Challenges in the 3*-4* Transition

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

This is in no way a comment on the explosion related to the DPDQ Legendary Token. Please don’t bring that conversation into this thread.

The Legendary Tokens are a fascinating idea, and a great way to assist people with their 4*-5* transition (which has really just started,) and to assist people with the 3*-4* transition. Sure, means of obtaining these tokens are limited, particularly to people with 3* rosters, but they still provide a good opportunity to obtain “bulk” covers for 4* characters.

I’m not really here to comment on the Legendary Token availability. I’m here to comment on something else - the problem I see is that it doesn’t really help players finish their 4* characters. Random token draws can potentially finish a character, but the chances are very much against it - you will generally need to get 1.5 to 2x the number of covers for that characters to “fill them out,” since you may end up getting 7 red HB covers, for example, before getting that 5th black. I sat on a 5/4/4 Black Panther forever - I never drew that fifth black from a token, finally got it from DPDQ. So while tokens are a good means of starting a transition, they’re a poor means of finishing it.

So lets see the means we have of actually going for a cover we need:

  • Scoring first in PVP - Extremely difficult at best. This isn’t really a means of distributing specific covers, only %.2 of players will be able to get it.

  • Scoring first or second in PVE - Even harder. The percentage is the same (%.2) but now it’s a longer time frame.

  • Getting 1000 in PVP - Definitely doable, even for 3* rosters.

  • Expending many, many Taco Tokens when there are 4*s you want in the vault - Extremely uncertain as unless you have 300 of that variety of Taco Token, you aren’t assured of getting the cover.

So we have one reliable method of obtaining a single specific cover three times a week. If they continue to release 4s every other week then it will take quite some time to cover any particular character. If they go back to releasing 3s once there is a good-sized pool of 4*s (a distinct possibility,) that’s a bit better, but we’re still talking about taking a decent amount of time to fully cover any specific character. Luck is going to play a huge factor.

I really enjoy this game (I wouldn’t be playing it for as long as I have if I didn’t,) but one of it’s weaknesses is a lack of choice. If you really love a particular character - say Deadpool - you can’t really focus on that character and work to cover him at the expense of others. The only real choice you get is whether or not you decide to chase Deadpool every chance you get - and there aren’t a lot of choices to that.

I don’t really have much in the way of good solutions, but I wanted to stress that least paragraph. Whatever means of helping the 4* distribution the devs come up with, I believe the players will be happiest with the option that gives them the most choice.

That’s enough for now, I may post more when I think on things. I welcome other opinions so long as we don’t talk about the Legendary Token in DPDQ.

2

Good points. Parallel discussion over here, too:

https://forums.505go.com/discussion/32858

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Why is spending HP on a needed cover not an option?
I don’t do it a whole lot, but sometimes it really comes in handy. Last purchase was the fifth red for Hulkbuster… I believe I bought a fifth black for Black Panther back in the day too.

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Don’t delude yourself - they’re never going back to releasing 3* chars except for very rare occasions, just like they didn’t go back to 2*s except Marvel and Torch.

Once there are enough 4s the flood of 5s will begin, we’re seeing the start of it with a monthly 5*.

Your other points are totally valid, but don’t think for a moment we’ll ever go back to less chars with a higher rarity than 4*.

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I’m gonna jump in here, but OP feel free to respond for yourself. I think buying that last cover or two for the guy you really want is certainly a valid option. If you’ve ever been over to the tips/guides subforum you’ll see a few forumites suggesting exactly this. Save your HP, don’t shield hop, use everything you win to buy the covers you’re missing. The problem is that it’s just not really a long term proposition if you have many desired characters. I’m sure most/all of you know why, but just a quick illustration of why.

I started to do some math to see how many covers are up for grabs in a given 4 week period (since that’s when things start repeating). I’ll spare the details (or maybe spoiler below) and just say I came up with ~65 4* rewards in total. That seems like a lot considering only 26 new covers are added in those 4 weeks. 18 of those, however, are for top 1 PvP/top 2 PvE finishes, which as mentioned are .2% of everyone, so we can more or less ignore these. An additional 10 (and 4 of the 18 previously mentioned) are for specific newly released characters. So, that leaves 37 other rewards to hopefully cover your existing chars. Only 12 of these are specific/guaranteed covers, the 10 1k progression rewards that aren’t new chars, 2k prog in Season Shield Sim, and the Season alliance cover. The other ~25 are legendary tokens with variable degrees of difficulty to achieve.

It becomes quickly quite clear that legendary token RNG is going to play a huge role in your transition and what characters are going to be covered first. Let’s just examine a new char and a player’s progress in covering that char. With incredible effort and luck, you can walk away from a character’s “release” with 7 covers in total (4 personal top 2 PvE, 1 alliance top 100, 1st place before release PvP, 1k release PvE). At this point MAYBE this character will be at 2k in shield sim in the next season or two, or the season alliance cover the next season, so maybe you get to 9 covers in 2 months after release. At the same time this character is bound to rotate through again to 1k in PvP again right? Well…as pointed out above, each 4 week cycle only gets through 10 existing 4*, and tacks on 2 new ones. At 16 4*, that’s 19 more PvPs before that character comes around again at 1st place/1k, which is a little over 6 weeks. At least 3 more new characters get released before the next time this guy/gal comes around again, so now we’re looking at 22 PvPs until the next time it shows up, which is over 7 weeks. So, work your tinykitty off, get lucky with brackets and dev choices for 2k Sim/season alliance reward and you can have 13 covers of a 4* about 14 weeks after it’s released. I hope you got the exact 13 you wanted to spec your char, cause it’ll be 8 or 9 weeks until he/she comes around another time. Now 14 weeks is not really a long time in this game, so that’s not so bad right? Well, that was the best case scenario, and I don’t know a whole lot of people who can pull this off (although quite a few of them do frequent the forums…).

The math is pretty bleak for more normal players though. Let’s say you “only” top 10 the release PvE, and have no chance of winning any PvP events ever. You come out of the release events with a 5-cover char, which is a pretty good start imo. Well, you can still luck into 2 more from shield sim/alliance season rewards, so that’ll get you to 7 in ~8 weeks. Same rotation math from above applies, so 6 weeks for another cover, then 7 weeks, 8/9 weeks, 10 weeks, etc. This time 14 weeks out and you’re at 9 covers. 19 weeks later, 11 covers. So, 33 weeks after release and you’ll have 11 covers (keep going and it’s over a year for a full 13 covers). As you can see, to cover this character (or any other one for that matter), you are going to have to have some RNG luck in pulling multiples of that character from legendary tokens, which also has a similar side effect of getting more and more difficult as more 4* are released.

Sorry for the wall of text

Tl;dr - If you’re not getting 1st place in PvP or PvE you’re looking at at least a full year to fully cover a 4* from guaranteed rewards alone, so pray to RNG gods before you open up those legendary tokens.

[spoiler]4* rewards math - in a given 4 week cycle you can get :
12 PvP events = 12 1k covers, 12 1300 tokens, 12 1st place rewards = 36
assuming 2 7 day PvE, 2 4 day, and 2 3 day, that’s 6 PvE events. 2 of them will be release events, the other 4 “normal”
2 release PvE = 10 covers for top 2 finishers + alliance t100 cover, 2 legendary tokens = 12
4 “normal” PvE = 4 top 2 covers, 4 legendary tokens = 8
Season Simulator 2000 pt progression = 1 cover
Season Score 10k pt progression = 1 legendary token
Season Alliance top 100 cover = 1 cover
~5.67 4* DDQ nodes = 5.67 legendary tokens

Add it all up and in a given 4-week period there are a grand total of 64.67 4* covers/tokens available for any given person to earn. Considering only 26 new covers are added during that time that’s not so bad. But how much is a reasonable person going to actually obtain?[/spoiler]

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I’m not saying your point isn’t valid, but I do disagree. They aren’t going to release a flood of 5s unless they up the drop rate - as it is the average player (and I mean average player at the top end, not average overall,) will probably gather 1-2 covers a month for a 5. I don’t see them altering this either this year or the early part of next year. So releasing more than 3 of these 5*s probably won’t happen for at least six months. The drop rate is extremely low - they really are intended to be an “end game” character, at least at this time.

As far as the 4s go, they stated that they wanted to get a good variety of 4s out there. Because of their drop rate, they’re going to have trouble sustaining over 20 different 4* characters - it will be too hard to get the ones you need and they’ll lose players. The Legendary Tokens will help, but only so far. I do think they will go back to releasing 3* characters once there’s a good-sized pool of 4s. The alternative would be a major shift in the game emphasis (4 PVPs, more 4* placement awards, etc,) I suspect they aren’t ready for that yet.

We’ll see.

As far as the HP purchase of a cover, I should have listed that, sure. Most players who do not invest a lot of money in this game (I’ll drop $20 on it every so often, for instance,) won’t see it as a good option for more than once in a great while, but it is in fact an option.