Progression suggestion: Overhaul DDQ

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I’ve posted before, and also suggested in the surveys D3 runs, that they need to provide more ways for people to progress into 4* and 5*. The lack on a consistent way to keep progressing through the game becomes a major stumbling block. Not everyone can win a PVP or PVE event, and most never ever will. So that means they can bumble along in 2-3* land, until they leave the game, or win the lottery so they can afford to gamble that the RNG gods will be kind.

Anyway, back to progression. One of the ways that we CAN progress on a very slow but regular basis in the early tiers is by running DDQ religiously. A decent enough 3* roster can look forward to some ISO, 3 taco vault drops, an elite, the 3* of the day, and a 1* just by running DDQ. (I’m ignoring the weekly one on one fight here.)

Why not just extend DDQ with a few more nodes, allowing for a 4* and, dare I say it, a 5* of the day, assuming your lineup can handle whatever match you need to beat to win those treats. Add 2 nodes per tier, similar to the current 3* nodes, allowing those who have built up their 3 and 4* heroes enough to keep seeing at least some kind of cover progression. So, for example, the 4* Dat Required Chatacter might lead to another elite or Taco token or a CP, and the 4* version of the Big Enchilada would reward with that day’s 4*. Similar rewards would cover a 5* required character.

With the huge number of characters now in the game, a few extra covers per day is not going to break the bank. But it might keep people interested enough that they do put money in to be able to roster heroes they had no realistic way of acquiring.

2

PVP and PVE players can’t even get a 5* from top placement-- I highly doubt they’ll be offered in any way in the DDQ. There should, however, be a way to get a 4* every day from DDQ. The event that gives you CP should instead give you a cover for the 4* hero you need to use (and instead offer the CP through progression). Also, requiring people with 4*/5* rosters to use 1* and 2* characters is dumb and dare I say a little degrading.

3

Thanks Rockwell. Obviously, the idea needs some refinement, and maybe adding a 5* tier is down the line when 6* is a thing, if ever. But I’d like to see at least some movement into 4*.

4

Would be great if they added CL so higher tier players could skip the 1 and 2* nodes and have a 4 or 5* node to play for a 4* cover instead.

5

It’s not difficult to progress to the 4-star tier. There are many paths. It takes time and consistent play.

There will never be a 5-star available every day in DDQ. The path to 5-star land is Legendary Tokens and CP, which DDQ does offer. Hoard enough of those when the time is right and you’re in.

6

A daily 4* is probably a bit much, but making it an aggregate of the weekly progression would be nice. Like keep it like it is, but if you are able to get max-progression every day for a week, you get a cover specifically for the Crash 4*. Miss any days and you don’t get it.Tune it so that beating the crash will compensate for missing some nodes (but not all). That way it still requires you to have a minimum roster depth as well as dedicated play, and it will give players an opportunity to get targeted roster growth. The LT from the crash is nice, and I wouldn’t want that to go away, but there are a LOT of 4*s going, so some further opportunity to target ones you need/want would be welcome.

7

Is it? 4* characters now significantly outnumber 3s. If you’re starting out, it would take you I-don’t-even-know-how-long to fully cover every 4, even with a daily cover.

Yes, I know, you don’t have to roster and champ everyone, but realistically that is going to be what most people are shooting for.

Edit: Decided I wanted to know the actual timeline and there are 66 4*s currently - actually 68 but Howard and Dino are weird. 66 times 13 covers = 858 days, or over two years before you’re covering the whole tier just from a daily cover. Throw in the additional characters that will be released over that period, and the fact that I’m assuming here that you’re able to complete every node every day, and it’s probably well over three years, maybe four.

I don’t think one daily 4* cover is all that unreasonable.

8

So i got curious, and went through my roster. As a totally free to play player on day 892, I have roughly 909 4* covers (not including covers I’ve thrown out over my time in the game from loss or from selling characters or whatever-that number can’t be much more than 30 though). That doesn’t include Devil Dinosaur (4) or howard (10). This looks like it’s a little more than 1/day, but the reality is I was getting 0 per day for a long time, and now I am getting a bunch at one time as events end or champ rewards roll in or whatever. Seen in that light, you’re probably right that 1/day probably isn’t unreasonable.

edit for fun, i tallied up my 5s, since they represent draws at 4s mostly, with a few daily resupply and champ reward exceptions. 87 more, i’ve never had to throw one of those away yet

9

I’m not sure if this is possible, development wise, but I recommend that they change the crash, somewhat, by letting a random or specific 4* cover for the weekly crash character be the reward every 6 days. For example, this week try to beat blade with Daredevil 3* and earn a random or specified Elektra cover. This way a roster still has to have a good number of champed 3s to win the 4 cover but at least they walk away with something. And honestly, some might choose to do the 3* challenge, even if they could win the regular crash, if there is a certain character in the crash that they need additional covers for. The only thing they’d have to make sure is someone couldn’t choose to do the regular 4* crash and the 3* crash.

10

It might be time for a daily 4* cover. You do have to be a little bit careful with that, as you don’t want newer players to feel like they’re getting gouged on slots to roster all these guys, so they’d need to gate it somewhat.

Daily 5* is not going to happen until we’re deep into whatever the next top tier is, if there’s a next top tier.

As an aside, I wonder whether people understand the consequences when they ask for more 5* rewards. Since every single mode in this game is competitive, just giving everyone more 5* raises the bar for all players, and depending on how it’s done, it could end up giving out more stuff to the bigger rosters, so you’d be even further behind. (For example, if they increase the 5* draw rate in tokens, the players who pull the most tokens will benefit the most. If they add 5* daily rewards, the players who have all of the 5* championed will benefit the most.)

You might say you don’t care about competition, but having more players with 5* increases the difficulty of PvE placement, and enables more people to attack you in PvP. The players in the top 1% (this includes virtually every player on LINE and quite a few on the forum) should want to keep 5* covers as rare as possible to protect their position at the top of the meta.

I think when a lot of people ask for more 5*, what they’re really asking for is “give out more 5* to me (or players in my situation), but not to anybody else,” except there’s not really any realistic way for the devs to do that.

11

The Burrito is already gated in that it requires a specific 4* character in order to do it. IMHO what they should do is make said 4* character the prize for the Burrito-- or maybe they could add another more challenging wave node accessible after the Burrito is finished that rewards it. In an ideal world this second wave node would give enough points to max progression so people could skip the 1*/2* nodes and not feel like they’re missing as much.

12

Any overhaul is welcome to the Deadpool daily stuff. 4 stars outnumber 3s at this point and with the current progression it takes just about a year to cycle through all the 4s. Thats a very generous 68 ‘potential’ legendary tokens a year, “rolls eyes”.

I think they dropped the ball with shield rank, it should have tied into the Deadpool daily. At a certain rank it should switch the 3s with the 4s and the 4s with the 5s. A daily 4 star node is needed as it will still take 68 days for a full cycle.

The game is so bloated with covers and the packs are so diluted that it must be super intimidating for new rosters knowing they will never catch up without spending there life savings. I’m assuming this is intentional by the devs as high dilution makes them more money for the ones chasing carrots. It’s sad the the only way to actually make a little bit of headway is to hoard for months on end, which is incredibly boring to me.

The more and more the packs get diluted, the less and less I feel like playing or paying.

13

You forgot to take into account getting 4* from the following sources:

  1. There are “guaranteed” 4* covers from PvP progression every ~3 days now.
    2.There are guaranteed 4* cover from PvE (beginning from SCL 7) approximately twice per week.
  2. Some 4* have feeders.
  3. You can get 4* from story event tokens, pvp specific tokens, Heroics, Classic or Latest Legendary tokens.
  4. You have H4H deals every now and then.
  5. Nowadays, 4* covers are “given out” more freely to players. (C&D, Ant-man, Wasp etc)
  6. You can get free 4* covers from daily login.
  7. You can get 4* covers from bonus hero.

When you take all these into accounts, getting 4* covers are not that difficult now. I suppose fewer players would buy H4H deals in the future as well if 4* covers are given out in DDQ.

Speaking as a player who have played for about 7 months, I have no difficulty getting 4* covers. In fact, I have to sell away 4* covers after 4* covers due to insufficient roster slots. Usually, those 4* covers come from Heroic or luck of draws from vaults. Now, I’m getting more 4* covers from PvE and PvP progression rewards. I have rostered about 1/3 of the 4* now and I’m completely F2P.

I think Iso-8 and roster slot are more of an issue for those transitioning to 4*.

Unless 6* comes out, which the devs have said that majority of the playerbase don’t want to see 6* tier, i doubt the devs are going to put 5* covers in DDQ. 5* covers are the premium now. You can get guaranteed 5* for 250, 500 or 720 CP (after activating that colour) though.

If giving more 4* and 5* to players requires sacrificing their bottom line or take a potential hit to their revenue, I doubt they would do so because it doesn’t make business sense. A happy player doesn’t alway translate to spending more. It’s quite the opposite.

However, giving an additional 4* cover or additional LT in PvE SCL 10 progression rewards might not be unreasonable.

14

at the very least the crash cycle should be reduced from the 5 days it is now. And those 1/2 star fights can be a slog. Ive skipped more ddq 2 star fights out of disdain than ive missed pve max progression.

15

DDQ Has:

  • That Guy From That Place: 1* only node (3 opponents, often 1 character and 2 goons)
  • Under the Sea: 1*/2* only sequential Wave node (two groups of 4, 0-1 characters with 3-4 goons)
  • Third Time’s the Charm: 2* only node (3 opponents, all characters)
  • Dat Required Character: 3* Required node (central 3* required, other two spots open to full roster, 3 opponents, all characters)
  • The Big Enchilada: Locked large wave node (one group, six opponents)
  • Behemoth Burrito: 2*/3*/4* Required node (requires all three specific characters)
  • Crash of the Titans: 4* Required node (1v1 fight once each Taco cycle)
    It requires characters from each tier (minus 5s), and a variety of characters (3 Required node and 4* Crash cycle through characters, and the Burrito requires a specific 2/3/4 team). And it provides 3 Tacos, 1 Standard, 1 Elite, 6500 ISO, 10HP, 2CP, one guaranteed 3*, and one LT every 5 days.

So we could add:

  • 2*/3* only node, something between the 2* node and Dat Required Character
  • 3*/4* only node, like a harder Third Time’s the Charm
  • A node referencing something other than Enchiladas/Burritos (in DDQ) or Chimichangas (Support), something Tex-Mex, maybe something about the cheesy goodness of queso?
  • Maybe a node requiring a specific 5*, or only 4*+ characters? Easy enough to do daily, but higher tier requirements so newer players have to work their way up to it.
  • Something different like the Burrito. Like a team affiliation node, where you have to use all Avengers or X-Men (or for smaller teams in-game, maybe it’s like “Spider-verse and/or Young Avengers” and lets you use more than one). Those were fun during the 12 Days of Christmas, make them more regular.
    Rewards could include another Elite and some HP from nodes (instead of progression), another 2 CP in progression (instead of from a node), maybe a Heroic (in place of that Elite, or in addition to it? there is no “only 3*/4* token”, so a Heroic is as close as it gets). Maybe another Taco in progression (one for doing all of the current DDQ, a second for doing all of the current stuff plus the new stuff that would be added).

I would put the first three nodes and a 2*/3* node as the “easy set” (on the left) for slowly growing rosters, and add an HP reward for the 2*/3* node (as it is hard to earn HP as a newer player, and being able to easily complete the first three nodes of DDQ but not having Dat Required Character to get enough progression for HP is a pain).

Dat Required, a 3*/4* node, Big Enchilada (more opponents than the 3*/4* node, also allows use of 5*s), those are the “harder” nodes on the right side. Could theoretically use a fourth node, bigger than the Big Enchilada (though it might make sense to move the name, so the hardest node is still called “The Big Enchilada”, unless they want to go with an awkward “Even Bigger Enchilada” or something) Add in a Heroic, and progression CP about the time you’d complete these nodes (if doing them “in order”), so the rewards help bolster the tier of the roster required to earn them.

The 2/3 node and the 3/4 node could also have special options, like the first could have one 3* and two 2*s to ease players into the 2-3 transition, and the 3/4 node could maybe be a 2v2 fight for something different than other DDQ fights (and to allow combos like Mr F and Torch, or Cage/Fist combos, or Shuri/Panther, or Spidey and Miles/Gwen, etc).

Burrito, Crash, and the Team Affiliation node as special nodes across the bottom. Maybe the Team Affiliation node could be once a cycle like the Crash, allowing it to have a harder difficulty. If it’s hard enough, this is where you could add a guaranteed 4* cover. Make it from the opposite end of the cycle from the Crash 4*, so you only have to wait half the cycle from earning a guaranteed 4* before it’s usable in the Crash, maybe?

I’d like to see some upgrades to DDQ again, both to encourage more steps for newer players to slowly overcome as they see their roster progress, as well as to add new types of challenges for middle/later game players, and to add more rewards to help players keep up with the ever-increasing game requirements (as more characters require progressively more HP/ISO/CP to acquire/use).

Though I do agree that guaranteed 5s and maybe even Daily 4s might be a bit too much to expect at this point.

16

Behemoth Burrito is pretty easy. I hesitate to say it’s too easy, but even on days when I only had 1 cover for the required 4* and 1 cover for the required 2* (it’s caught me out a couple of times if I wasn’t paying attention to the forecasts), I’ve generally been able to solo the node with just the champed 3* of the day. It is pretty much a “have you rostered these three characters? OK, enjoy some CP” node. It’s a pretty nice prize for developing rosters, so I wouldn’t want to replace it or make it harder, but it’d be nice if there was an additional daily-rotating node that was actually somewhat difficult and asked me/us to make good use of 3* or 4* characters we’d otherwise ignore.

Five days is becoming a really long time to wait between Crash o’ th’ Titans cycles. When I was making the 3*-4* transition, I used to be a little disappointed if I didn’t have the character needed to qualify for Crash, or if my character was missing the cover that made the Crash beatable, but I could console myself that it’d only be 3-4 months or so before I got a chance to play that character in Crash again. At this point I can probably beat pretty much any Crash (I made it through Rulk; I can make it through anything!), but if that weren’t the case I’d be pretty apprehensive about the prospect of having to wait a full year before I could try out in a Crash.

Just throwing this out there: I think Dangerously Cheesy would be a good name for a SCL9-like (or maybe Growth Industry-like) difficulty DDQ node.

17

You have my bow. I mean, my vote.

18

Never say never. I’m sure many thought we’d never have 5* covers from 4* champ rewards, 5* required nodes, or 5*s boosted 100 levels.

19

The definitely need to expand DDQ. Putting aside the questions of rewards etc..

Da required character and the big enchilda are the only 2 nodes where you can select and form your own 3/4*/5* team. There should always be a daily node that is geared for higher level 4*/5* chars.

Ultimately DDQ is a mode intendeded for people to use other parts of their rosters. and the 4*/5* tiers are have grown to size that deserves its own ddq nodes

edit: maybe a 4* focused node that gives out beginner support tokens. basically an expanded reason to build 4* teams

20

I think a 5* Crash would be good. Call it the Chimichonga Challenge and the reward would be a Master Support token.

There is currently no way to earn these in game and they are clearly intended to be rare. Gating them behind 5* Progression would give players some hope to get 5* Supports and incentivize people to develop their 5* Characters.