Boss Rush - Enjoyment Poll

JMccovery

I guess I had fun, about as much fun one can possibly have constantly losing at Round 3/4...

Methinks my love for collecting characters is what created the brick wall I ran into. (Lots of low-level 4-stars, a few champed 2 and 3-stars, 4 or 5 single cover 5's)

GrumpySmurf1002

Even missing completion as close as I did - still voted 80%.

Up to round 6 I was enjoying it, or probably more correctly, I wasn't aggravated by it. Yes the scaling was brutal, but there were multiple teams to get through the waves, some more effective than others, and the challenge felt fine. It still felt beatable despite the losing here and there.

Then Banner led off R7, which started to reduce the options. There's only so many ways to deal with that much green acceleration so quickly. Wipes became more frequent, and health packs started to become an issue.

Then came WTFPHX. This was not fun. As I said in another thread, this was Russian Roulette with 5 bullets in the chamber. There's no strategy to praying to everything that is holy that

a) the red doesn't make a match-5
b) the resulting clearing of red doesn't make a match-5
c) the subsequent matching doesn't make a match-5
d) you can actually get an engine going to beat her before cycling through a-c again.

Now it was immediate death close to half the time, 3-turn death another 25%, and maybe 1 in 4 you could Hulkfinite through it, especially if you could then Whale/Retribution/Penance Stare her as quickly as possible before the cycle broke. That's just atrocious design, at least twice as bad as first Galactus, which was horrific.

If not for WTFPHX, I do think this was ok, given the rewards. I'd never in a million years have played it for covers other than Peggy (or a 5*), but if you're gonna give me a high end reward, I personally don't mind the slog.

Dartmaster01

I finished but checked 60% because I did enjoy some of this event. Scaling was **** but even that wouldn't have been that bad if you were facing normal opponents. Phoenix was just over the top IMO. You never see this kind of outrage from gauntlet.

The really disturbing things I noticed while playing this was everyone was basically robbed of several days of double iso. I would have cleared a ton more iso from any other pve event. So that bothered me the whole time. They should give everyone 50K iso for wasting four days of double iso in the only week it has been around in 2 years.

Second and most disturbing is that for devs that traditionally have frowned upon winfinite teams, (with nerfs to several good ones, I wont name them all here) to make an event that is only winnable with a winfinite combo is just baffling. Look for every team that completed round 8 to get nerfed in the future. It was not fun trying to play with normal combos after round 3 but when I settled into winfinite (in rounds 4,5,6) it was winnable but still not fun. The only reason I put up with it was to grab some Peggy covers. Breezed through round 7 & 8 but would like to have had different options to play with. Being locked into one team for four days is just a waste of having over 100 characters. I honestly think this event was just for them to find out all the winfinite combos so they can get rid of them. It was all a !!!

GrumpySmurf1002

Dartmaster01 wrote:

The really disturbing things I noticed while playing this was everyone was basically robbed of several days of double iso. I would have cleared a ton more iso from any other pve event. So that bothered me the whole time. They should give everyone 50K iso for wasting four days of double iso in the only week it has been around in 2 years.

This is a good point that I forgot about. Last boss run we got static 500iso for every side node, and the boss drops came in a specific order.

This event, instead of 2x500 per side node (so 55k + boss rewards over 3.5 days, which is a pretty good rate), we got random boosts and standard tokens (couldn't have thrown us at least a few Elites?!) and the occasional 500 instead of 1k . Not to mention no rewards if you didn't clear the whole boss wave. (we couldn't be thrown a bone for clearing WTFPHX and dying to Surfer?)

That part of the event structure was disappointing.

gravel

I gave it 20% even though I beat round 8. I did need to buy health packs and boosts to beat the event. I enjoy new content, and I liked the concept. Two of the bosses were particularly unfair. There was also a step increase in difficulty starting with round 3. If the expectations are losses while damaging the boss enough to keep chipping away, that should be communicated prior to the event.

broll

20%

So I completed Round 6, but it was a grueling slog that was not in the least bit enjoyable. I wasn't even close to max personal progression, which was a huge insult based on the amount of time and effort thrown at this turd.

How scaling felt:
1 - Easy
2 - Normal
3 - Hard
4 - Really Hard
5 - Brutally Hard
6 - You're kidding right?
7 - You thought you were supposed to win? lol
8 - I didn't get this far but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just 3 Galacticus'

How it should have scaled:
1 - Super Easy
2 - Very Easy
3 - Easy
4 - Starting to not feel easy
5 - Normal
6 - Hard
7 - Really Hard
8 - Brutally Hard

The points should have been scaled so that you were supposed to beat all 3 bosses 3-4 times before progressing to the next round.

Other things that should be changed to make this enjoyable:
- Stop with the essential nodes scaling up every 8 hours. They should unlock every 8 hours and scale with the round.
- It would have been nice if it were not the same 5 essentials the whole event. If someone didn't have those characters the event would have been completely unattemptable.
- Progression points were tuned way too high. As long as you were hitting all 5 essentials each hour, even if you didn't do so good on the boss, you should have achieved 25 CP.
- The alliance reward was an OK idea, but the prize was too weak. The ISO was fine, but their should have been more HP and either multiple 3* covers for first or one of the following: 4*/LT/25 CP
- The idea that this wasn't an alliance event was interesting. I think it could work as such, but it should have been announced that way. The fact that we weren't told it would be solo felt like a bait and switch.
- Fix the tinykitty scaling for tinykitty sakes!!!

This event was not fun in the least. This is supposed to be a game about playing as/with Marvel heroes. Don't you love watching your heroes continually lose over and over to their enemies? It's it awesome when the henchmen beat them before they even get to the main boss? No, that's not how these things work. The bosses usually lose, then come back later stronger over and over until they finally do win and it takes a heroic effort to beat them. That's what this event should feel like, not this:

__Adam

As usual the rewards were linear and the difficulty was exponential. Imagine that.

abominatrix

I don't know that I have much to add that hasn't already been stated, but I do want to separate out 2 issues:

a. Scaling on essential nodes on boss events. This is not specific to Boss Rush, and should be easily fixed. There is no reason why the scaling is time based vs. boss level based, and it punishes casual alliances without doing anything to make it harder for serious players; in fact, it makes it easier for them since their essential node scaling will not seriously kick in until they are several rounds into the boss levels. This needs to change for all boss events.

b. Specific issues with Boss Rush. There are numerous posts on this, but the fact is that the boss design both greatly limited the kinds of teams people could play, and made the results entirely random based on cascades and initial board placement. This increases randomness and decreases fun. Also, I suspect the devs assumed that we would wipe most of the time once to level 4-5, but did no communication or change any kind of design to limit the pain; a simple change of not carrying over damage would have been enough; it would have told us that "Yes, you're not supposed to win, but you can still progress", and that they had actually considered this.

I COULD have powered through and gotten the Peggy covers, but life is too short. so I go through round 4 hoping things would get better. I gave the event 20% because the base event could be made fun with substantial tweaking on the boss design and perhaps the way the event was run, but if they run this event again with no changes, I'll likely not even start it. I'm having more fun with the Unstable ISO-8 event than I ever had with Boss Rush.

fmftint

Know what's fun? Carrying a boosted to 180 champ Hawkeye through his essential scaled to 352 vs Ghost Rider, 5☆ Spider-Man, Prof X

Then getting a standard token because sub node rewards weren't normalized

JVReal

I enjoyed it 10%, so I chose 0% since I did not want to give it more credit than it deserved.

I found the first couple Rounds to be decent where I could choose a different team to beat it and still make progress. once I got to round 3, I pretty much had to use Winfinite to get to round 6. When you are limited to one gimmick to beat a level (and not even the 4* cover rewarding rounds) something is wrong with the event.

I would have continued to beat my head against the wall of the event had the devs acknowledged it was a mistake and that they would be making amends for the horrific event... but after we got the Snub on Friday and told (yet again during an anniversary) that we were supposed to lose and suck it up... I stopped playing it.

I had no desire to feed false metrics into their system. Participation meant acceptance. Once they decided to give us the shaft on Friday I wanted to show no participation as a result of both the event and the treatment of me as a player voicing my concerns over a broken event.

Arphaxad

This was a case of great concept, poor execution.

I was excited to give this a try, but that excitement died by round 3. I begrudgingly got through round 4 and hated every moment of round 5. I couldn't bring myself to play round 6 and stopped with a day and half left on the clock.

Boss Rush gave me time to play other games. Not a good result for MPQ.

SeraphimLP

Vhailorx wrote:

It's true that lower leveled rosters have more options because the 3* and 4* tiers are deeper.

I was reading this so many times. It´s right, that you have more options, but it´s not very useful! I have a 3* roster (18 champed and a lot of them are ready to champ or have nearly 13 covers) with a few 4* (the highest is Bucky with 8 covers) and I had to quit in round 5, because I couldn´t even beat the essential nodes anymore (only the first wave in a wave node) and Green Goblin ate my characters for breakfast! So I don´t know why some people are thinking it´s easier with a 3*/4* roster...


At topic: I voted for 20%. Round 1 and 2 were fun, rounds 3-5 were only hell.

Calnexin

I made it to round 5 using the very helpful "Hulkfinite". Then I stupidly cashed in a Storm cover and she started tanking. That's when I gave up.

I enjoyed the challenge up until round 3. I was not able to finish 4 without the aforementioned combo, as my PX is not up to par. "Don't let your opponent get a turn" is an interesting concept, but taking stuns out of the equation means you're basically screwed unless you have an appropriate winfinite combo. Did not like.

stowaway

I took a full 6 months off from this game, not even playing daily. I decided to check back in for the anniversary, just for the heck of it. I appreciated the giant pile of iso waiting for me, and for a few days I was having dangerous thoughts like, "Maybe I really could just be a casual. . ." and "I should at least shoot for the anniversary 10 pack. . ." Boss Rush rolled around, I got to stage 5 (in a solo alliance), and with two and a half days left in the event, I uninstalled the game again.

It's not that it was wholly unenjoyable. It's that it was representative of everything that made me quit in the first place. Aggravation, time sink, luck-based rewards, the unique gaming experience of suspecting that someone is out there whose job it is to make sure I'm feeling frustrated instead of having fun. Good luck to you all, I'll probably see you next year.

Fightmastermpq

SeraphimLP wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

It's true that lower leveled rosters have more options because the 3* and 4* tiers are deeper.

I was reading this so many times. It´s right, that you have more options, but it´s not very useful! I have a 3* roster (18 champed and a lot of them are ready to champ or have nearly 13 covers) with a few 4* (the highest is Bucky with 8 covers) and I had to quit in round 5, because I couldn´t even beat the essential nodes anymore (only the first wave in a wave node) and Green Goblin ate my characters for breakfast! So I don´t know why some people are thinking it´s easier with a 3*/4* roster...


At topic: I voted for 20%. Round 1 and 2 were fun, rounds 3-5 were only hell.

The 5* tier has little to no diversity, the vast majority of 5* players have nothing more than SS/OML/Phx to pick from, some have BSS (useless against enemies that cannot be stunned) or GG, or IM46 or some others, but for the most part there is very little selection. There are no 5* winfinite combos. The scaling was so ridiculous that nothing short of an incredibly lucky board could get a 3* winfinite combo off the ground before someone critical to the combo died from match damage.

Even if you aren't using a winfinite combo characters like Peggy, Hood, Loki can be viable to slow the bosses down. JG or Storm can be used to remove special tiles, etc. These options didn't exist for 5* players, and I think this is the biggest issue with 5* scaling (not just for this event, but most other PvE events as well). These types of tough battles really place a lot of importance on board control and the 5* tier offers very little in the way of board control compared to the 3* and 4* tiers. Most of my round 7 wins were due to the use of a teamup rather than strategic team usage. I never even beat Phx in round 8. I kept thinking of some clever combos I could try that would immediately wipe due to a match-5, or 3 turns in from her 20 AP red......because collecting 20 AP in 3 turns was actually a pretty regular occurrence.

I get that scaling made it hard for everyone, but the 3* and 4* rosters definitely had a lot more options than the 5* rosters did.

Vhailorx

SeraphimLP wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

It's true that lower leveled rosters have more options because the 3* and 4* tiers are deeper.

I was reading this so many times. It´s right, that you have more options, but it´s not very useful! I have a 3* roster (18 champed and a lot of them are ready to champ or have nearly 13 covers) with a few 4* (the highest is Bucky with 8 covers) and I had to quit in round 5, because I couldn´t even beat the essential nodes anymore (only the first wave in a wave node) and Green Goblin ate my characters for breakfast! So I don´t know why some people are thinking it´s easier with a 3*/4* roster...


At topic: I voted for 20%. Round 1 and 2 were fun, rounds 3-5 were only hell.

I think if you read my whole post you will see i was arguing that the event was not easier for lower level rosters, but that tue entire design philosophy for the bosses was flawed.

As for 3* rosters having more options; thats true. In addition to jist offering more characters, most of the best enemy suppressors and ap batteries are 3*s (hood, loki, im40, switch, iron fist). And ap acceleration and ai suppression are very important against unstunnable bosses. But those options are offset by the fact that 3*s have much lower match damage and weaker powers. Everyone was pretty screwed.

Anecdotally, most of the people whi finished round 8 here are 4* or 5* players. But the boards arent representative, and lots of vets also missed out on round 8 too. Pure 3* rosters probably couldnt do round8 and maybe even round 7 was too hard as well. But I dont think we have enough data to say for sure if 4*s or 5*s had a better chance at finishing.

Square-Chopper

0% only because that's the lowest option. From even the very beginning, it was doable, sure, but I would absolutely not call it "fun". I stopped some time early Friday morning because I no longer wanted to defeat it even if I could have.

Peggy or no Peggy, this was not remotely worth the effort or frustration.

fmftint

Vhailorx wrote:

SeraphimLP wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

It's true that lower leveled rosters have more options because the 3* and 4* tiers are deeper.

I was reading this so many times. It´s right, that you have more options, but it´s not very useful! I have a 3* roster (18 champed and a lot of them are ready to champ or have nearly 13 covers) with a few 4* (the highest is Bucky with 8 covers) and I had to quit in round 5, because I couldn´t even beat the essential nodes anymore (only the first wave in a wave node) and Green Goblin ate my characters for breakfast! So I don´t know why some people are thinking it´s easier with a 3*/4* roster...


At topic: I voted for 20%. Round 1 and 2 were fun, rounds 3-5 were only hell.

I think if you read my whole post you will see i was arguing that the event was not easier for lower level rosters, but that tue entire design philosophy for the bosses was flawed.

As for 3* rosters having more options; thats true. In addition to jist offering more characters, most of the best enemy suppressors and ap batteries are 3*s (hood, loki, im40, switch, iron fist). And ap acceleration and ai suppression are very important against unstunnable bosses. But those options are offset by the fact that 3*s have much lower match damage and weaker powers.

That is compensated by a boss with much less health, for me Hulkfinite was the best option in R7/8, the same team a 3/4☆ player would use, BUT my bosses were @490 and had approximately 20k more health and much higher match and ability damage

JFisch

Gave it a 40%. I made it 2/3rds of the way through round 8 but couldn't get enough traction on Phoenix to get the last cover.

I actually didn't mind the fact that it was hard. What bothered me was that it was hard and the game economy punished me as a result. If you want to design a match that is truly terrifying and requires extreme rosters or strategy to win, okay. But don't persist any of the damage the team takes in the event match. The inability to muster any resistance and, therefore, gain any points will continue to gate people out of the higher prizes. You don't need to add completely exhaustion of health packs to that.

Aside from that, Phoenix was horrible. Insanely overpowered and unfairly un-fun. If you consider re-running this again in the future, you absolutely must nerf her. There isn't even a strategy against her aside from store up AP and blast her into submission before she gets a turn. Which doesn't work so well when she's the first boss in a round.

Banner was challenging but manageable. You just brought Rulk, got 7 purple AP, let him change into the other guy, then drained away his green.

IM46 was awful but, again, manageable. Bring in an AOE specialist, hoard AP, and blast him through his armor shield.

Surfer wasn't horribly threatening as long as you spread his 6-7K of free damage around. A 10 turn end of the world countdown isn't threatening when you can't last 10 turns anyway.

Goblin was annoying, but his goons couldn't jump in front to protect him so the classic tactic of ignore them and blast the boss to death worked.

OML was only difficult when you spotted him 30 green AP and a free trigger for his yellow. Once he was the first boss, he was actually a very reasonable fight.

Galactus didn't need to be able to make matches, but since he always came in with 18-25 "free" black AP, he was basically a two turn chance to do as much damage before he ate you.

But Phoenix. Oh god Phoenix. Who thought that was a good idea?

westnyy2

I gave it 20%. I completed through round 7 and fell about 100k short of getting the yellow Peggy. Perhaps if I took it more seriously and made sure I did a full clear every 8 hours then I likely would have gotten to the end. I'm a day 8 something player with virtually every character at my disposal in a usable form.

I started having issues in round 6 once I got to Phoenix. I found round 7 fairly easy and often got through Banner without any winfinite teams. Round 8 was abysmal for me. In many attempts, I got to Galactus twice but lost due to AI already having 30ap in black and got to Surfer probably 5 times. I couldn't attempt any of these winfinite teams in round 8 because even without any of Jean's powers going off, she would hit my character for 9800 just deleting her red.

I was hoping for more. When I heard I was taking on my alliance, I had hoped that maybe the side nodes would be against my teammates rosters or something to that effect. In the end, it was another carbon copy of an event with slight tweaks. I was really hoping a new mode would be unleashed this anniversary to spice up the game or allow me to use my 4's more in a 5 star world.

I gave it 20% because the side nodes were manageable. They were a challenge but not impossible like I found some of the CW ones to be.