Tl;dr: Despite a fairly tumultuous year I believe MPQ is much better now than it was when I started playing a year ago.
I started playing MPQ on the train home from NYCC 2013 October 18, 2013. By the time I got off I was well and truly hooked. On that train ride I decided my goal would be to get every character to max level. Exactly one year later I just achieved that goal as I maxed Devil Dinosaur although he needs to be respecced which I will do with my Daily reward red cover in a couple of days.
I realized early on that if I was going to spend money the only resource worth spending money on was HP first for cover slots and later for key covers. After the first few times I stopped buying iso and have only exclusively paid for Stark Salaries for HP since January. I bought when on sale when I could and have averaged a Stark Salary every two weeks over the past year. The first covers I bought were for Rag and GSBW. They were the first power couple in MPQ back in October of 2013. Then all boosts only cost 50 iso; Rag Thunderclap cost 2 red AP. You get the idea boost six red, use thunderclap three times in succession, right in to sniper rifle. That was the speed combo of all time. Give me back those two and I’ll take on a wave of sentry hood teams there has never been a better combo in the game. Just having those two allowed me to compete in everything and back then HP was up for grabs in Lightning Rounds. The other big bonus was Facebook sharing was broken I would wake up in the morning to have received 1,000iso and covers. It was like that every day for about six weeks.
Then they nerfed Rag and there was much anguish in the MPQ realm.
I had already moved on to the next problem child as I had maxed Spidey and was now happily stunlocking my way to victory. Much slower than Rag/GSBW but pretty much a guaranteed win if blue boosted. It was especially important because they began to raise the level of the team we were facing in PvE and if you wanted to grind the nodes you needed Spidey. Back then the nodes were on single refresh cycles of either 8 or 12 hours. You would play either three or five stacks down until the nodes had a value of one and then wait the appropriate time and start over. The only thing that hasn’t changed is you definitely have to be playing in the last two hours if you want a high placement. That also used to be true with PvP with the last hour being a free-for-all sniping fest as you hoped you could keep winning faster than people could be hitting you. Shields fixed this. It was the first Elite buy-in tournament which spawned the technique known as shield hopping as we could watch via leaderboard fluctuations what was going on and after it was over walk your path gave an extensive post-mortem on the forums. From that day forward I shield hopped. The addition of shields has made PvP much more reasonable although it does add a bit of P2W if you use more shields than the 300HP you can earn by playing.
Then they nerfed Spidey and there was much anguish in the MPQ realm.
Except most of us had moved onto MPQ’s next power couple Patch and C.Mags. PvE had enacted something called personal and community scaling which set your PvE opponents based on how easily you beat the node. Scaling is one of the ongoing problems within the game as they try to develop the right mix, currently it is a bit too hard as those who play a PvE regularly should not face a node they cannot beat. It should be very hard but not unbeatable. I believe this will be appropriately tuned at some point and then PvE will be at the same level as PvP.
Then Alliances were introduced and there was rejoicing in the MPQ realm.
Then Seasons were introduced and those in Alliances rejoiced and those not in Alliances were anguished.
Then Season 1 ended and many players felt burned out by the constant grind of one month of continuous play. Those that rejoiced now felt anguish.
By Season 4 things got easier and now the current pattern of a week off followed by a 21 day season seems to be the right balance.
In Seasons the Shield Simulator became relevant again as it reset with every new season allowing players to get covers or go earn iso every month as a new season started.
At this point the latest and current MPQ power couple of Sentry and The Hood reared its head and at the top levels of PvP in conjunction with shield hopping it became the only way to place in the top 10 consistently.
After almost nine months of waiting C. Mags was nerfed except this time they did it right and now he is perhaps the other half of the emerging new MPQ power couple of X-Force and C. Mags. There was anguish and rejoicing especially the latter among people who had previously useless X-Force turn into a top tier character.
The latest addition was the fantastic Gauntlet PvE.
I continue to enjoy playing this game and at this point have no thoughts of stopping anytime soon.
I think the devs have responded to almost every unbalancing event within the game in a measured and responsible manner. Their efforts have kept the game growing and vital. I thank them for it.
I also thank my Alliance mates in Retribution. I had a great time on my own but I really enjoy being a part of this team.
My goal for year two is to keep a maxed roster and eventually have one million iso in the bank.
