"Reskinning" events

Mawtful
Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
edited April 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
There's a lot frustrating about replaying previous events over and over again. For me, a big part of what makes repeats un-enjoyable is the fact that they don't offer anything new or interesting. Simulator is the exception to the rule, and it probably ranks pretty highly only the list of people's favourite events.

Simulator also shows that it's certainly possible to change the teams on each node in a sub, so I don't understand why there's any reason for not "reskinning" other events.

Thick of Thieves is fairly relevant to Kingpin, at least right up to the final stage when we'll end up fighting The Hood instead. Prodigal Sun and The Hunt might be a little harder to "genericize", but I think most of the others could be updated when they get re-run.

Comments

  • Pylgrim
    Pylgrim Posts: 2,327 Chairperson of the Boards
    I hear ya. Moreover, in Thick as Thieves they introduced the idea of using Skrulls to allow you to fight against heroes (as opposed to the tired Dark Avengers). But they did this in a single node never to be repeated. They could have exploited that idea a bit more so from time to time you'd get to fight against a more diverse roster of characters.
  • Quebbster
    Quebbster Posts: 8,070 Chairperson of the Boards
    Pylgrim wrote:
    I hear ya. Moreover, in Thick as Thieves they introduced the idea of using Skrulls to allow you to fight against heroes (as opposed to the tired Dark Avengers). But they did this in a single node never to be repeated. They could have exploited that idea a bit more so from time to time you'd get to fight against a more diverse roster of characters.
    From now on I'll pretend the Gauntlet and Simulator actually features Skrulls instead of computer simulations.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    They've reskinned some events in the opposite direction of what you're suggesting. In the first Prodigal Sun, we had quite a bit of story about Daken in the essential nodes, and that was removed when he was no longer the featured character of Prodigal Sun. So they do what you're suggesting, just in the wrong direction.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    I can't believe this hasn't been suggested before. It's so obvious. Change the characters. And remove the dialogue because I don't think anyone's still reading it.

    In fact, yeah, could we just remove "dialogue" from the game entirely? I'm tired of skipping it.

    But yeah. They should have copy-pasted Kingpin into the story over The Hood. And Daredevil, Elektra, and Bullseye should be boosted.

    Like, why aren't they doing this more? Using the game to tell a story? I know there are easy ways they could do it. I mean, besides asking their coders to write dialogue. We have teams and themes now. We just had The Black Vortex, even though there was no story there. They should boost the characters who are in the story, and make sure you're playing as this hero against that villain.

    Otherwise, they should treat PVE like we do: completely devoid of plot.
  • Chrono_Tata
    Chrono_Tata Posts: 719 Critical Contributor
    I remember that in the first time they ran Heroics, they replaced normal Iron Man, Hawkeye, etc., with their other versions, and those versions were the ones that were playable in the event. It was a pretty nice touch, but I don't notice them doing this anymore, But then I just skip all the stories these days after they have run the same events like 20 friggin times.
  • optimus2861
    optimus2861 Posts: 1,233 Chairperson of the Boards
    It's a disturbing sign of developer laziness, and reliance on the "Oh, new shiny toon!" factor to drive playtime and sales.

    I'm not even 6 months into this game and I can see the warning signs plain as day. Pumping new toons into the game, at an increasing rate. Reusing old events with no attempt or care to make them work for said new toons (I think Meet Rocket & Groot was the last time a new toon got a story specifically about him?). No plan to address cost issues that aggravate the players (ROSTER SLOTS!). Pushing events out back-to-back-to-back with no breaks. Running events over holidays. The expanding roster size alone must get more & more daunting to new players every week. 50 characters, then 60, now 65 or 66. How's a new player ever supposed to hope to catch up without dropping big bucks?

    These are the warning signs of a FTP game approaching its end of life, desperately trying to keep its whales interested, before it closes up shop and/or the mass exodus of players begins.

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