3rd Anniversary: Hits and Misses

Calnexin

All of the PvP has been a huge bummer for me.

BFF - don't know what happened, but none of my usable roster was boosted, and I was seeing max-boosted 4* and high-level 5*. I think I only managed to get to ~200 pts before no amount of skipping would banish OML/PHX.
Class of - Too new for a player like me who builds slow. I have most of them, but at very few covers and no significant Iso sunk into them. I started too early so I was seeing all the same max-champ 4* and OML/PHX. Waited a day and skipped my queue to get some easy matches, but after BFF I'm way behind, less than halfway to the 10-pack.
Gwenpool - I've got a single cover. No different than any other new release PVP, except once again none of my useful 4*s are boosted so it's gonna be a hard climb.

I've got a lot of work ahead of me to get to 3k, which would be an awesome prize. There's still useful stuff in my vault. I managed to get to ~ 550 in class yesterday, but I'm, sure the hits will tank me down to <300.

I was about ready to give up on PvP until Boss Rush. Since I can't progress any further in that, may as well see what I can do in Gwen and hope there's enough points in Simulator to make up the difference.

Dragon_Nexus

Kishida wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

If the current setup IS how it's meant to play then I have to ask ****. It would mean they *literally* learned nothing from Galactus and just dumped an identically evil murder grinder on us as a celebration. And I for one don't want to believe that that is what they were going for.

The perpetual question of MPQ: Are the devs more inept than they are cruel?

I've held off using the phrase before because I don't want to appear smug or something...but it seems relevent here. Hanlon's razer.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I want to believe the devs mean well but just bumble their way into these really silly design choices. I cannot imagine there's any kind of corporate greed at work here because does anyone here go "Oh boy, losing fights over and over REALLY makes me want to spend all my money buying health packs!"
Obviously not. Walking into Starbucks and being repeatedly kicked in the shin until you buy the large latte instead of the medium is not going to make you buy the large latte. It's going to make you leave.

So the only alternative is the devs are Three Stooges-ing their way through development.

BassMuffinFIve

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Kishida wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

If the current setup IS how it's meant to play then I have to ask ****. It would mean they *literally* learned nothing from Galactus and just dumped an identically evil murder grinder on us as a celebration. And I for one don't want to believe that that is what they were going for.

The perpetual question of MPQ: Are the devs more inept than they are cruel?

I've held off using the phrase before because I don't want to appear smug or something...but it seems relevent here. Hanlon's razer.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I want to believe the devs mean well but just bumble their way into these really silly design choices. I cannot imagine there's any kind of corporate greed at work here because does anyone here go "Oh boy, losing fights over and over REALLY makes me want to spend all my money buying health packs!"
Obviously not. Walking into Starbucks and being repeatedly kicked in the shin until you buy the large latte instead of the medium is not going to make you buy the large latte. It's going to make you leave.

So the only alternative is the devs are Three Stooges-ing their way through development.

The question is- why are we still here?

Mercalla

I agree with all but one point by the OP. I think the added reward for placement within you alliance for the boss rush is great. The rankings have always been there, so you could see who was participating and helping the team more than others, now it's just added incentives to help encourage people to contribute more. It's an added reward mechanic to a ranking system that was already there. How can people complain about free stuff and call it a miss?? Even if it was just a small amount like +50 iso per ranking, it's something that wasn't there before and better than nothing.

CT1888

BFF - for me this worked, because I had a Champed Kingpin. It forced me into trying against harder opponents than normal, and I won more than I expected. But I totally get that it's a miss because of the MMR issues across the board. I'd like to see this back if the MMR can issue can be resolved.

Class of 2016 - worked for me, purely because I had Champed Red Hulk and put a lot of Iso into Cho. For people without those, I can only imagine how much of a drag it was.

Venom Bomb - why? It's such a drag. I lost the will to play and gave up even chasing the CP from the nodes.

Anniversary Vault - Hooray! This was quality for me. Drawn about 65 tokens so far, and lots of good stuff in there.

Devil Dino drops - ignoring nerf/buff thoughts, with the quantity in the vault and availability elsewhere, there were quite a few covers available for me. Went from zero to 8. That's good for a once a year character in my book.

Double Iso - yay! Couple of two stars champed, and about to champ Cho (which will no doubt help in Boss Meat Grinder)

Boss Rush - it was a big, fat, brutal miss. Lots of things have been said already, so I'll leave that and talk about the near hits, those things that I feel are tantalisingly close to being great (and then copy it onto a Boss Rush post).
Each player unlocking each round. What didn't work was wiping out the collaborative effort. What did work for me was having progression awards totally in my control, not relying on everyone else to put a shift in to be able to score the big points against later bosses. That could be very frustrating at times in the past. Take that a step further and have the side nodes linked to the boss level like everyone is asking, it allows weaker rosters amd those with limited time to play throughout the event without feeling punished; get rid of the prize for clearing a boss level and put in a global progression pool to encourage everyone to work together again.
Sort the scaling. I get it needs to be hard, but it's just brutal. I also get that if it was too easy, like level 5 was the new level 8, people could've walked it with a Winfinite team. The biggie could've been nerfed by one of the passive's given to Phoenix being Teen Jean's. Team disrupted, find a new one.
Many things almost really worked, which is why I'm most disappointed.

dsds

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

If the current setup IS how it's meant to play then I have to ask ****. It would mean they *literally* learned nothing from Galactus and just dumped an identically evil murder grinder on us as a celebration. And I for one don't want to believe that that is what they were going for.

I would say they learned plenty from Galactus event. They learned that they could screw the playerbase or at least the people vocal on this forum and still earn a ton of cash. In my own alliance, the extra cp from purchases was huge. Actions speak louder the words unfortunately.

CT1888

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

The question is- why are we still here?

Masochism

fanghoul

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

I've held off using the phrase before because I don't want to appear smug or something...but it seems relevent here. Hanlon's razer.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I want to believe the devs mean well but just bumble their way into these really silly design choices. I cannot imagine there's any kind of corporate greed at work here because does anyone here go "Oh boy, losing fights over and over REALLY makes me want to spend all my money buying health packs!"
Obviously not. Walking into Starbucks and being repeatedly kicked in the shin until you buy the large latte instead of the medium is not going to make you buy the large latte. It's going to make you leave.

So the only alternative is the devs are Three Stooges-ing their way through development.

I hate to rip on the devs, especially on the anniversary, but this is probably true. I migrated here from Adventure Time Puzzle Quest, and can tell you that they managed to make an even more broken game over there (in terms of game design), which they somehow managed to break worse while fixing it.

Meanwhile, poking around the Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest forum one day, they seem to have managed to make a card which when used in defense, causes your opponent's game to crash, thus winning the match for you.

It's odd to think, but we actually seem to be their most successful and functional game.

Kishida

fanghoul wrote:

I hate to rip on the devs, especially on the anniversary, but this is probably true. I migrated here from Adventure Time Puzzle Quest, and can tell you that they managed to make an even more broken game over there (in terms of game design), which they somehow managed to break worse while fixing it.

Meanwhile, poking around the Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest forum one day, they seem to have managed to make a card which when used in defense, causes your opponent's game to crash, thus winning the match for you.

It's odd to think, but we actually seem to be their most successful and functional game.

Hooray?

Rumbles

I'm going to add my voice, not that demi ever gets what the average customers have to say. If you mega whale they send you personal birthday presents.....

But here it is. From day 1 this anniversary has been a let down as every new event they roll out is. BFF, class of 2016...clearly only for the mega whales...you have 2 maxed 5*?? Great I bet they are the 2 released in 2015, prepare to be stomped by anyone lucky or wealthy enough to have finished new chars. Dino...great a vault full of dino(anniversary). I'm sure he will sit in my regular rotation of chars after this "celebration".

The icing on the cake has got to be boss rush...reminiscent of Icex "players are meant to lose". Given that round 6 is 3 rounds of 500-507 characters each with 90k+ hp, and any one of them can easily one shot a 460 5* this event clearly isn't meant to be fun, enjoyable or honestly even playable if you aren't on a first name basis with Demi staff...course those mega whales have lvl 550 5* problem solved.

carrion_pigeons

In all, I believe the Anniversary is more good than bad: having a good vault and double Iso cover a multitude of sins.

And can I just say that having a comparatively small, rewarding vault that you can farm for multiple events is just a ton of fun? This feels like the best implementation of a vault, ever, and I would really love to see some form of the same thing being a constant thing in the game. Not just because it's better rewards than normal, but because it lends actual gameplay to the inherent randomness of tokens.

That said, the absolute biggest problem with this event has been the exact same problem that every attempt at innovating in this game has had: they didn't actually try it out beforehand, somewhere, to let players give any feedback on what was fun and what was boring or frustrating or irritating.

I could come up with a laundry list of complaints (and people have), but the reality is the specific complaints are not the point. The point is that there's no good reason not to beta test this stuff. Surprise factor is nice and all, but honestly the events we're seeing aren't complex enough for "but we want you to be excited to figure stuff out" to be a real reason. This time around, ALL of your ideas were just plain broken. That ought to be a hint that you need to fix your process.

Just one other super quick complaint: can you please communicate with us some idea of how much time you expect people to devote to some of these events? Boss Rush is an example of an actual interesting idea, but so buried under miles of slog that it can't see the light of day. If you iterate on this idea a little bit, I'd be pretty interested in having an alliance event where you chain bosses together in a survival-type setting. You just need more Puzzle to it and less F2P-Grinding-My-Brains-To-Paste against trash mobs. You seem so attached to the idea of node-grinding, and failure requiring that the end result be death, that you don't realize how much it limits your design space for other kinds of challenge.

TimGunn

Vhailorx wrote:

One minor addition I might add is the pre-anniversary sale. It's a negative for players when Demi offers a sale prior to, but not during, a big event. Demi effectively wants us all to pre-order anniversary week.

I bet they made that change after last year when the player base blew up at them over Galactus. Smart change on their part. I bought in the sale this year, but no way would i pay any money RN with the boss rush debacle. It is too bad because I bet the business will view the anniversary as a success because of the financial success. Damaging overall to player satisfaction and the brand.

tizian2015

Mechahamster wrote:

Double ISO was nice. In fact, I think if they had júst done that everybody would have been super happy. The rest has been frustrating. Terrible event choices with a heroic and venom bomb, specialized pvp events that favour the whales even more than usual, a pve event that is basically already over for me while there's still 3 days left.

Only the whales matter and this made the anniversary a success... for them. The rest doesnt matter. This is a game where someone like me with 120 spent bucks feels like a f2p. Completely overpriced shop, I have actual 485000 Iso which is worth 600 bucks!

It was not all bad, had 35 anniversary tokens, with 4 Dinos, 3 Lt´s, 1Kingpin, some 3*s, some 2*s and 3900 HP (last was great!). But the problem of this anniversary for me is: It shows me, the game should be more like this, the normal reward structure ist too low, even with ClearanceLevels, because the costant overflow with new chars delutes the chances to get specific covers in 4* and 5* land and this is a great wall for me. (Not even mentioned, how much iso this overflow needs to get covered)

We need a daily 4*DDQ, scaling-node-rewards (not only progression), something more ingame content the higher the shieldrank is (is there any other game a new player has the same energy/healthpacks/etc. like the veteranplayer), lower shopprices, better VIP-rewards, lowered scaling (progressing rosters to fight the same enemies just with much higher difficulty for the same noderewards, great content (/sarcasm)), etc.

And these last points made me think of quitting it, because a game designed for whales is not mine...

The Viceroy Returns

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

The question is- why are we still here?

The Marvel tie-in.
If there was no Marvel tie-in with the exact same design decisions, it would not have lasted nearly as long. The Marvel aspect has given them a massive amount of leeway.
Don't under-estimate the casual folks who play this because of the larger roster of highly polished Marvel characters.
Whether they have any control of actually choosing which of them to use, however, starts to get into the design decisions that a non-marvel game would have made more player friendly.

It's similar to the "Star Wars effect", where they think just putting the Star Wars name on something will make it sell, regardless of quality. And sadly to a large extent, they are right.
Back in the day when the movie first hit, Star Wars figures were so rare they actually tricked people into buying a CARDBOARD PICTURE of action figures, and then sent them the actual figures like 4 months later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CmGs9ixpNU

LambadaDave

I appreciate this thread because it reminds me that the anniversary wasn't all bad. I liked getting that Cho cover, even though the "random" was glitched. Also, that double ISO was a great idea!

The insanely hard PVP and truly abysmal Boss Rush are massively tainting my feelings about the overall event.

slidecage

keep up DOUBLE ISO on all events


overall i would give the anniversay an okay i guess really didnt have time to do it

i only got 15 annivery tokens

what i got

3 dinos
red hulk
3 star she hulk thor and coll vemon
5 2 stars
1000 hp
and
1000 iso

Vhailorx

The Viceroy Returns wrote:

BassMuffinFIve wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

The question is- why are we still here?

The Marvel tie-in.
If there was no Marvel tie-in with the exact same design decisions, it would not have lasted nearly as long. The Marvel aspect has given them a massive amount of leeway.
Don't under-estimate the casual folks who play this because of the larger roster of highly polished Marvel characters.
Whether they have any control of actually choosing which of them to use, however, starts to get into the design decisions that a non-marvel game would have made more player friendly.

It's similar to the "Star Wars effect", where they think just putting the Star Wars name on something will make it sell, regardless of quality. And sadly to a large extent, they are right.
Back in the day when the movie first hit, Star Wars figures were so rare they actually tricked people into buying a CARDBOARD PICTURE of action figures, and then sent them the actual figures like 4 months later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CmGs9ixpNU

It's not so much that they were rare, it's that Kenner (and everyone else) was shocked that star wars was such a huge hit. The toys weren't actually in production when the movie was released. It took many months to ramp up production to anywhere near demand levels. Star wars came out in May 1977 and I don't think star wars toys were really available until almost a full year later. I think christmas '77 was the height of parents buying cardboard "we owe you a toy" pictures to give to their kids.

But back on topic, yes, the marvel brand gives demi/d3 more space to be bad and still make a profit. brand tie-in's have their own downsides too (e.g. marvel gets final say on ALL story content).

Saeva

CT1888 wrote:

Venom Bomb - why? It's such a drag. I lost the will to play and gave up even chasing the CP from the nodes. Anniversary Vault - Hooray! This was quality for me. Drawn about 65 tokens so far, and lots of good stuff in there. [...] Double Iso - yay!

Probably for the best you gave up on Venom Bomb. It turned out that if you didn't have Gwenpool you'd be about 5-8K short of the CP progression. Yeah. I was pissed when I discovered that.

I actually otherwise like Venom Bomb. It helped my only Champed 4* is HB and he's boosted this week so I just tanked all the things, but even with normal Venom Bomb I'm one of the people who is strangely okay beating my head against that wall. Which, I think, is what makes it all the more frustrating that not only were they not using CL/broken up CP progression points but you couldn't even reach the CP. Insult to injury.

My Anniversary vault was great so, aside from being disappointed I couldn't time it right to get the Miles Morales cover, I'm happy. I cleared 70+ of the covers and got most of what I wanted.

I liked the Gwenpool event, primarily because no one has a usable Gwenpool yet which meant I could use her as a shield without wasting health packs. Plus, her abilities are fun to play. However, this was a basic PvP event, not Anniversary specific. I was also happy with the Power Man reward in the Simulator putting me at 4 covers for him but, again, that's a normal season Simulator thing.

Otherwise, this was a big miss for me.

Heroics? Hate the artificial limitation of my roster.

Venom Bomb? Couldn't reach CP without a brand new character.

BFF? MMR was broken.

Class of 2016? I have many of them -- but almost none were usable yet. For those not yet in the 4* transition or beyond it would be a complete loss.

Boss Rush? ... Yeah.

It was just one issue after another, even without considering the Cho cover glitch, the "missing" rewards (that then made Venom Bomb's GP node unplayable for people who should have had the GP cover), and the missing points for people who decided to beat their head against the mess that was Boss Rush. This was so poorly executed and CS for D3 is a joke.