What is the end of this game?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Have you ever thought of where this game is going? Will they ever stop introducing new characters? Will the character power creep continue forever? Can you ever get to the end of this?

I started playing in the beginning (2013) and back then 2 star characters ruled PvP. 3 stars were rare to be seen and never fully leveled up. Slowly, it became easier to get 3 stars and people started building their 3 star army. It was slow, but people liked the progression. But I was annoyed from the beginning at how often they introduced new characters (2 per month). While I already had too many characters to get covers for and level up, they introduced another one and another one and another! You had to purchase hero points just to have enough roster slots. But then, you lacked ISO, which was slow to accumulate.

I suppose the developers figured out that game progression was too slow, so they started giving out better and better rewards. DDQ really got things moving and they would have simultaneous PvP and PvE events, so the game became a real time hoarder. The once rare 3 stars, were now common, abundant and easy to get and then the game became a 4 star quest. I then thought that the end game would be collecting and leveling up the few 4 star characters that existed, but soon after they started introducing 5 star characters. So then I thought the end game would be collecting and leveling up the few 5 stars. But now I’m thinking that this game will never end.

They filled out 3 star and 4 star characters now (40 each), so does this mean they will start introducing 30 more 5 star characters? Will they then start introducing 6 star characters!? Since the words “Legendary” and “Epic” are used, I guess they could be called “Ultimate” Characters. Their marketing model has no end; in 5 years will there be 10 star characters?

Now, I understand why this has happened. The full time jobs of a group of people is to keep players interested in the game and continuing to spend money on it. The top players are also the top spenders, so to keep them engaged, they keep moving the finish line. They keep giving people the dream of getting ridiculously powerful characters so that they can rule events and be feared by all. What’s the point of getting a few strong 4 stars? → to win more 4 star covers. What’s the point of getting a full 4 star army? → to easily win command points and buy legendary tokens in order to get 5 star covers. What’s the point of getting strong 5 star characters? → to easily win command points and buy legendary tokens to get all 5 star covers. But then what!?

I suppose what people really want out of the game is to be #1, to show that your smarts, hard work (and money) has exalted you to the top. But if you get there, does the game become boring? Nope! Because they keep releasing new characters every 2 weeks, isn’t that great! (sarcasm added) Have you noticed that “winning” in the game helps you to “win” the game more? What’s the purpose here? I suppose what I wanted to vent about was that I make a goal to accomplish something in the game, but they keep moving the finish line, so I’m never going to finish the race. So, it makes me wonder why I’m in the race at all.

For a little background reference, I’ve quit this game 3 times before only to come back to it again and again because I was bored. The reason I quit was because it required too much of my time and other parts of my life were getting neglected. I hope there’s somebody else out there that has felt the same way I do about this game.

2

A better question would be “what would you like the end game to be?”

Other good questions:

Do you want there to be an end game?

Does the game model support an end?

3

There is supposed to be a finish line? Are there any match 3 games that have a finish line?

4

Yeah, him and me both…

5

Welcome to the forums, where literally every single person who has joined starts out by making a post functionally identical to yours.

Nobody likes the aimlessness and stinginess and time consumption of this game. But you just kinda have to make your peace with it, and either quit for real or decide what kind of performance you can be satisfied with, because this is the world we live in. We’re actually in a surprisingly good spot compared to what the game was a year ago, so if you’re an optimist, maybe you can convince yourself it’s just going to keep getting better, and that will help keep you invested.

The game does have a certain hamster-wheel feel to it, for sure, but the reality is that there is actual progression, if you’re careful about it: every time you bring a new character up to a playable level, you’re expanding your options and becoming more flexible in how you approach a fight. As long as you don’t go hogwild on 1-3 characters and wreck your scaling so you can have the “privilege” of never playing with anyone else for a long time, you can progress your way into a diverse and powerful roster relative to your scaling.

6

What “wrecks” your scaling? Spending ISO on characters that won’t matter by the time they are leveled up? I’ve learned that having a large roster is beneficial, but it also requires the most ISO.

7

I enjoyed the OP really interesting.
However I have a few questions, you left and came back three times.

When you give up something , experts say it’s a good idea to replace it with something else. With that in mind.

Why didn’t you join a gym ?

Why didn’t another game replace this game?

Don’t other games come close to mpq?

What could you have done better to stay away from mpq?

How much time do you give the game now?

Please try and answer I’m really interested.

8

Every Puzzle Quest before this one.

9

I have a very busy life with many things to do, but I always need some leisure/relaxation time everyday. This game can fill that leisure time, but because of my nature, I spend too much time in the game wanting to do my best. Finding another game is not a solution. I’ve also spent so much time in this game over the past 3 years that I have this crazy mentality to make it all worth something by achieving my goal, but that goal keeps moving, hence my post. Plus, it seems like the character power creep will never stop.

10

It won’t, it’s up to you whether you accept it or not.

Why on Earth would they stop releasing characters when they’ve got whales with more money than sense spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to max every 5* as soon as they come out?

11

Yup the whales have forced the game to move the finish line much faster than it should be moving. However if you noticed, you can stop playing for a bit and come back and you wouldn’t be too far behind. This is because they always implement new rewards and new systems for new players or returning players to catch up. It’s much easier now to progress from 2* to 3*. Whereas before it was a lot harder especially without ddq. This will always be the case. They need to create a gap between the whales and the middle class. But at the same time reduce the gap between the new players and the middle class. I believe the middle class is right now at the 3-4* transition level.

Also the time consumption does seem to be more than before. They do this on purpose. It is to entice you to spend. The more time is required to place well and to get the rare rewards, the more people will try to buy it outright because it is out of their schedules reach so they use money. If you look at the cost of hp and the tokens, etc, you will see that it is a little bit better to spend the money than the time. For instance if you were to play 10 hours, the rewards you would get would be less than what you could get with a stark salary. So as long as your wage isn’t minimum, you actually gain more by spending money than spending the time to grind through it all.

You think the stark salary is expensive to buy, but wasting 10 hours of your life for even less rewards is more expensive if you value your own time. But many of us play for fun so I personally would play 10 hours than spend on a stark salary. To someone who has lots of money, and little time, they will chose the stark salary.

12

The end of this game is MPQ 2.

13

What is the end of this game?
Death

14

There is no end game. It will end when the player base stops spending money.

They’re done with the 1-3* tiers. Spiderman got added to 1*, but it was just kind of slipped in there.

1* characters - 8
2* characters - 14
3* characters - 40

There’s no reason to believe that isn’t a trend. They double - or more - the number of characters at each tier. Depending on their release schedule and how fast they want to introduce new 5*, there’s at least 1-2 years worth of 4* content before they lock that tier.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing game-wise, if they can fix PvP MMR so lower-tier rosters aren’t forced to fight 5*, and they keep scaling reasonable. This game could grow to 8-9* characters. It would totally break the fiction, and I think it’s more likely there’s a MPQ2 before we see a 7*. But the mechanics of the game are adaptable to player scaling. They still have 3 Clearance levels to go. I’m barely at 7, and many people have played longer, spent more, and have far better rosters. There’s room for growth, but they need to manage it carefully. Newer players will quit after the tutorial if they’re locked out of progress.

15

I’ve heard if you crack 1 billion in Bejeweled they give you an adorable kitten.

Someone told me that. But they were in clown garb.

16

A profitable Massive Multiplayer Online game never never has an end. You can make a case for any of them, they all release updates or new content on a regular basis. The game ends when they stop doing that, or you don’t find it fun anymore.

17

Yes! I don’t mind getting smacked down by superior rosters. I do mind not finding anyone I can hit with confidence I’ll get some points out of it. I usually win ~ 90-95% of my matches. My BFF win ratio was ~ 50%, and that’s the first time ever I’ve spent Iso on the skip tax. If that’s how it’s gonna be, why should I bother generating points to target? Why would I pay to shield myself for long periods of time when I have no hope of climbing to a relevant placement or progression target?

18

Only Zuul.

19

Its not only the gap between whales and midclass, its the gap between new players and vets. the rewards are not able to bring a new player to a point where he has the feeling he can really take part in the race. Its this kind of game where you start two years after release and without spending massive amounts of money you will be the whole time two years behind the rest.

ClearanceLevel1 should be the old max progression, CL7 should be far better rewards. And the nodes have to scale not only difficulty, they have to scale rewards the same way.

So the end of the game will be when the old whales say goodbye, because the chance to acquire new whales is relatively small and they will not be able to change their shopsystem to a real price for a broaderbase of buyers, all there is completely overpriced. And I saw a point of warning: A few months ago with the new pve-tests they posted that about 100000 people joined the test. In my opinion this is not much for a complete pve in this game and joining means even one match.

I agree completely to the OP. The frequency of new chars is too high, its nearly the only source of new “content” and scaling covers the lack of real content. new players have no chance to get enough covers to get a viable 4* because of the deluting of dropchances with all this new chars, old players have lesser chances to get covers in the old days-agreed-, but there were far less covers to draw. And one of my mainproblems is: Some new features have a hidden nerf: -champions had the nerf of 2s and 3s -higher iso for selling champions had a massive drop in 2* droprate in pvp -clearancelevels had a massive drop in rewards for lower players. I have spent 120 bucks and thats it. Not one penny more, for no of these 30%sales, because for me and I think many other players who think about spending some more money, there is nothing in the shop thats worth it.

20

The biggest problem, IMHO, is in how difficult it is to actually get decent covers for the 4*+ characters and how expensive it then becomes to level them. Great example, and not sure how many play it, but is the difference between introducing a new character in Marvel’s Contest of Champions and a new character in MPQ. Especially how casual players can get involved quicker with a new character.

Let’s even get the hard part of the way, and say I just got a new 5* in each game. In CoC, this character is pretty much usable immediately. I can add it to my roster, take it on events, take it into the arena etc. You don’t have to collect “covers” in CoC to make them usable. They are usable immediately and then I take the time needed to level it based on getting ISO, Gold, Catalysts, etc.

Compared to MPQ, where my new 5* with one cover is pretty much useless. I now need to wait patiently and hope, somehow, I can collect some other covers. Even then, the character won’t be good until I have, at minimum, 1 of each cover and a total of around 10. Then, I need to have the ISO to upgrade. Basically, at best, it is probably a good three to four months until a 5* is usable. If I’m lucky.

Again, JMHO, but I think the most broken thing in MPQ is how difficult it is to get a new character up and running. Adding more characters makes it worse.

Oh, and scaling. But that’s a whole 'nother matter. icon_e_biggrin.gif