3-4* Transtion......easier? Discuss...

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Q(b): Obtaining enough Iso can be difficult. Any plans to help with this?/Have you thought about giving out more Hero Points for progressions or rewards?

A: Hey everyone, we’d like to group these first few questions because the answers are closely related. Kicking off Year 2 of MPQ, we’ve run into a few issues that we always knew we’d encounter (should we be lucky enough to be as successful as we have been), related to what happens when we introduce a much larger roster and increasingly rare characters. Our goal has always been to preserve the things that make MPQ awesome, and keep players engaged, challenged, and loving every match.

**In order to do this, we have to continue evolving the design and some of this will change what players have come to expect as the status quo. For starters, we’ll be releasing more 4*s this year, a lot more. We’re currently devoting a lot of thought to making that transition smoother than it was from 2*s to 3*s.**

^^ This a quote from David {Hi-Fi} Moore from back in December. I can’t help but think that part of this “lots of thought to making that transition smoother” involved the shield cooldowns. However, its been my experience (and apparently almost everyone else on here from what I’ve read) that this change has made the 3-4* transition 100% UNREACHABLE, not “smoother” as advertised. I for one, can not see a day when I have a maxed 4-Thor on the horizon, and every day that I don’t, the gap between me and the top of the boards grows more and more, and my interest in facing down hordes of 4horverines drops more and more. So far, I’m only seeing this as a way for the rich to get richer, and the rest of us to get Power Surged/Smited/X-Forced to death while we try (unsuccessfully) to catch up.

My current place in the MPQ metagame is a weird in between of 3* and 4* land. I have tons of 166s, of which most are obsolete bench warmers (Magneto, Cap, She-Hulk* and Hood being the exceptions), and I have a lvl 270 5/5/3 Xforce and a 270 5/5/3 Fury, but my 4-Thor is parked at 4/2/2, lvl 100. I need 5 covers and something like 375,000 iso to get her playable. This puts me waaayyyyy behind the curve, since Fury was good for like a minute, but now he’s pretty much a joke compared to 4-Thor. I can’t reliably fight the 270 X-Force/Thor teams with X-Force/random 3*, and X-Force/Random 3* isn’t scaring ANYONE off defensively, so once I get to a point level in PvP where I’m worth 30+ points I have a bullseye the size of pluto on my back, so without shield hops, I don’t see a way for me to get those last 5 Thors so I can start to compete again. I certainly wouldn’t call my transition to 4* land “smoother”.

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? (not that they’ll listen…I just like starting fires icon_mrgreen.gif
) Is anyone else stuck where I’m at? Is it having the same effect on you that it is on me? The effect being: Welp, I’ll never catch up, the carrot is too far away now. Guess I should find another game to play…

2

I really disagree with this. Yes, offensively GT changes the game, but on defense, Fury is a complete pain in the ass. All things being equal, I’ll skip a 270 Fury because there’s no way I can deny blue while I’m also trying to deny black/green from XForce. Bad stuff is very likely to happen. Going up against a GT on the other hand, is not a problem, because the AI only plays her properly by accident. As long as I pay attention to when she fires blue, I can piggy-back off it and end up benefiting more than the AI does.

3

Sounds like you’re much further on the curve than most.

4

If you consider having 2/6 of the current 4*s (and more like 2/3 of the PvP playable) maxed as in between, the rest of us are screwed.

5

Aside from “hey give us more covers you aren’t giving us enough covers” I’m not sure what there is to discuss, since this is such an easy “lever.” At any point in which d3p decides they want to make the transition easier, they could immediately make 4* progression at 600, give a 4* to top5 PVP, make 4* have a 5% chance to drop from a heroic, whatever.

6

The day when I grumble about not being able to max my third 4* character seems like a long enough goal to me. Hell, I’ve been playing for over a year and still don’t have max covers for X-force yet (managed to find 8 yellows so far though. Lucky me.)

I daren’t level him up though because it’ll just make my scaling worse.

7

Yeah, but will D3P make those adjustments? Seems unlikely unless players share their experiences and provide constructive feedback, so kudos to the OP… he/she is definitely not alone.

I’m over 400 days played, spend money on the game occasionally, and was making slow but steady/satisfying progress in the 3* to 4* transition, but now am struggling to see a path towards going any farther (i’m not in a top 100 alliance, but would prefer to stay where I am… I dont coordinate out-of-game and dont want to. With the current changes, I hit a wall at around 900 pvp points and cant make it to 1300 with the time left/cooldowns left/low point value targets).

I’m feeling pretty discouraged.

My hope is that whatever the Devs have in mind to adjust next doesnt take months and months to actually roll out…

8

This is so true. When I cross the magical 600 line, I am using level 135 Patch/Hulk combo, as my fastest team. The only team that I auto skip is level 270 XForce/Fury. Any other combination is beatable if the points are worth it. 4Thor may be the offensive powerhouse but Fury is the defensive power. With Fury and XForce, you have to deny black, green, purple, blue and maybe teamups. It cannot consistently be done.

9
  • it is easier, my 3*s allow me to finish high enough to get positive hp in every pvp (counting the loss for my 3 hour shield)
  • If I bust my butt in pve I can earn 4*s
  • being in a dent alliance earns me the 4* for season

Then I just use the hp i’m earning to cover my 4.

LR earn me enough iso to level it.

10

The % of 4* covers released via 1st place rankings will remain static. The main factor affecting the % of 4* covers released is really the 1300 progression reward.

I have maxed X-Force, and max covered Fury, but I’m not going to bother trying for the current 4* Thor blue cover, even though my 5/2/3 Thor badly needs it. For one, I don’t even know if it’s possible in my slice, and two, it doesn’t seem worth the rigid time schedule even if it were possible.

11

Fury is strong but he’s very awkward to play because of his total HPs. Let’s say you run X Force + Fury in a mirror match and Fury takes an X Force. This brings him to around 4K HP which is not something you want to go into next fight but maybe you can sort of wing it (and then lose a fight completely because you’re greedy). If it was X Force you use Recovery. If it was Thor you’d still have 10K left and probably enough. If you have anyone in the 8500 HP 3* tier you’d use a health pack (because you’d only have about 2-3K HP left). If it’s someone with even less they’d just be downed and you’d definitely use a health pack. But Fury, he has just enough to get you into trouble on your next fight and it’s just really hard to figure this out. This also applies to PvE. From a pure skill point of view there’s no way he’s worse than Thor defensively because Thor has no real threatening attacks unless she gets Power Surge and then matched 3 red charged tiles since the AI cannot plan for a Smite + Power Surge combo, while all of Fury’s moves are quite devastating on their own with comparable cost. Yes you don’t always get the full value of Avenger’s Assemble but the AI makes a surprising good use of it simply because of how they collect AP at random.

Too much of this game is still dominated by how fast a character heals over whether that character is actually any good. Thor is good because she can take a major hit and still function, while most cannot, and X Force is even better because he can take a major hit and then just heal up with Recovery. While nobody would think Recovery is the defining characteristic of X Force, if they changed that to fake healing you’re going to find X Force suddenly does a lot worse on offense as he has more or less the same HP as Fury and now one major hit puts him in the same awkward position on your health packs.

12

I’m enough of an old-timer to be pretty far along the transition curve (no 166s, but 28 164s and 163s, 3 4s fully covered, another will be in 29 days), and I’m not going to be doing the 4 transition for a while. 4* covers, at this point, are pretty much only going to be available in events to people who already have them - yes, the occasional character launch will make them slightly more available, but my Goddess Thor - currently 2/1/3 (or thereabouts), is not going to be playable for ages, and I’m not making the transition until she is.

The 3*-4* transition is going to be incredibly luck-dependent. Single covers cost the equivalent of about $20, and I need 7 of them. I’ve got a pretty good HP stash (I’m 25hp away from 15k) and I still couldn’t afford to fully cover her even if I spent all of it. I’m not going to start heading to 270 with just X-Force, Invisible Woman, Nick Fury, and Devil Dinosaur. Only two of them are particularly good, and I don’t want to screw up my PVE scaling.

13

Precisely! Discouraged is the perfect word for it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m in a terrible place. But contrary to what y’all tell me, Fury has never gotten me a single defensive win. I’m in a place where 2-3* players are going to skip me no matter what I leave out on defense, but 4horverine players see either Fury/Xforce or Xforce/3* and see LUNCH. Yea, Demolition hurts. I get that. So stun Xforce for 4 turns with Power Surge and eat Fury with Smite. Problem solved. I’m no threat to them, so my only reliable way to obtain anymore 4* Thor covers was to shield-hop my way up to 1300 when one I needed was the progression reward. That option has been removed entirely now, and with more 4*s on the way, and with no reliable way to obtain them, how am I ever going to dig myself out of that hole? I’m gonna be stuck in that same place for a looonnnngggg time, with no real hope of catching up. The carrot was dangling just out of reach before, and I felt like with enough effort, some careful planning and a little luck I could join the big boys running the “best team” in a season or 2. Now the carrot is miles away, and before I catch it, I’m more likely to just take my ball and go home. And with the large gaps in play time that the new change enforces, that’s likely to happen even faster as interest in the game wanes due to not being able to play it.

My roster of 20+ 166s absolutely tiny-kitty’s me as far as PvEs go, my scaling is downright absurd, so I don’t really spend much time there anymore. Contrary to popular D3 logic, watching a lvl 260 Juggernaut/Ragnarok/Feeder Goon spam powers turn after turn after turn while your best guys just lay down and die is NOT fun. So after i shield at the end of my initial climb in PvP, I’m putting the game down for half the day. How many other players out there are in the same boat as me, scaled out of PvE, forced to stop playing for 3, 5 or 8 hours, depending on how much you want to micro-manage your shielding? I bet there’s more than a few, and you’re going to lose us as players/customers before too long because we no longer see the end game as a possibility.

I feel infinitely worse for the 2-3* guys. Xforce at least lets me compete a little bit. I can usually get to around 8-900 in PvPs with just a few shields, but that only really gets top 10 or sometimes top 5, which nets me more 3* covers that I don’t really want or need. Powering up my 3s is only going to make my PvE experience worse, so there’s no benefit to it. I need 4 covers to progress, but they’ve been placed out of reach, so what’s the point? Losing players can’t be good for business, but that’s the environment D3 has created here.

In the interest of not being 100% negative, I actually DO have a few suggestions for how to help fix this situation. Seems like a waste of breath tho, because I’ve read a lot of great suggestions on these forums and they never listen to them, but here goes anyway:

1 - Shields were being used in a way that the developers did not intend. Ok, fair, we broke the system. Not disputing that. But instead of creating a horrid cooldown system to limit scores/hopping, why not institute a LIMIT to the number of shields you get per event? Everyone gets 2 3 hour shields, 2 8 hour shields and 1 24 hour shield. Scores are still capped at a much lower level, no one is getting to 6,000 or whatever the record is, but now we as players don’t have to schedule our lives around some imposed system of cooldowns, we can plan how to shield in a way that fits our own schedule.

2 - Change the reward structure. 1-3 place gets a 4* cover. 4-10 get all 3 colors of whatever 3* is featured. The rest is probably fine as is. This helps ALL players. People trying to make the jump to 3* land have a much better shot per event of getting what they need, as do people trying to make the jump to 4* land.

3 - Do what everyone else has already suggested, and lower the progression rewards so that the 4* reward is obtainable a but more easily. This could already be in the works, but we’ll never know, because they refuse to talk to their customers. And for the love of God, if you’re going to keep the cooldown system as it is, fix the UI so we can see how long is left on our cooldowns. One little mistake in shield timing can cost you an entire PvP, and that’s bull-kitty simply because of a bad UI.

TL:DR - Fury’s cool, but he’s not scaring 4horverine players off, and they’re who’s hitting me. Losing interest, prolly gonna switch to another game, and I bet I’m not alone, can’t imagine actively driving players away was D3’s intention. Re-evaluate the reward/progression structure.

14

Nobody’s scared of anybody else when you have enough points. Thor isn’t even a hard matchup for a standard 25 points let alone anything more. Do you really think the guys running Thor + X Force are just unshielded the whole time because nobody dared attacking them? They’re still doing the same old shield hop, and why shouldn’t they if you had the resources to max both of these characters out?

15

My simple suggestion:

Have a 4* available at 6000 points in Season rewards
Have a 4* reward for finishing a Gauntlet
Add a 4* progression reward in long PvEs

That would make 6 or 7 4* covers available during a season which reasonably dedicated players could obtain. Which will quickly be less than 1 cover per 4* character per season. It won’t devalue 4*'s but would allow players to at least feel like they were making progress.

16

I know that Demiurge said that they want the 3* → 4* transition to be easier than 2* → 3*, but why should that be a priority right now?

There are too few 4* characters at the moment to make this a priority. I’m fine with 4* characters taking a year to max, because the 3* game is still expanding as fast as ever. I still think that the 2* → 3* transition is where the work needs to be done. It’s sad that half the content in the game is so far out of reach of new players.

17

My gut tells me the 4* transition is important now because long term that’s how they’ll fix 2-3 (and for that matter 1-2 it’s way too fast right now and needs to get slowed a bit). I’m guessing once they get to 10-12 4s we’ll see them fiddle with token odds (gutting or completely removing 2 odds from Heroics) and then changing around the reward structure in PvP and maybe PvE to be focused more on giving away 4* since 3* will be fairly easily obtained through token luck in this scenario.

18

Can I ask, what are you hoping to progress to, exactly? Better PVP placement? Obviously you want to finish off your 4hor but except for season placement, there really isn’t much of any more progression that you specifically can do in this game. Fully powered 4hor and XF is the end game atm and keeping up with the new 3*'s if you are a completionist. They are releasing new 4* and hopefully revamping the rewards structure so there is a new endgame for people in your situation.

With or without a fully covered 4hor, it is literally going to be the same thing you are experiencing now in PVP after you finish 4hor - no need for any cover instead of most any cover. Aside from wanting to complete the character, defensive wins/losses and placement in an event are not really even relevant to your situation. Since you mentioned, from an incentives POV, it doesn’t make sense for you to even pick up the game right now. Maybe after some new 4* characters and the eventual 5*, they’ll be there again for you.

I’m really not trying to discourage you and you have a right to be frustrated but you are doing better than 95% of us in any given PVP with a roster most of us would like to get to someday. Seems like a good problem to have…

19

I didnt think I could make the 3* - 4* transition so I have stopped playing. I will continue to monitor how things are going but unless there are dramatic changes I do not see myself coming back. Good Luck to all.

20

Don’t really have any business responding to this post, as I’ve only been playing 280 days and am nowhere near this transition point. Having said that, unless access to HP, roster slots, and covers changes, there is really no way to make this transition easier. Flooding the game with more 4*'s doesn’t really do anything except create harder choices for those of us (myself included), that aren’t willing to spend tons of money on this game. I don’t see going beyond $60 dollars, the price of a home game console, for a mobile game. When I dropped my first $20, it was during anniversary week where I was able to get a little bit extra HP and add six roster slots (which of course are now full). I understand D3 has to stay in business, so if I get pigeon-holed into a mediocre roster, I get it. For those willing to spend money, it is still going to take A LOT of money to transition, even if a new 4* character comes out every week. After initially getting the character through PVP, Story Mode, and/or Season run, we’re talking seven covers max (3 for top finish in PVP, 3 for top finish in Story Mode, 1 cover for Season). A better job has been done with getting new characters added to packs, but unless you already a superior roster, which more than likely means you’ve already invested money, you’re looking at (going off forum posts where covers cost $20 to buy outright), $120 to finish that character. That’s not including the ISO-8 to max them out. Some people may say you have to ditch your 1*, 2*, and 3* characters for the 4*'s, however, you will then shoot yourself in the foot when you can’t be competitive in PVP, Seasons, and/or Story Mode depending on your roster set-up, which largely includes 2* and 3* characters. I think that’s the larger issue until something changes. Perhaps a limited space in some kind of cloud/warehouse for covers you can’t fit or want to rotate out? It could similar to Google Drive, where you get an allotted amount of space and can add for a price? Maybe one slot to bundle multiple versions of the same character (i.e. Captain America Modern and Captain America Steve Rogers take up a single slot)? Offer another bundle of slots for one flat price like at the beginning when you were going from 8 to 24. Something has got to give, because at this point, players will have to throw down $100’s of dollars to make this transition.