I do not feel PvE should be a competition.

Unknown

DaveyPitch wrote:

Riggy wrote:

The only other major consideration I would think is the planning out of the long-term effect that new static content would have on the game's economy as well as monetization. This would be most relevant if they were to add a new game mode (a la crafting or follower recruitment).

I'd agree they'd have to look at how it will affect the game's economy, but I only see it as a good thing. I think most people would agree that ISO is generally the limiting factor in leveling our characters up, and while the new content probably wouldn't have too much ISO in it, it could easily have several thousand ISO as rewards. What that could mean is that we can all level our characters up more, but I think very few (percentage wise) players have maxed covers for all characters. The extra ISO could potentially mean we reach the cover cap for our favourite characters. As people are more likely (IMO) to spend money on HP and not ISO, this could lead to more people buying HP to get extra covers so they can continue to level up their favourite heroes and villains.

That's just how I see it potentially working any way. I know for me, that even after nearly 180 days of playing, that I still have several covers left to buy for a lot of my 3 star characters. As I'm limited by ISO I haven't reached the cover cap for most of them yet, but when I do, I'd be much more likely to buy HP to get those last few covers I need.

Thanks to my trusty spreadsheet that I keep (huge dork), I know that I have purchased 2152 levels but even to reach my current cover cap I'd have to purchase another 655 levels (much of that at the high end of the scale). That's the real limiting factor on my HP spend. I've only bought one cover for HP in the last month (I wanted Psylocke to go from 3/1/4 to 4/1/4 plus the associated level cap going up to 92; for use in the heroic event at the time). But given that I don't have the ISO to buy those current 655 levels, it's not likely that I'll buy more covers unless I'm in a desperate spot for a given event (i.e. a heroic with **** roster options).

So yeah, I do feel like the ISO flow (for high level players especially) could be increased with few negative ramifications. However, that would also necessitate the need to release more ISO sinks (characters or other game modes) to keep the ISO income from catching up to the ISO sinks.

Unknown

Making X-Force Wolvie viable and fully releasing Nick Fury would be a pretty good ISO Sink. I'm one X-Force cover away from having mine fully covered; if he were worthy of his rarity and cost that would be a couple hundred k ISO I could be spending right there.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

So yeah, I do feel like the ISO flow (for high level players especially) could be increased with few negative ramifications. However, that would also necessitate the need to release more ISO sinks (characters or other game modes) to keep the ISO income from catching up to the ISO sinks.

I think the current 39 characters, plus the 5 or so on the horizon are more than enough ISO sinks as it stands. Like you said, you've been playing for ages and still have a load of levels to go to max everything out. Only the smallest percentage of people would find the extra ISO to be the last bit they need to finish everything off, and I don't think they're the people D3 are targeting when it comes to getting people to spend real money on the game.

Unknown

DaveyPitch wrote:

Riggy wrote:

So yeah, I do feel like the ISO flow (for high level players especially) could be increased with few negative ramifications. However, that would also necessitate the need to release more ISO sinks (characters or other game modes) to keep the ISO income from catching up to the ISO sinks.

I think the current 39 characters, plus the 5 or so on the horizon are more than enough ISO sinks as it stands. Like you said, you've been playing for ages and still have a load of levels to go to max everything out. Only the smallest percentage of people would find the extra ISO to be the last bit they need to finish everything off, and I don't think they're the people D3 are targeting when it comes to getting people to spend real money on the game.

I don't play the most efficiently though. I rarely bother to try and get past 500 or 600 points in PVP, and I haven't gotten past 300 points in an LR since the token changes. As far as high end players go, there are many who are more dedicated and have higher ISO incomes than I do.

But even so, an increased ISO flow does mean a drop-off in participation for lower-level rosters. If players are leveling their characters faster, there will be less time spent at the lower end of the pvp scale. Not saying if that's a good thing or a bad thing, just something to note. I also imagine that means you'd see more people at the higher end of PvE scaling as well.

Unknown

Riggy wrote:

But even so, an increased ISO flow does mean a drop-off in participation for lower-level rosters. If players are leveling their characters faster, there will be less time spent at the lower end of the pvp scale. Not saying if that's a good thing or a bad thing, just something to note. I also imagine that means you'd see more people at the higher end of PvE scaling as well.

Low-level rosters are limited by covers, not by ISO. The only way the lower-end players will drop off is if a glut of ISO encourages them to buy covers, which seems win-win for d3p

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Riggy wrote:

But even so, an increased ISO flow does mean a drop-off in participation for lower-level rosters. If players are leveling their characters faster, there will be less time spent at the lower end of the pvp scale. Not saying if that's a good thing or a bad thing, just something to note. I also imagine that means you'd see more people at the higher end of PvE scaling as well.

Low-level rosters are limited by covers, not by ISO. The only way the lower-end players will drop off is if a glut of ISO encourages them to buy covers, which seems win-win for d3p

Good point. Bring on the ISO (i.e. the delayed Lightning Rounds)!

Unknown

They tried making PvE progression-rewards only pretty much once (the only rank rewards were red Daredevil), but that was a garbage event given it was Heroic Oscorp (only boosted character amongst the limited roster was Daredevil, who gets hard countered by Daken and useless against Goons... A+ decision on Demiurge's part). Of course, given how they look at feedback, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they took progression only plus low play amounts as a bad sign. Their article based around recent numbers shows the incredibly bad metrics they take, like "Wow, people didn't like the Dark Avengers event and Heroic event, but loved Captain America and <other PvE event>, they must really not like certain things that totally have nothing to do with limited rosters!".

Unknown

Kamahl_FoK wrote:

They tried making PvE progression-rewards only pretty much once (the only rank rewards were red Daredevil), but that was a garbage event given it was Heroic Oscorp (only boosted character amongst the limited roster was Daredevil, who gets hard countered by Daken and useless against Goons... A+ decision on Demiurge's part). Of course, given how they look at feedback, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they took progression only plus low play amounts as a bad sign. Their article based around recent numbers shows the incredibly bad metrics they take, like "Wow, people didn't like the Dark Avengers event and Heroic event, but loved Captain America and <other PvE event>, they must really not like certain things that totally have nothing to do with limited rosters!".

Irony is i loved that reward scale, it was the event that blew terribly it consisted of 3 nodes that required a brand new daredevil against minion teams, and the rubberbanding and scaling were all over the place.

Moral

The rubber banding in Heroic Oscorp was nonexistent. You earned whatever the node was worth. Many players were into the second or third refresh before they realized it.

With the help of others on the forum we broke down the raw math of the event.

It was 3.5 days with 8 hour refreshes if I recall. 11 potential refreshes. 13 nodes. Max progression reward required clearing all 13 nodes 3 times per refresh for 9 of the 11 possible refreshes (presumably so you could sleep 2 nights)

39 node clears every 8 hours for 3 days. How fast can you clear 39 nodes? Was taking me nearly 4 hours.

And the 4 rewards per node didn't refresh, so by day 2 you were doing it for 20 ISO per node.

It was the grind of all grinds.

And this was before scaling came in.

The idea of a non-competitive PvE seems sound, but the results were incredibly awful. D3 sets the top prize so only a fraction of a percent of players get it, and if you don't reduce the numbers by competition it gets done by sheer repetition.

ClydeFrog76

RemusThirty wrote:

Hey all, thought I would share some thoughts I had that helped me figure out how/why I've been feeling about this game.

I really enjoyed the original Puzzle Quest game (Challenge of the Warlords). Puzzles are fun, but it was the Quest element that really kept me drawn in. While not a TRUE sequel, I thought Marvel Puzzle Quest would be something of a spiritual sequel in terms of its structure. But Marvel Puzzle Quest, while it succeeds in being Marvel and Puzzles, kind of fails to be a Quest.

My highest period of satisfaction with the game was when I was primarily invested in completing the Prologue (which was way back in the early days, I've been playing almost since launch). There were PLENTY of bugs to be ironed out, but in general I liked the feeling of gradually completing a quest at my own pace while getting stronger and enjoying seeing and playing as Marvel characters. Since then, the focus has so heavily shifted to constant competition, constant playing at the GAME'S pace instead of my own - even in nominally PvE content! Once the Prologue has been milled for all of its rewards (done months ago), there is no non-competitive way to play the game and earn decent rewards (besides daily rewards that are tokens or covers). It's all about rank, tanking, timing, alliances - all metagame stuff.

I still like a lot about the game, don't get me wrong. I like the option to play in a competitive way when I choose to. But I want Marvel Puzzle Quest to incorporate more QUEST elements. As it stands, this game isn't Marvel Puzzle Quest, it's Marvel Puzzle Arena, and I'd prefer the former. Just one man's opinion.

Preach it!

Could not agree more. This is a shell of a Puzzle Quest game now, and bears very little resemblance to anything that has held the name previously.

Competitive PVE is killing it imo. I'm currently playing once a day to collect my reward and that's it. The fun has long since gone.

Unknown

Moral wrote:

The rubber banding in Heroic Oscorp was nonexistent. You earned whatever the node was worth. Many players were into the second or third refresh before they realized it.

With the help of others on the forum we broke down the raw math of the event.

It was 3.5 days with 8 hour refreshes if I recall. 11 potential refreshes. 13 nodes. Max progression reward required clearing all 13 nodes 3 times per refresh for 9 of the 11 possible refreshes (presumably so you could sleep 2 nights)

39 node clears every 8 hours for 3 days. How fast can you clear 39 nodes? Was taking me nearly 4 hours.

And the 4 rewards per node didn't refresh, so by day 2 you were doing it for 20 ISO per node.

It was the grind of all grinds.

And this was before scaling came in.

The idea of a non-competitive PvE seems sound, but the results were incredibly awful. D3 sets the top prize so only a fraction of a percent of players get it, and if you don't reduce the numbers by competition it gets done by sheer repetition.

I don't think Heroic Oscorp scaled at all beyond the initial scaling based on your roster. I had a score higher than most people on the forum and I remember most of the nodes stayed at something like 205 pretty much forever. If it did scale, it must be so slowly that you can't tell it's there. That's not really surprising since people complain about scaling from beating the missions, and on Heroic Oscorp, you're simply not beating most of the missions without Spiderman, and even with Spiderman every fight took 20 minutes at their base difficulty so you're not going to be winning too many of them even if you never took any damage.

Moral

Phantron wrote:

I don't think Heroic Oscorp scaled at all beyond the initial scaling based on your roster. I had a score higher than most people on the forum and I remember most of the nodes stayed at something like 205 pretty much forever. If it did scale, it must be so slowly that you can't tell it's there. That's not really surprising since people complain about scaling from beating the missions, and on Heroic Oscorp, you're simply not beating most of the missions without Spiderman, and even with Spiderman every fight took 20 minutes at their base difficulty so you're not going to be winning too many of them even if you never took any damage.

My apologies if I was unclear. It was before the implementation of crazy scaling in the middle of the event. I cannot imagine trying to grind that number of nodes using the current scaling system.

The initial scaling did seem to be based on overall roster strength going into the event, not the strength of the limited roster you were permitted to use. I was fortunate that my 85 2*s were on the list. More than a few power players didn't have a single 3* over 80 on the allowed list with their scaling based on 141 rosters.

Unknown

Moral wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't think Heroic Oscorp scaled at all beyond the initial scaling based on your roster. I had a score higher than most people on the forum and I remember most of the nodes stayed at something like 205 pretty much forever. If it did scale, it must be so slowly that you can't tell it's there. That's not really surprising since people complain about scaling from beating the missions, and on Heroic Oscorp, you're simply not beating most of the missions without Spiderman, and even with Spiderman every fight took 20 minutes at their base difficulty so you're not going to be winning too many of them even if you never took any damage.

My apologies if I was unclear. It was before the implementation of crazy scaling in the middle of the event. I cannot imagine trying to grind that number of nodes using the current scaling system.

The initial scaling did seem to be based on overall roster strength going into the event, not the strength of the limited roster you were permitted to use. I was fortunate that my 85 2*s were on the list. More than a few power players didn't have a single 3* over 80 on the allowed list with their scaling based on 141 rosters.

I don't remember any major changes to scaling at the time of Heroic Oscorp. It either didn't scale at all (beyond the initial levels) or that people were losing so badly that it didn't matter.

You can have a bad system that actually works, or vice versa. Everyone complained about the rampant scaling in The Hunt, which is quite fair, but as a % progression to the top progression prize, we're much closer to HT at 170K compared to Unstable Isotope, which had relatively tame scaling (mostly due to enemies being very weak and mostly goons) but nobody was anywhere close to halfway of the top prize? The choices for the progression rewards probably trumps other gameplay designs, and it's something that's been all over the place.

Moral

Phantron wrote:

I don't remember any major changes to scaling at the time of Heroic Oscorp. It either didn't scale at all (beyond the initial levels) or that people were losing so badly that it didn't matter.

You can have a bad system that actually works, or vice versa. Everyone complained about the rampant scaling in The Hunt, which is quite fair, but as a % progression to the top progression prize, we're much closer to HT at 170K compared to Unstable Isotope, which had relatively tame scaling (mostly due to enemies being very weak and mostly goons) but nobody was anywhere close to halfway of the top prize? The choices for the progression rewards probably trumps other gameplay designs, and it's something that's been all over the place.

I honestly don't recall if the difficulty started out crazy high or went there. I was still on the newly 5 blue covered Spidey invincibility power trip. It was awesome until I realized 4 matches per hour went nowhere.

The top progression reward was supposed to be 300,000 and people were struggling to hit the red dd cover at 50,000.

I remember thinking at the Heroic Oscorp announcement how awesome it would be to be free of placement and rubber banding. How everyone could get as many placement awards as they wanted. How easy and fun it would be.

Not so much.

Unknown

Moral wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't remember any major changes to scaling at the time of Heroic Oscorp. It either didn't scale at all (beyond the initial levels) or that people were losing so badly that it didn't matter.

You can have a bad system that actually works, or vice versa. Everyone complained about the rampant scaling in The Hunt, which is quite fair, but as a % progression to the top progression prize, we're much closer to HT at 170K compared to Unstable Isotope, which had relatively tame scaling (mostly due to enemies being very weak and mostly goons) but nobody was anywhere close to halfway of the top prize? The choices for the progression rewards probably trumps other gameplay designs, and it's something that's been all over the place.

I honestly don't recall if the difficulty started out crazy high or went there. I was still on the newly 5 blue covered Spidey invincibility power trip. It was awesome until I realized 4 matches per hour went nowhere.

The top progression reward was supposed to be 300,000 and people were struggling to hit the red dd cover at 50,000.

I remember thinking at the Heroic Oscorp announcement how awesome it would be to be free of placement and rubber banding. How everyone could get as many placement awards as they wanted. How easy and fun it would be.

Not so much.

Yes, but that's a problem of the threshold chosen plus the time amount. If Heroic Oscorp lasted a month, the Wolverine covers would be reachable. It'd be painful, but I'm sure someone would go for it (I would). If the thresholds are about 1/3 of what they are, most people can at least hit the first Daredevil cover (that'd be about 1/3 of what I scored, since I got the Daredevil progression reward) and Wolverine covers would be reachable too (again painfully, but possible). And despite Heroic Oscorp had some pretty bad setup, the first Daredevil cover was reachable. Compared to this, nobody got the HT cover in The Hunt for Falcon. Nobody got the Captain America in Unstable Isotope. By the way I'm assuming that D3 doesn't purposely make certain 3* easier to reach just because it's Daredevil versus another one, because otherwise you can't ever compare progression rewards at all. People seem to generally perceive the scaling in the latest Simulator Basic as pretty bad, but the first Ragnarok cover was quite reachable too, which I think broke a recent streak of at least 2 events where nobody got a 3* cover progression reward.

I'm actually pretty curious how they determine these progression thresholds, since we have had events where the top score of the event didn't even have half of the score needed for the max progression reward.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

Moral wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't think Heroic Oscorp scaled at all beyond the initial scaling based on your roster. I had a score higher than most people on the forum and I remember most of the nodes stayed at something like 205 pretty much forever. If it did scale, it must be so slowly that you can't tell it's there. That's not really surprising since people complain about scaling from beating the missions, and on Heroic Oscorp, you're simply not beating most of the missions without Spiderman, and even with Spiderman every fight took 20 minutes at their base difficulty so you're not going to be winning too many of them even if you never took any damage.

My apologies if I was unclear. It was before the implementation of crazy scaling in the middle of the event. I cannot imagine trying to grind that number of nodes using the current scaling system.

The initial scaling did seem to be based on overall roster strength going into the event, not the strength of the limited roster you were permitted to use. I was fortunate that my 85 2*s were on the list. More than a few power players didn't have a single 3* over 80 on the allowed list with their scaling based on 141 rosters.

I don't remember any major changes to scaling at the time of Heroic Oscorp. It either didn't scale at all (beyond the initial levels) or that people were losing so badly that it didn't matter.

You can have a bad system that actually works, or vice versa. Everyone complained about the rampant scaling in The Hunt, which is quite fair, but as a % progression to the top progression prize, we're much closer to HT at 170K compared to Unstable Isotope, which had relatively tame scaling (mostly due to enemies being very weak and mostly goons) but nobody was anywhere close to halfway of the top prize? The choices for the progression rewards probably trumps other gameplay designs, and it's something that's been all over the place.

if by all over the place, you mean unachievable for the past couple months

Moral

Spoit wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Moral wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't think Heroic Oscorp scaled at all beyond the initial scaling based on your roster. I had a score higher than most people on the forum and I remember most of the nodes stayed at something like 205 pretty much forever. If it did scale, it must be so slowly that you can't tell it's there. That's not really surprising since people complain about scaling from beating the missions, and on Heroic Oscorp, you're simply not beating most of the missions without Spiderman, and even with Spiderman every fight took 20 minutes at their base difficulty so you're not going to be winning too many of them even if you never took any damage.

My apologies if I was unclear. It was before the implementation of crazy scaling in the middle of the event. I cannot imagine trying to grind that number of nodes using the current scaling system.

The initial scaling did seem to be based on overall roster strength going into the event, not the strength of the limited roster you were permitted to use. I was fortunate that my 85 2*s were on the list. More than a few power players didn't have a single 3* over 80 on the allowed list with their scaling based on 141 rosters.

I don't remember any major changes to scaling at the time of Heroic Oscorp. It either didn't scale at all (beyond the initial levels) or that people were losing so badly that it didn't matter.

You can have a bad system that actually works, or vice versa. Everyone complained about the rampant scaling in The Hunt, which is quite fair, but as a % progression to the top progression prize, we're much closer to HT at 170K compared to Unstable Isotope, which had relatively tame scaling (mostly due to enemies being very weak and mostly goons) but nobody was anywhere close to halfway of the top prize? The choices for the progression rewards probably trumps other gameplay designs, and it's something that's been all over the place.

if by all over the place, you mean unachievable for the past couple months

D3 likely has a math formula based on the point value of nodes in the event that assumes slingshoting through the use of rubber banding. If the event would last a month, the 5 day progression target of 300,000 becomes at least 1,800,000.

I'm certain scaling broke their formula for that, too. You don't have people grinding nodes to 1 anymore for fear of facing 400s.

In a way, the competitive reward model shows us directly what D3 is trying to do with rewarding the players. 1 in 500 players get the top prize. 1 in 100 second tier. 1 in 50 third tier.

Just because you move to a non competitive model of distributing awards does not change the intent of the developers to distribute a finite number of awards. They will use a model to set top tier rewards an estimated 1 in 500 players will be able to achieve.

Unknown

Even unobtainable have different degree of how unobtainable something is.

In Simulator Basic the first 3* was definitely obtainable, even though we got nowhere close to the top.

In The Hunt the top score was around 140K, with the max progression at 170K. That's actually pretty close compared to most events.

Unstable Isotope I know nobody got anywhere close to 83333 (Captain America cover), and I think the top progression reward is 150K?

Whatever formula they use to determine these values certainly can use some work. It's not like they're unconditionally trying to prevent anyone from ever getting close to any 3* cover, but they seem to be grossly overestimate people's ability to get points. Of the 3 events I mentioned, even if there was no scaling, I sure don't see the top progression rewards being obtainable in Simulator Basic or Unstable Isotope as that'd require people doing better than twice as good as they did. The Hunt would definitely be reachable if there was no scaling.