Some suggestions to improve rewards/skill gain

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
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EDIT: I changed the title of the thread to more accurately reflect my suggestion… I think… I’m not good at coming up with forum titles icon_redface.gif

Good afternoon all. I rarely post on forums and created this profile just to post this. I have been lurking in the forum for a few weeks and have seen some posts about token draws. I also have been following the excellent spreadsheet that has the probabilities of drawing different covers. Great job and thanks for making that by the way.
I know how unfriendly forums can be and I except the normal “stop whining,” “this is a free to play game get used to it,” etc replies. I want to risk all the Negative Nancys to provide what I hope is helpful feedback. I also know that about a billion of these threads have been created, but since I hope my thread will be helpful I didn’t want it to get “lost” in the sea of complaints. This is extremely long but I hope it will be helpful.

A little background on me. I absolutely love the Marvel universe (as well as the DC universe) and have read the comics off and on since around the time Onslaught happened. I love collectable games and find them very addicting. Additionally, match-3 games are some of my favorite iOS apps. I have Puzzle Quest 1 and 2 for pc as well as iOS. The Puzzle Quest games are my favorite type of match 3 games. I have been playing Marvel Puzzle Quest daily since mid-October (a little before the huge changes in leveling, intro of tokens, and daily reward addition). I really appreciate the work the developers have done with the game, the updates, the events, and the feedback I have seen from developers(?) like IceIX. Finally, I like how much work the developers have done to make this game not a “pay2win” game. I think it’s great that they have made it so we do not have to pay to be competitive.

I really enjoy the core mechanics of the game, the tournaments, and the pve. I even like the “cut scenes” as I think it adds to the feel of the game. However, I am honestly thinking about abandoning the game, which is the reason for my posting. To be honest I have burnt out on the game and feel very little reward from it anymore. I used to LOVE getting new tokens because of the unknown of what is in them. However, after the back to back Hulk events I can no longer say this. I have played almost every single event from the event and gotten a “Powered Up” or “Gamma Bomb” token over 90% of the time. I’m not sure how many tokens that is… but I figure if its 8 days long, 2-4 events per day, that’s PROBABLY over 40 tokens. In that time I have gotten 3 Spiderman tokens (2 blue, 1 purple I have yet to get a yellow Spiderman). 2 of them were back to back… The rest of the tokens with Captains or Wolvies. The first few Wolvies were welcome as I did not have the character maxed which was nice. I know it was also nice to get all the free ISO from the event. But really, 3 *** covers in 40-50 pulls seems ridiculous to me. That’s about a 6% chance IF the amount of tokens I received was accurate. I didn’t receive any Punisher or Hulks from any of my tokens. I was able to get the 3 green Hulks 2 from the Hulk level and 1 from finishing in the top 9k or whatever. Additionally, I did The Hunt event (was that twice as well?). That time I had a little bit better luck getting 1 BWG, 1 IM and 1 Spiderman. The rest of those I believe were Thor and Hawkeye. Honestly, I have spent hours in the game and feel like the rewards are very… unrewarding. I understand the need to keep the *** characters rare but it doesn’t seem like there isn’t really much point in even TRYING for the stupid tokens at this point. I have had SOMEWHAT better luck with regular and heroic tokens lately, which is at least something.
Here are the problems I am having with the game:

  1. As the pool of characters increases it gets increasingly frustrating to see the same one star pulls over and over. As well as the same 2 star pulls (Wolvie, Capitan, Thor). It’s getting more and more challenging to even level *** characters. In the last month 6 new *** covers have been added going from a little under 30 to a little under 36… If there is an equal chance (lets go with 6%) to get a *** character from a heroic pull getting a *** cover I want/could use is even harder now
  2. The gap between people who pay and those who don’t pay is increasing. As was pointed out recently it costs hundreds of dollars to max the covers of a *** character. In that case you can actually pick who to level and which skills to max. That makes sense for people willing to pay and I understand it. But if the developer is serious about keeping it from becoming pay2win then I feel like something needs to be done to help the people that don’t want to pay to stay competitive.
  3. The amount of time needed to level characters is also increasing, making it harder for people without hours and hours of time each day to get the covers they need to stay competitive. As mentioned, I’ve been playing for months, here are the *** characters I have:
    Gray Widow: 2/2/3 (I actually ranked highly in her tourneys which took A LONG time a lot of work)
    IM40: 2/1/2
    Spiderman- 0/2/2
    Hulk-3g
    Magneto- 1/0/2
    Rag- 1/1
    Doctor Doom- 1 black
    Hood- 1 Black
    The only reason I have one of the Rag, the DD, the Hood and maybe Magneto are from the Daily Rewards (Thanks for that!). The IM40 I was able to get from some of the IM40 tokens which were a great feature in my opinion. So overall, I have pulled very few *** characters from tokens. So overall, the hours of play I have put in has amounted to very few *** covers from tokens which doesn’t really encourage me to keep playing.
  4. The rewards for the ladders have been ridiculous. The widow maker tourney had Wolvie as the 21-175 rank rewards. Seriously? After people have already been flooded with Wolvie covers for the last two weeks? I actually purposefully retreated from a bunch of matches in order to make sure I was lower than rank 175 since I would have rather had recruit tokens then more Wolvies. I also plan on not playing much more of the Hulk event as I am not really interested in getting another green Hulk token. I would rather have 3 OBW covers then another green Hulk. I’m not sure why the free Hulk covers are the same as the level 1 Hulk reward. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make it somewhat easier to get 2 different Hulk covers so people will pay for more tokens to level them up?
  5. I find myself not wanting to play tourneys that much since it’s extremely challenging and time consuming to get in the top 20 for the “good” rewards. At least this should be changing since I have heard they are fixing the scoring. Hopefully that will help.
  6. Even the “free ISO” from the Hulk event has been hard and time consuming to get. A few days ago I played one level 20 times to get something other than 20 ISO (the first time I got the Hammer boost). Supposedly they increased the chances of NOT getting the 20 ISO after your first win but it still takes A LOT of grinding and luck to get some of the better rewards.

I know what some of you will say “stop complaining its free to play” or “you are doing it wrong” or “you have just been unlucky in your pulls!” But here’s the thing, I actually WOULD pay for the game if I had a higher chance of getting the covers I would like or to be able to level characters like Spiderman. I would rather purchase the app and have higher likely hood of not getting the same covers over and over. I’m burnt out from playing the past 2 weeks for very little reward (minus the ISO). It doesn’t really seem fun anymore since I just keep getting the same things over and over. Then I go into the tournaments and see people with much higher *** characters then I have… So either I have horrible luck, they have WAY more time then I do, or they are paying a lot. This means those people are more likely to win, which means they will continue to get ahead of me while I get the same pulls over… and over… and over… I know they also have the Lightning Evil rounds, but I don’t have time for those (I can’t play while at work) nor do I have a chance to get any of the good rewards with how huge the pool of players is. Overall I feel the “funness” factor of the game has decreased more and more lately. When you get fewer and fewer usable rewards it doesn’t really make you want to keep playing. Especially as you see the gap of upper tier players increasing. I can’t even imagine what it is like for newer players. What chance do THEY have???

So if you have gotten this far I actually have some solutions for all my complaints.

  1. I have seen other threads about how to boost rewards. One person mentioned giving people an option of three different covers. What I think would work well would be to let people save their tokens and use them to unlock higher skill slots. I would have MUCH rather used 20 of my Gamma/Powered up tokens to boost my Spiderman then pulls 6 trillion Caps. With this solution people could stay pay a hundred dollars to boost their character, take their chances at random pulls, or save their coins to boost a character they want.
  2. Have a rare(ish) coin that is JUST for *** characters. Maybe make it a reward for some of ther harder Hulk missions. This way you could spend money on it like you can heroic coins or win it. It would still be random in who you got but at least you could know you are getting a good character.
  3. Make more coins like the IM40 coins but for different characters. It would be great to see a coin devoted just to BWG or Spiderman etc. Again, these could be given out less frequently.
  4. Make it so middle of the ladder rewards aren’t the same as the “powered up” characters in the PVE tournaments. I’d rather not risk getting the 21-175 rewards if it’s the same covers I have been seeing for days on end in the PVE pulls.
    Hopefully this post is helpful and will give the community and developers honest, useable feedback. I know it is long winded and a lot of reading, but I did want to show that I have thought a lot about what I am writing. I also wanted to give a background of myself as a player to help the devs and community. Also, I am aware that I may have errors or contradicted myself somewhere. No need to point that out, I’m not going to take additional time to reread this whole thing since it has taken me long enough to write it! Thanks again for your time and thank you to everyone who helps make the game better!
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There’s a lot to take in here, and I think you have some good points and also some possible misunderstandings.

One big thing is that a lot of people are complaining about the repetition in the Wolvie/Cap’n A covers in Powered Up and Gamma Bomb tokens. Those are the only 2* characters in the mix for either of those, so once you’ve maxed either of them they can be a really rough slog as you keep hoping for a 3* (what is it, a 10% chance or so?) when you’re far more likely to get yet another 2* you don’t need. Sometimes I stay in the Heroic Token range instead because there are 2* characters I need, just not Wolvie or the Cap’n. The only thing you can’t get from the Heroic tokens that you can get from PU/GB tokens are Punisher and Hulk.

I did actually finally have good luck from Powered Up (or was it Gamma Bomb?) tokens this week, getting two blue Spideys in a row. Before that, just the 2*, over and over.

I think the developers should have foreseen the repeated cover fatigue in Powered Up and Gamma Bomb pulls, especially running the event twice, and looked for ways to mix it up a little. Maybe a few more Hulk/Punisher chances in event rewards, or a limited 3* token as you suggested.

And I totally agree that giving out a ton of Wolverine covers in a PvP tournament while giving him out left and right in the Hulk event makes no sense. He’s one of the strongest characters in the game, and giving him out this heavily ensures he’ll be on almost every team. More variety would be nice.

My biggest advice is to lower your expectations a little on tokens. At worst, you at least get some ISO back if it’s one you don’t need.

If you have the cover slots to spare, and some HP still lying around, I enjoy the 100 HP Heroic daily deals. You’ll get a lot more variety out of them than any event-based token, so you’re less likely to need to throw them away at least until you get to a high ratio of maxed-out powers and characters.

Single 3* character tokens have been done before in addition to the IM40 one – there was a Spidey one once, for example, but I think these are just too expensive. I’d rather wait than pay 1100HP for a Diabolic token, for example.

Some people like to save their tokens and cash them in in bulk (not me, I want instant gratification). Maybe this would ease the disappointment, letting you focus on the small number of good pulls instead of the bad ones. Just be sure not to let time-limited ones expire.

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Thinking about it… that’s probably they The Hunt seemed somewhat more satisfying. I think there were more ** heroes in the mix so we didn’t get the same 2 over and over. I also feel like the drop rate for *** was slightly better. Again, that could be because there were more *** heroes in the mix. They also gave out more tokens too as each “level” had progress rewards as well as an over all “The Hunt” progress. I think waiting all day for one token that gives you the same character has made The Hulk seem like more trouble then it is worth.

I have tried the “all at once” approach with tokens but still find that I rarely get any covers I need. Maybe I am just REALLY unlucky?

I think giving people the option to use tokens to upgrade skills would give people more choice. Should I hold on to my heroic/powered up/whatever tokens until I get enough to unlock one skill point? Or should I blow through them all in the hopes that I get that cover and some others I could use? More choice is always a good thing! Since you can’t buy tokens there wouldn’t be a way the paying players could get ahead!

I do think something needs to be done though. If there is only a 10% chance to get a *** character the more *** characters they add the harder it will be to progress at all.

Thanks for the nice respectful reply by the way!

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Some level of effort seems to have been gone to, in order to ensure that players get solid characters that will sustain them for a while. For instance, the Prologue ensures that you can get a solid 2-star team. The Iron Man 40 events pretty much gave everyone this 3-star character with all three of his covers. Wolvie and Cap covers have also been emphasized, for yet more 2-stars. I get the impression that the devs have tried to make sure that 2-star characters come in abundance and variety, and are intended to be used as the core of play over the long term for non-paying players.

It can take a very long time to build 3-star characters. I’ve been playing almost since the beginning, and I play a lot (including Lightning Rounds), and I’m still missing a lot of baseline covers for the 3-stars (which means that unless I want to pay to upgrade, it will probably be forever before i have their covers maxed).

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Totally agree on the problems regarding an increasing number of 3* characters – this is a problem for both older players (very very small chance of getting the one character you need, currently close to 1% and dropping) and newer players (as you point out, hard to get repeats of the same character, etc.).

However, I’m not sure I like the notion of paying tokens to level up characters. It feels kind of artificial to me. I would, however, be on board with a system where you can trade in standard Heroic tokens to get upgraded 3*-only tokens, perhaps with some markup. For instance, let’s say you can trade in 10 heroic tokens (3000 HP, but only 1000 hp if you buy them all on daily deals) for one Diabolical token (1100 HP). An event like the Hulk then would give you an interesting decision: do you cash in all your tokens as you get them, hoping for Punisher/Hulks, or do you save them up until the event expires, convert them to Heroic tokens, and then trade them in for a Diabolical?

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You make a great point about players who have been playing since the start. I was only thinking about it from my point of view where I have only a few 3* characters, but the more characters you get the less helpful rewards are. If you think about it before the Hulk and Punisher were added there were about 21 3* covers. Now they added 6 more covers, so there are 27 3* powers. So the probability of getting a specific power goes from 5% to 4%… add in the fact that there is only a 20% chance of drawing a 3* from a heroic token and currently there is a 0.6% chance of getting a cover that you need (down from 1%). Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that they are adding new characters. I really like that the devs ARE adding new events/characters. However, human nature makes it so we like being rewarded for our work. If you have all the 2* characters and less then 20% chance to get a cover you could use, would you really want to play the game? Currently there are diminishing results as you get more and more covers, giving you less and less motivation to use/go for tokens. I know you can get covers from tourneys, but realistically trying to get the 3* covers is a HUGE time sink and when only 20 people in each bracket can get the 3* reward a causal player doesn’t have much chance to get the 3* they need.

The sustainability of the current model seems to be decreasing, especially for the casual gamer. People who have lots of time/money will be dominating the tourneys and getting the good rewards, in turn getting more chances to win/get the better rewards. I believe the system is designed to not be a pay2win but it seems like that is where the game is going. I know they need to make money off the game and nothing in life is free, but who is going to really want to pay for a 0.6% chance for a specific cover? Is the average player going to pay $20 to upgrade skills since they only have a 0.6% chance to get what they need? It seems far more likely they will abandon the game out of frustration. Or how many casual players are going to be willing to pay $20 to get 2 chances with Diabolical tokens? You could buy the original puzzle quest games for that price!

All that said I like your idea of converting tokens into HP… that would give the option to get better tokens OR use the points towards upgrading skills. With the intro of tier 3 tokens it would provide more motivation to continue playing and maybe even paying!

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I agree that winning PvP tournaments, especially with the current system, requires a lot of time, or at least the ability to play for 60-90 minutes uninterrupted at a specific time of the day and week (the end of the tournament). I’d like to see that change, and I think the devs do too – I’m looking forward to the new updates to the scoring system that are coming soon.

However, I don’t agree with the assessment that over time, casual players will find it impossible to get good rewards. If you have 90 minutes to spare and you’re clever about how you play, you can win a diabolical token in the lightning rounds (it doesn’t require a high level villain of your own – I’ve done it using the lvl 15 guest exclusively). Repeat every week and pretty soon you’re looking at a roster of villains who rank among the best characters in the game.

I guess if you define casual as the guy who plays for 5-10 minutes while waiting for coffee every morning, yeah, that guy is not going to be competitive (nor, I would argue, should he expect to be). But I think 90 minutes once a week, where you have a good range of choice for day/time, is pretty reasonable.

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I’ll also chime in and add this
Im still under a month into the game and find that tanking as suggested all over these forums helps ALOT and makes it easy to get top 20 rewards.
Yeah winning or top 10 would be great but honestly I’ve found that focusing on my 2*s building them up and playing smart goes a very long way into how much i can enjoy the game.
Just a dumb example. Last hulk event I missed the 50k reward tier by a low amount, placed in top 10k, and this time around im currently sitting at 61715 points (crushed it!) and am currently plaaced at 951 so am hopeful to place in the top 1,500.

so TLDR:
Tank in tournies (maybe in back to back lightning rounds) when things get hard so you can place well in the next
build up your 2*s so you can win 3’s because they are pretty rare in tokens

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I guess the difference in what I am saying and what some others are saying is the difference in how one views “casual” play. I see it as playing several 10-15 minute games throughout the day not sitting down to play a 90 minute marathon to get one token or place high in a tourney. Honestly, if I am going to play a game for 90 minutes at a time (something I only have time to do on the weekends) I’m going to play a computer game instead of a f2p iOS app. I don’t have time to play more then 10-15 minutes until after work and then I am normally doing real life things (walking the dog, making dinner, etc). I probably end up playing an hour to 90 minutes through out the day, but there is no way I have time all at once unless I’m on vacation. Now I know that’s my problem and not everyone is in the same situation… but I am sure there are other people that ARE in similar situations and would still like to make progress. I honestly don’t think there should only be ONE way to play the game “right” or play it and get a sense of accomplishment. How many players are going to stay around if they can only get ahead by tanking in tournaments and playing 90 minute marathon sessions? From my experience with iOS apps they are typically designed to be played in short bursts… Maybe I just have unrealistic expectations for the game… but if they DID add some sort of currency exchange/3*token then the game could appeal to even more people. Then you could have the grinders, the tankers, and the slow and steady-save up people. All three could be a viable play style to accomplish a goal as compared to “play an extended period all at once or have a less then 10% chance to get a random useful cover.”

On a slightly ironic note, I won two heroic tokens from the last two hulk events… I thought “oh man least I will get something different since they aren’t powered up or gamma.” … then immediately drew a Wolverine… sigh icon_lol.gif

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well with only 15mins a day investment i can fully envision that you’re going to be stuck in the mid-game for a good long while where it wont seems like you are making much progression at all and thus have the feelings that youre currently experiencing.

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Oh I agree… that’s why I said 10-15 minutes at a time several times throughout the day… to add up to about 60-90 minutes depending on how much time I have that day… Unfortunately, the current setup for tournaments is not where you can play in that way. You have to play for 60-90 minutes straight right towards the end to have a chance to win the high level awards. Events are a little easier with a “play throughout the day” style of playing but then you run into the problem of coming away with a ton of tokens but the rewards from the tokens don’t really help you advance. As I mentioned previously I played both Hulk events and placed high enough in every level to get almost all powered up or gamma tokens. I came away with three Spiderman covers. I have had the last two weeks off and I DID play a lot more then 60-90 minutes a day. 3 usable covers is not really that satisfying a reward for that amount of time.

You might say “well… you should be happy to have 3 3* covers in the last two weeks… that’s GREAT. If you went with the system where you can change those tokens into HP and then buy skills it would be the same thing” But from a psychology stand point opening up 40+ covers after hours of play and only getting 3 usable covers isn’t that satisfying for a lot of people. I know I would have rather converted the tokens and unlocked a skill of my own choosing. It turns out to be the same amount of work but it makes you feel like your time was more well spent. Reading through the forums you can see a lot of people unhappy with all the caps and wolvies they drew. Yeah there were only 4 covers you could get so statistically speaking you WILL have 90% chance to get one of the 2 characters so it makes sense that’s all you get… but is that going to make people want to play more? Maybe some people, but realistically if a company wants to get the MOST people to play wouldn’t it make sense to give more options on how to get rewarded?

Also, don’t forget most of the tournaments end close to midnight est… That means people either have to make the choice “should I stay up late playing a match three game so I can advance or go to bed and be rested for my job?” I know some people can do that… But should that be the ONLY way to really get out of mid range in a reasonable time? You shouldn’t have to pick between sleep and a game to advance. I know there are lightning rounds too but to be honest everytime I have went to play one of those they were on cool down or the last few minutes of the round. So again, should people schedule their plans around an ios game in order to advance after a certain point? And will that retain/convince people to spend money on the game?

My point is, wouldn’t it be beneficial to everyone to have multiple ways to get to higher levels instead of just one play style?

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Yup, totally agree. But I’m not sold that trading in covers for deterministic rewards is the solution. I’d prefer a PvP system where I can effectively progress by playing 10-15 minutes throughout the day.