All good things must come to an end, but in my case, for the best reasons ever. On Monday morning, my wife is having a c-section and bringing our twin girls fully into the world. I am 100% stoked and excited for this. However, I expect that in the short term my play and forum time will plummet, and depending on how things go, I may or may not end up coming back - there’s just not much in the game that feels fresh and new. Unlike a lot of other quitters, I’m not necessarily bitter. I’ve greatly enjoyed my time here and in the game and while things can certainly be improved, that’s true of any game and of any community. As far as the forum community itself goes, I’ve greatly enjoyed the conversations and it has been a pleasure serving as one of your community moderators. You will all be missed.
Since it’s trendy in quitters’ threads to list things you’re not happy with, I thought I’d reiterate things that others have said as well as offer a few ideas of my own.
Lack of an end-game or higher-level purpose
I have a pretty good roster, but the only thing I get to use that roster for is short-term, repetitive goals. The only long-term goal is seasons which don’t actually add anything to the gameplay; its just a leaderboard with meh rewards. Give me boss battles, give me cooperative Alliance events, give me alliance vs. alliance events, bracketed tournaments, heck even just daily quests like “kill a max level Hood - earn 200 ISO”. Something to break up the monotony of match 3 battles.
Lack of diversity in game play
As others have said, new characters are hardly revolutionizing gameplay. I’ve been a campaigner for this since I started posting. I understand that this is intended to be a purely competitive game ala League of Legends or Dota2, so suggestions for static PvE, crafting, headquarters / lairs, followers, or whatever may not entirely be appropriate (though would certainly enhance the game and offer a much richer PvE experience). But there are a host of tournament options that I’ve seen in similar games that help break the monotony of endless PvP tourneys that are required for season progression. Some random thoughts:
- Team tourneys with exclusive heroes: go into a tourney with 2 other teammates where your team is set for the entire event and the heroes you use for your team can’t be used by your other teammates.
- Survival mode - take a team in, no health packs, no boosts, no substitute team members. Earn boosts or health packs along the way. Rewards after you survive each wave, nicer rewards after each 5 waves. Can save progress so you don’t have to grind 50 or 100 waves all at once. And finally, a valid reason to have enemies scale to level 400.
- Capture the Flag / King of the Hill / Domination / Tug of War - They’re all variants of the same style of gameplay. Have a map with nodes that represent each participating alliance’s headquarters. Have a central node that represents a target, and have a path of nodes leading from each headquarters to the target node. Fight along the path until you get to the target node, earn points for holding said node (i.e. have a zero-sum-gain progress bar that fluctuates based on wins/losses). When you lose on offense, you get sent back to the beginning and have to fight your way back to the target. This could be the Monday equivalent of Lightning Rounds. 90 minute events. Nothing ground-breaking in the gaming world, but would greatly improve the variety of pvp. It’d be fun to see a week long tourney where a world map is broken up into sections for participating alliances (say 50 alliances per bracket) and actually have your team gain territory and eliminate other alliances as their territory gets taken over. Sort of a Risk: Legacy style gameplay.
Character balance
There’s lots of discussion on the issue and there are people on both sides of the issue with very valid points. I think most everyone agrees that D3/Demiurge’s approach is dead wrong (i.e. the looming specter of funbalancing making you wary of ever investing in the brokenness). My personal preference is for characters to be balanced as quickly as possible. Every PVP I go into is Patch + C Mags + featured character. If I’m lucky, it’s C Mags + Hulk/BP/LT/Hood/OBW + featured character. See the common theme? Sure, all super-hero games should make you feel super powerful. In this particular game design, with persistent damage and slow regen times, making everyone on par with C Mags would cut my already restricted play time sharply. Even when I win, I’d be more likely to take abusive levels of damage. There has to be a balance b/w characters like Rags and Daredevil and those like C Mags (at least in the hands of a player). If anything, there should be more abilities in the 4-6 AP range. Match 3 is repetitive, but I’d love a game where I can make 2 matches and start doing things. Making one match and then getting lucky on cascades is an unsatisfying way to win and is a painfully frustrating thing to lose to. The overabundance of C Mags also highlights that people are only playing to win the next rewards, and not playing b/c they enjoy the gameplay. That’s b/c there’s zero incentive to stop and smell the roses (see my above thoughts on lack of diversity and alternative game content).
It was tempting on my way out to do something wacky, like ban IceIX and Demiurge_al (not that I think he’d notice), or possibly post in the announcements forum the most epic fake info I could come up with (R632: Season 17 rewards: Compete in this 3 month event for 5* Daken: “Die Hard with Laziness” edition - now even lazier than his 4* “Live Free or Die Lazy” version). In the end, I figured it’d be better not to burn any bridges (stickying my own quitting thread doesn’t count 
) just in case I do decide to come back. Given that you’re down to 3 mods (and I haven’t seen much of pandaberry in ages), we’ll probably be drowning in spam. Poor Nonce will be like that last soldier about to be overrun, emptying his clip bravely but futilely into the oncoming horde of spammers. As a last desperate action, he IP bans ... and pushes submit.
Take care and peace out.
