“A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way; however, the heavy toll negates any sense of achievement or profit (another term for this would be “hollow victory”)” - Wiki P. Dia
i stand before you a victorious, broken man.
i pushed myself to the extreme to achieve that blue cover dream. And i ask myself: was it worth it?
Was it worth running through those rings of hell, health pack after health pack as Team-Up surprises robbed you of your HP and stole your victory?
Was it worth the countless ISO used to fund your boosting, the HP used to keep you going, just to maintain your lead?
Was it worth staying up those ungodly hours to try and get as many clears in before exhaustion set in?
Was it worth sacrificing your winter vacation, your precious time, your sacred sleep just to ensure victory?
i can’t answer that question. not now.
But what i can say is that this was the least amount of fun i have ever had playing this game. The ironic thing is that i actually like the Simulator. it was one of the first events i participated in as a n00b and i have fond memories of it.
But i realized i am not the same player i was yesterday. Yesterday this game was a simple diversion, something else to do when i had some free time. Today it is my chain and i feel it’s pull every 2.5 hours.
But no more.
i have to take better care of myself. i’ve sacrificed my gym time and other interests to try and be the best. but i won’t continue like this. it’s not a healthy path that i’ve set on.
i’m not walking away from the game, i still like it a lot and think it’s fun but i am definitely dialing it back a bit. Having now gone hard in both pVp and pVe, i can say without question that pVp is much more enjoyable for me. However, the shield changes concern me.
i was never one of those mighty players that dared to dream of breaking records but they have my respect. If you pay attention to how they talk about their accomplishments, you can feel the pride and joy the took from the experience. i don’t think i have ever heard anyone on these forums speak fondly of their victories in pVe.
And the reason for that is that you have to play pVe to the extreme if you want to succeed and you essentially do it alone. sure you might get an encouraging word from your alliance mates, but they can’t help you. Your enemies may curse you, but they can’t stop you.
However, they can chase you. They can push you to play more than you want to play. Miss one refresh, risk dropping down a rank or two. Yes the decision to play or not is ultimately up to you, but i ask does this situation sound fun to you?
The devs told us the reason they implemented True healing is because people were doing tedious Prologue healing and it detracted from the fun of the game. So i ask them: Do you think trying to hit as many 2.5 refresh times in a 36 hour period is not tedious?
The devs told us the reason they are implementing 8 hour cool down times is to prevent players from cutting down on sleep to shield hop. So i ask them: If you are concerned about players getting sleep, why don’t you make 8 hour refresh times for pVe?
Don’t get me wrong, i know the devs mean well and have a lot on their plate as is. But i am concerned with the direction this game is heading. In the last Q&A, they mentioned that they intended to keep pVe competitive and they were considering a single (hopefully non-competitive) player mode. They also stated that they would be increasing the number of 4* and were going to make the transition from 3* to 4* smoother than from 2* to 3*. But they made no mention of how they intended to rectify the current 2* to 3* transition problem nor with how to deal with player burn out.
And of course these problems are only the tip of the iceberg.
What i want to focus on though are these three issues:
*** Issues with the current pVe structure**
- The 2* to 3* transition
- Shields
Issues with the current pVe structure
To be honest, i probably got the short end of the stick this time around and ended up with a few other strong players looking to shoot for the top so we ended up pushing each other a lot further than any of us wanted to go. Apparently, dudes/dudettes in other brackets had it easier. Be that as it may, there are significant issues with this pVe that i believe the devs need to take into consideration for improving the overall game experience:
*Refresh times: 2.5 hours encourages extreme forms of play. In order to do well, you have to try and hit as many refreshes as possible. Obviously, the choice to play or not play is ultimately up to the player but if the player chooses not to play then he or she receives lesser rewards, and if a player chooses to play optimally, he or she risks being burnt out. pVe with such low refresh times becomes a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Ideally it should be a win-win, where all players get something of value for whatever amount of effort they put in. 8 hour refresh times would be great, but i suppose 4 or 5 hour refreshes would also be a significant improvement.
*subs: as has been stated many times before, subs should be set to 24 hours, no more no less. It makes choosing a time slice easier and reduces the repetitiveness of the event. On a personal anecdote, due to the 36 hour subs of this event, i could not play the last hour of the second sub and the first couple of hours of the last sub which promptly saw my 20,000 pt lead vanish and me drop to 2nd place. Not cool but what can you do?
*scaling: now honestly i am on the fence about this one. According to the current meta-game, pVp is the vets playground while pVe is supposedly for the rookies and those lost wandering the deserts of transition. Scaling ensures that the Vets take quite the beating while those still too young to fly on their own get a nice cushion. Honestly, i don’t want to take the one area of the game that non-Vets can excel at away from them.
However, this wouldn’t be an issue if there was a proper system in place that eased the transition (i.e. other game modes, rewards, etc.). The problem is that there are three ways to acquire 3* covers in this game:
- pVe (competitive)
- pVp (competitive)
- tokens (luck)
None of these are very conducive for a 2* player that likes the game but does not have the time or money to play. i’ve already gone into why the current pVp structure needs to be changed (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/20613) but let’s take a more comprehensive look by consider the current pVe structure.
In order to do well in pVe you need to basically two things:
- the essential characters
- time and will the play (and if it comes down to it resources)
Is pVe actually 2* friendly? Yes and No. Yes, because usually vets are not interested in going through the grind for all the covers, they know they just need at least one for the next pVe and depending on what kind of bracket they get and RL situation they may or may not shoot for Top 10 but usually won’t have much trouble getting two (plus the alliance cover) covers. However, looking at pVe’s that have anything to do 4hor and you will see that, when it comes down to it most vets are willing to put up a fight and compete. Most of the people in my Top 10 were either vets (a couple dudes already had 5 blue 4hor covers but were still pushing hard, can’t blame them though since it is her most useful cover) or people with optimal pVe rosters (i.e. many cover maxed 3*s but left underlevelled one would assume to keep their scaling down. Hell one of the main reasons i don’t level max my X-Force is because i assume it will mess up my scaling, the other is it’s too ISO cost prohibitive but i digress).
The real reason 2* players perform better at pVe is because they don’t have to deal with ridiculous scaling but if the rewards are good enough, then 2* players may find themselves out of luck. This will be especially true if the format for releasing 4* is the same as it is now.
The main issue with scaling for those that have developed rosters is that it feels like you are being punished for playing the game. In most games, you have a choice between easy, normal, hard, deadly modes but in this game there is no choice, it is decided for you. It is demoralizing to see a player with a significantly weaker roster keep or out perform your roster simply because they have it “easier”.
Rubberbanding: As someone who has used and abused rubberbanding in the past i find myself at an impass. Let’s be clear hear: rubberbanding is an unfair mechanism. It basically requires there to be players that are unfamiliar with the mechanic or those that cannot play at the end of a sub/event. If everyone were to try to use the rubberband it would break and winning a pVe would simply be a mad dash to the finish line. On the other hand, there is the grind. Using the rubberband helps keep El Senor Grind away. But the real issue is: Why do players use the rubberband? Of course sometimes due to their schedule a player can’t perform optimally all the time so having the rubberband helps keep them in the race. But i bet more than not, it’s simply because they don’t find the event fun and feel the less they have to do it the better.
Believe me when the rewards are good, the subs are short, the ISO is flowing and the HP is dropping like mana from the skies, people will play. When it is a 7 day slog fest, with long subs and too many nodes, people will try to find a way to game the system. Have the devs not noticed the bracket reporting system that has blossomed in the events thread now?
(And no i’m not advocating for the removal of such threads, they are available for anyone to see and are necessary considering the current problems with time slices and bracketing)
Finally one more issue i wish to point out before i suggest potential solutions is that even if a 2* player is able to acquire Top 2 status and win all the covers in a pVe event, that player will still be unable to cover max a 3* player unless they are very lucky or the devs pull a Steve Rogers and 3* covers rain from the sky in a short period of time.
Under the current format, a Vet can win 3 (or 4 if you’re in a good alliance) covers in pVe, at least 4 (if not 5 covers) in pVp and then wait until the next season for another pVp featuring the character (so in total 3 events to cover max a character give or take token pulls or alliance status). However, if you are a 2* player you can win 3 (or 4 if you’re in a good alliance) and maybe 1 (or 2) in a pVp and again 1 (or 2) in the next pVp (give or take luck and alliance status)
For the sake of the argument let’s just say you are a 2* player in a decent alliance, that gives you a total of 8 covers in 2 months. So you need 5 more covers to cover max your character. However, it is highly unlikely you will get anything more than one cover in pVe again (they may have one cover as a progression award but that becomes a matter of when) which puts you at 9, they might feature the new cover as a top prize in the SHIELD Simulator but let’s be honest how many 2* players are going to be able to make it that far? Zero, right? So you have to hope that you you will at the very least have to wait another month or two before cover maxing the character and hope the devs don’t vault your character cough Colossus cough You also have to hope that you don’t get overlaps of colors you already have maxed.
And this is only for a dedicated 2* player. The real problem with pVe is that in order to do well you have to play to the extreme (or be very lucky and clever). And if a player continues playing to the extreme but the rewards do not coalesce into a playable character then guess what? Burn out ensues.
The key to improving the pVe experience
I won’t go so far as to say do away with competitive pVe since there are those that like it and the devs seem keen on sticking to it but i believe there should be two kinds of pVe: competitive and non-competitive and that they should switch between the two. i think i have played through three straight competitive pVe’s and although i haven’t burned myself out despite my exhaustion i know that to continue playing this way is a recipe for disaster.
We need more than just the Gauntlet.
To be honest, i’m surprised at the devs reticence about offering more non-competitive pVe considering the popularity of the Gauntlet among the forumers. However, the Gauntlet isn’t really 2* player friendly. Most of the good stuff lies in the last sub which most if not all 2* players will have difficulty reaching. I think a great solution would be to offer mini-games that are fun but challenging for 2* player rosters and only offer older 3* characters like Patch, Punisher and Grey Suit Black Widow. Something like the Ten Rings where you face off against the Mandarin in a race to collect 10 of each AP color. Who ever reaches the goal first wins and 1* Iron Man is a required character.
For competitive pVe, things get a bit more complicated. i would like to suggest offering three different modes easy (for 1*-2* transition players), normal (2*-3* transition players) and hard (3*-4* transition players) where the scaling is per-determined and equal for everyone. However, considering the current fiasco with time slices and bracketing i fear such a system would spread out the player base too far that brackets would never fill at least not at 1000 people. Maybe they would have to shorten brackets to 100 or 200. Whether that is a good thing or not is subject to debate but what is clear is that if the devs plan on using the current format to release 4* characters it will have serious repercussions in the already problematic 2* to 3* transition.
Shields
Finally, i would just like to briefly comment on a recent experience i have had with shield hopping. i am not a major shield hopper. i shield hop only when there are prizes on the line that i want and i go no further than necessary. With the 2.5 refresh times and the high difficulty of the Hard sub, i was finding it difficult to do both pVp and pVe. i didn’t bother playing much of the Category 5 pVp (i even contemplated not playing it at all), gave Top Gun a fair go since i’m building a second Patch and did a Hail Mary for Top 5 in the Cage Match pVp. But considering the amount of time it took to clear the playable nodes in Hard sub (roughly about an hour), the 20 or so minutes it took get through Normal sub and the climb for pVp, for better or worse i literally played the game for 5 hours straight. yes, i luckily managed to shield hop my way to top 5 (i believe i used 2 3 hour shields in about a 2 hour time span) but if the cool down system had been in place that would have been a pipe dream.
Let’s just be honest, the new system is in place to cut down on excessive scoring. i won’t prognosticate on whether it will have an overall positive or negative affect on the game, as i fall into the camp of those that believe True Healing was good for the game (despite the double nerf to my favorite super-hero Spider-Man). So i am willing to take a wait and see approach. But i am also aware that it does make it that much more difficult for a player to perform well in both pVe and pVp at the same time. And maybe that’s a good thing. i don’t think people should be playing this game for 5 hours or more a day (at least not on a regular basis).
Ironically, i had planned on updating the “Thanks for listening and caring” thread i had made (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/17193) since we have seen a lot of great stuff come through since October (time slices, third powers, DD buff, etc) but i just couldn’t find the time while trying to keep up with the 2.5 refresh time. Hopefully i will be able to get to that soon.
Once again, i’ve said too much about issues that are beyond me. But as the title of my post suggests, there is no honor or dignity playing pVe to the extreme. i suppose whether the effort was worth it or not will all boil down to whether i can cover max 4hor. Hopefully i will be able to do that sooner rather than later.
As always, the devs have my thanks and support. The game is still fun, but too much of anything is never a good thing. please focus less on churning out new characters and more on creating new content (game modes, vanity titles, single player mode). Really stoked about Dr. Doom’s new ability! But remember, constant competition is wearying. Allow players to take a break and play at their own pace every now and then.
Best wishes to the devs, Hi-Fi guy and everyone on the forum for the new year. Hoping 2015 brings on bigger and better things!
A true believer,
fight4thedream
TLDR: Playing pVe to the extreme isn’t so much fun so be prepared if you are trying to be number one (or two). Please no more 2.5 refresh times and fix the 2* to 3* transition problem before unleashing the 4* upon us. I’m on the fence about shield cool down times. Let’s wait and see. And for the love of all that is wonderful and good, someone Free Willy. Happy New Year!!
