I consider myself a Veteran MPQ player (Day 1071), and a legitimate Gamer, at that. Not anything hardcore, just casual.
Anyway, I play two other Android games regularly: Gems of War & Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. In the past few months (and in a month or so to come), each of these games is/has gone through significant updates.
MPQ: Supports & Red ISO-8, a new 4 or 5 star every other week
Gems of War: Pets, Doom Skulls, 2x new Guild Warish things (Invasion & Raid Boss), 1x new Individual Game (Bounty), Addition of various Orbs (as rewards), Various Character updates & introductions (weekly)
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter Updates & Perks, Ship Updates, 1x New Raid Boss, New Daily Events, Various Character updates & introductions
I am sure that I am forgetting some updates for the latter two, for the number of sheer updates they are performing
This struck me recently, as I played these games. Demiurge would do well to notice. They are getting left behind. Personally, I find myself putting more time into the other games, and struggling to fine a reason to play MPQ.
Absolutely. They have ignored everything we asked for and given us something we never wanted ( supports ). So it’s not a shock that revenue is way down and we are all slowly migrating to bigger and better games with devs who listen and react to the communities needs. We should be getting so many more QOL updates, buffs and balances to the game it’s absurd we get left in the dust.I will definitely check out the two games you mentioned as I need a new game to replace MPQ.
You forgot an update to how PvE is scored, update to 4* BP’s reward structure to feed 5* BP covers, update to XFW to feed OML covers. Also, those two other games don’t have a movie tie-in that they have to worry about, which is kind of a big deal.
Edit: And @Jonny1Punch I’d really like to see your source for stating that revenue is way down. Considering we have no idea how much the game actually makes, I’d say it’s a bit of a stretch to say that revenue is way down when the devs themselves have said that MPQ is in a really healthy place atm.
I understand you’re the Moderator for their Forum but you’re defending them with basic changes. The 5* feeders are at a snails pace. We complained about Tapping for nearly a year and they finally made the solution using what we’ve been saying since they originally made the awful change.
Are they paying you with Support tokens and Red Iso? If so, please let us know how you like the Supports because we have no idea with the severe lack of resources they’ve been giving us. Thanks Ducky =D
Same here. The two 4*'s that became feeders for 5*'s happens every season so it is not really a “New” update. We know it will happen just don’t know which 4* or 5*, just like we know there will be two 4*'s and a 5* released every season. The PVE score update was a problem that they took a year to acknowledge and months to fix. So it’s something that was about time. Other than that all the Devs time and effort was spent on Supports that have been received with negative feedback since release, because of the scarcity of ways to obtain them at higher ranks and low Red Iso we can earn to level them. Now with the 300 Item vault and the HFH bundles, it seems that Supports are a new feature that is intended as a cash grab rather than something to make the game fresh again.
Maybe the problem is… changes like new 5* feeders… the devs see those as major changes? Maybe they think “we just made a ton of huge changes, the players wouldn’t want any more right now”.
I just want to feel we are moving forward. Most “changes” feel like lateral movements and/or way overdue. So far overdue that they are no longer seen as “hooray” moments, but rather “geeez it took you long enough!”
The game has grown without truly changing. The token pools are super diluted with no easier way to truly get most characters, the events (even the new ones) are getting stale, the game modes are the same, some people feel like they are beating their heads against a wall. Luckily for me, it’s still fun enough to play daily, but I certainly stopped caring. There has to be a way to give players something they want (make the 4* node in DDQ daily maybe?) and make classic 5s or any 5s have a definite Avenue for acquisition… all while still making money, no?
4s outweigh 3s in is quantity, 5s are climbing ever higher. Those tiers are still pretty hard to fill out, harder with every new release. With every new releases without a true QoL improvement, the greater the disconnect grows between the developers and the players. They don’t appear to listen
Whilst I appreciate you defending the game, and indeed, I have played it since the Beta without wavering, to say the other games don’t have a movie tie-in is not correct. Specifically in the case of Star Wars: GoH (the game the OP was referring too). They had a Last Jedi Event (maybe 3 actually, but I am not high enough level there to access all those events particularly successfully), and they have Han Solo’s film next month to prepare for, whilst releasing a similar number of new characters to MPQ, revising their ship battles mode extensively, releasing events throughout the intermediate time (such as their Sith event), and revising the way you collect new characters (in a similar way to the 4* to 5* feeders here). This is in addition to the new other things the OP mentioned, i.e. the Bounty Hunter contracts, the new raid boss (a little like a Boss event here) and some new daily events. I would also say they release things related to the TV series’ as well, such as Star Wars: Rebels (an excellent series), with associated characters and events too.
Now, each game has different audiences, different developers (and team sizes), different IP to use and so on, so it is hard to compare to each other. But Star Wars: GoH is about 2 years younger (2015 versus 2013 for MPQ), and recently did a sort of, massive redress of lots of small issues in the game, how it works, and how the experience is for the player. Personally, that game is far better now for it, than before. I think Will addressed this a little in his Q&A posts he’s been doing, when he said this in answer to the following question:
"Will: I think more often than we did in 2017.
Our strategy last year was more, but smaller, changes, and while that I think that led to some real and steady improvements in the game, no amount of smaller changes adds up to the excitement of a big new feature."
I think this indicates, as well as the development of Supports, that changes are both needed, and coming to maintain the health of the game.
And to defend Supports - sure, they are underwhelming just now, but give it time. I didn’t see the value of many things in this game when they first arrived, but given time, it will grow. I think if you were expecting an instantaneous paradigm shift, it’s hard to create that. Additionally, even if Supports don’t pan out, not everything every developer for every game works out to the majority of players. I’m happy they are trying things. If they aren’t trying new things that’s a bad sign for the health of the game. I agree with Ducky here, the game seems pretty healthy, and these attempts to change things confirm this. To compare to another game, Marvel Heroes, that game was dying for 6-12 months, and the lack of any new content, other than limited new characters, showed it was going downhill fast.
Pong. Tbh, I saw a special edition updated version of Pac-man recently, well worth checking out.
To be fair, how big/rare/good are the examples for the other games? Honest question since I am not familiar with those games. Maybe those updates aren’t all that spectacular either?
I know we come to expect new characters every 2 weeks, but that doesn’t mean those aren’t relevant updates. The real MPQ game is collecting characters, and the hook to keep people playing is the threat of losing the character to dilution. So while we don’t get new pve events often, those don’t really do much to keep people playing compared to new releases.
Oh, OK. I’ll keep looking for those. I’m not overly excited yet.
However it’s a very different game from when I used to play it 2 years ago. My favorite change is the animation speed-up X4. I do miss the crazy Monday hauls. Participating in my first Guild War now.
One of the things that I personally would like to see is more lightning rounds, and more varied lightning rounds. I really enjoyed the recent Sakaar Arena ones because they were held on the WEEKEND and allowed me to actually participate.
There is such an opportunity for more themed lightning rounds with different boosted lists, at different times. Lightning rounds are mostly indistinguishable from when they were introduced 4 years ago, and that’s sad.
Supports would have been more exciting if they had done something like they did with XP and ‘grandfathered’ veteran players with a sum of riso that made at least one support usable to advanced rosters.
Help.