Marvel Puzzle Quest: Character Rebalances - Batch #2 (Nov 13, 2025)

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Grantosium said:

I do feel like a lot of people who are not forumites don't know about MMR though. The game doesn't exactly advertise it and every other RPG has trained you to think slapping levels on your best characters is the best thing to do. Should we be surprised that casuals chase one character to 450 and hamstring themselves for their efforts?

Matchmaking is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. If somebody gets a character to 450, why should they be able to continue beating up on weaker players? They should fight peers.

Almost every RPG has you fight more difficult enemies as you level up. You don't fight lvl1 goblins at the end of a Final Fantasy game, because that would be boring.

But they don't fight peers or at least not most of the time. They fight boosted characters I imagine almost all the time unless they find another Polaris/MThor or Sam/Juggs team. So their 450s are always fighting 550s. It's easy to see why they get frustrated and angry and telling them to fill out their roster (something that will take many years) isn't super helpful.

KGB

I'm not sure this is true (and neither are you!). This presumes there's some large group of players with evenly leveled 450 rosters who've got all the boosted guys every week, and I don't think that group exists.

Regardless, what's the alternative? Should 5* players be allowed to punch down at 4* (or lower) players? I don't think the 4* players would like that very much!

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Grantosium said:

I do feel like a lot of people who are not forumites don't know about MMR though. The game doesn't exactly advertise it and every other RPG has trained you to think slapping levels on your best characters is the best thing to do. Should we be surprised that casuals chase one character to 450 and hamstring themselves for their efforts?

Matchmaking is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. If somebody gets a character to 450, why should they be able to continue beating up on weaker players? They should fight peers.

Almost every RPG has you fight more difficult enemies as you level up. You don't fight lvl1 goblins at the end of a Final Fantasy game, because that would be boring.

But they don't fight peers or at least not most of the time. They fight boosted characters I imagine almost all the time unless they find another Polaris/MThor or Sam/Juggs team. So their 450s are always fighting 550s. It's easy to see why they get frustrated and angry and telling them to fill out their roster (something that will take many years) isn't super helpful.

KGB

I am not a whale. I totally did this. If you want to combat not having boosted characters - build out your roster. If you want to play non boosted PvP, Shield Sim is there. If you want to beat non boosted characters, Polaris and Jane do it. If you want to fight boosted characters, Jane and Polaris can still do it but with less guarantee.

@skittledaddy said:

entrailbucket said:

DAZ0273 said:
Polaris and Jane trivially wiped 200k off one of my boosted characters health last week in PvP with neither being boosted. They seem as viable as ever. I don't understand though why players aren't exploring alternatives? In football (soccer) if your star player gets injured you have to bring on a sub and the best teams are built with strength in depth not eggs in one basket only.

It's not clear to me that anyone even needs to explore alternatives. Tons of players seem to be doing exactly what they were doing before, with no problems. I'm not sure why some folks seem unable to do that.

Because (believe it or not), not all folks have them at level 550.
I'm telling you guys, 4* Polaris is hot garbage now. Maybe she gets a bunch of her kick back once she is ascended, but as a straight 4 she's a waste of a spot.
I can't speak one way or the other about Jane, I rarely ever used her back when I was playing.

Maybe, just maybe, players at different points in the game are having different experiences than the loud voices here living up in 550-Land who are saying "they barely even touched her" or "nerf her harder next time".

If a bunch of players are using high level Polaris (and/or m'Thor) to beat me (600+/672/672 almost every event), why can't other players use the same characters at lower levels to beat their lower level opponents?

I'm not saying 4* Polaris beats 672s, obviously she does not, but were you fighting against 672s before?

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Grantosium said:

I do feel like a lot of people who are not forumites don't know about MMR though. The game doesn't exactly advertise it and every other RPG has trained you to think slapping levels on your best characters is the best thing to do. Should we be surprised that casuals chase one character to 450 and hamstring themselves for their efforts?

Matchmaking is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. If somebody gets a character to 450, why should they be able to continue beating up on weaker players? They should fight peers.

Almost every RPG has you fight more difficult enemies as you level up. You don't fight lvl1 goblins at the end of a Final Fantasy game, because that would be boring.

But they don't fight peers or at least not most of the time. They fight boosted characters I imagine almost all the time unless they find another Polaris/MThor or Sam/Juggs team. So their 450s are always fighting 550s. It's easy to see why they get frustrated and angry and telling them to fill out their roster (something that will take many years) isn't super helpful.

KGB

I'm not sure this is true (and neither are you!). This presumes there's some large group of players with evenly leveled 450 rosters who've got all the boosted guys every week, and I don't think that group exists.

Regardless, what's the alternative? Should 5* players be allowed to punch down at 4* (or lower) players? I don't think the 4* players would like that very much!

I'm not the game developer so my alternative ideas don't really matter much. Besides anything I do suggest will be instantly pooh-poohed by this Forum like virtually all suggestions of something new are. As you yourself wrote ad nauseam over the past few weeks, the players of this game don't really want change, they just want to do the same things forever because they are comfortable.

If the game really is bleeding players due to these nerfs (as opposed to Unity itself) then the Devs can likely identify that and then either do something about it to retain those players or let it continue and hope it peters out before the game gets into real trouble financial wise.

KGB

P.S. Incidentally, 5 star players (talking 450-460s here) without any boosted characters for the week are essentially my MMR for any given week since with a wide roster of 370s I'll always have multiple 450+ characters thanks to boosts. So they are in effect my peers and should be able to queue me.

I mean, if your alternative matchmaking suggestion is "I get to punch down 300+ levels and beat up noobs all day," then that suggestion would likely be quite popular, change or not. When matchmaking was broken most players LOVED it -- PvP wasn't "work" anymore, and they could win endlessly with zero thought or effort.

I don't think "everybody gets to mindlessly stomp noobs all day" is a great way to attract new players or keep them, though.

@WilliamK1983 said:
The cover every win was what made me stomach it. Climbing 7 points a match to hit my usual placement was a huge pita. And if you got hit on the climb up, kiss 60+ points goodbye.

I found it so boring and pointless that I skipped a bunch of those events, covers or not.

I don't think we are a majority.

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Grantosium said:

I do feel like a lot of people who are not forumites don't know about MMR though. The game doesn't exactly advertise it and every other RPG has trained you to think slapping levels on your best characters is the best thing to do. Should we be surprised that casuals chase one character to 450 and hamstring themselves for their efforts?

Matchmaking is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. If somebody gets a character to 450, why should they be able to continue beating up on weaker players? They should fight peers.

Almost every RPG has you fight more difficult enemies as you level up. You don't fight lvl1 goblins at the end of a Final Fantasy game, because that would be boring.

But they don't fight peers or at least not most of the time. They fight boosted characters I imagine almost all the time unless they find another Polaris/MThor or Sam/Juggs team. So their 450s are always fighting 550s. It's easy to see why they get frustrated and angry and telling them to fill out their roster (something that will take many years) isn't super helpful.

KGB

I'm not sure this is true (and neither are you!). This presumes there's some large group of players with evenly leveled 450 rosters who've got all the boosted guys every week, and I don't think that group exists.

Regardless, what's the alternative? Should 5* players be allowed to punch down at 4* (or lower) players? I don't think the 4* players would like that very much!

I'm not the game developer so my alternative ideas don't really matter much. Besides anything I do suggest will be instantly pooh-poohed by this Forum like virtually all suggestions of something new are. As you yourself wrote ad nauseam over the past few weeks, the players of this game don't really want change, they just want to do the same things forever because they are comfortable.

If the game really is bleeding players due to these nerfs (as opposed to Unity itself) then the Devs can likely identify that and then either do something about it to retain those players or let it continue and hope it peters out before the game gets into real trouble financial wise.

KGB

P.S. Incidentally, 5 star players (talking 450-460s here) without any boosted characters for the week are essentially my MMR for any given week since with a wide roster of 370s I'll always have multiple 450+ characters thanks to boosts. So they are in effect my peers and should be able to queue me.

I mean, if your alternative matchmaking suggestion is "I get to punch down 300+ levels and beat up noobs all day," then that suggestion would likely be quite popular, change or not. When matchmaking was broken most players LOVED it -- PvP wasn't "work" anymore, and they could win endlessly with zero thought or effort.

I don't think "everybody gets to mindlessly stomp noobs all day" is a great way to attract new players or keep them, though.

It's not that at all and I agree it would not be a great attraction for new players.

On the other hand the current CL levels in PvP mean nothing since someone in CL10 can queue someone in CL1 if you have the same MMR or you've broken MMR. That's very non intuitive for new players and we constantly see people on the Forum not understand MMR or that you can queue players in other CLs because of MMR. It would make sense to change the CL levels to be gated by roster level (10 obviously unlimited, 9 could be max 500 unboosted characters, 8 could be max 450, 7 could be max 370 etc). So if you chose CL8 for example you'd be restricted to using L450 and under characters and your MMR would be set accordingly by that restriction. This would help players who don't have boosted characters (or lack good ones) because they could pick lower CL levels and fight at a lower MMR where they have more characters to choose from.

Yes it requires coding and yes it changes things but it would give players with unbalanced rosters options to still play PvP by choosing more appropriate CL levels.

KGB

It's not a bad idea. The concern would be getting enough players in, say, CL6 in slice 3, that you could get a decent play experience if you chose that. They might have to eliminate time slices to make it work. It's set up the way it is now to make sure that you've always got opponents.

The level cutoffs there probably wouldn't work, either. I'm not sure there are enough 500+ players to fill an entire bracket across 5 time slices, and the main thing with PvP is that they've always got to give you somebody to fight. It might look like 450 for CL10.

I'd also want this to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in rewards in the higher CLs (which is desperately needed anyway), to prevent endgame players slumming it in the lower CLs.

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:
The level cutoffs there probably wouldn't work, either. I'm not sure there are enough 500+ players to fill an entire bracket across 5 time slices, and the main thing with PvP is that they've always got to give you somebody to fight. It might look like 450 for CL10.

I'd also want this to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in rewards in the higher CLs (which is desperately needed anyway), to prevent endgame players slumming it in the lower CLs.

There isn't any real point in slumming down in lower CLs. Unless you are just tired of the end game meta (which some would be). But yeah rewards in PvP definitely need adjustment (6 star shards obviously) but the big incentive now to play in the highest CL is the support shards which most players desperately need.

The only place that might get starved of players would be CL10 because players deciding they want to play down either because they don't have the roster (very narrow) for their unlimited MMR or they don't like/have the boosted characters (eg hate Chasm week) or they are tired of the current endgame meta and want something different (some 4 star or 3 star game play). All the other CLs should still be filled with the current lesser rosters that are there now.

KGB

If the rewards don't significantly increase as you move up in CL, there's no incentive for anyone to move UP, though.

I do think you're overestimating the number of players who'd even qualify for a 500+ PvP. Remember the number of 450+ players is already very low.

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:
The level cutoffs there probably wouldn't work, either. I'm not sure there are enough 500+ players to fill an entire bracket across 5 time slices, and the main thing with PvP is that they've always got to give you somebody to fight. It might look like 450 for CL10.

I'd also want this to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in rewards in the higher CLs (which is desperately needed anyway), to prevent endgame players slumming it in the lower CLs.

There isn't any real point in slumming down in lower CLs. Unless you are just tired of the end game meta (which some would be). But yeah rewards in PvP definitely need adjustment (6 star shards obviously) but the big incentive now to play in the highest CL is the support shards which most players desperately need.

The only place that might get starved of players would be CL10 because players deciding they want to play down either because they don't have the roster (very narrow) for their unlimited MMR or they don't like/have the boosted characters (eg hate Chasm week) or they are tired of the current endgame meta and want something different (some 4 star or 3 star game play). All the other CLs should still be filled with the current lesser rosters that are there now.

KGB

If the rewards don't significantly increase as you move up in CL, there's no incentive for anyone to move UP, though.

I do think you're overestimating the number of players who'd even qualify for a 500+ PvP. Remember the number of 450+ players is already very low.

This would take into account boosted characters though. So 450 boosted is 550 so that's qualifies for 500+ PvP if you wanted to play there.

Obviously enough people now qualify for the highest level MMR (550) because if there weren't you'd just face the same 3-4 people over and over again and you've never said that's all you see.

But you might be right that CL10 would have to go down lower than 500. It would just be handy to have at least 2 CL choices at 450+ (unlimited and another one even if it was 475 and under).

KGB

@entrailbucket said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:
The level cutoffs there probably wouldn't work, either. I'm not sure there are enough 500+ players to fill an entire bracket across 5 time slices, and the main thing with PvP is that they've always got to give you somebody to fight. It might look like 450 for CL10.

I'd also want this to be accompanied by a dramatic increase in rewards in the higher CLs (which is desperately needed anyway), to prevent endgame players slumming it in the lower CLs.

There isn't any real point in slumming down in lower CLs. Unless you are just tired of the end game meta (which some would be). But yeah rewards in PvP definitely need adjustment (6 star shards obviously) but the big incentive now to play in the highest CL is the support shards which most players desperately need.

The only place that might get starved of players would be CL10 because players deciding they want to play down either because they don't have the roster (very narrow) for their unlimited MMR or they don't like/have the boosted characters (eg hate Chasm week) or they are tired of the current endgame meta and want something different (some 4 star or 3 star game play). All the other CLs should still be filled with the current lesser rosters that are there now.

KGB

If the rewards don't significantly increase as you move up in CL, there's no incentive for anyone to move UP, though.

I do think you're overestimating the number of players who'd even qualify for a 500+ PvP. Remember the number of 450+ players is already very low.

This whole thing sounds like it is designed to benefit soft capped rosters! I also don't think it will work with the boost system.

It really depends. The key would be to make sure that they earn significantly lesser rewards for playing in the kiddie pool forever. The gap between rewards in each CL in this situation would need to be massive, such that nobody would ever drop down on purpose.

Agreed.