics especially, if you have the beefed 2*s, you can place well. OBW/Thor/IM35? Cmon. At that level of scaling they will get the 120,000 reward if they want it. These people should probably SELL all but one Doc Oct, keep the 1 for the next PvE, and continue the upward climb. Doc Oct isn't going to be useful to a 15 slot roster beyond his utility in the next PvE to possibly win Daken covers.

Point 5, not every event can be like The Gauntlet. It just can't. The Gauntlet isn't a feasible way to release a character. Even if they just stripped out the rankings and made said rankings into equivalent rewards for progression it's too much work to retool everything they've already worked on. Espeically 1 week after they put The Gauntlet out. For now, think of The Gauntlet as a refreshing break from node grinding between actual PvEs. Like LRs are to PvP, kinda.

In the future, who knows, maybe they will stick strictly to a progress award structure, put release characters in nodes achievable by everyone, and award progress covers of the new character inside the event that releases him. And get rid of community scaling. Make nodes as hard as they are supposed to be, and leave 'em that way.

All the positive feedback from The Gauntlet I'm sure they are considering it, but work can only be done so fast.

Unknown

I seriously think every time a new character is introduced there should be a relatively easy way to get at least one cover for that character. Maybe as a late progression reward. And why the heck not? What's the big idea to hold out so jealously on new characters? In theory the ideal situation for devs is that each player buys a roster spot for a new character (wasting HP), gets that character to somewhete around 3/3/3 cover level (through prizes, wasting HP or lucky RNG) and then maybe that player buys the last few covers with HP if RNG is not so favourable anymore. So once again I have to ask: why can't they give a decent head start with new characters? One (almost) guaranteed cover will not rock anyones world or disturb D3's earning business. On the contrary, it might actually help. Getting one guaranteed cover for a new character is like a teaser of that character and promotes him/her/it.

NorthernPolarity

homeinvasion wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

they can't just give away 3 doc ock covers to everyone in the game.

NP I highly value your opinion, and think you are one of the best contributors to the site but May I ask why not? Wouldn't it make sense to give everyone the three covers?

Firstly: If they can attain them by getting through the PVE they are in 3 star land.

Secondly: Wouldn't you want people to be able to try out a new character with all three abilities in the next featured PVP, to know if they want to spend iso on them etc.

Thirdly: Creating access to the character means closer scrutiny from the community, which should give incentive to create fun new balanced characters not rehashes.

Fourthly: Economically isn't it better to have people buying covers for new character? I am in no way getting into the whole free to play, pay to win model, but let's be pragmatic, D3 is a business, if they don't make money, no more game. If we are looking purely at the free to play model and creating an environment that invites welcomingly new players wouldn't you want to help people transition to three star land, my thinking is that the more players the better, if there were 70 million players like LOL, they would have a massive development team = much better game.

Fifth: They obviously acknowledged that the old PVE format was broken in favor of US residence by making the Gauntlet, why would they go backwards? However in favor of your argument, couldn't they just make say level 400 opponents, or harder again so less people gain the covers, so it was more like only the top 5% could win all three? As an Australian the last chance I get to clear a PVE is about 18 hours before the end, I always go from 1st in all nodes to about 300th. It's plain unfair. Why can't they have the PVE finish Sunday morning for us, which is Saturday night for you northern hemispherites

sixth. Wouldn't you want 3 Do Oc covers? I've been screaming for more bad guys, I know I do.

Seven: By showing the community they do listen and can produce a better product with the Gauntlet D3 are showing a lack of backbone by going back to the old model. Imagine McDonalds came out with a new burger that was healthy, damn tasty, and lowered cholesterol levels all in one and you really liked it, then they stopped making that burger and served up their old junk you would be miffed. One of the core principles of Bill Gates is "underpromise but overdeliver" which means don't promise stuff you can't deliver but do deliver stuff you haven't promised. Both of these things make consumers believe they are getting good value for money and one of the cornerstones of economics is that 'rational people think at the margin'

2. That's what the node in PvE featuring the character is for.

3. When the community says things like "C. Mags doesn't need to be nerfed because I can beat him on offense", I don't think granting more people access to the covers would help much in terms of balancing decisions. In general the fans are notoriously bad at balancing decisions. I would say that the rate at which the community figures out things like how Sentry bombing is insane is pretty okay given that we have a lot of guys that adopt early and spend HP on the covers.

4. This point makes a ton of assumptions, and is exactly the type of logic that I was talking about in my earlier post. The whole "get more people to 3* land so that they can buy more covers!" doesn't sound so good when you consider that a ton of the veteran players in 3* land like myself spend no money at all on the game. Once you have a powerful roster in this game, you're entirely self-sustaining, and really don't need to buy another cover ever again because your existing guys are good enough. My guess is that a majority of the revenue they get is from 2* guys trying to get that extra boost into 3* land so that they can be competitive, in which case giving them free covers seems bad when they could be spending money buying cover packs instead. You might say "oh, but more people playing = more chances at getting whales who do spend a lot!", but those guys would have spent the money regardless to get to the top. You also have to consider the target audience for this game: you can't compare it to LoL because that business model just doesn't apply at all to a mostly single player mobile game.

5. The majority of the userbase is in the US, so it only makes sense to target their largest audience. Also they have no way of knowing how hard they need to make the nodes for only the top 5% to get them. From what I saw on my gauntlet brackets, a majority of the people made it to every single rewards.

6. What I want can be completely opposite of whats good for the company.

7. I don't really understand this point, because the gauntlet was never meant to be a direct replacement for standard PvE events. You personally might think that it was in all shapes and forms better than anything they put out in the past, but there are a ton of other opinions out there, and there's really no reason why they can't just run both types of events.

I believe you have this notion that if a game like LoL or DotA2 can be successful while having a cool f2p model, then why can't this game work the same way? The problem is that it's a completely different game and market. Just as an example, games like Clash of Clans make a ton of money because you have a small subset of the population spending exorbitant amounts of money trying to become the best players of the game (say, thousands+ per player), which defies all common sense for me at least because I can't ever imagine myself spending that amount of money on a game. But that's just the thing: I'm NOT their target audience, so things that I would consider unreasonable and unsustainable business practices could end up being the best way to go about monetizing the game. The things that I want as a player can just be completely against what is good for the monetization of the game.

NorthernPolarity

Ariakos wrote:

I seriously think every time a new character is introduced there should be a relatively easy way to get at least one cover for that character. Maybe as a late progression reward. And why the heck not? What's the big idea to hold out so jealously on new characters? In theory the ideal situation for devs is that each player buys a roster spot for a new character (wasting HP), gets that character to somewhete around 3/3/3 cover level (through prizes, wasting HP or lucky RNG) and then maybe that player buys the last few covers with HP if RNG is not so favourable anymore. So once again I have to ask: why can't they give a decent head start with new characters? One (almost) guaranteed cover will not rock anyones world or disturb D3's earning business. On the contrary, it might actually help. Getting one guaranteed cover for a new character is like a teaser of that character and promotes him/her/it.

Like I said in my previous post, it's entirely possible that the majority of their sales comes from guys who don't have the covers in the first place, and want the hero for essential nodes in the next PvE. Theres just a ton of possibilities that can be happening with regards to monetization that your argument makes too many assumptions, and is far from the clear and obvious thing to do. We'll never know for sure because they're not going to share that data with us, but you should be able to see why giving out free covers could be a bad thing.

The funny thing is, if demiurge is an evil cash grabbing company like a lot of the forumgoers think, then the one thing that everyone must agree on is that Demiurge will do whatever it can to make money. And guess what, they gave out free Hulk and Sentry covers out during PvE events in the past. Yet we aren't seeing them hand out free covers of new characters in every event nowadays. Now, if they actually made a noticeably larger profit on Sentry / Hulk because of those covers, then certainly they would give out new covers for every new event because that would be the best way to make money. The fact that they aren't is pretty good evidence suggesting that either it's not profitable, or that they're completely incompetent at realizing what actually makes them money. The former sounds a lot more plausible than the latter.

homeinvasion

I don't think Demiurge is a corporate tyrant in any way, I acknowledge they are a business and need to make money, and I am also willing to spend money on a game I enjoy. I have dropped over $3K. They seem to be staying with the current PVE model because they want to limit the amount of free covers. The only thing that makes sense to me is no free covers then more 42 packs. They obviously sell them for a reason, but I have bought 2 X 42 packs with no 3 star covers at all which I feel, rightly or wrongly that it is a scam. I can pay $80 for a fully working amazing game, to get 84 straight to iso covers is a ridiculous and unfair investment.

Also my chance of getting any Doc Oc cover is so low I am not even going to bother. 2Pm on a Tuesday finish time for me. I am an Australian Steam user so I have zero chance of getting top 150. Zero, none, impossible, never going to happen; unless the servers crash again (how does denial of service work again ). I have two max cover psylocke so have no reason to play the whole event for the progress rewards.

Look, all in all, I am crazy happy with the direction the game is taking, the ONLY 2 complaints are PVE end times (ergo rubber banding) and 42 packs (token drop rates) as the only viable way to get a new chatracter.

It isn't fair that I flat out I can't compete in PVE because of my nationality so can't compete in the next Dr Oc PVP unless I keep buying in with more 42 packs. Your argument of most of the player base is in the USA, is crazy biased. If you don't want to make it a fair playing field don't offer the game for use outside the US.Can we have some figures on where the players actually live? 200 Million/ 8 Billion in the USA seems like a pilot market to me.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Like I said in my previous post, it's entirely possible that the majority of their sales comes from guys who don't have the covers in the first place, and want the hero for essential nodes in the next PvE. Theres just a ton of possibilities that can be happening with regards to monetization that your argument makes too many assumptions, and is far from the clear and obvious thing to do. We'll never know for sure because they're not going to share that data with us, but you should be able to see why giving out free covers could be a bad thing.

I can see your point and I'm aware of "essential in the next pve" concept that Demiurge has (which I find silly and unnecessary but that's beside the point). I am assuming, nay, hoping that some other form of monetizing would be more beneficial both for developers and players alike. Higly likely I'm assuming too much. But since we don't know anything about "The Metrics" and devs don't share much info about them we can only guess. I can only speak from my point of view and IMHO one cover as a start is better than clawing other players for that very first cover.

The funny thing is, if demiurge is an evil cash grabbing company like a lot of the forumgoers think, then the one thing that everyone must agree on is that Demiurge will do whatever it can to make money. And guess what, they gave out free Hulk and Sentry covers out during PvE events in the past. Yet we aren't seeing them hand out free covers of new characters in every event nowadays. Now, if they actually made a noticeably larger profit on Sentry / Hulk because of those covers, then certainly they would give out new covers for every new event because that would be the best way to make money. The fact that they aren't is pretty good evidence suggesting that either it's not profitable, or that they're completely incompetent at realizing what actually makes them money. The former sounds a lot more plausible than the latter.

I accept Hulk as an example of spreading free covers but that red Sentry cover was offered only for a short period at the end of a pve and even some forumites managed to miss it. I found out about the extra node by chance and managed to grab it in time but otherwise I would have missed it too. It was not so clear " get your free Sentry here!" advertising then. At least not in-game.

I just hope they'd experiment a little bit more with offering those freebies.

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

I don't think Demiurge is a corporate tyrant in any way, I acknowledge they are a business and need to make money, and I am also willing to spend money on a game I enjoy. I have dropped over $3K. They seem to be staying with the current PVE model because they want to limit the amount of free covers. The only thing that makes sense to me is no free covers then more 42 packs. They obviously sell them for a reason, but I have bought 2 X 42 packs with no 3 star covers at all which I feel, rightly or wrongly that it is a scam. I can pay $80 for a fully working amazing game, to get 84 straight to iso covers is a ridiculous and unfair investment.

Also my chance of getting any Doc Oc cover is so low I am not even going to bother. 2Pm on a Tuesday finish time for me. I am an Australian Steam user so I have zero chance of getting top 150. Zero, none, impossible, never going to happen; unless the servers crash again (how does denial of service work again ). I have two max cover psylocke so have no reason to play the whole event for the progress rewards.

Look, all in all, I am crazy happy with the direction the game is taking, the ONLY 2 complaints are PVE end times (ergo rubber banding) and 42 packs (token drop rates) as the only viable way to get a new chatracter.

It isn't fair that I flat out I can't compete in PVE because of my nationality so can't compete in the next Dr Oc PVP unless I keep buying in with more 42 packs. Your argument of most of the player base is in the USA, is crazy biased. If you don't want to make it a fair playing field don't offer the game for use outside the US.Can we have some figures on where the players actually live? 200 Million/ 8 Billion in the USA seems like a pilot market to me.

Let's say that there was no tokens to purchase, eg this was a complete game with no f2p (p2w) aspect. Then people without the covers would be stuck without them and there would be absolutely no way to get them. There is rationale for token purchase existing. For drop percentage, If it is such a scam, then why do you keep buying them, eg at $3k+ no less? No one has forced you to buy them at these horrible rates. In fact, it is people who buy tons of packs who have pushed the drop rates this low. If everyone stopped buying them at these horrible rates, then they would be forced to raise the drop rates to get money back. The truth is people have just bought more token packs even at these bad rates. The low drop rates really sucks for people who only want to make a occasional purchase or so, because we're at the whim of what whales do.

People say it is sucks that the new characters aren't yet added to the tokens. However, what if this is intentional? Eg, doesn't this allow a committed fan base to stay ahead of p2w whales?

The region thing just flat out sucks. Australia gets screwed for gaming in 10 odd ways. It really makes you have to put in way more effort for a decent showing.

homeinvasion

drunk, ignore

Unknown

Lol, interesting projection.

My wife doesn't mind if I drop a few hundred on video games a month, but If I spent 3k on a f2p video game she'd probably take me in for addiction counselling. I don't have that much in my savings account right now.

Trisul

homeinvasion wrote:

I have dropped over $3K.

Holy ****.

NorthernPolarity

Ariakos wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Like I said in my previous post, it's entirely possible that the majority of their sales comes from guys who don't have the covers in the first place, and want the hero for essential nodes in the next PvE. Theres just a ton of possibilities that can be happening with regards to monetization that your argument makes too many assumptions, and is far from the clear and obvious thing to do. We'll never know for sure because they're not going to share that data with us, but you should be able to see why giving out free covers could be a bad thing.

I can see your point and I'm aware of "essential in the next pve" concept that Demiurge has (which I find silly and unnecessary but that's beside the point). I am assuming, nay, hoping that some other form of monetizing would be more beneficial both for developers and players alike. Higly likely I'm assuming too much. But since we don't know anything about "The Metrics" and devs don't share much info about them we can only guess. I can only speak from my point of view and IMHO one cover as a start is better than clawing other players for that very first cover.

The funny thing is, if demiurge is an evil cash grabbing company like a lot of the forumgoers think, then the one thing that everyone must agree on is that Demiurge will do whatever it can to make money. And guess what, they gave out free Hulk and Sentry covers out during PvE events in the past. Yet we aren't seeing them hand out free covers of new characters in every event nowadays. Now, if they actually made a noticeably larger profit on Sentry / Hulk because of those covers, then certainly they would give out new covers for every new event because that would be the best way to make money. The fact that they aren't is pretty good evidence suggesting that either it's not profitable, or that they're completely incompetent at realizing what actually makes them money. The former sounds a lot more plausible than the latter.

I accept Hulk as an example of spreading free covers but that red Sentry cover was offered only for a short period at the end of a pve and even some forumites managed to miss it. I found out about the extra node by chance and managed to grab it in time but otherwise I would have missed it too. It was not so clear " get your free Sentry here!" advertising then. At least not in-game.

I just hope they'd experiment a little bit more with offering those freebies.

Yeah. There was this one Heroic Oscorp event where they actually experimented a ton with the rewards structure. 0 rubberbanding, top 100 all got a single cover, and 2 covers were offered as progression awards. That event turned out to be the worst event in the history of the game: scaling was out of control, it was a HEROIC event with a limited roster, you had to grind the nodes an insane amount to get a progression award, and it was the same nodes for 5-6 days. I'm afraid they saw the metrics for that event (which I'm guessing were the worst ever) and shied away from taking more risks, which is unfortunate. I would like to see them just give out 3 easy covers as progression awards, advertise it as such and see what the revenue looks like. I completely understand if they don't though, because if you do this and later stop, then you get a bunch of people complaining on the forums about how all events should be like this (just like this post!). Theres definite risk to giving away freebies to that extent, and I'd be surprised if they decide to take it.

FaerieMyst

Let me point out a practical reality . . . . . they probably have events planned and the popularity or unpopularity of any particular event is not going to change what happens next. Maybe two events out but not the next event.

That said, I like the diversity. I never have to grind. It is always my choice. I chose not to in the Colossus event. I kept my energies focused on the season end PVPs and just did enough in the event to get to the minimum to help my alliance get the cover.

wymtime

Here are my pro's and cons of each
The Gauntlet:
Pro's, I don't have to grind, I can play at my pace, I don't have to worry about if my alliance is playing, the gauntlet challenges the way I play and makes me try different combinations.
Cons: Brutally Hard nodes, not fun to replay, if you don't have essential character you can't earn all the rewards, easy to give up because you don't need to support your alliance (Yes this is a pro and a con). Rewards were not necessarily worth the fight 3rd node had too many deadly battles.

DA Heroic:
Pro's: New character release, a mix of difficulties on Nodes, replay value to get more rewards on beatable nodes, limited roster to make you try out different characters, you get to work as an alliance to get rewards. ususally really strong rubber banding that lets you start late and still get the progression rewards

Cons: Limited roster creates more difficult nodes, health pack killer, repeate storyline, if you don't have the essential character your toast for the sub. Usually really strong rubberbanding causing the end game to be really close (yes rubberbanding is a pro and a con).

I personally don't like either PVE all that much. I felt the gauntlet just got too dificult at the 3rd sub and felt like I had to Sentry Hop boosted to have a chance. I want PVE to be hard but not tinykitty deadly where even if I win I need 3 health packs.

For the Heroic's the story is old, the limited roster is a health pack killer, and I hate the last hour of the event. I do like the subs where I can earn ISO and HP, and even the repeatable nodes. For PVE is about farming ISO, recruite tokens and HP.

Hopefully D3 makes new stories, lower the crazy levels in the gauntlet, and in heroic expand the roster a bit. 2 more 2* and 2 more 3* will allow for longer play in the event.