Boss Rush Event: Info & Rewards *Updated

Orion

I finished round 6 and I'm out. Not only did I never beat round 6 in 11 attempts, but I only got to Surfer once. And I was using 2 champion 5*s. I think the sweet spot for beating this must be if you have a bunch of champed 4*s, but no 5*s. That way your scaling isn't completely out of control. I just can't handle 3 bosses in a row with 100k health and attacks that do 20-30k damage.

auralgami

You want feedback? How's this: I quit.

I am a 1000+ day player. I have loved, supported, and hated this game through its ups and downs.

I love the new SHIELD rankings and the quality of life improvements that we've seen. I think Gwenpool is terrific and was looking forward to sloooowly collecting covers over the 1.5 years it would probably take me to get her champed.

Yet for every good thing, this developer seems to have a Jekyll/Hyde personality out to ruin the game. It's like the Justice League saves the day and Darkseid bursts in with his Anti-Fun equation. Anniversary should be celebratory. Instead, it's been a poorly-conceived slog culminating in this.

Boss Rush is so fundamentally broken on every level that it has pushed me out. This is player-hating, customer-hating game "design". I could believe it was ineptness except we've been here before. I could move pass Galactus and "You're supposed to lose" because at that time it at least hadn't been tried. Anyone looking at this design for more than 5 minutes should have seen what would happen. To release it anyway...I can't understand how anyone even the least bit sensible would think it a good idea.

Deliberately designed to be punishingly hard, deliberately designed to be even harder the longer you play (and released before the weekend, to maximize that damage), Boss Rush is just gobsmackingly, jawdroppingly incomprehensibly unfair and un-fun.

Why would I subject myself to this? Why would I continue to "play" a "game" that is worse than work? Why would I have anything to do with designers who clearly do not care about the experience they are offering and would let it fester over the weekend instead of fixing it?

Like a victim, I've continued to come back to my abuser time and again, hoping next time it will be different. Instead, Boss Rush shows us that next time will be exactly the same, or worse.

In the past, I've hoped for better and soldiered on. I'm invested, after all, in time and money. I have several 4* covers about to expire because I have 5 of that color, and I was grumblingly okay with that. I was grumblingly okay with a lot of customer-unfriendly game choices because I know it's a business.

I'm past being okay. I don't need this. My time would be better spent doing literally anything else.

I will resign from my alliance at the end of the season. I wish them the best, and they deserve someone who will support them.

I will keep my account, in the hope that someday, someone at this company will recognize that whoever is responsible for "design" this atrocious needs to be reined in, sent back to school, or fired.

That said, I'm done, and I want that message to be clear. I am not going to play, check in, or "just do DDQ".

Until and unless you fix your house, I'm gone. For good.

ZeiramMR

Orion wrote:

I finished round 6 and I'm out. Not only did I never beat round 6 in 11 attempts, but I only got to Surfer once. And I was using 2 champion 5*s. I think the sweet spot for beating this must be if you have a bunch of champed 4*s, but no 5*s. That way your scaling isn't completely out of control. I just can't handle 3 bosses in a row with 100k health and attacks that do 20-30k damage.

That probably is why I've been able to manage it so far. My 5*s and championed 4*s are pretty close together in levels.

Dragon_Nexus

I'm on round six, maybe 2/5 of the way through and...I can't. I just cannot muster up the energy to fight these long winded, painful, luck orientated battles any more. Best I've done is get Pheonix to about 10k health and that only happened because my Professor X was cowering in the shadows. But then she got a lucky 5 match of red and AoE'd him.

So I am done now. I don't have a team that can take them out quickly, can't stun them to death or anything...I was going to try to push for a single Peggy Carter cover at least but I have lost all enjoyment in what could have been a fun Gauntlet style Boss event.

But you did it again Demiurge. You confused difficulty with challenge. This isn't challenging, it's difficult because I cannot control enough of this game to be able to make the kinds of informed decisions that would allow me to win. I have to have faith, trust to luck and examine the tea leaves in my cup in the morning. So once again I am bereft of Pegy Carter covers and this anniversary ends on a whimper.

And that, to me, is the biggest shame of this event. It brought down everyone's mood from what had been a fun and enjoyable anniversary.

Arphaxad

"David wrote:

Moore"]*Update: 1:25 PM 10/14/16

Greetings, all.

The dev team wanted to let everyone know they have been reading your feedback and taking it into consideration. Here's word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"Hey everyone, We're trying a bunch of new stuff with the initial run of Boss Rush and we appreciate hearing your thoughts. We'll look at our data to see how people did and combine that with the feedback to help improve future runs of the event. Thanks for playing the event, and keep the feedback coming!"

Thank you.

Come on Anthony, you're not this stupid. You didn't NEED 3 and half days of data to know this event was screwed up. You knew this event was scaled too high for the majority of your players.

Next time, if there is a next time, err on the side of caution and make the event too easy. Then scale it up if needed. But this plan of killing our motivation and then hoping we stick around for the real event is not working.

Bowgentle

I limped into round 7 by going 0/I don't even know how many attempts in round 6.

When someone with a level 456 Surfer, 452 OML, 435 Phoenix and 28 champed 4*s can't beat round 6 of 8, something is very very wrong with the difficulty of an event.

But keep on keeping on, Demiurge. Collect feedback for another two days. Then adjust.
This too will pass.
Also, money.

simonsez

Chipster22 wrote:

even some 3* players on round 6.

You say that as if you don't understand that scaling results in no advantage to better rosters in this event.

simonsez

simonsez wrote:

Chipster22 wrote:

even some 3* players on round 6.

You say that as if you don't understand that scaling results in no advantage to better rosters in this event.

Orion wrote:

I never beat round 6 in 11 attempts, but I only got to Surfer once. And I was using 2 champion 5*s.

Bowgentle wrote:

When someone with a level 456 Surfer, 452 OML, 435 Phoenix and 28 champed 4*s can't beat round 6 of 8, something is very very wrong

Let me rephrase: You say that as if you don't understand that scaling makes this event easier for those 3* players...

MLDB

Enough has been said about the insane scaling that I have nothing to add besides I agree it was a horrible oversight.

I will address, however, overloaded kits. Phoenix by far is way stronger than any other based on her passives ALONE. Generating 5 red tiles a turn, but then also being able to collect them and deal damage if more than 9 are on the board? So we have AP generation plus a greatly improved Hood passive in 1 passive. Then passive 2 gives her AOE+ random 3 turn stun on a 5 crit, plus she can't be stunned back? No other boss has the ability to feed into free 9k AOE +stun without making a single match. If the generating red doesn't make a match-5, the cascades afterward have a great chance to! She doesn't even need Mind Crush to wipe a team.

If boss rush is retooled, please don't overlook phoenix as needing some toning down. Take away the stun or the damage on a match 5, or take away the auto collect if more than 9 red are on the board. Maybe even both, because there's no counter strategy to both.

In comparison, Banner, the other tile generating fiend needs to SPEND AP to do aoe, there's no 3 turn stun, he stops generating green tiles like crazy after he gets enough AP to transform and smash, and he can un transform if green is less than 7. He's at least got some counter strategy to him. Phx is just putting you at the mercy of RNGesus at maximum capacity.

kobu

Arphaxad wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]*Update: 1:25 PM 10/14/16

Greetings, all.

The dev team wanted to let everyone know they have been reading your feedback and taking it into consideration. Here's word from Anthony at Demiurge:

"Hey everyone, We're trying a bunch of new stuff with the initial run of Boss Rush and we appreciate hearing your thoughts. We'll look at our data to see how people did and combine that with the feedback to help improve future runs of the event. Thanks for playing the event, and keep the feedback coming!"

Thank you.

Come on Anthony, you're not this stupid. You didn't NEED 3 and half days of data to know this event was screwed up. You knew this event was scaled too high for the majority of your players.

Next time, if there is a next time, err on the side of caution and make the event too easy. Then scale it up if needed. But this plan of killing our motivation and then hoping we stick around for the real event is not working.

Agreed with starting off too easy. Ramp up slowly, gauge feedback, and ease off when complaints of too easy and too hard reach parity. The worse that could happen starting too easy is peanuts compared to what's being expressed in this thread. Everyone who might think it's too easy and boring will be right back in the next Story event, complaints mostly forgotten. This though? This will not be forgotten.

And here's how this event has impacted how I feel about the game...I have a routine now where I jump up each morning and do my DDQ. Until this morning. This morning, I didn't even want to fire up the game. I forced myself to, and I'm only on my third node when I normally would be done hours ago. I played some Star Realms instead, got some **** draws and lost a lot, but at no point did I feel like a carrot was being dangled just out of my reach.

It's the complete opposite of how I felt after Civil War. I was doing my best there, still got stomped by House Party Protocol, but still came back to help my alliance score as many prizes as we could. There was some frustration, sure, but it was also exhilarating to win later rounds and inch closer to our goals. Here with Peggy covers being a pipe dream, I don't even want to try.

Dragon_Nexus

kobu wrote:

Agreed with starting off too easy. Ramp up slowly, gauge feedback, and ease off when complaints of too easy and too hard reach parity. The worse that could happen starting too easy is peanuts compared to what's being expressed in this thread. Everyone who might think it's too easy and boring will be right back in the next Story event, complaints mostly forgotten. This though? This will not be forgotten.

Definitely. Hell, it probably would have benefitted them if it was too easy. One big fireworks display as we vent some frustrations "Ha take THAT OML you over powered monster!" as your boosted 3* team stomps a level 300 OML on Round 8 or something. We get this big glorious send off to the anniversary, everyone gets 3 Peggy covers as a big thank you to playing the game and we all leave with happy smiles having earned loads of anniversary tokens, maybe some Devil Dinos, a ton of ISO and other rewards and finishing off with a fun event that got us three covers for one of the most desirable 4*s in the game.

But instead we got brought to the party, handed some gifts and then kicked in the balls whenever the music stopped.

Wjohnson992

simonsez wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Chipster22 wrote:

even some 3* players on round 6.

You say that as if you don't understand that scaling results in no advantage to better rosters in this event.

Orion wrote:

I never beat round 6 in 11 attempts, but I only got to Surfer once. And I was using 2 champion 5*s.

Bowgentle wrote:

When someone with a level 456 Surfer, 452 OML, 435 Phoenix and 28 champed 4*s can't beat round 6 of 8, something is very very wrong

Let me rephrase: You say that as if you don't understand that scaling makes this event easier for those 3* players...

It really doesnt.

Vhailorx

MLDB wrote:

Enough has been said about the insane scaling that I have nothing to add besides I agree it was a horrible oversight.

But that's just the thing, It was NOT an oversight! How much evidence do we need to know that demi wants the game to be much harder than we do?

Galactus event last year
the first several PVE tests
the current 2* essential node "bugfix"
The great un-leavening after Season XXXI (no more baking)
The general trend towards longer, harder matches.

they just keep trying to make the game really hard and telling us it's a fun challenge over and over again. And we keep acting all surprised and frustrated by it over and over again!

Demi: There are too many game mechanics in MPQ that brutally punish failure. Change those underlying mechanics and you can ramp up the difficulty without destroying the player experience. But right now YOUR GAME IS NOT FUN WHEN YOU MAKE IT THAT HARD!

Nepenthe

I'm on round 7 and I think I'll be able to finish it. I've been using ProfX/GSBW/SWitch and +2 purple, +2 all AP boosts. It still takes a lucky starting board to get a win, but the round targets are set such that it doesn't take that many wins to get through. So far a 50% win rate or so has allowed me to make progress. Not sure about round 8. It feels very much like the first run of Galactus though, where a lucky board and winfinite could get some people through, but if you don't have those heroes or don't have the right starting board, there's no chance to win.

I liked the idea of boss waves. I love survival nodes, and I've loved most of the boss events (with the exception of Galactus's first run massacre). But this just didn't really work. I admit there is a certain tense challenging fun in making sure you keep having enough purple to not let the boss have a single turn, but that tight-rope suspense is not fun over and over through a long event. And for people without that certain combo, they just seem out of luck. I'd much rather be trying out different teams out of my 15 championed 4*s customized for which set of bosses I'm facing in a round, but that doesn't work and they just get wiped. Instead I'm using a cheap trick combo of two 3*s and an underleveled 4* to make it so it doesn't matter what boss I'm facing at all. If they get a turn, the match damage or a single power will kill me, so once I get winfinite started the boss is nothing but a sack of hitpoints. Not the varied challenging boss battles I think the devs were going for.

I hate to say it, but I think the existence of reliable winfinite combos is breaking the game. The devs obviously want to have challenging events, but anything with enough match damage or early-turn damage potential to be a threat to winfinite is going to be devastating for any other 3* and most other 4* rosters. If they scale this down so people can have a reasonable chance and winning with other rosters, winfinite will just roll over the bosses. It's perfect for long fights and survival wave nodes.

*One change I've been trying now is ProfX/GSBW/Jean Grey. In round 7 it's make or break before SWitch's countdown has a chance to go off, so I've had some luck with using Jean to tank purple an buy me a few extra rounds to get purple matches or a match-5. Give it a shot.

Nightglider1

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

But instead we got brought to the party, handed some gifts and then kicked in the balls whenever the music stopped.

"Musical ****" is a terrible game.

DeNappa

Wjohnson992 wrote:

[snip]

simonsez wrote:

Let me rephrase: You say that as if you don't understand that scaling makes this event easier for those 3* players...

It really doesnt.

Being a 3* player myself (hopefully not for *too* long any more) I can confirm that the bosses still stomp the **** out of you. That said, it could very well be the case that 4*/5* players have it even harder. At least psychologically...

Bowgentle

Nepenthe wrote:

The devs obviously want to have challenging events, but anything with enough match damage or early-turn damage potential to be a threat to winfinite is going to be devastating for any other 3* and most other 4* rosters.

And champed 5* rosters, for which winfinite isn't an option.
This event is just broken for everyone except the softcappers who also dominate all other PVEs.

GurlBYE

simonsez wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Chipster22 wrote:

even some 3* players on round 6.

You say that as if you don't understand that scaling results in no advantage to better rosters in this event.

Orion wrote:

I never beat round 6 in 11 attempts, but I only got to Surfer once. And I was using 2 champion 5*s.

Bowgentle wrote:

When someone with a level 456 Surfer, 452 OML, 435 Phoenix and 28 champed 4*s can't beat round 6 of 8, something is very very wrong

Let me rephrase: You say that as if you don't understand that scaling makes this event easier for those 3* players...

I get your frustration but one thing I won't to dash out is the myth of this being a cake walk for 3 star players.

The main problem isn't "ease for lower players"

The glaring issue is having scaling pressing down on your neck no matter how much you progress.

Lower players also have 1 team to use. The main reason that higher level players are having so much trouble and why the game is cooked is because they screwed with scaling before the game could handle it.

5 stars started out at 255. 4 stars ENDED at 270.
There are like 10 of those characters.

Scaling should not have nearly been as harsh for that part of the game, because even as powerful as they were made to be, on average even the players there have 2/3 options.

But this has been the trend since 2's 3's and 4's when people were soft capping for pve.

This event is just exacerbating a lot of the issues with the game.

It seems at this point sadly the expectations of advancing to feel more powerful in game is happening nowhere but the prologue.

Notice they even make us do the trial nodes with soft capped characters? And they also entirely stopped the pvp trial nodes once 5's were introduced?

peanut_gallery

The piss poor design of the PHX boss has already been covered in depth, so I won't rehash that here.

But putting her first as the opening boss for round 8, combined with her piss poor design, is just tinykitty tinykitty tinykitty piss poor game design and downright sadistic.

In prior rounds you at least had a chance to build up AP and go in guns blazing.

Now you are at the fate of RNGesus from the first move. Twice now she's had a crit on her very first move and essentially wiped out my team in one to two moves.

I'd have significantly better odds in Vegas, or even pulling the 5* I wanted from an LT, as that's what the "challenge" in round 8 comes down to: Pure luck from the first move. No strategy or real gameplay involved at all.

There is simply no reason continue to play this absurd event. With PvP and a new PvE coming up, wasting health packs on a slot machine boss battle makes no sense.

insomnia99

I have a question about the side battles. After I play them once they lock and say "mission complete." Yet before I start they say "0/4 rewards" available. Why offer four rewards if you can only play once? Relplaying the boss does not open them either. Is this the same for everyone else?