Hi, I'm Peter & I have a problem...I kinda liked Galactus

PeterGibbons316

So the first run is nearly over, and I just managed to hit the final progression reward, and....I kinda liked the event. I've heard all the complaints, and for the most part I agree - everything was harder than it needed to be, and it definitely scaled up way too fast. In the final rounds battles lasted no more than 4 turns, that's absurd.

But I really liked the timing structure of the event. At first I didn't get how it was working, but once I realized exactly what was happening it made the event far more enjoyable for me. For your standard PvE you pick a slice and immediately start clearing every node and then set an alarm for 8 hours. Sometimes you are able to play 8 hours later, sometimes not (usually not for me). In my case I'll do a clear when a sub first opens, then clear again suboptimally 6 hours later before I go to work (or not if I don't have time), then I can't play for about 10-14 hours til I get home and get the kids to bed. Then I do a 2-hr grind before the sub ends, and then another clear on the new sub to start the process over. It's a lot of work, and it's suboptimal

So compare to this event - event starts at noon for everyone (perfect for me, **** for people across the globe - sorry). But who cares? You don't need to jump in right away....in fact, it's in your best interest to let your alliance clear the first couple rounds for you so that you can get more points from later rounds. All you have to do is clear everything at some point in that 8 hour window, then you can stop, and not have to pick up the game for another 14+ hours if that is what works in your schedule. You can even get an extra boss fight in if you wait for your 8h refresh to touch the new nodes. So even though my schedule is crazy, I think I was still able to clear every time it refreshed. I really like the idea of clearing at some point in an 8-hour window, rather than exactly every 8 hours on the dot.

What I didn't like was that every loss to Galactus meant lost points that you can never get back. It put a hard max on potential scores that would drop (below final progression for most people) with every loss to Galactus. One of the great things about the current PvE structure is that you can continue to attempt nodes with new teams to try and find the best/easiest/safest/fastest ways to beat them, because if you fail you can just give it another shot - with enough time you could earn enough points to hit that legendary progression reward. It was tough watching many of my alliance mates slowly quit playing when they realized they couldn't hit final progression and we were not likely to beat round 8 for that 3rd cover.

I also hate that you can't see what you are fighting in wave nodes. My team is going to be very different against two waves of 3 legit enemies versus a wave of 8 ninjas dropping attack tiles followed by a lone 395 Gorgon. For normal PvE events you might get surprised the first time, but then you fight that same node for a day. Here it was always just a random guess that in rounds 7 and 8 proved to be quite the challenge.

TL;DR - The Galactus event was ****, but I actually prefer the "clear at any time in an 8-hour window" mechanic to the current "clear exactly every 8 hours and then stop everything to grind the same 9 nodes over and over for hours straight" PvE clearing method.

Unknown

Well you're right there, there's nothing wrong with the timing. It's definitely more laid-back and that's great!
BUT so was Ultron. So are the Gauntlets. And they were *enjoyable*.

Galactus could certainly work fine. It just doesn't now.

Omega Red

Seconded what OP says. I will add also that I really love not having to spend so much time on that horrendous grind between subevents in standard PVE. Also, the social aspect of alliance game is much more enjoyable in events like Ultron and Galactus. Everybody cooperates and goes the extra mile to get the job done.

Knyghtmare

Well, apparently 2.5% of men and 4.6% of women are masochists.

GuntherBlobel

I agree. There were a bunch of things that I liked better. Ultimately, I had fun, but I still feel that the Devs need to take a good hard look at what went wrong here: Galactus Round 5+.

The villain nodes were challenging and some were surprising, but winnable (at least with my scaling). A few pissed me off, but many felt great to beat! The villian nodes should have counted for more points. If IceIX hadn't made that comment about the Villian nodes being easy, I doubt that there would have been so many complaints about those nodes.

Galactus should never have been more unmanageable thatn he was in Round 5. Period. If that had been the case, then I would said that it was a great improvement over Ultron.

My Top 250 Alliance is still struggling to get one cover (fingers crossed) and I didn't even hit the 3* Progression. But I did have enough fun to see the potential here.

vaportrail

Agreed, I enjoyed this, at least more than the standard PVE events for new characters, I got the legendary and we finished round 8 (just waiting on that red cyclops like everyone else). It might have been nicer if more strategies were viable but compared to the alternative of a competitive PVE I would rather do this everytime no questions asked.

Granted, I hate the grinding and doing optimal refreshes in PVE with the fury of 1000 suns so that's not saying a whole lot.

Unknown

Galactus Cosmic tile AP gain should have topped at 2AP.

With the increase in cosmic tiles generated and the increase in countdown tiles generated, this would have still made the fights extremely pressure driven, but wouldn't have resulted in the 3 turn smackdown that prevents you from even putting up damage on him for progression.

I actually feel that some of the last minute changes were justifiable. StarLord would have just trivialized the event, but the damage might have fixed that. The -2 AP cost made him pointless, there were simply better team comps.

Elektra and the tile destruction, ehh... Again, I -get- it, but I think you just eliminated her possible use for the fight altogether and put her on the bench next to SL.

The + to all AP instead of just Black. Yeah, pretty much ruined the one opportunity per year anyone would use Psylocke's bewilder. But hey, that's one that could have made the conflict trivial.

The base AP gain from 1AP to 2AP and it's following impacts in later rounds if they did that increase across the board? That was when the event went from challenging to broken, because they failed to take into account, or willingly and maliciously took into account, the exponential AP gain it was going to trigger.

DaveR4470

Peter -

IN THE ABSTRACT, Galactus isn't a terrible event. It's an extreme challenge, and it's much more puzzle-like than typical MPQ.

It's in context that it's terrible. Specifically, it's that Galactus is paired with disappointing tokens and disappointing rewards, in a disappointing anniversary event.

Ultron was difficult and puzzly, and (at least in its intitial form) only barely completable... but it handed out tokens and HP like candy. I came away with something like 13-15 3* covers from the two Galactus runs, and probably grossed about 600 AP. So far, in this ENTIRE anniversary event -- that's multiple Galactus clears and over 10 anniversary tokens -- I've gotten one Devil Dinosaur cover and a Doc Ock cover I didn't need. Plenty of 2* Cap Marvel, though. And all that came from burning through my best characters and health packs in a way that limited my MPQ playtime to only maybe 30% of the (already limited) time I normally play.

It's not wrong and I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy it. (Good on you for that, actually.) Just wanted to note that reasonable people can reasonably differ on the subject!

Chrono_Tata

I totally agree on the timing structure. With nodes that refresh every 8 hours and basically no rubberbanding or cooling of points, you don't need to do do optimal timing. You just need to clear the nodes at some point during the 8-hour window. That's great.

There are actually a lot of good ideas in the Galactus event, and it's definitely not irredeemable, with some serious tweaks. Hell, if the Galactus node has been introduced as a Gauntlet node I would have loved it. It's just the highly competitive nature of the event that is unforgiving of errors and bad luck (not taking into account you-know-what), and the fact it's being run during and marketed as an Anniversary celebration, where the players were expecting to have a relaxing fun times with higher than usual rewards, not banging our collective head against the wall just to win a couple of 4-star covers, which the devs keep reminding us that they are meant to be easier to get now in order to help with the 4-star transition.

GrumpySmurf1002

It was rage inducing and poorly communicated, but yes, being able to play within a window instead of a strict moment is wonderful.

When they patched scaling into the essentials, however, it became god awful. Nothing like earning the right to play a 2 turn slot matchine by chewing through level 340 Loki-Hood-Mystique (and some saw 395 versions).

Ctenko

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

It was rage inducing and poorly communicated, but yes, being able to play within a window instead of a strict moment is wonderful.

When they patched scaling into the essentials, however, it became god awful. Nothing like earning the right to play a 2 turn slot matchine by chewing through level 340 Loki-Hood-Mystique (and some saw 395 versions).

370 Loki-Hood-Mystique killed me three times. Was just wonderful.

ZootSax

I actually liked the event some until the unlock nodes scaled up so ridiculously. I didn't quit because I got frustrated with 3 turn team wipes against Galactus--I quit because I couldn't clear level 315 wave nodes with a largely 2* roster (not all went that high, but at least two did--and goon-fed villains with 100-175 levels on me aren't any more manageable than 300+ level wave ones). I was spending more health packs on wiping on the unlock nodes than on Galactus, so the whole thing kind of lost the plot for me. There's story reasons for Galactus to be abserdly difficult; nameless mafia goons, not so much...

Huge kudos to all who cleared this one through eight rounds.

turul

You still have to do the 8 hourly schedule for 20% more points (+1 galactus node clear)

nwman

turul wrote:

You still have to do the 8 hourly schedule for 20% more points (+1 galactus node clear)

Timing was decent. And ya this but for the majority timing was easier. One good part of the event. But grinding or losing is what we do right.

blargrx

I don't think I would go as far as to say I "liked" galactus.

I enjoyed not having to adhere to a strict pve schedule.

It was difficult bc it was different, but eventually I started to find a strategy that worked for me.

I was just anticipating a more enjoyable experience for an anniversary event. I was hoping this would be a great way to accrue a lot of needed ISO and HP especially since the plan was to drop 2 new characters in a weeks time.

Another disappointing part was the fact that even pvp didn't work like it normally does.

Guess I'll have to wait for the next run to see anything gets better

thisone

Knyghtmare wrote:

Well, apparently 2.5% of men and 4.6% of women are masochists.

And to add to this, a larger percentage are contrarians or worse, hipsters.

bi0h4z4rd84

I like it too and the reason is because in order to progressed the entire team has to be involved. If the entire team doesn't do it misses a note or doesn't play Galactus than everyone suffers so that's why people are upset because everybody has a couple lazy **** in their group and everybody wants to win win win but I hate to break it to you guys but this is how only events should be, there is no I in team.

Xenoberyll

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

TL;DR - The Galactus event was tinykitty, but I actually prefer the "clear at any time in an 8-hour window" mechanic to the current "clear exactly every 8 hours and then stop everything to grind the same 9 nodes over and over for hours straight" PvE clearing method.

I think a lot of people can agree with this part. I certainly do. I also love that it's progression rewards because that way the people who give a very similar effort receive the same rewards. Unlike in a normal PVE where i can be in the top 1% in points overall but not win top 2 / top 10 rewards because i'm in a hard bracket. While other people in easy bracket get it all with a fraction of the score/effort.

But it seems to be philosophy for D3 to have us spend us as much time and effort possible to get a chance at winning something, so they probably wont change that too soon.

smoq84

Generally I enjoyed this event a lot.

Except two things:

1. There was some insane node with 220lvl Juggernaut, Mystique and goon. It was the hardest fight I have ever had in MPQ. It took me about two hours until I managed to beat them!

2. I wonder how many people achieved Legendary Token from the last progression reward? I have been playing every 8 hours and clear everything I could, I was staying late to make a clear before a sleep and spend really a lot of time and effort to maximize progression.
However I have ended with something like less then 800.000 points and I cannot imagine how could I get to 1.250.000

PeterGibbons316

turul wrote:

You still have to do the 8 hourly schedule for 20% more points (+1 galactus node clear)

Yeah, but that's 1 fight, and if you miss it - not a super big deal. I didn't even realize I could do this until the 3rd day, and only took advantage of this extra fight twice.

JamieMadrox

I hit top prog, my alliance beat round 8, and after the initial shock of how different/difficult it was, I liked Galactus overall.

What I didn't like was that you NEEDED a very specific team to be able to win. I'm all for the game being difficult, but not when only a part of the player-base can win. Traditional PVE is good for allowing weaker rosters to be able to compete. Galactus, not so much.