Meh

Raffoon

*This is a bit ranty. Go read a different thread if that upsets you*

I think it's time for me to stop posting. After 2 years of it, it's finally sinking in that the developers just don't care what we think.

I'll probably still do PVPs for my alliance, but the apathy displayed by the developers is really sinking in regard to the game itself too.

Some developers would pay large amounts to get the kind of feedback that they get on these forums. And they used to get more of it before they drove a bunch of far more sane players away.

I think the final straw is looking at my daily reward and seeing that after getting a heroic token on day 703, I get to wait a whole week to get.... another heroic token. Whoopee! Meanwhile, I've just started playing Marvel Future Fight, and that game throws free fun things at you every time you turn around. Marvel Heroes was similar. It would throw free stuff at you like crazy, and when you bought things they actually made an impact. The devs are way too stingy in this game.

Future Fight is a like a hotel that goes out of its way to make you feel at home. Mint on the pillow, complementary breakfast, friendly staff, and such.

Puzzle quest is like a dingy motel where you want some ice, but the ice machine is broken. You go to the front to ask about it and burly unwashed fellow tells you that they're working on fixing the ice machine. Now shut up and go back to your room. A year later you drive by and see it's still broken.

Where did the developers, or at least the community representatives go? They used to post here all the time. I guess I should be thankful, though. When they were here they used to say stuff like "Yeah we see that's a problem. We'd like to fix that" and then they'd actually just ignore it. Then of course, they'd tell us that all the changes they did make were based on player feedback!!! HAHA! So maybe it's a blessing that they've abandoned the forums. Now I can stop fooling myself into thinking that they care about the people that play the game and what they think.

All in all, a game and community that I used to have such hope for now just fills me with a feeling of "meh".

IlDuderino

Heartburn

i would have to agree just started playing future fight and it has been awesome. the extras for the last week and a half alone were about $15-20 worth of the in game premium resource for purchase and they have a constant bogo sale each week for black friday it was buy one get two. the purchases feel like i accomplished something. i already developed my base team to 6 /6 mastery to make it easier to farm the rest. but i can already feel the impact of my puchases as i am scoring higher and progressing with less effort. it feels good to get the feeling of progression instead of banging your head against a wall only to be hit for -200 point in less then 3 minutes.

TxMoose

at the start of any game there is quick progression. if that is what drives you, start a second account and restart mpq. you'll progress very fast over the first few months and then things basically continually slow for the remainder of the game. the higher you get, the slower the progress. it necessarily has to be that way. but can certainly become frustrating if you don't enjoy the base of the game enough to overcome the slowing progression. this is why most mobile games are flashes in the pan.

TheOncomingStorm

Imho mpq's 3 largest problems are interrelated.

1. Progress takes too long.

2. The time versus reward equation is off. It takes too much time for too little reward. And yes, I mean pve grinding (although pve aside from that has been greatly improved except that scaling is based on roster instead of the characters selected to be used in a node).

3. As far as compensation or celebratory events, mpq always try to err on the side of doing the minimum.

Spoiler: 1 and 2 (and having a one year old) are the reasons I stopped playing. I love the game and I still have the itch to play it all the time. But 1 and 2 are deal breakers.

P.S. The developers read the forum still. My guess is they no longer participate, and I don't blame them. Forumites were upset they didn't have answers. Developers gave answers and players were still upset and shot the messengers.

Crowl

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

Imho mpq's 3 largest problems are interrelated.

1. Progress takes too long.

2. The time versus reward equation is off. It takes too much time for too little reward. And yes, I mean pve grinding (although pve aside from that has been greatly improved except that scaling is based on roster instead of the characters selected to be used in a node).

3. As far as compensation or celebratory events, mpq always try to err on the side of doing the minimum.

Spoiler: 1 and 2 (and having a one year old) are the reasons I stopped playing. I love the game and I still have the itch to play it all the time. But 1 and 2 are deal breakers.

P.S. The developers read the forum still. My guess is they no longer participate, and I don't blame them. Forumites were upset they didn't have answers. Developers gave answers and players were still upset and shot the messengers.

Beyond the problems you mention, the biggest one for me is the lack of flexibility where you need to do your clears every 8 hours if you want to be competitive, they seriously need to get away from that as this is still predominantly a mobile game and those are ideally suited to playing here and there when you get 10 minutes or so to play.

TheOncomingStorm

TxMoose wrote:

at the start of any game there is quick progression. if that is what drives you, start a second account and restart mpq. you'll progress very fast over the first few months and then things basically continually slow for the remainder of the game. the higher you get, the slower the progress. it necessarily has to be that way. but can certainly become frustrating if you don't enjoy the base of the game enough to overcome the slowing progression. this is why most mobile games are flashes in the pan.

I strongly disagree with the latter part. For starters, we should have had 4* placement rewards 6 months ago (even if it was only one event per week) when 4*s overtook 3*s as the new meta.

A new character comes out every 2 weeks. Previously you could max cover a character every 2-3 months playing high end pvp/pve. With new content slowly leaking into the game, the thing that motivates most players is character progression.

In other words, constantly having new characters (at usable covers and levels) was the pay off for players and kept the game relatively fresh.

I'll say it again. The delay in making 4*s placement rewards seems (whether intentional or not), like mpq is giving transitioning players a chance to relatively carch up to vets almost like they are reseting the playing field. While this may be better for the game in the long run, it is making the game relatively more stale for vets.

I mean when cupcakes become one of the most fun aspects of the game for vets that should really tell mpq something.

TheOncomingStorm

Crowl wrote:

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

Imho mpq's 3 largest problems are interrelated.

1. Progress takes too long.

2. The time versus reward equation is off. It takes too much time for too little reward. And yes, I mean pve grinding (although pve aside from that has been greatly improved except that scaling is based on roster instead of the characters selected to be used in a node).

3. As far as compensation or celebratory events, mpq always try to err on the side of doing the minimum.

Spoiler: 1 and 2 (and having a one year old) are the reasons I stopped playing. I love the game and I still have the itch to play it all the time. But 1 and 2 are deal breakers.

P.S. The developers read the forum still. My guess is they no longer participate, and I don't blame them. Forumites were upset they didn't have answers. Developers gave answers and players were still upset and shot the messengers.

Beyond the problems you mention, the biggest one for me is the lack of flexibility where you need to do your clears every 8 hours if you want to be competitive, they seriously need to get away from that as this is still predominantly a mobile game and those are ideally suited to playing here and there when you get 10 minutes or so to play.

I don't totally disagree. However, i do I give them credit for going from 2.5 hours to 8 hours. I also think it's a catch 22. They can either give rewards to everyone or make pve competitive. If you've read Dwill's game theory posts in the past, rewards wI'll seldom be given out to everyone.

Since pve will be mostly competition based (rears less whether that is true pve as opposed to pvp with a story component, then you have to have a system that has scoring such that there is separation between the ranks. And while every 8 hours is optimal, you can place high not playing every 8 hours. As I said previously, imo the real time suck in pve is the grind at the end. I have previously proposed a solution where there is only one grind at the end instead of every sub for a week. Imo it's probably not the best solution, butI thought it was more player friendly than the current system.

Crowl

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

I don't totally disagree. However, i do I give them credit for going from 2.5 hours to 8 hours. I also think it's a catch 22. They can either give rewards to everyone or make pve competitive. If you've read Dwill's game theory posts in the past, rewards wI'll seldom be given out to everyone.

Since pve will be mostly competition based (rears less whether that is true pve as opposed to pvp with a story component, then you have to have a system that has scoring such that there is separation between the ranks. And while every 8 hours is optimal, you can place high not playing every 8 hours. As I said previously, imo the real time suck in pve is the grind at the end. I have previously proposed a solution where there is only one grind at the end instead of every sub for a week. Imo it's probably not the best solution, butI thought it was more player friendly than the current system.

They could still keep the grind at the end of an event or sub, just remove the strict clock (due to reducing points) for those first 3 or 4 clears so people could get those out of the way when they could fit them in and you still had a tiebreaker for placements. If they wanted to be even more flexible, they could have those fixed clears and allow you to activate two hours when you could grind that suited you better, you would just have to fit in your clears and grind period within the 24/48 hours of the sub and outside these clears you would just get your 20 iso rewards.

Blahahah

Here is the one problem I have with every...

EVERY....

Single one of the posts like this.


How ~fast~ do you think progression should be? Should you be able to max cover and level a 3* within a week? A month maybe?
Should your 4* transition end after just 30 days of decently solid work?
What about less work? Should just anyone be able to get the best characters so every single person in PvP and PvE can fight it out with the same 4 or 5 characters?

Here is the thing about progression: If only exists when there are differences between individuals. For example...
You think progression is slow because its hard to fight for rewards, so if they made it easier it would be better, right?
Only then everyone is still fighting for the same rewards, and those who are able to win as they do now will continue to win as they always have.


Second, to developer feedback. If they listened to every single thing in the forum, this game would literally not exist ever.
"Progression is too slow"
"Here, now it takes one node to recieve a maxed out optimally built 4* team thats in the meta"

"This team is overpowered!"
"Here, now those characters are removed from the game entirely"

"This character is underpowered"
"Lets make them the new overpowered"

These are extremes, mind you, but this is basically what people are asking for. They don't want a better game, they want to personally have a better experience.
They don't regard the experience of those around them, or how their desires affect those same people.

I think progression is fine given that by day 703 you're probably already "progressed" decently well into the end game.
When you were a new player, you built yourself up. 1* team complete, 2* team complete, then it took a little longer to hit 3* completetion.

Meanwhile you've just started playing MFF, yeah no duh the game is going to throw things at you. When you just started MPQ threw new and great rewards at you every day as well. Buying things meant something because progression was naturally faster.
I can almost promise by day 703 in MFF, you'll find the same innui towards the community and the game. It happens.

Games are meant to be enjoyed, if you don't enjoy the game then don't play it. Sorry this wasn't your cup of tea, but we'll be waiting for you to come back.
If you never do, then we hope you enjoy whatever you've moved onto. I've played MFF, not my cup of tea in the slightest personally. I'm glad you enjoy it though.

chamber44

Crowl wrote:

Beyond the problems you mention, the biggest one for me is the lack of flexibility where you need to do your clears every 8 hours if you want to be competitive, they seriously need to get away from that as this is still predominantly a mobile game and those are ideally suited to playing here and there when you get 10 minutes or so to play.

yep. i've said this before. There have absolutely been times where i'd grab my phone and not really have a game to jump into. I'm in-between Lightning Rounds, it's not time to grind, I'm shielded in PvP (or haven't jumped in because of slice times).

Second thing is an echo that everyone else has been saying about PvE -
1) grinding sucks and it's not fun
2) if you miss a clear, it can be impossible to recover
3) why bother? the rewards aren't worth the hours

Ludaa

Blahahah wrote:

Here is the one problem I have with every...

EVERY....

Single one of the posts like this.


How ~fast~ do you think progression should be? Should you be able to max cover and level a 3* within a week? A month maybe?
Should your 4* transition end after just 30 days of decently solid work?
What about less work? Should just anyone be able to get the best characters so every single person in PvP and PvE can fight it out with the same 4 or 5 characters?

Here is the thing about progression: If only exists when there are differences between individuals. For example...
You think progression is slow because its hard to fight for rewards, so if they made it easier it would be better, right?
Only then everyone is still fighting for the same rewards, and those who are able to win as they do now will continue to win as they always have.


Second, to developer feedback. If they listened to every single thing in the forum, this game would literally not exist ever.
"Progression is too slow"
"Here, now it takes one node to recieve a maxed out optimally built 4* team thats in the meta"

"This team is overpowered!"
"Here, now those characters are removed from the game entirely"

"This character is underpowered"
"Lets make them the new overpowered"

These are extremes, mind you, but this is basically what people are asking for. They don't want a better game, they want to personally have a better experience.
They don't regard the experience of those around them, or how their desires affect those same people.

I think progression is fine given that by day 703 you're probably already "progressed" decently well into the end game.
When you were a new player, you built yourself up. 1* team complete, 2* team complete, then it took a little longer to hit 3* completetion.

Meanwhile you've just started playing MFF, yeah no duh the game is going to throw things at you. When you just started MPQ threw new and great rewards at you every day as well. Buying things meant something because progression was naturally faster.
I can almost promise by day 703 in MFF, you'll find the same innui towards the community and the game. It happens.

Games are meant to be enjoyed, if you don't enjoy the game then don't play it. Sorry this wasn't your cup of tea, but we'll be waiting for you to come back.
If you never do, then we hope you enjoy whatever you've moved onto. I've played MFF, not my cup of tea in the slightest personally. I'm glad you enjoy it though.

You're enjoying it because you can still progress, even just a little, every single day through DDQ. Us grumpy vets have been there too, we know it's great! Some of us haven't progressed for months, despite playing every single day, grinding new releases, and reaching progressions. The last time I progressed was when I purchased covers for Jean Grey 3 months ago. No, we don't want it to be like Day-1 for us, but it needs help, it needed help 3 months ago.

Things are broken in this game and all they do is drop new characters on schedule. Sure, they'll say, "Changes coming soon!" but what does that even mean? You want me to keep playing unhappily for another month or two based on a mysterious update? They've had 2 years to get this kitty purring, but it's like everything they do is meant to give them just enough breathing room to go on vacation until the next roadblock. Zero foresight.

You're right about starting new games though, I recently started Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes and it's been awesome! They celebrated the Force Awakens opening by giving out two free characters that you could put on your A-Squad right away. You also don't have to pay to keep them, or wait on the game's reward schedule to start upgrading them. What a novel idea! MPQ drops a 7-day event asking you to squeeze blood from a stone, then pay to hold onto it while it rots in your roster for 8 months.

Sm0keyJ0e

Ludaa wrote:

MPQ drops a 7-day event asking you to squeeze blood from a stone, then pay to hold onto it while it rots in your roster for 8 months.

A truer statement has never been made.

Dragon_Nexus

The issue for me seems to be that devs have switched the meta from 3* to 4* but have made little effort in treating 4*s differently.
Aside from legendary tokens they're as rare as ever. It made sense that XFW or IW or NF were top tier prizes for top tier play, finishing in the top 2 in a PvE for example or getting really lucky with a token. But now they're released so frequently there's no chance of catching up.

The dilution only gets worse, too. You can focus on a single 4* character but by the time they're fully covered a dozen more have come out, likely making that one redundant. I mean, I've still not got a workable Hulkbuster and the time it'll take for that to happen for me will be lengthy and in the mean time everything that's come out since will require that much work *again* to cover.

3* transition, while slow at first, had some nifty ideas to help it along. PvE was rewarding since I'd often get one or two from that and then another one from PvP. Now it's so much work for so little reward.

In the last season I got maybe 4 or 5 covers, if that. Most of the early PvPs ended up with me reaching 800 and hitting a wall. I even poured more HP than I normally do into buying health packs so I could try to push on, a tactic which only sometimes worked. As a result I'm way behind on HP.

I'm hoarding Deadpool tokens because...what's the point? I don't even need anything in the vault any more apart from the 4*s.

And now there's a 7-day event right before christmas that I'm not even going to play because work will make sure I won't have the time. I'm running out of reasons to play =/

TxMoose

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

The issue for me seems to be that devs have switched the meta from 3* to 4* but have made little effort in treating 4*s differently.

this might be semantics, but 'meta', to me, means the very top of the game. and more and more of the very top of the game are getting at least 1 usable 5* (6-8 covers, level 300+) to go along with their 4* stable (according to my queues). I'd say the 'meta' has moved toward 5*s and the core of the vet game is shifting from 3* to 4*. so, not just the meta-game is 4*, but more and more, the core game is becoming 4*. yet the 4* covers are not being treated (distributed) like the 3* covers were when they became the 'core' of the game. I sympathize with those like luda above who have not had meaningful progress in ages. meanwhile a huge portion of the playerbase has filled out the ranks just under them with those who have successfully managed a big chunk of the 4* transition. the progress of the game has slowed to a crawl for the top, and I'm really not sure how it would be best handled. however, I know from experience, the 3* and 4* transitions are definitely doable in reasonable fashion.

now we have 2 more characters coming out. it sounds like they could be back to back releases - not sure. 2 more slots. I'm almost getting to the point where I don't care about rostering all the dang characters. was going to buy hp the next sale but having second thoughts about that and a few more characters will tap out my hp. I just want some iso to level what I have. and to finish out a few abilities on a few characters. then I'm good for a while until I decide to level a 5*. come about march, colossus and psylocke might be in real jeopardy.

DaveR4470

I'll second what TXMoose said. The problem isn't that the devs made 5* the meta... it's that they then quickly went straight from 4* to 5* WITHOUT turning 4* into a sub-meta (in the way 3*s were by the changes to leveling and DDQ). So you've now got the "true" meta as 5*, but 4*s are just as difficult to obtain/develop/max as they were before 5*s even existed.

So you wind up "freezing" the player base that can reasonably participate the meta AND the sub-meta gameplay in place. Because the lower tiered players now have TWO tiers of "meta" players above them pushing them downward in the pecking order. Or, put another way -- to develop a 5* roster (without massive expenditure), you have to have a well-developed 4* roster, and to develop a 4* roster, you... have to have a well-developed 4* roster.

TxMoose

DaveR4470 wrote:

to develop a 5* roster (without massive expenditure), you have to have a well-developed 4* roster, and to develop a 4* roster, you... have to have a well-developed 4* roster.

one small point - and to develop a 4* roster quickly, you... have to have a well-developed 4* roster, or at least a key pair for pvp. slower development can certainly happen via pve and 1K. 1300 is pretty difficult without a good 4* pair. that is how I started my transition - 1K and after LTs were intro'ed, pve (that is 4-5 covers a week, plus any token pulls). and you don't have to have 4*s for that. and the more you do that, the more 4*s you'll get, then you'll start beating the 4* ddq node and it develops from there. it is significantly slower than 3* transition, but to start with 4-5 covers/week and then add from there as your roster strengthens, I didn't find it horribly slow. full disclosure I did spend hp on 3 of my jeanbuster's covers, that sped the process along too. without that my hb would be at 4/5/4 and jean at 4/4/5.

Unknown

YES FUTURE FIGHT!

ANYONE PLAYING FF LOOKING FOR AN ALLIANCE MESSAGE ME

ClydeFrog76

Couldn't agree more.

I've been playing Mabinogi Duel for a month or so now, and the amount of stuff they throw at you just for checking in every day and playing puts MPQ to shame. It's F2P but I've gladly thrown some dollars their way because it's immensely fun and they actually seem to give a damn about their players. The amount of rewards you can get through PVP is also leaps and bounds ahead, and they have live PVP which is obviously the lifeblood of a TCG.

Highly recommend it to any lovers of TCGs.

(I'm still playing MPQ, but very very little.)

Dauthi

Ludaa wrote:

You're enjoying it because you can still progress, even just a little, every single day through DDQ. Us grumpy vets have been there too, we know it's great! Some of us haven't progressed for months, despite playing every single day, grinding new releases, and reaching progressions. The last time I progressed was when I purchased covers for Jean Grey 3 months ago. No, we don't want it to be like Day-1 for us, but it needs help, it needed help 3 months ago.

Things are broken in this game and all they do is drop new characters on schedule. Sure, they'll say, "Changes coming soon!" but what does that even mean? You want me to keep playing unhappily for another month or two based on a mysterious update? They've had 2 years to get this kitty purring, but it's like everything they do is meant to give them just enough breathing room to go on vacation until the next roadblock. Zero foresight.

It has been very frustrating that there have been so many problems with gameplay and their solutions seem to be another new 4*. If they just stopped and polished their product they would have something to provide better long-term profit. My guess is the 4*s are a great short-term investment so they are pushing those, like you said zero foresight.

Raffoon - I agree the game can be summed up as "meh." This game is by far more stingy with it's prizes than most games, especially at the higher end-game progressions. They ask for too much for too little. They have promises on the horizon, and they sound great, but I get frustrated thinking about the new 4*s being created instead of focusing on fixing the game.

I also got a heroic token today at day 738. How is this supposed to help me at day 738? Would it have killed them to hand out a legendary that, at this point, is the only way I can progress? I certainly would be more compelled to play and feel a sense of progress. Are they completely out of touch with the reality of the game?

I just started up Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest and every 31 days you get a "Fat Pack" of boosters, which would be along the lines of getting 4 10 packs in MPQ (11,200 HP!!) . During the 31 days the rewards slowly escalate how much of their currency you get, to some very impressive amounts every day. You don't even have to play, you just turn the game on and collect the rewards.

Bryan Lambert

Blahahah wrote:

Here is the one problem I have with every...

How ~fast~ do you think progression should be? Should you be able to max cover and level a 3* within a week? A month maybe?

Well, they're currently releasing three 4*-5* characters a month. So if the game provided enough resources as rewards for regular play to max one 4* character a month, you'd still fall behind two characters a month.

Hilariously, the only currency in the game that can keep up with new character releases is the "premium" currency. I can easily earn 3000 HP in a month just from progression rewards and alliance placement and not shielding much.

If I reached 1K in every PvP in a month (10 covers), top-100'ed two new release events a month (2 covers), and earn CP at the rate I am through PvE nodes and daily rewards (2 covers), that's 14 covers. Legendary tokens from grinding PvE's is another 6. Odds are in a month I'll luck into 1-2 more from Heroic and Event tokens, so that's 22-23 covers a month. Which is technically enough to max a single 4*, and almost enough for 2, but of course there's cover dilution and 1000-HP covers keeping that from being really ideal. Still, for the most part, I don't feel particularly cover-starved. I'd love to be able to choose to work on Hulkbuster and Jean and Thing and Iceman covers instead of whatever the event rewards and tokens give me, but still, it's a healthy amount of covers.

And then there's ISO. On a good week, with heavy play, I earn, tops, 40K ISO in a week. 160K in a month. Which is less than half the ISO I need to level a single 4* character.

That's the math of a 4* transitioned with most 3*'s at 166, at least one cover of every character released, playing every PvE and PvP for progression and some PvE's for placement. In a non-competitive alliance, sure, but competitive alliances are some rarefied air.

That's why the 4* progression feels out of whack. Three new characters at the 4* or better level per month, enough ISO to fully max half of one, and enough covers to max one to one and a half if you're very lucky. The math dictates that players who don't pay will continue to fall behind, and falling behind is a great way to negate any feelings of actual progression.