How many of you are still reading the boards?

Clintman

Since I drifted off several months ago and stopped really playing I still find myself coming back to the boards. I am curious how many of you are lurkers still, waiting for something to change to bring you back?

I find that I wish I wanted to play again but when I do I feel like it is a waste of time. I don't really want to dedicate a day worth of play just to do an event. It would be nice to be able to play whenever you want to and feel like you are making some meaningful progress toward something.

As some of you with long memories know I stopped playing when I got into Brave Frontier and have been playing that steadily, putting my money into that game rather then into MPQ. I spent quite a bit on MPQ and did enjoy it for the time that I played. I just found that the gameplay got stale. Playing BF there are new events all the time, some get recycled but by and large there is constantly new content which is fun and exciting.

I really would like it if MPQ would get away from the pure PVP aspect of the game and have more static missions you can play at your leisure, and have actual good rewards. I see what they did with the gauntlet and even after taking a break for the past few months I looked at the top end rewards and feel they are garbage, so why bother?

I think MPQ would do well to put some decent rewards into the game, it takes way too long to make a character viable needing 10 covers to max them out to be competitive. The devs are far too stingy I think with rewards and I feel it turns people off.

ErikPeter

I'm around. This is enough of a diversion I should probably post a new thread for it, but hell.

Clintman wrote:

I think MPQ would do well to put some decent rewards into the game, it takes way too long to make a character viable needing 10 covers to max them out to be competitive. The devs are far too stingy I think with rewards and I feel it turns people off.

The "10 covers" bit is the thing they need to reevaluate. You can talk a lot about max builds and stuff but the truth is that it is very fun to try new combinations. Getting more use out of your roster. But in most situations, the "shiny new" characters are bad because they can't be levelled up at all (unless you're a whale who wants to spend 50 bucks on covers). I think that some day (sooner is better) D3 will be forced to go back to the drawing board and eliminate the level progression for number of covers. 2*s should start with a level cap of 70 that goes up 2 per additional cover. Except screw that, the whole level system should be tweaked so that 1*s aren't immediately useless and 2*s can stay relevant a bit longer. That way, spending the ISO is the major advancement, and number of covers is almost entirely what differentiates a strong character from a weak one (beyond rarity).

Just imagine how diverse the PvP format could be if all 3*s could get leveled to 140ish with only a couple covers! The devoted players are still rewarded because their maxed characters have a slightly higher cap and much more effective powers (e.g. LazyCap's red, Xforce black at 1 vs 5), but a player with a weaker roster can still dump ISO on their favorite character and actually use them instead of leaving them on the bench at 43 and continuing to use no one but the 2 highest characters they have.

Imagine the thrill of winning a new character and knowing, "hey, I could spend some ISO and rotate this guy into PvP right now"? Sure he'd be **** with only a cover or two but you could still USE him. Imagine how the 2-star-to-3-star transition meta would shift for the better if the people who won a few Blade covers could immediately level him to 100 and sub him in for OBW...

I'll say it again. IMAGINE IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY USE YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS, RIGHT AWAY. How cool would that be? I know, right? Babykitty cool.

GothicKratos

What I would offer is some advice based on my own experiences; do just play when you want to and how you want to. I quit playing for about three months after the initial DPvMPQ event after not placing well enough to get covers, but my girlfriend whom had been playing for about three weeks at the time, got two. Infuriated would not even capture my feelings. The feeling of wasted time and frustration was only exasperated by the fact Deadpool is easily my favorite comic book character. After a little while, while Kyla was still playing and talking about it a lot with her and helping her, I found myself wanting to play again, but I didn't want to fall into the trap again. So, basically, I started gaming the system.

I know that 500 is my peak in PvP, so, when a PvP starts that is giving away something I want in 3* land, I just join as late as humanly possible (one hour seems to be the magic number), but if it's a 2* prize I need, I just play casually whenever I want and as long as I get a decent amount of matches in each day, I snag the cover. I've gotten ranked for two 3* cover rewards four times now (just got two 3* Thor covers today, even, by playing for an hour with Daken and Wolverine) and one cover rewards endless times.

For PvE, if I need something in the high end of the Progression Rewards, you need to be able to play, at least each node once, and each Essential Node down to around 500 point value (usually three plays) every three hours. If you only need rank rewards, then join each sub six hours before the node ends and play each node once and each Essential down as far as you can for both refreshes. You'll need to do this for each sub, though. This seems to maximize banding and bracketing.

It's slow, of course, but it's a good reward versus effort.

Shadow

ErikPeter wrote:

I'm around. This is enough of a diversion I should probably post a new thread for it, but hell.

Clintman wrote:

I think MPQ would do well to put some decent rewards into the game, it takes way too long to make a character viable needing 10 covers to max them out to be competitive. The devs are far too stingy I think with rewards and I feel it turns people off.

The "10 covers" bit is the thing they need to reevaluate. You can talk a lot about max builds and stuff but the truth is that it is very fun to try new combinations. Getting more use out of your roster. But in most situations, the "shiny new" characters are bad because they can't be levelled up at all (unless you're a whale who wants to spend 50 bucks on covers). I think that some day (sooner is better) D3 will be forced to go back to the drawing board and eliminate the level progression for number of covers. 2*s should start with a level cap of 70 that goes up 2 per additional cover. Except screw that, the whole level system should be tweaked so that 1*s aren't immediately useless and 2*s can stay relevant a bit longer. That way, spending the ISO is the major advancement, and number of covers is almost entirely what differentiates a strong character from a weak one (beyond rarity).

Just imagine how diverse the PvP format could be if all 3*s could get leveled to 140ish with only a couple covers! The devoted players are still rewarded because their maxed characters have a slightly higher cap and much more effective powers (e.g. LazyCap's red, Xforce black at 1 vs 5), but a player with a weaker roster can still dump ISO on their favorite character and actually use them instead of leaving them on the bench at 43 and continuing to use no one but the 2 highest characters they have.

Imagine the thrill of winning a new character and knowing, "hey, I could spend some ISO and rotate this guy into PvP right now"? Sure he'd be **** with only a cover or two but you could still USE him. Imagine how the 2-star-to-3-star transition meta would shift for the better if the people who won a few Blade covers could immediately level him to 100 and sub him in for OBW...

I'll say it again. IMAGINE IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY USE YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS, RIGHT AWAY. How cool would that be? I know, right? Babykitty cool.

Actually, the new characters are usable within 2 weeks of their release. I usually have no issue picking up 9 or 10 covers for the new releases and pump them to level 100 almost immediately. At this stage, if you really want to, you can use that char in SHIELD sim with no adverse consequences. Or play them when starting out on a new PvP. My blade is 4/2/3 at level 114. And just to highlight, I'm F2P so it doesn't take a whale to be able to do this.

Phumade

My blade is 4/2/3 at level 114. And just to highlight, I'm F2P so it doesn't take a whale to be able to do this.

Huh, My alliance partner has his blade at 4/1/4 I'm at 4/2/3 myself. I'm at a loss to figure out how why he 4 green and 1 purple, while I've got 2 purple 3 green

yogi_

Shadow wrote:

Actually, the new characters are usable within 2 weeks of their release. I usually have no issue picking up 9 or 10 covers for the new releases and pump them to level 100 almost immediately. At this stage, if you really want to, you can use that char in SHIELD sim with no adverse consequences. Or play them when starting out on a new PvP. My blade is 4/2/3 at level 114. And just to highlight, I'm F2P so it doesn't take a whale to be able to do this.

Really? How?

What percentage of the playerbase has 9 or 10 covers for a 3* within two weeks? 0.XX%?

Unknown

Phumade wrote:

My blade is 4/2/3 at level 114. And just to highlight, I'm F2P so it doesn't take a whale to be able to do this.

Huh, My alliance partner has his blade at 4/1/4 I'm at 4/2/3 myself. I'm at a loss to figure out how why he 4 green and 1 purple, while I've got 2 purple 3 green

Did he get any out of tokens?

Phumade

ooohhh right. Totally forgot about those. I got my 4 from pve 4 from pvp 1 as the 1100. He must have gotten one from token drop

Unknown

yogi_ wrote:

Shadow wrote:

Actually, the new characters are usable within 2 weeks of their release. I usually have no issue picking up 9 or 10 covers for the new releases and pump them to level 100 almost immediately. At this stage, if you really want to, you can use that char in SHIELD sim with no adverse consequences. Or play them when starting out on a new PvP. My blade is 4/2/3 at level 114. And just to highlight, I'm F2P so it doesn't take a whale to be able to do this.

Really? How?

What percentage of the playerbase has 9 or 10 covers for a 3* within two weeks? 0.XX%?

Yeah this is only possible with two top 10 finishes and one top 10 alliance finish with one as a reward or token drop to get to 10 if you buy no other packs. This is not at all reasonable for the average player by statistically literal definition. F2P or not.

HailMary

noone_ wrote:

yogi_ wrote:

Shadow wrote:

Actually, the new characters are usable within 2 weeks of their release. I usually have no issue picking up 9 or 10 covers for the new releases and pump them to level 100 almost immediately. At this stage, if you really want to, you can use that char in SHIELD sim with no adverse consequences. Or play them when starting out on a new PvP. My blade is 4/2/3 at level 114. And just to highlight, I'm F2P so it doesn't take a whale to be able to do this.

Really? How?

What percentage of the playerbase has 9 or 10 covers for a 3* within two weeks? 0.XX%?

Yeah this is only possible with two top 10 finishes and one top 10 alliance finish with one as a reward or token drop to get to 10 if you buy no other packs. This is not at all reasonable for the average player by statistically literal definition. F2P or not.

Correction: assuming zero lucky token pulls, this requires T10 placement in the intro PVE (1% of players), an individual T5 PVP finish (1%), membership in a T100 PVP alliance (accounting for varying alliance sizes, maybe 2%?), membership in a T100 PVE alliance (again, 2%?), and hitting 1100 in the subsequent PVP for the progression cover (~1%?).

At the end of all this, I'm gonna peg the 10-cover population at around 0.5% of the total playerbase.

Edit: That said, the player pool for judging how reasonable cover outflow is wouldn't be the total population, but rather the people who really tried to get those covers. Individual T100 in PVP nets a 3* cover, right? That's the top 20%. The same holds true for PVE. To account for a show of consistent effort, I''m gonna hand-wave that, out of the players who really tried to get multiple new 3* covers (and were already in/past 2* land), maybe 0.5%/10% = 5% of them got a 10-cover character.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Correction: assuming zero lucky token pulls, this requires T10 placement in the intro PVE (1% of players), an individual T5 PVP finish (1%), membership in a T100 PVP alliance (accounting for varying alliance sizes, maybe 2%?), membership in a T100 PVE alliance (again, 2%?), and hitting 1100 in the subsequent PVP for the progression cover (~1%?).

At the end of all this, I'm gonna peg the 10-cover population at around 0.5% of the total playerbase.

You're right, I was being lazy when I posted and didn't think about it hard enough.

My point though wasn't to get the stats exactly right but more to point out the ignorance of the statement, "it's not that hard to 9-10 cover something within two weeks as F2P." It's literally impossible for 98% and realistically for 99.5% to do this if your guesses are correct.

Shadow

noone_ wrote:

HailMary wrote:

Correction: assuming zero lucky token pulls, this requires T10 placement in the intro PVE (1% of players), an individual T5 PVP finish (1%), membership in a T100 PVP alliance (accounting for varying alliance sizes, maybe 2%?), membership in a T100 PVE alliance (again, 2%?), and hitting 1100 in the subsequent PVP for the progression cover (~1%?).

At the end of all this, I'm gonna peg the 10-cover population at around 0.5% of the total playerbase.

You're right, I was being lazy when I posted and didn't think about it hard enough.

My point though wasn't to get the stats exactly right but more to point out the ignorance of the statement, "it's not that hard to 9-10 cover something within two weeks as F2P." It's literally impossible for 98% and realistically for 99.5% to do this if your guesses are correct.

I don't think I said anything in my original post that it was an easy feat to do. Just that it is possible if one was capable of placing well in both pve and pvp. I made the post to state the fact that one doesn't have to be a whale to get a decently covered new char since the post that I was responding to implied that it wasn't possible unless one was a whale.

ErikPeter wrote:

they can't be levelled up at all (unless you're a whale who wants to spend 50 bucks on covers)".

Somehow, the number of people posting to this thread that have a 4/2/3 blade or higher is pretty high. Phumade, HailMary, etc. Lol

Unknown

Hey Clintman,

Back to point, I'm still around, soldiering on as the last semi-active moderator. I ramped up my play for Season VII again, rebuilt our alliance and we're currently in like 83rd for the season or so. Still enjoying it, but definitely on the downswing (been playing a lot more Civ: Beyond Earth and Diablo 3 lately).

Clintman wrote:

I find that I wish I wanted to play again but when I do I feel like it is a waste of time. I don't really want to dedicate a day worth of play just to do an event. It would be nice to be able to play whenever you want to and feel like you are making some meaningful progress toward something.

As some of you with long memories know I stopped playing when I got into Brave Frontier and have been playing that steadily, putting my money into that game rather then into MPQ. I spent quite a bit on MPQ and did enjoy it for the time that I played. I just found that the gameplay got stale. Playing BF there are new events all the time, some get recycled but by and large there is constantly new content which is fun and exciting.

I really would like it if MPQ would get away from the pure PVP aspect of the game and have more static missions you can play at your leisure, and have actual good rewards. I see what they did with the gauntlet and even after taking a break for the past few months I looked at the top end rewards and feel they are garbage, so why bother?

So here's the systems analyst in me. Mobile games are typically treadmills. There are a certain set of mechanics identified by behavioral psychologists which trigger the dopamine receptors in our brains which makes us want more of those triggers and we keep playing the treadmill game. Developers like this b/c it takes a lot of investment to spin a new game up so being able to keep existing games going as long as possible is a solid investment.

The problem with MPQ is that yeah, it does take a lot of effort to get that reward trigger. So a lot of people, you and I included, get tired of the effort it takes to trigger those dopamine receptors. Having never played BF, I can't say for certain but I'm also willing to bet that it follows the same model, they've just implemented it with better window dressing and more variety in the rewards. MPQ only has 3 rewards and two of them feed the third (HP and ISO feed into covers). In my original farewell thread, I had said that they need more variety if they want long-term viability. Making everything a competition means they're going for a higher churn rate in their playerbase and appeal to a smaller group of potential players than if they widened their gameplay.

I ramped my play back up for season VII just to get a copy of Lady Thor, but after that, I suspect I'll fade back to casual again.

Unknown

I dare to guess that D3's staff assigned to MPQ is much to small to churn out a faster rate of new story telling and new events. Most people are sick of recycled old content if you've been her for a year as many have but there's that carrot dangling of new stuff to come. The new characters are basically stop gaps with some income for D3 until they get new modes / features / story lines going.

They might need a drastic change to the overall system that has more rpg (leveling/stat elements) The teamups as far as I'm concerned is a complete failure due to the tiresome non-worthwhile effort required to bother. Everyone I know uses it for tanking and that's it. Unless they are changed to be persistent but less effective than the actual rewards, I'm not touching them for anything more than a trophy.

The boards are actually a decent place to find out about what's coming up in MPQ so most people read it for that now - and to argue which build for which character they like. Would be nice to see actual new content and systems, not just re-arranged skills for another character that you have to buy a slot for. . .

Welcome back when you do return

Unknown

I still check in the forum every few weeks. I quit playing back in July.

The thing that would bring me back would be true PvP and/or co-op. I doubt that is feasible for this iteration of MPQ, but maybe the next one.

After playing games like Hearthstone, it's hard for me to go back to a competitive game where you are fighting AI 100% of the time. It just becomes an exercise in repetition.

Unknown

Most requested feature in my alliance has been a Raid-style fight. Your alliance verse an enemy/pve zone where you all take part in progression etc. - perhaps gauntlet style where your progress bar is shared just with your alliance

noobprime

I visit the forums on an off, but post much less these days. I miss the days where people cared - sang funny songs, celebrated epic climbs ... I think a lot of the magic and character from the boards is simply gone.

Clintman

Have you guys been seeing a resurgence of older players returning to the game? Or does it seem like once people fade out they never return?

Unknown

Just logged in to say hi to Clintman .

Clintman wrote:

Have you guys been seeing a resurgence of older players returning to the game? Or does it seem like once people fade out they never return?

For me, it's a gradual fading out. I seem to take longer and longer before I play again. When I do play, it's just a match or two and fade out again.
I read the boards but hardly log in anymore.