Why the MPQ System is garbage and why I won't try anymore.

Unknown

So here goes a huge rant. Thanks to everybody who decides to read it and I hope I can properly articulate some of my frustrations with how the game is designed.

Just right now in the Thick as Thieves Tournament I joined up 30 minutes before the Event was up to clear the nodes and get my 2 Storm covers. After all I have been cruising in the 10-60s for the whole 6 days. As I joing the Event I am told I am in place 217 and the nodes award a whopping 2000. I grind the same couple nodes over and over and get in the Top 200. Fair Enough.

Let's put this in perspective. I set my alarm clock for 5:30 am just to clear the nodes for the last stretch. I am writing this at 6:30 am to get it out of my system before I forget anything. For the last 6 Days I have been clearing the nodes every 2-3 hours. Except when I was sleeping. Always at 20th place when I finish and at worst 60th when I start. For 5 days I have been GRINDING this game. I cleared the same nodes so many times I was already dreaming about them. The Nodes always awarding 300-1000 Iso. I thought this was good enough. Today I join for the final stretch and notice that I have been leapfrogged by absolutely EVERYBODY. All Nodes are 700-2000. Insane numbers. Nobody who hasn't been grinding the nodes in the last 1-2 hours gets anything. The Event ended at 6 am for me. Where do you come from that you think this is an acceptable manner to finish a 6 Day Event. Screw everybody over who has been playing for a week but the couple players who have time to play in the final 2 hours. I took away a lesson from this.

The lesson was that it simply isn't worth trying for me.
I was playing a lot this season. And luckily I was placed in very easy brackets early on. Getting a couple 1st and 2nd place finishes. But in the last couple days the sharding took over. I get into this bracket where the Top20+ ALL have shields and maxed three Star Characters. My Roster right now is 4 maxed 2 Star Characters and my best 3 Star is a 64 Patch. I can't compete in those brackets. Fair enough, they earned their rewards. After hours of trying to grind up to the Top10 to shield up and get the 2 Magneto Covers I give up and go to sleep on 12th place about 40 minutes before the Event ends. (Again, most tournaments end at 6 am here) Being content with 1 Magneto cover. I wake up and am greeted with a message telling me I lost 390 Points. Wow. I get some basic tokens(I'll get to them later). For the next event I am again in a Killerbracket, and again being unable to breach 900 Points because I get attacked twice for every Match I win I shield up at 12th or something.

There is a fundamental flaw with this attacking Mechanic. I understand it earns you money because people need to buy shields yadda yadda but people skip around until they find a weak team and tear it apart. (For one of those my widow was only lvl 77 because I couldnt get the last blue cover and you can bet that nobody skips a 77 Widow, easy prey huh?). Now again, my team is all 2 Stars. So I need 3 Stars, and I get those from the Tournaments, right? Well no because as I explained the 140 teams are preying on the 85 teams and prevent them from winning anything. The guy who has everything gets even more and I can barely get a single cover towards a 3 Star that I can then level to 45 or something, weeee.

Which brings me to another point, those tokens. They are worthless. All I need are 3 Stars but I keep winning basic and heroic tokens that don't do anything. I need a way to earn 3 Stars reliably. The 600 Point Reward is always a 2 Star I don't need. And the more expensive Rewards are out of reach without an already stacked roster. So the sharding screws me over and even if I play a ton I barely make any progress.

The way those 3 Stars are awarded needs to change. Awarding only the top players only makes the rich richer. The people who really need them, don't. If people play a ton they should get their loot. I don't accept that I got a single Storm Cover for 6 Days of playing so much. Another 3 Star Hero I can't use but will probably need for a future event. Which is funny enough in itself. Since the next event will most likely hand out a new character and will need this one to earn it. Back when LazyCap/Torch/Falcon were released they were in subsequent Events. You needed one to win the other. If you didn't have the character from the previous event, you couldn't harvest the high value nodes to win the next character. Everybody who played a lot shouldve gotten the characters. Most people can't even do anything with it since they only have 1 Cover, but they really need it to participate in future events.
As for the most recent example. It would REALLY surprise me if somebody who didn't have a Hulk won a Storm. Tough luck i guess.

My takeaway is that I won't put the time into the game anymore. I will play some tournaments every now and again, but I won't try for a high ranking in those big tournaments or especially the Season anymore. I don't need the 2 Star tokens from the Thick as Thieves SideEvents, I don't need more 2 Star Covers. I will play the next Story event for the story and I won't win anything and I am fine with that. But you also need to be aware that I won't be progressing my Roster.

The bottom line:
I'm fine with longtime players taking up the top spots and winning more covers for their Roster, but there needs to be a way for new players to get there. Opening a billion tokens is not reliable and frustrating. Playing every 2-3 hours every day for 6 Days to win 1 single cover I can't even use is not acceptable. I understand you emphasize that the game is supposed to be a marathon, not a sprint, but it is actually both. Only the people who are constantly sprinting in that Marathon are able to progress.

So this was the last time I stayed up to 6 am to win a cover. I deserve better for playing that much the last 6 days just to be leapfrogged by people who were trailing behind the whole time. I won't put in the time anymore. My Progress is going to be ground to a halt and who knows when I finally will have my first maxed 3 Star. If that's the way you want to manage the game, so be it.

As a sidenote for something that is supposed to be a mobile game I have to wonder how many people are sitting at their device hours upon hours while it is plugged into the charging stating. Playing this game meaningfully while on the road should be about impossible. This has more of a Diablo grind to it.

Phillipes

Totally agreed, almost same situation here. I tried som hard to get 2 Strorms coves (to end up to 40th), just to finish 100 - 200 th in the long run.

Unknown

I gave up trying hard a while ago. Tokens, progression awards, and daily freebies account for all but one of the 3* covers I have gotten in the last few months. I don't have the time or drive to push myself near 3* reward land, 2* reward land is USELESS, so I end up playing for what tokens and ISO i feel like since at the least tokens have a tiny chance at something interesting. There is no middle ground. Playing while not caring simply dries your reward stream up to a desert and makes the game that much less fun.

Salmon Paw

This game has become such a grind that I basically can't do anything else, it's become a second job if i want any rewards, and they made the tokens have an even lower chance to contain the 3 star cards I need (Dropped from 22% event bonus for featured hero to a whopping 6% ). Trying to clear these nodes for a 6 day event that only has rewards up to 25k when my ending score was around 140k was not only insulting but i was barely even in the top 100. I lost sleep over this game to try to stay competitive, but it's really just not worth it at all to get cards for a character that is almost an exact copy of an already existing character just reinforcing WHY people call them Lazythor, Lazycap, LazyStorm. Also the pvp matchmaking is so broken I feel like i'm starting fodder for everyone in any bracket i'm in, where it pits me against characters impossibly high for me to win right from the onset. the game just hasn't been as fun and it makes me sad, but none of this will change even with the feedback thread. The only way they will start listening is if people start down voting the app in the stores and listing the reasons why. Until it affects their profits they'll just keep making it more of a grind.