Game no longer fun, how can i fix it?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Add mine to the long list of stories from people who used to get a kick out of the game but are really struggling now.

I’ve got a level 140 Punisher, three 2*s at level 85, and no one else over level 80. And yet in tournaments i keep getting matched against people with two or three level 141s.

I’ll skip and skip and skip and it will just keep showing me the same teams, while digging my ISO into the dirt (Charging us 10 ISO per skip when it’s not actually letting you skip the team is bordering on false advertising i think, but that’s another issue.)

Finally in the Black Panther tournament i was mostly seeing two 141s paired with a boosted level 212 Black Panther. I’d skip and skip and finally find a team that seemed maybe beatable, maybe two 141s and a Black Panther that was only level 120 or so. I’d splurge on boosts and usually manage to win, though often by the skin of my teeth. I finally managed to crawl my way up to 500 points… and exit the match to find i’d been hit three times and knocked back down to 450 points.

My alliance teammates with weaker rosters report having a much easier time of it, and seem to be having more fun to boot. They’re getting matched against 85 teams, getting up to 700ish points and getting the 3* cover reward. On my alt-account on my phone i’ve only got level 85 characters and i only get matched up against level 85 characters, and it’s a lot more fun!

If i sell my Punisher will i get dumped back into the level 85 MMR range? Or will i just be stuck with unbeatable fights? Is there any way to make the game fun again? Is there any way to be competitive again? The only other 3* with 13 covers that i’ve got is CMags, and it would take forever to level him up. I can’t seem to win more 3* covers in the tourneys anymore because i’m in MMR hell. And even if i had a second maxed out 3*, how do you play in tournaments without having OBW on your team, playing a PVE match to heal up, or spending tons on health packs? Is that what everyone else is doing? (And i refuse to give D3 any more of my money when i’m not actually having any fun currently.)

Or should i just give up on my PC account, only play on my phone, and make sure to never level up anyone past 85?

I dunno, it just seems i’m having to invest a lot of time, especially with the Season stuff going on and the constant events with a continuing stream of new characters, but i’m not having any fun anymore and i’m not making and progress. It seems like i’ve ruined everything by leveling up Punisher and i don’t know what to do now. I used to have so much fun with this game and now i just feel dejected.

2

Based on what Bugpop posted the game almost certainly matches you up based on your highest, recently used character. So if your team is 141/1/1 you’d still get matched up against 141X3 (it’d be highly abusable if not). So if the rest of your roster isn’t strong enough to fight 3X141 consider just using all lower level characters until they caught up.

That said there’s no shortage of 141 + OBW combination of heroes that have very high scores. OBW is probably stronger than an average 3* anyway.

3

I run 141 Pun and 85 OBW with basically any featured hero (obviously not Pun or GSBW) and I’ve found I can beat a lot of combinations of 141s, but I also get matched up with many low leveled featured char + Pun/OBW or LT/OBW as well. After this recent set of LRs in which I tanked quite a few of them, I actually fought a lot of 85/85 teams on my way up to 700+ before finding the usual mix of 141/141, or 141/85, and the occasional 85/85 in the 7-900 range.

tl;dr - try tanking the next set of LRs, beat the seed teams for 15 minutes and throw in your tank team once the real guys show up. Rinse, repeat. Your MMR WILL go down, but whether it’s enough to get you back to 85/85 land? Well, you won’t know until you try.

4

Well the question here is what is your expectation with say 141 Punisher + OBW? I suspect the difficulty of the team you face is a bell curve that is also limited by availability. I run 2 141 for all games and I rarely see 2 level 85s and 141X2 is the dominant team, but seems inline relative to my team’s strength. If you’re running 141 Punisher + OBW, then a 141X2 is technically stronger, but it sounds like you also see more 85X2, which is definitely weaker. It seems to me people just want more 85/85 than 141/141, but why should anyone be entitled to such advantage? And if someone has to get that advantage, it’d make sense for that to be the 141/141 guys (because nobody can be higher level than they are, and they probably play/spend the most). My 141/141 team obviously has an easier time with a 141/141 compared to a 141/85 team facing 141/141, but a 141/85 team could see more 85/85, which I very rarely see. Does that balance out? I’ve no idea, but it doesn’t sound like it’s inherently unfair to either player.

5

You raise some great points Phantron, but I think my major issue is that once you have a LV 100+ character, you get put into 3* land and it makes it harder for you to raise your 3*'s to be competitive with rosters like yours. If I’m not placing top 50, then my progress is very slow because I’m not getting as many 3* covers as the max 2* and max 3* people are.

6

My BP was level 41 buffed in previous PvP. I kept getting people with 2x85 plus a BP above level 60 or another 3* above or around level 100. Reaching 600 was tough. I don’t have any usable 3* btw.

7

My main concern about the game is : why should we spend so much time tanking (I do not do it anymore, as I already spend enough time in the tournaments themselves) ?

That’s the same thing as prologue healing…

They should fix this first. If they delete tanking (apparently that’s what they are doing) and prologue healing, then they should find a way of making the game less difficult to play.

IMO, the best way to fix things is just to play casually. If everybody does that, the turnover from shields, Health Packs… will just collapse, and they will have to find a way of getting money another way. We can hope they will find solutions that make us enjoy the game better…

8

You rearrange your entire work and social life around a f2p match-3 game upon which you spend HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS IN REAL MONEY.. If you were to look real human beings in the face and exhaustively detail everything that you have done while playing this game, their faces would slowly turn pale white as drops of cold sweat trickle past their twitching eyebrows and dart around their agape mouthes before finally hurtling off their slack jaws toward the ground like a flailing, doomed skydiver with a torn parachute.

I am not being facetious. At this point I genuinely believe that you are subconsciously crying for help by detailing the exact measures you take to play this “game” as a second and third job. There are people who play Clash of Clans with two iPads strapped to their shower walls who would look at your posts and think, “Wow, this guy really needs to seek professional help.” Please, please, please speak to someone. If you are already speaking with someone, please speak more.

TLDR: Lexapro. Get some.

9

And this post is where Ghast levelled up to AGhast.

10

Ghast : like any other addiction (cigarette is one and it kills you, and costs quite a bit of money too) it can go beyond imagination.

11

New app tagline: “MPQ: it’s not as bad as chain-smoking.”

12

I don’t really get the point you’re trying to make, but to answer your question, I don’t really have any certain expectations with my 141 Punisher/OBW team. I guess I expect to see a mix of 141/85 and 141/141, just as I was facing before, and I was surprised to start seeing mostly 85/85 teams, which is why I shared my experience. I didn’t go in expecting to have an advantage since I’m running an 85 over a 130 or 128 that I also have on my roster. In fact, even if I do see only 85/85 I might be slightly advantaged early on as I can kill those teams faster than 141/141 teams, but once I get up to high enough points those maxed out teams are going to see me and eat me for lunch. So, does it all balance out, as you asked (perhaps rhetorically)? I think it mostly balances out, and in the long run, whether it’s truly equal or not is not really a big deal because the game has other mechanisms which help restore the balance.

13

I think the featured character is not considered in the matchmaking, or at least weighted a lot less compared to the level of the other two guys. I mean the point is that they want you to spend money on the featured guy, so it’d be actually pretty stupid to use him as a weight in MMR, because that just means if you maxed out Sentry for $250 you immediately see other Sentry at level 141 too and that’d be a pretty big waste of money! But the reverse is also true, e.g. your loaner Sentry is going to face the guys who just maxed out their Sentry because your other two guys are considered equal to his two guys.

14

That was more of a rhetoric question yes.

I think most of the frustration people feel is just that only 2% of the people can win all 3 covers in a given PvP event (10 out of 500). No matter how you rearranged those 2%, 98% of the people will be left out. I certainly do not try for top 10 on every event because it’s too tiring to do so. I guess the seasons/alliance does give people pressure to do well in events they don’t really need, but a guy who can get top 10 is usually comfortably in the top 100 alliance range and shouldn’t really need the heroic tokens for the individual finish. I think I’m like #95 in my seasons bracket this time and I’m not even sure if I’m going to bother doing SHIELD training if my alliance is nowhere close to moving up/down a reward tier. Last time I got 2X10 heroic pack and currently I’m on schedule for 5 heroic tokens and honestly that’d probably just be 15 more covers I sell back immediately.

15

Uninstall it?

Not a dig at you. This game is beyond fixing.

16

I’ll confess I just skimmed through the posts in this thread but judging by the title you’ve fallen on the “Check Your Internet Connection” trap!

341×443 28.7 KB

Personally I think it’s more inclined towards the devs to make the game fun again rather than yourself. But that’s just my personal opinion.

17

The problem is the devs won’t realize something needs to be fixed if the players don’t provide feedback. I’m sure many have quit and uninstalled the game right now and won’t reinstall unless they hear it’s amazingly fun and MMR / PVP fixed again at some point.

I’m stubborn and trying to work through the problem, but I’m also reporting my feedback to them by posting up here on the forums. I’d like to see the PVP portion of the game fun again some day and i have hope that they will fix it.

Until then I will continue to report my feedback and hope that it will get fixed.

18

Oh, I don’t disagree sauron! People should post their feedback.
Just the OP was asking how they could fix it and make the game fun, where I’m trying to state it’s less about the player/user more the development of the game.

19

Thanks for the tips, but so far i’m having trouble implementing them.

I tanked about ten rounds in Sentry, starting with healthy characters and playing all the way through to death rather than retreating. Was still seeing a lot of 141/141s, but did stumble across a 141 paired with an 85 OBW. I fought that with Thor and MStorm in the Jungle with full boosts, and barely managed to pull of a victory, and i’m still seeing dual 141s with the very occasional 141 and 85 OBW.

I’ll try fighting some more matches with just 85 level characters and see if i can win, but so far if my MMR is improving the process is very slow and subtle.