Unstable ISO-8 PvE Event Feedback Thread

NorthernPolarity

So now that this PvE event is almost over, I thought it would be good to have everyone's thoughts about the event in a separate thread so that it's easier to find. What were your guy's overall thoughts on this event? I guess the main questions to be asked were the things it did right, things it did poorly, and general impressions. This type of feedback might also be useful for the devs to think about when designing future events. I'll start us off:

Likes: You only need to play through each set of nodes once to stay competitive. Only having to grind on the last day of the event made it a lot more casual and an iso farm since you just needed to clear each set of nodes once per day in order to stay with the pack.

Dislikes: Progression rewards completely broken. Lack of any meaningful awards like the 1k iso rewards in the simulator, etc. Lack of grinding also means that it was meaningless to grind most of the event, which can be discouraging for players that want to be competitive through grinding.

General Impressions: The event feels like it wasn't carefully tuned since it was a rerun of one of the earliest PvE event with the current scaling/rubberbanding systems thrown in there, and it shows. It's clearly a lot more casual than a typical PvE event since you don't need to grind much to get all the awards, and I think these types are nice to have inbetween the more hardcore events such as brotherhood/hulk where you had a new sub every day to grind. Generally I'm pretty happy with the event: I wouldn't like the structure to be a mainstay in the future, but it felt good besides the obvious progression issues.

Unknown

I am on an Okay rating as well, but the progression NEEDS to be fixed. I think some of us will hit the top reward of 500ISO...how grand.

The heavy goon nodes are saturated with heavy community scaling, same with the high value nodes. Individual subs disperses the hurt around more and gives it time to build up, where constant refreshing of the same high value node only leads to frown town. I can clear them using broken mechanics but can everyone? And if we clear them using those mechanics the rest of our nodes scale up. Its like a bicycle without the exercise, well actually not that bad.

Note to self, get better analogies.

Oh and I reserve the right to complain once I see the rubber banding damage in the final 2 hours. This isn't right.

Unknown

I rated it great, but that "great" is just for the event structure - I'd like to see more 6-day nosub events as well as 9-day subbed events

The too-high progression rewards and the "80% goons, Daken, and Bullseye" take it down to somewhere between "meh" and "okay" when judged overall. I think there's going to be a LOT of frustration after the end of the event because top 50 placings will essentially be almost random, but to spread out the pack more, while maintaining the casual feel of this event (which was my favorite part), are pretty much mutually exclusive goals

Unknown

I generally agree with NorthernPolarity's reasoning, but I have an extra dislike:

No subs means no event tokens. Yeah, my 2* roster is mostly complete, but I'd really like more chances at 3* covers. Event tokens can be spotty--hell, in the Simulator I picked up 23 event tokens and got exactly one 3* cover, my 5th black Hood--but for those of us trying to make the 2* -> 3* transition, every little bit helps. Of course, the no-sub event token issue was exacerbated by the wretchedly miscalculated progression sequence that locked *everyone* out of two theoretically-available Mr. Rogers covers, but sub rewards could have offset that problem.

Mawtful

Agree with the comments regarding the reward structure.
(Again, this is another situation where my "reward shop" idea would have prevented this.)

I think it was also particularly jarring coming off the back of Simulator, where there were so many new and different variations in terms of enemy teams. This event had variation like: sometimes you fought two mooks with either Daken OR Bullseye and sometimes you fought only one mook with Daken AND Bullseye! Although maybe that was a blessing in disguise - I didn't have to be facing 230 Ares + Rags + Venom/Juggs. Anyway, variation would be nice.

Unknown

I voted for Meh. I would gladly change my vote if the progressive rewards were attainable in any way. I was looking through the alliances at the top and I'm pretty sure no one got the 66k+ Hero Points, let alone any of the Lazy Cap covers. I feel like it's a big middle finger by the devs, who didn't bother adjusting the awards from the first playthrough or when they saw the average per day of 5-6k. I can see it's a major point of contention, and apparently from reading other threads something that's happened in the past. It's just frustrating to grind for 9 days and be denied any kind of meaningful reward (yay a new character I have to spend another 400 HP for a roster slot on...)

The Iso rewards for individual nodes were also disappointing. Only the occasional 500 iso possibility with 250 iso being the standard. I was hoping to get a bit more out of a 9 day event.

Unknown

I also voted 'Meh', though i'm probably more inbetween meh and okay to be honest.

As previously mentioned by others, as part of the 2* to 3* transition brigade i don't feel i got enough out of this event given how long it went (one week).

Specifically, I worked quite hard to remain top 10 pretty much throughout the event, but because of my timezone and the fact I play on Steam I was unable to make the last hour dash as I'm at work. As such I wouldn't be surprised to find that i've been knocked out of the top 25 or even top 50 by the end of the event.

The event itself in terms of node rewards seemed ok, though the progressions were a little bit off. My concern is that for a week's worth of playing at a high level by result in only one 3* cover if i was unlucky with other people's last 2 hour effort as i expect in addition to terrible luck with the rewards this week. The sub-event structure tends to work a bit better for me, because at least then i have a chance to compete for some sub-event rewards.

Unknown

sirlemsip wrote:

Specifically, I worked quite hard to remain top 10 pretty much throughout the event, but because of my timezone and the fact I play on Steam I was unable to make the last hour dash as I'm at work. As such I wouldn't be surprised to find that i've been knocked out of the top 25 or even top 50 by the end of the event.

Unfortunately, you almost certainly got hosed. The rubberbanding was *insane* for this event; I think the top 200-300 spots only had a point difference of maybe 4k. At 13 hours to go, I was around 4th in my bracket; with an hour and a half to go, I was down around 300, then fought my way back up to 2nd--all in the last 90 minutes. Since I hadn't been bouncing around nearly as much earlier in the event, I know that rubberbanding put a *lot* more people in competition for the top spots within the last 12 hours.

KaioShinDE

**** event and with another heroic coming up next, if it wasn't for my alliance needing me I'd completely abandon the **** PvE in this game and stick to PvP tourneys only.

Unknown

I seriously hope we're not going to see an event like this soon. The rubberbanding has reached insane proportions and working (yes, working) for a week only to get screwed by people that played just the last hour and half isn't satisfying at all.

I went to sleep with less than two hours remaining, sitting on third place in bracket. When I woke up I got the rewards for top-100. I still managed to get two HT covers, but the whole process felt like a chore, not a game.

Unknown

I voted for 'meh'

The Good:
- A great choice of buffed heroes: LCap, Patch, Hulk, OBW, Thor, cStorm... all quality characters
- The length: 7 days is enough for this kind of event
- Fairly relaxed pacing: it was possible to do well playing only once a day

The Bad:
- Unachievable Progression rewards
- You had to guess when new nodes would appear
- Lack of subs: this aspect has so many negative side-effects, it honestly surprises myself how important the sub-event structure really is, so let me explain his in some more detail.
No subs, means much less iso and HP to be gained. My alliance got Top 100, so that's a whooping 150HP over the entire event.
It also means that there was barely a reason to play before the final day, and it showed. Activity was at an all-time low.
It was completely impossible to get any kind of meaningful lead. In Simulator, your position could be roughly fixed 12 hours before the end. Here, missing the last hour meant missing the covers and essentially losing 7 days of playing, because it's not like there were any meaningful rewards other than Torch.

If I were to give a numbered score, I'd go with a 4/10. it wasn't all bad, but I would have liked each day to be its own sub-event.

Unknown

I voted meh. I think releasing a major new character (the only one that took more than five minutes to design since before the golds) during an event like this was a terrible idea. The event was dull, and had pitiful rewards, and was kinda barely there for most of it. And no subs is terrible; I hope they never run a no-subs event again.

Also, while I probably prefer six-day event in general, with the new "new character every pve" structure I'd prefer longer events just to space them out - the trouble is, this event didn't have enough HP in it for a roster slot, even if you maxed everything (barring an insane improbability like every token getting you 25 HP), and that needs to be at least possible when they roll out a new character.

Unknown

Didn't like the event and I got all three covers. The problem was that what I really, really wanted was the LazyCap covers. At first, I had planned to play like mad and try to get both.

After two days, I gave up on that and consoled myself that the 93k one would surely be reachable...

By the weekend, I had given up on that.I barely played over the weekend on the pve and was ranked 280 with 80 minutes to go.

Barely even cared and easily got into the top 50. Could have done top 20 with a bit of trying. A giant FU to anyone outside of NA timezones and to those who wanted the progression rewards. And in the confusing node reset times and it was just a mess.

Unknown

Kappei wrote:

I seriously hope we're not going to see an event like this soon. The rubberbanding has reached insane proportions and working (yes, working) for a week only to get screwed by people that played just the last hour and half isn't satisfying at all.

I went to sleep with less than two hours remaining, sitting on third place in bracket. When I woke up I got the rewards for top-100. I still managed to get two HT covers, but the whole process felt like a chore, not a game.

I agree. I had some time over the week and grinded this event a lot, and an hour and a half before the end I was 10th place. I knew I'd fall, but I hoped to stay in the top 50 to get two covers. Ended in the Top 100 and got one cover. A pretty unsatisfying event.

Unknown

I voted "okay", mostly from an Alliance point of view. Our Alliance ranges from new players ( < 1 month ) to grizzled old-timers (me not so grizzled, I shaved this morning ) All did well, the range of low level and high level opponents meant all could do something to be competitive.

My biggest W hip T ight F rown is how one could hold the number one spot until T-5 hours, and then drop like a rock. with an hour to go, I would win a "deadly" battle, get +254 points, and come out of it 2 or 3 ranks lower than when I went in! I didn't think the rubberbanding allowed anyone to slingshot past the bracket leader?

Anyway, no point getting a hot head over this... oh wait... I did ... Thanks to the Alliance, all the Torch covers.

WAH-HOOO!

HailMary

Current partial results:

Great: would like to have a lot more events with this type of structure in the future. - 5 - 8%

Who are these crazy people?!

mags1587

Honestly, I can see people rating this great. I only rated it okay, but there were some things that really appealed to me about the event.

- Goon fights. I like all-goon fights. It's a different type of challenge -- studying the board and making a match so that 2 matches later you can destroy a countdown tile before it goes off.

- I could play the event casually without stressing about my place or alliance points too much. There were no subs so no pressure to place at the top every other day. Also, aside from the last day, I felt like I could pick up the game and play a match whenever I had a few minutes free without screwing myself completely.

There were problems with the progression rewards that should be fixed, but after the Simulator, this event was a nice change of pace. Would I want this type of event as a replacement for other types of PvE tournaments? No. But if we're going to have a PvE running all the time, I'd want one like this with tweaks to the progression rewards thrown in every so often.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Current partial results:

Great: would like to have a lot more events with this type of structure in the future. - 5 - 8%

Who are these crazy people?!

Like I said, it's inarguable that they went a little to heavy on the "lower reward" aspect of this "lower effort, lower reward" tourney, but I loved the "structure." If they had run this with the "hard" node each day having 50 HP as one of its rewards, more 500 ISO rewards throughout, and obtainable progression rewards, it would have been one of my favorite events ever

HailMary

gamar wrote:

Like I said, it's inarguable that they went a little to heavy on the "lower reward" aspect of this "lower effort, lower reward" tourney, but I loved the "structure." If they had run this with the "hard" node each day having 50 HP as one of its rewards, more 500 ISO rewards throughout, and obtainable progression rewards, it would have been one of my favorite events ever

Agreed. I voted "Meh", but I can definitely understand "Good." I can't see "Great", though.

Unknown

The progression rewards were a train wreck. If you got the 53333 Progression reward, you were probably top 2-3% and they should go ahead and add the Y and R LazyCap covers to your account.

Unknown

This event actually worked out well, IMO. True, the prog rewards weren't obtainable, but that can be attributed to a typo somewhere, and I'm over it.

But the two shining point of this event were the truely casual aspect of it, and not needing to have the required hero missions to be done to place high.

The rubberbanding allowed everyone a fair chance at placing decently, and even as a grinder myself this event, I never felt punished with level 230 battles. On the contrary, it was quite enjoyable analyzing each individual battle and using the best team possible to win. I never felt better than taking down 230's with only half level or lower teams.

And a big complaint that I see on the forums, about having a required character for certain missions, was was dealt with in this structure. I'm positive 100% that I had a top 10 placing, and the entire time I never had any need to use the Cap missions.

So overall, this event did solve some big problems, and looking forward to more in the future.