Design-a-PvE Format (Making it fun)

Unknown

Goals. No grinding, not playing against too easy or too hard enemies (just the right challenge), doesn't matter when you play (no last hours push), risk/reward system.

no rubberbanding
3 resets per node (optional)
All nodes are lvl 30 for 1000pts (base)
Players can change lvl of node

You can risk increasing lvl of a node for better reward. Risk 150pts and node will be lvl 180. Beat it and you get 1150pts. Lose and node is back to lvl 30 but only for 850pts.
There could be 3 resets for a so after you beat it its back to lvl 30 for 1000pts and you can try harder, or weaker (if you lost too much points).
You fight enemies that's right about challenging for you, no more frustration from extreme lvls you can't beat.
It could be both competitive or only progress rewards.
Since everyone have same same amount of fights, and points are set by player and not by rubberband, it won't matter anymore when you play - it fix end of event problem.

TazFTW

I agree with seeing more of those everyone works towards a reward events.


The Falcon and the hare - Your team versus Uber Daken, Falcon, and someone else (regular Daken? ). Fastest time wins.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

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)

I love this idea - especially the first two. PVE is not really PVE as long as your main rewards come from placement. That puts you in competition with other players, and is therefore PVP even if you are never fighting anyone else directly. A new format should be a combination of progression and match rewards. Does anyone remember when Cap came out (the first time), and you would get his covers for single matches? Then you could get a modern Hawk for a match, maybe a Storm. If the designers built the progression rewards into the actual progression, then there would be more of a sense of progress in the event, rather than just "let me grind these out again."

Unknown

AsianInvasion wrote:

Survivor Arena

Each battle becomes increasingly more difficult. Each battle has a reward. At end of event you get reward for highest round completed and all the ones preceding it.

Can only use each character once.

If you lose you go back to battle one with all characters available again.

Would force you to play with your entire roster and strategize how you wish to deploy them.

This would be super interesting! I heard somewhere along the way that the devs want to encourage character variety, where you rotate through your heroes as they get damaged. Yet the state of the game doesn't really encourage rotation -- if someone is buffed for an event, yes you'll use them even if you wouldn't ordinarily. But you still would rotate within an event, because you use mostly the buffed characters. This would be another way to encourage rotation type behavior, and then we would all see a lot of variety. It would also introduce a lot of strategy! How long do you save your Spiderman, Mags, OBW?

Unknown

rixmith wrote:

I would definitely like to see play modes that allow me to utilize more of my roster. How about a PVE mode where you get 5 nodes of differing levels and some buffed characters. But once you beat a node with three characters they are not available for the other nodes (from a story point of view all nodes are actually happening simultaneously). So what team do I send to the Level 40 node? My level 41 soft-capped 3*** heroes, or my 1* heroes? Do I save all my buffed heroes to tackle the biggest node, or do I put one with a team of lower level characters to capture the mid-level nodes and forgo the highest one? You could have nodes at levels appropriate for players at any level of their progression, and make the rewards appropriate.

I would just like a PVE that makes all my heroes valuable and challenges me with strategy in figuring out good teams to set up for particular situations.

THIS! Exactly THIS! We should have to act like commanders, assigning our troops to select battles. Either that, or following limited options per mission. So many problems solved.

There can be a workaround or exemption for new players, and even an element of randomization for what you get for a node. Would keep things so much fresher (not to mention story-themed, potentially)

Unknown

The saddest thing about this thread is that I'm seeing a ton of ideas that could make PvE seriously fun again, and rewarding for both large and small alliances - and I guarantee D3 will not implement a single one of them.

Unknown

rixmith wrote:

I would definitely like to see play modes that allow me to utilize more of my roster. How about a PVE mode where you get 5 nodes of differing levels and some buffed characters. But once you beat a node with three characters they are not available for the other nodes (from a story point of view all nodes are actually happening simultaneously).

Excellent idea. Our characters could gain "exhaustion" -- say able to play only 5 games in 8h period -- so you would need a battle plan for nodes considering best use of available plays.

Or not even timed: you have a board of many nodes, each with 3 prizes, repeatable 3 times providing one prize but less points. No node rest. Enemy levels fixed. Each of your character can play only X (4-5) games overall. And that is it. You can play at whatever times, whatever selection, by the end a realistic roster will still leave a plenty on the table and the sum will depend on good decisions.

A twisted version could add rounds keeping the character uses carried over, but add say Y (2) chances to everyone. More strategy to save up now to get better shot later.

Combine this with the already suggested 3-4 of exclusively selectable arenas that differ in base opponent levels and prize structure and we have the fair and interesting PVE.

_RiO_

DaveyPitch wrote:

The saddest thing about this thread is that I'm seeing a ton of ideas that could make PvE seriously fun again, and rewarding for both large and small alliances - and I guarantee D3 will not implement a single one of them.

Somewhat pessimistic, but yes; they have a track record of tossing this kind of advice in this wind. I really, really hope that at one point they'll start listening though.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

DaveyPitch wrote:

The saddest thing about this thread is that I'm seeing a ton of ideas that could make PvE seriously fun again, and rewarding for both large and small alliances - and I guarantee D3 will not implement a single one of them.

Somewhat pessimistic, but yes; they have a track record of tossing this kind of advice in this wind. I really, really hope that at one point they'll start listening though.

If they didn't take the vs. Simulator overhaul idea directly from the forum I'd be surprised. It has been suggested for some time that it be changed to exactly what it is now.

Puritas

Moon 17 wrote:

If they didn't take the vs. Simulator overhaul idea directly from the forum I'd be surprised. It has been suggested for some time that it be changed to exactly what it is now.

I guess you haven't been around the forums all that long

Unknown

Copied and pasted from the Suggestions forum, b/c I thought it fit here as well (and I like feedback on my ideas ).

Proposal: Crafting System!
I wanted to find a way to add a crafting mechanic similar to what was found in the original Puzzle Quest. For those that didn't play it, you would find runes throughout the world, and then in your castle (accessible from any city), you could play a mini-game with rules variants that would allow you to craft items. A similar mini-game existed to research spells from captured monsters.

For the initial introduction of crafting, the easiest target would be the consumable boosts. Instead of having the boosts drop from a fight, you could have the crafting materials drop (perhaps 7 different materials, 3 common, 2 uncommon, 1 rare, 1 super-rare). Each of the current boosts could be crafted from these materials, allowing players to craft the boosts they use most (or need at that moment). The rare and super-rare materials could be purchasable with HP and would be used for the "+1 to all AP" and "+10% to all Matches" boosts, thus preserving their rarity and monetization. I don't know about other players, but I often find myself using some of the "+10%" damage boosts only when it hits 25+, while other categories rarely get above 10 (e.g. +1 AP to Blue/Purple or Black/Green). Under this system, you could craft the ones you use all the time and never receive a "wasted" boost from an end-of-combat drop.

The actual mini-game itself would play very similar to what was in the original Puzzle Quest, with a few tweaks. Matching 4 tiles gives you a crafting tile (perhaps a beaker or a circuit board) and the goal of the mini-game is to match those crafting tiles eventually reaching some number, where the goal would be dependent upon the type of boost you were trying to craft. However, the original Puzzle Quest's crafting was quite unforgiving in that if you screwed up or got unlucky, you would lose upwards of 20 minute of work (for godlike items). To alleviate that, I would suggest the addition of "research abilities" which would be available based on who you bring into the lab (or more simply who is available in your roster). For a team-based approach, you could make the team-selection screen just be the "brainy" peeps as playable (e.g. IM35, IM40, Spiderman/Peter Parker, Dr. Doom, Hulk/Banner). The abilities wouldn't be game-breaking but rather meant to mitigate the risks of the original crafting system. Sample abilities would be similar to what is in the current bank of abilities:

• Destroy all environment tiles, generating AP
• Destroy all crafting tiles, generating AP towards required total.
• Create a 2 turn countdown tile that replaces 2 random basic tiles with crafting tiles

However, to create some risk, the environment tiles are now a Bad Thing ™. Matching or destroying environment tiles creates instability in the system. For some relatively cheap amount of AP (say 9, so 3 matches), some negative ability occurs. Perhaps a 1 or 2 turn countdown (or 2x 2 turn countdowns) that will destroy some random blocks or will reduce your current crafting total. Also, a turn limit of say 30 turns will be in place (similar to what PQ2 offered for some of its minigames). Match 5's and certain abilities could increase the number of remaining turns, while certain negative abilities might reduce that.

This system is also easily modified / extensible for other things. Perhaps it could be used to unlock or upgrade additional rooms for your headquarters (should that ever happen), for the recruitment of hirelings/henchmen, unlocking alternative outfits, or (my personal favorite) the building and maintaining of vehicles (which I envision as semi-permanent boosts that have a durability and you play a mini-game to repair it).

Summary of Changes/Additions

• Have boosts (+1 AP, +3 AP, +10% dmg, etc.) be crafted instead of dropped.
• Have crafting materials drop from normal fights (alternatively, drop recipes and each time you craft, it consumes that copy of the recipe).
• Provide a PVE location (such as "Horizon Labs") under the Prologue tab to start the game type.
• Players would select which boost they want to craft using crafting materials they found previously in other fights.
• The crafting fight would be similar to the original PQ. A match 4 or 5 would create crafting tiles (anvils in the original PQ), which then need to be matched.
• Normal character abilities wouldn't be available, but special abilities would be available based on who is in your roster of heroes (i.e. the smart people).

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

Moon 17 wrote:

If they didn't take the vs. Simulator overhaul idea directly from the forum I'd be surprised. It has been suggested for some time that it be changed to exactly what it is now.

I guess you haven't been around the forums all that long

Now, now. A lot of development changes seem to be random moves made by, I don't know, like a chicken pecking boxes with random idea suggestions in them. But a few of the changes in the game appear to have been informed directly by forum discussion. I think the modification of the ISO-8 skip tax into a degrading reward system was made because of the discussion on the forum, for instance. I think the vs. simulator was similarly remodeled based on forum suggestions.

If we look at it from a percentage basis, sure, they effectively never take our suggestions into account. But there are definitely occasions where board chatter informs game changes.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

If we look at it from a percentage basis, sure, they effectively never take our suggestions into account. But there are definitely occasions where board chatter informs game changes.

Though if some exploit is discussed here it can get shut down. PVE deleveling lasted for almost nothing...

_RiO_

pasa_ wrote:

Moon 17 wrote:

If we look at it from a percentage basis, sure, they effectively never take our suggestions into account. But there are definitely occasions where board chatter informs game changes.

Though if some exploit is discussed here it can get shut down. PVE deleveling lasted for almost nothing...

Yeah, that would be because it effectively screws with the game's revenue. (I.e. people having to buy boosts or health packs to cope with scaling raising enemy levels.)

Unknown

I second Riggy's suggestion.

One of my favorite parts of original PQ games was the treasure mini games. Instead of a **** token that has a 95% chance of bring a duplicate, I'd love to see a mini match game that would give you boosts/iso/hp/covers/rare covers based on tole luck amd performance.