This Isn't Fun

TheOncomingStorm

Punisher5784 wrote:

Did the developers truly find the Ultron event fun when they were testing it? Don't get me wrong, it was fun at first especially during the early stages but now it's completely out of control.

Who thought it was a good idea to allow the Ultron Sentries to move the board?!?!?! The whole purpose of goons is that they have enough CD power to kill us, especially on a bad board. These guys.. well every turn they destroy the bottom of the board, place a ton of special tiles, and can also place critical tiles and heal themselves THEN they get to swap tiles.. seriously?! Why are they also gaining board control? Those match 4's and 5's should be mine, they don't need the AP, they don't need the tile damage with all their other abilities. Sure I could bring OBW to steal and heal, but let's not buff her, leave her health low after the health patch. Sure I could bring Loki, oh wait he's only level 80, should I level him? Wait there will a decrease in ISO levels so maybe I should wait even though we have no details on it.

Ultron dropping bombs seems like a cool concept and definitely makes great use of 'puzzle' but if I get an unlucky board, forget about it. Too risky to board shake, CapAm is too slow and his CDs get destroyed. It's sad when I feel the need to bring Moonstone to move his bombs away.. yes Moonstone.. maybe that was their plan all along! It would had been nice if we could stun him, I understand why we can't but maybe instead of immune, he can only be stunned for 1 turn. There's just not enough time to stop him. I am up for suggestions and team build.

I missed the first 3 rounds, which I heard was easy. It was bad enough the event started at 12pm for me when I'm at work but when I went to play during lunch.. server down! But it doesn't even matter, I don't see how it's possible to reach QS (not that I want him) and beat Ultron Prime for SW with the scaling of their broken abilities.

The developers were missing on the forums for nearly a month to make this.. maybe with all the health packs we're buying for Ultron, end of PVP and now another PVE, you can hire some more people.

Thanks for the vent. Now it's time to go back to

That's why the event is by alliance and 4.5 days.

That's also why they count damage against Ultron counts even if you wipe.

Players always complain they're tired of fighting the same goons and villains over and over. Get rid of board shake, it's just like the other goons, but with a different name.

Ultron is supposed to be based on the movie and able to reach the precipice of defeating the avengers. If he was a pushover, the event would be an epic fail. You have to use different strategies. Many players are using a variety of characters and strategies. So there is not just one solution, but if you're just attacking without a game plan, you're going to have tremendous problems in this pve. Everyone else is being challenged and having fun.

Unknown

Jakecin4791 wrote:

Me: 3-match
AI: Swarm to 4-match to three, 3-matches
Me: 3-match special tiles in a color that doesn't do much for me
AI: Swarm to 4-match to cascade to 5-match, to 4-match
Me: 3-match special tiles... and go make a cocktail while the AI takes the next minute to chain moves
AI: Swarm to a gajillion strike, protect, attack tiles and crit tiles up the wazoo

Oh look... my 11K+ LCap now has 2K health 6 moves in.

Anyways, I'm sure you get the idea. I'm clearly bad at this game.
I'm also clearly a whiner, a complainer, and most of all I'm apparently neither woman nor man enough to figure out how to have a good time at this.

It feels pretty good to commiserate though. Damn.

Back to just the DDQ. For now I'm gonna give Ultron a miss and go floss my dog's teeth -- now that's a challenge I've been putting off for months.

I mean. You must be incredibly fortunate if something like that has never happened before to you. I once Berserker Raged against a 0 ap opponent, got my hulk out front, and had him die next turn to cascades. Do you have any idea how many cascade stages it takes for a full health hulk to die in a single turn from full health after BR? It's something like 11.

ShadowX1984

I'm really enjoying it. Yeah, it's challenging and I've been wiped out a couple of times, but I'm starting to work out the combos and strategies that make it work. There's clearly some luck in it too, and a bad board can cost you the game. The main thing is: it's new content, there's not a Dark Avenger in sight, and I'm having to think about my matches a lot more carefully than I have in a long time. It feels like a special event and it's kind of refreshed my interest in the game.

MaskedMan

Well one thing at least. Devil Dinosaur has found a home. He works very well against Ultron. He is built for single target attacks with few APs. His purple power even has a use. More than once I've pulled a bomb from the bottom of the screen back up to the top to save myself some nasty damage.

As far as the other fights go, I think it makes a nice change of pace. I wouldn't want to see it all the time because it basically takes all the strategy out of the game (you can't manage what is available for them to match since they don't need anything).

Katai

This is the same two battles over and over forever. How do people find this fun?

_RiO_

Phantron wrote:

Swarm is about the same as taking two extra turns, and it's almost cumulative too because all kinds of cascades happens naturally after 3 Swarms. A lot of the time I'm wondering when I'm supposed to get to move anything.

^ This. Swarm is basically the AI double-turning or triple-turning. EVERY- DAMN - TURN.

If anyone deems that fair, they're either trolling or need to get their head examined.

fmftint

_RiO_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Swarm is about the same as taking two extra turns, and it's almost cumulative too because all kinds of cascades happens naturally after 3 Swarms. A lot of the time I'm wondering when I'm supposed to get to move anything.

^ This. Swarm is basically the AI double-turning or triple-turning. EVERY- DAMN - TURN.

If anyone deems that fair, they're either trolling or need to get their head examined.

You
Can
Prevent
Swarm

_RiO_

fmftint wrote:

_RiO_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Swarm is about the same as taking two extra turns, and it's almost cumulative too because all kinds of cascades happens naturally after 3 Swarms. A lot of the time I'm wondering when I'm supposed to get to move anything.

^ This. Swarm is basically the AI double-turning or triple-turning. EVERY- DAMN - TURN.

If anyone deems that fair, they're either trolling or need to get their head examined.

You
Can
Prevent
Swarm

Not consistently enough to matter.

Sentries perform tile-matches as well and may remove their own special tiles.
Swarm itself may remove their special tiles.
Swarm may lead into cascades that removes special tiles.
Sentries need to build up a minimum of 5 special tiles first, before they stop using Swarm.

Two things need to be changed to make this more balanced:
Special tile creation by Senties should be restricted to the top end of the board, so that they aren't instantly removed by a follow-up Swarm. (Or the order of execution for both has to be switched around...)
Sentries should not be allowed to perform tile-matches when they use Swarm, Meltdown, etc.


That gives you an actual fair shot at reaching the equilibrium between the activation of Swarm and Meltdown...

Katai

If Swarm doesn't go off, then they'll convert tiles into crit tiles.

It's something like if they have less than 5 special tiles, Swarm procs. If they have more than 7 special tiles, they spawn two crit tiles. That means you have to have exactly 5, 6, or 7 ENEMY special tiles on screen to not get royally f'd.

Cymmina

I don't mind the concept of the event (I'm a level 94 3* transitioner, so my scaling is not out of control). The fights are an interesting change of pace and the whole "you work with your alliance to unlock stuff" is pretty cool.

I DO mind how they dropped the "no alliance hopping" bombshell on us with not even 24 hours notice. Only 14 people in my alliance were participating up until this morning, the rest are inactive (including the commander, so we can't even kick them). I *could* have switched alliances, but with such short notice, it seemed like a bigger risk than staying with what I already have.

I've done the math and I don't think we'll even be able to clear the 6th round before the event ends (we just cleared round 4). This will be a huge disappointment for everyone who is busting their **** to try and make this happen.

Hell, doing the math for 20 active players over the course of 4.5 days, every person would have to kill Ultron 9-10 times (17.125M hp, 856.25k per person) each day to get through round 8. On top of that, most people weren't even able to participate for the first ~8 hours due to server crashes. This seems a little unreasonable to me, especially when you consider all of the other things going on (DDQ, Season XIII ending, Oscorp Heroic, etc.). I'm not currently working, so I'm able to stay on track with 9-10 kills per day. I don't know how people who have jobs/school/friends are able to do this.

I get that they want to try and keep people occupied for the entire duration of the event, but I would have been better off slogging my way through the traditional PvE event model. At least then I could pretty much guarantee myself 2 covers. The only way I see getting my hands on SW is by getting lucky on a draw from a random token. Knowing that makes the event "not fun" for me.

Pylgrim

Katai wrote:

If Swarm doesn't go off, then they'll convert tiles into crit tiles.

It's something like if they have less than 5 special tiles, Swarm procs. If they have more than 7 special tiles, they spawn two crit tiles. That means you have to have exactly 5, 6, or 7 ENEMY special tiles on screen to not get royally f'd.

And? Play around it! Did you see that "P" in MPQ? It stands for "Puzzle" and these nodes are one of the instances of the games that most appropriately can be called so. Me? I bring Spider-Man and match as much purple as I can so I can ignore most of the sentries' special tiles and swarm/match damage. In the meantime I quickly try to kill the blue sentry (or the green one if there are two blue). Once there's only either blue or green sentries (or yellow), the game is already over and I won't take any more damage. Either do that or find your own way around it instead complaining about a bit of a challenge.

Unknown

Luke Cage. 5 5 3 build, with Lcap.

Luke's red covers off most of the damage, keep the special tiles between 5 and 7 to avoid swarm and "feed the ... beast? system? whatever" to prevent sentries health regen and crits

And patiently let Cap pick the bastards off, with the occasional punch from Luke. use Hulk as meat shield against Ultron.

working very well for me.

Now, as long as Ultron doesn't play mind games... "Luke! I ... am your father... (kooo-HAAAH)"

Unknown

I noticed something funny about this event this morning.

At first, I was concerned because I wasn't doing well. My alliance is destroying Ultron, and my contribution is, well, negligible.

Here's the thing:

I am doing better than ever before in PVE and PVP.

When I finish a tier in PVE, I can actually see my alliance rank moving upward (never saw that before).

I just earned my first ever top 100 finish in PVP (top 5, actually), which will no doubt mean that I actually contributed to the rest of my alliance getting some much-needed HP, as well as ISO (I've never even contemplated making the top 200 before this morning).

So while the top players in my roster are slogging away at Ultron, I'm actually doing more for the team than I had previously thought possible, and I can actually see the impact of my 2* crew. I do what I can in Ultron, which is not much, but based on the scaling of enemies compared to the levels of my strongest characters, it seems pretty obvious that I'm not supposed to, and that's fine with me.

Based on my experience over the past 24 hours, and the chatter among the alliance, it looks like D3 did indeed find a way to excite at least some vets and less powerful players. I know what it looks like from where I'm standing...

Cheers!

DBC

elvy75

I am maybe one of the rare ones that truly enjoyed this event. First its not grindy, with time management, playing when the refresh hits i am already above 1mil and stopped playing to let my alliance mates reach top progression rewards. Second i enjoyed figuring out how to best beat both ultron and his sentries, to the point that i was finishing ultron node with full health and was wipeed twice, once in round 7 and once in round 8, when i really had bad board. It took some time to figure out how to best deal with sentries, but i managed to get few clears with no health packs needed. Maybe i was just lucky, but my last nodes had 200+ scaling, so i think i managed to find combination that works for me. Ultron prime fights are the most interesting though, so too bad you can play them only once.

Dauthi

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

wymtime wrote:

My alliance is in round 6 and the essential survivial nodes are the hardest. Ultron has not been that difficult. I have lost a couple of people every now and then but not much. So far Ultron Prime has been fairly easy, and I will say this running Hulk Lthor against Ultron prime to get more green on the board is very helpful especially when they start doing much more damage. Round 6 is also when you need multiple players to clear the event twice to move on o Ultron Prime. I think they are trying to keep players from beating Ultron in one day, but if a 20 person alliance has all 20 people clear all essentials and all Ultron powers you alliance should get Ultron Prime. This mechanic severely limits smaller alliances and I don't think someone who is in a 10,12,15 person alliance should be punished this way. The later rounds will definatly get harder and unlike the Gauntlet you entire alliance will need to step up to win.

I was gonna write some stuff, but this covers it well.

I'm having a lot of fun with this event. The Sentries are challenging, but there are ways to beat them. I've even cleared the Hawkeye essential using the 1-power, level 1 character, in other words 2 on 3.

It's a modified Gauntlet. Yes, its unfortunate that some people can't complete this, much like there are those who can't complete the Gauntlet. But if everyone could beat it, there's no real point in having a PvE, just hand everyone a cover.

That's little consolation for those who won't get there, but that's the reality.

I was going to write exactly this.

I'm glad they considered the veterans when making this. We are working on the final round and now our biggest concern is beating Ultron too fast and some folks not getting the progressions.

Unknown

Move. Swarm. Swarm. Core Meltdown.
Move. Swarm. Swarm. Core Meltdown.

or the even worse:
Move. Swarm.
Move. Swarm. Core Meltdown. Core Meltdown.
Move. Swarm. Core Meltdown. Core Meltdown.

I like the event, but the occasional unfairness of it makes me want to ragequit.

NighteyesGrisu

Punisher5784 wrote:

Did the developers truly find the Ultron event fun when they were testing it? Don't get me wrong, it was fun at first especially during the early stages but now it's completely out of control.

Who thought it was a good idea to allow the Ultron Sentries to move the board?!?!?! The whole purpose of goons is that they have enough CD power to kill us, especially on a bad board. These guys.. well every turn they destroy the bottom of the board, place a ton of special tiles, and can also place critical tiles and heal themselves THEN they get to swap tiles.. seriously?! Why are they also gaining board control? Those match 4's and 5's should be mine, they don't need the AP, they don't need the tile damage with all their other abilities. Sure I could bring OBW to steal and heal, but let's not buff her, leave her health low after the health patch. Sure I could bring Loki, oh wait he's only level 80, should I level him? Wait there will a decrease in ISO levels so maybe I should wait even though we have no details on it.

Ultron dropping bombs seems like a cool concept and definitely makes great use of 'puzzle' but if I get an unlucky board, forget about it. Too risky to board shake, CapAm is too slow and his CDs get destroyed. It's sad when I feel the need to bring Moonstone to move his bombs away.. yes Moonstone.. maybe that was their plan all along! It would had been nice if we could stun him, I understand why we can't but maybe instead of immune, he can only be stunned for 1 turn. There's just not enough time to stop him. I am up for suggestions and team build.

I missed the first 3 rounds, which I heard was easy. It was bad enough the event started at 12pm for me when I'm at work but when I went to play during lunch.. server down! But it doesn't even matter, I don't see how it's possible to reach QS (not that I want him) and beat Ultron Prime for SW with the scaling of their broken abilities.

The developers were missing on the forums for nearly a month to make this.. maybe with all the health packs we're buying for Ultron, end of PVP and now another PVE, you can hire some more people.

Thanks for the vent. Now it's time to go back to

Speak for yourself, I haven't had this much fun with MPQ in months

Unknown

It's a boring and repetitive event but beatable with a non-maxed 3* roster, although I have to see how it scales up (currently on round 5).

For the essential nodes Daredevil is king - his radar sense deals with the special tiles very effectively.

For the Ultron boss fight I consider Punisher and 2 nukers essential. Currently using Luke Cage, Dr. Doom and Punisher. Nuke Ultron with Luke and Doom, finish with Punisher's retribution. It's quite effective and I only wiped once due to an extremely bad board. Punisher's red will increase in value the more Ultron scales up.

Edit: I also wanted to add that I beat the essential nodes with 2* Wolverine and 2* Daken too. I tried it, because I wanted to conserve health packs. It is definitely doable.

Chirus

It's repetitive yeah, but I didn't find it that grueling oddly enough. I also play once every few hours which may help. Also the hopes of getting the reward token is a pretty strong incentive for me. If there are future iterations of this, we could have multiple different nodes with villains/heroes occupying those nodes to keep things interesting. Really, it doesn't make as much a difference to me, but that the enemies are roughly the same means I can more easily employ a specific strategy to take them down easier. Pretty hard as it is anyway.

Everything said and done, I wouldn't mind if new releases were all in this format and separate PvE events can take place concurrently for anyone who doesn't already have a strong roster. New covers are so much more attainable this way and everyone in your alliance has a pretty good shot at picking up all 3 new covers (seeing how the boss nodes are all non-essential). I may be an outlier, but I hope this format stays long term.

SnowcaTT

elvy75 wrote:

First its not grindy, with time management

I need your stopping-time machine. Folks say it's repetitive and I can't really disagree. I think it's really grindy. Day one it was grinding because it wasn't every 8 hours that it was refreshing - it was every 2/4/6 or so. Once we hit 7/8 the grind was of a different sort: those 180 goon wave nodes x5 take a ton of time.

I've never used many boosts before this event. I found all my +2/all AP gone in wave 7, I used my first mega-whales today followed by three or four more. The scaling is still pretty darn high if that is pretty mandatory.

All that said, I'm sitting 50K from 1 mil waiting on refresh, four team-mates are sitting at 1 mil and not progressing right now so others can hit top reward. So I probably could have had better time management by not running the event so much at the beginning, but more throughout - but who knows how progression will fall in any given PVE. On thing that -is- fun is getting six covers in 2.5 days, that I'd be all for all the time.