Random Feedback

zarrick13

Dear D3,

Thank you for creating a very interesting take on Puzzle Quest using the always awe-inspiring Marvel world. When I first started playing this game, some several hundred playing hours ago, I wasn't sure what to expect. I've always been a fan of Puzzle Quest games and hoped that a Free-To-Play model wouldn't somehow ruin something that had nigh infinite potential. I was delighted by the layout, the powers heroes have, the way the game played, the strategies I could bring together with multi-hero teams, and just about everything. The core of the game is straight-up fun, and for that I applaud what you have created. I am even a big fan of some of the more recent changes, what with team-ups and alliances adding some much-needed diversity to the core hero vs. hero gameplay.

Yet as time passed and I grew from fledgling MPQ'er to someone wanting to leverage the tactics I've learned and heroes I've earned to ever-increasing difficulties of PvE and PvP competition, I've grown supremely frustrated with one core factor in the formula. See, one of the bigger appeals to Puzzle Quest for me was growing a character from a scrappy nobody to a powerful force to be reckoned with, and while I expect there to be some effort put into making this happen, I've become very disenchanted and frustrated with the current methods used to gain characters above the 2* rating. You have quite the rosterful now, with more being added fairly regularly, filled with characters and powers that could have so many interesting combinations.

I understand that these 3* and 4* covers are marked as 'rare' or better. I don't expect to get a 3* cover every other day (though it's possible if you spend enough time in the content and do well enough in the rankings, it's true). However I do expect that if I put hours into a game, I'll see some kind of worthwhile advancement. The problem is that many rewards are too random. I have a fairly large roster now, chock full of many 3* characters that just don't have enough covers to be useful, no matter how much I really wish to use them and their powers. After weeks spent on this game, they're really nothing more than some eye-candy and wishful thinking, while I'm forced to rely on the couple characters I've managed to snag enough covers for to stand a chance to stay competitive in my brackets. I don't mind the competition. The competition is fun, and I particularly enjoy fielding several groups of 2* heroes to play. What I do mind is that when I do get enough points for some kind of reward, there's a very high chance it will be for something I don't need, want, or didn't have before, marking yet another infinite climb from zero-power to somewhat useful.

I feel there needs to be a real shakeup in how heroes are given. Getting a rare/legendary hero should feel good, like an accomplishment, not like you're trying to climb a new mountain after climbing ten others just like it. You don't feel good until you've hit that particular accomplishment upwards of ten to thirteen times, and hopefully you got the right colors you wanted/needed to make them viable to boot. This is not value for the time and potential money spent on a game that has such great fun in it. Really playing MPQ should be about pitting heroes you like and want to use against other players with teams they want to use. Balancing should be about making sure viable teams can knock each other out. You want roster diversity? You want a real interesting playerbase? You want to take this game to the next level? Cut the random nonsense out of getting rewards, offer up some ways to get players the characters they want. Something a little more attainable than 1500 HP for a cover perhaps. Let people get what they want to fill their roster, set the bar higher for those rare rewards, and let'em have at that way. People will be a little more eager to open their wallets when they know they can get something they want/need instead of having to either cheese a tournament to inch a character up another cover or abuse free gold tokens every day in hopes they'll get that hero they want.

You may need to think up some different rewards, but trust me, it'll be worth it when people can play they way they want to instead of being forced to use whatever luck threw at them for however many weeks until the right stars align to give them the characters they were shooting for in the first place. Some new rewards might even appease those players with maxed-out rosters and characters to get them butting heads again.

One possible step in that direction would be to at least eliminate the color-specific covers. When you get a new cover, let the player choose which power it upgrades. That at least makes every cover a little more valuable to the player and nukes a smidge of the frustration of getting ten X-Force Green covers in a row. It's bad enough that getting a rare/legendary cover is indeed so rare, getting one you can't even use anymore when another color would have been helpful is soul-crushing.

I'll admit, I started playing Marvel Heroes instead of MPQ. As much as I enjoy the Puzzle Quest format and would much rather play a puzzle game over an action game any day, at least I can set goals in Marvel Heroes to get something I want and get there with a reasonable amount of effort or coin. You don't get money by frustrating players. You get money by making them feel awesome enough to want to play and spend more.

Looking forward to what you do with this game in the future.

tl;dr: This game rocks! Can you guys make rewards not so random and annoying so we can actually play the heroes we want to have fun with?