Improved PvE Scoring System

Unknown

I was thinking about why I like Galactus so much more than other PvE events, and I realized it's largely due to the more relaxed schedule. You still have an every-8-hours commitment, but it's anywhere within the window rather than exactly on the stroke of 8 hours. This motivated me to think about how to make PvE more enjoyable and less like work.

Problem: Extremely rigid schedule SUCKS!
Solution: Refresh subs by 1/6 every 8 hours on the clock, rather than every 8 hours after each play. Still subtract 1/6 of points each play.

This creates a situation where you still must play in every "window", but not exactly every 8 hours. Infinitely more manageable and enjoyable! However, it creates a new issue.

Problem: Too many players with same score.
Solution: Differentiate scores based on efficiency. One could choose to reward fastest match times, but I prefer least health lost.

The idea is just to differentiate scores, not to really add or subtract any real value towards progression rewards, so take, say, 10% of max node points and make them dependent on your teams' health loss during the match. So no damage = full points. One toon left at 1 health = only 90% of total points. No big impact, but enough to reward players that play "better", and to separate out scores for placement. This would also create an interesting dynamic in terms of doing well to score high, but therefore increasing your personal scaling. So truly better players (or rosters) would rise to the top, as desired.

You could even factor temporary healing into this 10% score metric, if you want to encourage people to use more defensive burst-healing characters. Personally, I think that would be a good idea because otherwise burst healing sucks and by doing this you would also add to the "puzzle" element in order to try and get high scores. But it's not really important either way.

The final grind would no longer be a solid 3-hour "sprint" (followed by the 1st clear of next sub), and instead be a bunch of clears over the final 8-hour window trying to play as well as possible. Slightly different, but I think much more interesting. And the benefits of being able to play the rest of the event on a normal-person schedule (while still requiring commitment and excellence for top placements) would be HUGE!

Crowl

They need to do more than that to increase the flexibility for players, the best bet would be 4 or 5 clears paying proper rewards and full points, subsequent clears just pay default iso up until the last 2 hours of your slice when it pays out decreasing point amounts per clear like it currently does.

This would have the net result that people could just dip into the game and do the odd game here and there other than in their final 2 hours, which seems like a sensible design for a game that originated as a mobile one.

Dayv

I'd rather they got rid of repetitive grinding completely. Galactus and Gauntlet are both steps in the right direction.

Unknown

For sure I'd prefer them to completely remove placement rewards and go to something like Gauntlet, but it seems they don't really want to, plus they have a lot of previous events they would no-doubt like to keep using. I do like the "1st 3 clears are full score, then decreasing after that" idea, but it seems like they want to encourage repetitive logging-in (maybe better for their "engagement" metrics or something?). Ergo my suggestion to loosen up the time windows but keep the general idea of "play every 8 hours".

madok

It would be nice if they replaced the whole placement rewards system with a hybrid of what they do with seasons/events in PVP. Your subs get their own progression rewards that gives you want you could win in the placement rewards for the sub and the overall event gets its placement rewards sprinkled into its progression rewards.

Crowl

DayvBang wrote:

I'd rather they got rid of repetitive grinding completely. Galactus and Gauntlet are both steps in the right direction.

They do need some form of tiebreaker though unless they switch entirely to placement rewards.

The Gauntlet's scoring system isn't ideal either, there is no scope to compensate for the lack of a particular essential character since they calculate the rewards based on a full clear rather than a clear of the main path.