How to radically improve MPQ for everyone

TranscendGod

Goal:

Introduce a few simple changes to make MPQ more fun for players while simultaneously increasing profits for the company.


Summary:

1. Introduce a one-time boost to every character for each event.
2. Add anti-passive abilities to diversify the meta.
3. Add anti-AP gain abilities to further diversify the meta.
4. Increase PvP match rewards to reward players who join early.



Reasoning:

1. This would create incredible diversity in every event for virtually all players. It could work like this: The first time you use any character in each event they get a one-time level boost (perhaps 10 * star level: 50 for 5*, 40 for 4*, etc) for one battle. This would be super fun because you'd encounter all sorts of teams using just about every character in each tier. Because this rewards having a deep roster, players have extra incentive to spend more money which is great for profits.

2. The meta is dominated by powerful passives that reduce the viability of characters without passives and often lack counter play. Introduce an anti-passive character with the following passive ability: Disable passives for everyone except this character. If many passives are being used, this character would greatly reduce their effectiveness and reward players who use active ability teams. As more players switch to active ability teams, this character would become less useful until players start using passive teams again. The end result is a diverse meta with a great variety of different teams to battle. Ideally there should be a 3*, 4*, and 5* version of this anti-passive character. This is also great for profits because it rewards having a deeper roster.

3. After passives, ap generating abilities could use a good counter for similar reasons. Create active abilities that have bonus effects when targeting a character with an AP generating ability. You could also have a strong passive counter that only allows characters to gain AP from matching tiles, but that might be a bit too extreme. This would further diversify the meta which is great for players and great for profits.

4. There isn't much incentive to join pvp events early. The players that do join early generate a lot of points which is great for the people who join later. It would be excellent if there was a greater reward for joining early and the easiest way to accomplish could be to increase the rewards for winning pvp matches. If this is too difficult to implement, you could have rank based prizes every X hours until the end of the event, or you could add win based progression rewards in addition to the point based rewards we have currently. This is great for players who join early because they get extra rewards, great for players who join late because it'll make it easier to hit progression targets, and great for profits because more people will buy shields.

Sm0keyJ0e

As always, excellent ideas @TranscendGod

sambrookjm

TranscendGod said:

Goal:

Introduce a few simple changes to make MPQ more fun for players while simultaneously increasing profits for the company.


[snip]

2. The meta is dominated by powerful passives that reduce the viability of characters without passives and often lack counter play. 

I like your ideas.  Sadly, it doesn't look like Demiurge took this to heart, and in fact went in the exact opposite direction.  Did you get a look at America Chavez's powers?  Red, Yellow and Green.  All passive.  At least some of them are AP based...but no active abilities (or getting rid of other people's passives) at all.

shardwick

They introduced an incentive for pvp to encourage more people to join early. They called it "win based" but then got rid of it because they didn't implement it correctly. Really the only ways that I want the game to be changed, which I think would make a ton of people happy, would be a move to a more progression based system for pve which would put placement rewards as the final rewards in a pve event. An alternative to that would be to put them into a bonus sub that would unlock once you complete a certain amount of missions.

And the second thing is a hybrid pvp system. If they implemented those two things then I would stop giving them low scores on their surveys.

Wumpushunter

You didn't radically improve the game for me. It actually made the game worse by adding in anti passives, I usually live and die by passives.

Daredevil217

Wumpushunter said:

You didn't radically improve the game for me. It actually made the game worse by adding in anti passives, I usually live and die by passives.

I agree. If anything the game just slowed down immensely with these changes. People will ALWAYS gravitate to whatever is strongest and the meta will always center around a handful of characters whether it is Sentry/Hood (AP Supression), Fistbuster (AP acceleration), Blade/Carol/Wasp (Passive City) or Grockdusa (you can beat me, but it’ll cost you some packs). 

Take away options and the sheep will flock to whatever the next strongest is.  You can’t fix that problem.  Character boosts and essentials are the best way to diversify gameplay and it works rather well. 

Also a character that blanketly wipes all passives would likely break the game with bugs and it would make some characters down right useless. Some characters are not broken but their passives are their bread as butter and is what makes them fun. Imagine your 6* Leech going up against Daken/Wolverine/X-23.  It’s also just really lazy character design that doesn’t require a lot of thought or skill to play. 

Like I said, the meta always shifts and I’m happy that newer characters like Grocket, Vulture and heck, even a guy like Iron Fist place a premium on speed. If the meta has to land somewhere (as it always does) I’m glad that it’s as fast as it has ever been. This game demands a lot of grinding to be successful especially if you play both PVE and PVP.

vernr1

The whole time based scaling is just an exceptionally bad idea. Game dictates to me when I should play it instead of other way around

sirwookieechris

I don’t think they would ever introduce a character that turns off passives. First of all, all bosses immunity to stuns would be gone.

You also overestimate the ability to diversify the meta. It would just change the meta to quick, powerful abilities. There would be no downside to agent venom, so he would be greatly boosted.

abmoraz

I don't see the issue.  It's basically a Stun that doesn't prevent match damage and as long as its an active power and not a passive, I don't see it as a game breaker any more than characters with cheap stuns (G4mora, IceMan, etc...).

A character that disables powers (think Leech from the Morlocks) could be useful and usable.  His power would have to be an active one, though.  Something like: 8 Purple - Choose an opponent.  Place a 4 turn countdown tile on the board.  While this tile is in play, neither the target nor Leech can use any powers (active or passive).

Punisher5784

sirwookieechris said:

I don’t think they would ever introduce a character that turns off passives. First of all, all bosses immunity to stuns would be gone.

You also overestimate the ability to diversify the meta. It would just change the meta to quick, powerful abilities. There would be no downside to agent venom, so he would be greatly boosted.

Not if the Boss has Shroud! Geez.. haven't you ever played Magic the Gathering?

Daredevil217

abmoraz said:

I don't see the issue.  It's basically a Stun that doesn't prevent match damage and as long as its an active power and not a passive, I don't see it as a game breaker any more than characters with cheap stuns (G4mora, IceMan, etc...).

A character that disables powers (think Leech from the Morlocks) could be useful and usable.  His power would have to be an active one, though.  Something like: 8 Purple - Choose an opponent.  Place a 4 turn countdown tile on the board.  While this tile is in play, neither the target nor Leech can use any powers (active or passive).

The issue is you didn’t read the OP. 

“Introduce an anti-passive character with the following passive ability: Disable passives for everyone except this character.”