Reward expectation vs outcome

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

This isn’t meant to be a rage post or even necessarily a complaint but something has been bothering me for a little while now and I feel the need to express it.

I’m a relapsed player who came back to the game after you introduced clearance levels, which I think are a fantastic innovation. To actually get me playing again is quite an achievement, as I was sure I was done when I left the game after the first venom bomb event (topic for another day, I hate venom bomb).

I think a lot of issues with the game have been addressed but there are still some recurring themes that keep coming up, and I think they share a common thread, which is disappointment after earning a reward.

What crystalised this for me was today when I spent 20 command points to open a token. I understand rationally that these tokens are random, but I am very much a 4* transition player, I only have 7 4* with 5 covers in any colour (no spell check, that’s how we spell it here and I’m not changing it). So I open up my shiny reward and it is a red carnage cover. I already have 5 of these, and specifically remember opening at least one other red. But this isn’t a complaint about RNG, i accept that with the systems the game has in place. It’s more my reaction after. I was just disappointed, I felt a bit hollow. Instead of finishing off the rest of the nodes in this sub, I just stopped playing the game, it killed my motivation (plus, you know, venom bomb). Now I’m not going to quit playing or anything, but it just goes against what I think is normal game behavior. We put in effort in order to be rewarded, so you get that little serotonin hit in your brain and that warm fuzzy feeling. When rewards don’t meet expectations, you feel sad. If you feel sad enough, you stop playing the game. I can’t imagine what an actual power player or whale would feel after spending hard earned $ only to draw their 7th black OML cover when they don’t have a single yellow yet.

The same effect I think applies to the other main area of the game I find confusing, scaling. Most games as you progress your roster the game gets easier to give you that sense of growth in power. In MPQ, as your roster increases the game actually gets harder. You get a higher MMR in PvP and your scaling increases dramatically in PvE. The forums seem to suggest that people with full 5* rosters find it harder to clear PvE nodes than my with my champed 3* roster. This just seems counter intuitive to me, again your expectation of reward is contradicted my in game effect.

The final area of discontent is ISO shortage. You spend your time, or money, or often both to earn some new covers or a new character, and finally get enough covers to make the character playable, but you never will, because you are always short of ISO. This isn’t to say we should be overflowing with ISO and never have to make decisions or play the game to level our characters, that is too far the other way, but it does seem the balance is off, and most players (at least that voice their opinion on this forum) can’t ever realistically see themselves without an ISO shortage.

All of these events just give players a chance to stop playing the game. It’s hard to earn rewards in this game. It takes an investment of both time and some emotion, so it just seems natural to me that when people open a pack, they want to feel excitement. At the moment it feels to often like the opposite, like our reward is actually a punishment.

I offer no solutions, as these have been discussed in great detail, I don’t really have a gripe or anything, I just have been thinking about this a bit (yes I think about this silly match game too much) and wanted to share.

2

All three of these are valid complaints that have been unaddressed for years.

  1. It’s extremely saddening to open up a duplicate cover of a non-championed character, particularly a 4* and even worse a 5*. It just means the game is laughing at you for trying very hard to win LTs and CP and saying “why did you even bother? you’ll never make progress”

  2. Scaling at high levels is very bad, and I’m sure it’s never been play-tested by the devs. It’s frustrating that the game should get harder at higher levels and for no additional rewards.

  3. ISO is much better than it used to be. I can generally get at least 40,000 ISO per day from all the new features they added on recently. It could still be more, but this is a good start. Eventually they should improve node rewards and upgrade plain tokens to elite tokens for people at higher SCLs.

3

I’m having a different experience than you are.

I’m not on the 5* tier, but every time I champ a 4* it adds to my game. I have noticed a difference in scaling, but the power of a boosted 4* makes up for it. It changes the game a bit. On difficult nodes, match damage doesn’t really matter. You look to build resources to unleash powers. It takes me less time to clear hard nodes now with a half dozen champed 4* than it did when I was working with 3*.

Iso shortage is a matter of perception. I’ve currently got 500k in the bank, with 2 4* at max covers. At the moment I can champ one of them, but not both. I’ve also got a host of 4* (plus 2* farm and 3* strange) I could devote those resources to. Am I “short”? I don’t think so. The rubric seems to be that if you don’t have enough Iso to fully level every current character, you’re “short”. That’s disingenuous. You’re not short until you can’t earn the resources to level the characters that actually matter to you and your personal strategy.

We are not entitled to max-champ every character right away. The Iso limitation is intentional - here’s a character. If you like it, put some Iso on it.

4

Exactly.

Scaling breaks down once you move to 5s.
Trust us.

5

Do you think that’s on purpose?

PvE has always seemed like the noncompetitive side. There’s placement rewards, but progression rewards are a touch better. 5* being the pinnacle of the game, maybe the scaling is absurd because you’re already at the top of the pile.

Enriching the rich creates unbeatable players. Instead, the premier combatants are relegated to PvP to slug it out amongst themselves. They’re welcome to use the PvE climbing tool, but it won’t be pretty, and they won’t get rewards that are particularly relevant to them.

It might not be on purpose. It might just be because the Dev team doesn’t work with 5* teams and assumes they’ll handle anything thrown at them, so they hit the big red button and call it a day. I think it’s part of the game design, though. Those at the top don’t get the easy rewards because they’re already at the top. Kings fight Kings, not peasants.

6

I agree that two of the three problems you have mentioned are clearly some of the worst problems the game faces right now (together with how PvP works in general, and RNG/opening tokens as the only way of getting 5s).

  1. Getting 6th covers suck, but getting 6th covers for 5s sucks A LOT. If you get a 6th cover for a 3 is not that bad, you know you will easily cover max and champ that 3 soon enough. You might even be able to use that cover before it expires. For 4s is a bit worse, for me is not that bad because I get a lot of 4 covers, but I could see someone starting the 3 → 4 getting also really annoyed because of this. But we can win 3s and 4s by getting to progression rewards and by placing in events, we CAN’T win 5s in any other way than by opening tokens and praying to RNGesus. This is a big deal. As long as RNG is the only way of winning 5s, 6th covers should always be swapped by CS. Or it would be nice if covers were colorless or there was a mechanic to swap colors for covers in game (20 CPs for a 5 would be fair, 5CPs for 4s, 1CP for 3s).

  2. Scaling is not working as it should, this game has always favoured soft-capping, which is totally counter-intuitive. Right now scaling is a curve, and the best position is clearly with a 4 roster. If you have a deep 4 roster you can easily dominate in PvE, and boss events in general. Then I think 3s have slightly easier time than 5s (specially in new scaled boss events).

Playing in 4 or 3 land is so much fun also, you have plenty of different team combinations and options. Most of the 5 players just have 2-4 chars to chose, and they have to use them all the time.

I think iso has improved A LOT lately. If everything is not yet perfect in that regard is just because 4s and 5s are so much expensive than 3s and 2s. I think Devs should lower the cost of maxing 4s and 5s a bit so they are more in line with the other chars (a 4 is like three times the cost of a 3). But even with the actual costs, I can probably champ a 4 in 10-13 days, which is less than the time covers expire, which is what most of us wanted in the first place.

7

It’s not on purpose. The devs made it clear recently that they don’t test at the 5* level. It might be the desired outcome, but if so it’s accidental.

I don’t want to be handed T3 finishes in every PvE, but they should at least be possible. I’ve played the past 5 or 6 PvE events HARD finishing T10 in all of them, but I can only recall a single T3 finish, and when you look at the T10 it’s rare to have more than a couple 5* rosters there. And it’s not from lack of ability or understanding of mechanics as many of the 5* rosters took top spots in the Heroic events where their 5* scaling doesn’t have such a big impact.

There is no disputing that the current PvE scaling model puts 5*s at a disadvantage.

8

That’s just not the case. At a certain point in pve, you don’t do better by having a better roster, you simply do better by being willing to invest numerous hours each day playing. Anyone with at least a decent 4* roster or else one good 5* can do fine in pve if they chose to play the grind game. So it’s not like people with champed 5* rosters can somehow do even better than that.

People with 5* rosters still have to spend hours grinding each day, and it’s actually worse, because their clears take much longer and use up more healthpacks due to the crazy scaling.

I think that everyone should be able to make reasonable progress in the game, whether you’re a 3*, 4* or 5* player. Otherwise, you simply plateau and are just going through the motions (which is what I’ve been doing for around 6+ months [after around 900 days of play], stuck with 20+ championed 4s and 0 championed 5s…).

9

In regards to the title, I was let down when I opened my latest legend token that I won from Drax’s clash of the titans. I got a 6th purple for my 3/3/5 Iceman. Normally when I open a classic legends for 20 cp I don’t feel as bad getting duplicate covers. CP can come in bunches, I usually try to get the 10 from PVP and 25 from PVE, so thats about 2 tries every 3 days. I have a decent amount of 5 cover powers so it is to be expected. But pulling out the win with a 2/2/5 188 Drax felt wasted when that token ended up as 1000 iso.
I try to level up my 4s to around 188. That way I can usually get enough iso to champ them in the 2 weeks if I pull a cover. I can’t go from 70 to 270 in 2 weeks, but I also don’t stash iso forever before spending it all. I know if I wanted to max everyone I would need a few million iso, but then what? I remember being in 3* transition having all my characters maxed, and ended up spending iso on standard tokens. Looking at the total iso needed is daunting, but its not too bad when you focus your needs.

10

I don’t mind ranrom for some rewards but I hate getting them after something that was a huge grind and then get a crappy result.

I need so many 4* that I really like Legendary token, since you are assured a 4*, even if random most the time I get something I can use.
Same goes for command points, those are great rewards because they are either Legendary tokens or I just buy the cover I need to max a 4*

Elite are pretty good too since I farm the 2*s, even in a casual alliance you can get those by just playing one node of a PvE you don’t like, they add up.

That’s why I like the new levels in PvE because I can get a specific 4* in the progression, if I want it I make the effort if I don’t, I don’t. Same goes for season shield simulator, I love this one because I know for sure what my efforts will give me.

I’ve been playing this game for 1030 days or something, I think MPQ has made great progress in this, we have more ways of getting what we want without relying just on randomness. They have me back playing on a regular basis, I also get the VIP for fast healing a some daily stuff, they way things a like now, I don’t mind sending 10$ a month to them.

For people like me who are between casual and hardcore, this is fun because I can see progress even if I don’t go for top placement anymore.

11

Here are some intentionally dumb suggestions:

  1. I got around being disappointed by bad CP by not redeeming them anymore. Instead, I am champing every 4* I actually want to champ, then I’ll redeem those CP. No sense of loss. (Also, the rewards cascades are about to get epic*).

  2. You can champ a 4* approximately every 14 days. So whichever 4* happens to fall out of an LT, don’t open anymore and champ that dude (or dudette) first.

  3. In the unlikely event that you champ a 5* (takes about 550,000 iso, plus champ costs), make sure you like them. They will be required in every node from here on out.

  4. Heroics are your friend. Scaling gets way better since that aforementioned champed 5* is no longer factored in. It’s like that scene in the Wizard of Oz when you go from black and white to full color.

  5. I actually am actively living by these rules at the moment.

*I’m actually done champing 4s for now. Blade, Cage, Medusa may get some iso love, but they are nowhere close to ready. Just waiting to have 550k in the bank before I release the Latest LT cascade-a-rama.

12

I agree entirely.

Part of the issue is that we rarely can work towards relevant rewards.

Like I have no 4 stars fully covered. my closest to covered is invisible woman at the moment. I have more than half of the 4 stars rostered, 4 powers are at 5 covers and I’ve gotten those powers from 6 tokens at this point, found them in vaults that I didn’t even bother pulling from and more.

While random can spike a nice jolt of excitement when it works in your favor it makes you not want to play when every rewards a big fat so what.

When i’ve got no 4’s fully covered and I’m sticking my hand in a pool of 40 and hoping it’s one of the ones I have, it’s not fun. It doesn’t feel special, it doesn’t make me want to work harder for another pull.
It feels like if you covered a 4 before the onslaught of them all in the pas year, you don’t see this as disheartening as it truly is, for you, it’s a champ level or a new character.

ISO they’ve been slowly improving. I’ll wait to see where we’re going, but as long as more is the word we’re on the way.

13

So, your post is a data dump of issues and emotions with the game which many i agree with. The PvP mmr is easy to give you some info on. PvP mmr does suck and get tighter as you get higher.

However, this was a direct response to players complaining on the forums and d3 adjusted. The forums were getting flooded awhile back with relatively new players complaing difficult opponents and always getting hit by much much stronger teams. So they insulated those weaker teams.

Here is the thread describing that by will a red name…
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/27107
An excerpt:
"Part of the difficulty in improving matchmaking is that advanced players are used to a large chunk of their points coming from repeatedly stomping weaker teams. Many of you have asked to bring back that feature of the old matchmaking system. As the 4-star environment fills out, and more players are playing with maxed or nearly-maxed 3-star teams, those matches become more unfair and that experience becomes worse for beginning players. It’s not a sustainable situation for the long-term health of the game.

…But those players don’t have to be matched with the weakest players, causing first-time players to lose dozens of times for every match they win…"

Translation - can’t scare off the new players but the vets who aren’t whales or addicted (like me) would die off anyway. FYI - many vets at the time of the forum MMR discussions that fueled the above game change warned that what would happen is trading short term difficulty for a long term worse game experience.

14

I agree that the game should get easier (and more fun) for you as you strengthen your roster, and it does, until you start leveling up 5*s.

4* rosters can dominate PvE. 5* rosters dominate PvP. That’s life right now in the game. 3* rosters can compete, but not get top 10.

Because D3 keeps releasing new 4s and 5s, we are all on a giant hamster wheel never reaching the end.

15

Aren’t you confirming my hypothesis here? 5* rosters are punished in PvE because they’re already at max level. The game makes it challenging to earn rewards from lower tiers in an attempt to give a leg up to the less evolved rosters.

16

The entire game is designed to allow fast progression in the beginning and slow progression in the “end”. It’s a reverse exponential curve in terms of progress vs time spent. ISO follows this curve, obtaining covers follows this curve, scaling follows this curve. The game employs diminishing returns as you play; so if your current progress is more frustrating then fun, it’s probably time to quit.

17

I’m not on the 5* tier, but every time I champ a 4* it adds to my game

I agree, I think champing has been great for the game, because it basically make covers colourless. I’m talking about getting covers that you can’t utilise though because you don’t have 13 covers for the character yet, so like a 1/5/1 getting another “5” cover.

The game employs diminishing returns as you play; so if your current progress is more frustrating then fun, it’s probably time to quit.

That was kind of my point in a round about way I think, making the game frustrating does lead to people quitting, and it’s probably something they want to avoid!

Overall I agree with the general sentiment that ISO reward has improved, hopefully things keep moving in the right direction!