Based on how Heroics are being implemented, very few players will be happy with them.
Right now you, the devs, are monkeying around with systems to force this extra mode of play into existing modes and it’s not generally going well when your players have been playing a certain way based on the game’s incentive structure, for years. Players who have been following very long term strategies which are required in a game like this which deliberately provides slow, long, steady progress and requires being focused on the best characters when there are 402 of them.
Heroics do nothing to change the basic design of the game and how well and fast you can build teams.
If you cannot restrict PVP nodes to only showing you other Heroic teams, abandon it now. Do not force Heroics into standard PVP. It will only be usable vs seed teams. There is no path where a player being forced into at most 2-3 boosted toons out of the couple dozen, or a bunch of unboosted non-meta teams, will be able to do well. Anyone who’s applying a modicum of cost-benefit analysis to their play will not engage in Heroic PVP as is described - and has been experienced in the America PVP - beyond trying to see if they can get a few extra 2s and 3s from seed rounds.
Instead of making Heroic part of normal PVP, create a separate season long Simulator where you can ONLY use Heroic teams. Maybe make the required points double and required wins double and double the progression rewards. Make it separate from the standard season, let people play it as they want. Some people will like playing it more than standard PVP (no meta teams), some may not, whatever. But shoving weak teams into a meta team environment is just not going to work no matter how you muck around with free shields or whatever unless you can granularly apply rules to Heroic nodes when the game was not built in a way to segregate teams you see or use. I would recommend having no placement rewards in the side Heroic Simulator PVP.
You could run similarly designed Heroic PVPs alongside normal but I would recommend not running them more than like once a week to avoid burnout by the tryhards.
PVE extra points are a logical solution to a big problem, being that it’s taking longer to play Heroic nodes and many players might find themselves hitting a wall on the 4th and 5th clears. EXCEPT: The points boost break the game’s overall incentive of building your best teams up to do well. They lock you out of using the best characters/teams unless they happen to be in the affiliation and winning the event. The same characters that the game has been incentivizing you to build for years (I just 550d, finally, my 4-5 Jugg.)
IMO a better solution - since I assume splitting standard PVEs into Heroics and non is not going to happen - would be to make a Heroic and non-Heroic Tower where the Heroic one offers better rewards in nodes AND progression. Make it fully optional, feel rewarding, make it last the whole season etc so people can know they can chase characters or the vault and try to beat more nodes that they might feel stymied by. It also makes for better community building when you’re trying to beat nodes for progression and sharing teams and strategies over 28 days vs shorter term events. One reason for this is meta teams for endgame rosters can waltz through the whole Tower with no problem and adding a challenge for them would provide an opportunity to play something harder, optionally.
Aside: In the old days we had an event called The Gauntlet which offered increasingly hard nodes with some team restrictions and I think that spirit should be returned to, which this Heroic Tower would do.
Lastly anything you do will end up with players in the thousands who have an incredibly deep knowledge of the game finding exploits you may not be anticipating and reacting in ways you also are not anticipating. I do not know what you all worked on before but this game, despite its falling engagement, remains far more popular than any of the prior and newer PQ titles or Gems of War.
Maybe all of these are easier said than done and obviously require new work and things. I do not pretend to think any of these would be listened to and I understand going simpler, and anything you do different upsets the game calculus for players, and might mess up some of the habits we have.
But you’ve already done that with the PVE points bump and Heroics in general.
These are just my ideas but I don’t think the the game you are designing will work with the players you have.
Interesting ideas. An easier implementation is a Heroics PvP/PvE and a Normal PvP/PvE, running at the same time (just like they’ve done for boss battles). If someone wants to do both, then that’s entirely up to them, but at least you have people competing at the “same level.”
Going all in has always been a very risky move. The game’s entire history demonstrates this over and over and over again, including relatively recently with m’Thor and Polaris, and folks simply refuse to learn the lesson. When they hit Hawkeye we’re going to get a bunch of “who could have predicted this???”
The safest strategy has always been to build a wide roster, so that you’re ready for sudden metagame shifts (like this one!).
Heroic PvE makes sense to me, especially now they have implemented the extra points for playing it that makes it make sense.
They must have fixed America Chavez PvP by the time I joined as I had no Heroic option. I don’t really understand how they are going to do this on PvP so I hope we get some proper up front communication explaining what the benefits of Heroic PvP are going to be and who it is we can be potentially fighting against with a restricted roster.
I think the idea was to accomodate pvp farming and normal lb scoring within the same event/structure.
i.e. Some people play to farm 1*/2* now 3* covers (say 200 matches ) per event. while others play for event and season points.
As it currently stands, you can pursue one path or the other, but its hard to farm 200 covers and score over 2000 points per event. (Yes, some rosters can do that, but that requires lots of engagement/time)
I can see where they are trying to bifurcate the playerbase within the same “event” structure. I suspect its because they can’t afford the event reward budget. i.e. they don’t want to create extra bracket rewards, they simply want to accommodate both playstyles within a std budget.
Maybe allow players to switch between Heroic and Normal mode mid event? I.e. allow players to switch their MMR (and available targets) from Heroic mode (Xmen) to Normal mode (unlimited).
I personally don’t mind playing Xmen exclusive for better covers, but I would also like to transtion back to standard play and compete for points and placement.
Farming works best with easy wins. Heroic does not give you easy wins. You are fighting boosted normal teams. So you can’t just farm the nodes and not worry about hits. You also can’t climb for points as you are a huge target for all the normal teams.
So it is the worse scenario for both the modes you describe.
If I recall, aren’t there a couple seven day PVEs that are on the shelf? Take those and make them Heroic only and run them concurrently with the 4 day / 3 day normal PVEs. With one start and stop time for all Clearance Levels. Major rewards are progression with minor rewards for placement. People can dip their toe if they want, play both, go all in on one. Whatever.
Heroic PvP only really works if they can separate matchmaking and bracketing somehow (and if they do that, it REALLY works! It fixes tons of problems with the current PvP setup).
Unless/until that happens, it’s unclear who heroic PvP would be for. I have like everybody 550d and I won’t bother with it. Players with weaker rosters sound like they’re not interested (speak up if I’m wrong, please!). Competitive players can’t do it and still compete, and noncompetitive players seem to just try to “do their PvP” for some number of wins then give up.
I’m going to keep posting this general sentiment in multiple threads for the sake of opinion balance, that having played it a bit I love the new PvE heroic format. There’s actually some jeopardy (read excitement/important decisions), as there’s a very real and irreversible chance you won’t be able to do all clears on the hardest nodes.
The incentive to use champed characters that I haven’t touched for years is amazing! Dusting them off and trying to find cool combos for them makes me love this game again (the lustre was starting to fade).
Having 550s shouldn’t matter if you’ve got a combo that works well together, though I admit boosted mag5 health bar does help with survivability in the tougher nodes. Mine aren’t generally much above baby champ, and I’ve been managing just fine. Health packs have been used, but as I’m sitting on ~1,500 of them, it’s not a problem for me.
Personally I think this could be the meta shakeup the game has been needing for some time
I have no opinion on heroic PvP, as haven’t engaged with it. I’m not a big PvP player at all
I totally agree. I am enjoying the change - my view is every change is an opportunity to do something different. I’m not sure if I will want to invest the extra time to complete heroics every day, but I can make the choice each day and the difference in placement rewards isn’t that great. So far I haven’t really pushed for the fastest possible clear times as I have enjoyed the experimentation (maybe 40 minutes so far for each set of clears and can probably get this down to 30 minutes if I push). But still, an hour of play versus 30 mins for standard is quite a lot of additional time investment.
PVP has been completely normal for me so far, which I find odd given the problems that so many others are reporting.
