What kind of grind is this?!

TLCstormz

That post to Rowie was A LOT more tame than I thought it would be, in comparison to how most "vets" voice their thoughts about "newbies", but the viciousness was definitely still there. lol

Anyways, the thing that I don't understand is......why do so many vets think that scoring 250 - 500 points is EASY or even frequently done by said newbies? It was not easy on the old system and who knows how it will be on this new system.

All I know is that my SHIELD Sim displays nothing but level 120s and above, while all I have are 94s. lol. I imagine it will be exactly the same thing in Heavy Metal, after I clear out the first 3 Seed Teams.

ErickTheRed

Another newish 2* player here.

I don't see much of a difference actually. My goal in the PvP events is to get to 400, and get the season 10 pack. This has been achievable before and after the change. I found I had to time my push before, and maybe a little less now. Before the change if I started too early I would face tough teams, and of course in the final hours of the event 2* teams get beaten down. I would have to make use of the skip button, and waiting to get some reasonable retaliations would help. Also occasionally I'd just have to fight characters with higher levels and hope for some luck, but I've been able to very consistently achieve that target.

So far I've found that there were fewer pointless battles, I was very quickly matched against 2* teams with a few underleveled 3* teams in the mix, and have climbed to 300. So it seems likely that 400 will still be a reasonable target. Of course more time is needed to tell for sure.

Honestly the balance seems about right at my level. Getting to 400 is sometimes difficult, but doable. I have an incentive to compete at a lower level, so it's easier for others to get points off me and advance past, and the more people like me in the pool the easier it is for people with advanced rosters to hit top 100.

Of course I can't speak to higher levels. I have never tried using shields to get the top 100, that seems expensive and risky, let alone push for 900. I can't speak to what it's like to have a roster of 166 and see endless X-Force. I skip any fully leveled one I encounter now obviously.

Unknown

My Impression is it's ****. I know most of us are change adverse but for the life of me this is not even close to the game I used to know and love. To the point now where our really great Alliance is breaking up, it's really sad, but thems the breaks. I wonder what's on Netflix...

IamTheBiggs

I know that members in my alliance have mentioned their disdain at this aspect. I may be among them.

And if you really don't like the changes, then let your rating in the Google Play/iTunes store reflect that. Why is it that people haven't figured that out?

Azoic

The only ppl not liking it are the 166+ folks (the wall) now experiencing the wall themselves. No more gangbangimg your way to 600 without a care or healthpack. My highest is 108, and this has been one of the better pvp events. I can aim to progression without getting stomped at 500.

So the vets are now experiencing what all the new players had to go through each time. We've been placed in separate pools to start with, but merged at the end if you hit the top

Bowgentle

Azoic wrote:

So the vets are now experiencing what all the new players had to go through each time. We've been placed in separate pools to start with, but merged at the end if you hit the top

Is it really so hard to understand that us vets _already_ went through that when we started out?
Why do we have to go through it _again_ with 500+ days played?

Unknown

Azoic wrote:

The only ppl not liking it are the 166+ folks (the wall) now experiencing the wall themselves. No more gangbangimg your way to 600 without a care or healthpack. My highest is 108, and this has been one of the better pvp events. I can aim to progression without getting stomped at 500.

So the vets are now experiencing what all the new players had to go through each time. We've been placed in separate pools to start with, but merged at the end if you hit the top

To add to what Bowgentle said, you do understand how much harder progression gets in the 3* range, right? Yeah, we progress to 600 easier. We also need the progression rewards more.

GuntherBlobel

rowie wrote:

Apology accepted. Although your post made me feel so unwelcomed to this community and the game for being what you call "New." It made me feel like MPQ should only be played exclusively to vets or those that have started with this game.

Don't let it get to you. Its a Forum for a competitive F2P game. Any change that benefits one player usually comes at the expense of someone else. With any new change, there's always going to be in-fighting between players at different rarity levels, or whales and fish, etc. For the most part, the Forum is a civil place, so please stick around.

tanis3303

Azoic wrote:

The only ppl not liking it are the 166+ folks (the wall) now experiencing the wall themselves. No more gangbangimg your way to 600 without a care or healthpack. My highest is 108, and this has been one of the better pvp events. I can aim to progression without getting stomped at 500.

So the vets are now experiencing what all the new players had to go through each time. We've been placed in separate pools to start with, but merged at the end if you hit the top

See, here's what bugs me about this argument/statement, and let me start off by saying no, you're not wrong. BUT...us "vets" have already been through this. We've spent hundreds of days and thousands of hours smashing thru "the wall". You think we started with maxed out characters and have been able to score well in events since we installed the app? Certainly not. We took our beatings just like all you transitioning players are taking yours now. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel - once you completed the transition, got your go-to team of PvP rockstars, be it xforce, Lthor, Patch, Hood, etc, etc, you could climb higher, do better, save some resources because you had passed that part of the game. You leveled up, it was progress. The transitioning players are happy now. But I have some bad news for you going forward...when you start to progress into 3* land and higher, your experiences are likely to mimic that of the vets, and trust us, you're not gonna be happy.

PvP was for the veteran players. Yes, we steamrolled over some of the newbies in the early stages of the events, and no, that's not particularly fair. But having a stacked roster doesn't mean tinykitty for PvE, in fact it's actually a bad thing (level 395 Ares wants to say hi >_<). And now having a stacked roster in PvP is a punishment too? What's the point of leveling our rosters then? There does need to be a solution to the PvP system of vets squashing new players, but it's not this. The tiered system I've seen mentioned (apologies, I forget who it was) is a great idea, and a much better place to start than all this new mmr nonsense.

*edited for spelling because my phone's autocorrect thinks it knows things..it does not

GuntherBlobel

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

To add to what Bowgentle said, you do understand how much harder progression gets in the 3* range, right? Yeah, we progress to 600 easier. We also need the progression rewards more.

The progression rewards near 1K will need to come down if my bracket is any indication, but all the top scorers have the kind of Rosters that you would expect them to have. The Devs change Progression thresholds based on how many people achieve them, so I expect it to change once they get enough data.

simonsez

tanis3303 wrote:

I have some bad news for you going forward...when you start to progress into 3* land and higher, your experiences are likely to mimic that of the vets, and trust us, you're not gonna be happy.

You wouldn't think it'd be so hard to make transitioners understand there's no reason to applaud their new ability to "progress", when progress has now been rendered irrelevant, or worse, detrimental. This feels like one big social experiment run amok.

GuntherBlobel

Bowgentle wrote:

Azoic wrote:

So the vets are now experiencing what all the new players had to go through each time. We've been placed in separate pools to start with, but merged at the end if you hit the top

Is it really so hard to understand that us vets _already_ went through that when we started out?
Why do we have to go through it _again_ with 500+ days played?

480+ days played here. I'm fine with the harder fights. I don't understand why I'm supposed to want hours of easy matches to grind through. I get the concern about Progression awards, though. The Devs can set these lower.

renfox

419 day vet here. From my experiences, manipulating MMR was an essential skill to win in PVP for as long as I can remember, regardless of your roster's progression. It seems this change helps the new guys while making it harder for us older guys. These huge changes without explanation or forewarning are annoying. Unfortunately, there are legitimate concerns for newer and older players, and because of the differences between each camp's concerns, balancing the game is getting unwieldy for the devs.

The main problem under all of this I see as being two things. One is transparency, and the other is organization.

- People complain when things aren't fair. With hidden MMR mechanics or lack of transparency about what is happening before, during, and after events, everyone feels slighted. If we play chess and lose, regardless of how good other players are, we feel it was fair.

- The other challenge in this game is organizing the events so they are challenging for all involved. In PVP they had this hidden MMR scale that bracketed you with 'appropriate' matches. In most other games you would have easy, medium, hard modes, or unlocked challenges when reaching a certain amount of levels. This sorts people into appropriate categories, allowing the devs to structure events to the players. Throwing everyone in the same pen creates this problem like herding cats. The more diverse the group is, the more incapable devs are at controlling the shape of a challenge.

As a practical matter, I think this change will make it so you jump in and play for the full event, taking on fights spread throughout the whole event time. I don't think the rewards match the challenge as it stands. At least for someone with my roster. All in all, I'm just not taking PVP too serious while these changes in the game economy smooth out.

my 2 cents.

Unknown

All I can say is with this new change, there's no point transitioning from 2* to 3*. I'm having as difficult if not more difficult time placing in top 100 in this event when compared to my 2* days ( I have 5 max covered 3*s at lvl 163' no usable 4*)

Unknown

This change seems like exactly the reason why I quit another game (the one with barbarians and archers that once took the itunes top spot). After months of base building, they updated the game to 'protect' new players from being raided all the time. And effectively punished everyone who had invested into the game. It got boring, the rewards decreased and I stopped playing.

Then I found MPQ and got excited about a game I could play to progress. I never complained about being hit by higher level teams, it was simply a challenge to get higher level. Now after six months I have a decent set of 3* players and the game updates to 'protect' new players. Why do devs/accountants insist on doing rubbish like this? The game was great, you should have LEFT IT WELL ALONE!!!

GuntherBlobel

Twombley wrote:

Then I found MPQ and got excited about a game I could play to progress. I never complained about being hit by higher level teams, it was simply a challenge to get higher level. Now after six months I have a decent set of 3* players and the game updates to 'protect' new players. Why do devs/accountants insist on doing rubbish like this? The game was great, you should have LEFT IT WELL ALONE!!!

Can I ask you and others who have "already been there" and don't want to go back, why isn't it a fun challenge now and why you didn't complain back then? It seems to me that if the game was fun then, it should be now. Honest question.

Every RPG I've ever played starts you out at Lvl 1, fighting Lvl 1 Kobalds. At Lvl 100, the only thing that has changed is that you are now fighting Lvl 1 Giants who provide exactly the same threat that the Kobalds did when you first started. If the game is any good, you've unlocked new content and discovered new strategies that keep the game interesting despite its repetition. But you never make it to Lvl 100 to keep killing Lvl 1 Kobalds.

EDIT: RPG rant

Unknown

Transitioning player here. I really don't see how it's helping at all.

Bowgentle

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Twombley wrote:

Then I found MPQ and got excited about a game I could play to progress. I never complained about being hit by higher level teams, it was simply a challenge to get higher level. Now after six months I have a decent set of 3* players and the game updates to 'protect' new players. Why do devs/accountants insist on doing rubbish like this? The game was great, you should have LEFT IT WELL ALONE!!!

Can I ask you and others who have "already been there" and don't want to go back, why isn't it a fun challenge now and why didn't you complain back then? It seems to me that if the game was fun then, it should be now. Honest question.

It wasn't fun back then, but as in every game the promise was that it would get better when I had better characters myself.
Progression, like in any other normal game.

You suck at the beginning, you take your beatings, you get better stuff, you suck less - it's what I expect from games.

In MPQ they get you hooked by making you seem like a top tier player for your first events, and _then_ make you suck. It's just... interesting game design.

Spoit

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Twombley wrote:

Then I found MPQ and got excited about a game I could play to progress. I never complained about being hit by higher level teams, it was simply a challenge to get higher level. Now after six months I have a decent set of 3* players and the game updates to 'protect' new players. Why do devs/accountants insist on doing rubbish like this? The game was great, you should have LEFT IT WELL ALONE!!!

Can I ask you and others who have "already been there" and don't want to go back, why isn't it a fun challenge now and why didn't you complain back then? It seems to me that if the game was fun then, it should be now. Honest question.

#1 reason? Scaling. Back then, nodes were a set level, and you only had to play them like twice a day, so it wasn't anywhere near as bad. Especially with rubberbanding, which is something they should really revist now that the time slices somewhat fixed the structural disadvantages non-US people had

Also, death sharding wasn't a thing, so you didn't need to play anywhere near as hard.

GuntherBlobel

Bowgentle wrote:

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Can I ask you and others who have "already been there" and don't want to go back, why isn't it a fun challenge now and why didn't you complain back then? It seems to me that if the game was fun then, it should be now. Honest question.

It wasn't fun back then, but as in every game the promise was that it would get better when I had better characters myself.
Progression, like in any other normal game.

Well, then that's the answer. I have to say, from the earliest days of this game I've seen leveling up your characters as something that would give a one week to one month advantage before scaling and MMR caught up. For me, this game is about running to stay in the same place, but you have to chose the pace that is most fun for you.

Anyway, I think I understand now.