Question for the X-men about motivation.

Unknown

Alright guys so I before I start, for the love of god can we not let this turn into some flame war or "play harder bro" session? Thanks.

Ok, so I am just looking for some insight from the X-men top scorer's on why you push so high? I am talking the guys that spend 1000-3000HP in EVERY PVP. Don't lie and say you get there in 2-5 shields. We have all seen how much you guys hop and with the cost of boosts and health packs for sentry, the HP adds up. I am not hating on you guys here I just genuinely wonder why in the world anyone would ever do this? It does not make financial sense at all. You are paying 2000 HP over everyone else just to win first and gain an extra 150hp and some extra covers to sell off. Let's all be honest with ourselves here, there is really no skill or secret strategies to this game. High end pvp basically just comes down to how many times you are willing to shield hop with sentry and boosts. You guys are basically buying your way to victory. Is it really worth all the money you spend to be number 1?

Maybe it's just because I am such a cheap person but I don't see the point. I just think about how if I could get some billionaire to sponsor me and one other guy, we could just buy a max rosters and shield hop off each other to 2500+ points in every pvp. There is always someone that is going to be richer and in this game that would be all it would take to win. It's not skill, or strategy, It's how much HP you are willing to spend. It just seems pointless to me. What motivates you guys? You are literally spending 10x the rewards that you are getting from 1st. I just don't get it.

TheHueyFreeman

I'm obviously not an Xman but it's likely a desire to simply be the best at something regardless of the cost. For some people, 2nd or 3rd isn't good enough regardless of whether you already have three XFarces or Bagladies.

I also wouldn't be surprised if they had internal competitions with each other to help incentivize higher scores. Doubtful but would be interesting.

Unknown

Different things motivate different people.
Some of our players just really like the game and like trying to beat personal scores. We also compete within ourselves. X1 vs x2 trying to come on top. Friends trying to top 1 another. Then there's others who shield hop to help others climbing. Sure, WorldRunner wouldn't need to break shield to go from 1700 to 1730, but in doing so 5-6 more of us gain a 45+ point target. People would understand much better if they played with us on occasion. It's like an off the wall party the last day of every pvp.

KillStormFirst

It also depends on what bracket you're in as well as trying to top others within your alliance (for fun like Psykopathic said) who are in a different bracket altogether. Personally I just like the challenge of beating other top players. Worthy Opponents who in turn just want a shot at the X as well. You can't take it personally if one of us beats you. I want points and won't even remember your name when the dust settles because my motivation is I'm a competitive person who hates to lose at anything and I'm a ridiculous comic fan. As far as shields go ..depends on the rewards. I save my HP so I don't have to spend $$ and won't shield until I need to solidify my rank.

Unknown

Started off as a question about why they invest so much time and money into a mobile game and devoled into a rant how you can't compete because they spend more than you.

You lost me at this sentence.

Let's all be honest with ourselves here, there is really no skill or secret strategies to this game.

If you are really curious and not just trying to vent:
They do it because they can. They have the time, they have the money. Some people collect stamps, others build a car in their garage and the X-Men play hard.

Unknown

PPPlaya wrote:

the X-Men play hard.

haha

Edit* - this isn't mocking anyone its just funny that the op stated it is not difficult to climb so high, and you stated they are playing hard. I really just thought it was funny.

NorthernPolarity

While i dont quite get it their motivations, i cant really complain about the effects of their pushing. After all, getting 1100 points for the torch cover would have involved a couple of shield hops in the past since targets dried up at 1k, but since the xmen go up to 1.6k points, you can easily find 1k+ people unshielded to trivially push to 1100.

Beast1970

I'll echo the sentiment about the effects of their pushing. There is always a cry in our alliance chat when the X-Men break shield to push, it is a great chance to queue up some high point matches. As well, some members have been around a while and have provided motivation just in competition terms for some of us. For example, I have Psykopathic in my Season bracket, and have been doing my best to keep him on my screen within the 5 visible ranks when I check my season ranking. So I can definitely understand his explanations about the competition within their alliances. It doesn't have to make sense to the rest of us, it is all about having fun while you are doing it. Besides, and I mean this in a sincere way, someone has to subsidize D3. A free to play game doesn't stay around if everyone plays the game for free, and I'm all right with that.

FaerieMyst

It does not make financial sense at all.

Everything is a matter of cost/benefit but it is erroneous to assume that the benefit has to be in the same currency as the cost.

I own eight pairs of glasses. I can only wear one pair at a time. I don't need more than one pair. So why did I bother to spend the money to buy extra pair? Because the variety gives me pleasure. I smile every morning when I pick out my glasses for the day.

Why do I wear makeup? I don't need to. It doesn't give me an advantage at work. It doesn't make me prettier. It not only costs money to buy but it costs me time every morning to put it on and every night to clean it off. Most of my life I didn't wear makeup. So why bother? It's simple. I enjoy it. To my surprise I discovered that I like the process of putting on my makeup every morning.

I could go on - there are many things in my life that aren't necessary. They exist because I perceive a benefit from them. So I don't wonder why the XMen spend real money for intangible rewards that they don't need. Obviously they do it because it gives them something they want.

I don't know if it is because I turned 50 this year or as a response to some major life events but I do a lot of un-sensible things now that I would have never done when I was younger. Spending my money on a shiny game is one of them.

Unknown

Well it's not a financial argument for sure - I have yet to hear anyone say they play mpq for monetary gain

We have competitive members and they like to score well for all sorts of reasons. Of course you have to spend some to go that high but there is still skill / fun / tension involved. And the top scorers have full rosters so there is no reason to stop just because they hit 1300. The alliance angle has a lot to do with it as Psyko said, I doubt we would go as high just playing individually.

Having said that a lot of us would like to see some changes in formats, characters etc as sentry-hopping is too dominant a strategy right now. Give us a new challenge we can work out how to be best at

I recall a Beee post months ago where he was asked a similar question and compared his 10 3-hour shields to the cost of seeing a movie I think it was. Folk tend to spend their money on what they enjoy, there are plenty of leisure activities I spend a lot more on than mpq! Starbucks gets more from me than mpq for example....

Unknown

mikeydollar7 wrote:

Well it's not a financial argument for sure - I have yet to hear anyone say they play mpq for monetary gain

We have competitive members and they like to score well for all sorts of reasons. Of course you have to spend some to go that high but there is still skill / fun / tension involved. And the top scorers have full rosters so there is no reason to stop just because they hit 1300. The alliance angle has a lot to do with it as Psyko said, I doubt we would go as high just playing individually.

Having said that a lot of us would like to see some changes in formats, characters etc as sentry-hopping is too dominant a strategy right now. Give us a new challenge we can work out how to be best at

I recall a Beee post months ago where he was asked a similar question and compared his 10 3-hour shields to the cost of seeing a movie I think it was. Folk tend to spend their money on what they enjoy, there are plenty of leisure activities I spend a lot more on than mpq! Starbucks gets more from me than mpq for example....

Oh the irony if one of these people bashing our spending is a cigarette smoker. Lol. People spending hundreds a month to kill themselves while I spend $50 a month on my gaming. Oh how horrible I am with money. Haha!

Unknown

Tongue in cheek question: Why do all these vets waste time playing lightning rounds?

I'm pretty sure that working somewhere for 3 hours at minimum wage would buy more iso than than you can win in two LRs

Unknown

mikeydollar7 wrote:

Tongue in cheek question: Why do all these vets waste time playing lightning rounds?
I'm pretty sure that working somewhere for 3 hours at minimum wage would buy more iso than than you can win in two LRs

This question actually gets us closer to what people really want to know, because I think what's going on here is people are asking and answering the wrong question. To answer your question, and I play LRs probably more than any other component of the game, I do it because I like leveling up my characters. It's part of the "progress quest" RPG element to this game that I enjoy, and of course I enjoy the match-3 gameplay. Sure I could buy my levels with money, but that would feel like cheating. I wouldn't have earned it. So I hit the LRs, play a game that's fun, and I make progress towards my goal of powering up my characters, completing my collection one little chunk at a time.

Basically, like most game, I play because it's fun. So the question that really needs to be answered isn't why to you spend so much just to get a high score. Presumably it's because you enjoy it, or you have other problems we probably don't need to be getting into. The real question is why is shield hopping for no meaningful rewards fun for you? I shield hop when there's something on the line I want, but I can't say I really enjoy it. The idea of doing it 10, 20, 50 times in one event for "fun" is hard for me personally to understand. And you're doing it for rewards you could have bought many times over with the money you're spending to get those scores.

So what exactly is it about shield hopping over and over again just to put up a big number that you enjoy?

Sandmaker

My only complaint is that the whole sentry + shield hop strategy has essentially turned the shield button into a "Pay 75 HP and get some points" button. The game's always been on the side of pay2win, but having a button for it is just a little too blatant. It's so safe that it's removed most of the excitement from pvp.

Unknown

I'm not an xmen obviously, but damn why all the threads on them. Being a xmen must be great, you get talked and thought about everyday. Let them do what they do, who cares. If you anyone does, you should be asking why do you care so much. People complain about how much money they spend, xmen should make threads complaining on how much time you spend talking about them. Its getting old seeing all these xmen threads. If people really wanna know how or why they do what they do, join them and find out. Simple as that.

Not trying to be rude to anyone, but its quite pathetic seeing half the community focused on what they are doing.

FaerieMyst

So what exactly is it about shield hopping over and over again just to put up a big number that you enjoy?

I love match three games - and play a bunch of them. MPQ is the only match three that has a strategy element to it. When I play Farm Heroes (every day) I don't think beyond the game board. How I play one level will in no way impact the next level. MPQ has more. One of those strategy elements is shielding. Yes, you can simply shield to not lose points and at a point in every PVP I do that. You can also use shields as a way to acquire more points. There is a strategy to doing this.

Unknown

FaerieMyst wrote:

So what exactly is it about shield hopping over and over again just to put up a big number that you enjoy?

I love match three games - and play a bunch of them. MPQ is the only match three that has a strategy element to it. When I play Farm Heroes (every day) I don't think beyond the game board. How I play one level will in no way impact the next level. MPQ has more. One of those strategy elements is shielding. Yes, you can simply shield to not lose points and at a point in every PVP I do that. You can also use shields as a way to acquire more points. There is a strategy to doing this.

Except there really isn't a whole lot of strategy employed in shield hopping. You load up some boosts and bomb away with your team of choice, which among this crowd means Sentry and whoever. Set your timer for however long as you are brave, when it's up you finish your match and shield. We're not talking about some kind of grand chess match for the ages here.

Now granted there's an element of coordination involved when you have a group of people communicating "I'm unshielding now, queue me up....okay, I'm shielded again, fire away" but that's logistics, not really strategy. If logistics was a big draw the number one app would be The UPS Store game, which I don't think is a real thing, but then again...

Most people don't enjoy this kind of repetition without some kind of tangible reward on the line, and most people don't revel in fairly mundane feats of logistics. So the draw of the behavior in question is confusing to many, myself included.

Unknown

Right now the only strategy left in the game is in pve. Pvp is a complete bore but decent ISO and hp. There's no challenge in getting a high score with unlimited hp and ISO. And it's especially not exciting for me but to each his own. It's also a good thing someone wants to pay to win because without it the game couldn't afford developers to keep on developing.

To say getting a high score here takes skill beyond just having a good roster is like saying it takes skill to operate a vending machine. Eventually people will realise that the high scores list are a complete jokes when the developers emphasize so ding money to get a higher score.

Pve atleast allows you to use your entire roster to fight enemies in new ways. (Now that Spider-Man is nerfed and even more so when cmag is nerfed)

Unknown

Apocalypse sr wrote:

I'm not an xmen obviously, but damn why all the threads on them. Being a xmen must be great, you get talked and thought about everyday. Let them do what they do, who cares. If you anyone does, you should be asking why do you care so much. People complain about how much money they spend, xmen should make threads complaining on how much time you spend talking about them. Its getting old seeing all these xmen threads. If people really wanna know how or why they do what they do, join them and find out. Simple as that.

Not trying to be rude to anyone, but its quite pathetic seeing half the community focused on what they are doing.

The hate is natural, if a little pathetic. You have the same people winning all the time. They are keeping rewards from people who need them even though they do not. Add to that the fact that not only are they winning, but they are putting up scores that are so far above what almost anyone else is doing that they appear to serve no other purpose than to scream "Look at my score! Look how awesome I am!" And I'm not saying that's necessarily what they're doing, but that is going to be the perception among some people, and perception is its own kind of reality.

Most of what you see here is curiosity, which is also natural. There is a phenomenon going on here that defies some degree of logic: spending more to achieve scores for which the rewards are less than the resources expended to win them. If people weren't curious about things they didn't understand, you probably wouldn't have a phone or a computer to play this game on.

Nemek

Thugpatrol wrote:

Apocalypse sr wrote:

I'm not an xmen obviously, but damn why all the threads on them. Being a xmen must be great, you get talked and thought about everyday. Let them do what they do, who cares. If you anyone does, you should be asking why do you care so much. People complain about how much money they spend, xmen should make threads complaining on how much time you spend talking about them. Its getting old seeing all these xmen threads. If people really wanna know how or why they do what they do, join them and find out. Simple as that.

Not trying to be rude to anyone, but its quite pathetic seeing half the community focused on what they are doing.

The hate is natural, if a little pathetic. You have the same people winning all the time. They are keeping rewards from people who need them even though they do not. Add to that the fact that not only are they winning, but they are putting up scores that are so far above what almost anyone else is doing that they appear to serve no other purpose than to scream "Look at my score! Look how awesome I am!" And I'm not saying that's necessarily what they're doing, but that is going to be the perception among some people, and perception is its own kind of reality.

Most of what you see here is curiosity, which is also natural. There is a phenomenon going on here that defies some degree of logic: spending more to achieve scores for which the rewards are less than the resources expended to win them. If people weren't curious about things they didn't understand, you probably wouldn't have a phone or a computer to play this game on.

I think the "hate" that they get is more about the couple of X-Men who were extremely abrasive and rude to many of the posters on the forum. Coupled with the homophobic and mean-spirited comments made from them in other avenues, it was an easy step to vilifying them as a whole, which eventually led to the believability of any underhandedness (as unwarranted as it was.) I'm sure the vast majority of X-Men are really nice people, but there were a couple of them in there that soured the perception.

Unknown

FaerieMyst wrote:

I don't know if it is because I turned 50 this year or as a response to some major life events but I do a lot of un-sensible things now that I would have never done when I was younger. Spending my money on a shiny game is one of them.

*rubs eyes* another female over the age of 30? I didn't think it possible *tear wells in eye*

& personally, I'm on a mission to own ever shade of purple eyeshadow on the planet..

& sms4002 be greatful to people who drop money, they are the ones that keep the game going