It's OK to lose

AtlasAxe

Our alliances have been discussing offline, and we all agree that it is OK to lose. Video games in general have had that from the earliest days. Think Pac-Man, Galaga, Centipede, Space Invaders, Defender, etc. None of them had a "win." What they had the opportunity to keep playing if you played well, that gave you the rights to a good score. Even if you were inexperienced, that quarter got you some fun. If you died immediately, you didn't play it again.

Galactus doesn't have that.

This game presents that opportunity sometimes. My example from within MPQ that I gave in our chats:
When IW was on DDQ 4*, I played that all day trying to win the legendary. I had one cover, Invisibility. I would go invisible and hide out, then try to find the best matches to win against QS. Inevitably he would get 5 blue matches and wipe me with the AOE, but it was fun and a real challenge. It took 10-20 minutes to play and was a hopeless situation. I almost did it once (about 1k left). I finally gave up so I could make the PVP score for the event we were in, but I had great fun that day. It is the sort of thing that makes the game worth playing, or at least trying.

simonsez

Atlas Axe wrote:

Think Pac-Man, Galaga, Centipede, Space Invaders, Defender, etc. None of them had a "win."

I'm pretty sure this was considered a win in Pac-Man:



Besides that, yeah, I agree. Capping every match at 3 turns isn't very satisfying.

MarvelMan

I have a fully covered (but unleveled) IW and it was easily one of hte most puzzly fights and therefore one of my top five MPQ fights ever. I could have maxed her, but the enjoyment I had trying to beat it at lvl 70 was enormous. It took me 5-7 tries (dont remember which) and I wanted to do it again. So yeah, its okay to lose. But it CANNOT be an entirely luck based fight, nor one where only certain rosters have even a glimmer of hope of being alive past turn 3.

GrumpySmurf1002

Root problem is they're employing the "it's ok to lose" mentality to a competitive situation.

Most games with the refreshing lives mechanic are, in fact, increasingly frustrating, borderline impossible on some levels. However, there's no time element, nor any competition with other. If you have a board that takes multiple days/weeks/months to beat, you can do so on your time. When you complete it, it's satisfying. And you're not forced to spend to replace lives lost in your multitude of attempts.

MPQ doesn't have that luxury. You're constantly up against a clock, with limited attempts in that clock to boot. Adding expected failure to that mix, and releasing a new character to boot, is a caustic mixture that had predictable results.

And doing it in a time where you're supposed to be celebrating the game and (presumably) rewarding your player base for their loyalty makes it a laughably bad idea.

Unknown

Without question, losing is obviously perfectly acceptable in any video game. Some of those "corporate defender" posts arguing that MPQ players "don't want to lose, ever," arguing in a way that seems so bizarrely detached from what's actually being said, make me question whether my lighthearted paranoia about paid shills isn't really all that paranoid…

A recent example of my feelings on losing:

DDQ 4* fight, my Thoress lost countless times to Rags. I'm pretty sure with even one more card or 20 levels, I could win that fight.

I used health packs, boosts, bad language, gregorian throat singing, and all the skill and luck I had.

I walked away bloodied, beaten, frustrated. But my overwhelming feeling wasn't, "Screw this game, I'm deleting it," it was…

Next time, Rags, you and me… next time.

You want me to lose, and lose semi-gracefully, over and over and over and over and over again? Fine. Give me a CHANCE IN H3LL of succeeding, and give me an actual reason to fight.

DBC

Unknown

Drummerboycroy wrote:

DDQ 4* fight, my Thoress lost countless times to Rags. I'm pretty sure with even one more card or 20 levels, I could win that fight.

I used health packs, boosts, bad language, gregorian throat singing, and all the skill and luck I had.

Very surprised the Greogorian throat singing didn't turn the tide. Always seems to work for me.

mohio

Totally agree that occasionally having to lose in a game is no big deal. Also your examples of games where you must eventually lose are equally acceptable. Think about Tetris. What a classic game. There is no win, you just get to the highest level you can and the tiles drop faster and faster and faster until you just can't handle them and you die. Also, those games allow you a real experience before killing you, and you can feel like your effort is keeping you alive, and the flip side of that, you made a mistake which made you lose. As all of you know who played it, Galactus did none of those things. Giving you 2 turns to collect ap before certain death is not giving you an experience. Relying on a good starting board, or Hulk Anger creating match 5s is not a skill game.

It's interesting multiple people have mentioned the 4* DDQ fight as one they don't mind (or may even enjoy) losing in. I think the promise of a premier reward for completing it is one reason, but I think the other, more important reason is simply "bang for your buck" gaming value. For the cost of 1 health pack, you get somewhere between maybe 3-10 minutes of game play. Try your hand at it 5 times and you just spent at least half an hour doing something you enjoy, and you still have 5 health packs left to go play some PvP or PvE or finish the rest of DDQ or whatever. Galactus on the other hand...have a go at him just twice. You played a whopping 6 turns, maybe 5-10 minutes total since you spend a little extra time surveying your moves. And you're now down 6 health packs for your efforts. Not to mention you feel absolutely no progress (unless you've figured out how to win/deal a lot of damage, feel free to PM me if you still need ideas) and you feel like you're letting down your alliance for not scoring more points.

All that writing and the whole point is, give us a good experience and we won't care that we lost. Make an achievement list we can try to complete before wiping a million times. Keep a tally of how many different abilities you used against him and run a leaderboard or something. Just something else that makes it feel like we're actually accomplishing something besides dying a lot. Even the people that were beating galactus pretty regularly (full disclosure, I was one of those), did not have fun doing it, because there's no real gameplay to it. Either you win in 2-3 turns or you lose and try again. I want to actually play the game not just an RNG/simulation that pops out "win" or "lose" at the end.

JamesV

Basically: It's not just the act of losing that sucks. It's the experience of how you lose.

And when you have a system that means you losing lose hurts up to 19 other people and you had no say in it, it makes a bad experience much worse.

mrflopwelligan

Completely agree. I loved the IW fight! Took me all day, I think I was on my 11 or 12th try. It took strategy - after all this game is called: 'Marvel PUZZLE Quest' not 'Marvel Play then Die then Play then Die Quest'

Ctenko

aesthetocyst wrote:

There is a bizarre genre of games that are intentionally unfair. (See The Impossible Game, Unfair Mario, etc.)

These games are more honest and entertaining than Galactus Hungers.

How?

1. They are very upfront about their nature.
2. They are standalone; progress in a larger game architecture is not dependent on them.
3. They allow you to save progress (if you can make any) and entertain you with more ridiculous ways to surprise fail.
4. Because of their nature they are free and certainly dont try to suggest that spending might enable progress.
5. They are solo. No friends progress is dependent on your continuing to flail away.

NONE of these things is true about Galactus Hungers.

There is no reason to suspect it is intentionally rigged. You sucked in by easy first acts and find out the hard way.

Want to avoid letting your friends down? Shell out for boosts and health packs!

Hey is your Simulator placement OK? Sure....if you killed yourself for 3 days in Galactus.

Unfair games exist. They are even entertaining.

However, presenting them as fair in a pay-to-win environment is fraud.

Much more relevant, They are mechanics based. Doing the right thing at the right time will always lead to a win.

But you are exceptionally correct.

Hayek

I think the key difference here is that in the QS fight with your 1/0/0 IW, although you died multiple times, you know that one success is all it took to get the legendary reward. So the fight is justifiably hard, and with your IW, also luck dependent. Now imagine if you had to do the IW fight 18 times a day for 3 days and be expected to succeed at least 2/3 of the time to get the same reward... and what you get is this, mutiny!

I managed to get the legendary token out of the Galactus event, which required me to beat him many times in round 8. This was very time consuming and frustrating. I went through more ISO in boosts than I had been getting from the double ISO sources, not to mention depleting my taco stashes for health packs. Our alliance found exactly ONE team that worked, and even then, it was in no small part luck dependent. If you didn't have these 3 characters and 5 covers in their key abilities as well as some ISO already pumped into them, you were tinykitty out of luck.

Now it would have been fun to try different teams even if we died, until you found that one team that worked, if you had to beat R8 Galactus only once. But the joy of killing him that first time was quickly squashed by the realization that now I had to grind him.

Unknown

Hayek wrote:

I think the key difference here is that in the QS fight with your 1/0/0 IW, although you died multiple times, you know that one success is all it took to get the legendary reward. So the fight is justifiably hard, and with your IW, also luck dependent. Now imagine if you had to do the IW fight 18 times a day for 3 days and be expected to succeed at least 2/3 of the time to get the same reward... and what you get is this, mutiny!

I also have IW at 1/0/0. Tried that fight between 25 and 30 times (estimate based on health pack consumption). I got QS down to 11k to just over 600 hit points (if memory serves) on an early attempt and down to 1 or 2k on a few other attempts. I enjoyed it while I was doing it because it was a challenge, but after enough attempts I realised that no matter how good the opening board was and no matter how well I played, the RNG could fail me 10 minutes into the match and I was completely at its mercy.

I think when I finally gave up on that one I was a lot angrier at the game than I ever got with Galactus, here's why:

With Galactus every failure was still contributing. Come within 1,000 HP of downing him and that was basically as good as a win.

I got over 600k in total on Galactus for all those wipes, not much of value from personal progression, but our alliance cleared all 8 rounds so I've got 3 4* Cyke covers to show for it and event tokens that yielded another 4* as well as 2 3*s I didn't really need.

With IW vs QS, I still have nothing to show, even for the 3 or 4 runs that were arguably really (just a turn or five away) close to downing him. Come within 1000 HP of downing QS and that's NIL POINTS!