Towards the beginning of this year, I shared with some that I play closely with that if the game didn't have something significant change with it by June that I'm likely walking away from it after over 5 years of playing daily. This is not meant to be a complaining post, rather just sharing what another long time player sees as current flaws and why yet another vet of the game is all too content to just give it up.
1) The Cheating...
Yes, it happens. Yes, it is likely happening more than people think. It isn't just that people are finding ways to cheat in the game, it's more that there is NO REAL PUNISHMENT for those that have cheated. The three biggest cheats that I know of are:
1- Buy fraud. People are "buying" without spending any money whatsoever for the purchase. There are hacks that make this possible and it appears to be a real purchase on the backend, unless you do post purchase validation with the payment processor. If that post buy validation is not being done, it makes it all too easy for people to use these hack programs (more prevalent on android) and rip off not only D3 and demiurge, but players that are making real purchases.
2- Token cheating. How many people have been re-rolling tokens and for how long? It's become known recently that this was a problem (that most probably never knew about) and that there were a couple ally families that knew about this for a long time. How long have they been doing it and how much of an advantage did they gain? More importantly, the devs/support should be able to see whose pull rates on tokens are astronomically high and do something about it. Why not punish those that did it? The community has very strong suspicions/evidence who the big perpetrators were and see there is nothing done to punish them.
3- Device cheating. It's becoming quite evident a certain portion of the player base has a way to speed up their game play. The evidence is all pointing to a particular device or family of devices that allow the player to accelerate the GUI and processing of the game. Surely these devices can be detected and/or the speed at which these players can complete matches compared to other players with similar rosters can be isolated. Again, why not do something about it?
2) The broken characters. There are a small handful of characters and/or combinations that are totally broken in the game allowing players to play beyond what their placement level should be. The three (maybe four) biggest offenders:
1- Bishop -(I won't even bother with the details)
2- Kitty (or, gritty, grocket and kitty) - Kitty alone is not the problem, but in combination with 4s Rocket and Groot, it's a severely broken combination. I've seen players without a single champed 5 star, but a 12 cover kitty push for and challenge for a top 5 placement in SCL 9 in PVP. A player without a champed 5 star should not be a strong, viable contender at this stage in the games life, yet they are if they have gritty. The only highly reliable counter to gritty is black suit spidey, but how many have him champed, and if a players does, they become a big target if they use him. A possible easy fix is maybe just to place a 2 turn countdown tile at match start that when it is gone from the board then she boosts the special tiles on the board, just not right at match start.
3- Okoye - some will disagree that she is broken, but she really is. I've seen a high level okoye give 2 star storm the ability to deliver 40k in AOE damage. There is no way a 2 star character should ever be able to deliver that kind of damage. She essentially makes any character she is paired with over powered. A simply fix could be just to max the number of team up AP that counts towards the additional damage.
4- Thor - Some believe he is broken as well. I personally would disagree because they only way he is advantageous is because he generates AP quickly when running at half health. He dies and has no healing compared to okoye and doesn't boost any powers other than collect AP for them.
3) Game play and staleness - Releasing "new" events that feel pretty much just like prior events with new maps is doing nothing for the staleness of the game. Introducing new 4s and 5s on a schedule is doing nothing for the staleness of the game. How about something NEW.
How about:
-The march/april forum contest was great. It was different! Why not put an event in like that, where it isn't just about winning the match, rather you win or get bonus pts for achieving alternate goals.
-Implementing a PVE scoring system or setup that frees us from having to play about an hour during the same time slot every day of an event. Many of us, especially those that really BUY stuff in game, have a job, family, etc and can't always play that exact same hour all the time, or we sacrifice something that should be more important to make that hour work. Why not implement a timer for PVE and speed (which is essentially the most important thing already) is what determines the winner, or give bonus pts on nodes if you use lower tier characters (4s instead of 5s) and that way it isn't just pure speed.
-PVE event that it is expected that a player won't finish. Make is painfully hard that brute strength won't win it, rather being smart and utilizing the right character combination is more important.
-A tournament that players pay an HP or CP fee to enter and you get to select a subset of your roster at the start. You then can pick an additional character once you see what your opponent has in their "subset". Give out GOOD rewards based on how far in the tournament you go.
-An alliance versus alliance event, or an alliance versus alliance tournament.
-how about another run of sakaar arena?? just something to change it up, please!
I haven't been a big game person on my mobile devices, usually I get bored with a game after 2 weeks and delete it. I'm on day 1940 and do not recall missing a single day. I'd love for many of the problems above to get addressed and for the game to have fresh life and make it to day 2190 at the least, however I doubt any of the above is even being addressed or even looked at.
@Brigby, please tell me I'm wrong and that there is something significant in the pipeline??
PiMacleod said: While I understand how old the game is, the layered data, and how hard the task may be....Isn't the game also one of the longer lasting mobile games you can find? It's been around much longer than most ever experience, and it's generates a cash flow still.That said, isn't a product that still has interest shown by the players after all this time a good investment of a developers time and resources?Imagine if Magic The Gathering just up and quit after a few years because "they had a good run". Same for Minecraft. World of Warcraft. D&D. ...you get the picture. I used different games from different mediums/genres in order to exemplify that I don't think the rule has to be different for a mobile experience.At this point, I believe it's a matter of the owners and developers to realize what they have and invest the resources wisely. For example, what if they WERE developing a new app, but really it's just an entirely new version of MPQ... New GUI, new fixes and QoL fixes to old problems that stemmed from old infrastructure. They make sure it works with old roster data per player, in order to be able to plug in old player data into the new game to achieve the desired results without cheating anyone out of time/money spent. Then one day, when they are ready, bring the game servers down for an hour or two, with a default message telling everyone to wait for a new major patch. The game updates eventually, overwriting the original files entirely, and when the servers go live, boom ... Whole new experience. Animated characters issue hits per match, much like Super Puzzle Fighter, saved character and team slots, ability to sort characters and other things by different filters, new types of gameplay, etc etc etc...I understand everything that was said before. All the nay-saying. All the reasons why it wouldn't happen. But just imagine if they were to treat it like the mobile cash cow it could be, and tend to it like other companies tend to their products that stand the test of time...
Bowgentle said: PiMacleod said: While I understand how old the game is, the layered data, and how hard the task may be....Isn't the game also one of the longer lasting mobile games you can find? It's been around much longer than most ever experience, and it's generates a cash flow still.That said, isn't a product that still has interest shown by the players after all this time a good investment of a developers time and resources?Imagine if Magic The Gathering just up and quit after a few years because "they had a good run". Same for Minecraft. World of Warcraft. D&D. ...you get the picture. I used different games from different mediums/genres in order to exemplify that I don't think the rule has to be different for a mobile experience.At this point, I believe it's a matter of the owners and developers to realize what they have and invest the resources wisely. For example, what if they WERE developing a new app, but really it's just an entirely new version of MPQ... New GUI, new fixes and QoL fixes to old problems that stemmed from old infrastructure. They make sure it works with old roster data per player, in order to be able to plug in old player data into the new game to achieve the desired results without cheating anyone out of time/money spent. Then one day, when they are ready, bring the game servers down for an hour or two, with a default message telling everyone to wait for a new major patch. The game updates eventually, overwriting the original files entirely, and when the servers go live, boom ... Whole new experience. Animated characters issue hits per match, much like Super Puzzle Fighter, saved character and team slots, ability to sort characters and other things by different filters, new types of gameplay, etc etc etc...I understand everything that was said before. All the nay-saying. All the reasons why it wouldn't happen. But just imagine if they were to treat it like the mobile cash cow it could be, and tend to it like other companies tend to their products that stand the test of time... The owners are Marvel.They don't care about the game as long as it generates the money they are getting from the contract.Devs are trying to generate that revenue plus enough to cover their costs plus revenue for their shareholders.The moment Marvel isn't getting its money, the license is gone and the game is dead.Simple as that.
bluewolf said: A couple quick points....the IPs you mention have a much more vested interest in keeping their games alive because THAT IS THEIR BRAND. Minecraft is still going strong - my kid loves it - and while they could obviously (and maybe someday will) make a sequel, keeping it simple and allowing just about anyone to enter and join their friends is part of its appeal. Analog games have an even easier task in terms being able to design their game as needed since they aren't locked into devices and legacy code etc. So the MtG card game, WoW, D&D...these are the properties that bring people in based on their offered experience. Not "Hey, it's a match 3 game. I like those. Ooo, and Spider-man is in it! I should try it."If your question is: "Should there be a Marvel branded match-3 game?" The answer is yes.If the question is "Will it be THIS Marvel branded match-3 game in a year or two or whatever?" That is much harder to answer.Even if you rebuilt the game, your best bet would be to make people start over. A big obstacle in the game as it exists today is that new players are 5 years behind people who have build massive monster rosters that will simply destroy them any time they care to. If you are going to do the work to rebuild a match-3 game with the Marvel license, the best idea is probably to close down the legacy one which has diminishing returns, let there be none on the market for a while to build up demand again, and have a dramatic launch and build excitement and allow everyone to start at a level playing field again.
AXP_isme said: I never tried MtG PQ or adventure time PQ. Did they suffer from the same problems as MPQ? Maybe what you call flaws are actually what’s giving the game it’s longevity.
PiMacleod said: AXP_isme said: I never tried MtG PQ or adventure time PQ. Did they suffer from the same problems as MPQ? Maybe what you call flaws are actually what’s giving the game it’s longevity. Both MtG and Adventure Time PQs are younger than Marvel PQ. That said, it's hard to say which one is doing it better ... I would think they'd be similar if this one had such longevity. Can't say for sure.