2*->3* Players aren't playing 80% of MPQ for a year

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

So as the odds of 3* drops constantly increase, it seems like this game is only catered to the Pay to Win whale [~$70 (edit:wrong calc) to fully cover a character, excluding iso, which means $140 for a two character team] or the super hardcore.

Anybody who wants to spend an average amount of money for a game ($20-70) will not be playing 80% of the game that the MPQ staff are working on.
Because the 2*->3* transition is now so long, it will amount to a year, before there is any change to the repetitive optimal 2* strategy that will be repeated, for 3* rewards.

How did I arrive at a year? This is the most probable scenario and I can say 80% of players will experience this and quit.

So you’re a 2*->3* transitioning player. 80% will not be able to stick with or land in a Top 100 ranked Alliance. Because your scores will not be high enough, to not drag your alliance down in PVP.
Which means you are typically getting 1 cover, each time your 3* character is featured as a reward. There are so many 3* characters now, let’s assume it takes a month before it’s back as a reward.

3* characters are not serviceable until 10 covers. Most people will miss the ending of an event let’s say 2 in 10 times. Your 10 cover 3* has now taken 10 months, with 2 months leeway, totally 12 months.
A 2* to 3* transitioning player will find their optimal strategy (ex. Ares/Thor + OBW and the occasional shield) within a month or two. And that’s basically the same repetitive game, they will be playing for a year.

You’ve lost 80% of your players by attrition, and they haven’t even played 80% of the 3* characters and their combinations, that you’ve carefully balanced and designed, to be fun interactions.

I understand that the MPQ business model might just be to exploit whales for 95% of their revenue, but if you want any of the mainstream market, this needs to be addressed.

The character rotations was really the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Sure, the recruitment packs help the odds a little (1428 packs for 10 covers, or 4 packs a day for a year), but they actually took the 3*, I was building, out of rotation. And just to plug, I think 4 pools of weekly rotating covers would be fun. /rant

2

The game is barely a year old. I’m prettttttty confident the 2–>3* transition does not take a year.

3

Not for early adopters, no, but they had a much smaller pool of character to draw from plus there have been a ton of changes to the game that made the transition to 3* slower.

4

I finished my transition around day 370. The OP describes my experience pretty well.

5

Believe it or not, but there are a lot of people who play the game on and off, paying customers. It’s like being stuck on a mario stage for months on end and being told you can skip it for $100 more.
You can call it lack of commitment to the game, but the truth is, people have real life obligations and still want to play 3* characters, and these people will not be competing at the high levels, taking rewards from competitive players.

I really want to support the developers but I can buy another whole AAA game for that kind of money.

I have heard of someone icon_e_wink.gif
who spent $20 on the actual game, and another $50 for a hacked near unlimited sandboxed experience, so the higher end content can be tried out.

6

I’m at day 236, and still stuck in the 2-3* transition. I was moving along the curve pretty well, until around August, when the flood gates opened on new characters.

Now with the rotation out, some of the characters I was close to crossing the 110 level mark with, are out. While I could take GSBW to 166, she is too slow and squishy for the current PvP environment.

I understand all the new characters, but if you are not playing this hardcore, then the time to transition is getting longer and longer.

7

I agree that for the ones who started playing in the first 6 months it has not taken a year, but for the ones who started playing on the second half of the game’s first year, it’s been and it’s still a painful transition. It’s a complete hassle to make 600 on PvP because at 500 I start to hit the ***166 wall. If I manage to reach that high it still doesn’t guarantee I’ll make top 100. At that point I have to work hard to win a fight only to finish it and see I’ve been attacked twice and lost.

Top tier characters are taken out of rotation making it harder to maximize the character that most people use on PvP events. Because no matter how many cool characters are introduced, it’s still Xforce, Cmags, Sentry, Hood, LThor, etc. Developers might want to promote new characters used by making this but people who already have them maximized won’t stop using them. The *** pool is pretty diluted now

I’m not complaining for having to work for my progression because even if I managed to get useful *** covers frequently I’d still have to work for the ISO to maximized them. I just wish that the chance to get the covers wasn’t that difficult now.

8

Even if you aren’t in an alliance and get only one cover per event (and it is’t hard to get two covers in most events even for a 2* roster) do you know how many tokens and how much HP you’d get in a month? There is no reason it would take anywhere near a year to max three or four 3*s, unless you don’t play for considerable stretches, and it’ll take you years to get to the endgame of any game if you don’t play it

9

There really isn’t a reason why characters rotated out one season shouldn’t be back the next. Characters being rotated out for a single season isn’t that bad because there aren’t enough days in a season for every character to be featured in a PVP anyway. However, characters being rotated out for multiple seasons is absurd because there are people who have been working on those characters for awhile and to just take them out of the character pool for an undisclosed number of months heavily hampers down on that person’s experience over a decision that was probably an oversight.

The only reason a character should be out of rotation for over a month is if that character is getting an actual overhaul to its abilities.

10

I agree that the widening character pool creates “problems” with progression, nobody disputes that(rotate chars weekly ya chumps), what I don’t find convincing is the argument that the game would be healthier if you could “complete” it in just a few months or that even now it will take anyone who is even remotely trying to “steadily” progress a year to fully cover a 3*

11

I like to think of myself as a casual player. I have 2-3 three star.png
characters sitting at L100 in my roster, just above my L94’s, and I’m quite happy to wait and slowly build up iso and covers. In fact, I don’t really want to progress into L166 land because it looks and sounds WAY too competitive for me, who plays maybe twice a day.

I sympathise with people who are much more into this than I am, but it makes sense to me that you have to pay more and more for your roster slots and wider and tougher rosters, because you are playing this more competitively and have to invest more, in terms of money and time, to play at your higher competitive level.

12

Yeah… have to say, the OP’s dead on for me. I’ve been laboring the 2 > 3 star transition forever. Sitting on over 200k ISO because I simply can’t get enough covers in a 3 star character to make them better than a normal 2 star fully covered. I have FOURTY roster slots. And I only have one 3 star character that is viable in Cap (5/4/3). I’m at around 180 days in now. Literally no one else is even close besides Falcon and he’s…yeah…no. My best other than those two is like 2/2/1? It’s not viable.

And the rate I’m getting 3 star covers has now slowed because the event time change has made it literally impossible for me to get top 100 in the most recent four PVP events, even while spending on shields. It’s brutal. I’m investing a good bit of time in the game (over 600 the last pvp events and still not top 100) and going no where.

Think of it this way… Let’s say they’re releasing a new character every 20 days. And they have 13 covers to max them. I need to average basically a new, usable 3 star cover two out of every three days just to keep up with the release rate of new content. For a 2 star player that’s NOT possible. And that’s not taking into account characters I’m not using (Loki, etc). Let’s say that I get a cover one out of two. Not too bad. But now split that between literally the FOURTY +3 star characters. The rotation in and out does NOT help someone earning covers at this rate catch up. It does nothing, effectively.

The whole situation is obscenely frustrating.

13

MPQ won’t even make money from noob whales like myself. Bought a 42 pack once and it was crap. Never again.

I’m on day 40ish and enjoying the build. Working on 5th lvl 94 char and it’s going pretty smoothly. I am expecting to get very frustrated soon when transitioning to 3* like OP said though. We can’t compete in PVP and PVE just gives us stupid covers for new chars.

Our only hope is passing through 100 1* hawkeye/venoms for a potential .0000000000001% 3* cover.

14

This season we have 2 or 3+ 2* players in our alliance that’s still in the transition and have been landing comfortably in top 100. I don’t see how you came to that conclusion.

15

I think my transition was odd.

Currently, I’m closing in on the year mark, have six 166s and 8 other cover maxed 3 star.png
heroes. But I wasn’t really all in for most of it, and I haven’t spent much. However, I didn’t have much trouble getting into 3 star.png
land. I only ever maxed out two 2 star.png
characters (Ares and 2 cover Daken at 78, then 69, also never maxed a 1 star.png
) and, although I used them frequently, I never really relied on them. Honestly, I replaced IM35 on my top team with IM40. My OBW is like level 45, Storm lvl 50 or something. My next highest 2 star.png
is Magneto at 61 (he was fun during the first run of Brotherhood). So, I know my case seems weird, as I never really had token luck, and I’ve never been in a top 100 alliance except as a mercenary for like 3 events. BUT, I definitely know what everyone means. I have four brothers all at different stages of the transition, and it’s kinda odd to watch. It really is a slow process. I’m not really sure if/how something could be done about this, but I definitely understand how it can get difficult (I can’t sympathize, but I can empathize icon_e_biggrin.gif
)

16

Yeah, it’s something to do with the timing bracket changes and maybe the one I’m picking, I don’t know. I was probably 10 straight top 100s when I tried (I skipped the Mohawk Storm one a while back) with a 2 star roster and a 3 hour shield.

The last three by the time I hit 450 or so in the rankings, it’s nothing but full 150+ 3 star teams. I can eek out a win or two with some boosts and my lone 3 Star, but even 615 at the end of the Daken event wasn’t top 100 whereas not only could I get a little higher at times before, but 600+ was pretty much auto top 100.

17

Nobody in my family has long hair, therefore I don’t see how there are people in society that have long hair. Nice.

If they’re in a Top 100 alliance, chances are,

  1. They understand the game ranking mechanics very well
  2. They can finish at event ending times
  3. By virtue of being in the Top 100 Alliance, they are getting way more covers, HP, iso than … I don’t know, the 400/500 other people they are ranking above?
18

Hitting top100 is NOT easy for 2* roster. People at top should seriously try playing with just 2* instead of thinking game is same as it was months ago. Now at 500 you start facing the wall, and the wall also see you. With no char higher than 94 I was able to climb to 500 this event. Even after 30-40 skips, I could not find a single match that wasn’t ‘boost, come with full health, and hope for no cascade’ 130 x 2 + leveled IM is least I could find. Often straight 2* 166. Do you know what position I was at 500+ points? 103. 20 minutes later, I got hit for over 100 points, just because I was ‘too high for my roster’ and every other person at this level saw me as free food. So I couldn’t get even into top100. Top25 for 2 covers? You are delusional if you think it’s possible, unless you are willing to try shieldhop 10+ times with Stormneto (slip just once and say bye to HP and rewards).

Fact is, game is old, there is more and more veterans. But reward stay the same. You bunch 500 people together, and 20% of them will walk off with at least one shiny 3*. Half year ago, from those 500, 50 were vets with developed rosters (that were also weaker than today due to level cap change), that left 50 valuable slots that were fought over with people with 2*. Today however, for every 500 people, 100 are ‘vets or close’ and have rosters significantly better than 2* can muster. This leaves no rewards for people that actually need that reward to move forward.

There is only one real solution that isn’t a bandaid fix (like increasing amount of covers to top150, problem will repeat itself after few months), and that is introducing fair MMR system that doesn’t automaticly puts you in ‘you lost before you started fighting’ bracket. Hopefully they will continue working on it between seasons.

The second problem, as mentioned, is that new characters are released constantly and vaulting takes away ones that transitioning people need . This season, vaulting made sure I can’t get anything valuable for me from tokens. My entire progression comes from PvE rewards alone. It means I have to grind like mmo for a week for one guaranteed cover and maybe 2 from top 50 finish (as Europe player trying for top10 is insane). Half of the time, the rewards comes as new character, which is entirely useless for me, beside needing one cover to have shot at next PvE where ‘maybe’ some old char will be offered. All those Rocket and Groot, Mystique, Blade and other covers? Apparantly some vets are upset I even can earn those as a dirty lowstar peasant. I don’t want them. I would trade them in a heartbeat for old character like Patch, Thor, Punisher. Sadly I can’t.

19

Know what also helps, people asking for advice on their roster. Asking where to focus on their ISO to help improve faster. Nudging them to prioritize certain characters over others depending on PvE or PvP focus. Giving suggestions where to invest that HP if they choose to put money in the game. The moment you stop playing the way you want to play and just focus on improving your alliance as a whole gives you that extra cover and HP. Teamwork, bruh.

20

If what you’re saying is that the only way to enjoy an underutilized significant % of the game of character diversity with fun interactions, is for everyone to:

  1. Focus on the same repetitive optimal characters and strategy
  2. Making every pvp end time, so you don’t get kicked out of your Top 100 Alliance

Then I think we both agree. We already know what these optimal strategies are, we just can’t ignore real life obligations to grind in this current state of the game.