Marvel Puzzle Quest R199 Release Notes (3/30/20)

grumbLEGO

Between the black widow movie that should have been coming out and the multiplying skills I would guess a new version of Task master, or an event with him as primary, especially with him being in a recent bundle. 

bluewolf

grumbLEGO said:

Between the black widow movie that should have been coming out and the multiplying skills I would guess a new version of Task master, or an event with him as primary, especially with him being in a recent bundle. 

I'm pretty sure MPQ won't release any BW tie-ins until the movie is in theaters; now set to be November 6, 2020.

Otherwise they probably don't get the tie-in bonuses.

https://variety.com/2020/film/box-office/disney-mulan-black-widow-release-dates-coronavirus-1203550173/

So, guess again!

JiraiyaSannin

 I wonder what direction the game is gonna shift since the movie got pushed back. 

They should consider doing new x-men run in the comics. Because we know X-Men could bring a nice amount $$$ if they play the cards right.

DarthDeVo

bluewolf said:

The rockett said:

IceIX said:

You'll be getting a second character this month, but yes... due to obvious world reasons things there have been in a bit of flux. We're pretty well set on our release plans for April at this point though, so the next 5-Star will be coming out around month end as per a "normal" two character per month schedule.

Past that, we're not 100% sure on the release schedule. A certain film that was planned around set up one thing and the delay there has kind of messed around with near future character release plans. We've got options, so there shouldn't be any content release issues, but nothing set in stone for May quite yet.

So we are at the point of 4/5/4/5.  This is terrible and not a good step.  It is hard enough for some that play at a high level to get them champed before they leave LL without dumping a ton of money into the game. 

Couldn't agree more.  The game wears more and more on me.

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

jamesh

The Carnage change is interesting if you're playing 4* Rocket and Groot against an enemy Carnage: the enemy makes a free match before you get to start your turn.  That was a bit surprising.

ThaRoadWarrior

It works in your favor vs that team at battle start also

jamesh

Sure, but that feels less weird since it is part of your turn.  Enemy Main Event Hulks don't do their opening board shake on your turn.

Tony_Foot

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

DarthDeVo

Tony_Foot said:

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

That's nice. For you. 

It's been my goal for the past 3+ years to eventually champ everyone. I've been playing my butt off to do it, especially the last two years after becoming a T10 hybrid player, and was getting fairly close. My only two Classics with fewer than 10 covers are Black Widow (2/4/3) and Doc Ock (3/2/3). And now the rug is getting pulled out from under me yet again.

Look, I have no issue with whales getting 500+ versions of each character. Most of my 5*s end up between 450 and 460 before cycling out, and that's pretty reasonable for how much I play. 

And all this ignores the fact that the dilution problem just gets spread to the 5* tier as well now. Heck, Classics was already pretty much an inefficient black hole to toss your CP into. Let's just go ahead and make it worse while we're at it. 🤦‍♂️

Projectus2501

Tony_Foot said:

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

I don't agree. Whale territory should be 500+ covers on small group of 5* charecters

bluewolf

DarthDeVo said:

Tony_Foot said:

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

That's nice. For you. 

It's been my goal for the past 3+ years to eventually champ everyone. I've been playing my butt off to do it, especially the last two years after becoming a T10 hybrid player, and was getting fairly close. My only two Classics with fewer than 10 covers are Black Widow (2/4/3) and Doc Ock (3/2/3). And now the rug is getting pulled out from under me yet again.

Look, I have no issue with whales getting 500+ versions of each character. Most of my 5*s end up between 450 and 460 before cycling out, and that's pretty reasonable for how much I play. 

And all this ignores the fact that the dilution problem just gets spread to the 5* tier as well now. Heck, Classics was already pretty much an inefficient black hole to toss your CP into. Let's just go ahead and make it worse while we're at it. 🤦‍♂️

The devs are in a position with no good options (sound familiar?).

They layer in more 4's that matter less and less.....they annoy and frustrate people who are trying to maybe, possibly think about moving up into and through the 4 tier.  And make each 4's covers less and less important to players as a reward.

Or they add more 5's and now they are frustrating the top players who feel less able to keep up and frustrated by a rapid pace of release, meaning you have less flexibility to finish each one.  Which could mean bad things down the road if one that was previously kind-of dismissed (Iceman) becomes an important tool when a new one comes along with synergy.

The game is 6 1/2 years old and has over 200 characters so they are just trying to keep doing what they have been doing as long as humanly possible and as long as we all login everyday and some people toss money at the game.  Dilution is a feature when you push a new bundle out every other day or so.

Bad

I dont think releasing more 5* characters could be more frustrating because playing hard on scl10 gives covers enough to champ him plus cp gaining.
And so I did with BRB and Im near to champ sinister. For progression on classic characters there are the shards( I wouldnt do it until they were rebalanced though)
If not willing to pay nor pushing some effort, then of course there is the frustration. If one wants all characters champed thats it.

Tony_Foot

Projectus2501 said:

Tony_Foot said:

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

I don't agree. Whale territory should be 500+ covers on small group of 5* charecters

It’s easy to see no real variation in pvp has come by almost everyone having the ability to champ the meta all the time. I would much rather it was more of a compromise to get those characters and switch the meta up more frequently. People constantly complain all they ever see if X and Y, well that’s because they are meta and everyone has them.

All that does is then calls of nerf X and Y because that’s all we see.

bluewolf

Tony_Foot said:

Projectus2501 said:

Tony_Foot said:

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

I don't agree. Whale territory should be 500+ covers on small group of 5* charecters

It’s easy to see no real variation in pvp has come by almost everyone having the ability to champ the meta all the time. I would much rather it was more of a compromise to get those characters and switch the meta up more frequently. People constantly complain all they ever see if X and Y, well that’s because they are meta and everyone has them.

All that does is then calls of nerf X and Y because that’s all we see.

While I agree here in theory - the more easily you can cover people, the more ubiquitous the meta - it is not true that even a 454545 would put a damper on many players' ability to cover the meta.

The meta is not every single 5.  There have been occasional times when you had 2 meta 5s in one store, but most of the time it's much more spaced out with characters that are just good (down to garbage).  So a smart player can sit out/not pull after BRB fades out (or now) for example and wait until Hulk is next to leave, and if they were previously mostly-keeping-up they can easily finish Hulk at that point along with anyone else who is in there with him.

I realize this counters my prior point which is "you don't always know who you'll need later" but when it comes to the obvious meta people, players should typically be in good shape.  

The biggest problem with the rapid pace, to me, is it leaves players with less ability to cover and play with middling characters and eats a bit into the fun of the game.  Unless you find hoarding fun, I guess.

Projectus2501

A 454545 pattern seems a step closer to a 645556 pattern in the future... 

DarthDeVo

bluewolf said:

DarthDeVo said:

Tony_Foot said:

DarthDeVo said:

Seconded (or thirded, I suppose). I'll say it in every thread if I need to. 4/5/4/5 every two weeks with no boss events is one of the worst developments I've seen in my 4 years of playing. 

I guess it's a case of be careful what we wish for. We've been asking for a solution to dilution in the 4* tier for years now. Well, this seems to be part of the answer. Release fewer 4*s because more 5*s are getting released instead. 🤦‍♂️

I like a solution where 5* are released faster and I cannot keep up. The mistake with the tier in the first place was having F2P players like myself being able to keep up if I chose. No one except the whales should have been able to keep up. As has been proved him and time again through every tier the game is stale when everyone has the meta characters all the time. The most you should have been able to realistically cover for free should have been 2 out of 3. We should all have been making a choice which ones to fully cover to suit out play style or existing champs.

But yeah I get now after being able to do that for so long why it might be upsetting. Just pick the bad ones get one cover and let them slide away. It's not hurt my game one bit doing that.

That's nice. For you. 

It's been my goal for the past 3+ years to eventually champ everyone. I've been playing my butt off to do it, especially the last two years after becoming a T10 hybrid player, and was getting fairly close. My only two Classics with fewer than 10 covers are Black Widow (2/4/3) and Doc Ock (3/2/3). And now the rug is getting pulled out from under me yet again.

Look, I have no issue with whales getting 500+ versions of each character. Most of my 5*s end up between 450 and 460 before cycling out, and that's pretty reasonable for how much I play. 

And all this ignores the fact that the dilution problem just gets spread to the 5* tier as well now. Heck, Classics was already pretty much an inefficient black hole to toss your CP into. Let's just go ahead and make it worse while we're at it. 🤦‍♂️

The devs are in a position with no good options (sound familiar?).

They layer in more 4's that matter less and less.....they annoy and frustrate people who are trying to maybe, possibly think about moving up into and through the 4 tier.  And make each 4's covers less and less important to players as a reward.

Or they add more 5's and now they are frustrating the top players who feel less able to keep up and frustrated by a rapid pace of release, meaning you have less flexibility to finish each one.  Which could mean bad things down the road if one that was previously kind-of dismissed (Iceman) becomes an important tool when a new one comes along with synergy.

The game is 6 1/2 years old and has over 200 characters so they are just trying to keep doing what they have been doing as long as humanly possible and as long as we all login everyday and some people toss money at the game.  Dilution is a feature when you push a new bundle out every other day or so.

I'll freely admit I don't know what the answer should be, or if there even is a good or decent answer. I'm not a game designer, nor a publisher. Perhaps 4/5/4/5 could work if it were three weeks in between each release, but I'm pretty sure that will never happen. 

I will say that shards and CL10 have been good for 4* coverage,  especially PvE. The problem is they're still focusing on the newest three 4*s or so in a tier of nearly 100. PvE being structured the way it is, we're only seeing two characters featured each week on average. So each 4* is getting featured maybe featured once a year, and that's it.

Same goes for the 5* rotation. Getting half a cover worth of shards each time they're featured sounds great... until you realize non-Latest 5*s get featured maybe once a year on average. 

I feel like 2* drop rates need to be seriously toned down in Heroics OR Mighty Tokens need to be featured more. Drop rate in Classics for 5*s should be upped to 20 percent at least. Make it worth our CP to potentially spend it there. A 5 CP discount doesn't cut it anymore. 

Maybe some of these ideas are viable, maybe some of them aren't. Again, I'm no expert. Just trying to figure out ways we can keep our heads above water as the increasing release rate threatens to drag us down. 

Mostly just frustrated because for the past 3+ years since I've been seriously playing, and especially since I started the 5* transition about 2.5 years ago, I've been able to keep up and slowly catch up. It felt like the system worked, for the most part. Now it's being "fixed," going against that old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."