Increase rewards due to slower and deadlier battles

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
21

This. I’m not sure about others, but I generally don’t attack nodes with less than 25 points if the opposing side has a team that can retal effectively, which given the recent changes is the vast majority of nodes I see in my queue. (The situation is different if it’s the last fight before I shield, but that’s a minority of fights).

Attacking a lower point node is just offering your opponent a discounted ticket to a higher score, and yourself a net loss upon retal. The incentive therefore is to attack only higher point nodes (>25) so that if there is a retaliation (i.e. the other player either doesn’t understand the game mechanics, is shielding, or is just overly prideful), it works in your favor. The retaliation feature is doing is nudging you to discriminate against <25 point nodes, because the MPQ food chain works upwards remember, opposite that of the real animal kingdom… Meanwhile, you skip node after node in your queue and what do you see? Lots of 18, 20 point fights (or in dry slices 3 point fights!) – fights which you probably are better off not attacking and skipping (at a cost of 10 ISO).

You get attacked and have the option to retal. If the other player was smart and attacked you from a lower score (which are the majority of retals I receive), then it’s stupid for you to take the retal. The only good retaliation opportunity is therefore one where the other player was stupid (prideful, or shielding). These are a minority of retals.

The retal system has little upside, as fmftint said, and I just don’t see much sense in it. Getting rid of it would at least make more of the 18-20 point nodes in my queue as feasible options.

(The only merit I see in it is that it may help team coordination, in that my friend can attack me from a higher score and shield, offering me a high point retal option.)

22

Shameless bump here. Hopefully this isn’t against forum policy.

Felt this topic was worth bringing back to the surface now that the devs are back from their perceived hiatus.
It seems to be an issue that permiating the forums again as well.

Long match times with the same rewards is discouraging.
I think the ISO reduction has made a VERY positive impact on things but it doesn’t feel like quite enough to leave players with a positive play session.

I particularly want to call attention to this section of the post:

[spoiler]Increased Reward Values and Availability:
Granted, reduced leveling costs are effectively the same as increased ISO. But psychologically speaking people will still feel like their efforts are worth less when they still visually see the same numbers pop up for their time and resource efforts.

I’d strongly consider an increased value of rewards in this game even if they aren’t substantial. This is more about the rewards on a match to match basis rather than placement rewards. So perhaps tripling the bonus ISO per battle in PvP would be a great way to reflect this.

  • 90 bonus ISO for 0 skips
  • 60 bonus ISO for 1 skip
  • 30 bonus ISO for 2 skip

Deal with the base PvE Node reward of 20 ISO problem. I get that you don’t want people farming the easiest node to exploit the system but I’m sure you can make the experience of getting PvE node rewards more enjoyable.

Example: Guarantee a new reward for each node clear until all 4 rewards are given out.

  • clear 5 the reward is 100 ISO
  • clear 6 is 75 ISO
  • clear 7 is 50 ISO
  • clear 8+ is 25 ISO

Finally, rather than increase the placement rewards simply stretch out the number of players who earn them. This will help ensure a more consistent experience for the more competitive balanced game. You’ve done this already with 4* PvE’s.

  • Reduce the 4* pvp prog reward from 1000 to 900 to reflect the added challenge of getting hit a LOT more in PvP.
  • Extend the single 3* cover from top 100 to top 200.
  • Extend the single alliance 3* cover from top 100 to top 250. (apply similar changes to PvE as well)

Improve Out of Battle Character Healing:
Characters are taking a beating now. Fury might last 2 battles before he needs a pack. This is true EVEN when you support him with Luke Cage’s protect tile. The fact of the matter is that you’ll take several enemy attacks per battle relative to before. The increase match length also adds to the increased threat of enemy cascades which just compounds the damage taking problem.

My ideal solution to this would be to completely remove character healing timers from the game entirely. Did your character SURVIVE the match? He or she is returned to full health. No more timer upon timer garbage that is the bane of the worst F2P/Facebook/Mobile practices. You still have limited health packs to REVIVE characters but not to heal them.

That change is super extreme though I don’t see it becoming a reality. So if you can’t take it that far then please STRONGLY consider a massive health rate increase. Think of it like a full heal from 1 hit point in an hour. This is enough of a deterrent to impact grind pushes for PvE’s and PvP’s but not enough to prevent frequent use of a character throughout the day.[/spoiler]

23

there is no way it will ever happen you jump into a late bracket with less then 200 people in it, you will get 1 cover 100% of the time if they jacked it up to Top 200 get covers…

I can see this
top 10 get 3 covers
Top 50 get 2 covers
Top 125 get 1 cover

Would say way too many covers on alliance but then again they are tossing 3 stars out daily on deadpool.

Boosting would work in PVE a lot better then PVP
Top 200 get 1 cover instead of 150 (they will never jack it up to 250 cause that would mean 25% gets the cover)

24

I agree with OP in pretty much all the points raised, and even if I don’t totally agree with all the solutions, I think they raise a whole load of interesting points to debate.

The problem with all this is that I can’t see any evidence of the Devs being willing to address any of the fundamental issues with the game mechanics. Whilst the MMR changes might have been needed, in isolation they make the game much longer and less enjoyable. Realistically this change shouldn’t have been released on its own, without addressing a lot of other valid points raised in this thread about progression awards, retaliation, sharding, health regeneration, scaling etc.

Fixing one issue at a time, seems to make things less playable than before. Whilst not perfect before, the PvP imperfections seemed in a state of fine balance, and Demiurge’s recent approach seems to have disrupted that, without addressing the underlying issues.

If there was a sign that they were addressing the issues as a whole, then I’d feel much more confident in the outcome. As it is, my confidence is at an all-time low.

25

Last night was the breaking point for me.

I have barely been playing for the last 1-2 months, but figured I’d play for some taco tokens (didnt need She-Hulk’s red) so I started the daily deadpool. The recent increased health for all those characters has made every battle 2x or 3x as long.. Sure, I could have won, I rarely die in any of the daily deadpool nodes, but I said EFF THIS, it’s taking too much time. So, I quit and put the game down.

I’m moving onto other things. Perhaps I’ll come back when this game and the devs get their shTT together.

26

I know the battles take longer, and eat up health packs..but if battles are over too quickly, then what is the point of having all those abilities you will never have time to gain AP to use?

That being said, the only place i really appreciate the higher health is in the Simulator, where thanks to the iso lowering for leveling, i am testing out a bunch of different combo’s, and getting a chance to use their abilities more gives me a better sense of what they can do.

In DPD, round 4 used to be a given 0 moves for the other team, but once in a while, it isnt, and they fire off everything they have.. that can suck a bit.

27

If you didn’t end the previous round with an AP consuming move or a match 5, the AI always gets the first move on the next round because you ended your turn and the new wave comes in after you ended your turn, and they’re free to do whatever they’d normally do if they have the APs. Due to the variation in goon/villain combinations in DDQ a lot of the time the new guys won’t be able to make use of the stockpiled APs, but sometimes they can and that can get ugly.

28

Yup, and i make sure to always end round 3 with a move to get first shots in round 4!

29

I don’t recall a case where I ended the previous round with a move and the enemy still get a turn first. If it happened it’s probably just me being sloppy or that I had an unexpectedly large cascade that downed my opponent earlier than I thought.

30

I was referring to not finishing the enemy team with the AP i had stored before they had a chance to take a turn. Usually, i end round 3 with a skill, then unload on round 4. If they survive, then they unload on me, before the HP increase, they never survived my initial volleys.