Unbalanced feeder system

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

There are 14 two-stars in the game, all 14 feed one of the 47 three-stars, which all feed one of the currently 81 four-stars, while only 23 of the 81 four-stars feed one of the currently 33 5-stars. This is unbalanced, but not terribly so.

There are 33 three-stars that do not have a two-star feeder, and currently 34 four-stars without a three-star feeder. That’s not the most unbalanced aspect of the feeder system though.

Two of the three-stars (Ragnarok and Daken) feed the same four-star (X-23). That’s still not the most unbalanced aspect of the feeder system. Both Ragnarok and Daken have two-star feeders, meaning even though there’s only 14 two-stars in the game, two of the 2-stars feed the same four-star. That’s pretty bloody unbalanced, IMO.

I’d like to suggest a change to the feeder system.

Because there are 14 two-stars and 47 three-stars, every two-star should feed not 1 but 3 three-stars. Yes, three. And I don’t mean 2 of the 3 three-star covers they all currently reward should be changed to covers for two other characters, I mean each two-star Champion should reward you with 9 three-star covers, one of each color for 3 different three-star characters. Yes, 9 three-star covers.

And because there are 47 three-stars and currently 81 four-stars, each three-star Champion should be updated to reward you with three covers for two four-stars. Given that this would then unbalance the three-star to four-star ratio the other way, several of the three-stars could remain as single four-star feeders for now and only get updated as new four-stars are released.

What would this do to the game?

If the covers were not rewarded retroactively (as currently happens when a four-star is updated to feed a 5-star) that may upset veterans players with Champion 2* and 3* characters who may think they’re entitled to receive the reward covers they would have otherwise got. First, nobody is entitled to anything that is not already currently in the game.
Am I entitled to receive a Legendary Token or a 5-star cover from my Champion 4-stars as they hit 280, or 300, and so on? Yes, I am, because those rewards are already in the game. What I am NOT entitled to are Champion rewards that got updated. It’s a nice gesture on the part of Demi and D3 that they give them to me anyway, but I am NOT entitled to them because I already got a Champion reward.

I liken this to Gambit’s nerfing. People got upset about that. I got upset about it. I had just barely finished Gambit at that time, he was about to become my very first 5-star Champion…and he got nerfed. You better believe I was upset about it. But I’m an adult, I’m (usually) fairly mature, and I eventually moved on and got over it.

So yes, there would be some grumbling: “I already have some 266 3-star Champion! I deserve those extra covers!”
Well, Mr. Entitled MPQ Player, I have THIRTY-TWO level 266 3-star Champions, and I only don’t have even more than that because I already sold several max-level 3-star Champions to reroster them. If Demi/D3 were to change the 3-star Champion system, I would not be mad if they didn’t retroactively give me the new Covers. I’d be over the bloody moon if they did, but I would not be mad if they did not because I am NOT entitled to those new rewards, and neither are you.

So, aside from the grumbling from entitled players (who can put a sock in it), how else might this affect the game?

Obviously it would result in players getting a lot more 3* and 4* covers.
Is that a bad thing?
If you’re a new player with an undeveloped roster and not enough HP to buy more roster slots, yeah, you might see that as a bad thing, because now you’re forced to sell all those covers!
Or…
You could buy HP, or more HP. And there are players that would buy HP, or more HP, because they’d hate to see those covers going to waste.

This is the kicker and is why D3/Demi should change the Cover Reward system and give us even more covers because it’s NOT giving players something for nothing. It’s incentivising players to spend money.

But wait, you say. You get HP from Champion rewards, you say. And now you’re getting flooded with covers so you’re going to get more Champion levels and Champion rewards faster, so you’ll get HP faster, so newer players won’t need to buy HP.

Yeah, about that. If every 2-star is changed to feed three 3-stars, and the 3-stars are now feeding two 4-stars, those extra 3-6 covers have to come from somewhere. Looking at the current list of 2-star Champion rewards, I can see 5 levels that could become 3-star cover rewards. Yes, I’m talking about the CP and HP rewards. Now I know Veteran Players love the 2-star Farm, I’m a 5-year Veteran myself, I count myself among you, so put down the torches and pitchforks and do NOT get your panties in a bunch. Keep reading and think of the Big Picture©. Think of all those extra 3-star covers you’d be getting which would accelerate your 3-star Farm, and because only three of the 3-star Champion Rewards would be updated, you would still get a lot of the same rewards, HP, CP, etc. from the 3-star Farm, but you’d get them even more regularly because of how much faster the 2-star Farm would be feeding the 3-star Farm. So this would be a good change for veteran players with already established rosters.

So, recapping,

  1. Being the most important of all, this would be a good change for D3/Demi because it should motivate newer players to spend money to buy more HP to roster all of the 3* characters whose covers they’re now getting swamped with.

  2. This would be a good change for newer players because getting a lot more covers a lot more often may help them build their rosters a little faster (assuming they’re buying HP, that is) and this may help newer players feel like they might actually be able to catch up to us Veteran players. This could encourage them to stick around and buy even more HP, which is good for D3/Demi.

  3. This would be a good change for veteran players, in spite of the nerfing of the 2-star Farm, because it would accelerate the growth of our 3-star Farm, and that is arguably the more profitable of the two farms. This would also accelerate the growth of our 4-star rosters, and I know the rate of release of 4-star characters has often been a big concern to many 4* players. This may help reduce burnout among veteran players, and as veteran players are often still spending money (Renewing VIP, buying HP for Shields & Health Kits, etc.), D3/Demi should be doing more to encourage their veteran players to stick around, because what’s good for the veterans is good for D3/Demi.

2

As a blanket statement, I’m not entirely sure I’d agree with that.

I do agree the feeder system needs an overhaul though - there is no reason any 4* should be multi-fed.

Limited characters (bag-man included) need to be giving out appropriate rewards. It took longer to max-champ my bag-man than it did to champ 5* Ghost rider. Yes, some players may have them at better levels than organically available peers, but you can’t bonus them. Even Magikarp has Gyardos to look forward to eventually.

At a glance, it seems like multi-feeding 5s would be great, but in practice, i’m not entirely sure it would make a big difference with dilution being what it is. Since the best way to grow a 4 is to just pick one and never move your BH, it wouldn’t be materially different time-wise than just growing a dupe I don’t imagine.

3

I pretty much agree with everything you said, including that as a broad, blanket statement, yes, not everything that is good for veterans is automatically good for D3/Demi. Obviously giving us a whole bunch of LTs would be fantastic, but that’s not necessarily good for D3/Demi because then we’d stop spending money. But would giving us a ton of LTs really be that great? I used to love playing The Sims, but I just never had enough money, and after a long day at work, coming home, sitting down, and making my Sims work and level up, just so they could make money to get their shiny new toys…that was too much like my own life to be a relaxing break away from it. So I used the infinite money hack and bought everything I wanted to, I redesigned my house, I filled it with cool things, etc., and when I was done…I had no desire to play the game.

I think MPQ would be the same for me, because I don’t see this as a puzzle game. I don’t play it as a puzzle game. I play it as a Marvel/Pokemon game where I’ve got to catch 'em all, so for me the “puzzle game” and stories are just a means to an end, that is, collecting, finishing, and leveling all my characters. If I were given 1,000 LTs, or if I was sandboxed and could have all the characters, fully-covered, fully-leveled, etc., immediately upon release, I’d actually lose interest in MPQ very, very quickly. This is not the same as dipping into your hoard of LTs to get at least one cover for the Latest 5* so you can do their 5E node. I’m talking about bam! Instant 550(?) 5*s the day they’re released. Sure, you’re crushing your non-existent competition in PvP and hitting #1 in every Story event, but how long is that really going to be fun for you? So, would giving you instant access to max-Champions of every character in the game really be good for you? While there absolutely are people that would love this, I think they’re a distinct minority. I think (opinion, so yes, I could be wrong) that most of us love the thrill of the chase, and so if we were just handed the prize without having to put in the effort, I think most of us would be turned off by that and would quit playing. So in that respect, giving MPQ veterans everything they might think they want is not good for the veterans and would also not be good for the game.

And in that vein, maybe everything I, as a veteran, have written, both above and in my original post, that could all be wrong, too. It is entirely possible that changing the Reward system to something like I proposed may very well kill MPQ. And maybe that would be good for us veterans. We’d finally be free of the game that’s taken up so much of our time for the past 4-5+ years :slight_smile:

What a hole that would leave behind though! It did when I finally quit WoW, except I kept getting pulled back in again, then quitting again, then getting back in again. Heh. And then I discovered MPQ :slight_smile: I never quit, I just changed drugs :slight_smile:

Appreciate the read and comments @ThaRoadWarrior :slight_smile:

4

It’s a topic worth addressing for sure, but i think if you take a step back and look at the picture of the game at large, we’re offering solutions rather than correctly framing the problem. I have no access to actual metrics, i’m just trying to reverse engineer some of these decisions with an eye towards deriving “why” from them. To me, MPQ has a very robust entry and mid-game, and an incredibly deficient late game. You can tell that players are not intended to make it all the way to 5* play (yet), though it is possible to do. i have a feeling that if you visualize players according to where they are in the game, it would look like a pyramid, with 5* players at the top, and then install, try, and quit players at the bottom.

To my eye, most of the changes we’ve been seeing have been to give quality of life to 3-4* transitioners, with full dilution being the late-mid game for them. Bonus hero odds are better in the PVP stores, CP is reasonably attainable, supports are supposed to help them play-up in story mode (which is where i suspect most people hang out due to the punishing MMR system in PVP). I don’t think that roadmap has been fully traveled yet, I fully expect to see attention start to return to the 5* tier here before too long in the form of feeders and rebalances. In fact, i think we may be seeing the pendulum swinging that way now with more regular access to special legendary stores, many of which lately have had “good” 5*s in them, or just Thor in more than a few. I haven’t spent a dime on the game, so maybe i’m more able to look at the meta development picture with less emotion than some. I could also be very wrong. But I suspect there is a plan, and I further suspect it needs to be carefully managed and monitored due to things like team size, budget, community management, whatever. Who can say for sure?

5

I would say the argument of the veterans is that, assuming a card is more valuable than CP or HP rewards, they’re being punished for being early adopters of the game and for succeeding as far as they have already. If 5s weren’t retroactively awarded when 4s became feeders, (at least some) players would never BH 4s that aren’t feeders and would avoid champing them for as long as possible, so as not to miss out on rewards whenever they did become feeders. Of course the current system means you want to BH and champion non-feeder 4s so you get both the current reward and the 5* reward, though I don’t know if veterans actually do this.

On the flip side, giving 2* or 3* players cards from the next level they can’t roster and can’t necessarily stop themselves from getting by avoiding opening packs, while simultaneously slowing their rate of HP acquisition, is probably more likely to lead them to quit, especially if, like me, they prefer to avoid paying money if at all possible. Of course by the point they’d be getting those cards they’d probably have a good chunk of the next level rostered already, but that assumes they followed optimum strategy and didn’t open tokens they couldn’t roster. If they did open those tokens, this could make it nearly impossible to dig their way out of it without selling a lot of valuable cards.

At the very least, the devs would have to undertake a massive review of what cards everyone feeds and what they should feed, ideally keeping everything as thematically consistent as possible (which is actually probably part of why they haven’t given every 5* that comes out a feeder). It’s entirely possible X-23 would lose both her current feeders in the long term and get fed by Wolverine instead.

The main problem you identify would be fairly easily fixed if Ragnarok or Daken (more likely the former) had the card they feed changed. The biggest imbalance would then be that some cards get fed and others don’t, which I would presume is part of the design of the system, especially since most of the strongest 3*s don’t have feeders. If that’s truly a problem, lower the odds of getting cards with feeders from packs, which for all I know they already do.

6

I, personally, think that every 5* should have a feeder.

I actually pulled 100 latest legends tokens, with the intent of pulling until I got one cover for Hela, just because I like to have at least one cover for each character.

I pulled zero Hela covers, and didn’t even pull a 5* at all in the last 40 or so pulls, before finally giving up because it was such a waste of tokens.

I’m not saying 5* covers should be easy to get, but this was ridiculous.

Anyway, if all 5* characters had a feeder update as they were introduced, it would give players another option to get the 5* for when it’s essential.

It would also encourage players to have a good amount of champed 4* characters.

I don’t think this in an unreasonable request.

7

I was thinking exactly this a few day ago, about the 3* champ rewards. With the number of 4s always increasing, I don’t see a reason to why not to update the 3 champs to give two different 4s as rewards, instead of only one. That way, all 4s could have a 3* feeder, which for me, would be very, very welcomed.