Proposal for PvE Event

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

A post I made regarding my feelings towards the recent Hulk event got me thinking about what can be done to fix this situation. Here are some of points on my view the current state of PvE:

–Lots of new characters
This is great. It encourages diversity and generates excitement. I believe it also reduces the need for funbalancing.

–New Character events should be epic in scale
There is a lot of development time and effort needed to create these new Heroes. Understandably, they should be promoted with a large scale event.

–Too many, too long! (this point is a little long winded)
The back to back events are wearing people down. Of course, no one has to play them all. Thats probably the point – to make people choose so that there is more variety. However, I think this will backfire. There was a recent post about a F2P survey that stated 50% of profit is driven by ~15% of the player base. This 15% is not going to sit out events. It’s that compulsive nature that drives them (us) so hard and ensures a steady ROI. After these last events, there were players (that were almost certainly in that top percentile) that stopped playing because they were burnt out. These weren’t grand gesture rage-quits, they were silent and resigned. That’s the real kind of attrition that needs to be avoided.

So how do we keep up all of these character additions, maintain an appropriate event scale, and prevent burn out? Here’s my suggestion…

DOOM’S BETRAYAL
(Theme: After H.A.M.M.E.R.'s defeat, Dr. Doom turns on the Cabal and attempts to enslave the Dark Avengers)

EVENT STRUCTURE:
-Main Event (Latveria) + 3 sub events (based on Hulk structure)
-Nodes in main bracket unlock subs.
-Sub events run simultaneously with each other
-Subs are only available to play Fri-Sun, over 3 consecutive weekends.
-Buffs: Dark Avengers, IW, Hulk

REWARDS AND PROGRESSION
-The top tier rewards on the Main Event display a silhouette and say “New Fantastic Four character!”
-Colors and Abilities for these heroes are hidden
-There are 3 progress bars in the Main Bracket
-Each bar represents a race to recruit a new FF character – Torch, Thing, Mr. Fantastic
-Each sub event features a different FF character in the story.
-Completing missions contributes to their respective progress bar on the main event (Leaderboard points are universal)
-Each sub event rubberbands with their counterparts, however…
-Completing missions in a particular sub will reduce point values earned by that player in the other two subs
-After each weekend event, these modifiers are reset
-Completing missions in the Main Event will unlock subs, contribute to leaderboard ranking, but will not effect the three progress bars.

END GAME
-The 4th weekend will present 3 subs, each featuring a different FF Hero’s portrait
-Each participant chooses their desired hero by selecting their respective event
-This will lock the other two events for them until the end of the tournament. (ie. “You have sided with the Human Torch!!”)
-Chosen FF member is provided as a featured character. He will be buffed with all his covers – this will be the players first introduction to the character and how he plays.
-Points obviously contribute to the chosen hero’s respective progress bar on the main event

–Once the event is over, the FF character with the most points unlocks
–Each participant gets a single cover (ala Hulk unlock)
–Rewards are distributed based on leaderboard results

…

I believe an event structure like this will be a positive experience all around:

-It will generate excitement
-Promote a new level of competition
-Increase personal investment in MPQ
-Offers players an equal opportunity to play
-Provide an epic scale showcase for new characters
-Set the stage for future characters
-Gives players something something to look forward to (the upcoming weekend event and future PvE’s for the unchosen characters)
-Prevents over saturation and burnout

You could even run PvP events during the week that tie into the theme and story (ie Dark Avengers strike back!) Progression and reward tokens can be offered that correspond with the PvE event.

Anyhow, if anyone thinks this is a decent idea, speak up.. add your suggestions! If you think it’s stupid.. well.. your mom. icon_e_smile.gif

2

Great idea, cant fault anything here. Well done good sir.

3

Nice job, man. This sounds fun.

I’m a bit confused by this. You mean 3 simultaneous sub events per weekend, right? Not 3 subs in total? Or, is it 3 subs in total, unlocked once at the beginning, each of which will reactivate every Friday?

Also, requiring IW for a mission unlock would handicap out a rather large number of people, more so than any 3* character requirement. I’m not only saying this because I don’t have IW. I’d say the same thing about the XWolv that I have.

I like this. I’m not sure if hardcores will like the “unlock only one char at the end” mechanic too much, though. For example, Cap is generally one of the most popular MPQ characters, even though he’s, ahem, not great. That said, I suppose his significantly higher emotional cachet wouldn’t apply to any one member of the F4 over the other F4’s. Also, I’d like to see some sort of subevents during the week, just for some pick-up-and-play. Perhaps events whose point stacks don’t refresh and have small + low progression rewards, but something to fiddle with.

4

Interesting idea: i really like the changes in event structure, since i think that mixing it up a little bit (like he iso labs in brotherhood) go a long way in spicing up the events. Your subevent structure is pretty cool: 3 events for 3 days means that theres still a ton of iso to be had, and rubberbanding is a neat way to still allow people to pick a side while allowing thknto grind all the subs. Here are the potential issues with this event:

  1. The single hero unlocking at the end of the event would waste a lot of development work with the 2 unreleased characters. The other 2 would need to be released after the event at some point, but then that means that theyre delaying content that they already have made (which is probably okay, but it means that they spent time polishing content that wont be fully released for a month, which i doubt is ideal for these mobile game companies)

  2. Not too sure about splitting the event into 3 separate weekends: 3 weeks is a lot of time (albeit only weekends) for the same event, and i think people would get impatient with the lull between subs. I agree that the recent 3x 10 day events have been a bit long, but reducing events down to 6 days or so and have 1 week break for every 2 weeks of events would be a better solution to stopping burnout.

  3. Small nitpicky thing, but letting you play as the das seems weird given how the f4 are all heroes.

5

Interesting ideas. I would take it a step further and give out different covers based on some criteria. Either people can choose 1 one of the 3 at the end of the event or make it somehow tied to the actions in game (i.e. I got most of my points in Human Torch missions, so I get him as reward). This could help with team variety, at least in the short term.

6

Example regarding the subs:
Friday @ noon, the main event goes from being greyed to being accessible. You go in, and play the three new nodes. Each one you complete opens a new sub-event, just like normal large-scale PvE events. During the course of the weekend, you can play any of those three sub-events (Human Torch , Mr. Fantastic , The Thing ). On Sunday night, they all finish and rewards are distributed. The following Friday, the same thing happens with different locations / battles.

Re: Unlock
I think the tease is a good thing. Sure, it’s gonna make some people complain, but what change wouldn’t? icon_e_smile.gif
It will get people talking outside of the game and generate hype. The only thing I was a little shaky on was being able to use their “chosen” character during the final act. I like the idea of being able to finally try out a full version of the character you’ve been working to unlock, but that would also mean that some players would be able to try out characters that potentially won’t be unlocked until the future. Whether that is a good or bad thing is debatable icon_e_wink.gif
I suppose they could always feature the unlocked character in a tourney the following week – on par with what is done already.

Re: IW
I didn’t mean to imply that she would be required, I only meant that she would get a buff because it makes sense thematically. However, I certainly would have her as a featured (provided) character like we saw in Thick and Thieves. This not only fits in with the story, but its a good opportunity to showcase her abilities. If more people enjoy playing her, that’s more incentive to compete in other PvP’s tourneys.

7

Do I get it right, the devs must create 3 characters but after the month time only one of them gets actually introduced?

8

Got it. I like that. Having not been around for past Hulk events, I rather liked the Hulk structure this time around.

Fair enough. It’d be great to be able to try out a few high-powered characters, then attempt to unlock the one you like.

Ah, got it. I don’t read comic books, so I know nothing about story. I’m all for buffing her. What’s one more buff, after all?