Dear friends,
As with all good things, my time with MPQ has come to an end. I don’t want to dwell overmuch on why this is so – in my time on the forum I’ve always tried to avoid the negative, but if you’re really interested, I’ve put my reasons in a spoiler tag:
[spoiler]Two reasons, really: time and progression. For me, getting meaningful rewards means hitting 900-1000 in PvP and hitting top 50 if not top 10 in PvE; a rough calculation estimates that this takes around 20 hours a week, not accounting for forum visits, chatting on LINE, or doing any of the work of running an alliance. I don’t want to actually log my total hours spent on the game, but I suspect all told the number is probably close to a full-time job.
Now, that wouldn’t be a problem – I’ve certainly spent that much time on games before – but unfortunately the state of the game is such that I’ve lost interest. I’ve spent my entire MPQ career chasing The Next Big Thing, from Ragnarok to Spider-Man to Patchneto to Sentry to X-Force to TGT, and then enjoying The Next Big Thing until it’s time to chase The Next Next Big Thing. But with the nerf to TGT and the announcement that X-Force is still above the 4* power band, I simply don’t see anything worth striving for any more.
Sure, it’ll be fun to play with Kamala Khan or Professor X or Kingpin – it’s not like they suck – but they won’t be significantly more effective than my existing roster. If that’s the future, then there’s no more progression to be had, in which case what’s the point of spending so much time just to keep up and not actually improve?[/spoiler]
I’d like to thank a lot of people for making my time with MPQ so enjoyable. In no particular order:
-
To all the forumites, past and present, who have contributed so much of their time and energy to adding humor, insight, strategy, and entertainment: thank you. I won’t try to name everyone, but you know who you are. Your efforts help make this community what it is. I know it’s not always easy to wade through the negativity and the invective, but keep fighting the good fight, and know that there are those lurking who appreciate what you do.
-
To the hardworking staff at Demiurge and D3: thank you. I haven’t always agreed with what you’ve done or the way you’ve done it, but at the end of the day you guys made a great game that provided me with literally thousands of hours of entertainment and held my interest for near a year and a half. I hope you guys all got super rich from the Sega acquisition and are now driving gold-plated Ferrarris because I’ve worked in the game industry and I know how hard it is to make a successful game and keep it alive for this long. Kudos to you. The forum gives you a lot of flak, and we’re not usually very good about remembering that there are real people with real feelings at the other end of the line, but I appreciate your continuing efforts to incorporate our feedback while also doing what you think is right for the game. I wish you guys much success, and may your metrics forever go up and to the right.
-
To all the members of my alliance, Chaos League, past and present: you guys are so awesome. It’s been a great privilege to have been your commander these past twelve seasons. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built together: an alliance that’s been top 100 every single season and has never missed a new release cover, ever…but I’m even more proud of how we’ve done it – no drama, lots of silliness, and in all our time we’ve only ever had one person leave the alliance on bad terms. It’s been a joy to watch our transition players filling out their 3* rosters and our 3* players finally finishing their XForces and Thors, and the thrill of seeing guys who were consistently scoring in the 600s finally break through to their first 1000 progression reward has been so fulfilling. Thank you so much for all your hard work in supporting your teammates and me. It’s been an incredible journey and I feel lucky to have been a part of it.
-
To all the wonderful alliances and people whom I’ve gotten a chance to know via LINE: thank you for having our little alliance and letting our minnows swim with your sharks. Some of my fondest memories of this game come from the coordination and cooperation that we’ve managed to forge together, and your acts of kindness and generosity for both me and my guys have been as heartwarming and spectacular as they have been unexpected. May all your shield-hops be snipe-free and your PvE clears be optimal.
Now, it wouldn’t be a party without some parting gifts, would it? Throughout my time, I’ve found a bunch of tools to be very useful – here, for the first time, I’ve collected them all for easy reference.
ISO/Level calculator - planning how much ISO you need to level a character to any level
Level cap calculator - knowing what soft level cap is for a given number of covers
Token spading spreadsheet - for getting numbers on the probability of pulling specific characters or rarities from tokens
Buyback data - how much iso and hero points you get back for selling off a changed character
Tile damage - knowing at what level characters tank colors for other characters
PVP score calculator - figuring out what someone is worth to you based on what he’s worth to someone else
So long,
mischiefmaker
P.S. Some of you may be wondering what will become of character rankings. I’d like to do one last edition, but right now I really need a full break from the game – perhaps once I’ve had a little time, I’ll be motivated to finish that up. After that, it’ll be up to someone else to pick up the torch!
