Places of Power, A Success Story?

Eichen

I'm pretty sure the consensuses is that the new event is a success!  I think most are enjoying it.  I wanted to start a discussion with the positives and I guess negatives too.  So here goes:

Good:
Progression only PVE - Many have been asking for this since... well, the game is 5 years old so I guess about 5 years.  

No Timers - Even though the current timer system is better than the old 8hr refresh there is still scheduling your life around the game instead of enjoying the game when I want to.  Just like life, not having to answer to a clock means more enjoyable. 

No Grind - 4 clears and done.  Thank you!

Bad (with good comes bad; way of life):

Communication - Here we are again.  The key to any good relationship is communication.  Spouse to spouse, friend to friend, employer to employee, Company to customer, whatever type of relationship, communication is SO important and you guys just don't get that for some reason.  (Brigby- I'm not meaning just you, you catch the brunt of everyone's angst but I know you get info from someone else and you guys time it to come out at certain times)  Release info earlier.  Why throw it over the fence last minute.  Put it out there like an advertisement.  Build up some anticipation and get the community involved.  Seriously, why not just tell us not we can't get ever single reward instead of letting people stumble around in the dark overnight and all morning?

Deadly wasn't so deadly for a 5* player.  


But as you can see the game play itself was an overall success.  

wymtime

I was thinking about starting a similar thread. I would actually like more PVE like this one.  This event feels like an updated version of the gauntlet.  You can do deadly nodes or easy nodes.  The only thing I would like to see is being able to complete more sections as an alliance.  So many alliances enjoy completing events as fast as possible and racing ranch other, or completing both sides of civil war.  This event gives great rewards, but it also feels too easy to make one mistake and enter the wrong node and can cost your alliance the rewards.

fmftint

I gotta say, this event is B-O-R-I-N-G
Great rewards though

shardwick

I'd like to see it changed a bit to where each person starts with Normal and then when you completely finish your clears on Normal it unlocks Hard, and then Deadly. And then on Deadly there could be four different boss nodes, in addition to the normal nodes, and each boss gives a legendary as the prize. The boss nodes could have a fun little challenge to them. The other four legendaries would need to be unlocked through alliance progression.

This way there's no confusion of where to send people through chat because everyone has the full length of the event, similar to the gauntlet, to complete each difficulty. 

DeNappa

Eichen said:

<snip>
Communication - Here we are again.  The key to any good relationship is communication.  Spouse to spouse, friend to friend, employer to employee, Company to customer, whatever type of relationship, communication is SO important and you guys just don't get that for some reason. 
<snip>

On a related note: alliance member to alliance member. AKA, please fix the **** in-game chat. Especially stressful for an alliance like mine that doesn't coordinate on 3rd party communication.

Tony_Foot

fmftint said:

I gotta say, this event is B-O-R-I-N-G
Great rewards though

Exactly this, if it wasn't for being off the clock all that's changed is the easy nodes are now also harder. So yeah there's grind 5/6 and if you do it 7 gone but you have more harder nodes you still have to clear 4 times.

I appreciate the extra rewards but they could have just thrown them into a strange sights and I'd have been just as happy. No end boss, no extra puzzle element just a royal pain in the backside to make sure you co-ordinate with almost zero room for error. It looks like one of our comms has been up all night making sure people go to the right node and we are still missing one person each D node.

I bet he's over joyed with this lower pressure off the clock PVE

Due to the lack of info we now are scrambling for a merc to get one side done because an alliance member cannot commit, with decent communication about the event this could have been done and sorted a week ago.

So yeah thanks for making a low stress PVE even more stress than a boss event or normal PVE.

DAZ0273

Good - It was nice to have Kraven and Goblin in the mix in the Savage Land as a bit of variety.

The deadly nodes levels were fair I thought and less fights was good.

Bad - I think the communication on this was a swing and a miss.

It is just more tedious grind and on a time when Grocket isn't boosted it is going to be an even greater slog. I was really hoping for something different.


I'd be OK with these every now and then instead of yet another Meeting of Rocket & Groot but not in place of Boss Alliance events.

DAZ0273

Oh and Nebula was a bit of a low blow for the 4e, she is so new that the vast majority of my alliance don't have her and so we started with a massive disadvantage compounded by the idea that it might be possible to protect all places.

Oh well, live and learn.

Dormammu

I like it so far. Great rewards in both progression and node rewards. Decent mixture of enemies (at least in the nodes I've played the once) and I loved (LOVED) not being on the clock to do a little experimentation with slower but still effective strategies (in other words, I didn't have to bludgeon my way through with Okoye/Medusa/Thanos for placement).

The lack of details (communication) prior to the event doesn't bother me. It's the first time its run and I don't expect the developers, or Brigby, or anyone else to just hand my alliance the ideal min/max strategy. Part of the enjoyment was figuring it out for ourselves. I've never seen my alliance so active, excited, and chatty as we were yesterday for the first day of the event. Now that we're into it we know how to co-ordinate and it won't be a problem moving forward for the rest of the event and any times it is repeated.

broll

I think it's a bit more of a mixed bag than the OP.  I still think it's good, but it has a lot of flaws IMO.

Good:

• Progression only PvE
• No Timers
• Less time intensive than normal PvE (4 clears and done)
• Amazing alliance rewards

Bad

• Communication - Both from the devs and the difficulty of doing it in game.  This feature should not have released without fixing the horrible chat function and/or giving commanders some way to coordinate their team (being able to assign people to particular places even if it's only a suggestion that pops up on their map screen).  As far as the devs side, not telling us the point values up front so we could plan was not fun.  My alliance lost out on 20 LTs (1 per person) because you encouraged us to explore it out on our own.  Getting robbed isn't my idea of fun....  In addition the in game descriptions are not good.  I had to spend a good several hours directing alliance members what to do and how it works if they don't come here.  
• The requirements for deadly rewards are too tight - It could be worse, it could require 9.7 or higher clears, but with requiring anything over 9 it means that if someone is on vacation or not available for the event you have to kick them until they get back or miss out on big rewards.  That's not a good system.  Highest number of clears to be required for deadly IMO should be 8.5.
• The inability to see the rewards and scores of any place but the one you chose is bad, especially for commanders who track performance of their members.
• This event is likely to add a lot of alliance in fighting and/or other issues.  One person making a mistake and/or not playing has a major consequence on 19 other people, that won't end well...  My alliance has LINE but we don't make it a requirement, with this change it now has to be a requirement because we need to plan and the game provides no reasonable way to do so.  Boss events were usually something where the less active/lower rostered players in my alliance got a break while the big boys pulled more of the weight.  In this I can see having to warn/kick some of those members if they can't keep up.
• Individual rewards are still terrible - As a 5* roster who plays SCL 9 quite a bit none of the personal rewards are even remotely exciting.  
• No SCLs - Why on earth are you guys still making new events that don't support SCLs?!  It boggles my mind....  Even if only the personal rewards scaled it would be a huge win.  SCLs that affected everything including battle difficulty would help with some of the 'B-O-R-I-N-G' complaints from long time vets.  Seriously aren't these the issues you made SCLs to fix, why pretend like they don't exist when making a new feature.... I have no more words...

turbomoose

Good - lots of rewards compared to usual PVE alliance events , even rosters a month or so old can contribute 

no time specific deadline means you can play anytime you want in 24hrs 

Bad - no communication, even discord had to wait until less than 24 hours before the event started and with the fact that most alliances have members from different time lines around the world, zero chance of successfully being able to plan.

no in game story images , Dr Strange could have been used as a single pick at the very least otherwise it could be anyone asking us to protect places of power 

Misleading information suggesting that we should be trying to protect all 6 places of power, when this clearly isn’t the case . 

No difference in points for harder levels, deadly should get you a higher points total than hard and so on . 

Using a virtually new 4* in game reminds me of the early shield training where unless you were a veteran player you had little or no chance of success 

overall I like the event and appreciate it’s a first run but I hope that if and when they run it again they bring in some changes 

AardvarkPepper

fmftint said:

I gotta say, this event is B-O-R-I-N-G
Great rewards though

Stating something's "boring" doesn't identify anything specific to address.

What would be "exciting", specifically?

If you can't identify any specific issues, that's not unusual.  Your opinion isn't any less legitimate even if you can't put words to what you're thinking.  Your opinion is legitimate, you expressed your opinion, and your feedback is useful.

Yet the developers really can't determine a course of specific action based on nonspecific criticisms.  Just saying.

Eichen said:

I'm pretty sure the consensuses

Based on?  Let's say you say something's great.  People want to go along with that.  Nobody wants to be negative.  Or maybe you liked one aspect of the event and someone else liked another.  Unlike with criticisms, people often like praise.  But as with criticisms, praise that is nonspecific doesn't provide so much a course of direction.  Who had that consensus, specifically?  Why?  For the reasons you stated?  Was there a discussion, did everyone agree?  Or was it just a couple comments from a couple people?  What about their experience specifically was positive, what would they change, what would they not change and why?  How can the event be made even better based on that specific positive feedback?  That sort of thing.

At any rate - as much as I liked certain aspects of the event - no event timers, progression based only - I do have some criticisms (apart from the identified communications issue).

==

Broll wrote much I agree with.  A few additional comments:

1)  A lot of players in this thread are criticizing in-game chat.  Probably there's another thread specifically about in-game chat and its lack of features somewhere else - or perhaps there should be.  But considering I've just commented about nonspecific criticisms, I won't leve it at a nonspecific criticism "chat needs improvement".

So - remembering that other players will have other issues that what I identify here -

A)  Chat log doesn't keep much history.  A commander makes an important announcement, it gets pushed down by other alliance members asking questions or making requests for specific team-ups, or such things.

  Chat log isn't differentiated.  If someone thinks their cat looks cute today, if someone makes a team-up request, if there's an important announcement, it all goes in the pile.

I suggest as a fix to this having different tabs in alliance chat - one for posts that may only be created or edited by alliance commanders (for announcements or instructions that don't need to be checked all the time), one for general chat (my cat looks so cute today / I would like XYZ specific teamups), one for specific events (what slice players are starting, etc.).

Also keeping more chat history, and allowing alliance commanders to delete past posts as chat just needs to be cleaned up and some moderation ability would be welcome, I think.

2)  Reward structure and Deadly nodes, I *really* don't like the implementation.  Even supposing communications all went well, as it works, 10 players need to go one Deadly node, 10 another, for maximum alliance rewards.  This pretty well means players need well-developed 4* rosters or 5* rosters to perform well.  But think on what that means; that means any player that *doesn't* have those sorts of rosters or that can otherwise finish Deadly nodes is a detriment to their alliance.

I think the development team may have assumed that's already the case what with Essential nodes at SCL 8+ providing more points so allowing higher scores, or with timers that mean players with better and more developed rosters being able to consistently have lower clear times so higher points.  But this event is on another whole level.

Specifically - suppose a player is in the 2*-3* transition, which happens in well less than a month of regular play.  By playing at PvE SCL 7, they earn the essential 3* and essential 4* characters as progression rewards that they can rotate into empty character slots (the 3* very quickly and the 4* about halfway through the event).  Given a few good 3*s, knowledge of what's efficient and what's not, a player that has researched what to do or figures it out can quickly find placement in a top 100 PvE alliance.  This can be confirmed by looking at in-game data and seeing it is literally true that such players can earn full progression, and also by looking at alliance recruitment boards where posters are advertising spots in top 100 PvE alliance requiring only max progression (and some not even that).

That is, even new players can get to a point at which they're earning somewhat decent rewards fairly quickly.

But with this new alliance event and its requirement that 10 alliance members max one deadly node and 10 alliance members max another deadly node, there's this big pressure on alliances to kick such players out, as such players are simply totally incapable of handling deadly nodes.  It makes me sick to think of playing MPQ, and it makes me think I cannot recommend MPQ to new players.

Before now, it was "Yes, MPQ is a long grind, but if you play smart, you can become a valued member of a good alliance in under a month, and you can transition to a fairly powerful roster in a year to a year and a half".  Now it's "The developers are going in a direction that's ever more about new players with undeveloped rosters being deadweight, you're a second-class citizen and you're going to feel that way until you put up at least a couple thousand dollars or a year and a half real time".

I mean all right, the PC interface sucks now, I don't love it, but it's a cost-savings measure and I can deal with it.  There's ever increasing numbers of heroes which makes managing rosters for matches more of a pain in the butt (I recommend user-defined preselected teams that a player can press a single button for, including two-player teams for Essential character nodes) but I'm sure quality of life measures may not be the first thing on the development team's mind.  Well all right, I suppose, maybe if they look at things down the line or maybe I can live with it, not super happy, but that's as it goes.

But this whole "new players equals pleb trash" just sucks the enjoyment out of it.  It's like, all right, I respect and accept the whole F2P structure, there's this big grindy thing, players retain gains from grinding or they can buy in.  But I'll only participate in F2P if new players that care to do research game mechanics and really look and think about what they're doing have some real chance for advancement and can be valued members of even a veteran team.  Then it's not about how many hours you put in, or how much money you threw at the screen - it's really about being smart.  And yes all right, you could say the top echelons of play may only be for players that put in a big time and/or money investment, but that's fine, the lower echelons are still making progress and having fun in their own right.

But now here's this alliance event, and I'm like yeah that just isn't working any more, and whoever designed the event in the first place must have figured that was exactly what was going to happen.  Maybe they figured "hey, MPQ's already a grind/pay-in sort of game, what does it really matter if an alliance misses out on top rewards if some of its players just can't cut it?  what does it matter if an alliance needs to boot a couple of its members and take on temporary players to get best rewards, what does it really matter?"  Well in the larger scheme of things it doesn't matter, does it?  Because in the end a few legendary tokens or not per player for an event, that isn't going to change the fact that players are spending hundreds of hours or dollars to grow their roster.

But it does make a difference - a HUGE difference, because it's exactly those small gains that smart min-maxers that don't have developed rosters need to look out for.  You make events that cut players out of small gains, the smart min-maxers look at the event and realize "hey, this new event isn't really for me, maybe this game isn't for me."

==

btw - in case devs read this, a note of appreciation for 24-hour based timers (as opposed to the previous shorter timers), championing, progression-based PvE, I liked those changes.  Probably others I forget offhand.  Also note that I think the idea of having an alliance event that requires coordination is a good thing - it's just that the chat's not up to handle it, and the current implementation for prize structure really pushes this "plebs is trash" thing - but both could well be changed.  So thanks for your hard work!  but please remember the little folk because without them the world would be cold and empty.

ThaRoadWarrior

I wonder if like Sakaar, we'll get a second run of this event pretty quickly so that we can make use of our learned lessons?

Dormammu

One big positive (for many) this event addresses over other alliance events is that it isn't over after a single day. Everyone, regardless of roster strength, will have something to do on the PvE side all weekend.

Phumade

Honestly,  I thought the deadly were too easy as is.  If your are going to make it 10/10  then at least make the deadly hard enough that only a few alliances can do the progression.

As it stands its too easy for all of the t25 alliances.  I'd be down with making it 9 of 10 but crank it up so that only a few alliances can win the double LTs

Dormammu

I disagree. The game already gates too many rewards to 'elite-only'.

ThaRoadWarrior

man...my alliance has trash participation this time. I told the 6-7 of us who are playing in this to just focus on the "hard" node on the right every day so we can at least get something.

rixmith

Another thing I like about this is that the next time it is run I can do a different set of nodes. And since my alliance can't do 10/10 I could even jump down and do a Hard node if I wanted something different. So it has a chance to remain fresh for longer than most PVE content.

I also think this format could easily lend itself to playing as villains raiding Hero assets, making it fairly easy to have a very different set of foes, much like Prodigal Sun.

skittledaddy

Good: The fact that I have a 5* Thanos (albeit only 3/0/2). LOTS of fodder in this event.

Farmerbink

First and foremost, I'm really enjoying this event.  That's almost 100% based on not having to do a burn/ramp session, but it's been entertaining for other reasons.  Overall, that's important enough to me to be a major, major win already.

I do, however, have a few comments to add that I haven't seen elsewhere.

1: I feel like there's a serious missed opportunity here.  This is one of very few events in which the players won't be functionally penalized for taking our time and enjoying the storyline/dialogue  ...and there's no dialogue?  I think I understand what it supposed to be taking place, but it would be really nice to have in-game cutscenes or extra nodes to describe the situation.  

2: As an experienced player, the deadly nodes aren't deadly.  As a new player, the hard and deadly nodes are out of reach.  The best rewards are 10/10 deadlies, full stop.  Somewhat tangent to what Aardvarkpepper mentioned above, there's an obvious potential for conflict here.  I think it would be another overall improvement to decrease the number of full clears needed, but pair it with an increase of difficulty.  Maybe as few as 6 players needed, but make them really be good?  Obviously, this is my opinion, and one man's opinion does not make everyone else agree.  Still, my 2c.  

The intended effect of the above is for less-developed rosters to be more free to play in lower difficulties.  As it stands, if you can't hack deadly, you're simply dead weight.  If there was more opportunity for hard/normal nodes to be run, without "costing" you a deadly node, it might really feel cool to be the guys tasked with going and taking out a lesser threat.  At the very least, that's certainly more exciting than being benched from the alliance, because you can't handle the only one that matters.  

Still, overall I think this event is a huge success.  As always, it could be better.  Thanks, devs!

WEBGAS

Lack of communication  (as ever) But great event! Me and my alliance are really enjoying this  and I hope this could be The first Step towards a Progression only PVE