What game did I sign into today? (Thank you Devs)

babinro

What game did I sign into today?

I logged in for my daily dose of soul crushing hopelessness and suddenly I can reasonably finish covering Silver Surfer all while getting CP nodes in pve without wanting to hang myself?

I'm genuinely impressed by the 25 CP change and how quickly it got implemented. I think some of us expected it to happen eventually but being the jaded players we are it was just assumed that we'd want 25 CP and would ultimately get 10 or 15 CP after 6 months of pleading.

As I said on LINE I think I'm finally at a point where I can genuinely recommend MPQ as a game to my friends. I don't personally agree with all the RNG systems or the character balancing choices but those are the kinds of nitpicks I'd have with any game. Even my all time favorites. These are fun problems to have. Not ones that make you second guess your choice to keep playing.

About the only major hurdle for me now is the fact that we still play competitive PvE on D3's time rather than our own. We clearly shouldn't have to schedule our day around optimized 8 hour clears with grind downs at the end of the subs to do well. PvP largely fixes this problem through shields. PvE has no such system in place to respect it's players real life responsibilities.

Any chance there are plans to address this?

The devs have truly hit it out of the park in 2016 in terms of making the player experience more FUN.
I really hope this translates to better sales figures for you all and I for one am I'm eagerly awaiting what else you have coming down the pipeline.

P.S. Please don't let the March MMR changes be a nightmare that ruins all this.

wirius

Devs have been outstanding. Amazing. Excellent. A thesaurus worth of good! My big thing I think they need to fix is making the 4* tier meaningful beyond a handful of characters. That could take a while though, and I'm ok with that with all the incredible good they've been doing.

Wolarsen

Strongly agree with OP

Azoic

Now just a stronger flow of iso across the board and it will be great! Double? Even double it would take me a good 5 months to max current characters lol

But going in the right direction. At least you can earn some more iso from nodes in general.

zeeke

I have a solution for you babs that have worked for me for over a year:

Don't play PVE competitively

I didn't even bother with pve again before they added LTs. I'd just get to frustrated with the softcappers.

GrumpySmurf1002

Azoic wrote:

Now just a stronger flow of iso across the board and it will be great! Double? Even double it would take me a good 5 months to max current characters lol

I'd be surprised if all the new nodes don't have a higher ROI over the first 7 plays now.

The first node alone in Gauntlet (with the 3 essentials) is 610 (200x1, 100x2, 70x3) + standard, so ~740 iso. I think the previous incarnation was 420 (250, 100, 70) + standard. Without doing the exact math even if you went 4 for 4 and then the other were 20, you're looking at 610 iso. So minimum is a 130iso gain (21%), with the actual ROI gain probably being closer to 25%.

If that's across the board, that's a decent quality of life improvement.

Stax the Foyer

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Azoic wrote:

Now just a stronger flow of iso across the board and it will be great! Double? Even double it would take me a good 5 months to max current characters lol

I'd be surprised if all the new nodes don't have a higher ROI over the first 7 plays now.

The first node alone in Gauntlet (with the 3 essentials) is 610 (200x1, 100x2, 70x3) + standard, so ~740 iso. I think the previous incarnation was 420 (250, 100, 70) + standard. Without doing the exact math even if you went 4 for 4 and then the other were 20, you're looking at 610 iso. So minimum is a 130iso gain (21%), with the actual ROI gain probably being closer to 25%.

If that's across the board, that's a decent quality of life improvement.

And it's more frontloaded too, especially in terms of partial clears. For people just hitting a node 3-4 times to hear the PvE Legendary (or 25 CP, hopefully), their expected value has gone up significantly because none of those victories can be a 20 ISO win.

Twysta

The devs have made some very good changes recently, but are they honestly not going to compensate people at all for the initial ridiculous Galactus scaling and the lack of ISO rewards during the Lightning Rounds?

Unknown

wirius wrote:

My big thing I think they need to fix is making the 4* tier meaningful beyond a handful of characters.

I completely agree with this. They've expanded the 4* tier, but not created any reasons to build a broad 4* roster. The characters are running ahead of the game modes.

For a while they were "encouraging" new 4* rostering by making each one better than all the rest (JG, Ice, even Thing, DPX) but they've since released a handful of 4*s that I just couldn't care less about rostering. Even solid mid-tier 4*s like maybe X23 are just "don't care" for me, I'd rather keep building IMHB, thankyouverymuch.

Der_Lex

Sundance2112 wrote:

wirius wrote:

My big thing I think they need to fix is making the 4* tier meaningful beyond a handful of characters.

I completely agree with this. They've expanded the 4* tier, but not created any reasons to build a broad 4* roster. The characters are running ahead of the game modes.

For a while they were "encouraging" new 4* rostering by making each one better than all the rest (JG, Ice, even Thing, DPX) but they've since released a handful of 4*s that I just couldn't care less about rostering. Even solid mid-tier 4*s like maybe X23 are just "don't care" for me, I'd rather keep building IMHB, thankyouverymuch.

Yet in the current meta, just about any combination with HB is considered a relatively soft team when you cross the 1000-point line, because he's so easy to shut down when playing against him. He's barely in the top 5 for 4*, and I think Nova even has the potential to take that spot from him, although I'd have to see him in action when maxed more often to get a better impression of that.

I think the main problem has been, as you point out yourself as well, that 4* releases have been kind of grouped together, power-wise. We had a group of top tier ones released close together (Ice, Cyke, Rulk), and then a group of characters that ranged from mediocre at best (X23, GR, Venom) to weak (Mr F, Chulk). The game designers of Magic: The Gathering once wrote a really interesting article on how for there to be good cards, you need 'bad' or 'okay' cards as well, and that really applies to the characters in this game as well. Nova is a good example of how strong characters can still be made. I think the real challenge will lie in finding the right balance in weaker/stronger releases, and of course in deciding when the 4* tier is 'full', like the 3* tier is.

But overall, I think a lot of moves in the right direction have been made for the game this week. And that definitely includes the new weekly buff level for 4* characters, because that goes a long way towards making sure that L350+ 5* are no longer 'I win'-buttons. Well, until we start to see fully championed 5*, that is, but that could even take the megawhales a while.

Unknown

Der_Lex wrote:

Sundance2112 wrote:

Yet in the current meta, just about any combination with HB is considered a relatively soft team when you cross the 1000-point line, because he's so easy to shut down when playing against him. He's barely in the top 5 for 4*...
I think the main problem has been, as you point out yourself as well, that 4* releases have been kind of grouped together, power-wise.

I can't comment on top-tier meta without any even near maxed 4*s myself, but regardless of specific ratings, I believe the biggest problem is just not having anything to do with extra 4* toons. Even if my first 2 maxed 4*s are not the best available, if they're good enough to push me over 1K, maybe to 1300 with enough hopping/coordination, then why bother with the others? There are no 'essentials' like with 3*s and PvE, yet they are headed to having just as many 4*s as 3*s. The vast majority of 4*s will be just redundant bloat unless they add some new modes that allow you to take advantage of a broad roster. I don't think 1/week 4* DDQ is enough.

I agree with OP that lots of good things have happened, but there are obviously still some deadzones in terms of motivation to progress and/or even play.

(Edit: I mean meaningful essentials. Of course they unlock PvE nodes, but those can be beat with a placeholder un-leveled 4*, so don't really count except to cost HP for roster slots.)

Der_Lex

I think the enhanced weekly buffs for 4* are going to be a big help as far as making all 4* feel more relevant is concerned. Characters like Xforce Wolvie or Fury might no longer be kings of the hill, but when boosted to L350+, they're pretty damn scary. Of course some characters like Chulk will probably still be pretty worthless, but the 3* and 2* tiers have their dead weight as well. Somebody has to be at the bottom.

That doesn't mean that I don't think that 4* utility/usefulness in general can't be improved, of course. I think the game is ready for 4* PvP events once a week or every two weeks, and new game modes are always appreciated.