There is no incentive in getting stronger

Unknown

Sorry but I don't really understand it. Please help me.

This game is a puzzler with elements of RPG and PVP competition.
As we all know, while completing stuff and supposedly having fun, you get stronger with powers and levels.

The next logical point would be moving forward to better prizes, better incentives and moving your whole game experience to epic levels.

Taking the most famous RPG as an example, Dungeons & Dragons, at level 1 you struggle fighting against orcs and goblins, gaining 10 exp points at a time and finding a basic magic sword is priceless, and at lvl 20 you wield powerful magical artifacts literally out of this world and go to take over the gods, gaining millions experience points in the process.

Back to MPQ:DR, you power up and go up bigger challeges, but just in the form of more levelled opponents (OVERlevelled, as it is), fighting over the exact same rewards as before, just with 10 times more difficulty and time spent involved.
It's like you played D&D at lvl 20, went against the gods, fight epic struggles for weeks and... be rewarded with the same +1 trash sword and 10 exp. Meanwhile, your buddy lvl 1 group plays 1 hour and gets exactly the same reward against trash mobs.

Because, you know, this is exactly what happens in this game, thanks to MMR and SCALING. The better you get, the more you struggle, and the less rewards you receive complared to your power level. ISO is our exp. points by the way. As a noob 2k rocks your world and gets you from zero to hero. To me, it gets 1 level to my toon, a whopping 0,8% increase in power or something.
So, please help me to understand the logic behind this. Is there any real incentive in getting stronger, other than looking at these little numbers get up?

Unknown

Nice D and D reference. lol

kensterr

/start sarcasm
Once you get stronger you're suppose to "bully" lower characters in PVP and earn easy ISO. I think that's the point of the game
/end sarcasm

Unknown

You are completely right. There is incentive though to keep playing: collecting covers, leveling up, upcoming team-play. The real issue for me is in pve events, weak-roster people do better than seasoned player, which is a bit infuriating.

D3 has of course to maintain attractiveness for new player, maybe this could be done by setting up separate event dedicated to new comer (for example, account not older than 2 weeks, or account without 3*, given the reward for PVE / PVP is 3 *), but I guess this has been suggested already

Unknown

I don't think you should compare the MPQ to an RPG. The game is closer to a TCG since cover collection is what drives it. As such, it counts on the need people feel to complete their collection when they get a new cover. There are some heroes that open new combos and strategies, but right now at least half of them are below average compared to others with same rarity and function. This forces you to depend heavily on a 2-3 team strategy and reduces the variety of teams you would like to see and play.

Everyone's hope is that in the near future all heroes will be where they should be, but I wouldn't expect much since they seem to put all their effort in nerfing the op heroes and giving new ones which draws back in players with maxed rosters, than buffing the weak. The latest heroes we got were certainly more balanced so they are definitely learning even though it seems to be a slow progress.

djpt05

Don't the Elite tournaments attempt to address this?

Unknown

I agree, but one thing I know is that MMR and level scaling alleviates grind and pay2win. If you don't need to get stronger to win, you don't need to grind or pay to get stronger.

Unknown

djpt05 wrote:

Don't the Elite tournaments attempt to address this?

It'd be nice if the elite tournaments weren't just a shielding / queuing metagame. The top players just watch like hawks for other players to unshield, then queue them up, and possibly take a crack at them during said unshielding, then shield up again. It's pretty silly and a huge drain on hero coins. Honestly, if they want a real elite tournament, they need to remove shielding from it.

Unknown

Narkon wrote:

I don't think you should compare the MPQ to an RPG.

Though it's nowhere near a traditional RPG in any way, it is how the publishers have marketed it on Steam, at least to a small extent. From the store page:

"Assemble a team of Marvel’s biggest super heroes and villains and battle with Puzzle Quest’s trademark match-3 and story-telling gameplay in a game that combines favorite Marvel characters with a deep RPG leveling, player vs. player, character upgrades, and more."

If you want to play around with RPG elements, there are some conventions to stick to.

sinnerjfl

This game has a philosophy of punishing the player for doing well instead of rewarding you and it is quite frustrating. I don't know if it has to do with the F2P model but I have a strong feeling that is the case

They make the game somewhat competitive but if you do too well it's just gonna get harder for you. Its non-sense.

Unknown

Newcomers are doing so fine the way it is now on PVEs and PVPs that they just skip Prologue.

And this is the main excuse the devs have to not include more permanent story content. "Because many players did not finished prologue yet!". Of course not! Why they would do it for a 2* Daken when they can do it for a 3* Punisher and 100 HP right?

Unknown

I disagree that there is no incentive to grow stronger. Seeing as how I recently started playing this game, I can tell you that the burden placed upon a newbie player is quite high. It is extremely difficult to get the HP to grow your roster without selling characters. The one thing that is nice for new players is that they have an easier time of obtaining rewards; some of them useful, some of them not. Most of the covers will just be sitting there for when they actually level to be able to compete.

What happened with me was that I won a fair amount of rewards and then hit a wall. That wall may have been a bit harsh, and it still can be for me as I am levelling my 2*s and filling out some 3*s, but the fact is that there needs to be barriers at each level. Furthermore, there needs to be competition at the top. Sure, you can find a few lowbies here and there who have gotten too big for their britches but for the most part you now need to compete at a higher level.

I don't think it is a perfect system right now; the PVE especially seems out of whack but it does seem to be getting better. The PVP would be great if it weren't for tanking and the MMR was either tweaked a bit more, or thrown out altogether with appropriate rewards for each level.

Still, I think if there wasn't the fact that you can win some cool stuff when you are low level, I don't think I would have played the game. Then the game would turn in to either an old men's club where no new players could climb their way up.

Unknown

Pretty much agree I guess. Over half the top 10 in all my PvE subs this event have had rosters that couldn't even field 3x lvl 85 (and probably half are running on at least 2, if not 3 1* covers). I think part of the frustration is you get scaled based on god knows what but your bracket is just unsorted sequential players. So someone grinding through lvl 230 fights is competing with ppl having a MUCH easier time.

IMO PvP is far FAR worse. To see someone with a garbage roster ahead of you in your bracket and to be unable to hit them because of MMR while they sit there unshielded us infuriating .

Imperfect system I guess. they don't seem to want/ be able to have ppl compete against other ppl with similar rosters for rewards (MMR groups you for fights, not rewards from events) so the system will always piss ppl off.

Unknown

CeeEssGee wrote:

I don't think it is a perfect system right now; the PVE especially seems out of whack but it does seem to be getting better. The PVP would be great if it weren't for tanking and the MMR was either tweaked a bit more, or thrown out altogether with appropriate rewards for each level.

Improving MMR doesn't make getting a stronger roster get rewarded AT ALL. As long as the rewards for PvP are not better for ppl with a better MMR you are literally no better off than someone with a 1* roster who gets to fight other 1* rosters for the same stuff. In fact, it's far less risky for a 1* roster to go against an equivalent roster in PvP than a 3* roster because, as long as you focus down M.Storm it's a lot less likely a freak cascade will finish you off than against decked out 3*'s.

(Same for comparing 1* to 2*. An OBW getting a lucky cascade to aggressive recon into a Thor combo is far more devastating than you'll face in 1*'s where the worst you can get is probably M.storm feeding into a Jugger headbut.)

Unknown

My 141 Patch, 128 Hulk, 110 Punisher, 107 Magneto, and 100 Spidey cound not disagree more.

You get attacked less during PVP events.
You can grind for hours without using a health pack.
You can mow through lev 230 goons like it's a prologue mission
You can stop tanking like a **** and forget about MMR all together.

What more incentive do you need to make your team stronger?

Unknown

AsianInvasion wrote:

My 141 Patch, 128 Hulk, 110 Punisher, 107 Magneto, and 100 Spidey cound not disagree more.

You get attacked less during PVP events.
You can grind for hours without using a health pack.
You can mow through lev 230 goons like it's a prologue mission
You can stop tanking like a **** and forget about MMR all together.

What more incentive do you need to make your team stronger?

+1

Except my levels are slightly lower for some and slightly higher for others

Unknown

CeeEssGee wrote:

I disagree that there is no incentive to grow stronger. Seeing as how I recently started playing this game, I can tell you that the burden placed upon a newbie player is quite high. It is extremely difficult to get the HP to grow your roster without selling characters. The one thing that is nice for new players is that they have an easier time of obtaining rewards; some of them useful, some of them not. Most of the covers will just be sitting there for when they actually level to be able to compete.

What happened with me was that I won a fair amount of rewards and then hit a wall. That wall may have been a bit harsh, and it still can be for me as I am levelling my 2*s and filling out some 3*s, but the fact is that there needs to be barriers at each level. Furthermore, there needs to be competition at the top. Sure, you can find a few lowbies here and there who have gotten too big for their britches but for the most part you now need to compete at a higher level.

I don't think it is a perfect system right now; the PVE especially seems out of whack but it does seem to be getting better. The PVP would be great if it weren't for tanking and the MMR was either tweaked a bit more, or thrown out altogether with appropriate rewards for each level.

Still, I think if there wasn't the fact that you can win some cool stuff when you are low level, I don't think I would have played the game. Then the game would turn in to either an old men's club where no new players could climb their way up.

Thank you for sharing your perspective on the game as a newer player. I have been curious what happened to the newer players who were able to dominate recent pves with 1* and 2* rosters. I am certain you can bust through the wall you hit if you keep playing. It sounds like you have a solid perspective on how to keep moving up. So, did you play the prologue before hopping into the pvp and pve events? How much of the prologue did you go through? Do you think the wall you hit due to lack of iso (your characters levels were too low?) or lack of iso (not enough cover slots, lack of roster diversity?). What do you find most challenging in the game now - pve or pvp?

AsianInvasion wrote:

My 141 Patch, 128 Hulk, 110 Punisher, 107 Magneto, and 100 Spidey cound not disagree more.

You get attacked less during PVP events.
You can grind for hours without using a health pack.
You can mow through lev 230 goons like it's a prologue mission
You can stop tanking like a **** and forget about MMR all together.

What more incentive do you need to make your team stronger?

All true.

However, it does take a long time, a lot of dedication and considerable planning to get to that point... But when you get there - it is glorious.

Unknown

+1

You do get attacked in PVP just as much since your mmr puts you against people who also have several 100+

In PVE the enemies at 230 for 141s are harder than lvl50 enemies for rosters in the 40s

Low levels almost always seem to win pvp tournaments (low being highest character 85 or below)

Lightning rounds is the one and only redeeming event worth having a high level roster for.

And no the elite tournament is not worth the time or HP unless you're one of the top 3 out of what, 50-100k that actually do it

And even so I'm not sure I'd want to spend the time/HP required to get 1 of each cover and 15-25k iso when you proably have 2/3 of the covers you get anyhow. From what I hear people spending, HP at best, even selling off 2/3 of the covers would be a wash or a net loss to fill in a few holes in a roster you don't even have iso for.

And for new players who want to try it, you can already get 3 2* cover tokens for 300 HP without having to deal with the shieldy ****

As the last elite tournament showed, the shield system hiding people above you is clearly broken and since you can't really tank effectively now they should make shielded people visible once again.

Meanwhile my little alt account was able to get about the same points in russia as my account with maxed toons, so I think what this Subject addresses really equates to, 'We need MORE incentive"

I do love the bejeweled aspect of the game, ignoring all tournaments/stories/pve etc but maybe something new could be incentive

KaioShinDE

I have yet to hear a convincing argument why the scaling needs to be there for newer players in the first place. There was a clear progression path before PvE scaling. I know it because I went through it myself just a few weeks ago.

You build a 1* team in the prologue and you grab a few free recruitment tokens from low PvP tourneys rank. Then with a fully leveled 1* team you can easily rank in the 2* reward ranks in events. That way you build up a 2* roster. THEN you move up to 3*s.

That is how the system worked and how it worked FINE. Now every level 10 noob should have a shot at 3* rewards? Why ffs? He doesn't deserve it. Meanwhile I get punished for having invested 130 hours into the game with enemies that one-shot you if you make even one mistake.

The logic behind this baffles the mind. After several tournaments in a row with this **** I'm strongly considering quitting. It's just not worth it. I guess this game goes the FPS route of milking new players in their first 10 hours of playtime as much as possible and then taking a fat dump on them and shoving them out of the door to make room for fresh meat.

Unknown

Il Palazzo wrote:

Sorry but I don't really understand it. Please help me.

This game is a puzzler with elements of RPG and PVP competition.
As we all know, while completing stuff and supposedly having fun, you get stronger with powers and levels.

The next logical point would be moving forward to better prizes, better incentives and moving your whole game experience to epic levels.

Taking the most famous RPG as an example, Dungeons & Dragons, at level 1 you struggle fighting against orcs and goblins, gaining 10 exp points at a time and finding a basic magic sword is priceless, and at lvl 20 you wield powerful magical artifacts literally out of this world and go to take over the gods, gaining millions experience points in the process.

Back to MPQ:DR, you power up and go up bigger challeges, but just in the form of more levelled opponents (OVERlevelled, as it is), fighting over the exact same rewards as before, just with 10 times more difficulty and time spent involved.
It's like you played D&D at lvl 20, went against the gods, fight epic struggles for weeks and... be rewarded with the same +1 trash sword and 10 exp. Meanwhile, your buddy lvl 1 group plays 1 hour and gets exactly the same reward against trash mobs.

Because, you know, this is exactly what happens in this game, thanks to MMR and SCALING. The better you get, the more you struggle, and the less rewards you receive complared to your power level. ISO is our exp. points by the way. As a noob 2k rocks your world and gets you from zero to hero. To me, it gets 1 level to my toon, a whopping 0,8% increase in power or something.
So, please help me to understand the logic behind this. Is there any real incentive in getting stronger, other than looking at these little numbers get up?

D&D, you say? Well then....

Of course at the newbie levels, a short sword + 1 is going to seem godly compared to common mundane starting weapons for a melee class.
By the endgame, the same character is wielding either a holy avenger + 5 or a vorpal sword +5.

In RPG terms, this is called power creep, and is a staple of any RPG system.

The more appropriate question would be here is how MPQ is addressing power creep. Lack of ISO? IceIX has said ISO is flowing into the ecosystem faster than ever, and that was before the Simulator and ISO-Brotherhood events started adding daily 1000 ISO missions. Now, do I agree with 20 ISO for 230x3s? No, but the core problem here is that the encounters were not designed for 230x3s, leading to the mess that currently exists. This is on the devs' heads to fix, and is a different discussion altogether.

Next, an observation on the RPG staple known as progression is useful here.

In classic D&D, levels 1->2 generally require 1500 - 2000 XP to achieve for most classes. For levels 19 -> 20, the required amount is in the range of 200k- 300k XP (and this is completely disregarding if your DM required progression quests to level up). The higher levels are meant to take longer to achieve than the lower levels. Achieving the pinnacle of power does not happen in a fortnight.

That being said, MPQ is only on Episode 4 out of 25 right now. The game is nowhere near the endgame right now, and probably analogous to being around D&D level 10-12 or so at 3x 3-star 141s on a roster. The endgame, someday, will surely require 3x 4-star 230s. Remember when tourneys offered 2** covers as high-tier rewards?

Therefore, in RPG terms, the situation you current describe is best framed as being over-leveled for the currently available content in the game. You are grinding low-level rats and orc pawns in an attempt to level up your high-level characters, which is horribly inefficient and there is currently no known high-level equivalent available (scaled encounters do not count here). You are simply too far ahead of the power curve at the moment, everything is trivial, and you are stuck waiting for the next "expansion pack" to come out to offer higher-level and higher-rewarding encounters.

Unknown

Actually the OP has the right of it, with the exclusion of being lucky and obtaining certain "power combos" via tokens, it's all designed to drive you to the cash shop. I'll explain.

So when I started, I hopped between the prologue and the events, mainly because I thought that was how it was meant to be played. I got lucky and on the first PvE event I joined, I got covers that were jacked up. Because they were low level, their recovery times were short, and their power strong enough to actually place me in the 50's in the event. This got me excited, seeing my little team of weenie fighters up among the level 80's. At that time my highest was level 20-something, ending around level 30 by the time the event ended. So I figured since I was having a ton of fun, I'd pay for roster slots since I kept getting more and more covers.

That's the intent, they want to hook you in and make it seem possible to compete even though you really need higher characters. Then you become the victim of the sunk cost fallacy, believing that since you "invested" in this, you might as well see it through. They then do events showing you how powerful certain covers can become, like the recent Psylocke event. Seeing her devastating opponents made me want her, but knowing that was the intent, I didn't buy in. Instead I've cut my losses and keep playing for free right now.

Now, as you can see, you're talking about one singular setup of covers, all of which are relatively rare... or are guaranteed gains if you buy certain higher priced packs. The aim is that with certain setups, you are capable of much greater feats. So the company pushes them out in events, shows off the packs... then eventually when a good number of people are relying on them for easy wins, nerfs them to the stone age and introduces new replacement covers to chase.

So really the mid-game (i.e. everything after that initial push of levels to make you somewhat competitive until you get those rare, higher covers) are intentionally a punishing grind that keeps reminding you there is an easier way out of the level trap you are in. Right now, my free account is actually doing better than my paid simply because I did level and try to compete with my paid account and need to tank my MMR to be capable of doing anything now. My levels are pointless because I lack the right covers to be able to make them matter.