SHIELD Clearance Levels 9 & 10

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Can any community leaders, other veterans or developers chime in on this…

What is the delay in S.H.I.E.L.D Clearance Level 9 release? and 10 for that matter?

The reward structure doesn’t scale much differently between 6-7-8 as is… what is the delay on 9?

Are you waiting for a critical-mass (i.e. once a certain number of players are at/over the threshold for SCL 9, we’ll add it to events)?

I know this affects a small percentage of the community at large, and sounds like an entitled complaint… but just a legitimate concern nonetheless:
Some of us have been capped at rank 125 from very early on… we’ve been waiting all this time, and yet the community is closing the gap.
For those of us who put in the work over the years prior to these levels, who ascended quickly… event tiers should reward symmetrically rather than having us wait around until more people catch-up.

At a minimum, if you can’t implement SCL 9 because events seem too thin for number of participants… at least scale the rewards based on rank/roster.

If your average of front-3 characters is 550, you are SCL rank 125, and capped at SCL 8 events… add a multiplier for rewards like 2.5x (base iso-8, hero points, command points, minimum cover-reward-tier, etc).

For those that keep strong support for D3 over the years… who keep the lights on and the rent paid… why have us hang around in limbo with the same rewards as a community player with average roster level 120s?

There are asymmetric resource needs at the top compared to the bottom… and no way to attain these as we’re being throttled on advancement.

Please don’t view this as a complaint, I am trying to do 2 things:

  1. Express an unspoken concern
  2. Understand the delay and request a reasonable estimate of when advancement will open back up for us.

Thank you in advance for the constructive input!!!
Thank you to the development team for giving us new incentives (they’ll never come frequent/fast enough for some of us addicts)
Thank you to the player-base and forum community for the years of fun!!!

Have fun everyone!

ciao…

2

I do find it fascinating that the best SHIELD Rank to get SCL is just 53.. whereas many of us who played hard enough started out at Rank 65, iirc.

I’m impressed that you made it that far that quickly. Even if my current rank (86) isn’t enough to hit SCL 9, it would be great to know that it’s out there somewhere for me to reach and aspire to.

3

While I love the idea of SCL and it’s better than not having SCL overall but it was very poorly thought-out and implemented. They should not had advertised SCL as 10 levels.. there’s no point of the “Coming soon”, it should have been just released when ready, but instead everyone is clamoring for SCL9 and 10, when the reality is SCL8 was a complete and utter failure. They changed the required levels in the beginning to lower ranks to enter specific SCL which is causing problems now because it’s not difficult to gain a Rank. I am assuming they initially expected us to earn ranks at a much slowly rank. At this point I think it would be best to redo the minimum rank for a specific SCL and boost the awards for SCL8.

4

One of my questions is whether 10 is the forever max or if they will add more past 10. If they only ever plan to have 10 they should have just released all 10 at once and occasionally change the minimum and rewards for each level. That seems easier to maintain in the long run.

5

10 SC levels is probably based off of 5* being the max for covers/characters. If they ever introduce 6* (hopefully a long time from now), then you can be sure they will add more SC levels. That being said, SCL 8 is good indication that these were poorly planned out, so we could get either less or more than 10 at any point.

6

I agree with the above, but if as the popular theory goes, that they are waiting for x number of people before opening up a new level. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have it always be 10 levels, top 10% have SCL10 available, lowest 10% have SCL1, etc. Then adjust once per PvP seasons. Seems way more manageable then having to wait for x number of people to fill a category (that they have the option of not joining anyway) all the while peoples numbers change at drastically different rates…

7

SCL8 is a minimum rank of 52.. if we use mpqr7’s recent poll as an indicator, 93% of the 236 voters are well above rank 52 (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/59067). Although most of the high end players are on the forums, I’m sure there is still plenty of players to fill out SCL9.

8

That’s no where near a large enough sample size to really tell that. 236 people isn’t enough to fill 1 PvE bracket… Plus as noted the figures here would be heavily weighted towards the higher end.

9

While I agree, D3 has the data and knows this information… I’m curious the etiology of the absence of SCL 9 & 10…
Lack of sufficiently leveled players?
Lack of implementation?
Distracted and forgot about the SCLs?
Revamps planned that will affect SCLs, so back-burner-project pending redesign?..

Just trying to get an idea for it…

And we were initially so happy that they are attempting to scale rewards… it never panned out for those at the top (who were requesting all along).

Players furthest along in progression competing for same node-rewards as first-time-players…
There is a massive disparity in resources required for progression at level 549 vs. level 1 … yet the rewards don’t scale… Just the difficulty of the encounters.

10

Surely the delay is that there aren’t enough people in those brackets yet to make it fair. For instance, if you’ve only got 10 people who are into the hundreds on clearance levels then it would be pretty dumb of them to open up a level 10 just for those people to grab all the best rewards.

11

If you have characters at 550, what rewards do you really need?

I mean, getting an extra 4* cover in progression, a little more cp, or maybe MAYBE a 5* from placement or progression - I can’t see any of those really affecting folks with 550s by much. I guess every little bit helps though?

12

I think the crappy raise from CL7 to 8 (and perhaps the terrible rewards from the valentine promo) indicates they still think 4* covers are being given too frequently. It’s hard to imagine they will release CL9 and 10 until they change their thinking and gear more towards the more elite players… but I don’t imagine that will happen any time soon.

13

The fact that they STILL only give them to the top 10 is a sad indictment of this.

14

Well, the game is never static… every other week there has been a new character…

So, even if you have every character maximized, you STILL need a ton of iso-8, Hero Points, Command Points, Legendary Tokens … in order to keep progressing.

releasing a new 1* character would be easily attainable for players on the 1* to 2* transition.

Releasing a new 5* character is unreasonably difficult to attain for a player with all characters maximized at level 550 under the current reward scheme… because these players are still receiving rewards equivalent of 1* tier players who have drastically different resource requirements at that phase of their progression.

15

I genuinely dont think we’ll see anymore levels for probably another year. They need thousands and thousands of people to fill those brackets first.

16

In reality, all they need to do is incentivize people to play at the highest level. If they don’t release SCL9+ anytime soon, that isn’t the end of the world. However, no one cares whether they play at SCL7 or 8 because theres no real difference. Some people play SCL6 for new releases and just make sure they get higher for alliance and personal placement.

In no way should someone at SCL90 or above ever want to play SCL6. But the current structure says “meh, go for it… it’s all the same”. It reminds me of a Jim Gaffigan joke about mexican restaurants. “Just say something that sounds spanish, I’ll bring you food. It’s all the same really, just tortilla with cheese meat and vegetables”.

SCL = a great idea. The current way it works? needs some tweaks.

17

I cant view as anything other than them being stingy with 4* covers. They have a pattern of offering more of the next tier character first from ranking, then from progression, so if the pattern continues then CL9 would offer more 4* from progression. This means 2 per event from progression on CL9, and then eventually probably more 4* covers given to the t20 for CL10. THAT definitely seems too good to be true for them, so I’m not surprised they’re taking their sweet time in coming up with a solution. I refuse however, to believe it’s “not enough people”.

CL4 - Rank 15+
CL5 - Rank 20+
CL6 - Rank 27+
CL7 - Rank 32+
CL8 - Rank 52+

Lets say CL9 is Ranks 72-82+, following the most recent change between CL7-CL8. You’ve got to be kidding me if you think not enough people have achieved at least that in order to be able to fill multiple brackets of multiple slices. Especially considering most people get through at least 1 rank level/week.

18

10 is the highest SHIELD clearance level in both the comics and movies. They probably want to keep that true in the game to match, so if they decide the levels aren’t tiered correctly they would probably change the rank requirement and rewards instead.

19

Imagine if highest level clearance = highest level required rank = highest level reward !!!

chances are, those that put in all the time will be sadly disappointed by the humble difference between SCL 8, SCL 9, and the ultimate SCL 10.

20

You have 550’s in your roster.

What level of reward do you think would be appropriate yet relevant to you, as well as players below you.

If you have suggestions toss them in, but the introduction of the 5 star tier, along with the path built from 1 to 8 are why 9 and 10 aren’t here yet.

There’s a LOT of space between 1 4 star cover, for a full rotation of 4’s 1 time after 44 weeks, and someone like you who has the most powerful characters in the game fully leveled..
Like not fully iso’d.

But fully champed.

They are likely trying to bridge the gap and had the clearance idea before people got REALLY lucky with draws and resources and got champed 5’s.

There’s nothing they can add that will be relevant to a player where you are besides 5 star covers.

Where as if we go by Cl structure as is, CL 10 would be 3 4 star covers in pve progression and maybe 7000 more iso overall?