This Game Isn't Fun Anymore

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

At this point, I think it's all just a money grab. Everything has become some new "incentive" to spend more and more...more iso to level guys to keep up, more HP for shields and Boosts, more HP for covers you never pull. Pay, or be left behind. That seems like the overarching plot line here.

That's my conclusion as well. We, as players, don't know the financial situation of the game in any way, but the signs are quite apparent that the game has shifted away from its F2P origins and is clearly towards P2W with hints of P2P potentially being introduced at the high end of the power curve.

If we look back at the pie graph from Part 1 of the MPQ posts on Venturebeat: Part 1, 90%ish of in-game revenues are obtained from exactly three sources: cover pack sales, roster slot sales, and direct ability purchases, in that order. All of these are attributable to one course of action: releasing new characters. Players buy cover packs to win the newest character that is required for events, which can cause the need to purchase additional roster slots to hold them, and for deep pocket individuals the potential to quickly buy covers for that character to gain an advantage in the current tourney/event. Everything else on that chart is really insignificant in scope.

Thus, in my opinion, the vast majority of the devs' resources were realigned around that single objective - to release more characters to generate more revenue for the game. That is perfectly fine, if there was balance between this and other functional parts of the game. Balancing has been ignored and new content is not being created (Seriously: how much time does it **really** take to create some wallpapers, write 2-3 pages of a script for characters, and program the nodes for each event?), all in the name of churning out new characters as fast as possible? But even that has its limits. How many more new 3*** characters will be released before the community really no longer cares and only goes through paces because that character will be required on future Essential nodes (Yay! She-Hulk! Ugh... ANOTHER Green/Red/X character....)

So, now, we have the developing situation with both PvE and PvP MMR changes. The PvE ones are farther in maturity and the players as a whole understand their implications in general disdain. PvP, is now being molded to fit the same mold as PvE. But there is a severe problem here. 1* rosters only require 1-3 hours at most to naturally heal up from a wipe. 3*** gold 141s require 8-10 hours to achieve the same result with 50 minute downed timers and 6-10k health to regenerate. Thus, the endgame players are being forced into a P2W environment to even remain remotely competitive.

(Speculation begins after this point - fair warning)

Now, let's look at the developing situation at the high end in PvP. With players locked into 141 fights of high damage being thrown around everywhere, the only way to avoid damage and end matches relatively quickly is via Patch + CMags or Patch + Spidey. Most already do this to some degree, but these changes will push the rest in this direction.

Then comes the long awaited "Funbalance" that mitigates Spidey's healing and lockdown capability and well as CMags's costless 5 Blue ability and spammable red to break up his synergy with Patch. Patch becomes the extremely high risk character again that players can no longer mitigate and Spidey can't lock the board down anymore, which places essentially every 141 team in **exactly the same position**. No one has an advantage over any other roster and every fight becomes high risk to avoid any incoming and potentially crippling damage.

The obvious solution would then move to avoiding enemy AP abilities from being cast, which means The Hood. But wait, Hood counters Hood, and if that is not enough, Lazy Daken will make short work of the Hood. So... now what? Defense is still not a viable strategy as even Lazy Cap or Spidey defense tiles mean little against a Lazy Thor Cts, Black Panther RoP, Lazy Cap SSA, and so on...

With everyone being exactly the same in 3*** land, does this suddenly open the doors for the devs to push the climb to 4**** territory to somehow "escape" the 3*** growing masses if Xforce is finally buffed when CMags and Spidey are nerfed to push the soon-to-be-deemed-viable new endgame roster of IW/Xforce/Fury to gain any marginal advantage over the masses again?

And then you have the fun issue of while fighting masses of 141s constantly for any event points at all, there is always the backdoor hardcoded in for the 2** rosters to ruin your day via the Jungle and Forest nodes to spam your 141s to defeat, marginalizing any minimal event progress that was obtained. Will constant shield crawling by the 141s be needed to obtain any significant placing in PvP events in the future?

So... are we having fun yet?

Unknown

If the PvE events are supposed to be P2W they sure aren't doing a very good job at it. What are you going to do with a ton of HP? Buy a lot of health packs? Use HP costing boosts on every fight? You'd have to spend thousands of HP for that to even make an impact and for what? So you can win a cover that's worth 1250 HP?

I suspect they want to encourage people to have multiple level 141/85s to use to keep scaling down (and make more money from you having to level all these extra characters), though since we still don't know exactly how scaling works, it's not like people will just start randomly leveling up extra characters just in case. Whatever the current plan is, it really doesn't even matter, because we can't even know that we're supposed to P2W without understanding how the scaling works, so even if you're prepared to pay, you certainly won't do it yet until you're sure paying indeed lets you win.

over_clocked

Yep, not sure how the devs could pressure me into buying anything (ignoring that I'm purchase-banned for the moment here).
I have all the characters in the game and will continue getting every new character due to being in an active and large alliance, so nothing here.
I have enough HP to expand my roster in time for a new character, and could always sell Yelena/Bullseye/Bag-Man if short.
The insane scaling does pressure me into Prologue healing but not often - it just greatly reduced my PvE playtime in general and to beat 6 Essential nodes (3 in Hard, 3 in Normal or 2x all 3 Essential nodes, for instance) I may just use my 5 healthpacks and any that regenerate during the time of beating those nodes.

Earlier I could afford to play for those 4/4 rewards (man I love tokens even if standard, that's some RNG addiction I'm denied) and maybe push the community scores higher, I am one of the players that invest their time instead of money and lots of it, after all. Could maybe help the community reach prog rewards because I don't care about coming 1st in a PvE. Instead I'm discouraged from playing as much as I'd like to.
I'm not sure what the devs want from me as a F2P. Stop playing if my playtime is not welcomed?
I can't even recommend the game to anyone anymore because I'd feel responsible and guilty when they later inevitably encounter the joys of scaling, etc.

Edit: oh and I'm not that impatient for short-term rewards that ability upgrades offer. I only upgraded my Hood, for example, because I totally enjoy playing the character. No force of nature will make me upgrade my puny lazyThor as I will get those covers anyway eventually.

So if I'm a very bad player from an ARPDAU standpoint, too bad for me I guess.

2Lyrian: If Ice has not been directly misinforming us, the 4*s won't overshadow 3*s for quite some time yet. I don't believe that cMagneto and Spidey will be nerfed or that X-Force will be buffed anytime soon, although I sure hope something is done to alleviate scaling - but sadly at the cost of one of the most enjoyable characters in the game.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Level 230s are absolutely beatable without any cheap mechanisms. Even some level 395s are beatable without them. I already had 3 accidentally wins when I was trying to lose against Daken/Storm/Hulk and Hood/Commander/Daredevil, which are very strong combination of enemies and they're in the level 200 range for me, though those fights are all pretty close so if they're 50 levels higher I might not have won, though I was trying to lose so hopefully I'd do better if I wasn't trying to lose.

The Hulk is actually quite good against these guys since they can easily hit hard enough to trigger Anger even when he's level 141. The team I was trying to lose to The Hood was Punisher/Hulk/someone and I think I had 30 green before I realized I was going to win and had to start making really bad matches to not win, because I was getting an Anger every round and when you can use a Judgment every 2 rounds, that is quite devastating. Ironically I think I had to let some Tactile Deployment resolve on purpose initially because they didn't do enough damage to trigger Anger, so it might even be a little bit easier if the enemy starts out doing enough damage to trigger Anger without needing a Tactile Deployment.

But how does Tactile Deployment feel?

daveomite

Lyrian wrote:

daveomite wrote:

At this point, I think it's all just a money grab. Everything has become some new "incentive" to spend more and more...more iso to level guys to keep up, more HP for shields and Boosts, more HP for covers you never pull. Pay, or be left behind. That seems like the overarching plot line here.

That's my conclusion as well. We, as players, don't know the financial situation of the game in any way, but the signs are quite apparent that the game has shifted away from its F2P origins and is clearly towards P2W with hints of P2P potentially being introduced at the high end of the power curve.

If we look back at the pie graph from Part 1 of the MPQ posts on Venturebeat: Part 1, 90%ish of in-game revenues are obtained from exactly three sources: cover pack sales, roster slot sales, and direct ability purchases, in that order. All of these are attributable to one course of action: releasing new characters. Players buy cover packs to win the newest character that is required for events, which can cause the need to purchase additional roster slots to hold them, and for deep pocket individuals the potential to quickly buy covers for that character to gain an advantage in the current tourney/event. Everything else on that chart is really insignificant in scope.

Thus, in my opinion, the vast majority of the devs' resources were realigned around that single objective - to release more characters to generate more revenue for the game. That is perfectly fine, if there was balance between this and other functional parts of the game. Balancing has been ignored and new content is not being created (Seriously: how much time does it **really** take to create some wallpapers, write 2-3 pages of a script for characters, and program the nodes for each event?), all in the name of churning out new characters as fast as possible? But even that has its limits. How many more new 3*** characters will be released before the community really no longer cares and only goes through paces because that character will be required on future Essential nodes (Yay! She-Hulk! Ugh... ANOTHER Green/Red/X character....)

So, now, we have the developing situation with both PvE and PvP MMR changes. The PvE ones are farther in maturity and the players as a whole understand their implications in general disdain. PvP, is now being molded to fit the same mold as PvE. But there is a severe problem here. 1* rosters only require 1-3 hours at most to naturally heal up from a wipe. 3*** gold 141s require 8-10 hours to achieve the same result with 50 minute downed timers and 6-10k health to regenerate. Thus, the endgame players are being forced into a P2W environment to even remain remotely competitive.

COMPLETELY agree. Everything being done, all the changes, the new characters, the scaling, the thresholds in pvp, all of it leads to the same overall goal. D3P is trying to make more money - and as a small business owner, I can completely understand. But, if I did to our clients what this game is now doing to many of us, we'd be fired. I'm not saying that anyone paying money in the game has the upper hand, nor am I saying that F2P is completely a dead stick. But it seems pretty obvious to me that F2P is intended for the Prologue section mainly, at least, that's what the devs hope.

The issue is, the Prologue has been completed by just about everyone beyond 30 days or so. So once it's over, what's left to do in the game? PvE and PvP. Sure, a new player can step right in and generally do OK in a PvE fairly quickly. Like what happened when I first started. I absolutely LOVED the game, couldn't put it down. Because I mainly work from home, I can play more often than a lot of other people. I worked my way through most of the Prologue pretty quickly, and started leveling whatever characters I had. I hadn't even noticed the tab for the Events. Once I did though, I started trying to do some things in there. PvP - I was able to get a few hundred points, but I was severely outclassed for most "matches" I was given, so focused more on the first PvE I saw, Brotherhood.

That was within my first 30 days, and in that, my first PvE, I was 1st in my Brotherhood bracket, and 1st in most subs. However, it's all bait and switch. Because I won that, and because of various "lucky pulls" for me at the time to get more covers for Thor, Classic Storm, etc. I bought ISO to get characters like mThor and cStorm up to 85 as soon as possible, and those two helped carry me through Brotherhood. But, I also managed to win Psylocke very quickly, just not sure I remember in what. Then magically pulled at least other other cover for her, put some ISO towards her - and she was boosted in the event, which helped out amazingly. Managed to finally get MagsMN and Psy/cStorm/MagsMN became my go to team. Of course, I had the opportunity to invest some money into ISO and even a few covers to get those characters up to speed sooner.

At the time, it seemed like the thing to do. Between whatever money for ISO I had invested, and the hours I played a day, I was quickly moving along in the game, or so I thought. I am not, and never was, trying to be the best or win each and every event. For me, it was about accomplishing getting a team together as fast as possible, to try to further expand my roster, and to try to become an active part of the environment of the game. But of course, I always did aim to do my best and to try to place as high as I could to get maximum rewards, which in turn, help further me along on my path.

But then more and more new characters were being added. Seemed like a landslide of them over a 45 day period to me. There was simply no way I could win every single one of them, and be able to level them all up as much as I needed. Even with my Psylocke, who was my first 3* I had longest, I had her in the 70's at the time. I remember that Psylocke PvP, and was amazed I was getting put into matches with people who already had her fully maxed at 141, just 2-3 weeks after she was released. Same thing happened to me with Panther. I won him, got a few covers, but nothing outrageous. Again, seeing people who already had him fully maxed in what seemed like no time.

That's when things started getting rougher. Harder times in PvE's, impossible walls in PvP, nothing to do in Prologue. My only choice was to continue to put ISO into characters to try to get them higher. To try to get more and more covers, which were never the ones I actually needed. I kept fighting to stay in all the PvE's I could, usually placing in the top 10-20 in several, higher or lower in others. Every sub, every event, every node... I played it. Unless of course, I didn't have the required character, which at the time I didn't have ones like cMags and Daredevil or even Cap, etc. Each PvE was a little harder. Not by a lot, but incremental. When I first started, nodes in the 20-30 range in that first PvE. In the next one, in the 30-50 range, and so on. As I grew and got stronger, the levels of the villains I fought increased. That made perfect sense, and kept it challenging as I progressed.

Up until that point, most of the PvE's were at least manageable. By Unstable, I was seeing my first 200+ nodes. Those were hard. And I didn't even have Spidey when that started, nor cMags. I kept hearing people talk about how great Spidey was on the forum, and managed to finally get him off of a heroic token, needless to say, I was pretty happy with that. But still, couldn't use him. I placed high enough in Unstable to win Torch's green cover at least, then turned around and placed top 10 in Hot Shot.

Then, the Hunt. Between the start of Hot Shot and the Hunt, I put ISO into Torch and had bought a couple of covers for his green. Then lucked up and got a red cover on some pull. Wound up buying the 4 extra covers of red, and the remaining green covers I needed, then paid for more ISO and leveled him all the way to 115. That was around my 55-60th day of playing. Then pulled a yellow and blue cover for Spidey. I had some left over HP and ISO - so I went ahead and bought the remaining covers for Spidey's blue and leveled him as high as I could, to 66. Mainly because he was a 3*, which I was lacking very many of them.

By day 2 or 3 of the Hunt, I now had a leveled Torch, and had leveled Spidey. Up to that point, things seemed about normal, challenging nodes, but not every one "Deadly". By day 4 though, that changed, a lot. I saw nodes start changing immediately after playing them, watched as what was a 100+ node jump to a 200+ node. By day six, I got my first 395 node, then day seven, two of the Bullseye nodes were 395, and the other 300+, and Ares and countless other ones were now 300+. On day eight, all of the Bullseye nodes were 395, the Ares node 395, and a couple of others, virtually every other node were now 300+.

At that point, I had no choice but to use Spidey. None. There was no way my normal team of Torch/mThor/OBW could cause enough damage fast enough to a 300 team, much less a 395 one. Not to mention, the constant lucky tile drops of the AI, within 3-4 turns, I was dead. Regardless, I still made it through the Hunt, was 21 in my overall bracket, in and out of the top 20 constantly, and had over 115k in the end. That was purely because I was unwilling to give up, and just put more and more time in trying levels, dying, prologue to heal, trying a again.

In just a matter of a few days though, the game went from being fun, basically being a sort of addiction, to a complete pain in the **** grind that I questioned if I wanted to play anymore. I was hardly able to compete at all, and I know from reading the countless threads on it - even people that had been playing much longer were running into the same problem as I was.

I'm now working on day 72 in the game, and it amazes me how much it's changed in just that short amount of time. I have no idea if I've made progress at all, not sure I've accomplished much of anything other than screwing myself long term. Seeing more and more of what characters I need, but don't have, and looking at nodes in the Sim round 2 SIM01 node at 179. I haven't played EITHER sub at all in round two yet. So, I'm so looking forward to taking them all on in a little while, should be fun.

Lyrian wrote:

(Speculation begins after this point - fair warning)

Now, let's look at the developing situation at the high end in PvP. With players locked into 141 fights of high damage being thrown around everywhere, the only way to avoid damage and end matches relatively quickly is via Patch + CMags or Patch + Spidey. Most already do this to some degree, but these changes will push the rest in this direction.

Then comes the long awaited "Funbalance" that mitigates Spidey's healing and lockdown capability and well as CMags's costless 5 Blue ability and spammable red to break up his synergy with Patch. Patch becomes the extremely high risk character again that players can no longer mitigate and Spidey can't lock the board down anymore, which places essentially every 141 team in **exactly the same position**. No one has an advantage over any other roster and every fight becomes high risk to avoid any incoming and potentially crippling damage.

The obvious solution would then move to avoiding enemy AP abilities from being cast, which means The Hood. But wait, Hood counters Hood, and if that is not enough, Lazy Daken will make short work of the Hood. So... now what? Defense is still not a viable strategy as even Lazy Cap or Spidey defense tiles mean little against a Lazy Thor Cts, Black Panther RoP, Lazy Cap SSA, and so on...

With everyone being exactly the same in 3*** land, does this suddenly open the doors for the devs to push the climb to 4**** territory to somehow "escape" the 3*** growing masses if Xforce is finally buffed when CMags and Spidey are nerfed to push the soon-to-be-deemed-viable new endgame roster of IW/Xforce/Fury to gain any marginal advantage over the masses again?

And then you have the fun issue of while fighting masses of 141s constantly for any event points at all, there is always the backdoor hardcoded in for the 2** rosters to ruin your day via the Jungle and Forest nodes to spam your 141s to defeat, marginalizing any minimal event progress that was obtained. Will constant shield crawling by the 141s be needed to obtain any significant placing in PvP events in the future?

So... are we having fun yet?

Lol, not really.

You mention both Patch and cMags. I guess that's where part of my "progression" has really just hit a dead end. I have Patch, but only the one Yellow cover I just got less than a couple weeks ago. I now have cMags - but literally just won his blue/red covers in the Doctor's Orders PvE, placed second in that. #1 in Top Gun got me some more Punisher covers at least, and another IW. But, since I don't have any of them leveled up, and don't have covers - they are pretty much useless right now.

I guess the difference between where my mindset is now with the game, and where it was originally - I'm not going out of my way to buy any more covers soon. I may eventually break and do it with cMags, but I'm less likely to now, given I've already invested more than I probably should have to begin with, and managed to completely derail my progress and through up the scaling walls in front of me.

For those curious, here's a snapshot of my roster as it sits right now on day 72, minus the Loki I just won/added in Army of One:



Just before the Hunt, I went ahead and created a 5 person Alliance. Halfway through the Hunt, I was recruited to another 14 person alliance. I then got them to make me a Commander, and I paid to unlock the remaining 5 slots, found people to add, and now we have a 20 person alliance. I do what I can to help them, and I'm really unwilling to just quit completely because of that - but just yesterday, already one member announced they need time off as the game has just gotten to be too grindy. I really can't argue that, because it really has. Believe me, I'd kind of like to just say "screw the Hunt" and do something more productive. But, being one of the more active members, and apparently, one of the stronger ones, just means I need to really dig in to help them, even if I have to get punched in the face repeatedly to do it.

Maybe I should ask someone around me to see if I have a "kick me" sign on my back or something...

Sorry for the long post... wasn't intending to write a book today, lol

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

By day 2 or 3 of the Hunt, I now had a leveled Torch, and had leveled Spidey. Up to that point, things seemed about normal, challenging nodes, but not every one "Deadly". By day 4 though, that changed, a lot. I saw nodes start changing immediately after playing them, watched as what was a 100+ node jump to a 200+ node. By day six, I got my first 395 node, then day seven, two of the Bullseye nodes were 395, and the other 300+, and Ares and countless other ones were now 300+. On day eight, all of the Bullseye nodes were 395, the Ares node 395, and a couple of others, virtually every other node were now 300+.

At that point, I had no choice but to use Spidey. None. There was no way my normal team of Torch/mThor/OBW could cause enough damage fast enough to a 300 team, much less a 395 one. Not to mention, the constant lucky tile drops of the AI, within 3-4 turns, I was dead. Regardless, I still made it through the Hunt, was 21 in my overall bracket, in and out of the top 20 constantly, and had over 115k in the end. That was purely because I was unwilling to give up, and just put more and more time in trying levels, dying, prologue to heal, trying a again.

Look, presumably you're aware that not everyone has this scaling issue. This means that you're doing something that makes the computer want to smack you down, and you know it.

So, when faced with a 395 node, you had two alternatives:

1) Try to figure out what you're doing that the system doesn't like and adapt.
2) Continue to work through the 395 nodes with mechanics that you know are broken.

If you chose #2, why would you expect the system to do anything but try even harder to crush you? It's not that you had no choice, it's that you consistently made choices that led to 395 nodes, and then continued to perpetuate them.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Then stop doing it.

daveomite

ZenBrillig wrote:

daveomite wrote:

By day 2 or 3 of the Hunt, I now had a leveled Torch, and had leveled Spidey. Up to that point, things seemed about normal, challenging nodes, but not every one "Deadly". By day 4 though, that changed, a lot. I saw nodes start changing immediately after playing them, watched as what was a 100+ node jump to a 200+ node. By day six, I got my first 395 node, then day seven, two of the Bullseye nodes were 395, and the other 300+, and Ares and countless other ones were now 300+. On day eight, all of the Bullseye nodes were 395, the Ares node 395, and a couple of others, virtually every other node were now 300+.

At that point, I had no choice but to use Spidey. None. There was no way my normal team of Torch/mThor/OBW could cause enough damage fast enough to a 300 team, much less a 395 one. Not to mention, the constant lucky tile drops of the AI, within 3-4 turns, I was dead. Regardless, I still made it through the Hunt, was 21 in my overall bracket, in and out of the top 20 constantly, and had over 115k in the end. That was purely because I was unwilling to give up, and just put more and more time in trying levels, dying, prologue to heal, trying a again.

Look, presumably you're aware that not everyone has this scaling issue. This means that you're doing something that makes the computer want to smack you down, and you know it.

So, when faced with a 395 node, you had two alternatives:

1) Try to figure out what you're doing that the system doesn't like and adapt.
2) Continue to work through the 395 nodes with mechanics that you know are broken.

If you chose #2, why would you expect the system to do anything but try even harder to crush you? It's not that you had no choice, it's that you consistently made choices that led to 395 nodes, and then continued to perpetuate them.

Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Then stop doing it.

hmm. Ok then. My other choice was to stop playing, just as t is a choice now. I just chose to continue playing.

If me playing several hours a day leads me to 395 nodes, then I guess I should just stop, right?

AdamMagus

daveomite wrote:

At this point, I think it's all just a money grab. Everything has become some new "incentive" to spend more and more...more iso to level guys to keep up, more HP for shields and Boosts, more HP for covers you never pull. Pay, or be left behind. That seems like the overarching plot line here.

Couldn't agree more.

Heck, the CEO wrote a 7+ part article titled:
"Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU

We're going to be nickled and dimed even further if these things keep up

over_clocked

dave, try to hit as few nodes as possible, do not stress for your alliance - if you can hit top 250, it's all that matters (the 3* cover range).
Try to avoid the high level nodes or only do them once. Die often there as well.
The Essential nodes, only once or twice for each sub, as they don't scale too drastically. Do take some load off yourself and try to make the game think you're not as good as the game presumes. I am trying that thing myself (playing VERY little in PvE), will see how it goes. I try not to break out Spidey and even with Magneto I do wind up damaged sometimes. Also throw my Hulk at nodes to die sometimes - maybe it will help long-term, even if I'm not seeing any benefits right now.
I am quite sorry to hear that for an invested player, your enjoyment dropped that drastically. It should never happen, period. It's quite possible that you over-invested and the game urges you to invest even more, but you probably understand this will only worsen the situation - the race never stops. I'm pretty sure I didn't have as many roster slots and a single decently leveled 3* by day 70.

Unknown

So he,i and countless others are "doing something the computer doesn't like"?

Sure makes perfect sense. I don't know how others play, but me, i do the essential nodes and that's it. That means i do a total of 18 games every 24 to 30 hours in the 2 subs combined. There are a total of 10 nodes in each sub and most people would do them 3/4/5 times to get their rewards. Which if they did them just 4 times and had amazing luck to get all 4 rewards you are still looking at 80 games. And then most people would hit the refresh too.

So if my 18 games every 30 hours which most games take on avg 8 minutes which makes a total of just over 2 hours playtime is enough to drive up scaling then hell i may as well not bother playing the game cause that makes absolutely no sense when others do the exact same tactic and have no massive jump in scaling. That's why people are annoyed, because 100 different people could do the exact same thing and have completely different outcomes for reasons unknown. Not cause we are "doing something wrong with the game"

scottee

We have high level players complaining they can't compete for top prizes, because of scaling. Except that they still place decently high. It just takes hard work.

We have newer and mid-range players complaining they can't compete for top prizes, because their rosters aren't good enough yet. Except they haven't put in the hard work and time yet to have developed a good enough roster.

Not everyone can be #1. Every time you win a PVP match, someone else loses. There's an average of an exactly 50% win/loss ratio in the player base. I know everyone wants to continuously win, never lose, and always walk out with full health, but that's not good for the game, and impossible in a versus mode.

It's important to have perspective. Of COURSE the Devs are trying to make money. That's they're JOB. You want to go play a game where the makers are losing money? Go right away, there's millions of them. They have to pay living wage salaries to every single employee. It's not two guys programming from their basement. They HAVE to sell iso and HP, otherwise all the devs have to go find another job. They have to pay for offices, pay for servers, pay for equipment, etc.

Most players don't appreciate how hard it is to make a game where there is regular new progress available to all levels of players. New players need something to work toward. Mid players need something to work toward. Top players need something to work toward. All while continuing to grow the game and pay the bills. There's a reason not many games reach this level of success. And even then, the game is STILL completely playable, and competitively, by not paying them a dime.

It's a marathon, not a race. You choose how much time/blood/sweat/tears you put into playing. It can be as stressful or as casual as you want. You don't HAVE to compete for top prizes in every event. Do your Human Torch will get fully covered 8 weeks from now instead of 4. So what? Plenty of people run marathons just to say they completed it, or just to give themselves a goal, and not necessarily to place at the top of the leaderboards.

No one's life depends on how high you rank and how much you grind. (unless you're in some kind of sweat shop alliance, which I wouldn't put past anyone. no bathroom break, more match-4's!)

scottee

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

So he,i and countless others are "doing something the computer doesn't like"?

Sure makes perfect sense. I don't know how others play, but me, i do the essential nodes and that's it. That means i do a total of 18 games every 24 to 30 hours in the 2 subs combined. There are a total of 10 nodes in each sub and most people would do them 3/4/5 times to get their rewards. Which if they did them just 4 times and had amazing luck to get all 4 rewards you are still looking at 80 games. And then most people would hit the refresh too.

So if my 18 games every 30 hours which most games take on avg 8 minutes which makes a total of just over 2 hours playtime is enough to drive up scaling then hell i may as well not bother playing the game cause that makes absolutely no sense when others do the exact same tactic and have no massive jump in scaling. That's why people are annoyed, because 100 different people could do the exact same thing and have completely different outcomes for reasons unknown. Not cause we are "doing something wrong with the game"

Life's perfectly fine if you don't win every prize you know.

Simpler and more transparent scaling would be nice, but I feel like they're still evaluating and adjusting it from event to event. It's still relatively new, and it's hard to balance a single event for players at all stages.

over_clocked

2TU1: As Northern Polarity and many other players have outlined, you need to forget about top placement in PvE if you don't want scaling, that most probably includes playing as little as possible - 18 games sounds a lot to me, maybe only 6 after all? 3x Essential in Normal and 3x in Hard, once per sub.
Unfortunately you need rubberbanding to be in full effect as well. But for me, the scaling already hit the uncomfortable zone so might as well ignore everything and only try to catch the rubberband.
I'm not sure how scaling is supposed to counter rubberbanders - for me, it's exactly the opposite this time around, my scaling is so high already that my playing early will give literally zero benefits.

daveomite

locked wrote:

dave, try to hit as few nodes as possible, do not stress for your alliance - if you can hit top 250, it's all that matters (the 3* cover range).
Try to avoid the high level nodes or only do them once. Die often there as well.
The Essential nodes, only once or twice for each sub, as they don't scale too drastically. Do take some load off yourself and try to make the game think you're not as good as the game presumes. I am trying that thing myself (playing VERY little in PvE), will see how it goes. I try not to break out Spidey and even with Magneto I do wind up damaged sometimes. Also throw my Hulk at nodes to die sometimes - maybe it will help long-term, even if I'm not seeing any benefits right now.
I am quite sorry to hear that for an invested player, your enjoyment dropped that drastically. It should never happen, period. It's quite possible that you over-invested and the game urges you to invest even more, but you probably understand this will only worsen the situation - the race never stops. I'm pretty sure I didn't have as many roster slots and a single decently leveled 3* by day 70.

thanks locked. I actually only play each node in a sub once, and maybe the essentials twice. That's it, then leave it alone for 12+ hours and focus on PvP or something else. The only time I would ever play any node more than that, is after the final refresh before the end. Even then, I may only hit a few nodes that have any substantial point value left.

I am doing something similar now though I guess. I didn't do anything in either sub at all until I just started the easy sub about 30 minutes ago. Aiming to clear both easy/hard, then will push the final refresh closer to the final 5 hours or so. Will see how that goes. But your scaling may be worse, not sure. Sim01 in easy was 135, 175 in hard. That's not that bad, but just curious what that will mean for round 3.

daveomite

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

So he,i and countless others are "doing something the computer doesn't like"?

Sure makes perfect sense. I don't know how others play, but me, i do the essential nodes and that's it. That means i do a total of 18 games every 24 to 30 hours in the 2 subs combined. There are a total of 10 nodes in each sub and most people would do them 3/4/5 times to get their rewards. Which if they did them just 4 times and had amazing luck to get all 4 rewards you are still looking at 80 games. And then most people would hit the refresh too.

So if my 18 games every 30 hours which most games take on avg 8 minutes which makes a total of just over 2 hours playtime is enough to drive up scaling then hell i may as well not bother playing the game cause that makes absolutely no sense when others do the exact same tactic and have no massive jump in scaling. That's why people are annoyed, because 100 different people could do the exact same thing and have completely different outcomes for reasons unknown. Not cause we are "doing something wrong with the game"

glad I'm not the only one seeing how much wonderful sense it makes. You certainly did start up a doozy of a thread though, huh? Lol

Unknown

I didn't say anything or mention prizes at all in any of my responses so that point is null and void. My topic is about scaling and how its completely different across the board. I play the game an hour a day. Never more than two.i don't care for the prizes nor where i finish. I am happy getting 700-800 points. If that makes me top 10 then great, if not then no biggy.

My issue is that the developers need to explain how the scaling works to its users. Clarify it. Nothing more. Not about how i must win every cover under the sun.

Locked: if playing the game for 2 hours every 30 hours including pvp is enough to drive up scaling into mad land then why play the game? That's on a lazy day when i have no work or nothing to do so really its 90 minutes. That's not a hell of a lot in my book. Again i don't care about finishing top. I've won 2 events in 4 months as i don't care. Its the silliness that the scaling is all over the charts, no rhyme or reason to it that's the problem for some players.

that's the point and only point im trying to make.

daveomite

AdamMagus wrote:

daveomite wrote:

At this point, I think it's all just a money grab. Everything has become some new "incentive" to spend more and more...more iso to level guys to keep up, more HP for shields and Boosts, more HP for covers you never pull. Pay, or be left behind. That seems like the overarching plot line here.

Couldn't agree more.

Heck, the CEO wrote a 7+ part article titled:
"Marvel Puzzle Quest’s road to the mythical $1 ARPDAU

We're going to be nickled and dimed even further if these things keep up

amen.

daveomite

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

I didn't say anything or mention prizes at all in any of my responses so that point is null and void. My topic is about scaling and how its completely different across the board. I play the game an hour a day. Never more than two.i don't care fir the prizes nor where i finish. I am happy getting 700-800 points. If that makes me top 10 then great, if not then no biggy.

My issue is that the developers need to explain how the scaling works to its users. Clarify it. Nothing more. Not about how i must win every cover under the sun.

completely agree. I don't set out to place high in anything, I play because I like to, and if I manage to get top 10 or top 20, great. So I can completely relate to that. Only time I have purposely fought to place high, is to win a cover I needed, but in most of those cases, top 50 will suffice for those.

over_clocked

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

I didn't say anything or mention prizes at all in any of my responses so that point is null and void. My topic is about scaling and how its completely different across the board. I play the game an hour a day. Never more than two.i don't care fir the prizes nor where i finish. I am happy getting 700-800 points. If that makes me top 10 then great, if not then no biggy.

My issue is that the developers need to explain how the scaling works to its users. Clarify it. Nothing more. Not about how i must win every cover under the sun.

Pretty sure that information won't be disclosed - while I am sure of your motives, TU1, many others will try to game the system or something for their personal benefit (no blame here, just stating the fact). E.g. we know already that amount of damage taken matters a lot. So the best you can do is suicide your Hulks/BPs/buffed Ares and Thor/LT/IM 40/whoever. And not just by retreating, but by being beaten by lvl 300 one stars - humiliating but what gives. I hear that people that have the patience to do that get great results scaling wise.
And probably do that several times per sub as well. No healing, just none - unless you're losing a critical match otherwise. No City hot dogs for you!
I think stunlocking is fine if you don't heal to full at the end of the match. Just play as bad as you can and take as much damage as you can after you basically won the game to fool the system.
There, the devs won't tell that to you, but they actually want you to play poorly and compensate with money instead.

Edit: I'm fine with not getting top 10 or top 20 as long as I get the essential covers, so will try to do just that and stick to lesser ISO/HP rewards in PvE.

Unknown

But again locked and i'm not starting an argument, just stating how i feel that if i wanted to play the game and drop my scaling then i should "lose" matches?

It just doesn't make any sense to me and never will. I did the whole losing thing at the start of the sim, near enough 100 times and while it did lower my scaling, it went back up 2 hours later.

I can't think of any other game where losing on purpose is the best way to play. It boggles my already fragile mind. I shouldn't have to sit through game after game of losing on purpose to try and lower my levels by 10. Thats just wrong lol.

I'm pretty sure that game developers want their customers to play their game as much as possible and spend as much money as they can. So for me playing and hour and a half every 30 hours wouldn't make me one of their best customers. Some people here spend hour after hour playing the game and all the power to them, but again the point is, why is their scaling better than others who put less time into it?

I don't think its a lot to ask for that someone could take 5 minutes out of their time to talk to the people who play their game. it happens all across the gaming community except here it seems. Except IceIX of course even if he is the weakest member of Django