Sooo, I’m quitting the game now. Not for any ‘rage’ reason but simply because I can’t live my life around it anymore.
Having played for over a year and campaigned strongly for better end times and longer refresh rates, here’s my concluding thoughts on the state of the game from the perspective of a ‘top tier’ (but not whale) player.
One step forward, one step back (Shield Cooldowns)
Thanks to the MPQ team for implementing sharded end-times. They were only really needed in PvE because ‘shields’ in PvP, but you did it for PvP anyway. Slicing has it’s own issues, mostly because there are too many (3 slices would have been fine) but the scheduling freedom it gave to players was then snatched back by shield cooldowns.
Shield cooldowns force top players into a fixed schedule revolving around rotation of 3hr and 8hr shields. If you want a competitive (top 5) score then it can mean having to play at times that are really, really inconvenient or alternatively forking out for a 24hr shield you don’t need. This change is why I’m quitting… because sitting outside my office in my car during work hours to play MPQ because of cooldown rotations is not good. I also appreciate it’s an issue that won’t affect 95% of your players who don’t use more than a couple of shields. But at least add a cooldown timer… why the hell was dev time spent on Goon banners instead?
Out of game communication
I like banter and game communities but the shield cooldown change forced the top players to use even more out-of-game communication. That’s completely at odds with what you wanted isn’t it? Yet what else was going to happen if you made each hop so critical? It’s not like we can take a loss and go again in 30 mins anymore - so we have to communicate to an extreme level so that we’re not ripping into each other.
So, not only do top players have to schedule their lives around shield cooldowns now, they also have to communicate in up to 12 chatrooms to stay on top of what’s going on. Still, you get to know people.
New characters
A great job has been done recently with DrDoom and Loki (not so much with utterly destroying Sentry tbh) but Invisible Woman has been an utter joke since her release and is still being given out as the highest progression or #1 placement reward. Yeah, you’ll rework her eventually but the glut of so-so characters given out while we’ve been waiting for this seems like wonky priorities. Slow down the releases until you’ve sorted the problems.
PvE Slices
Slicing works very well in some ways but if you’re late to the event you can enter a slow filling slice without any chance of getting near the top. I’d strongly recommend that if you’re going to have slices then reduce the number of players per bracket (to half) and consider a mechanic of having the bracket fill completely before the event starting for that group. It would allow everyone to start on an even keel. The difficulty would come at the end of the event if a bracket didn’t fill, but hopefully that would encourage people to enter earlier.
PvE node refreshes
4 hours or 8 hours… both are infinitely better than 2.5 or 3hrs. PvE makes everyone tired of the game and needs either 4 hour refreshes (AND a couple of days between events) or 8 hour refreshes (downtime not so important). At the top end, we face teams with HUGE health-pools and subs that can take up to 45 mins per clear… at 2.5-3hrs that means spending over a quarter of your life playing MPQ. That just isn’t sustainable in the long run. Looks like 8hrs is here to stay, but man it took a while following either Will or IceIX stating the 2.5hr refresh ‘wasn’t ideal’ over 4 months ago.
Scaling is also an issue (everyone knows that level capping your team is now optimal for PvE) so that should be the next issue sorted. It would also be nice to conclude the Dark Reign storyline but maybe you’ve nerfed Sentry so hard he can’t mount an attack on the home of the God’s anymore 
That’s most of it because lets face it TL;DR but…
and it’s a Kim Kardashian sized ‘but’…
Thanks D3 for making a game that I’ve had a lot of fun with over the last year or so, and that I’ll probably dip back into every now and again. I’ve played at the top tier of a few mobile games and some people don’t appreciate that you actually give more feedback to players than the vast, vast majority of games out there. Thanks also for listening to the plight of players outside the US with end times, and trying to do the right thing for the masses in many cases - everyone knows deep down that profit has to be a factor in decisions but it’s hard to be objective when you spend so much of your time investing in the game.
Thanks SKYNET for being a fantastic home this last few seasons - the leadership and community there really work for each other in a way I’ve rarely seen in gaming. Thanks too to my former alliance colleagues in Chaos Rising who kept the alliance in the top 50 despite only ever seeming to have about 10 properly active players.
Good luck MPQ and all who sail in you!
p.s. Devs, it’s pink you know? Right? Not purple.
p.p.s Congrats to whoever read through all that. Have a cookie.
