Vote in the Combined Arms Obvious Hyperbole Poll!

El Satanno

For the first time in ages, I am actually excited to play an event. Yes, I play every one to max progression and beyond but sometimes (often?) it feels more like work than anything else. Combined Arms has been the liveliest, most refreshing, and fun event to come around since...well maybe since last time it ran! I'm not the only one who thinks like this. I'm sure this super helpful and totally not obvious poll will reflect that.

But just what makes Combined Arms so damn great? Let's break this down. There's a lot to be learned, I think.

1. I'll get the obvious bitter pill out of the way: No 5* characters. I was banging on about this event in alliance chat today, and one of my mates asked if I would be fine only being able to use my 5* in Story events. I answered yes, and without hesitation. I'm more patient than most so I don't really mind using Logan and Phoenix in every match, every event, all the time. But you know what? Having the option to play others without painting a giant target on my **** is wonderful. We've heard it so many times from the devs themselves that they want us to have the chance to use our entire roster. This event actually allows for that, and it's a-frickin'-mazing.
2. As an extension of #1, without the 5* characters mucking up the MMR there are so many other targets out there! It's like playing a whole new game! Before anyone wants to go there, yes I belong to several truces so I am artificially limiting my potential pool in regular events. But here's the kicker: In Combined Arms I get to see everyone. I got in very early, and I've only seen a handful of "friendly" people the entire time. And it's a-frickin'-mazing.
3. In standard events your 3* characters are already playing second fiddle to your 4* and 5* guys. Especially in the latter case, the difference between the loaner and your champ 3* is largely negligible. Combined Arms gives your 2* and 3* characters an actual purpose. Sure, they're the weaker links in the chain. However once you're out of 2* land, it's the utility of the character you want. And even at the 2* level there are several characters who provide genuine practical utility for your team. Let's be honest, too: The 2* transition is a joke by now, so we can dispense with the notion that the majority of players are stuck there. Even if we assume that to be true, there's no reason we can't run the original 1-2-3 Combined Arms in parallel. Hell, tie it to CL! BOOM! Wouldn't that be a-frickin'-mazing?
4. Have I mentioned the variety? Not only do you get the chance to play a mixed team, you get to play against different teams. I've seen more characters in the first 12 hours of this event than I've seen in the entirety of last year. That's a-frickin'-mazing.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I'll be genuinely sad when this event ends. Sadder still when we go back to 5* only time. It would breathe great heaping buckets of fresh air into the game to incorporate Combined Arms into the regular season somehow. Here's another list of ideas, suckas!

1. Run Combined Arms all the time. That's it. I'd be happy with that.
2. Run Combined Arms all the time, but with the required featured character stuffed in there. 3* or 4* or both, because why the hell not? (This is honestly the most reasonable one, and I really think it would be a great idea.)
3. Run Combined Arms in between the stale-**** regular events. So a season would be Boring-Fun-Boring-Fun-Boring-etc. until ten events pass.
4. Run Combined Arms at the front/tail end of the season. It's not as fun, but then we could have either something to look forward to at the beginning/end of the season instead of being bored for 10 events.
5. Run every event in the vein of Combined Arms, but tiered. So you could have a 1-2-3, a 2-3-4, and a 3-4-5 event all running in parallel, with CL gating people from the higher ones. I'm not convinced the dev team gives a **** about players burning out, but if you want to prevent that, make sure joining one locks you out of the other two.
6. As a supplement for the last one, also run a No Holds Barred event for people who like playing Logan/Phoenix/Surfer all the time ad nauseam. Because I know there are some people out there like that. Hey, there's no accounting for tastes.

acescracked

Combined Arms is so great because of one simple fact...5* mmr is hell and opposite of fun.

tanis3303

I'm not quite as excited about it as Satanno, but I'm darn close. See, I NEEDED that yellow Peggy. She was 5/2/5 with a blue in my q. So, I had to get to 900 like, yesterday. So I just blitzed my way to 900 using Bobby/M40/Widow in like an hour. But I had ideas yo. Silly, crazy ideas. That probably won't even work, but yo...YO...they might! And it would be bloody fun to try them! Peggy/Hood/Widow? Good luck using powers son! Falcap/Spidey/Bullseye? Lol...protects everywhere, because reasons. PunisherMax/Bullseye/Daken? That..actually, that might be really good. I had to shield at 9xx because of life, but I'm gonna make the most of it tomorrow by playing the weirdest kitty I can come up with all day long. If you get hit by some random nonsense, I ain't even sorry. Please, retal and have fun with it. I think this event will be the most fun I've had with the game in, like ever.

#combinedarmsftw

Alsmir

[X] Stop trying to force your opinions on other people.

What about people who have 4* at 1-2 covers?

Dormammu

Combined Arms is about the worst event I can imagine, being that I am still in 3* land.

El Satanno

Alsmir wrote:

[X] Stop trying to force your opinions on other people.

What about people who have 4* at 1-2 covers?

[X] Stop missing the obvious joke, Captain Oblivious.

To actually answer your poorly considered response, it's no different than the current situation where people don't have the required 3* with anything approaching decent coverage. You can also read through my post where I addressed a possibility for such a situation, if not pointedly for that purpose. But here, because I suspect you didn't read the post anyway:

El Satanno wrote:

Run every event in the vein of Combined Arms, but tiered. So you could have a 1-2-3, a 2-3-4, and a 3-4-5 event all running in parallel, with CL gating people from the higher ones. I'm not convinced the dev team gives a **** about players burning out, but if you want to prevent that, make sure joining one locks you out of the other two.

Tromb2ch2

I just hit 900 with flaptain/im40/2be and it was a lot of fun. I think one of the reason this event is fun is because everyone is boosted (which basically makes no one boosted but still). I don't have to go I guess I'll make a team around this character because they are boosted. I would like to see more events like this even like a 2* only or 3* only or 4* only event. Or even like red team go (only characters with red as their highest match damage can be used). Theme related things always seem more fun to me (other than boss rush....)

Bowgentle

ALL OF THE OPTIONS!

Seriously.
Just banish 5*s from PVP.

That's coming from someone with champed OML, champed Surfer and 435 Phoenix.

The most fun I had going to max prog in at least 9 months.

Akari

I both liked and hated Combined Arms. It takes away the huge gap in 5* players and everyone else, which means every team is beatable and TONS of teams are viable, which means you can really farm iso forever. On the flipside, since everything is beatable, getting horribly beat down on a shield hop is even more plausible and scary.

However, it is genuinely fun to try out all the teams, up until you get to a somewhat high score and see nothing but peggy rulk peggy rulk peggy rulk (rare HB/iceman mixed in). My suggestion? Run a Combined Arms Simulator all season, let people play with random teams all day long. I have all these champed 3 and 4* that I basically just never get to use outside of PvE essential nodes or being featured chars in PvP, and I'd like to use them more often.

Polares

acescracked wrote:

Combined Arms is so great because of one simple fact...5* mmr is hell and opposite of fun.

This is the main reason this event is fun for me. If you think about it, it is basically the same but instead of the same 5s, everybody with a good roster uses Iceman, Rhulk, Peggy, 4hor or IMHB, and then as 3s IM, IF or Switch (the 2s doesn't matter at all). Then we see more teams because almost anybody with a champed 4 has the same MMR, so we see teams of people who doesn't have any of the good 4s champed. Most 3 players are in this category, so for them is a pain in the ****. But for me, this MMR is fantastic! It is great not having to fight the same people over and over again.

The other reason normal PvP is boring for 4->5 and 5 players, is because most mortals have only OML, PH and SS as useful 5s. I hope when we have 6 or 7 useful 5s, things will improve.

Edit: I will add that when we start having top 4s in the 310+ level, variety of team composition is going to change. Max champed buffed 4s are so much better than 450-470 5s, so we will see them all the time very soon. I already see them quite a bit already (410+ level IMHB doing 3k for every red AP, Iceman punch doing 28k+ damage, Rhulk doing 26k+ AoE dmg with his green, etc.)

Bowgentle

Polares wrote:

acescracked wrote:

I hope when we have 6 or 7 useful 5s, things will improve.

I'm already seeing champed Black Bolts in my queue.
I don't think that will be an improvement, except he kills me even faster than 460+ OML PHX.

Polares

Bowgentle wrote:

Polares wrote:

acescracked wrote:

I hope when we have 6 or 7 useful 5s, things will improve.

I'm already seeing champed Black Bolts in my queue.
I don't think that will be an improvement, except he kills me even faster than 460+ OML PHX.

Of course super whales have already all 5s champed, but this is a very small percentage of the player base, much smaller than the ones we already have 2-4 champed 5s.

Bowgentle

Polares wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

Polares wrote:

acescracked wrote:

I hope when we have 6 or 7 useful 5s, things will improve.

I'm already seeing champed Black Bolts in my queue.
I don't think that will be an improvement, except he kills me even faster than 460+ OML PHX.

Of course super whales have already all 5s champed, but this is a very small percentage of the player base, much smaller than the ones we already have 2-4 champed 5s.

Nope.
It's not super whales, it's also people who have given up on Classics and spent their resources on Latest.

Cdubb1975

Great post, great event, hope this feedback is taken and combined arms becomes part of every season.

mpqr7

Oh, snap. I didn't realize peggy was the prize. I didn't win her in boss rush, nor did I draw her in the last vault event tokens. Maybe I can win her here. I have two peggy s sitting in the queue.. we'll see if I can win her and champion her in time. If not, then I'll go back to championing my two remaining 2*s and just relax a bit with the ISO needs. We'll see.

simonsez

I like this event now, but when they run it again next year and everyone's using Peggy, it's going to be an awful slog.

broll

It was OK. As someone who is right on the edge of, but hasn't really started the 4* transition it was kinda meh. I rarely ever see 5* outside of 1-3 covered jokes. While I have a few usable 4*, especially with the buffs, I struggled as I have only 1 4* over level 100 and only few over level 70. I do like the concept and see it being more enjoyable once I'm more established. The ability to sort by *s would have been nice here, it was often hard to setup the roster with everything sorted by level order.

TxMoose

I think this was the easiest trip to max progression for any offseason event where I wasn't in a big BC. I also saw lots of different teams played. 4s included hb, ice, 4cyke, rulk, jean, xfw, px, peggy, maxipun, and 4thor. can't remember another but I might be missing one - they were actually more varied than the 3s. 3s I saw included witch, im40, 3cyke, thor, and hood. think that's mostly it. 2s I saw most of them. only ones I didn't see were cap and bagman. that is so much variety and makes things so much more enjoyable to try different things out other than just being tied to usable5/boosted4.

Calnexin

For me, this is the most fun event in a while. My 4+ champs are limited, but building the 3/2* around what I've got has been really fun. So fun... I'm gonna run IW for a few rounds tonight. Yeah! I'll make it work! Start with IW/IM40/QS and see what happens!

tanis3303

That wont work, as QS and M40 are both 3*s, but may I suggest IW/Switch/Mmags instead? Swaps in different battery over M40, which powers an even more different battery to charge her blue, and with all the red you should be getting from spamming polarity shift, you can probably collect even MORE ap from Flux to help power FF Crush...in fact, sounds fun, i'm totally gonna try that myself!

Jabrony_Geoff

El Satanno wrote:

For the first time in ages, I am actually excited to play an event. Yes, I play every one to max progression and beyond but sometimes (often?) it feels more like work than anything else. Combined Arms has been the liveliest, most refreshing, and fun event to come around since...well maybe since last time it ran! I'm not the only one who thinks like this.

You have me to thank for combined Arms, I asked for it in one of my post and voila, it was in the sneak peek.
Im happy you're happy, don't think I've ever seen such a happy post in this forum.

Before anyone wants to go there, yes I belong to several truces so I am artificially limiting my potential pool in regular events.

What in heavens name are you talking about...truces?
It seems theres a whole new world I'm yet to experience in MPQ.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I'll be genuinely sad when this event ends. Sadder still when we go back to 5* only time.

What in heavens name are you talking about (part 2?)
What's it like up there in 5* cover land.?
I assumed that when you have a powerful roster you destroy all 3* & 4* teams in the blink of the eye and walk around with a permanent smile on your face.
Seems like it ain't so.

Run every event in the vein of Combined Arms, but tiered. So you could have a 1-2-3, a 2-3-4, and a 3-4-5 event all running in parallel, with CL gating people from the higher ones. I'm not convinced the dev team gives a **** about players burning out, but if you want to prevent that, make sure joining one locks you out of the other two.

Now this my friend is a brilliant idea. I mean it.
It's absolutely brilliant. Now I don't know about across the board but maybe in some events and PvPs. Like you said tiered. So you could have a 1-2-3, a 2-3-4, and a 3-4-5 event all running in parallel.

I'm the only one in my alliance who can compete in combined Arms on the basis I have some 4* cover championed.
I know with 100% certainty that other alliance members would have entered 1-2-3 level if the option was available.