Why should players level their characters?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

As hard as it is and as much time as it takes to earn covers, leveling the characters take exponentially more time and hard work. However, while I understand the benefits of earning full covers for each character, I’ve reached a point of cognitive dissonance. That is the light has finally come on and I’ve realized (what probablyeveryone else already knows) there is no point to leveling characters.

I’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and cold hard cash on this have, but why???

Does leveling characters help players in pve? No, scaling actually punishes me for my efforts.

Does is help in PvP? Despite the outrage of transitioning players, I get penalized here as well. I may face some unmaxed teams earlier on, but this stops earlier than lower level rosters acknowledge. So, while it helps to compete with the elite of the elite, I’m penalized again. Instead of getting the advantage I’ve invested my efforts into by leveling my characters, I’m sharded into tougher brackets and most of the players I’ve outworked are hidden from me in my nodes.

Hence, my original question: why should players level their rosters? There are a lot of activities or games o could be investing my time in that would not penalize me the more time I spent at it.

Think about it. Why do you level your rosters? Outside of spending time on a very select few characters, all this does is waste your time and money. Why level Psylocke? Do you can be scaled out of pve’s faster? Why level IM40, so you can have a leg up in his PvP once a blue moon? No, you’ll just have face tougher opponents on your level or above with deeper pockets. Why level GSBW? For her tri-weekly LR? You only need to play LR a lot if you’re going to level characters that you’ll be penalized for later.

It is my conclusion, that outside leveling a few characters like Sentry, any one else is a waste of our time and/or money. Feel free to do so, but don’t expect it to help you on this game. Instead of being rewarded for your hard work and dedication, you’ll be penalized at every turn to ensure you don’t gain a significant advantage.

2

Why play at all? Playing only earns covers and ISO needed to unlock and level your characters. Are you sure you are having fun playing the game?

MPQ is a Sisyphean task. You have to love your boulder if you want to find happiness.

But seriously, I don’t see how leveling ONLY Daken/Sentry would be fun. Efficient for Season play, sure, but not fun. I have the opposite strategy as you suggest. I level all my characters evenly (currently around lvl 120/94), so that I can play any combination that seems fun at the moment. Right now I am playing She-Hulk/Spidey/OBW. The game is to see how little health I can start each match with and survive.

3

Ditto on the “levelling all characters evenly” tactic (I wonder if Ben Grimm has that trademarked yet?)

That said, the devs have spoken about how their desire is for players to level their characters as soon as they have the covers, but then they put in a system that punishes that. Don’t make a whole lotta sense.

4

I level my characters because from a strategic sense, it, well, makes sense. Does it make life in PVE often harder? Sure, but I tend to concentrate on PVP anyways. And for that, having a lot of your roster higher means less likely you’ll get picked on. Sure, once you get high enough in points it doesn’t matter, but I sure as hell saw less hits than a lot of people in the Hulk event. Do I get sharded into harder brackets? Sometimes, but the competition can be fun. For me the joy in this game comes from competing at a high level, seeing how many points I can put up in as few hops as possible, and helping my alliance try to do the unthinkable and take out Xmen.

There’s different avenues in this game from where to find your enjoyment. They vary for everyone. I suggest finding one, or, like the previous poster said, why play?

5

I concur with everyone that’s been leveling their characters evenly because I’ve been doing that at the beginning of the game. I choose to level characters whom I find is more useful and find the best combination with the right triplet, but still have my supporting cast as well. IMO, Pve is more about trying out the combination, PVP is more about challenging and being strategic with what you have. Even though I’ve invest real cash for slots, I play just to have fun. If the game mechanics doesn’t interest you, then move on.

6

I’m pretty sure they just look at your highest character to determine your scaling because otherwise someone like Colog should have everything start at the maximum possible level in PvE. Likewise for PvP there’s really not much point to be cute because you’ll get thrown in the max 166s MMR as soon as you move out of 2* and 3s at 2 levels aren’t really that useful.

Now it is worth asking what’s the point of leveling up characters when you usually only need 3 of them for any given PvP event and up to 6 for PvE (if there are 3 rotating essential characters and none of them are usable in your regular team even with buffs).

7

Ignoring the obvious PVE/PVP/scaling issue, and taking a more philosophical stance, players level their characters because it imbues the player with a (false?) sense of accomplishment or fulfillment. Speaking for myself, this is a game about collection. If I get all 13 covers of a character, great. If I can max out their level to 94/166/270, then I will officially consider that character “mastered” or “completed”, feel good about myself, and move on with the next thing. Simple as that.

Specially quoting this line:

Hence, my original question: why should players level their rosters? There are a lot of activities or games o could be investing my time in that would not penalize me the more time I spent at it.
I fully admit, all the hours I spent playing this game I could have taught myself a useful life skill, like teaching myself Mandarin, or learning a new eggs benedict recipe, or how to disassemble and reassemble an engine block. With that in mind, why play MPQ or any videogame at all?

8

this is a match 3 game built around collecting different characters and competition. PVE is a faily even playing field where everyone can compete and it is about playing the right times and playing efficiently. PVP is more direct competition becuase you can loose points. If you are not leveling your characters then you will not be able to place high enough to win the covers you want. Yes there is a very crappy transition period in the 2*-3*. Your team is stronger than the 2* teams but you are free points for a full 3* team. Getting to a full 3* team is a balancing act for PVP because once you get to high enough points you see a lot of Sentry with Hood/LDaken. You have to be able build a roster to hit the goal you want to reach. If you want to be top 5 you need to multiple 166 most likely Sentry, and you need to spend HP on shield hopping. If you want top 25 you will need to shield hop a little until you get enough 166 characters that mesh well and then you can probably hit 800+ points and get top 25. Getting a lot of people to 166 takes a lot of time, I remember being in 2* land for 3-4 months before 2* dropped like candy from a piñata. I was not in a 20 person alliance and could not score high enough in PVP to get 2 covers. The best thing you can do is hold ISO and HP and then when your 3* are ready bam you have 3 166 covers and you have the ability to score more in PVP and score easier as well.
Be patient this game is a marathon.

9

Tank and they will magically appear again.

Hence, my original question: why should players level their rosters? There are a lot of activities or games o could be investing my time in that would not penalize me the more time I spent at it.

There is a difference between penalizing and slowing players down due to lack of content. This isn’t an MMORPG, there isn’t crafting, economies etc, there is only playing the game (and an occasional new character to compete for). Once you max all your characters you want everything to be easy? Why would anyone stick around if that became true?

Think about it. Why do you level your rosters? Outside of spending time on a very select few characters, all this does is waste your time and money. Why level Psylocke? Do you can be scaled out of pve’s faster?

Entirely untrue. You get your best bang for your buck with buffed characters when it comes to scaling. Scaling mostly contributes to how much you play, so in reality it is those who have the buffed character who have a large advantage since it considers that characters unbuffed level. A buffed character will be able to push farther than normal, thus giving you an advantage.

Why level IM40, so you can have a leg up in his PvP once a blue moon? No, you’ll just have face tougher opponents on your level or above with deeper pockets. Why level GSBW? For her tri-weekly LR? You only need to play LR a lot if you’re going to level characters that you’ll be penalized for later.

Don’t forget when she is buffed for PVE as well. PVP is tiered so that, unless you have high level characters, you will never break a specific point total. I guess if you never want to break 300 points you can just not level your characters.

It is my conclusion, that outside leveling a few characters like Sentry, any one else is a waste of our time and/or money. Feel free to do so, but don’t expect it to help you on this game. Instead of being rewarded for your hard work and dedication, you’ll be penalized at every turn to ensure you don’t gain a significant advantage.

Aside from the points I pointed out, playing other characters makes the game fun. Also, sometimes synergy can matter more when there are buffed characters that don’t mix with commonly used characters.

All this leads to the promotion of leveling your characters evenly. It is in the designers best interest for us to do so, as it slows our progression so that there is always something to do. These points show they try to push players into doing so as well.

10

Is pve starting level based on average level of roster, or highest level character?

I was under the impression it was average level of roster - as I have dropped one and two stars and added more and more three stars, it seems my starting level has increased fairly substantially, while my highest level character has been a 110 psylocke for a very long time.

If it is average level, then you are given an incentive in pve to level your core of heroes

11

Actually, if it’s an average level, then the incentive to NOT level your characters is greater since you want your starting levels to be lower so that community scaling doesn’t go crazy.

12

Sooo… maybe if we recruited an entire second roster and not level them, our average would be half-ish?

It’s worth testing… Interesting thought, either way.

13

And that’s probably why it isn’t based on average level since you can game the system while still benefiting from having maxed characters.

14

It’s almost certainly just the highest level character you have (and unusable characters don’t count for heroics) because otherwise it’d be way too easy to just have a lot of 1*s sitting around to drag your average down, not to mention this doesn’t even make sense. Why would you assume anyone do a PvP/PvE event by picking characters at random as opposed to their best ones, who are likely to be the highest levels?

15

I don’t think this is necessarily true. I’ve employed the “don’t level them until they are usable” strategy, and thus have several 166s and several 40s 3* characters. Typically I find my scaling is lower than my alliance mates with similar number of maxxed 3* in most (non-heroic) PvE events. So I think there must be something other than your highest level.

I wonder if they only look at the buffed characters for the event?

16

It could be say the 3 highest usable characters, though it’s pretty hard to speculate. I’m pretty sure the highest level usable character has a very high weight, though, because otherwise someone must have hit an event where they’ve a 166 but the rest of their usable roster are low level and just beat everything trivially, and it’d be hard to keep a secret like this for so long. I mean we’ve events where the Daredevil was a 3* and most people surely left him underleveled but we sure never recall hearing easier than normal scaling on events with Daredevil.

17

Going by the comments and the people that have contributed to the DA thread, it’s not just the highest level. (maxed Psylockes are reporting different scaling).

Some of it is just personal scaling of course, which we know exists just not to the extent. There still seems to be a gap that’s presumably driven by the secondary characters.

There needs to be a thread where we crowdsource as many people’s starting position as possible in the next PvE. It can’t be that hard to figure out what is happening, at least as far as roster composition.

18

Think about it. Why do you level your rosters? Outside of spending time on a very select few characters, all this does is waste your time and money. Why level Psylocke? Do you can be scaled out of pve’s faster? Why level IM40, so you can have a leg up in his PvP once a blue moon? No, you’ll just have face tougher opponents on your level or above with deeper pockets. Why level GSBW? For her tri-weekly LR? You only need to play LR a lot if you’re going to level characters that you’ll be penalized for later.

I play a lot of match 3 games. All of them get progressively harder. Isn’t that sort of the idea? I mean, how boring if as you built your roster, the game ceased to be a challenge.

I have a fairly low level Sentry. I’m still not sure if I’m keeping him long term. I have only played him a few times outside of when he was featured in a PVP. Yet I still manage a top 5 finish in PVP. I know I shouldn’t be. Lot of people have posted that you can’t win without Sentry. Yet someone I manage - with Psylocke or IM40 or GSBW.

Why did I level up my GSBW? Because I’ve yet to find a team I can’t take out with her.

19

If you want to take a handful of max characters and blow through every node repeatedly in PvE you’re probably doing it wrong.

My heroic nodes are 35s, 110s and 160s. I use the level appropriate characters to clear them. And every PvE has the same mix of nodes.

I have a half dozen max 3* and another 8 in the 120 range. It’s about asset management for me. Balance between keeping my second line characters high enough to clear the second line nodes while deciding when to bite the bullet and take another to 166.

Roster strength is more about balance, imo.