Why the 4* "Transition" is impossible

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

TLDR: The release-rate is out pacing your resource rate.

YOU AREN’T TRANSITIONING THROUGH PVP 1K REWARDS.

PVP 1K progression on 10/25 was Purple/Pink Jean Grey (JG-P hereafter). Let’s try to guess when this reward will be seen again, shall we?

There are currently 19 (DD excluded) 4*’s in the game – with a new one added approximately every two weeks. So you have to go through the other 56 (19x3 -1) covers before getting back to this reward again. You see three covers each week from 1K PVP rewards.

So right now, you’d see JG-P in 19 weeks: Feb 29-March 04 2016. But we haven’t added those new characters in. Assuming you get a new one every two weeks (starting 10-26 to 11-1), you’ll have ten more characters added by that time. They are always rewarded immediately after their release, then added into 4* rotation: so you have to add in those 10 characters covers once, and probably 5 of them twice in the rotation. That’s fifteen more covers for 1K rewards, so five more weeks – why which time there will be –another- two 4* characters added and –another- two 4* 1K rewards after their release, and it’s probably safe to add another one of the new 10 a 2nd time…so let’s add yet another week.

The next time you’ll see JG-P is April 11-April 17 2016 – 25 weeks (almost six months) from now.

YOU AREN’T TRANSITIONING THROUGH LEGENDARY TOKENS.

But wait – you’ll get chances outside of PVP…right? Let’s look at those. You’ll have some chances from heroic tokens – but laughably low chances. You’ll get them from Legendaries (in DDQ) six times a month! Except most of the legendaries with the 4*’s that have been out for any amount of time have already passed – it’s coming up to legendary impossible season: remaining that anyone may have reasonably covered are only SL, KP, PX, -Maybe- Carnage or JG. Also remaining: Cyc, Hulk, Thing, Fal-Cap, MrF, Iceman – these are unlikely to be covered/leveled (so these nodes will be impossible) to the average player (some will have gotten lucky and have these covers—others will have purchased them so the node is possible).

Let’s date those heroics again, shall we? Every time three run (15 days) you’ll have a new 4* character that is added to this rotation as well. So let’s just make guesses, and assume D3 will be “benevolent” and put the characters that have been in the game longest first – so you’ll have some chance to have them covered enough to beat that node.

10/30 Starlord. 11/4 PX. 11/9 Kingpin. 11/14 Carnage. 11/19 JG. 11/24 Thing. 11/29 Fal-Cap. 12/4 MrF. 12/9 Iceman. 12/14 Cyclops. 12/19 Hulk. 12/24 4* added week of 10-30. 12/29 4* added week of 11-13. 1/3/2016 4* added week of 11-27. 1/8 4* added week of 12-11. 1/13 4* added week of 12-25. 1/18/16 MAYBE (assuming another one wasn’t added in) XF rotates in 2nd time….the last time you saw him was 9/15/15, three months ago – and five characters/25 days were added in between. Next time you see him will be even more than that.

This “transition” thread isn’t really being written to the whales, or those who can consistently hit 1300 every PVP. But perhaps you PVE to legendary progression every time as well! That means a two extra legendaries per week, good job!

Now, what are your odds for a specific cover: let’s say JG-P? Right now there are 19 characters – but also 5*’s in there, so you have 1 in 63 chance of that cover. Assuming 4* added every other week, and 5* added once a month, there will be 24 4*’s and 4 5*’s in December – by 2016 you’ll have a 1 in 84 chance to get any specific cover in Legendary tokens.

YOU AREN’T TRANSITIONING WITH HP.

Approximately once a month two 4*’s and one 5* are being added. As a player who is almost down to four 2*’s and one 1* (basically enough for DDQ), my roster slots are already 900HP.

Anyone who kept every 2* character only (selling most 1*’s) has been paying 1000 HP per roster slot for months.
You are paying 3000 HP every season for roster slots (assuming you get the new 5*, you’ll need that slot for that character eventually). Do you make 3000 HP every season? You do? Wow, great! Tell me how, please.

But that’s just for slots. No more buying covers for you!

YOU AREN’T TRANSITIONING WITH ISO

Each 4* costs ~300,000 ISO to level. Do you make 300,000 ISO every two weeks? (HA HA HA HA! No you don’t.)

YOU AREN’T TRANSITIONING WITH COVERS GIVEN OUT.

Every two weeks you need thirteen more 4* covers. Let’s say you aren’t in top 1% (you don’t get T1/2 in anything), and likely not in top 5% (you don’t 1300 each PVP – I don’t know what % does this).

Without that, you received in two weeks: 6x PVP 1K progressions, 2x DDQ legendaries, 4x PVE legendary progressions…..let’s say you pull a ton of heroics every two weeks and get one there….let’s say two from individual + alliance rewards of new character…let’s say two from division of Sim progression/Season progression/Season alliance reward.

That’s pretty good! You’ve received 17! Good job! I’m not sure how many folks/alliances are left that T100 every PVP and PVE…but if you can do that, you are in the top 10% or so of all players. And you barely kept up getting covers (17) compared to covers released (13…again, ignoring 5*’s here…).

EXCEPT, of course, you didn’t get the 17 covers you actually needed, did you? You had a bunch of doubles that didn’t do you any good! Again, as described above: you have a 1 in 57 chance for any given 4* right now, and about 1 in 72 chance by 2016. Those might all be needed! And…they might not be.

And again – that’s assuming you get 17 4*’s every two weeks. I think maybe two of our 20 (T50 PVP alliance) get that many – and we’re almost all hitting every 1K and all alliance/season PVP progressions. DDQ is going to be a toss-up, heroics are a toss-up, PVE most of us don’t run for sanity’s sake. Personally, I likely get an average of 12 (a number that will be going down as I start failing upcoming DDQ’s). That’s still pretty good! But I’m at nearly 600 days also – can you do that at 365 days anymore?

SOLUTIONS TO EACH OF THESE PROBLEMS. IT IS TIME TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS.

It’s time to treat the 4*’s like 3*’s used to be. They should be at 800 as a progression reward, they should be given out as T100 rewards for individuals in PVP and PVE, they should be given out as T100 rewards for teams in PVP and PVE.

It’s time to have DDQ-Legendary be daily. Plenty of these coming up won’t be beatable by the vast majority of players – making them daily lets you know that’s ok, you’ll have another chance tomorrow – you don’t have to wait five (or 35) days before you can beat one.

It’s time for roster slots to be capped at a lower amount. 500 HP each is plenty with the current release schedule, that’s still 1500 a season needed!

It’s time for resources to be scaled up in-game as characters are added. Did you add three characters (roster spots) that require 1.1 million ISO to level? How much of a % was that compared to previous season? Time to add iso in at that percentage, perhaps in the “20 iso” rewards or in the daily drop rewards. (This is an HP solution as well!)

It’s time to give out more covers all around. Solutions for this are bandied around all the time: trade covers (in-alliance only?), a new token type that includes 3*/4* only (no 2* or 5*), higher 4* rate in Heroics. Perhaps some mechanic where you sell un-needed covers as a resource to get needed covers….

Note – a very slowed character release rate would also solve all of these problems. But as D3 seems unwilling to do that, their increased release rate has essentially created all of these problems. It is time to fix the problems that this release rate has created.

December 2015 bump: CP did not address resource shortages or getting specific 4* covers!
January 2016 bump: Champions will not address resource shortages or getting specific 4* covers!

2

Bumping in hope that the devs listen to you.

I’ll share my experience. One month ago I spent money to max both HB and JG (currently my only two fully covered and maxed 4s) , since then I have been able to hit 1300 every pvp (12 legendary tokens), get all the legendary tokens in pve (6 last month) plus two more leg tokens from DDQ fight. Approximately 20 tokens per month. Now, in theory that’s a lot of new 4* covers and an excelent pace to fully transition in 4* land. Actually of those 20 covers, two were 5*. Ok so 18 covers to develop my 4* characters. From those 18, I opened 2 HB and 1 JG, and like in all the rarity realms in mpq, there are completely useless 4* that is literally a waste of ISO to even level them up (IW, Starlord, Elektra), I got tons of those too in my leg tokens. So at the end, I end up with only 10 useful 4* covers for decent characters PER month, then add 5 more truly useful covers for reaching 1000 in pvp in that month: that’s what you get playing at a really high end level. Coming out of the anniversary, we were thrown up with 26 new 4* covers to look out for in just one week. Before the month even ends, X23 will come and add up 13 more covers to the count. 39 new covers against 15 I earned in one month, again, earning almost all the possible leg tokens and 4* covers that you can get per month.

Because covers are evenly distributed across all characters, it will take me months before I can have my third fully covered and maxed 4*. Now imagine the poor guys in the 3* land. Some struggling to even reach 1k in pvp, and almost impossible to reach 1.3 unless u spend a lot of hp and the boosted 3* that week are top tier. I’m completely blaffed when people say to those guys, well u know, maybe you should work harder because that’s how I got there. But I have always guessed (correctly) that these guys have been way too long in 4* land that they have become completely blind to the real problem that the 3* guys are facing. Is completely untrue that the 4* transition is easier now that it was months ago, common sense tells you that the flooding of new 4* covers completely outpace the speed that you can earn them, and is a trend unlikely to stop. I was in 3* land not too long ago, and when you are there, it’s completely obvious that transitioning to 4* land is impossibly unless you $$$$$$$$!$$$!!!

3

Can somebody answer this for me?

How many 3*s were released AFTER Deadpool’s Daily Quest was introduced?

Because I think that the devs would rather get the numbers up until they’re mostly done with them, then make it easier to grab them, then make it easier to flood specific ones or whatnot.

But then again, they added Legendarys and the 4* DDQ and they don’t seem to be done releasing 4s any time soon. And the new feature they talked about wasn’t specifically about 4s, just all star-up transitions.

Basically I don’t think they want to open the floodgates, metaphorically, until they got most of the 4*s they want.

4

At least four in Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Bullseye, and Vision. I think that Iron Fist and Kamala Khan also post-date the intro of DDQ.

Cage and Squirrel Girl both came before, I’m pretty sure.

5

Listen to him? This is purposly done,calculated. Unless you/he/she can make them feel bad about it. The only thing they might “listen” to is fixing some game problems,maybe. Not that this isn’t a problem,becuase it is.

This game intentionally or unintentionally is designed to piss off the free-to-players. It will be battle of the whales if it isn’t already. 4* transitioning is done with $$ only.

6

I’d like to add that a 5 star.png
cover should be the top 100 alliance award for the season. The current “legendary” token is pretty inadequate for that much effort.

7

Are you actually saying that the current 4* cover acquisition rate is in anyway close to to 3*s a year ago? That’s rich.

The “long haul” for 4* progression is currently well under the 3* rate a year ago or even a year and a half ago.

The massive difference with 4*s is that you literally can’t get more than 1 at a time. You don’t have alliance placement to help you. And you don’t have PVE to help you outside of a really lucky legendary token pull.

Additionally, those useless 3* covers only go to show how little PVP matters to the vast majority of the playerbase because most of us taking those 3* covers don’t need them and it’s not like d3 is working to expand the placement tiers to make sure those covers go to lower tier players.

Edit: PVP isn’t entirely useless to lower tier players. If you are working to cover two stars, it probably isn’t too bad but going from 2* to 3* is hilariously terrible in PVP and has been that way for months.

8

But slowing releases literally does nothing when the acquisition rate is so minimal. You can’t compare the slowing of 3* releases to 4* releases when their acquisition rates are so different. That’s my point.

9

Personally, I believe they will eventually increase the chances to get 4* covers. First, they still haven’t come out with what their earlier announcement about a new way to earn them will actually be. Second, there’s no reason to assume that things are going to continue to be this way. If that were the case, we’d still have useless environmental tiles, and you couldn’t get 2*s randomly from pvp matches, and there’d be no DDQ.

There WILL be an easier way to get 4* covers. 3* were difficult to get until they came out with a ton of 3* and there were several 4*. My feeling is that eventually, probably after another few 5* and several more 4* come out, they will release an easier way to get 4* covers. The only real issue is time.

10

I’m not the person you quoted, but about a year ago, it WAS difficult/impossible for new players to keep up on release rates, let alone make traction on ascending. On top of that, it is about this time that certain 3* characters were “vaulted” on a semi-rotating basis.

I didn’t start to make traction on having more than 3-4 covers for a particular 3* hero until after DDQ began, and even after that it was mid-summer or so before I finally actually had at least one cover for each of them so that they could progress. I still have She-Hulk, Punisher, Vision, and 3* Daken well under-covered. A couple others only have 10-11.

11

I agree with everything you posted except this.

I’m towards the end of my 3* phase and will be starting my 4* soon and what I have noticed is that I normally get around 100k ISO every week. It’s basically enough for me to level a 3* at 120 to 166 (about 97k) at that rate with some left over for any small incremental levels of any 4* cover that happens to fall my way. I only play pve to get the legendary tokens and in pvp I only aim for the 1k progression rewards. Obviously, I’m playing DDQ every day but I hardly participate in the lightning rounds (which is one of the quickest ways to earn ISO). Don’t forget the daily rewards from your facebook friends (I only have two). So I don’t see 300K every fortnight as being impossible, it’s a lot of work but it’s definitely achievable. Just placing top 1-2 in pve every sub and event and if you make it to 1.3k in pvp, the placement rewards is a fair chunk of that 100k ISO for the fortnight already.

12

They’ll increase the chances of getting 4* covers the second the have a solid 5* system in place and they dilute the 4* tier. Same thing they did with 3*. Nothing has changed.

They were releasing 3* extremely quickly, more characters meant a lesser chance of pulling the cover you needed, iso was (and is) still hard to come by, and roster slots hadn’t been capped so they were potentially in more expensive. This is the cycle, it seems. This time next year (if the game still exists) people will be complaining about how the 5* transition is too hard, how can they be expected to compete with the 6* tier when given so few chances at 5* covers, did we really need a 6* Wolverine, etc.

13

I agree. Based on the past we can see they saturate the * realm with characters first, then open the doors. If they did it before hand it might be too easy to acquire a single character.

I feel like we are at the point where we should be getting a better transition real soon. I am an old player and my missing 4s are becoming a really steep cliff. I will soon be at the point where I might have to miss a few 4 DDQs.

14

I was holding back on posting something like this until we at least got wind of that “new feature” that has been hinted for a while to improve the 4* transition. Hopefully, now that the anniversary madness is done, we’ll be hearing about it soon.

15

Impossible?

I believe that many people added 20 years to their age before posting in the “who are the mpq players” thread.

16

You know, once they decide to speed up that 4* gain, it won’t be long before the same complaints will rise on getting those 5* covers. And who knows, maybe some super rare 6* covers will be introduced by then (the Watcher? Ego the living planet? Eternity? Phoenix force?), making all those problems shift up one more level. (they should save Beyonder for 7* tier icon_mrgreen.gif
)

17

IceIX suggested first 5* should be Howard the Duck when we were joking about those.

If they fix only the cover problem and not the ISO/HP problem…no one will complain about getting the covers, they’ll complain instead about not being able to level those that they have covered.

I guess that’s part of my suffering. I get that -something- in the game should be rare. But should -everything- be rare? HP, ISO, covers, tokens…come on, give out something. If 5*'s are the super-rare and you are going to have boat-loads of 4* covers that take boat-loads of ISO to level…maybe make either those covers or that ISO a bit more abundant in the game.

I can’t imagine starting this game as a newbie and looking at the ISO/HP you’d need.

18

If I gotta have either an inability to get covers or an ISO deficit, I’ll take the ISO deficit, honestly.

If the covers flow but it takes longer to level the characters, I’m still feeling a sense of progress, even if it takes forever to max level the characters. Because there’s always something new dropping for the characters I DO have. Or a non-trivial reason to spend on a new roster slot if it’s a character I don’t have (and can reasonably believe that I have a hope of covering).

If I’m awash in ISO, what good does it do me if my 3* are all level 166 and I have no 4* to spend my ISO on?

That isn’t meant to trivialize the ISO drought. It’s an issue that does need addressing. But, I mean, as things stand right now, my roster needs about 3.1 million ISO for everybody to hit max level. I’m not making a dent in that anytime soon, so any sense of “progress” on that front is, uh…muted.

But if I start getting 4* covers with reasonable regularity for the nine 4* I have at three or fewer covers? Okay, I still have a reason to log in, still have a reason to play, because even if it’ll take me a while to max everybody, I still have new shinies to play with on a regular basis.

19

I’m mixed on this. Yeah, it would be nice if more 4s were easily accessible, but then they would be accessible for everyone else as well. I’m already pretty regularly seeing teams with maxed 4s in PvP, and I’m just not sure that things are so bad right now that it would be worth it to flood PvP with more teams of maxed JeanBusters.

Also, I spent a lot of time getting the 166s that I have, and I’m not sure I’m ready for most of them to go obsolete.

20

With all the comparisons to how the game was a year ago with how it is today when it comes to character releases:

It is worth noting that 3* releases inherently allow players to earn more covers than 4* releases. Not including any alliance rewards:

  • Up to 3 covers in the initial PVE (Top 150)
  • 1 cover via progression in the next PVE
  • Up to 3 covers in the PVP before the characters PVP
  • 1 cover via progression in the character’s PVP

And since 3* are the standard rewards for any event that same structure repeats every time the character is up. I understand the argument against 4* deadpool daily just giving a cover a day or whatever, but 1 year ago (so roughly pre-Mystique, Blade, Rocket & Groot, Gamora, Kamala, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Bullseye, Cyclops, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Squirrel Girl, and Vision) there was still a higher rate of possible cover accumulation for 3* characters than currently with 4*.

The biggest issue at the time and the months after was the vaulting – which was design to help offset character releases – but had the side effect of stopping progression on some characters completely (Hi, Black Panther! Hi!). Deadpool Daily made the vault concept unnecessary (among other reasons).