is PvP a waste of time, does MPQ have a future/will it?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

If you’re not a P2P, player, are you screwed?

To me, the simple answer is yes… I understand that a game is there to make money but that’s not the problem… With the worst match making scripts ever made in any game that I’ve ever played, you’re low leveled teams of 100 or less, become absolutely out classed by 3*'s and 4*'s maxed… Are these legit, maybe, maybe not… But why are level 100’s being pinned against teams of level 141’s and/or 200’s?! Are D3 trying to force us to buy HP or drive the game in to the ground?

Do you use your favorite characters/teams?

My opinion is… I very much doubt that you are… If you’re using Black Widow you’re already not… If you’re using Punisher… Again… You’re not… Probably less than 1% of humans realistically fit these in to a top 3 of the “my favorite Marvel characters are…” list… Yet, Black Widow is in EVERY team… Some may say she’s overpowered… Some may call her essential… Let’s face it, almost everyones top 5 will see, Spider-man, Wolverine, Iron Man, Hulk and Thor… But…
Iron Man has been chopped and screwed in MPQ, so he pretty much won’t feature in any team in the long run, with his Model 40 causing self-harm more than anything, he’s more of a back-up or a hero to take a beating than anything else.
Wolverine features in a lot of teams with his 2* green ability combined with his red pretty-much wipes the floor with any character but with lack of health slowly gets pushed out of your teams, but his 3* and 4* doppelgangers cause more defensive problems than offensive favors, this makes them used by a selected few.
Thor is by far the most over used, overpowered hero in MPQ, but why does IM40 get stuck with a 20 costing blue ability which does 2000 damage to all, plus stuns the target and also costs 3 of every other color, but Thor can cascade so much destruction with an 8, 12 and 14 ability cost, respectively?!
Spider-man is rare and in selected teams, but easily beaten nonetheless, with a lack of any attacking abilities, as long as you own Black Widow 2* (which every team does), Spider-man is a worthless hero.
Hulk is an army of tanks rolled in to one green, muscle bound, angry, sum-bi**h in the MPQ world, with his black ability combined with his green, plus being a rare cover and that he also has an insane amount of health, this makes him a defensive wall.

The lack of different teams is also another factor on why PvP is a waste of time, Black Widow 2*, Thor 2*, Thor 3*, Punisher, Hulk and Wolverine 2* are pretty much all I see, Black Widow 2* is in EVERY team, the likelihood of her being your favorite character is almost zero.

Are the events even worth playing?

When an event starts, I look at the star of the event… Let’s take the current one with Sentry… Are you kidding me?! inhales deeply… Exhales… Then I look at the prizes and with one of the newest updates being that you can win 1* and 2* covers from any given fight, why are they still a “prize” in events?! I used to sell them for the extra 100 or 250 ISO, but I saved them up more recently and I decided to make a list of what I owned… Without ranking in an event, I could easily sell all my 1 and 2 star heroes and rebuild them no problem… Another problem is that the duration of the event means you must play pretty much the whole duration or shield after every 5-10 fights… Another problem is the lack of points gained to points lost, you can gain 500 points in about 1-2 hours, but with the retaliations flocking at your feet, you could easily lose 700 points in the same amount of time.

So my opinion is, No, the events are a waste of time.

Are the match-ups fair?

Um, no… When I start an event, the first 3-5 guys I see on my grid have lower than level 15 heroes, excluding the main star… Immediately after winning, my next opponent is more than likely ranked top 25 and I can win 30-50 points off them which continues until I reach top 25 at which point the most I can gain is between 20 and 35, but I know for sure that when the newer guys join or the retaliations come, I will lose between 25-40.

Why am I saying all this?

Well, D3 have no gratitude for us downloading and playing their game… They add a new 3* character every other day and maybe a new 4* character every other month, then start an event which makes no sense… With prizes that are worth less to any one person as they come… With the worst match-up scripts in all F2P games’ in all the APP Stores around the world… With the most ridiculous points gained/lost record of all time… And characters which have had almost no thought going in to them, I.E, Thor 3*, Daken 3* etc. etc… Characters have been given a star rating VIA what??? Why is Psylocke a 3*??? Is she in the same league as Hulk or something??? Maybe I missed something…

Is there a solution?!

Yes… LISTEN TO THE COMMUNITY DAMNIT!!! We don’t know what’s best for the game for sure, but we damn sure know what’s wrong with the game.

Before adding more and more useless characters every day, fix the ones we have already.
Before changing a loading screen, try adding an animation on and off button.
Before upping prices, get a massive fan base.
Before making Season 3, 4 or 9, fix the match-up/points, systems.

The list goes on.

Does MPQ have a stable future?

My opinion… No… It’s being run in to the ground at every new update.

Will MPQ have a future?

If changes are made to the systems, of course… But D3 must stop adding useless junk and fixing things that aren’t broken.

My plea.

—>Fix the match-ups/points system for the next update<—, we don’t want more graphical changes that, to be honest, hurt my eyes… Flashes in battle… The horrible new loading screen made… The “New Reward” lies after every battle… The boosts used, at the start of every battle… The amount of things that show up after every fight now is enough to make anyone stop playing, alone… Passive abilities show up every time, most noticeably Daken… The duration of damage from attack tiles… The duration of AI’s ability usage after a loss, the most noticeable PITA is when Storm is on the opposite team… The list goes on here too.

This is merely my opinions and suggestions and I don’t speak for everyone… I ramble, but I want D3 to start listening to the community… I don’t mind the discussion but let’s try to keep abuse to a minimum lmao.

2

Just saying, for the record, that it takes less than a month of bad changes for a player to go from the above, to OP’s post.

Now imagine those of us that have been here since near the beginning, because we get drawn back in again and again with one really good change, followed by another three discouragingly bad or irrelevant ones.

I didn’t quit after Season 1 (and neither did Emeryt) because they did fix the end. I likely won’t quit this season either, despite the atrocious Spidey nerf (him being one of my favorite characters) and the problems previously listed not being fixed–but like almost all the other players who were breaking 1300 per pvp last season, I’ve pulled way the hell back and have vowed not to spend any cash (MPQ, at $10-15, is the first and only F2P I ever gave money to, but I haven’t given a dime since prior to Season 1 due to the game developments).

3

I don’t understand your post tbh… So you’re saying that PvP no longer has your undivided attention… You considered quitting but didn’t because… D3 take 1 step forward but 3 steps back… D3 have taken so many backwards steps that you insist on spending no more money until they fix the problems… Spider-man had a horrible update and has made you drop him from your team…

So you’re agreeing with my post???

I fail to see the point of copying a previous post of mine… Which still confirms everything I just said… Fix the points system… I don’t understand.

4

Do you mean the seed teams?

5

I do agree overall. I think D3 needs to fix up the game before adding new characters, graphics, etc. I’ve pumped in about $100 to the game but am starting to wonder if they’re making a mess of things.

To D3:

  1. Fix up the characters that you know need fixing.
  2. Fix up match making because MMR hell sucks. It probably needs an overhaul now because the user base has grown and the current system doesn’t quite work for it.
6

There are two different approaches to designing a game: either design the game to suck as much money as possible out of players, or design the game to give players a positive experience, that they will remember fondly.

If the former, your relationship with your customers is fundamentally manipulative: you’re trying to 1) get them not to quit, and 2) get them to lose perspective on the monetary value of in-game objects. Every change made to MPQ falls into one of those categories: even the changes that seem good are just there as bait to fill the former requirement so they can do a switch later.

When a player gives up playing a game like that, it feels like he’s escaping. The greatest in-game accomplishment any MPQ player will achieve will be developing the will to quit.

7

the game’s meta as it stands leans towards basically 4 characters dominating the pvp scene. The season scenario forces players that would take competitions that are irrelevant to them personally (because they have the covers) as serious competitions, driving the challenge up, increasing the need for spending on shields, etc. There was no break after season 1, and i expect there will be no break after season 2. I personally made a change. I am not spending all my iso on lazy thor or lazy daken and I"m playing who i want to play. I am starting pvp 4 hours before it ends, and I’m not shielding, or if i do, I use one shield. The result is that my scores have drastically lowered but my overall fun has increased.

That being said, I don’t see this as sustainable for the future. The carrot approach of offering Nick Fury covers only as a season reward will only last for so long. Once all three covers are out there, the wealthy will finish Nick Fury the same day.

The PVE is even worse, because it’s so repetitive than there is little fun to be had, if you have played this game for over 200 days, the PVE are mostly rehashed and you only do them for ISO and maybe the covers. I have thankfully broken my addiction to this game, so if I miss a sentry cover I really don’t care. I have no interest in having a 141 Sentry to feel life is complete.

I would like to see a major rehash in the game. Not design measures done to increase user spending (i have spend 0 dollars this season, and will not spend another dollar in the foreseeable future) which we have seen plenty of, but things to make the game more fun. Character rebalancing is nice, but it’s hard to argue that the game is a lot more fun now that Spidey is trash. I think the pvp is more fair, because you can’t use Spidey as a crutch, but on the other side Spidey is pretty much useless now.

There is little fun happening around here! The game needs to change beyond here is a number, if you reach this number you get a new character. It feels super grindy right now, and I’m probably quitting permanently after season 2 ends unless something amazing happens.

They can increase monetization measures all they want, my tournament finishes afford me all the shields I need, and short of another roster spot, that’s all i need HP for, so they have managed to convince me that spending money on this game is a waste of time. I did spend $50 for 40 packs on heartstone, and I have a lot more fun playing that game these days. That’s the key, maximizing fun, not ARPDAU.

8

You don’t have to quit, you just have to not care. Play, have fun, don’t pay a penny unless the game is amazingly fun and worth your penny. It’s your wallet, your time, do what you want with it. I was paying in a bit before the spidey nerf and matchmaking changes, now i’m completely free play and having fun while not caring.

9

Regardless of whether you were burned out by the seasons or not, I don’t think PvP can be very interesting when there are only about 4 or 5 viable team on the high end after factoring the restriction of the featured character. I don’t actually care too much about PvP, but seeing the same 5 teams over and over gets old, though I can’t really complain since I run one of those same 5 teams too.

For PvE the level boosts gives incentive to max out other characters and experiment with them. You probably don’t need to worry about it as long as Magneto is still the offensive god of MPQ (and all PvE matches are offensive in nature) but there should be a point where you have to actually use the boosted characters instead of counting on Magneto to bail you out of everything.

The real problem is that the game doesn’t really reward you for having a diverse roster. If you have every character maxed out you’d hardly do any better in PvP, if at all. PvE it’d help more but unless every other node requires a certain character, you’d probably have at most 3 teams (say an Anti-goon team, high offense team, and AP steal/defensive team). There would need to be some really significant change to the game for this to work, like say allow 5 characters on team, or maybe fights where the character you can use is randomly selected (and if you don’t have some guy you get a loaned one at low level, otherwise people would just start deleting characters).

10

I’m mostly fine with the characters as they are (recently discovered Hood’s immense usefulness, especially with slow attackers, so I do vary my team quite a bit).

What bothers me is the MMR, that truly is frustrating, and it really wouldn’t hurt to spread out prizes some more like it used to be, because thanks to some new system you get attacked by three opponents at once if you dare to drop your shield for too long and lose more points than you gain, so making Top 10 has gotten a lot harder than it was (there was a time when you could play for the last half hour and climb up through the ranks, but now when you try this you most likely get ripped to shreds by everybody else). And it would really be great if one didn’t have to shield all the time to score anything, it’s getting anoying (and expensive).