Will True Multiplayer be in MPQ2?

Leugenesmiff

One thing I really think this game has always been missing is the ability to actually play against another player. After so long it's pretty evident that it's not something that's coming to MPQ, but might there be a sequel that includes it? If so, I say bring on MPQ2.
I wouldn't think it'd be too hard for a developer to pull off. It could be set up like Hearthstone, with turn timers and allow people to really compete against each other.

Ludaa

Have you actually given this much thought? You think they could create an MMR for real pvp? The board rng decides most matches as it is. What part of watching your opponent be handed match 5's THAT HE WILL NOT IGNORE seems fun to you? No thank you.

Dormammu

I sometimes take several moments puzzling out the board, figuring out the ideal match that might give me some kind of minor cascade. I don't want to wait for a real opponent to do the same. AI turns already take too long sometimes (though PVE is admittedly longer) with various animations and resolutions.

MarkersMake

Well, it would obviously have to be challenge-based. Either by entering your opponent's name or selecting an opponent (list via MMR as now) and having them choose to accept the match.

As long as it's not worth anything at all (points, xp, rewards) it could be a fun occasional diversion, since the stakes would be nothing other than... bragging rights.

Pope Belligerent

MarkersMake wrote:

As long as it's not worth anything at all (points, xp, rewards) it could be a fun occasional diversion, since the stakes would be nothing other than... bragging rights.

Good point. We don't waste nearly enough time on this game already for rewards. Let's throw in some "bragging rights" matches too!

MarkersMake

Ha, true!

Actually, my main point was that if it is worth anything it *will* be exploited to gain an advantage (deliberately winning/losing matches for hp/cp/iso, etc), so it can't have any in-game rewards.

And I was thinking bragging rights between alliance mates - the friendly kind! No leaderboards or anything like that.

Mechahamster

The amount of griefing with people deliberately picking the most annoying, stalling, animation playing, board shuffling, self healing teams just to force you to quit and take the L

JamieMadrox

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

DapperChewie

The worst part of true multiplayer is waiting for them to play. I actually think I like the way it is now, where you put your team out there and the AI plays for you.

What I think does need to change is how points in PvP work, but that's for another thread.

Bowgentle

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

What is this "new content" that you speak of?

Sure, they can add more characters.

If they try to add even more features to the chewing gum and glue that currently holds their code together - well, good luck with that.

Dragon_Nexus

You're forgetting a much more fundamental issue.
Say I need to do my final run to get my progression...but I'm on the wrong time of day for everyone else. Everyone's asleep. Or at work. There are no opponents to fight. Guess I'm out of luck...

notamutant

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

Ha! 10 years. Yeah right. The game is only getting harder and harder for new players. Adding to a game like this is only going to be harder and harder to get new players over time. Starting from scratch would be 10x easier. I give the game one more year. Look at MMORPGs. How many new people are joining WoW? The numbers will drop over time as fewer new players stick around and more old players quit. And at least in WoW, you could catch up, but this game is impossible to catch up in without literally tens of thousands of dollars.

Jaedenkaal

notamutant wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

Ha! 10 years. Yeah right. The game is only getting harder and harder for new players. Adding to a game like this is only going to be harder and harder to get new players over time. Starting from scratch would be 10x easier. I give the game one more year. Look at MMORPGs. How many new people are joining WoW? The numbers will drop over time as fewer new players stick around and more old players quit. And at least in WoW, you could catch up, but this game is impossible to catch up in without literally tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't think that's really true. If you mean "catch up" as in, have all the same 4-5 characters as everyone else does, sure, that would cost alot. You don't need those to play the game in a meaningful way, though, and SCLs would seem to do a pretty good job of segregating players into brackets where they're competing for rewards they can use effectively with other players who can also use those rewards effectively.

I suppose you can argue that the PvP metagame is way beyond what new player nowadays will see, but I'd imagine that SCLs can help manage that as well. What does the SCL 3 meta game look like, I wonder? Probably not too many champed 4 s

notamutant

Jaedenkaal wrote:

notamutant wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

Ha! 10 years. Yeah right. The game is only getting harder and harder for new players. Adding to a game like this is only going to be harder and harder to get new players over time. Starting from scratch would be 10x easier. I give the game one more year. Look at MMORPGs. How many new people are joining WoW? The numbers will drop over time as fewer new players stick around and more old players quit. And at least in WoW, you could catch up, but this game is impossible to catch up in without literally tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't think that's really true. If you mean "catch up" as in, have all the same 4-5 characters as everyone else does, sure, that would cost alot. You don't need those to play the game in a meaningful way, though, and SCLs would seem to do a pretty good job of segregating players into brackets where they're competing for rewards they can use effectively with other players who can also use those rewards effectively.

I suppose you can argue that the PvP metagame is way beyond what new player nowadays will see, but I'd imagine that SCLs can help manage that as well. What does the SCL 3 meta game look like, I wonder? Probably not too many champed 4 s

You are mixing up MMR and SCL. Even 4 star players can never catch up to the whales in PvP. At a certain point, I stop seeing other 4 stars and only see level 400+ 5 stars, even though I don't have a single 5 star above level 255. There is a hard limit in progression newer players will hit very early and never catch up on. Ranking they might be able to place higher on, as long as a guy with a 80 shield rank doesn't drop down to SCL 3, but the rewards still stink. Think about it like this: in a regular MMORPG, like World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars, a new player can join the game, and in say 20 hours or 500 hours, whatever, catch up to someone that has been playing for 3 years. Maybe not in gold or cool looking items, but in having a character just as competitive. In MPQ, you cannot ever catch up to compete with top players. It is not a game of skill or strategy at the top like in those MMORPGs, but rather a game of who has been playing the longest and spent the most money. Very different game types and atmosphere for the players. Yes, time is a commitment, but you don't hit a hard wall that often in MMORPGs. In Guild Wars, you could play as long as you wanted, and nothing would stop you from reaching the highest level and best equipment. In MPQ, you have a very solid limit on rewards. You cannot decide you will play this game for 20 hours a day for 2 months straight and that will be enough to get you to have the best characters maxed out. Progression is random, and even more, limited by timers (rank rewards), repetition limits (reaching progression rewards and hitting a node 6 times), and health packs.

So you effectively shut out new players from competitive PvP forever. PvE is less like this, but still requires tons of characters, which will cost a lot of money for new players. I am at around 115 slots. A new player in order to be able to consistently remain competitive in PvE, will need to spend hundreds just on buying slots.

Jaedenkaal

notamutant wrote:

Jaedenkaal wrote:

notamutant wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

Ha! 10 years. Yeah right. The game is only getting harder and harder for new players. Adding to a game like this is only going to be harder and harder to get new players over time. Starting from scratch would be 10x easier. I give the game one more year. Look at MMORPGs. How many new people are joining WoW? The numbers will drop over time as fewer new players stick around and more old players quit. And at least in WoW, you could catch up, but this game is impossible to catch up in without literally tens of thousands of dollars.

I don't think that's really true. If you mean "catch up" as in, have all the same 4-5 characters as everyone else does, sure, that would cost alot. You don't need those to play the game in a meaningful way, though, and SCLs would seem to do a pretty good job of segregating players into brackets where they're competing for rewards they can use effectively with other players who can also use those rewards effectively.

I suppose you can argue that the PvP metagame is way beyond what new player nowadays will see, but I'd imagine that SCLs can help manage that as well. What does the SCL 3 meta game look like, I wonder? Probably not too many champed 4 s

You are mixing up MMR and SCL. Even 4 star players can never catch up to the whales in PvP. At a certain point, I stop seeing other 4 stars and only see level 400+ 5 stars, even though I don't have a single 5 star above level 255. There is a hard limit in progression newer players will hit very early and never catch up on. Ranking they might be able to place higher on, as long as a guy with a 80 shield rank doesn't drop down to SCL 3, but the rewards still stink. Think about it like this: in a regular MMORPG, like World of Warcraft, or Guild Wars, a new player can join the game, and in say 20 hours or 500 hours, whatever, catch up to someone that has been playing for 3 years. Maybe not in gold or cool looking items, but in having a character just as competitive. In MPQ, you cannot ever catch up to compete with top players. It is not a game of skill or strategy at the top like in those MMORPGs, but rather a game of who has been playing the longest and spent the most money. Very different game types and atmosphere for the players. Yes, time is a commitment, but you don't hit a hard wall that often in MMORPGs. In Guild Wars, you could play as long as you wanted, and nothing would stop you from reaching the highest level and best equipment. In MPQ, you have a very solid limit on rewards. You cannot decide you will play this game for 20 hours a day for 2 months straight and that will be enough to get you to have the best characters maxed out. Progression is random, and even more, limited by timers (rank rewards), repetition limits (reaching progression rewards and hitting a node 6 times), and health packs.

So you effectively shut out new players from competitive PvP forever. PvE is less like this, but still requires tons of characters, which will cost a lot of money for new players. I am at around 115 slots. A new player in order to be able to consistently remain competitive in PvE, will need to spend hundreds just on buying slots.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding how PvP and SCLs interact. I was under the impression that you would only be matched against players in your SCL bracket.

mpqr7

I would do true multiplayer but not as part of the current PVP tournament. Imagine having an opponent who is super slow at making moves, so you win 50 points and lose hundreds, right when you were about to hit 1200. No thank you!!! It's hard enough to get there when I can miraculously pull off a 3-minute battle that obliterates my team!

True Multiplayer would need to be some sort of one-off situation where getting a slow battle didn't ruin your entire shield hopping plan. And there should be turn limits, such as 10 seconds, or even 5 seconds.

Anyway I bet it would be a massive lift, and there are lots of other things I'd rather they did first.

broll

notamutant wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I doubt we'll ever see an MPQ2. Devs have already stated that they see this game having a life of at least 10 years. Realistically, they never have to create a sequal as long as they keep adding new content.

Ha! 10 years. Yeah right. The game is only getting harder and harder for new players. Adding to a game like this is only going to be harder and harder to get new players over time. Starting from scratch would be 10x easier. I give the game one more year. Look at MMORPGs. How many new people are joining WoW? The numbers will drop over time as fewer new players stick around and more old players quit. And at least in WoW, you could catch up, but this game is impossible to catch up in without literally tens of thousands of dollars.

Main problem is the number of tiers and rarity of the higher tiers. My hope is that they don't go any deeper than 5 tiers so one two things happen going forward:
1. Tiers get wider and years by year 10 we have 100+ 5*s
2. Tiers get cycled out, so when 6* becomes a thing, 1* get's retired. prologue get's reworked for 2* characters, STs become 2*|3*|4*, HTs become 3*|4*|5*, CP becomes 5*|6*, etc.

If in 10 years there are 8 or 9 tiers and 1* still exist, yeah it would be nearly impossible for new players to ever get involved, which would hurt their business model I would think.

Calnexin

I could see multiplayer work if it were formatted differently. Set off into its own tab and you can have 3-4 matches going, but in a "words with friends" kind of way. You take your turn, then exit the match and wait to receive a notification that your opponent has made one.

Such a scheme can work, but game rewards shouldn't be part of it. That would be open to abuse - two people collude to trade off win streaks, one of them conceding every match on the first turn. Rather, make it an Iso bet. A player offers up 5k to challenge their team. The challenger risks 5k of their own, and at the end the winner takes the pot.

bbigler

I've suggested this before and I've put some thought into it. Turn timers, of course. Great prize for winning, OK prize for losing, no prize for retreating. If the tiles don't fall your way, get over it baby.

GrumpySmurf1002

Jaedenkaal wrote:

Perhaps I am misunderstanding how PvP and SCLs interact. I was under the impression that you would only be matched against players in your SCL bracket.

The only people in your bracket for placement are those in your SCL. However, anyone in any SCL in the time slice can fight you, provided their MMR allows you to be found.

Jaedenkaal

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Jaedenkaal wrote:

Perhaps I am misunderstanding how PvP and SCLs interact. I was under the impression that you would only be matched against players in your SCL bracket.

The only people in your bracket for placement are those in your SCL. However, anyone in any SCL in the time slice can fight you, provided their MMR allows you to be found.

Ah. I obviously don't play enough PvP (and I pick SCL 8 anyways) to really notice this. That seems a little cruel. I mean, I guess you only have to do better than everyone else at your SCL to place first and get those rewards, even if that means you can't progress any higher than 700 points (or whatever).

It doesn't really bother me that I can't ever catch up with players that have been playing much longer than me. Easy to say, I guess, when I'm already at Day ~785, but still. As long as I can complete against others of my relative level, be challenged, get rewards, and progress, it doesn't really bother me how long the other player has been playing, and I generally don't check.