Why are we adjusting our day to accommodate a video game?

Taganov

This game is too balanced toward PVP. The only true PVE events in this game are the prologue, DDQ, and Gauntlet. So really, just DDQ. Introduce more of these events and everyone's happier. The hard cores get yet another event and the casuals get something they can play on their own terms as well.

Lidolas

My life got a lot better after I realized I don't have to be competitive to play and enjoy the game. I started playing casually about 8 months ago. I'd still join top100 alliances for new hero releases, but I would only play minimally in PvP and and other PvE events. DPDQ has been awesome for me. It only takes a small part of the day. I can use different teams every day to try out new things. And I can still get decent rewards. The game is designed to keep different types of people engaged, not just grinders. You just have to let go of the mentality that you need to stay competitive.

Unknown

don't ask questions...buy tokens....grind characters.....play the same pves and pvps......

GurlBYE

While I disagree with the pvp suggestion,the pve suggestion makes perfect sense.

Like people use dead pools daily as an example of a good way to get 3 stars, but never realize the lose/lose of needing that 3 star to get the 3 star.
PvE placement rewards aren't very pve at all. Making more progression based rewards would want to make people play more.

Pve is kinda just easy pvp right now in that you don't compete for progression awards, otherwise they are the same.

DaveR4470

I'm not. It's a game.

Heartburn

Malcrof wrote:

theHappyDance wrote:

... I'm just so damn tired of the game dictating how we play and trying to force things down our throats.

They do neither. You allow it to, that is on you, not them. They set the game up for everyone to play.

My wife plays extremely casually now (maybe 3 hours a week because of all the connection issues over the past few weeks) and yet because of her low play time, she usually ends up in brackets that never have over 150 players.. she has more carnage covers than i do, in 1/100 of the play time.

I play because i enjoy the game, the competition, the rewards.. if they change the rules, i change my playstyle. This is how it has always been with every online game ever.

Way back when playing Everquest, i helped run raids for my guild, my wife was in a casual chat guild. Guess what, she got what she wanted out of the game, not playing anywhere near as much as i did, and we both had a great time.. yes, i would play for 24 hours straight to clear a Plane etc.. but that was MY DECISION, not the games, not the game makers, not my wife's, MINE ALONE.

Don't blame anyone else because you are playing something that is obviously making you unhappy.

that is why I only play DDQ,if that. But it is pretty dense of you not to want to try to make something you like, that you feel needs improvement, better. That is why some people come to the forum to offer feedback and to offer input when possible. While I admire your constant flexibly with this game, some are not so limber and want to voice some concerns without having to hear " no one is forcing you to play " type of comments.

jimstarooney

theHappyDance wrote:

I've never been happy with these unnecessary competitive elements of an otherwise fun match-3, and I find I have less and less patience for needing to start an event / play at the exact right times with perfect or near perfect clears to continue progressing at anything more than a snail's pace.

A game should accommodate the schedule of its players, not the other way around. There's not any good reason why PvE and PvP can't just have progression rewards, and no hokey timetables, shield hopping required, defensive losses, or any of the other gimmicks that force you into adjusting your schedule to fit the dev's idea of how / when we should be playing, instead of just letting us play, and progress at our own pace through events.

Change the PvE format to ALL rewards being progression rewards, and do away with needing to wait for points to refresh, permanently disable out of control community / personal scaling, and suddenly the vast majority of problems people have with PvE are solved.

Get rid of defensive losses in PvP and move the cover rewards to ALL being progression rewards, and the rest of the format's problems that they keep tweaking to try to fix take care of themselves.

I started the Hunt late (yes had to actually do things like sleeping etc.. that normal people do) and now I'm way behind. I've never enjoyed this - having to play on the dev's timetable of what they think we should be playing instead of just letting us play at our own pace. PvP I've actually stopped playing completely.

Of course, they've consistently proven they want the game to be 1000x more grindy than any sane person would want, so maybe that's a bad idea, but that's a separate issue.

It's a bit disappointing that after all this time, they haven't gotten their act together and fixed the most basic parts of the game that would make it 1000x more enjoyable to everyone except professional MPQ'ers.

I dont plan my day round it, thats what shields are for;)

Lidolas

Heartburn wrote:

that is why I only play DDQ,if that. But it is pretty dense of you not to want to try to make something you like, that you feel needs improvement, better. That is why some people come to the forum to offer feedback and to offer input when possible. While I admire your constant flexibly with this game, some are not so limber and want to voice some concerns without having to hear " no one is forcing you to play " type of comments.

Mal was responding to a post that in no way could be considered useful input. It was just a complaint.

wymtime

IlDuderino wrote:

When I realised I was planning my day around it was when I realised I had an addiction

Addicts go to meetings. Stop going and enjoy the rush of MPQ.

At least it is 8 hr refresh times and people are not setting alarms for 3hrs to wake up in the middle of the night to play.

The biggest issue is time slices. Time slices are good for players because PVE is so end time important, but time slices are punishing if you don't get into a fresh bracket. It feels impossible to get into a fresh bracket if you don't start right away. Such a double edge sword. I like the competitive and alliance aspect, but I would be fine with more progression centric PVE's.

Unknown

The problem with 'play casually' is that there are other games that are better or at least they pretend you're getting more value out of your money (if you're not spending and playing casually, you'll never get anywhere in pretty much any game so you'd be indifferent here). The flipside of a game being a greedy P2W is that they obviously go out of their way to make you feel like the money you spent is worth a huge power gain, otherwise you'd never spend the money in the first place. Since MPQ doesn't really care about being P2W, it also doesn't particularly care to make sure the money you spent felt like it's worth it. Certainly if you spend a lot of money and play casually you can look forward to an exciting #200 finish in PvE because there's no way your money can possibly make up for missing a full refresh which should definitely happen if you're casual. It's probably a superior game compared to things in the same genre overall but the lack of content makes it not a clear cut winner since doing The Hunt for the 17th time again isn't even superficially exciting. MPQ is quite an interesting game for the hardcore, but the hardcore part of this game exceeds what can be reasonable even amongst most hardcore guys and then people get burnt out.

When I was out there ruining the rest of the server's day by sniping weeklong spawns in EQ1 you only have to knock out say 5 key mobs over a one week period because that's the respawn time. If the guild asked everyone to always log on during 6am PST, 3pm PST, and 11pm PST every day I'm sure people would've burned out a long time ago. Sure once in a while something respawned in 3am and you got people scrambling like crazy to get it downed, but that's a once-per-week mob and you need several things to go wrong on the RNG for it to even spawn at that time since obviously nobody is purposely trying to make a mob respawn at 3am of their dominant timezone. I've heard of guilds that had Qvic goats on lockdown and those respawned every 8 hours, but those are stuff you can do with 20 guys when you should have an active roster of 60 players for prime time, so it's not unreasonable to expect to rotate through a few shifts. Hardcore is fine when it's done right, like say it's 3am and your super hardcore guy noticed goat #1 is up and rallied the 15 insomniacs to down the goat and it's an awesome experience. But if you think I'd enjoy doing that every day at 3am you're nuts, and that's what MPQ requires to do well in PvE. Plenty of games asks for insane hours, but the difference between MPQ and another similarly hardcore game is that the other games usually you don't want to quit and MPQ it's a matter of you can't quit.

Ironically although I never liked PvP, it seems to be the more playable mode out of the two in the game based on what I know. If I enjoyed PvP I'd still be playing the game, since PvP doesn't demand that you must play at a certain time to even have a shot at finishing well. Even if we assume you cannot play in say the last 3 hours of the game it's not out of the question to get a top 10 finish if you did everything correctly prior to the last 3 hours, and since you can select the end time it's quite reasonable to assume that you should've selected a time where you are definitely able to play in the last 3 hours and then it's just a matter of how much playing/spending you're doing relative to all your competitors and there's definitely no scheduling issues here.

OnesOwnGrief

I'll get in contact with D3 and see if they'll let me do a "Playing Casually 101" seminar. You too can score 1k with ease in 10 easy steps.

Unknown

Is not the point of selectable end times so you DON'T plan your day around MPQ, and instead plan MPQ around your day? I mean, you are going to play anyway, and at this point you should know placement in PvE takes dedication and 8 hour play schedules.

Dauthi

theHappyDance wrote:

A game should accommodate the schedule of its players, not the other way around. There's not any good reason why PvE and PvP can't just have progression rewards, and no hokey timetables, shield hopping required, defensive losses, or any of the other gimmicks that force you into adjusting your schedule to fit the dev's idea of how / when we should be playing, instead of just letting us play, and progress at our own pace through events.

It's a bit disappointing that after all this time, they haven't gotten their act together and fixed the most basic parts of the game that would make it 1000x more enjoyable to everyone except professional MPQ'ers.

I think at a certain level everyone starts accommodating their game over life. Name any competitive game and I can tell you how it would happen. A few examples: to be competitive in MMORPGs you have to join an active guild, which means participating in scheduled raids. It's the same for MOBA's, you have to set aside time to practice with your team.

If you think dropping this game is a good idea, then you should drop all games because you can't moderate your enthusiasm to play a game. In the end it is about moderation if you are truly concerned, and to moderate means you can't be competitive at any game.

Lee T

Lerysh wrote:

Is not the point of selectable end times so you DON'T plan your day around MPQ, and instead plan MPQ around your day? I mean, you are going to play anyway, and at this point you should know placement in PvE takes dedication and 8 hour play schedules.

There's unfortunately not enough time slices available. In my timezone only one time slice ends at a time where I'm not either at work or sleeping. I'll agree with you the day we have 24 time slices.

I wish we had a non time based refresh. There are other ways to handle diminishing returns than hooking your game to a clock.

Unknown

The 8 hour refresh makes the timing requirement of this game way more hardcore than most games. Usually for a hardcore game you'd expect to play around prime time, generally evening of your time zone but could be something else if the game has special rules (like respawn timers). Usually being able to hit 3-5 hours around the prime time of the game is sufficient to do well, and while there are always distortion to the established norm, it's generally understood such distortion will be temporary. For example I think in the guilds that try to race for world first in WoW they ask everyone to take a 3 week vacation from work when a new raiding zone is out. You can be sure this isn't what's happening when the content is on farm and people actually return to their normal lives at that point. These short bursts of insanity likely has some positive value even though you do have some risk of burnout, because it's indeed pretty cool to beat some stuff in a marathon all nighter... as long as you're not doing it every night.

In MPQ, the 'prime time' of this game, assuming a 1D sub, is bracket end time, end time minus 3 hours, end time minus 8 hours, and end time minus 16 hours. You've to hit the sub at all these times or at least relatively close to it. Being able to select the end time means you should be able to make sure end time + end time minus 3 hours is favorable to you, but there's no guaranteed end time minus 8/16 hours is going to be good for you. In MPQ there are 4 distinct times per day you got to play, while in other games usually the smallest unit of time for required consistent gameplay is 24 hours, e.g. 'dailys'. It can be in weeks (raids) or even a longer period (qualifying rounds for big events can take months). In generaly, consistent gameplay, even consistently bad gameplay, is hard to get out of players. That's why the guy who stands in fire that always show up is generally more valuable than the MMORPG all-star with a weird schedule. You'll be surprised how many super hardcore guy that can run circles around anybody you know in MMORPG ends up skimping out on a daily reputation grind, because it's mindnumbingly boring to do it every day. And this is stuff you can do while facerolling once a day, compared to MPQ where you got to do it 4 times a day and nothing in MPQ beyond the trivial PvE nodes can possibly be facerolled. The workload in MPQ PvE is basically 4 times that of anything comparable and it's much harder too, so it's no surprise people get burned out.

Unknown

Lee T wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Is not the point of selectable end times so you DON'T plan your day around MPQ, and instead plan MPQ around your day? I mean, you are going to play anyway, and at this point you should know placement in PvE takes dedication and 8 hour play schedules.

There's unfortunately not enough time slices available. In my timezone only one time slice ends at a time where I'm not either at work or sleeping. I'll agree with you the day we have 24 time slices.

I wish we had a non time based refresh. There are other ways to handle diminishing returns than hooking your game to a clock.

And by choosing that one slice you've planned MPQ around your life instead of life around MPQ if you had no choices or choose a different time and had to make sacrifices.

If you are sacrificing free time to the game that is a whole other thing, and not exactly "adjusting our day to accommodate a video game". I mean, it's much better than the dark times before time slices where only east coast USA PvE players stood a chance at top 10.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

theHappyDance wrote:

A game should accommodate the schedule of its players, not the other way around. There's not any good reason why PvE and PvP can't just have progression rewards, and no hokey timetables, shield hopping required, defensive losses, or any of the other gimmicks that force you into adjusting your schedule to fit the dev's idea of how / when we should be playing, instead of just letting us play, and progress at our own pace through events.

It's a bit disappointing that after all this time, they haven't gotten their act together and fixed the most basic parts of the game that would make it 1000x more enjoyable to everyone except professional MPQ'ers.

I think at a certain level everyone starts accommodating their game over life. Name any competitive game and I can tell you how it would happen. A few examples: to be competitive in MMORPGs you have to join an active guild, which means participating in scheduled raids. It's the same for MOBA's, you have to set aside time to practice with your team.

If you think dropping this game is a good idea, then you should drop all games because you can't moderate your enthusiasm to play a game. In the end it is about moderation if you are truly concerned, and to moderate means you can't be competitive at any game.

I wouldn't go that far, but I will say it's important to know your limits

Dauthi

Phantron wrote:

The workload in MPQ PvE is basically 4 times that of anything comparable and it's much harder too, so it's no surprise people get burned out.

There are lots of other factors too though. When you are doing raids that time is locked in, you only get a break scheduled by the raid leader and everyone takes it together. This is a problem for folks like me specifically who have a family to take care of. With MPQ you can play a few battles, grab something to eat while healthpacks regen, and play a few more. When I was doing raids I couldn't stop to sort out problems the kids are having, while MPQ is much more accommodating.

Raid practice is also ridiculously boring, and I would say it easily compares to the boring grind of MPQ. You are just training everyone to do the same thing over and over until they do what it is they are supposed to do perfectly.

In any case, my point is hitting top 50 in PVE is pretty hardcore, and if you are that dedicated to any other game you are going to have to plan your life around it as well. There will be variances, positives and negatives, but in the end playing competitively always has sacrifice.

Unknown

Who is this "we" to whom you refer?

Unknown

Was going to post earlier, but I'm trying to stay away from the forum these days. lol

Not sure who "we" is, but I know a bunch of folks who aren't.

I lucked into a patient alliance largely populated by semi-retired vets that takes what the members give, which for me is boiling down to DDQ for the most part these days, with enough dabbling to throw some support to the alliance rewards.

PvP is a joke for me with my roster. I get hit after my first match, and I don't have the strength to fight back (yet). Add in the fluctuating point totals, growing necessity of shields, mostly unwanted or inaccessible rewards at my level of ability, and the overall lack of fun, and that pretty much does it for PvP.

PvE was fun for a month or two until I realized I already have a full-time job. Once I realized how much I was investing for one single card, well, yeah.

That leaves DDQ, at least until it gets ruined.

DBC