Mid-High level getting stale

Vhailorx

elwhiteninja wrote:

Perhaps a solution is to have 2 or 3 pvp events in the seasons that have not the new release four star as a essential character and the round before will do the current rank rewards but with the upcoming four star instead.

Putting older 4*s in as PVP placement rewards would be a huge improvement. The opportunity to earn 2 covers of the same color via alliance rewards is the single most important reason that the 3* transition speeds up immensely when you get a few maxed 3*s (you are finally able to put up reasonable PVP scores and join a top 100 PVP alliance).

Some equivalent of this is necessary to smooth out the 4* transition rate. Right now it's just too slow even for those that can hit 1k reliably, and it will only get worse as more are introduced. Pretty soon it's even going to get too slow for those who can hit the 1300 rewards reliably.

Nick441234

acescracked wrote:

nick_chicane wrote:

I have 7 4*'s all with only 1 cover. My X Force is the most covered at 2/2/2 and I've had him nearly a year now!

4*'s are utterly pointless unless you pour real money in as you just dont get any covers for them elsewhere.

Weird, why has our mpq game experience been so different?

I have 3 (buster, wolvie xforce, 4hor) 4*s fully covered and maxed, fury fully covered and at 250, profx fully covered and at 210. Elektra and invisible woman fully covered but not leveled. Antman and kingpin almost fully covered and leveled little.

I dropped $20 twice on this game once when I started and another $20 awhile ago. That was for slots and shields but now I'm hp positive every season.

"4*s utterly pointless unless you pour real money in as you just dont get any covers for them elsewhere"... Hmm either I'm a wizard or that's not a very accurate statement.

I forgot about Fury, he's at 3/1/1. I also forgot Invisible Woman, she's at 0/3/1.

Other than that, I have Carnage, Electra, Hulkbuster, Jean Grey, Kingpin, Prof X, LThor and Star-Lord all with only 1 cover.

So yeah, for me, its utterly pointless if I dont pour real money in.

Bowgentle

Vhailorx wrote:

Some equivalent of this is necessary to smooth out the 4* transition rate. Right now it's just too slow even for those that can hit 1k reliably, and it will only get worse as more are introduced. Pretty soon it's even going to get too slow for those who can hit the 1300 rewards reliably.

I have hit every 1300 prog reward for the past 3 seasons, and still need two yellow covers for my PX.
The transition is too slow already, even if you hit 1300 like clockwork.

Putting a 4* as the first place reward is a cruel joke now, because for highly coveted covers that means putting up 1800+ AND getting lucky.
Having two different 4*s at 1K and 1300 doesn't help much, either - the same 4* would be better.

SnowcaTT

I've been trying to take the game of 4* like they initially wanted you to take 3* - slow and steady. 1K every time, I'll get there eventually right?

Except you get 10 4*'s that way....+1 in sim progression +1 for season reward. Twelve 4* a season if you play the 1K game....when there are already 15 characters. Soon we'll only be getting one of each of the character covers every two seasons, you don't get one every season now. Much, much to slow.

Are we sure we can't make this a starlord gripe fest? I got my every-other season 4* drop out of a token yesterday (tokens being yet another place that 4* should be greatly speed up, much higher drop rate needed). Of course it was SL, thirteenth cover, horray? The first 4* where I bought no covers - was that truly random?

dr tinykittylove

SnowcaTT wrote:

Are we sure we can't make this a starlord gripe fest? I got my every-other season 4* drop out of a token yesterday (tokens being yet another place that 4* should be greatly speed up, much higher drop rate needed). Of course it was SL, thirteenth cover, horray? The first 4* where I bought no covers - was that truly random?

Can I whine about Starlord too?

Whyyyy can't I get yellow Starlord? I have him at 535 and and love him and desperately want to get him to 553 for great justice, but they refuse to put up his yellow when I actually have time to play.

throvolos

I'm in the same boat. I have a few 4* but mostly have to struggle every week to get 1000pts in PvP to try to get another 4* cover.

They don't put out new 3* because 3* don't make them any money.

4* make them tons of money. If they create a bunch of them, it becomes even harder to get a single 4* fully-covered, making people spend even more money.

The game has gotten stale because it has turned into a huge rush by the Pay-to-Win folks for the latest 4* so that they can pwn everyone else in PvP for the next few days.

The reason the game is getting stale is:
1) There is no new PvE content (and hasn't been for ages, excluding the Ultron event).
2) The AI cheats
3) The Pay-to-Win folks are skewing the game away from what the 90% majority want
4) The AI cheats
5) PvP is hugely frustrating if you don't have the current boosted 4*
6) The AI cheats
7) There's no way to compete in PvE unless you can play 3x a day, 8hrs apart, every day of the entire event.
8) PvP is designed to reward those who Pay-to-Win

I could think of a bunch more but none of this is new to anyone who has been playing the game for a while.

elwhiteninja

I would doubt that they make no money on three stars. But I have no doubt they make much more for four stars.

Vhailorx

throvolos wrote:

The reason the game is getting stale is:
1) There is no new PvE content (and hasn't been for ages, excluding the Ultron event).
2) The AI cheats
3) The Pay-to-Win folks are skewing the game away from what the 90% majority want
4) The AI cheats
5) PvP is hugely frustrating if you don't have the current boosted 4*
6) The AI cheats
7) There's no way to compete in PvE unless you can play 3x a day, 8hrs apart, every day of the entire event.
8) PvP is designed to reward those who Pay-to-Win

Mix of good an bad in this.

The ai doesn't cheat in any particular way (or if it does no one has yet produced any real evidence that it does, and the devs say it doesn't. don't see any reason to doubt them).

Doesn't seem to fair to exclude the second to last new story mode content, and THEN say there hasn't been story mode content in a while. Kind of like saying "except for christmas, there was no christmas last year..."

PVP isn't designed to reward pay-to-win directly. It's designed to reward deeper, stronger rosters. And the roster/cover mechanics are all about incentivizing payers to want to get new characters as fast as possible.

I somewhat agree about the frustrations of PVP in that I think the very highest levels of PVP have already or are about to change significantly. We have now reached a critical mass of new 4*s, some of which are very very good, and there are several very powerful 4* combos. As more people get those characters covered and leveled, high-end PVP will become progressively harder for 3* only players. I don't think it's hopeless yet though. Good boosted 3* teams are still quite viable in most PVP events for now, so 1k is well within reach for 3* players.

You are right to suggest that the needs of the whales are relatively incongruous with the needs of the "typical" player, and that does create a bunch of problems for the game. But I think your presentation of that fact is more than a little biased. Whether or not you spend a lot of money on the game, it's hard to deny that whales pay for a significant portion of the dev costs. So in a way, they are subsidizing those who don't pay. It's more complex than just saying "whales=bad, f2p=righteous!"

cyineedsn

Vhailorx wrote:

Doesn't seem to fair to exclude the second to last new story mode content, and THEN say there hasn't been story mode content in a while. Kind of like saying "except for christmas, there was no christmas last year..."

Although, I mostly agree with you, I personally feel that comparing Ultron to new story modes is more like comparing labor day to christmas. (Although reward-wise, Ultron was probably more like christmas and typical story events are more like um...something not christmas)

I may have lost my point in there somewhere..

Vhailorx

cyineedsn wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Doesn't seem to fair to exclude the second to last new story mode content, and THEN say there hasn't been story mode content in a while. Kind of like saying "except for christmas, there was no christmas last year..."

Although, I mostly agree with you, I personally feel that comparing Ultron to new story modes is more like comparing labor day to christmas. (Although reward-wise, Ultron was probably more like christmas and typical story events are more like um...something not christmas)

I may have lost my point in there somewhere..

I dunno, ultron had its problems *cough...difficulty in the second run, and alliances locking each other out of prog rewards in the first run...cough*. but overall ultron had much better rewards than a standard story event, and was at least as interesting in terms of introducing new styles of play as every PVE event save enemy of the state.

(and I said it was the second to last piece of new story content because of that weird ant-man one-off thing that kinda came out of nowhere).

And to be clear, none of this is to say that I wouldn't like to see more new story content myself. I would (though I recognize that it's less profitable than new characters). I just don't think it's fair to complain that "other than the last big piece of story content that was released, there hasn't been new story content. . ."

elwhiteninja

Personally I don't care about the "story" I want new content, and new combos to try.

AXP_isme

TL;DR moan, moan, moan, moan, moan

Seems like I'm in a similar boat to a lot of people. I have most of the 3*s cover maxed but I need ISO to level them. I see few, or no, 4* covers and haven't got to the point where I can hit 1k points yet.

I'm concerned that by the time I get the ISO to run a 3* team that'll get me to 1k that I'll be left behind on two fronts:
1 - there will be so many 4*s that it will be really slow to get one into a usable state
2 - the meta will have moved on to the point where 3* rosters will have trouble competing due to the proliferation of powerful 4*s.
It feels a lot like the 2-3* transition again. You needed 3*s to get enough points to earn 3*s or you needed to get lucky. At least you used to be able to get a reasonable number of 3* covers from PvE but that avenue doesn't exist for 4*s beyond their release runs.

I'm very sympathetic to the points in the OP, they're well made and coherent. It would be a shame if the player base drifts away because they don't see how they can progress. Whales need other people to stomp on or it's no fun for them and even if there's a steady stream of noobs, if they don't last then the future would be very bleak.
I can understand why progression to the next level of play needs to be considerably faster if you spend real money but it needs to be well defined for everyone. Right now it feels like the difficulty and period of the 2-3* transition was recognised as a problem and steps were made to ease it (more 2* covers, lower levelling costs, DDQ) but the impact has just been to expose the exact same issues between 3 and 4* with no proposal for how they are fixed.

Unknown

nick_chicane wrote:

I have 7 4*'s all with only 1 cover. My X Force is the most covered at 2/2/2 and I've had him nearly a year now!

4*'s are utterly pointless unless you pour real money in as you just dont get any covers for them elsewhere.

I'm in the same boat. Almost 2 pages of single cover 4*s for how long now?

I've got 3 4*s that are at least usable as meat shields in the first two PvE nodes, but beyond that, a bunch of very expensive parking spots with "not much car" in them.

Of course, I'm almost 700 days in without a single fully covered 3*, so there's that as well...

DBC

Marty17

SnowcaTT wrote:

simonsez wrote:

I'm assuming that once 5*s show up, 4*s will become easier to get. Believe it or not, it used to be hard to cover max your 2*s. Seriously.

Agree with simonsez...and this is when I'll quit. I remember when 2*'s were hard to get, and I was so excited to get my Thor covered at last. OBW was nearly impossible to find the covers for, almost one of my last 2*'s.

Just got into the 3* feel of things....and they went to 4*, made 2*'s drop like candy, and made the 3* transition soooo much easier, and cheaper to level. "What? This sucks!" I think. But I have my 3*'s going so I continue on.

Having the 4* "transition" bar yanked away (by the introduction of 5*) from me like the 3* was will be the end of this game for me. And I do think it's coming. But the 4* transition should be made much, much easier before the 5*'s are even here.

People could have all the 3*'s covered/maxed before the 4*'s started flooding the game. They need to make that possible with 4* - tons of covers and ISO need to start coming along.

I can scan down to the end of my roster and see only a few 2*'s left (since roster spots are so pricey), lots of 4*'s (max leveled unable to get past 94), and a 1* for DDQ. That page alone tells you a couple of huge problems with MPQ.

Same here. That's one of the reasons why I quit Marvel: War of Heroes, I'm used to the 7 rarities (highest is Legendary) then they introduced ANOTHER rarity called Ultra Legendary Also the chances of obtaining Ultra Rares (fuse 2 together creating Legendaries) doesn't seem to have increased odds in drawing.

elwhiteninja

progression is going to happen, they will release five stars one day, it is just going to happen the game used to be pyramid shaped back when it started with very few four stars and a bunch of 1 and 2 stars

Then they started releasing a ton of three stars but in a good pace that also included a few 2 stars and the occasional four star. the game then became a kinda skewed diamond

Now the game is turning into an upside down pyramid

When Bullseye was released we had
* 7
** 14
*** 40
**** 9
Now with the upcoming unknown
* 8
** 14 (Most of the player base)
*** 40 (Most of the player base ALL OF THE PVP rewards)
**** 18 (The people who pay for everyone)

Perhaps if four stars would be useful at 6-9 covers they would be more interesting but most of them need to be at least fully covered in one color and lvl 190ish

Linkster79

The way I see it there are a couple of problems with the 4* transition for the majority of the player base.

One is the availability of 4* covers. As has been mentioned you can hit the 1300 points versus event progression every time for a season and still not fully cover a 4* character, which means to boost the number of covers you need to finish in the top 2. Here is the other problem as for the most part those who tend to finish top 2 in versus events tend to be paying players who already have the latest 4* maxed on or close to release. Now I am not saying for one minute that those players do not deserve to place very well and to be honest if I invested large sums of money I would want to be up there too.

So we have to ask a couple of questions, what can be done to help the majority of the player base get 4* characters to a useable state (9-11 covers) in a reasonable time frame? And also why do those who already have the 4* rewards already maxed feel the need to deny those who need those placement rewards? These are not easily answered questions, especially the second one.

Top tier players need to score as high as possible for season rewards both for personal and alliance based, has the alliance system backfired on the players. Back before season long rewards a lot of players who already had their 4* characters maxed covered would have backed off and dropped down rankings to allow those who needed them a chance of obtaining them. Now that is not an option as dropping rankings doesn't just affect one player but 19 others, not just for one event but an entire seasons worth. Would players be willing for alliances to he done away with so we can go back to a more civilised way? Personally I can't see it ever happening.

Back to avaliabilty of covers. A great way to make more 4* covers available would be for high story event progressíon rewards. By doing away with leaderboards and distributing those rewards around the progression rewards with a few of the better ones at 1.5x, 2x and 2.5x current progression the developers might actually make a 7 day grind worth it. Especially if alliance placement rewards are also factored in to make up for lack of leaderboards. Story events could become a little goldmine for those willing to put in the time.

jimstarooney

Vhailorx wrote:

simonsez wrote:

I'm assuming that once 5*s show up, 4*s will become easier to get. Believe it or not, it used to be hard to cover max your 2*s. Seriously.

I have been saying this for most of the summer. Glad some one finally agreed with me!

And yes, it was before my time, but 2*s used to be much harder to get before their covers were available as PvP match rewards. That was also when ares/obw could get you top 25 in PvP events easily. And punisher dominated 3* land.

transitioners nowadays just dont realise how easy they have had it,now u can get a 2 star just from winning a match.

Linkster79

jimstarooney wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

simonsez wrote:

I'm assuming that once 5*s show up, 4*s will become easier to get. Believe it or not, it used to be hard to cover max your 2*s. Seriously.

I have been saying this for most of the summer. Glad some one finally agreed with me!

And yes, it was before my time, but 2*s used to be much harder to get before their covers were available as PvP match rewards. That was also when ares/obw could get you top 25 in PvP events easily. And punisher dominated 3* land.

transitioners nowadays just dont realise how easy they have had it,now u can get a 2 star just from winning a match.

I was like a kid a Christmas when I finally maxed my OBW. Her, Thor and Wolverine got me many a top 50 in versus when then end times weren't at 5am.

elwhiteninja

Linkster79 wrote:

jimstarooney wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

simonsez wrote:

I'm assuming that once 5*s show up, 4*s will become easier to get. Believe it or not, it used to be hard to cover max your 2*s. Seriously.

I have been saying this for most of the summer. Glad some one finally agreed with me!

And yes, it was before my time, but 2*s used to be much harder to get before their covers were available as PvP match rewards. That was also when ares/obw could get you top 25 in PvP events easily. And punisher dominated 3* land.

transitioners nowadays just dont realise how easy they have had it,now u can get a 2 star just from winning a match.

I was like a kid a Christmas when I finally maxed my OBW. Her, Thor and Wolverine got me many a top 50 in versus when then end times weren't at 5am.

I think the game is in a much better place for transitioners but since we are not getting new content at the three star level its super boring to have all these characters that are just making me spend 900 hp on slots.

elwhiteninja

someone posted on redit that they will be making getting four stars much easier soon. Dont know if that is true or not but it can really only mean one thing...5 stars are coming soon