New PVE Optimal Run

sinnerjfl

revskip wrote:

Pretty sure that if everyone who is threatening to quit if the PVE tests end up being the new format then grinding to the ground won't even be necessary by virtue of a large portion of the player base that was doing the grinding before simply not being there any more. If everyone quits then there wouldn't be any reason to grind in the first place since doing your 5-6 clears would be more than enough for both progression and placement in a world where all the grinders ragequit.

Of course maybe people are only saying they'll quit but when the time comes will still be grinding away and all of this will have been much ado about nothing.

I'm betting on the latter.

I can guarantee you I will never play PVE for placement ever again if this abortion of a system ever becomes permanent. I only play for placement for new releases and already find it a huge commitment that often feels not worth it at all for 2 to 4 covers that won't be useful for 6 months.

The people who think this new system is great arent thinking ahead, eventually they'll be stuck in their progression and PVE will be one less way for them to earn 4* covers.

Smudge

HxiiiK wrote:

revskip wrote:

Of course maybe people are only saying they'll quit but when the time comes will still be grinding away and all of this will have been much ado about nothing.

I'm betting on the latter.

Because how else will we let them know how important we are if we don't threaten to quit every once in a while?

Except some of us aren't threatening any more. I played EotS ad nauseum, hit my 25 CP progression, and stopped. I played Unstable ISO-8 to the thankfully much easier to reach 25 CP progression, then stopped. When I saw how Prodigal Sun's progression was bumped up again here and then started playing against the ridiculous health pools of Maggia Dons and Muscles with little recourse in the boosted 3* characters (no, IMHB and Rulk are sadly not in my upper echelons at 2/1/0 and 1/2/1 each), I decided enough was enough.

Am I playing Prodigal Sun? Yes. Do I care about progression/am I playing it hard? Not a chance. I burned out on the last two tests. I'm grinding out the CP from the hardest and the 4* essential nodes, and I'm done. I'm in slice 5 - ends at 02:00 Central time, and I'm already done with my PvE for the day. Not touching it until after 02:00 tomorrow morning.

I've amassed enough score so far to hit the 2* Daken reward, but this isn't a threat - I've quit playing this garbage test for any kind of progression or placement, and you can be damn sure I'm not going to waste time or effort farming it when the nodes scale up but my rewards don't. Period.

IamTheDanger

To the ones asking if this model will become permant, I say it is very likely. The devs spent a good bit of time designing this and tried it 3 times now. Even though its not very popular, the devs don't seem to want to give it up. And I do believe that this new PvE model has potential. It just needs work. Which is kind of what players have been asking for. In a way. We, the players have repeatedly asked for beta testing by us, the players. So thats kind of what this is. In a twisted sort of way.

I just hope that when, not if, this new model becomes permant, it has been tried and tested and changed enough that players dont have to spend several hours on an initial clear to start the clock, then more on a final grind and start of a new sub. As it stands now, the optimal way to clear for top placement just kitties tinykitty kitties. Just like it was mentioned in a previous post, the first time this model is used on a new release will be very unpleasant.(to put it nicely ).

JJ

mpqr7

I've played each day a lot of pve (probably cleared 30-40 nodes at least), yet I'm barely cracking top 300. That makes me very sad. It all seems quite pointless.

revskip

Smudge wrote:

HxiiiK wrote:

revskip wrote:

Of course maybe people are only saying they'll quit but when the time comes will still be grinding away and all of this will have been much ado about nothing.

I'm betting on the latter.

Because how else will we let them know how important we are if we don't threaten to quit every once in a while?

Except some of us aren't threatening any more. I played EotS ad nauseum, hit my 25 CP progression, and stopped. I played Unstable ISO-8 to the thankfully much easier to reach 25 CP progression, then stopped. When I saw how Prodigal Sun's progression was bumped up again here and then started playing against the ridiculous health pools of Maggia Dons and Muscles with little recourse in the boosted 3* characters (no, IMHB and Rulk are sadly not in my upper echelons at 2/1/0 and 1/2/1 each), I decided enough was enough.

Am I playing Prodigal Sun? Yes. Do I care about progression/am I playing it hard? Not a chance. I burned out on the last two tests. I'm grinding out the CP from the hardest and the 4* essential nodes, and I'm done. I'm in slice 5 - ends at 02:00 Central time, and I'm already done with my PvE for the day. Not touching it until after 02:00 tomorrow morning.

I've amassed enough score so far to hit the 2* Daken reward, but this isn't a threat - I've quit playing this garbage test for any kind of progression or placement, and you can be damn sure I'm not going to waste time or effort farming it when the nodes scale up but my rewards don't. Period.

Were you routinely hitting top 10 or better? Because if so then what I posted holds. If you are no longer trying to hit those top placement spots they are still going to someone else. There will still be rewards handed out, just to different people. And perhaps if enough people lose the drive to grind for those rewards the grind itself will lessen. I doubt it but a man can dream.

Either way a shuffle in who is hitting top placement spots isn't really a losing situation for the devs. The only losing situation for them occurs if they lose players who are spending money without replacing them with new players spending as much or more. In any game like this there is a tipping point where vets realize that even with the sunk cost fallacy they aren't getting enjoyment out of the game as it is currently set up. Those players then leave the game, most of the time forever. Successful (read profitable) games manage to ameliorate the losses with new players and I'm sure the devs think this new PVE system will create revenue by the virtue of giving newer players a quicker rise to the early levels, in turn those players will spend on HP to keep roster slots.

Smudge

revskip wrote:

Smudge wrote:

HxiiiK wrote:

revskip wrote:

Of course maybe people are only saying they'll quit but when the time comes will still be grinding away and all of this will have been much ado about nothing.

I'm betting on the latter.

Because how else will we let them know how important we are if we don't threaten to quit every once in a while?

Except some of us aren't threatening any more. I played EotS ad nauseum, hit my 25 CP progression, and stopped. I played Unstable ISO-8 to the thankfully much easier to reach 25 CP progression, then stopped. When I saw how Prodigal Sun's progression was bumped up again here and then started playing against the ridiculous health pools of Maggia Dons and Muscles with little recourse in the boosted 3* characters (no, IMHB and Rulk are sadly not in my upper echelons at 2/1/0 and 1/2/1 each), I decided enough was enough.

Am I playing Prodigal Sun? Yes. Do I care about progression/am I playing it hard? Not a chance. I burned out on the last two tests. I'm grinding out the CP from the hardest and the 4* essential nodes, and I'm done. I'm in slice 5 - ends at 02:00 Central time, and I'm already done with my PvE for the day. Not touching it until after 02:00 tomorrow morning.

I've amassed enough score so far to hit the 2* Daken reward, but this isn't a threat - I've quit playing this garbage test for any kind of progression or placement, and you can be damn sure I'm not going to waste time or effort farming it when the nodes scale up but my rewards don't. Period.

Were you routinely hitting top 10 or better? Because if so then what I posted holds. If you are no longer trying to hit those top placement spots they are still going to someone else. There will still be rewards handed out, just to different people. And perhaps if enough people lose the drive to grind for those rewards the grind itself will lessen. I doubt it but a man can dream.

Either way a shuffle in who is hitting top placement spots isn't really a losing situation for the devs. The only losing situation for them occurs if they lose players who are spending money without replacing them with new players spending as much or more. In any game like this there is a tipping point where vets realize that even with the sunk cost fallacy they aren't getting enjoyment out of the game as it is currently set up. Those players then leave the game, most of the time forever. Successful (read profitable) games manage to ameliorate the losses with new players and I'm sure the devs think this new PVE system will create revenue by the virtue of giving newer players a quicker rise to the early levels, in turn those players will spend on HP to keep roster slots.

No, I don't regularly hit above T100 for placement with the exception of Webbed Wonder where I had better timing on the refreshes and could push to T10 with no problem. I understand that there are players who will take my place regardless. The fact that I am expendable as a player does not escape me.

The fact that I do spend the occasional $20 here and there on the game does not escape me, however. Your greater point was wondering how many people are threatening to quit grinding. I answered that question speaking on my own behalf, and if I spend less time grinding, that means I'm spending less time thinking about if I'm going to drop that $20, because the inevitable answer is no. Why spend money on something that is going to consume that much of my time with nothing but a potential 4* cover and some change for it?

The losing situation, as you stated, is when they can't drum up enough (spending) new players to outlast the drop in spending from their current player base. Restructuring the PvE is widely hated by the existing veteran base on the forums; the threads speak for themselves. They do themselves a disservice by killing off the old player base, because a lot of new players are largely recruited via word-of-mouth. Negative customer experience drives participation and sales down, too.

A: "Hey, check out this MPQ game! It's pretty fun!"
B: "Yeah, Joe told me about that one and I played it for awhile. He got to a point where he couldn't really get much farther without spending gobs of time and money on the game, and I kind of started hitting that point too. I crushed it for awhile, but then I hit the same wall."
A: "Oh, that sounds like it sucks. Maybe I'll play it casually, but I know Jane was talking about a different game the other day..."

slidecage

DTStump wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

St1nkf1st wrote:

DTStump wrote:

The only people who enjoy this change are those guys who don't have the time to even consider placement rewards

That's not entirely true. For me (3* roster and more focused on PVP), I experienced during PVE test run that with about same time effort as before I got a reasonable placement (25 if I remember correctly) just without the 8 h schedule I hate that much, because I was never able to fit it 100% into my work/live/sleep cycle.

I guarantee you that you and everyone else who thinks that they'll get easier placement with this system are in for a very rude awakening once this is run for a new character release.

Exactly. People are not necessarily motivated to play in these test events because (1) the placement rewards are not very exciting and (2) they're just not happy with the changes and are taking a break, but will grind again if such changes become permanent.

"Getting a reasonable placement" in a test event is not necessarily a reliable metric because a lot of factors influence the intensity of competition. It is more useful to understand how new rules impact optimal play to predict what happens when there is actually competition for placement rewards.

i dont think you will see that many who are taking a break return to grind they will just quit. I know if this is the new PVE i will quit the PVE and just do pure PVp and once that gets insane hard i will just quit

Pongie

The grind will always be there as long as there is a timer. Remove the timer and no one will grind. Since there are 7 rewards, just make the nodes lock out after 7 clears. Add slight rubber banding to make scores unique enough fro placements.

Lopan15

Someone in a different thread mentioned that this new system would work for the insane and the unemployed. Being unemployed and slightly not right in the head, I decided to grind this test to see what it would take to finish high. So 4+ days in and I've had to do 10-11 full clears each day to keep a fingernail hold on 1st place. At ~30 minutes per clear that's 5 to 5 1/2 hours a day. Add in the hour for DDQ and PVP and I'm up into the 6-7 hour range. Even if I was just shooting for top 10 and ONE 4* cover, I'm not really looking at a whole lot of time saving. Add in the fact that a lot of grinders are sitting on the sidelines and I'm guessing I'm into the 7 to 7 1/2 hour range per day when there is a new release and I'm still not guaranteed a decent finish. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm trying for a top 5 finish, I'd be done now after just getting the progression CP. I just do not want to play anymore. The same fights over and over and having to still use my A team to save on healthpacks (can't imagine how much longer this would take without maxed Rhulk) has sapped my will to continue. Like others have said, if this is the PVE going forward, I'm inclined to not play (once I get a job I definitely wouldn't bother starting). 6 hours a day during a new release and only fighting for most likely a single 4* cover is far from enjoyable.