Boss Rush Event: Info & Rewards *Updated

aesthetocyst

JHawkInc wrote:

Do the health packs NEED to be adjusted when you've got 8 hours to do each wave? There's plenty of time for them to regen and for you to get through and finish a set of clears, right?

You are expected to wipe vs. the boss. judging by the flavor text, we are expected to see "how far we can get" against the boss. In previous boss fights, it was common for weaker rosters to be scaled out, and only the strongest players to be able to beat the rd 8 boss. In this event the bosses are in waves and they are scaled. Everyone is wiping by rd 6, if not earlier.

Each round offers 5 or 6 chances at the boss depending on your timing. Wiping each time for partial pts means needing 12 or 15 health packs, just to field the same team for those fights. The difficulty and unknown scoring requirements ensures that you'll need to bring your best team to each sight.

Pile on top of that the expected node scaling increases (should hit in 26min*), and yeah, doing your best in this event will be requiring a couple dozen health packs per cycle.

Oh, darn, they are capped at 10.

Well, you can stagger your play throughout the day and make the best of it. 8hrs / 35min = almost 14 heals generated every cycle.

________________

* Yep, scaling ticked up at start of 4th cycle, as usual in boss fights. oh well, there goes one possible bright spot LOL

guib

I couldnt read everything , so has this issue been tackled already ? :

the previous boss battle had the rewards fixed (like in PVE) with cp at 1st, 4th and 6th on the 8 if I remember
so winning at least once allowed to win at least 1 cp

is this system already gone, or the order of rewards has been changed ?
because the 3 times I managed to beat round 5 , I got 1000iso, then 500iso, 500iso




not to mention that anyway, even if you won every boss waves, there isnt even enough points to win 8 rewards so it seems really poorly implemented on that aspect also...

Bowgentle

It's almost noon at Boston, I guess they're still drawing straws about who has to answer Hi-Fi's mails.

Timely communication from Demiurge on a Friday, as always.

Yes, I'm getting bitter about these continued "whoops, people like this idea of ours WAY less than we expected!" moments and the ensuing radio silence.

I'm still waiting to hear if I'll be compensated for the zero ISO instead of double ISO I got by playing Dino in Slice 1.

fmftint

Kabir WAS on a moment ago...

simonsez

Bowgentle wrote:

I'm still waiting to hear if I'll be compensated for the zero ISO instead of double ISO I got by playing BFF in Slice 1.

And I'm still waiting to hear if I'll be compensated for getting locked out of sub3 of the Gwenpool PvE.

But I think we already know the answer.

simonsez

fmftint wrote:

Kabir WAS on a moment ago...

Are you sure it wasn't a Kabot?

Bowgentle

fmftint wrote:

Kabir WAS on a moment ago...

Guess he drew the short straw, then.

Hendross

I'm also in the r6 boat floating down river Styx to meet my maker; Phoenix. I calculate only 36 more health packs to "clear" the round

wymtime

Escape2victory wrote:

I just made it to Round 7. 2 pints of beer, a Scotch, a lager and pork scratchings this time. Looking forward to Round 8.
Boss Rush ?.. don't worry, it'll go away soon for an autopsy.

What team did you use in round 6?? Fellow alchoholics want to know

Noobulator

Good intentions with the event are marred by the continued poor execution. Consider this par for the course.

#YSTL

madsalad

Round 6 is a cruel, cruel joke. Starting with OML leading into Boss Jean? OML was easily handled. Jean passived into a match 5 and wiped my full health team.

Kudos.

Pessi

Reset ushered in the subnodes to increases in level too. Hooray! Knew it would happen but its still a kidney punch.

This event is a farce.

hesjingixen

Two quick things:

1) Just made it to round 6, and there is little in this game more demoralizing than watching Phoenix use an ability that cost 20 AP 3 turns in a row. Yeah....totally "fun" event.

2) If the point of this event was supposed to be "It's insanely hard, but fun!", I would have no problem with a version that plays just like the current one, but boss battles are "free", and by that I mean, when it's over, your heroes are healed back to whatever HP they had when they started. That way, you essentially throw your best team out there, do the best you can, scramble for partial points, and then go fight rounds to get back in there. As it currently is, it feels like a money grab to make people buy health packs during what is supposed to be a fun anniversary event.

Arimis_Thorn

In Round 6 my Boss waves lvl 484 - 491. But hey, at least I get to look forward to a 2* Storm progression reward if I can accrue another 150,000 points.

Dipshits.

phaseetious4me

Guess they just wanted to give me the weekend off from PvE. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Poodlec

Fightmastermpq wrote:

famousfoxking wrote:

xidragonxi wrote:

Guys, this was actually fun. No sarcasm.

Great! Maybe you could provide some tips on how to make this enjoyable?

Using OML (420), Phoenix (435)

Ah. Nevermind.

That's unfair, the bosses are scaled, so the 5*s have a much harder time IMO. They are forced to use just a handful of available characters (very few people have more than three 5* champs), and the scaling goes vertical around level 500 (which is what 5* players start to see starting round 5). I would MUCH rather be able to pick from my pool of fifteen champed 4*s than be locked in to OML/Phx/Support Character.

I need 5k points to end round 3. My best guys are champed Doom, Hulk and Cyclops(i started to champ my not long ago), and my have mostly 1-2 covers(except Cho, he have one each color) and bosses i face are lvl 300+. So, what did you said was unfair ?

ErikPeter

Hey everyone. I love this game. My initial reaction to the new event was quite positive.

But the format of the event (nodes followed by 3 bosses in a row) takes away from the fun that should be had.

• Who's the target audience?

Who is this event aimed at? In my casual alliance of RL friends, I'm one only a few heavy hitters who reach the 1.2M LT in Ultron/Civil War. 16 hours into the event, most of my alliance is already just done. I'm trying to remain optimistic going into round 5, but I' m pretty sure I'll have to start tanking with lesser meat characters, and just see how many points I can get from side nodes. It's a boss rush where I'm motivated to skip the "boss rush" entirely. A bad sign. So?

• Ditch the side nodes

It's a "boss rush". What are we doing wasting time--and later, health packs and much much more time--on side nodes while we get to the main event? I get that "tempo" is a thing, and as a storyteller you want to have periods of growing tension broken up by periods of release. Thematically, the side nodes work for that in Ultron as he's getting more powerful and making more drones before the final confrontation. But here, the real excitement of the event is in the boss fights, the hardest single matches in the history of MPQ. The side missions here are meaningless, just a grind to ensure I have the required characters, with the added dread that in 24 hours they might also be a heal pack tax that prevent me from playing the 'main event'. If some higher-up says the side nodes are required for the MPQ flavor, they should be optional but offer health-pack and boost rewards that can help you on the main event (they could even be Boss-Rush specific boosts not usable anywhere else.)

• Gotcha?

I feel bad for the designers who came up with a bunch of "clever, exciting, cool" boss versions of characters that only a small fraction of players will get to play against.

I was really excited to see what Wolverine Unleashed would look like. The first time I got to him, however, he just killed the last two members of my team on his first turn before I got to even look at his powers. (The second time I beat him with winfinite so his "clever, exciting, cool" powers were n/a.)

"Gotcha!" some clever dev said. "You know those two bosses you just fought in a row, (probably the hardest fight you've ever played if you're not a Round 8 Civil War alliance), well, turns out you were supposed to be denying green the whole time! Ha ha, start over, tk." Cruel tricks aren't very fun, and better saved for final rounds than used when introducing a new character. But really that just leads me to my last point--

• Boss Rush is the wrong format for Boss Rush

Fighting 3 bosses in a row is actually a really bad way to showcase how cool and exciting bosses are. Bosses should be about building up resources against brutal attrition, trying to unload a final, game-winning nuke (e.g.) to win the match. I suppose Boss Rush is the same way, but the nature of resource gain is that going into a new wave, you will get ruined by the next boss if you let him get a turn or fire a power off. Dunno about you guys but whenever IM fired House Party Protocol I was basically back at square one. Multiple bosses in a row is a GREAT idea for later rounds when things get even harder, but why bother spending the design time on "Silver Surfer, Herald of Galactus" when only a small portion of your playerbase will even get the privilege of losing to him?

It seems to me like Boss Rush was designed by an engineer who is a gamer who wants a challenge, not a thoughtful game designer who wants a fun challenge.

We need to fight the bosses first to get a feel for them before we are thrown into the shredder. The first few rounds should have been solo boss fights (with some tricks and traps, maybe a wave of 12 weak ultron sentries before ultron shows up, e.g.) If you need side nodes, either make them optional resource rewards like I mentioned above, or use them to pit us against solo bosses at beatable difficulties, so we can see how they work (and appreciate the design), then rise in difficulty gradually as the player progresses. It's not a co-op event, it's a Gauntlet, so the difficulty should increase like one.

In conclusion: Next time, you should focus on the boss fights and cater to players of a wider skill level.

Dalbok

I'll add to the sentiment that I'm not enjoying Boss Rush at all. I get the impression that players aren't intended to win but simple whittle away at their progress bar and get as far as they can. But that is not enjoyable in my opinion. I guess in the big picture it can be viewed that way, but I'd like to feel like I have a chance. I was able to win twice in Round 4 and gained points to make it to Round 5 and I think I may be able to achieve Round 6 but there won't be time to get further I'm fairly certain. Earning too few points.

And if that was the intention, I imagine that was also the thinking behind the original Galactus event. If so, they should've learned from that it wouldn't go over well.

Boss Rush and BFF were good ideas but not good implementation. They need a play test group to provide feedback before these go live.

mpqr7

Boss rush would be great if it were two easier bosses, with the third being very tough. So then you could save up your AP by fighting the first two bosses, and then you could unleash all your major attacks on the final, deadly boss.

But instead, if you save your AP and avoid doing attacks on the first two bosses, they will just kill you. And even if you miraculously win, you barely make any points toward progression, plus you still need to use 3 healthpacks, so it's a bit frustrating.

Dragon_Nexus

I ask the same question now that I did when Galactus was designed as a problem you couldn't solve by design.
I don't like the phrase in general but I'm talking design philosophy and theming here rather than tossing out a tired meme about business strategies. If we're meant to lose in the event, why are the characters not regenerated to full health after the attempt?

This was an issue with Galactus. The idea was "He's unbeatable because he's Galactus, obvs. So he's going to swat you away and carry on with what he's doing". Okay, fine, but why do I have to spend 3 health packs after he's swatted me aside?
Same here. If the goal is to get as far as possible and grind away at point values:
1) Why do the pins increase in difficulty at all, isn't the boss tough enough as it is? Remember Galactus round 1 where the pins were so absurdly difficult some people couldn't even GET to the boss?
2) Why am I penalised for playing the boss mode as it's designed? Imagine playing Halo but every time you killed an Elite you lost part of your shield. You'd think Bungie or 343 Studios had gone raving mad. And yet here we are being told the goal is to get as far as you can and finishing is a bonus...but if you fail to finish you're stumping up 3 health packs for being such a loser.

This is *literally* the same list of problems as Galactus last year. It's quite uncanny, really. Boss is too hard and designed to wipe your party. Pins will eventually become too long winded and grindy to be fun. Health packs are drained within a half hour. All the while the devs seem somehow completely oblivious to the fact that repeatedly dying and losing in a game *isn't fun*.

I gave you guys the benefit of the doubt, I said in several threads about this "I reckon they just turned boss scaling on by accident, or someone set the scaling too high by accident" and then the first dev reply we got expressed puzzlement that we weren't enjoying being flogged to the bone.