Cover availability conspiracy theories!!! (/Sarcasm)

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Over time, it seems apparent that all covers for all characters will be available as “lowest tier” placement rewards.

That being said, is it possible that the devs make certain covers more difficult to get when new characters are released?

Going back to October, the new characters are: blade, mystique, 4* Thor, RnG, Gamora, Elektra, cage, and squirrel girl. Did I miss anyone?

Of those characters, to my recollection, the following had their consensus “best” power (often a passive) released as a top 5 reward: blade (green), mystique (black), RnG (yellow), gamora (black), cage (red), and squirrel girl (green). (Some would argue that red is Gamora’s best cover, but I think most would agree that black is her defining power.)

I don’t remember the cover rewards for 4* Thor (red was the bitten tier, but blue is probably her key power), and the heist tier reward for Elektra was probably her weakest power (red). So this pattern holds true for 3s more than 4s.

Of the 3*s listed above, the best powers for at least 2 (RnG and now squirrel girl) were not available as prog rewards or top 100 rewards in the subsequent pve/PvP events. So the only way to Have RnG yellow or SG green is to finish top 10 in their intro pve or top 25 in their intro PvP (or a token pull).

For others (like Cage), the “best” power was readily available in subsequent events.

So it seems somewhat clear to me that the devs are limiting availability of the “best” powers in intro paves, but it is less clear that they are intentionally doing so for subsequent events. And I don’t think this evidence says anything at all about certain covers being depressed in the long run.

Am I right about this? Am I missing something? (Also, typed on a phone, please forgive typos)

2

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Not everything is a Dev conspiracy, guys. They overlook things way more often than they screw us over by design.

3

I thought this was common sense and/or obvious. It would make sense that a chars strongest ability would be hardest to obtain.

4

It’s the way it should be. Where’s the collecting and compitition if they just readily hand out the best covers in the game, especially for new charecters in the first month?

The next pvp they will switch up teh reward structer for that charecter.

The top finishing players should absolutly get the better covers for a release. It’s a competitive game.

What would you compete for if they just handed over the best covers for a new release in the first week?

Seems to me that more and more people just want the rewards of the game handed to them, instead of competing for them. Defeats the premise of the game.

if earning things isn’t your style, bejewelled is a really fun match game to play.

5

The only conspiracy theories were before Spidey nerf you could never get a Blue cover, they weren’t prizes, they never dropped. The other conspiracy is Hood’s blue. Aside from that, I think it’ s more overlook than anything else.

Remember the Definition of Conspiaracy

Conspiracy–Assuming people are smarter than they really are.

6

I agree that not everything is a conspiracy, and occam’s razor is a useful intellectual tool. But it seems to me that “the devs make the strongest abilities the rarest at release.” is every bit as simple as “the ‘best’ powers have just happened to be the highest tier rewards for the last 6 3* release events by random chance.”

Please don’t mistake discussing the rewards structure immediately interpreted as complaining about the rewards structure. I was just posting a pattern that I have noticed on the board to see if others agree with my conclusion. I guess this is what I get for sarcastically using the term “conspiracy theory” on the internet.

Whether or not the structure is a good idea is a totally different discussion. And in any event, there is a big gap between letting people get one cover for a power, and handing out all the best rewards to everyone.

7

I think posting “conspiracy theory” on an MPQ forum just sets the expectation that it is complaining since that’s how the majority of those posts go

8

I keep hearing about the “hood blue” conspiracy. Hood blue was the first 3* power I had maxed and I’ve had to sell at least 4 of them from token pulls alone. It just boils down to luck…

9

Aren’t most of those also the character’s third ability, BTW?

10

Lets see.

Blade yes,
Mystique yes
RnG no
Gamora yes
Cage no
Sq yes?

So 2/3 are the third rank abilities. Not really convincing one way or the other.

11

Almost at day 365, never pulled a hood blue. Pulled pretty much every other cover that i can think of. Not a gamora black root yellow or a cage cover yet…but those are pretty new.

12

I’d say there is an intention to create scarcity in the powers that redefine a character. Dormammu’s Aid seems to be the hardest to get for Hood. 3* Thor’s yellow is the most important skill, and it seems to be the hardest to get one’s hands on. Captain Marvel is just a damage dealer until you get Energy Absorption, and it wasn’t made easy to get until this last PVP. Hulk’s Anger has been scarce, as well.

Maybe it’s just the AP-gathering skills that are the hardest to come by.

13

I’m on day 430-whatever and I have never to pull a 3* Magneto “Blue” cover (which used to be Purple).

I mean… I pulled and won a bunch of the old “Blue” covers before they changed his blue into yellow.

Does that mean I won a Blue cover or no?

14

Got ya beat-day 438, my Hood is 5/0/4.

15

This only became an issue when the alliance cover was moved from top5 to top100

16

Fixed that for you.

17

I have also heard those theories, and I intentionally did not discuss them in this thread.

With respect to character introductions, we can evaluate real data without any real sampling bias because we know with perfect certainty which covers were offered as rewards for which event.

But with respect to the long term probabilities of pulling particular covers, I am much more skeptical for several reasons. One significant problem is self-selection. Everyone knows that blue is Hood’s best power. So those people who have played for 100+ days but have never gotten close to a Hood blue (myself included unfortunately) and is sitting on a 5/0/5 build, are way WAY more likely to gripe about it that someone who has pulled the same number of Hood covers in the same amount of time but has a 5/5/0 Hood. Same for any other character with one very good power that is frequently reported as impossible to find (Lazy Thor’s yellow, Hulk’s black, Blade’s green etc). We forumites don’t have easy access to the kind of data that would let us sort out the noise. On the other hand, I remember that someone did a fairly sizeable tally of devil dino pulls during the anniversary week and that data suggested that purple was about 2x as common as red or purple.

All of which is to say that I guess it’s possible that the “best” covers are less likely to drop from a token, but we generally aren’t in a position to evaluate such a claim objectively. And anecdotal griping about whichever cover someone doesn’t have is not sufficient evidence.

18

Agreed, and while not meaning to sidetrack your thread, there appeared to be differing cover drop probabilities for Devil Dino during anniversary week, with purple covers vastly outnumbering red and green covers. Again, it’s just anecdotal, as you say, and without confirmation from the dev team one way or another, that’s how it’s going to stay.

19

Over 400 days in and NEVER EVER pulled a Hood Blue from a token. I finally got my first Hood blue from a PVP last month after killing myself to get Top25 (cause of course Demiurge makes the Blue cover harder to get).
I’ve pulled every other 3* color token from a token at one point or another (accepting the newest 3*'s released in the last 2-3 months).

I assume this is just luck of the draw - but sheesh that Hood Blue is hard to come by.

20

Now I feel extra sad. I killed myself for top 25 in that pvp a week or two ago . . . and finished 27th. misery