When was the last time original content was added to MPQ?

SnowcaTT

Honest question! I'm on about 2.5 years so I saw a few things changed - but little has ever been added. What is the newest big "change" of content in-game? I suppose it comes down to what you consider "original content".

CP? These are just purchasing resources...HP existed.
LT? These are just tokens...heroics existed.
5*'s? These are just characters...4*'s existed.
PVE's? They keep getting added...but they are just riffs off the old ones.

Perhaps wave nodes? When were they added, was that "original" enough?

Perhaps boss PVE's? I'd wager that might be the last original content...but you have to go all the way back to Ultron run one, since everything after that (more Ultron, Galactus, Civil War) is the same thing re-skinned. Some argue the whole thing is just PVE re-skinned. I still like seeing them, since it is a progression reward and slightly different than the typical PVE.

If not boss PVE's, perhaps the Ant-Man or Cho events. These were also a bit different than your standard PVE...I forget if they were before or after the boss PVE's.

Certainly DDQ - that was something completely different and added quite a lot to the game that players still seem to enjoy today!

I'm just forgetting the game time-line (is there a thread with changes?) DDQ was about a year and a half ago. Boss PVE's introduced with Ultron - was that timed with the Avengers #1 DVD release? Didn't the Ant-Man event come out near his release time?

All of those are at least a year old. That seems like a LONG TIME to have nothing but extensions of the same things put out over and over. Am I overlooking something that was truly original? Wouldn't it be nice to hear that new play types/styles were being planned than character #100 for PVE #20?

Starsaber

I'd say being able to champion heroes would qualify.

And in other games like MMOs would you define original content so narrowly as to say that a new raid wouldn't qualify as new content?

Vhailorx

I would list the big story content introductions (in reverse order as)

Boss Fights (obviously all variations on a theme, but a definite departure from existing PVE content and a major change)
Civil War (May 2016)
Galactus (October 2015)
Ultron (April 2015)

DDQ (4* in Sept. 2015 introducing 1v1 battles, and 3* in March 2015 being completely awesome!)

Survival nodes (introduced with Enemy of the State in Dec. 2014)

Anniversary event (October 2014)

There have been some minor additions too, like one-off events for ant-man and TAHulk, and Howard, but they don't really count as major content.
____
In the PVP space, seasons were a big introduction, sometime around June 2014. And there were some interesting trials before that, like buy-in tournaments. There were also lots of logistical changes like shielding, shield cool-downs, and time slices.
____
And for character logistics, there was the 3* level cap increase (140 to 166), the introduction of real 4*s (starting with Fury in summer 2014), intro of 5*s in september 2015, and the champ system in january 2016.

carrion_pigeons

It's hard to say they haven't had new content in a long time because obviously they have. New characters are content. Civil War is content. The problem is they aren't *very much* content. Anyone can look at nearly everything the devs for this game have ever released and go "um, that's it? Where's the rest of it?"

There's no story anymore (if there ever was, actually), and they refuse to give people a route they can plan for towards any definition of success. As such, the game is trending more and more away from Puzzle Quest and more and more towards Bejeweled.

mpqr7

It would be nice to add in more stuff. I know they make a lot of money by adding in new characters, but enough already. Give your team a break so that they can focus on actual content.

It would be nice to give us old-timers a reason to play other than the need to get more iso. The playing itself should be fun and different. Not just extremely challenging but also very rewarding. Working your butt off for 70 iso doesn't feel great. But doing a moderate push toward thousands of iso would be awesome. A moderate push... not simply "beat 100s of nodes to get a 90% chance of 1000 iso"...

I would love more long-term challenges and achievements, rewards for using lower-tier characters.

As it is, I'm still playing each day, but my engagement is much lower. And there are times when I'm available to play, and I actually don't play, I spend my time doing other stuff, which surprises me, because I used to play at all possible times.

westnyy2

I thought before IceIX left he had a video talking about alliance vs alliance events they were working on. That seems to have gone away.

Jasonzakibe

The first Puzzle Quest had a few different game modes. IDK why this game has to only be the Bejeweled gameplay. There's no skill involved in the gameplay at all. The skill is all roster selection and timing when to play.

smkspy

Starsaber wrote:

I'd say being able to champion heroes would qualify.

And in other games like MMOs would you define original content so narrowly as to say that a new raid wouldn't qualify as new content?

Championing is just moving the goal posts as far as max character progression is concerned. Also it came at the cost of those 3 stars being neutered thus less effective than they were before championing.

PeterGibbons316

We JUST finished the civil war event. If that isn't new content then I don't know what is.

I think if I were a dev I would have killed myself by now. Imagine coming on here as a dev looking for some direction in where your player base wants the game to go, seeing the call for additional content, spending weeks or months of your time working on that content, only to come on here literally 36 hours after the event using your new content has ended to see some joker complaining about a lack of new content.

And then people wonder why they get ignored by the devs......why waste time trying to please someone that can never be pleased???

SnowcaTT

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

We JUST finished the civil war event. If that isn't new content then I don't know what is.

I think if I were a dev I would have killed myself by now. Imagine coming on here as a dev looking for some direction in where your player base wants the game to go, seeing the call for additional content, spending weeks or months of your time working on that content, only to come on here literally 36 hours after the event using your new content has ended to see some joker complaining about a lack of new content.

And then people wonder why they get ignored by the devs......why waste time trying to please someone that can never be pleased???

But....Civil War was just like the Civil War they already ran. Which was just like the Galactus they already ran (ok...it had TWO sides...). Which was just like the Galactus before that. Which was just like the Ultron before that. Which was just like the Ultron before that. Which was just like the first Ultron.

I did sort of intentionally leave "content" vague, it probably differs from person to person. But I certainly don't feel "excited" by Civil War (re-skinned Ultron), or Howard (re-skinned PVE), or new character X+1 (re-skinned character X)...I'd like to see something extremely different and new rather than more of the same with slightly different characters or goons.

If I were a dev I'd read players saying "new content please" and not thing "Let's put out a new PVE that introduces a new character!". Instead, I'd think about what the players keep throwing out there as suggestions - daily 4* DDQ. Weekly ant-man/Cho type events (mini-PVE's). Split PVP's. PVE "seasons". Those would all be re-skinned events as well - but ones that your players are crying out for.

Or things like Alliance vs. Alliance - drastically different play-style than what we have now!

Linkster79

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

We JUST finished the civil war event. If that isn't new content then I don't know what is.

I think if I were a dev I would have killed myself by now. Imagine coming on here as a dev looking for some direction in where your player base wants the game to go, seeing the call for additional content, spending weeks or months of your time working on that content, only to come on here literally 36 hours after the event using your new content has ended to see some joker complaining about a lack of new content.

And then people wonder why they get ignored by the devs......why waste time trying to please someone that can never be pleased???

I would hardly class Civil War as new content. Sure you could argue the new characters as new content but the event itself was just a reskin of an existing game mechanic. Hardly masses of man hours were put into making it.

Personally I would class new content as new play styles, admittedly there isn't much that can be done with the match 3 game style but as has been mentioned you only have to look at Puzzle Quest to see how things could be done better.

PeterGibbons316

SnowcaTT wrote:

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

We JUST finished the civil war event. If that isn't new content then I don't know what is.

I think if I were a dev I would have killed myself by now. Imagine coming on here as a dev looking for some direction in where your player base wants the game to go, seeing the call for additional content, spending weeks or months of your time working on that content, only to come on here literally 36 hours after the event using your new content has ended to see some joker complaining about a lack of new content.

And then people wonder why they get ignored by the devs......why waste time trying to please someone that can never be pleased???

But....Civil War was just like the Civil War they already ran. Which was just like the Galactus they already ran (ok...it had TWO sides...). Which was just like the Galactus before that. Which was just like the Ultron before that. Which was just like the Ultron before that. Which was just like the first Ultron.

I did sort of intentionally leave "content" vague, it probably differs from person to person. But I certainly don't feel "excited" by Civil War (re-skinned Ultron), or Howard (re-skinned PVE), or new character X+1 (re-skinned character X)...I'd like to see something extremely different and new rather than more of the same with slightly different characters or goons.

If I were a dev I'd read players saying "new content please" and not thing "Let's put out a new PVE that introduces a new character!". Instead, I'd think about what the players keep throwing out there as suggestions - daily 4* DDQ. Weekly ant-man/Cho type events (mini-PVE's). Split PVP's. PVE "seasons". Those would all be re-skinned events as well - but ones that your players are crying out for.

Or things like Alliance vs. Alliance - drastically different play-style than what we have now!

It's one event, the movie is still in theaters. They told us "hey, we got some new content for this movie most of you are going to see, and we are going to run it twice on these dates....." 36 hours later......OMGZ WHERE IS THE NEW CONTENT?!?!?

The event played differently than anything we have ever done before. They released 4 new characters including 2 new 5*s with abilities/mechanics never seen before, and rewarded legendary tokens that operate differently from all previous versions. I don't know how you could possibly look at that and not consider any of it to be new content. Oh and they did it all to coincide with the release of the highest grossing movie of the year.

If that isn't good enough then you aren't seeking new content. You are seeking a new game.

carrion_pigeons

PeterGibbons316 wrote:

We JUST finished the civil war event. If that isn't new content then I don't know what is.

I think if I were a dev I would have killed myself by now. Imagine coming on here as a dev looking for some direction in where your player base wants the game to go, seeing the call for additional content, spending weeks or months of your time working on that content, only to come on here literally 36 hours after the event using your new content has ended to see some joker complaining about a lack of new content.

And then people wonder why they get ignored by the devs......why waste time trying to please someone that can never be pleased???

I would be seriously surprised to find that any game dev didn't know that Civil War wasn't going to satiate the desire for new content. Or that it took weeks or months to design. Probably the thing that took the longest about prepping for that event was convincing the board of directors to let players get multiple 4* covers as rewards.

The reason why it ought to be obvious to them that it wasn't going to be enough is that
1) It went away and left players with nothing to do after it was gone.
2) It didn't change anything. The game and the story are indistinguishable from what they were before the "content", and the few people who actually got Ant-Man/Quake to a playable level are in a tiny, tiny minority. I personally went from a 2-cover Ant-Man to a 5-cover Ant-Man and while I enjoy his playstyle, he's still nowhere close to being a useful character for me yet. I'm back to playing all the same teams I've always been playing for the past 6 months, and it isn't even because the characters I use are particularly good. It's just because six months worth of tiny drips of progression haven't brought up anyone new at my rate of play.

Don't get me wrong, if they said, "Okay, we're going to run an alliance event every single weekend from here on out." I would cheer and call it meaningful content. If they said, "Okay, every new character gets their own story event that actually progresses the plot of the game." I might not cheer because I don't have much faith in the devs' design choices, but I'd still call it content.

Content isn't just something new to do. Content is whatever aspects there are of something that attract the attention of the target audience. You wouldn't say that a new summer blockbuster movie coming out had a lot of content if it consisted of 2 hours of watching grass grow, even if it took a truly astounding amount of effort to film. And lets be honest: MPQ game design is not something devs have put a lot of effort into.

sinnerjfl

Maybe the word "content" is not the right choice.

Seems OP wants more gameplay modes than we have currently and I have to agree, it is limited. We could use some changes to the gameplay (and it seems the devs' answer to this is add more characters, which in a way is kind of new gameplay).

mpqr7

To be fair, many of us have been playing this game for two or more years. I don't think it's too much to ask for new stuff at this point.

And yes, it took them work to do the CW stuff, but as previously stated, it was quite similar to the previous boss battles.

And it seems like most of the content is "do this one thing a ton of times", which yes sells healthpacks, boosts etc

But it would be nice if that one thing was a different thing some times!! More 1-on-1 battles... more different types of battles and goals... just different stuff from the usual stuff

No more Dark Avengers!!!!

PeterGibbons316

Don't get me wrong I've been asking for repeatable end-game content for a long time now, but credit where it's due....CW was a step in the right direction. Three of the most common complaints I see on the forums are competitive PvE, lack of 4* progression rewards in PvE, and luck-based 5* progression - the CW event addressed all 3.

I get people not considering new characters as new content, but at least the new characters are introducing new mechanics, which changes meta, balance, and game play. IM46s red does damage based on specific characters on his team. Not many have him usable yet, but when they do expect to see BSS become more common than he is currently. GG introduced fortified tiles, but most of us weren't very familiar with them until CW and it changed how we fought Cap. The calling of support characters is a new mechanic just different enough from wave nodes to make you rethink how you approach a fight.

It's absolutely without a doubt new content, and should be appreciated. Just because it's not the specific content that you want doesn't make it OK to crucify the devs for failing to deliver. They are listening and working to add some of the things we have asked for, and quite honestly with the exception of the node scaling near the end of the event they nailed it with CW.

Dayv

In this thread: the word "content" used to mean "features".

Pylgrim

While I don't think we've been precisely lacking in new stuff, I do want to hear at least hints of what's the next thing to look forward to, now that CW is over. Hopefully we won't have to wait all the way until 3rd anniversary.

Ludaa

They have a ton of stuff in the game already. If they'd just show a little personal touch, it would go a long way to freshen things up. Mix up the LR characters, throw a special reward in a surprise node somewhere, 2x iso/boosts/team up odds special events, let us vote for an upcoming pve, increase bagman cover sell prices for a week. The game is run by robots right now, week after week after week of scheduled regurgitation makes us yearn for anything different.

udonomefoo

I'm with Ludaa, OC is not even on my wish list. Fix the things that are already there and if you can make them more fun, you don't need to worry so much about adding something new.

smkspy

Ludaa wrote:

They have a ton of stuff in the game already. If they'd just show a little personal touch, it would go a long way to freshen things up. Mix up the LR characters, throw a special reward in a surprise node somewhere, 2x iso/boosts/team up odds special events, let us vote for an upcoming pve, increase bagman cover sell prices for a week. The game is run by robots right now, week after week after week of scheduled regurgitation makes us yearn for anything different.

Gotta agree here, just seems like there is no management actively promoting the game. Same thing over and over again except for the continuous additions of new characters. That's not fun.