How many of us have to scream about the problems?

Frigs

I like many people here fell in love with this game from the start, being a fan of 3-match puzzle games and HUGE Marvel fan, the combination of the two was just a brilliant and instant hit with me, much like most others who populate this forum. I've been gaming for a solid 25+ years now and I have to say, there are not many games out there I enjoy so much that I actively search them out online and actually join the games online forum. I've done my fair share of forum perusing, but never do I actually join them, I mostly observe in secrecy so to say. Since I started playing about 200 days ago the forum is pretty much a daily thing that I hit up, if anything just to hear what people have to say about whats going on with the game.

While performing this daily task I have discovered that the players of MPQ are the most miserable and angry players of any game I've ever seen in my life. Here's the thing though, these players have every right to be angry and miserable because the development team has flat out ignored their players screams for help for an eternity now. Every single tin kitty day there is a post about something terribly wrong with this game, and the person posting the complaint is 100% right. In what world do we live in that we continue to live in misery because we enjoy playing puzzle games and also like marvel characters? How is it even possible that a game can frustrate us to this degree and we refuse to stop playing it?

Iso shortage, level scaling, RNG completely kitty us, its all legitimate gripes and when you look at something as simple as the cost to pay for iso and how much you would have to spend to level just a 2*, its all just completely ignorant and selfish. Sure, have your mid-week iso sale so it only cost $400 to champion your professor x, those of us crunching the numbers arent having it.

I'm not hear to offer a fix for anything thats wrong with the game, as I've witnessed over the past few months the devs really could care less about any of these gripes, I'm merely here to state that what I have witnessed within this gaming community and the level of appreciation for your feedback from the devs is just downright sad. Its quite obviously about money at this point and not at all about what the strongest members of your community care about, so just think about that for a few minutes.

Intentionally finding ways around the profanity filter is a violation of forum rules. Please refrain from doing so.

DeNappa

Frigs wrote:

[..]
While performing this daily task I have discovered that the players of MPQ are the most miserable and angry players of any game I've ever seen in my life.

. Maybe you're just exaggerating to get your point across, but I don't think this describes the state of the average MPQ player. The percentage of this may be a bit higher in the 'vocal forum veteran' player base though.

Here's the thing though, these players have every right to be angry and miserable because the development team has flat out ignored their players screams for help for an eternity now. Every single tin kitty day there is a post about something terribly wrong with this game, and the person posting the complaint is 100% right.

Iso shortage, level scaling, RNG completely flucking us, its all legitimate gripes and when you look at something as simple as the cost to pay for iso and how much you would have to spend to level just a 2*, its all just completely ignorant and selfish. Sure, have your mid-week iso sale so it only cost $400 to champion your professor x, those of us crunching the numbers arent having it.

A lot of things that were complained about in the past have also been addressed. The recent iteration cyclces on testing the new PVE structures are a good example. However, it's not clear why certain issues are left in the cold and others get fixed.

I'm not hear to offer a fix for anything thats wrong with the game, as I've witnessed over the past few months the devs really could care less about any of these gripes, I'm merely here to state that what I have witnessed within this gaming community and the level of appreciation for your feedback from the devs is just downright sad. Its quite obviously about money at this point and not at all about what the strongest members of your community care about, so just think about that for a few minutes.

So, the tl;dr for your post: dev communication is lacking. That's a valid point IMO.

I think the main gripe is that it's unclear how issues are prioritized, or even acknowledged as something that may be seen as a problem.

Take for example something that was recently fixed, the rewards screen (speed is now improved and there's a *-rating filter). This has been a very long standing issue with the player base, so you'd think some dev time will be redirected to it at some point. But it was never acknowledged as being a problem, and after 2 years they 'surprise fixed' it.

It would be great to see, for example, some montly dev blog or Q&A just to know what is going on. Will they fix the 'excess covers for nonmaxed characters' thing? Are they working on fixing the known wave node bugs? Will alliances ever get some more features or quality of life improvements?

Jabrony_Geoff

Frigs wrote:

While performing this daily task I have discovered that the players of MPQ are the most miserable and angry players of any game I've ever seen in my life.

Here's why I'm currently angry, I recently cashed in 4 legendary tokens and 150 CP in an attempt to pull Blackbolt.
I've loved blackbolt since I was a little baby comic collector.

Did I pull him?...Did I tinykitty.

If I could have picked my own covers I would have picked.
5 Blackbolt Green
3 Blackbolt black
2 Blackbolt yellow

WHY CANT I DO THIS..???
MY TOKENS MY CP ...MY CHOICE....!!!!!
Would my choice have broken the game?

Willie Degel says the customer is king, treat the customers like kings and they will come back.

TREAT ME LIKE A KING ...!!!!
#nuffsaid

Quebbster

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Frigs wrote:

While performing this daily task I have discovered that the players of MPQ are the most miserable and angry players of any game I've ever seen in my life.

Here's why I'm currently angry, I recently cashed in 4 legendary tokens and 150 CP in an attempt to pull Blackbolt.
I've loved blackbolt since I was a little baby comic collector.

Did I pull him?...Did I tinykitty.

If I could have picked my own covers I would have picked.
5 Blackbolt Green
3 Blackbolt black
2 Blackbolt yellow

WHY CANT I DO THIS..???
MY TOKENS MY CP ...MY CHOICE....!!!!!
Would my choice have broken the game?

Willie Degel says the customer is king, treat the customers like kings and they will come back.

TREAT ME LIKE A KING ...!!!!
#nuffsaid

YOu can pick the covers you want as long as you are ready to pay 720 CP per cover. Assuming you already have at least one color in each color of course.
But I don't see anyone ever choosing to get something other than a fivestar cover from legendary tokens if you could indeed choose the cover.

SnowcaTT

It doesn't matter how many of us scream, they don't hear us above the "cha-ching cha-ching"

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/06/16

Jabrony_Geoff

Quebbster wrote:

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Frigs wrote:

While performing this daily task I have discovered that the players of MPQ are the most miserable and angry players of any game I've ever seen in my life.

Here's why I'm currently angry, I recently cashed in 4 legendary tokens and 150 CP in an attempt to pull Blackbolt.
I've loved blackbolt since I was a little baby comic collector.

Did I pull him?...Did I tinykitty.

If I could have picked my own covers I would have picked.
5 Blackbolt Green
3 Blackbolt black
2 Blackbolt yellow

WHY CANT I DO THIS..???
MY TOKENS MY CP ...MY CHOICE....!!!!!
Would my choice have broken the game?

Willie Degel says the customer is king, treat the customers like kings and they will come back.

TREAT ME LIKE A KING ...!!!!
#nuffsaid

YOu can pick the covers you want as long as you are ready to pay 720 CP per cover. Assuming you already have at least one color in each color of course.
But I don't see anyone ever choosing to get something other than a fivestar cover from legendary tokens if you could indeed choose the cover.

Quebbster you haven't answered my question, would choosing my own covers break the game?

Quebbster

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Quebbster you haven't answered my question, would choosing my own covers break the game?

If you can choose to get only fivestar covers from legendary tokens? Absolutely.
And even if you had to pick at least five fourstars before you could get another fivestar it would mean players would only choose covers for the characters they have already invested in. There wouldn't be much reason to choose covers for new characters, would it?
It's a lottery, and the prize reflects it. If you want to eliminate the random aspect, you need to pay a lot more.

Pants1000

Some of the "problems" are intentional game design. They keep people playing and spending money.

They also have done a few things to address those issues, although they're small tweaks. For example regarding ISO shortage, they've had double ISO events, added more ISO to taco vaults, had ISO sales, and just recently changed the last simulator node from 2000 to 3500.

No those changes won't make it easy to max out all of your 4's, but it probably wouldn't be good for the game if that were the case.

atomzed

Quebbster wrote:

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Quebbster you haven't answered my question, would choosing my own covers break the game?

If you can choose to get only fivestar covers from legendary tokens? Absolutely.
And even if you had to pick at least five fourstars before you could get another fivestar it would mean players would only choose covers for the characters they have already invested in. There wouldn't be much reason to choose covers for new characters, would it?
It's a lottery, and the prize reflects it. If you want to eliminate the random aspect, you need to pay a lot more.

Agree with que, choosing our covers will break the game. (Notwithstanding the fact that you can choose your covers but you need to pay much more).

I feel your pain cos I have experience the uselessness of 5* pulls.

I have thus far pulled 12 Oml Red (meaning 6 dup), 7 SS black (meaning 2 dup) and 6 GG purple (meaning 1 dup). If I can just transfer the duplicate pulls to something I can use, I would have at least 2 fully champ 5*.

But even then, I acknowledged the fact that choosing our covers WILL break the game. There is no doubt about it.

kobu

I've always liked Puzzle Quest and have bought it multiple times on different platforms. I'm also a big comics fan. There's a lot this game gets right with the feel of how things play. However, I'm already at the feeling of banging my head against the wall. If it's worse for vets, I really feel sorry for you all. It's a great game mixed with some great frustrations.

I have to say though that it felt like magic when I had talked here about the troubles I run into as a new player and then the rank system got announced. I presume though that had been in consideration for a while. And then without any details, it's hard to know if that will actually address my being mixed in with vets from the get-go and the insane scaling jumps from the difficulty I was at just a couple weeks ago which are two of my biggest complaints.

Further on the plus side, the QoL changes I've seen already in the...exactly 73 days I've played...have been seemingly coming at a steady and quick pace. I do have to wonder why some of these things weren't implemented long ago because they seem so obvious, but I'll take them now. If things keep up at this pace and some changes get iterated further (bigger ISO-8 rewards, one less PVE clear), this could go from a fun but frustrating game with a lot of decent highs and a lot of very low lows to an overall great game.

More communication is always welcome. I've been active on a lot of game forums and I'd say the communication here is about average. That doesn't mean it's at a really acceptable level, just that most game dev communication is horrible. At least they make regular announcements here on upcoming changes. It would be better to hear some rationale for things. That's what the best of them do. Even when it's something like, "We would change that, but we think it would tank the economy and we wouldn't make any money anymore." Especially when it's followed up with, "Here's what we're going to do instead to give you a better experience." From what I've seen from game companies that discuss things with players like that, people just eat it up and the boards become overall protective of the devs and game company rather than mostly united in criticism as I view it here.

Well, they probably also do have to fix some basic issues with resource starvation and a certain overpowered character first before that can happen.

chaos01

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Quebbster you haven't answered my question, would choosing my own covers break the game?

If we were allowed to pick our own covers the lack of diversity would be stunning. 1-4 stars would become irrelevant because anyone not picking a five star would be crazy.

simonsez

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Here's why I'm currently angry, I recently cashed in 4 legendary tokens and 150 CP in an attempt to pull Blackbolt.
I've loved blackbolt since I was a little baby comic collector.

Did I pull him?...Did I tinykitty.

I sympathize with all the complaints in this thread, but if going 0 for 10 on a 5% pull rate is your anger threshold, you've got a whole world of fury ahead of you...

firethorne

chaos01 wrote:

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Quebbster you haven't answered my question, would choosing my own covers break the game?

If we were allowed to pick our own covers the lack of diversity would be stunning. 1-4 stars would become irrelevant because anyone not picking a five star would be crazy.

First, I don't think anyone is suggesting all of them should cost the same. There still can be a standard progression, it just doesn't need to be completely random.

Inherent in what you said is a pretty strong condemnation for the way things are. The game is very imbalanced, and we now have a select few charterers that make all the others completely irrelevant. Yet, getting these characters is entirely a function of a random number generator.

There is a fairly standard progression pattern in many successful games that MPQ ignored. Take something like Skyrim. You start off with your beginner skills, say sneaking. Then you level up and think, I want to raise my pickpocketing to work with that. It doesn't instead randomly give you a the ability to summon a spectral horse. And there still is a progression. Your can't just select daedric and dragonbone smithing without learning iron and steel first. There is a very natural progression, and one that gives the player a great deal of agency in selecting what they want. MPQ laughs at the idea of the agency of the player in their progression.

The Herald

There ARE standardised progressions underneath the RNG madness.

Fixed cover prizes, starting in the prologue and then going irregular across events.

Daily supply drops have fixed covers built into them.

The Champion reward food chain is in place, if not exactly fast. 2's feed a selection of 3's, 3's feed some 4's (and hopefully there will be a big reshuffle on that to plug the new characters in).

5 stars are random, but they turn up (although a less frustrating alternative would be nice, like adding fixed covers to the far side of 4*Champion progression so getting them is inevitable).

The structure IS there. It's slow, and needs Hero Points galore for roster slots, but it's there.

Getting a fast tracked mega character is entirely up to RNGeezus but if you focus on roster depth over power gaming the stars will eventually align.

chaos01

As a 3->4 star transitioner for the past year and 3 months I know the progression can be snails pace of rng isn't with you. I have 30 3 stars above 183 and still only have two fully covers 4 stars. Many have 9-12 covers.

I'm about to get my fourth oml from day 820. But I'm sitting around 4% on LT pulls. I would likely have 8 more fully covered 4 stars if I didn't need to sell repeat covers (I could have a 2/2/13 Xpool).

ClydeFrog76

Frigs wrote:

the devs really could care less about any of these gripes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

MyNameIsRed

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

Frigs wrote:

the devs really could care less about any of these gripes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

Well there goes my afternoon watching all his videos

puppychow

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Here's why I'm currently angry, I recently cashed in 4 legendary tokens and 150 CP in an attempt to pull Blackbolt.
I've loved blackbolt since I was a little baby comic collector.

Let's see . . . 150 CP = 6xlatest tokens. With the other 4 LTs, you cashed in 10 tokens. If you didn't get a baby black from your 10 pulls, maybe you need to pray more to RNGesus.

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Personally, I just pretty much gave up on 5* land. Can't keep up with the supes, so why worry?

puppychow

The Herald wrote:

Getting a fast tracked mega character is entirely up to RNGeezus but if you focus on roster depth over power gaming the stars will eventually align.

Hopefully, it won't take another 820 days to get that alignment. (I got my day 820 OML bk cover not too long ago myself. So congratz!)