My first 1000 days of MPQ
zeeke
Posts: 153 Tile Toppler
Greeting,
I crossed into 4-digit land a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share some memories and thoughts with you about these past 1000 days. Some of you have been here as long as me and are almost part of the structure, and some of you are more recent additions. Over the years (I know its sounds strange but it is true) we have had a lot of changes to the game and I'd like to talk about some of them.
Thorverine 1.0
Before there was #shields, there was Thorverine. Back in the old days 2 star Wolvie was awesome. He had cheap and devastating powers. He had true healing, or as we use to call it back then; healing, and he went great with Thor. Since you couldn't shield to protect your score you had to either play continuously just to stay in the top or try to start really late, hope for a half filled bracket and pound out matches before the servers started to put you into the rotation of other players. It was basically like looking at the crabs trying to climb on top of each other.
When the Thorverine combo was nerfed (shocker) OBW was the queen. For some reason many players did not figure out the now prevalent 355 build but ran here 454. The meta really consisted of who could get to 8 purple first, because that person got to steal the others AP, release Wolverines green and ride the OBW double tap all the way home. And if you tinykitty up and lost the match, no worries, you had 3 tries to beat the opponent. They didn’t even regain any health between fights and any character you had downed was dead and gone!
Did I mention that Lightning rounds gave out 3 star covers? No? Ok they did, and you know who we wanted to get? Tinykitty Ragnarok! He had two powers, green and red and they were so cheap they were almost free. Plus they hit really hard.
Alliances
To start an alliance you had to spend HP, then you got 5 spots. Every additional spot cost HP so the top alliances with 20 were hard currency. I first joined S.T.E.A.L.T.H back in season 4 or 5 with the promise to always score at least 600 points. This was not easy, but I had an awesome weapon at my disposal, a level 140 Punisher! His strike tiles, attack tiles and retribution was great with OBW double tap and AP stealing. I still play in that same alliance but sadly most of the original crew have left, there just isn’t enough sense of progression for the veterans.
Patchneto
Before his nerf-change-whatever Magneto was awesome. He had a 5 (3?) AP blue power which let you chose wherever to put his two blue protect tiles. Sounds bad? Not combined with Patches strike tiles. For a short while the meta consisted of using those to make blue matches so you got the AP to do more blue matches. Ad infinitum, or as long as anyone could stand up to Patch's strike tiles which was about 4 turns.
Hulkbomb
The fasted game in The West. Almost. Here we again tanked up on green to release Patch's strike tiles, then put Hulk in front to absorb the damage and get really really angry. So angry he turned board green while making AOE damage with every single CD, worked best with environmental tiles. Ahh Environmental tiles. What stupid **** idea that was.
We all wanted to play in a top100 alliance to get that sweet sweet Nick Fury cover. He was just about as useless then as he is now, but to have a 4 star cover when everyone else was trying to build their first complete 3 star was a badge of honor.
Sentrybomb
Before Sentry was a piece of useless meat you have to chug though to get to the real fight, he was a god ruling the meta with a firm hand with the help of his best friend The Hood. During this epic time period we also had +3 AP boost with meant that you could enter the fight with 6 AP in the colors that matter. And those were yellow and green. Get the then ridiculously over-powered strike tile out, fire of green and watch the world burn. With a good board a fight would take less than 30 seconds and without any cooldown on shields, bracket sniping was abundant. Devil Dino was even part of the meta for a couple of days, mostly because his purple was so cheap and the animation was long enough to offset a shield jump on defense if you were lucky.
My first taste of 2k
I remember my first fight to the death with Zonatahunt, We fought for #1 to get whatever cover, but after a while it escalated and got out of hand. Snipes and #, get the extra points, reshield. See if the hit bounced or hit. It if hit, calculate if he would hit the retaliation node or not. Refresh the leaderboard and see when the un# came. In the end I lost the fight with 1980ish to his 2000, number 3 barely broke 1300 (looking at you Lukewin). Win or lose didn’t matter, still almost the most fun I’ d had with the game up to that point.
Thorverine 2.0
Enter xforce and Goddess. First you have to understand that xforce used to suck. For real, he was so bad that some top players even told alliance members to sell his covers instead of spending HP for a slot for him. But then everything changed, xforce black changed the meta, and it changed fast. With 11 black AP you could one-shot almost any character and also collect AP enough for a second power.
Goddess used to make so many charge tiles you almost had to be as unlucky as Pauly Shore not to get enough red AP for the Smite. Oh and the damage was insane. Her one-two punch, usually powered by xforce black AP collection was a beauty to behold. Then the nerf came. And still to this day, never forgive, never forget. The forum whiners got their way and Thorverine 2.0 was treated like a used condom, fun while it lasted but ultimately flushed down the toilet.
Shield Cooldowns
Im not sure this was the right move for the game but if anything it pushed more collaboration, a tighter community and a SSOLU sprang up really fast. Remember the 24 hour # bug? Yeah, I’m still hesitant to use that thing. Got burned so many times.
Enforcing
Ever wonder why you keep getting hit by the same people? It is because you sniped the wrong person idiot! See any pattern? Well, yes they are from the same alliance and they are called enforcers. What you do as an enforcer is to stay low by donating points so you can snipe the snipers for your alliance mates. Can be really fulfilling, especially if you have a sadistic streak.
Retreat boosting / Cover farming
What to do when the game feels stale and you need something to occupy your time with? Well sir, why don’t you try our new and improved retreat boosting formula?
Here is how it worked:
1: Get 3-4 people to about 800p in PVP
2: Decide the order you want to farm the cover in.
3: When the first one goes for the score everyone else retreat to him/her
4: When the scores boost start, its goes really fast, so fast in fact the game couldn’t keep up and sometimes you’d have to restart the game to get the rewards.
5: After successful farm of the 1300 cover you’d turn around and donate the points back to next in line so they could get the cover. Rinse and repeat
PVE
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Besides Gauntlet and Boss Events, this game doesn’t have a Player VS Environment mode. It is just Endurance PVP. Or as I like to call it; The Find Out Who Can’t Keep A Job Mode, TFOWCKAJM for short and simple. I like the Gauntlet, but it still suffers from terrible rewards. There should be a 5 star in the end of that tunnel.
The most fun I’ve had with PVE was most likely to build effective teams that doesn’t have to rely on being crazy fast. Like Blade, Spidy and Falcon. Great synergy all around, defensive and once it gets going a great damage dealer. Same with Charlies Angels, and if you don’t know that team, get out! (Its PX/GSBW/SW)
5 stars
Full disclosure: I have a championed OML. RNG was nice to me in the beginning but I still thought and still think that the difference in power between 4s and 5s is killing the game. I love the design choice that a 5 star is useful with a handful of covers and truly believe this should trickle down the lower tier of characters. However, when you level your first 5 star, its over. You will have the first world MPQ problem of only being able to use that one character for everything! Either that or the MMR will eat you alive. I actually found the last Patch even really fun because it locked out OML for me but also for everyone else. I was back to playing with strategy, well, almost since Bobby and HB ate everything, but still some resemblance of strategy at least.
Championing
Most likely the best new feature to the end game in a long time. I’ll say it like this, I’m even tempted to champion Elektra and IW just to dull the severe migranes I get when I pull their covers from an LT.
I don’t buy the argument that championing somewhat negates the stupid power curve difference in 4 vs 5. Anyone who makes that doesn’t understand how drop rates or the meta works.
Balancing
I’d like to end on some thoughts I have on the game after spending approximately 2500 hours playing it.
There shouldn’t be the one single strategy that works for PVP. There should be a plethora of viable options to choose from. What I mean is characters should be design with a Rock-Paper-Scissors mentality. So if you bring a strike tile generator, I bring my Protect tile generator. I bring my glass cannon and meat shield, you bring a stunner.
This approach has somewhat been addressed lately with BBSS and Peggy but I there is a fundamental flaw in PVP that can not be overlooked and that is the need for speed. The upside of breaking a shield is the at most 75 points you can gain by winning a fight, but the downside is almost infinite or at least as many points as you have accumulated during this PVP. This makes speed the number one factor when fighting. Defensive characters will have to be so much more powerful in the future if you want to change the way the meta works. If we ever se a 5 star Luke Cage he would have to put a 5k+ protect tile for it to matter, maybe even more.
Rebalance the 4 stars when we get to 4 star PVPs. I think a boosted 4 should be able to handle a maxed non boosted 5 without much problems. As it is now, you reasonably could make the 3-5 progression and skip 4s all together. The cost of leveling them need to come down as well. It takes a dedicated player around 3 weeks to get the ISO to level a 4, that is way too much when there are almost 40 of them in the game.
The community
I would not have played this long if it wasn’t for the best part of the game, you guys. Well, not only the forumites but the SSOLU and my Alliance family. I’ve had so much fun and I think It was Stax that said it best that the GC is 50% a support group for abused players. It has felt like that sometimes. Thank you, you know who you are.
Here’s to another 1000 days!
/zeeke
I crossed into 4-digit land a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share some memories and thoughts with you about these past 1000 days. Some of you have been here as long as me and are almost part of the structure, and some of you are more recent additions. Over the years (I know its sounds strange but it is true) we have had a lot of changes to the game and I'd like to talk about some of them.
Thorverine 1.0
Before there was #shields, there was Thorverine. Back in the old days 2 star Wolvie was awesome. He had cheap and devastating powers. He had true healing, or as we use to call it back then; healing, and he went great with Thor. Since you couldn't shield to protect your score you had to either play continuously just to stay in the top or try to start really late, hope for a half filled bracket and pound out matches before the servers started to put you into the rotation of other players. It was basically like looking at the crabs trying to climb on top of each other.
When the Thorverine combo was nerfed (shocker) OBW was the queen. For some reason many players did not figure out the now prevalent 355 build but ran here 454. The meta really consisted of who could get to 8 purple first, because that person got to steal the others AP, release Wolverines green and ride the OBW double tap all the way home. And if you tinykitty up and lost the match, no worries, you had 3 tries to beat the opponent. They didn’t even regain any health between fights and any character you had downed was dead and gone!
Did I mention that Lightning rounds gave out 3 star covers? No? Ok they did, and you know who we wanted to get? Tinykitty Ragnarok! He had two powers, green and red and they were so cheap they were almost free. Plus they hit really hard.
Alliances
To start an alliance you had to spend HP, then you got 5 spots. Every additional spot cost HP so the top alliances with 20 were hard currency. I first joined S.T.E.A.L.T.H back in season 4 or 5 with the promise to always score at least 600 points. This was not easy, but I had an awesome weapon at my disposal, a level 140 Punisher! His strike tiles, attack tiles and retribution was great with OBW double tap and AP stealing. I still play in that same alliance but sadly most of the original crew have left, there just isn’t enough sense of progression for the veterans.
Patchneto
Before his nerf-change-whatever Magneto was awesome. He had a 5 (3?) AP blue power which let you chose wherever to put his two blue protect tiles. Sounds bad? Not combined with Patches strike tiles. For a short while the meta consisted of using those to make blue matches so you got the AP to do more blue matches. Ad infinitum, or as long as anyone could stand up to Patch's strike tiles which was about 4 turns.
Hulkbomb
The fasted game in The West. Almost. Here we again tanked up on green to release Patch's strike tiles, then put Hulk in front to absorb the damage and get really really angry. So angry he turned board green while making AOE damage with every single CD, worked best with environmental tiles. Ahh Environmental tiles. What stupid **** idea that was.
We all wanted to play in a top100 alliance to get that sweet sweet Nick Fury cover. He was just about as useless then as he is now, but to have a 4 star cover when everyone else was trying to build their first complete 3 star was a badge of honor.
Sentrybomb
Before Sentry was a piece of useless meat you have to chug though to get to the real fight, he was a god ruling the meta with a firm hand with the help of his best friend The Hood. During this epic time period we also had +3 AP boost with meant that you could enter the fight with 6 AP in the colors that matter. And those were yellow and green. Get the then ridiculously over-powered strike tile out, fire of green and watch the world burn. With a good board a fight would take less than 30 seconds and without any cooldown on shields, bracket sniping was abundant. Devil Dino was even part of the meta for a couple of days, mostly because his purple was so cheap and the animation was long enough to offset a shield jump on defense if you were lucky.
My first taste of 2k
I remember my first fight to the death with Zonatahunt, We fought for #1 to get whatever cover, but after a while it escalated and got out of hand. Snipes and #, get the extra points, reshield. See if the hit bounced or hit. It if hit, calculate if he would hit the retaliation node or not. Refresh the leaderboard and see when the un# came. In the end I lost the fight with 1980ish to his 2000, number 3 barely broke 1300 (looking at you Lukewin). Win or lose didn’t matter, still almost the most fun I’ d had with the game up to that point.
Thorverine 2.0
Enter xforce and Goddess. First you have to understand that xforce used to suck. For real, he was so bad that some top players even told alliance members to sell his covers instead of spending HP for a slot for him. But then everything changed, xforce black changed the meta, and it changed fast. With 11 black AP you could one-shot almost any character and also collect AP enough for a second power.
Goddess used to make so many charge tiles you almost had to be as unlucky as Pauly Shore not to get enough red AP for the Smite. Oh and the damage was insane. Her one-two punch, usually powered by xforce black AP collection was a beauty to behold. Then the nerf came. And still to this day, never forgive, never forget. The forum whiners got their way and Thorverine 2.0 was treated like a used condom, fun while it lasted but ultimately flushed down the toilet.
Shield Cooldowns
Im not sure this was the right move for the game but if anything it pushed more collaboration, a tighter community and a SSOLU sprang up really fast. Remember the 24 hour # bug? Yeah, I’m still hesitant to use that thing. Got burned so many times.
Enforcing
Ever wonder why you keep getting hit by the same people? It is because you sniped the wrong person idiot! See any pattern? Well, yes they are from the same alliance and they are called enforcers. What you do as an enforcer is to stay low by donating points so you can snipe the snipers for your alliance mates. Can be really fulfilling, especially if you have a sadistic streak.
Retreat boosting / Cover farming
What to do when the game feels stale and you need something to occupy your time with? Well sir, why don’t you try our new and improved retreat boosting formula?
Here is how it worked:
1: Get 3-4 people to about 800p in PVP
2: Decide the order you want to farm the cover in.
3: When the first one goes for the score everyone else retreat to him/her
4: When the scores boost start, its goes really fast, so fast in fact the game couldn’t keep up and sometimes you’d have to restart the game to get the rewards.
5: After successful farm of the 1300 cover you’d turn around and donate the points back to next in line so they could get the cover. Rinse and repeat
PVE
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Besides Gauntlet and Boss Events, this game doesn’t have a Player VS Environment mode. It is just Endurance PVP. Or as I like to call it; The Find Out Who Can’t Keep A Job Mode, TFOWCKAJM for short and simple. I like the Gauntlet, but it still suffers from terrible rewards. There should be a 5 star in the end of that tunnel.
The most fun I’ve had with PVE was most likely to build effective teams that doesn’t have to rely on being crazy fast. Like Blade, Spidy and Falcon. Great synergy all around, defensive and once it gets going a great damage dealer. Same with Charlies Angels, and if you don’t know that team, get out! (Its PX/GSBW/SW)
5 stars
Full disclosure: I have a championed OML. RNG was nice to me in the beginning but I still thought and still think that the difference in power between 4s and 5s is killing the game. I love the design choice that a 5 star is useful with a handful of covers and truly believe this should trickle down the lower tier of characters. However, when you level your first 5 star, its over. You will have the first world MPQ problem of only being able to use that one character for everything! Either that or the MMR will eat you alive. I actually found the last Patch even really fun because it locked out OML for me but also for everyone else. I was back to playing with strategy, well, almost since Bobby and HB ate everything, but still some resemblance of strategy at least.
Championing
Most likely the best new feature to the end game in a long time. I’ll say it like this, I’m even tempted to champion Elektra and IW just to dull the severe migranes I get when I pull their covers from an LT.
I don’t buy the argument that championing somewhat negates the stupid power curve difference in 4 vs 5. Anyone who makes that doesn’t understand how drop rates or the meta works.
Balancing
I’d like to end on some thoughts I have on the game after spending approximately 2500 hours playing it.
There shouldn’t be the one single strategy that works for PVP. There should be a plethora of viable options to choose from. What I mean is characters should be design with a Rock-Paper-Scissors mentality. So if you bring a strike tile generator, I bring my Protect tile generator. I bring my glass cannon and meat shield, you bring a stunner.
This approach has somewhat been addressed lately with BBSS and Peggy but I there is a fundamental flaw in PVP that can not be overlooked and that is the need for speed. The upside of breaking a shield is the at most 75 points you can gain by winning a fight, but the downside is almost infinite or at least as many points as you have accumulated during this PVP. This makes speed the number one factor when fighting. Defensive characters will have to be so much more powerful in the future if you want to change the way the meta works. If we ever se a 5 star Luke Cage he would have to put a 5k+ protect tile for it to matter, maybe even more.
Rebalance the 4 stars when we get to 4 star PVPs. I think a boosted 4 should be able to handle a maxed non boosted 5 without much problems. As it is now, you reasonably could make the 3-5 progression and skip 4s all together. The cost of leveling them need to come down as well. It takes a dedicated player around 3 weeks to get the ISO to level a 4, that is way too much when there are almost 40 of them in the game.
The community
I would not have played this long if it wasn’t for the best part of the game, you guys. Well, not only the forumites but the SSOLU and my Alliance family. I’ve had so much fun and I think It was Stax that said it best that the GC is 50% a support group for abused players. It has felt like that sometimes. Thank you, you know who you are.
Here’s to another 1000 days!
/zeeke
0
Comments
-
Excellent post, but you forgot about the featured character being guaranteed in ten packs. And wasn't 3* Spidey really awesome at one point with his stun lock?
Ahhh, the good old days. Back when gas was $0.75 a gallon and pay phones were a dime.0 -
And the terribly boring reign of the Spider.JCTthe3rd81 wrote:You forgot about the featured character being guaranteed in ten packs.0 -
Welcome to the 1000+ day club !
I think we really need to get a new 5 Thor (Old King Thor) who plays specially well with OML (grandpa logan and grandpa thor
), so we can establish the new and improved Thorverine 3.0 
No seriously, WE NEED OLD KING THOR
0 -
Thank you for the reminisce, I've not even been here a year yet and have no "good old days" to look back on yet
It's nice to see that it IS a dynamic game. We appear to be in the calm before the storm with some big plans from the Devs (which has been hailed as TEH DEFF OF GERM from a few quarters) an overview gives me hope on top of entertainment.0 -
And you needed 20 covers of the same color to max an ability instead of 5 today.0
-
I really enjoyed reading that. The game evolved so much early and I guess it still is...maybe. I started around season 6 and missed about half of what you were talking about!0
-
Remeber when Call The Storm and Rage of the Panther were the battle enders!!! Zomg ~3000 hit point aoe damage... game over!!!0
-
Well said. I happened to catch the tail end of pretty much each super combo (magnerine, sentry and hood, hulkbomb) and even just missed a few (thorverine 2.0) as I was unable to catch enough covers soon enough. Thanks for the reminiscence!0
-
No mention of when Pre rework Rag + GSBW combo that used to be the fastest clear team (I really missed old rag, I actually loved old godlike power) and Pre rework 3* Mag + Patch?
Magneto was top dog for a long time after Rag, self looping and one of the scariest nukes in game with what used to be his purple power, I remember when the rework hit and everyone lost their **** and thought new Mag sucked.0 -
As a pretty new player (today will be 161) it's interesting to hear how much the game changed overtime. I haven't really seen a major change yet. When i started 5*s and champions were already a thing, but new enough that I still hear people talking about how they've changed things (for better or worse). It's kinda cool to hear how different the earlier game was.0
-
Environmental tiles, NEVER FORGET!0
-
I'm about 150 days behind you but I really appreciate this post. Even starting 5 months later, I experienced all this as well. I do miss Elemental Tiles and did for quite a while after they disappeared. At this point I couldn't imagine having them back.
I agree that 5*s are ruining the game. There are a couple reasons for this:
1) I don't whale, I am primarily free to play, and my luck is dismal. My peers who are also free to play have champed 5* rosters and I'm stuck. However, 5*s destroyed the 4* game some of us vets spent years trying to build, and allowed noobs to suddenly whale 5* rosters and be more competitive than us vets in no time flat. It created a place in PVP where the roster that many of us spent years on was suddenly invalidated and we were no longer big fish in a medium size pond, we became small fish in a big pond. I understand the game is set up to make money and doesn't cater to people like me that doesn't pay mortgage to D3, but the distance between 4 and 5*s that you mentioned, created a place for us to feel like beginners again. And with a little bad luck, I can no longer keep up. If I wasn't a smart enough player to hold my own in a sea of champed 5*s I probably would have just quit. However, D3 doesn't care as much about me because I don't pay. If the whales quit, that's when they take notice and start changing things. So while it was a huge disappointment to me for D3 to introduce a new tier--and as I've watched it play out since introduction, I've learned my disappointment was valid--I do know that I'm not the target market for the devs.
2) The frequency of 5* releases does not provide a platform that would be long drawn out builds for high tier vet players of epic proportions (as they said when they introduced them). You may disagree with this, but my example is, I have Phoenix at 12 covers. Build 5/5/2. She was easier to build because there were less fish in the ocean so the odds I'd catch a keeper were better. Now, (after pulling about 20 of her covers total and not yet having her finished), the odds that I will draw a red cover are at .8%. These odds are unreal and dismal and depressing. Should I start pulling Latest LTs and new tokens in hopes that I can collect Banners and Black Bolts quickly before they move to the dank pool of classics and lower the pull rates in the classics further? The answer is no. My best bet is to save 720 CP that should take close to two seasons, which will slow down my iso earning and chances of building or finishing another 5* in the classic pool now.
The patterns built around 5*s and necessity to have them in game is drowning players like me who can't afford to (nor want to) spend their kids' college funds on a mobile game roster, and have unfortunate luck.
I wish we could go back to a 4* game, but the truth is, 5*s will continue (and at the current trajectory, 6*s are probably a year away) and those that spend money will stay ahead of the curve. While players like me will ultimately slide into world of obsolescence where we are no longer able to be competitive and are forced to leave the game and let our time and energy invested rosters float away on a Norse burial raft, set fire adrift a sea of whales.0 -
Tomorrow will be day 600 for me so I've been around for about half of what your op has, thanks for the history lesson!0
-
JCTthe3rd81 wrote:Excellent post, but you forgot about the featured character being guaranteed in ten packs. And wasn't 3* Spidey really awesome at one point with his stun lock?
Yes! Can’t believe I missed the Spidy stun lock era.Polares wrote:Welcome to the 1000+ day club !
I think we really need to get a new 5 Thor (Old King Thor) who plays specially well with OML (grandpa logan and grandpa thor), so we can establish the new and improved Thorverine 3.0
No seriously, WE NEED OLD KING THOR
That would be great, But I think we have to wait for the next Thor movie to get a 5 star version.0 -
I'm a little ahead of you in days, but probably less than 1500 hours are put into my game, and I remember every single one of your points!
I also remember being able to heal by levelling a character which was useful.
I agree championing is the best thing to happen to this game, and releasing more than 4 5*s a year is too many0 -
The Lightning round discussion reminded me of the time of character vaults. Remember that? Certain 3* character were taken out of tokens to keep the draw rates at an acceptable level, then people complained about not being able to get those characters.... And since they kept adding character the number of characters out of rotation just kept growing...0
-
U forgot the prehistoric state of MPQ where skills do not only have 5 levels but 20 each
Oops i am too old. OML haha0
Categories
- All Categories
- 44.6K Marvel Puzzle Quest
- 1.5K MPQ News and Announcements
- 20.2K MPQ General Discussion
- 3K MPQ Tips and Guides
- 2K MPQ Character Discussion
- 171 MPQ Supports Discussion
- 2.5K MPQ Events, Tournaments, and Missions
- 2.8K MPQ Alliances
- 6.3K MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
- 6.2K MPQ Bugs and Technical Issues
- 13.5K Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest
- 496 MtGPQ News & Announcements
- 5.3K MtGPQ General Discussion
- 98 MtGPQ Tips & Guides
- 417 MtGPQ Deck Strategy & Planeswalker Discussion
- 293 MtGPQ Events
- 60 MtGPQ Coalitions
- 1.2K MtGPQ Suggestions & Feedback
- 5.6K MtGPQ Bugs & Technical Issues
- 548 Other 505 Go Inc. Games
- 21 Puzzle Quest: The Legend Returns
- 5 Adventure Gnome
- 6 Word Designer: Country Home
- 381 Other Games
- 142 General Discussion
- 239 Off Topic
- 7 505 Go Inc. Forum Rules
- 7 Forum Rules and Site Announcements