The Sinister Six Event Feedback - Developer Request

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

With the first run of the Sinister Six event having just ended, the development team at Demiurge wanted to take the time to learn and reflect on what players thought about it.

Did you enjoy crafting up that perfect roster to take down Doctor Octopus's reactor tiles? Perhaps you found it too chaotic watching Sandman create and match yellow tiles all over the place. Too easy? Too hard? Let the developers know!

If you would like to provide your feedback for The Sinister Six event, then feel free to fill out this quick survey below:

Spider-Man vs. Sinister Six Story Event Run 1 Feedback

Thanks!

JHawkInc

Hey, so what did people say?

I thought Carnage was a little... unwieldy in the last round. Crossed that line from "fun chaotic" to "his turns are taking too long and I just want him to die so I can fight Doc Ock." Not sure what to improve, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Doc Ock could be a little less black or white. If you can take out his reactor, it's basically a win. If you can't (say, you ran 4Thor, GSBW, and IM40 like me, and lost GSBW against Carnage in the first wave), then you're hosed. I'd like to see his tentacles function like the 5*, and do stuff while he's stunned (so taking out the reactor but not the tentacles still leaves him as a threat). And maybe add a puzzle element, where destroying tentacles gives you some board destruction (escalating, so it gets stronger as there are fewer tentacles on the board?) so even if you don't have powers that can handle his reactor, you can still fight him by taking out his tentacles. Make it more "puzzle" and less "do I have a power that can beat his reactor".

It was too short overall, but I stressed that I wanted an increase in the time spent playing, not the difficulty. My alliance completed it in 27 hours (and I'm not sure if we've ever completed Civil War, both sides, though I know we've come close). And given that the event runs for 3.5 days, I'd kinda like a reason to play for more than just the first day. I don't want to fight tooth and nail for the full 3.5 days, but I don't want to spend most of the boss event with no MPQ to play, either.

And Boss events don't give enough ISO. I suggested a multiplier attached to the round or the daily difficulty increase to make Boss events more appealing from an ISO standpoint. I suggested that it would be even better if the ISO were good enough that you'd want to keep playing after hitting personal/alliance progression, instead of just hitting those and being "done" with the event.

broll

I put that it was good and I enjoyed it.

I picked Carnage and Vulture for liked, not so much cause they stood out, but I needed to pick something.

I picked Sandman and Oc for did not like.  Sandman's AOE was way too OP compared to the rest of the event.  Oc was very problematic if you got a bad board and didn't bring someone who could just blow away tiles.  I had a lot of problems with Oc on a newbie side account I play from time to time because I had no tile destroyers.

I liked that the scaling wasn't bonkers hard (but I couldn't tell how it scaled up cause we cleared it so fast)

I put that I didn't like how easy it was both in terms of fight difficulty and time to clear it all.  However, I did specifically say that too easy is much better than too hard.

In other comments I said the boss event rewards need a significant infusal of ISO, HP, and CP to match other non-boss PvE reward levels.  I also put that they should really give vaulted covers as that seems more of a price than something it's super easy to get from the stores...

STOPTHIS

Overall I loved this event. Only downsides to me were Carnage and Sandman in round 8, but those aren't huge problems. Carnage would have been easier if he was later in the round, but I would like to see Sandman get a slight tweak to his power that cut 50% damage.

I still think support nodes scale too high too quickly.

I do wish there was a regular PvE event running along aside it. Boss events always throw my iso plans off a bit.

Warbringa

Everything but Carnage was great about the event.  Carnage's red shouldn't deal great damage and rearrange nearly the entire board since he creates so many cascades with that ability which then just fuels the same ability and his black and green abilities even more. If you want to keep that, the AP cost needs to be doubled to 10 instead of 5 as it is way too powerful of an ability for that cheap of AP cost along with his black ability.  In one match, he started this cycle on the third turn and I lost two characters almost instantly, couldn't even beat him of course.  I just ignored doing the nodes when he was first in the last round because he was so broken. I felt all of the other characters had their challenges but were overall fair.  Obviously the first character of each node was the most difficult in my experience since I leaned heavily on 4Thor and IM40.  Not sure how I will feel without those two boosted though, may be a lot tougher than I thought.

Evilplayer

The event was great, good job guys. 
The only think i believe u must change is the rewards. Most of us i think would want vaulted characters and more iso.. And as someone above said we need a reason to keep playing the event after we hit max prog. And i think iso is the ansewr

TheVulture

Overall I thought very good & creative. 

Highlights: Doc Ock, Sandman, Venom (just as a rest stop between hard bosses) & overall gimmick of having gimmick matches.

Low points: Vulture being so drab (literally just the regular 4* character?), Carnage being so random and downright tedious once he got rolling + hiding super-Venom in survival nodes.

purplemur

I gave the event high marks and liked it more than the usual Alliance/boss events. 

I liked that I could clear both sides, whereas in civil war its kind of a trade off of which rewards are personally relevant. and have to just focus on that side(in my heart :team cap.) 
I liked that the bosses were different as bosses than as playable toons.
-Venom especially. I just am glad that he is getting better represented in game. Blade red wrecked his day
-Carnage was fierce! nasty as he outta be! the good doctor gave him 50cc's of faltline and TCB
-Doc Ock was the most puzzley and on the rounds I forgot to pack GSBW It was stressdown reactor meltdown!
-Vulture didn't do much, we'll have to see what his release is. but if he has similiar triggers, him and Gwenpool/Colossus black seem tasty
-Sandman: went down with some Luke Cage hadukken! but that AoE hit hard! 
-goblin was just goblin as far as i could tell(not rostered) but whenever he forced his Goons to lay quick strike tiles I barely limped outta the node

I think it suffered from the usual scaling acceleration problems. The newbs in my casual public alliance just couldn't hang and pretty much gave up after the first few rounds which went by quick. So two of us scored 3.5mil combined and the rest were at a couple thousand. and I get it; why throw yourself at a brick wall with a 2* roster?

 I think a solution would be to have the scaling/Round increases tied to personal progression, with Alliance rewards being a gauge of overall strength. I can be fighting rd6/7 and some of the others can be chipping in their 10-15k at 2/3 as they are able. Being that we missed a carol cover by a couple hundoK(the one I would need to champ her!) I wish there was more involvement from the smaller rosters in my Alliance. 

While I was all about the Carol covers(she's almost there!) I do think some webby friends would have been nice as awards, diversity is key: 3* spidey, SpiderGwen AND Miles should have been earned, or conversely a venom AND carnage. I think the redux will let us cover Vulture. 

How about a higher ceiling for personal progression prizes? just one more threshold(like 2 mil) and earn an ACTUAL 5*! 

Good job, keep up the fresh content

p.s please take ANOTHER stab and making spid3rman and venom actually good

FokaiHI

I thought the event was fun, but short. Whenever these events are run, there  is such a huge ISO shortage. Maybe in the future we could have concurrent pve runs. 

fmftint

My only complaint was Carnage, he wasn't too hard but was too GD slow, my phone screen timed out every single turn. Can you speed him up a bit?  Drop the animations maybe

Spudgutter

I liked it, it was a much better version then boss rush.

Three tips to make this and other alliance events more fun:

First, stop with the 24 hour scaling jump for yhe side nodes. Seriously, i still cant figure out why this has never even be addressed.  Either defend it, hopefully with a great explanation as to how it makes any sense(here's a hint, it doesn't) or get rid of it.

Second, and this one is more for newer people and more casual or public alliances; get rid of the essentials.  You want engagement all weekend long?  Make it so that weaker or less developed rosters can take on the bosses more often.  Make the bosses a little harder, but i have to imagine it would be more fun to win all 5 or 6 sides nodes, then lose to the boss, then only be able to do one or two sided nodes.

Lastly, more iso.  Seriously, who thought that just a couple thousand iso was sufficient? Does that person even play the game?

corytutor

Carnage was a bad build, often making tile moves then special then tile move again then board shuffle all in one turn. Luckily he hit like wet toilet paper

Nepenthe

One thing I mentioned in the additional comments:  The variety of bosses and the variety of characters that are very good against them highlighted the problem with vaulting away most of the 4* tier. I was able to use Hulkbuster, Cho, and Quake as needed because I already had them from pre-vaulting. This sort of event is a lot of fun, and a nice chance to break out people other than your go-to team.  It serves as a counter-example to the "Just pick one old hero as your bonus and you don't need any more than that anyway" argument, imo.

j0nats

Was fun due to the boss variety, but i still think boss rush1 was more fun as it required us to be more creative with team strategies at later levels. 

Also since everyone could complete it, the satisfaction didnt feel the same as the 1st boss rush )although i admit that i didnt hit full prog on that one

hodayathink

The actual bosses were probably scaled just fine, but the progression in the event itself was too easy. I know people aren't going to want to hear that, but hitting max progression in a boss event a little after the first day really isn't ideal.

MPQ_Daywalker

j0nats said:

i still think boss rush1 was more fun as it required us to be more creative with team strategies at later levels. 

Well there's a phrase I certainly didn't expect to see.  I've never heard anyone say "Boss Rush was fun" let alone "Boss Rush was more fun" than anything.

I gave them glowing praise in my survey responses.  They fixed absolutely everything that was broken in Boss Rush.  Back in October, I put together a summary of all the problems with Boss Rush -- personal progression instead of alliance progression (and that change not even communicated in advance), boosted characters poorly chosen, bosses having insanely high match damage for all colors plus being able to make matches on their own, and how you could easily wipe out within four turns, partially due to all the AP the previous boss gives the next boss.

The only things I found annoying in this event were Carnage (especially in the last round, where one of his turns could take five minutes) and to a lesser extent, Sandman.  I really liked the puzzle nature of Doc Ock.  I thought Venom would be annoying but once he did damage and destroyed his invis tiles he was easy to take out.  Vulture could be ignored, and Green Goblin felt a lot like boss Iron Man or Cap with his minions, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

I've seen a lot of complaints on the forums about how this event was too easy and their alliance finished it too quickly.  Well I think there are a lot more casual alliances out there that didn't finish as quickly, and the difficulty level was set well for them.  If you're a casual 3* player, this event was playable right up through the end of Round 8 -- I don't think you can say that for any previous boss event.  That means the alliance progression rewards were earnable by way more alliances than ever before, and I feel that's a very good thing.  Especially when the 4* reward is one of the best in the game.

Starfury

MPQ_Daywalker said:

I've seen a lot of complaints on the forums about how this event was too easy and their alliance finished it too quickly.  Well I think there are a lot more casual alliances out there that didn't finish as quickly, and the difficulty level was set well for them.  If you're a casual 3* player, this event was playable right up through the end of Round 8 -- I don't think you can say that for any previous boss event.  That means the alliance progression rewards were earnable by way more alliances than ever before, and I feel that's a very good thing.  Especially when the 4* reward is one of the best in the game.

That's all well and good, but if the result is that if you're in a competetive alliance, the event is essentially over after 24 hours, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

This was THE marquee event of July. And I guess many players spent the weekend like me - farming the side nodes once every 8 hours while deliberately losing the boss fights because they were worth NOTHING. Not even 20 iso.

In my mind, that's not a good thing.

zulux21

I said I liked it.
said I liked doc oc and venom didn't like sandman or carnage (he was a pain and sandman's damage reduction was tiresome)

most of my survey was spent telling them to stop their stupid scaling on the boss unlocks.
the unlocks should be trivial in general and at no point should approach the amount of time, or effort as the bosses, let alone easily eclipse the boss in difficulty -_-

seriously, just leave them at day 1 levels and be done with it.

Wumpushunter

I trashed the event, the devs responsible and their ancestors. I know all you board people are running 30 champed 4s and multi champed 5 but that isn't everyone in the game. These boss alliance events are hurting progress of new players. They are causing alliance tension at least in my alliance 3 people were expelled because they could not score well.

Hadronic

What comic did doctor octopus become a turtle? I missed that issue.

zulux21

Wumpushunter said:

I trashed the event, the devs responsible and their ancestors. I know all you board people are running 30 champed 4s and multi champed 5 but that isn't everyone in the game. These boss alliance events are hurting progress of new players. They are causing alliance tension at least in my alliance 3 people were expelled because they could not score well.

I think your issue might be with your alliance and not so much the event.

who in the heck yells about it not being new player friendly enough but runs an alliance that is hardcore enough to be booting people just because they can't score well in an event?

i'm in a pretty casual (though long playing) alliance. The top players have a handful of 4* champs (no one has a 5* champ, and no one has a 4* champ over level 293) most who have a 4* champ only have 1 or 2 and they aren't of good 4*s. Everyone in my alliance aside from 1 person hit the personal progression. The one person that didn't was not the person who only has 3* champs, he was in fact one of the first people to hit personal progression.

None of the bosses were exceptionally hard until the later rounds. If you had issues with someone like doc oc (who was one of the easier bosses) it was because you were trying to brute force something that required a bit of finesse instead. 

now if you want to talk unlock scaling, I am always for trashing that. but the actual bosses weren't that bad. They were easily handled by a 3* roster until round 6 or so. I can't say how easy they were for a 3* roster to deal with after that as i never bothered playing around with one after that, I just instead hulkbustered most things >.>