Story Event Minimum Points - Trial Run (3/9/18)

LifeofAgony said:

I agree re: top end cl9 play,  Its the one game feature I believe truly rewards skill as I see non-550 rosters beat 550s in the race on a regular basis.  Tapping completely negated the one facet of the game that I believe had ever been tied to skill, so kudos on the the hopeful death of tapping and hooray for competition.

I am rather curious what you mean by "skill". As someone who plays PvE competitively, it seems rather clear to me what sort of rosters will dominate this sort of format:  Players who 1. have the boosted 5* character for the event, 2. either have a viable 5* Thanos and/or high level *5 Thor and 3. are willing to use boosts if competitively necessary. 

There are perhaps a handful of nodes where such a team is not the most ideal but they are quite rare. I would argue if a player with such a roster finished slower to a non-550 roster it wouldn't be for lack of skill but rather lack of motivation or some other external circumstances. 

Ironically, as someone who does play PvE competitively, I have always wished they would make it non-competitive. Not because I don't enjoy a good race because I do but in terms of game play experience and balance, PvE should be the one arena where people are encouraged to move out of their comfort zone and use more of their roster. It's why some people have been asking for the return of heroics.

I personally would like to see them adopt a skill-based personal progression point system. Under such a system, you are not competing with anyone but yourself. Instead of speed, your point totals are determined by a base factor and then increased by various multipliers.

So for example, the base point factor would be overall team health points + value of the node on completion of a node. And then, let's say there are five types of multipliers: 

1. Use of event boosted character: 2 x base points

2. Completed node in:
1 turn: x 3
3 turns: x 2
6 turns: x 1.5

3. Friendly tiles on board at mach end
6 or more tiles: x 3
5 friendly tiles:  x 2.5
4 friendly tiles:  x 2
3 friendly tiles:  x 1.5

4. Single target damage threshold in one attack:
Damage over 40,000: x 3
Damage over 35,000: x 2
Damage over 25,000: x 1.5

5. Star level of each non-downed member of  team:
1* character:  x 4
2* character:  x 3
3* character: x 2
4* character: x 1.5 

So for example to illustrate:

Player One

Team: 5* Captain America, 3* Sam Wilson (boosted for event), 1* Hawkeye
Complete node with all members active, 7 friendly tiles on board, highest single attack 16,120
Number of turns to complete match: 17
Total health at end of match: 49,650
Value of node: 850

Base total value: 50,500
Boosted character x 2
6 or more friendly tiles: x 3
1* character: x 4
3* character: x 2

Total points: 2,424,000

Player Two

Team: 5* Thanos, 4* Carol Danvers (boosted for event), 5* Black Bolt
Complete node with all members active, one friendly tile on board, highest single attack 25,422
Number of turns to complete match: 6
Total health at end of match: 160,758
Value of node: 850

Base total value: 161,608
Boosted character x 2
completed node in 5 turns: x 1.5
Damage: x 1.5
4* character: x 1.5

Total points: 1,090,854

At CL9 Personal sub progression final progression goal for
sub 1 would be: 25,000,000 points
sub 2 would be: 30,000,000 points
sub 3 would be: 40,000,000 points

Event final progression goal at CL 9  would be: 95,000,000 points

So once you hit the sub 1 final progression goal you can stop, knowing you are on pace to reach the event progression.Or if you think you will be busy over the next day or two you can keep at it to pad your score. In that instance, you won't get anymore sub or node rewards but you can still work on event progression rewards.

This, of course, is just an example. The devs could tweak it using bonus points instead of making everything a multiplier and what not. For example, Player One could get a bonus 5,000 points added to their point base level for using an "All team Cap" team.


Obviously, the devs would also want to adjust point values on node sets, being sure to make the hardest nodes both challenging enough and rewarding that people would prefer to test their skill there rather than "tap" easier nodes for easy points. Also utilizing the current CL system, the lower levels would offer lower kinds of rewards but would be much more forgiving while the higher levels would offer better rewards but require higher level of skill and a deeper roster to achieve final progression.

Additionally, such a move would in fact significantly lessen the use of 5* Thanos as his Court of Death would prevent players from benefiting from the non-downed star level character multiplier. 

The goal is to tune each CL level where the "ideal" roster for that level would be able to achieve final progression at 5 clears to allow room for experimentation and player error. 

I think such a system would be a lot more fruitful than simply making PvE a race because it encourages players to consider their roster options more carefully. I imagine the forum would see an increase in discussion about the best teams to deal with each event as boosted characters will figure much more prominently in scoring and we would have to re-evaluate the worth of characters as now you are going to have a meta-focused on preserving health points and friendly tile production. 

Of course the devs could find another measure for determining base level points but I think you get what I mean. Anywhoo, that's my 2 cents on the subject.