dying over and over isn't fun

PeterGibbons316

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

Has anyone done the math on the progressions? Is it even possible to get the legendary token being locked out every 8 hours? At least in standard PvE events you can play sub-optimally whenever you want. This basically forces you to quit whatever you are doing every 8 hours so you can try again.

So I did the math.......and it's next to impossible.

I've been playing as optimally as the servers have allowed and I'm at 300k with 8 more potential clears. Currently in round 6 with 24k health is 144k/clear for this clear and the next before we move on to round 7 where we can get 168k/clear for 3 clears before moving on to round 8 where we get 192k for the final 3 clears. That assumes I can beat him every fight. I'm using what I believe to be the best possible team (ProfX 220, SWitch 166, GSBW 166) and am still only winning 5/6 fights, and my understanding is that it gets even harder. If I win 4/6 of my fights and can clear every 8 hours I can hit the final progression. If I lose 2 additional fights, I can't hit it. If it takes me longer than an hour to do a clear, I can't hit it. If I miss a clear, I can't hit it. If my alliance kills Galactus before my final clear, I can't hit it.

I get that legendary tokens and final progressions are supposed to be challenging to get, but this is just absurd.

SnowcaTT

Dying over and over -could- be fun. Imagine if there were no subs on Galactus - and therefore no cooldowns.

Here is this epic big baddie, basically impossible to beat. It's going to take everyone throwing their all at it, over and over!

You take everyone against him - your entire roster. Build your teams however you think will work best! Run everyone until your entire roster is dead! Promotes different team strategies and roster diversity! Your "wait" time isn't sub cooldown, but health regen time!

That would be thematic, timed at your pace, and pretty fun.

Or we could play it as presented.....

Warbringa

GuntherBlobel wrote:

I'd say that the Galactus event overall is better than Ultron, but I agree with OP that the difficulty ramp-up is too extreme.

Here are some things that the Devs should consider:
1) Most people don't get to play Rounds 1-3, because Galactus has such low health in early rounds. Just a few Alliance members are needed to complete this, so most users don't actually experience the "training" process that gets them ready and willing to take the more difficult Rounds like 4 and 5. Please, wait until Round 3 or 4 to increase the difficulty. This is my single biggest critique.
2) After Ultron, I suggested making the Boss fights increasingly more difficult as a solution to the grind of Ultron's ridiculous health meter. I think this is a good solution, but it looks like they increased the difficulty without making a proportional decrease to Galactus' health. I don't care if Galactus beats me, as long as I can see the impact of my efforts on the health meter. By Round 5, I can't tell that I made a difference, particularly if I die trying. Round 4 Health seemed reasonable.
3) No one understands why 4* characters are so difficult to Roster. Ultron made Scarlet Witch fairly easy to Roster, while HB was nearly impossible. In the end, many people just want to add a character to their collection (and buy a slot). Do players realize that the vast majority of players they are not intended to get a single 4* Cyclops cover (because of his rarity)? I don't think they do...

Here's what I like:
1) Many teams work against Galactus. Aside from maybe OBW, there's no one hero that is as critical as Captain America was vs. Ultron. I like that. It keeps it fresh. I keep trying new solutions.
2) The 8 hr. lock out is a feature (not a bug) that reduces grind and make Score Targets more predictable. I don't understand why anyone is complaining about this.

Overall, Galactus is an improvement over Ultron... but the difficulty increases were not well tested for player experience.

I disagree. Ultron was more grindy yes, but allowed more strategy. It allowed your choices of matching tiles (you know, the premise of the game) to really matter. This event is all about complete luck once you get to round 3/4 and above. Does the board allow you to get a couple of quick match 5's? If so you have a chance, if not you are dead. Doesn't matter who is on your team. That to me, is way worse than the Ultron event. It is laziness and poor planning by making last minute changes that they didn't test adequately.

Chief270

2 days 12 hours. Ends at 11pm on sunday night(central time)
11am - Friday
7pm - Friday
3am - Saturday
11am - Saturday
7pm - Satuday
3am - Sunday
11am - Sunday
7pm - Sunday (only a 4 hour window)

That's 8 more refreshes. At the non-optimal 5 battles per refresh that is 40 Gala battles.

Round 6 health is 24320. Which will creep up as the rounds progress(although the battles will be tougher too). If this stayed constant.... 24320 x 40 = 972,800. Which would be enough to put myself over the 1.25 million mark(1.262). I'll be able to sneak in probably a 6th battle on all but two of those refreshes.. So gives me a little wiggle room(another 146k if we don't make it to round 7). But every battle is important.

The level increase will help only if I can actually defeat galactus. So while there are more points to be had, there's more chance for me to miss out on points as well.

Chief270

Do the essential nodes count against Gala health?

AaronTheLuigi

Chief270 wrote:

Do the essential nodes count against Gala health?

They contribute a small amount to personal progression (i.e. 1600 points in Round 4) but I don't believe it hurts Galactus.

So once you get to round 5+ the essentals are you're best bet for pushing your progressions

GuntherBlobel

Warbringa wrote:

GuntherBlobel wrote:

I'd say that the Galactus event overall is better than Ultron, but I agree with OP that the difficulty ramp-up is too extreme.

Here are some things that the Devs should consider:
1) Most people don't get to play Rounds 1-3, because Galactus has such low health in early rounds. Just a few Alliance members are needed to complete this, so most users don't actually experience the "training" process that gets them ready and willing to take the more difficult Rounds like 4 and 5. Please, wait until Round 3 or 4 to increase the difficulty. This is my single biggest critique.
2) After Ultron, I suggested making the Boss fights increasingly more difficult as a solution to the grind of Ultron's ridiculous health meter. I think this is a good solution, but it looks like they increased the difficulty without making a proportional decrease to Galactus' health. I don't care if Galactus beats me, as long as I can see the impact of my efforts on the health meter. By Round 5, I can't tell that I made a difference, particularly if I die trying. Round 4 Health seemed reasonable.
3) No one understands why 4* characters are so difficult to Roster. Ultron made Scarlet Witch fairly easy to Roster, while HB was nearly impossible. In the end, many people just want to add a character to their collection (and buy a slot). Do players realize that the vast majority of players they are not intended to get a single 4* Cyclops cover (because of his rarity)? I don't think they do...

Here's what I like:
1) Many teams work against Galactus. Aside from maybe OBW, there's no one hero that is as critical as Captain America was vs. Ultron. I like that. It keeps it fresh. I keep trying new solutions.
2) The 8 hr. lock out is a feature (not a bug) that reduces grind and make Score Targets more predictable. I don't understand why anyone is complaining about this.

Overall, Galactus is an improvement over Ultron... but the difficulty increases were not well tested for player experience.

I disagree. Ultron was more grindy yes, but allowed more strategy. It allowed your choices of matching tiles (you know, the premise of the game) to really matter. This event is all about complete luck once you get to round 3/4 and above. Does the board allow you to get a couple of quick match 5's? If so you have a chance, if not you are dead. Doesn't matter who is on your team. That to me, is way worse than the Ultron event. It is laziness and poor planning by making last minute changes that they didn't test adequately.

We probably do agree. I was being generous when I said that it was "not well tested." Words can not describe how poorly tested the later rounds of Galactus are. I'm on Round 5 now and there is no room for error / unmatchable tiles. I enjoyed the Galactus mini-game in Round 3, where there was some time to scan the board and plan a route of attack.

However, the best strategy by Round 5 is boost your cheapest, most deadly power, find a match and hit Galactus once. I agree with everyone that this is not fun and I'm all about the matching game over the rewards. Round 5 Galactus does not pass the requirements of a game in my book. This is a task.

Round 5 is seriously messed up. Too bad many people didn't even see the playable version (Rounds 1 - 4) because they were busy for the first 8 hours.

Demiurge did learn some things from Ultron (I like some of the changes), but sadly, they appear to still have a lot to learn about game design. Either that, or someone made a last minute change to the Event and Round 5 onward is all one big gigantic typo.

Seltsam

SnowcaTT wrote:

Dying over and over -could- be fun. Imagine if there were no subs on Galactus - and therefore no cooldowns.

Here is this epic big baddie, basically impossible to beat. It's going to take everyone throwing their all at it, over and over!

You take everyone against him - your entire roster. Build your teams however you think will work best! Run everyone until your entire roster is dead! Promotes different team strategies and roster diversity! Your "wait" time isn't sub cooldown, but health regen time!

That would be thematic, timed at your pace, and pretty fun.

Or we could play it as presented.....

This is what I hoped the event would be like. The nodes to clear before unlocking Galactus is a horrible game mechanic.

JackTenrec

I think I might be okay with this event with either of the following tweaks: 1) less AP given to Galactus per consume 2) Galactus downs a random character rather than everyone.

Thankfully, I have all of the essentials, so at least I can get a full set of attempts in, but my success rate is currently at 40%, and that's just at level 3 (my alliance knocked out level 1 and 2 before I got home from work). I'm pretty sure as soon as Galactus gains more health, I'm going to be at 0% unless the board grants me a match-5 and multiple cascades on move 1.

DaveR4470

Building on SnowcaTT's idea.... What if this were the event?

- Galactus has some ridiculous level of health that makes him almost unkillable. Say, 1,000,000 hp or something.
- There is only one pin.
- Upon entering the pin, you pick three of your roster characters.
- Galactus has basically the same mechanics, but with his AP generation toned down to about an average 8-turn period between instakills
- When Galactus insta-kills your team... the AI picks three new characters randomly from your roster.
- Rinse lather repeat until you're out of characters.
- However much damage you did -- that's your point total.
- And -- key factor -- ALL your characters revert to their health status prior to starting the battle.
- Node is available once every 8 hours, no exceptions.

Wouldn't that be playable and sorta fun?

PeterGibbons316

Alright, so I'm on round 6 now and it's pretty ridiculous. Every match is over in 5 rounds. Either I win, or Galactus does.

I'm using Charlie's Angels: , boosting purple, green, and all*.

Turn 1: If the board has a match-5 for you your chances of winning increase 10-fold, brings purple AP up to at least 8, so only one more purple match is needed. If no match 5, look for a place to set one up. If not possible match purple. If no purple matches....might as well retreat and save your health packs. Seriously. Potential purple AP count: 7.
Galactus 1: Three 2-turn CD tiles spawn
Turn 2: SWitch CD tile out and at 3. Need to find a way to get rid of at least one CD tiles, and make a purple match, or set up a 2 CD match for next turn. Potential purple AP count: 10.
Galactus 2: Three more 2-turn CD tiles spawn, previous three tiles tick to 1.
Turn 3: SWitch CD ticks to 2. Need to get rid of 2 CD tiles, and make a purple match. Potential purple AP count: 13.
Galactus 3: Three more CD tiles, previous 3 tick to 1, first 3 activate generating 4 cosmic tiles each.
Turn 4: SWitch CD ticks to 1. If you have collected purple AP every round you can fire off your Deceptive Tactics and likely win, if not you better hope you took out at least 2 of those CD tiles because ending the turn with 8 cosmic tiles on the board is game over.
Galactus 4: Galactus eats all cosmic tiles generating 4 AP each. Three more CD tiles, previous 3 tick to 1, first 3 activate generating 4 cosmic tiles each. If there were 8 or more cosmic tiles on the board, or if destroying the cosmic tiles created a cascade with some black matches he will hit 30 AP and do 1,000,000 damage to your team.
Turn 5: SWitch CD activates. Usually this will generate enough AP for you to fire your Deceptive Tactics, if not.....you lose.

Every single battle I've had in round 6 has been exactly like this. My most infuriating one was where I got to turn 5, but my SWitch tile was buried in the corner. It went off and generated no AP so I was stuck with 10 AP praying for a miracle match-5 cascade from the top on my final match.

*You could probably get away with boosting only purple as even starting with 4 you still need 3 matches to use GSBW. I like starting with 4 in case I get a match 4 that can generate an extra purple requiring only one more purple match. In my 6 matches thus far it hasn't made a difference though.

loroku

Just wait for stage 7!

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

1) Most people don't get to play Rounds 1-3, because Galactus has such low health in early rounds. Just a few Alliance members are needed to complete this, so most users don't actually experience the "training" process that gets them ready and willing to take the more difficult Rounds like 4 and 5. Please, wait until Round 3 or 4 to increase the difficulty. This is my single biggest critique.

This explains alot - I came home after work and started playing this event - after 5p EST - I am 1-for-10 so far against him - but just now realized that my alliance was already in Round 3 when I started - I didn't get the easier first 2 rounds to play...

That said, I'm wasting nothing on this event - another horrible cash grab by D3 - the only win I had was because of a favorable draw of match-5's with OBW, HT and CMags - every other time I have tried I am done by the sixth turn - I have NO CHANCE to remove his tiles so the outcome is inevitable - I will not spend on HP or health packs or waste boosts for this event

Another in the long line of failures for a game I have "for some unknown reason" spent hundreds on. They continue to reinforce that they have no interest is customer loyalty...

TheOncomingStorm

I think mpq did a lot of things right for the anniversary.

Everyone knew (should have known) there was going to be server issues. By everyone, I mean players.

The token cover odds aren't actually bad. The odds of getting a specific cover are bad, but I've been saying that for months now. The odds of getting 3*+ is really good.

Also, dino has the highest rate because you only have a week to get him before he's extinct from packs again. Overall, I thought this showed good judgment on mpq ' s part.

I could go on, but imo none of this matters. I don't evaluate things from a business or game design perspective. I'm just a simple player. There's only one question that matters to me: Is this fun? No.

The problem is that there was no gradual slope of difficulty for the galactus pve. Unfortunately, such a small detail (whether intentional or not) ruined much of the great work that went into this pve.

So great rewards, new boss abilities, double iso, a mechanic that makes player grinding unnecessary, etc., all things that should have really made this anniversary epic, have been marginalized. A game can have the best features and characters ever; however, the most question will always be is that game fun?

OneLastGambit

The funniest part of this event is that the only people who will even see round 8 are the hackers with sandboxed accounts...and I bet even they have trouble with it and hate the event

Vhailorx

Petergibbons is right, all matches in round 6 end by the 611th turn or earlier.

That being the case, what is demiurge's intended strategy for players? What team combos can reliably deal 20k+ damage in 4 or 5 turns? What about rounds 7 and 8 when galactus has even more health and will reliably win even faster?

After the difficulty debacle of the imhb run of ultron, why would they turn up the difficulty even more?

And I disagree with you storm about the rewards. These event pack tokens are meh (like all tokens), and the anniversary tokens are arguably worse than regular heroics. Even worse, the obvious comparisons are to last year's anniversary tokens and even the ultron prize packs, both of which were significantly better.

OneLastGambit

Vhailorx wrote:

Petergibbons is right, all matches in round 6 end by the 611th turn or earlier.

That being the case, what is demiurge's intended strategy for players? What team combos can reliably deal 20k+ damage in 4 or 5 turns? What about rounds 7 and 8 when galactus has even more health and will reliably win even faster?

After the difficulty debacle of the imhb run of ultron, why would they turn up the difficulty even more?

And I disagree with you storm about the rewards. These event pack tokens are meh (like all tokens), and the anniversary tokens are arguably worse than regular heroics. Even worse, the obvious comparisons are to last year's anniversary tokens and even the ultron prize packs, both of which were significantly better.

The ONLY thing I've gotten from tokens is Ms Marvel and MHawkeye, I've opened 11 now which means if I'd bought a 10 pack (thank god I'm FTP) I would've completely wasted my money, which only strengthens my decision to not pay anything. Not the correct business model, if they want my money they should make it worth my while.

EDIT: I realised I was near the threshold for another "awesome anniversary token" and did a P2P matcg to get it and I'm rewarded with..... MHAWKEYE! Thats the 5th one today!

Dayv

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

I think mpq did a lot of things right for the anniversary.

Everyone knew (should have known) there was going to be server issues. By everyone, I mean players.

The token cover odds aren't actually bad. The odds of getting a specific cover are bad, but I've been saying that for months now. The odds of getting 3*+ is really good.

The odds of getting a 2* are increased over those in heroic tokens. If the 3* odds are good (I haven't checked, but I doubt it), it's only by making 4* even worse.

cyineedsn

DayvBang wrote:

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

I think mpq did a lot of things right for the anniversary.

Everyone knew (should have known) there was going to be server issues. By everyone, I mean players.

The token cover odds aren't actually bad. The odds of getting a specific cover are bad, but I've been saying that for months now. The odds of getting 3*+ is really good.

The odds of getting a 2* are increased over those in heroic tokens. If the 3* odds are good (I haven't checked, but I doubt it), it's only by making 4* even worse.

The odds for a 3*+ are more or less the same as heroics, plus a few extra prizes like DD or some iso and HP, although the odds for those extra prizes seems to have been taken from the 3* and 4* chances, so basically....the same.

I think more or less what everyone was hoping/expecting were tokens with better odds for 3*+. How much better is debatable, but I think everyone expected something better. If there was ever a time to do that it would have been now during the anniversary, but...I guess not

loroku

DayvBang wrote:

The odds of getting a 2* are increased over those in heroic tokens. If the 3* odds are good (I haven't checked, but I doubt it), it's only by making 4* even worse.

The only thing you need to know about tokens is that there is a 74.1% chance of getting a 2*.

That means there's just under a 26% chance of getting something decent.

Last year, that number was closer to 40%.

Also, Devil Dino has a 3% chance. Last year it was 10%.


Ok, just for fun, I looked and there is a 20% chance of getting a 3* character.

That means a 2.9% chance of getting a non-Dino 4* character or ISO/HP. Given that the ISO rewards are terrible and they have a .2 and .6% chance, that leaves a 2.1% chance of a 4* or HP.

So really it's like:

2% - something awesome
3% - DD
20% - 3*
75% - ****