Reflections after being in 5* land for 6 months.

9RMetal

So here's the thing, it's been 6 months since I started my 5* land journey and although 5 stars are amazing, I still missing using 4* more strategic and the OP 3*, after analyzing the full roster now, I think the disparity between 3* and 4* now its pretty ridiculous, I love 3* for been feeders for 4*, I wish MPQ started adding more 3* just for that, PVP feature more 4*events, what do you guys i think about how much characters and teams have evolved and these feeders disparity?

Phumade

Keep this in mind.  You probably have a wide 4* roster that can address a variety of situations. vs a limited 5* roster that can't fill every task.

But eventually you'll build out the 5* cast and then 4* will feel just like your 3* roster currently does.  And your only question will be when will they update the 5* feeders.  

Don't get me wrong,  it will take forever to build out your 5* roster, and you'll wonder whats the point.  But take it from the long term vets.  There's just as much strategy and fun at the 5* tier.

Trust the process and enjoy the journey.  The value of the game is in growing your roster and seeing how new pieces revitalize old characters and you'll see a whole new perspective to the game.

Vhailorx

It's certainly true that a short 5* bench can feel much more restrictive than a well-developed 4* roster.

I disagree with phumade, however, that it will eventually get better [edit: on its own]. That's true of 4* rosters: you play long enough and your bench will eventually fill out.  5*s however, are still sufficiently hard to get that players generally won't develop a 5* bench by accident; it almost always takes some effort to optimize resources.  And the opportunity costs of making bad decisions about which 5* characters to chase are very high. There is basically no way for a new 5* player to fill out a bench of 5* classics.  You can sharget a few, but getting more than that is is a practical impossibility without infinite funds.

So rather than just having faith that the problem with fix itself naturally over time, OP, I would suggest figuring which one or two 5*s would make a big difference for your 5* experience and trying to focus on getting those characters with shards and speciality stores while hoarding LTs until you have enough to pull on a good set of 3. There is hope, but you might need to plan a bit first.

Phumade

No.

There are 2 things that many players including most forum posters confuse and merge together.

1.  95-99% of the entire player base will not be TOP TIER (all 5* over 540) competitive players competing for T5 positions and battling with full 5* infinity gauntlets(all 6 stones).  I.e. if your goal is to be on the bleeding edge of the game, you need to spend cash and devote years of high end competitive play to develop the in game understanding of how the biggest whales compete in the game.  And have other gigantic whales assisting you the whole way.

2.  But most players will absolutely cover and champion the full 5* tier.  I know this because 4* characters were just as rare and even harder to obtain than current 5* chars.  Rest assured, level 450 5* characters/tier will eventually be depreciated and made as easy to acquire as the current generation 4* chars.  (I remember when champing a new 4* like HULKBUSTER era would take multiple seasons,  now  Icaris can be champed by the end of the first pvp event of the next season)

Maybe that means the devs raise the natural level cap to 750 or higher.  Maybe they outright bump every cover position in progression by 1*.  Maybe they create an actual 6* tier.  Maybe its a new type of milestones.  But you can absolutely be assured the devs have a game pathway  (even if it exists only in Anthony/Kabir head or whoever runs the studio) for dedicated players (and that may require you to get to 2500 days and SR 250) to effectively champion all 5*.  (In fact I guarantee the devs will inevitably create some new in game pathway for 5* acquisition.)

Be aware that just because you have all 5* champed at 450, doesn't mean your gonna be competitive against the TOP TIER players with full 550 rosters.  But you will absolutely be able to enjoy the rich diversity of character interactions and gameplay strategy at the full 4*/5* tiers.

In any case, getting all 5* champed to 450 is reasonable objective for dedicated 5-7 year players.  And I'm sure that many forum posters would love to tell you about their various journey towards getting all 5* champed even if they never bother to play to 3000 or even 2000 points in a PVP event.  You can be certain that carefully planning and probably some targeted spending will need to occurs.  But in a game that has always had a planning time frame measured in YEARS, you can get there with a yearly spend that is probably far less than 3 AAA game purchases per year.

I know of maybe 1 person in the entire history of the game who can legitimately claim to have champed all characters without any dollars spent (including VIP, or bugle pittance). 

A true Tightwad Titan!!!!

Trust the process and Enjoy the ride!  Everyone gets there eventually, even with a minimal dollar spend.

Yepyep

Re @Vhailorx 's comment, there is another way. It is slow, though, like everything in this game:PvP placement, at even quite modest levels, yields significant 5* shards. Over many, many events, they accumulate. Many are for legacy characters, with more targeting newer characters. Not to mention HP and CP accumulation that is also part of the scheme.

Anyway, that is the path forward I am using, having transitioned to 5* land maybe about... um... 2-ish years ago? Maybe a little less. (It's hard to remember my way back through COVID days...). I had a core set of characters ready and covered for champing, all with saved covers. I saved up mega ISO, million+, then jumped right in. Now I play a lot of PvP plus solid. solid PvE play. Burns time, but can get you into 5* land if you keep at it.

Vhailorx

Maybe the game will one day democratize 5* acquisition, but it hasn't happened yet. Most players of MPQ, even most players who acquire at least 1x 5* champ (already a tiny fraction of the total playerbase) will never come close to champing the full 5* tier unless there are major changes to the 5* economy. I too remember the transition to a 4* meta in 2014 and 4*s were indeed extremely hard to get.  Since that time, however, many many paths have been added to the game to get 4*s (feeders, shards, vaults, CLs, etc) and 4* acquisition was ALWAYS less randomized than 5* acquisition because fixed cover rewards for 4*s have always been available from placement (and now from progression too), even if they were hard to get. 

Feeders and 5* shards in event rewards have definitely made 5*s easier to cover, but those are still just supplemental tools as they are insufficient to cover any single character on their own (it would take leveling 2x feeders to level 370 PLUS 2 PVE featured cycles to fully cover a single 5*). That's multiple years worth of work, during which time  25+ new 5*s would have been released into the game. So the only way to reliably cover 5*s is still via RNG tokens and CPs, which means hundreds of pulls. and the LT/CP economy strongly incentivizes using the latest tokens (since buying classics forces you to split your resources between latest and classics), making the classics even harder to acquire.

It's basically possible for f2p heavy grinders keep up with the current 5* release rate (especially if you grind PVE and PVP to top 50 or better). You might get especially unlucky on some characters but you will basically get all of the new ones by pulling as you go. But that's about a 15-20 hour/week commitment and is just treading water with the release schedule; it does very little to backfill a roster. 

It is entirely plausible that 6*s will come out some day or demi has some other plan in mind to make 5* acquisition easier, and if that happens then it will be possible to develop a 5* bench organically through prolonged play. But I don't think that describes the current state of the game, and I don't think it's a good idea for new players to plan their strategies on the basis of speculation about future changes to the game.

HoundofShadow

I have been playing competitively since late 2017 (100% FTP). My goal was never to champ all the 4* and 5*, but to champ characters that are interesting and meta. After ~4 years, all my 4* are champed, including Ikaris. As for 5*, I have about half of them champed now and I started catching up (champ all latest 5*) only in early 2021.  I'll probably be able to champ most of them in late 2022, and the rest in the first half of 2023. So, that's ~5.5 years of playing competitively in pves and hitting 1200 in pvps to champ them all, without wanting to champ them all, and without paying a single cent in any form to the game.

How does this link to feeders?

Giving more feeders for 4* and 5* is not a permanent solution to "catching up". You will be able to catch up the moment you play competitively, or you whale. Even if the dev start flooding all 3* to give shards and covers for 3-4 4* each, and two 4* feed one 5*, what casual and full progression players get are another 1-2 covers of each 4* and 5* characters. It moves the needle a little but it doesn't solve their problems. New 5* and new 4* continue to be released. Somewhere down the road, they will expect each 3* to feed five 4* and three 4* to feed one 5*. It's a never ending cycle. 

So, in the end, players get burned out because they want to accomplish what top players or competitively players are doing and they play like only 40-50% of what the top players are doing. There are players who played MPQ for 7 years and champed only 1 5*, while I have champed about half of the 5* in 4 years. This is not a show off, but it's to show the gap between playing competitively and playing casually. So, if you chose not to play competitively, simply prioritise champing 4* and 5* that you find interesting, fun or meta. Ignore the rest because you'll never catch up.

Vhailorx

I kind of feel like you are proving my point hound. You play to top 50(100?) in cl10 pve AND 1200+ in every pvp event, and even at that pace it will still take you the better part of a decade to fill out your 5* bench with baby champs?

From your posts in other threads, you also use optimization strategies like planing out your LT pull rate to be sure you can champ all new 5*s before setting aside CP for backfill speciality stores.

Is it really fair to say "don't worry, just keep grinding and you will get 'em all eventually" to 5* transitioners when that really means "play 15-20 hours a week, optimize your LT/cp resource usage aggressively, and you will probably have most of them in 8-10 years or so."?

HoundofShadow

Let me try to recall my journey. 

As a 2* player, I was getting T1 or T5 in ScL 4/5/6 pvp. Placement was really easy. Pve wise, it's like T50-T200, due to lack of essential 3 and 4*

As a 3* player, I often get T5 or T1, or sometimes T10 in pvp. My score was about high 700 to 8xx in pvp. I'll push for 900 if I have the 4* that I want. In pve, it's the same whenever I have the required 4*. I'll play SCL 7 only if I've the 5*, else it's always SCL 6.

As a 4* player, I was largely playing SCL 7-8, which always net me T10, T5, T1. In PvP, it's T1, T5 or T10 for SCL 8. T25 or T50 in SCL 9 PVP, before SCL 10 was created. My score was about 900-1000 in pvp.

When you are getting T10 placements, your clears for pves are not more than 25 minutes. For wave nodes and Mindless Ones, it's ~5-7 minutes longer. For easy pves, it's 18-22 minutes for 4 clears.

Therefore, for PvEs, it's ~40-50 minutes a day, and for pvp, it's approximately 30-45 minutes every 2 days. Total time spend a week is actually:
50minutes * 7 + 45 minutes * 3 = 485 minutes or 8 hours a week. It's way lesser than 15-20 hours a week.
That's the amount played per week once you get the hang of it. In the beginning, it takes more time due to weaker roster. Once you have the core 3*, you will be blazing.

LRs wise, I played regularly when I was a 2* and 3* player. LRs were fascinating to me and I could get 1-2 Heroic Tokens since I was a 2 player. ~5-8 tokens a week on average? I stopped playing after a while and play every now and then when I was a 4* player.

On my first year, I could have champed 2 or 3 of the latest 5*. I remember Kingpin and Cable were in there and they were non-meta. So, I pulled and covered both Kingpin and Cable but I didn't champ them. Instead I became a 4* player in December 2018 and continued to be one until late last year, where I became a 5* player. During this period (2019-2020), I pulled a cover of 5* and call it a day, until Prof X rolled in. This is the period where I started pulling all my LTs and CPs and I could get Carbage, Mr Sinister etc to 10 covers or so. As you know, 5* released ram up and I got fewer covers, like 5-8 covers. At that point I decided to start hoarding again, and in 2020, I think Kitty was in one of the special store, and I finally fully covered her. I became a 5* player in late 2020.

As a 5* player, I'm getting either T1 or T5 in SCL 9 PvE. When SCL 10 first started, I was getting T50 or T100. After boosted 5* came in, my placement got better and I'm either T10 or T20 in SCL 10. However, I don't play SCL 10 frequently. PvP wise, it's T50 now and T25 in S5 for scl10. Score wise: minimum 1200 unless the pvp is really slow, like vs carbage/polaris/brb.

The hoarding begin again in late 2020 because I need some new goals. So, I started tracking my pull rates this year or last year. So, from 2020 until Wanda/Colossus/Electro, I have at least 1 cover of every 5*. I started champing all latest 5* from the batch of Wanda/Colossus/Electro.

So, if you play competitively since day 1, you can champ the latest 5* in a year. Once you get the meta running, everything runs so smoothly until you can fully cover all the 4* but you just won't have the iso-8 to champ them. That's why I said, eventually you will catch up. I have a few vintage 5* closed to champ and my iso-8 income can't seem to catch up with the rate of champing vintage and latest 5*.

Sekilicious

Something like adding 4* and 5* acquisition to the Deadpool Daily would help a lot with older characters. No, I don't expect that to happen, but it isn't outside the realm of possibilities.

In the end, I agree with the OP. If you enjoy 4* play you really should should cap your 5*s and  play at lower tiers for as long as you enjoy it. If that is your game, then pulling from the classics store and ignoring all 25cp offers is the probably best way to go and will go a long way to transitioning to 5* when you get bored of it.  Once your 4*s are champed with most at 320+ and giving out the best rewards, which in itself should take years, 5* acquisition is easier. Especially for the new ones. Once you are able to make progression at SCL10 PvE and PvP it is possible to coast a bit and not miss out on too much. 

The best rewards, like 550 characters and Infinity Stones, are locked behind whales, in-game relationships, and numerous years of playing. Not even Hound competes at that level. No one who regularly posts here does, or at least if they do they haven't mentioned it. I'm not sure that is a bad thing as there are numerous ways to enjoy the game without 20 minute clears and a full set of R5 Infinity Stones. Thankfully. 

Vhailorx

Hound you are talking about 25 minute clears in cl10 pve?  That's definitely possible, but only for those players with all the key characters (okoye + ihulk, or Thanos, etc, + bssm for the gritty nodes), and who know all the right team combos and tricks to use, and are willing/able to spend iso/hp on boosts and healthpacks. for most players who actually make it far enough to play cl10, clears will be closer to 45 minutes if they play to progression and 60+ if they grind out for placement. so that's 6-7 hours a week minimum.

Then there are ddq and special event nodes, so I think it's fair to say that grinding pve for most players is 7-10 hours a week. And i haven't mentioned that pve grinding time must also be strictly scheduled to maximize value.  All 40-80 minutes a day are not created equal; if you don't fit your close->open back to back you will get much lower results for the same work.

Pvp is harder to time because there are so many different ways to play.  You can do a quick 20 minute rush and shield out. There's pretty good return on investment for that style, but not everyone can hit 500+ doing it, let alone 900+. Grinding to 1200+ generally requires (i) access to at least one meta team, (ii) knowledge of slices and player patterns, and (iii) at least 1 shield hop, all of which means a commitment of at least 1 hour per event (some of that is spent waiting rather than playing, but is still time focused on the game). And lots of players prefer to use different strats like harvesting retals and getting prog via wins.  These are easier but take much longer.

All of these times can be reduced considerably by dropping to CL 9 or lower, but that comes with an arguably more significant reduction in premium rewards (e.g. 5* shards and cp).  For example, you can finish top 400 in cl10 pvp and get the same amount of 5* shards as top 10 in cl9. And just in terms of grinding prog in pve, cl9 might save you as much as 50% in terms of time, but it will cost 12% of the cp and 80% of the 5* shards.

entrailbucket

The answer to this is (and has always been) classics.  Several players on the forum are currently employing a successful strategy of splitting pulls between latest and classic to build out a 5* bench, and it's working. 

They haven't totally cracked the exact method to make this work but I expect that'll happen sometime soon.  Roadwarrior's thread contains a ton of very specific details about the strategy.

HoundofShadow

You can clear SCL 10 in 25-30 minutes with boosted baby champed 5*. Of course 5* like Bruce Banner won't help you but most of the latest 5* can help you. Clear + Grind is approximately 50-60 minutes for T10. 

I forgot about DDQ plus shield sim. But it's at most 10 minutes for DDQ. You don't need to hit 75 wins in shield sim. Approximately 30-35 wins will do. As for special events, those are rare and it more less cancel out with 4 days pves or boss events. 

As for PvP, it's really easy to hit 1200 in 18-20 wins. Play Slice 1 because that's the place with the most point. A burst of ~40 minutes will get you there most of the time. No shield hopping and Line chat are needed. For newer 5* players, it might take more time depending on who they have. I'll simply restrict it to players who come to forum regularly because chances are, they have been hoarding for meta 5* so that isn't a problem. With boosted 5*, things change a little but if you have good champed 5*, even if you've none of the boosted 5*, you still can do it. The timing will fluctuate depending on who's boosted etc. The current boost week took me 1 hour to hit 1200. Other week is ~40 minutes. 

If you can get top placements in SCL 9 pve, missing out on that extra 12% in SCL 10 isn't a big deal because placement on on sub rewards should help reduce that loss a little. I'm jumping into scl 10 more regularly recently because I'm testing some other hoarding strategy. By Feb next year, I'll know if it works consistently.

Ultimately, being comfortable > maxing out rewards for reducing burnout. Players get burn out because they push themselves too much. If you are spending 1 hour in SCL 10 x 3 clears, simply drop down to level 9. If you can't play according to schedule, then you have to set a realistic goal.

If  you can play competitively and according to schedule, you can hit 3 latest 5* in a year as a new player with the appropriate strategy. That's why I said if you can't do what competitive players are doing, set a goal that makes sense for your progress level. You don't need to champ all 4* and 5*. If you don't use them, 1 cover is enough.

Vhailorx

entrailbucket said:

The answer to this is (and has always been) classics.  Several players on the forum are currently employing a successful strategy of splitting pulls between latest and classic to build out a 5* bench, and it's working. 

They haven't totally cracked the exact method to make this work but I expect that'll happen sometime soon.  Roadwarrior's thread contains a ton of very specific details about the strategy.

I have been following roadwarrior's thread too, though I am a few months out of date. My impression is that, as I said above, it is possible for grinders to keep pace with the 5* release schedule, but that doing that PLUS backfilling classics was a lot harder, requiring uber hard grinding (e.g. top 10 in pve and pvp) and/or spending.

I know that I still had to make plenty of hard choices about which latests to chase when I was still doing top 50 in pve and casual 500+ in every pvp. And classics were out of the question beyond my one sharget.

entrailbucket

Vhailorx said:

entrailbucket said:

The answer to this is (and has always been) classics.  Several players on the forum are currently employing a successful strategy of splitting pulls between latest and classic to build out a 5* bench, and it's working. 

They haven't totally cracked the exact method to make this work but I expect that'll happen sometime soon.  Roadwarrior's thread contains a ton of very specific details about the strategy.

I have been following roadwarrior's thread too, though I am a few months out of date. My impression is that, as I said above, it is possible for grinders to keep pace with the 5* release schedule, but that doing that PLUS backfilling classics was a lot harder, requiring uber hard grinding (e.g. top 10 in pve and pvp) and/or spending.

I know that I still had to make plenty of hard choices about which latests to chase when I was still doing top 50 in pve and casual 500+ in every pvp. And classics were out of the question beyond my one sharget.

I really shouldn't speak for him but that's not what he's doing at all.  He's f2p, not grinding like crazy or getting placement, and still doing well.

Sekilicious

CP acquisition depends more on the 4* and 5* farm than anything to do with PvE and PvP. If you are getting between 3 and 4 LL pulls a day it is because the farm is healthy. 

Vhailorx

Farming is a difficult to measure but very important element of cp and LT acquisition. But most farms are tended by consistent grinding to provide plenty of 3* and 4* covers.

And entrailbucket: we might have very different definitions of grinding. At least during 2020, roadwarrior was averaging 3+ LT pulls per day. I don't think that anybody achieves that level of steady cp/lt income without a level of play that I would consider grinding. Ymmv, of course.

entrailbucket

Vhailorx said:

Farming is a difficult to measure but very important element of cp and LT acquisition. But most farms are tended by consistent grinding to provide plenty of 3* and 4* covers.

And entrailbucket: we might have very different definitions of grinding. At least during 2020, roadwarrior was averaging 3+ LT pulls per day. I don't think that anybody achieves that level of steady cp/lt income without a level of play that I would consider grinding. Ymmv, of course.

Maybe he'll show up here, or you can check out the last year of that thread!

Vhailorx

entrailbucket said:

Vhailorx said:

Farming is a difficult to measure but very important element of cp and LT acquisition. But most farms are tended by consistent grinding to provide plenty of 3* and 4* covers.

And entrailbucket: we might have very different definitions of grinding. At least during 2020, roadwarrior was averaging 3+ LT pulls per day. I don't think that anybody achieves that level of steady cp/lt income without a level of play that I would consider grinding. Ymmv, of course.

Maybe he'll show up here, or you can check out the last year of that thread!

You think the 2021 data will help your case?  Roadwarrior is still f2p, but gets more than 3 LTs a day now. She/he plays to max prog in pvp and pve almost every event. I don't see any reasonable way to argue that isn't "grinding" the game.

I can respect your suboptimal contrarianism, entrailbucket. If playing in a suboptimal way is fun for any individual player, that player should do so with no regrets. But that is a different thing alogether than arguing that suboptimal play is anything but suboptimal.

Sekilicious

I am still waiting patiently for the F2P game where there is no daily grind. 

entrailbucket

I'm confused about what "grinding" is, then. 

If you do one fight in every PvE and play PvP to 200 points, without spending anything, then yeah, you're not going to get anywhere at all -- certainly not to the top tier of the game.  Why would anyone expect to?