My Year of MPQ

Colognoisseur

Tl;dr: Despite a fairly tumultuous year I believe MPQ is much better now than it was when I started playing a year ago.

I started playing MPQ on the train home from NYCC 2013 October 18, 2013. By the time I got off I was well and truly hooked. On that train ride I decided my goal would be to get every character to max level. Exactly one year later I just achieved that goal as I maxed Devil Dinosaur although he needs to be respecced which I will do with my Daily reward red cover in a couple of days.
I realized early on that if I was going to spend money the only resource worth spending money on was HP first for cover slots and later for key covers. After the first few times I stopped buying iso and have only exclusively paid for Stark Salaries for HP since January. I bought when on sale when I could and have averaged a Stark Salary every two weeks over the past year. The first covers I bought were for Rag and GSBW. They were the first power couple in MPQ back in October of 2013. Then all boosts only cost 50 iso; Rag Thunderclap cost 2 red AP. You get the idea boost six red, use thunderclap three times in succession, right in to sniper rifle. That was the speed combo of all time. Give me back those two and I’ll take on a wave of sentry hood teams there has never been a better combo in the game. Just having those two allowed me to compete in everything and back then HP was up for grabs in Lightning Rounds. The other big bonus was Facebook sharing was broken I would wake up in the morning to have received 1,000iso and covers. It was like that every day for about six weeks.
Then they nerfed Rag and there was much anguish in the MPQ realm.
I had already moved on to the next problem child as I had maxed Spidey and was now happily stunlocking my way to victory. Much slower than Rag/GSBW but pretty much a guaranteed win if blue boosted. It was especially important because they began to raise the level of the team we were facing in PvE and if you wanted to grind the nodes you needed Spidey. Back then the nodes were on single refresh cycles of either 8 or 12 hours. You would play either three or five stacks down until the nodes had a value of one and then wait the appropriate time and start over. The only thing that hasn’t changed is you definitely have to be playing in the last two hours if you want a high placement. That also used to be true with PvP with the last hour being a free-for-all sniping fest as you hoped you could keep winning faster than people could be hitting you. Shields fixed this. It was the first Elite buy-in tournament which spawned the technique known as shield hopping as we could watch via leaderboard fluctuations what was going on and after it was over walk your path gave an extensive post-mortem on the forums. From that day forward I shield hopped. The addition of shields has made PvP much more reasonable although it does add a bit of P2W if you use more shields than the 300HP you can earn by playing.
Then they nerfed Spidey and there was much anguish in the MPQ realm.
Except most of us had moved onto MPQ’s next power couple Patch and C.Mags. PvE had enacted something called personal and community scaling which set your PvE opponents based on how easily you beat the node. Scaling is one of the ongoing problems within the game as they try to develop the right mix, currently it is a bit too hard as those who play a PvE regularly should not face a node they cannot beat. It should be very hard but not unbeatable. I believe this will be appropriately tuned at some point and then PvE will be at the same level as PvP.
Then Alliances were introduced and there was rejoicing in the MPQ realm.
Then Seasons were introduced and those in Alliances rejoiced and those not in Alliances were anguished.
Then Season 1 ended and many players felt burned out by the constant grind of one month of continuous play. Those that rejoiced now felt anguish.
By Season 4 things got easier and now the current pattern of a week off followed by a 21 day season seems to be the right balance.
In Seasons the Shield Simulator became relevant again as it reset with every new season allowing players to get covers or go earn iso every month as a new season started.
At this point the latest and current MPQ power couple of Sentry and The Hood reared its head and at the top levels of PvP in conjunction with shield hopping it became the only way to place in the top 10 consistently.
After almost nine months of waiting C. Mags was nerfed except this time they did it right and now he is perhaps the other half of the emerging new MPQ power couple of X-Force and C. Mags. There was anguish and rejoicing especially the latter among people who had previously useless X-Force turn into a top tier character.
The latest addition was the fantastic Gauntlet PvE.
I continue to enjoy playing this game and at this point have no thoughts of stopping anytime soon.
I think the devs have responded to almost every unbalancing event within the game in a measured and responsible manner. Their efforts have kept the game growing and vital. I thank them for it.
I also thank my Alliance mates in Retribution. I had a great time on my own but I really enjoy being a part of this team.
My goal for year two is to keep a maxed roster and eventually have one million iso in the bank.

atomzed

A very good read! Thanks for sharing.

Whenever there's a new character released, I will search retribution, and click on your name to see the max stats and also to check for your ideal build.

Is Xforce and cmag truly that great now? My experience tells me that they are very hard to play against, as it is difficult to deny green, black, red, blue at the same time. I just respec my cmag to 5red and 5 blue. Now wondering whether to spend all my iso on him... hmm decisions decisions. Part of the fun of mpq.

Unknown

I have not been here for a year, but my summary is similar although briefer. MPQ was awesome. Out entered the Dark Ages where things seemed to only get worse for a long while. I actually intended to quit when MMR and the initial death brackets came about. Now, MPQ really seems to be in a state of c Renaissance the past couple months, so I'm glad I hung around.

Ironically, yesterday afternoon I was looking for a post stating that losses while you're shielded don't lower your MMR (still haven't found it). But I can across a Ask Questions segment with IceIx, I think Nonce had probably grouped it together. I would have checked to see who had done all that work of I'd known I'd be wanting to give them credit today.

Any way, there were the most questions I'd ever seen asked and answered. IceIX stayed an incredibly long time just answering questions with lots of them being 3 to 4 questions long each. What struck me is that I had forgotten all about that. There were so many people there that day that are no longer on the forum. People who did not stick it out. Top players and great forum members. There was (as there is now) lots of skepticism about the answers that were provided. Funny is probably not the right word, but it was funny, (this was also a period back when we really weren't getting much communication, unlike now) that here this guy is on a Friday (I believe) after his work hours taking his time to answer questions, and a lot of people would just ignore his answers (like recently). But hopping forward to now they've been doing everything that they said they would. It just has been on their schedule (which is the one they're kind of tied to) instead of ours.

I'm really glad I stuck around. I continue to have more fun and meet more awesome people than anyone should. As long as things continue on the road their on now (and time permitting) I hope the fun does not stop. Lots of thanks goes to the people on the forum, GFC, Django Unbuffed, The Best 20, and the MPQ staff...Even Demiurge_Will who per the MPQ Inflation thread doesn't think I need more iso.

hurcules

Didn't start as early as Colognoisseur, I think I started early Nov or late Oct. But missed a couple of weeks due to vacation. I was introduced to MPQ by a forum post in Ars Technica forum's iPhone games thread.

Instantly hooked was an understatement. I remember staying up late battling into the wee hours (UK time here) for PvP in the pre-shielding days.

Some additional mile stones I remember to complement Colognoisseur's post:

1) Streamlined level up system. I think 2 or 3 weeks into my MPQ life the cover leveling system was changed to the current state. Used to take 20(?) covers to increase a power level. My memory is a bit hazy on this one. Colognoisseur or other October players may be able to shed a light on this.

2) Re-spec. This was life-changing. No more hair-splitting and irreversible decision to apply a cover. The pent-up demand reached fever pitch. Much rejoice and angels sang when IceIX announced it. I could hear forumites' collective emotional breakdown through my monitor.

3) Thorverine with OBW. The power triple. Again, much complain over every PvP node is Thorverine with OBW. Then came the funbalance and even more anguish. But the decision to alter Thor and Wolverine proved the better for the game. Speaking of OBW, do people remember trying to place lower rank for that black OBW cover?

vudu3

Colognoisseur wrote:

On that train ride I decided my goal would be to get every character to max level.

What I am about to say/ask is not meant to be rude or disparaging in any way.

As most of us on this board know, you max out characters immediately after they're released. Depending on your placement in PVE, you need to buy 9 or 10 covers at 1,250 HP a pop in order to do this which will cost more than a Stark Salary to do. I'm just wondering why you choose to do this instead of earn most through typical play. This isn't like an MMO where you can purchase high-level gear but then use it to earn even better gear. Once you get all the covers for a particular character you don't need any more of those covers. Doesn't this take the fun out of most events? You have very little need to push hard in any event that's not giving out a brand new character.

I think that if I did what you do then I'd have quit a long time ago from boredom. I'm already at the point where there are very few covers I actually need and my enjoyment of events with prizes I do not need is definitely less than those where I still need covers. If nine out of every ten events was nothing more then a way to accumulate ISO I'd have little drive to continue playing the game.

IceIX

hurcules wrote:

1) Streamlined level up system. I think 2 or 3 weeks into my MPQ life the cover leveling system was changed to the current state. Used to take 20(?) covers to increase a power level. My memory is a bit hazy on this one. Colognoisseur or other October players may be able to shed a light on this.

Yep, maximum 50 covers to fully level a character, every 5 levels was an ability upgrade.

Colognoisseur

vudu3 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

On that train ride I decided my goal would be to get every character to max level.

What I am about to say/ask is not meant to be rude or disparaging in any way.

As most of us on this board know, you max out characters immediately after they're released. Depending on your placement in PVE, you need to buy 9 or 10 covers at 1,250 HP a pop in order to do this which will cost more than a Stark Salary to do. I'm just wondering why you choose to do this instead of earn most through typical play. This isn't like an MMO where you can purchase high-level gear but then use it to earn even better gear. Once you get all the covers for a particular character you don't need any more of those covers. Doesn't this take the fun out of most events? You have very little need to push hard in any event that's not giving out a brand new character.

I think that if I did what you do then I'd have quit a long time ago from boredom. I'm already at the point where there are very few covers I actually need and my enjoyment of events with prizes I do not need is definitely less than those where I still need covers. If nine out of every ten events was nothing more then a way to accumulate ISO I'd have little drive to continue playing the game.

It is a fair reply and I will try and clarify.
For me a large part of the fun of a game like MPQ is figuring out which characters work well with each other. The closest analogy I have to this was when I played Magic: The Gathering trading card game. I wanted to win but I wanted to win using the best strategy and I want to be one of the first to find that strategy. So when a new M:TG set came out I went and bought four boxes of cards so I could have copies of all of the new cards and I could begin to play and figure out what the best new strategies were.
In MPQ this plays out that I compete to win all the new covers I can in a PvE release. Then I buy the remaining 10 covers for 12,500HP which is less than a 20,000HP Stark Salary. Then I earn over a 100K Iso a week playing the game so I have the iso in the bank to max out the character. Then this is where I have my fun as I can use the new character as the featured character in the next PvE and in the PvP which features them. As a result because of scaling I get to try the new character at a high level in PvE almost immmediately and determine whether it is a good PvE character and with which other characters. Then in the PvP those of you who run into me in the first 24 hours of that will confirm you sometimes will catch me running some completely off the wall combo early on as I test to see what works.
So as you see I am far from bored if you presume most release PvE take a week. The next PvE with the new character is another week which will overlap with the new character's PvP. By that time if i still want to fool around then the SHIELD Simulator is there. The rest of the time I play to support my Alliance mates and to get more iso for the next new character.
I think this is the hardest thing for people to understand that there are many ways to enjoy and "win" MPQ which might not be the same as yours.
I just explained what I consider "winning".
Others finishing in first every PvP is winning.
Others want to be part of a #1 Alliance
Others want to max out a favorite character.
The nice thing about all of this is each different player is happy if they can meet the goals that they consider winning.
Hope that answer helped you see what me version of "winning" is.

Colognoisseur

IceIX wrote:

hurcules wrote:

1) Streamlined level up system. I think 2 or 3 weeks into my MPQ life the cover leveling system was changed to the current state. Used to take 20(?) covers to increase a power level. My memory is a bit hazy on this one. Colognoisseur or other October players may be able to shed a light on this.

Yep, maximum 50 covers to fully level a character, every 5 levels was an ability upgrade.

Thankfully this changed so quickly after I joined that I never really got used to it. Although I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Colognoisseur wrote:

I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

They should give you a 15-cover IM30. If that's even possible any more. Might not be.

When a new character comes out and they're not in the Character Compendium yet, I've noticed you've always tended to attack me. I'm not sure if you're being friendly or not, but that was usually a good prompt for me to make a character update.

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

They should give you a 15-cover IM30. If that's even possible any more. Might not be.

It's not. The system screams at us for even thinking of trying.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

They should give you a 15-cover IM30. If that's even possible any more. Might not be.

It's not. The system screams at us for even thinking of trying.

It allows them as PVE opponents, or is that basically a different system?

Colognoisseur

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

They should give you a 15-cover IM30. If that's even possible any more. Might not be.

It's not. The system screams at us for even thinking of trying.

Are there even any of those guys left? The group of us who have all just passed our one year anniversary has to be pretty small and then of those the ones who had a >13 cover IM30. Maybe one or two I'm guessing.

IceIX

Ben Grimm wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

They should give you a 15-cover IM30. If that's even possible any more. Might not be.

It's not. The system screams at us for even thinking of trying.

It allows them as PVE opponents, or is that basically a different system?

Different system, the PVE opponents don't actually go through (much) roster validation since it's hard coded server side and is thus assumed to be intentional, if weird. It's also why you can have 3 Black Widows in Sims but that can't be done by a user.

Nellyson

Colognoisseur wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

On that train ride I decided my goal would be to get every character to max level.

What I am about to say/ask is not meant to be rude or disparaging in any way.

As most of us on this board know, you max out characters immediately after they're released. Depending on your placement in PVE, you need to buy 9 or 10 covers at 1,250 HP a pop in order to do this which will cost more than a Stark Salary to do. I'm just wondering why you choose to do this instead of earn most through typical play. This isn't like an MMO where you can purchase high-level gear but then use it to earn even better gear. Once you get all the covers for a particular character you don't need any more of those covers. Doesn't this take the fun out of most events? You have very little need to push hard in any event that's not giving out a brand new character.

I think that if I did what you do then I'd have quit a long time ago from boredom. I'm already at the point where there are very few covers I actually need and my enjoyment of events with prizes I do not need is definitely less than those where I still need covers. If nine out of every ten events was nothing more then a way to accumulate ISO I'd have little drive to continue playing the game.

It is a fair reply and I will try and clarify.
For me a large part of the fun of a game like MPQ is figuring out which characters work well with each other. The closest analogy I have to this was when I played Magic: The Gathering trading card game. I wanted to win but I wanted to win using the best strategy and I want to be one of the first to find that strategy. So when a new M:TG set came out I went and bought four boxes of cards so I could have copies of all of the new cards and I could begin to play and figure out what the best new strategies were.
In MPQ this plays out that I compete to win all the new covers I can in a PvE release. Then I buy the remaining 10 covers for 12,500HP which is less than a 20,000HP Stark Salary. Then I earn over a 100K Iso a week playing the game so I have the iso in the bank to max out the character. Then this is where I have my fun as I can use the new character as the featured character in the next PvE and in the PvP which features them. As a result because of scaling I get to try the new character at a high level in PvE almost immmediately and determine whether it is a good PvE character and with which other characters. Then in the PvP those of you who run into me in the first 24 hours of that will confirm you sometimes will catch me running some completely off the wall combo early on as I test to see what works.
So as you see I am far from bored if you presume most release PvE take a week. The next PvE with the new character is another week which will overlap with the new character's PvP. By that time if i still want to fool around then the SHIELD Simulator is there. The rest of the time I play to support my Alliance mates and to get more iso for the next new character.
I think this is the hardest thing for people to understand that there are many ways to enjoy and "win" MPQ which might not be the same as yours.
I just explained what I consider "winning".
Others finishing in first every PvP is winning.
Others want to be part of a #1 Alliance
Others want to max out a favorite character.
The nice thing about all of this is each different player is happy if they can meet the goals that they consider winning.
Hope that answer helped you see what me version of "winning" is.

That is awesome!! You're winning is pretty damn cool! I'm definitely looking to your roster from now on to see your builds. I won't be copying them, but definitely want to see how they stack up! Great post and keep up the work!

GothicKratos

Very interesting read and it's quite refreshing to see another person acknowledge that everyone enjoys playing things differently.

rbdragon

It always bothered me why someone would just go and buy all the covers to max out a character, and then go ahead and play a tournament to win those exact covers. I never understood the mindset, nor saw the point.

Thank you for giving me some clarity on this. You're right, everyone's definition of winning is (and should be) different.

I get it now and shall not question, nor be bothered by it anymore

Kiamodo

I'm coming up on my one year aniversery as well and I would love to thank not only the devs for all their hard work but you guys! It's a very fun game to say the least but having a supportive community that sticks with the game this long is pretty awesome. My favorite part of this game has been the different levels of enjoyment I see people having with the game. There is enough room for all types of players. I too am looking forward to another great year!

Unknown

Not far off a year for me also.

1. Started the game. Liked it. Didn't like the fact that as I am in the UK 75% of the events finished at a time which meant it was barely worth playing.
2. Carried on with the game. Slowly built up a mediocre roster. Still enjoyed it. Didn't like the fact that as I am in the UK 75% of the events finished at a time which meant it was barely worth playing.
3. Six months in. Seasons start, chaos reigns. Got silly sharding that meant that I was double teamed. Because as I am in the UK 75% of the events finished at a time which meant it was barely worth playing. Alliance stuff was fun and allowed me to actually get some rewards by piggy-backing on American players though. Which was nice. So I kept playing.
4. Now. Thanks to the aforementioned piggy-backing I have some three stars at 120. Which is nice. I still have level 166 teams hitting me when I am 300 points into PVP, which is not nice. But the Alliance stuff is still fun and I still get rewards through them and, shock/horror, if an event finishes at some time other than 4 or 5 am I can even contribute well to our score. Which makes me feel less bad about taking rewards.

So, in summary, the game is allright. If it were better I would consider moving to Canada. Because, in case the developers were not aware, as I am in the UK 75% of the events finish at a time which mean it is barely worth playing.

Unknown

I must be a veteran too by now, since I pre-date seasons. Here's the story of my (MPQ) life, then - long and rambling, as it's fitting for an old guy like me

I started on New Year's Eve; at the traditional party at a friend's place another friend was playing something on his phone. I asked what he was playing, he showed me, I downloaded it straight away, and I've been playing ever since, every day since then.

At first there were guaranteed covers in cover packs, so while building up my roster I bought plenty of those an soon had a nice selection of characters. Ares was an early favourite. At first I only played prologue (I remember The Hunt, but the first node was way too hard for me back then), then finally I started on PvP. I think Rage and Ruin was my first. My Ares was soon complete and I happily slaughtered whatever came my way. My standard team was Ares/Thor/OBW, with Punisher acting as back-up. Venom got quite some action too as back-up for OBW.


I remember the first Hotshot. I got a few lucky draws from tokens and my Torch was pretty far along, and I won my bracket easily and spectacularly and felt I was the king of the world. I was well into 3* land by then, and I was having a hard time bidding my favourite combo good-bye, but I embraced Torch readily. I loved Torch. So when Hotshot came around again, I was over the moon and jumped in enthusiastically...
And then came the great personal catatrophe, the new MMR. I was scoring high, was cnstantly in the top ten - until I started to get hit. And people weren't just hitting me, they were beating the kitten out of me, plenty with maxed teams (still level 141 back then). I ended up crawling behind a shield at the end of the event (instead of playing the final 20 minutes) to lick my wounds, and cursing the cruelty of fate for crushing my ego like that.
I believe that it was then that a guy called Fanzhuosi dominated my leaderboard, and I envied him and hated his guts.


The first season I spent in a five person alliance called Black Angels, an alliance whose commander was the friend who had introduced me to the game. However, I was scoring highest by far, so eventually I wanted to move on to bigger and better things. I joined D.E.A.D.L.Y. for season 2 and was over the moon to be part of a 20 people alliance... but as it turned out, lots of the high scorers were leaving, and after the alliance setting was changed to public, its descent into mediocrity was complete. So I went to find a new team for the start of season 3.

By then, I had raised plenty of characters to level 100 (what later became level 125 after the level readjustment), but no further, so I had a large selection to pick from. I still went back to my old 2* team (back then they were maxed at level 85) from time to time, or combined them with some of my 3*. The first 3* to reach level 100 was Punisher.


Lord Will of Retribution was recruiting, and that the alliance was "Punisher themed" drew me straight away. I didn't score higher than 700 usually back then, but that was enough, I got recruited. As it happened, I replaced the very Fanzhuosi I had hated with all the passion of my wounded gamer pride.
Then I "met" Colognoisseur, of course, who was something like the team's mysterious guru to me. I half harboured this odd mental image of him sitting in a darkened shrine with smoke from low-burning braziers wafting through it (cologne-scented, of course) floating a foot above the ground serenely while directing the game with the sheer power of his mind. I felt like a novice ready to learn the greater mysteries of MPQ.

And learn I did. Since then I have not only maxed 8 three-stars (and raised X-Force Wolvie and Fury past 166), but also learned the art of shield-hopping and many more such things. Colognoisseur guided me through my first 1K score in PvP, and by now that has become my usual score. My record until now is 1500+, that was during anniversary.
I like coming up with my own teams and strategies. I keep every single character in the game on my roster, and I use them all (yes, even Bagman, Bullseye and Yelena!), mostly in PvE, of course, but I enjoy switching teams at the start of PvP. I like unusual combos too, but I take guilty pleasure in the so-called Sentry-bombing. Sentry and Daken or Sentry and Panther are two of my favourite high-power combos (if I can choose all three characters freely the third often is Hood, Psylocke, Falcon, Magneto or Deadpool, and sometimes my old pride-and-downfall, Torch), as well as X-Force and Deadpool or X-Force and Thor. I'm quite fond of Captain Marvel and Colossus and intend to integrate them into my top tier line-up. Punisher has grown into more of a PvE specialist, but I still use him frequently.


I want to thank the devs for giving me this game to pass away the commute time or fill work breaks and idle hours with fun, and my team mates in Retribution for being a great gamer family.
Here's to another year of taking the last 40%!

Beast1970

Colognoisseur wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

I was very jealous of those who had IM30's with more than 13 covers after the transition to the current system.

They should give you a 15-cover IM30. If that's even possible any more. Might not be.

It's not. The system screams at us for even thinking of trying.

Are there even any of those guys left? The group of us who have all just passed our one year anniversary has to be pretty small and then of those the ones who had a >13 cover IM30. Maybe one or two I'm guessing.

There are still a few people left that were playing long enough to at least see those in someone's roster. I started playing just a few days after the game was released, saw it reviewed by AppAdvice, tried it, and got hooked. Lurked on the forum since the beginning, took until last December until I thought I had anything worth saying here.

I remember the day they switched the covers, along with IceIX's explanation of how they would transition. Happiest day of my roster building time here, I had a LOT of covers that just broke into the range to 'round up' to the next higher tier, like having just 16 covers of a color to find that translated to the full 5 of the new covers! It was like the MPQ Santa Claus came to visit my roster!