Sub Event Reward Structure Needs Rework

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hi everyone, Chuckova here once again, you might remember me from such threads as “Design Philosophy: Reward vs Punishment”.

Some of those ideas got implemented in the game and I hope some of the following does as well.

I think the current reward structure for sub events needs some rework.

The reward structure seems to be getting worse and worse ever since the Ares event.

Ares had the best prizes, you really felt you were getting rewarded for placing well.

Patch was still pretty good. You got a Patch cover for top 5, or 1-3 tokens for lower placing.

But the key was if you placed top 5, you got a Patch cover, which most people needed since he was brand new.

If you got 6th, you still got 3 tokens per sub to win something decent.

Currently, the rewards for top finishers are quite lacking due to the randomness of tokens.

Top 5 2 tokens
Top 600 1 token

Surely, it takes more then 2x the effort to get top 5, than it does to get top 600.

Yet the prizes don’t reflect that.

I personally believe that the top reward bracket should never be random. There is a place for randomness, but it’s not at the top.

That feeling of placing top 5 in both subs, and then getting 4x hawkeyes that are immediately sold.

This is a bad feeling for the player, and something the developers should avoid.

You want to create a positive feedback loop, not a negative one.

This part of the reason why I prefer the villian lighting rounds to the heroes.

You know exactly what the rewards for villians LR are, and the Diabolic tokens are at a good spot for those that needed them.

This is where random token rewards belong. It’s a stepping stone for new players starting LR and also it’s nice RNG for those key harder to get covers, like Hood Yellow or Mag Red.

With the hero LR, you place top 2, and get 3 tokens that give you 3 covers that you don’t need. It’s pretty disappointing.

While everyone would like rewards similar to Ares Event, they were probably a bit too good. Oh 500 gold rewards you will be missed.

However I think something between Ares and Patch reward structure would be more inline with the current state of the game. Especially since the addition of scaling.

I upped the gold and iso amounts to buffer the times all your tokens are complete trash, so you still get something respectable for your time and effort.

Also since the Hulk event doesn’t have the node that gives 1000 iso on completion.

Assuming a 1000 player bracket, take note that current existing Hulk sub brackets are 2000. So the following should be slightly easier to achieve.

Note: numbers for the following are not set in stone, its just to give you a rough idea.

Top 8 1x Black Panther(rotating color), 2500 iso, 250 gold
Top 25 1x THREE STAR(Featured) token, 2000 iso, 200 gold
Top 100 3x tokens, 1500 iso, 150 gold
Top 250 2x tokens, 1000 iso, 100 gold
Top 500 1x token, 1000 iso
Top 600 3x Standard Tokens, 750 iso
Top 800 2x Standard Tokens, 500 iso
Top 1000 1x Standard Token, 250 iso

Top 8 prize is the current featured hero, Black Panther in this case. The cover color rotates from sub to sub. Players that place at the top know exactly what they will get.

The top prize for subs should always be a cover for the new hero just introduced. Never a random token.

Top 25 prize is a new token type for PvE. The THREE STAR token. Which guarantees a 3 star featured cover. In this event it would be, Hulk, Punisher, and Black Panther.

The Three Star PvE token, you maybe thinking, the devs would never add that, since they make a lot of money from selling the 10x packs that guarantee a 3 star.

I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.

If anying it’s more of an incentive to buy the 10 pack for a new player.

Getting top 25 without a Punisher or Black panther would be quite challenging for a new player, since there are nodes that you can’t do without those heroes.

But if you bought a 10x pack and got the covers that lets you do those nodes, now you have a chance to win even more 3 star covers by placing top 25.

So that purchase now has more perceived value.

Also, this THREE STAR token also gives free players that need those 3 star covers a definite goal to work towards.

There is now progression from the rewards. Top 100-500 give a player a chance to win the 3 star covers to unlock nodes.

Once unlocked, they now can try to compete for top 25, to improve those 3 star covers. To eventually compete for top 8.

It may take you a couple of events to build up your 3 stars, but it’s doable.

The game now looks less pay to win and more pay for convenience.

Now some issues with the THREE STAR token.

1st is price. How much will it cost to buy?

You have about a 15% chance to pull a 3 star. So 3 in 20 odds.

So the average value of a 3 Star is (400 gold * 20) / 3 = 2666.66 gold

Now that is a pretty high price for one token.

A diabolic token from lighting rounds cost 1100 gold.

Now if this token cost 1100 would there be a reason to buy a 10 pack still?

Yes there is since it guarantees a Black Panther cover.

With Hulk, Punisher, and Black Panther in the mix.

One Black Panther cover would take an average of 3 THREE STAR tokens to get which would cost 3300 gold.

So the 10 pack looks like a pretty good deal since it only 3800, so for 500 more gold, you get 9 more chances at getting a Black Panther.

Thus the new token, through price comparision, might actually sell more 10 packs because it makes it look like a better deal.

Which is funny since it’s the 3 star token is a good deal when compared to the normal 400 gold token.

2nd issue, is there enough space for 3 different things to buy on one screen? I guess you could make them smaller and fit 3.

It seems like a minor issue, but it is an issue to consider none the less.

Well those are my thoughts and reasoning for an improved reward structure for PvE sub events.

Devs added scaling to make the game more challenging, I believe the rewards should be improved to reflect that added challenge.

Since the current top rewards are very lacking due to the randomness of tokens

It’s too late for the current Black Panther event running, but I hope the Devs rework the reward structure for future events.

2

Very nice thoughts here, Chuckova.

Your posts makes my usual longread rants into TL;DR posts.

I’ll try to keep this brief-ish.

I agree with in principle, but the numbers aren’t going to work in the current state of the game. There appears to be a very strong trend over the last few events to introduce new characters, but invoke actions designed to limit how many covers a new character a player can obtain for free. Randomized token pulls serve to further this direction for the game.

The one famous extreme that is relevant here is 3*** Patch, when he was given out as daily sub rewards during TaT. What ended up happening is that most high-tier players dominated the brackets, resulting in many of them obtaining enough covers to build Patch twice over. That doesn’t seem like a “rare” character, now does it?

Another famous extreme is the 500 hero point daily sub prizes that were awarded during The Hunt: Ares. The same result happened here as well.

Add to the mix that many players here on the forums argued that they wanted PvE to more about progression prizes than placement, and you get what we see right now.

We won’t likely see highly valuable sub-event daily prizes ever again. If they do appear, the sub times would likely need to be length of a standard 2.5 day PvP tourney, in which the devs appear to be moving away from as they really like their 24 or 26 hours sub timers.

The devs seem to be in the mindset that they want to reinstate “rarity” among the rare covers. They want players to obtain covers for 3*** covers, as many new accounts can easily win them in their opening days of activity. On the other hand, the devs appear to do not want to players to easily be able to obtain full sets of covers, either. If players easily obtain full sets of covers, then they won’t purchase the remaining covers with cash. The trend here seems to be to introduce new characters so fast, that the rewards for PvP/PvE move onto the new characters before players can fully cover a character; especially if the character has a very desirable power/moveset. Further, the changes in the new PvP tourney rewards seem to imply that the devs believe that too much free hero points are still flowing into the economy, even with the outflow from mandatory-ish shield usage.

In regard to 3*** Heroic tokens, this is a very touchy subject at the moment. Short answer - Yes, but later in the game’s life span. My guess is they will be introduced somewhere around Episodes 12-15, when the power creep of the game reaches a need for 4**** covers to necessary/desirable for anything more than just trophies.

3

Remember the Thick as Thieves sub-events?

Do those again please. :c

4

So you’re quadrupling roughly the reward values handed out. That sounds wonderful for players, but what incentive does that give people to actually buy packs? Or ever buy HP again given the amount you are throwing around.

It’s a pure ‘rich get richer’ model, where if you have a good roster and time you get guaranteed the next character filled out and masses of HP. That supposed new guy who thinks he can catch you with a ten pack purchase is an idiot, because his one or two three star covers aren’t going to put him in the meaningful placings while you’ve scored yourself another five or six three stars across the first few days.

I’ll come out of this event with maybe 1000 more HP and 4 more 3 star covers. That seems rewarding enough. That’s the difference between finishing top 5 and 600th. But that new person buying a 10 pack is closing the gap between us instead of watching it grow.

5

+1

6

Perhaps my initial changes are a bit too generous.

I remember reading about a player last event that placed top 5 in each sub for 24+ tokens, he got 0 Psylockes and only got 2 threes stars which he didn’t need.

Thinking of that player grinding lvl 230 mobs for hours a day for over a week, and not getting a single Psylocke cover.

I don’t know, that just doesn’t seem right to me.

Would have been nice if you could have saved up 10 tokens and used them to buy the 10x Pack to guarantee a Psylocke cover

So that player could have gotten at least 2 Psylocke covers for his full week of grinding.

If that isn’t possible,

Then I still believe at the bare minimum, top 5 should be improved to a Fixed Cover(rotating color)

If Devs don’t want to make give out the current feature hero of Black Panther as top prize to force people to buy 10x packs

Then perhaps, they could make the Top 5 reward the previous featured hero, Psylocke(rotating color), plus previous reward tier of 1 token.

7

That player got 3 black panthers for their week of grinding plus yet again over 1000 HP. They didn’t get nothing, they got quite a lot.

I also read about players who pulled 2 psylockes from 4 tokens. Sometimes people are lucky, sometimes they aren’t but it tends to balance out. That’s the whole point of random tokens.

8

Reward structure is fine. Best hp in the game atm. It’s not THEIR fault I already have all the 3*** I am pulling.

9

If my situation is widespread, I have a lot of heroes almost maxed out in covers but barely leveled. The recently increased ISO rewards might be an attempt to encourage/assist players to have a broader roster.

I would like to see the top sub bracket reward be a single 3* token rather than multiple 2* tokens.

10

Or perhaps players can choose which to redeem, though that’d be messy. I, for one, would still like to be able to get OBW covers from my sub placement rewards.

11

It would be nice to get more from sub event placing, but those rewards are not why I’m grinding this event. I really like that there are achievable Progression Rewards, which will improve my roster. Three guaranteed Punisher covers are all the incentive I need to keep playing. Improved Progression Rewards are a much better incentive than random tokens.

I also think that giving a guaranteed featured character cover for a top 8 finish in a 24/48 hr sub in a long PVE is overkill. The very strong rosters would get much stronger hoovering up all the rewards, after two or three Subs they would be almost invincible. My 1/1/1 BP has 5500 HP in this event.

Rewards (Subs/Progression) are almost perfect in this event. Only needs to go back to Hulk Tokens instead of Heroics in the Subs and they would be perfect.

12

I’ll admit I didn’t read all the posts in this thread but here is my suggestion.

The complaint I’m hearing is that there are too many “bad” tokens being given out and you never know what you’re going to get despite having grinded for hours.

1: More cover rewards in for progression and more varied covers. The current event has a Thor and three Punisher covers. Make it a total of 6 covers in progression; two 2*, three 3* and one 4* as the max reward. Make each 3* a different hero, that way you might hook more players as I suspect those that have Punisher maxed aren’t that motivated to earn the progression rewards. But if instead it was one Punisher, one Black Panther and one Hulk cover at 50K, 70K and 100K points then you would grab the interest of more players. This way, even if all your tokens were unrewarding but you spent all that time you still get maybe one decent 3* and one rare 4* if you invested the time. Personally I’ve never reached the top progression reward. I’ve managed the 8000 Iso-8 once and I know how much time that took me. Spending enough time to get a 4* shows true commitment and those are the kind of people you want to keep in the game, so be generous to anyone that spends that much time playing it.

2: Introduce a Token conversion option. 10 standard tokens converts to 1 Heroic token, 5 Heroic converts to a 3* Token (whatever you call that). This way you give people an option of how to spend the tokens. If a person really doesn’t need anymore 2* covers then they can hang on to them and get a guaranteed 3* which is way better for those people that hate the disappointment of chance.

Obviously these two suggestion don’t address the reward scaling, but it adds alternative rewards and might grab more people interest.

13

This seems much more viable now that the devs have pulled HP from the sale value of covers; above example would be casing in 1000 ISO (10 standard) to get 1 cover “worth” 250 ISO, and 1250 ISO (5 heroic) to get one cover worth 500 ISO (values are based on sell market value).

However, personal experience, along with empirical data from Mischiefmakers great spreadsheet, we can see that with standard tokens, statistically (!) one it eight pulls is a 2*, and one in 45 is 3*

so if y’all had 50 standard tokens, statistically you will get ~6 x 2* and 1 x 3* - which is better than cashing in 50 standard tokens for 1 x 3*, plus you keep all the ISO from the sale

the devs just need to add slot-machine animations to make it better. or maybe that would just start a “phones to projectiles” movement.
(click - “BP BLACK”, click - “BP BLACK”, click - “Yelena Bolava” - hurled phone narrowly misses the cat as a final form of bittersweet irony)

14

:heart: this.

15

Yes agreed - STATISTICALLY. I only meant to present the idea rather than exact implementation of it. I just pulled the token numbers out of my ass to describe the mechanic that I was suggesting. The loss of sell-value Iso would be the cost of using this option.

16

“Rare” digital items make me laugh. There’s nothing rare about something that can be reproduced infinitely or simply “found” by throwing money at it. The awards for this even have been pretty lame. The Hulk cover was nice but I already had 5 green so it was quickly sold.

I really enjoyed the Ares Hunt as I played a ton and I was awarded for my efforts. With the poor scaling, the randomness of the awards and the cash-in Thor prize, not only am I losing more matches than I ever have, I’m playing less and having less fun. If that was the dev’s goal then they succeeded with flying colors. The sad part is if this wasn’t a F2P game we’d all play and be awarded for our efforts without having to worry about time limits, meta gaming, rubberbanding, prices, 20 iso no-prizes, and random pulls. None of us would even be talking about this.

17

Your logic is flawed. Even in the non-digital world, your logic means that there is nothing rare in the world. Managed scarcity is an economic concept. They’re creating a digital economy in this game wherein some items are designed to be more scarce in relation to others. To remove the idea of scarcity from a game economy (digital or physical) destroys the underlying principle behind why many people play collectible games.

To the actual point of your statement, yes, the rewards for the subs seem pretty sub-par compared to the length of the subs.

18

Rare is in context of the artificial economy of the game, as controlled by D3.

I agree that Ares was a pretty darn good event (other than the 500HP awards being WAY too high). I liked that if you played an above average amount you came out of the even with enough covers to fully build Ares just about any way you wanted. I was only barely above average due to RL committments but I still was only a cover short of a 4/4/5 build. Since then Ive only gotten a 1/1/1 Patch, a 1/1/1 Psy and a 1/0/0 BP, all of which were won from PVP, in part because the scaling has resulted in me fighting opps 100+ levels above my highest char so I only participate in the first half and pretty much get locked out of the last 2/3.

19

Sure I get that. The cover “rarities” are manufactured but they are there to feed the pokemon, “Gotta Catch em all” mentality. But in my head I think of rarity like when it comes to tangible items. Amazing Fantasy #15 is rare because no matter how many times you reproduce it, there’s a very finite amount of originals exist. So it’s hard for me to wrap a value around a line of code that has some arbitrary “rarity” chosen by a guy behind a desk. Typically “rarity” is put in a game because the devs just want you to play more to get it, ie item drops in RPGs. Unfortunately in the F2P world, time and effort doesn’t really matter because you can just buy whatever you want.

But yes, back to the actual point. Give us more chances to win actual covers, not win the chance at actual covers. I’d hate to be the guy that grinds to the top spot every sub event only to get 8 Storm covers.