Would you prefer non-Puzzle Gauntlet events to run alongside boss events?

Godzillafan67

Now that we've had time to assess how a PvE + boss event would feel, did you end up finding the situation positive? Doable but you'd rather have non-alliance events? Hated it?

BCS has the numbers, but we have the anecdotes. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.

WilliamK1983

Yes

Wasn't much of an inconvenience at all for me, nor did I have to change my regular pve time either.  

Pro: I liked this way also because in the past with the alliance events, I wouldn't get to max out my daily bonus rewards (from vip purchase).  

Con: The 8pm node reset rolling right into pve clears.  Reminded me of my early days when I needed at least 2 hours a night for pve(last 3 clear, then first 4 clear).  The under developed roster days were a serious grind!!  However, knowing this was coming I was able to plan ahead and time all my weekend commitments out.

Timemachinego

No

It wasn't THAT big of a deal, but I do appreciate the extra few hours of time once a month to catch up on tasks that haven't been important enough to fit into my schedule otherwise or to even just stare at a wall blankly. This game is an endless grind, breaks are important and it doesn't upset our alliance commitments when they're baked in.

Godzillafan67

Yes

I certainly prefer having access to the amount of rewards I’m used to grinding for. That said, I think a non-alliance, do-as-you-please event or increased node rewards to cover my missing loot would work for me also.

P.S. I just noticed the typo in the question. Sorry to all!

ThaRoadWarrior

I don’t know if I want to be railroaded into saying only PG stuff, I would have said untimed events. I definitely found there to be way too much time sensitive content running at the same time, I did it but I didn’t enjoy it. Usually I use alliance event weekends to catch up on Simulator.

probably not the place for it, but puzzle gauntlet takes up way too much time for the reward structure. I only do the two red circle nodes to get my 3* dupe worth of iso and then walk.

Theghouse

No

Prefer the puzzle gauntlet or other alternative story event that is not a normal PVE.  

dianetics

Yes

It did not seem like I was playing much longer than usual. I prefer to do things at my normal time and the boss events run at off times for me.
There was also something to do during the last day, when there is usually nothing. So I would prefer to keep them, but it doesn't seem likely since the player base is divided on it.

Bad

(Call me) maybe

Godzillafan67 said:

BCS has the numbers, but we have the anecdotes. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.

Great slogan! As much of posterity as everything we write. Be it a lot or nothing  

I don't care too much. Giving our lazy nature if there is no pve we are happy but if there is we do it and happy too.
At least it's how it works for me.

PiMacleod

No

I would not like to do that again.

PvE events require a set amount of time per day.  We all know this... it's not news.

The boss requires play during certain periodS (read: multiple) each day it's active. 

If you've got a roster of 550s, this is probably a moot point to you, since you probably fly through most PvE and boss things... but for the rest of the world, it's a bit longer to do.

PvE + boss event = a lot of time looking at your phone.  As much time as I sink into this game already, I wasn't a fan of sinking in more.  Sure, I still like the game, but let's not kill the desire to play by pushing too many events at once.  If people wanna play more matches in a day, let's leave that for PvP, please.

ThaRoadWarrior

I guess I'd be curious to know what the new dev team thinks is ideal: that it's possible to engage with all daily content to completion, or that players will be forced to decide what daily content they are going to engage with at any given time with the understanding that you just can't keep up with it. I would hope it's not the latter, but I suppose it's their prerogative to do that.

For this experiment, sure we got another PVE's worth of rewards we wouldn't normally have had access to, but the grind is pretty excessive to me.

Punter1

No

I always enjoy the break afforded by the Boss event weekends.  I know this game is a daily grind, and I still enjoy that (most the time), but I also look forward to the small breaks to the ongoing match-3 rinse-repeat cycle that come with boss events and 48H subs.  

I have characters at a high enough level and in a decent alliance that running the boss concurrently was not too huge an inconvenience.  However it turned a normal nice break Boss weekend, into a normal PVE weekend with a Boss inconvenience.  

I play S5 PVE and am in MST time zone, the boss starts for me on a Thursday at 10am, while i still have a grind in PVE to do.  I'm used to the overlap and a busier Thursday.  

On a boss Friday, normally it's 1 quick easy clear early and 2 shorter than PVE clears.  Friday evening is clear - yey!

If I'm lucky I wake up Sat am and the boss is done, so just need a little for personal prog.  Then no more MPQ PVE for the weekend, just some PVP time which i do when convenient.  Importantly I get Sat & Sun evening free!

I play enough MPQ as it is... I don't need more!

jbtilley

No

Boss events (and 48 hour nodes) are to help prevent burnout. This weekend was the opposite of burnout prevention for me. It flamed me to the point where I'm closer to just giving up on trying to keep up.

Usually the MPQ routine is about an hour per day (already waaaaaaaaaaaay too much) but with the PVE and boss event running together, it took a solid two hours to finish PVE and the boss event and that was just for the normal daily playtime in the morning. I had to come back twice more after that to finish out the boss event resets.

The burnout wouldn't be so bad if I felt like I could take a few days off and not risk getting further behind.

justsing

No

Boss event = break from daily grind. If something else is run alongside it, I'd want it to also be untimed like Puzzle Gauntlet and not a regular PVE event.

toecutter3095

Yes

I am deep in the ISO hole of 4-star land, so I liked having something extra to do alongside the boss event to keep those precious resources flowing.  I play slice 2 of PVE and if I remember rightly, I think that coincided with the start of the boss event, meaning I had to choose to do one or the other. The very early rounds of a boss event are normally quickly completed with an active alliance, so having to choose was not ideal.  Maybe offset the start time of the boss event so that it doesn't clash with any of the PVE slices..?
I'm not a puzzle gauntlet fan, effort vs. reward is just not doing it for me. Definitely happy with something else to do and if it ends up being PVE, so be it. Any of the suggested alternatives, like a revival of Gauntlet would be fine as well. I wasn't playing when that was an event, so I have no experience of it, but it sounds a better option than puzzle gauntlet.

axmoss

(Call me) maybe

If it were like once every 3rd boss event, I'd be for it. But not every Boss event with a concurrent PVE event.

turbomoose

(Call me) maybe

I’m not too worried either way, sometimes it is nice to have something extra to do during alliance events especially in between seasons

However sometimes there is too much to do

That being said, nobody has to take part in an event.

Personally when I did take part in the event first time around I finished too 10 in SCL 10 which is rarely the case so clearly a large number of players didn’t take part

fight4thedream

I'm curious about how many people who voted yes would also be cool with new content that wasn't a time-based competition.

I don't think this is an either-or situation.

If I understand the issue correctly, the divide falls into two schools of thought:

a.) Burnout Prevention (BP) School: Boss events provide a period of downtime for competitive players.

Pros: Allows those that play the game competitively a moment to catch their breath
It also is a good time for players to do the Simulator event

Cons: Less opportunities to earn rewards
Potential decrease in user engagement

b. Moar please (MP) school: Boss events are not enough. There needs to be supplementary content.

Pros: More opportunities to earn rewards for everyone
Keeps users engaged

Cons: Risk of burnout and/or disillusionment with the game

The MP school has a legitimate criticism of the BP school in that if a player wants to take a break, they are free to take an event off at their own discretion. What is often called "No one is forcing you to play" critique.

On the other hand, a significant factor of what drives competitive play and spending in this game is the Fear OF Missing Out (FOMO) effect.

Obviously it is in the dev team's best interest to try to appease both groups. For me, at least, the solution seems obvious:

Create new events that aren't time-based competitions. For example, an Iso-8 Bonanza event that only allows the player to use villains characters (and maybe Deadpool?) in an attempt to steal Iso-8 from some kind of Fort Knox-like storage facility. Give players a chance to pull a heist. Rewards consisting mostly of Iso-8 and maybe and odd Heroic Token or Two. And oh yeah, throw in one beginner support token, too.

Make it so a new player can earn enough Iso-8 to at least be able to champ a 3* star or two. Give new players an event they can look forward to.

Obviously not every event should have the same rewards. They can run a Mercs for Hero Points event that gives out extra HP, a Cosmic Collision event for CP, etc.

Or they could repurpose shelved content like the original Gauntlet or Boss Rush.

With the original Gauntlet, make the first sub set at a difficulty for 3 star roster level with rewards relevant for that peer group (more ISO, less CP for example, Elite tokens and some Heroic), the second sub for 4 star level rosters (more CP, less ISO, replace Elite tokes with Heroics and some Mighty Tokens) and the last sub for 5 star rosters (even more CP, even less ISO, Mighty tokens and two Classic LTs and one normal LT).

You could even do it Heroic style and restrict the usable characters for each sub meaning the first sub a player can use only 1-3 characters, the second sub 3-4 characters, and last sub 5* characters only. That should help cut down on winfinite combos if that be a concern.

I guess for me personally, there is just so much they could do instead of running the same type of PvE events that I find it a bit baffling this isn't what people are asking for.

Broken Circle is still relatively new and it's good to see them trying new things but I definitely believe there are solutions that don't alienate either schools of thought on the issue.

ThaRoadWarrior

Puzzle Gauntlet specifically is also a lot of effort for very little reward. You can clear the two nodes on the right and get your pair of 3* support duplicates, and walk away without feeling like you are leaving anything on the table because supports are such a lame duck feature currently. I would definitely be in favor of other untimed content being around, but additional grind based events are a drag to me.

JimboJambo

No

I agree with the suggestion of a different kind of event. Ideally one that people feel they can skip more easily. So for me that means 1) a non-alliance event - therefore no compulsion to play so that you don't let down your team-mates, 2) not offering rewards for covers in the normal rotation - eg if I'm trying to champ 5* Odin and he comes up in this event that clashes with the boss event, then I will end up playing both but resenting it.

Just to be clear, I have no issue with people getting more rewards than me - if they play more, they deserve more. But I think the specific rewards on offer and the alliance conditions make it more difficult to skip a full PVE event. To some extent, increasing the rewards for the event the last time this happened made it even more difficult for people to skip, because they knew they would be missing out on even more.

slidecage

(Call me) maybe

i would rather have jack up reward Pves run along boss events its like double presents

killahKlown

"Would you prefer non-Puzzle Gauntlet events to run alongside boss events?"

Prefer over what exactly?