Bad Boss designs

Phumade

I'll accept that Kaecillius is working as intended if they "the Devs" are prepared to accept honest criticism.

1.  This version of Kaecillus was badly implemented in this event.  If the core idea was to increase the number of matches to defeat the boss, the devs have fundamentally misunderstood their own game, characters and scaling formulas.

 ---  It should be pretty obvious to even novice players/ designers that giving Kaecillius immunity to both match and power damage means that even 5* chars are largely ineffective outside of their large health pool.  That would be acceptable if Kaecillius was tuned to the characters that could actually be effective.  (I.e. coulson, MR. F., quicksilver, board shakers and tile manipulators.)  But a level 330 Kaecillius health is tuned for high level 4* and 5* rosters 

This was a major design mismatch  if your don't allow those rosters to use their high level match or power damage.  From my perspective,  this event appears to use the standard scaling formula for scl8, but they failed to consider the unique design of this boss.  For example,  the actual sub experience was fairly consistent between all the other events played under the new scaling, but the boss experience was far more frustrating and tedious than either Galactus or Sinister 6.

Part of good, modern game design is ensuring that difficulty is consistent and or ramps smoothly and incrementally.  This reminded me of the worst parts of NES gaming (ie. beating battletoad's boss level)

A 330 Galactus, Ultron, Boss Cap, Boss IM is perfectly inline with their current philosophy on pve play because players can take advantage of their increased match or power damage.  But this version of Kaecillius doesn't seem fully thought through or tested.  In fact, this boss is almost as bad as Boss Rush Version 1.

2.  In the middle sub, the 2* essential is actually harder with more health than the 4* essential.
--  I don't really understand why the 2* essential node has more enemy health than the 4* node???  From my perspective, they should have switched the enemies so that the 4* node has the 2* enemy team and vice versa.

This is a significant error that should have been caught by a tester or someone who actually reviews these events before they go live on the server.


Positives:

I do appreciate that the Kaecillius match is a one and done match that doesn't really impact Leader board placement.  It would have been a terrible experience if we had to grind that node multiple times at the end of a sub.


@LakeStone

ProtoformX

Seems to be the latest in a never ending series of bad design choices or amateur hour mistakes.  This latest release has ridiculous loading times for everything and the sound effects are broken again.

Captain_Carlman

Why does it seem that whenever there is a broken boss event, the developers are always out of the office for an extended period of time?

Pants1000

It's not broken, just difficult.  

shartattack

Just because Brocket made nodes a cakewalk doesn't mean Kaecilus is broken.  There are plenty of teams that can beat him.  Nothing wrong with a little challenge .   

Borstock

Oh look, another "let's complain about Kaecilius" post. Because there aren't enough of those.

The only mistake here is that they didn't communicate the change beforehand to allow people to adjust their SCL choice based on what version of him they wanted to play against. He's still beatable. This isn't like that broken boss rush event. Just beat him and move on.

Tseb

I actually thought he was fairly easy to beat with C4ROL/Medusa/3*Falcon.  Just match purple for defend tiles and keep boosting by matching yellow and Executive Order.  Rinse and repeat as necessary and K will soon be reduced to hitting you for only 1 point damage/tile match

Dartmaster01

Wow, you give people one match that takes actual strategy and people lose their minds. Matches like this are the only good thing about this game lately and they are becoming more and more scarce. I suppose you just want more mindlessly tapping through pve like we don't have enough of that already.

And by the way this match is not even hard. I know a lot of people that beat this with 3* teams like it was nothing and not one of them complained.
 

St_Bernadus

I enjoyed the challenge of this fight. A bit of a heads up would have been helpful, but that seems a common problem.

Wonko33

I beat him 2/3 matches with 2 3* and a 4*- enough whining. Don't use characters with useless powers againt him and it will work just fine. To quote a great President, use strategery 

acescracked

MPQ is hard.

Wumpushunter

Whom ever flagged you does not understand the term "abuse" or spam.

Wonko33

Wumpushunter said:

Whom ever flagged you does not understand the term "abuse" or spam.

there is a whole generation of people out there that think they are being abused or bullied when someone disagrees with them - sad 

ProtoformX

I'm not complaining that it's hard, I'm 2/2 with no wipes on scl7 with Elektr4 and Medusa forming the core of my team.  There are 2 gripes I have with K right now:
1. The only Delta here is that the amount of damage dealt is much less than it was before with absolutely no forewarning or explanation.
2. His matches are drawn out about 2-3 times as long as a regular node.  In a time when burnout due to 5+ pve clears is a *very* real thing I and my alliance are trying to cope with, I absolutely do not want to be spending more time on this game...

Lucifier

i am playing at CL7, that's mean Kaeciius is level 245.

beat him with 3* team (KK lvl168, patch lvl170, and Loki lvl130(but 13 covers)) with one team up agent venum (the invisibility ability).

turbomoose

Yes he's harder to beat this time and it was quite frustrating but I think it's helped me as I stand a good chance of getting a top 10 finish despite not starting the event straight away on the first two days 

definitely agree that we should have been told about the change to the level of damage though 

Wonko33

ProtoformX said:

I'm not complaining that it's hard, I'm 2/2 with no wipes on scl7 with Elektr4 and Medusa forming the core of my team.  There are 2 gripes I have with K right now:
1. The only Delta here is that the amount of damage dealt is much less than it was before with absolutely no forewarning or explanation.
2. His matches are drawn out about 2-3 times as long as a regular node.  In a time when burnout due to 5+ pve clears is a *very* real thing I and my alliance are trying to cope with, I absolutely do not want to be spending more time on this game...

My burnout is not based on how long nodes are, it is based on repeating the same thing over and over with the same teams against the same teams, this is refreshing

Milk Jugz

I'm 2/2 so far against K-silliness (credit to aesthetocyst on that name, I liked it) and I'm not even using any special teams, just the same one I use for the subs. Phoenix, Bl4de, Hobo. The board shake that team offers is minimal, Phoenix purple changes 7 random basic tiles or TU tile to red. Sure, it can make a cascade, but more often it just makes a match, or it just makes 7 more red tiles. I haven't had an issue except that it takes a little long. But, even that is not a problem, it's a one time node- I just finish my clear first. Doesn't matter for placement how long it takes.

Milk Jugz

Wonko33 said:

Wumpushunter said:

Whom ever flagged you does not understand the term "abuse" or spam.

there is a whole generation of people out there that think they are being abused or bullied when someone disagrees with them - sad 

Quick, everyone run to their safe space!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dudethtsawesome

The name of the game is Marvel PUZZLE Quest. Like @aesthetocyst said earlier, this games gets on autopilot sometimes and events like this actually make you think about your strategy. What team will accomplish the desired effect. Kaecilius is just a puzzle to figure out, im thankful for the break in monotony to be quite honest. 

Jarvind

He's not THAT much harder. The only problem here is that, as with most changes that do not materially benefit the player, they completely failed to announce it.