MPQ and its longevity

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

We’ve all said it, read it, or talked about it somewhere. This game is one of the longest lasting mobile games out there. And it’s not without its flaws, but it has a ton of merit too.

I’ve been in an alliance since nearly the inception of alliances. Back then, I joined a random one, just to join one. I’ve NEVER CHANGED ALLIANCES. About 60% of the people in this alliance have been the same people the entire time i’ve been there. I started in as the new guy with a low roster, but through tons of perseverance and patience, I’ve become a top player in the alliance. This wasn’t a goal, mind you… just my play style and hoarding techniques finally evolved enough to get to this point.

Meanwhile, the other long-standing players in this alliance (i.e. not the other 40% or less that sometimes drop off or don’t participate with the same energy) have been doing the same… evolving, growing, and all-in-all getting stronger.

At one time, we cheered when we beat a boss on Round 8 because it was a feat for us. Now its expected – the big dogs in this alliance have all grown up, and we just do it.

Blah blah blah… but whats the point of this post…

People are losing interest. I see it in the scores and participation of my fellow alliance-mates. There a couple of us that remain solid, but many of the vets in our alliance just aren’t participating as they did before, and it’s not because of RL issues. It’s just due to boredom and/or burn-out. And to be quite frank, I can’t blame them.

We need a shake-up! Something new. Not a new character. Not even a new support-feature. Not EVEN a new PvE storyline! We need a new carrot to chase, or something new to try out. A new mode? A new feature? Maybe a new alliance-event?

I can’t tell the devs what to do. But I can say that something is up. If my long-time playing alliance-mates (who’ve been playing since alliances were a new thing) are starting to burn-out or get bored… I think it’s a sign.

I’m hoping there’s something in the pipeline. Although, if I’m to be honest with myself, I DID kinda want to go down with the ship, if this game burns itself out… see how far this daily-login counter takes us. :wink:

2

Dilution, unbalanced characters, power creep ruining older 5 stars, and lack of communications on the forums from the Devs are whats removing my desire to play the game. My alliance is a skeleton crew now, but i play so casually now that i don’t feel like joining a new one and having to deal with i must to x y and z to remain blah blah blah .

I still enjoy the core mechanics and its a fun time waster, but skipping the same team 100 times in PVP and the Devs idea of hard content is just jacking up the enemy damage and health while leaving you weak leavers a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention they want you to do everything fast, but every feature they have released has slowed the game down to a snails pace.

Not to mention the length of time Bishop has gone untouched, the Gritty combos etc. just leaves the game in a very stale state.

I feel the game needs some sweeping changes and some huge QoL changes that are never coming due to the slow development schedule this game has. I’m assuming this game is a huge money maker for them, so it is odd that they haven’t addressed really anything as of late.

3

I don‘t get it either and was funnily once again in this mood of posting something similar.

if they did a season without new chars but improving QoL things (gameplay/tile placement speed, roster presets, auto claim) I wouldn‘t stop grinning for at least a week.

If they added then something like node-challenges (finish with X AP, do a single-turn damage of XXX, finish within X turns, finish only firing passives, etc- something that would unlock auto-clearing that node 4x) or a cool battle playground, tag-team matches, live pvp etc… I think that grin would last for a season.

i really don‘t understand a company that is unable to put a developer on the game for a month. Thats like 7.000$, Demiurge should have that. Instead all we get is char after char. It‘s like 2 people (a game designer and a graphics designer) are working 8hrs a week on the game, and some text writer for half an hour the week. Can‘t they see the potential like we players do, that are on the frigging game for years??

4

I have played at least 7 other match-3 games and there aren’t a lot of things you can add into a match-3 games.

These are those I’ve played before that I can remember now:

    • Puzzle Quest
  2. Candy Crush
  3. Sega Heroes
  4. *Magic the Gathering
  5. Gardenscape
  6. Gem of War
  7. Empires & Puzzles

  • I used to play Puzzle Quest on Nintendo DS and it has been years since I last played them. I can’t remember them much except you can choose 4? classes for your hero.

  • I have to say that I played Magic the Gathering for only a very short while (before they changed their developer) due to their UI back then. I played for a week or two.

Here are some features that some of these games have that MPQ doesn’t have:

1. Auto-play option
Sega Heroes allow you to auto-play nodes if you have won the match with three star. However, there’s a limit on how many times you can do this. You can spend resources to refresh autoplay though, if I didn’t remember wrongly.

Empired & Puzzles has auto-play option as well. However, their main focus is more on building up and leveling your Kingdom.

2. Building up your Kingdom/Home
The last three games have this feature. The thing is, they had it since the inception of the game, rather than adding it years later. MPQ probably has to overhaul the entire game if they were to implement this. Starting MPQ 2 is easier.

3. “Puzzly Puzzle”
I think Candy Crush is famous for this. No introduction is needed for this.

Gems of War has something similiar where players use their earned treasure maps to play a game mode where it’s purely making matches to gain resources. For example, making a match-3 of bronze coin will turn into silver coin. Matching silver coin will turn into gold coin and so on. When you have no turn left, they will give you resources based on what tiles are on the board. Bronze coin gives the lowest tier of rewards.

Gardenscape has a non-match 3 puzzly mode if you have seen their ads before. It’s about making 2-3 move to save the character from getting burned or eaten up by shark.

Changes to MPQ
I’m not really keen in seeing MPQ turn into Marvel Candy Crush. Gardenscape is pretty close to Candy Crush in terms of “puzzle”. This game reminds me why I stopped playing Candy Crush: it’s too RNG-based.

MPQ used to have entire player-based progress event. I would like to see them back again just for the kick.

Live PvP isn’t that bad if they can shorten the wait time and allow players to report other players who deliberately waste time.

5

Gems of War has much more than just the treasure hunt mode, if comparing it to MPQ. The treasure hunt is pretty similar if not exactly the same as it was in the Puzzle Quest challenge of the warlords, which was the game that made me download MPQ in 2013, and not Marvel…

Gems have 4 types of week long “boss events” that cycle, kind of like MPQ season.

One is the alliance war kind of event, in which you fight 6 other teams, one each day and each day has a different color to use troops with so you get extra score.

Then there’s fighting a boss with restriction of using troops from the one kingdom (for that run), sort of like affiliations in MPQ.

Also, fighting a boss with the restriction of using troops that can use one chosen color (for that run).

I forget what’s the 4th thing… :slight_smile:

Gems have started about a year after MPQ, but they’ve had two or three major updates, adding new modes of play and new currencies, and more I probably don’t even know, as I’ve only dabbled in it for short spells, after the initial 5-6 months I played and built up a little of the roster.

Most important difference, I think is, in Gems you don’t need to win quickly, you just need to win. Except probably in the very top of pvp fights, but that’s just one part of the game. All the alliance events are doable at your own time.

And no health packs. But there are a limited number of tries to battle something in alliance events. In practice, though, as long as you are beating the enemies, you’ll be earning extra tries, so you’re only scaled out when the enemy levels rise high enough. By which point, your team has unlocked enough rewards for you to have progressed nicely. Single play modes, you can grind as much as you like.

Anyway… Like OP, I’ve been in my alliance from the very start of alliances. There are 3 other Pandas from that time that are still playing and a few more that have joined a year or two later. I’ve started keeping track of our team scores and rankings in 2017 (along with LT pulls… :smiley: ), when we got back into top 100 pvp, and lately I’ve noticed the same slight drop in playing, scores or just interest about the game.

6

I never played the original Puzzle Quest game, and I’ve always been more of a DC fan than Marvel, so I came to Marvel Puzzle Quest via a sideways vector from most, I think: Puzzle Quest Galactrix. I really love that game.

There are certainly some vague similarities between MPQ and Galactrix (tile-moving, powers, etc.). But one of the things that was quite different was the fact that there was more to the game than just dueling. There were at least three other “modes” of puzzles (that I can remember), where it wasn’t just “destroy the other guy” but trying to accomplish different types of goals, collecting specific resources, trying to manipulate the board without an opponent messing you up.

I’ve been saying for years in the surveys that they should incorporate a different game mode. But obviously that’s more of an investment in time than they’re interested in.

7

Thanks for elaborating on Gems of War. I didn’t point out the rest because I just want to point out something unique that can’t be found in MPQ.

I thought Evergreen PvP was something new, but not everyone likes it.

8

I thought think there could be a lot of things they could do in game other than new characters to re engage players. Here are a couple of ideas:

balance changes making weak characters stronger, fixing broken characters.

supports making Higher star supports achievable

Seasons making simulator a season long gauntlet instead of a vs event.

alliance perks or more alliance events. They actually had some interesting events that came out in the past and I wish they would revisit those events. Even if the devs felt they did not hit home the way they wanted they were good attempts at alliance events and with some tweaks they could be great

9

Yeah… all the other Puzzle Quest games (that were on consoles/handhelds) had this.

For example, in PQ1, making magic items required you to create certain icons via making certain types of matches. Once those were made, then you had to find a way to destroy them – no powers were usable during this mode, but it was something different, and if you succeeded, the thing you came out with would help you in battles to come for sure.

The same idea, with different twists, were used for training a mount, learning a new skill from a captured enemy, and so on.

PQ2 didn’t have as much of this… it was more about the adventure you were on, and while there were a few things on the side, I feel PQ1 did more side-quest play styles.

Galactrix… geez. Well, for starters, Galactrix didn’t even have normal gravity!! Since it was in space (AND was based on hexagon gems), the gems fell into place based on the DIRECTION you moved the gems… so, if you swapped two gems by touching one and swiping it to the upper left (as an example), the new replacement gems would actually come into the grid from the lower right! It was somehow trying to simulate having no gravity, but still within the realm of a match 3 game… and it did it pretty well! But I will admit, adding this layer also added on time to every game I played versus the other PQs in the series. I’d sit there and deliberate over WHICH WAY TO MOVE the gem, because the direction you’re moving the gem in order to create the match means so much!

And that’s not even to touch upon the side things that were mentioned earlier, like resource grab modes.

Anyways, I’m sure there’s things they can do to spice it up. But it won’t be without effort. I STILL BELIEVE that the way to go is an “achievement/trophy” route, where you make a list of things to accomplish, and each thing has its own set reward based on how hard/unique it is to do. For example, winning a game with 10 extra red AP in reserve isn’t too hard, so it’d give a smaller reward upon completion… but stating something like, “Clear Royal Family with more than 25% health left on all three characters” or “Clear node X using Namor on your team”… those could be worth more due to the difficulty of completion. Yeah - some people may NOT have Namor, but then again, isn’t that how the devs like to entice people to “collect them all”?

I feel like that’s an easy shot of adrenaline to put in… and it could offer more rewards, and force us to play a bit differently, all without changing the core of the game. I guess it’s just my thoughts, but I’m probably also just preaching to the choir here? :slight_smile:

10

If they would just introduce a quick way to filter the chars, I would be a happy camper. I hate playing Kacelius not because he’s hard but because it takes me so tiny kitty long to find 3* Quicksilver. :slight_smile:

11

I have NEVER agreed with posts like this one, for various reasons I won’t go into because they are mostly unimportant. But I will acknowledge that I’ve been feeling it a little more than usual lately.

12

I think the best we can hope for is a new Alliance event.

The game isn’t offering enough growth to warrant a completely new mode or way of playing. Nor is the ROI immediately apparent.

There are…reasons…to think there are some new non-alliance events coming in the fairly near future. So stay tuned there.

And it appears they are working on Support improvements, so maybe that will start feeling like a real feature again soon.

But I think we have been asking for truly new stuff for years and we see what we have gotten. Ramped up 5 releases with some marginal reward improvements leading to basically the same thing we had (able to tread water and keep up) with increased playtime. In fact, I could be wrong, but if you assume a new 5 takes more work than a new 4, the devs have less bandwidth than ever to really develop brand new stuff.

It also seems very unlikely they are looking at anything too radical in a game which the studio founder recently described as “antique”.

13

One of the quickest and easiest way to liven up the game without adding or changing much is.

re balanced old 5* and 4 star characters.

It literally affects almost everyone and provides essentially new toons for people to mess with and CHASE. The odd thing to me when it comes to this game is how they have the ability to change the meta in so many different ways yet don’t.

Not sure if that’s a resource things, dev decision or financial one. But man it sure seems like now would be a great time to start re balancing 2 or so old 4 and 5’s like once a month

14

I would be quite happy if they scrapped SHIELD Sim and replaced it with a new concept. At this point it is just a wall of boring.

15

Everything is this game in it’s current state is boring

Grinding the same old PVE Events
Fighting the same team over and over again
Slowly building shards
Slowly earning 5 stars
Same old Deadpool Daily
SCL10 being the slowest thing on the planet

Game needs some love in the fun department, but the Devs are just gonna keep up the releases schedule and the Game will remain on a “set it and forget it mode”.

At this point it is what it is. :confused:

16

This is very true also,

Dev’s def need to address something in the fun depart, a kind to balance of power or a time run or endurance matches that you can ALWAYS do even if they don’t give you a ton of resources or limited resources.

I think grinding the same old event’s but with a new coat of paint, to look new is also getting boring. There legit needs to be new modes and things.

I have noticed more people than not kinda of slowing down. I think the rapid 5 release as well as the difficulty in getting 5’s hasn’t helped either.

17

Skrull Empire died this weekend, as a bunch of us burnt out / lost interest and quit around the same time. The time, the grind, the repetition, the 5* release rate, the CP reward shift negatively, the push to keep on the hamster wheel, just too much for too little in the end.
(clearly I’m still in the throes of severing all ties with the game else I wouldn’t be hear posting). I doubt it is the only old alliance going to the wall over these points.

18

IMO, SCL10 PVE is a factor in this too. This moved goalposts for some rewards further away and increased the grind considerably, making late game really bad/even worse. Ever since its introduction I’ve noticed hitting progression less often just because of burning out and/or getting bored. I don’t even mind the increased difficulty (even though it’s somewhat artificially created because of unfair scaling), if it weren’t for the fact of having to burn through such large stacks of health several times…

19

Hitting my five year anniversary of gameplay this week, so lot of reflection going on right now.

I’ve progressed so much, but what I keep thinking of is, instead of that progress, that a new 5 is announced the day after the latest 5 drops into tokens.

I’ve champed every latest since Gambit with the exception of JJ and Cable (both were 12 with saved covers upon exit), so I’ve been doing something right all these years. Right now my Yelena is at 4 measly covers. I’ve got 38 five star champs and if this is the future, might as well pack it up.

20

I was going to post this idea too but you did it more succinctly. Nice job!

Remember when SCL10 launched, they made it sound like they would be listening to feedback and possibly adjusting things? We have provided feedback here, and on Discord, and on the subReddit, all pretty much saying the same thing: Extra difficulty is fine, but it’s just too much now. This is 4 MONTHS of SCL10 under our belts and NOT ONE ADJUSTMENT anywhere except making the Simulator PVE an utterly horrible experience by stacking it with meta and annoying teams.

I play in SCL9 sometimes (for this run of CC) and it’s practically a vacation compared to playing SCL10. Ya’all need to do something quickly before the stream of retirees becomes a river. I get you want to make it feel hard and like an accomplishment to get a 5* cover but there are 46 5s now! Each one is not a special gem anymore. If you make SCL10 easier to clear I promise you won’t lose a ton of money. Whales will whale, usually no matter what, but if they don’t like playing that’s a different story altogether.