I do not feel PvE should be a competition.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Let me explain, i do not think that the whole PvE events should be about outscoring people at all. I feel it should be about progression and node rewards much much more. The 3 star covers should be placed in the progression point awards along with some of the Iso-8 to fill in the huge gaps later in the progression bars, 2 of the 3 star covers one reasonably attainable, the other requires a good amount of work, and the third requireing a bit of dedication, but not as much as the 4 star cover. I don’t even feel alliances and PvE should have any relation at all.

Also each node should have its points reduced per finish not affected by your total points compared to others or anything, when i clear a node it should not affect any other node, you cna play the PvE stuff as casually or hardcore as you want to get as far into it as you want.

Meanwhile the placement rewards i would prefer completely removed, but just for those who get kicks off of beating up pre designed computer opponents better than others. have them with token, iso-8 and hp rewards only.

now PvP i like how PvP works, perhaps reduce the effectiveness of tanking but that should be strong competition.

I think it would help a lot of new players without flooding the game with 3 star covers, there are roughly what 3 pve events a months giving a whole 3 covers each compared to what 8 or 10 pvp events? I really think reducing the competitive part of PvP will also reduce burn out, not everything needs to be a competition.

How is it not better to have both a casual option in your game, and a competitive option in your game? wider nets catch more fish and all that.

2

you can PVE and reap pretty solid rewards from progression only… so not sure what the issue is. Other people competing doesn’t prevent casual players from getting any rewards - in fact the opposite - the rubber banding HELPS casual players obtain higher point values per node, thus allowing them further progression. To me, it’s the best of both worlds for everyone. What it sounds like you’re really saying is that you think there should be more rewards for casual PVE.

3

I posted this in another thread earlier, but I basically agree with OP. To me, the bigger issue isn’t that casuals should be able to reap greater rewards, it’s that rubberbanding punishes people who aren’t able to play for an hour or two before the end of the event. Since D3 doesn’t seem willing to alter their event end times at all, I think it would help people in unfriendly time zones (I mean who wants to get up at 4-5 AM for a game?) to move at least a portion of the rewards from placement to progression (and make them actually attainable). These events are long enough that I doubt it would seriously hurt their bottom line if a larger percentage of people were getting the 2x cover reward or 3x cover reward (or even the 1x reward). It might even help if more people who get covers when they otherwise wouldn’t have decide to spend some money to upgrade those abilities they wouldn’t have even had the option of doing before.

As for the competition aspect, I don’t have a problem with the way it is currently implemented. Some people play this game to collect everything, some people play cause shiny marvel characters, and some people play to win (and I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons, just highlighting a few). I don’t think taking away all incentive to win would be a good thing, even if it were just in the PvE events

4

Other people competing shouldn’t affect casual players at all, but you are wrong when you say it doesn’t. Community scaling sees to it that casual players are affected as much as everybody else.

I agree with the OP, have PVE events plays like the Prologue but with the addition of progression rewards.

5

Hey all, thought I would share some thoughts I had that helped me figure out how/why I’ve been feeling about this game.

I really enjoyed the original Puzzle Quest game (Challenge of the Warlords). Puzzles are fun, but it was the Quest element that really kept me drawn in. While not a TRUE sequel, I thought Marvel Puzzle Quest would be something of a spiritual sequel in terms of its structure. But Marvel Puzzle Quest, while it succeeds in being Marvel and Puzzles, kind of fails to be a Quest.

My highest period of satisfaction with the game was when I was primarily invested in completing the Prologue (which was way back in the early days, I’ve been playing almost since launch). There were PLENTY of bugs to be ironed out, but in general I liked the feeling of gradually completing a quest at my own pace while getting stronger and enjoying seeing and playing as Marvel characters. Since then, the focus has so heavily shifted to constant competition, constant playing at the GAME’S pace instead of my own - even in nominally PvE content! Once the Prologue has been milled for all of its rewards (done months ago), there is no non-competitive way to play the game and earn decent rewards (besides daily rewards that are tokens or covers). It’s all about rank, tanking, timing, alliances - all metagame stuff.

I still like a lot about the game, don’t get me wrong. I like the option to play in a competitive way when I choose to. But I want Marvel Puzzle Quest to incorporate more QUEST elements. As it stands, this game isn’t Marvel Puzzle Quest, it’s Marvel Puzzle Arena, and I’d prefer the former. Just one man’s opinion.

6

Unfortunately, pure single player experiences are going the way of the dodo. They are content-heavy (ie. costly) and don’t offer the same kind of player engagement as a co-op, social, competitive game can. You see it across all kinds of gametypes, where the single player portion is tacked-on (FPS) or non-existent (MOBA’s). Some genres that relied on the SPE are all but dead (JRPGS).

You only need to look at the non-existance of Half-Life 3 to understand that we are in a different time.

So, it seems kind of Quixotic to pine for something that doesn’t seem very feasible given 1)the era we are in 2) a mobile game and 3) a dev team that is small.

7

I don’t see why an expanded single-player experience would be prohibitive. They could have something similar to the Simulator with 4-5 nodes that refresh daily with different enemies and prizes. That would be neither costly nor labor-intensive for the developers.

8

People have been predicting and lamenting the death of the single player experience for a decade or more now. Some developers see the bigger picture and realize that the social experience can generate brand loyalty, while other developers would rather have a much more polished but finite single-player investment. Single-player games also have a predictable revenue model while online games are far more erratic and have continual costs. Very few games reach that critical mass of paying players to sustain revenue (especially for larger publishing companies). And RPGs as a whole are still a very healthy market for game developers.

For evidence, I would present some stats from the ESA, 2/3 of gamers play online. So fully a third of gamers play only single-player games. Now also note that isn’t the number of games being played, just what percentage of players play only online vs. only single-player. My google-fu is failing me (blame it on the limited time I’m spending at work to write this post).

It sounds like what you’re saying is that gamers crave shallow experiences with no substance, especially those in the mobile world. Now at this point in the post, I become a slight hypocrite and say that PvE of the 90’s and early 2000’s is definitely harder to find. You can’t find the 90+ hour games where you can sequester yourself in the basement for weeks on end.

However, for a game like Marvel Puzzle Quest, what other content will they spend their time creating? The artwork for their PVP backgrounds take more time than the actual PvP event design. At the rate characters are being added, there has to be a lot of other things being developed behind the scenes. That says to me there’s a lot of content coming, most likely single-player and new features.

Either that or they’re all busy playing Titanfall with each other.

9

I understand the points about the new model of gaming being a stronger revenue stream, so I will answer by speaking about my attitude on what will make me spend more money on this game (I have put in a little bit, mostly to reward the developers when I was most satisfied with the experience). I don’t feel like buying ISO, HP, or Tokens are good investments. I resent the climbing costs of Roster Slots and Alliance Slots, although when I did spend money on this game the first time, it was for Roster Slots (I like collecting). But here is what will get me to spend money - I would pay a flat, fair amount to unlock more truly single-player PvE content without leaderboards and start/end times but with rewards worth playing for (ISO and HP are always good, but I’m talking about *** covers or similar) in reasonable amounts. Give me that and you can have more of my money, developers. Cash for Chapters. Your move. icon_e_smile.gif

10

In the link you provided all the top few pages of results are within the last 2-3 years. But, I understand your point. But the reality is that -the world- is moving away from the traditional games we grew up on. That doesn’t mean it will ever die (heck, they still make new 2d platformers every month).

But from a value perspective, the ‘upfront’ costs on a multi-player game are far, far less. They also provide a superior way for ‘word of mouth’ to spread. Which drastically cuts down on advertising costs (the biggest death knell of gaming companies).

And RPGs as a whole are still a very healthy market for game developers.

Well, some western RPG makers are still thriving (Obsidian, Bethesda), but the rest of the industry has moved into MMORPG’s (like Turbine) or gone bankrupt. JRPGS in particular are few and far between compared to where they were 10 years ago.

For evidence, I would present some stats from the ESA, 2/3 of gamers play online. So fully a third of gamers play only single-player games.

There is still a long legacy of older franchises/gamestyles that are still played today. The entire Nintendo catalog being the prime example. So, that number isn’t terribly surprising nor have much value when discussing where the trend is going.

There are numerous games on kickstarter that are ‘single-player’ experiences, but you wouldn’t confuse this recent phenomon as where the industry is headed or has headed in the past decade.

However, for a game like Marvel Puzzle Quest, what other content will they spend their time creating? The artwork for their PVP backgrounds take more time than the actual PvP event design. At the rate characters are being added, there has to be a lot of other things being developed behind the scenes. That says to me there’s a lot of content coming, most likely single-player and new features.

A good comp is the game King Cashing 2. If you haven’t played it yet, I urge you to check it out. It’s how an MPQ single-player game SHOULD look like, at least the bones of it. Your opinions on the artwork and the content might be subjective.

I look at the amount of content produced for this game in the past 8 months since launch and I don’t really see a whole lot. I look at some of the bugs and missing features and I wonder about them too. At least in relation to other F2P games from small studios I have played in 10 years. So, it speaks to me as a small team of people trying their best, but really under-manned to provide the type of quality content some people yearn for.

11

I see nothing wrong with an event structured like Heroic Oscorp where progression reward was better than placement reward. You’d almost certainly have to have no rubberbanding for that to work. Scaling matters a lot less (because if there was no scaling there’s still nothing stopping extremely high thresholds for progression which is the same thing as having a high scaling but lower progression thresholds). Placement award does not need to always be the best reward.

12

I used the term “brand loyalty” as one of the bigger benefits to social gaming, but I think you’re more accurate in stating that it’s word-of-mouth advertising. I think that’s where my mind was going, it just came out wrong.

Independent of the actual response I was going to write, I just read yesterday’s PvP comic and thought “huh, that is a very concise summary of both sides of our discussion points”. icon_lol.gif

13

They’re still thriving, but on the budget end of the market or on portable devices where expectations of graphics fidelity (the single largest cost in triple-A games) are lower. Very few of these end up being translated for Western consumption, because almost no localization company is willing to touch them. In that light, we should applaud localization studios like Ghostlight, which are currently bringing the Agarest series over to Steam; yes they actually have the balls to push such a console-centric genre to the PC-platform […] and apparantly it’s working out for them.

JRPGs are probably about to come back in full though, as the ridiculously good reception of the Final Fantasy X HD-remaster has sent SquareEnix off to do some good hard thinking on how their RPG titles are given form. They’re really the kings of the genre and if they decide to release more in the vein of that remake; good times are a-Comin’. (Well, SquareEnix and Namco have a shared throne really; Namco’s “Tales of…” series still does quite well for itself as well.)

14

Also, have you guys played Brave Frontier? It is essentially a single player experience. It encourages you to make in-game friends (but that’s a super-shallow level of interaction), and it has an asynchronous pvp arena, but the bulk of the game is a single player quest. That game is awesome. And fairly complex. And from what I understand, it’s wildly popular worldwide.

It’s also generous: my wife was just complaining the other day that when she logged in to Brave Frontier on Easter she got “Easter Eggs” with premium prizes inside, but when she logs in to MPQ she usually gets nothing. There’s room within the video game world for story, and single player content, and even sheer generosity on the part of developers. It’s not unreasonable to hope for those things here, especially considering the overall quality of the game at its core and the pedigree of the series that spawned it.

15

When they release Deadpool his three attacks should be called “Candy Crush,” “Flappy Bird,” and “Clash of Clans”

16

The other mobile game I play quite a lot is Quiz RPG, which seems to be doing rather well for itself. It has a very limited social component and no alliances/guilds, only a very limited competitive multiplayer component in tournaments which come along once every 2-3 months (and which, frankly, are mostly decided by who’s paying money so they can play the tournament as many times as humanly possible and not who’s the best at the quiz because placing is purely on cumulative scores). A number of the status updates I see on people are asking after the next story component… they seem to have no problems churning out non-story events but there’s only been one new story chapter in the last 12 months (sound familiar?).

I think single player games can be successful still.

17

For me, the reason we haven’t seen any additional single player content is down, in part at least, to laziness on the part of the developers. With so many previous chapters of PvE available (The Hunt, Thick as Thieves, etc), I can’t imagine it would be difficult at all to turn that into a static piece of single player content. Make the enemy levels static, put the rewards in place, maybe offer a 3* cover for completing the final battle of the chapter, things like that. It’s easy and it would take them no more than a matter of hours to plan it. Why don’t they do this? To my mind, it’s because they can’t be bothered coming up up with new PvE content at a decent rate. That’s why they are continuing to recycle the old events on a weekly basis. This last Simulator was the 3rd time (I think, maybe more) it’s been run. The Hunt has been done 3 times I think. The Hulk event has been at least twice. If you add that to the Heroics which come up every few weeks, the devs are able to go several months before releasing completely new content. I could perhaps be a little harsh on the devs here, but given the actual new content we get is limited to some new artwork, and a few new storyboards (with perhaps 1 new character as a reward), I honestly can’t see what takes them so long in releasing new content.

18

I recall IceIX saying once before that the art and the storyboarding is the long pole in development. So I really think what you’re doing is being harsh to the writers and the artists, not the developers. icon_e_smile.gif
With the core engine in place, most everything that the developers need to build around it is trivial by comparison.

The only other major consideration I would think is the planning out of the long-term effect that new static content would have on the game’s economy as well as monetization. This would be most relevant if they were to add a new game mode (a la crafting or follower recruitment).

19

If that’s true then I’ll obviously throw my lazy comments in the right direction in the future icon_e_wink.gif
The point still stands though I think - the constant repeats of all the previous content means there is less pressure on the entire team to push out the new content most of us are crying out for.

20

I’d agree they’d have to look at how it will affect the game’s economy, but I only see it as a good thing. I think most people would agree that ISO is generally the limiting factor in leveling our characters up, and while the new content probably wouldn’t have too much ISO in it, it could easily have several thousand ISO as rewards. What that could mean is that we can all level our characters up more, but I think very few (percentage wise) players have maxed covers for all characters. The extra ISO could potentially mean we reach the cover cap for our favourite characters. As people are more likely (IMO) to spend money on HP and not ISO, this could lead to more people buying HP to get extra covers so they can continue to level up their favourite heroes and villains.

That’s just how I see it potentially working any way. I know for me, that even after nearly 180 days of playing, that I still have several covers left to buy for a lot of my 3 star characters. As I’m limited by ISO I haven’t reached the cover cap for most of them yet, but when I do, I’d be much more likely to buy HP to get those last few covers I need.