Cover Packs - Token Drops - too many Characters

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Since I did not want to HighJack the “Anniversary Thread” - but would like to get the community opinion.

Everyone seems to want to figure out what to do with tokens and a lot of ideas have been thrown out there.

Here are my thoughts.

  • 1 -
    Color and Star tokens.

For example:

A 3* Blue token → can be used for any Blue ability for a 3* cover, you already have.
While maintaining the traditional way of acquiring Covers → PvE/PvP for example and/or packs containing covers.

  • 2 -

Remove color requirement on tokens ONCE a cover has been acquired.
Again - While maintaining the traditional way of acquiring Covers → PvE/PvP and/or packs; tokens become color independant. You would still insane chances of getting the cover you need, onlt you have the options of choosing where to put that power.

People have complained forever about needing that Blue Hood that just won’t drop or Black Black Panther… and instead, time and time again… greeted with a blue BP or yellow Hood.

Having tokens (some not all) or token packs (more expensive?) give out color independant tokens… You can keep the same or similar drop chances - only they are not than cut in 3. A 1% chance of getting Hood and than further cut into 3 of getting the right color…

  • 3 -

Always keeping in mind - that you already have a cover for. Cover and color. Can’t be used to acquire a new ability on upgrade existing abilities.

The third option. Multi or themed cover tokens.
For example:

  • Any color cover for a “Lady”.
  • Any color cover for a “God” (Thor/Ares/Thorress)
  • Any cover of a character “bearing guns” (deadpool, punisher, GSBW, Fury)
  • Any character “wearing steel” (Magneto, IM, Colossus)
  • Any of the Xmen

And so on, and so on. The possibilities could be endless… There are a hundred ways to bundle these up into 12 or even 20 different types of tokens.

2

What happens when you pull a cover for a character you don’t have any covers for yet?

3

You don’t want to know. You DON’T. WANT. TO KNOW.

4

There’s always the possibility of going to color packs.

Avengers Assemble! - yellowtile.png
12, Battleplan - yellowtile.png
9, Energy Absorption - yellowtile.png
Passive, Grant Invisibility - yellowtile.png
18, Healing Factor - yellowtile.png
Passive, Healing Factor - yellowtile.png
Passive, Immovable Object - yellowtile.png
8, Inspiration - yellowtile.png
Passive, Medical Marvel - yellowtile.png
11, Mistress of the Elements - yellowtile.png
9, Raging Tempest - yellowtile.png
Passive, Recharge - yellowtile.png
6, Recovery - yellowtile.png
9, Sacrifice - yellowtile.png
8, Sentinel of Liberty - yellowtile.png
19, Sentinel of Liberty - yellowtile.png
19, Snarky Remark - yellowtile.png
7, Sunder - yellowtile.png
10, Thunder Strike - yellowtile.png
12, Thunder Strike - yellowtile.png
12, Twin Pistols - yellowtile.png
18, Web Bandages - yellowtile.png
12, Coercive Field - yellowtile.png
9

A Little Off the Top - redtile.png
6, Adamantium Slash - redtile.png
12, Ambush - redtile.png
7, Best There Is - redtile.png
14, Blast Arrow - redtile.png
9, Colossal Punch - redtile.png
11, Fireball - redtile.png
8, Fireball - redtile.png
8, Magnetic Flux - redtile.png
8, Mjolnir’s Might - redtile.png
8, Mjolnir’s Might - redtile.png
8, Photon Blast - redtile.png
11, Photonic Blasts - redtile.png
7, Pistol - redtile.png
12, Polarizing Force - redtile.png
8, Power Of Attorney - redtile.png
9, Psychic Knife - redtile.png
8, Rampage - redtile.png
10, Retribution - redtile.png
8, Smash - redtile.png
14, Star Spangled Avenger - redtile.png
11, Star Spangled Avenger - redtile.png
11, Supernova - redtile.png
11, Thunderclap - redtile.png
6, Unibeam - redtile.png
13

All Tied Up - bluetile.png
5, Anti-Gravity Device - bluetile.png
11, Ballistic Salvo - bluetile.png
20, Bewilder - bluetile.png
10, Chemical Reaction - bluetile.png
5, Chemical Reaction - bluetile.png
5, Defense Grid - bluetile.png
8, Demolition - bluetile.png
10, Dormammu’s Aid - bluetile.png
Passive, Electric Arrow - bluetile.png
9, Equalizer - bluetile.png
7, Force Bubbles - bluetile.png
13, Iron Hammer - bluetile.png
6, Magnetized Projectiles - bluetile.png
10, Manipulation - bluetile.png
11, Mutagenic Breakthrough - bluetile.png
8, Peacemaker - bluetile.png
12, Peacemaker - bluetile.png
12, Redwing - bluetile.png
Passive, Settlement - bluetile.png
9, Technopathic Strike - bluetile.png
9, Web-Slinger - bluetile.png
9, Wind Storm - bluetile.png
11

Adamantium Bones - purpletile.png
Passive, Aggressive Recon - purpletile.png
5, Bird Strike - purpletile.png
12, Deceptive Tactics - purpletile.png
11, Escape Plan - purpletile.png
12, Gravity Warp - purpletile.png
8, Illusions - purpletile.png
5, Pheromone Rage - purpletile.png
Passive, Pheromone Rage - purpletile.png
Passive, Polarity Shift - purpletile.png
11, Radar Sense - purpletile.png
11, Speed Shot - purpletile.png
Passive, Spider-Sense - purpletile.png
Passive, Switcheroo - purpletile.png
13, Whales! Whales! Whales! - purpletile.png
14

Animal Inside - greentile.png
9, Armed and Dangerous - greentile.png
12, Berserker Rage - greentile.png
9, Call The Storm - greentile.png
14, Call The Storm - greentile.png
14, Feral Claws - greentile.png
6, Flame Jet - greentile.png
5, Flame Jet - greentile.png
5, Force Field Crush - greentile.png
9, Godlike Power - greentile.png
10, Judgement - greentile.png
8, Lightning Storm - greentile.png
12, Lightning Strike - greentile.png
10, Onslaught - greentile.png
7, Reprieve - greentile.png
12, Sniper Rifle - greentile.png
15, Thunderous Clap - greentile.png
10, World Rupture - greentile.png
7, X-Force - greentile.png
8

Anger - blacktile.png
Passive, Control Shift - blacktile.png
17, Espionage - blacktile.png
Passive, Fastball Special - blacktile.png
13 , Hailstorm - blacktile.png
9, Inferno - blacktile.png
10, Inferno - blacktile.png
10, Intimidation - blacktile.png
9, Molotov Cocktail - blacktile.png
7, Murderous Aim - blacktile.png
18, Psi-Katana - blacktile.png
6, Rage of the Panther - blacktile.png
12, Summon Demons - blacktile.png
12, Trickery - blacktile.png
15, Healing & Heat - blacktile.png
Passive, Healing & Heat - blacktile.png
Passive, Hypersonic Punch - blacktile.png
9, Insult to Injury - blacktile.png
Passive, Life of the Party - blacktile.png
Passive, Surgical Strike - blacktile.png
11

5

Nonce, how long did that take you to make? ^

6

A few minutes with regular expressions.

7

You are WAY, WAY too good at the boards. o7!

8

First off the continued dilution of the character pool is not just a token problem but a problem across all rewards. More people for rewards means each one comes up less often as conventional rewards from events and less often from random tokens.

To counteract the dilution there is two paths they can follow to combat this although there are many ways to implement each path.

  1. More rewards. Seems simple enough, if it takes too long to get someone covered pass out more of all rewards and it will go faster. More events with more rewards with more tokens, better odds on tokens would also help. This path while might be popular with the players might get too overboard down the line and I can see why the devs don’t want to start throwing things around like candy.

  2. Targeted rewards. Give people the ability to manipulate your own personal odds. Best possible scenario the player gets to pick the 20(?) 3* heroes they want in the random token pool. Can prune down the 2* pool also if they continue to add more of those. You won’t ever be able to set it to say I want Sentrys give me Sentry, but you can move finished characters out of your pool maximizing the chance that you will get something you actually want and can use. New players can concentrate on getting a core team up and running before worrying about making space for ~every~ character out there. It could be really awesome but admittedly harder to implement than the first path.

Many people keep suggesting splitting tokens into separate packs but without any control over which packs we get that will not actually affect the long term odds of pulling a character just the odds on that specific token.

The third path is to start retiring people but that is really a last resort option and I don’t think anyone wants that to happen (except the vets who already have all the old school chars maxed). If they were going to retire characters I would do it in a fashion that “retired” characters can have their covers bought directly for cheap. Start with Rags Doom and Loki, make any of their covers buyable for 500 HP and let any budding new whales just buy a shiny maxed 3* team that is kinda really bad but makes them still available just not part of the token pool.

9

Had to quote this in, because I love the work you did with this.

This kind of falls into my original idea.

BUT !! As in my first point, you would also have to make them star.png
valued. I mean a star.png
greentile.png
< star.png
star.png
bluetile.png
< star.png
star.png
star.png
redtile.png
< star.png
star.png
star.png
star.png
blacktile.png

Or used for any ability of color up to number of star.png

10

Question how would you see this implemented? Does each reward give out a different color token or are you given a choice every time you open the token as to which color you want?

Merely splitting things up is purely organizational. To actually see improved odds for the players we need some amount of choice or control over what packs we receive after they have been split up, and it would be best of all if each individual player had some amount of control on what they personally wanted in packs.

11

There’s an easy enough way around that. You don’t create 2 tokens you just split the 3* pool in half and change which half are in the heroic token pool frequently (every week/every other week?). If you don’t need the characters in the current pool you just hang on to the tokens for a week or two…it’s not the best solution but it’s certainly workable.

12

One other suggestion on the topic for now.
Add all the characters into the pool and have a rotating daily featured set of characters (1 star.png
2 star.png
3 star.png
4 star.png
)
Each token opened that day would have (noticeably) increased odds of the featured people so if you really need a Loki save up all your tokens and open them all on a Loki day for best odds to get what you want. If you have Loki maxed DON’T OPEN ANY TOKENS ON LOKI DAY. Nice and simple icon_e_smile.gif

Edit: I see the guy above me also had a very similar suggestion that could also work. Larger group weekly rotation but same idea.

13

This exactly. It’s the elephant in the room. The current model of continuously adding characters into the pool is unsustainable with the reward structure we have right now. In the long term the whole thing will have to be overhauled.

Imagine this… At the current rate of a new character every 2 weeks, in another year we will be looking at almost 50 3* characters. At 2-3 pvps a week, it will take roughly 20 weeks to cycle through every character once. Even if we were to assume that you’re amazing and can win top 5 every event, it would still take you 60+ weeks to fully cover a particular 3*. In that time, another 30 new characters will have been introduced.

Can you imagine being a new player transitioning into that? I would’ve erased the game after 2 weeks.

14

Why not keep the same odds but rotate which 20 star.png
star.png
star.png
characters are available each season? In Season 6 you can’t get Beast, Deadpool, Colossus etc… In Season 7 rotate out Punisher, Doom, Spider-Man… That would keep the odds the same and would scale for characters for quite a while. Seems pretty simple, and people shooting for a very specific character know they will be in rotation at least every other season.

15

Absolutely.

This is what they are realising they are facing and it’s actually unlikely they are going to be able to find a permanent solution within the model of “here player, have a heroic token”. IceIX was saying somewhere else, ideas are still germinating on their whiteboard which means it’s going to be anywhere from 1 to 2 months or more before we get anything in a release.

I’ve seen a number of other suggestions floating around, many of which have a lot of merit. Some resolve some of the issues but then introduce new ones - but if it’s a system that is impacted each time a new character comes out, it’s eventually going to run into the same problem. Also it has to be a minimal effort thing for the devs.

The immediate resolution is to stick everyone in up to Doc Ock, lower the 2* odds and increase the 2*'s slightly in the standard tokens (which really makes the 1*'s shorter term characters again, which is a questionable outcome but a side issue).

A short-medium term resolution is to halve or third the 3*s and rotate them weekly as packs.

Longer term, the solution is the seperation of the connection between characters and “here have a token”, so that if you were to introduce 50 new characters in one day, it shouldn’t make a difference. You would need something like a levelling system (as part of an integrated roster and training system) where you can use ISO or HP or a token or a cover or whatever to unlock a character (or character colour) and then level or de-level (long desired feature, which could be implemented in such a system) them.

16

I don’t see having too many characters being a problem since it never made sense to buy tokens for any particular character except at the very beginning of the game that was more because there were stuff like Lightning Round tokens that only had 5 3s in it. At worst they can split it into 2 types of heroics and that should be good enough for at least an year or so. As long as there’s no reason to diversify your roster I’m not terribly concerned with unable to get the 3 that I never needed in the first place. I used to try to get everyone max covered all that means is I got more stuff to sell back from PvP/PvE events, and it’s not like I’m missing someone I need because that’s what my spare HP is for.

17

Personally, I’d just be happy if they came out with group tokens that allow you to choose a token for someone out of like 3-4 characters so people can have an easier transition.

18

That is what it boils down to, they will have to start giving people choices instead of chances.

19

It’s not really the same type of game, but INJUSTICE-Gods Among Us offers Bronze, Silver, Gold packs and they’ve added new packs that contain newly released characters only.

20

Personally, I’d be happy with rewards and tokens drops being for a character, not a particular color of a particular character. Keeps SOME of the randomness, but lowers it from the insane level it is now. (Would also keep people from getting a 5/2/1 GSBW like I have, and I’ve sold at least one green cover.)

Yasuru of the NotInTheFace alliance