Events requiring 3* characters need to be consistent

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I’m a 2* player at the moment. When the Hulk event began, I invested heavy time and energy for the prospect of Hulk tokens and the covers to finish my Wolverine at the end.

What I discovered, however, was that placing high enough to get Hulk/Recruit tokens in the subevents consistently kept me in the high 1000s to low 2000s. No higher, though. I didn’t own a Black Panther and my Punisher was level 15, so I really couldn’t capitalize on the required hero fights. Fine, I figured. Two 3* Thors is nothing to sneeze at.

7 days, even more subevents, and the formula is the same. 3-4 non-required fights per Sub, 1 required BP and 1 required Punisher. My rank is consistent.

Last day of subevents, and suddenly each sub has one fewer non-required fight - and Punisher is required to complete the last two story missions. I’m irritated, but over two days I have two lucky games with mStorm and Thor, and clear those two fights. My rank sinks, but is still comfortably inside the 3333+ bracket.

Last day. I open up the main event.

6 of 7 fights require 3* characters. I have 3 Punisher covers, and 1 Hulk cover. They are levels 20 and 15 respectively. The day begins with villains around level 140-160. By the end of the day, they are hovering at 191.

I grind, consume every healthpack I have multiple times, even at one point finally cave and spend HPs on a health pack.

My last fight of the event, I am at rank 3321 with 9 minutes to go. By the time I finish the fight, the event has ended and I have been bumped to the 6666+ bracket, the one place I did not want to be.

Here’s the point. I committed intense time over the past 10 days because the structure of the event led me to believe I would be able to maintain a certain rank throughout the event if I grinded every sub-event. On the last day, that structure changed drastically, and I lost that rank.

Demiurge, I feel like you screwed me over on this one. Please, if you must require 3* characters, require them consistently.

tl;dr: The sudden increase in Required Character events cost me a yellow 3* Thor cover. I’m somewhat miffed.

Edited for clarity: replaced ‘events’ with ‘fights’

2

Punisher was always required in the Hulk event. It also fits with the storyline they’ve done. And they give you a Hulk during the event.

3

Yes, I know. I think it’s fine that some percentage of the PvE - lets say fights, to be more clear - are required character. What I’m saying is that that percentage needs to be consistent across the entire event. I competed in this event by compensating for a lackluster roster with grinding time with storm/thor. Suddenly and drastically changing how many fights require characters screws players like me over - after I’ve already invested 8 odd days of grinding.

4

The events that require Punisher/Hulk have considerably weaker enemies than normal. You can’t tell it on this time around because they’re all level 230 due to scaling, but in the original version of The Hulk, the Punisher required mission usually have 3Xlevel 50 guys even on the hard bracket, which can easily be killed by a level 15 Punisher plus any random 2 level 85 guys. Back then, Wolverine 2* was boosted and can take out 3 level 50 guys with both hands tied behind his back.

In general, any required character mission tend to have lower enemies. It’s hard to see this with scaling making everything level 230, but that’s how it’s supposed to be.

5

I feel for ya, dude.

The structural change for the last day was rather jarring, and the early downgrade of event tokens to normal Heroics was disappointing. I was lucky to have a couple BP covers and a few Punisher covers to unlock nodes. That 1-Thor tier is terribly awkward, esp. for 2* players like us. I purposely avoided that tier in Brotherhood to max out my AWolv, since I was all but locked out of multi-BP-cover contention by Psylocked nodes and lack of rubberbanding knowledge.

As for your low Punisher and Hulk levels, I didn’t even bother leveling my Punisher and Hulk to their soft caps, since my buffed Thor & OBW were tanking every color but black. I literally never used any Hulk powers on the last day, and only the occasional 20% Retribution. Then again, I saw lower enemy levels than you (my final-day nodes opened at under L100), so you might have had an actual need for them.

One last thing: were you able to optimize your rubberbanding?

6

As far as I know, yes. I did the initial round of each subevent, plus 1 to 2 refreshes. I didn’t grind to 1, but I took all the major points off the table except for the required events.

This last day, it took multiple attempts at each fight just to clear the initial round. Even Search and Destroy 3 was painful, simply because of an extremely high level Daken. Over the course of the day, I managed to repeat S&D 3 three times (it refreshed to 900 points midday), and S&D 2 once - twice, if you count the one I finished 2 minutes after the event ended.

7

Those guys are supposed to be around level 100-150 minus The Final Showdown in the original Hulk. This time around the scaling puts them all at 230X3 which is quite painful, but it’s not really intended.

8

None of my final missions hit 230. They were all in the hundreds, most were in the 80s for my first refresh.

9

If it makes you feel any better, it is going to take months and months to fully cover out the new lazy Thor anyway since they Don’t seem to have events with the new characters as rewards anymore. He is a LOOOONG way from being viable for anyone that does not spend money on it.

10

Same here.

On some subevent BP missions (Gnu, you’re gonna hate this), I saw levels under 60 for the first refresh. As far as I remember, enemy levels only passed 200 during the second half of the last day, when a couple of those final nodes hit L209. I did not do those nodes. On the last day, I did a down-to-200 full sweep, then a few reps of a couple of L150ish nodes maybe 10 hours before close. Finally, 3-4 heavily boosted fights two hours before the end, which turned out to be unnecessary.

Daken is the bane of both my PvE and PvP existence, because at lower levels, he’s persistently annoying. At higher levels, he’s like a clumsily vicious vampire, constantly healing himself while taking progressively larger chunks out of you.

P.S. - And yes, unbuffed Th’oreal is going to be deadweight for me for a while, even though I got 3 covers, unless those little pulsing stars spawn a 2*-to-3* metaThorphosis function.

11

The main problem for me with the required character fights (As far as completing them went) wasn’t so much about the third character being weak, as it denied me the ability to use my full thor/storm/obw combo. I could still pull it off with just thor/storm, and once with storm/widow, but it was far, far less consistent. Wolverine I found was just too slow (higher level than my thor, so he was tanking too much).

Honestly though, I don’t even care that much anymore about my relative success or lack thereof. As clint said, the Thors weren’t going to be much use to me anyways. I just think that drastically changing the event structure on the last day is bad policy, and I’d like Demiurge to change that.

12

Hope you guys realise the WTF mechanism of this HULK event - it’s his event but he’s less buffed than Black Panther. My level 70 Hulk turns out to be level 100 when buffed while BP being the same level is level 148 when buffed. So I’m in the awkward situation of HULK only being able to make environmental matches when he’s the required character with others taking Headbutts and what not.

As for the OP, I feel your pain. I started out MPQ about 1-2 weeks before the first HULK event and I just didn’t compete in those “hard” or “deadly” missions because all I had was just IM35 and MBW, both not maxed. Hope that you won’t stay disappointed for long but instead build up your roster and covers to do better.

13

I’m in a similar place to Phantron - I wish I knew why! Both S&D II and III were level 230s for me. I think, from memory, S&D I was around 190, so not sure why the jump either!

I would have loved to have seen some 100 levels - I might have tried to push for top 1000 if that had been the case.

Gnu, I’m really feeling for you. It sounds like you were particularly unlucky on this one. If it’s any consolation, on my first run through of Hulk I couldn’t really compete either. This time round, I got all the progression rewards, and if I’d had more time / less life, my roster would have allowed me to grind for minimum top 1000. It all comes back around eventually - hang in there.

14

Last three or four days I was facing all 230s. Doable but not fun at all and took quite a while. I’m wondering if doing more than 1 pass on the nodes increases their levels? Either way it would be nice of the enemy levels we adjusted solely on useable character levels for each player.

Now what do I do with all these max stacks of buffs :stuck_out_tongue:

15

The event was more or less consistent, execpt for the last day. The last day was a big mistake, two many points for one day and two many fights with Punisher.

I prefer the last day just as a way two wrap the story. Everybody should be able to play all the nodes and follow the story of the event.

In my case, I was able to mantein my rank and win everything, but I was really scared about losing my rank in the last day., after 8 days of hard work Not fun.

16

Not exactly. I waited too long to start on some of the sublevels and on the last day and when i did come back they had already spiked considerably. I think its a combined effect of your personal success rate on top of the community clear rates. I made the mistake of not grinding them out the minute they opened up, because after that 1st refresh its only gonna shoot up.
And yea. daken and juggernaut’s balance were kinda broken in this event. Not challenging in a good way, a lot of dumb luck, randomness and difficulty for difficulty sake.

But on a positive note, the unnecessarily long running time of the event did give alot of players time to get all the progression rewards.

17

The requirement in the ending made perfect sense. One strain finalized the Hulk line and the other was Punisher’s personal subplot, of course he was required.

Your problem is not what you state really: in the original run these games provided half points on the second run and 1 afterwards. And the point values were not really high. (And I think did not reset at all either).

This time they repeated in 5 packs, 3 resets and quite everyone got the 10x rubberband multiplier. Meaning full harvest of all had 67k points. In a tournament marking 160k progression as end. (In First hulk like 150 people passed the last progression, first place was like 500 points above.)

The last day just rounded the story and provided no significant points, your placement was quite sealed from the last sub. And the fight vs tough but doable with the 1-cover Punisher that one time alright.

So your problem is really the same everyone had: the f-d up points for the last day with all its massively negative impact.

18

Mine started 140-180. Then by the end the most popular ones scaled up to 230, but say the Hulk remained considerable lower. And the final shodown was still below 200 – while IIRC in the original run it was a 240 final go.

19

Really? We’re having a BP thing just right now.

But certainly it takes quite some time to complete a ***, it is perfectly normal. My Punisher got the last cover just a week ago (first in the middle of first Hulk), and he is about the most featured thing around. Patience rulez.

20

All tournaments use different level buffs, it’s even indicated by the red chrystal. The normal last times is like +40 levels and the big like +100.

But the big is only applied to the most recent character, now BP, last PVE to Psylocke – players who won all possible covers have all those at 1/1/1 or 2/2/2 only with related level cap. That is being compensated by the massive buff. Good only for a single event. Watch how in next PVE LazyThor will get the same privilege.