Finally made it to 5* land...and it's horrible.

granne

While I've recycled Torch more than any of my other 2*s. Random is random. The word for your example is anecdotal.

Jarvind

Phumade said:

Gotta step up your strategy.  There are no noob players in 5* pvp.  Knowing when to climb, when to shield, who to hit, and who to fight are 3/4s of 5* success.

The game morphs and changes at the 5* tier.  its less about your team and roster and much more about your understanding on how the other 5* players in your shard will react to whatever move you make.

I enjoy 5* pvp more than any other game mode precisely because your fighting with other meta savy players who also have access to the same tools you have.

To get to T5 in competitive brackets with 1500+ scoring is really a statement on how well you leverage your allies to boost your score and how effectively you impede the process of your enemies.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice your placements, points, resources, preferred play style to help your alliance partners with an eye towards long term success. 

I'm not saying any of this is objectively wrong, but Jesus Christ, what you are describing is an unpaid, part-time job. I want to log on and smash things, not get on Slack and promote synergy while leveraging key assets to blarghblarghblargh.

If the game has developed in such a way that the game itself is secondary to checking schedules and manipulating flaws in the system, it's not a game anymore.

Lemme impart a story, here. I briefly played this space colonization/fleet combat simulator thing. It was basically a ripoff of "O-Game" if anyone's familiar with that. Ostensibly, it's a game where you build up planets, produce and upgrade fleets, and blow up other people's stuff so you can harvest the debris and in turn build up even bigger fleets. Sounds fun, right?

The problem was that your fleets couldn't be hit if they were on a mission, and you could deliberately send them ridiculously far away at low speed to make them untouchable for hours, days or even weeks. This was known as "fleet saving" and was essential, because no matter how big and bad your fleet was, somebody else's was always bigger and badder. And if it wasn't, people would band together to repeatedly suicide run at your shinies until they were dust, then split the spoils.

Additionally, planets would have an icon on them indicating whether the owner was online, and you could see incoming attacks, which would usually take hours to arrive; everyone could see what everyone else was doing. So the only way to hit somebody was to catch them unawares, while their fleet was sitting in orbit. This was basically impossible because everyone knew how to game the system, or "play the meta" if you prefer, and would keep their fleets out on missions at all times. If you joined the game not knowing the deal, it would look like nobody ever built any ships and probably be very confusing.

So the only way to actually get combat to happen was to learn an opponent's schedule and meticulously monitor their planets to find the 30-second window each day between their fleet arriving back from its mission and them sending it out again. Fleets on a return trip couldn't be redirected, so if you timed it correctly, they'd be helpless to do anything but watch as their fleet came back and the attack hit a few seconds later.

When "being a crazy stalker" is the only way to play the game, the game is broken. So I quit. I have a job, and, like, aspirations in life.

Now, obviously MPQ is a bit less complex and doesn't require this same level of borderline-psychopathic behavior (or maybe it does. I've never scored 1500 in an event before). That said, when I hear talk of "learning the meta" and "upping your strategy" in a situation like this, it's very hard for me to hear anything but "I have sunk a tremendous amount of time and resources into a badly designed system, and I need to justify it to anyone who recognizes it for the trashcan fire that it is."

I truly don't mean that as a personal attack. If you're really enjoying the 5* tier, by all means, have at it. I'm just saying that for those of us who actually want to play a game and not get on conference calls to determine when it's safe to play and who gets to win this week, it's a pretty awful reward for the amount of effort it takes to get there.

Jarvind

FokaiHI said:

I am kind of shocked with how much you participate in the forums that this would have caught you off guard. Did you just decide "I'm going 5*"? I am grateful with your post though. It reminds me why I remain in the 4* tier. There is no rush. 

Like I said in the post, I figured reports must be exaggerated. Back when 4*s were top of the heap, people swore you couldn't hit 1300 without LINE, but I managed to do it on a pretty regular basis. I figured it would be basically the same - tough, but not as bad as everyone says. I was incorrect.

Jsh2014

With all the 5* horror stories I'll keep pouring my ISO into the 4*s I'll still collect the 5s but until they make some major fixes and maybe they will remember what they said about not nerfing 5* like they did to OML 

Spidurman27

What makes 4* fun for me is diversity.  Having 20 champs means I'm working with a variety of skills and boosted lists and can play matchups and see a ton of different game experiences.  

What I am not looking forward to at 5* (still not close) is losing that diversity of weapons and gameplay both offense and defense.   Especially early in tier. 

FokaiHI

I just got a 13 cover BP and leveled him to 360 as well as an 11 cover Thanos. I understand what you were thinking. I just figured it I would remain in the 4* tier because Thanos costs so much HP.  No lie though, being soft capped has certainly has its good and bad. I can leave a defensive pvp team on the board, but I seem to get crushed by some heavy hitters. I felt like I would level up, but then you made this post. Thanks. 

Nepenthe

I'm getting really close to making the move up to 5* tier.  I've got four 5*s cover-maxed. (Strange, Thanos, Phoenix, Black Panther.)  I've been prioritizing 4* champs for my iso spending, but I'm basically caught up there - only R&G and Gamora left to champion.  It takes me about a week to raise the iso to champ a 4*, so with the release schedule being what it is I'll be able to put half the iso I earn into champing new 4*s as I cover them and the other half into 5*s.

The change to CL-based scaling in PvE is definitely making me feel more comfortable with going ahead on this transition.  PvP could still be a struggle, but currently I get the 900 pts and usually top 25, occasionally top 10.  So if I even just stay in that range, I'll be fine with it.  We'll see how it goes.

Dragon_Nexus

I'm slowly reaching an end in 4* champing. Or at least, I'm reaching a sustainable area.

I have four 4*s not at 13 covers. Iron Fist (keep getting blues, dammit), Gamora, Rocket and Moon Knight (keep getting blacks, dammit). Howard doesn't really count for me...if I get to 13 with him, I'll deal with that as it happens.

Every other 4* is either champed or at 13 covers waiting for dat ISO. Once I've got my 2*s back up and running I can start opening legendaries until I get a spare for a 4*, then I champ 'em in about 7-10 days.

Once the current run is complete, I can work on a few of the older ones just for funsies. After that...I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. But hey, at least my 4*s will gain a bunch of covers and stuff.

No idea what to do with my 5*s.

Pongie

Bowgentle said:

UNC_Samurai said:

Pongie said:

First time I've heard hawkeye is top tier. I agree with bolt, thanos and panther but surely strange and Phoenix are better. Maybe I shouldn't feel so about my hawkeye as my lone 5* champion then 

5-Hawk/Coulson is the fresh new hotness.  It's incredibly frustrating to fight against.

Strange makes mincemeat out of Hawkeye.
Yes please, fire those arrows, multiples per round, please.

I was curious whether the AI  would fire multiple blue/red. Wasn't it coded in  way that each ability is only cast once per turn?

Jarvind

Pongie said:

Bowgentle said:

UNC_Samurai said:

Pongie said:

First time I've heard hawkeye is top tier. I agree with bolt, thanos and panther but surely strange and Phoenix are better. Maybe I shouldn't feel so about my hawkeye as my lone 5* champion then 

5-Hawk/Coulson is the fresh new hotness.  It's incredibly frustrating to fight against.

Strange makes mincemeat out of Hawkeye.
Yes please, fire those arrows, multiples per round, please.

I was curious whether the AI  would fire multiple blue/red. Wasn't it coded in  way that each ability is only cast once per turn?

He can only fire blue and red once per turn each. Still, together with Coulson they generate so much AP that he's firing at least one nearly every turn, so Strange would eat him alive pretty quickly.

spectator

The main issue seems to be people jumping from 2 champed 4 stars to 2 champed 5 stars with nothing in between. The play style and opponents are very different and you are not eased into it because of the way people have chosen to transistion

Starfury

spectator said:

The main issue seems to be people jumping from 2 champed 4 stars to 2 champed 5 stars with nothing in between.

No, they really aren't.

Rhycar

As a 5* player, I can sympathize with your plight. If there's one way I can see that would be a positive for making the 5* jump in this phase of MPQ's life, it would be to hoard LT/CP until you have hundreds of pulls available, wait until the latest three 5* don't suck (hint: not right now) and make sure you have the 1.5 million or so ISO to immediate level them all. And I do recommend Line for any 5* player. The community, learned strategies and friendships are worth it. If you're already on the forums, you clearly care about the game enough to discuss it and generate ideas on gameplay. An active alliance that uses Line just accelerates that. Best of luck to you.

JackTenrec

Phumade said:

The game morphs and changes at the 5* tier.  its less about your team and roster and much more about your understanding on how the other 5* players in your shard will react to whatever move you make.
 

That sounds absolutely terrible. I installed MPQ because I wanted some match-3 goofiness combined with some superhero collecting, not time and opportunity-based chess matches. I guess all my 5* (and I think I've finally gotten at least 1 cover of all of them) will just stay at 255 forever.

animaniactoo

Rhycar said:

As a 5* player, I can sympathize with your plight. If there's one way I can see that would be a positive for making the 5* jump in this phase of MPQ's life, it would be to hoard LT/CP until you have hundreds of pulls available, wait until the latest three 5* don't suck (hint: not right now) and make sure you have the 1.5 million or so ISO to immediate level them all. And I do recommend Line for any 5* player. The community, learned strategies and friendships are worth it. If you're already on the forums, you clearly care about the game enough to discuss it and generate ideas on gameplay. An active alliance that uses Line just accelerates that. Best of luck to you.

fwiw, I'm here on the forums to figure out general how to use my characters best, talk about a game I like, and stuff like that. I'm relatively newer to the forum, but I only have so much of my life for this game to take up - posting here is pretty casual. So for me, it's a rather *large* jump from posting on the forum to the kind of investment you're talking about with using line and pre-planning matches for PVP, and 5-star land, etc. Which is pretty much to say, I agree with the poster directly above me, and being here in the forum is in no way an indicator of ever wanting more than... general info and community light.

animaniactoo

JackTenrec said:

Phumade said:

The game morphs and changes at the 5* tier.  its less about your team and roster and much more about your understanding on how the other 5* players in your shard will react to whatever move you make.
 

That sounds absolutely terrible. I installed MPQ because I wanted some match-3 goofiness combined with some superhero collecting, not time and opportunity-based chess matches. I guess all my 5* (and I think I've finally gotten at least 1 cover of all of them) will just stay at 255 forever.

I will probably end up leveling/champing 5 stars because it's kind of not in me not to do it as part of progression. But reading through this has really convinced me that I might stay in the PVE end of the pool and in lots of ways that's fine. I don't have to be a PVP player even if it was an initial draw. The game at the PVE end takes up enough time and effort as it is.

Particularly since every time I've played PVP where I've opened it far enough in advance to make significant inroads up the progression rewards ladder, I get to a point somewhere around 600 or 700 where I play a match and come out to discover I've been stomped 3x and have lost more points than I gained - completely pushing me down the possibility of decent placement rewards. And that's even when I was going after the bigger dogs, not picking on the little guys who I could reasonably expect to get lots of points off beating me in retaliation. I was hoping that 5* land would change that, but from this thread.... clearly not without what you're describing. So I think I'll leave it to those who enjoy that and have the time and energy for it.

Fightmastermpq

animaniactoo said:

Rhycar said:

As a 5* player, I can sympathize with your plight. If there's one way I can see that would be a positive for making the 5* jump in this phase of MPQ's life, it would be to hoard LT/CP until you have hundreds of pulls available, wait until the latest three 5* don't suck (hint: not right now) and make sure you have the 1.5 million or so ISO to immediate level them all. And I do recommend Line for any 5* player. The community, learned strategies and friendships are worth it. If you're already on the forums, you clearly care about the game enough to discuss it and generate ideas on gameplay. An active alliance that uses Line just accelerates that. Best of luck to you.

fwiw, I'm here on the forums to figure out general how to use my characters best, talk about a game I like, and stuff like that. I'm relatively newer to the forum, but I only have so much of my life for this game to take up - posting here is pretty casual. So for me, it's a rather *large* jump from posting on the forum to the kind of investment you're talking about with using line and pre-planning matches for PVP, and 5-star land, etc. Which is pretty much to say, I agree with the poster directly above me, and being here in the forum is in no way an indicator of ever wanting more than... general info and community light.

5* play is just different, and much like transitioning to any other tier for the first time it kinda sucks.  You get locked in to the same 2 characters for every fight without much variety.  I will say that champing and vaulting is REALLY starting to help with this.  I often run the first half of events with a couple boosted 4s if they are good enough to take down 5s - it's fun, adds variety, and keeps me mostly hidden from other 5* rosters.

All the complaints from 4* players getting beat on by 5* players you now see as a joke.  Because you can't even queue a 4* player until you are so high that hitting them is usually not worth points.  So the initial climb is rough because you are always fighting 5*s and the match damage is so high that you do go through a lot more health packs compared to 4* play.  When playing against 4*s you can deny any abilities from firing and get through matches with hardly any health lost......not the case at the 5* tier.  So it does use more health packs if you want to climb with the same 2 players for an entire event.

But once you get high enough to queue the seals you can float or farm ISO for days without really needing to shield.  And when you do hop you rarely come out of a fight to a -200, usually not more than a single hit even if hitting 3+ targets.  So it's much easier to climb to 1200 and beyond if you are willing to spend the HP.

Line helps a ton.  The number of other 5* players is very very small in comparison, and so getting on Line and finding them will help.  It's by no means a requirement, and you don't have to use it any more than you are willing to be successful, but at the very least it might help you to avoid hits as lots of people will check you before hitting.  If you want to take it to the extreme and join a 200 person BC you can do that, but not everyone has that kind of time - just joining a truce room can be helpful to start.

hopper1979

I cannot say I have any championed 5 yes but I did finally hit a jump in pvp.  I am sitting on a 420 SS, a 405 OML and a 345 Thanos and upon reaching level with SS PVP jumped into a whole new level.  Fortunately I have a fairly solid 4 roster beneath me but once I get to around 600 I am done.  I cannot compete with what I am running into with a boosted 4 and two lower tier 5's.  I do not mind so much I mostly live in pve land but before leveling surfer I could easily make a run to 900 if I wanted to now it would be a waste of health packs.  I have heard people constantly hitting his wall but never run into it myself until now.  I leveled all my 3's before doing any 4's which made a big difference but it is easier to get ahead of your self in the 4 to 5 transition.  Lets put it this way the only 5 that will get any more iso will be surfer if I can get his last 2 blues and that is it, iso into 4's only from this point forward.

Jarvind

OJSP said:

OP, which slice were you playing in? Perhaps it's a dry slice.

Nah, I had the same thought. I used to play in 2 which I know is a weird one, so I tried 1 and 4 as well - not quite as bad but still pretty brutal once I get above 600 or so. I assume part of the issue is that I'm not using the cookie-cutter Thanos/Panther team that everyone else is using - I know I immediately hit anyone not using that team, both for variety and because I don't get slapped back every time Thanos's passive stuns Panther.

Bowgentle

Jarvind said:

OJSP said:

OP, which slice were you playing in? Perhaps it's a dry slice.

Nah, I had the same thought. I used to play in 2 which I know is a weird one, so I tried 1 and 4 as well - not quite as bad but still pretty brutal once I get above 600 or so. I assume part of the issue is that I'm not using the cookie-cutter Thanos/Panther team that everyone else is using - I know I immediately hit anyone not using that team, both for variety and because I don't get slapped back every time Thanos's passive stuns Panther.

Yeah you'll not have a fun time playing solo in s1 with a small 5* roster.
S4 has been suffering point suppression lately.

Just go s3, you can probably score 6k or something there with barely champed 5s.