This Game Isn't Fun Anymore

scottee

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

"higher end" of the player-base, who might be expected to be a little savvier about banging their heads into brick walls.

You see, this is what i mean. You don't know how each indivudual person plays the game. Some grind the nodes down while others maximize rubberbanding. Some play 5 hours and more a day, others play 1 or 2 and have similar scaling issues.

But nope, it cant possibly be the game's fault, just the ones who play it wrong.

Ice has already said that how you play in a match matters. Not just the timing of your node clearing and such.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

ZenBrillig wrote:

"higher end" of the player-base, who might be expected to be a little savvier about banging their heads into brick walls.

You see, this is what i mean. You don't know how each indivudual person plays the game. Some grind the nodes down while others maximize rubberbanding. Some play 5 hours and more a day, others play 1 or 2 and have similar scaling issues.

But nope, it cant possibly be the game's fault, just the ones who play it wrong.

Ice has already said that how you play in a match matters. Not just the timing of your node clearing and such.

So when i play my essential nodes, take a tonne of damage, dont use obw,spiderman or cmags, dont use boosts and barely get out alive and my scaling still goes up, THEN I'M STILL PLAYING IT WRONG?

edit: and also go into the next node with half health cause i have no packs left, that still means my scaling goes up.

Unknown

The point and my last point on this thread before i go loopy is, we shouldn't have to play the game a very specific way just to progress and have fun.

daveomite

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

The point and my last point on this thread before i go loopy is, we shouldn't have to play the game a very specific way just to progress and have fun.

Could not agree with you more.

Unknown

While the essential nodes are supposed to encourage people to level up other characters, they're also meant to be hard because you're forced to use a certain character. That is also why they are worth the most number of points. You shouldn't expect to always beat those cleanly, and it's okay to use your Magneto/Spiderman quota for a few of those games too as long as you keep that staggered. The highest essential mission gives close to 50% more than the Daken + Hulk + Storm mission, which is a very devastating combo and they're also 50 levels higher than their essential counterparts, so the essentials should be pretty hard to justify the point gain.

scottee

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

The point and my last point on this thread before i go loopy is, we shouldn't have to play the game a very specific way just to progress and have fun.

I agree they're making it so the formula for match making and scaling more and more complex, and that's a bad thing.

Part of the problem I think is that they want the game to be competitive and challenging. It's not a casual, sit back and relax, win easily game. That'll turn a lot of people away. There's a point in every players progression when just relaxingly matching some gems isn't an option. If I play even a mundane match lazily, I pay for it. Oops, didn't see that countdown timer and I'm dead. Wasn't watching the enemy AP and got tiny kittied to almost no health. Fun for a lot of people means blowing through matches, slamming the enemy, and not taking any damage. They don't seem to want that.

Seems like the drive is to make the game more and more competitive. This can be both a good and bad thing.

P.S. Does anyone else type and mentally say "tiny kitty" purposefully instead of as a replacement for cuss words?

daveomite

scottee wrote:

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

The point and my last point on this thread before i go loopy is, we shouldn't have to play the game a very specific way just to progress and have fun.

I agree they're making it so the formula for match making and scaling more and more complex, and that's a bad thing.

Part of the problem I think is that they want the game to be competitive and challenging. It's not a casual, sit back and relax, win easily game. That'll turn a lot of people away. There's a point in every players progression when just relaxingly matching some gems isn't an option. If I play even a mundane match lazily, I pay for it. Oops, didn't see that countdown timer and I'm dead. Wasn't watching the enemy AP and got tiny kittied to almost no health. Fun for a lot of people means blowing through matches, slamming the enemy, and not taking any damage. They don't seem to want that.

Seems like the drive is to make the game more and more competitive. This can be both a good and bad thing.

I think it's fine if they want to make it more competitive and challenging, but T1U's post/point, which many of us agree with, is that just throwing in tremendous scaling for no rhyme or reason is not making things more competitive or challenging, it's just more frustration overall. It may take more thought on the developers side, but there are certainly more ways to continue to evolve the game and make it more challenging, rather than just hitting a switch and turning up random people's scaling out of the blue.

scottee wrote:

P.S. Does anyone else type and mentally say "tiny kitty" purposefully instead of as a replacement for cuss words?

Are you tiny kitty kidding me? tiny kitty that! I never say tiny kitty when I really mean tiny kitty, never.

Puritas

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

So when i play my essential nodes, take a tonne of damage, dont use obw,spiderman or cmags, dont use boosts and barely get out alive and my scaling still goes up, THEN I'M STILL PLAYING IT WRONG?

edit: and also go into the next node with half health cause i have no packs left, that still means my scaling goes up.

You're using AP-heavy nuke skills right?
Overall match damage being mostly from tile matching rather than skill damage keeps scaling down, so cmags blue is actually one of the best options ;P

Of course there's absolutely 0 reason to make the game work like this other than to give new players whose damage is primarily from tile matching a tremendous advantage but w/e

NorthernPolarity

TheUnwiseOne wrote:

The point and my last point on this thread before i go loopy is, we shouldn't have to play the game a very specific way just to progress and have fun.

It's kind of how it's always been though: every single PvE event required you to optimize points by only grinding at very specific time intervals. Due to the nature of Demiurge wanting to make every single aspect of the game competitive in what I assume to be due to revenue purposes, this has been a pretty common theme throughout the history of the game. It's just that before this didn't affect how you actually played the matches, but now it does, which is pretty ****.

LordWill

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

I also find it curious they have time to explain how they are making the $ but when it comes to talking with their playerbase and lettings us know what's going on, state of the game address, whats on the horizon, KNOWN ISSUES, etc it just makes me wonder...

If they are truly looking at this as a relationship, seems like people are starting to fall out of love and getting the cold shoulder....

kensterr

How long does it take for a guy to give up chasing a girl he likes? No matter how much he spent on her, how many gifts he buys for her etc, she still doesn't want to be in a relationship with him yet cos she thinks that he likes the 'challenge'.

Some tiny kitty idiots like the challenge, most sane people don't and just move on.

Unknown

My personal opinion on how PvE scaling works is that the system we have now is pretty much the same system that was used in TaT, just with a few tweaks.

I do agree with Phantron in that I believe that you see your personally scaled nodes OR the community scaled ones, whichever is higher at the time. This is done so that no matter how well one manages their PvE MMR, community scaling will eventually override and render pointless any attempts to lower a player's personal rating.

The best model I can think of which fits still to this day is the one I describes as the one that fit TaT, which mimics the standard PvP progression rewards ladder. Both personal and community scaling fits this model reasonably well.

(Disclaimer: Fictitious numbers being used here to illustrate a point; your guess is as good as mine on the actual values for these)

The basic premise is this: Players earn personal PvE MMR points in the exact same manner that PvP rating points work. Win matches and your rating increases. Lose and it drops. When a player reaches a new "progression prize tier", the reward is a bump in scaling, which I noted on a previous thread to be +5% per increase (which is why after 150 or so, levels skyrocket into the stratosphere quickly).

So... let's say a player for whatever reason based upon the roster composition and other hocus pocus variables is assigned a starting rating of 500 points at the beginning of an event.

Player fights a match and wins. The game then runs a series of checks:
-- Did the player win? Yes - add 20 points. If no, subtract 10 points and skip the rest of the checks.
-- Did the player finish with all characters over 75% health? b]Flawless victory check[/b If yes, add 5 points.
-- Did the player win in under 10 turns? b]Massively overpowered check[/b If yes, add 10 points.
-- Did the player allow the opponent any villains (mooks exempt) to execute any AP power at least once? b]Stunlock check[/b If no, add 10 points.
-- Did the player leave the fight with more health than when they entered it? b]Healing check[/b If yes, add 5 points.
-- Did the player use at least one health pack before entering this fight? b]Health pack consumption check[/b If yes, subtract 5 points.
-- Did the player suffer a critically injured character during this fight? b]Massive damage check[/b If yes, subtract 5 points.
-- Did the player suffer a downed character during this fight? b]Downed check[/b If yes, subtract 5 points (downed counts for critically injured, netting 10 points total).

And who knows how many more checks there could be?

Now... the game sums up all of the modifiers....

Example 1: Playing poorly, trashing all characters, downing one. +20 for winning the fight -5 for critical damage -5 for downing a character = +10 net points. Add this to their MMR of 500, results in a new rating of 510 for Player 1.

Example 2: Complete board control, using Cmags/Patch: +20 for winning the fight + 5 flawless victory + 10 for "fast" victory (enemy never got many turns in because of CMags blue) + 10 for stunlock check (double jeopardy, as near infinite turns means the enemy ever executed a power successfully) = net +45 points. Player's 2's new MMR is 545.

Let's say for argument's sake that each progression tier is +100 points over the last, so the next tier is at 600 points. Both players win their first node and both players do not see any increase in node levels. However, after a few fights, the different becomes quite apparent.

After 5 nodes, repeating the same practice, the first player arrives at a MMR of 550, resulting in no personal scaling due to personal management of MMR. The second player, however, has achieved a rating of 725, which means two tiers of scaling, so (1.05 * 1.05) = 10.25% increase in levels over what player 1 sees. Over time, as a result of the power of compounding, player 2's levels will balloon out of control.

But Player 1 is not safe, because of community scaling.

Community scaling is probably something as simple as this:

Nodes start at a predefined level. Community MMR starts at 0 points per node.
If a player anywhere defeats a node, gain 1 community MMR point for that node. If a player loses, subtract 1 point.
Progression tiers are at 500 points. Each tier scales a node +5% in levels.

Thus, over the natural course of play, as players are generally opposed to intentionally losing against levels, community MMR will tend to always increase, resulting in a "rising water in a sinking ship" effect.

Players will see the higher of either their personal MMR for the event for a node, or the community scaled event MMR for a node, whichever is higher.

And that is the best way I can describe how PvE MMR appears to work, with only anecdotal evidence.

scottee

daveomite wrote:

I think it's fine if they want to make it more competitive and challenging, but T1U's post/point, which many of us agree with, is that just throwing in tremendous scaling for no rhyme or reason is not making things more competitive or challenging, it's just more frustration overall. It may take more thought on the developers side, but there are certainly more ways to continue to evolve the game and make it more challenging, rather than just hitting a switch and turning up random people's scaling out of the blue.

They didn't throw it in for no rhyme or reason. They obviously had a rhyme and reason. We just don't know what it was. We don't know exactly which factors they're trying to shape. Exactly what factors go into scaling. How they want us to play. It's one thing to say, we don't get it, and it's frustrating. It's another to say that the devs obviously hate players and love money and are doing random **** to try to mess with players for their own enjoyment.

Also, to someone else's point, we have to remember that this forum represents a tiny percentage of the player base. It's not their job to appease us here. If everyone on the forum quit, and they went on to grow the player base and revenue per user, they'd be doing their jobs correctly. The things complained about on the forum may very possibly only be affecting 0.5% of the players. Someone might have never read the forum, and they don't know how good Spidey's stunlock is, so they never leveled him. Or (and we know this is a fact), everyone might be using their favorite hero, 2* Captain America, and maybe the scaling is built perfectly for those players.

The loud vocal minority is always a tiny minority. In every organization or body. It's not always in the leadership's best interest to appease them. In fact, in my experience with leadership development and organizational leadership, those are usually the people you DON'T want to be making decisions for. That might be right or wrong in this situation, depending on what you think the long term goals of the game are, but that's got to be taken into consideration.

Are many of the players around here the most loyal players who know the game the best? Probably. But don't mistake that for being the game's most reliable financial base. Yes there are players here who have contributed tons of cash. But there's also players like the mysterious double 230 possible Arabian prince, who have no idea about this forum and whose experience is totally fine.

For all we know, 99% if the player base have no problem with the scaling, or except it as part of the game, and are perfectly fine with that. Online forums are always skewed toward problems because when people think something's going wrong, they seek it out and post. When they think everything's perfectly fine, they just sit contently and keep playing.

Unknown

I think people are missing a key point about the scaling. Even the community scaling alone is supposed to be a lot. I'm pretty sure my personal scaling is below that of the community scaling (my personal scaling went up, but my enemy levels did not), and the enemy levels are still quite challenging to beat without Spiderman or Magneto. The hard bracket nodes are supposed to be equivalent of the 230X3 nodes in the past. They're not something you're supposed to be able to reliably beat. The only difference is that those nodes now also know when you got Spiderman/Magneto on your side too (or rather, infer that from your flawless victories). In TaT even beating the hardest mission once is enough to put you in top 10 in your sub bracket. While TaT scaling is a bit excessive, it's pretty clear the high point missions are meant to be what separates the top and the rest, and even with zero personal scaling, they're not something you can expect to win easily.

over_clocked

allorin wrote:

Can we agree that's broken? It can't be what the Devs intend - removing the fun from the game so people don't want to play (which is what this thread was about, after all).

Also crazy is the strategy you're suggesting. It might work - but are we really so accepting of the game being fundamentally broken that we will deliberately play to lose, in the hope that later we might be able to play to win? That's getting quite surreal. Again, back to the topic - this game isn't fun any more. That is just not fun. It's not. And I think it's right and fair that the active, vocal forumites call that out to the Devs and ask them to consider changes.

I was suggesting to play as poorly as possible - e.g. losing a guy on purpose, not to lose all the time. The game clearly thinks we win too often.
As for the player enjoyment, other people in this thread already outlined that we're not entitled to enjoy the game in the way we want, F2P or not

over_clocked

gamar wrote:

locked wrote:

There, the devs won't tell that to you, but they actually want you to play poorly and compensate with money instead.

But what's especially confusing to me is that in addition to all this junk being unfun, I don't see how it makes anyone more likely to spend money?

Before, if you were missing an essential or featured hero, the event token pack was very attractive: Guaranteed hero and probably at least one or two others you need. Now, even though they're cheaper, they are likely to not have that immediate value.

With scaling, boosts just make things worse for you so there's no reason to buy them. Health packs don't help when community scaling causes an insurmountable wall.

ISO needs to be SEVERELY marked down to be worth considering buying.

The only change I can see actually increasing their revenue is the change to only giving out one 2* cover in rewards

If d3p wants to encourage people to spend money to progress faster, fine, that's the whole point of this game existing. But it's not just that these changes make the game more unfun and less rewarding, it's that I can't see how they encourage people to spend, either

Don't forget that forum folks are a tiny minority of the player base. People are probably still buying the nerf packs and tokens and thus providing the lion share of MPQ revenue - otherwise we wouldn't be seeing those changes. They don't know about scaling either or don't care, as all they see is short-term rewards.

Unknown

locked wrote:

allorin wrote:

Can we agree that's broken? It can't be what the Devs intend - removing the fun from the game so people don't want to play (which is what this thread was about, after all).

Also crazy is the strategy you're suggesting. It might work - but are we really so accepting of the game being fundamentally broken that we will deliberately play to lose, in the hope that later we might be able to play to win? That's getting quite surreal. Again, back to the topic - this game isn't fun any more. That is just not fun. It's not. And I think it's right and fair that the active, vocal forumites call that out to the Devs and ask them to consider changes.

I was suggesting to play as poorly as possible - e.g. losing a guy on purpose, not to lose all the time. The game clearly thinks we win too often.
As for the player enjoyment, other people in this thread already outlined that we're not entitled to enjoy the game in the way we want, F2P or not

You don't have to purposely suck. Losing 3K total health between your characters is pretty much always enough to keep the scaling manageable, and to do better than that against anyone who can move the board pretty much requires Magneto or Spiderman. 3000 damage is just 10 match 3s from level 230 enemies and the game rightfully should suspect something weird is going on if you somehow took less damage than that. When you're not using Magneto or Spiderman, you'll find that you don't have to try very hard to accidentally lose a guy to a Headbutt or eat a Rage of the Panther.

In general there's no reason to purposely suck during a battle because if you want to take more damage, you can simply win and then purposely let everyone die in the next battle. Keep in mind a character like lazy Thor needs about 11 hours to go from down to full health at level 141, so do make sure you're going to be away from the game a while, or log back in later to use a health pack. I do think the rather ridiculous downtime on the tankier characters could be considerably shorter. Something like max of 2 hours from 1 HP to max plus the current time for down would be more than enough.

over_clocked

Hopefully I'm doing everything 'right' then - I did a flawless Spidey victory in the second-to-last refresh just now, because I was running out of time, but other than that, I'm managing to hurt my characters just fine (the insane buff helps).
So, if my entry node for Hard is at 222, and Sim 03 in hard is at 331, Sim 07 - at 328, that's community scaling overriding personal? I beat Sim 07 at 358 and then it lowered to 328 -.-

NorthernPolarity

locked wrote:

Hopefully I'm doing everything 'right' then - I did a flawless Spidey victory in the second-to-last refresh just now, because I was running out of time, but other than that, I'm managing to hurt my characters just fine (the insane buff helps).
So, if my entry node for Hard is at 222, and Sim 03 in hard is at 331, Sim 07 - at 328, that's community scaling overriding personal? I beat Sim 07 at 358 and then it lowered to 328 -.-

Nope: my entry nodes are at 63 for easy and 73 for hard: I think you're getting hit hard with personal scaling.

over_clocked

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Nope: my entry nodes are at 63 for easy and 73 for hard: I think you're getting hit hard with personal scaling.

I know that, what I mean is that my nodes aren't at 223 or 230 as my entry node for Hard would suggest. I just hope that after minimal play and a modest top 50 finish (cannot convince myself to go lower, and alliance will suffer most probably as to achieve that I have to miss a sub) my personal scaling will get more normal - maybe I haven't got used to lvl 400 possibility yet, but I don't want to... I liked the challenge at lvl 230 plenty, considering that the devs do not distinguish between lvl 230 Juggernaut, HAMMER goons or X-Force. Juggernaut can and will kick my butt to the stratosphere.

Edit: although my Essential nodes in Hard are pretty close to the 230 mark (the Psylocke-Falcon-A.Wolverine one is at 268).