Changes in rank rewards

atomzed

Paintsville wrote:

Now, the next issue. I realize that the 2* - 3* transition is long. Whether it is longer now than before, I wont address. I don't have the experience of starting a new game. What I can say is that MPQ has always been about the long haul. I believe that the main issue with alot of people is not the time it takes people to get to 3* land, but that the amount of time is not "normal".
That's not how MPQ is. For anyone outside of the top 100, getting a 3* cover that gets you one tiny step closer is difficult to come by. But that also make it that much sweeter when it happens. I can't remember the last time I looked forward to opening a token. That magic is gone for me. So like it has been mentioned before, if you want instant gratification, then this is not the game for you. And that's not your fault, or my fault, or anyone's fault. It's just the way the game is. At least until they finally get around to fixing it.

Agree, especially the one in bold.

I think of MPQ kinda like a driving game. Those driving game which you can't buy a new car, but you have to tune the one that you have. You change the gear box, that increase your horse power by 5. You change the tyres, your max speed increase by 5. You change the body kit, the max speed increase by another 5.

Each tuning only confers very little advantage... But eventually you reach a point where you "whoa, I got a pretty good car now!"

Mpq is like that. You get the covers, 1 by 1 and it seems perfectly useless to use a low cover hero. In my early days, I was trying to get my pun and lcap fully covered. So when I draw the patch yellow tokens, I was feeling unhappy, and went "man, another useless patch yellow token, he doesn't even do dmg with the ability".

Eventually when I get the 5th yellow from tokens a month later (after I purchase covers for pun and lcap), I realised that "damn, patch is awesome! And I didn't even have to pay for him!"

That's the kind of game mpq is. The highs... are not that much, since 1 golden cover is but 1/13. But you can just plough on, and eventually (months later), you will get all the covers. And you will swing out the newly max cover guy/gal, and you will find that it's a joy to experience the full power of the character.

I spend a big sum of money, buying 10 packs (silly me, poor choice), and covers for lcap, pun and hulk. After that I stopped, and only focus on getting the rewards from the events. I got my sentry, ldaken,cmag, lthor etc... all from events. There is a certain level of pride involved in seeing my collection grow.

Yes it took months (e.g. CM took 3 months plus to get her fully covered). But hey, that's part of the fun

over_clocked

To share my experience, I had the opportunity to play LRs when they had guaranteed covers as prizes and when tokens were much better and we had what, 12 rare characters?
I started playing mid December 2013, had no idea you could play something else besides Prologue for quite a while, but started competing more or less as soon as I got usable 2*s (and the amount of time I ran oBW/modern Storm, it's astounding).
I had the opportunity to use healing that Spidey and oBW provided and it stayed between matches, I hit LRs as much as I could, I grinded everything I could reach. I didn't have Facebook sharing then either, otherwise the process could be a bit speedier.
My first cover and level-maxed 3* (Punisher) didn't come until I was in an alliance, some time before Season 1 I think, which was in late March. I could easily clock in more than 100 hours per 2 weeks according to Steam, and still only got my first maxed 3* after at least 2,5 months of intense F2P-ing. I spent a few bucks on 3 cheaper slots in my friend's alliance but I could have done without it since there was no lack of people willing to share the slot expenses in the early alliance era. I never spent on roster slots or covers or tokens directly but I imagine that now some expense on roster slots is almost unavoidable if you want to keep most covers, but that's a collector's mentality and you can still F2P I believe, it's just you can't participate in all events equally well. Makes sense to me, as I couldn't hit PvE nodes that required GSBW, for example, for quite some time either, and had to throw out 3* covers (including Hulk, Ragnarok back when he was cool, IM 40, Punisher, etc.) and lesser 2*s all the time. 2* covers were kinda harder to get back then, too. The first one star tourney, I only had modern Storm to participate and couldn't get a cover-complete Juggs or IM 35 in time, there were no random 1* and 2* drops whereas now you can afford to ditch all one stars you don't rely on every day and rebuild them when Balance of Power and Combined Arms-style events are announced.
It wasn't fast even then. Maybe it was a bit faster if you happened to play from the very beginning, had Facebook sharing and lucked into Ragnarok/GSBW/cStorm and then 2* Thorverine covers who were, in that order, the OP combos of the time, but it still took months.

AXP_isme

I love it when people trot out the "it's a marathon, not a sprint" cliche. It always makes me think back to my classical 'history' and the original marathon participant who dropped dead having delivered the message that the Persians were defeated. I'm sure that's not the inference people want me to draw but it does make me smile.

Unknown

Just so you guys know, I was never talking about me being felt like I was cheated out of covers. I was sympathizing with the OP. It's newer players that are the ones who need those covers. If I want to schedule my life around the end of a PVP event so I can jam myself into the top 25, I can. But there are people who can't, regardless of how hard they might try.

I also agree with Locked. There was a time when I didn't have those 3 star covers needed for essential missions, and had no chance at making the top spots in a PvE event. If by some miracle there was an event with a character I did have, then I had to keep playing those events religiously if I wanted to maintain getting those covers, not to mention spend money for roster slots so I could keep them all. If I missed an event, due to real life or whatever, and didn't get that cover, it could be a month before another event happened that had an essential character that I had a cover for. In the meantime I was SoL and grinding for a 2 star cover that I didn't need.

Again, to clarify, I am not the one missing out on covers. It's the newer players that are, and I sympathize with them. It's a struggle that isn't getting easier as more players transition to the 3 star game.

bdksni1

The first time i played this game (before seasons appeared) i didn't get to a fully covered 3* -though i had some allmost there- but i was playing solo without being in any alliance. Then my phone died taking my roster with it so had to start from scratch. Now i'm in an alliance, have a bit more knowledge about how this works, play 3xmore than before. Still my roster is weaker than before and it takes much more time to have a viable char to play.
Perhaps the whole MMR \ bracket system should be redefined. Why shouldn't it be like in real sports? Like minor leagues, big boys leagues and "champions" league? Of course the rewards would have to be different but at least you would have a choice wether to be slaughtered by 166s+ or have a fair fight that you can actually win or lose. Sometimes it feels like i'm taking super-heroes to the execution chamber
I´m not saying i want to climb faster than everyone else, i just want a fair chance to accomplish goals in order to evolve.

Unknown

I think the real issue here is the fact Sentry has become an absolute necessity if you want to perform well. He is making hops far to efficient. Your roster can be subpar overall, but as long as you have a decent Sentry, you will be able to score well.

Now I do have several maxed 3* and a few with 10-12. Also a 353 Level 220 X-Force. So I am not really a transition player. However, Sentry is not one of them. He is close, but the lack of Yellow covers (Mines is at 351) is holding him back.

Having to deal with such brackets, especially in PvPs where I (and others) who genuinely want and need covers for can be annoying. I got last minute snipes in Blade PvP and just barely got kicked out of the Top 25. So I lost out on the Yellow cover I needed.

In other words, I feel the structure is fine. Seasins are driving scores up yes. However, it wasn't until Sentry arrived on the scene when they began to be absurd. I remember before, something like 1800 was somewhat unheard of. I never saw anything much higher than 1300.

Unknown

I just wanted to weight in here, even though this will break something like 4 or 5 months of forum silence...

Accumulating covers is like a million times harder now than it was when the game started. I started a few weeks after the game was released (in early October), and I had my first team of 3* characters maxed by mid December. Granted, two of those characters were IM40 and GSBW, but my third was pre-nerf Spiderman and in those days that meant quite a bit. Importantly, though, the competition at that point was always a lot less steep; everyone was growing his or her roster at the same time, so there wasn't this "guaranteed wall of 166 teams" that you encounter now as soon as you get about 6 or 7 hundred. I used Classic Storm and 2* Thor for a long time (of course, they were a little on the broken side back then, too), and back then the difference between a 2* and a 3* character wasn't so great (especially when not all of the 3* characters you ran into were maxed).

I don't have an opinion on rewards structure or alliance pressure or how this game should or shouldn't be adjusted to meet the needs of transitioning players. I just wanted to go on record as saying that players transitioning now absolutely have a much harder time than I did when I started. If the developers believe that the game was too easy on start-up, and they've only now dialed that difficulty in to a something more like what they were aiming for, then bully for everyone. However, it's improper to suggest that everyone has to go through the same experience playing the game. My impression that the difficulty of transition is directly related to the time elapsed since the game was released (with a noticeable jerk in the graph to account for 2* cover rain).