Time to retire from MPQ - Until effort vs payoff is fixed

peanut_gallery

I’ve been playing MPQ daily without fail since the first week of its launch over 2.5 years ago. I’ve been through all the ups and downs and changes, and even semi-retired as occasional burnout set in.

But through it all, I still played because there was always the lure of decent loot, the best of which was new covers to build a better roster and play new characters.

Now that I have been fully in the 4* to 5* transition for numerous months, with 24 4* fully covered, and most of those championed, another five 4* nearly complete, and a nearly completed OML, I’m finding that the effort required to move my roster forward vastly outweighs the instances where I get the covers to do so.

Granted, championing has been a fantastic game mechanic, but it doesn’t alleviate the frustration of having a 4* or 5* character at 4/5/3 or 5/5/2 and pulling nothing but that 5th cover you can’t use over and over again. Between my OML and another five 4* that are 1 cover away from completion, I’ve pulled at least 2 covers for each of those characters in the past month that I can’t use. I grind out PvE and PvP events to get all possible cp rewards in the hopes that I’ll pull the cover that will let me champ the character finally and not let those other covers expire and go to waste, but to no avail. It final hit me the other day that the effort and time involved is just not worth it.

And without the lure any significant forward movement in my roster, there just isn’t any incentive for me to play the game anymore other than a few matches when I have some time to kill.

I say all this in hopes that D3 looks and listens, and hopefully they will come up with a new mechanic to reduce the frustration. Even making it so that earned covers never expire would go a long way to making me feel like what I earned may at some point become useful. Or allowing me to combine 2-3 extra covers in colors I can’t use in a character for the one color I can use. Either one of those would extend the life of the game for me considerably.

Until then, I’ll just be lurking in the MPQ peanut gallery, occasionally playing a match here or there.

And I also want to say thanks to the great player community here. Half the fun has been being part of the alliances, chat rooms and # check rooms. Maybe one day I'll be back for more.

mpqr7

Nice. I am basically retiring as well. I went from being mpq-only for two years to now playing khux and ffbe as well, and I play whichever one I feel like. But I rarely do more than a few mpq matches in each event. I realized that it's just not worth it to grind away and get close to 25 cp rewards but not hit them, so there's no reason to even bother.

And iso collection is just too slow. You can play 100 matches per day and only make a few thousand iso, so there's no reason to put in that level of effort. I have already championed 15 four-star characters, so it won't really matter if I never champion another one again.


I'm just sick of the stress of trying to hit progression within so many time limits, both for pvp and pve. Not doing that may slow down my progression, since I won't win many cp, but in the end it removes my stress and gives me my own life back.

Plus even grinding like crazy doesn't mean I'll get the omls I desire anyway... I could get thousands of cp but still only draw more IWs. And there's no way I'll be saving up 720 cp for a single oml cover, that's just nutzo.

SnowcaTT

Bummer to see the vets retire.

It is hard to stay motivated when you have no chance to advance thanks to RNG (and are punished for advancing with scaling and MMR).

I fear we may not see you back - I can't think of a time when payoff was worth the effort (maybe when only 3-5 4*'s existed).

The Bob The

Honest question: Why not just save the CP to buy that final cover? Champ levels aside, it doesn't seem like you're particularly happy with your pulls, so why not just bank it for the sure thing? You seem like precisely the kind of player that was designed for.

babinro

I can definitely feel the OP's pain here.

I've been really lucky with my OML, Phx and Surfer all of whom were championed rather quickly but since then my luck has run out. I've been drawing below average for a while now and that's to be expected given how things started.

I've been running OML/Phx as my pvp team since January I believe. Newer 5*s like Spidey and Goblin are at 6 covers or less with the latest legends being much worse. Meaningful progress is PAINFULLY slow by design and it's getting easier and easier to give into that temptation to simply walk away.

If D3 only kept splitting up the 5*'s in token groups of 3 there would be soo much more hope in the future. Instead of watching the game give me yet another championed Surfer, Phoenix, OML I'd actually be building a more diverse 5* team and having more FUN. I don't care that my Phx and OML are a greater threat when championed to 457 vs 450. I just want to have more fun variety in my day to day play.

peanut_gallery

In response to the question of why don't I spend cp to finish characters: I actually did once. I spent 240 cp to get my final two Rulk covers as for months I wasn't getting any and then found myself sitting on my 6th and 7th green at 2/5/4. (And yet my championed HB and DPXF were approaching level 300 and characters released well after Rulk were getting fully covered. It made no sense).

And while it's nice to have a fully functioning Rulk, it felt very expensive, as well as like I was passing up opportunities for potential 5* cover pulls. And 720 cp also feels much much too expensive for a 5* cover. That's my own opinion, of course.

If prices were lowered to, say, 80 cp for a 4* and 500 cp for a 5*, I would have considered purchases more often.

But I guess the other point of frustration wasn't just that I wasn't getting the covers I needed, but without exception, the last 5-6 characters that were one cover away from completion were drawing the exact one cover I couldn't use. Not just once, but twice per character. It seriously started to feel like D3 was trolling me.

carrion_pigeons

This is why true randomness makes for **** game design. Some people get super lucky and finish their progression early, and some people get super unlucky and never get close, and both groups end up retiring.

Game needs luck mitigation in so many forms.

zeeke

This has bothered me for a long time too and the fix is so easy:

Let any cover act like all colors And let us players decide where it goes!

Thing is to max a character now you need 113 covers, but only the 13th one might be the one you have to throw away. This game design's made sense before championing bit not now.

8punch

i hope the time i am at your level. they changed this rediculous systeem for level 5 cards. it is already hard enough to get even 1. let alone champion it.

as i see it. the higher you get with card level the more you need lady luck in your favor. what is the fun in that?

i would be inredible annoyed by the hardworking you do earning those CP points all see to waste when you pull another level 5 card you cant use, because you need to get a different color.

i think much better idea is to seperate level 5 cards from the rest and create a completely new game mode for it. that way top elite players players have more fun playing and incentitive to keep on playing.

simonsez

The Bob The wrote:

Honest question: Why not just save the CP to buy that final cover? Champ levels aside, it doesn't seem like you're particularly happy with your pulls, so why not just bank it for the sure thing? You seem like precisely the kind of player that was designed for.

I'm in a similar situation as the OP... and my answer would be that at 720CP, math says that you're still better off pulling tokens, assuming that along with trying to pull that last OML/PHX cover, you also care about things like pulling GG or Peggy (which you should)

wirius

I quit a few weeks ago myself. I don't miss the game as it is today, I miss the game as it was.

1. When I had a chance of winning 3 top tier rewards in pvp (3* covers back in the day)
2. When I could do Deadpool daily for second tier covers.

Now? Twice the work for a 1/3rd of the reward. The game needed an update and transition of rewards in 4* and 5* land a long time ago, and hasn't done it. It might not either. Regardless, I'm not wasting my time.

SnowcaTT

peanut_gallery wrote:

If prices were lowered to, say, 80 cp for a 4* and 500 cp for a 5*, I would have considered purchases more often.

500 cp does sound about right. When I was pulling HP at a reasonable rate and you could buy covers with HP, I was buying them at approximately 1.5 every season (three every two seasons). 500cp/cover would be right about in line with that.

HOWEVER, because 5*'s are -SOOOOO- much more powerful than 4*'s I think that change would instigate many to hoard and purchase, and then you'd have many folks complaining about how they can't get 4* covers - because they used all their CP to purchase 5* covers directly!

Every time I look at that price and the RNG, I remind myself these were set specifically for monetary reasons - D3 wants the mega-whales to buy into their 5*'s early, and they don't care about how RNG treats the rest of the shlubs.

mpqr7

720 cp would take me around 3 months to get when winning pvp like crazy. But now that I barely play, it could take well over a year. So... it's not worth it for one stinkin' cover.

KingDon

As someone whom has just hit day 970 and have only dropped £ on the sales and spent on roster slots I am going to be giving the game till the 3 year anniversary to see how my roster has progressed before making a decision about the game.

I am in the slow progression from 3* - 4* with only 2 4*'s fully covered ( & ) but not leveled, and a couple more on 12 covers ( has been 5/5/2 for so long and (5/4/3)) that I would like to level and champ but alas the last covers are not easy to obtain.

I have set myself a goal of at least taking 4 *'s to max level by the 3rd anniversary (I have 750K iso In the bank...keep trying to break the 1mill mark but spend on the 4* clash to bring them up to a useable level) if I cannot make that then I think It will be time to move on as some progress would be nice

SnagglePuss

How many season and i still haven't pulled that elusive OML black that everyone else seems to have. I can't even save all the CP to buy / exchange / increase my odds in anyway whatsoever because i don't have the cover in the first place.
Other than lvling low tier 3*/4*, which don't add anything to my overall game as i only use three 4* in the game and occasionally whoever is boosted, my roster hasn't progressed.

Thanks D3

Stax the Foyer

I haven't retired yet, but it's getting to the point where that's just semantics. I skip DDQ some days, which would be unthinkable. I've given up PvE completely due to the recent changes, and I'm skipping many PvP events completely. Like mpqr7 said, it's the number of huge grinds on short fuses in individual events, where if you don't hit max progression, it was basically a waste of time.***

On one hand, my roster is in desperate need of ISO. On the other hand, I'll be using OML/PHX until the end of days because of the insane power curve for 5*s and the existence of 5* champion levels, which means that my OML and PHX will always remain the best characters on my team forever. And more ISO can't fix bad design decisions.

Even if they introduce end game features at this point, I'm not sure that it fixes it. The problem isn't just that they don't have 4-star PvP, or any variation at all in Lightning Rounds, it's that we've been playing the game for more that a year now without features that should have been there all along. It's the accumulated frustration of more than a year with players asking for (and reasonably expecting) these features, with radio silence on the other end about the big stuff, and some notably player-unfriendly changes during that time (like the devaluing of HP). Enjoyment of a game and trust in the developers is path-dependent, and every day we've played without these features builds up, since it feels like they should have been there all along.

Maybe other folks don't feel the same way. There's a lot of personal bias built into all of our opinions. Like, the one thing that could get me back into the game in a big way would be win conditions, something that rewards how you win, not just whether or not you won. Style points, bonus ISO for making match-5s or finishing with certain amounts of AP in specific colors, rewards for using particular characters. Puzzles layered on top of the regular gameplay. That would make the individual games matter, instead of just being one in an interminable number of times you fight the same fight, and would fundamentally change the gameplay. That's just me personally, though.

Anyway, I get it, OP. It's not worth it anymore, and my behavior is finally reflecting that, too.





**Because I can't stop with the ideas, even when venting. You want a real, fundamental QoL change? Make CP progression rewards event-independent. A separate counter running outside of the event, and every time it ticks over, you get the points and it resets. You get 30,000 PvE progression points (or whatever you want to set it as), you get 25 CP.

You get 25,000 PvE points in an event? That means you get the 25 CP 5,000 points into the next event.

You get 45,000 PvE points in an event? You get 25 CP during the event and you rack up 15,000 points towards your next progression award.

You grind like crazy and earn 70,000 PvE points in an event? Your CP progression counter ticks over twice, and you get a head start on the next one.

It makes every point count, and benefits crazy grinders and the super casual equally. It discourages bracket sniping, and keeps people constantly engaged. It's regular, semi-consistent progress (I mean, it's still RNG tokens), which this game doesn't have at the moment.

bluewolf

I heartily second the idea of: awarding *something* extra for better wins (losing less health, no powers used, AP accumulated, number of moves, anything really). Something to add variety and a nominal skill level recognition. I wondered about this when starting out, then realized that the game BECAME HARDER - dis-incentivized doing well - if you trounced the opponents instead of rewarding skilled play. And of course I realize that randomness is 50% or so of how well you do in each match. But still. At least now Story just increased levels regardless of performance.

I also really like the idea of constant PVE counter for CP. Great ideas!

Sm0keyJ0e

In my case, I have:
Silver Surfer 5/2/1, with the five being blue
Green Goblin 5/4/1, with the five being black
BSS 5/2/5

Guess what my last dozen 5* covers for these guys have been? Unusable covers that I've had to sell.

Of course I tried opening a ticket and that was the absolute worst FU I've ever received from a CS department.

Polares

Sm0keyJ0e wrote:

In my case, I have:
Silver Surfer 5/2/1, with the five being blue
Green Goblin 5/4/1, with the five being black
BSS 5/2/5

Guess what my last dozen 5* covers for these guys have been? Unusable covers that I've had to sell.

Of course I tried opening a ticket and that was the absolute worst FU I've ever received from a CS department.

When I had a 5/2/5 Phoenix I pulled 2 greens and 1 red which I could not use, I rostered those covers with the hope that when I would manage to champ her I would open a ticket and they would add those covers as levels for my champ (not that hard, they already replied my message). Guess what, I did that this weekend and you know what it was the answer? **** you! This is what they said (well they used the more polite version "we have the policy of not doing that" but this is what they were implying). I knew that was going to be the answer, but in a game were I have spent so much money and time, I hoped they would show some appreciation, specially with chars that are so hard to get (I was asking about a damn 5), really disappointing.

720 CPs is crazy high, but I think it is like that on purpose so no one uses CPs to buy covers directly. 5 covers should not be buyable EXCEPT the 13th cover, that should probably be like 300 CPs.

SnowcaTT

Polares wrote:

Sm0keyJ0e wrote:

In my case, I have:
Silver Surfer 5/2/1, with the five being blue
Green Goblin 5/4/1, with the five being black
BSS 5/2/5

Guess what my last dozen 5* covers for these guys have been? Unusable covers that I've had to sell.

Of course I tried opening a ticket and that was the absolute worst FU I've ever received from a CS department.

When I had a 5/2/5 Phoenix I pulled 2 greens and 1 red which I could not use, I rostered those covers with the hope that when I would manage to champ her I would open a ticket and they would add those covers as levels for my champ (not that hard, they already replied my message). Guess what, I did that this weekend and you know what it was the answer? tinykitty you! This is what they said (well they used the more polite version "we have the policy of not doing that" but this is what they were implying). I knew that was going to be the answer, but in a game were I have spent so much money and time, I hoped they would show some appreciation, specially with chars that are so hard to get (I was asking about a damn 5), really disappointing.

720 CPs is crazy high, but I think it is like that on purpose so no one uses CPs to buy covers directly. 5 covers should not be buyable EXCEPT the 13th cover, that should probably be like 300 CPs.

Same deal with the 5* and covering them - I had a 5/0/0 and a 1/0/0 SS, I had a 1/5/1 Phoenix so I was surprised when it went "all" the way to 3/5/3 before I rostered a 0/1/0. Of course CS will never merge them.

Dayv put this in suggestions (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37571) ages ago and I've agreed. There I mentioned - it makes NO SENSE that you need 113 covers to max a character, but only the first THIRTEEN matter in the order that you get them.

SangFroid

Just wanted to mention that peanut_gallery has been a VERY long term member of our alliance and is a great guy. He has been a hardcore PVP and PVE player over the years and has spent some money on this game. This is not the kind of player you want to see leaving this game I really hope things change so that he feels motivated to return and the game stops losing quality players...