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

Godzillafan67
Godzillafan67 Posts: 596 Critical Contributor
edited August 2022 in MPQ General Discussion
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.

Would you prefer non-Puzzle Gauntlet events to run alongside boss events? 68 votes

Yes
33%
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No
54%
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(Call me) maybe
11%
axmossslidecageturbomooseDAZ0273First311BadfractalvisionsCharlieLima 8 votes
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Comments

  • WilliamK1983
    WilliamK1983 Posts: 978 Critical Contributor
    edited August 2022
    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
    Timemachinego Posts: 492 Mover and Shaker
    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
    Godzillafan67 Posts: 596 Critical Contributor
    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!
  • Theghouse
    Theghouse Posts: 334 Mover and Shaker
    No
    Prefer the puzzle gauntlet or other alternative story event that is not a normal PVE.  
  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,641 Chairperson of the Boards
    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
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    (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   :p

    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.
  • Tony_Foot
    Tony_Foot Posts: 1,812 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2022
    Yes
    They don’t need to be release events because I don’t want to cause grief for alliance members that want a break. Other than that it was excellent. I mean look at the scores some people posted in the boss event. 2.4 million. Clearly they want something to do!

    Or give them rewards post 900k.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,454 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2022
    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
    Punter1 Posts: 729 Critical Contributor
    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
    jbtilley Posts: 20 Just Dropped In
    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
    justsing Posts: 510 Critical Contributor
    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
    toecutter3095 Posts: 56 Match Maker
    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
    axmoss Posts: 240 Tile Toppler
    (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
    turbomoose Posts: 806 Critical Contributor
    (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
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,973 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited December 2022

    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.

  • JimboJambo
    JimboJambo Posts: 132 Tile Toppler
    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
    slidecage Posts: 3,452 Chairperson of the Boards
    (Call me) maybe

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

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