Ultron postmortem

firethorne

Well, the first of the Ultron events is done, and I thought I'd share my impressions, good and bad.

Pros:

New gameplay mechanics. Loved the Ultron fight. It actually felt a bit more like a puzzle than your average fight, and encouraged you to make moves not for maximum ap, but to get tiles to the right spot to take out bombs. New enemy types were also fun for the first 5 to 10 times I played them. The balance between swarm and meltdown was perhaps a bit too thin, as I did get obliterated by meltdown crit cascades more than once. Overall design concept is good, but may need some minor tweaks if you're going to have us face them so many times in an event.

Rewards. It was generous with the tokens and HP. The prime nodes seem like a good way to do it. I may have a skewed perspective here, since I had fairly good luck with the token draws, managing to pull a Star Lord and a few three stars. If you pulled all Moonstones and Bagmen, I realize how that could be even more frustrating than winning nothing at all. I accept I could just be an outlier, but my experience here was very good.

Cons:

Core meltdown (on the game's servers, not the skill). We were on the node about to unlock Scarlet Witch, had Ultron under a third health left, and couldn't log in. This, unfortunately, leaves me with the opinion they failed with the event. We'll see if they address this with any compensation. But, knowing the pattern that SW will be required to do well in the next event, I'm not happy.

Repitition. All of the side nodes were two part survival nodes against the same enemy type. I understand that an army of these sentries may fit in thematically with the movie. But, having us grind the same match dozens of times isn't good gameplay. The tone of the alliance chat was very excited at the beginning, but made a gradual change to getting tired of the grind over the course of the event. I'd say the progression points need to be lowered.

Lock out. I understand that alliances with heavy hitters could burn through before the more casual players got to play. That wasn't our alliance, by any means. But, it is an issue that happened for some, and needs to be addressed. I think there are a number of possible good solutions here, and this was just a problem not really thought about until after it happened. You could easily keep nodes unlocked for individuals until the final prime was unlocked AND they hit the last progression reward. The heavy hitters would be locked out when the final prime was unlocked and they cleared their individual progression, while slow players could continue even after the prime was unlocked, up to the point they finished their progression rewards.


Alliance morale. As a commander, this is the one I'm ultimately extremely concerned about. We're a casual alliance, and we did not unlock Scarlet Witch. Now, with the server outage, I think we can direct a lot of the frustration directly at D3. But, had the servers worked perfectly, and we had not managed to pull it out, I think I'd be on serious alliance damage control today. At best, we politely decide the events like this are not worth it, and then have no shot at them in the future since no one will bother to make a serious effort. At worst, the people putting up the higher scores will demand a serious effort, and want to kick people who aren't putting up big numbers in favor of roping in mercs. Seems dicey either way.

Unknown

I agree wholeheartedly. It was a fun event with a great new dynamic. But my alliance is a small, private affair. Just started with one of my friends who roped in a few friends, myself included. We've got 9 players. Two of which are super casual. My wife is a third casual player who was motivated into doing well because she wanted Scarlet Witch. You can guess how that turned out.

And yes, definitely agree the point values and progression values were too large. Maybe this would be best-solved by adjusting the event so that when the first member of an alliance joins, the system looks at the alliance's player total and checks off against a list to determine the values needed. For some alliances, it may not have been challenging enough. For ours, it was an impossibility.

AugyTek

Yup. I agree as well.

Since D3 is obviously catering to the top 1-3% of players like every other game on the planet seems to do, and the rest of us mere mortals that make up 70% or more of the game are but insignificant specs, maybe we should just take our money and playtime elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the Ultron event, (even though I was one of those players that got worthless 2 star dupes for all draws) but D3 seems to be catering to the high end players which makes me completely apathetic towards participating in future events. Special events are geared towards high end players in this top 1-3% meaning they are really the only ones getting stronger, and then in "normal" type events the rest of us get steamrolled as well because we simply cannot compete with those that have maxed 4 star characters. (Where do you even get that many 4 star covers? I am having a hell of a time even getting 3 star ones and usually when I do I get them for maxed out abilities!)

I know that it is impossible to make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time. But it is beyond my reasoning why you would create an event that only the top 100 alliances can get any decent rewards for?!? Sure, 2000 people, but if you have 100K players that is a mere 2% of the population!! Which means the strong get stronger and the rest of us just get to deal.

Now from a business point of view, if those 2% are major purchasers, then my argument is invalid. Money trumps all. But even with my character set, I rarely have to pay for another character slot, or want for ISO-8, and if these top 2% of players are getting most of the rewards, it stands to reason they aren't paying for anything at all! I'd love to see the income business model on this and where it has gone wrong. I have just as many characters as a high end player does, just not all 3 and 4 stars, but the cost of slots are the same. I have spent maybe 40 bucks total on this game in 6 months. Can't say I plan on spending any more in the near or distant future.

I wish D3 would screw their heads on straight and make a special event like Ultron but this time with division tiers so that the rest of us can actually have a snowballs chance in hell of completing the event. See my other post here: http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=28633&e=0

Oh and before you post, if you have a 3 or 4 star character above level 120, and you are having similar issues with events, my max is 2 star Daken at lvl 94. I can kill a great many things with this character and boosts with Ares and Moonstone for support. But once I come up against level 140ish NPC's or about the same for PVP, it doesn't matter the damage I put out, or the survival ability I have, it simply just isn't enough, the special abilities just do too much damage, which is not totally unexpected. (Or 4 waves of level 100 characters, that Deadpool final event needs to be scaled down and a few of the stops need to be put back in)

Through all pve and pvp events I have participated in, I think Doom is my highest 3 star at the moment and I can level him to 89 or so, and he still pales in damage and survival comparison to the 2 star Daken.

Back to the point, I don't think many players are going to be very pleased if they can look at the event, participate in the first few hours of it, and then get totally B*tch-slapped to the point of walking away. I know at this point the business model offers you special packs for a CHANCE to pull more powerful characters out.... Ya no, I am sorry, I just got spanked so hard that I don't feel much like gambling. If you could guarantee I would get 15 covers all for the same 4 star character, I might spend 20 bucks on that, and that is a big MIGHT.

There is simply too much difference between the average player and the high end addict players. It has been the downfall of online gaming since the early 90's, and most players end up walking away to find something more enjoyable and less frustrating. Then the high end players walk away too because competing with each other gets boring because the end result is stalemate. (immovable object and unstoppable force thing) Sales/subscriptions decline, company tries to do a major special event to bring players back, high end players come back and steamroll everyone else, the average players never come back again. Company declines further, puts out super stellar event, mostly only high end players come back, and only the best of the best get rewards. High end players leave, and that is the final death throes of the game. The process can happen several times with trying to get players to come back, but all they are is band-aid fixes for a gaping flesh wound.

What I don't understand is why these different companies repeat the same process over and over for the past 20 years instead of changing their plan before it happens, rather than try to patch it up after.

It seems to me that MPQ is in the beginning of average players walking away. With all the new characters being released lately, I think the beginning of the end is upon us. It's too bad because I really like the game and events, but really kind of sick of being knocked out of ranking by people that really don't need the covers because their characters are already maxed, or they simply want to try for 1st place.

I do hope the next event will be planned out a little bit better, rather than cater to a very small percentage of players in the game. But I guess Disney has to make money somehow eh?

firethorne

Just one more follow-up from the part 2 aftermath, the decision was made by higher level players to kick dead weight to the curb. We are no longer an alliance that is a friend to the one or two star transitioning players. Have a good roster or get lost. I'm not a fan, but it is a requirement of the environment D3 has created.

ErikPeter

Echoes here. I enjoyed the event at first. Pretty much, overall. But I feel the reward structure should have been bent toward realistic achievement.

• Our alliance is a casual, real-life acquaintances one. In fact, it stands as a testament to how many people (i.e. mostly paying customers) I brought into this game via word of mouth. It's almost full with about a dozen active players, up to about 14 during the event while we pushed for rewards. Two of us (myself included) reached 1M points progression in both runs (3 in the second with two more not far below.)
• During run #1, we didn't quite make it to Round 6 because of the network problems. But D3 gave everyone a SW so it seemed OK. I was very excited for Run #2, as Hulkbuster is the first 4* I've really been excited about (mostly because of his powers, but he looks cool too).
• During run #2 we pushed much harder to try and make that first cover, and by the last day it was clear there was just no shot at all (We ended up getting about 1/5 of the way through the round 6). How much did you jack up Ultron's HP, anyway? Playing for an hour, every 8 hours, without getting one of the 4* rewards, stung a bit. We all just gave up at the end once it had become mathematically impossible to achieve.
• I did get a Hulkbuster (Blue) drop on a token. Tokens were pretty plentiful, but due to luck or whatever that was just one of two usable covers I earned over the week. (Seeded 900th in a late Enemy of the State round, so there's no chance of more anytime soon. Another 4* singleton to add to the pile.)
  
• The different drones and wave composition was interesting, and the Ultron fights keep the board fresh and reward MPQ fundamentals very well. Dropping in one more drone type after round 4 might have mixed it up a bit after the grind started to get stale.
• Core Meltdown + 4.5x crit multiplier was just borked. The problem with CM is that crits often explode the board into more crits, which bring a lot of enemy tiles onto the board, which means another unpreventable Meltdown next turn. It's a feedback loop. If the damage output is intended to be that high (e.g. dropping powered-up Thor in one turn), at least prevent the Gunner from making new tiles while the Core Meltdown cascade is happening.

So overall, I think it was an ok event, and definitely a refreshing change of pace at first. I really considered getting a cover pack (and spent 50HP on each daily deal with no luck).

But next time I will first ask around about where Ultron's HP is set before putting in much effort.

• How many alliances have 20 active players? Couldn't the final rewards be set at, say, all 20 players getting 1M points (e.g. Give ultron 20M HP over all rounds)? That way, alliances like us that could only do 10M damage would still have made it to one of the covers and felt accomplished. Checking online, I see that's basically what run #1 was. I take it that the problem became that people couldn't keep grinding Ultron once level 8 was complete? Jacking up his HP to the point where everyone needs to do 2M points was not the right solution. Why not just leave the Ultron node open to grind--or, even better, because gathering 20 people who are willing and capable of 1M points each represents a significant amount of teamwork by itself, just give everyone in the alliance the progression rewards?