MPQ: The First half of 2019 vs 2018

bluewolf

As we have just finished the first half of 2019, I thought it might be interesting to compare the last 18 months of changes in the game and see what kind of changes occurred in the last three 6-month periods.  I have listed them below, leaving out (almost) all the characters, various Supports and Costumes.  Why?  Because I think those things are the product that the game devs produce to sell to us, and I’m more interested in this discussion in what they are doing to impact the game overall than what thing they are giving us to chase.

First 6 months of 2018:

1/8/18  Roster Slot Sale
1/9/18  Strange Sights points bug fixed
1/25/18 Starter Pack bundle introduced - begins the introduction of bundles focused on newer players.
2/7/18  Fight for Wakanda introduced
2/12/18  Various characters were updated in a small way, mostly improvements, with the app Update
4/5/18  Supports introduced
4/19/18  Minimum points (0) implemented in Story to eliminate Tapping
5/15/18  Okoye released
5/21/18  Auto-selling of covers upon expiration
6/4/18  Dilution begins (no more “Latest 12” weighting in tokens for 4* characters)
6/12/18  Enemy cascade limiting begins in PVE
6/18/18  Saved Covers implemented (and quickly updated)
6/20/18  Hybrid wins-points PVP begins
6/26/18  Gambit nerf announced 
6/27/18 CS assisted cover swaps end for Latest 5*’s

Second 6 months of 2018:

7/12/18  A number of character updates (mostly around locked tiles) with the app Update
7/2/18  Growth Industry runs (last run of one-off untimed event giving away covers, other than the newer ones that unlock over a number of days)
7/3/18  Support update (3 ranks instead of 5 for new Supports going forward)
7/3/18  Public purchases for Alliances
7/26/18 Gambit nerf
8/2/18  Saved covers improvements (more can be saved, and you can save covers when you have less than 13)
8/8/18  10 Years of Marvel begins - many feeders, stores, etc.
8/13/18  Nightcrawler and Black Bolt updates to show the most present color with app Update
8/16/18  Pack Odds Display update (most impacting single buys of Heroics)
9/10/18  Numerous character updates/improvements with app Update
9/24/18  Red Iso-8 rewards dramatically increased in PVP and PVE
9/27/18  Shield Resupply update/improvements
10/19/18 Places of Power (Alliance Raid event) 
11/26/18 Costumes feature debuts
12/3/18  Full points display adjusted to only show actual full points when they are actually available
12/13/18  5* Doc Ock rework
12/13/18  Sinister 600 - New Alliance Raid event

First 6 months of 2019:

1/10/19  Mr. Fantastic rework

1/21/19  Many characters’ sound effects bugs are fixed in the app Update

1/21/19  The Red Goblin costume bundle includes tokens for the Masked Vengeance store, which began a run of frequent pop-up CP stores through early June.

1/28/19  Support reworks in terms of ability to get them, ranks rewarded from tokens, rotation of Supports in tokens.  Support Circuit begins.

2/22/19  3-day reduction in ability upgrade cost (using CP to directly upgrade abilities)

3/7/19  New Cosmic Chaos PVE event debuts

3/15/19  Bonus CP for Alliance from purchases (one week duration)

3/22/19 Roster Slot discount 

4/5/19  Support Circuit hiatus begins

4/22/19  Cinema Showdown event debuts (similar to 12 days of Marvel which runs at the holidays)

4/25/19  Infinite Pursuit PVE event debuts

5/28/19  3* Spidey’s  When the Going’s Tough ability is fixed for 1v1 fights

7/1/19  Battle at the Basilica debuts (new alliance boss event)

A couple observations about this year so far:

1. Obviously, this year has seen no significant changes to the way you grow or develop your roster.  No reward changes (other than Support Circuit offering more resources through play).  2018 saw some fairly large changes, including a new feature (Supports) that can impact your play and roster.
2. We have gotten more new PVE events (which are sticking around) than in a lot of prior years.  This is certainly nice, although the way you play them is basically the same (some reduction in grinding Join Forces nodes is much appreciated).
3. Character tweaks, even small ones, have become extremely rare.]
4. The recent introduction of more 1v1 fights in events is a nice, puzzle-y thing to play.

Vs. 2018:  A lot of the stuff that they fixed last year were things that seemed fairly simple to solve (from a conceptual point of view, at least)  Fixing tapping did not impact the overall grandness of PVE or the requirement to play at certain times to get the best placement and was a small change in scoring.  Saved covers was a big thing, but that addressed a limitation that the developers created to attempt to force action/spending.  I continue to believe saved covers was implemented to remove a barrier to rostering characters (no cover is wasted) while acknowledging that iso sales were not really occurring enough to make the cover expiration frustration worth continuing as a pressure on gamers.

Remaining solutions to issues like: time-based play (if that ever happens), dilution, truly solving MMR, figuring out how to make Supports work better - these are larger issues that seem to me to be more difficult to address.

Anyway, something to think about as we look at the rest of 2019.  Now that the MCU films have all debuted and the attendant tie-in events seem to be (mostly) over, the game should, in my opinion, offer players something interesting on its own merits to keep us engaged and coming back.  And being untethered to MCU events should allow for the development team to showcase their own creativity and initiative.  I look forward to seeing what comes next.

HoundofShadow

This year, they introduced more PvEs, compared to the last few years. I remember it was something like 1 or 2 in the first half of the year and three for the second half of the year. I think this is something what some wants: more new PvEs, despite it still being a time-based PvEs. I doubt time-based PvE are going to go away completely because the players have the choices to play without following a schedule, but it's the placement rewards they can't let go of. That's the problem.

I think the survey about priorities and supports ran a few months back is worth throwing it in because it was something that players in here always commented about the devs or the game. It's like they lifted comments in here and put it in the survey. I wish to know what the results of the survey are because it could be eye-opening and it might affect what they will be focusing on for the rest of the year.

Edit: the puzzle challenge in the forum where the top 3 winners get 5* covers in is worth mentioning.

I'm more interested in Support-related updates than solving dilution because Support could be more helpful to deal with more challenging nodes, rather than waiting to champ a character. I hope duped Supports could be used to upgrade the levels of your supports instead of giving Red ISO-8. This year, they made support purchaseable with HP twice for about 300 to 500+ HP per token.

As for MMR, I see things this way: the further you progress, the more challenging things will be, but not so challenging that it's impossible to beat the opponents.

Currently, I don't have much problem in PvPs defeating opponents past 900 points. The players with problems are 3* and below players getting past 900 points because it's a pain beating up boosted champed 4* teams.  The bigger problem in PvP is alliances ganging up in LINE to jack-up PvP points, thus preventing players who play normally from getting placement rewards. When I was playing PvP SCL 6, the highest point needed to get top 1 is around 900 points. Now, it's almost twice in SCL 9.

Now that there isn't any more Marvel movies for 2019, I think they should have more free times to improve one or two situations. 

Phumade

HoundofShadow said:

The bigger problem in PvP is alliances ganging up in LINE to jack-up PvP points, thus preventing players who play normally from getting placement rewards. When I was playing PvP SCL 6, the highest point needed to get top 1 is around 900 points. Now, it's almost twice in SCL 9.

Lol,

You can't ask 20 human players to associate with each other and not expect them to figure out a way to collaborate to their benefit.  Its sorta implied in the word "alliance".  And we can be honest and there are many different forms of alliances.

little 20 man alliances. 
big alliance families X-Men vs Villians
alliance of similar play styles. Bakers vs Snipers
alliances of preferred event styles.  PVP focused vs PVE vs Hybrid.

LOL

peterdark

HoundofShadow said:

 The bigger problem in PvP is alliances ganging up in LINE to jack-up PvP points, thus preventing players who play normally from getting placement rewards. When I was playing PvP SCL 6, the highest point needed to get top 1 is around 900 points. Now, it's almost twice in SCL 9.

I imagine that no matter how they would change this there will always be a way to work around it. It happens in every game, they can change things that would stop this and that would work for maybe a few weeks? Then someone would have figured a way to strategically work within a group to maximise their points gain.

I don't use Line and I also don't consider hitting ranking or points in pvp and would rather grind progression rewards for your reason above. 

DAZ0273

The Devs killed "cupcakes" a while back which was allowing a much wider abuse of offline collaboration because the game didn't leave out your strongest defensive team like it does now so players with completely uncompetetive rosters could get in on the action if they knew where to look, racking up scores way beyond their roster strength.

I suspect "grilling" isn't anywhere near as much of an issue because you can't just leave out completely terrible teams but you'll never stop Alliances from co-ordinating and the PvP system has been too ingrained for years.

peterdark

DAZ0273 said:

The Devs killed "cupcakes" a while back which was allowing a much wider abuse of offline collaboration because the game didn't leave out your strongest defensive team like it does now so players with completely uncompetetive rosters could get in on the action if they knew where to look, racking up scores way beyond their roster strength.

I suspect "grilling" isn't anywhere near as much of an issue because you can't just leave out completely terrible teams but you'll never stop Alliances from co-ordinating and the PvP system has been too ingrained for years.

I've been trying to leave out 2 * teams but doesn't seem to be working.... but if I run a few matches with 3 * teams then I eventually get easier opponents. I mean full matches and not just quit after starting.

DAZ0273

peterdark said:

DAZ0273 said:

The Devs killed "cupcakes" a while back which was allowing a much wider abuse of offline collaboration because the game didn't leave out your strongest defensive team like it does now so players with completely uncompetetive rosters could get in on the action if they knew where to look, racking up scores way beyond their roster strength.

I suspect "grilling" isn't anywhere near as much of an issue because you can't just leave out completely terrible teams but you'll never stop Alliances from co-ordinating and the PvP system has been too ingrained for years.

I've been trying to leave out 2 * teams but doesn't seem to be working.... but if I run a few matches with 3 * teams then I eventually get easier opponents. I mean full matches and not just quit after starting.

What you are attempting is known as "trapcakes". In order to have been able to leave out 2* defensive teams you will probably need to work up from the seed teams and increase your team strength gradually based on retals. You need to be worth some points for this to work so you'll have needed to hit as many seed treams as you can with as weak a team as you can manage to still win with.

That's not what cupcakes were. Cupcakes were designed to give easy points to other players by out of game collusion, so to be a "Baker" you first had to be in a position to be able to be worth 75 points or a similarly high score, that meant you pretty much had to be a fairly high level player so that you had already bagged your 1200 CP and could then start helping others. It also involved a fair amount of HP spent per event. 

peterdark

all this talk of cakes and bakers is getting me hungry 

Daredevil217

peterdark said:

HoundofShadow said:

 The bigger problem in PvP is alliances ganging up in LINE to jack-up PvP points, thus preventing players who play normally from getting placement rewards. When I was playing PvP SCL 6, the highest point needed to get top 1 is around 900 points. Now, it's almost twice in SCL 9.

I imagine that no matter how they would change this there will always be a way to work around it. It happens in every game, they can change things that would stop this and that would work for maybe a few weeks? Then someone would have figured a way to strategically work within a group to maximise their points gain.

I don't use Line and I also don't consider hitting ranking or points in pvp and would rather grind progression rewards for your reason above. 

All they have to do is mask the name of the player/alliance you’re attacking. 

AXP_isme

Baking was good fun. Trying to put out as easy a team as you could while still winning and not staying exposed to hits was really exhilarating. I enjoyed the jeopardy and the collegiate nature of the coordinated eating/hopping/baking cycle. 

Phumade

Daredevil217 said:

peterdark said:

HoundofShadow said:

 The bigger problem in PvP is alliances ganging up in LINE to jack-up PvP points, thus preventing players who play normally from getting placement rewards. When I was playing PvP SCL 6, the highest point needed to get top 1 is around 900 points. Now, it's almost twice in SCL 9.

I imagine that no matter how they would change this there will always be a way to work around it. It happens in every game, they can change things that would stop this and that would work for maybe a few weeks? Then someone would have figured a way to strategically work within a group to maximise their points gain.

I don't use Line and I also don't consider hitting ranking or points in pvp and would rather grind progression rewards for your reason above. 

All they have to do is mask the name of the player/alliance you’re attacking. 

not really,  People have played long enough together to know rosters and playstyles.  People already know about  name changes as fast as they happen.  

At the highest levels,  its a small pool of players with easily identified rosters and characteristics.

Colognoisseur

To get back to the OP. I am very interested in these next six months. The first half of 2019 was always going to be dominated by tie-ins. For the next six months that won’t be the case. It should free the devs to do some different things if they are inclined to.

ZootSax

Colognoisseur said:

To get back to the OP. I am very interested in these next six months. The first half of 2019 was always going to be dominated by tie-ins. For the next six months that won’t be the case. It should free the devs to do some different things if they are inclined to.

That's a real good point.  It wouldn't surprise me if Disney+ had a tie-in similar to the 10-Year Anniversary of the MCU stuff last year for all the movies/TV-series which should be there on launch in November.  Otherwise, unless there's something major in print which they want to promote, they should have a relatively free hand.

DAZ0273

ZootSax said:

Colognoisseur said:

To get back to the OP. I am very interested in these next six months. The first half of 2019 was always going to be dominated by tie-ins. For the next six months that won’t be the case. It should free the devs to do some different things if they are inclined to.

That's a real good point.  It wouldn't surprise me if Disney+ had a tie-in similar to the 10-Year Anniversary of the MCU stuff last year for all the movies/TV-series which should be there on launch in November.  Otherwise, unless there's something major in print which they want to promote, they should have a relatively free hand.

I assume they will do something around Marvel's 80th Anniversary and the 1000 celebration upcoming.