[Brainstorm] Ideas for improving PvE?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hey all,

I’m seeing if we can kind of aggregate and discuss some ideas about improving the PvE experience. I don’t think it’s good for the game for players (especially vets) to burn out like I have on a fairly big slice of the game. Let’s collect some existing ideas about how things can be less burnout-inducing and maybe come up with some new ones!

(I really enjoy DPD and don’t feel like I’m sick of the core gameplay. I think PvE can actually be improved, and can be something that every player will look forward to playing!)

COMMON FORUM SUGGESTIONS

  • Make PvE non-competitive (i.e. more like Deadpool Daily or Gauntlet)
  • Distribute time slices better
  • MAKE MORE CONTENT!
  • Consistent rewards for 4* releases
  • Retire heroics

MY LIST OF PVE PRO/CONS

Pros

  • 2* rosters can compete with top rosters
  • No points-reducing mechanics like PvP losses
  • There’s a storyline!
  • Team composition plays some role
  • Premier format to introduce new characters

Cons

  • Time investment is still extremely high, even with 8h refreshes
  • Final sub grinds require 2+ hrs to optimize
  • Scaling is an unintuitive mechanic that can go out of control if the game is unbalanced
  • Too much emphasis is placed on bracketing
  • Certain PvE formats are awful and should be retired or reworked

RANDOM THOUGHTS

  • I’m on board with the non-competitive PvE idea. DPD is structure pretty closely to what I’d want in a PvE… one-time clear, not insanely difficult, just fun content to plow through with whatever team I feel like playing that’s somewhat effective.
  • Difficulty balance would be the trickiest part. You want the PvE hard enough to require a good team, but not so difficult to where you need THE overpowered team (or Whales) to get through. I think Gauntlet is way overtuned for what it is, and the intense difficulty curve stifles some of the enjoyment.
  • I would like devs to boost more than 3 characters on each tier, and boost based on % rather than flat values. A “Women of Marvel March” PvE event with all the ladies buffed would at least present you with some fun alternative teams.
  • In a nutshell, FUN = REASONABLE DIFFICULTY + NO/LOW REPETITION + TEAM VARIETY + FUN REWARDS. In other words, DPD. Why can’t PvE shift more towards what DPD is?

What are your ideas about improving PvE? What does your ideal PvE event look like?

Previous suggestion threads:

2

I voted for “Not yet, but I’m getting there,” because on the one hand I am pretty burned out, but on the other hand I don’t want it to go away or stop participating entirely. I’m with you that the Deadpool Daily is fun, and I hope that’s the model they’re working with going forward.

A lot of my frustration with PvE could be alleviated just by making more of the nodes non-repeatable. The out of control scaling is frustrating, but sometimes it’s kind of satisfying to take on an insane challenge and win by the skin of my teeth. I just wish I didn’t have to repeat it to place well.

The thing I keep thinking about is that I wish there was some kind of modest effort, modest reward gameplay mode. I can’t really play the game effectively if I’ve had more than a drink or two, but I often find myself with a drink or two in me, getting ready for bed, and wishing I could play for ten minutes. I’d like to have something that’s always there, that’s a little more challenging than the hardest nodes in the prologue, and a little more reward than 20 iso. ETA: The sort of thing I’m thinking about is an endless survival mode, where you get a small reward for each wave completed, and each wave gets progressively harder, so eventually you WILL wipe out.

3

We need a non-competitive daily PVE. If it must be ONLY The Daily Deadpool, so be it. But additional
non-comp PVE would be most welcome. I chewed up HUGE amounts of time, boosts , health packs & mental energy over 5 days
in the Hunt, and could never crack the top 10 ( highest was brief stint @ 13th ), so my reward = Prof. X, 1 cover.

Will be a long time 'till that’s helpful.

That is why I answered " burnt out"

Most other games I play have some sandbox or non-comp mode.

4

I personal have two problems with PVE.

The first is how long the events run for, five days is a long time to commit and compete at something - especially if you work shifts, have long hours, or study and work at the same time. Having to schedule two fixed points for multiple sub endings over five days seems more like work, it is asking a lot from the player to stay competitive. Coupled with the quick restart of events, if you are in a good PVE alliance it starts to feel like your life revolves around PVE. I could understand the commitment needed if it was a shorter event, but anything over two - three days is a nightmare. Games should be a distraction from the world of scheduling, dead-lines, and time-management… to an extent at least - not a event you schedule into your life. Kind sucks the fun out it if your scheduled 12.00 appointment is Marvel Puzzle Quest for the week. I am not actually sad enough to do that by the way… honest.

I think that is the problem I find with scaling too, the higher enemies need longer matches usually, as you have to play more defensively and their health is off the charts - and it just a big time sink. (I could just suck at the game, however). I do enjoy the challenge once or twice, but repeatedly it takes hours to grind down to zero, and maintain an okay score.

So I’d go for smaller run times - but that would have it’s own problems too - as you’d most probably have to commit an entire day to it. So … that’d suck too most probably.

The second problem is the low progression cap. I know it gives an achievable 3 star and I wouldn’t want to change that, but if the top what, about 50 players are at least doubling it shouldn’t it be expanded somwhow. So they still receive something, even if its just a iso bonus every 10000 or 15000 or something after ward. I know they gain the covers, hp, top alliance rewards and most probably collect all node rewards for tripling and so tripling does in the long run net you more - but it makes the grind after progression so long and even more soul-sucking somehow.

5

Make the one-time Node bonuses based on Challenges, rather than random luck. For example:

+70 ISO: complete node.
+250 ISO: Complete using only Avengers
+250 ISO: Complete using only Xmen
+500 ISO: Complete using only female characters.

This will benefit veteran rosters more, because they’ll have more diversity and be better equipped to complete the challenges. But they also need the ISO more anyway. As an ancillary benefit, might mitigate scaling because the teams required for the challenge won’t be the optimal team to win with.

Edit: spelling

6

a much less intensive schedule, somethimg like maybe a system where a PvE lasts one week, with three 24 hour subs, each having 10 timeslices throughout the week

Give players at least a little flexibility to be able to pick when they grind

7

Choice A normal event normal rewards, go grind to your hearts content.
Choice B Casual mode event, no leaderboard, timers are still running, but only progression rewards to fret about.

Choice A will always have more potential for rewards but Choice B would offer something good if you keep up with it.

8

I’ll give the Wrecking Crew 2015 story again here with our ranking in events. During this time I think we also hit T100 in all but maybe one PVP. We often put in one or two Mercs for the intro PVE events, thanks to them as well.

The Hulk: #60
Deadpool: #56
Oscorp (SG intro): #34
The Hunt: #65
ISO-8 (Cyc intro): #51
Enemy of the State: #66
Prodigal Sun (IF intro): #91
Season XII PVE’s - the alliance quit PVE.

Seriously, done. Top 100 PVE alliance every time, out. We kept all 20 people in the alliance through this decision, including a couple of PVE-heavies. We were all burned out, some had left in previous seasons, some were ready to leave if we kept up the grind.

PVE is simply not worth it once you get out of 2* transition. You can spend a week on a constant grind and get one cover, or two if NINETEEN other people also did this - there isn’t enough room to get another cover without basically everyone playing hard. Instead you can skip the PVE and pick up two (or more!) covers with a few hours of work in the following PVP. We were a T100 PVP team before this, since we quite PVE we’ve T50’d five of the last six times. With more rest (and perhaps more healthpacks?) everyone is having more fun and doing well.

Some still hit up the PVE until progression to get some rewards, or harder if they want a personal cover - we’re fine with folks mercing out if they need to, and seven did for the recent 4*: all are back now. We’ll push for the 3* rewards, since T100 once (or maybe twice) a season isn’t to terrible, but to heck with the rest of these events.

It’s ridiculous when I can do what I did with the Hunt: enter with 25 hours remaining and only my dislike of buying health packs (and wanting sleep) kept me from T10 and top progression: but that was so much better/easier to T50 than the alternative. Can’t do that for an alliance though!

Ideas to improve:

NEVER, EVER T50. 4* T100, 3* T150 for alliances.

SCALING OFF. Folks shouldn’t be “punished”, but rewarded for having the essential/boosted characters. Boosts should make event easier, not be required to beat nodes.

Top 18 scores in any PVE count, to allow alliances to give their members a break (or have a life), and slow mercing.

Progressions ONLY, not competetive. Want the same % to get reward? Set progression to that percentage.

NO EVENTS LONGER THAN THREE DAYS. Players hate playing the same sections over and over and over!

All held EITHER on weekdays OR on weekends - not a combination in which some can do one part or the other well, but not both.

ALWAYS alliance rewards in subs, so it feels like you are getting something out of it.

NO HEROICS, which everyone hates!

RUBBER-BANDING OFF. With shorter events, this won’t matter. With progression only events, you don’t want to encourage “catch-up” or everyone will.

4* rewards for top progressions of non-introductory 3*'s, so it feels like your last reward actually helped get something worthwhile (rather than say, yet another 3* storm and a 3* Rags cover you didn’t want).

Rewards continuing past the “top” progression, or more rewards along the way. ONE HUNT TOKEN in progression?!? Come on, these drop something good like 2% of the time. Every thousand points up to, and beyond the “best” progression should go 250 ISO / event token / 25 HP / 500 ISO. It’s a bummer to be getting rewards every 1K to 12000 (or whatever) and then see next reward at 20,000. It’s not like your points started going up any faster between then! All it means is you get rewards less often, and the event feels less rewarding.

Seriously, any three of these implemented would make the PVE’s enjoyable (and perhaps worthwhile!) again.

9

I also liked that the final sub nodes in “Enemy of the State” would award an Event Token upon completion.

10

No more dark avengers ffs. The marvel universe is so diverse, yet we fight the same gang of wannabes over and over again. Enemy of the state was a good direction for PVE. Token award for the last survival node was good. PVE rewards need to be expanded if we are expected to grind for a week straight for 1 or possibly 2 covers for most people lol.

11

While I understand, and would definitely welcome, a model where only the top 18 scores count… does this risk actually making things slightly harder?

Let’s look at this last (soul-crushing) run of the Hunt. I know that many of the t50 teams tried to get it done with 1-2 of their low-middling scorers, but swapping dictated that almost all 20 seats on a roster had to be filled with a solid score. It was a terrible let-down for those that got swapped, no doubt. But those last swaps could be used to argue that 1000 of the top scorers got the alliance pX prize last night.

What if the top 900 players were now able to get across the line 18 at a time? This leaves 100 very strong competitors out in the cold and awards a pX to 100 players these winners felt a personal loyalty to. It also generates a potential to gray-market purchase tickets to the top spot - an argument typically used to counter ‘cover trading’ ideas even when they are limited with ‘same alliance’. If you spread those 100 people out across 5 other teams - didn’t you just make the competition for t50 that much more cutthroat and terrible (with 55 teams trying to absolutely kill themselves for 50 spots)?

12

What if they eliminated the 4* alliance prize (so that the alliance side of the prize pool was all just 3* rewards like every other event) and they instead set a global threshold where the top 1,000 individual scores got an additional cover? The same net number of 4* cards were released, but you don’t have the carnage we saw last night?

13

I was going to burn my self out and try to get 3 ares but i got to the node ( mind you its like the second node ) and i had to face a 110 Daken, Juggs and Venom.

The Characters available to use.

MStorm : Flly Covered lvl 196
OBW : Fully Covered lvl 134

and the other 3 were level 90 3torch
level 80 daredevil
Level 70 squirell
all of them have less than 5 covers

even with storms powerful black it was only a matter of time before juggs got 6 red. and getting stunned every turn my venom didnt help.

i tinykitty lost .
decided i was just down on my luck. i tried again … juggs blasted off a head but twice in two rounds downing storm.
Obw got devoured and torch was useless and i got chipped out.;

i will not be plYING THIS PVE

14

I really like this idea. Anything that promotes a diverse roster in this game is a good thing. Playing the same old comp every time is a quick way to get bored with the game.

15

best way to improve PVE is to get rid of/retune old events, keep amount of nodes low, keep scaling nonexistant, make more events, make heroic events have rosters that make sense, stop releasing 4*s like crazy

16

I’ll settle for events that begin and end at the same time of the day before anything else fancy.

17

I think one of the reasons why I’m going towards burn out is the fact that I’m tired of playing against the same characters following the same stories…

For example:

Professor X was introduced

MAKE THE STORY ABOUT PROFESSOR X! Write a childish story on how Charles has been kidnapped and you have 3 (3!!, not 6.5) days to try to save him. Make some nodes or subs work in a way where you need the help of all the members of the alliance to get it done. Stop making me fight daken and bullseye and ares every single node. It’s getting too repetitive. PVE should be where we go to relax and really enjoy the game. We are already hitting hard during PVP, PVE should not be the same.

Fight4thedream had a really good article about new game content, maybe D3 should take a look at that:

https://forums.505go.com/discussion/22828

One of the reasons why people are loving DDQ is cause we are fighting somewhat new characters every day. It’s new content (even though the text is the same…)

To save PVE, new content is needed. I can guarantee that PVE gameplay will definitely go up

18

Change how nodes degrade: instead of regenerating over time, they degenerate by a fixed percentage (maybe like now; 100%/83%/67%/etc.) down to 1 and that’s it. At the same time, nodes go up in levels by a fixed amount every time you clear - the second time is a bit tougher, third even tougher, etc. That’s where scaling is. Prizes are fixed - not competitive - based on how completely you do this. Doing every node 6 times gets you a 4*; something a bit lower gets you 3 3* covers, etc. All prizes are progression. They’d have to fiddle with it to get the levels right, but that’s solvable.

Events would be open for x number of days and allow people to go at their own pace, like the gauntlet, and wouldn’t be tied to time slices or times of day.

19

With a bad start to the season and seeing no possibility for 4k early on, I’ve REALLY checked out lately. I competed in the Iron Fist PVE after being able to place in the top 50 after the first day of the event. I ended up placing 53 after basically checking out the final day. It’s just become WAY too much of a grind to keep up, pun intended. I touched two nodes on the current The Hunt PVE, but with no Professor X, I can’t even bring myself to try and earn the Gold Token in this event. Deadpool’s Daily is about all I do these days, then I check out. PVP and PVE have become more of a burden than anything else. This thread comes at a good time, and anything close to a Deadpool Daily format would be GREATLY appreciated, the sooner the better. I’m honestly just satisfied get the one or two tacos, 1000 ISO, Daily Reward, and checking out. I respect D3 and ALL the work they do, but something has to give. Even if they host Deadpool-esque events once a season or something, gamers need a break. Not to mention another game in this thread, but when I played WoW, the same thing happened to me when Burning Crusade came out and I was still level 58. The game became miserable, and I feel that same thing coming on strong in this current format.

20

I’m not a huge fan of how most of the PvE portion of the game is pretty much PvP (you fight other people for the top prizes). I don’t want to see that disappear, just more PvE options.

I love the Deadpool daily, as a newer player it’s fun to get a cover of a card I only have 1-2 of. Progress!, someday I will see a full three star!

More PvE events/dailies would be great since my roster isn’t high enough to compete with the Vetern players in PvP yet. I do love working my way up though.