New Feature: Milestone and Special Quests

IceIX

As some people have probably seen according to the Holiday Plan, we’ve got three new features coming to MPQ with R217. The first two are Live as of… now (well, the next daily patch, so probably 12/11, but it's queued)! with Milestone Quests and Special (Event) Quests!

Special Quests are quests that will run alongside various events and offer rewards for completing specific challenges within missions. They are all time limited though, so take advantage of them while you can!

Milestone Quests on the other hand, are static sets of quests that are placed to keep track of, and encourage, the growth and usage of your roster. These quests feature ramping rewards as you complete more of each of the sets, providing players with rewards commensurate with the difficulty of completing that tier. Once that tier of quests is complete, the next in that line unlocks, with better rewards for completion. So keep pushing through those Milestones and reap the rewards!

The last new feature that we’ll be putting out is coming a little later, Puzzle Ops, related to Johnny Storm’s Fireside Puzzles. We’ll be releasing more info on that soon, but suffice it to say now that players who have been looking for more ways to play than just beating up their opponents will have an early holiday present coming!

With these features, we’ve added yet more cool direct feature related stuff into the game, with more planned. Looking forward to seeing what players have to say!

ThaRoadWarrior

@IceIX
So far my experience of the quest system has been net positive, I'm really happy with it. For Milestone Quests, can you clarify if players who have been here for a while are going to be starting those from scratch, or will the game recognize any we may have completed historically and retroactively accomplish them the way Shield Ranks were rolled out?

Loosie

@IceIX When can we expect the Milestone Quests to be live?

IceIX

Loosie said:

@IceIX When can we expect the Milestone Quests to be live?

It's in the next daily data patch, and will probably go out with that assuming nothing catastrophic.

ThaRoadWarrior said:

@IceIX
So far my experience of the quest system has been net positive, I'm really happy with it. For Milestone Quests, can you clarify if players who have been here for a while are going to be starting those from scratch, or will the game recognize any we may have completed historically and retroactively accomplish them the way Shield Ranks were rolled out?

Depends on the quest. Not everything was a simple tracking job, so the ones that do (Have X characters of a given tier for example) should retroactively instantly complete while others we decided to leave as default due to difficulty in retroactive tracking.

ThaRoadWarrior

Awesome, thanks! I see from that screenshot most of the rewards seem to be iso - would it behoove us to adjust any shard targets at this point before it goes live in case we're doing something short term right now and would prefer (potentially) large slugs of shards to go to a more long term character would you say?

BigSoftieFF

Sound fun! 

JHawkInc

For all the groaning and grumbling we do, it really needs to be said that you guys have knocked it out of the park this year. Not everything is going to resonate with everyone, but with the wide variety of new characters, some new goons, new events, SCL 10, UI revamps, saved teams, all that jazz, and now quests (that come in daily, milestone, AND themed event varieties?!), you've really done a solid job of addressing damn near everything players have asked about in recent history. Except maybe Supports, but you have communicated that they're being worked on as well, we DO technically have more ways to acquire them thanks to the new Taco tokens, AND they're kinda obviously not the top priority anyways, so it makes sense that if you're going to have something to start the 2021 list with, Supports would be it.

Like seriously, you've done a great job having a great 2020, and I appreciate your part in making garbage year better for the rest of us. Looking forward to Marvel Puzzle Quest 2021!

Phumade

Overall the infrastructure stuff looks really good and well implemented.  I hope that a lot of focus has been putting on interesting and challenging objectives.  Ultimately it really does boil down to engaging and fun objectives that incentivize using the rest of our roster.

snowball quests are fun, using 3 hp is not a fun quest.  Overall this has really stimulate engagement numbers, and players can see it based on bracket flips and how lb are changing

Bzhai

Glad to see a new system that benefits both veterans and newbies. All this hard work will go a long way in attracting newer players and keep the game going. 

Looking forward to seeing the game reach its 10 year milestone and beyond.

dingo

How many individual milestone quests will there be, and are there set caps to them?

pheregas

dingo said:

How many individual milestone quests will there be, and are there set caps to them?

I second this.  If that preview one is any indication, we could pound through several of these early ones pretty quick.  Does it cap out like Shield Rank does?

turul_1

For veterans some milestones are better as opposites

Rank t10 without using a shield

Win match without boost
Win match without teamups

Win match without stuns

do 10 matches without using hpacks between...

RGV123

If there is a significant retroactive-milestone resource drop it may be a jolly x-mas indeed.

IceIX

pheregas said:

dingo said:

How many individual milestone quests will there be, and are there set caps to them?

I second this.  If that preview one is any indication, we could pound through several of these early ones pretty quick.  Does it cap out like Shield Rank does?

Number milestones depends on the quest. Something like "Level Supports X times" has a ton of levels to it (28 unless I miscounted?), while the DDQ chain has 7. There are limits to them, but they get pretty high up there, and we have the ability to add more to the end as time goes on much like Shield Rank.

As for rewards as someone was asking, the Iso only rewards tend to only be for the first couple ranks. For example, the "Use 1 Health Pack" reward is 200 Iso, and tier 2 is 1000 Iso, but then Tier 3 starts giving out covers of Daken (because he self heals, ba dum tish). So to people worried about this being useless in a post-Iso world, I wouldn't be.

SaltnPeppa

Thanks for making the milestones doable by everyone regardless of time spent playing.

HoundofShadow

Milestone quest seems like a variation of the request about resetting Prologue with better rewards. What's more, there's no time limit.

A lot of good stuff have been rolled out this year: lots of QoL and new features. I'm really surprised.   

Will Advance tokens/Master tokens be available for grab in Milestone quest rewards?

DAZ0273

Thanks for the info @IceIX, all sounds very cool!

DeNappa

JHawkInc said:

For all the groaning and grumbling we do, it really needs to be said that you guys have knocked it out of the park this year. Not everything is going to resonate with everyone, but with the wide variety of new characters, some new goons, new events, SCL 10, UI revamps, saved teams, all that jazz, and now quests (that come in daily, milestone, AND themed event varieties?!), you've really done a solid job of addressing damn near everything players have asked about in recent history. Except maybe Supports, but you have communicated that they're being worked on as well, we DO technically have more ways to acquire them thanks to the new Taco tokens, AND they're kinda obviously not the top priority anyways, so it makes sense that if you're going to have something to start the 2021 list with, Supports would be it.

Like seriously, you've done a great job having a great 2020, and I appreciate your part in making garbage year better for the rest of us. Looking forward to Marvel Puzzle Quest 2021!

While I agree on all the positive things and I don't want to sound like a Richard, I'd still like to mention one of the major criticisms which is the minimization of communication and the essential removal of the community manager position this year. 

BriMan2222

Merry Christmas Milestones!!! They are live and they are awesome.  Thank you.

bowla33

This is better than feeders. Milestones are great! 

I've already maxed out 12 and the rewards at high level are great. 

Xception81

Be careful claiming the rewards, particularly the “Promote 4* (and 5*) to champion” since you get a TON of shards and can switch the character between each claiming (as needed).