That damned season reward structure...

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

As the title may suggest this is a bit of frustration based entry…

When you’re in transition, far away of having a single 3* fully covered and fully leveled, the journey towards solid Season placement is pretty difficult. But you want to achieve for your and your alliance’s sake, so you invest time and energy in every season PvP so you get at least 600 pts every event (those who don’t possess Sentry, nor other quick characters on decent level know, that that placement requires more than couple of hours and some shielding at the end).

That individual PvP placement usually grants you 2 covers of same color for the next featured 3* character (should you and your alliance rank at top 100 spot). I will not question whether it is good or bad reward; that basically comes down to personal preference of individual characters usability.

What stuns me though is that roughly 7100 pts in overall season score grants you top 500 (again depending on bracket) and reward for that effort equals 3 heroic tokens, some small ISO and HP? And furthermore this is even bigger slap when you open those tokens and you got 2* chars (again) or random 3* (if you’re lucky) based on what is currently in rotation.

If I should sum up the progress in my 2*->3* I was able to make during the season and post-season rewards I was quite shocked how small it was! I got bunch of covers for low-tier 3* characters (i.e. Beast, Storm..), I got few covers for new or relatively young 3* characters (how does a build of 0/0/2 Blade is going to help my transition in long term?)

This game is a lottery, P2W only for those who can afford those incredibly high costs of HP and ISO. And that lottery aspect of this game is maybe acceptable to certain level but not if you play for nearly a year and this ‘bad luck’ is just not enabling you to be competitive with others having ‘better luck’.

The lottery is represented in following major areas:

  • brackets/shards (are you lucky enough to get easy bracket to get better season placement?)
  • tokens (are you lucky enough that you open a cover you desperately need to make the ability of your character useful?)

I guess, that devs are making a good moves by addressing time zones, refunds to all commanders who invested in expanding alliance, corrections of characters like Xforce, Magneto. But simply addressing this lottery issue is becoming priority every day it is not addressed

Would be worth assessing following approaches:

  • make heroic tokens less random (too many characters in them multiplied by variety of covers - makes the chances to get the desired cover much lower than low) - create theme based heroic tokens (villains only; x-men only; heroes only; whatever only! just limit the odds)
  • make those hard to get rewards truly motivating (3* tokens or free cover of own players choice)
  • or just go through the forums, many ideas are already out there…
2

Ok, first of all, see Polarity's Guide on Going From 1* to 3* (Updated: 1/22/15) - MPQ Tips and Guides - 505 Go! Official Forums

To address specific points, it sounds like you do not play PvE at all, which is a shame. Transition rosters are especially good at PvE. The nodes start out lower and stay beatable longer if you only have level 100 and below on your roster. How a 0/0/2 Blade helps you is he lets you play required Blade nodes in PvE. Beyond that he’s useless to your transition.

There is less competition for less desirable rewards. That should be obvious. If you are aiming for a PvP centric strategy, sadly all you have to focus on is Sentry. Sentry, Guest, X is fine for end game PvP right now, technically. It works better with certain characters, but Sentry is at the core. You want to place well for your season score and your alliance, and that’s great, but the main focus should be anything that hands out those coveted powerhouse covers. It sounds like you are in a top 100 alliance, correct? If that’s so, you got at least 10 3* covers this season. Hopefully 10 more for placing top 100s. And if you had been in some PvE events you would have gotten more still.

I do miss the LR tokens, the ones that had better chances to pull heroes or villains depending on who the LR was. Now they are basically the same as a featured PvP token. This would basically fit the bill for more directed tokens. As for the lottery bit, well, just keep pulling that lever. Your season 10 packs should result in 1-2 3*s, now of a semi focused variety with the vaulting going on.

There does already exist a way to get “any cover of the players choosing”. It’s “save up 1250 HP”. Another thing that is easier if you are getting 100 or 200 from PvE events as well as PvP.

I do feel bad for transition players right now. It seems that PvP is a terrible place to be without at least one 166. It was easier when you could ride Ares+OBW (as I call them, the midnight train) to the victory circle using minimal healthpack.png
. Now you can choose 1 of 2 methods. Use Ares+OBW (from a reasonable bracket) to place top 25 with about 800 points using numerous 3 hour shields, effectively buying that second cover for a HP discount or use whomever you can to scrape into the top 100 and 3 hour shield out to the end. I personally got a lot of miles from MNM+C.Storm.

3

While I do realize that we pick up rewards along the way, any reward below a 10-pack does seem to be a bit stingy for placing even last in a month long event.

But this is only because the draw rates for a Heroic token are so crappy. Every season someone posts a “What did you get from your 10-Pack” thread. Anytime someone gets even 1 3* or better out of it (that they can use), they are pleased. 1 out of 10.

So I can’t blame anyone for being disheartened when after a month long event they end up with 5 Heroic tokens or less. It’s so often the same as saying “Thanks for playing for a month, here is 1250 ISO. Or less”

Especially when in just one Lightning Round you can win much more ISO than that AND a relatively easy Heroic-like token. A 1.5 Hour event gives out better rewards then a month long event.

Of course there is the Alliance reward for the Season, which is very cool. But it would be nice to be personally rewarded for your effort as well.

Or keep the rewards the same and improve the rates of Heroic Tokens. But that is another thread entirely.

4

No intention to start a flame, but:
I read the Polarity’s guide.
I do participate in PVE. I do participate to that extend that I usually gather nearly all progression rewards (or at least first 2 thirds of them). E.g. last heroic event I aimed on getting to top 150, I ended up in top 500, why? The same old story of events finishing at 6 am my time… and lottery plays significant role also in PVE (excluding Gauntlet) - because I am getting pretty often 20 ISO reward when approaching the node for 2nd, 3rd and 4th time, thats not very helpful in transition either. I am aware of new characters being mandatory in PVE nodes, am not a newbie. Bottomline PVE is even more frustrating than season, all things considered…

Another thing - saving 1250 HP is great strategy indeed unless you have zero covers in desired colour (Hood blue, BPanther black, LThor yellow, Falcon purple… I can continue), and IF the strategy for PVP is using multi-shield hops, then actually reaching level of 1250 HP while accommodating roster slots for PVE needed characters becomes nearly impossible journey…

Back to the original point - the reward structure IS something that requires significant focus. And if there’s only one truly right way how to progress and one would need to go according to some manual to be truly enjoying the game, than the logic itself becomes very twisted.

5

One thing that is true is that you are guaranteed everything and nothing at the same time. I kind of agree that season rewards could be better or at least guarantee a 3* cover or two. Or something that will add value and progression for a month long event. I hate and love the system at the same time. I hate it because effort does not translate to rewards and reverse. I love it because with very little effort you can get something very big.

It all comes down to luck with very low drop rates. I don’t know if you have played Diablo 3 before Loot 2.0. It was literally one of the worst experiences for time played vs rewards. I kind of feel the same here when I get those 250 ISO from Tokens, except I did not pay 60 euros for this game.

I doubt anything will change dramatically any time soon to address rewards. Taking into consideration the fact that they lowered 3* drop rates a while ago, I think they are more than satisfied with the current system.

On the other hand, I have had an experience with games that base their core mechanics into pure luck. Here we have some covers given out, which guarantee some progress but, according to general belief, kind of slow and we also have tokens which are mostly seen as money vacuums rather than ways to progress. There is of course the P2W aspect of the game, but this cannot be the majority of this game’s community.

Games such as this, where luck is the biggest component of it, you just cannot claim that time played = rewards received. Unfortunately, this game has to do a lot with luck and personally, I don’t think that playing more is worth it. Try and play the game at your own pace. If you can’t keep up with the alliance just quit it and join a public one. Don’t beat yourself up about that extra cover that you will lose.

Frustration comes when something becomes more of a chore than entertainment. Try to find the fun in the game again even if it means sacrificing some rewards.

6

It’s not a smart move really from the risk perspective. From 600+ you face only 2x166 at minimum, often with fully boosted featured, 4* Wolv is insta skip of course. So you have to use a 2x94, one of which dies to a sneeze, and win at average 10 matches in a row. That is 750 hero point cost that goes down the drain if you slip (cascades yo). I don’t find it reasonable at all, and that’s just one event out of 3 per week. Even less so that you need around 1500+ Hero points alone per month if you want to keep up with never ending stream of new characters that you either add to your roster or pass on PvE altogether.

In the times long past, before I played, I heard that you could make top25 or higher just by having 2x maxed star.png
star.png
. When I played in Seasons 1-4, I could use oBW/Ares to place myself up to near 600 wall, sleep and wake up not attacked too much and with top100 cover. Nowadays, I can’t get that unless I shield. And as Blade PvP with over 600+ points needed for top100 showns, the future doesn’t look bright, in couple months it will be standard and shield hopping will become required to score single 3*. That is absurd.

Global power changes. Rosters have matured. There is loads more people playing with developed rosters while comparatively there is less and less new people, so in one 500 bracket you have increasingly more full 3* that will keep getting larger slice of reward pie. I already have to often fight lvl120 people just to get to 500 points, to ‘win’ a 2* cover. Reward system is ANCIENT. It needs rework, badly.

7

There is a thread on the forums somewhere by D3’s Will that they are aware how frustrating the transition has become due to the number of characters, and, from my memory, he asked people to message him if they had any ideas on how they might fix or tune the randomness and frustration.

I know this doesn’t really help you at this time, but I believe it is something they are looking at. However, with the temporary fix of “vaulting” some characters, I believe they must be trying to evaluate a significant change, or don’t have any good ideas at all.

I still think they need some type of MVP flag a player can set for a character they wish to level. Then when set, lets them earn covers through daily play much like the daily rewards. Sure, you wouldn’t want it to be a cover a day, but say one every 5 (?) days of play would give some gradual known advancement.

8

7500 season pts, which isn’t a huge number, gets you 150HP, a Heroic 10-pack, a guaranteed 3* and whatever the ISO is that isn’t listed on the Season 7 thread. Sure, tokens aren’t great but a 10-pack will pull around 2 3* covers on average.

But even with the new 166 wall, 500x10 events is 5000, which with 1000pts in Sim gets you everything except the last 100HP. That’s a lot of free stuff just for playing. And that ignores all the progression/rewards from actually playing the events themselves.

Sure, 7100 and 3 tokens + some iso/hp for top 500 might seem like a slap. Try 11.5k for ~85th (don’t remember exact number) and 5 tokens + not much more ISO/HP. Now, I finished my transition about a month ago (well, mostly finished), but that goes to show you it’s not like it gets any better when you’re done. There’s still a whole group of people that are well past finished with the transition to deal with, and they have the ISO/HP reserves from having played and/or paid since the onset to squeeze you out. Short of unlocking the bank, there’s no reward they’re gonna offer for top 500 that’s going to solve that issue.

The more general thought behind this and all the other “I want more rewards!” threads that are popping up by the day seems to be that no one joining now wants a game that takes ~6 months to develop a semblance of a 3* roster. That’s the (unfortunate?) reality of this game, if you want it to be relatively free.

9

If you are not in a top 100 alliance, I would suggest skipping the first PvP of the next season. I waited until about halfway into Event 2 before entering the season and got a very soft bracket (Sumilea being the exception). Finished 24th with 8944 points (around 7300 PvP and 1600 Simulator).

That said, my highest character is 120 and my page of standings (from 21st to 30th) all had at least 6 166s or higher, so I was definitely working for it, but a lot more lazy players at that join time.

10

This is the roster of the number one scoring player in the number one scoring alliance for Juggernaut: Heroic:

Level 41 star.png
star.png
Wolverine yellowflag.png
yellowflag.png
yellowflag.png
yellowflag.png
redflag.png
greenflag.png

Level 40 star.png
star.png
star.png
The Hood blueflag.png
blackflag.png

Level 40 star.png
star.png
star.png
Black Panther yellowflag.png

Level 40 star.png
star.png
star.png
Colossus blackflag.png

Level 40 star.png
star.png
star.png
Deadpool redflag.png

Level 40 star.png
star.png
star.png
Magneto redflag.png

That means we all lost to a player using two unleveled, single-cover three stars and a six-cover Wolverine. That player beat you. Got four Mystiques and a Nick Fury.

11

not sure what the above post is doing in this thread but back to the topic at hand…

I agree that it’s not a great reward structure, especially considering the sharding business that has been going on for months now. Being a fully transitioned player that has been around for almost 9 months now, I get grouped with all those guys who decide to spend a little money on the game and routinely go for 2000+ pvp scores. I don’t begrudge them their entertainment by any means, but there’s just no way I can keep up with those kinds of scores. With the inclination to do so, I could probably put up 1300-ish every tournament, and that would still only put me MAYBE in the top 25, and maybe only top 50. As another poster said, it doesn’t necessarily get easier.

That said, these season rewards were only meant to give us some free stuff for playing the game fairly regularly. I have been treating them this way, and so long as I keep up with my alliance mates for the most part so I’m not hurting our season score (we’re pretty much safely within the top 100 at this point) I just ignore my placement in the season bracket. The difference between 10 tokens and 5 tokens is really not a lot considering the poor drop rates, and I could make that up easier by just trying a little harder in a few LRs.

tl;dr - treat season rewards as free stuff you wouldn’t otherwise get, since that’s what they’re intended to be. You’ll be happier.

12

6 AM end time does suck. Hopefully the new end time feature will be of use to you. The 20 ISO rewards in PvE tho, you just have to ignore those, and keep getting points. The focus is the overall reward, which for top 50 is like 2000 ISO, 25 HP, and Mystique. If you were top 50 with 8 hours to go you should have been top 150 by the end probably.

As pointed out, terrible rosters are better at PvE. PvE is the key to transition players. Sad but true. What could be focused on from a rewards standpoint is events that hand out the same character in shorter time frames. My first 166 was Captain America because they did MANY events with him as rewards in short period. I remember when Heroics had an Easy and a Hard map, when Simulator had 3* prizes for both easy and hard mode, and when they would run Hulk and all his subs giving out HP rewards plus the free Green Hulk cover. Now it seems a month long event is supposed to “focus” on like 15 heroes. That’s crazypants. They do some cross over with PvP and PvE, but if you are getting only 1-2 3* cover per event it is going to take a long time to fully cover any hero.

Not being able to buy a missing cover for HP is kinda terrible. Something they should change.

Bracketing is basically everything to a transition player. Weather 25th place is 800 or 1300 depends on when you bracket and what the rewards are. I know it’s strange advice to say “don’t play the game” but not playing the moment an event starts will lead to lazier brackets of people to compete with. Your same 7100 could have gotten you 5 tokens instead of 3 possibly, and your same 600 points should get you top 100 if you are in a decent bracket.

13

Actually somewhere in season IV or V (can’t recall precisely) - 6000 pts got me top5 - my roster was not much different from the one I am having today - now over 7000 it hardly kept me in top 500. That’s the lottery element in brackets/shards I fail to understand.

14

The bracketing changed.
Season 1 and 2 were murderous death brackets, season 3 and 4 were OK, and since season 5 we got the return of sharding, with a vengeance.
We’ve been asking to change bracketing back to whatever it was based on in season 3, but no dev ever replied to those questions.

15

well seeing the latest announcements I am very curious what will be the impact; devs are very mysterious in announcement icon_e_biggrin.gif