Discussion of losses and impact on player engagement

atomzed

The gaunlet is probably the hardest event. And this iteration is the hardest to date imho.

I have wiped out several times on many nodes. Every time I wiped out, I cursed at the MPQ AI. (Sometimes throwing my phone... Into my pillow.) Everytime I clear I felt a sense of achievement.

That made me wonder about the role of failure (or wiped out) in games. What kind of difficulty is the best.

I found this research article and found it very interesting. Beware it's a long article.
http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/fearoffailing

The TL:DR version is that some losses are essential for player engagement. If there are no failures, players lose interest quickly because there is no challenge.

The summary quote is here:
"I have argued that failure is central to player enjoyment of games. This is not that surprising, given conventional wisdom that a game should be balanced to match the skills of players. However, it is notable that failure is more than a contrast to winning – rather failure is central to the experience of depth in a game, to the experience of improving skills. The study supports the idea that growth, the experience of learning, of adjusting strategies, of trying something new, is a core attraction of video games. Hence the desire for game balance, losing some, winning some, is also a desire for variation in the challenge and difficulty of the game. Failure adds content."

There are other interesting parts of the article such as
1) Feeling slightly responsible for the failure is good for the player engagement. As they are able to learn to improve. If the game is too hard, the tendency is to drop the game entirely.
2) the players in a single player game (which MPQ qualifies in my opinion) "WILL NOT use ANY mechanic they do not need to use".

This got me thinking about the characteristics of MPQ.

The Bad:-
1) players often are unable to tell how they can do better.
When they lose it always seem to be due to cascades. As the player has very little influence about cascades, they will end up blaming the program for cheating.

2) When a player loses on the node, they inevitably have to replay again. When they loses a few times they will inevitably feel frustrated. Coupled with 1, they will then blame the program for cheating or stacking the odds against them.

3) there will always be a wall for all players, regardless of their strata. Even if you have the best roster, you end up hitting your head against the zombie hoarde. If you are a 3* roster you end up against the 4* wall. This means that eventually every player will feel frustrated.

The Good
4) As players tend to stick to what they know best, they won't explore interesting combinations.having the essential nodes and buffed character rotation, incentivise the players to try out. Some may feel that this is enforced, but I personally have felt like I learnt new combinations playing with different characters.

I feel that there needs to be some fundamental shift in terms of gameplay, to break out of the problems in 1,2,3. The Ultron pve sorta helps. The gauntlet also helps (since you only need to clear the node once).

So the question I have for the community is this, bearing in mind that (some) failures are essential for a game, which aspects of the game would you like to tweak to ensure player engagement?

Vhailorx

This a great topic of discussion!

I definitely think that player engagement would drop significantly if every match was a cake-walk. I remember the second run of Meet Rocket and Groot when the community scaling was out of what and every node was in the 40s. It was not very fun (though part of that was that everyone could be every node, so placing well meant optimum grinding back in the old 2:24 minute refresh era).

I also agree that cascades are the perfect subject for player conspiracy theories for two reasons: (1) lack of player control, as you cite atomzed, so the players feel no ownership of the loss, and (2) confirmation bias (everyone just feels awesome and/or lucky when they get a big cascade in their favor, but we all flock to the forum or out alliance message board to gripe when the AI gets the same cascade).

I think that setting a difficult level that both ensures an adequate level of challenge across all levels of the game is difficult, so constant tweaks are necessary and I think that's more or less what we see. Some scaling is good. constant 395s on evil gauntlet nodes, or the second run of the ultron event is probably bad.

Personally, Shield cooldowns are the bane of my MPQ existence. I absolutely hate having to schedule my life around those cooldown timers. Just soft cap PVP scores (i.e. diminishing returns over a particular score threshold) or limit the aggregate shield purchases. either one has the same effect as cooldowns, but lets me play when I have the time, which would be SO MUCH more fun.

Dudemon

This line of thinking is ****.

I have played the grandest boardgame of all time, World in Flames for over 5000 hours over the past 20+ years every Friday night with lots of different people. It takes us about 6 months to play 1 game. I have never lost.

It is VARIETY, not losing that holds interest.

That's why I like the different formats they seem to be trying in this game. Instead of getting one super team and kicking **** over and over the same way, they encourage the use of different teams and tactics, especially in PVE.

That helps keep things fresh.

tanis3303

My biggest issue with not just MPQ, but with all video games is when they make them difficult simply for the sake of being difficult. Fighting a level 300 Juggernaut with 22,000 health who is being fed red and green mana by goons every turn is not a challenge. It's not a puzzle you can figure out. There's no magical solution or team composition you can take in to even out the odds a bit. It's 8,000+ guaranteed damage and a cascade generating board shake every other turn, regardless if there's enough red and green AP for this to happen or not. Its not difficulty, its just cheap.

A good example from another game that got difficult correct is Dark Souls 2. The original game Demons Souls also got it right. Every time you die in those games, which will happen CONSTANTLY, it's your own fault. Whether you stepped off a ledge, tried to get greedy and get in one more hit instead of dodging/blocking, it was always squarely on you, and that death taught you an important lesson which you could use to overcome the battle the next time you attempted it. Dark Souls 1 on the other hand, the middle game in the souls series, was difficult for the sake of being difficult. Arenas with no chance for player mobility, necromancers in unreachable locations that constantly spawned skeletons to attack you, and a very restrictive and and unreliable health recovery system all added up to a very frustrating experience, and one which felt altogether out of your control. No matter how many times I died in Souls 1 or 3, I always came back for more, because yes - it was hella hard. But I knew I could do it. Dark Souls deaths felt cheap by comparison, and I found myself getting frustrated rather than motivated to complete the challenge.

I feel this way a lot when playing MPQ. The goon-feeder/damage character nodes are not challenging. They're set up to do the most damage as quickly as possible with little to no player control. The Ultron bomb gauntlet node was not challenging. I honestly don't know what to label that one, I'm just glad I had some Whales to take care of it. These kinds of battles are frustrating, luck dependent affairs that all but remove player skill from the equation. If D3 wants to put up a challenging node, I'd rather they get creative with it instead of just picking a high damage character and giving him/her free mana. Make a Hood/Loki/She Hulk node. You're not going to fire very many abilities in a node like that, making most teams unreliable. You'd basically have to win with match damage, making characters like Daken, Falcon, Blade or Iron Fist key to victory. I remember awhile back there was a 3x Deadpool match (simulator I think?) That node was a blast! Having to constantly swap targets and plan who (which?) Deadpool to attack when and with what was a cool challenge. The original Ultron bomb battle from his PvE event was awesome. There were tons of ways to solve that node, and it was another battle that really highlighted the "puzzle" aspect of the game. Lets have more stuff like that, that gives us an actual puzzle to figure out, rather than huge chunks of damage every couple turns that we have no hope of stopping.

ShadowX1984

Dudemon wrote:

This line of thinking is ****.

I have played the grandest boardgame of all time, World in Flames for over 5000 hours over the past 20+ years every Friday night with lots of different people. It takes us about 6 months to play 1 game. I have never lost.
.

What I wonder here is: who are you playing with that's been losing every 6 months for 20+ years?

Seriously though, whenever I see a discussion like this about "what players like" or "what players hate," I'm reminded of the way Magic approaches this issue. They acknowledge that there are several types of players who each play for different reasons and are happy with different results. Some players want to dominate the field every time, and will be happy with the same lineup as long as it works. Some players want variety and will tolerate losses if they're trying new abilities and combos. Some players are collectors and just want one of everything, even if some of them never get played. I feel like there's a search for "the right way" to play this game without understanding there are probably 3 or 4 right ways depending on who you talk to.

simonsez

It's not really "losing" that creates engagement, it's creating the sense that you will do better if you play it again. Take something like flappy bird... you die, you feel like you screwed up and won't make that same mistake next time, so you want to play again. And then you screw something else up. Repeat. If you died because the game randomly created gates that were impossible to navigate, you'd quickly say, "F this ****", and move on to a different game. As a current poll indicates, people don't feel they lose an MPQ match because they screwed up. It's almost always a bad board or bad cascades. Encountering bad luck doesn't create that same kind of engagement. It just pisses you off. So no, when it comes to MPQ, we're not engaged because of the losing... we're engaged in spite of it.

Unknown

Cracked.com did an excellent article on this:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-worst-ways-in-app-purchases-are-ruining-gaming/

If you have not read things on cracked before, you are missing out.

Unfortunately mobile games and now PC and console games are all going to the pay for play model. They are making millions of dollars a day/week/month off this model. It's not going anywhere. Unless EVERYONE on the planet stops paying for In-game purchases its only going to get worse.

Unknown

I agree with the sentiment and feel that's likely correct for a large portion of game players of all types. We play for the learning curve and the challenge, if they don't exist and everything is random chance, the interest dies out quickly.

But what really tanked my own "engagement" with Gauntlet was realizing the rewards I needed were unobtainable regardless of my skill level or my character levels.

The essential system makes sense when players are competing against each other in the other even, because it rewards player commitment with access to better rewards.

But for the gauntlet, that wasn't an issue, and so the reward track should have been focused on helping lower end players improve their rosters. Instead, 2 star covers were gated by 3 star essentials, and after doing the math and realizing I couldn't get a cover or token from the event, I decided to just give up and take a break.

It was a shame, because I did like the structure of the event.

And really true engagement has to strike multiple chords, which is a difficult feat. For a game like MPQ, you not only need to have something that entices the challenge focused players, something that entices those drawn by "Progression", and something to entice those that want "variety" as listed above. Plus, you could argue there's those that want to "collect" and work has to put in to keep them engaged as well. It's a fairly tricky subject, which is why so few games actually pull it off well.

Unknown

This thing this ignores is that losing don't improve player engagement unless it's relatively safe to lose: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/ ... t=20150601

People like hard games that don't overly punish them for failure. The health pack system is pretty bad because it heavily penalizes you anytime you lose. This means you're forced to seek out the easiest matches that will allow you to keep playing if you want to progress since you need to place to progress in this game.

It's an arbitrary mechanic that wasn't in prior PQ games and serves the primary purpose of creating a hyper competitive environment focused on artificial scarcity of rewards, rather than learning. I can't speak for everyone, but I generally enjoy games by challenge - which means learning the system and getting better, but in MPQ you're rewarded for doing the opposite. I suppose you could argue it teaches risk management and patience, which is arguably something many people need, but I think the game would still do that either without health packs or without the competitive elements that penalize experimentation.

Unknown

theHappyDance wrote:

This thing this ignores is that losing don't improve player engagement unless it's relatively safe to lose: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/ ... t=20150601

Very true

theHappyDance wrote:

It's an arbitrary mechanic that wasn't in prior PQ games and serves the primary purpose of creating a hyper competitive environment focused on artificial scarcity of rewards, rather than learning. I can't speak for everyone, but I generally enjoy games by challenge - which means learning the system and getting better, but in MPQ you're rewarded for doing the opposite. I suppose you could argue it teaches risk management and patience, which is arguably something many people need, but I think the game would still do that either without health packs or without the competitive elements that penalize experimentation.

This is true for PQ games; however all of the other match 3 games have gone to this format. It's stupid, frustrating, annoying and ridiculous.

Vhailorx

It's not just healthpacks, the entire PvP format punished players brutally for losses (you lose points, and healthpacks, AND risk getting hit by remaining unshielded to try another match).

Unknown

I would be fine with losing occasionally if it didn't mean using 3 health packs or waiting 6+ hours to use those characters again.

TxMoose

yes - I've learned I can beat level 240+ opponents through the gauntlet and other events (thanks, scaling), but especially for pvp, managing health packs requires me to avoid risks like that and thus I usually choose the lower team for few less points knowing I can probably survive 3 matches against lvl 140 guys before having to reach for a health pack or two rather than 1 match against lvl 200-240 guys. and since I have very limited options leveled high, that limits my team makeup to a handful of characters for each event, which makes health pack management even more important. it will be nice when I have several 166s to choose from, but I'm stuck here until I get some more top guys covered better.

lockness

theHappyDance wrote:

This thing this ignores is that losing don't improve player engagement unless it's relatively safe to lose: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/06/ ... t=20150601

People like hard games that don't overly punish them for failure. The health pack system is pretty bad because it heavily penalizes you anytime you lose. This means you're forced to seek out the easiest matches that will allow you to keep playing if you want to progress since you need to place to progress in this game.

Yes, I feel that way. Personally speaking, when I play with fully covered, boosted loaners in PVE I enjoy experimenting with strategy, knowing I could lose, but taking more risks to teach myself something about the characters I'm playing with and different strategies. I know the consequences of losing with loaners is I don't waste a health pack but enjoy trying different things. I'm always more cautious when I'm playing with my characters, knowing I have limited opportunity in one sitting to "get it right" and that is not enjoyable.

Unknown

Depending on the personality of the "loser" losses can help with learning, they can infuriate, motivate and even alienate. Losing, in effect has little to do keeping the interest of "people" in general. People generate their own desires and reasons for having them, they are quite varied and some may indeed include losing or winning.

There is an internal motivation that drives us to compete at anything we do and to continue competing. It's the natural order of things to be driven to be the best.

Putting that aside, competitors love to compete for whatever varied reason. Most would prefer a good competition over the actual win or loss, "a good fight" so to say. This type of reasoning, above all else, is why most competitors compete. They don't want beat their heads against an unbeatable opponent nor do they want to step on ants.

Therein lies the issue of MPQ. A good fight equals 3 health packs and can be considered a loss. No matter how exciting the victory was, you suffered mortal wounds and as such your experience for the next 2 1/2 hours has been limited at best.

With that in mind, unless you are simply destroying an enemy in this game... You are losing despite the word VICTORY being shown. That means most of us, most of the time, ARE losing yet we keep playing.

Maybe losing DOES keep us interested!! TINYKITTY!!!!

Staals

Is it not exactly the risk of losing those healthpacks and playing time that engages?

I believe many of the issues that atomzed identified as being bad are actually problems of the player. Realistically the AI will have more or less the exact same chances of getting a lucky board or getting lucky with cascades as the player. Whether the player sees bad luck as the AI cheating is up to him, it's not a fault of the game. I understand that it may seem unfair, but it is how the mechanic works for AI and player alike.

I do agree that some nodes in the Gauntlet depended on getting lucky with the board. However I did feel a sense of accomplishment by getting closer to Hulkbuster and especially after finally winning his cover. And I believe much of that sense was a result of being wiped out many times, and being pushed to revaluate my strategy and team composition.

So I guess for me MPQ is most engaging when it challenges me to get creative. The possibility of getting lucky, and with that the risk of getting unlucky, offers an extra dimension.

Unknown

I fail enough in PVP that I don't need overscaled PVE to cause me to fail

Pylgrim

Definitely agree. I prefer to play a game where I am challenged and experience some frustrating and even infuriating losses, than a game so easy that I quickly lose all interest in it. Sure, some losses are the result of complete and utter **** luck by the AI and winning was completely out of my control.... but as chance goes, those happen sporadically and some times I also get **** luck and obliterate the AI in the first two-three turns (last happened yesterday against a team of maxed X-Force, 4hor and Cap Marvel.)

And the very best feeling? When the AI gets that **** luck and you still manage to eke the win with good playing. It's like facing life itself trying to cheat you and still coming out victorious!

Unknown

I am actually quitting because of the scaling. When i see people with sub 100 finishing the gauntlet in the top positions it pisses me off. I am done. They punish you for putting time into the game. Last night went through 15 health packs on one node in the gauntlet marked as normal. The first time i died the it actually scaled up. Dissolving my guild tonight.

GothicKratos

The two biggest things that need attention in MPQ are; scaling in PvE and roster slots. Period.

[edit]: I'll flesh this out later, but League of Legends with the lady calls...and she doesn't wait.

Unknown

Staals wrote:

Is it not exactly the risk of losing those healthpacks and playing time that engages?

*snip*

In a word? No.

In fact, it's really starting to drive me away, especially when most other games (Marvel Future Fight to name just one) have a far less, uhm, "challenging" health system.

DBC