LT/Classic draw rate "nerfs"

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

So for the last two 5* releases (Dare Devil, IIRC, and Gambit) the drop rates have been off on D3 servers (I assume) for the first few hours and then they are fixed/updated once it’s been realized. No I don’t have a problem with this, as human error is understandable. But now twice, it’s looking like it’s more than human error.

What happens in the larger alliance “families”, word is spread quickly and those that are on-line start drawing (no big deal, more power to them). But if a player is NOT online during those times, they are sh*t-out-of-luck.

So this makes a situation of rich people (those that can get online and play at will), and the poor people (those that can’t get online and play at will), getting further and further apart (in 5* covers).

(If you couldn’t tell I’m one of the one’s who couldn’t capitalize on this error, even though I had a CP stash to burn).

I don’t want any special favors, but I would at least like a level playing field. Those of us who can’t capitalize on D3’s errors (like me), are falling behind in the 5* cover race for no fault of our own. If an error like this keeps happening, all that I ask is that you at least let everyone have a chance to benefit from the error. Not the select few who can drop everything and use it while it’s in the wild and can be used.

2

Unfortunately, this request basically boils down to “please earn significantly less money so that my gaming experience is improved.” I’m rooting for you, man, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

3

A couple points:

  1. The store errors have all occurred around the start of a boss/alliance event. So if you can at all be available around noon on a Thursday (EST), that might be helpful.
  2. The errors are fixed as soon as possible by the devs. So they prefer no error, but then an instant fix would be far better than leaving it up for an hour or two. The fact that some have been up long enough for word to spread at all is very bad, from their perspective.

Online commerce is weird sometimes. There are times when Amazon has an error and something is too heavily discounted. People can buy for the advertised price, but once it’s fixed, that’s it.

I do feel you too. I missed the one in August but caught this one.

4

Guys please boost all my characters. I would have been playing for 2 extra years if I had known about the game. But I didn’t and that’s not fair

5

I wish it was noon in my timezone. Cant be up at 3-5am to pull tokens

6

To be fair, even if the rate was better for a short amount of time, it still boils down to luck (RNG). There were plenty people that got a fair amount (above average) of 5* with the fixed rate, as well as surely there were guys who had a bad streak even with the increased rate.

7

This is absolutely true.

Really, would be best if they stopped making errors and either permanently adjusted the 5* rate somehow (as dilution becomes worse and worse) or have ongoing different stores, or something. The 5* tier is horribly frustrating (other than Latests).

8

The fact you think that’s even a fair comparison is mind boggling to me.

9

I think his post was missing a sarcasm tag? I can’t tell trolls in here sometimes…

10

The fact you think he’s being serious is mind boggling to me. I think the forum is starting to break us.

He’s just pointing out how absurd the claim is. A store doesn’t extend a weekend sale because you couldn’t get there until Monday. Happy Hour doesn’t extend an hour because you show up late. At no point does it make sense to extend an error to give people a chance to abuse it.

It’s an exaggeration for comedic effect, but asking devs to buff your roster to account for time you weren’t playing because you didn’t know about the game, and asking the devs to bring back an error because you didn’t take advantage of it when it was around, are both things that boil down to the same point. They’re not the responsibility of the developers of this game.

Might as well go up to Microsoft and Apple and say you meant to invest in the 80’s and forgot, and would like to retroactively be compensated.

11

Enough with the shaky “rich people , poor people” analogies. Had nothing to do with this one: people who had to poop during the 1/4 time got lucky , people who did not have to poop missed it .

12

I think these feelings are mostly about it happening twice in a row the exact same way. It doesn’t feel like an actual mistake, but instead feels like a wink-wink quasi-sale that isn’t broadcast to everyone.

I missed both simply cause I didn’t know, and by the time i did, it was fixed (especially this 2nd time).

This is just another side effect issue.
They absolutely need to fix 5-Star Acquisition so it’s not 100% RNG and/or Pay to Win by brute forcing the RNG.
If 5-Star required nodes in PVE is our life now, there has to be a way to get them that doesn’t involve RNG or some brutal slog fighting nodes with 500+ Level enemies and being forced to use under covered characters.

Heh, remember back when Silver Surfer came out they claimed players wouldn’t be able to directly buy 5-Star characters?

13

But your pulls are predetermined, not much “RNG” in that if you ask me.

14

This logic doesn’t makes sense. If I trip on a rock on the sidewalk on Monday and then trip on the same rock on Tuesday then most likely I’m doing it intentionally? OK. What’s more likely is I’m careless and already forgot I triped there yesterday.

The fact that its happened in the same way twice to means it’s more likely to be a mistake and they failed to learn from it last time. Now if it continues to happen the same way every new release the likelihood that it’s intentional goes up, but not on the second occurrence. Third or fourth at least. Right now this just reeks of sloppiness, something they happen to be well known for. I’m pretty sure they had two back to back patches that made the game unplayable I doubt those were intentional either…

15

I guess wanted to try and give them the doubt for not being so careless that they could mess up simple % rolls that have been in place for multiple previous 5-Star release tokens.

But You’re probably right.
Ineptitude is usually the reason, but I’d like to think the dev team would be like “well, we f-ed up on the pull rate %. Let’s make sure that the exact same issue doesn’t happen again the next time we do this.”
Oh wait…

After a while, the prevalence of obvious issues that make it into the live game seems almost intentional.

16

That’s not close to a good analogy. If an establishment has a Happy Hour or a sale, they clearly advertise the hours those sales are in effect, and everyone who cares to pay attention can be aware of the details. If you don’t know, that’s your fault.

Happy Hour: Every weeknight from 4 to 6 p.m.

Sale lasts from 8 a.m. Friday to 8 p.m. Sunday!

With these bugged drop rates, it’s like wandering into a bar at noon and finding out the new guy is ringing up drinks at half price, or Best Buy has a bug in the system ringing everything up at 25% off. It lasts for an hour or two until the manager finds out and fixes things. If you happen to be lucky enough to be in the bar at the time, then congrats to you. Otherwise, tough luck. It’s not advertised and nobody knows unless they’re told by another customer.

The problem with MPQ having a bug like this, is that there is an inherent competitive element to the gameplay. Players with stronger, deeper rosters have the potential to outperform lesser rosters. Players who “get lucky” during these bugged sales have the chance to leapfrog over others who “aren’t lucky”.

For the record, I could have taken advantage of the first instance, but didn’t have much ISO to spare, so was worried about unusable/wasted pulls.

This one, I was consumed with getting as many clears on Apocalypse as I could during my lunch break, so I didn’t have time for much else. I even intended to pull from Mes Amis over the weekend and looked in the store, but didn’t notice the rates. If I had, I would have pulled.

It wasn’t until I got off work and came to the forums and saw the posts about the bugged rates, but by then it was already fixed. Shoulda pulled right away, and I probably spent more CP to get the covers I got than I would have, so the only thing I’m missing out on is having more CP to chase 5pidey.

But I definitely sympathize with OP.

17

Guys please boost all my characters. I would have been playing for 2 extra years if I had known about the game. But I didn’t and that’s not fair "

Just to be clear, 1356d player here, I’ve been hear from almost the start.

But you are definitely “favored” by D3 if you can play “at-will” verses a 1x day person like me (who plays on a PC). Between shields in PvP, and scheduling your life around end times of PvE events. If you haven’t seen it/realized it by now, sorry I’m the one to break it to you.

18

I wish I could have used some hoarded ISO during the “sale,” but I couldn’t play MPQ @ noon. Them’s the breaks.

I got bored with hoarding so I decided to cash in most of my hoard anyway. It took 23 tinykitty pulls before I got a 5*. Them’s the breaks.

Life is cruel.

(*thinks for 5 seconds about the fact that he’s talking about a mobile game which his position is society enables him to have the time to play instead of, say, starving and wondering where he’s going to spend the night)

On the other hand, life is great!

19

Feels more like D3 being lazy/lack of quality control than intentional.

The real intentional slights were things like the H4H being different for everyone, certain people getting discounted/relatively discounted packs (at least 1000 hp cheaper). Under the guise of testing (for months!), and then going with the most expensive option (saying it was the most popular).

20

The message board was full of people thinking the draw rates would come back on the anniversary day. Unless you were sleeping, and even still for some folks, it wouldn’t have taken long to fire up the game and go to the token ratios page. It would have taken longer to actually spend a hoard, so you’d be forced to take a suspiciously long bathroom break.