Design-a-PvE Format (Making it fun)

Puritas

So since most players I've talked to lately have been completely burnt out by this last series of PvE events culminating in the daily disappointments that are the Hunt
and Demiurge has been working on this whole Season/Alliance reward structure to make PvP more interesting
let's throw out some ideas for new formats for PvE in the hopes that they'll see something they like and we can move on from this soul-crushing chapter of MPQ's history

I'll start off with...

• No repeatable nodes
• First node starts at level 20
• Each progressive node has enemy level +10, with no level cap
• Four days to clear as many nodes as you can
• Spidey and Mags banned
• Make progression rewards purely ISO, change ranking rewards to your final score at end of event rather than leaderboard ranking (i.e. you've cleared up to the level 100 nodes, you get ** cover rewards. You clear level 200 nodes, *** rewards)

[*]Remove rubberbanding/community scaling, so you're rewarded based on the fights you could beat and nothing else

Make suggestions, upvote posts, and I can update the OP with most popular ideas

Note: I'm not demiurge staff, so don't take this as some sort of official statement that things will change

Knyghtmare

What is it with the Spidey and Mag hatred? Seriously, how about we ban OBW, so we can have no healing. Oh, and lets ban the Hulk and Lazy Thor, so we don't have tanks with too many hit points, not to mention Hulks passive and Thor's green are really powerful. Wait, wait, we should also ban Black Panther because his black is a ****. If Demiurge wants to nerf them, that's one thing, but Mags isn't much more powerful than some of the recent 3 stars (again, Black Panther). If everybody has the same opportunity to get a character, then they should be fair game.

NorthernPolarity

Knyghtmare wrote:

What is it with the Spidey and Mag hatred? Seriously, how about we ban OBW, so we can have no healing. Oh, and lets ban the Hulk and Lazy Thor, so we don't have tanks with too many hit points, not to mention Hulks passive and Thor's green are really powerful. Wait, wait, we should also ban Black Panther because his black is a ****. If Demiurge wants to nerf them, that's one thing, but Mags isn't much more powerful than some of the recent 3 stars (again, Black Panther). If everybody has the same opportunity to get a character, then they should be fair game.

Have you tried level 300+ mobs without C. Mags or Spidey? Black Panther/LazyThor are obviously strong, but they don't inherently break PvE like C. Mags and Spidey. If you think about it, C. Mags and Spidey both allow the player to take extra turns for extremely little AP: Spidey by stunning the entire enemy team, and C. Mags by endlessly match4/5s and generating AP from the resulting cascades. Even though BP might have a sick AoE and LT might have a strong green, they're only strong relative to other 3*s: once you start facing enemies that are much higher level than you are, then that damage becomes negligible and the only way to really beat the fights are to be taking a lot more extra turns than your opponent, which you can only do with C. Mags/Spidey. LT and BP are strong in the context of 3* 141s. Scale up the levels to 300/400, and it becomes obvious that the only characters that can keep up are C. Mags and Spidey.

Puritas

Knyghtmare wrote:

What is it with the Spidey and Mag hatred?

Pretty much what NP said
Infinite turns makes the game trivial

Unknown

Spidey and mags ban = f*** you, I'll eat your babies. Lol. Don't care about spidey, but if you ban magneto you might as well ban about 4-5 other characters as well. Patches due to his ridiculous green If you can mitigate the purple selfdamage. Punisher because his red is "too good" against high hp PvP. Thor because d-d-d-dominant. Bp'black is too strong on its own if scaling isn't wak like it is ATM. I know spidey and mags are probably too strong for pve due to thier blue in a mode with no def (mags isn't broken in PvP besides the red imo because his blue cannot be used by the machine, and the red should be changed anyway cuz..no 2 ap moves..or it could stay if they decided to find a way for moves to not be amplified by strike tile damage)

Okay. You know how you go about doing the same thing without officially nerfing/banning either character? A new enemy that steals ap every turn instead of creating ap. Make them steal 2-3 blue per a turn. If someone can keep magneto running while losing 3 blue every turn they either spent hp-lvl boosts on the fight or they worked hard for it. Just make a new enemy that steals blue only. I mean, besides those 2 nobody except maybe cap is going to miss the blue, so you are effectively only nerfing them. Do the same thing as a ban in a way without being as stupid as "you spent money, iso, hp, time...but we are going to let EVERYBODY BUT YOU play.". which is pretty sh***y business practice if they did do that. Heroics are okay because a large enough # of players are f-ed over that it feels fair lol. 2 characters just comes off as bad business. I'd say the same thing if they banned any other 2 man combo as well (though with spidey mag I would understand why..as compared to say l.cap and gsbw being the only 2 not allowed). Also, throwing spidey and magneto as enemies in a pve effectively does a sort of soft ban on them...which is also far more fair than what you sugguest.

On top of that, to take what you suggested already and go off that, if they wanted to make the most money they should make specific battles almost feel mandatory to.have (or not use) certain characters...thereby forcing players to have a high lvl and diverse roster to compete. So:

- no character bans.
-all 4**** have a 2x buff.
-New ap nullifying enemy. Nullifies (ap is taken from you, but not given to the machine) ap of 1 color every turn. 1-3 depending on the enemy lvl.
-after a certain number of hours (1-4?) Your difficulty ratchets down a few nodes. This makes it so players should never be 100% stuck.
-Number of nodes completed, not the top node completed dictates your final score.
-nodes not repeatable, instead there are 3 nodes at all time that, upon completion, become a totally new group of enemies at a higher lvl.
-nodes are specifically set up, only 3 nodes are ever available coming from 3 separate difficulty trees. All 3 nodes max to the same difficulty lvls though, so you cannot just play the easy mode to rocket up ranks as doing only.1 node.type will lead to very high lvls in that node, making the others easier to complete.
-There is a max difficulty to each of the 3 nodes. Once reached, you cannot complete anther node until your difficulty ratchets back. This is to keep one player from racing to 100000000 wins on.day one and ruining the fun for others. If someone is willing to follow the rachets and win matches every hour...they kinda deserve the win..no?
-progress rewards are not just iso, but there are no covers in them. Iso comes in tiered stages at every node completed. (Progress node 1-2, 2-3, 3-4 gets you 20 iso. 11-12, 12-13, 13-14, 18-19 gets you 50 iso. 70 for the 20s, 140 for the 30s and so on. Hp is rewarded every 10 nodes when not replaced by another reward. @30 you receive a token. @ 50 you receive a token. @75 you receive a toke. Etc. (Note: completing nodes 1,2,3 letting it ratchet down to one and completing 2 and 3 again only counts as 3 nodes of progress. Complete nodes 1,2,3,4 ra het down to 2, complete 2,3,4,5,6 ratchet to 4, complete 5...would put you having done 6 nodes..but needing to complete #6 again to move to a chance to earn progress #7)
-alliance reward is just iso. Big chunk like 15k for top 2, 12k for top 10, 10k for top 25, 58k for top 50, 5k for top 100...so on.
- make nick fury part of the rewards
-make nick fury's yellow part of the rewards.
-have nick fury as an enemy in the last node with devil dino and a new 3*** as the team.

Linkster79

Okay I'll have a bash at this.

Firstly players have just 48 hours to sign up (I.e. initiate a battle to join a bracket), after that 100 hours to get as many points as possible. All nodes are at fixed point values and points drop by 10% after each victory until they hit zero, with a 10 hour refresh. All enemy levels are at fixed levels and increase by 10% for every 500 points earned, and if goons are teamed with characters auto generate AP is off. Zero AP AI moves like sniper are out, will cost at least 2AP. Every 20 hours a new sub will open with base level enemies being 10% higher than in the first sub.

As for buffed or featured characters how about something fun like select 1*'s get a 200% buff, 2*'s 75% and 3*'s 25%. No love for 4* I'm afraid.

This way things are as they should be, those with better rosters will be able to finish higher than those with weaker rosters, but with the higher buff for 1* newer players should still be able to get some good progress rewards, also if people wish to grind the hell out of it they can without fear of being hit with scaling beyond their control.

Unknown

My contribution:
No ranking rewards; all rewards are progress-based.
Scoring system transparent, so it's clear how to reach any given reward level
Nodes are branching, not linear
Enemies are non-repeating (at least to the degree possible)

Zifna

This is more a slight change than a whole new mode, but I think it would play very differently...

One change I'd love to see is for rubberbanding to freeze for the last 4 hours of any PvE event. That is, the game remembers where the leader's score is 4 hours before the end of the event, and will rubberband anyone up to that point - but not past it.

The idea is this would hopefully make it more viable to play your last round of maps earlier in the day - you don't have to stay up until 11pm to catch the last drops of rubberbanding to stay competitive.

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

So since most players I've talked to lately have been completely burnt out by this last series of PvE events culminating in the daily disappointments that are the Hunt

Yep. My recent idea of fun PVE is to quit this genre entirely. It was boring enough right after the first triplet and I'm really sad I didn't realize we will have 4 triplets not 3, as I would probably quit right there. Since it was made even worse by insane leveling too.

• No repeatable nodes
• First node starts at level 20
• Each progressive node has enemy level +10, with no level cap
• Four days to clear as many nodes as you can
• Spidey and Mags banned
• Make progression rewards purely ISO, change ranking rewards to final score at end of event (i.e. you've cleared up to the level 100 nodes, you get ** cover rewards. You clear level 200 nodes, *** rewards)

That is an odd way to start. Normal way of design is to look after value, after user stories, after the source of fun. THEN convert them to implementation points verifying they align with the aim.

Lack of fun comes from:

1. boring battles: same opponent teams fought by same of yours ---> the only break from this was Sim and first subs of thivies/brotherhood. Latter by using maggia and mutants we didn't see for a while. Sim went very far here, using mixes of opponents, lockout of out company, different buffs every few days, the latter is the thing should be considered seriously: diversity across the board.

2. too many battles: zillion repeatable nodes providing points in stack of 5 resetting every 8/12h? For 9 days? That is completely nut.

3. fixed play time. The event runs for 9 days, sub may be 2-3 day long yet you must play at 2-3 fixed time points to get results.

4. scaling. Insane scaling. Accumulating too. You fought for fun or prizes in first sub -> 2 sub later face 230 or now 400 without a way to go back

5. opaque rules. Unfair spread of levels across players without any visible reason

To address the latter points a completely different point system should be used, that:
- allows play the game to any extent without any penalty (beyond not providing points)
- make timing of play not influence the result
- *if* opponents are scaled so should be the rewards
- transparent design: it must be clear what is consequence of play or not play.

It's certainly not easy to come up with something working: I'd probably try a pointing schema where each game create points but for standings only some subset is used. The suggestion to have only progression can be considered. If competition is desired random bracketing should go and make people either select a difficulty arena or be bracketed by roster or day count -- obviously with different prizes.

Honestly I grew skeptic about improvements especially as long as we players linger on so supporting all the **** D3 drops at us, so probably will stay with the first idea and look back after a few months.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Have you tried level 300+ mobs without C. Mags or Spidey? Black Panther/LazyThor are obviously strong, but they don't inherently break PvE like C. Mags and Spidey. If you think about it, C. Mags and Spidey both allow the player to take extra turns for extremely little AP: Spidey by stunning the entire enemy team, and C. Mags by endlessly match4/5s and generating AP from the resulting cascades. Even though BP might have a sick AoE and LT might have a strong green, they're only strong relative to other 3*s: once you start facing enemies that are much higher level than you are, then that damage becomes negligible and the only way to really beat the fights are to be taking a lot more extra turns than your opponent, which you can only do with C. Mags/Spidey. LT and BP are strong in the context of 3* 141s. Scale up the levels to 300/400, and it becomes obvious that the only characters that can keep up are C. Mags and Spidey.

That is a problem only if the game actually provides the 300 enemies. What it definitely should not.
Also we had events with limited rosters, excluding spidey and/or mags. Were that more fun? Not really. Were they not scaling? Yeah, sure.

With the existing buff system it would be easy to create a set of buffs/nerfs that make most of the roster be viable rendering those two to be just an option of many other good ones.

_RiO_

Zifna wrote:

This is more a slight change than a whole new mode, but I think it would play very differently...

One change I'd love to see is for rubberbanding to freeze for the last 4 hours of any PvE event. That is, the game remembers where the leader's score is 4 hours before the end of the event, and will rubberband anyone up to that point - but not past it.

The idea is this would hopefully make it more viable to play your last round of maps earlier in the day - you don't have to stay up until 11pm to catch the last drops of rubberbanding to stay competitive.

Excellent idea and seems easy enough to take for a dry run in a single event before implementing it game-wide as well. Two thumbs up from me.

Renaldoo

I was really psyched at first with the hunt for Falcon. I like the large diversity of maps, some minions, some npc's, and some of both. I also really like the large number of different sub-maps to play on for the event. Repeating the maps once to allow players in different time zones to easily play at the end of the event is fine too.

Getting to play Devil Dinosaur has been my single favorite moment in this game thus far, no joke.

What started out as a great event, however, has turned into a soul-crushing nightmare. It is simply far, far too long, and the repetition has been taken to an absurd degree.

TLDR: Hunt for Falcon would have been an example of an excellent format had it been either 1) shorter, or 2) less repetitive

Unknown

Someone mentioned a gauntlet mode a bit ago. I liked the idea, but don't remember the details (sorry idea creator!).

how about survival mode?

Survival mode:

A never ending string of battles. Each battle consists of a random team of 3. First battle starts at level 1 enemies. Each completion ups the levels by 3. For every 5 stages a player completes, they achieve a reward tier, at which point they are given the option to end and take the prize, or continue on. If the player loses a battle, they lose the reward as well.

The player's team does not change in between battles, unlike the enemy team, but the player does get to be fully healed between rounds. Cost 100 hp to enter per use, so it's not something that can be easily farmable for iso. A persistent leaderboard is also added, to give some kind of incentive to trying to beat other players high score(s).

Puritas

pasa_ wrote:

To address the latter points a completely different point system should be used, that:
- allows play the game to any extent without any penalty (beyond not providing points)
- make timing of play not influence the result
- *if* opponents are scaled so should be the rewards
- transparent design: it must be clear what is consequence of play or not play.

Actually my idea addresses all these points!
I guess I should go back in the OP and clarify that rubberbanding/community scaling is removed

Unknown

Random team mode: When the event starts, you pick 9 heroes from your roster. (If you don't have 9, you can pick "loaners" just like other events where you don't have the required character). Each node you go into, you don't know what your team is until you enter - the computer randomly picks 3 of your 9, and you have to adapt. No retreats allowed.

_RiO_

Puritas wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

To address the latter points a completely different point system should be used, that:
- allows play the game to any extent without any penalty (beyond not providing points)
- make timing of play not influence the result
- *if* opponents are scaled so should be the rewards
- transparent design: it must be clear what is consequence of play or not play.

Actually my idea addresses all these points!
I guess I should go back in the OP and clarify that rubberbanding/community scaling is removed

So in effect, progress through the nodes themselves directly (linearly?) translates to progress on the progression ladder and ranking ladder? (Though the prize for the latter only pops at the end of the event.)
That sounds good to me. Heck, that sounds ideal and above all fair, as it all boils down to beating as high-leveled opponents as allowed by your roster, at more-or-less your own pace. No node refresh timings, no node grinding, just beating a list of increasing challenges.

I would love for this to be expanded on with stuff like branching nodes, optional backtracking, hidden paths with additional rewards, etc. Enforced paths (even if branching) could also be used to flesh out the game's story a lot better than was done with previous episodes, because you can be sure it will be presented to players in a certain order.

Unknown

SHIELD vs Hydra but you can call it anything.

lots of nodes!

instead of everyone competing for the top 100 ranks, everyone's score contributes to total playerbase score.

at 10mil points everyone gets reward A
at 50mil reward B
100mil reward C
and then you have stretch goals like 150mil and 200mil that reward the community for dedication.

then you have player rank awards that reward you in the same way so that you are personally rewarded for your hard work and not being a leecher.
20k, 50k 100k.
and then the same for alliances. 500k, 1mil, 5mil, 10mil.

in this way everyone gets rewarded for the effort they put in but do not directly deny others the same rewards.

Unknown

Hmm, there are different rewards per node. What if each different reward was tied to a different enemy team composition.

Each node could then have a possibility of 4 different fights chosen randomly with different rewards depending on who you are fighting. Would take some extra work on the dev's part but could be promising.

Less grindy
Less predictable
Rewards can be scaled directly to difficuly
Event Points could be scaled based on difficulty

Each node could have an "easy" fight and each time a 20 iso reward pops up it hands you the easy group to play with, but event points are also at easy levels.
Each node could also have a "hard" fight worth greatly more points.

Throwing in a goon node, two mixed goon/hero nodes and one all heroes node would provide variety and make team composition choices more interesting.

I fear we are near the point of exhausting the current pve environment. The same fights over and over is causing burnout especially with the same fights increasing in difficulty each time. We need more randomness, more spontaneity, more reward/risk. People are putting up with the grind for the reward.

Oh what this game could be if you thoroughly enjoyed the ride while competing for the end rewards.

_RiO_

L45TN7 wrote:

SHIELD vs Hydra but you can call it anything.

lots of nodes!

instead of everyone competing for the top 100 ranks, everyone's score contributes to total playerbase score.

at 10mil points everyone gets reward A
at 50mil reward B
100mil reward C
and then you have stretch goals like 150mil and 200mil that reward the community for dedication.

then you have player rank awards that reward you in the same way so that you are personally rewarded for your hard work and not being a leecher.
20k, 50k 100k.
and then the same for alliances. 500k, 1mil, 5mil, 10mil.

in this way everyone gets rewarded for the effort they put in but do not directly deny others the same rewards.

Basically this expands on the freebie Hulk cover from the Hulk event, right? I like it.
Working towards a common goal with guaranteed goal post rewards would be refreshing for a change.

PorkBelly

There was a recent PvE (can't remember which one) where after you played a node 2x, it decreased to 1 point.

I really liked that because, for obvious reasons, it discourages grinding.


As for your initial suggestions, I agree with pretty much all of them except for the spidey & mags point (& I don't even have a decent spidey).

Unknown

Long time lurker first time poster! I'm glad this topic came up! I was just thinking of what I would like to see in PVE tournaments. I think what I would like to see is something that is collaborative more than competitive for PVE. Kind of like in the hulk event that when the community hit the specific reward we all got a hulk cover. I would like to see the the progression rewards all bracket based for the team, or even achievement based for the bracket (ie the bracket beats this node 100 times, get 500iso and move on to the next achievement). You wouldn't be able to move along to the next achievement until the bracket completes the current achievement. So even if the next achievement is down 150 hammer and the bracket has achieved that, you don't get the reward unless the previous achievement for completing the node 100 times was completed. But you would still get progress towards the next achievement. Achievement rewards for the event wouldn't need to be iso, cover, or token based either. I was thinking that if the event restricted the players to 8 characters, one or two of those rewards could be for the player to unlock a character for the event.

I think that this would be more akin to raiding or going into a dungeon and working together with your bracket than the competitiveness that should be reserved for pvp.