We're Living in a State of Dilution

13

Comments

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    The game's main driver is a feeling of constant and meaningful progress.  

    Spending has never (previously) necessarily felt like a requirement to champing even a 5, but that was somewhat dependent on your length of play and how your champs look.  Playing catch up now is far more daunting than being a vet who played regularly in terms of being able to get the pulls for finishing 4's quickly.

    In theory a person who could champ 2-3 4's a month is a somewhat acceptable pace to the developers, as that was fairly easy to achieve for me with some minimal spending.  It seems to me that if you have all the 3's champed to be there, and be playing pretty hard (getting a cover from placement in PVE, then progression and the PVP 900 cover).

    A lot of the questions posed above are unanswerable to us because, assuming the developers have answers to them, they will not share them.

    A different question is, what if the answer to the question of "How many 4's can a FTP player champ?" is effectively 0 or say, 1 every other month.

    I do not actually believe that per se, but at the same time, the current status quo makes for very slow progress for any new player to the point where it would easily feel demoralizing.

    Each player needs to assess whether their progress seems to be worth the time, effort, and (possibly) money spent and whether it feels meaningful to them.  If (as I suspect) the answer is increasingly no, then the developers will need to develop some more solutions.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2019
    It's difficult to measure "meaningful progress" because it is subjective and once again it depends on how much and how competitively one plays.

    I read posts by players who have played MPQ for 1XXX in-game days and they have not champed all three stars yet. 

    Again, I think it's down to managing  expectations and the goals of the players, which is not easy. 

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,283 Chairperson of the Boards

    I don’t really think that dilution alone is a road block to progression in MPQ. It was in the past because you were basically forced to champ 4* in 13 days or sell the covers (Hi Elektra) and so you couldn’t afford to waste any covers because you didn’t know where the next one was coming from. Now thanks to the cover save feature in conjunction with Bonus Heroes you can plan and plot your path to what 4* you want. However champing costs for 4* are still ludicrous in Iso terms. I’m not sure who this is supposed to be for as the Vets are either post-Iso or can comfortably generate any iso requirements they need and so it seems to me that it is punishing newer players just because they are new and can’t generate the same level of resources an older player can. It is an unnecessary thing on top of the added dilution in game since the odds for 4* changed.

    Another thing to mention was that when the 4* odds were changed the blow was meant to have been softened by increased odds from PvP stores with more 4* PvP. I haven’t noticed any increase myself but then I don’t open much beyond tokens earned (maybe if they had actually doubled the tokens you can earn as PvP prizes? Let’s not start on PvP awards being out of date…) We were also supposed to get MORE 4* PvP but I’m not sure outside of special event tie-in’s this has been the case and 2019 has actually seen fewer 4* releases.

    So in conclusion…it all seems a bit over the place.






  • CNash
    CNash Posts: 952 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2019
    Any acceleration in obtaining 4-star covers (or the ISO needed to champ them) will inevitably increase the speed of the player's progression towards the 5-star tier - both through feeders, and through being able to accumulate more CP from events with a primarily 4-star team.
    What we need to be asking, therefore, is "what's next?" Assume that 4-stars become as easy to get as 3-stars. Suddenly the bulk of the established player base is rocketing towards the 5-star metagame. Once they get there, and start fielding a team of top-of-the-meta 5s like Thor, Kitty, Okoye etc., where is there to go? Completionists will want to finish off their roster, of course, but for a lot of people that's the endgame (sorry), they have "finished" MPQ for the forseeable future. If people stop playing, they stop spending.
    The high-level solution therefore is: In order to make 4-stars easier to obtain, MPQ must introduce a 6-star tier.
    Of course, then we get to "how?".... introducing a new tier hasn't happened for years, it would require a fundamental shift in the structure of practically every aspect of the game. PVE difficulty, event reward structures, champion level prizes, ISO distribution, Support effects at higher levels... it's not something that would be done lightly. And weighing up the pros and cons of such an immense development task, one inevitable way out will appear: "Start development of Marvel Puzzle Quest 2".
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    Iso costs are high and when multiplied by the number of characters, it is a daunting number  as I mentioned earlier.  We have asked them if they might lower them....I guess it's currently at the point of "creates frustration without making people give up".  It continues to be a major incentive to actually play the game since you can use $ to overcome cover needs, if you want, but using $ to overcome iso needs is a very poor value proposition.

    We had the 4 pack odds and dilution go up prior to saved covers.  Saved covers eliminated the pain point of choosing between selling characters for iso or selling a cover (or buying iso).  It also eliminated the frustration of getting a cover that you could only sell when your build was 2/5/5 (or whatever) and you didn't pull the needed 13th cover.  (The occasionally-triggered HfH that offers you the last cover you needed, when one is on the vine, still exists.)  I assume that iso purchases in the face of a lost champ reward weren't happening enough to keep that pain point in the game. 

    Increased 4 pack odds in the PVP stores mostly addressed the fact that they cost more per pull than Heroics, but most of the time (3* PVP stores) offered a decreased chance at a 4 vs pulling Heroics.  Making the PVP tokens more appealing helps the devs sell more of them, I assume.

    I don't know what kind of progress through the 4 tier is acceptable to the developers, but in my opinion, it was slowed down last June and each new 4 slows it further.  If the 6* tier was not required a year ago, then somehow moving the progress needle back to that point (or perhaps even a bit further when there were even less characters in the game) would seem to remain within the game's design goals without somehow creating the need for a 6* tier.

    Progress could be sped up with some more earnable CP (Support Circuit offered that, at least) and throttled fairly easily vs putting more covers in the game, so perhaps that would be the best way to handle things.  But the tier remains very large for the game and what you can do in it, and adding more people into it remains increasingly questionable in terms of what each new one offers to you and your roster.
  • tupacboy
    tupacboy Posts: 127 Tile Toppler
    Any hint of hope on the horizon that anyone knows of?
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,822 Chairperson of the Boards
    If by "hope on the horizon" we see once again the current answer.

    A store offering 50/50 odds on a group of 12 select 4's (MCU stars), of varying quality - kind of like the old Latest 12 weighting, where you had some good and some bad.

    25 CP a pop for pulls.

    Anything else will require an overhaul of the reward economy.  And we don't know, other than by observation, if the current situation seems to the devs like a problem to be addressed or simply not commented about and capitalized on.

    Dilution is perhaps just a pain point that they intend to keep in place in order to make the short term offers with more focused pulls more appealing and therefore spur player spending.
  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,208 Chairperson of the Boards
    The worst dilution gets, the less i want to spend on this game. I know im only one person, but i went from buying VIP every month to not buying it in over 8 months . I used to spend more on this game but just haven't felt motivated to do so lately. 
  • tupacboy
    tupacboy Posts: 127 Tile Toppler
    DyingLegend said:
    The worst dilution gets, the less i want to spend on this game. I know im only one person, but i went from buying VIP every month to not buying it in over 8 months . I used to spend more on this game but just haven't felt motivated to do so lately. 
    i feel the same... thinking about 80 x 13 covers x lets say 20 cp = 20,800 cp...  that's assuming perfect spread / no more additions... i have 2 4-stars champed...  seems like a 2-3 year battle... 
  • jp1
    jp1 Posts: 1,081 Chairperson of the Boards
    Great communication in response to all these questions and concerns lately. Kudos!
  • ZootSax
    ZootSax Posts: 1,819 Chairperson of the Boards
    jp1 said:
    Great communication in response to all these questions and concerns lately. Kudos!
    This. I know I piled on when communication was quite poor, so I do have to applaud the improvements of the past couple weeks.  There was even a dev video, which I’ve directly asked for numerous times, both here and in the surveys.
  • therightwaye
    therightwaye Posts: 459 Mover and Shaker
    I think they have a limited solution in game right now, the Avengers store. Themed stores will help get players to pull for specific characters.

    Long-term, I think adding a second 4 to PvE events would go along way for helping with dilution. Rotate latest 12 for primary and older characters as secondary. Add a cover and rotate for placement. SCL9 for example could reward 4 star covers for t100.

    example:  Talos and Fury
    T1 - Talos Purple
    T5 -  Fury Yellow
    T10- Talos Blue
    T20- Fury Blue
    T50- Talos Black
    T100- Fury purple

    (one less latest for T10, but more opportunity over coming weeks)


    Alternatively, they can do latest 12, and sub-event progression can award an older 4 cover)
  • tupacboy
    tupacboy Posts: 127 Tile Toppler
    moss04 said:
    I think adding extra 4 star rewards is a good idea for combating dilution, but not by putting them in the placement rewards.  Placement rewards primarily go toward those who already have well fleshed out rosters and also only go to a fraction of the player base.  Anyone who is really struggling with dilution is still going to be up a creek with no paddle.
    exactly...  as a player who just started 4 star... i don't even try for placement... no point... i don't have a chance against people who are in 5 star land or deep into 4 star... right now that's part of the struggle as well... can't get placement really in both pvp or pve... i basically hope for top 50 in pve just for hp... 
  • Therealsmkspy
    Therealsmkspy Posts: 254 Mover and Shaker
    edited April 2019
    Here where the stopping of the LLLVV schedule fears us, even vets, the most. When the devs inevitably throw Talos or Magik at us for shield training and we've had zero opportunities to aquire them other the fickleness of RNG dilution and unreliable BHing. 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    The current Cinema Legend store seems to be a good idea to combat dilution. Both classic 5* and 4* gets rotated every few weeks. It could be a win-win situation for the players and the devs.
  • n25philly
    n25philly Posts: 426 Mover and Shaker
    Therealsmkspy said:
    Here where the stopping of the LLLVV schedule fears us, even vets, the most. When the devs inevitably throw Talos or Magik at us for shield training and we've had zero opportunities to aquire them other the fickleness of RNG dilution and unreliable BHing. 
    Based on how generous they were with Thanos on shield training I am expecting Ronin to have Magik, Talos and Thanos as the required characters for the shield training

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