Upcoming Change: Character Level Shift

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Is this change likely to make it possible for steam users in the 2* transition phase likely to be able to continue to progress?

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dkffiv wrote:

I'd like to point out that Iron Man and I'd assume Hulk are on a roughly 7 hour respawn timer if downed and can only presume that will turn into 8+ hours with the level shift. You are completely **** over players would built around tanks (or whichever character they got covers for first) instead of assassins.

Hulk is supposedly put on fast regeneration so shall heal up faster (guess 4-5h). Probably not much difference for practice if you actually down him.

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Budget Player Cadet wrote:

Is this change likely to make it possible for steam users in the 2* transition phase likely to be able to continue to progress?

As I wrote elsewhere, the game produces ~40 health packs a day. One playing every 3h can access all. If you play morning/evening, can access ~15. If one time, like 9. That is a huge difference when a pack value is 40HP and a 2* player with progress potential likely will run out of them faster than his time for those few-session cases.

OTOH we have many players in game and I estimate the big ones are in minority by far so you have to run your own experiments really. (especially as the answer is dependent on your full roster, MMR, play schedule and other things). I'm sure ** players will keep getting *** covers for good and many of them, but which ones?

Probably a better question to ask is whether it worth it really -- what you gain by roster development except more punishment?

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Robably wrote:

If the goal was truly to have roster diversity this would do it.. people would be able to select for powers they want, or compensate for very poor draw rates from packs.. like mine

They keep talking about roster diversity, and honestly it just annoys me. How are we supposed to play different people when there's no way to get covers for them? Say you want to level, I dunno, Human Torch. You have a 1% chance of drawing him, or you can pay $10 for ONE power rank ... assuming you even have that color to start with. Otherwise, the best you can do is slowwwwwwwly gain a cover or two of whatever hero they decide to dole out. If they wanted diversity, they should make it easier to get the covers you want. Respecs, trades (with your own covers), etc.

There are so many people I would use if I could, and combinations I would want to try, but there is no point when the heroes are at 1/1/2 or something.

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SaintJimmy wrote:

Robably wrote:

If the goal was truly to have roster diversity this would do it.. people would be able to select for powers they want, or compensate for very poor draw rates from packs.. like mine

They keep talking about roster diversity, and honestly it just annoys me. How are we supposed to play different people when there's no way to get covers for them? Say you want to level, I dunno, Human Torch. You have a 1% chance of drawing him, or you can pay $10 for ONE power rank ... assuming you even have that color to start with. Otherwise, the best you can do is slowwwwwwwly gain a cover or two of whatever hero they decide to dole out. If they wanted diversity, they should make it easier to get the covers you want. Respecs, trades (with your own covers), etc.

There are so many people I would use if I could, and combinations I would want to try, but there is no point when the heroes are at 1/1/2 or something.

Yup couldnt agree more.. I'd much prefer to be able to level characters damage/hp seperately to their powers... And as I say, abolishing the level cap would also work to support it. My roster hasnt really shifted for months due to horrendous drop rates.. and even though I'd spent some money to buy some powers, its not really something I can sustain forever.... $15 a month is alright.. more than that would be ludicrous.

killerkoala

SaintJimmy wrote:

Robably wrote:

If the goal was truly to have roster diversity this would do it.. people would be able to select for powers they want, or compensate for very poor draw rates from packs.. like mine

They keep talking about roster diversity, and honestly it just annoys me. How are we supposed to play different people when there's no way to get covers for them? Say you want to level, I dunno, Human Torch. You have a 1% chance of drawing him, or you can pay $10 for ONE power rank ... assuming you even have that color to start with. Otherwise, the best you can do is slowwwwwwwly gain a cover or two of whatever hero they decide to dole out. If they wanted diversity, they should make it easier to get the covers you want. Respecs, trades (with your own covers), etc.

There are so many people I would use if I could, and combinations I would want to try, but there is no point when the heroes are at 1/1/2 or something.

now with level shift your 3* 1/1/2 will be = to your 1*50. but then again if you are playing pvp everyone's character gets a boost in levels too, so it's worst for us in the long run, more heath of enemy team and more damage to us, and with more heath on our characters longer waits for regeneration. Sucks to be us. it's our fault we don't have more powerful 3*; we should pay 100's and 100's dollars just to play a little bit longer with a larger rosters or "We need to buy more health packs". thx true healing we either play less or pay more. i for one, play less and troll the forums.

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I agree that character availability is important for diversity (the other being character balance), but they have made it somewhat better. At least for the f2p players. You get a 3-star for top 100 now and you can now also get up to 4 covers per event.

One problem is that recent offerings have been bad. Punisher is already one of the most popular, gsbw and dd are pretty undesirable, etc.

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From page 3 of this thread :

IceIX wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

1. Have you considered that perhaps the reason those players have 3*s sitting doing nothing is that they don't have enough covers or ISO to level them? It is incredibly unlikely that people who play this type of game "cap out" on purpose.
2. "Players aren't getting what they should out of the more powerful characters" - How does one do this without covers/ISO and/or $?

1. Yep. We have quite a lot of players that are sitting on mounds of growing Iso-8 and maxed 1*/2* characters. Every now and then a new character release will make a couple people level one, then we see them suddenly blow the rest of the Iso-8 on leveling others as they figure out that there's a whole new world out there.
2. They don't get what they should because they don't invest the Iso-8 that they have in them when that's available. We've got a not insignificant percentage of players sitting there with 3-5 85s and a half dozen or so completely viable 3*s that have enough covers to overtake those 85s. Those same users also tend to be hoarding Iso for... I dunno, the Isopocalypse or something. Users that don't crunch the numbers or read guides simply don't realize that with a relatively minimal Iso-8 expenditure, the characters that they already have could give them a strong boost.

gobstopper wrote:

Adding 25 levels to a 1 cover Punisher is not going to all of a sudden make him competitive. Like you said, since the level shift is global, whatever "bonuses" are canceled out by the boost that everyone else has too. I would even argue that the power difference is actually exacerbated by this change, because while the level difference is the same, the level 166 has 2-3 abilities that have scaled but the underleveled 3* only has 1-2. Can you share playtest results that compare level 15 vs level 141 and level 40 vs level 166?

A Level 40 Punisher base shows a 1* holdout that these 3* characters without much of a push will be stronger than their current roster. They then have something to work for and will likely start down the path of leveling 2*s and 3*s to do so. 2* players similarly suddenly have less than half the deficit to make up to start pushing into 3* land. As for shift in power levels, a 15 vs a 141 will get thwomped more than a 40 versus a 166. Tile damage and ability damage don't scale linearly. The difference isn't night and day, but there is a tad more survivability there.

gobstopper wrote:

TLDR This change is meant to "gently nudge" players to spend $ on their "suddenly more powerful" characters.

Nope. The people we're targeting are generally sitting on hoards of unused/unusable Iso. They're not likely to suddenly buy more if they haven't figured out a use for it by now. Of course, a few weeks down the line when they're again down to normal levels of Iso-8 in the bank, who knows. Our main goal here is to get people that have stalled to realize that there's more to the game than the little tiers they've set for themselves and continue to play as a result.

Looks like the character stats will indeed be changing rather than moving laterally. Which sucks for theHappyDance (and us if they don't want to bother updating the tools - which is totally understandable), as well as Nonce Equitaur 2.

OnesOwnGrief

I'm gonna need this update to hit like RIGHT after the Daredevil tournament because I don't want to see level spikes during a Punisher tournament. That would be no beuno.

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Amanda1983 wrote:

Looks like the character stats will indeed be changing rather than moving laterally. Which sucks for theHappyDance (and us if they don't want to bother updating the tools - which is totally understandable), as well as Nonce Equitaur 2.

Thanks for pointing that out. So it's like I said then. All the stat tables will need to be redone, and I better wait for the change to go live to make sure everything else is accurate.

killerkoala

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'm gonna need this update to hit like RIGHT after the Daredevil tournament because I don't want to see level spikes during a Punisher tournament. That would be no beuno.

icex said, "We're currently planning on making a change (likely during the week of 7/1)" so it's tue-thurs, cause i know they don't want be in office fixing things on 4th of july, if anything goes wrong. and they will want to mess up and delay lightning rounds and the scaling for heroics event ending thursday

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IceIX wrote:

...
1. Yep. We have quite a lot of players that are sitting on mounds of growing Iso-8 and maxed 1*/2* characters. Every now and then a new character release will make a couple people level one, then we see them suddenly blow the rest of the Iso-8 on leveling others as they figure out that there's a whole new world out there.
2. They don't get what they should because they don't invest the Iso-8 that they have in them when that's available. We've got a not insignificant percentage of players sitting there with 3-5 85s and a half dozen or so completely viable

Uh, I wonder what rocket scientist mitigates such things with a global level bump really.

In other games you can see figures the character will be after improvement or just have a 'Confirm' button on the skill development page so you can allocate points at will and look at change of relates stats then decide what works for you or cancel the whole thing.

But such info or commit thing is clearly not implementable for MPQ, becuause, err, why really?

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IceIX wrote:

We're currently planning on making a change (likely during the week of 7/1) to alter the starting levels of each of the rarities of characters past 1*. The max levels will be shifted according to this same amount, making the new top ends change accordingly. Characters will automatically shift the number of current levels equivalent to their rarity. This change will be retroactive, so all characters in the game will automatically be adjusted to the new levels. These changes are intended to make gaining a brand new rarer character immediately useful for those players topped out or transitioning from one rarity level to another. The changes to levels are as follows:

Rarity    Current (Base)  Current (Cap)    New (Base)     New (Cap)     Change
1*              1              50               1             50          +0
2*              6              85              15             94          +9
3*             15             141              40            166         +25
4*             30             230              70            270         +40

Leveling costs are unchanged with those costs simply shifted as well. So a 3* character leveling from 15->16 will cost the same amount as a post-shift 3* leveling from 40->41.

Is there any possibility I could get my hands on the updated stats tables for all the characters, so I don't have to find a trainer and make a dud sandboxed account in order to pull all that data for my roster tools? Thanks.

OnesOwnGrief

killerkoala wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'm gonna need this update to hit like RIGHT after the Daredevil tournament because I don't want to see level spikes during a Punisher tournament. That would be no beuno.

icex said, "We're currently planning on making a change (likely during the week of 7/1)" so it's tue-thurs, cause i know they don't want be in office fixing things on 4th of july, if anything goes wrong. and they will want to mess up and delay lightning rounds and the scaling for heroics event ending thursday

That still doesn't invalidate the time I gave. It could have happened anywhere from Sunday in the middle of the PvE/Daredevil tournament all the up to Saturday of the same week. It is still the same week.

Mawtful

john1620b wrote:

So...you increase the healing time on characters, and then increase their health to make healing take longer?

ugh. so much this. I was just getting comfortable with going all out until I was out of health packs and my roster was dead and then leaving the game alone for ~2.5-3 hours and being able to come back. Now I'm just going to have to leave the game for even longer. And that makes it even less likely for me to buy ISO/HP.

jk, I'm never spending money on this game again anyway - just got to make it sound like they're missing out on sales, since that's what drives design.

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theHappyDance wrote:

BTW, for anyone interested, Puzzle Quest 1 and 2 are both on sale for $5 in the steam summer sale. Unlike this game, those are both finished products that you can pickup and play whenever you want and don't have constant changes to screw you over.

For the love of... Do NOT pick those up, it's a trap! I've tried PQ2 and the AI is infuriatingly hard. You will cry.

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Sorry if this has been said before, but I suspect this is also a ploy to make seed team climbing unviable, by making everyone take longer to kill..

Though with increased damage, who knows

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iPulzzz wrote:

Sorry if this has been said before, but I suspect this is also a ploy to make seed team climbing unviable, by making everyone take longer to kill..

Though with increased damage, who knows

Only the featured character gets an increase in levels on the seed team. The 1*s remain unchanged.

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vetheran wrote:

theHappyDance wrote:

BTW, for anyone interested, Puzzle Quest 1 and 2 are both on sale for $5 in the steam summer sale. Unlike this game, those are both finished products that you can pickup and play whenever you want and don't have constant changes to screw you over.

For the love of... Do NOT pick those up, it's a trap! I've tried PQ2 and the AI is infuriatingly hard. You will cry.

True it is a lot harder, but I didn't consider that a problem or the following reasons:

1) No competition, and no timed component to when you have to complete matches if you want to progress. So you're free to progress at your own pace. You can play for hours if you want, or you can just play one match, depending on what you want.
2) No losing penalty. If you lose, you can try again immediately. Also, the increased difficulty IMO better mimics what you'd experience playing actual humans. MPQ isn't true PvP, but the way it's set up nobody actually wants difficult matches because it's a competition and you're screwed for seeking them out when everyone else goes for the easiest ones possible and you have to P2P if you lose.
3) The game is always there. If you put it down for a month, you won't find that you're hopelessly behind with no way to catch up. Your progress is still there, and you simply continue where you left off. You don't come back and find that you now have 20 more characters or powers you need to earn in order to keep playing.
4) You choose your own play style and combine the powers you think will help you win games. Because there's no competition, no time-sensitive component, no health packs, and no losing penalty, you're free to mix and match powers and try different approaches. Pretty much whatever tickles your fancy.

It's pretty much the way a proper game should be. The problem with MPQ IMO is that matches are either mind-numbingly easy and repetitive, or else they aren't (usually because the game cheats rather than actually playing smart) and you're punished severely and expected to spend money to keep playing.

Oh yeah, and most importantly 5) $5 (sale price) gives you full access to the whole game. Progress though tough is entirely consistent, and not designed around trying to trick you into spending more money. That's a big thing. Ask yourself what would $5 get you in MPQ.

IMO the only thing MPQ has going for it are the social aspect of the community here and alliances, but as awesome as they are, I'm not sure that's worth all the bull-shard you have to deal with from this game.

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iPulzzz wrote:

Sorry if this has been said before, but I suspect this is also a ploy to make seed team climbing unviable, by making everyone take longer to kill..

Though with increased damage, who knows

The change doesn't affect 1* characters so seed teams should be unaffected, as long as they aren't making any stealth changes. In principle, it should make the tough teams like Battle_Angel easier since their lower level in relation to the rest of teams now. But the general idea is correct, it seems intended to cause more damage in PvP so you have to either wait for health packs, buy them, or miss out on covers and sic have to buy those as a result (costing you a lot more, which is what the devs seem to want).