Defy Conquest a case study in base boss design

HoundofShadow

That was a good thread being digged up by entrailbucket. The scenario that I expected from the players if the dev decided to create a challenging boss event can be found in that thread. I read only the first and last three pages and it's mostly anger and unhappiness. Let's move along and forget about creating challenging boss events. History has proven that players will be unhappy, and challenging boss events in the past few years has continued to prove that players are not interested in a real challenging boss event.

Bubba3210

Hound, I disagree with your general claim. Not everyone complains as you suggest. It’s just that we wanted a little more with this one. That’s all…something requiring some strategy or puzzle aspect perhaps. This felt like a pve event and nothing special. No one is asking for challenge node difficulty every time even though you quickly went there for a difficulty aspect.

I know my alliance looks forward to boss events. It’s a time to work together for one common goal. We share strategies for harder events. No one needed to share because it did not require one.

BlackBoltRocks

I don't know why people keep engaging with Sky of Horus even though he's proven himself to be incapable of staying on topic and inevitably blames everything on the playerbase.

In any case, I enjoyed this boss event, but I agree with @dianetics' main point that this event could have been more "special/unique/whatever adjective is appropriate". And every "boss" node having both Kang and Modok plus some random AIM dude kind of defeated the point of a "boss node". As many have stated, it's effectively just another PVE node. In addition to many of the good suggestions already made here, my own humble suggestion is perhaps a boss gauntlet similar to Sinister Six. We could start off with Prime Kang, then Rama Tut, then Immortus. Or maybe even have two boss nodes like Sinister Six, Civil War, Molten Man/Hydro Man to incorporate as many variants of Kang as possible. Maybe we could have a new PVE event that incorporates the Council of Kangs? So many possibilities.

bigjojo04

This is why i always enjoy having a PvE going on during a boss event. Hitting the boss takes like 10 minutes max each mission flip so the PvE running with it keeps me playing. I honestly can’t remember the last time i used a health pack on any boss events.

The extra bit of health Kang gets when he gets low isn’t really much of a gimmick to make it feel like a real boss event like others in the past. Not that I really care cuz I’ll take the easy 5* covers but I do agree with others that mentioned how this really just feels like any other regular node. Maybe in the future when they run this boss again they can add some new, interesting gimmick to make it feel more like a traditional boss fight rather than a regular mode .

HoundofShadow

If designing unique and challenging boss events is as simple as splitting 7 days events into 3+4 days events, and the playerbase would be happy, then I'm sure the dev would do it. But past histories of many unique and challenging events have proven otherwise. How many events have been taken out of rotation because of players' complaints? Fight for Wakanda was one of them. Places of Powers is another one. Bosses are supposed to feel challenging unless the bosses are joke characters, like Big Wheel. That's where you can have fun and unique boss events.

At the end of the day, the aftermath of launching a unique and challenging boss event is a problem that the dev has to deal with. How can the dev create a unique and challenging boss event without some or a hoarde of players playing victims in the forum? The most common rebuttal or feedback to challenging and unique events is "The players are being punished for (insert reasons)".

1. When Bishop was reigning supreme, players were being punished for making matches.
2. When heroic boss event made a comeback last year, players were being punished for building a wide rosters.

If the dev create a unique and challenging boss event, are you going to stand together with them and fight off those players playing victims, or are you going to take this opportunity to take multiple shots at the dev?

It's probably this reason why Demiurge can't be bothered with this and continue with their hamster wheel boss events because they know how those dedicated players are going to react when difficulty is increased.

Edit: I'm not saying all players behave this way. There are players who genuinely look forward to unique and challenging/fun/puzzle events but histories have proven that the dev will pull the plug when complains overwhelm them despite the facts that there are supports for them.

entrailbucket

The bigger problem is that they sort of can't make a difficult fight now. There's like a million overpowered nonsense teams that can go infinite and beat any enemy team of any level pretty trivially.

If we got Galactus now, he had a million health, and he wiped your entire team 3 turns in, I can think of probably 4 or 5 teams that can trivially win that fight, and plenty of players have access to them.

The way to make fights interesting now is with alternate win conditions, but we kind of already have that with puzzle gauntlet.

Anyway I agree that this Kang thing is somewhat exceptionally low-effort and boring, but the rest of the boss events are just the same thing, with a hat on. Like the Thanos boss is moderately more interesting because he's randomly left the Infinity Stones scattered around the board, but if you match one he just immediately dies -- it's even easier than Kang.

Glockoma

This event left much to be desired. Yawn.

HoundofShadow

They could always implement heroic into boss events with unique mechanics
The problem is, how do you convince those groups of players who spend years to widen or improve their rosters that they are not being punished with restricted rosters? This argument or rebuttal has come up many a times and they always portray themselves as victims. I'm sure many of you've seen such argument before.

Scofie

@HoundofShadow said:
They could always implement heroic into boss events with unique mechanics
The problem is, how do you convince those groups of players who spend years to widen or improve their rosters that they are not being punished with restricted rosters? This argument or rebuttal has come up many a times and they always portray themselves as victims. I'm sure many of you've seen such argument before.

I don't really understand the argument. Take the Dark Avengers event last time. How many people were rubbing their hands together in glee because they'd ignored the meta and leveled up their 5* Yelena to 550 through shards. It was only the people with deeper rosters that could manage it easily. Yes, so they couldn't use everyone for 3 days, but it's not like the characters got retired. It's a game condition. It's like complaining you can't use the corner tiles during the Apocalypse boss event.

Bowgentle

@Scofie said:

@HoundofShadow said:
They could always implement heroic into boss events with unique mechanics
The problem is, how do you convince those groups of players who spend years to widen or improve their rosters that they are not being punished with restricted rosters? This argument or rebuttal has come up many a times and they always portray themselves as victims. I'm sure many of you've seen such argument before.

I don't really understand the argument. Take the Dark Avengers event last time. How many people were rubbing their hands together in glee because they'd ignored the meta and leveled up their 5* Yelena to 550 through shards. It was only the people with deeper rosters that could manage it easily. Yes, so they couldn't use everyone for 3 days, but it's not like the characters got retired. It's a game condition. It's like complaining you can't use the corner tiles during the Apocalypse boss event.

Just ignore him.
He's running out of angles to paint "the players" as the problem here, so he's swapping arguments every time someone calls him out on one of them.

Scofie

@Bowgentle said:

@Scofie said:

@HoundofShadow said:
They could always implement heroic into boss events with unique mechanics
The problem is, how do you convince those groups of players who spend years to widen or improve their rosters that they are not being punished with restricted rosters? This argument or rebuttal has come up many a times and they always portray themselves as victims. I'm sure many of you've seen such argument before.

I don't really understand the argument. Take the Dark Avengers event last time. How many people were rubbing their hands together in glee because they'd ignored the meta and leveled up their 5* Yelena to 550 through shards. It was only the people with deeper rosters that could manage it easily. Yes, so they couldn't use everyone for 3 days, but it's not like the characters got retired. It's a game condition. It's like complaining you can't use the corner tiles during the Apocalypse boss event.

Just ignore him.
He's running out of angles to paint "the players" as the problem here, so he's swapping arguments every time someone calls him out on one of them.

Yeah, but I win most arguments on the basis of logic, patience and stubbornness. 😉

I agree in a sense that you'll never please everyone. Question would be how seriously you take a section of the player base's concerns before you never do anything different at all. I'm far more in the "we heard you but we respectfully disagree so we're doing it anyway" camp (because players also disagree with no change!). But that's a risk/impact assessment choice for the devs. I'm hoping they'll be decisive and brave. And if I don't like one event as a result, I'll still appreciate the variety.

Bowgentle

I'm ok with the Devs trying out some stuff, if the rest runs smoothly.
Lately they haven't tried out stuff, and things still broke, so that's the worst of both worlds.

Scofie

I think there are three elements to doing something new: character design, event design and the interaction design. I think the latter is most difficult because it's based on the quality of the handover from the previous devs, the combination of old and new code and an ever- increasing and complex set of characters, powers and revamped and new affiliations. It seems that the focus has been on the character first (fair enough, it generates the revenue) and then the event where there's time. My guess is that the handover wasn't fully comprehensive and some of the knowledge went out the door, so now filling the gaps is now being done alongside other development. But new characters and new events create many more issues and that's what we're seeing now.

DAZ0273

And on the 8th (and 9th) Day of the 3rd Month did he come from the Desert to bring wisdom to the cowardly cry-baby MPQ player base, The Tsar of MPQ(TM) himself, may RNGESUS preserve and he did proclaim:

Listen! The Devs, oh makers of all shalt hear thy cries, your whine and be yet turned yet heed my words!

'Tis not an obvious non scaling node bug, 'Tis as an encouragement to 2/3* players!

Yay, those of you who can rise above your coward status BE advised to play the event with under levelled 3*!

Lo, the cowardly superstitious lot who have built their wide rosters will never accept event restrictions (aren't those the players who are fine as they have everybody?) so must Kang doeth the NOTHING!

Come forth from your 5* hidey holes and embrace the LIGHT, O' unwashed of MPQ!

Magik is just fine!

Bowgentle

Rofl.
Brilliant!

Bad

Well, I'm already in a trascending state where I accept everything.
Do devs want to keep designing easy boss events? So be it.
Do devs want to gift valuable 5* covers for everyone just for playing 10 m each 8 hours? So be it.
Do devs want to present the same event to all players types despite so many times receiving scl suggestions? So be it.
The alternative is to not run boss events for a good while and losing these almost free resources.
So I just play and beat these punching-balls and I move on.

DAZ0273

@Bad said:
Well, I'm already in a trascending state where I accept everything.
Do devs want to keep designing easy boss events? So be it.
Do devs want to gift valuable 5* covers for everyone just for playing 10 m each 8 hours? So be it.
Do devs want to present the same event to all players types despite so many times receiving scl suggestions? So be it.
The alternative is to not run boss events for a good while and losing these almost free resources.
So I just play and beat these punching-balls and I move on.

It would be too hard for you Bad, so yes, a wise choice.

HoundofShadow

I'm not swapping arguments. I'm just looking at things from a holistic point of view. Anyway, the dev mentioned they are still in talk about making endless wave nodes and bringing back gauntlet. The thing is, they are still talking about it.

DAZ0273

@HoundofShadow said:
I'm not swapping arguments. I'm just looking at things from a holistic point of view. Anyway, the dev mentioned they are still in talk about making endless wave nodes and bringing back gauntlet. The thing is, they are still talking about it.

You never had an argument to swap to begin with!

Chipster22

@Bowgentle said:

I think Civil War was the only one where alliances had trouble finishing both sides.

My alliance has still never finished both sides of Civil War and I'm always excited when it comes into rotation. We are so close, finishing 7 and 8 rounds.

For our mid to low tier alliance it gives us a challenge of which we have a reasonable chance of beating soon.

I hope Civil War runs again soon and often.