Will casual players have a chance at the upcoming event?

brisashi

I'm in a pretty casual alliance with some IRL friends, only about 8-10 of us play regularly and I'm the only one thats really competetive.

I'm curious if a group like use will have a decent shot at beating the upcoming event, since what I have heard is that it will take several alliance members to take it down over time. I'd rather not leave my alliance just to get a reward.

GrumpySmurf1002

Until they post the actual rules, it's impossible to say for sure.

I would speculate you'll need 20 members contributing at least semi-regularly to have a chance. It seems to be based on total damage dealt though, so a couple competitive people with really deep rosters and a lot of free time might be able to pull the weight.

I'm personally expecting to have to KO my roster once or twice a day.

MarvelMan

Its going to be very interesting to see how they tune this. Something that might be difficult for a casual mixed alliance of 20 people might be a cake walk for a 20 person hardcore, or unplayable for a 10 person casual. Hopefully it does NOT involve some variation on their **** scaling.

Malcrof

My alliance is full, but alot of RL friends and casual players. 2 or 3 transitioning play for hours a day peeps. Hoping they set levels based on overall alliance levels.

Aidonis

Seeing as no character release ever in this game has been "casual" friendly, I'm going to go with no.

Unknown

Boy I hope so. Casual players should be ok assuming their alliances don't kick them out for more hardcore players. Unless they tuned the event totally wonky.

Sounds like more progression less placement which is good.

Katai

Well, all the hardcore players seem to be leaving, so... yeah, maybe.

morph3us

I'm going to vote yes, based on this article:

http://www.gamezone.com/news/marvel-puz ... nt-3415604

"Alliance Specific Leaderboards – Rather than competing against a global Leaderboard, Boss Battles are Alliance specific. This means each Alliance has their own Score Target representing Ultron’s HP to deplete, and players must work together to defeat Ultron before the event ends.
Alliance Score Target Representing Ultron’s Health – Rewards are shifted out of Placement Reward and put towards completing the Score Target, mission completion drop tables, and Progress Rewards.
Giant Central Mission Pin Featuring Ultron – When players win a fight against the Ultron pin, players contribute towards a Score Target, which represents Ultron’s total health. Unlike past Score Targets, this is Leaderboard specific rather than Global. The Ultron pin becomes locked, and placed on a cool down."

That suggests that the Score Target is going to vary based on the number of players within an Alliance, so I'd expect an Alliance of 5 to have a lower score target than an Alliance of 20. Larger casual Alliances with only a few active players may have a problem, though.

Unknown

morph3us wrote:

I'm going to vote yes, based on this article:

http://www.gamezone.com/news/marvel-puz ... nt-3415604

"Alliance Specific Leaderboards – Rather than competing against a global Leaderboard, Boss Battles are Alliance specific. This means each Alliance has their own Score Target representing Ultron’s HP to deplete, and players must work together to defeat Ultron before the event ends.
Alliance Score Target Representing Ultron’s Health – Rewards are shifted out of Placement Reward and put towards completing the Score Target, mission completion drop tables, and Progress Rewards.
Giant Central Mission Pin Featuring Ultron – When players win a fight against the Ultron pin, players contribute towards a Score Target, which represents Ultron’s total health. Unlike past Score Targets, this is Leaderboard specific rather than Global. The Ultron pin becomes locked, and placed on a cool down."

That suggests that the Score Target is going to vary based on the number of players within an Alliance, so I'd expect an Alliance of 5 to have a lower score target than an Alliance of 20. Larger casual Alliances with only a few active players may have a problem, though.

Thats not what I got from it. What I got is that each alliance has its own "leaderboard" instead of a global one, not that the leaderboard is different (with different target scores) depending on members or anything else.

So a 2 member alliance has a first target score of 10K like a 20 hardcore member one will have first target score of 10k; they just wont compete with each other for placement.

morph3us

ShionSinX wrote:

morph3us wrote:

I'm going to vote yes, based on this article:

http://www.gamezone.com/news/marvel-puz ... nt-3415604

"Alliance Specific Leaderboards – Rather than competing against a global Leaderboard, Boss Battles are Alliance specific. This means each Alliance has their own Score Target representing Ultron’s HP to deplete, and players must work together to defeat Ultron before the event ends.
Alliance Score Target Representing Ultron’s Health – Rewards are shifted out of Placement Reward and put towards completing the Score Target, mission completion drop tables, and Progress Rewards.
Giant Central Mission Pin Featuring Ultron – When players win a fight against the Ultron pin, players contribute towards a Score Target, which represents Ultron’s total health. Unlike past Score Targets, this is Leaderboard specific rather than Global. The Ultron pin becomes locked, and placed on a cool down."

That suggests that the Score Target is going to vary based on the number of players within an Alliance, so I'd expect an Alliance of 5 to have a lower score target than an Alliance of 20. Larger casual Alliances with only a few active players may have a problem, though.

Thats not what I got from it. What I got is that each alliance has its own "leaderboard" instead of a global one, not that the leaderboard is different (with different target scores) depending on members or anything else.

So a 2 member alliance has a first target score of 10K like a 20 hardcore member one will have first target score of 10k; they just wont compete with each other for placement.

Oh, blargh, I hope not. I didn't think of that. Fingers crossed for a variable HP target.

Unknown

If they made it easier for smalled alliances peole would just make new ones with like 4 members (ending with 5 alliances 4/20 from a 20/20) and play lightly for easy rewards.

morph3us

I don't think that's the case, though. Let's assume that Ultron has 1 million HP for a 20 member alliance, which gives a 50K HP target per member. For a 4 member alliance, you'd then have a 200K HP score target. Given that the Ultron nodes seem to be on a refresh timer, each member is going to contribute at the same rate, regardless of whether it's a 4 member or 20 member alliance, provided that the rewards are set proportionally to the score total. The 4 member alliance isn't going to hit the score target any faster than a 20 member alliance. What matters more is the activity of each player, in this instance, as an alliance with inactive members is going to have more work to do per member.

Unknown

I dont think there will be a limit on how much damage each member can deal, so people with a better roster can make up for the weakest ones (or that just dont have a max LCap that seems the best one here). If Ultron has 200k HP, instead of giving a 10k per member they can just put it all there and you take as much as you can; I can totally see a Cyke/LCap duo doing over 200k with enough time in hand, overriting every one of Ultron's tiles.

Maybe its the reason for so many LCap rewards lately.

morph3us

From the same link:

"Upon entering the mission, they’ll face off against Ultron and attempt to take him down. Dealing damage to him will take down his overall health, which all Alliance members will be helping to do as well. But, after a battle, he’ll go off and repair for round two—or three, or four. There’ll be a timer that will decrease on its own representing when the player can fight Ultron again. At this point, it’s time for a rush of Sentries to attack, represented by multiple nodes that each use different Avengers as essential characters."

So it looks like you can't just hammer him over and over again without stopping. I do agree, though, it doesn't sound like they're capping the amount of damage each member can do against him, but it does look they are limiting the number of times you can fight him individually. I was just using the 50K figure as an example on how they might apportion a variable score target.

Also, there was this:

" Defeating these waves of Sentries will reduce the timer on the Ultron battle and get him back into the fight quicker."

So presumably you can get a couple of extra "node refreshes" in by doing this.

Still hoping for a variable score target, though, otherwise I'm going to be really busy this weekend

Unknown

I didnt mean that you could fight him over and over, just that LCap/Cyke can take it all in ONE fight if they wont limit how much damage you can deal to him per single fight. If you have a PX you are set to take even three of it haha.

And the later parte, looks like our regular PvE reset timers (8h) but you CANT fight again before that, and those extra nodes would reduce the waiting time if you manage to beat them.

morph3us

ShionSinX wrote:

I didnt mean that you could fight him over and over, just that LCap/Cyke can take it all in ONE fight if they wont limit how much damage you can deal to him per single fight. If you have a PX you are set to take even three of it haha.

Ah, good point. Presumably they'll set a time limit on each round before Ultron "retreats" or something. You're right, though, there are some teams that could deal an absolute face beating given enough time (Blade/Falcon/Prof X would also hurt him pretty badly too).

Unknown

You would really need LCap to deal with this tiles tho. He makes new ones over and over so Redwing doesnt seems enough.

scottee

Pretty sure you'll defeat Ultron each time in the node, and then you'll be awarded node points, just like usual. Then the alliance will have it's own "alliance progress" bar that needs to be filled up to get the top prizes. Like the old global progress bar they used to do for early PVE's. That progress bar is Ultron's "health".

Unknown

ShionSinX wrote:

You would really need LCap to deal with this tiles tho. He makes new ones over and over so Redwing doesnt seems enough.

Lcap is garbage to deal with multiple CDs that pop out early. This might be a job for the late 5/5/3 xforce.