Review of "Class of" events. i.e. pvp without placement.

Phumade

We've had 3 events and 2 under the new MMR. I think its a good time to talk about this A/B pvp test and evaluate if we should move to progression only play.

A couple of concepts to highlight.
1. A week long "pvp" eligible format is a real boon when you want to play without risking an event or season score. In many ways I view the class of as a continuous lr event. A way to drop in, test out a new combo/interaction and then leave.
2. themed events are wonderful way to limit rosters. Whether you call it X-men, "Class of" "Balance of Power, all these limited roster events are wonderful and I sincerely hope limited roster pvp can be intergrated into the existing season formats.

Now lets talks about the controversial concepts.
1. Seeds Seals, mini walruses are great for people finishing 50 wins progression. But I know from informal whispering that alot of people don't enjoy this new style of play. I personally didn't have any issues working through the "cache" and or using the standard pvp play tactics. But we be fools not to acknowledge the play experience is DIFFERENT and everyone is playing a higher match count whether your a T1 Superwhale or a meager salmon in the t100.
-> personally I enjoyed how it reverts to traditional play after you've fully seperated, but if its all on the table, its all on the table for discussion.
2. No placement rewards. It goes without saying, players would expect the value of placement rewards to be sprinkled into progression. But with that said, how do people feel? I still played class of after I had my 50. assuming proper rewards "check points" I have no concerns playing another 40 matches for "competiton". In any case, this has been wished for by a segment of the community for years. What's their thoughts now that we have it live in game?

Now that everyone's had an a opportunity to compare class of to standard season events. How does everyone feel about more

themed limited events vs character focused but open roster events?

Progession only vs placement rewards. Assuming the values are similar is match volume higher in class of or the season events? Is match volumes a more important metric to the devs?

I am definitely open to these week long events, even if it meant 1/2 the rewards. The flexibility of play is great and worth having it run concurrently to the season events.

KGB

I love these week long themed PvP events with no placement. With the game being 13 years old you could rotate them infinitely and only get each 'year of' event 4x a year (52/13=4).

As far as MMR goes, we already know what's happening is a bug and is going away. So the idea of 10 or 20 or some such seal teams isn't going to stick. Not sure it's even worth discussing because I see no way it's going to happen.

Now what we might be able to lobby for is making these all be 'balance of power' type events where every character is boosted to a flat 550. Since there is no placement, it would mean there isn't a need for MMR at all if you just flat set every character to 550 and let everyone battle everyone. You'd get tons of different teams in your queue with everyone at 550 and no downside (ie losing points) if some lesser team combos get infinitely hammered (in fact there is really no need for retal nodes either since there are no points and you could skip until you find a team to your liking).

Then the other discussion would be around supports (if everyone is flat boosted to 550 including newbie players with 1 star rosters I'd say no supports at all since that would be the unbalancing part having players with no supports vs R5 supports).

KGB

ThaRoadWarrior

I've primarily liked an easy path to grind 1* covers, since I have a few that are "close" to being ascendable to 5* . I say close, but it's still a few hundered covers. I have a few at 370 with 3* dupes, so any time I get those covers it's actually a bit more exciting that some random 3* out of a low end token at this point.

entrailbucket

Limited roster PvP (and also PvE!) is great fun and encourages building a deep roster.

I think for events like this to truly be considered "extra," they can't have placement rewards. Otherwise you'll get lots of complaints about being "forced" to do them. The extended time is also nice for this.

Please no more Balance of Power. Fights are just too random, it penalizes/eliminates the benefits of roster strength, and everyone ends up settling on the same few teams anyway.

Are we strictly doing marine life metaphors now? Whales, salmon (?), otters, seals, walruses? If so I would like to be an octopus, or maybe one of those sponges that lives on a volcanic vent.

Grantosium

Putting aside the broken MMR, I found it interesting that 2013 and 2014 were both pretty open and most characters in the limited roster seemed to be viable choices. 2015 wasn't much worse but the presence of 5* characters started to skew this.

2016 was horrible. If it hadn't been for the high availability of seed teams this would have been really painful to finish because every real team seemed to be Dr Strange and Peggy. This is arguably the year that balanced character design started to go badly wrong and passive abilities became more important than actives. The 2013/2014 game was a lot slower than today but 2016 slowed the game to painful levels.

2017 introduces 4*Rocket and Nico which feels like a direct reaction to the pain of 2016. We all love Rocket for what he does to PvE but you've got to admit this is the point where PvP can never go back to the (IMO) interesting 6-10 turn back and forth of gathering AP and blocking your opponent's AP gathering to being all about passive strike tile creation and finishing matches in 3-4 turns.

I don't know what we do with this information. There's no going back. Maybe some aspiring game designer is taking notes for their own game. Maybe one day we can have an event where passives are disabled and see how that effects meta?

ThaRoadWarrior

I do miss the off season themed PVP like the 2v2 one, the 4/3/2 one (which might be hard now that I've ascended most of the lower tiers?), evergreen, etc. Now it seems like the off season events are just 3* pvp that don't count towards the season points.

DAZ0273

The console version of MPQ has balance of power as the PvP and it is the most tedious thing I ever played. It is not fun.