Ideas for PVE match diversity

OwlBear

The current fights against Kaecilius reminded me of all the past discussion about more puzzle elements and different win conditions. It has been nice to have a different goal and need different characters. I won't presume to know how hard it would be to change this kind of thing in the code, but it seems like there are a ton of different ways to add things into a few of the normal PVE nodes which don't just require doing enough damage to down everyone ASAP.

Like:

-enemies start with beefy strike tiles, survive x turns to win the mission (invis, tank or however)

-collect x ap in a particular color, or all colors, to win (bring ap generators instead of damage)

-enemies can only be damaged by matches/abilities in x color (if black, bring Domino, Clagger, GG)
-win the mission by creating x special tiles by any means (Carnage, Bullseye, etc)
-create protect tiles for a total of x reduction to win missions (Carol, Thing, Flaptain, etc)

-The Apocalypse boss fight has interesting conditions, but it is generally faster to just ignore them and kill him normally, so maybe a tweak on these kind of horseman tiles.

-...probably a ton of others I didn't think of. 

Do these sound like things you would want to try? What else can people think of for ways to spice up the normal PVE win conditions?

JHawkInc

The game could definitely use more variety, more of the "puzzle" aspect. I've always thought Arcade would be a fun boss, where there's "Boss Arcade" and a handful of "Miniboss" versions, so that in each side node you face one of the different Miniboss versions. Then they all use various win conditions like this, so both the side matches and main boss require you to "play Arcade's game" to win. And it works great for a boss because you can take your time (even if it's a brilliant idea, if you try to put slower or more puzzle-based elements into something like PVE, there will be pushback from the higher end "fastest wins possible" PVE crowd, so going the boss route circumvents that issue).

ThaRoadWarrior

Whenever we get an event that features well-crafted teams of tile movers, like Simulator (story), people cry big crocodile tears because it slows play down so much. Even though I play progression-only and don't try to place, I'd still like some mode where placement wasn't a thing that had hard-to-defeat or build-the-right-counter-team nodes on it. Support Circuit Reboot could be this mode - ideally just every node is a single clear, culminating in exactly the same progressively hard boss-pins.

pheregas

I'd sign on for a daily, DDQ-esque tab that has like three situation-specific goal nodes in it that refresh daily with different challenges from day to day.  Only need to clear each node once and get something like iso for the first node, HP for the second node, and 5cp for the third node.

It would give people to use the people they want and play it in their own time.

DAZ0273

I'm all for Bosses or puzzle things - I loved it when we got surprise Super Patch and Super Venom in Boss Events. 

JHawkInc

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Whenever we get an event that features well-crafted teams of tile movers, like Simulator (story), people cry big crocodile tears because it slows play down so much. Even though I play progression-only and don't try to place, I'd still like some mode where placement wasn't a thing that had hard-to-defeat or build-the-right-counter-team nodes on it. Support Circuit Reboot could be this mode - ideally just every node is a single clear, culminating in exactly the same progressively hard boss-pins.

There was definitely a lot of chatter in our alliance about doing a "Support Gauntlet" as the replacement, which is basically what you describe (you could clear Gauntlet nodes like... 3 times, last time it was run, so you could go with slow escalation there so you get multiple runs against the hard-to-counter teams). There are also (generally) plenty of comments about a progression-only mode, and that does seem to go hand in hand with slower, more difficult/puzzle-y nodes.

pheregas said:

I'd sign on for a daily, DDQ-esque tab that has like three situation-specific goal nodes in it that refresh daily with different challenges from day to day.  Only need to clear each node once and get something like iso for the first node, HP for the second node, and 5cp for the third node.

It would give people to use the people they want and play it in their own time.

Adding to DDQ was my original suggestion for adding Supports to the game before Support Circuits came out. Add slightly more challenging nodes with different requirements from the rest, like a 3*/4* only node, or a node with a required 4*, a "Team" node (like X-Men Only), etc. Give out a Basic Support Token and another Taco from clearing the nodes, add some HP/CP/ISO for the extra progression added on top of normal DDQ, then tweak and expand the Taco vault (more stuff since you're getting more Taco tokens, to keep the odds of any individual reward roughly the same, and then all of the "new stuff" is mostly Support related).

Borstock

I would honestly be thrilled if they just had someone go in and swap some AI characters, and nothing else. There are more villains in this game than there were when most of the events were created. Swap out a Juggernaut for Prowler here, a Daken for Vulture there... I'm guessing the reason that they don't do it is because they'd have to move through some sort of tedious approval process and it just isn't worth it. But even that would be nice.

ThaRoadWarrior

Borstock said:

I'm guessing the reason that they don't do it is because they'd have to move through some sort of tedious approval process and it just isn't worth it. But even that would be nice.

Simulator (story) is the only event that seems to be routinely updated with new characters when it comes around. I find it genuinely hilarious to see the commentary on it when that happens because some of the teams can be pretty tough. The other place this occasionally happens on the 5e nodes for story, but those seem to get created with interesting teams (Royal Family, Mockingbird + Heroes for Hire), then never touched again

DAZ0273

Oh dear sweet Thanos...

The rockett

Great topic, now going to forum purgatory.  

Anyways, the puzzle aspect has been asked for before and would be great.  Non timed PVE for this would be awesome as well.