A small honest review

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Unknown
Unknown
edited December 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
I have waited for so long for something new from this game and when it came I did not play it. I have no idea what survival mode is and I am not curious about it. I stopped playing after my T10 alliance missed the Elektra cover the last hours of the event because of new alliances being created to flood that T50.

I play other games on my phone, including the new Marvel Contest of Champions, and I have to say I have never seen a game that does not offer you any other way in obtaining something other than competing with an exponentially increasing crowd of players. Things are changing too fast and ranks have become so fragile with the latest changes that it is just not worth the ball breaking. Especially having to deal with ranks in PVE is what kicks many of us right in the nuts.

All this gets multiplied by the number of characters that exist in this game, which is increasing at an overwhelming rate for the amount of game play they offer. I will compare this game to the Marvel Conest of Champions only for the sake of saying that PVE in CoC is worth playing. I cannot go over the mechanics because they are two different game approaches, but they sure do offer you enough chapters to grind through with rewards that no one can steal and a "Coming Soon" label at the end which gives makes me know that there is more PVE stories coming. I do not know the reason why PVE is treated as it is in MPQ. Instead of having many new chapters for a year long game that are permanent and re-playable, we get this repeated old chapters that not only have ranks, but they run for 7 days too. You really expect someone to bust his **** playing this game for 1+ hour, every 3 hours, every day, for 7 days? And this is not a one time thing, this is the way they release new chars too, so it is considered "normal" around here.

I see a product that sustains itself by adding new characters while it lacks game depth. There is always new chars coming in and no actual reason to level them since they have no special bonuses, no class bonuses with other characters and no direct synergy with anyone else whatsoever. There is no depth in building your roster and new characters add nothing to it other than spending your HP for slots and covers.

Recent news from the dev's Q&A point out that they are planning to introduce many other 4* characters. What worries me is that they did not mention any new way of introducing them, because getting 4* characters is a pain and it should be since they are rare. But, if they start flooding the game and become essential characters in various events, it would really suck. Also, they did not mention anything else coming apart from competitive PVE (This sounds silly, but it exists in this game). This game has a serious lack of an actual PVE mode. If you want a reward you will be competing with everyone else 90% of the time.

Frankly I have been very skeptic over the past year of playing this game and I still am. I think I have waited enough for the game to shift towards something better. While there have been many improvements, they have always been accompanied with bugs and the devs saying "Oops" almost every event they run. The biggest change they have brought is end time selection, but that has brought up a lot of side effects to ranks, brackets and in general the way the game rewards you. Not to mention that they introduced it as beta testing and we have no information whatsoever to how long they are going to be testing it or if it works as intended.

Overall, this game is really fun to play up until you have maxed several 2* characters. After that there is a big brick wall build ahead of you which you have to bring down with a plastic spoon while they keep adding more bricks to it. Money does help but like any other F2P game it is way too overpriced and not worth it.

Comments

  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Okin107 wrote:
    getting 4* characters is a pain and it should be since they are rare.
    I think those days are over. 4s are the new 3s. The way they offered 5 covers of LadyThor and Elektra in PvE is a pretty good indication that things are different now. Given the benefits of PvE scaling that weaker rosters enjoy, transitioning players should hit events like that hard, and not stress the transition to 3s.
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,757 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I am not sure what the OP really wants from MPQ. At the heart of it MPQ is a match 3 game a la candy crush, or bejewled. What makes it different is the RPG element to it. They have many ways to earn 3*-4* characters, recruite tokens, daily rewards, progressions in PVP, rewards for season and rewards for PVE. They have a stroy mode, a pvp event and lightning rounds. When people want new types of game play, they are asking MPQ to change at heart what they are. Look instead at what MPQ has done over the past year. They have created alliances that we wanted. They have made 2* characters very easy to achieve. They have balanced characters, some bad spiderman, some good Cmags, Loki, Dare Devil. They have also adjusted to help the player base, giving out more rewards in PVP, giving a week break in between seasons, in the past 6 months 3 new stories in PVE (yes we want more). They have now created a new survival mode to make some of our support characters relevent again. Spiderman, Falcon will have a stronger place with this mode, as well as others who will heal, or shield from damage. With this new PVE they also released a boss battle who matches that we cannot have in Gorgon. They have made PVE now last 7 days, which is very grindy, but you can now win more ISO by playing PVE 7 days a week instead of 4-5. Is it what we wanted not really, but it is a way for people who want to go after it can get it.

    If you look into the future of MPQ this is what I am seeing they are doing. They are making a 3-4* transition by releaseing more and more 4*. What this means is once they have a true 4* level they can make it easier for players to go from 2*-3*. MPQ is still about competition so you might see top 10 get the 4* cover while top 150 gets a 3*. 2* might be eliminated from gold recruite tokens all together. Change to this game takes a lot of time and if you look back at the changes D3 has made I would say there has been a lot more good then bad, and if you really think about what the Dev's are doing and why they might be doing it you can see they are trying to make the game better for all levels.

    I personally enjoy the competition, I enjoy leveling they characters I get, and I might not agree with all the changes to the game the Dev's have made I try to understand why they are doing it and try to see where they might be going in the future with it.
  • Unknown
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    wymtime wrote:
    If you look into the future of MPQ this is what I am seeing they are doing. They are making a 3-4* transition by releaseing more and more 4*. What this means is once they have a true 4* level they can make it easier for players to go from 2*-3*. MPQ is still about competition so you might see top 10 get the 4* cover while top 150 gets a 3*. 2* might be eliminated from gold recruite tokens all together. Change to this game takes a lot of time and if you look back at the changes D3 has made I would say there has been a lot more good then bad, and if you really think about what the Dev's are doing and why they might be doing it you can see they are trying to make the game better for all levels.

    That scares me - if they make the 3 star transition as easy as the current 2 star transition is, I will be done.

    I have been playing almost 300 days and have fought hard to get deep into transition. I am not as concerned about the 4 star transition as my fully covered level 130s can beat every character in the game most of the time. However, if 3 stars start raining from the sky and players start gaining 166s 2 months in (like they can get 94s now), progress for everyone will grind to a halt as there will be 300 or more players in every bracket capable of getting top100.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
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    papa07 wrote:
    That scares me - if they make the 3 star transition as easy as the current 2 star transition is, I will be done.
    Were you playing when the 2* transition was actually difficult? I can remember biting the bullet and buying OBW blue covers, just so I'd be able to compete at a higher level. It's normal for games to progress this way. If 4s are the new 3s, then 3s are the new 2s. I won't be surprised at all when 3s become way more common than they are now.
  • dr tinykittylove
    dr tinykittylove Posts: 1,459 Chairperson of the Boards
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    simonsez wrote:
    papa07 wrote:
    That scares me - if they make the 3 star transition as easy as the current 2 star transition is, I will be done.
    Were you playing when the 2* transition was actually difficult? I can remember biting the bullet and buying OBW blue covers, just so I'd be able to compete at a higher level. It's normal for games to progress this way. If 4s are the new 3s, then 3s are the new 2s. I won't be surprised at all when 3s become way more common than they are now.

    I remember grinding prologue for my first cstorm, obw, awolvie and thor covers, and hoping for 2*s to drop from my hard-won standard tokens... icon_e_smile.gif
  • Unknown
    Unknown
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    simonsez wrote:
    papa07 wrote:
    That scares me - if they make the 3 star transition as easy as the current 2 star transition is, I will be done.
    Were you playing when the 2* transition was actually difficult? I can remember biting the bullet and buying OBW blue covers, just so I'd be able to compete at a higher level. It's normal for games to progress this way. If 4s are the new 3s, then 3s are the new 2s. I won't be surprised at all when 3s become way more common than they are now.

    I remember those days. 2 star covers started raining from the sky after I had Ares, Thor, oBW, Wolvie, Storm, and Mags all at 94. My thought is that if 270s are at 100% power, 166s are around 90%, 94s are around 50%, and 50s are around 25%. That means that the 4 star transition is the least significant, while the 3 star is the most significant.

    Think about the 56% of the playerbase that has joined since September (from the Q&A). In their first 60 days, they can get 94s and then they hit the 166/270 wall. If they want to keep playing, they have to evolve and put in serious time or money to advance, as 94s can attack 166 and down, but get attacked by 50-270s.

    If instead, those players have fully covered 3stars at 60 days, they can now beat anyone on offense, and will still be attacked by 94-270s. The game has suddenly gotten a lot more friendly for the new players while rendering the time that we are currently slogging through transition useless.

    Because the jump in power from 94s to 166s is huge, the transition needs to be lengthy (maybe not quite this lengthy, but still). The logjam of the playerbase has to be before that point in order to weed out players and keep the balance of the game.
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,757 Chairperson of the Boards
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    simonsez wrote:
    papa07 wrote:
    That scares me - if they make the 3 star transition as easy as the current 2 star transition is, I will be done.
    Were you playing when the 2* transition was actually difficult? I can remember biting the bullet and buying OBW blue covers, just so I'd be able to compete at a higher level. It's normal for games to progress this way. If 4s are the new 3s, then 3s are the new 2s. I won't be surprised at all when 3s become way more common than they are now.

    Do you remember trying to land in PVP between 50-75 so you could earn 3 2* covers? I do and I remember not having a shield to help me out so you had to be awake at the end of the PVP in order to with 2* covers.

    I can see 3* be given out as rewards like 2* were about 1 year ago once there are enough 4*. top 150 for one 3* cover would not be crazy. I just want to see what they are going to do to make a 4* transition other than 1300 points, win the event, or $$$$$

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