A Short Critique of MPQ

Unknown · January 2015

I could write a laundry list of things on here and go into great detail, but I'm not going to. There are three main ways that MPQ has been getting in wrong, and I am tired of waiting for them to fix them. There is a much longer list of improvements for the game in the past 6-8 months. However, there are three things that keep detracting from those successes. (This make sense later on, but I also created a new account so I could start the game from the beginning to see how much it changed from when I started.)

1) Roster slot prices. This was actually addressed by the developers (I want to say in the last Q & A). Their response was the last one that I ever expected. They do not want players having too many slot. They want players to pick and choose which characters that they keep. By extension, they do not want us to level everyone, we only need just enough iso to level a few select characters.

What the tinykitty? I hardly know where to begin. I guess I'm most puzzled that they as developers would spend all this time, effort, and creativity in making characters, but not be proud enough of their work to want everyone to covet every character. If it was me, I would be upset that characters like beast, moonstone, and IW are belittled by players. I would want to do everything for players to like the creations as much as the creator.

More importantly, why would you cut off your nose to spite your face? Supposedly token and cover sales are the bread and butter of this game. Yet, they want players to only want certain characters and to not collect the rest. It must be nice to being so well that you can just turn away potential sales.

Starting with the bunching of roster slots all the way to ridiculous prices of the slots when it gets to the 40-50 slot area, the system makes little sense. To me, the easiest way to hook new players would be to give them more slots and make it more affordable to buy slots (not more than $2), so that they can be excited every time they get a 1* or 2* cover instead of making them agonize about opening tokens because they will not have a slot for them. Likewise, if the slots would max out at say 500 HP, more people would buy more slots. This would mean they'd be more invested in the game, less worried about buying HP for an affordable 500 HP slot, and more likely to buy tokens and/or covers if they have the slots for the characters. There's nothing worse than the moment you work your tail off to get a new character; then, immediately you are hit with a 800HP requirement for their roster slot. To go from ectasy to agony so quickly, I do not understand the thinking behind this.

2) PVE refresh timers. I'm not going to repeat what I have said over and over. The bottomline is that we want to be able to play a game successfully without having to schedule our lives around that game to have the greatest success. 2 hours 24 minutes, 3 hours, etc. is not cutting it. We want social lives, we don't want to have to choose between going to dinner and a movie or making sure we can hit an optimal in PVE. The old system worked. You remember the old system. The nodes refreshed every 8-12 hours (whatever the exact amount was). No one complained about this amount of time to refresh, so naturally since it worked, it was changed to one of the worst systems possible. I do not care how the time of 2 hours 24 minutes was derived. The bottomline is that it is not a sufficient amount of time for players to have a break in the event.

3) Transition Process/Cover Distribution. Full disclosure, I am not wanting for covers. In that regard, this is not about me. However, this is actually the biggest problem facing the game right now, and I am tired of it not being addressed.

My biggest aggravation with this is that when the game was created end of 2013/beginning of 2014, the cover distribution system was awesome and the game itself was just one of the best. As far as I know, the same people that worked on the game then work on the game now. If that is the case, I just cannot comprehend how such brilliant minds have not been able to adapt the game to the current environment. I understand and agree that covers should be rare. However, they should not be bordering on extinction.

In the larger picture, my belief is that the developers should have a certain time frame in mind in how long it should take a player to transition from a 2* to a 3* to a 4* roster. This should be reinforced by ensuring there were mechanisms in the game that facilitated players to complete the transition process in that timeframe. I am not a fan of just play the game and eventually one day you might be able to transition to a better roster. In my mind, it is not the responsibility of the players to figure out a way to transition. Every other RPG I have played, there is designed path to getting certain characters, levels, and items. The path ensures that while the journey is not easy or quick, there is a certainty and finiteness to the process.

The bottomline is there are currently 32 3* characters alone (I think only rags currently has 2 covers). So there are 95 various covers. This means even if there were not 1*'s, 2*'s, or 4*'s in the mix, a player would roughly only have a 1 in 100 chance of pulling a cover that they want. This is not counting the new characters that will be introduced the rest of this year. I'll put it another way. Even if a player managed some how to cover max 1 character a month for a year, they would be 20 characters behind plus all the new ones. That's not counting 4*'s or iso needed to level up those characters. To put it into plain English, the environment today is far different from the one a year ago.

People tend to think that PVP placement and MMR are the problem. In my opinion, I think that the problem are the placement rewards. With all the characters, 2*'s have become the new 1*'s, the old 3*'s have become the new 2*'s, the newest 3*'s are the 3*'s, and the 4*'s are the new end game. However, cover distribution has not taken any of these new environments into account. Therefore, I would readjust the reward tiers to reflect his new reality.

I would also adjust the packs. In particular, the only tokens that I would include in event packs are the characters featured in that event. Lastly, I would have two sets of tokens. One that you buy where the odds are what they are now. I would have a second set that you could only win from events and progressives that have better odds. In the end, when players open up tokens that they have won, they should be receiving rewards, not filling kicked in the gut by receiving a 10 pack of Moonstone and Ares.

TL; DR: Please fix (1) Roster Slot Costs; (2) PVE Refresh Timers; and (3) the Transition Process/Cover Distribution.

Lystrata · January 2015

+1 to all points. Specifically:

stephen43084 wrote:

In the larger picture, my belief is that the developers should have a certain time frame in mind in how long it should take a player to transition from a 2* to a 3* to a 4* roster. This should be reinforced by ensuring there were mechanisms in the game that facilitated players to complete the transition process in that timeframe. I am not a fan of just play the game and eventually one day you might be able to transition to a better roster. In my mind, it is not the responsibility of the players to figure out a way to transition. Every other RPG I have played, there is designed path to getting certain characters, levels, and items. The path ensures that while the journey is not easy or quick, there is a certainty and finiteness to the process.

... that. I actually started playing MPQ in favour of an mmorpg, because I was tired of the grinding there. Weeeeell! That was great for the 1* - 2* transition. Now? 5 months in and no fully maxed 3*? If they want this to simply be a game of token chance, vaulted character chance, and what characters they offer as a reward for events chance... so be it. But I'm sure as hell returning to other games from this season on, and only sticking to the last few hours of each PvP from now on. There's really not enough solid 'return' for time investment in this game, to keep me here for much else.

Of course, this is just from my perspective. Not saying that I'm 'right' or 'wrong' in this view, simply that as a person/player, I don't find the snail pace rewarding enough to maintain my interest any longer. It doesn't surprise me that over half of players are newer recruits. The beginning of the game is very fun. The 3* transition is like trying to break past the 600-700 pt wall of 270 players in PvP.

Unknown · January 2015

Excellent summary and explanation of views I share. Especially points 1 and 3. I think something that is being overlooked by a lot of the vets for this game is that the dilution of characters make it incredibly tough for new transition players now. I would be really interested in hearing what the devs believe is the expected time for a regular user (not an all day/night user) to advance after they get a few maxed 2* characters.

Unknown · January 2015

The old system for refresh worked like this. Nodes refresh 12 hours after you did it and each refresh is kept track separately and points did not refresh continously, so let's say you did 3 clears at T = 0, 3, and 6H, you'd end up having something that looks like:

T = 0, get 100 points
T = 3, get 80 points
T = 6, get 60 points, mission is worth 40 points
T = 12, mission is now worth 60 points
T = 15, mission is now worth 80 points
T = 18, mission is now worth 100 points

This gets you 240 points and you have 100% of your points back 18 hours later. However, had you simply did 3 times immediately you'd still get 100 + 80 + 60 and it'd just take you 12 hours + whatever time it took you to do these missions. Even considering rubberbanding, it's generally advantageous to have all your points replenish 6 hours earlier. This system encourages you to do as much as you possibly can in one go because doing the mission again later set you back by a lot. The problem of this system is that suppose your points refreshed to 100% with 6 hours left, it's not very obvious what the solution is, especially back when rubberband is very strong. Another problem is that if you ever lost track of the value of your points you may not be sure if the mission is back to 100%, though the same timer can be applied here with the same system. Note that in such a system the optimal strategies is pretty much do as much as you possibly can as early as possible, and I think that's pretty fair because beating some of the nodes more than once in one sitting is awfully hard. Given a sufficiently weak rubberband, you only have to play once every 12 hours unless you're playing extremely poorly (e.g. you used 5 health pack but can only beat 2 node, so it's probably still advantageous to come back 3 hours later to do some other nodes).

Unknown · January 2015

Phantron wrote:

The old system for refresh worked like this. Nodes refresh 12 hours after you did it and each refresh is kept track separately and points did not refresh continously, so let's say you did 3 clears at T = 0, 3, and 6H, you'd end up having something that looks like:

T = 0, get 100 points
T = 3, get 80 points
T = 6, get 60 points, mission is worth 40 points
T = 12, mission is now worth 60 points
T = 15, mission is now worth 80 points
T = 18, mission is now worth 100 points

This gets you 240 points and you have 100% of your points back 18 hours later. However, had you simply did 3 times immediately you'd still get 100 + 80 + 60 and it'd just take you 12 hours + whatever time it took you to do these missions. Even considering rubberbanding, it's generally advantageous to have all your points replenish 6 hours earlier. This system encourages you to do as much as you possibly can in one go because doing the mission again later set you back by a lot. The problem of this system is that suppose your points refreshed to 100% with 6 hours left, it's not very obvious what the solution is, especially back when rubberband is very strong. Another problem is that if you ever lost track of the value of your points you may not be sure if the mission is back to 100%, though the same timer can be applied here with the same system. Note that in such a system the optimal strategies is pretty much do as much as you possibly can as early as possible, and I think that's pretty fair because beating some of the nodes more than once in one sitting is awfully hard. Given a sufficiently weak rubberband, you only have to play once every 12 hours unless you're playing extremely poorly (e.g. you used 5 health pack but can only beat 2 node, so it's probably still advantageous to come back 3 hours later to do some other nodes).

Would you agreed that it would be better if they tweak/improve this system, then keep the pve refresh timers we have now?

Unknown · January 2015

stephen43084 wrote:

Would you agreed that it would be better if they tweak/improve this system, then keep the pve refresh timers we have now?

The only problem I have with the old system is that doing a mission at the wrong time can adversely screw you up and it's not very obvious looking at just the system that you need to concentrate all your playing in one sitting, or at least concentrate all your playing in a few nodes. That is, it's fine to do node 1 3 times at T=0 and then node 2 3 times at T=3 hours and node 3 3 times at T = 6 hours because their refresh timer won't conflict, but if you did node 1 2 3 at T=0, 3, 6H your score could be screwed up and I'm not sure if the average player understands the old system enough to avoid this. In fact I think the new continous refresh system is setup to avoid this kind of problem, since the behavior I described is exactly how you should approach the current system.

mohio · January 2015

Good write up and I agree with a lot of it. In regards to the point about the devs having a timeframe in mind for transitioning I think it's pretty clear that they don't have a set time frame or things would have changed. Since the introduction of alliances and the alliance cover there has been a huge increase in the number of 3* characters yet it has only gotten harder to obtain them for a transitioning roster (extending covers to top 100 hardly counts here) simply due to character reward dilution from having more and more characters to populate the rewards with. If they had a set time frame in mind we would have seen them find ways to get more of the same characters out in a shorter amount of time, as opposed to the seemingly dart-board selection of rewards they have been using so far.

franckynight · January 2015

Im growing more and more impatient with the gm now.. Even if some minor tweaks have been made, lack of end game and insane scheduling have made me completely uninvested.. 1st time in months i didnt finish top 10 in pve.. I made some lazy clears and ended up 12th as most ppl completely stopped to touch the hard simulator.. Characters lately released not only are meh but the prohibitive cost of roster slots prevent most noobs to invest in them as they know they will occupy a slot for months before becoming serviceable.. Even for a vet collector like me i became uninterested in maxing every char as their usage rate is so low.. Eg .. Gamora.. I earned all covers and i dont see why i will max her in a xf/gt metagame.. End of shield hopping is another low blow for the gm as It made basically all events a LR.. Tank Your mmr.. Enter a slice.. Let ppl gain their points.. And feast the last 3-4 hrs on everybody until a reduced shielhoping sequence.. They even killed the interest of being in an alliance.. This game had so much potential and its sad they completely ruined it.. I will certainly remain one more season to burn my remaining hp before finally going into the sunset..

Unknown · January 2015

stephen43084 wrote:

3) Transition Process/Cover Distribution. Full disclosure, I am not wanting for covers. In that regard, this is not about me. However, this is actually the biggest problem facing the game right now, and I am tired of it not being addressed.

I agree with this points and the others but for this point i beggan a suggestion topic wich could help and totally change the frustration about "covers rewarding".

Covers should not be an advance slacker (only ISO), and should be an equal reward for ALL players. The "Crafting" topic has been created for this.

If you like the idea doen't hesisate to support us giving a thumb up or your advice, it can help making the idea growing up.

Link of the topic:

http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21313

wymtime · January 2015

I don't disagree with the OP on what his point are. I try and look at things from D3's point of view as to why they have things this way and what would be the implications of changes.

stephen43084 wrote:

1) Roster slot prices. This was actually addressed by the developers (I want to say in the last Q & A). Their response was the last one that I ever expected. They do not want players having too many slot. They want players to pick and choose which characters that they keep. By extension, they do not want us to level everyone, we only need just enough iso to level a few select characters.

What the tinykitty? I hardly know where to begin. I guess I'm most puzzled that they as developers would spend all this time, effort, and creativity in making characters, but not be proud enough of their work to want everyone to covet every character. If it was me, I would be upset that characters like beast, moonstone, and IW are belittled by players. I would want to do everything for players to like the creations as much as the creator.

More importantly, why would you cut off your nose to spite your face? Supposedly token and cover sales are the bread and butter of this game. Yet, they want players to only want certain characters and to not collect the rest. It must be nice to being so well that you can just turn away potential sales.

For Roster slots I do think there needs to be a final CAP on the cost of roster slots. Someone who has collected all the 1-4* covers should not have to be paying 1000 hp to bring the next character on board. The issue the Dev's are facing is balance. Top 25 players in PVP will earn more than enough HP to afford a roster slot every 2 weeks and a 3* cover potentially every month or every other month. With HP in progressions for PVP, PVE and placement there is a lot of HP that CAN be won. The balance is if roster slots cost much less or are free top end players will be able to max out and buy a ton of covers without spending money. This can seriously cut into profits for the company and cause the game to go away. By making roster slots continue to rise as you develope your roster it makes F2P players make more choices on who to keep and who to get rid of. For players willing to pay HP for Covers they still can win enough HP in events to cover the cost for roster slots and then pay for the covers they want, or if they want to shield hop. It is a balance of profits for the company and keeping the players engaged to keep playing. If they made roster slots cost max 300 HP they would have to dramaticly reduce the amount of HP players can win to make similar profits. We are more likely to see an eventual increase in HP available to win rather than a significant decrease in the Roster Slots.

Starting with the bunching of roster slots all the way to ridiculous prices of the slots when it gets to the 40-50 slot area, the system makes little sense. To me, the easiest way to hook new players would be to give them more slots and make it more affordable to buy slots (not more than $2), so that they can be excited every time they get a 1* or 2* cover instead of making them agonize about opening tokens because they will not have a slot for them. Likewise, if the slots would max out at say 500 HP, more people would buy more slots. This would mean they'd be more invested in the game, less worried about buying HP for an affordable 500 HP slot, and more likely to buy tokens and/or covers if they have the slots for the characters. There's nothing worse than the moment you work your tail off to get a new character; then, immediately you are hit with a 800HP requirement for their roster slot. To go from ectasy to agony so quickly, I do not understand the thinking behind this.

stephen43084 wrote:

2) PVE refresh timers. I'm not going to repeat what I have said over and over. The bottomline is that we want to be able to play a game successfully without having to schedule our lives around that game to have the greatest success. 2 hours 24 minutes, 3 hours, etc. is not cutting it. We want social lives, we don't want to have to choose between going to dinner and a movie or making sure we can hit an optimal in PVE. The old system worked. You remember the old system. The nodes refreshed every 8-12 hours (whatever the exact amount was). No one complained about this amount of time to refresh, so naturally since it worked, it was changed to one of the worst systems possible. I do not care how the time of 2 hours 24 minutes was derived. The bottomline is that it is not a sufficient amount of time for players to have a break in the event.

I think the Dev's are playing with the refresh times. atomized posted a very interesting point to what would happen in PVE if refresh times were changed http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21666 What the Dev's are doing now is slowling bumping the refresh times back. Elecktra was a 3 hr refresh compared to 2 and 1/2. This shows that the Dev's are listening and are trying to find the sweet spot of good health for players, but challenging as well. If someone plays in the morning, then at lunch, then twice at night that would be 4 clears in a day and 3 hours refreshes it will get you a really good placement in PVE. Yes someone is currently taking 2 extra breaks durring the day, to clear, but if they streached refresh times to 8 hours you would be looking at 2-3 clears a day, and from a Dev's point of view I would want my players to play PVE more often than that. The eventual perfect refresh time might be 3 1/2 hours. for playing 4-5 times a day. There will always be a crazy overly competitive grinder who needs to win who will wake up at 3am to clear a node and I will be happy to let them take 1st place.

stephen43084 wrote:

3) Transition Process/Cover Distribution. Full disclosure, I am not wanting for covers. In that regard, this is not about me. However, this is actually the biggest problem facing the game right now, and I am tired of it not being addressed.

My biggest aggravation with this is that when the game was created end of 2013/beginning of 2014, the cover distribution system was awesome and the game itself was just one of the best. As far as I know, the same people that worked on the game then work on the game now. If that is the case, I just cannot comprehend how such brilliant minds have not been able to adapt the game to the current environment. I understand and agree that covers should be rare. However, they should not be bordering on extinction.

In the larger picture, my belief is that the developers should have a certain time frame in mind in how long it should take a player to transition from a 2* to a 3* to a 4* roster. This should be reinforced by ensuring there were mechanisms in the game that facilitated players to complete the transition process in that timeframe. I am not a fan of just play the game and eventually one day you might be able to transition to a better roster. In my mind, it is not the responsibility of the players to figure out a way to transition. Every other RPG I have played, there is designed path to getting certain characters, levels, and items. The path ensures that while the journey is not easy or quick, there is a certainty and finiteness to the process.

The bottomline is there are currently 32 3* characters alone (I think only rags currently has 2 covers). So there are 95 various covers. This means even if there were not 1*'s, 2*'s, or 4*'s in the mix, a player would roughly only have a 1 in 100 chance of pulling a cover that they want. This is not counting the new characters that will be introduced the rest of this year. I'll put it another way. Even if a player managed some how to cover max 1 character a month for a year, they would be 20 characters behind plus all the new ones. That's not counting 4*'s or iso needed to level up those characters. To put it into plain English, the environment today is far different from the one a year ago.

People tend to think that PVP placement and MMR are the problem. In my opinion, I think that the problem are the placement rewards. With all the characters, 2*'s have become the new 1*'s, the old 3*'s have become the new 2*'s, the newest 3*'s are the 3*'s, and the 4*'s are the new end game. However, cover distribution has not taken any of these new environments into account. Therefore, I would readjust the reward tiers to reflect his new reality.

I would also adjust the packs. In particular, the only tokens that I would include in event packs are the characters featured in that event. Lastly, I would have two sets of tokens. One that you buy where the odds are what they are now. I would have a second set that you could only win from events and progressives that have better odds. In the end, when players open up tokens that they have won, they should be receiving rewards, not filling kicked in the gut by receiving a 10 pack of Moonstone and Ares.

TL; DR: Please fix (1) Roster Slot Costs; (2) PVE Refresh Timers; and (3) the Transition Process/Cover Distribution.

I think the Dev's are in the process of fixing this even though most people cannot see it. In the Q&A they said they will be releasing a lot more 4* characters. What this does is creates a new tier for players to progress too. Once there are enough 4* characters and a true 4* tier then D3 can make it easier to earn and build a 3* roster. They have basicly eliminated the 1-2* transition and that in itself has made the 2-3* transition worse becuase players see how easy it is to get a 2* roster and then get slamed back into reality when they cannot get 3* characters. For transitioning players you can earn more HP, ISO, and 3* than ever before. Once D3 has developed a 4* tier they will make it even easier, becuase they will need to make a way to progress to 4* land. It takes time for them to make this change but if you look at where the Q&A they said they are looking to make the 3-4* progression easier than the 2-3* so in turn the 2-3* progression will get easier as well. It won't be free, and players will still have to push themselves for placement, but they will have that opportunity.

A Short Critique of MPQ

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