The Simulator - Nov 11th-18th

Unknown

papa07 wrote:

Switchman wrote:

This pvp/pve going on right now is greatly helping me for being an almost month old player. Daken/Ares buffed clean up in PVP and PVE is easy. If only I had a Mystique to actually play the center nodes. Thankfully, I should have Mystique shortly once this PVP ends.

I have good news and bad news for you. You may get a Mystique after Friday PvP close, but starting 25 hours before that, Hulk will be required, followed by Hood for the last sub events. Hope that you already have each of those ready to go.

i feel sorry about it...i dont have the Hood......... disappointed

Unknown

I've been lucky with the hood. For the longest time I didn't have his ( in my view ) key cheapskate cover - dormammu's aid - but from previous challenges, grinding and some luck I have all 3 covers and he's at 85 so I expect I should be OK.

For the essentials it is frustrating. First off, if you don't have the character you're screwed which I've said before I think is not fair - if your aim is to keep as many players as engaged as possible. If you ( like in my case with mystique ) just have the basic 1 cover character then that character gets you into the game but is essentially a hood ornament - especially in the hard simulators. That is perhaps not unfair, just aggravating - again doing nothing to maximize player engagement.

At this point my focus has been to get some tanks - then trying to grind my **** off to get the "usual suspects" of special characters upgraded to the point that if they are featured in a pvp or essential match, I can at least hang.

At some point I'll reach the cheapskate oasis with a tricked out xforce wolverine, hood and sentry. Until then, punch em in the throat when they're not looking.

orbitalint

tuscan panty raider wrote:

For the essentials it is frustrating. First off, if you don't have the character you're screwed which I've said before I think is not fair - if your aim is to keep as many players as engaged as possible.

It is frustrating but with regard to this mechanic, they likely maximize engagement, though in a perverse way. This event is somewhat unique in that they require multiple characters for essential nodes. However, for typical events, you only need to play 2 events to have access to those essential nodes. The first event if you do reasonably well, you'll get the character needed for the next one. The trick is that they play on addictive aspects of psychology where you don't want to miss out and be at a loss rather than something more positive.

It's a grind-y rollercoaster ride where once you are on, you'll want to keep playing to make sure you can continue to play at a high level. It's not until you get a good stable of characters using this method that you can take breaks in the cycle. And even then, you want to keep playing to get more covers for them until they are maxed. Forget about what happens when they introduce new characters - it ramps up everyone's engagement so they don't feel like they missed out.

I'm not in love with the model but it does keep people coming back consistently and keep them "engaged". Maybe not for one specific event but on average.

Unknown

sitting just outside of top 30 overall, and haven't yet breached 60k points. Gonna be a long haul. It seem that events a guy either gets double the points of the top tier reward, or it is near impossible to reach the top tier.

Unknown

When I said it's sub (bracket) leader over main (bracket) leader I assumed everyone know it's always the global leader but that may have been a bad assumption.

The rubberband has been weak for all events and people seem to confuse RB with progression rewards that are way lowballed. It's not unusual to see the overall leader come out with more than twice the points of the progression reward in recent PvE. I estimate you can get about 60% of the overall leader's points after a day of intense playing, so if the overall leader is at more than twice the progression score of course you can easily hit your progression target too. But that's because the progression rewards are set low, not because the rubberband is strong. In this event it's far less certain the overall bracket leader will hit 320K (twice the Mystique cover). At any rate you don't have to know what the rubberband is to predict your score because each sub uses the same mechanism. Historically the points in Simualtor have increased +25% (4 rounds), +33% (3 rounds), or +50% (2 rounds or 3 rounds). Since Sumilea isn't around to write down the base points nobody knows what they are this time (it's 720 base for the lower left essential on hard on R2 but I have no idea what it was on R1) but +33% has been the most common pattern. So if you pull 40K in first round you'd get (1+1.33+1.66)X40K = 160K total which is exactly enough. If it turns out we have +50% then you can get away with less, but I was advising on a conservative estimate. Even at +50% you'd have to average (160/(1+1.5+2) = 35.5K on first round to hit 160K. Of course you could just play more on the rounds that are worth more, so it's not set in stone but this is a good starting point to shoot for that doesn't require additional effort at the end.

GrumpySmurf1002

Phantron wrote:

Since Sumilea isn't around to write down the base points nobody knows what they are this time (it's 720 base for the lower left essential on hard on R2 but I have no idea what it was on R1)

95% sure that essential was base 540. I joined pretty early and it took a while for the RB to kick in. 99% sure the middle right was 360 base.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Since Sumilea isn't around to write down the base points nobody knows what they are this time (it's 720 base for the lower left essential on hard on R2 but I have no idea what it was on R1)

95% sure that essential was base 540. I joined pretty early and it took a while for the RB to kick in. 99% sure the middle right was 360 base.

That'd be +33% per round then and would require a pace of 40K on first round to hit 160K. It'd likely be slightly easier because Mystique start out as the first essential probably depressed score somewhat, but it's not like you can expect to suddenly double your score from first round unless you didn't have Mystique at all.

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

tuscan panty raider wrote:

For the essentials it is frustrating. First off, if you don't have the character you're screwed which I've said before I think is not fair - if your aim is to keep as many players as engaged as possible.

It is frustrating but with regard to this mechanic, they likely maximize engagement, though in a perverse way. This event is somewhat unique in that they require multiple characters for essential nodes. However, for typical events, you only need to play 2 events to have access to those essential nodes. The first event if you do reasonably well, you'll get the character needed for the next one. The trick is that they play on addictive aspects of psychology where you don't want to miss out and be at a loss rather than something more positive.

It's a grind-y rollercoaster ride where once you are on, you'll want to keep playing to make sure you can continue to play at a high level. It's not until you get a good stable of characters using this method that you can take breaks in the cycle. And even then, you want to keep playing to get more covers for them until they are maxed. Forget about what happens when they introduce new characters - it ramps up everyone's engagement so they don't feel like they missed out.

I'm not in love with the model but it does keep people coming back consistently and keep them "engaged". Maybe not for one specific event but on average.

perfectly bad design. How about those new joiner? lazy and ridiculous design will only come out form small game developer. I cant within top 100 in the last Hood event. Not have the luck to get the the hood and you ask me out? My good performance in the first two sub event is totally vanished ! I m in top 10 both normal and hard in current sub ! I stopped as i know i never get good result.

extreme frustrating make me HATE the game

Unknown

If every event required a character that was just released there's still a 15% chance you'll have that character. Of course, since this is obviously not the case there's a considerably higher than 15% chance of having the correct required character. You don't even need to have that character in a usable state (though it'd usually help if he is). Also, if you don't have the required character, you're probably still in the 2* range and have very favorable scaling. Although that's probably not by design, when you've relatively easily beatable 'hard' nodes it makes up a lot for not being able to do essentials because it's awfully hard for a maxed roster to do those hard nodes when they start at level 250 and go way up.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

If every event required a character that was just released there's still a 15% chance you'll have that character. Of course, since this is obviously not the case there's a considerably higher than 15% chance of having the correct required character. You don't even need to have that character in a usable state (though it'd usually help if he is). Also, if you don't have the required character, you're probably still in the 2* range and have very favorable scaling. Although that's probably not by design, when you've relatively easily beatable 'hard' nodes it makes up a lot for not being able to do essentials because it's awfully hard for a maxed roster to do those hard nodes when they start at level 250 and go way up.

Yes, if that scaling snafu showed anything, it's how ridiculous the difference between having to drag a 1-3 cover essential character is when they can actually somewhat contribute, if only with match damage, as opposed to being an anchor on your 2-on-3 fights that occasionally needed medpacks

Unknown

benben77 wrote:

perfectly bad design. How about those new joiner? lazy and ridiculous design will only come out form small game developer. I cant within top 100 in the last Hood event. Not have the luck to get the the hood and you ask me out? My good performance in the first two sub event is totally vanished ! I m in top 10 both normal and hard in current sub ! I stopped as i know i never get good result.

extreme frustrating make me HATE the game

Absolutely. The system is needlessly complicated in some regards and depending on how you look at it unfair or designed to extract money. If they sold actual characters ( even for a premium ) it would be better and probably more profitable.

With an obscene amount of time and a not insignificant amount of money I am finally at a point where i can finish well anywhere. It was a long frustrating road though. The worst part for me though is despite working to get a kick **** lineup im still at the mercy of the bad match ups where wolverine xforce 270 or nick fury 270 smokes me.

atomzed

tuscan panty raider wrote:

With an obscene amount of time and a not insignificant amount of money I am finally at a point where i can finish well anywhere. It was a long frustrating road though. The worst part for me though is despite working to get a kick **** lineup im still at the mercy of the bad match ups where wolverine xforce 270 or nick fury 270 smokes me.

Well congrats on finishing the transition! It's a tough road surely, I just hope you feel a sense of achievement.

And regards to Xforce 270 or Nick fury (who isn't that getter now), well, that's something that you can strive towards to. If there's nothing else for you to work towards to, well you might as well stop playing the game.

Which brings me to my main criticism about mpq. There is no end game content. Until we have some end game content, it will always be a Sisyphus task, where we repeat the same old, same old stuff again.

Unknown

If they sold character for money it'd probably be like $20 or so to get some covers for a guy.

For $20 let's call that 3000 HP, you can get an extra 5-6 slots in your roster to accomodate for most random 3* you pickup if you're still at a range where you might not have certain guys. Okay some 3* might just never show up but since the featured 3* seems to be chosen at random there should be a relatively small chance it happens to be whoever you don't have. It didn't take very long for me to have every existing 3* when I joined and it was probably harder to come up with the HP for the room for them.

Now whether you'll have the featured character at a level where they can contribute is an entirely different question, but like Spoit pointed out, if you're in the transition phase they can always contribute by just match damage/tanking because a level 40 base 3* is a level 130 3* when major boosted. I can't even get that out of my Mystique on the first round because all my characters are maxed.

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

tuscan panty raider wrote:

With an obscene amount of time and a not insignificant amount of money I am finally at a point where i can finish well anywhere. It was a long frustrating road though. The worst part for me though is despite working to get a kick **** lineup im still at the mercy of the bad match ups where wolverine xforce 270 or nick fury 270 smokes me.

Well congrats on finishing the transition! It's a tough road surely, I just hope you feel a sense of achievement.

And regards to Xforce 270 or Nick fury (who isn't that getter now), well, that's something that you can strive towards to. If there's nothing else for you to work towards to, well you might as well stop playing the game.

Which brings me to my main criticism about mpq. There is no end game content. Until we have some end game content, it will always be a Sisyphus task, where we repeat the same old, same old stuff again.

dont expect an end game. The concept of end game is different form player to player. Modern game design is no end game. player enjoy themselves with infinite grinding for power / collections etc

The development team need to make sure every player do have fair chance to progress. Dont afraid nothing to do in game will drive players out. It is a must ! Everyone leave with different reasons . However leave with satisfaction or frustration.

fmftint

25 hours left on this rotation and every node is now hard/deadly (Hard map)
Time to start boosting

orbitalint

fmftint wrote:

25 hours left on this rotation and every node is now hard/deadly (Hard map)
Time to start boosting

Surprised you are still able to play all nodes. I have three that make any sense for me to play and have a reasonable chance of winning - iw essential, obw essential and the goons. Everything else is a waste of healthpacks. Didn't even try the blade, daken, colossus level.

GrumpySmurf1002

orbitalint wrote:

fmftint wrote:

25 hours left on this rotation and every node is now hard/deadly (Hard map)
Time to start boosting

Surprised you are still able to play all nodes. I have three that make any sense for me to play and have a reasonable chance of winning - iw essential, obw essential and the goons. Everything else is a waste of healthpacks. Didn't even try the blade, daken, colossus level.

I started my attention on the normal, but I've still been clearing all the hard nodes. They're getting near awful, but they're still doable, much better than the first set.

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

fmftint wrote:

25 hours left on this rotation and every node is now hard/deadly (Hard map)
Time to start boosting

Surprised you are still able to play all nodes. I have three that make any sense for me to play and have a reasonable chance of winning - iw essential, obw essential and the goons. Everything else is a waste of healthpacks. Didn't even try the blade, daken, colossus level.

Congrats to d3 for consistently setting the bar lower and lower. With full hulk ragnarok punisher with boosted ap i cant win the blade daken colossus. I wonder how many handicapped parking stalls are in the d3 parking lot..

Unknown

tuscan panty raider wrote:

orbitalint wrote:

fmftint wrote:

25 hours left on this rotation and every node is now hard/deadly (Hard map)
Time to start boosting

Surprised you are still able to play all nodes. I have three that make any sense for me to play and have a reasonable chance of winning - iw essential, obw essential and the goons. Everything else is a waste of healthpacks. Didn't even try the blade, daken, colossus level.

Congrats to d3 for consistently setting the bar lower and lower. With full hulk ragnarok punisher with boosted ap i cant win the blade daken colossus. I wonder how many handicapped parking stalls are in the d3 parking lot..

Instead of Ragnarok try Thor or Spider-Man - get Punisher's strike tiles out as quickly as possible so anger can trigger with them if you have 5 black covers on Hulk & use Crit boosts too. If using spider-man try to get protect tiles out quickly to reduce the enemy strike tiles and deny blue from daken & match away red when possible, I usually target blade then daken then colossus

Unknown

I really hope they don't mess up the fun Patch/Loki/Daken combination when Patch and Loki return into rotation...