The False Dichotomy of the "New" PvE System

Stax the Foyer

If the "new" PvE system looks anything like these tests, it's not going to change anything. At most, every iteration of the new PvE system does nothing more than shift rewards around slightly. Back-and-forth about who really benefits from it is ignoring the real issue.

Because the problem isn't with anything they've changed so far. The problem is right here:



Those are the awards available to everyone who plays PvE. The exact same rewards. Whether you're on Day 5 and have your Iron Man/Juggernaut/MBW team, or whether you're [Name Redacted] and you have all of the covers in the game. In fact, if you're just starting out, you have a much better chance of earning those rewards than someone who's been playing for a few hundred days and could really use those 4* covers.

The issue isn't how to decide who the best two players are in an arbitrarily-assigned bracket using a system that punishes long-term players. Changing that is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic, and it's mind-boggling to me that limited developer time is being wasted doing that. The Civil War event was fantastic, but the Gauntlet re-run and the next tone-deaf PvE rework have taken all that shine away in a really short period of time.

Another poster put it as succinctly as I've ever seen it put when he said that:

DaveR4470 wrote:

This is the sort of thing that happens when you push out a 5* tier without developing any 4*-level game content.

/drops mic

(Hop over there real quick and upvote that post, because it deserves to be green.)

Clash of the Titans is a fun diversion, but it's not 4* content. I use my 3* characters far more than I use my 4* characters. Elektra was the first 4* PvP re-run, and there's no indication that something like that will ever happen again.

You've got the perfect format for real PvE: The Gauntlet. But it languishes because developers pretend that rewards that were valuable to everyone a year and a half ago are still as valuable as they used to be. Real PvE, without personal scaling and with gated difficulty, is something that the game needed a year ago, and needs even more today. It'll allow people to get rewards geared towards their specific needs, at every level of the game.

So here's the real question for the developers. What's coming down the pipe for us? Why should we continue to spend time and money on this game, if all you're doing on your end is making tiny tweaks to PvE-but-really-PvP structure to stretch out the same old content over five tiers of players, and punishing success with increased difficulty for the same out-of-date rewards?

The developers have had multiple goes at the the PvE rework, and they haven't even addressed the players concerns about the real issues, let alone made any effort to change it. Don't ask us to choose between the old PvE and the "new" PvE, because the right answer increasingly looks like no PvE at all. Almost all of us realize that the best option is the one that the developers aren't giving us, and we deserve to know why that is.

mpqr7

There's no way I'll get remotely close to top 10, and a few 4*s aren't worth going nutz and giving up my life. If/when I do pve, it's just for some iso and I guess some cp... in the end, it just feels like a lot of effort with little actual reward.

DaveR4470

A shoutout from Stax is definitely the key to a good Friday....

Stax the Foyer

mpqr7 wrote:

There's no way I'll get remotely close to top 10, and a few 4*s aren't worth going nutz and giving up my life. If/when I do pve, it's just for some iso and I guess some cp... in the end, it just feels like a lot of effort with little actual reward.

That's exactly the issue. They need separation because that's the only way to distinguish between players when everyone is placed on an even playing field, and grouped into brackets based on their performance.

The grind is a symptom of a deeply flawed system. It substitutes repetition for content, and time commitment for challenge.

The Boss PvE events are loved because the rewards are progression rewards. But then we go back to regular PvE, where fixed 4* covers are such a precious commodity that only 1% of a veteran bracket gets to earn them, or the Gauntlet, where we deal with personal scaling to earn a single 4* cover because improving your roster isn't allowed to help you in PvE.

SnowcaTT

That rewards haven't really changed between the time of 10 4*'s in the game to the rapidly upcoming 40 4*'s in the game (the same as the number of 3*'s.....) is pathetic.

OP is right, the RNG nature of 5* and availability to everyone has the lucky few completely skipping from 2* to 5* transition, and how can that be looked at positively by anybody in between those transition points?

Vhailorx

Absolutely agree that rewards are one of the most significant problem in the game right now. Too few 4*s available by a huge margin. And the game now has enough depth that universal rewards make no sense (1*/2* players have very different needs that 4*/5* vets).

Soitswritten

Honestly I think they'd make a lot of us happy if they'd at least rerun Ultron and Galactus once or twice a month arid in the other pve's.

LordXberk

Bump. This deserves to be the top thread in General Discussion for as long as it takes to get real change in PVE.

I'd imagine almost NO ONE thinks current PVE is ideal. Either the timing, the grinding, or the archaic rewards.

The rewards (or lack thereof) is what really grinds my gears now that I've got most top tier 4*s champed and many more fully covered. It is ridiculous that the reward structure remains largely the same except for the addition of 25 CP max prog (still doesn't help ISO) and the t10 getting 4* (still doesn't help ISO, nor does it help many w/ the 4* transition).

Varg138

I will bump this 3 times a day to keep it at the top of the thread.

firethorne

Fantastic post, Stax. This absolutely deserves developer comment.

Aidonis

I still baulk at it being referred to as pve. The gauntlet is pve. Ultron and civil war are pve (outside of alliance rewards). Everything else in this game is all PvP. And as far as I am concerned, the PvP in this game it absolutely broken. I honestly pay zero attention when they do these reworks, because I know they won't address the true issue, so wth do I care?

And yet I keep spending money on this game, I have no clue why. The writing is on the wall, has been since the second silver surfer was launched. This game has a maybe a year left before it smokes out. I wish a similar puzzle game would get released, so I could leave without watching the ship slowly sink.

wirius

If you're reading this post and you haven't upvoted the OP, why not? What more needs to be said or read?

Cousin Simpson

mpqr7 wrote:

There's no way I'll get remotely close to top 10, and a few 4*s aren't worth going nutz and giving up my life. If/when I do pve, it's just for some iso and I guess some cp... in the end, it just feels like a lot of effort with little actual reward.

Same thing can be said about...

LIFE.

Varg138

Bumping up...please read, people

Smudge

I absolutely agree, but I would say that the whole system, both PvE and PvP, needs some reevaluation. PvE rewards for the effort required are far and away uglier compared to their PvP counterparts, but there is a lot to be desired on both sides.

PvP rewards a single 4* cover for top placement, 5k ISO (which doesn't get you even 2 levels on a 4-5* character), 100 HP, 2 CP (hooray, 10% of a lottery ticket!), and 3 3* covers, which may or may not be useful - often not useful except for being 1500 more ISO.

On top of all of this, there is a bunk bracketing system. After x times of performing well, you get bumped into veteran brackets, where people who all generally need the same thing are competing for the same tiny prize pool among a relatively large group of people. If you do sit out of or perform poorly in y events, you get dropped back into newbie brackets.

I'm not trying to single anyone out or make anyone feel bad by using this example, but I have an alliance mate who sat out of several PvPs towards the end of last season, and he has handily and easily taken 1st in the few PvPs so far this season. He's a solid player with a good roster, but because he didn't play for awhile, he has much better odds of hitting those rewards that everyone else in the alliance needs, save for maybe a couple of us.

Stinginess with rewards, coupled with a terrible bracket system that punishes us for playing well and rewards consistent poor performance, is foolish. I hadn't been playing as hardcore or as well as I have been in recent months for a number of reasons, mostly due to not knowing optimal strategy and not getting onto the forum and into a good alliance until a couple months ago.

Should I be competing against people with similar rosters and who play fairly frequently? Absolutely! Should the rewards pool for such a large group of competitive players be representative of the needs of those players? If you ask the players, the answer is clearly a resounding yes.

Mawtful

This is the fourth test now, the new format is here to stay.

Of course, you don't have to grind even harder than before for the same rewards, you can always get covers from the specially marked token packs!

Sluggo

About a month ago, I suggested something simple: have gauntlet-style events running all the time, not in place of, but in addition to the usual "story" PVEs. We know they can run side-by-side, just create some more individual gauntlets with decent rewards and boom: you have (a) an option for people who don't like competitive PVE, and (b) an instant influx of more ISO.

The suggestion was met with crickets.

It seems like the developers are never going to abandon the competitive PVE format. I don't know why. Maybe it's a philosophical thing where they feel it's more dynamic, or better for business, or both. Maybe the best approach isn't to try to convince them to abandon one for the other, but give us both.

Starsaber

Sluggo wrote:

About a month ago, I suggested something simple: have gauntlet-style events running all the time, not in place of, but in addition to the usual "story" PVEs. We know they can run side-by-side, just create some more individual gauntlets with decent rewards and boom: you have (a) an option for people who don't like competitive PVE, and (b) an instant influx of more ISO.

The suggestion was met with crickets.

It seems like the developers are never going to abandon the competitive PVE format. I don't know why. Maybe it's a philosophical thing where they feel it's more dynamic, or better for business, or both. Maybe the best approach isn't to try to convince them to abandon one for the other, but give us both.

It wouldn't even need to be gauntlets. How about Growth Industry style events for the previous season's new 4*s? That way, if they feel like they can't change Grind PVP to true PVE, competitive players would have an advantage in getting the covers first, but everyone else would have a guaranteed way of getting them before too long.

My preference would be to go to true PVE, but constant 4* side events like that would be better than the current system.

Suddenreal

Starsaber wrote:

Sluggo wrote:

About a month ago, I suggested something simple: have gauntlet-style events running all the time, not in place of, but in addition to the usual "story" PVEs. We know they can run side-by-side, just create some more individual gauntlets with decent rewards and boom: you have (a) an option for people who don't like competitive PVE, and (b) an instant influx of more ISO.

The suggestion was met with crickets.

It seems like the developers are never going to abandon the competitive PVE format. I don't know why. Maybe it's a philosophical thing where they feel it's more dynamic, or better for business, or both. Maybe the best approach isn't to try to convince them to abandon one for the other, but give us both.

It wouldn't even need to be gauntlets. How about Growth Industry style events for the previous season's new 4*s? That way, if they feel like they can't change Grind PVP to true PVE, competitive players would have an advantage in getting the covers first, but everyone else would have a guaranteed way of getting them before too long.

My preference would be to go to true PVE, but constant 4* side events like that would be better than the current system.

A gauntlet style PvE with four tiers. Each tailored for the max level of each rarity of covers, giving each covers suited for their bracket and an appropriate reward at the end of the progression track (hc token for the first two, command points for the last two).

sinnerjfl

Stax the Foyer wrote:

So here's the real question for the developers. What's coming down the pipe for us? Why should we continue to spend time and money on this game, if all you're doing on your end is making tiny tweaks to PvE-but-really-PvP structure to stretch out the same old content over five tiers of players, and punishing success with increased difficulty for the same out-of-date rewards?

The developers have had multiple goes at the the PvE rework, and they haven't even addressed the players concerns about the real issues, let alone made any effort to change it. Don't ask us to choose between the old PvE and the "new" PvE, because the right answer increasingly looks like no PvE at all. Almost all of us realize that the best option is the one that the developers aren't giving us, and we deserve to know why that is.

The big problem here is what the forum dwellers want and what the developpers wants is a completely different thing. They never even remotely acknowledge any questions regarding the removal of competitive PVE. They don't even consider it. They either do not care or they think it will hurt their bottom line too much. Instead they give us the rather insanely scaled Gauntlet and stuff like Ultron/Galactus/CW which btw, were historically very difficult to complete.

Since there is no competition in those, they ramp up the difficulty to push people towards purchases. In competitive PVE/PVP, this happens organically between players. Honestly, the goal of these F2P games is always "How can I make people spend money?". This game is no different although it's fairly friendly to people who don't want to spend too much.

It's ingrained in the game design. Here is a great article on how they designed this game:
(it's 2 years old but still relevant)
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/08/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-1/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-2-cover-store-overhaul/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/15/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-3-event-design-improvements/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/17/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-4-card-pack-design-and-currency-sales/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/22/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-5-adventures-in-consumables/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/24/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-6-alliances/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/29/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-7-event-analytics/
http://venturebeat.com/2014/05/15/marvel-puzzle-quests-road-to-the-mythical-1-arpdau-part-8-card-store-overhaul-redux/

If competitive PVE has stuck around for so long, it stands to reason it's a good revenue stream for them. Why would they kill off something
that makes them money?

TheOncomingStorm

Haven't you just replaced one false dichotomy with another one?

The real error imo is that pve in this case is a misnomer.