New Event: Introducing...

IceIX

For some of you, seeing a new character come to Marvel Puzzle Quest is an occasion to go through your comic longboxes and review a few issues to freshen your memories of a hero or villain. For others, it’s a hurried trip to Marvel’s character wiki to see who they are. Some players are familiar with the characters they’ve seen on the big screen, or read through their issues of Captain America, Uncanny X-Men or The Avengers, so they’re at least down on the major characters. Even when they are though, do people remember what the exploits were for Tony Stark while he was using the Model 40 Armor versus something like the Bleeding Edge Armor? Even our team of designers love deepening their knowledge on the characters they’re working on to make sure they’re special and awesome when released. We’d like to share some of that research and learning with the player base with an all new new character launch Event: Introducing...

These events are intended to give players an idea of the origins of the character or incarnation of that character that is being released and how they fit into the ever-growing MPQ universe. The best part? Wherever possible, we’re doing it with stories drawn directly from the source; Panels drawn straight from the comics.

When new characters are first released, we’ll be offering an opportunity to play through a Daily Unlock Event that delves into the origins of the character in question. Each day, another aspect of the background of that character will appear and players can engage in a battle that is core to that character’s existence. Some of these missions will also showcase certain powers for a character. These showcases will help to connect the dots with the powers the character has in-game compared to their source material, as well as showing off just what those characters can do!

These missions are not exclusionary, and will provide the character(s) needed for each of them. As well, battles scale  appropriately for your roster strength where necessary. The goal here is to show off the character and their origins, not provide an unbeatable wall for players to push against just to find out more cool info. Rewards are given per node completed as well as for Progression, providing some Iso-8 and Tokens for completing the miniature origin stories we’ve laid out.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you all think of these “Introducing...” Events! This isn’t the first time we’ve integrated comics into the game since we use covers to represent characters, but this is certainly the most in-depth case. We’d like to see what you all think and whether the Event gives as neat an insight as we expect!

RentedPanda

This sounds great, very much looking forward to it!

wymtime

I look forward to reading up on Onslaught and new characters in the future.

on a side note I have a suggestion regarding individual scaling with new releases and shield trainings.  My suggestion would be just require the 3 characters and give the loaners to scale.  Then once the node is beaten open it up to a full roster.  

Another idea would be to make one node a survival node with the new character and 2 open spots.  It would scale like a PVE event but still only give out one reward overall this way we can go through waves of difficulty on our own instead of having difficult matchups for smaller rewards.

i really like what you have done with new releases and look into some new ideas with scaling in the future.  Personal roster scaling has been a touchy challenge in the past and I hope alternatives can be made in the future.

Bubba3210

Fifteen shards for the Introducing event? Seriously? Why even bother giving out shards if it’s going to be so ridiculously low?  Just give me iso, a mighty, something that has value instead of this slap in the face.

Loosie

I love the sound of this event. I like that you mention that it’s not supposed to be an unbeatable wall. Because having it be an overly difficult node for 15 shards would lead to some major backlash.

thanks for the new event though. Looking forward to it!

JHawkInc

Bubba3210 said:

Fifteen shards for the Introducing event? Seriously? Why even bother giving out shards if it’s going to be so ridiculously low?  Just give me iso, a mighty, something that has value instead of this slap in the face.

The whole point of the event is to have a fun way to explore the lore of the character, they've already said they're providing required characters and that it isn't supposed to be a hard event. They could have just not given any rewards for it at all.

If you're getting that bent out of shape that they decided to toss us a couple teaser shards, maybe you should quit playing the game and take your negativity... literally anywhere else.

Bubba3210

@JHawkInc, you’re right. I am bent out of shape and for good reason.

They reduced command points in pve. They raised the pvp point threshold for command points. Then they increased the release frequency for 5* and expect us to just accept it and move forward. Oh but we gave you 15 shards and SCL 10. That is not an acceptable solution.

Why should I accept it and not voice my opinion?

FesterTester

I'm curious, is there a plan to eventually combine these introduction events into full-scale PVE events, the way "Honor Among Thieves" was cobbled together from three mini-events?
Otherwise, I don't quite see the logic of making a new event every two to four weeks and throwing it in the trash afterwards, while re-running the same PVE events on their current cycle of around 7-8 weeks.

As for the new event itself, will have to wait and see, max progression being 3% of a single cover implies that it should indeed be completable by all rosters, so hoping it will be fun.
Roster-based scaling has been bumpy in the past, I prefer where you pick your level of enemies and the rewards are scaled to match that instead.  Guessing that these enemies will be scaled very low.

Venomous

This is an amazing update. Even if the rewards are terrible, It's not really the point of the event. It's meant to give a level of respect toward the characters that are added. This can even make room for doing many more lesser known or recognized characters to give them the spotlight for a change.  

Bubba3210

I don’t mind the chance to test drive. In fact, that’s a great addition. It’s that they try to divert our attention while slowly reducing the rewards and hoping no one notices.

JHawkInc

Bubba3210 said:

@JHawkInc, you’re right. I am bent out of shape and for good reason.

They reduced command points in pve. They raised the pvp point threshold for command points. Then they increased the release frequency for 5* and expect us to just accept it and move forward. Oh but we gave you 15 shards and SCL 10. That is not an acceptable solution.

Why should I accept it and not voice my opinion?

That's not what I said, and that's not what you did.

Voicing your opinion at the overall change in rewards is obviously fine.

Whining because a reward is subjectively too small is petty and not even remotely constructive.

krakenoon

Two aspects here.

Pretty awesome to see the background/development of new characters. Looks like we may get some concept art here and there. While any of us can go and wiki new characters, I love a peek behind the curtain.

 I have to agree with Bubba though. It seems that every time something new is introduced, the rewards are abysmal. I don’t know when I’ll hit rank 125, but I’m almost not looking forward to it from the comments concerning time investment for SCL10.

I sincerely hope the devs are working toward fixing rewards and QoL instead of creating new content with virtually no rewards because I’d like the game to stick around for a while. As it is, it seems like there is an approach where the amount of energy invested in restructuring and financial planning is blinding those in charge with the reality of what the players want (ofc excluding the likes of Hound & Tonyfoot who seem to be in the minority). Seems like every time there is another shift like the recent release schedule, I see a number of comments like Glockoma’s post today.

Omegased

This is really cool.

I really enjoyed the rework of S.H.I.E.LD - the chance to actually play the characters in a max covered form made it easier to understand their mechanics, and how they'll work with the rest of the characters. i hope this will do the same.

I would love to see these on the regular!

Phumade

FesterTester said:

I'm curious, is there a plan to eventually combine these introduction events into full-scale PVE events, the way "Honor Among Thieves" was cobbled together from three mini-events?
Otherwise, I don't quite see the logic of making a new event every two to four weeks and throwing it in the trash afterwards, while re-running the same PVE events on their current cycle of around 7-8 weeks.

I am also curious about their replay plans. A lot of the best events are the one offs that rarely occur like the ant man intro. I would hope going forward, they make these types of events accessible for testing and exploring power combos.

 I do not claim to be a vet very often, but the real value of this event is in having a way to explore powers like, the silver surfer node, and the OML node from the dawn of 5*. Those nodes had no rewards but were replayable, and helped players understand how they needed to develop their roster.

 This new event needs to fulfill those roles, I’m okay with little to no rewards as long as this event was openly availble for the balance of the season.

Heartbreaksoup

Once upon a time, when I was a 2* and 3* player, I made several suggestions for a low-prize or a no-prize sandbox mode or event.  I would have, then, loved the opportunity to try out 4*s and 5*s with no reward whatsoever.

Even though I'm a 5* player now, I think this is a terrific idea.  100 iso, 15 shards, that's cool.  While I would dearly love a couple million more iso to finish champing all my wretched 4*s, I'd mainly just like to try out Onslaught and don't need to be rewarded for some fun new matches.  This sounds a lot more entertaining than Versus.

helix72

As the rate of 5* releases outpaces our ability to gain enough resources to cover them all as they come, I guess I will appreciate some way to tell if the character is one I want to chase or one I want to let pass me by...

IIAlonditeII

This is a good event, but I wish there were a relevant prize for completion.

that said, I don’t mind the tryout by itself.

HoundofShadow

I like the concept and look forward to it in a few hours. Will this "Introducing..." event be limited to only 5* release?

As for the rewards, I don't know what people expect for 5 easy nodes since it scales to your roster.

In SCL 10, you need to go through 135/180 nodes to get 250 shards.

The rewards scales about right.

shardwick

Heartbreaksoup said:

Once upon a time, when I was a 2* and 3* player, I made several suggestions for a low-prize or a no-prize sandbox mode or event.  I would have, then, loved the opportunity to try out 4*s and 5*s with no reward whatsoever.

Even though I'm a 5* player now, I think this is a terrific idea.  100 iso, 15 shards, that's cool.  While I would dearly love a couple million more iso to finish champing all my wretched 4*s, I'd mainly just like to try out Onslaught and don't need to be rewarded for some fun new matches.  This sounds a lot more entertaining than Versus.

Yeah, the game definitely needs a sandbox mode where you can just screw around and try out different teams. Like for me I have nine covers for Yelena and I'd like to play around with her with different teams against different match-ups that I tend to encounter like Shield Sim opponents, goons, etc. So a mode where there are no rewards and no healthpacks required would be great. You could even use characters that you don't have rostered.

Rosraf

Sweet. This is a terrific idea.  

Maybe do some retroactive ones for older characters too?

Bryan Lambert

I can’t compartmentalize enough to even pretend to be mad about it, but fifteen shards is definitely the number a group of developers would arrive at if they spend a long lunch break over Zoom wondering how few shards they could hand out and still have people thank them because they could have given out nothing.