On Galactus run 1 (Game feel vs Ultron)

IceIX
IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,308 Site Admin
edited October 2015 in MPQ General Discussion
Hey all,

Wanted to share a few things about how Galactus works and what we're expecting versus what we're seeing.

To start, it seems like a lot of people are on a basic disconnect here, looking at the boss battle similar to how Ultron ran in terms of how things work. Meaning that Ultron should be going down pretty regularly. He's powerful, but his real power lies in the fact that killing his body doesn't stop him. You need to crush every one of his drones and main bodies to win. So winning rounds is a pretty regular occurrence. Game-wise, what this means is that players won fairly easily against Ultron and took their lumps against the drones. The stopping timer there was health packs based on when the drones finally wore you down. What this also meant is that the higher end Alliances would chew through the entire Event in about 12 hours and let it kinda sit for 3 days.

Galactus is different. The "minion" fights against the villains are relatively simple. They're there as minor hazards but relatively easily winnable. Galactus on the other hand is a massive threat. He's not going to be stopped by gnats. Iron Fist punching him in the toe isn't very painful. So he gets bored and swats them away. In game terms, this means that players are going to be beaten. Winning a round against Galactus is an achievement. You're supposed to lose. Every time you do, you're still chipping away at his life. It's an exercise in damage in aggregate. Over the 3.5 days, hitting him over and over to finally bring down the big bad is somewhat slow, but certainly effective.

Overall, most of the higher end Alliances are in Round 6 or knocking on the door to Round 7. Which is actually slightly faster than we were expecting people to get just based on the math. So everyone's doing pretty darned well in terms of progression. There are some teams rockin' the Winfinite, other teams that are pushing through with some interesting strategies (who woulda thought OBW would be a rock star against Galactus?). Not many Alliances are getting anywhere near full clears. Which is actually intended. You're supposed to lose your Health Packs on Galactus, rather than against the minions like on Ultron. It's also why we changed up the play method for this round too so that it's not just a flip flop between Ultron and minions till you win. There's a set number of times you can hit Galactus before you need to take a break to let minions refresh. That break means that you have plenty of times for Galactus drained Packs to refresh while you can go in and get some Black Vortex in. Or play Simulator (up soon). Or get your Devil Dino on when that starts up. It's a different design than the rush of Ultron where that was pretty much all players did while it was open.

Long story short, you all are doing really well against Galactus. Yes, the gameplay is different. I'm sure most of you aren't used to going into a battle with the idea that you may well lose. But given that you're still pulling out wins with pretty strong regularity, I don't see any reason this wouldn't continue into Rounds 7 and 8, and on to Cyclops awesomeness.

At the outset, going into the boss battle, you're looking at winning like normal. After all, it works elsewhere in the game, and it worked against Ultron. So suddenly getting rocked by Galactus is a shock. Keep at it. If things are really going to go poorly, we'll look at doing refresh timer changes and the like that we can do server-side as a quicker band aid style fix for run 1. After that, we'll figure out what we want to do for difficulty on run 2 (and any other runs that we do in the future, of course).
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Comments

  • brisashi
    brisashi Posts: 418 Mover and Shaker
    Could you comment on the countdown tiles in the boss event? They drop as 3-turn tiles but go down to 2- turn tiles immediately. No other countdown tiles work this way. Is this an intended mechanic?
  • IceIX
    IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,308 Site Admin
    brisashi wrote:
    Could you comment on the countdown tiles in the boss event? They drop as 3-turn tiles but go down to 2- turn tiles immediately. No other countdown tiles work this way. Is this an intended mechanic?
    Hmm? The description for the Countdown tiles list them as 3 2-turn Countdown tiles. Maybe getting tripped up by the adjacent numbers in the description?
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    Ok so this event is an intended FU to your players, message received, wallet closed, perhaps uninstalling
  • slidecage
    slidecage Posts: 2,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    What this also meant is that the higher end Alliances would chew through the entire Event in about 12 hours and let it kinda sit for 3 days.



    Not sure how you can even say that when a VERY FEW Allainces made it though the 2nd running of ultron and i highly doubt anyone beat all 8 stages in 12 hours . Love to see any proof of tons of high end teams beating all 8 stages in 12 hours
  • FaustianDeal
    FaustianDeal Posts: 760 Critical Contributor
    Off topic - but since this thread is getting notice - any word in Iceman in token packs? I thought he was coming for anniversary week?
  • reckless442
    reckless442 Posts: 532 Critical Contributor
    I'm not playing Galactus, but I've heard enough complaints that I thought I would comment on this post.

    If the plan was for teams to lose to Galactus, why not say that upfront, instead of saying the event is "like Ultron." Moreover, if defeating Galactus is such an achievement, the prize for beating him should be something awesome -- like a legendary token. After all, if beating Galactus is so difficult, it should be a legendary achievement. Better prizes for the minion battles would go a long way toward taking the sting out of the constant losses on the boss node.
  • GurlBYE
    GurlBYE Posts: 1,218 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited October 2015
    Totally not trying to be that guy but when people bring up certain characters who shouldn't be certain star levels (antman 4 star, jean grey 4, OML 5) using canon power levels is a bit weak of an answer.

    And if the difficulty is correct, any reason the rewards are, what they are?
    The lock outs?
    The lack of other events during those 8 hour blocks of silence.
  • slidecage
    slidecage Posts: 2,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited October 2015
    Keep at it. If things are really going to go poorly, we'll look at doing refresh timer changes and the like that we can do server-side as a quicker band aid style fix for run 1. After that, we'll figure out what we want to do for difficulty on run 2 (and any other runs that we do in the future, of course)


    UMMM you just said ealier that we are ALL doing so well so why would you have to change it and that we are now going to poorly. Sounds like your talking out of both side s of your mouth



    . Or play Simulator (up soon)

    woo a pve that you just ran not even 2 weeks ago Many skipped.. Man i hope the higher ups love how you are killing their game and how can you say

    UP SOON it does not show up for another 72 HOURS
  • FaustianDeal
    FaustianDeal Posts: 760 Critical Contributor
    IceIX wrote:
    brisashi wrote:
    Could you comment on the countdown tiles in the boss event? They drop as 3-turn tiles but go down to 2- turn tiles immediately. No other countdown tiles work this way. Is this an intended mechanic?
    Hmm? The description for the Countdown tiles list them as 3 2-turn Countdown tiles. Maybe getting tripped up by the adjacent numbers in the description?

    His blue for the round 7 galactus (from a screen shot I've seen) clearly says 3 3-turn countdowns. (Unless this was the stealth update that just went out ~40 minutes ago.)
  • DrStrange-616
    DrStrange-616 Posts: 993 Critical Contributor
    It's not fun. I'm stunned you think this is remotely fun. It's not.

    I'm glad for you this abomination is working as you intended, but it's torture. Not remotely fun or challenging. It's the worst kind of demoralizng slog.
  • Philly79
    Philly79 Posts: 422 Mover and Shaker
    Will there be any time added to the event or something for the people that missed out on health points from clearing lower rounds? I ask as I personally started the event as soon as it started, did 2-3 battles in r1, was jumped to r2, did a clear and jumped to r4, skipping r3 completely. Comment?
  • IceIX
    IceIX ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 4,308 Site Admin
    GurlBYE wrote:
    And if the difficulty is correct, any reason the rewards are, what they are?
    Care to expand on that? The rewards are 3 4* covers, quite a few tokens through both progressions and nodes, and various other smaller rewards. It's pretty on for a boss battle in comparison to prior rewards, plus the Legendary token which wasn't there before.
  • itstime1234
    itstime1234 Posts: 369 Mover and Shaker
    Ice, First off, I think everyone will agree, we have a lot of respect for you. And if the goal was truly to make an almost unwinnable battle, there is much better ways IMO.

    Make him 80K HP or whatever. But for the only real possible toss up way of winning is to do a broken down winfinite move defeats the purpose of having a deep roster. Also the fact a battle against galactus will go about 30 seconds leaves many unenthused.

    At best, people get to play, oh 10 minutes or so every 8 hours. That's not really a fun PVE if you ask me.

    Lastly, not sure how anyone is suppose to get to 1.25M if you are clawing and scratching for 10K a fight with Galactus.

    Oh and one other point, I don't think it is fair for when the battle starts into the next round for everyone who played to be locked out. The early rounds are winnable and therefore anyone winning in round 1 gets less points than teammates who play round 3 and Round 1 players are locked out from round 3.
  • stowaway
    stowaway Posts: 501 Critical Contributor
    I'm willing to buy that losing to Galactus is thematic, and true to the lore. But. . . it just isn't fun. I think a lot of us were hoping that there would be something during anniversary week that would be fun. That's all.
  • Actually... hate to say it, but it kind of makes sense. As long as we are able to achieve Cyclops "awesomeness" icon_e_smile.gif I'm ok losing 3/4 matches against Galactus. Clearly there was an expectation misalignment here, but we're flexible, we'll adapt.

    I'll reserve judgement until the end of the event.

    Thank you ICE.
  • scottee
    scottee Posts: 1,609 Chairperson of the Boards
    Haven't you guys learned? Players want to make a couple shiny gems and push a win button. They expect to win every time. You're supposed to be handing out participation trophies with anniversary candy in them that turns into Old Wolverine's poop. You clearly don't know how to cater to your players...
  • Thanos
    Thanos Posts: 722 Critical Contributor
    . After all, if beating Galactus is so difficult, it should be a legendary achievement. Better prizes for the minion battles would go a long way toward taking the sting out of the constant losses on the boss node.

    What, you don't think critical boosts are worthy reward for a legendary achievement? icon_e_confused.gif
  • hamsingame
    hamsingame Posts: 66 Match Maker
    You should probably have stated up front somewhere, then, that you're MEANT to retreat the turn before dying. It makes sense from a "live to fight another day" perspective, but it's not generally the done thing in games.

    But all that aside, the event is just a matter of front loading as much damage as humanly possible before you get instagibbed after your 4th turn?
  • slidecage
    slidecage Posts: 2,948 Chairperson of the Boards
    IceIX wrote:
    GurlBYE wrote:
    And if the difficulty is correct, any reason the rewards are, what they are?
    Care to expand on that? The rewards are 3 4* covers, quite a few tokens through both progressions and nodes, and various other smaller rewards. It's pretty on for a boss battle in comparison to prior rewards, plus the Legendary token which wasn't there before.

    at least the side battle gave tokens and HP in the ultron battles why not now
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited October 2015
    Luck is not a difficulty setting and a terrible game mechanic

    Ps, the alliances that are doing well aren't doing it the way you think, Or do you believe they're that lucky...