Exit feedback on difficulty / progression

Unknown

I'd like to provide some feedback as I prepare to uninstall MPQ from my device (as soon as Galactus is done).

What all of this comes down to, and for a long, long time is that the devs fundamentally misunderstand what enjoyable difficulty means.

Boss Battles:
Having boss battles that you're designed to lose aren't a fundamental problem, but they are in context of how MPQ is setup. They were fun in the original Puzzle Quests because there was no cost to losing so you could try again, play around with different power combinations, etc.. and not be punished for it. In contrast, risk management is a fundamental feature of MPQ - managing your health packs to make sure you can keep playing. The problem with matches (4* DPD, Ultron run 2 / Gauntlet Ultron, Galactus) that are designed to make you lose is that it's completely opposite with how the rest of the game works. If they want to have matches like this, they need to either set up these matches so that heroes start the matches with max health and don't lose health from the matches, or they need to disable the entire roster and have a team-up copy of each players roster to use, so players aren't being forced to use health packs. They also need to keep boss nodes open after you lose so you only need to unlock them again after you've beat them (or dealt a certain amount of damage to them).

Luck and AP generators:
Players don't enjoy matches where enemies get tons of free AP without making matches. The higher the AP generated in this way, the more a match becomes roulette / dumb luck instead of actual strategy.

Rewards:
Matches designed for you to lose are problematic because it means you aren't being rewarded for playing them, and when you finally do beat them (which has very little to do with strategy), the reward is vastly outweighed by the health pack cost. This has been a longstanding issue with MPQ - both in terms of health pack requirements, and amount of grind required to earn meaningful rewards (for anyone who does anything with their life beyond playing MPQ). If they want to make impossible matches like Galactus, they need to severely reduce the amount of damage required to be done to them in total, and additionally need to award prized regardless of win or loss, and / or increase rewards for all of the essentials (tokens for all of them).

Token odds:
This has been a long-standing problem in MPQ. Tokens in general are fairly worthless and rarely give you anything you need. The exception are legendary tokens, which take far too much effort to earn (every venue to earn them are near impossible, either through effort or difficulty) so don't really count. As others have mentioned by others, devs have no sense of generosity. They're insanely stingy, even during an event that's supposed to be celebratory and give people tons of party gifts.

After a certain threshold, the combination of factors being stacked against the player, the role of skill / strategy disappears and just comes down to pure luck - having the right roster for the random board you're dealt, and having an overwhelmingly lucky board on top of that. This is very poor design strategy, as it doesn't encourage strategy, but rather discourages it. More generally, impossible matches that punish the player for losing discourage trying different combinations and discourage any enjoyment that might be derived from the game.

Progression:
3-4* progression basically has flat-lined. It's been that way a long time, but it's gotten worse since they keep releasing 4*'s, but don't add sufficient means to earn them. Natural progression would mean that they should be given out the same way 3*'s used to be. The odds also need to be substantially higher in tokens, and point scores needed to earn them need to be lowered.

There's probably a lot more I could say, but I just don't care any more. I'd considered spending more on this game again for a bunch of roster slots with the sale, if Demiurge actually shaped up with all their promised new progression paths to help with the 3-4* transition, but given how bad 4* DPD and now Galactus are, there's no way that's ever happening now. I've uninstalled MPQ from my tablet etc.., and will be uninstalling it completely as soon as Galactus is over.

On a final unrelated note (and I'm sure this is the only thing D3 will actually do anything about, knowing how they've operated for the past 2 years), when reinstalling the game, they need to add a splash screen when the game first loads (before the tutorials) with options to start a new game or link/login to load saved data from the servers so that players don't need to go through the whole tutorial before they're able to restore their save game.