MPQ never gets mentioned on other Marvel gaming boards

inEden

simonsez wrote:

inEden wrote:

Is MPQ too hard? Is that why no one mentions it or plays it in the wider Marvel gaming community?

The hard part is not caring that all the tinykitty they dangle in front of you won't be usable to you for a long, long time, if ever. Hell, BSS and GG came out 6 and 7 months ago, and between the two of them, I have 7 covers total. And yeah, I get every token and every CP available. In fact, I don't have any fully-covered 5*s. The hard part is accepting this RNG scamduggery and resisting the urge to forget about your sunk costs and move on to a game that doesn't do such a tinykitty job of pathing its players towards the end game.

Is the system flawed when it's not only people who don't have a developed roster (with 4*s capable of hitting 1000 in PvP consistently and without spending heaps of HP on shielding) but also the Veterans who are having trouble with their progressions, albeit at different stages?

I guess it's from which angle you look at it. If the current progression makes the most money than it's obviously great. But any system that seeks to maximise spending is obviously going to be bad for the playerbase.

The game (like most f2p games) has gotten generous over time as the roster becomes more bloated and there is power creep. Like 2* and 3* are a lot easier to earn now than they were 2 years ago. Eventually they will make 4* easier to earn but the concern is that when they do, 4* won't be relevant anymore.

Chrono_Tata

Bowgentle wrote:

Chrono_Tata wrote:

I may be wrong but I think it's just because of the type of game MPQ is. The other games are games mainly along the line of the fighting and action RPG genres which appeal to the general "game" population. As a puzzle RPG, MPQ is a pretty niche genre that doesn't easily appeal to people that aren't already into the genre. But yeah the barrier to entry with the progression system doesn't really help either.

LOL.

MPQ is a match 3 game at its heart.
That's as far away from niche as you can get.

"Puzzle RPG" lol. Yeah it's highly sophisticated gaming in MPQ.

Yes, MPQ is a match-3 game, I'm glad you noticed, but if you think you think the MPQ system isn't niche then you clearly never tried to explain the game to the average Candy Crush player. Casual gamers don't care about investing any amount of effort in roster building or thinking about character powers, and more serious gamers don't think games with match-3 mechanics warrant their attention. People who actually continue to invest in the game past the first couple of weeks is a very small number compared to other games.

Calnexin

ammenell wrote:

where is the “puzzle“ in mpq?
all I see is plain luck.

At a 1-2* level, that's mostly true. 3* play, it still plays a heavy role. 4-and-up, strategy dominates.

Consider

3* Patch has enough green to fire his strike tiles. There's only 5 green on the board, and there aren't any purple matches available.

There's a 4-match available in a color that benefits neither you nor your opponent. Do you take it, or a 3-match that boosts one of your powers?

IF's got enough green to fire the baseline, but you're only 1 black match away from doubling the tiles.

OML has 9 black. Half the black on the board is an easy match. Do you fire it?

Once you get into higher level play and try to synergize characters, strategy is the dominant factor. You can get boned if you focus on one strategy and the board doesn't give you the necessary tiles. If you go well-rounded with a few different strategies available, luck is usually not a factor.

dsds

It is still heavily luck dependent. When I am on my fourth clear in pve, I am already exhausted from playing for an hour or 2 straight. So I am not at 100% and am making bad matches left and right. yet I still manage to win because I have a pretty big roster and just keep spinning the slot machine until I win. The final node and the 4* required node, I always pick my characters to ensure a win. The rest, I can just spin the roulette and eventually will win with a team.

Yes I have 3-4 preferred teams to use. The teams aren't random. yet, I would still win and lose randomly. Don't deny how much luck is involved in the game. I would say it is probably 60% luck and 40% strategy or puzzle as you call it.

I guess if you want to call 40% as still being a puzzle, I guess I can't argue against that. 40% is still 40% so obviously there is a puzzle element however small it is.

inEden

In MPQ tiles drop randomly and the board is set up randomly at the start. You can strategise all you want but if the board doesn't fall the way you want.. you are struggling. That's why people like rainbow teams.

Tactics also arises from position of the board. I love IM40. If I am fighting against level 250 goons who have like 2-3 turn countdown tiles things can go very badly very quickly. But with IM40, if I can make 2 yellow matches early on I can win without taking any damage.

Sometimes the board is set up at the start where there are no yellow matches and won't be 5-6 moves in. That's when things get dicey. So it's a bit of both. You definitely need to think about team composition and when to use your abilities either on it's own or in synergy but there is also a massive random element to the game.

There are mechanics in the game that purposely offset that randomness though. You can start with a boost in AP or match damage. You can start with teamups. Most importantly you can choose who you want to attack and which of your team members you want to defend (for an upcoming enemy ability or countdown tile) which is a massive advantage.

dsds

I like to compare the puzzle element to BlackJack at the Casino. Again this purely my opinion of the game and how I think when I go into it to keep myself sane.

BlackJack is probably one of the highest odds games you can play at the casino. yet the odds never go over 50% because the house needs to make money. However it is close. It's like in the 40 percentile depending on the rules at the particular casino.

There are things you can do to increase your chances of winning. For instance, fold at 15 because you will likely lose and then get half your money back. Stand when the dealer has 12 if you have more than 11. All these strategies will help increase your odds, yet nobody calls blackjack a game of strategy, they still call it gambling because it is heavily dependent on luck. With strategy in Black Jack, you could significantly increase your win ratio. But you still will likely lose to the house more times than you would win. Also someone who doesn't use the strategy can still win more than you. This is because luck is the dominating factor and the house rules dictate that you will eventually lose to the house.

Compare it to the mpq game and you see the same similarities. The house will win over time. You can increase the odds, but it is for the most part luck dependent. Someone who doesn't follow the strategy can still do better than you. The only thing different is that sometimes the house doesn't win. If you have a big enough roster, you can in theory not use up all your health packs. But in the end you will feel like you came out of it with nothing as progression is extremely slow even if luck is on your side. I mean that's perfectly fine as long as you go into it with the same mindset as a casino, as just having fun and not expecting to gain anything, just an entertainment value with no progression expectations in mind. But beware that luck is addicting, once you are on a streak, you will want to keep putting money in, or when you are on a losing streak, you may think it may break anytime and that's when it becomes dangerous. There really is very little puzzle in it. For the most part it is gambling.

mckauhu

Talking about luck: recently i have seen a heavy lucky cascades by enemy team that fell my healh points drastically. But because I'm a strategist, I can use for example Luke Cage or Falcon to minimize that damage and Spider-man to heal injured characters. I could go all out with heavy hitters like Thor or Magneto, but that would cost me precious health packs. So where is luck in that? In one option you lose heavily health points and are forced to use health packs and other option you win without hardly taking a scratch. Luck? For that part, no way man. Cascades are totally random, but how you choose teams is all about strategy no matter what star level teams you use.

Other factor is color pool you are using. Do you go with all red green blue users or do you choose all around characters? If you go with RGB, you might notice you are doing considerably less damage with black yellow and purple because of your choice. Again, nothing to do with luck, just common sense.

Final factor is character health points and their speed of regeneration. If you go with characters low regenerating speed, you have to possibly also wait longer to use that character again. Or then you can simply choose Patch or Daken and use it every round, watching how they self-heal in game.

You can play with random teams with random color pool, but you are simply doing it wrong if you do so - resulting having to use health packs more likely and more often. Luck IS part of the game, but I still think strategy is the dominant factor

dsds

Let me counter that by listing the stuff that is totally luck dependent. Problem with your game, such as crashing, bugs, send a support ticket and pray to god you get one that is generous to you. The board is heavily luck dependent. Cascades are heavily luck dependent. Even the boosts are luck dependent unless you want to spend hp or iso for them. The fact that a major bug could hit you is luck dependent, the one the most annoying right now is the random shuffle one which sometimes denies the player the consecutive cascade which would get the colors he/she needed to fire a power. I've had this bug hit me twice in one match. Tell me how to manage that with strategy?

Need a five star, well that is again totally dependent on luck. What is that percentage again? 15%. Wow much lower than the blackjack tables at the casino.

Need to max a 4*, I am at 3 maxed cover 4* and I am over day 800. That's how aweful my luck is.

So you say you can choose the characters to make the fights more management, yet the characters you can choose from are (wait for it) Luck dependent. It is luck that get you whatever the character's cover is. Let's look at the percentage for drawing 4* character or even 3*. Take the deadpool pvp token, the percentages are less than 10%.
Even if you choose the right character, you can still lose and the chance isn't like 1-5%, it's quite high. Also I see so many new players who have more covers in a 4-5* character than me. Yet I've probably played 2-3 times the amount of days he/she has player

After reading this tell me that luck is not the dominant factor.

I like your thinking, I mean the thing is why focus on the stuff that you can't change, just focus on the stuff you can change which I really should start doing. It is like a slot machine game, but i like it, maybe because I love to gamble as well.

A major change about retreat will maybe make it 50/50 regarding luck and strategy because now you can retreat strategically which is very good.

mckauhu

Absolutely. No denying what you just said, game itself IS heavily luck dependant for the reasons you just told, but still there is that strategy factor for the reasons I told before your post. So it is both, but depending how you look at it, how you want to look at it. I'm constantly talking about when game is played vs enemies, strategy becomes the dominant factor. Of course game could crash and will crash at times, but if we leave such things away from this, then there is just strategy. You get characters which you just happen to get, but combining them in a best possible way is the key. Making rainbow teams so that every match you make, does highest possible damage and so hastens how quickly enemies are defeated. Or that you use clever combos like Patch & Loki when Patch makes his move and Loki turn enemy tiles also to yours. That is strategy. You can't learn it unless you try different combos and different characters go well with different characters, but you don't know until you try them. So this trial and error is what you don't learn just like that, what makes you a strategist, that's what I'm trying to say.