MPQ 2025 Dev Update #1

S0kun

We wrapped up last year with a few updates regarding our current roadmap and some immediate changes that we were planning to implement going into 2025. Now that things have settled in for a bit after a crazy start of the year, we wanted to share news regarding some imminent changes and what you can expect from a revised character release rotation.

SEASON VAULT
We had stated previously that Season Vaults were making a return with more items to collect, but unfortunately the reintroduction of our Season Pass that yielded Season Vault tokens missed the mark when it came to how much of the Vault was unlockable. There were far too few opportunities to acquire tokens and players weren’t able to obtain all the items in a Vault. This is going to be addressed in upcoming seasons with a smaller 60 item Vault and more ways to obtain Vault tokens.

A bit of context as to why the Vault was 120 items, and why it was difficult to gain enough tokens. Originally, we were running the old 80 item Vaults with those Vaults taking up pretty much all the slack in the economy that would be used by other features. Meaning that introducing anything else would almost certainly unbalance the economy; be it HP, Iso, CP, etc. So when we looked at reintroducing them with the Season Pass, we knew we had to lighten this load a bit. Hence, the 120 item Vault which retained all the big ticket items players were chasing after, but also added other items to balance out its overall offerings for the aforementioned reasons. Obviously in hindsight, while it works for economic balance, it doesn’t work for excitement on Vault pulls.

So, we decided to go back to the drawing board and see what we could do. The 80 item Vault was right out. We just detailed why. And a bigger Vault wasn’t doable. But why then, a smaller one? Well, it’s because we reduced the value of the Vault to do it which might sound bad, but it’s actually a positive adjustment and here’s why. The 80 item Vault had 2 Ascended characters, which statistically was the biggest value proposition. That wouldn’t work for a smaller Vault. So just by cutting that to ONE Ascended character, that opened up a TON of value to mess with. We then looked at just halving it overall (which would largely keep the same budget), but came up with issues where a 4-Star led Season Pass Vault would be super “chunky” with almost all the value in a couple covers and the majority of the Vault being relatively cheap Iso and Red-Iso. Meanwhile, a 2-Star led Season Vault would have a decent amount of Season Character covers. It’d be a very weird experience across seasons. A 60 item Vault balances this out across pass types while still having the number of items low enough that we can provide them through various reward and bundle types to clear.

In the upcoming season starting on February 6th, this new smaller Vault will also have more opportunities to acquire Vault tokens. About a third of those tokens can be obtained from activities such as Season Pass tier unlocks and quests rewards. More are available through overleveling the pass by completing more Quests after you’ve reached max rank. The remainder will be found in bundles which will allow players to completely unlock an entire Vault. The plan right now is that if you were to do absolutely everything and purchase everything, you’d actually end up with OVER 60 tokens to the Vault. Which means you’d clear the Vault and have leftovers which you could then spend once the Vault enters expired status, as with other limited Vaults.

The current general composition for these Vaults will be as follows:

• 1 x 3Star4 Ascended character related to the character(s) leading the Season Pass
• 2 x 5-Star Season Pass related covers
• ~8 x 4-Star covers. Depending on which rarity is leading the pass, some of these will be more focused or random.
• ~14 x 3-Star covers. Ditto with the above
• ~10 x 2-Star covers. If the Season Pass is led by a 2-Star (for example, if the Headpool focused pass had a Vault), it would have more 2-Stars here, eating into a couple of the 3-Stars instead.
• ~15 x Various Iso/Red Iso
• The remaining balance is made up of various higher level tokens and premium currency (Classic/Latest Legends, HP, CP, etc)

CHARACTER RELEASE CADENCE
December brought a bit of a different release strategy for a month with a 2-Star release in place of a 5-Star. While this did have some positive feedback, many of our veteran players didn’t enjoy the knock on effects when characters would normally cycle in and out of packs. We’re still in the mind that we want to experiment with character release cadence, but probably won’t be doing that again. So breathe a bit easier. If it does happen, you’ll be sure to know about it though.

Towards that experimentation, we’re going to try this next month going back to a “classic” 5 Star then 4 Star release month instead of the 3/5 Star then 4 Star release that we normally do. We’re going to look at how the player base reacts gameplay-wise to the 5 & 4 Star release rotation, since the 3 Star has a lot of downstream effects that aren’t immediately visible (especially a month later when the 3 Star is Ascendable). And the only way to see that effect is to try it! This doesn’t mean we may not go back to 3/5s, or even that the 3s that are “missing” now won’t get released later. Just that we want to try things and see what sticks.

Something that not all players will notice is that we’re not planning on changing the rewards in Deadpool Daily with this new character release rotation. Some may not remember, but when we last made adjustments to DDQ, we added in extra Hero Points to specifically defray the cost of the additional 3-Star releases. This should theoretically be pulled back since we’re not releasing that extra character for the moment, but we decided to keep the rewards as-is since it’s better for everyone.

One other bit of spoiler: Part of this experiment also affects our New Character Poll winner’s release schedule. Congrats to Hobgoblin for winning! Current plan with this changeup is to actually release Hobgoblin as a 5-Star instead of a 4 Star as per previous New Character Poll winners. Given the amount of time between the end of the survey and calculating results and planned release of the character, a 3/5 wouldn’t have been in the cards. But as just a 5? Crazy 5-Star Hobgoblin bombs for everyone!

That’s it for our first update of 2025! We’ve still got a lot to reveal this year and look to do more of these updates to make sure you’re well aware of upcoming changes and exciting new features that we’ll be tinkering with!

Carnage1484

60 Item vault with 1 3a4 looks like a decent middle ground. It was obvious the original vaults value was massive while the current iteration is just too watered down.

Interesting about the character releases. No doubt you had some 3s in the pipeline that now have to be transitioned out and I would guess they’d become 4s instead of 3s making them direct feeders to the 5s they would have released with.

Hobgoblin i had hopes would usher in a Goblin rework. Still possible perhaps but seemed a better bet if he was to be a feeder for him instead of a 5. I’ll take the change though, he will be usable much faster as a 5 assuming hes good.

MegaBee

All I'm seeing is that we could've had a 5-star Paste Pot Pete...

WhiteBomber

Thanks for sharing, as well as listening to the complaints! Fingers crossed it all feels good, it sounds better on paper.

CASSIDYFROST

Hope that now with fewer characters to make, their art will go back to being well done and beautiful like before, the ones from last year were really sad... 🤞🤞

Bigwillyg

@S0kun can the costume for hobgoblin be demogoblin? That would be wicked

Hellblazer666

I am kind of glad no more 3 stars for a while. Just stick to 4-5 stars and please bring costumes back to the seasonal Vaults ones for characters not unlocked yet (all I got before you stopped costumes was young Nick Fury MCU Photon's costume AOA Cyclops and Silk's costume). Not the just changing the color in 2 places costumes like in the pass

Godzillafan67

Thanks for listening and working out a reasonable solution. I am once again excited for the next season's vault! [insert justin_biber_heart_motion_jif]

entrailbucket

Huh, backing off 3* releases will give me a chance to 5* a bunch more of the older ones (I won't have to bonus the new guys up to 4*)!

Get ready, ascended winners thread, I'm coming for you!

Bzhai

Never wanted 3-stars back in the first place. But the damage has been done.

Dilution and Aunt May, Namor ascended have made pve and pvp very cheap now.

revskip

I really like all of these changes. I'd much rather have a vault where everyone is all but guaranteed to clear it than a vault where some get the good stuff while others get boned.

Also like the change in the release cadence even if it is just a short term thing. Now if we can get the update that gets shards available for swaps it will be an awesome new year!

Scofie

Thanks S0kun! Happy with all those things, but the explanation and insight in the post has been the best thing for me. Very much appreciated.

Scorpion201

So 4 star got hosed for 5 Hobgoblin, I don't think there any on a 4 level. He should of been 4, why bother voting if you're going to change it up . Not fair for people who voted for him at that tier. I'm starting to hate this game more and more with moves like this.. also there's no point in don't doing deadpool daily if the rewards are not rework. The added Hero points are chump change. It's a dead mode at this point.

Carnifex

@S0kun Is exchanging shards for 550 characters likely to still be implemented soon?

LavaManLee

Since I am quick to criticize, thank you very much for the update. Greatly appreciate the communication.

Sidlon

I assume one of the effects of that December release experiment is that we have no boss event this week?

DAZ0273

@MegaBee said:
All I'm seeing is that we could've had a 5-star Paste Pot Pete...

I just don't know how many more ways this game has to stomp on me!

KGB

@revskip said:
I really like all of these changes. I'd much rather have a vault where everyone is all but guaranteed to clear it than a vault where some get the good stuff while others get boned.

So we hope. You'll note he said that you need to open bundles to get enough tokens to fully clear (over clear) the vault. I expect that means some of those bundles will require $ rather than just HP ones. So if you are a pure FTP player you may still miss out on the 3A4.

As for no more 3s, I'm a bit disappointed. Having every 5 star release be a 3/5 was a lot but I would not mind the occasional 3/5 release (maybe once a quarter or 4x a year at times like anniversary or other important Marvel dates like Hellfire Gala or a major movie release etc).

KGB

GrimSkald

Nice! Very positive changes all around. As stated above, the 3|4★ are just so valuable in order to ascend a character (they save you having to level the character to 266 again, which takes many months without favoriting/exchanging.) The vault being clearable is definitely more important than a bigger vault.

I've always thought the constant 3/5★ release was too much. I don't object to new 3★s - the new ones freshen up the game a bit as they offer better support options and of course you can potentially ascend them, but at the same rate as the 5★s is just too fast. I'm glad you're re-examining the cadence, and for my personal opinion - I'd welcome more 3★s in the future, but not every time. Make them interesting or not at all, that's what I feel.

Zarqa

Thanks for the detailed update!

S0kun

@Sidlon said:
I assume one of the effects of that December release experiment is that we have no boss event this week?

Sortta. We won't have a heroic version of the upcoming boss battle so it will only be a regular version. Hoping to post the rewards later today.