I Think It's Finally Time

Dragon_Nexus

I had a similar moment yesturday, but I'm not smart enough to break the cycle. Helps that I have no friends or social life to pull me away, I guess.

Did four fights in the shield sim and lost the last three. A board full of nothing except 8after* I make a move (which the AI takes and uses on me); single match turns for me and 30 second long cascades for the enemy turn after turn. I just rage quit after the third fight went the exact same way, feeling like I'd just wasted 40 minutes of my life.

I play way, WAY less of the stuff in MPq now. I strive to get to 1000 in PvP and I try to get the legendary token at the end of the season, that's about it. All I need is 4*s and getting them is so arduous that it's becomming a chore. I don't *want* to play every PvE plus PvP to grind away at the game for hours uon hours to get one or two legendary tokens for such a broad range of 4*s. I'd like to play some other games in my free time, not just this. The 3* transition, even before DDQ, felt like I was making progress. I'd get to the top 100 in PvP or I'd finish in top 150 in PvE and I could relax my way into a cover or two. I'd get a heroic token and quite possibly get a 3* character. Then DDQ came along and it was even more fun to build my 3*s up.

That feeling's gone now. I need three 3* covers and I'm done. Building up a 4* roster isn't enjoyable since most of them aren't really usable. I have Lady Thor, X-Force Wolvie, Nick Fury, Invisible Woman, Star Lord...all the really old 4*s that have well fallen behind their newer counterparts. Meanwhile the new ones are all sat at sub-2* level, pretty much. My level 147 Deadpool is the next best 4* from my top guys and then it drops off quickly.

Before I could work for a few days on PvE and get two maybe even 3 covers for my 3* and then bust into a PvP and get one maybe two more. Now I need to work hard to get one cover *maybe* from PvP, if I lucked into a competitive enough bracket. And the thought of grinding away at PvE to get a legendary just feels miserable. I cannot bring myself to do it.

I thought Command Points would be the next step forward. "Awesome, they'll probably give them away frequently since this is designed to help people who still can't get anywhere in the 4* transition!" Pffth, nope. I'm at 55 since the idea was released, only reason I haven't spent them is because I'm waiting to see what else they want to do with them. CP was another feeling of hope that was dashed, for me. A great idea that is so minimalistic in its approach that I keep forgetting it exists until I luck into a single CP after completing a node. "Lots of ways to earn them" they said. I assumed they'd do something like a daily/weekly/monthly mission set to galvanise play. "Beat 100 HAMMER goons in the current PvE to get 5 CP!" or "Beat Moonstone 20 times this week to earn 5 CP!" or "Win 100 games in PvP this month for 10 CP!". But no, it's the same old placement and random node reward stuff.

Eh, I'm rambling now, I guess. I just wish they'd make the game fun again. Make it feel like I'm able to progress through a reasonable amount of effort, not leashing myself to the desk and slaving away for hours upon hours for *one* cover.

rawfsu

I learned this lesson during this past Thanksgiving weekend. I literally had only enough time to play through DDQ and participate in the two PVP events. I was worried about making the minimums for my alliance. I was worried I couldn't play SIM. I was worried I missed clear times for Ghost Rider. Then I stopped and realized this is just a game. My Thanksgiving was spent with family. A blessing. I was able to eat a good meal at Cracker Barrel. A blessing. I got extra rest and a date night with my wife while my mom babysat. A blessing. I went to the mall with my family after church and spent the whole day out. A blessing. It's all about perspective.

GothicKratos

Good luck in your future ventures! I hope you get your normalcy back, it's not cool feeling like that, that's for sure.

If you do choose to come back to MPQ at some point, I'd implore you to take it casual especially in PvE. There's a lot of people helping people on Line right now and hitting hit points in PvP isn't as hard as it used to be (I hit 1k without shielding a few events ago with my roster, which is not great, with a very small amount of coordination).

I definitely feel for the strife that MPQ can take up too much time. I have a significant other, she has a daughter, I have two (much) younger brothers, friends, a full time job that likes to work me during all normal living hours, etc. Thankfully I found myself into a pretty chill Alliance and as long as I let them know before hand they'll push extra to make up if you're going to miss mins, and we do the same to pay it forward. It's nice.

It took awhile to teach myself I could miss things and it would be okay. I'm the type of guy that plays an RPG to 210% and then I make up stupid challenges to make it fun again. I get it. You wanna get all the shinies, but you're not in this game, not without practically killing yourself.

Anyways, good luck man.

optimus2861

Good on you for realizing that, frankly, you had a problem with playing this game too much, and that you needed to curtail that. A lot of mobile 'freemium' games are thinly disguised casino rackets that try to keep you addicted so that you'll spend a lot of money in a short amount of time, not fully realizing what you've done.

While I've often said that MPQ is not as bad as other offerings out there (in particular, if a game has the name "Mobage" on it, stay far, FAR away), it's got enough distasteful elements that I closed my wallet to this game some time ago. I never spent much, but not one more dime.

And watching my boy grow up is infinitely more rewarding than matching a bunch of gems!

MrMadeULook

I feel you Punisher. I took a break right before Kingpin was added to the game and came back into Round 2 for Galactus. I was tired of feeling burnt out with the PVE/PVP grind. I'm only playing again cause I have the time and less stress in my life.

Handoftheking26

This post is great for perspective. I have NEVER set alarms or cancelled plans to play. But i do find myself getting pretty frustrated that i cannot achieve the rewards the die-hard players get. If I had known those players were arranging their lives around these rewards i wouldn't have felt as bad. I am super bummed i did not get Ghost Rider this week, as I have loved him since childhood. But I could/would not sacrifice family time at the holidays to get a reward. You should always put real life ahead of video games, even Marvel ones....lol. Good luck Punisher!

Enoc99

I too have reached what I refer to as the "unfun" phase of the game.

I am finished with my 3* roster, with nearly all of them cover maxed and 12 of them at 166. Now I am trying to work on my 4* roster. But I am earning so few 4* covers each week, that I am starting to give up hope and wondering why I am still playing this game.

I don't mind the "marathon" mindset of progressing from tier to tier, but I feel like this 4* transition is such a slog that I question if it is worth it. In a marathon, you have a long way to go, but you are continuously taking steps towards it.

This progression feels more like at each mile marker that the marathon coordinators are pulling me aside and putting me on a treadmill for an hour because they don't want me to finish the marathon too quickly and "ruin the experience". I end up just as exhausted as if I kept going but I didn't make it any further.

rollx

I really liked this post. It resonated with me. I try and be competitive, usually in the top 100 of both PVE and PVP. Does it take time? For sure. I accumulate about 3 hours a day of game time. That's a pretty big commitment, but I enjoy the game, and the RNG. I have to admit though, I've added a bit of funds into the game, which is why I don't plan on quitting anytime soon, although I've thought about it (way more seriously after this more recent Ghost Rider event).

I've recently started playing Final Fantasy Record Keeper. After learning the mechanics, I've learned that they way they do things over there is WAY better than MPQ. They give out events every 5-7 days that grow in progressive difficulty as you beat each "stage". Each stage you get a better reward when you beat it. Once you beat it, you can play each stage as many times as you want to continue getting the rewards to a lesser degree. It's you verse the game, not verse hundreds and thousands of other players (although I do enjoy aspects of the competitiveness). This is what I liked out of a PVE event. A Challenging, you vs the computer match game. PVP is fine where it is, although it does get stale doing the same thing over and over again, but PVE needs to have some growth and changes.

My favorite event is still the Ant-Man PVE event. I loved the challenge, finding new strategies, the rewards were great, and actually playing towards a tangible goal. You only have to do each node once, but the rewards were so good I had to tap each one a few times. They need to do this for every new release.

Wobby

I've been close a few times myself. I have scheduled things around the game. I've set alarms to wake up and grind 3 hours for the end of an event. I spent way too much time playing this weekend and ended up 17th - 2 covers for 12 hours of play.

But I've got a family and a job -- and I'm training to qualify for the Boston Marathon, which means I'm running at least 8-9 hours per week. So somethings gotta give.

I have a few rules now that I'm sitting on 750,000 ISO and 20,000 HP:
No buying covers unless it's the only thing that will make me competitive anymore.
No competing in an event that lasts four or more days.
No worrying about my placement in pvp or season.

Get on LINE and make friends, because it can be pretty easy to hit high scores in pvp if you do.

Edith09

Big part of me wants to scream "don't go " but as my rule for gaming was simple: HAVE FUN I completely understand your decision.
Games should make you happy not angry and when this border is crossed it's high time to stop. I'm quite enjoying MPQ now but I would not put infront of family, friends.

mrflopwelligan

Wobby wrote:

-- and I'm training to qualify for the Boston Marathon,

Wow. That's awesome, man! Put the game down and qualify! Then run it and finish! That's a real world accomplishment, right there. And something a lot of people never have the gumption to actually go out and do.

Years from now, on their death bed, no one will say how happy they were they got RHulk fully covered or placed t10 on the 187th time the devs ran 'Meet Rocket and Groot', but to sit back and tell your grandkids that you ran and completed the Boston Marathon---that's priceless!

Or, maybe talk the devs into giving you a few extra covers if you run with a MPQ shirt!

But let's be honest, we all know what you'd get: 20 ISO.

Dragon_Nexus

Enoc99 wrote:

I too have reached what I refer to as the "unfun" phase of the game.

I am finished with my 3* roster, with nearly all of them cover maxed and 12 of them at 166. Now I am trying to work on my 4* roster. But I am earning so few 4* covers each week, that I am starting to give up hope and wondering why I am still playing this game.

I don't mind the "marathon" mindset of progressing from tier to tier, but I feel like this 4* transition is such a slog that I question if it is worth it. In a marathon, you have a long way to go, but you are continuously taking steps towards it.

This progression feels more like at each mile marker that the marathon coordinators are pulling me aside and putting me on a treadmill for an hour because they don't want me to finish the marathon too quickly and "ruin the experience". I end up just as exhausted as if I kept going but I didn't make it any further.

My main issue is the pace of the new releases far exceeds the pace which we can earn the covers.
PvP is the only option to get a specific cover you want, and that is incredibly slow to turn around. Like I'd said before, I haven't even managed to get Professor X or Hulkbuster to a usable state yet. Heck, even Invisible Woman and X-Force Wolvie only became useful recently for me.

So with a backlog of progress that long, I wondered what the point of earning Ghost Rider was. I don't know what half of these 4*s even do since it's been so long since I had to think of their move sets. I have one 13-covered 4* and that's Devil Dino, and even he's not perfect at 5/4/4

Wobby

mrflopwelligan wrote:

Wobby wrote:

-- and I'm training to qualify for the Boston Marathon,

But let's be honest, we all know what you'd get: 20 ISO.

that seems clear!
These guys are in Boston right? Hey Ice, I'll gladly wear a D3 MPQ shirt at the Boston Marathon that says "-- but all I got was 20 ISO" on the back....

XandorXerxes

So an idea that I've been toying with forever is to just ask customer support to sandbox the account. If I/you do, don't turn around and then add every 5* at max covers to your account, just play the game like normal - but only do it when you want. The biggest "perk" to sandboxing (aside from apparently being able to generate whatever you want) is that you're invisible in PvP. Spend a couple hours, win up to 1300 progression. That makes up for the PvE tokens you're no longer grinding out. Your "progress" will still be slow and you won't have an alliance - but if you enjoy the game because it's marvel match-3 then those are sacrifices I'm finding that I'm increasingly willing to take.

Heck, if you want to speed up the progression just auto-add a second cover for whichever one you find. It'll still take you a year to get there.

GothicKratos

XandorXerxes wrote:

So an idea that I've been toying with forever is to just ask customer support to sandbox the account. If I/you do, don't turn around and then add every 5* at max covers to your account, just play the game like normal - but only do it when you want. The biggest "perk" to sandboxing (aside from apparently being able to generate whatever you want) is that you're invisible in PvP. Spend a couple hours, win up to 1300 progression. That makes up for the PvE tokens you're no longer grinding out. Your "progress" will still be slow and you won't have an alliance - but if you enjoy the game because it's marvel match-3 then those are sacrifices I'm finding that I'm increasingly willing to take.

Heck, if you want to speed up the progression just auto-add a second cover for whichever one you find. It'll still take you a year to get there.

I know of a lot of players that run a secondary boxed account on Steam for kicks and giggles.

El Satanno

I hate quit threads. Hate the **** out of them. This one passes muster because it's clear, well-written, and has more substance to it than "TOKENS SUCK, PVE SUCKS, EVERYTHING SUCKS I QUIT."

Good luck out there, Punisher. Hope you find more fulfillment away from the game.

GurlBYE

Whether the posts are long or short, I hope they get long time players and more recent ones a like aren't digging the direction of the game.

Whatever is introduced next needs to be pretty good. Aside from command points, not much in the past few months was received positively. (I think even the luster of command points wore off a lot when people saw how much were needed and the infrequency of them after the first week without massive spending sprees within alliances)

ammenell

fight4thedream wrote:

[...]
But what I hope the devs really take away from this is [...]

just no.
i see suggestions all over the board, there are bugs and glitches and whatnot, but they are ignored for weeks and months.
a player quits because he is frustrated and spends too much time for no progression? im sure the dev team doesnt give a single tinykitty. pretty sure it wouldnt be a big deal if he takes a chunk of other players with him.

there are guys whaling their second silver surfer.
go make some new victory screens for him.

@op:
wow, and i thought i play too much.
i started when i needed a game i could play on mobile when i get bored.
it quickly escalated similar to your situation, but not that bad.
if that is what im looking forward to, ....
i always thought after the 3* transition i just stop or post my fb acc so somebody put up with that mess of a roster, maybe that will be sooner than later

jimstarooney

Op should switch to pvp i think personally

_Ryu_

Personally i think its everybody own decision how much effort and time you spend for your daily doings.

For a mid 30 in the IT like me there are basic things that have to be done, get up and prepare for work, do your work, come home, do your duties at home, freetime, go to sleep, repeat!

But there is much much much more in there like, drive to work with train for 40 minutes and do some scoring in PVP for fun, mid break surf in the forum and see if there are new MPQ News and Announcements or are other interesting discusions, drive home and do DDQ, in the evening after we brought our little girl to bed its time for some more rounds till I feel switching to a episode of Jessica Jones or to PS4 Arkham Knight (At this point I have to admit... I Love Batman, he is my number one hero, hope you have a understnading for this;-)

At the weekend my wife already has a full schedule for us and I love the time with them more then everything else... but some rounds MPQ is always in there, you know just for fun.

Why I am so relaxed with the game? Because its a lovely time filler with all my beloved heros and villians and as a born RPG gamer there is collecting and lvling like I love it. This game is great as long as you do understand the nature of itself.

- Its a match 3 game with marvel characters, nothing more
- Its a endless game, so you can play it your entire life if you want to, so no time pressure
- Collecting, lvling, contribute with all the others in your alliance for a happy togehter
- There are always renewals and thats very important to keep on track, no one like to be bored

If you are very determined on your 2* to 3* to 4* transition, planning your time around the game and be frustated because it feels like the game works against you instead with you and get angry or depressed, then you are shot over the top!

This game is GREAT as long as you see it is a hobby and not work... peace out!