Clearance Level 9 and Player Time Investment

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
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1

Forgive if there is already a post on this (posts can fall off the 1st pages fast), but was wondering what other thought on this.
I want to bring up an aspect of the PVE CL refactor in regards to CL9 & CL10 that’s been a pretty big negative side effect for me.

Understandable the CL9 node structure swapped out the green hard node for a 2-Star required node. But the tradeoff is that in CL9 each node now needs 4 clears to start the refresh timer, whereas CL10 (in both the old and new setups) only needs 3.
I can’t play CL10 cause I don’t have champ maxed 5’s or 4-Star ascended 5-Stars (and none are close). I initially tried it because my muscle memory selected it once or twice, and I could barely beat some of the hardest max level nodes (green & 5-Star Required nodes). My roster isn’t ready for it yet, which I understand and is fine; UBER end game players need a PVE difficulty.
However, the time investment to play a PVE event has gone up dramatically for me. I’ve found that I now need more than an hour+ for each PVE sub-event to start the refresh timer for all of its nodes (clear each one 4 times), especially when the 5-Star required character is trash and/or not cover maxed (like Silver Sable).
Under the old CL10, I could do it in under half an hour. As a result, I’ve missed some of the final Progression Rewards because I ran out of time, as my old habits thinking it wouldn’t take as long as it now does. Annoying AF because these are the ones that would help me the most; the biggest CP reward, 5-Star & 6-Star Shards, etc. Weirdly I tend to place top 100 (sometimes even top 50), yet still have missed some of these Progression Rewards.
Suppose the obvious comments could be to “get gud”, but that’s not necessarily the point. It’s that I now have to play more total nodes than before, which takes more time out of my day.

Back in the day, the Demiurge devs tested different node refresh structures to fix the unreasonable time investment of “nodes refresh every 4 hours” (Pepperidge Farm remembers). Their goal was 3-fold → find a good balance between difficulty, rewards, and respect for the player’s time.
That last part didn’t seem to happen with this update. We got a new PVE reward structure, but then little to no adjustments since.

Scoring is relative within a PVE event, so reducing the number of clears needed to 3 wouldn’t impact final placement rankings much. Progression Reward requirements would need some adjustments though, but reaching the last few rewards are all over the place anyway, with some events having much less ‘catch up’ opportunities than others.

With the current state of the game (laggy/slow/buggy menus, features from the old engine still missing, etc.) who knows when they will be able to make adjustments here. Timely (and appropriate) game balance has not been a common thing with this game whoever the devs have been, but with all of the turmoil behind the scenes (rough deploy of the Unity engine upgrade, dev teams changing, etc.) I can totally emphasize.

Anyway, I usually don’t post like these and mostly lurk, but wanted to vent a bit and give my perspective now that this new PVE structure has been live for about 2 months.

2

I think the dev should set PVE CL8 & 9 to be 3 clear to start timer, then CL10 to be 2 clear to start timer so that is not that time consuming.

Just my wish… And I’m very sure the dev won’t grant me… :expressionless:

3

I don’t have any Maxed out 5* but I can usually cope with CL10. Getting placement is tough but the rewards are so good even top 300 is great. If you have champed 5* especially if they are boosted you can still clear and Kang cheese teams work in most cases. Even if you can’t beat every clear you don’t need that for full progression. This past week 5* Sam is boosted so paired with Juggs that team shreds.

4

I think the point is going to get lost because you’ve suggested that it might be a skill or roster issue and you are going to get some gitgud responses. I regularly do SCL10 in around an hour exclusively using characters between level 300-370 so we know it can be done, (one recent one I got down to about 40 minutes with a Hawkeye/Ghost Rider 2099/Mystique team).

The point that I absolutely agree with is: why are we doing so many repeats? Especially those first 3 trivial nodes. Since the Unity slowdown it’s often over 30s to do one clear of a trivial node. That means you’re doing half a second of gameplay every half minute. 9 clears is getting around the 5 minute mark, 12 clears for the lower SCL levels is sometimes getting closer to the 10 minute mark than the 5. Why aren’t we just doing 1 instance of each trivial node?

Why are we doing more than 3 repeats to start the timer at any SCL difficulty level? Maybe even drop it to 2? One at the base levels, one at the peak levels. Fewer repeats would also have the benefit of making experimenting with team build is less punishing and a lot of us will enjoy the game more.

There does need to be a bias towards quality over quantity of gameplay in my opinion, especially when there’s no new PVE coming in the foreseeable.

5

In my opinion, SCL9 should just be a scaled down version of 10, so no I do agree that the extra clear is nonsense.

6

You are not the first person to make this point; if the devs are paying attention as they say they are(were?), they will have seen this brought up many times by now.

They are running at dangerously low levels of engagement with the community and even if they had an announcement saying a road map would be coming in 2026 a Q&A as they transition would allow this along with other concerns to be given an official acknowledgment.

I do not know how realistic it is to think IP2 will be able to adjust clears for existing SCLs in the near future but I don’t think you’d find any player who wouldn’t be very happy to have the option to play in 9 with an actual reduction in time spent playing when they wanted to.

That was one of the main selling points of of SCLs in the first place for advanced players, giving them an option of playing for shorter periods for reduced rewards while still advancing their roster vs not playing at all.

Punishing players who aren’t able to play in new 10 with increased time required in game is one reason, I am sure, that so many are leaving the game. The level of inherent disrespect for us and our time is palpable and borderline insulting.

7

I can appreciate the QoL stuff but how is this a thing? If you can’t play in SCL10 because your roster isn’t good enough then isn’t that exactly what the Devs said should happen? And this entire concept that SCL10 is only for 550 rosters is utter nonsense. I don’t even use my highest characters (Shang & Jane at 528 & 525) and every week is a 550 week with boosted characters.

8

The point is you used to be able to access 10 at a lower shield rank and maybe you couldn’t clear everything but you had reduced grind and lower difficulty making progression easier than SCL 9 is now.

And you can say you get more stuff in new 9 than old 10 but the point is humans are not strictly rational beings and everyone shoved down from 10 due to caps or difficulty or whatever is experiencing perceived loss and the devs handled it extremely poorly. They should respect us more instead of just saying “this is how it is”. They do not care that people have been playing for years etc.

Again the people who decide they’ve had enough and quit - I respect them immensely. They decided they are not happy with how the devs are treating us and said “I’m done”. Good for them.

9

Fair enough. I don’t know who they are, I thought most left (completely reasonably) due to Unity issues instead of anything else. I imagine that most players playing 10 year plus can deal with SCL10 but if not then I don’t know why that would be.

10

This seems like an oversight. They introduced a “new” CL 9 and 10 and bumped the “old” CL10 down to CL8. The problem is that they didn’t actually do that, because the “old” CL10 had been adjusted to have fewer clears.

Have they said anything about this anywhere that they actually communicate now? Did they confirm that this was intentional or did they just forget to change the number of clears?

11

They have not, to my knowledge, said anything about adjusting clears, nor whether they perceive the current pve design and requirements as any kind of issue to be resolved. Not one way or the other.

To be honest I’m not surprised their communication has been so abysmal, because so many things are wrong etc; any acknowledgment of a thing that should be addressed and hasn’t been by the hapless developers who have been “running” the game just makes the game and the people working on it look worse. Best to shut up and say nothing, fixing what can be easily fixed/paid for/absolute necessities to run the game.

12

BCS sorta tricked everybody when they came in and started communicating right away. Demiurge was terrible at it, even when things were going well. I don’t think anybody decided not to, they’re all just really bad at this.

13

If you can do CL9 you are better off moving up to CL10.

You can reach progression and a T300ish score by just doing the easy nodes 5 times (3+2), the hard nodes 3 times (+1 if you can manage) and the 3-5 essentials 2-3 times (depending on if you can manage) and ignoring the CL entirely (unless you can do 1 clear). I made progression doing this and it takes WAY less time than doing CL9 and the rewards are better.

KGB

14

I haven’t tried CL8, but it needs less clears than CL9?? I wonder why they intentionally decided to make CL9 the grindiest one then?
Knowing the current state of the dev team, and PVE bugs like how some event subs were straight up missing nodes for several runs, it could have been an oversight. They probably have more than enough to deal with right now. We won’t know until we hear otherwise I guess.

My main comment wasn’t really about difficulty, but time investment. I agree if my roster isn’t good enough, or I just “don’t have the skillz” then sure, I shouldn’t be playing CL10.
There should be a play place for Uber players, but it shouldn’t come at the detriment of other types of players. Just because I maybe can’t cut it in CL10 doesn’t mean my experience should suck in CL9 and take more time to clear than CL 10 does. By relation, in theory CL10 should be the most time intensive of all CL’s if time/difficulty are related. But something can be hard/challenging and not need an outsized time investment to play.
My main point was that even partially optimal PVE play shouldn’t take as much time as it does, for ANY CL level. Not arguing, just clarifying.

I agree there is human behavior & bias here. Presenting this as the same helps confuse players → “Why is this so hard/time consuming now?! It looks (almost) the same as I’ve always done.”

I’m suggesting that if a player who has been playing this game since early 2014 (I started when the 3rd 4-Star got added, Nick Fury) feels like it’s taking noticeably more time play one tier lower than I had been playing for years, their balance/presentation is perhaps a bit off.

Maybe next PVE I’ll try CL10 again.
With where my roster is at, I want to be able to get all the 5/6-Star shards & CP I can, and the most of those are the final Progression Rewards. I should be able to get them in CL9 with my roster, but my muscle memory/player behavior from years of the “old” CL10 aren’t enough with the added node clears and node scaling. I just need to adjust and start my clear cycle way earlier than I’m used to, or move up to CL10 and gut through it.
Maybe the time ‘savings’ is worth it.

15

Just referring back to the original post, it’s worth mentioning that the “uber end game players” are mostly just using kangveil for the green node because it’s the fastest option. Some of the other nodes are definitely easier with more developed rosters tough.

If everything has just shifted up 2 levels then there is no reason why the top 3 levels shouldn’t all have the same number of clears and all include the green node.

16

Viceroy, I don’t seem to be able to @ you, but I don’t know if CL8 has less clears. It might, and that might be a fix for you!

When they changed the difficulties, they said that CL8 would be equivalent to the “old” CL10, and that CL 9 and 10 would be new, harder difficulties…like, CL11 and 12 under the old scheme.

I seem to remember someone complaining about the number of clears then, but I don’t remember exactly what that was about.

17

At the very least it would be nice if they lowered the number of clears needed on wave nodes. There are a couple of 3 round wave nodes that have 4=7 enemies per node. Even at 2+3 clears those can be annoying.

18

Maybe I’m just a caveman, but I don’t understand your ways and how Kangveil works.
I get the end goal of eventually sending the entire team away for an instant win, but no clue how to do it. I have a mid 450’s Kang, and a 284 Darkveil. I’ve tried it, and Darkveil just gets one-shotted before anyone gets sent away (let alone the entire team). Maybe I just need to watch some youTube video of how it works.

19

CL8, despite being the ‘old’ CL10, does have the extra clears, i.e. the same amount as CL9 and more than CL10

20

@The_Viceroy_Returns said:

@JimboJambo said:
Just referring back to the original post, it’s worth mentioning that the “uber end game players” are mostly just using kangveil for the green node because it’s the fastest option. Some of the other nodes are definitely easier with more developed rosters tough.

If everything has just shifted up 2 levels then there is no reason why the top 3 levels shouldn’t all have the same number of clears and all include the green node.

Maybe I’m just a caveman, but I don’t understand your ways and how Kangveil works.
I get the end goal of eventually sending the entire team away for an instant win, but no clue how to do it. I have a mid 450’s Kang, and a 284 Darkveil. I’ve tried it, and Darkveil just gets one-shotted before anyone gets sent away (let alone the entire team). Maybe I just need to watch some youTube video of how it works.

Darkveil needs team up AP to work so you have a better chance starting with a team up boost. The way I tend to do it is also try and get 9 blue so Kang can finish them off, running Deathlok on that team can help with the blue AP. It is definitely not fool proof and I often find my team of Kang/Deathlok/IM40 is actually more reliable. I do have a level 510 Kang though so the extra health on him helps the team survive to do their job.