MPQ Sneak Peek: April 2019 Edition *Updated (4/26/19)

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  • Punter1
    Punter1 Posts: 729 Critical Contributor
    Reasonable point - however I am not a designer.

    I'd love there to be a new "big" change implemented, what that "big" change is specifically I don't know.  Bring the puzzle back to puzzle quest, change up the need to grind on a timer all the time, mix up the way to earn characters, provide some solution to deal with dilution, encourage more alliance cooperation, encourage me to use all my roster, bring some variety to the game play etc.  I don't have the specific answer, but something that addresses these grander points would encourage me to stay engaged.    

    Prior "big" changes I didn't see coming, but for the vast majority of them, they've refreshed the game in some way that encourages ongoing participation at all levels of the game.  Champ levels, team-ups, fave characters, boss events, Deadpool dailies to name a few.  Unfortunately the last major new thing added was supports (over a year ago) which, thanks in part to a terrible UI, have not had the impact on the game I think the Devs were hoping for.  

    New 4* releases are routine and, with no solution to dilution, incrementally more frustrating for those starting out & fairly unexciting for us vets.  This is one of the biggest issues in this game right now.  Fave characters provide a partial solution, but not enough.  Several solutions have been provided, some better than others, but this hasn't been addressed by the game.  There appeared to be an attempt through PVE essentials to assist this but that's also be silently rolled back.

    Another PVE within the same format really doesn't change thing. Sure there may be new art & story, but when grinding through it for placement, ends up being the same as the prior PVE.  I get there will always need to be some sort of template, but an attempt at some freshening up of the stale format would be nice.  Again many suggestions have been offered.  

    The single cinema node fights in theory are cool, but zero roster scaling means they are just another trivial node.  I've liked the premise of each fight.  Small change to proper scaling here was expected.

    Cap M as a feeder is fine too, but all 5* should have a feeder.  It won't break the game!  

    I had hoped End-Game would bring some "thing" that didn't need to be revolutionary but did something fresh to show the Devs were trying to keep us entertained.  Instead everything added was "routine" that feels sub-par and phoned in when you look at the easy misses like having no Avenger essentials on the new PVE.  As it is I realise I'm complaining too much, I hit day 1900 tomorrow so I'll see the season out and then go find this real-life thing I've heard tell of!
  • jamesh
    jamesh Posts: 1,600 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'd kind of hoped Magik would be featured a few more times before being made an essential for SHIELD Training (or at least featured in both story and versus just before).  I've got fairly lucky with my pulls considering the dilution, but it'll be a stretch to hit 10 covers.
  • Salacious_D
    Salacious_D Posts: 15 Just Dropped In
    edited April 2019
    Zero scaling for cinema showdown makes no sense. I have a roster where it is challenging but achievable: all 3*s champed, fully covered soft - capped C4rol, lv270 Carol and Bl5ck Widow. Took me three goes for Nebula and two fir Kaecilus but that's fine - single battles are meant to make you work a bit. But this must put me in the tiniest of minorities in the game. The idea is sound and I particularly like the Ultron wave level design. It's a shame so few will actually play it as intended.
  • MorganWick
    MorganWick Posts: 29 Just Dropped In
    Black Duke said:
    @Brigby
    Sworded Affairs and Half-Inch Hero both have Vulture as placement reward. Is that true?
    I would guess Sworded Affairs is in error and should be awarding Ant-Man since that's the next event, with Vulture being punted to that event. Ant-Man is listed as the placement award for Sworded Affairs in the Endgame Celebration entry in the help system.
  • Salacious_D
    Salacious_D Posts: 15 Just Dropped In
    @OJSP  

    I agree that we should wait to see the difficulty of the final levels before making a full judgement.

    I'm not sure what a new player could have done with a lv70 loaner fighting Nebula on Day 2 though. Galactic Rage wiped out two of my guys in the level 180s before Star Lord did the business third time round.

    Having an event that starts SCL1 and finishes at SCL10 would make sense, so long as the rewards along the way were in proportion. Or has that already been tried and ditched before my time?
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,817 Chairperson of the Boards
    We will see how the event ends up, but one dev made a comment that CS is, to paraphrase, a descendent of the Gauntlet, which definitely was set up with very easy nodes to start and got progressively harder (just with many, many, more nodes).  SCL10 was not really a thing/concern when the last Gauntlet was run, but the last nodes were often ones you'd want to pull whales out for.
  • Bubba3210
    Bubba3210 Posts: 246 Tile Toppler
    OJSP said:
    Salacious_D said:
    I'm not sure what a new player could have done with a lv70 loaner fighting Nebula on Day 2 though.
    That loaner is specced 5/3/5, so boost blue APs and stun her. I got her stunned locked and almost beat with the loaner (1000 hp left). I had 2 Team Ups ready by then to beat it, but decided to try again later with the loaner. A new player could bring a 1* MBW stun or something else too.

    Another riskier way is to get the winning condition from The Deadliest Woman.

    Of course, it is tough and requires a good board. But we can attempt it as many times as we want without using any health packs.

    I haven't actually started the event and I just tried that node since you asked.

    I'm actually waiting until I have a bit more free time to try beating as many nodes with just the loaner(s) in one sitting. Looking at the wave node with Kaecillius, I think it is meant for 2*-3* players, so I'll bring an appropriate team. Without knowing the enemies yet, I'm thinking IM40 and Quicksilver should help loaner Strange.


    I ran 5* Thor, quicksilver and antman because my normal team of parch, quicksilver and coulson was not allowed. Thor shook the board for better placement and quicksilver matches. Thor dropped 15k health. Either bad luck or K did more damage than I realized.
  • TPF Alexis
    TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
    OJSP said:
    Salacious_D said:
    Zero scaling for cinema showdown makes no sense. 
    It looks like they are making the nodes accessible to new players, so even if they don't have the character, the loaners should be able to do the job.

    It makes sense, because there could be people (especially younger audiences) who become attracted to the game by the movie. This event could be their first MPQ experience and being able to beat these nodes would be exciting for them. It can't be a good thing if they join the game and they couldn't even try one node.

    As I expected, now we are starting to see some challenging nodes to prevent the 4* covers being rewarded to too many players.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the last 3 nodes have roster based scaling and/or no loaners.

    Again, I'll reserve my feedback until the end of the event. At the moment, I'm just trying to see the bigger picture.
    I was thinking they should maybe scale it to the specific Featured Character for that node. You don't have Gamora? Here, fight a Lvl70 Nebula with a Lvl70 Loaner Gamora. You have a max-Champed Gamora? You get to go up against a max-Champed Nebula.
    Doesn't work for the nodes where you get a full team, but it would be interesting for the 1 on 1 fights.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards
    jamesh said:
    I'd kind of hoped Magik would be featured a few more times before being made an essential for SHIELD Training (or at least featured in both story and versus just before).  I've got fairly lucky with my pulls considering the dilution, but it'll be a stretch to hit 10 covers.

    Having Magik as the featured character is entirely unreasonable. I tend to miss out on most ST covers and that is fine and I joke and move on. This one is completely not. It is either incompetent in so much as they have returned to an arbitrary rotation with no thought about levels of exposure or communication to players that is the case to obtain or much worse, predatory. 
  • randomhero1090
    randomhero1090 Posts: 396 Mover and Shaker
    @Brigby


    Is it possible to make HoT a 4 day event?  As a 3 day event it ends the same time as the current PvP season.
  • Southside84
    Southside84 Posts: 93 Match Maker
    I think it would be interesting to see a scaled event where you could only us each of your characters once. After they fought, they would be locked out.  It could start against sc1 opponents and gradually scale to sc9.  26 fights and call it marathon?  

    It should encourage more roster utilization for the vets and could make you really think about which teams to put together for the later fights, since you wouldn't want to burn your best characters for sc 6 and 7.  Maybe it would suck, but it would be different.
  • RickOShay
    RickOShay Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2019
    randomhero1090 said:
    @Brigby


    Is it possible to make HoT a 4 day event?  As a 3 day event it ends the same time as the current PvP season.
    We seriously need to stop tagging Brigby with requests where we (should) know that he cannot make changes, or on questions that he cannot answer. His time is much better spent by providing us with information and other great assistance, than reading distracting messages that he's tagged in.

    You have a valid point that it stinks for many players of your time slice where PvE and the PvP season ends at the same time. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does we just have to plan PvP shielding more appropriately.

    I would suggest for people this affects, post a request for the Dev team to follow up on to try to avoid this overlap in the future. This is still quite unlikely to work, but has a better chance than Brigly can attain with just a few days notice.  
  • randomhero1090
    randomhero1090 Posts: 396 Mover and Shaker
    @RickOShay

     Not to sound smart...  If I knew the answer I wouldn’t ask :smile:

    I appreciate your feedback and it looks like I have an answer then.
  • TPF Alexis
    TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
    OJSP said:
    TPF Alexis said:
    I was thinking they should maybe scale it to the specific Featured Character for that node. You don't have Gamora? Here, fight a Lvl70 Nebula with a Lvl70 Loaner Gamora. You have a max-Champed Gamora? You get to go up against a max-Champed Nebula.
    Doesn't work for the nodes where you get a full team, but it would be interesting for the 1 on 1 fights.
    Of course. That would be the fairest. I'm not sure how complicated the code would be.
    Anymore, I just sort of assume that the code is going to be a significant obstacle to any changes. This game has so many layers of updates piled on over the years that it's actually pretty impressive that it runs as well as it does.
  • Spudgutter
    Spudgutter Posts: 743 Critical Contributor
    JHawkInc said:
    You're both missing the point. I know why things have failed in the past, and I know some people have made some well thought out posts saying what they would like.

    But that doesn't change the fact that, for example, right now I still can't tell you what Punter1 would like to see. You've explained that you are frustrated and disappointed in multiple posts, but if I had a genie and a magic lamp I couldn't fix that because you still haven't said what you want. It would be a complete gamble that something I come up with would be satisfying or not.

    That's what I mean by the old married couple type of comparison. We can't be the people that don't give input on what we want to eat, and then complain when we don't like the food. It's not helpful to us OR the devs, and we'll just run in circles until we hate each other.

    I specifically brought up Boss Rush because they revamped the "multiple bosses back to back in a single fight" idea with Sinister Six. We jokingly referred to it as Boss Rush 2.0 when it came out, and it's been a well received event. And I'm sure that was in part because of the feedback we gave (specifically for things like AP resetting between waves for the boss). My point there was that if we just wait for the devs to figure something out without giving feedback, there's a gamble we'll get another Boss Rush (instead of a Sinister Six). We can't just sit back and hope for the best, because that clearly doesn't work.

    Which is why I'm poking and prodding here in the first place. If we don't follow up on telling them we don't like what's going on, how can we ever have hope that it'll get better?

    We got 2 typical releases during this timeframe. Okay, that's not good, but why? Do you want more? Fewer? I can get that it's not exciting because it's routine, but are you at least glad we got Endgame related characters (as opposed to them releasing completely unrelated characters like Black Cat or Mr Sinister?)

    We got a new PVE event, which people have been clamoring for for ages, but that's another line item you've listed as a negative. Is it because it's the same format as every other PVE event? What kinds of new formats would you rather see? Or is it because it's largely the same enemy types (outside of newcomers like the new Thanos or lesser-seen enemies like Taskmaster)? What new enemies would you like to see? I would see many praising the fact that we have another new event that lessens the number of Dark Avengers we see in the normal PVE rotation, so if you feel differently, I think it's worth looking at why.

    Similar with the "trivial daily node." People sing praises for the Christmas events and have been asking for another run of Crash of the Mad Titan since it's debut, but you list them as a negative. So why? Is it because the nodes are too easy? Because they're one-and-done? What would make it better?

    If the feedback stops at "This is broken," it only makes it harder for them to fix things in a satisfactory manner.


    I will agree that it is helpful, when giving constructive criticism, to also give points on what we would like.  But we give ideas all the time that sound good to us, and very infrequently are they ever implemented.  In fact, one could say we have been conditioned after 5+ years to just reacting to what is implemented.

    Take a look at boss rush or crash of the mad titan.  Boss rush was bad, but they came up with sinister six.  Why haven't they applied those changes to boss rush and ran it again?  For the mad titan, the reception was fairly positive, and it gets asked for all the time, but it only ran that once.

    Long story short, i agree with you in principle, but not in practice. We may not know the solutions, but that doesn't stop us from seeing the problems.

    To paraphrase a comedy bit i saw, "i may not know how to fly a helicopter, but if i see a helicopter in a tree, i can tell the pilot he messed up."  
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,817 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited May 2019
    It looks like the second sub of Cosmic Chaos, "Savage Beasts", is the one they removed for this 3 day run of the event.

    Edit:  Having gotten to sub 4, I can confirm this.  "Savage Beasts" contains (contained?) the Kitty/Rocket/Thing node which was obviously a big obstacle for a lot of people.  So either they are reworking that sub to change that node or this event will be 3 days going forwards.

    I hope that sub comes back as I enjoyed the Pet Avengers cutscenes.
  • Ed_Dragonrider
    Ed_Dragonrider Posts: 593 Critical Contributor
    bluewolf said:
    It looks like the second sub of Cosmic Chaos, "Savage Beasts", is the one they removed for this 3 day run of the event.

    Edit:  Having gotten to sub 4, I can confirm this.  "Savage Beasts" contains (contained?) the Kitty/Rocket/Thing node which was obviously a big obstacle for a lot of people.  So either they are reworking that sub to change that node or this event will be 3 days going forwards.

    I hope that sub comes back as I enjoyed the Pet Avengers cutscenes.
    Oh thank heavens! I was really dreading that node, but forgot where it was. While i liked that sub, in general, if missing it for a while means they'll change that node, im all for it.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    *Here is the May 2019 Sneak Peek

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