Boss HP system, just give up on it (please!)

Irgy

Let me make it easier by laying out the pros and cons for you:

Cons:
* It's confusing. When it first came in nobody understood how it worked. We're used to it now but it's still another thing for newer players to figure out. Part of what's confusing about it is its fundamental pointlessness. How do you explain it to someone, it's like a timer except nobody knows how long it's set for? "But what problem is it addressing? Why not just use a timer", they ask. No answer.
* You don't know what you're signing up for. If I'd known this current event was going to last this long I'd have left my coalition and made room for someone else instead. Now I'm stuck with it.
* It invariably ends with some people having unused charges. Unlike other events with an 8 hour window for the last game (especially now that tiebreakers are fixed, hooray!), this one you have to be right there at the end or you miss out.
* The developers need to guess what number of people are going to be playing actively in the event. This is the big one, that's lead to several epic failures in the past. Remember the panharmonic-con, where the top progression reward was literally unobtainable because the event ended too soon? Remember the subsequent overcompensation and painfully long events? And now this one, that's looking likely to go for 12+ days or more. And that's before you account for more and more people getting burned out, or just stopping because they've reached the progression rewards. There's already about to be two concurrent coalition events on top of all the other active events. Soon there's going to be a second copy of this same event running, if they don't change the schedule. Sure, maybe some day the devs will figure out how to predict the future and it will all be fine, but why create yet another way to screw-up out of nothing?

Pros:
* Um... someone help me here... ? It's flavourful? Because we're all banding together to compete with each other at defeating the same boss over and over again thus gradually reducing their hitpoints? I'm sure someone out there likes the flavour, and good for them.


If you insist on events using the boss timer continuing to do so, then so be it, but in the future can you just accept that it's a completely pointless idea that adds nothing and just creates problems, and just give up on it, please?

Phase

100% agree with this. The boss HP system is nothing but a headache for the vast majority of players. The excitement is in the fights themselves, not wondering if I am going to have grind out another 9 matches on a Wednesday night for an event that started like five days ago.

The change to a 4 charge max on the nodes was a welcome change though. I will give credit where it's due. Now you can clear all your nodes at the same time every day and not miss charges.

edit: @Irgy there is a post from @Brigby around here saying the event will end at 3pm UTC today. If you need to, finish up your charges

DuskPaladin

I agree, the life % is absolutely a nuisance, nobody likes it. Either people will complain because the boss died too fast and not have  enough time to get max progression reward. Or, it lasts so long that you guys have to pull the plug for it to end like a normal event, and in that case the life % is useless.

We don't feel like we're banding together to take down a powerful foe at all. If we kill it too fast, we'll piss players who couldn't get max progression. There's no sense of achievement.

We also don't get any rewards whatsoever for defeating the "boss". Nothing.At.All. We could leave him there and the devs will kill him for us.

If you want to make it a true Coalition event, make it so that EVERY coalition had his own boss, and the first coalition to kill him will finish first, then second, then third, etc. Lower coalitions will take more time but they should eventually be able to reach max progression and kill their boss. No one will kill it too fast for their taste.

You made this a what 4-days event? but the rewards are worse then your 1-2 days events. It makes no sense.

You also create Standard, so please, for all that is Holy, be more generous, you can afford to give more rewards to players in order for them to get the necessary cards to compete.

Please revamp your terrible Boss events.

Thank you.

Laeuftbeidir

DuskPaladin said:

If you want to make it a true Coalition event, make it so that EVERY coalition had his own boss, and the first coalition to kill him will finish first, then second, then third, etc. Lower coalitions will take more time but they should eventually be able to reach max progression and kill their boss. No one will kill it too fast for their taste.

This. Exactly this.
Maybe with an included time - out, for smaller coalitions.. Or maybe when top 50 coalitions have killed the boss, the event ends for all.
The overview could show the percentage of health left by other coalitions.

@brigby
Could you communicate the with the developers?

madwren

CONS

1. Progression now takes twice as long
2. Third node gated against casual players makes event take longer
3. Ridiculously skimpy rewards--a basic booster? really? --for the longest event
4. Incredibly tedious

PROS
1. Fun to figure out the initial decklists, which quickly evaporates when the cons set in

UweTellkampf

I believe, it is dead. Just like that.

Corn_Noodles

Being a RPG nerd, I'd like to see the actual hit points of the boss and how much each successful match deducts from that.

Kyphonis

I'm not quite there in thinking it is dead, but a shift should be addressed for this event. I've always had a soft spot for big community things so the boss timer hasn't been too bad, but I was one of those nearly gated from the 3rd tier. The only reason I nearly got to the 850 needed (ended at 840 all charges used) was cause it took so long and I was able to earn a few More packs to get a cycling cast out deck. I died 6 times to Temmaret before I beat him and several to Sammut before I beat the final gods in 2 tries.

Frankly the first event almost needs to be this long for lower power players (every good card I had was innistrad block almost...except sky sovereign) to have any chance to get some of these rewards. There is a lot that could and maybe should change but for a first time through the longer time is an offering to let less fortunate players have a chance.

As painful as it dragging on happens to be, it happened cause so many couldn't tackle tier 3, and that is it. However I would like to add my voice to at least noticeably better rewards, or a better way to deal with an opponent who has more base raw power in every way than an average player.

UweTellkampf

Kyphonis said:

I'm not quite there in thinking it is dead, but a shift should be addressed for this event. 

I literally meant: the boss is dead. Dead in means of "turned off".

gruntface

Or have several phases of the boss with a reward for each completed phase for each active participant.

Set a defined time period (3 full days is fine). The first boss would have relatively low HP, once he is beaten, everyone gets a basic booster or a few crystals. Keep on upping the HP each cycle and gradually improve the rewards to keep people somewhat vested.

But whatever is done there should be some sort of reward for taking the boss out other than the reward of ending the event. It doesn't need to be game breaking like a mythic or anything, but some tier appropriate token would be nice.

Corn_Noodles

gruntface said:

Or have several phases of the boss with a reward for each completed phase for each active participant.

I like this idea.

Yvendros

what if the boss had actual hp?  like 4 billion health or something absurd.  so we all go into the final fight knowing we're not going to beat it, but we're just chipping away at its health.  your coalition gets points based on how much damage you collectively do.

*i know infinite decks have a pretty big leg up here, maybe a 10 minute limit?  or 50 round limit?

Sarahschmara

Phase said:

... edit: @Irgy there is a post from @Brigby around here saying the event will end at 3pm UTC today. If you need to, finish up your charges

I'm very grateful that @brigby answered that particular question but that information should really have been sent to the in-game inbox instead of buried in a bunch of replies to a random topic of discussion (or as well as, I'm not too picky).

In fact, most of your clarifications @Brigby really belong in the in-game inbox. Why is this valuable resource not being used by the development team? We, as a species, are a lot more patient and forgiving if we actually know what's going on.

shteev

Link to relevant old thread

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/60168/coalition-life-events

[edit] Yey! We got the deck slots, finally! Although, they still mean rebuilding your decks manually for every node and level of a PvE event, so, boo....

Skiglass6

They should have kept the progression rewards where they were and just added bonus rewards for every 50-100 ribbons above progression. Like 2-5 jewels or 5 crystals. This would allow newer players access to progression and give something to the players in the top coalitions that have to keep playing. May also keep others playing past progression so it doesn't take as long. 

 Yes get rid of the hp system and shift the start/stop times 12hr apart from the non-coalition events so everything doesn't start at the same time.