My Thoughts on State of MPQ

Unknown

Lately the changes that have been made are sort of bothering me.

First, there's the problem that when you lose a match in a PVP tournament it's completely devastating to your rank. So instead of fixing the actual problem of losng 36 points to only be able to gain back 17, Demiurge puts in Shields, which make PVP a lot more accessible.

Then, because PVP has apparently become TOO accessible, instead of removing Shields and taking another look at the real problems, Demiurge jacks up the price of Shields (surprise, surprise), and will now be charging ISO to even be able to find a decent opponent.

It seems to me like instead of addressing the real issues of a matchmaking system that doesn't find you compelling opponents easily enough and the fact that you lose far too many points when you DO lose a match in PVP, they're implementing bad fixes and then bandaging those bad fixes instead of coming up with real solutions to the problems of PVP events.

Also, I really feel like the "competitive" side of the PVE events should be removed. Rubber banding is the most annoying thing in the world, because it almost promotes not playing the game and that's not how it should be.

And lastly, after finally getting a decent levelled Spider-man, while it will make me sad to actually have to strategize again, I completely understand why they might want to nerf him. I still don't think Thor or Wolverine needs a nerf, though.

Tl;dr: Fix PVP, more PVE without dumb rubberbanding, less nerfs more buffs.

Unknown

Well said.

MarvelMan

buckfanana wrote:

Rubber banding is the most annoying thing in the world, because it almost promotes not playing the game and that's not how it should be.

It promotes playing a game within the game, which would be fine if it didnt involve not playing the game itself.

Unknown

It's true that rubberbanding was OP in the past, but the last event had extremely tame rubberbanding. So tame that I would say the opinion is either outdated, biased or just a scapegoat.

LordWill

I thought I would chime in on this as well.

I've been playing for about 3 months and been having a great time.

Some of the changes implemented and future changes has me concerned as well.

From a business standpoint it would seem they would want as many people playing the game for as long as possible. The more you play the more chances you may buy a boost, health pack, iso, or hero points which they are in the business of selling. I won't go into all the details as I am sure all of you know how fruitless some of the current game mechanics are right now. Right now there just isn't a lot of incentive to play.

Since I come from a MMORPG background, I can understand some of the reasoning behind certain changes. Appealing to the masses is a lot harder to do when there are so many different factors.

What I don't understand is to take all that development time for a lot of the characters that NEVER get used. Perhaps the devs should start playing some of those characters they have developed and before doing a bunch a nerfs, make ALL the characters viable.

I agree to fix the underlying issues before forging ahead and making things worse.

MarvelMan

ihearthawthats wrote:

It's true that rubberbanding was OP in the past, but the last event had extremely tame rubberbanding. So tame that I would say the opinion is either outdated, biased or just a scapegoat.

While toned down it was still significant. I generally only played one time through each event, except the 200/240s, and I placed top 15 in 4 out of the 5 first sub missions thanks to the rubber banding. I was top 10 in my main bracket when each of those events closed. If I hadnt just about ignored the last three submissions (didnt play Fri-Sun almost at all) I would likely have stayed there, without grinding.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

It's true that rubberbanding was OP in the past, but the last event had extremely tame rubberbanding. So tame that I would say the opinion is either outdated, biased or just a scapegoat.

While toned down it was still significant. I generally only played one time through each event, except the 200/240s, and I placed top 15 in 4 out of the 5 first sub missions thanks to the rubber banding. I was top 10 in my main bracket when each of those events closed. If I hadnt just about ignored the last three submissions (didnt play Fri-Sun almost at all) I would likely have stayed there, without grinding.

The question really is, was anyone else you were competing against playing more? Without knowing how the other players in your brackets played, we can't know how much rubberbanding affected.

MarvelMan

Kyosokun wrote:

The question really is, was anyone else you were competing against playing more? Without knowing how the other players in your brackets played, we can't know how much rubberbanding affected.

True. I would guess that there more than 10 people putting in more time since I was only putting about 45 min into each submission and still placing. I wasnt #1, thankfully, but a top 15 shouldnt be that easy.

Unknown

Well you say we lose a lot of points when we DO lose. My problem is that every time I've lost points I've never "lost". Sure my "opponent" has won, but there's never been any association with me losing and me losing my points. When I actually lose I just get to try again with minimal point gain.

Unknown

buckfanana wrote:

Also, I really feel like the "competitive" side of the PVE events should be removed. Rubber banding is the most annoying thing in the world, because it almost promotes not playing the game and that's not how it should be.

I think they could fix this by only having progressions rewards for PvE, no rankings. No need for the rubberband. You complete the event as quickly or slowly as you want to get the rewards that you want.

Unknown

Personally I could dig into the iso cost to find an opponent. What it will mean is that even tho some character combinations will be better than other and the iso cost won't fix that, the players with easy to kill hero combinations won't be chain targeted by everyone. So it alleviate or mitigate the problems related to hero balance.

Unknown

Honestly I've been on both sides of the Rubber Banding system. In the Hulk event, I found it really hampered my ability to place well because of when I had time to play I wasn't rubber banding very well. In The Hunt: Ares, it's the only reason I even did remotely well because I'd do each mission just once and I spread it out qute a bit over the span where the event was running. I just don't think it's the right answer and all of the fixes just seem to be ways to avoid the real problems. That's the point of my diatribe.

Unknown

I've been saying this for a month. Why Have a points system that Wants you not to play grind all you want and hour at the start and end of each sub mission will get you a top 150 easy and the new cover isn't the top reward anyway lol I just don't get it I gave up hope for PvP when shields arrived then the iso skip charge just insured I would be playing those event I refuse to pay to play a busted event. I won't even spend my free hp which is slowly disappearing from progress rewards on shields to protect my broken points.

The only thing I like about the recent changes is ares himself and patch. Their new powers that add for the opp is interesting I know I slow down on purples if bullseye is an opp interested in this idea

Unknown

Nerf all the good damage dealers, reduced rewards, doubled shields prizes, skip tax... this is becoming the slowest game ever! Boooooooring

Unknown

By no means would I call the game boring, and I still love it and play it as much as possible, but I do tend to enjoy the game much more when a single match doesn't take 10 hours (which is why despite having a 3/5/4 spiderman I don't love using him because while he's great and unstoppable he's SLOW). I think a good argument can be made for toning down Thor a bit (high health AND damage, very little downside) but Wolverine is much less a problem of being too good but more a problem of everyone else not being up to par. His strike tiles, while cheap, are pretty easily dealt with, and his Red ability is about average. He's actually quite easy to gun down even at 85, where as a level 85 Thor can still beat your face quite severely. I think with the current changes they should really bring back the level heals, because with Shields and the slower gameplay it no longer makes sense to have removed them.

Unknown

buckfanana wrote:

By no means would I call the game boring, and I still love it and play it as much as possible, but I do tend to enjoy the game much more when a single match doesn't take 10 hours (which is why despite having a 3/5/4 spiderman I don't love using him because while he's great and unstoppable he's SLOW). I think a good argument can be made for toning down Thor a bit (high health AND damage, very little downside) but Wolverine is much less a problem of being too good but more a problem of everyone else not being up to par. His strike tiles, while cheap, are pretty easily dealt with, and his Red ability is about average. He's actually quite easy to gun down even at 85, where as a level 85 Thor can still beat your face quite severely. I think with the current changes they should really bring back the level heals, because with Shields and the slower gameplay it no longer makes sense to have removed them.

I think for Wolverine they will go with a buff to the cost to bring it to the new minimum (not sure if it is 5 or 6) which makes sense for me. In a match 3 game having abilities that cost 2-3 is a source of imbalance. With that higher cost I think they will also buff his green a little to either deal more damage or start by placing 2 tiles and 1 extra for each 6 red AP you have. At least this is what I am hoping for since without him I wouldn't be much of a competition even in the pve tournaments. About Thor I have no idea what to expect. I have him at 4/5/1 (finally got a red cover after 3 weeks of terrible draws from the standard tokens) and lv21, not willing to spend any ISO on him until I see the changes. Part of me wants them to keep him strong so that I can benefit from him when I level him and another part wants him beaten so bad because that would mean I can fight on equal terms with those who have him maxed and use him in all teams.

Assuming you are talking about animation duration, the slow animations are an issue for me. Storm also has some slow animations. Wolverine 2* is a good example of fast animations and it doesn't take too long to chain them. I think Adamantium Slash is one of the fastest in the game. For me the worst character to play against near the end of a tournament is Hulk. Playing against one with 4-5 covers on Anger is so annoying I usually just skip him. Waiting for all those black tiles to trigger takes forever.

The main problem with the game for me is the lack of any incentive to use 1* characters (or 2* when they are nerfed and the 3* are rebalanced - not like Rag rebalance though). We get all these 1* covers from the chapters when we only need 3 of them (Iron Man, Storm, Black Widow) and only until we get 2-3 decently leveled 2*, even when the standard token will give them again. Even if Yelena and Classic Hawkeye have a reason to exist as an introduction to the game, I wonder if they will ever introduce any more 1* characters and what purpose they will serve. A 1* tournament is not enough if it happens every 2 months or even once/month. I was away for some days during Christmas time, but I play for almost 5 weeks and haven't seen one yet. The easy solution is what they do now. Give a 300% buff to a character and he suddenly matters. However, when you give this buff to 5-6 characters and some of them are 2* or 3*, then 1* characters still don't matter.

When you try to create a balance between the * value and the effectiveness of each hero, you can't have the 3* be better at everything (Higher damage, higher health, higher max level, better and cheaper abilities). If you do that in a game where the hero abilities are mostly limited to 6 categories (direct damage, attack/strike tiles, protect/invisibility tiles, healing, stun, AP deny) and each hero has 2-3 of them, then obviously you will have abilities overlap and since 3* heroes MUST be better than 1* and 2* (because if they are not, what is the point of going after them) the low tier heroes become obsolete. Imho, the fact heroes can reach different levels makes the gap between 1*-4* even more obvious. A 3* hero with a very strong ability which can one shot another hero should feel more like a glass canon. If you use him right and go mostly for his color, ignoring most other colors, you have a very good chance to win the match. If not, then a fully leveled 1* should have a chance against him. So the extremely high health the heroes have at high levels seems to get in the way. I think would like the game better if there were either no * levels or maybe 2 (common/rare) to make the gap between them less obvious and we had more variety of heroes (40-50) with 2 abilities each that could offer more possible combinations.

Ideally, all characters should be able to play a different role in a team. Introducing more variety to the character abilities will help the devs do exactly that. Or maybe they could use more the hero affiliations to give passive bonuses (even a small +20% health buff or a 10% buff to damage) to all heroes in a team when it has only heroes that belong in a single affiliation (X-Men, Brotherhood, Avengers ...) would be a much more interesting way to make low * heroes useful. Following this thinking we could have lower * heroes have passive abilities that benefit from a single affiliation team like a 1* ability
"If your team has only Avengers, each time your team makes a purple match, gain 1 more AP"
or a 2* ability that benefits from different * values
"If all heroes in your team have different * value, each time an opposing hero is downed gain 5 AP of every color"

So each of these issues adds to each other making them appear even more significant.
The lack of proper testing before the release of some characters lead to other heroes become obsolete --> Since most have no reason to collect those characters, other than collecting them to have a full roster, the transition from 1* to 2* and 3* takes less time than it would normally do because 2-3 characters are all you need to make the transition. --> While waiting to collect the covers of your next target (if that is possible with your current roster) there isn't much to do because many of the covers you get are for underdeveloped characters like BagMan. --> This brings us to redesign decisions which nerf some characters in an effort to balance (better this time) the game. However this is also a slap to those who threw most of their ISO on those characters which adds to the frustration.

Unknown

buckfanana wrote:

I still don't think Thor or Wolverine needs a nerf, though.

Sorry, that statement made me disregard the rest. Really? You think the two most easy to access 2-star characters should be, by and far, the strongest of the bunch, and stronger than some 3-stars? That's just stupid. It's like having an MMO give you all the end tier armor and then go "oh, but you can grind for the lower tier **** too, I mean, if you want. You do already have all this shiny, high tier ****, why not just use that?"

Unknown

Wolverine is unlikely to be able to place even 2 strike tiles at a cost of 5 green after balance, because that'd still be strictly better than Judgment from Punisher. Punisher puts down 3 random strike tiles for 8 green of roughly 100 strength, while Wolverine's strike tiles are 89. So at 2 strikes tiles per 5g, you're looking at roughly 270 worth of strike tiles. Now add in factors like:

1. Punisher's ability requires more green to use at all.
2. His ability is difficult to use more than once because he destroys a random 3X3 block before placing the tiles, so the next time you use it he can randomly destroy his own strike tiles.
3. The tiles are placed in random locations which means you can't have any strategy in protecting them. Wolverine's tiles are always on red and it's easy to figure out when it's relatively safe to start placing them.

In fact Punisher is an example of a well balanced ability. His strike tiles are powerful but there's pretty much no way you can protect them reliably since you don't even have any idea where they'll be placed and it's risky to place them more than once. Currently, Wolverine's tiles are actually more powerful (at 3g you can place 3 of them for 9g even if you've 0 red) and far easier to protect as well.

Unknown

I should say "to bring it over the new minimum". When I say higher cost, I don't mean necessarily 5g. For example his ability could be

Power Cost: 8-9 Green AP
Wolverine's rage builds. He deals 31 damage and adds 2 Red Strike tiles on the board.

Level Upgrades
Level 2: He adds 1 Red Strike tile for every 8 Red AP you have.
Level 3: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 4: He adds 1 Red Strike tile for every 6 Red AP you have.
Level 5: Costs 1 AP less.


In this case they would have brought his ability to 5+ AP and nerf the tile generation a little while keeping the flavor of the character.
Like I said, this is what I hope for because I would hate to see him gutted like Ragnarok. I understand and support fully the need for higher min cost and less special tiles on the board, but not obliterating him.

Unknown

What is rubber banding? Trying to follow this conversation without knowing what one of the main points of contention is is a little difficult. At first I thought it was a different term for tanking but I further context clues told me that's not it.

Unknown

Voxil wrote:

What is rubber banding? Trying to follow this conversation without knowing what one of the main points of contention is is a little difficult. At first I thought it was a different term for tanking but I further context clues told me that's not it.

Rubberbanding is a handicap in PVE events. Basically, the further back from the #1 player's point score you are, the more missions are worth for you (caps out at a certain point, though, so doesn't keep increasing forever). It helps players who can't play as much keep competative (so it's not a matter of who can play the most), and helps the community as a whole reach higher progression rewards.