PvE on a Schedule - What’s the fix?
Comments
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I'm the kind of player that doesn't try to get the placement rewards. I play the nodes 6 times throughout the 24hr period to get the node rewards and max progression.
I'm personally all for removing the pvp aspect from pve. I'd be up for trying a new system to see how it works.0 -
acescracked said:PVE should have 2.5 hour refreshs.
Having a job with long hours I would miss multiple 2 hour refreshes per day. I shouldn't be "punished" for having a full time job.
Not saying the current system, where you are "forced" to play for almost 2 hours in one sitting (end of one sub and the start of the next one) is better either.
The issue of WHEN in the day long play sessions are seems to be the problem many are trying to solve.
IMO, one of the goals for any PVE fixes should be to make it LESS of a time commitment and LESS grindy, not more.
As many have said, the move from 4 to 5 clears for full Progression rewards was not welcome, mainly for this reason.
The addition of 5 Star required nodes increased it yet again, as now there's 4 more fights per clear.
As a data point, I have a Champed 5 Star Thanos & 5 Star Daredevil. In SLC 8, it still takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to almost an hour to clear all nodes 4 times, depending on the sub.
SCL 9 would take even longer, and that's actually the main reason why I don't play it. The increase in rewards VS the additional play time is just not worth it to me.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong? Every single fight is either Thanos, DD, + a random 5 Star (usually OML cause of healing) or Thanos, DD, + Essential. Not what I would call roster diversity. When only a handful of 100+ characters are viable, for top placement, I'd say there's an issue with this mode. Granted, somewhat First World Problems and not the average MPQ experience, but a well designed system works for all ends of the spectrum.
IMO an ideal session play session for PVE (not including DDQ and PVP) should be at most half an hour. That includes in SLC9 against max scaled nodes.
This could possibly be achieved by simply making nodes be a max of 4 rewards, with 2 wins to start the node refresh timer, instead of 6 rewards with 4 wins to start the node refresh timer. That's much more managable. Of course the node difficulty, rewards, and progression thresholds would all need to be adjusted, but it would be a start towards cutting down the time commitment.
Otherwise it's identical to how it is now. Sure, Top50 in SCL 8 should get the 4 Star cover, and the difference between 8 & 9 is still too small, but one thing at a time, less moving parts at once.
These are number changes instead of complete system overhaul changes. I'd think this would be easy enough try at least once; once per normal event and again on a new character release event when the stakes are higher and can distort the system.
In the greater question of PVP and PVE, the fact that most players call Story Mode "PVE" is rather telling.
It feels like it should be PVE, meaning no interaction with other players.
Maybe there just needs to be a 3rd mode of some kind that truly is PVE. Not DDQ or Gauntlet either. Basically something like Growth Industry, Amedus's Inferno, whatever that one-off thing was with Quake that seemed like they were setting it up for another chapter, etc. Those were quite popular if I recall.
Have them on a rotating cycle, and when the Player finishes the active one, after a set amount of time (to prevent them from playing through them too fast) the next one in the list automatically becomes available. This would let Players finish them on their own time frame, as the next one would only trigger after you finish your current one.
The issue of whether this would hurt revenue is an important one though.
Donno, probably rambling now, but just some thoughts.2 -
fight4thedream said:Smart80 said:Fight4thedream
- No competition would be real boring I think
- No alliance competition at all?
- RNG based node rewards, even to get tokens seems a real bad idea.
- Not sure i understand the scoring factors, but starting health should be as high as possible, to up health pack sales? Bye bye Thor/DD...
- Paying to play more than 4 nodes?
I apologize for not reading on past the “boss node” part, but this sounds absolutely horrible.
Also to be clear, you wouldn't be paying for 4 nodes. You would have access to all nodes. You would only be able to make 4 attempts on each node and then you would have to start paying for the last three. I figured if people are willing to shield in LRs and in SIM early in the season, there will definitely be people willing to pay to unlock a node for more chances at better rewards.
My bad, meant to say: paying to play node more than 4 times?
Maybe if there are 4 rewards and you get 4 free attempts and have to pay for additional tries, if you wipe, I could see this happen. However, having to pay for whats free now, might not feel right for anyone..
But from your LR and Sim example, Im not sure if we have same thing in mind. Improving game versus shaking down dumb people...0 -
ZeroKarma said:broll said:Bowgentle said:Smart80 said:ZeroKarma said:I had a discussion with alliance mates and the general feeling is that PvE now is better than it ever has been.
- Play time has dramatically decreased
- playing in a chunk once a day on a timer compared to 3 or even 8(!) times a day on a timer
- no rubberbanding
- no roster-based death scaling
- better rewards
That isn’t to say it couldn’t be better. But the evolution has been step-by-step and has been very positive. I am ok with continuing that trend.
possible next step: shift slice times from event to event, like they do with mid week end pvp, compared to the other 2.
it wont be good for everyone each event, but all will get ideal times once every events. And will take some getting used to it, instead blindly picking slice, but in the end could be fair for all i think.
God, no.
Instead of annoying some people like it is now, you'd annoy ALL THE PEOPLE?
Not a good idea.
I need to be able to plan my PVE times, settle for ONE time.
The last thing I want is to have a varying schedule for PVE.
It wouldn't be any different that the pervasive RNG all over the game. Sometimes it's in your favor, sometimes it's not. Right now time slices are never in certain peoples favor and there is no hope that will ever change. Why should those people pay the company that doesn't care about them? If however the timeslices rolled it could potentially drive people to sometimes pay for more covers when they are in a bad slice on a release event. Doesn't that fit the F2P model several people keep harping on?
The goal is to improve without alienating if possible, not make everyone as miserable as the minority.
Also if this was tied with the other suggestion of 6 slices 4 hours a part, then you'd never be more than 3 hours off your optimal and with the even spread there would probably be something that works OK for you most, if not all of the time. (unlike now where there's a 6 hour gap during eastern primetime)5 -
aesthetocyst said:The rockett said:
So I just talked to a good friend that tracks all of the flips for all the slices in SL 9. Now he might have this for all SL from SL 7 to SL 9. I know others have said this, but there are not enough players to add more brackets. This is how many brackets in just SL 9 for HOD.
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Does your "friend" catch all the late brackets as well?
That's plenty of data to make a decent estimate of how additional slices would impact. All the what-ifs and assumptions made would come out in the wash within a reasonable margin of error. The game could go to 8 slices and still expect a flip or two in each one.
However, the idea of going from 5 partial brackets to 8 partial brackets might give the bean counters heartburn.
Also if bracket flips were a problem they could always shrink the bracket size down. PvP only has 500 brackets where PvE has 1000, just saying...
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aesthetocyst said:The rockett said:
So I just talked to a good friend that tracks all of the flips for all the slices in SL 9. Now he might have this for all SL from SL 7 to SL 9. I know others have said this, but there are not enough players to add more brackets. This is how many brackets in just SL 9 for HOD.
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Does your "friend" catch all the late brackets as well?
That's plenty of data to make a decent estimate of how additional slices would impact. All the what-ifs and assumptions made would come out in the wash within a reasonable margin of error. The game could go to 8 slices and still expect a flip or two in each one.
However, the idea of going from 5 partial brackets to 8 partial brackets might give the bean counters heartburn.
Also useful to know numbers in last bracket. My 2.9.2 was around 950 an hour from end, but final scores suggest it filled up. Mined data could suggest 3 brackets nonetheless.0 -
Smart80 said:fight4thedream said:Smart80 said:Fight4thedream
- No competition would be real boring I think
- No alliance competition at all?
- RNG based node rewards, even to get tokens seems a real bad idea.
- Not sure i understand the scoring factors, but starting health should be as high as possible, to up health pack sales? Bye bye Thor/DD...
- Paying to play more than 4 nodes?
I apologize for not reading on past the “boss node” part, but this sounds absolutely horrible.
Also to be clear, you wouldn't be paying for 4 nodes. You would have access to all nodes. You would only be able to make 4 attempts on each node and then you would have to start paying for the last three. I figured if people are willing to shield in LRs and in SIM early in the season, there will definitely be people willing to pay to unlock a node for more chances at better rewards.
My bad, meant to say: paying to play node more than 4 times?
Maybe if there are 4 rewards and you get 4 free attempts and have to pay for additional tries, if you wipe, I could see this happen. However, having to pay for whats free now, might not feel right for anyone..
But from your LR and Sim example, Im not sure if we have same thing in mind. Improving game versus shaking down dumb people...
Additionally with Thor's large health pool and ability to produce friendly protect tiles makes him well suited for this system since he can also net you a multiplier for amount of friendly tiles on the board and reduce overall damage to your team with his protect tiles.
But yes, I acknowledge DD fares less well.
I think the issue is that you are thinking in terms of "speed" and pure power, which is how we have been conditioned to consider matches. Almost every encounter in the game, the most desirable outcome is to finish the match as quickly as possible. The devs have even allowed us to remove animations so that we can play at a faster pace. While this is fine, particularly in PvP, it does come at the cost of devaluing certain power types like healing and protect tiles because these abilities don't allow you to win matches faster. This will be even more true for PvE if they do switch to the speed-run chicken race PvE format.
One of the goals of the system I proposed is to move away from this mentality, to allow players the opportunity to consider the board and each move carefully. When team health becomes a factor in your score, it boosts the value of healing abilities and protect tiles. So hopefully it will get players to make use of more than just the most powerful characters on their roster.
I do think your critique of the node unlock system is fair and admit I myself am not entirely in favor for it. Perhaps, like you said, having to pay to unlock after all nodes have exhausted their rewards makes more sense. Or if the difficulty is set high enough on the harder nodes that in order to achieve a desirable score you will need to use health packs after each match might be another route.
It was more a feeble attempt to demonstrate how a non-competitive PvE format could be monetized than something I actually want. lol
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Smart80 said:aesthetocyst said:The rockett said:
So I just talked to a good friend that tracks all of the flips for all the slices in SL 9. Now he might have this for all SL from SL 7 to SL 9. I know others have said this, but there are not enough players to add more brackets. This is how many brackets in just SL 9 for HOD.
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Does your "friend" catch all the late brackets as well?
That's plenty of data to make a decent estimate of how additional slices would impact. All the what-ifs and assumptions made would come out in the wash within a reasonable margin of error. The game could go to 8 slices and still expect a flip or two in each one.
However, the idea of going from 5 partial brackets to 8 partial brackets might give the bean counters heartburn.
Also useful to know numbers in last bracket. My 2.9.2 was around 950 an hour from end, but final scores suggest it filled up. Mined data could suggest 3 brackets nonetheless.
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The rockett said:Smart80 said:aesthetocyst said:The rockett said:
So I just talked to a good friend that tracks all of the flips for all the slices in SL 9. Now he might have this for all SL from SL 7 to SL 9. I know others have said this, but there are not enough players to add more brackets. This is how many brackets in just SL 9 for HOD.
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Does your "friend" catch all the late brackets as well?
That's plenty of data to make a decent estimate of how additional slices would impact. All the what-ifs and assumptions made would come out in the wash within a reasonable margin of error. The game could go to 8 slices and still expect a flip or two in each one.
However, the idea of going from 5 partial brackets to 8 partial brackets might give the bean counters heartburn.
Also useful to know numbers in last bracket. My 2.9.2 was around 950 an hour from end, but final scores suggest it filled up. Mined data could suggest 3 brackets nonetheless.0 -
fight4thedream said:Smart80 said:fight4thedream said:Smart80 said:Fight4thedream
- No competition would be real boring I think
- No alliance competition at all?
- RNG based node rewards, even to get tokens seems a real bad idea.
- Not sure i understand the scoring factors, but starting health should be as high as possible, to up health pack sales? Bye bye Thor/DD...
- Paying to play more than 4 nodes?
I apologize for not reading on past the “boss node” part, but this sounds absolutely horrible.
Also to be clear, you wouldn't be paying for 4 nodes. You would have access to all nodes. You would only be able to make 4 attempts on each node and then you would have to start paying for the last three. I figured if people are willing to shield in LRs and in SIM early in the season, there will definitely be people willing to pay to unlock a node for more chances at better rewards.
My bad, meant to say: paying to play node more than 4 times?
Maybe if there are 4 rewards and you get 4 free attempts and have to pay for additional tries, if you wipe, I could see this happen. However, having to pay for whats free now, might not feel right for anyone..
But from your LR and Sim example, Im not sure if we have same thing in mind. Improving game versus shaking down dumb people...
Additionally with Thor's large health pool and ability to produce friendly protect tiles makes him well suited for this system since he can also net you a multiplier for amount of friendly tiles on the board and reduce overall damage to your team with his protect tiles.
But yes, I acknowledge DD fares less well.
I think the issue is that you are thinking in terms of "speed" and pure power, which is how we have been conditioned to consider matches. Almost every encounter in the game, the most desirable outcome is to finish the match as quickly as possible. The devs have even allowed us to remove animations so that we can play at a faster pace. While this is fine, particularly in PvP, it does come at the cost of devaluing certain power types like healing and protect tiles because these abilities don't allow you to win matches faster. This will be even more true for PvE if they do switch to the speed-run chicken race PvE format.
One of the goals of the system I proposed is to move away from this mentality, to allow players the opportunity to consider the board and each move carefully. When team health becomes a factor in your score, it boosts the value of healing abilities and protect tiles. So hopefully it will get players to make use of more than just the most powerful characters on their roster.
I do think your critique of the node unlock system is fair and admit I myself am not entirely in favor for it. Perhaps, like you said, having to pay to unlock after all nodes have exhausted their rewards makes more sense. Or if the difficulty is set high enough on the harder nodes that in order to achieve a desirable score you will need to use health packs after each match might be another route.
It was more a feeble attempt to demonstrate how a non-competitive PvE format could be monetized than something I actually want. lol
Anyway, try to get a test run of this system, alongside what we already have and ill gladly try it.. but keep in mind, this whole thing, with some extra gimmicks, sounds a lot like The Gauntlet... And we havent had that for ages for a reason....0 -
Smart80 said:The rockett said:Smart80 said:aesthetocyst said:The rockett said:
So I just talked to a good friend that tracks all of the flips for all the slices in SL 9. Now he might have this for all SL from SL 7 to SL 9. I know others have said this, but there are not enough players to add more brackets. This is how many brackets in just SL 9 for HOD.
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Does your "friend" catch all the late brackets as well?
That's plenty of data to make a decent estimate of how additional slices would impact. All the what-ifs and assumptions made would come out in the wash within a reasonable margin of error. The game could go to 8 slices and still expect a flip or two in each one.
However, the idea of going from 5 partial brackets to 8 partial brackets might give the bean counters heartburn.
Also useful to know numbers in last bracket. My 2.9.2 was around 950 an hour from end, but final scores suggest it filled up. Mined data could suggest 3 brackets nonetheless.0 -
The rockett said:Smart80 said:The rockett said:Smart80 said:aesthetocyst said:The rockett said:
So I just talked to a good friend that tracks all of the flips for all the slices in SL 9. Now he might have this for all SL from SL 7 to SL 9. I know others have said this, but there are not enough players to add more brackets. This is how many brackets in just SL 9 for HOD.
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Does your "friend" catch all the late brackets as well?
That's plenty of data to make a decent estimate of how additional slices would impact. All the what-ifs and assumptions made would come out in the wash within a reasonable margin of error. The game could go to 8 slices and still expect a flip or two in each one.
However, the idea of going from 5 partial brackets to 8 partial brackets might give the bean counters heartburn.
Also useful to know numbers in last bracket. My 2.9.2 was around 950 an hour from end, but final scores suggest it filled up. Mined data could suggest 3 brackets nonetheless.0 -
aesthetocyst said:
Sir,
I feel it is my duty to point out to you that "The 2.5 hr refreshes" reference made by Officer Acescracked was, sir, indeed, sir, a "joke".
0 -
aesthetocyst said:
5 is for american night owls, European mornings, and afternoons in Asia.
For me, ends at 1 AM CST.0 -
The rockett said:
Slice 1: 5 brackets
Slice 2: 2 brackets
Slice 3: 3 brackets
Slice 4: 3 brackets
Slice 5: 5 brackets
As you can see, this would spread more people out and therefore you might not even get a flip in some of these slices. This would not be a good thing. Now you could say more people would move up to 9, but I don't think that would be the case.
Addaran: Why is it a bad thing if there is no flip? (See fight's quote down) Ideally, there would be no flip ever. It's unfair that someone with 1000 points get better reward then someone with 1500, just because he joined a later slice and there's a lower number of good players.
Atm, there is 18 different groups. If there is 6 slices, it will probably stay about the same. If for some reason it get worst, eliminate the brackets. Playerbase divided in 6 is better then 18 like presently.
fight4thedream said:
The Problem with PvE
Before I begin, it is essential that we understand the flaws with the current system. Mainly:
*time slices limit the amount of participants who are able to play optimally and therefore competitively.
*bracket sniping. Gives players "in the know" an unfair advantage to gain better rewards than those players who have put in more time and effort, and perhaps performed better in an event.
Addaran: Those are the two biggest points IMO. The way it is presently, the competition isn't fair.
I really like your idea too. It would be a lot of work, but it would be more fun. It is pretty annoying that a lot of ability types are pretty useless. Protect tiles are only usefull in very hard fights that you couldnt win without. The puzzle aspect of protecting your 1* or putting lots of special tiles before winning would be fun.1 -
The Viceroy Returns said:aesthetocyst said:
5 is for american night owls, European mornings, and afternoons in Asia.
For me, ends at 1 AM CST.
My schedule does not allow for optimal play. With 5, I start each sub in the morning, and know that I have to finish before I go to bed.0 -
I'm an East coast American, but not a night owl. I play in 5 because it flips when I'm asleep.
My schedule does not allow for optimal play. With 5, I start each sub in the morning, and know that I have to finish before I go to bed.
When a Sub flips, I don't bother playing it right away unless it's a new release. And even then, not always.
The time commitment required for the final push of the current sub + doing 4X clears of all nodes in the newly opened sub, which is required for t10 and above, is way too grindy and can easily take almost 2+ hours. For a mobile game that's crazy.
I play SLC 8 because of time constraints. And in that reward structure, there is effectively no difference in rewards after t10 in final placement (no 4 star cover and less CP). t50 finishes and every now and then t20 is what I end up with.
The work I'd have to put in to make t10 just isn't worth it. That's not being "entitled," it's just taking a step back and looking at the overall time investment. The total time combined with the added restriction of WHEN to do so (due to Time Slices and sub endings, etc.) is a bit insane.
0 -
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion. Some takeaways from my end.
1) Many people are ok with the timer and speed being the main competition criteria, but want that to be flexible. I might still play at the same time personally, but don’t have any argument with it at all. Provided that the implementation is easy enough, why not?
2) There is a group of people that would like speed not to be the main criteria for victory and there were some neat ideas how to make that work. Maybe this group also sorta coincides with the group that wants PVE not competitive? Maybe this would be an interesting as an add-on or some events/nodes speed based and some with alternative conditions like Kaecilius.
3) I don’t see anyone advocating for a tapping intensive system or additional time requirements. It’s all about flexibility.
To be honest, adding that flexibility probably won’t alienate anyone interested in improving the experience. We all want a clear, defined system that creates a level playing field and, in the case of alternative conditions, keeps it fun and challenging.
5 -
Additional note: I think that the occasional Heroic event or concurrent Gauntlet (maybe with some skill-based nodes) would be positive improvements for many of the discussion points and which could be implemented easily with existing game infrastructure.0
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aesthetocyst said:broll said:
Also if bracket flips were a problem they could always shrink the bracket size down. PvP only has 500 brackets where PvE has 1000, just saying...
They'd cut all the placements in half (t20 rewards only go to t10, etc) ... and probably round down .... jerks.
Change rewards from 1-10 to say top 1%
etc...
they give the same percentage of rewards currently. no more bracket sniping.
Add more slices0
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