PVE & PVP Thoughts/Suggestions

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

Hey D3 and Forum Dwellers!

Brief Background: Relatively new to MPQ, but have recently dipped into the more competitive aspects of the game. It wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that I realized there was more to this game than just the Prologue… lol. In any case, as I am a fan of puzzle games and Marvel, this seemed like the perfect game to play on my mobile device. I only just learned about Alliances this past weekend and regret not joining one sooner!

I recently placed 1st in the Prodigal Sun PVE event for my Time Slice (final score I think was around 320K) for the Elektra rewards and successfully completed the Gauntlet(!), both of which were brutal to say the least for my first PVE experiences and I typically score between 800-900 points in PVP events up until this point, so I’m not completely new to these parts of the game. Granted, I haven’t been playing long, but perhaps a fresh view from a new player could be helpful?

Any time there is both PVE and PVP in a single game, it’s always going to be tricky to balance, so here are my thoughts/feedback:

BLUF: Separate PVE from PVP from a Roster Standpoint

PVE
Rubberbanding/Scaling/Transitional Players/Borked Buff Player Selection all seem to have plagued this game from the beginning based on these forum posts. Honestly, Prodigal Sun was just all over the place (Enemy of the State seems OK so far). Whatever secret formula you use to automagically scale is never going to be completely “fair” for the wide range of players in this game. So I propose the following ideas:

  • Pre-select about 15-20 Heroes/Villains to use as a base Roster for a PVE Event (for example, Three 4*, Ten 3* and the rest 1/2*)
  • Not everyone will have access to all of these characters, but the ones they do have can still be competitive, if they do, then more power to them!
  • All of these Characters are scaled to the same specific levels for everyone, however Covers still matter, so you can still have a 194 MoStorm rocking 1/2/2
  • Key here is health, just because you have a couple characters (usually your Go-To’s) leveled way higher than the rest shouldn’t penalize you, but having my squishy non-leveled MoStorm that I am forced to play rocked by one ability is ridiculous
  • If you’re going to continue with 36 hour Subs (I so hate you right now just thinking about it… lol), then go with 6 hour refreshes (because sleep is sort of required for us human beings, yes… we are humans playing this game)
  • Regarding refreshes, make it so if one decides to tap a node again prior to a refresh, then make it significantly harder right after, like Easy > Hard / Normal > Deadly level and have that gradually decrease back down using your refresh timer, tapping a node again still extends the refresh cycle as it does today and continues to provides less points
  • Folks who want to place higher will put in the effort to separate themselves from the pack and getting to a point total first still matters, so even if folks end up with the same score, timing and efficiency still matter in the end
  • Keep the Essential Nodes, I realize this is important for those folks who put the effort in the previous PVE, but I wouldn’t make them Essential in the VERY next PVE, that’s asking a bit much, give folks at least a week to get a cover from Tokens/PVP/Previous Progression Reward
  • Keep a few preselected characters open for the Community to vote who should be included in the next PVE event, great way to include your community

PVP

  • Game right now seems to be working for the most part in PVP, folks who have maxed rosters should have an advantage honestly
  • One change I would suggest is that it’s somehow possible for you to be attacked by multiple folks at the same time? If not shielded, then this really hurts, how about if one loses, then they are quasi-shielded for say 10 minutes and prevents an onslaught of snipers
  • As much fun it is to force the AI to do a Match 4 on colors it doesn’t need, not so fun thinking it’s doing it for me too on Defense
  • The only other suggestion I have here is have 2 different Brackets, 166 Max and 270 Max, Rewards are better for the 270 Bracket which would incentive folks to play there if you have a 3* Roster (who can still beat the AI in full 270’s, it’s just not as easy)

Paying for Roster Slots, Health Packs, Boosts, Token Packs, etc I’m OK with, you gotta make money and you are a business. Trying to change how the financials of this game work isn’t my intention and I don’t believe my suggestions above would impact those too much.

It almost seems like if you want to be competitive in PVP, you have to pretty much give up on PVE because of how scaling works today. This shouldn’t be the case, folks should enjoy both aspects of the game. At first I was super frustrated that Wolverine (X-Force) would be locked out for Enemy of the State because he’s pretty much my go-to guy to get through PVE events. However, forcing me to play with other characters and actually somewhat enjoying this new Event is what prompted these ideas in my head.

In any case, I’m ready for the Forum Trolls to tear this apart, hopefully something sounds right though and I hope it helps!

Thanks!

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Had another thought/suggestion, how about a “Silo” or “Quarantine” feature for specific characters on one’s roster? Note: There’s gotta be a better word than either Silo or Quarantine, but after 7 days of Simulator and almost to the end, my brain isn’t working right any more…

For example, say you have a 270 4Thor or Xforce or both (I do not btw… lol), but you only wanted to use them for PVP purposes, so you mark those characters as PVP-only via Quarantine and now this character is locked from use for PVE and Personal Scaling is based on the remainder of one’s roster for a PVE event?

Add a Cooldown every time you want to remove a Character from Quarantine (similar to the new Shield CD of 8 hours) so someone can’t juggle back and forth. Of course add a cost too, like 100 HP to Quarantine a Character and 500 HP to remove them from Quarantine.

This adds a few benefits for you and the player, you get another source of income and the player benefits from not being screwed by weirdo Personal Scaling due to 270’s. Also, now players have more of a reason to have duplicates of their 4* (or in my case, 166 Sentry), not like folks are already doing this already, but more folks will probably do that now. This also now gives players a way to “fix” their roster for PVE purposes without forcing them to delete or remove characters which seems a bit drastic IMO.

Personally, I’d LOVE to have my 166 Sentry Quarantined since him being at freaking 256 (60+ levels above my highest characters…) is a tad insane. It’d actually make me want to level a baby Sentry just for PVE purposes and lock my max level Sentry away for all time in the Quarantine.

Anyway, not sure if these things ever get read by D3 at all, but wanted to share, thanks!

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After playing a bit more and with some of the recent changes (8 hour refreshes, Shield CDs, MMR Tweaking, etc), I figure it’s worth a refresh of these ideas with some additional thoughts that come to mind. I accept that these may not be original to me as I’m sure many if not all of these ideas probably have been posted to the forums at some point, but here goes nothing.

I still like the original thought on pre-selected and pre-scaled PVE rosters, but that’s probably tough to implement, so here’s another suggestion, let’s call it Proposal 1B.

Proposal 1B:

  • Instead of using Placement Rewards to dictate who should win what covers, let’s move those to the Progression Rewards instead, hear me out before the pitchforks come out
  • I’ve placed well in all of my PVE events so far (fingers crossed that can continue) and noticed I’ve hit the top Progression reward within the 2nd sub (sometimes even in the 1st?!), usually by the end I am 4-6 times higher than the top Progression Reward
  • I’m not saying make it easy for all folks to get these covers, but let the effort be the same to get in the Top 10 or higher, but remove the x-factor that is your bracket
  • The scenario where someone in your Alliance wins T2 with a score only to hear about an Alliance mate who scored very similar and missed out on Top 5 (even Top 10) happens enough to raise an eyebrow (were they just unlucky? should one way say instead “you should’ve played harder!?” nope, I don’t think so)
  • In this proposal, say there’s a 18K Top Progression 3* cover, now for a new 4*, first cover would be at 60K, second cover at 80K and third cover at 100K (adjust accordingly of course)
  • For Top 10, do what you did with Gauntlet, let the top 10 finishers get a free Heroic 10-Pack for their efforts (sort of reverse what you did with Gauntlet, but I think this works out better for all, also don’t want to even touch that thread with a 10-foot pole personally, lol)
  • Keep the normal Top Progression reward you have today, but add in this extra tier on top, maybe throw in some random ISO/HP rewards along the way
  • This means more folks control their own destiny, reduces the frustrations that some feel when their competition gets better scaling than you and allows more to enjoy the game in my opinion then worrying if your paltry 5K lead is enough to hold out so you can sleep for 5 hours (which it probably isn’t, lol)
  • This recent Gauntlet made the idea pop in my head and while I like the concept, just think it can be implemented in this way to make more folks satisfied
  • Of course, keep Alliance rewards the same too (perhaps this alleviates the stress to hit T50, who knows)

I actually had another completely different idea regarding PVE (similar to previous thought of PVE Normal/Hard, but I don’t think I need to address that here just yet), don’t want to dilute too much with that (same with PVP), I don’t know if this even helps or if the Devs see it, but worth posting to see what other folks think.