This game has a ton of promise.
First off, high-fives around the office. I'm really digging where things are headed here. The base game is fun, polished, and should serve as a great platform for future development. Putting my publisher hat on for a minute, you've got one of the best core gamer IPs on the planet, coupled with an extremely extensible and successful core game mechanic. You've got two legs up on just about anyone else coming into this particular space. That's the good news!
So, now my game designer hat goes back on, and I deliver three critiques.
One: Value transparency is absolutely key to establishing player trust. Players need to trust that your economy has sensible rules in order to participate it. Having mid-tier characters switch from skilling up with soft currency to skilling up with hard currency is a violation of player trust. You've taught the player a system, and then you've changed it midstream. Now, the player wonders what other systems have hidden "gotchas", and will be less willing to explore your systems. (You also do this with expanding your inventory slots, though in a somewhat less egregious way.)
Two: Your PvP point gain/loss algorithm is broken. As you earn points, the pool of players that can grant significant point gains decreases, and the potential loss of points from lower-point-total attackers increases dramatically. This is not a terrible thing - it's due in part to the non-correlation between the number of points that a player has as the power level of their team. Plus, the game overwhelmingly favors the attacker. (Humans are better than AIs, boosts, three tries, etc.)
As such, with the last two PvP events, you've seen that an earned point equilibrium forms at the top end, rather than a steady climb of points. This effectively means that the any tier of rewards for earned point totals past 1000 is just a cruel tease. It's effectively impossible for anyone to climb past 1000. An increased player pool will not address this problem - proportional scaling will just mean that you'll have a larger pool of people approaching the equilibrium point, and nobody will ever earn your 2000 point Spider-Man.
You've got a decision to make - with the extremely asymmetrical PvP gameplay, do you want your limited-time challenges to be races, or do you want them to be more zero-sum? If it's the former, then you need to significantly decrease or eliminate the points lost for invisibly losing a match to another player (who has all the advantages of attacking). You already have some good limiting functions in-place, in that you have a limited amount of healing, and thus a limited amount of efficient play. The PvP game could be a great race.
Alternatively, you could completely do away with the Progression Rewards, and focus entirely on rating and ranking. There was definitely some great moment-to-moment play as I was frantically trying to finish off one last opponent with five minutes left on the clock in order to squeak into the top 30. (Yay, Magneto!) But in that world, I would want to see the asymmetry closed down significantly. Removing the three-tries model might be enough. In that world, it might be better to move the awards that you would associate with the Progression Rewards, and instead put them as rare drops on the loot table for PvP. Some more cohort-banded matchmaking would go a long way toward making that system fair as well.
Three: "Soft launch" scenarios are seriously difficult to manage well. On one hand, players are willing to put up with a fair amount of chaos if you stick a "beta" tag on your game. I assume that's the goal of "Preview Edition". (How long was Gmail in "Beta"?) However, in order for that to be true, you've got to be very upfront with the sorts of changes that are considered "in bounds" for your beta period. MPQ really isn't a beta - full monetization has been turned on, and players have every reason to believe that the game is fully featured and functional. But the "preview" tag makes people wonder. You'll have players bouncing off at this point thinking "Maybe I'll try again when it's finished," (hint: they won't) and you've got other players angry because your game behaves like a fully featured and functioning game, but you're still making pretty broad beta-style balance changes. In short, soft-launches are often seen as publishers as a nice way to hedge bets, but more often cause more damage than either an explicit beta or fully backed launch would experience.
And lastly, when the AI sees this...
...let the poor AI make the L-shaped 5, eh?
Best of luck, and I hope this was helpful to you at this stage of development.
So, now my game designer hat goes back on, and I deliver three critiques.
One: Value transparency is absolutely key to establishing player trust. Players need to trust that your economy has sensible rules in order to participate it. Having mid-tier characters switch from skilling up with soft currency to skilling up with hard currency is a violation of player trust. You've taught the player a system, and then you've changed it midstream. Now, the player wonders what other systems have hidden "gotchas", and will be less willing to explore your systems. (You also do this with expanding your inventory slots, though in a somewhat less egregious way.)
Two: Your PvP point gain/loss algorithm is broken. As you earn points, the pool of players that can grant significant point gains decreases, and the potential loss of points from lower-point-total attackers increases dramatically. This is not a terrible thing - it's due in part to the non-correlation between the number of points that a player has as the power level of their team. Plus, the game overwhelmingly favors the attacker. (Humans are better than AIs, boosts, three tries, etc.)
As such, with the last two PvP events, you've seen that an earned point equilibrium forms at the top end, rather than a steady climb of points. This effectively means that the any tier of rewards for earned point totals past 1000 is just a cruel tease. It's effectively impossible for anyone to climb past 1000. An increased player pool will not address this problem - proportional scaling will just mean that you'll have a larger pool of people approaching the equilibrium point, and nobody will ever earn your 2000 point Spider-Man.
You've got a decision to make - with the extremely asymmetrical PvP gameplay, do you want your limited-time challenges to be races, or do you want them to be more zero-sum? If it's the former, then you need to significantly decrease or eliminate the points lost for invisibly losing a match to another player (who has all the advantages of attacking). You already have some good limiting functions in-place, in that you have a limited amount of healing, and thus a limited amount of efficient play. The PvP game could be a great race.
Alternatively, you could completely do away with the Progression Rewards, and focus entirely on rating and ranking. There was definitely some great moment-to-moment play as I was frantically trying to finish off one last opponent with five minutes left on the clock in order to squeak into the top 30. (Yay, Magneto!) But in that world, I would want to see the asymmetry closed down significantly. Removing the three-tries model might be enough. In that world, it might be better to move the awards that you would associate with the Progression Rewards, and instead put them as rare drops on the loot table for PvP. Some more cohort-banded matchmaking would go a long way toward making that system fair as well.
Three: "Soft launch" scenarios are seriously difficult to manage well. On one hand, players are willing to put up with a fair amount of chaos if you stick a "beta" tag on your game. I assume that's the goal of "Preview Edition". (How long was Gmail in "Beta"?) However, in order for that to be true, you've got to be very upfront with the sorts of changes that are considered "in bounds" for your beta period. MPQ really isn't a beta - full monetization has been turned on, and players have every reason to believe that the game is fully featured and functional. But the "preview" tag makes people wonder. You'll have players bouncing off at this point thinking "Maybe I'll try again when it's finished," (hint: they won't) and you've got other players angry because your game behaves like a fully featured and functioning game, but you're still making pretty broad beta-style balance changes. In short, soft-launches are often seen as publishers as a nice way to hedge bets, but more often cause more damage than either an explicit beta or fully backed launch would experience.
And lastly, when the AI sees this...
OOXO XXOX XXOX
...let the poor AI make the L-shaped 5, eh?
Best of luck, and I hope this was helpful to you at this stage of development.
0
Comments
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It's kinda scary how a lot of these suggestions still apply to the game today. Makes me wonder if offering suggestions makes any sort of difference...0
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Oversoul wrote:It's kinda scary how a lot of these suggestions still apply to the game today. Makes me wonder if offering suggestions makes any sort of difference...
Not.really. its like anything. They listen, but only.really.for key questions they are already actively looking for usually. That's how most businesses function. This forum afterall is just a free (well...cost of site) form of beta testing and an easy form survey taking. They aren't stupid. Thier business guys I would assume and hope know thier job. Even with how garbage the current changes to PvP are they did them.as a calculated risk. Do they care about you or your opinion? Not really...but if your opinion has enough of a backing they might see if they can find a way to "solve" your problem in a way that works best for them (many times ends up being a gesture more than a real.fix).
Remember though, also like with any job, just because employee A who works hands on with the product agrees doesn't mean thier own opinion means much. Sometimes such decisions are from a collective but usually its one or two ppl making the real decisions and everyone else has to march in line regardless of thier opinion. So even if some ppl arge with what players are saying ...its one thing to agree, its diff to bring it before the boss so that it actually really gets looked at. And even them the boss has to agree and not in a "how do we spin this" sort of way.0 -
I think the solution is simple. Tell the publishers that we won't spend a single dime on this game until they fix these glaring problems.0
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Talking means nothing. Vote with your wallet, and people are still buying things.mechgouki wrote:I think the solution is simple. Tell the publishers that we won't spend a single dime on this game until they fix these glaring problems.
Rewards/points have gotten better, then they got worse again with just the latest single tourney. Relax, it will change again.0 -
This is a huge part of the issue I have with the game right now. Uncertainty is what is killing the game, not the specific nerf to Rag or even the changes to shields/MMR. With the constant change I dont have confidence my binding decisions are good ones. Yes, that will change with the respec but in the meantime I am now sitting with money in my itunes acct rather than move it to the game and have played a lot less, and the time I do play feels less like advancement. That is tied with the goals becoming more vague: get 3* covers (rather than a clear one: build Rag/Mag).ihearthawthats wrote:Relax, it will change again.0 -
@Marvelman
Uncertainty isn't bad if it doesn't screw us in the ****.
Where the devs are concerned, it's almost always for certain that we will get screwed.
Well at least they bothered to give us a warning first.0 -
MarvelMan wrote:
This is a huge part of the issue I have with the game right now. Uncertainty is what is killing the game, not the specific nerf to Rag or even the changes to shields/MMR. With the constant change I dont have confidence my binding decisions are good ones. Yes, that will change with the respec but in the meantime I am now sitting with money in my itunes acct rather than move it to the game and have played a lot less, and the time I do play feels less like advancement. That is tied with the goals becoming more vague: get 3* covers (rather than a clear one: build Rag/Mag).ihearthawthats wrote:Relax, it will change again.
I have an 8 year old $50 itunes.gift card. Doesn't matter as I use android.but I wonder if.it even.still works...sometimes.they have exp dates (pretty sure exp. Dyes are null and void in CA though...)0 -
abuelo wrote:Tesla wrote:
And lastly, when the AI sees this...OOXO XXOX XXOX
...let the poor AI make the L-shaped 5, eh?
Best of luck, and I hope this was helpful to you at this stage of development.
Ye gads no. The AI gets far too much of the 'I think I'll give myself infinite AP now' as it is!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias0
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