Punished Because I Know How To Play

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hello,

A little background before I launch into my diatribe (written on an iPhone on a bumpy commuter bus):
I’ve been playing regularly since launch and have invested a good amount of money in roster expansions (mainly) and other “basic necessities.” Essentially, I feel pretty invested in this game and have a right to air some grievances.

And, also understand, I fully appreciate monetization schemes. This post is both a word of warning to the developers from someone who knows exactly what they’re doing as well as a post of self interest.

After a while of playing, I’ve learned strategies. Learned the abilities of almost every character, including those I haven’t leveled. I am, if you don’t mind “pretty good.” I can beat PvP teams many levels over my own. More specifically I have an IM40 around level 105, a recently Patch around 94, and Spider-Man around 88.

I’m not stupid, I see the value of a 2-AP blue stun Spider-man and have used it to great effect against impossible odds.

I’ve tolerated some pretty nasty scaling because I understand how to combat every character. I regularly take on PVP teams that average 30-50 combined levels higher than my own. I’ve taken down some ugly PVE level 230 squads at the edge of blue AP.

But there must be a limit.

I started the IM40 doubleshot and every team, from the very start, was in the 120-141 range. No strategy can withstand my oneshot-ability. Excuse my French, but my ass got kicked with 0 points. Yet, as we all know, people in the top 50 with level 14 IM40.

I’m not saying throw the entire MMR system out the window, but give me a break. When I start a me PVP tournament, give me the ability to beat one team.

Sorry for any typos. This bus is bouncy.

2

so spend some time tanking

3

On a game-design level, that’s a terrible solution. Nevertheless, I’ve certainly tanked quite a bit and I’m just stupid enough to keep doing it if it worked.

Which leads me to my second response which is that the game designers have, as far as I’ve seen in-game and read about here, reduced the efficacy of tanking. I know that in the last PVE event, I would tank approximately 40 matches, and see no change in my the levels of my competition.

4

You’ve been punching above your weight, so your MMR has been adjusted accordingly. You mean you didn’t want to be matched up with those players? Why did you fight them?

5

This points towards something the developers need to remember. Is it fun and is it working. MMR isn’t fun and doesn’t work so although in the short it may seem like a way to get new people into the game, they’ll lose far more spenders than they gain in casuals.

Having to tank points to how bad the system is so please fix it!

6

Losing tournaments to teams that wouldn’t last 20 seconds I shielded if I could see them is also a huge kick in the teeth. I ended up second in the latest tourney and none of the other teams in the top 5 had a champ over 85. Several of the, had no one over 50.

7

I think they need to do away with MMR altogether.

They should run parallel events with different min/max team requirements and different prizes.

You should only be able to enter one event in a given set.

Also It should be that you can enter any bracket you want, but your team should be limited to what the requirements of the tourney state.

That way, If I want to try out some new covers, that I haven’t really leveled I can go and play in the easy bracket with team of lvl 20’s and still have fun, but my good covers would be locked out.

I’m sure there are reasons why this is difficult to implement, but I know I would LOVE that change.

8

Really? So you’ve been doing so awesome, you got put into a bracket that you can’t beat this ONE time? Someone has to be on the bottom. Someone ALWAYS does. Its your turn. Then your MMR will get reduced, and you’ll be back to a more competitive place next tourney.

I’m sorry, its a game of thousands of people, and they’ve designed it to try to give everyone their time in the sun. That means everyone’s going to have to spend some time in the shade as well. My advice is relax, cool off, and try next tourney.

9

You terribly misunderstand the problem. The way MMR/brackets is currently working there are a lot of people with pretty craptastic rosters earning the top rewards. The rewards are tiered so that the mid levels are 2* rewards, which is where someone with a 1* roster should be competing to get. Someone without 2* chars shouldnt be winning the 4* at slot #1. Should they have a chance, with a TON of work, at getting a top slot? Undeniably yes. But recently the top 10s of most brackets have been comprised almost exclusively of those low players: that is just BROKEN.

10

The problem with this game is all you need is a heavy hitter and Spidey and it doesn’t matter who your third character is and you can beat anyone on offense. Offense is so much easier than defense because AI is so bad at strategy. Last Double Shot, I didn’t lose a single offensive fight rocking a level 30 IM and I fought people with level 100+ IM. With well timed shields, I finished in the Top 5 in my bracket.

11

Is a pretty clever system and i believe you are missing the point of it. The skip functions has babied all of the playera in MPQ by cherry picking oponents you think you can beat. Even if you decide to fight a team a bit ahead of you i am 100% sure nobody does suicidal runs for the sake of glory against a team that has synergy. Pretty much because the cost of your heroes dying or taking in too much damage far outweighs the reward in a tournament. We all want to keep on winning and it isnt until we hit the wall that we realized we dug a hole too deep to get out.

We tend to see negative more than possitive in any situation. You can see a low level team to “your” standards snatching a top prize, but you have no clue how much effort that person has put into earning that reward, afterall that player is fighting aginst peoplle with equivalent rosters. The game “should” be wins over losses but since there are loop holes that enable exploits such as tanking then the system breaks. Put it this way if you were to translate your score to a more simplified k\d scoring system, your score would be ridiculous and rapidily proceeded to fight other people with that same score ending in your ass being handed to you.

To end it if you were put on a bracket with the people you are being matched MMR wise and none of this tanking was possible, you would be lucky to even make it top 75 since it allow 2 things. 1 your playtime qould only make the game impossible and unrewarding and 2 it would allow people to hunt you down and knock you down further into the bracket since winning against you would mean getting ahead while burrying your opponenr. Brackets like this make it possible so everyone has a slime chance but still a chance at snatching a good prize.

Sent it from my phone so pardon typos along the way

12

Except I like the way they do brackets, and would applaud everyone having a chance (depending on effort) to win a top prize. The issue I see is that you should progress up the rewards, not shoot to the top and slowly drop down unless you were willing to put in ever increasing efforts. I barely played the Oscorp Heroic after the first day as the top 10 in my bracket were all beginners. I could have counted the number of maxed 2* stars without taking my shoes off and didnt see a single 100+ 3* let alone one with full covers.

13

There are plenty of guys with high rosters that dominate the high PvE brackets. Spiderman is an all-or-nothing deal, as in if you have it at 5 blue he could be level 15 and he’d still be able to put most 230X3 guys away, and that’s something most newbie players simply won’t have.

The current PvE event greatly favors those who have a diverse roster and, more importantly, having the buffed heroes at a reasonable level.

14

If anything, what we could have is a corrected MMR that takes into account how different tournaments can be.

For instance, a few weeks ago I was wrecking people in the wolverine tournament, because my highest level character is a Patch, so with the boosts, my MMR completely misrepresented my real power level. Then we have Double Shot, where my 18 level IM40 is well below the average for players of the MMR level that I reached after those tournaments that were focused heavily on my best characters.

So I just don’t think it makes any sense to have a matchup system that makes it very easy to reach 750 points one week, while the next week I can’t reach 200.

15

Same situation man, 141 patch, level 20 IM40.

Did manage to top 15 by playing hard for the last 50 minutes and skipping about 10-15 times to just find someone who didn’t have a 120+ IM40.

But I believe there should be a MMR reset on PVP events of some kind, or MMR scaling based on what level your version of the buffed mandatory character is. Even if you get a momentary advantage of a too low MMR the benefit is essentially gone after a mere handful of wins.

16

I like your comment cause it goes along with some other people’s comments about not being able to play some of their other heroes. We currently have a system that encourages everyone to focus all efforts (and $$$) on two heroes to lead them to victory in all tournaments. I liked it in the past when players would bring out seldom used heroes. Instead, I see Thor and Wolverine everywhere. We are all becoming expert at facing them but I rather see some more variation.

If there could be a complete redo of MPQ, the selection process should allow players to select their team first and then the system will assign the best match for that combination. This will allow players to play their other heroes and help justify why someone would need 30 hero slots when we only can utilize 2 heroes. This could also encourage more playing cause even if some of your heroes are defeated, you can utilize others in a fair manner.

17

The way it is supposed to work, or at least as I understand things, each player in an event is competing against opponents of relative difficulty. So the level 50 team in the top 10, had the same relative difficulty as the level 100 team in the top 10. The skip function was sort of undermining the system from within, and therefore , the devs have decided to provide an incentive do encourage less skipping and perhaps have the system work more closely to what is intended. It still needs some tweaking though. But try to not skip, likely lose a couple matches (using your actual team instead of you crap covers you don’t really use) and see how things work out. I was irked at first, but then just gave in to the system. Give it a try, resistance is futile.

18

Sound like you punched above your weight class and got punched back.

Eventually your MMR will settle into a range more suitable for your roster strength.

I’m not a fan of tanking, I think it makes it harder to climb the upper rungs of progression as stronger teams typically have higher scores. I’d rather fight a max 3 star worth 45 pts, then beat up on a bunch of 2 star teams for 15 pts.

If you’ve been using a lot of boosts, i’d curb that immediately.

  1. waste of iso
  2. you inflate your MMR

save em for tough pve battles and eleventh hour pushes.

19

It’s not an issue of MMR. It’s more like the guy had some favorable featured heroes and now the featured hero isn’t the one he have so he’s getting beaten up. The MMR probably treats a roster of level 141 Patch and a level 15 IM40 as equally strong as a level 141 IM40 and a level 15 Patch, so you’d clean up in The Best There Is with a level 141 Patch but likely to get owned in Double Shots. There’s no reason for the MMR to take account of the featured hero because that’s supposed to be transient. If IM40 is always buffed maybe it should, but there’s no reason for it to go easy on you just because your featured hero happens to be especially underleveled for the tournament. You don’t get punished for having an espcially high featured hero, so why should you get rewarded for having an especially low hero?

20

It is an MMR issue in that it doesnt factor in where your ISO/covers were spent. Adding a little bit of intelligence to the MMR would go a long ways towards making it fair. Factoring in where the featured is in your roster would help you actually play against equivalent teams, which is the goal right?

The only downsides I see are that it could result in a narrow point bracket similar to MMR Hell and you would consistently take more damage (bad for players, good for devs as that equals more spent on health packs) because you would actually be fighting teams closer to your actual strength.