This game is NOT F2P!

Dauthi

rkd80 wrote:

I think many miss my point, in that, relying on the random drops appears to be impossible and having 100k ISO with now 70+ 1* covers in the queue demonstrated that I tried, really tried.

Of course I do not expect to compete or have anything even remote to the seasoned players who put in the time and effort, I never asked for that, i simply pointed out that to get a sense of progression in this game currently appears to be impossible without paying. That is all.

So tonight I played about 20 PvP matches in LR and got three 2* drops. So perhaps they drop more frequently than I imagined, but for me it was 2 bullseye and a moonstone. Again. For the record, I do not have them in my roster, I delete them. The only 2* covers in my roster are: Ares, Thor, OBW, A. Wolvie, MMN, C. Storm. The reason I have them all is because i have 6-7 covers for each, like I said. This is what makes the game so frustrating. My plan is to max out Thor, Ares ad OBW. Use M. storm as support, since I do not see a huge benefit in C.Storm.

Nobody doubts how many 1* you have in your surplus roster, they have a crazy drop rate since they replaced straight ISO rewards with 1* and 2* covers in PVP. It could be that you were really unlucky too, but you obtained decent covers for your main characters regardless. M.Storm and OBW is a great combo, stick with it until you get into high 2*. Note that 2* drops pretty often and players are able to progress through the 2* ranking faster than ever before.

Something else to keep in mind is that by shooting for 2* covers in PVP rewards you are ensuring you stay in a more casual bracket until you are actually ready to work on 3* covers. Relax and plan out your *3 roster you would like in the mean time, and if you have room start shooting for them now.

HairyDave

HailMary wrote:

Oh, and by the way, I started playing at the end of January, I've been F2P the entire time, and I now have 5 L141s.

I am incredibly jelly right now - I started a month earlier (basically just before Christmas) and I still don't have anyone at 141. But that could be down to my slow uptake on PVP and joining an alliance.

HailMary

HairyDave wrote:

HailMary wrote:

Oh, and by the way, I started playing at the end of January, I've been F2P the entire time, and I now have 5 L141s.

I am incredibly jelly right now - I started a month earlier (basically just before Christmas) and I still don't have anyone at 141. But that could be down to my slow uptake on PVP and joining an alliance.

Yeah, I try to avoid advertising it much, because I don't take F2P status as a point of pride, but I am my own strongest data point when rebutting all the "this game is totally P2W!" rants sprinkled about the forums recently (the OP here is one of the milder, more fleshed-out, more civil ones, so again, kudos to him). So, I mention it when relevant.

I lucked out in co-founding a top alliance on day one of the Alliance Epoch, so that helped a lot.

rkd80

Thanks HailMary, your responses make sense. Perhaps treating MPQ as any other game and expecting the same kind of linear progression was a mistake on my part, I think I got swept up in some of the negativity in the forum and decided to prematurely jump on the bandwagon with a "fresh" perspective. However the bigger problems of the game plague the vets, not the newbies like myself. It would appear that generally speaking, new players have an easier time although there seems to be some dispute on the subject.

I'll just temper my expectations a bit and slow it down a tad. I left the possibility of the RNG simply not going my way at all, but over the long run it should level out.

Thanks for your reply and for everyone else's too, criticism and all, to be expected!

Unknown

rkd80 wrote:

I also understand that 2* is temporary - so spending - at this stage - 60+ bucks on temporary characters is absurd.

And that right there is EXACTLY why they Want ppl to skip or at least move beyond the 2** phase as fast as possible.

HailMary

No problem.

1* players now have an easier time transitioning to the 2* stage than ever before -- Iso and 2* covers are both much easier to come by. The basic advice used to be "Don't buy 2* covers, unless it's a game-changing cover, like OBW's 5th blue or 4th black." Now, the basic advice is "Just don't buy 2* covers." From my observations of Season 1 activity, max-2* players who aren't in a Top 100 alliance now have a much harder time transitioning to the point where they can start replacing their A-team with L100+ 3*s. Now that the frenzied point-grabbing of Season 1 has died down a bit, though, many brackets seem to easing back down to the point where solid 2* players can reliably reach 3* cover-rewards placement tiers with some judicious shield usage, so things will almost certainly get a bit better for them.

Compared to three months ago, there's now more upfront work required in the form of joining/forming a large, well-performing alliance and helping it consistently grab alliance 3* cover rewards. Once established, though, good alliance membership pays hefty dividends (a bit like Captain America's red & blue boomerang abilities ). Alliance cover rewards will very palpably accelerate your 2*-3* transition, especially when trying to build newly released 3*s. Another general tip for optimizing your general progression: work towards getting as many roster slots as you can (at least 25, preferably at least 30). That way, you can at least keep the mid/high-tier 3* covers you manage to pull. You never know when one (or three ) of them will sneak up on you, and you'll suddenly realize that you've steadily and quietly built a shiny new 10-cover 3*.

For now, you're focusing on the right thing: getting a solid 2* team going. Your next major step in optimizing your progression will be to join a good alliance. It sounds like you're willing to consistently put in quite a bit of game time (I never even saw 100K Iso until I was about to push my first 3* to L100+, I mean, wow). That, coupled with a well-leveled 2* core, is a pretty solid sales pitch. There'll continue to be a steady hum of alliance membership turnover for the foreseeable future, so you can make a meta-game of it.

There's been a lot of negativity lately on the forums, and much of the most sensationalist stuff I've seen from vets and non-vets alike is overblown bandwagon-jumping -- yours is one of the more thoughtful anecdotal criticisms. Don't let the negativity get to you. MPQ is still a fun game -- even most of the complainers actually agree, seeing as how they haven't quit yet. There are PVE scaling issues, MMR issues, server issues, and the occasional shield glitch, and those are indeed very real problems. But, the game's core is solid, the forumites are generally great, and speaking as someone who's never read a single comic book in his life, I'm excited about the new 3*s coming down the pipeline.

Edit: typos.

over_clocked

About getting 2* covers:
played some LR, seed teams only.

Unknown

locked wrote:

About getting 2* covers:
played some LR, seed teams only.

2k+ Iso from a bunch of seed teams? Wow...

rkd80

HailMary: Again, many thanks for the thoughtful response. Tempering expectations is a useful life skill, regardless of what one does - we certainly do take something as trivial as a mobile game rather seriously, do we not? Once my 2* team is good to go, a solid alliance is something I will definitely be seeking. For the moment there does not appear to be a rush for the very reasons I stated in the first place. Indeed on the roset slots, any HP I earn goes to that. Lastly, ff there is room in your alliance at any point, do give me a holler!

locked: That is just incredible, in the past 3 days of grinding PvP (about 50 matches) I got about 6 2* covers, 2 bagmen, 2 bullseye, 1 moonstone, 1 mmn. Your distribution is much nicer IMO. Very well then, just need to smooth out my RNG curve.

Unknown

It's a f2p but not f2w.

u are getting it all wrong.

In general, games in f2p mkt isn't really selling u a game, they are selling u a service that allows you to pay to feel like onthe top of the world, it just using gaming as a platform

people paying for their premium service will surely have advantages, no doubt about it. it'sthe same when people pay more to a cable company to get more channels.

In fact, they are running a business not charity, of coz it's gonna make ur progress miserable if u ain't paying enough

I do feel someof the in game item they maybe charging too much and price someof their items wrong. But, Iam pretty sure licensing from marvel doesn't come cheap.

All in all, it's a full game that allows u to access all features without paying a dime, MPQ is a f2p game.

Free to pay or pay to enjoy. Choice is yours.

Unknown

the fact that you are top 10 in the Sentry PVE with only a 1 star roster makes me wonder how anything in this game works.

I played nodes plenty and I got 125th with my 3 star roster.

Unknown

rkd80 wrote:

HailMary: Again, many thanks for the thoughtful response. Tempering expectations is a useful life skill, regardless of what one does - we certainly do take something as trivial as a mobile game rather seriously, do we not? Once my 2* team is good to go, a solid alliance is something I will definitely be seeking. For the moment there does not appear to be a rush for the very reasons I stated in the first place. Indeed on the roset slots, any HP I earn goes to that. Lastly, ff there is room in your alliance at any point, do give me a holler!

locked: That is just incredible, in the past 3 days of grinding PvP (about 50 matches) I got about 6 2* covers, 2 bagmen, 2 bullseye, 1 moonstone, 1 mmn. Your distribution is much nicer IMO. Very well then, just need to smooth out my RNG curve.

I've found that RNG comes in spurts, in terms of good RNG and bad RNG, anyway. There will be days or weeks where I don't pull a single useful cover from anything; event tokens, standard tokens, etc. Then, there will be days where I pull multiple 3*'s from standard tokens. It is all purely RNG, and that is what can make it a real **** sometimes.

For example, during the entire Prodigal Sun event, I pulled zilch from any of the tokens. Then, after the event had concluded yesterday and I recieved my final 2 event tokens, I pulled a Purple 3* Daken from one of them. Some days you get lucky, and some days you get nothing.

lickfurjr wrote:

I do feel someof the in game item they maybe charging too much and price someof their items wrong. But, Iam pretty sure licensing from marvel doesn't come cheap.

All in all, it's a full game that allows u to access all features without paying a dime, MPQ is a f2p game.

Free to pay or pay to enjoy. Choice is yours.

Your point about Marvel licensing is spot on - that cannot be cheap in any way. However, your final statement about it being F2P or pay to enjoy I do not agree with. You can pay to max every single character in this game, but you'd still have to put in the time and effort to win any of the events in this game... and paying a ton of money to excelerate your progress to the point of maxing characters out would suck a ton of the fun out of this game IMO.

Unknown

lickfurjr wrote:

It's a f2p but not f2w.



I do feel someof the in game item they maybe charging too much and price someof their items wrong. But, Iam pretty sure licensing from marvel doesn't come cheap.


Free to pay or pay to enjoy. Choice is yours.

Its not the IP forcing them to charge crazy amounts. Marvel heroes is a F2P marvel diablo clone and the prices there (while high by many people standards) looks like pennies on the dollar compared to this game.

People can spend close to 10o$ on covers for a character in this game. In marvel heroes you can buy the same character for 9$ total. And BTW its a more advanced game than a 3 match game and more work goes into making those characters and FX.

HailMary

rkd80 wrote:

Lastly, ff there is room in your alliance at any point, do give me a holler!

locked: That is just incredible, in the past 3 days of grinding PvP (about 50 matches) I got about 6 2* covers, 2 bagmen, 2 bullseye, 1 moonstone, 1 mmn. Your distribution is much nicer IMO. Very well then, just need to smooth out my RNG curve.

Hehe, I'll keep an eye out, though I must say that we've already got our next few entrants/replacements squared away for the moment. I'll try to keep you in mind when I'm lurking the alliance subforum.

Jkells wrote:

I've found that RNG comes in spurts, in terms of good RNG and bad RNG, anyway. There will be days or weeks where I don't pull a single useful cover from anything; event tokens, standard tokens, etc. Then, there will be days where I pull multiple 3*'s from standard tokens. It is all purely RNG, and that is what can make it a real **** sometimes.

For example, during the entire Prodigal Sun event, I pulled zilch from any of the tokens. Then, after the event had concluded yesterday and I recieved my final 2 event tokens, I pulled a Purple 3* Daken from one of them. Some days you get lucky, and some days you get nothing.

Yep, I had a run of incredible daily-deal Heroic luck a couple months back (5 good 3*s over the course of 8 100-HP tokens), followed by literally zero 3*s from any event progression tokens (I get all of them) since then. I've pulled a couple of 3*s from standards (so many standards) and the odd Heroic since, but I think only one was marginally useful. Le sigh.

Unknown

They have been making the 2* transition a lot easier lately. Just keep on grinding PvP and you can easily get a good couple of 2*s per event for winning. Plus any covers you get as Progression rewards.

Before that update, my only maxed 2*s were Ares and Daken. Everyone else was not well equipped. Like only 5-7 covers, also most of which where kind of all over the placed and badly specced, and pumped to level 35 or so. Was stuck in getting more. Now I have a maxed out OBW and Wolvie (Although I do need 1 Red to finish his respec) to join my team. My C Storm and MN Mags are also now fully covered and now pumping ISO into them slowly. That update was 20 days ago. In those 20 days, my roster has improved so greatly. Went from medicore and barely anything to something much more usable.

rkd80

If anyone is still reading this thread, I suppose I do have a question for the experts.

I have enough covers to make C. Storm and A. Wolvie playable, with just enough ISO for both. Is it worth it? I have Thor around level 50 and Ares level 40. I really wanted to use them instead of Wolverine who strikes me (see what I did there?) as a one dimensional character.

HailMary

rkd80 wrote:

If anyone is still reading this thread, I suppose I do have a question for the experts.

I have enough covers to make C. Storm and A. Wolvie playable, with just enough ISO for both. Is it worth it? I have Thor around level 50 and Ares level 40. I really wanted to use them instead of Wolverine who strikes me (see what I did there?) as a one dimensional character.

What do you mean by "playable"? 10 covers?

CStorm is weak on defense in PVP. AWolv is still pretty solid: his red is extremely high-damage, and his green is quite decent if you wait to stock up on red before using it.

For PVP, the 2* power ranking goes something like this: OBW, Ares, Thor, AWolv/CStorm/Daken, MN Mags (only as support for CStorm), ... everyone else.

rkd80

Yes 10+ covers. I got 11 for him, higher than any other 2* character.
I do not want to invest anything into C.Storm - even though I have about 9 of her covers.
I also got about 8 covers for MMN, but it seems like he is a one trick pony as a blue battery for C.Storm and I am not sure I want to pigeon hole myself just yet.

Unfortunately my OBW is by far the most scarce at 4 covers.
Guess I will just hold out for Ares/Thor/OBW, which of course makes it that much more challenging

Unknown

Well looks like just from yesterday you got a major break in rng with multiple covers for Thor/ares/obw so Grats! Still feel the same?

Now I'm sure in a few weeks you will feel like it's much worse as you will be trying to cover 3*s but as you see, patience pays off!

rkd80

So I decided to just go crazy on fresh cut and see how far i can get, although I am really just keen on placing in the top 200 to get OBW. At one point there were about 10 2* covers. I would say 30% of the drops were 2* across the board. Crazy, makes me feel stupid for posting.