What should PvE be?

Eddiemon

A lot of things have gone wrong or upset people with the current PvE event. There have been scaling issues and the change of characters and resource costs mid event and so on. I don't really want to beat the dead horse of everything that hos gone wrong, there are plenty of threads about that.

But I have noticed that people seem to have expectations of what a PvE event should be an what they should be able to achieve. For example with the cost rise of +3 all AP, there were plenty of cries that people now wouldn't be able to clear all the missions.

Should a PvE event be one where everyone can complete all the missions and it turns into who grinds the hardest and gets the rubberbanding right? It's not what I want form PvE, but contrary to my general demeanour I accept that I am not always right and that other peoples opinions and preferences matter.

My ideal of a PvE event would have say 10 missions with 1 and 2 being trivial and 10 being ballbreakingly difficult so that only the best teams with skill and a bit of luck can beat them. I'd love to have missions that I'm not sure I'm going to be able to win on the sheet. And have my progress and final standings based on beating those missions.

I don't get that out of current PvE, with all the boosts even the 230 missions were a breeze. Match 3 green and 6 blue, throw berserk and have spidey lock down the other team while you hit them for 2K per match. The third team member is just there for window dressing. Even taking away the +3 all it just means I need to be more cautious and match 6 green. Then I need to complete all matches multiple times to grind down all the points to stay competitive. I can do it, but it's not 'fun'.

That's not to brag, but just to set down what things are like today. But with the Spidey nerf coming up that may change. There may no longer be a guaranteed clear of all missions, and things may move from grind time to how many missions can you complete.And that's fine by me, may be the challenge I need and give me back some of my time.

Reading the complains about AP changes and Patch/Thor/Wolvie changes though, people have complained that they can no longer complete all the missions in the current event. Where I want there to be new missions to conquer and an upper limit on achievement to be pushed, others seem to want a predetermined grind and the winners and losers to be time based. And it is a philosophy I can understand, the more 'work' you put into and event the better rewards you can get. And there seems to be a desire that everyone be able to get all the progression rewards (And I'm not saying that is wrong) which may demand that things are kept easily grindable.

Is there a right answer? Should PvE be like The Hulk or The Hunt where every 8 hours you are back? Is that what you want it to be? Should more time mean more rewards automatically? Or should there be different PvE events with some grindfests and some unfairly challenging ones?

I'm just curious as to what others want.

Unknown

I wouldn't mind an event like you're describing, but first and foremost, this is a Marvel game. Right now it's following the Dark Reign storyline. You need to make every encounter accessible so that the fans of the comics and casual players can complete everything at least once.

I actually like the idea of scaling difficulty. I think it would be great if you could do every mission once on Easy, and then the difficulty ramps up as you go, so that only the most dedicated players can obtain the top rewards. I think that's what they intended with this event, but IceIX already said it didn't scale as well as they calculated. I also don't mind the idea of just having easy missions and rewarding those who grind the most (like past events), but I think rubberbanding undermines that concept.

Unknown

The event I liked the most was Hulk. For me it was the most balanced between time investment, difficulty and fun.

If I could design PVE stuff however I would throw out the placement rewards completely, no competition between players in PVE. And concentrate on making the progression rewards a community effort. Kind of like the point bars you see now just more sophisticated.