What we can infer about Feeders from Shardmass

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
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1

New year, new devs, and we’ve just had the best Shardmas ever. After several years of a slow trickle of 5* feeders, the new development team decided to make sure everyone was covered. I thought I’d make a post where we could discuss what we could infer from the most recent changes. I’ll caveat this with they can always change things int he future, and previous behavior doesn’t necessarily set the standard, but we can definitely hypothesize a few things from Shardmass:

5 Characters are going to get a feeder pretty quickly*

At this point all 5* characters have at least one feeder. The new 4* is going to feed the next 5* (probably Wong.) It looks like they will usually try to have a character being fed as quickly as possible.

The new team is definitely favoring characters with connections

We had a lot of reshuffling of 5* feeders over Shardmass - most of it was completely unnecessary from a gaming standpoint - the characters already had feeders. They prefer characters to feed themselves and/or will take characters with close connections. There are a few pretty tenuous connections left - Sam Wilson to Heimdall is a weird one for example, but in these cases the feeder was established when there was no one better.

They’re willing to use an established 4 as a feeder if they have a connection.*

She-Hulk, Emma, Riri, and Hit Monkey were all brought into a game with a 4* already feeding them, in three of these cases the 4* had a very strong connection, in the last they had some connection (I think?) or at least were probably the best character suited to feed at the time and/or the foreseeable future. In the case of all but She-Hulk, we got retro rewards too.

Double feeders are going to be a Thing.

While they at one point looked like they were going to remove two double-feeders (the connections were pretty tenuous for both,) they let them lie, and Shardmass established a lot more. At this time we have the following, I’ll put the ones with the strongest connections first:

Hawkeye - Hawkeye and Kate Bishop
The Hulk (Bruce Banner) - MEH and TAH
Okoye - Shuri and Namora
Kitty Pryde - Kate Pryde and Doop
Spider Man (Peter Parker) - Oscorp Spidey and Vulture
Lumbercap - Bucky and WorthyCap
Kingpin - Kingpin and Miles Morales
Cable - Deathlok and Bishop
Killmonger - Hydra Stomper and Shuri
Havok - Reptil and Polaris
Colossus - Negasonic and Puck

That’s eleven characters - definitely a good amount. Even not counting the two they were looking to take away, it’s clear they intend to have double feeders happen. Let me know if I missed anyone.

A few more tenuous conclusions we can come to -
A 4* feeding two 5*s is probably not going to be a thing? We only have one, it seems exceptional, but I suspect if they decide the connection is worth it, they’ll do it.

It’s unclear if new 4* characters will always be a feeder going forward. While it’s true that we haven’t not had one for a while, now that they’re caught up they don’t really need to. I guess we’ll see if they want to keep adding to the double feeders or just let things go on like much they have in the past.

That’s all I got for now, anyone want to add anything?

2

Early on they did say they intend to have every new release be a feeder, I think in one of the first couple Q&A threads. Take that with a grain of salt as 5*s haven’t been coming out feeding anyone.

3

Just sharing my opinion on your points (which I think might be counter to what most feel)

5 Characters are going to get a feeder pretty quickly*
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I would love to see them get a feeder as they enter Classic Legends. when they’re still the latest, I feel like having a feeder devalues the covers. they’re already so generous I’m worried this will mean that people may lose interest.

The new team is definitely favoring characters with connections & They’re willing to use an established 4 as a feeder if they have a connection.*
This is great in theory, but in practice becomes impossible to manage. it also leads to the worry I have above.

Double feeders are going to be a Thing.
I’m on the fence with this one. 12 covers without pulling a LL or CL? that’s a bit easy.

I’m hoping to alleviate all of the above we’ll see ALL new fours are feeders, and these new fours Feed the new 5s. I agree that we as players were not getting enough rewards for the time given -but I’m worried we’ll go too far in the wrong direction.

Just to reiterate - I think the new devs have had an awesome run these past 6 months. the game feels alive again (after a few years of treading water) and I’m excited to log in each day. The characters feel fresh and interesting, and giving love to old stale characters has been great (Banner and Iron man boosted last week shows how usable they both are now). The generosity has been great, quick to action and quick to anticipate. Because of this, I feel like they’ll make sure they hold the reins and at least attempt to balance it as well as possible.

4

I’ve said for years that it’s silly to have some 4* be feeders and some not. Every 2 feeds 3*, every 3* feeds 4*, but (for a very long time) a random few 4* were randomly kicking out much, much more valuable rewards than others.

I think what held that back for so long was the previous regime’s reluctance to give out full retro rewards, and players’ rebellion when they tried to give less-than-full retro rewards. The new team deftly sidestepped that issue by just raining a massive amount of rewards on us.

If they’re going to have every 5* double fed (and at this point, they should, because some are double fed and some aren’t) then I hope they’ll continue doing retro updates.

I’m not terribly concerned about the impact that’ll have on the metagame. If anything, giving more players more covers, plus the buffs they’re doing, will create a diverse 5* meta that changes weekly with the boost list.

5

I suspect that was probably a way to address all the 5* characters that didn’t have a feeder. Now they do, they don’t need to do that. I’d still find that welcome, though.

6

It means big change to the game is coming, that’s why the value of 5* covers have been “devalued”. 5* is supposedly the end-game content, and now their covers are gotten so easily. You don’t devalue end-game content without having another plan to keep the hamster wheel running.

In the past, players have to save up ~300 pulls to fully cover 3 5*. With SCL 10 & shards, certain group of players can get at least 500 shards of new 5* without using their cps. Then, this year, 2 covers of newest 5* were put up for grab in boss events. Finally, we have (classic 4*) feeders feeding newest 5* and classic 5*. What this means is that players will need even fewer pulls to cover all 3 latest 5*, which can be as low as zero to ~200 pulls for those players whose average 4* level is 330. This will result in players having excess cps.

On the cash bundle side of things, 5* covers/shards are also being made even more affordable and they appear more frequently.

As for vaults, 5* covers/shards have been appearing in them frequently for months.

Lastly, they mentioned they will “restructure” (I can’t remember the exact word being used) pve rewards.

As time goes by, double feeders for 5* will feel as special as double feeders for 4*.

7

They’ve been slowly devaluing 5* covers since 5* were launched. Remember, when Silver Surfer was released, there was no CP, and the only way to pull his covers was earning a Legendary token from finishing #1 in a PvP or PvE, or buying a 40-pack.

Their business model is (and has always been) selling roster slots. Making 5* more available sells roster slots.

Introducing a new, higher rarity tier would create more whale spending, but MPQ, unlike almost every other mobile game, doesn’t rely on whales and never has. That’s why the game has survived so long.

8

I’m not sure about big change coming. Why introduce a 6* tier? 4* and 5* character releases aren’t slowing down, and new 3* characters have just been reintroduced although not with every 5* released. I don’t see it happening, at least not anytime soon.

9

I would agree with you on that.

They mentioned that players were not being properly compensated for the amount of play (rewards did not match work), so they’re finding a balance. I’m wondering where that balance is.

My next question for them in the Q & A, is “can we get a breakdown of what the “average” player plays?”. I’m guessing we’re obviously in the top % of players, so maybe they’re working to make that Joe Average a happier person, and we just get chocolate sauce AND sprinkles on ours.

10

The statistic I’ve seen cited by the devs a few times is that 5% of all players have a character at lvl450 or greater. That was (I think?) 2 years ago, but they said it had held roughly at that point for a few years.

11

How does it devalue the covers when the 5* are still in Latests? We have almost 80 5*. At any one time, only three of those ~80 are available at a 7% pull rate. As for the 4* who feed them, you need to attain covers for those 4* in the first place. More generosity is always good. Not everyone has the resources to cover every Latest trio, and even if they do, there’s this thing called RNG. What good is an 11/1/1 cover distribution going to do for anyone? And even if RNG is kind, it costs about half a million iso to get a 5* from 225 to 450. And even then, that 5* can be champed and another 100 covers applied. I don’t see how this will cause players to lose interest, because there is always something new to chase.

12

While this is definitely the sort of thing they need to do to put in a 6* tier, I don’t think that’s necessarily what is happening. They are making the 5* covers more available, and even more possible to get the new 5* characters higher, but to add another tier that’s even more rare still seems premature. You’d need to stagger out releases a lot more, I think, which really wouldn’t help them with dilution.

Speaking for myself, I don’t think I’ve had any trouble fully covering a 5* as it’s released since… Dr. Octopus, I think.

13

Introducing 6* or pseudo 6* (like Support) will naturally slow down the release of 4* and 5*. There are 24 releases in a year (excluding 3*): 12 4* and 12 5*. With this new tier, it will turn into a 8/8 release for 4* and 5*. MCOC, which started later than us, already has 6* releases 2 years ago. In MPQ, our first 5* was released 7 years ago. Support came in 2018 but it didn’t progress far enough.

I don’t think the goal of the dev is to move players into 550 territory without hoarding. Neither do they expect majority of the players to be in 5* land. Majority of the players are casual players and they think differently from us. Such difference in thinking has been proven a few times in different scenario and it is something even the new dev team is aware of based on the data they have and it’s something they find challenging(?).

14

@BlackBoltRocks said:

@Omegased said:
Just sharing my opinion on your points (which I think might be counter to what most feel)

5 Characters are going to get a feeder pretty quickly*
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I would love to see them get a feeder as they enter Classic Legends. when they’re still the latest, I feel like having a feeder devalues the covers. they’re already so generous I’m worried this will mean that people may lose interest.

How does it devalue the covers when the 5* are still in Latests? We have almost 80 5*. At any one time, only three of those ~80 are available at a 7% pull rate. As for the 4* who feed them, you need to attain covers for those 4* in the first place. More generosity is always good. Not everyone has the resources to cover every Latest trio, and even if they do, there’s this thing called RNG. What good is an 11/1/1 cover distribution going to do for anyone? And even if RNG is kind, it costs about half a million iso to get a 5* from 225 to 450. And even then, that 5* can be champed and another 100 covers applied. I don’t see how this will cause players to lose interest, because there is always something new to chase.

I guess that’s really your opinion vs mine?

In my opinion, the 3 latest were (generally) exciting, and rare. having them champed felt like an achievement. At the moment there are people out there with champed Riri who isn’t even in LL yet. I personally have 7(and a half) covers for Riri.

I would like to see a little bit of rarity in the Latest, I think it’s good for some mysticness. If, as they leave Latest, the next release 4 feeds them - I think that would be my “best” case. That way the 3 months they spend in Latest they’re still kinda rare and exciting.

15

@HoundofShadow I would rather see the supports get some much needed love before a new tier of characters is released.

16

I think a revamped supports works best. Adding a 6 tier doesn’t do much for most of the players. Since supports can be placed on a toon of any tier, all players can be motivated to pay/play by supports.

17

Given that some Supports are broken (those that gives +6ap at the start of the game), they can turn a 5* into a pseudo 6* in pvps and pves. Imagine eating a Skuttlebutt at the start of opponent’s turn or watching Apocalypse fire his yellow at the start of his first turn and many other more possibilities. In PvEs, watch a 6XX Green Goblin fire his Glider or a 6XX BRB fire his Skuttlebutt at the start of their turn.

Since Supports seem to be the focus this year, we probably see Supports being activated in pvps at last, which would give us our pseudo 6*.

18

Since the current devs seem to have more than a vague notion about high level play, there’s no way they’ll activate supports in PVP.

19

Interesting data. My thoughts about it, although I do think it’s a pretty low %:

  • probably that % should had been increased with the new policy, although if it was a 5% then right now it shouldn’t be more than 10%
  • if a single 5* champed is owned by a 5% of the players, by pure logic this data throws off the 6* tier incoming.
  • finally, this data talks about 5* players champing 5* characters but it doesn’t talk about 4* players collecting and soft capping 5*s. I’d bet then we would be talking about a 50%. And this is where the true business actually is.

2 ways to see the game working.
With former devs the pressure to obtain 5s were great. It was needed to play hard or to spend a nice amount of money in order to keep champing all 5s. Probably that made 5* tier a classist tier as playing scl10 was a requirement.
BCS took charge. Boss events make pretty easy to champ all characters. Feeders to all characters will help. The shardmas came, but it won’t be repeated easily in the future.
Right now the 5s are easier to get, more players can enjoy them, as well as new 3s versions coming together.
Add to that 5* rebalances coming faster. I think it’s a positive change and by the looks of it, a good business.
The broken circle honored their name and everything they made until now imo it’s positive and offers more fun.

20

That stat always blows people’s minds because the game is designed to conceal it. They have to keep you chasing, so the game generally forces you to interact only with players at your level and above.

Try looking at other random players’ rosters as you start your climb in PvP or as you clear in PvE – most players (even in scl10) have a lot of one and two cover 5* rostered. Make your alliance public or join a public alliance and look at those rosters, and you’ll see the same.

Making 5* more available won’t cause those players to start championing 5* – they’re still way too rare and diluted for that. What it will do is cause them to roster more characters, and that is where the game makes its money.