DDQ, vaulting, and splitting the baby.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Okay, so, my car’s hors de combat at the moment, which means I do a LOT of walking. And one of the ways I amuse myself while walking is…thinking (entirely too much) about MPQ.

Saw this tidbit from Brigby in the “we can haz feedback nao?” thread (okay that’s not actually what it’s titled but bear with me):

The first two of those have been oft suggested, while the third leaves me instantly skeptical; “containing older 3- and 4-star characters” needn’t be parsed as implying ONLY 3- and 4-star characters. So I’m going to pretend, for the sake of this post, that that option got nuked from orbit (it’s the only way to be sure) and it’ll end up being one of the first two.

And I’d be okay with either of the first two!

But there’s another option for which the pleas have been lustily offered, and just as there’s a framework within the Latest/Classic dichotomy with Legendary tokens, there’s a framework for this, too: using DDQ to convey specific covers.

Now, Demiurge have been resistant to making 4* covers available on anything like the daily basis 3* are, and I wouldn’t expect that to change.

On the other hand? Look at DDQ as it exists: seven nodes, five progression rewards. Most days, if your 2-4* rosters are well-represented, there are a maximum of 22000 points attainable; one day in five, you can get as high as 44000.

So, okay: but that leaves 22k points as window dressing. If you win the Crash, you get all of that day’s progression rewards (standard/1k ISO/elite/2k ISO/taco) and then clearing the remaining nodes gets you another 22k points and node rewards, but nothing in the way of progressions.

So why not put a cover for the cycle’s Crash character at 44000 points? You’d only get there one day in five, at most - you’d have to time your Crash for a day when you also have the characters for the two essential nodes.

It would provide targeted progression for veteran rosters (defined here as “rosters with characters well-developed enough to win the Crash”), which is important considering that 75% of the characters who go a-Crashing are, currently, minimally obtainable - if you haven’t reached viability on a chunk of the 4* available, you’re going to have a tough time earning those tokens.

Would one cover every five days instead of a cover daily completely tame the ravening beasts? Ha. Ha, ha. No. But it wouldn’t HURT.

I mean, ideally, a 3/4* token would exist alongside that every-fifth-day cover. It doesn’t have to be either/or. That way, less mature rosters still have the ability to build towards Crash viability, and once they reach that point, they’re rewarded with additional covers targeted to that specific character. Rosters which have reached viability have reason to champion, and some percentage of those would then spend on ISO. I mean, I don’t know WHO, or why they would EVEN, but…they’re out there. Somewhere. Veteran rosters which already have champions would see the restrictions on their champion progress eased somewhat.

Eh? Eh?

2

I like it. To expand, put more 4 stars in the taco vaults and take out equal 2 stars.

3

A vault feauring the 4* of the week should AT LEAST contain a cover for any color of that character.

4

Simply put, there is WAY too much resistance to making 4’s more common.

There are more 4’s than 3’s and we get 3’s on a daily basis.

It can’t keep operating like this to be fair.
If we keep on as we’re keeping we’re ending summer/fall alone with over 50 4 stars.

It’d still be a 50 day cycle for 1 cover of all 4’s if they went a daily route, and that’s if you can use/have all of them rostered.

5

in all honesty, the taco vaults needs a revamp. 300 items is too much, and I would guess somewhere around 250 of those items make the recipient say “whoop. dee. doo.” in the most sarcastic tone ever. Personally, I only open tacos if I have a lot saved up and there’s a 4 star I want in there… or I need healthpacks in general. After that? I think of them as borderline garbage (similar to most tokens in this game). I know the 2* farm requires 2* characters, but at some point, my main roster goals becomes 2* farming because that’s the only thing I can do! 900 in PVP, top 10 placement in any event… most likely that I won’t get there for either. So, 4’s only come from LT’s and CP, 3*s sometimes come from tokens but still too rarely… My token odds are still incredibly frustrating.

I am all for longevity of the game, and you can’t give away the farm in one day. But at the moment, I have all 3’s champed except for Hawkguy, and 4’s are still unicorns… I am finding less to chase because the goals are too far out of reach (and keep getting farther away!) The carrot that is being dangled in front of me is starting to get moldy and gross.

6

OK, now that’s a pretty good idea (getting the 4* cover at 44000 points, limited to once every 5 days), but may I offer a small suggestion?

I’m an early 4* transitioner, so quite a few of my 4s are still woefully undercovered. How about getting to 44000 points gives you a cover for the 4 that’s coming up next in the cycle instead? Kind of how placement rewards in PvE and PvP give the required characters for the next event.

I say this because for me and other early transitioners, winning a cover for a character I just won the Crash with, while welcome, may not be as beneficial as winning a cover for the next 4*, who may have a lot fewer covers. Or, may be one cover away from becoming really viable in their Crash.

Perfect example: I won this cycle’s Crash pretty easily with my 4/1/3 Level 172 X-23. Your proposal states that on the day I beat all the nodes of DDQ and got to 44000, I would get another X-23 cover. That would be nice, but I would rather get a cover for my 0/0/1 Iceman, who will be up next for Crash.

Now, a two cover Iceman still won’t have a shot of winning his Crash, but it could be a game changer if it was maybe my sixth or seventh cover instead.

This way the characters that can win a Crash can help those that can’t quite yet, rather than your proposal, where the already strong get stronger, but the poorly covered stay that way because the progression cover is gated behind an area they can’t get to, since they can’t win the Crash in the first place.

Does that make sense? I hope I’m explaining it well enough. Again, it’s a great idea, something that hadn’t crossed my mind, but once you mentioned it and I thought about it, this just seemed like a tweak that might make it a bit better.

7

I get what you’re saying; it’s not a hill I’d die on either way, because a 4* is still a 4*.

That said, the reason I went the way I did is twofold: first, that’s how 3* DDQ already works, so it maintains consistency; and second, such a system has to start SOMEWHERE. If it starts with the current character getting skipped, it will cause disgruntlement. Consider the forum response when a character gets skipped in the PvE 4* progression, as an example. Or how Captain Marvel became a feeder for Captain Peggy after many had passed 183 already.

There’s no way to please everyone on implementation, I get that. And as I said, I’d not die on that hill favoring one approach strongly over the other. But I do think tying it to the current crasher would probably cause fewer problems in the short term.

8

Yeah, after taking the time to write and post that, I did realize that your suggestion more closely resembles the current system, where you have to beat Dat Required Character in order to unlock The Big Enchilada, which rewards a cover for… the required 3* from the current DAT.

You’re right, I wouldn’t necessarily complain if they implemented your idea. A 4* is a 4*, and I’ll takes 'em where I can gets 'em. But I figure that if we’re making reasonable suggestions, might as well swing for the fences.

9

I popped in here just to say I enjoyed your use of aliens quotes in the first part of your post. Kudos

10

I wouldn’t mind a 3/4 token, but no way in hell would I spend cp on it.

Daily 4 star deadpool is pretty much a necessity at this point.

11

Simply let players curate which characters are “current” and which are “vaulted” - with a cavet, that there must be a minimum of X characters. To clarify,

There are 12 “Current” 4*'s which turn up in tokens wherever a 4* draw is possible. So we’re going to say that there will always be 12 4* characters in your line-up. You pick up to 12 characters; if you pick less, then the remainder of the list will be populated with however many of the newest characters are needed to reach 12. You want Jean, Cyke and Iceman? Let’s load 'em up, along with the 9 latest characters.

Same deal with the 3* tier but up to 20 characters instead.

12

in your honest opinion, wouldn’t everyone just pick the 12 best characters? Thus, it would mean every roster began to take shape in the same way, creating carbon copies. Carol, Ice, Cyke, Jean, HB, Medusa, RHulk… etc. We would never put bad characters in that group of 12, thus making all bad characters, even the new ones, immediately obsolete.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to only pull from a pool of great characters, but it is pretty obvious that we would all select the same 10 or so characters, which would cut down on competitive advantages to those people who already had those characters maxed out. Anyone who already has C4rol championed deserves to have an advantage over the people who have yet to get there.

13

I don’t know about EVERYBODY, but there would likely be some homogenized rosters. To be fair, though, that’s the endgame of vaulting without some sort of tweak. Everybody ends up building the latest 12 and, in theory, the older ones eventually fall away in the face of whatever the meta becomes, since they can’t be easily built anymore.

14

The above more or less covers my response. I think there’s probably a core 4 or 5 characters, but it becomes a lot more mutable past that.

Even if there was a list of the quantifiably best 12 characters, all Demiurge would have to do is release a character which is equivalent in strength. Then it becomes a matter of choice - something which the devs have repeatedly stated was their objective all along (players should choose who they roster, etc). Now if you think the game doesn’t reflect that, well, that’s an issue you need to take up with them, not me. I think that the recent character updates have actually done a lot to bring the game towards that goal. I think vaulting access to those updated characters absolutely runs contrary to that design, and I think the game’s mechanics still only reward a “win fast” meta.

15

I actually dont think the system is broken and dont mind the pace to covering 4* (witj vaulting I actually stopped spending CP and started hoarding LTs until I champed my max covers I already have). I get that this is free to play so progress is gonna be slow unless you put A LOT of work into it. With that being said, I think your idea of a 4* as progressive when beating Crasg and the rest of DDQ. Its a small token of appreciation that I think would make the fan base feel a lot better about their frustrations lately. Ive seen A LOT of complaining and unrealistic solutions given on this forum lately but this does honestly sound like a perfect compromise and would be very easy to install.

16

Hmm that’s certainly an interesting proposition. Quite interesting enough that I’ve included this thread in my weekly report to the developers. Thanks for the post, DFiPL!

17

Thanks for passing the proposition on to the developers, Brigby!

18

If they did implement something like this, I wish they would consider locking the Crash node the way they do now, over a 5 day span, but still change what the Crash node actually is on a daily basis. That way people could choose one of 5 characters every cycle to get the targeted cover for, rather than have it be just the one option for 5 whole days.

This would mitigate the issue of the Crash rotation moving so slowly and would also let people have 5 chances to succeed at the Crash with different characters if some of their characters aren’t Crash ready.

…And if they wanted to stick all five of those 4* characters into the vault (so that people knew who to expect), I wouldn’t particularly complain. What is that, an extra .15 4*s out of the vault every cycle? That’s the equivalent of 4 whole extra CP per week. Not that big of a deal guys.

19

Sir, your suggestion is excellent and I would subscribe to your newsletter.

That said, one of the intensely frustrating things about vaulting 4*s is that for a transitioning player (e.g. me) crash nodes are effectively gated out of existence.

For example: I’m missing only 6-7 4*s rostered, however of these only 1 (Invisible Woman) has enough covers to matter for crash! So, until I can (A) get enough of the current 12, and (B) the current 12 show up in the rotation for crash, I may as well ignore that feature of DDQ.

DDQ is not the place for reliably distributing vaulted covers, unless crash changes to be more like the 3* reward node, and you can bring a team. The idea as presented would help folks finish their heroes, so its certainly not a bad idea. Just… not sufficient.

–Khanwulf

20

Oh, you’re absolutely correct: my proposal doesn’t do a thing to help transitioners whose characters have low coverage.

But some of those affected are those for whom champion rewards affected their resource flow, and this compromise can help them. Same for those with Crash-viable characters who aren’t at full coverage.

As part of a multi-tiered solution, I think my proposal has a role to play. All by itself, it’s absolutely incomplete.