Was Ultron like this with rounds?

firethorne

I though on Ultron that once your alliance cleared a "round" everyone could start in again instantly on the next round. Am I remembering that wrong?

For Galactus, I played thorough all I could on round 1 (no Jean Grey in my roster). The alliance since made it to round 3, but I can't do anything. Everything but the Jean node is locked. Galactus has a countdown, ending in 5 hours or so.

DrStrange-616

The pins refreshed with each round in Ultron. It blows that they don't here. Although I think it will all be moot as he will be unbeatable by most players by round 5 or 6 anyway.

firethorne

DrStrange-616 wrote:

The pins refreshed with each round in Ultron. It blows that they don't here. Although I think it will all be moot as he will be unbeatable by most players by round 5 or 6 anyway.

Thanks. I thought so. Yeah, from what I'm hearing, we probably won't clear the higher matches. Which makes being locked out on some of the easy progression points along the way even more frustrating.

tmurf5387

DrStrange-616 wrote:

The pins refreshed with each round in Ultron. It blows that they don't here. Although I think it will all be moot as he will be unbeatable by most players by round 5 or 6 anyway.

The boosted characters dont matter. We HAVE to play board shakers because unless you can destroy his countdowns/cosmic tiles he generates 12 ap every turn after 2 turns. 3 turns later you're dead. You seriously have to beat him in 5 turns or less unless you get lucky. This is ridiculous. There is no strategy, just board shake and hope you get lucky. I can only imagine as we get higher levels of Galactus he generates more countdown and more cosmic tiles killing you even quicker.

DaveR4470

In Ultron, the pins refreshed on a clear AND every 8 hours on a "hidden" timer that you couldn't see. So, for example, you could:

(1) clear your pins
(2) get them refreshed when your alliance cleared an Ultron stage
(3) clear them again
(4) get them refreshed when you crossed the "hidden" 8-hr threshold
(5) clear them again

etc.

If this lock isn't a bug, it's significantly different, AND it extremelysmallkittys over anyone who played the event ASAP. I'm locked after clearing Galactus..... all on the early 8k-per-clear tier. Someone jumping in now in my alliance, when we're at stage 3, gets 12.k per clear for a moderately more difficult clear. So they get 73,000 points for the round, whereas I got 48,000 for the round. And then we're both locked out for 8 hours. Hooray! Glad I got microscopicallysizedkittied over for being first to jump in to help in this alliance-based event!!!!!

Unknown

firethorne wrote:

DrStrange-616 wrote:

The pins refreshed with each round in Ultron. It blows that they don't here. Although I think it will all be moot as he will be unbeatable by most players by round 5 or 6 anyway.

Thanks. I thought so. Yeah, from what I'm hearing, we probably won't clear the higher matches. Which makes being locked out on some of the easy progression points along the way even more frustrating.

The bolded is my current favorite part of all this. Couldn't play Stage 1 or Stage 2, and lost all those points.

Tried Stage 4, and boy, if this is how things go from here, I could REALLY use those lost points…

"This too shall pass [at least as far as the forum is concerned]…"

DBC

Vhailorx

I think this is because the ultron event had a main node and a sub-node, so each round had its own main node, and the round 1-8 nodes were in a permanent sub-node.

They might have changed the structure to avoid the situation last time where there weren't enough points available for everyone to score the maximum prog reward.

As an added, unpleasant, side-effect, this also means that there are less interested rewards in the galactus event. In Ultron, there three fixed cover rewards as a prog reward, and three more cover rewards in the sub-round nodes. So a total of six fixed cover awards were available in each run of the event. now there are only 3.

So overall, everything about this set of anniversary events has been a bit underwhelming to this point.

firethorne

Yep. My alliance just hit round four, yet I've had everything locked since I did my round 1 work. Progression rewards won't be easy. Which apparently isn't the worst thing since the anniversary token draw rates are horrible. Man, did they duck this thing up.

Phumade

As usual they did a great job of explaining the mechanics of the game.

If someone/anyone at D3 could do an even half assed job of writing up the flow of the game, we would all know how to play and plan for the event.

Instead of letting their employees do the internal testing. Why don't they invite a few elite level forum members to play for 24hr in advance and then write up an event summary?


In honestly, I understand that when your deeply immersed in a project, things look and sound obvious. Its only with some time and distance, can you objectively look at something and provide useful feedback.

D3 would gain so much from having a small outside group of beta testers, who could really test out an event and provide useful feed back to the developers and the community. The Galactus information thread was a joke, and provided no information on how the event should have been played.

Vhailorx

It is interesting that of all the problems demiurge had with the first Ultron runs, communication about the event before release was actually quite good.

there were definitely some bugs with ultron, but that's to be expected with rolling out a new event. Here, they gave out very minimal information ahead of time.

Phumade

Vhailorx wrote:

It is interesting that of all the problems demiurge had with the first Ultron runs, communication about the event before release was actually quite good.

there were definitely some bugs with ultron, but that's to be expected with rolling out a new event. Here, they gave out very minimal information ahead of time.

I agree with you, and I think the shows a real weakness in how the management process/ thinking.

This happens in the real world all the time. Managers are afraid to comment because they can't control the info spin and are afraid that info leaks box themselves into a corner.

I actually think the opposite is true. More transparency allows stakeholders to comment and add their feedback to the process. To be sure, you need savvy mangers who know how to communicate between stakeholders. I really thought this was Hi-Fi's role in the community. Release information and help steer the community by building consensus amongst the player base.

A strategic release of information along with a discussion with alliance commanders would have done alot to reduce confusion and allowed alliances to make intelligent decisions about how their members would choose to enjoy the event.

The most frustrating thing about Ulton's 2nd run, was that it was literally impossible to finish the final round, unless you how to grind the first 4 rounds correctly. It wasn't until round 5 appeared did alliances realize it was physically impossible to complete the event.

I have a sense that this structure is open ended and there is no limit to how many times Galactus can be hit, but why couldn't this be communicated at the start of the event.

Now, we have to rumor monger amongst ourselves until someone actually reaches final progression to determine if the event is capped or open ended.

DaveR4470

aesthetocyst wrote:

I'm not sure why they removed that sub node with the ladder. One less hoop to jump through .... maybe.

I think it's simply narrative. The "ladder" made sense with Ultron, because historically (in the comics, and in the film) he's continually upgrading himself to be stronger and stronger. So you're fighting the various incarnations of Ultron, each of which is more powerful than the last.

Galactus is Galactus. He doesn't change. He's a baaaad mofo no matter how you slice it. This "round" method at least narratively hides (somewhat) the logical incongruity of "wait, why is the same galactic being I crushed with Squirrel Girl and 3* Spidey last round suddenly demolishing my 4*s in a couple of turns?"