Should new players eventually be able to reach competitive parity with veteran players?

MarkersMake

Re-posting this to be compliant with forum rules:

Power inflation means that new characters are often stronger than old ones. Vaulting means that old characters will largely stop receiving additional champion levels, so they won't gain much of the raw power advantages that level-based scaling confers.  

The long-term result (maybe a year or so from now) of these factors will be that newer players (say, a total of 1-2 years played) and veteran players (say, 4-5 years played) will have similar effective 4* rosters. The "heavily used" part of their rosters will be mostly composed of relatively new 4* characters that are champed to about 280-300. Vets will have more total championed 4*s, but their older champs will be stalled out on levels and probably outgunned by the inflated powers of newer characters. 

As a result, newer players should be almost as competitive as veterans in most events, being able to stand up fairly well in PVE and PVP, despite having started much later. 

In many games, early adopters acquire an insurmountable advantage over later players due to raw number of days played. Should that same advantage be permanent and unassailable in MPQ as well, or should it lessen over time?  

IOW, should newer players eventually be able to reach the above-described competitive parity with vets? 

Daiches

They already have parity in PVE providing they have all essentials which requires only a good finish in the preceding PVE. In many cases softcapped 3-4star rosters already have a significant advantage due to scaling.

Bowgentle

They already invalidated all progress people had made when they brought out the 5* tier in October 2015.
No reason to not assume they will do that again in the future to give new people the illusion of eventually being able to compete without putting in serious money.

D4Ni13

The answer is yes. And it's not like the veteren player is not able to have the new 4* in his roster like the new player. More so the veteran player will have the experience to get the new content faster than the average joe, so I don't see where the problem is. 

The veteran player will always have the upper hand, even if that means a couple of vaulted 4* (that new players will not be able to get easily) or more experience and game knowledge overall. 

Tony_Foot

Yes if you want to have a game in the future. I started when there was 60ish roster slots needed and very nearly baulked at that after a couple of weeks playing. I think to get and keep new players they should be given a single cover on every 2 and 3 stars on day 1. Hook them in.

I'd also back fill every one of those days of progression with 3* covers, those empty spaces on daily rewards and standard tokens to accelerate them along. ISO will still be a limiting factor but starting today and looking at 130+ slots, not a hope I would have carried on.

JablesMc

At this point, the only thing that concerns me is the essential 3* and 4* requirements. How are newbies going to feel if every other event, they miss out due to not having a required, vaulted character? Granted, this is easily addressed(at least on the surface) by limiting essentials to newer characters, but...

JamieMadrox

Newer players should only expect to be able to compete with vets if they also lay down as much money on the game as what vets do.

Crnch73

my belief is that after a certain point, you should stop seeing scaling. Meaning, you should actually be rewarded for having a level 450 champion 5*. Right now, the better your roster means the harder your competition. What's the point in building a higher roster if the game doesn't get easier eventually?

I don't want it to be so tilted that the new players can NEVER compete with veterans. But I want it to be that someone with Shield Rank 20 can't earn progression points easier than someone at rank 80. There should be a line in the sand where a better roster means some things get easier. If not, what's the point anymore? Just soft-cap (which vaulting already has done since my 4's will never make it past 280 now) and have fun playing with your roster. At some point, nodes should just become easier, but we should make it so the people with higher rosters can't play down in SCL to lower levels, that way their ease in beating nodes can't "steal" placement rewards from the newbies.

mpqr7

When I was a noob, I made plenty of progression. I didn't get top placement in events, but I still was able to build and level up my characters. Heck, I still don't place well in most events.. and I'm still building up characters. It's slow and steady progress.

carrion_pigeons

Obviously yes, up to the point of the penultimate tier (which in our case is sub-460 or so?). Presumably everything after that is Deliberately intended to be a paywall.  

The question from a game design standpoint ought to be instead: what mix of catchup mechanics will be the most encouraging in getting people to engage at that level?  Every time a player stalls out mid-transition, that's a loss for the company. Which is why it's so mystifying to me that they make the 4* transition so painful. 

Fightmastermpq

carrion pigeons said:

Obviously yes, up to the point of the penultimate tier (which in our case is sub-460 or so?). Presumably everything after that is Deliberately intended to be a paywall.  

The question from a game design standpoint ought to be instead: what mix of catchup mechanics will be the most encouraging in getting people to engage at that level?  Every time a player stalls out mid-transition, that's a loss for the company. Which is why it's so mystifying to me that they make the 4* transition so painful. 

This is why they introduced vaulting.  Vaulting makes catching up happen 3-4x faster.

D3P2K5

New players should never really be able to catch up with competitive vets but they should be able to enjoy and play the game just as much as the vets.  The problem more so is their ability to acquire and complete characters is far more difficult now than ever before.  Vaulting doesn't truly help new players as they still won't be able to complete their limited characters fast enough as vaulting will continuously consume more and more characters.  What will help most is some way for players to choose from multiple character limited token stores where one type of token can be used to access any of those stores (as an example).  

smkspy

Every new player that plays long enough eventually becomes a vet. Problem with this game is that it doesn't really mean much when you do become a vet. 

Take pvp for example, I'm at 20 four star champs and despite that it takes both bring really lucky and having the right boosted 4s to be able to hit 900. Likewise playing pve takes optimal grinding and the right time slice to score top 20 for an event. 

I have zero reference towards other games of this nature in the freemium model, but that isn't that boosts confidence if I wasn't already knee deep in the muck.

vinsensual

I don't think they should limit the vets' rate of growth for their champed 4s.  Defense isn't  a priority in this meta, so most people with low level champed 4s can already punch way above their level.  So parity is already close, fight-to-fight, in a "any given sunday" sense (not counting 5s).

Competitive parity is loosely defined here, people can already top 5 in pve if they grind.  PVP is much more complicated to achieve parity where stuff like shield hopping is as much or more of a factor than difference in champ levels. 

On another note, those champ levels are about receiving better rewards too, not even about using them in fights. 

veny

Technically i cant imagine an online game where newbie somehow gets equal or even better than veteran trough non-monetary ways.
MPQ has some limits and after reaching them, you cant get more assets (max progress loot, limited nodes etc.) - without paying which has no in game limits.
So, it is impossible for new players to compete with veterans and i think it is good. Honestly it would be weird if some "noob" with 1k hours defeated me (i have 2500 hours) unless he paid for it.
BUT we should not prevent newbies from getting what veterans have - sadly vaulting does this pretty well, with it, it is nearly impossible to get, or even max out old 4*s (that are essential for PvE, PvP and DDQ).

Fightmastermpq

veny said:

Technically i cant imagine an online game where newbie somehow gets equal or even better than veteran trough non-monetary ways.
MPQ has some limits and after reaching them, you cant get more assets (max progress loot, limited nodes etc.) - without paying which has no in game limits.
So, it is impossible for new players to compete with veterans and i think it is good. Honestly it would be weird if some "noob" with 1k hours defeated me (i have 2500 hours) unless he paid for it.
BUT we should not prevent newbies from getting what veterans have - sadly vaulting does this pretty well, with it, it is nearly impossible to get, or even max out old 4*s (that are essential for PvE, PvP and DDQ).

There should be diminishing marginal returns to upper tiers of play, and MPQ I think does this well.  A day 500 player won't have nearly the diversity that a day 1000 player has, and so the day 1000 player will always maintain a slight advantage, but that advantage becomes much much smaller as time goes on.  A vet using level 460 characters to the "n00bs" 450s is just a very slight advantage that both incentivizes continued progression while not discouraging new players from ever being able to compete.  Having to spend to catch up would be a sure way to ensure the demise of the game.

SnowcaTT

Voted yes. I'm a vet, and I have been complaining since my 2* days that it's nearly impossible to catch up with covers/ISO - and I've been "gently suggesting" for over two years that those resources should be scaled with each character added.

Of course I do see some catch up to me overnight (splash splash)

Also with champions there is a new definition needed: what is "competitive"? because every time I hit some new plateau (3*/3*, 3*/4*, 4*/4*, 4*/5*, 5*/5*) there is a whole slew of people that are WAY beyond that due/thanks to champions.

Jaedenkaal

JablesMc said:

At this point, the only thing that concerns me is the essential 3* and 4* requirements. How are newbies going to feel if every other event, they miss out due to not having a required, vaulted character? Granted, this is easily addressed(at least on the surface) by limiting essentials to newer characters, but...

I don't see how that is any different than when I was starting out and had 15 4* covers in total to my name. And in those days, you couldn't win 4* covers in progression. If you couldn't make placement, you got nothing.