Thank you, MPQ Devs :)

Puritas

Psykopathic wrote:

Can't wait for Elder Scrolls online!!! It was my single reason for an Xbox one purchase. Haha!

Oh man buying an xbone for elder scrolls online

that's gonna be something to look back on and weep gently in a corner

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

Can't wait for Elder Scrolls online!!! It was my single reason for an Xbox one purchase. Haha!

Oh man buying an xbone for elder scrolls online

that's gonna be something to look back on and weep gently in a corner

Well I got CoD and some other stuff to play on the it also so Xbox isn't solely for ESO. But ESO was the primary reason.

Unknown

pulis wrote:

All these people thanking the devs must be the devs themselves or people who are cheaters. I don't know how people can thank other people who shaft them over and over. With every update i'm finding out i wasted money and time. I level up thor and wolvie and they get ****. All my maxed one star covers get 2 shotted by the nerfed covers. Ragnarok super **** in every way imaginable. Boosts now cost way more than the help they give. Ares can only go up to level 85 yet the computer has a level 230 ares. Why? The rewards for beating that level 230 aries and company are useless anyhow.

The only thing I can thank the devs for is the time i will no longer be spending on this game when newer games come out.

A little background on me: I am old. I have played games for my income since I was 15, starting with the Magic: the Gathering pro tour. My major income now is from poker, but I still play many F2P games, and I am friends with a couple of F2P developers, plus working on my own F2P game (might be a pipe dream, but who knows!). I have played pro/semi-pro level DotA and other games nobody cares about. I live for games. I will always live for games.

This is one of the best companies I have ever witnessed in terms of listening to the players and implementing desired changes. There is almost no other game you'll find where the players complain about one character/class/etc. and it gets nerfed within a month. That kind of response time is unprecented in the gaming business, especially when Korean and Chinese games are dominating the market. I was absolutely blown away when I started playing MPQ and saw that the devs actually implemented ideas from the forums within a week or two. You have NO idea how fortunate you are to be listened to so closely, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I am split when I look at the changes themselves; I see a lot of ideas which simply do not fly from my game design background, but I also see a desire to make the game better. The developers clearly are trying to improve the game and not turn it into a cash grab. You guys don't even know what a cash grab looks like. The devs have good intentions, but they don't know how to implement them, because they are new to this model of game. You need to stop **** and give them some leeway and meaningful feedback to enact changes that are meaningful. They are trying. Most companies don't try and don't care, because they know their game will be dead within a year, so they want to grab as much cash as they can. D3 is not one of those companies. Please believe in them and address your (valid) complaints without **** on the company and the game itself. Thank you.

Unknown

Just for the reference I've been an 8-16 hour a day mobile player for 3-4 years. If nothing else I can see cash grabs and changes toward being a cash grab from miles away.

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

If nothing else I can see cash grabs and changes toward being a cash grab from miles away.

Same here. I've been playing F2P PC games going back to 2007 and mobile for the past 3. It's a joke that someone would even try to spin these past couple months as anything else.

That being said, making a F2P PvP game is really, really hard. Getting 'the balance' right is next to impossible. Major corporations like EA and others fail spectacularly over and over trying to do it right. So, I have sympathy for people that try ... but, I'm not going to sit back and be supportive when $hit is done wrong.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

If nothing else I can see cash grabs and changes toward being a cash grab from miles away.

Same here. I've been playing F2P PC games going back to 2007 and mobile for the past 3. It's a joke that someone would even try to spin these past couple months as anything else.

That being said, making a F2P PvP game is really, really hard. Getting 'the balance' right is next to impossible. Major corporations like EA and others fail spectacularly over and over trying to do it right. So, I have sympathy for people that try ... but, I'm not going to set back and be supportive when $hit is done wrong.

What I find the most hilarious is that no reasoning is given behind these changes. No fluff, no lies. It's almost like they know we know why they did it and are just letting us take it and get over it.

Puritas

Celerity wrote:

I am split when I look at the changes themselves; I see a lot of ideas which simply do not fly from my game design background, but I also see a desire to make the game better. The developers clearly are trying to improve the game and not turn it into a cash grab. You guys don't even know what a cash grab looks like. The devs have good intentions, but they don't know how to implement them, because they are new to this model of game. You need to stop **** and give them some leeway and meaningful feedback to enact changes that are meaningful. They are trying. Most companies don't try and don't care, because they know their game will be dead within a year, so they want to grab as much cash as they can. D3 is not one of those companies. Please believe in them and address your (valid) complaints without tinykitty on the company and the game itself. Thank you.

As someone who's been in the game industry since the arrival of f2p models to the West


+1

Unknown

Evilbeavers wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

If nothing else I can see cash grabs and changes toward being a cash grab from miles away.

Same here. I've been playing F2P PC games going back to 2007 and mobile for the past 3. It's a joke that someone would even try to spin these past couple months as anything else.

That being said, making a F2P PvP game is really, really hard. Getting 'the balance' right is next to impossible. Major corporations like EA and others fail spectacularly over and over trying to do it right. So, I have sympathy for people that try ... but, I'm not going to set back and be supportive when $hit is done wrong.

What I find the most hilarious is that no reasoning is given behind these changes. No fluff, no lies. It's almost like they know we know why they did it and are just letting us take it and get over it.

Part of the cycle I mentioned somewhere it another. New players will filter in that didn't get to see the how things used to be. They just see the new "meta" and are happy because they never got a taste of when the game was really fun.

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

Evilbeavers wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

If nothing else I can see cash grabs and changes toward being a cash grab from miles away.

Same here. I've been playing F2P PC games going back to 2007 and mobile for the past 3. It's a joke that someone would even try to spin these past couple months as anything else.

That being said, making a F2P PvP game is really, really hard. Getting 'the balance' right is next to impossible. Major corporations like EA and others fail spectacularly over and over trying to do it right. So, I have sympathy for people that try ... but, I'm not going to set back and be supportive when $hit is done wrong.

What I find the most hilarious is that no reasoning is given behind these changes. No fluff, no lies. It's almost like they know we know why they did it and are just letting us take it and get over it.

Part of the cycle I mentioned somewhere it another. New players will filter in that didn't get to see the how things used to be. They just see the new "meta" and are happy because they never got a taste of when the game was really fun.

Ofcourse. The whales and the new players are the ones that sail this ship. The middle tier players know what its all about and try to get by/game the system while making progress and spending nothing. Whales will always spend and new players won't know any better.

I plan on sitting on the front porch of this forum and talking about all the good times that were had before that mad cash grab of 2014.

Unknown

100 new forum accounts in the past 24 hours. Not bad for a board that doesn't quite have 2000 people yet.

I'm sure they all signed up to shower the game with love.

Unknown

I can appreciate a lot of the complaints being voiced (I suppose) because they must feel as if they disproportionately affect newer or less established players. Thor and Wolverine were clearly in the top tier of 2* characters; now they are definitely less good. That's gotta sting. And I can admit that part of the reason I'm so unilaterally pleased with their changes is that I'm not really using them anymore and it doesn't affect me. If they were two-thirds of my core team this would have stung.

That being said, those two characters were never two thirds of my core team, and there's no good reason that they should have been so ubiquitous. The game isn't exciting if there's no reason to progress, and the developers don't get any more money or play time from people who maxed out their 2* guys and then didn't need to cover hunt anymore. If you're unhappy about Thor and Wolverine now, move on to 3*s. There are plenty of opportunities to earn covers that are still within the reach of the non-paying customer.

What I find curious and distasteful about this whole exchange is the suggestion that a)Thor and Wolverine are the only two characters available to the player who hasn't spent a ton of cash and b)players without higher-end teams have now been somehow denied access to PVE content that they were rightfully capable of completing before. Suggestion part a is just silly; there are more good 2* characters now than there were when I was coming up (OBW is awesome and Ares is pretty solid), and I had no difficulty acquiring and training a 3* team without any investment. Everyone should be able to do the same, and they could probably do it more efficiently than I did with a little luck and less tragic love affair with IM 40. The ubiquity of Thorverine is a sign that those characters were not balanced. They were obviously better than they should have been.

Suggestion part b is greedy. If you can't beat level 230 opponents without access to characters that are unbalanced, maybe you're not ready for them. It's not unreasonable to think that some parts of some PVE events should be inaccessible to some players. There were certainly parts of the first red ISO-8 event that I had to skip, as well as one or two of the Heroic Juggernaut missions (if memory serves). In order for there to be true end-game content in a system like this, there has to be some real power separation between the character rarity levels. There should probably be a smoother transitioning system for players (maybe a post-prologue chapter with guaranteed covers for IM40 that is always available, so covering at least one character isn't such a **** shoot), but there's no reason to believe that something like that won't one day exist.

Oh, and the change to the all AP stockpile was just about perfect. I'll miss it, but it's clearly more powerful than all of the other boosts and it should be a rare treat. Provided it still drops after matches, all they've done is guarantee that no one in his or her right mind will purchase it outside of incredibly rare circumstances (finishing a specific PVE mission with a perversely high value, for instance), which will make games more about the games and less about whichever character has the best opening salvo for under 6 ap.

There are a lot of changes that the developers still need to address. Thor and Wolverine's ubiquity was one of them, though, and (as an objective observer) this really feels like a good fix.

Unknown

Celerity wrote:

pulis wrote:

All these people thanking the devs must be the devs themselves or people who are cheaters. I don't know how people can thank other people who shaft them over and over. With every update i'm finding out i wasted money and time. I level up thor and wolvie and they get ****. All my maxed one star covers get 2 shotted by the nerfed covers. Ragnarok super **** in every way imaginable. Boosts now cost way more than the help they give. Ares can only go up to level 85 yet the computer has a level 230 ares. Why? The rewards for beating that level 230 aries and company are useless anyhow.

The only thing I can thank the devs for is the time i will no longer be spending on this game when newer games come out.

A little background on me: I am old. I have played games for my income since I was 15, starting with the Magic: the Gathering pro tour. My major income now is from poker, but I still play many F2P games, and I am friends with a couple of F2P developers, plus working on my own F2P game (might be a pipe dream, but who knows!). I have played pro/semi-pro level DotA and other games nobody cares about. I live for games. I will always live for games.

This is one of the best companies I have ever witnessed in terms of listening to the players and implementing desired changes. There is almost no other game you'll find where the players complain about one character/class/etc. and it gets nerfed within a month. That kind of response time is unprecented in the gaming business, especially when Korean and Chinese games are dominating the market. I was absolutely blown away when I started playing MPQ and saw that the devs actually implemented ideas from the forums within a week or two. You have NO idea how fortunate you are to be listened to so closely, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I am split when I look at the changes themselves; I see a lot of ideas which simply do not fly from my game design background, but I also see a desire to make the game better. The developers clearly are trying to improve the game and not turn it into a cash grab. You guys don't even know what a cash grab looks like. The devs have good intentions, but they don't know how to implement them, because they are new to this model of game. You need to stop **** and give them some leeway and meaningful feedback to enact changes that are meaningful. They are trying. Most companies don't try and don't care, because they know their game will be dead within a year, so they want to grab as much cash as they can. D3 is not one of those companies. Please believe in them and address your (valid) complaints without tinykitty on the company and the game itself. Thank you.

This game has become a cash grab plain and simple. Before the changes to the boosts, i was regularly top 7 in the daredevil missions. Now i'm probably top 100. You literally cannot retain your spot if you do not spend the gold coins to buy the boosts. I would be ok if you were showered with gold coins here and there. Gold coins cost money primarily so making some boosts cost gold coins makes this a cash grab. People who do not spend real money will not be able to win any new covers. As of right now, there's no possible way to buy new covers with ISO. In short, if you want to move forward in the game, you need to spend money. That is the definition of a cash grab game.

Also, games that are cash grabs that die within the year do so because they are cash grabs. I would much rather have paid 80 dollars straight out of my pocket and have a game with occasional free updates just like every other puzzlequest game in the past than pay 5000 dollars to try to enjoy the game.

Unknown

It's literally impossible for your placement in some overall bracket to be adversely affected by the change simply because everyone is affected by it equally and from the whining there sure a lot of guys doing exactly the same thing as what people are complaining about. You might think you're apparently the only guy who's figured out '6 AP in 4 color = good' except everyone else already figured this out too. Unless you're hit with the issue where everything is permanently level 230 for whatever reason (and in that case boosts might not even have been enough) the current main bracket missions are quite reasonable.

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

Can't wait for Elder Scrolls online!!! It was my single reason for an Xbox one purchase. Haha!

Oh man buying an xbone for elder scrolls online

that's gonna be something to look back on and weep gently in a corner

You better pre-order, one of the races is now Pre-Order only.

Unknown

SirKopath wrote:

Puritas wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

Can't wait for Elder Scrolls online!!! It was my single reason for an Xbox one purchase. Haha!

Oh man buying an xbone for elder scrolls online

that's gonna be something to look back on and weep gently in a corner

You better pre-order, one of the races is now Pre-Order only.

ZOMG! Pay 2 Win ****! FAIL!

Puritas

pulis wrote:

All these people thanking the devs must be the devs themselves or people who are cheaters.

Before the changes to the boosts, i was regularly top 7 in the daredevil missions. Now i'm probably top 100. You literally cannot retain your spot if you do not spend the gold coins to buy the boosts.

I guess since you can't beat missions without +all boosts it's definitely not a player skill issue~~

Unknown

pulis wrote:

Celerity wrote:

pulis wrote:

All these people thanking the devs must be the devs themselves or people who are cheaters. I don't know how people can thank other people who shaft them over and over. With every update i'm finding out i wasted money and time. I level up thor and wolvie and they get ****. All my maxed one star covers get 2 shotted by the nerfed covers. Ragnarok super **** in every way imaginable. Boosts now cost way more than the help they give. Ares can only go up to level 85 yet the computer has a level 230 ares. Why? The rewards for beating that level 230 aries and company are useless anyhow.

The only thing I can thank the devs for is the time i will no longer be spending on this game when newer games come out.

A little background on me: I am old. I have played games for my income since I was 15, starting with the Magic: the Gathering pro tour. My major income now is from poker, but I still play many F2P games, and I am friends with a couple of F2P developers, plus working on my own F2P game (might be a pipe dream, but who knows!). I have played pro/semi-pro level DotA and other games nobody cares about. I live for games. I will always live for games.

This is one of the best companies I have ever witnessed in terms of listening to the players and implementing desired changes. There is almost no other game you'll find where the players complain about one character/class/etc. and it gets nerfed within a month. That kind of response time is unprecented in the gaming business, especially when Korean and Chinese games are dominating the market. I was absolutely blown away when I started playing MPQ and saw that the devs actually implemented ideas from the forums within a week or two. You have NO idea how fortunate you are to be listened to so closely, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I am split when I look at the changes themselves; I see a lot of ideas which simply do not fly from my game design background, but I also see a desire to make the game better. The developers clearly are trying to improve the game and not turn it into a cash grab. You guys don't even know what a cash grab looks like. The devs have good intentions, but they don't know how to implement them, because they are new to this model of game. You need to stop **** and give them some leeway and meaningful feedback to enact changes that are meaningful. They are trying. Most companies don't try and don't care, because they know their game will be dead within a year, so they want to grab as much cash as they can. D3 is not one of those companies. Please believe in them and address your (valid) complaints without tinykitty on the company and the game itself. Thank you.

This game has become a cash grab plain and simple. Before the changes to the boosts, i was regularly top 7 in the daredevil missions. Now i'm probably top 100. You literally cannot retain your spot if you do not spend the gold coins to buy the boosts. I would be ok if you were showered with gold coins here and there. Gold coins cost money primarily so making some boosts cost gold coins makes this a cash grab. People who do not spend real money will not be able to win any new covers. As of right now, there's no possible way to buy new covers with ISO. In short, if you want to move forward in the game, you need to spend money. That is the definition of a cash grab game.

Also, games that are cash grabs that die within the year do so because they are cash grabs. I would much rather have paid 80 dollars straight out of my pocket and have a game with occasional free updates just like every other puzzlequest game in the past than pay 5000 dollars to try to enjoy the game.

"You literally cannot retain your spot if you do not spend the gold coins to buy the boosts."

HA! My ranking has gone UP without the boosts, because I actually have the appropriate team for taking on 3 lvl 230s. Before the change, anyone with a tiny bit of spare ISO and Thorverine\ Patch could clear all the missions, and it was just a competition for who was most willing to rearrange their schedule to play at every 8 hour refresh. NOW, the rankings are actually spreading out more, as people with good 3 star teams still being able to clear regularly, and others only being able to clear occasionally. *GASP* Now everyone who had been using an undeniably overpowered team (overpowered == clearly better and more easily obtainable than almost all other options in their same rarity, and better than many characters of higher rarity) feels entitled to still be able to clear content that isn't intended to be beatable by all players. I have a team of 90 Patch/106 Mags/106 Loki and I was barely able to tread water in the top 10 of my main bracket, even though I was doing my damnedest to do missions as often as possible. Now I am in the top 4, depending on refresh timings.

And for the record, I am well aware that Magneto is going to be nerfed, and even though I spent money to get many of his covers, I acknowledge that he needs to be toned down.

Quite a bit of venting, not trying to attack anyone personally, but I am enjoying the game much more after the patch.

Unknown

I'm not even sure why I am actually posting this here since it seems like the people defending the company don't really want to accept that the game does seem to be making a cash grab. Maybe this was posted somewhere else in this thread (I didn't slog through 4 pages of people complaining and other saying they just aren't skilled enough) but lets look at the last few weeks of updates/choices the devs made:

When I started playing you could use HP to buy tokens, buy specific skills, or unlock character slots. They gave HP through the prologue, as tourney rewards, and in pve events for EVERY level of the event. Heck, the first PVE even had progress rewards for EVERY level, which was awesome.

In the last few weeks they have introduced shields for HP... then doubled the cost, introduced an "elite" bracket that you have to use hp to join and have to get high up to really gain anything (you could argue you get the tokens but I will get to that in a minute too), and hp to get boosts. They have also not really fixed the PVP situation where you basically NEED a shield or to play all day to get a high score and the newest PVE event (plus the nerfs that occurred during it) have made it frustrating for a lot of players and in order to keep the spot you have been spending lots of hours on over several days you PROBABLY need some HP.

Now, adding all those things isn't BAD per say, but look at what they also took... every other PVE event has given away HP every time a "level" ended... this made it so you could purchase a new cover slot for the new characters introduced at least.... this one no longer gives HP away for each. I'm sure a lot of players have already gotten the HP from prologue which means there are less and less chances to get more HP. Unless you are a high end player who already has a lot of HP.

PLUS they are adding more characters, which is GREAT but it also means you have to enough to unlock a slot for them... So basically, more things to spend HP on... less HP available...

Let's look at the other rewards lately... middle rewards for the last few events:
Storm (who you can get in the prologue)
Thor (who no one even wants anymore)
Captain America who was given out like candy in a lot of the PVE events... So... either you get in the top and get something useful... or you get covers that are frankly pretty useless (you do get HP which is helpful, but you would have to score fairly high up in 3 tourneys to get enough to unlock a space for a new character... plus... the HP barely covers a shield).

You can argue that people are whining because they don't have your level of skill or your time or whatever... but honestly, when you look at all the added HP charges in the last few weeks it really does seem like the developers are trying to get more money from people... and it's not even money that is used for anything FUN... YIPPIE... I can pay to get a BOOST!!!! Hooray! I can have a shield so I can get a Captain America cover while all the people that already have *** teams get the *** covers! YAY! I can buy a token to MAYBE get a *** character (HA!) that I can use and have been building up.... THAT'S highly unlikely since the random pool keeps growing so the likely hood of getting a cover you want is lower and lower.....

I mean really, think about it... people say that "maybe you just aren't skilled enough to compete or have a good enough team".... if you can only get Patch by placing in the top 5 and the levels are getting harder and harder and you can't boost without paying... the people with the stronger teams will win... making their teams stronger and stronger... then they will win Daredevil... making their teams stronger.... and the poor chumps who have two star teams? They fight to get more ** covers....

Honestly, it feels like people that defend the changes are happy because they are the people with the winning teams, large amounts of hp, and are able to have more opportunities to get even more successful since they are already at an advantage....

It kind of reminds me of the SAME arguments people with people with lots of money and power use as an excuse to keep those less fortunate from advancing...

Unknown

RangoFett wrote:

pulis wrote:

Celerity wrote:

pulis wrote:

All these people thanking the devs must be the devs themselves or people who are cheaters. I don't know how people can thank other people who shaft them over and over. With every update i'm finding out i wasted money and time. I level up thor and wolvie and they get ****. All my maxed one star covers get 2 shotted by the nerfed covers. Ragnarok super **** in every way imaginable. Boosts now cost way more than the help they give. Ares can only go up to level 85 yet the computer has a level 230 ares. Why? The rewards for beating that level 230 aries and company are useless anyhow.

The only thing I can thank the devs for is the time i will no longer be spending on this game when newer games come out.

A little background on me: I am old. I have played games for my income since I was 15, starting with the Magic: the Gathering pro tour. My major income now is from poker, but I still play many F2P games, and I am friends with a couple of F2P developers, plus working on my own F2P game (might be a pipe dream, but who knows!). I have played pro/semi-pro level DotA and other games nobody cares about. I live for games. I will always live for games.

This is one of the best companies I have ever witnessed in terms of listening to the players and implementing desired changes. There is almost no other game you'll find where the players complain about one character/class/etc. and it gets nerfed within a month. That kind of response time is unprecented in the gaming business, especially when Korean and Chinese games are dominating the market. I was absolutely blown away when I started playing MPQ and saw that the devs actually implemented ideas from the forums within a week or two. You have NO idea how fortunate you are to be listened to so closely, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

I am split when I look at the changes themselves; I see a lot of ideas which simply do not fly from my game design background, but I also see a desire to make the game better. The developers clearly are trying to improve the game and not turn it into a cash grab. You guys don't even know what a cash grab looks like. The devs have good intentions, but they don't know how to implement them, because they are new to this model of game. You need to stop **** and give them some leeway and meaningful feedback to enact changes that are meaningful. They are trying. Most companies don't try and don't care, because they know their game will be dead within a year, so they want to grab as much cash as they can. D3 is not one of those companies. Please believe in them and address your (valid) complaints without tinykitty on the company and the game itself. Thank you.

This game has become a cash grab plain and simple. Before the changes to the boosts, i was regularly top 7 in the daredevil missions. Now i'm probably top 100. You literally cannot retain your spot if you do not spend the gold coins to buy the boosts. I would be ok if you were showered with gold coins here and there. Gold coins cost money primarily so making some boosts cost gold coins makes this a cash grab. People who do not spend real money will not be able to win any new covers. As of right now, there's no possible way to buy new covers with ISO. In short, if you want to move forward in the game, you need to spend money. That is the definition of a cash grab game.

Also, games that are cash grabs that die within the year do so because they are cash grabs. I would much rather have paid 80 dollars straight out of my pocket and have a game with occasional free updates just like every other puzzlequest game in the past than pay 5000 dollars to try to enjoy the game.

"You literally cannot retain your spot if you do not spend the gold coins to buy the boosts."

HA! My ranking has gone UP without the boosts, because I actually have the appropriate team for taking on 3 lvl 230s. Before the change, anyone with a tiny bit of spare ISO and Thorverine\ Patch could clear all the missions, and it was just a competition for who was most willing to rearrange their schedule to play at every 8 hour refresh. NOW, the rankings are actually spreading out more, as people with good 3 star teams still being able to clear regularly, and others only being able to clear occasionally. *GASP* Now everyone who had been using an undeniably overpowered team (overpowered == clearly better and more easily obtainable than almost all other options in their same rarity, and better than many characters of higher rarity) feels entitled to still be able to clear content that isn't intended to be beatable by all players. I have a team of 90 Patch/106 Mags/106 Loki and I was barely able to tread water in the top 10 of my main bracket, even though I was doing my damnedest to do missions as often as possible. Now I am in the top 4, depending on refresh timings.

And for the record, I am well aware that Magneto is going to be nerfed, and even though I spent money to get many of his covers, I acknowledge that he needs to be toned down.

Quite a bit of venting, not trying to attack anyone personally, but I am enjoying the game much more after the patch.

I have been using thorverine. The problem is if you don't lock them down or kill them fast enough, your whole team is dead in 2 turns. The closest I've been to consistently mopping the floor with them is with IM40, spiderman and wolverine. IM for the regeneration of all colors, spidey to lock them down and wolverine to do the damage. There is literally no other way to play it consistently.

it's simple math. If you don't clear out the counter tiles right away, the enemy gets a MASSIVE boost in their already massive damage. The enemy team hits at LEAST 400 damage per match. Coupled with the upgrade to damage gives them 700 damage each move if they only get 1 match of 3. If they get 2, that's roughly 1400 damage. That's 33% of your life. Then there's also the massive amount of damage they can do when they use their ability when they match gems. I don't know what game you are playing or even what ranking you are but it's not really possible to get a high rank with hard work as it takes forever for you to claw up without boosts. On the off chance that the enemy AI gets amazing lucky combo matches, you are so totally screwed even WITH boosts. This has happened to me 2x in a row before knocking out my entire team in one fell swoop from 90% life to 1 guy remaining at half life.

Unknown

Also, I have a question for those defending the Devs choices... honestly can you please tell me how a new or even a player with a few *** characters is expected to ever become competitive? Or really, even get a team of *** characters? Please don't tell me how you did it because the environment has changed and having to rank in the 1-5 range to get *** covers seems increasingly unlikely against people who already have great teams. How are players that don't currently have *** characters or only have one or two covers for them supposed to get more? And if your answer buy HP... then that kind of answers if this is a cash grab....