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Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign |OT| Welcome To Marvel [5m23s]!

hamchan

Member
It was prolly already ready to roll out before that. Unless they wanted to delay it.

Really should have delayed it. It's unplayable for a lot of people right now.

It's just so easy to have static levels instead of having this weird level scaling formula that's not working at all. It punishes people who do well at PvE and clear mobs faster, that's crazy. It's not positive reinforcement and it makes your user base feel bad.
 

NomarTyme

Member
Haha, wow - I just wiped on a level 50 Yelena with 2 level 51 Spies. I just have no good options for damage. A level 60 Invisible Woman still doesn't do much, a level 52 Spider-Man is good for putting off the inevitable but lacks damage, and a level 41 Grey Widow can dish out the pain with a maxed sniper rifle but needs a ridiculous amount of green to do it.

At least buffed Daredevil is useful in missions where there's at least one enemy hero and there is no Daken.

Indeed. This shit is tough with such limited character options. I miss my OBW. :(
 
I lost my "best" team on the event (Wolv 85, Hawkeye 85, Spiderman 40) on a fight against level 90 soldiers and pyro, so I decided to kill all the characters, before going to sleep, to check if the level went down.

When I was killing the lowest level chars (DareDevil 18, Grey Black Widow 28, Classic Storm 28) I started to realise that I had real chances of winning. When I was going to be killed, Storm stunned 4 turns the pyro. When that ended, I was able to use purple GBW skill, and create a line of green pieces that linked the timed attacks, destroying them. When a soldier made supression fire, he destroyed a red DareDevil trap and he got killed.

It was a VERY long match (each match made less than 80 damage), but I ended killing all the enemies, without losing any character.
 

Spoit

Member
People on the official forum are complaining that the levels are all over the place; some people have level 100+ soldiers on the first mission. Mine are level 12.

Mine were like 150 or so before I deleted it.

EDIT: I didn't start it because of that
 

jurgen

Member
People on the official forum are complaining that the levels are all over the place; some people have level 100+ soldiers on the first mission. Mine are level 12.

Yeah. My first mission had level 129 soldiers. Didn't make it all that appealing to continue.
 

shaowebb

Member
I have only the following to choose from in this event.
TfRr0oK.jpg


No choice but to tank with Daredevil and Ironman for the health in this battle. Ironman does the damage. Storm or Black Widow acts as battery. Doesn't build very well though. Spiderman's low health for this makes him irrelevant as he is only at lvl 1 and both Storm and Widow have blue tile stuns of their own. His only use is to do a low level bout in hopes of healing folks.

Pumping all my iso into that Storm to make her more secure as a battery. Gonna be a long one. Last night I made it to level 23 and I'd cleared about everything up to the point it has the first Venom match with the pyros. Couldn't get past it due to the full team damage that would slip through occassionally. Its...tricky. I think I can turn this into a red daredevil cover though if I'm already able to secure the 20's.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
I had a small window of time yesterday where all my enemy levels were below 20 and stayed there no matter how many battles I won. I was able to rack up about 1600 points until it was dinner. I logged back in and everything jumped to lvl 200. Weird.
 

shaowebb

Member
My levels never counted down last night ???

I thought things ALWAYS counted down on events in levels the longer you were away but no countdown occurred at all for me. I'm at level 15 now. Its slow, but Daredevil, Storm, Ironman is working. Itd be easier if I had more AP at the start of the round but if I resort to that then I'm going to wait until later on. I'll go see if I have any 500iso chances I haven't farmed out of prologue yet. If so I'll try to nab them to keep dumping into storm. She's really putting in the work for this team. Especially since her stun does so much damage as well.
 

cobell

Member
I used to love this game. I don't mind the f2p stuff, but the levels of the challenges are just ridiculous. This and the past event's mobs are just all lvl 200-230 to me, and I realistically have little to no chance to winning any engagement. The ones I do win are long, horrifically tedious affairs that abuse stuns
 

shaowebb

Member
I used to love this game. I don't mind the f2p stuff, but the levels of the challenges are just ridiculous. This and the past event's mobs are just all lvl 200-230 to me, and I realistically have little to no chance to winning any engagement. The ones I do win are long, horrifically tedious affairs that abuse stuns

What team do you use and what other cast do you have? Maybe there are a few team setups some of us know that are abusable you could try with your roster.
 

cobell

Member
For Heroic Mode, I've got the following heroes accessible
Wolverine (85) 5/3/5
Storm (77) 5/5/3
Iron Man 35 (50) 5/4/4 (My first char to cap and didn't realize there was a cap otherwise I would've done a 5/5/3)
Spiderman (40) 1/3/1
Modern Black Widow (34) 5/5
Modern Hawkeye (30) 5/5/3
GS Black Widow (28) 2/0/2
Invisible Woman (50) 0/2/1

I usually try to use Wolverine, Storm, and one more as those two are my highest levels 85 and 77, respectively. I usually try to use Spiderman (but sometimes sub in Black Widow) just to abuse the stuns. But the game just drags on (as I must focus on blue to feed the stuns), and if I make a single mistake (or have no other tile matches), I expose Storm and Spidey to lvl 200+ NPC attack tiles. They pretty much die instantly (or alternatively a heal tiles goes off and heals the mobs for almost as much damage as I've done). If I don't focus on stun-cheese, I just die to the endless attack tiles that build up as my dps can't match up to lvl 230 NPC dps and the 1800 team-wide heal tiles.

For me, except for the first two encounters, whose levels are 10 and 50, everything else is lvl 200+ (usually the capped 230).

I can win occasional encounters, but it's just entirely tedious and unfun at this point. I was considering buying ISO/coins, but I just haven't been having fun the past few tournaments and PVE encounters as enemies scale to levels that pretty much make the entire thing tedious. I've got a large amount of my roster locked up for this current event. It just kind of makes me not want to play.

There's just a massive difference between mob and hero levels for me which from what I udnerstand isn't standardized across players? Like the top players in my bracket have around a 3000 rating and their comparable heroes are lower leveled.

At this point, I don't know if I'm just clearly a terrible player, or if the player experience across multiple people is just not standard making a tournament/bracket pointless in my eyes. I feel like it's like having a tournament for having a 100 meter dash, but a random selection of players only have to dash 10 meters and get as much (if not more credit).
 

cobell

Member
Yeah, that's why I put Wolverine in my roster for the event when I try, as he has some powers not tied to blue. I tried Iron Man, but he's just too weak as a 1 star to deal with the ridiculously high level mobs in the event for me.
 
The two active events are extremely boring.

First, the heroic one, long matches with low-powered characters, that usually ends with a couple of dead or bad injured chars

Then, the Thor tournament. Everybody has a level 85 Thor, and their stats are so high that there is very little difference on what are the other 2 chars. You have to face a 15k beast with attacks that don't require too much AP, with 3 high damage skills from 2k to 5k damage, so is very difficult to win without receiving a LOT of damage. The only character that can make a difference is The Hood, because of the stealing AP passive skill.

Amazingly, the first 4 char on my Thor leatherboard don't have Thor at 85. Or any other char at 85. One of them has a level 26 Thor. So, are they chating?
 

Gotchaye

Member
Amazingly, the first 4 char on my Thor leatherboard don't have Thor at 85. Or any other char at 85. One of them has a level 26 Thor. So, are they chating?

No, it's just how match-making works now. Better evidence of cheating would be if people with high-level Thors were frequently losing points to much weaker teams.

The system tries to show you opponents (and show you to opponents) who have similarly strong teams, probably using something like an Elo system. This hidden rating carries over across events. So people with weak rosters can end up on top of a tournament bracket just because they don't show up as potential opponents to people who have stronger rosters.

This is nothing new; what changed recently was that it became harder to game this rating system. Before, you could easily lower your hidden rating by "tanking", and that kept enough high-level rosters throughout the entire range of the hidden rating to keep low-level rosters with low ratings down.
 
No, it's just how match-making works now. Better evidence of cheating would be if people with high-level Thors were frequently losing points to much weaker teams.

The system tries to show you opponents (and show you to opponents) who have similarly strong teams, probably using something like an Elo system. This hidden rating carries over across events. So people with weak rosters can end up on top of a tournament bracket just because they don't show up as potential opponents to people who have stronger rosters.

This is nothing new; what changed recently was that it became harder to game this rating system. Before, you could easily lower your hidden rating by "tanking", and that kept enough high-level rosters throughout the entire range of the hidden rating to keep low-level rosters with low ratings down.

Interesting. I'll try to use my thor with two level 1 characters (thor buffed is so powerful than other characters doesn't matter too much) and let's see if matchmaching get's a little better.

Edit: LOL at Thor + low level dakken + low level bullseye (to get sure that they are never on front). Deadly combo.
 

hamchan

Member
Can totally feel no one playing this PvE since I'm 16th place and I've barely played it. Since 1 to 50th place are all the same cover there's no point really trying that hard.
 
Can totally feel no one playing this PvE since I'm 16th place and I've barely played it. Since 1 to 50th place are all the same cover there's no point really trying that hard.

But there is another DareDevil cover as reward on 10.000 progression, that is duable (unlike the 30.000 one)
 

shaowebb

Member
Farmed out a couple of the lower level matches already. Starting to feel the hurt on this one as the only damaging character in it is Ironman and he's expensive. Still doing all I can to power level classic storm since she has a battery move and a stun move and her stun is doing good damage. This entire event is based around limiting your damaging options vs the AI. Given green is better spent on battery since Wolverine can't heal until its too late, Storm is the best thing for the event as she can wipe out enemy tiles in mass and fuel her team. If you got one of her, I doubt you've missed this point as your options are limited. Best time is likely Storm, Ironman, Daredevil if you got the covers. If not, one of the widows since you could either steal/prolong stuns or do damage with gray suit.

But there is another DareDevil cover as reward on 10.000 progression, that is duable (unlike the 30.000 one)

Even though that is only a purple cover Daredevil which doesn't do much in an event with tile droppers who dont turn tiles that is a BIG thing folks should go for because another cover means you can level Daredevil and that red Iso buff he has for the event means he will be so healthy he can soak up damage to protect your team. Also at the 1500 mark is another yellow cover Classic Storm that is definitely worth having.
 
Even though that is only a purple cover Daredevil which doesn't do much in an event with tile droppers who dont turn tiles that is a BIG thing folks should go for because another cover means you can level Daredevil and that red Iso buff he has for the event means he will be so healthy he can soak up damage to protect your team. Also at the 1500 mark is another yellow cover Classic Storm that is definitely worth having.

Well, the important part is not to get the card to use it in the event, is to get the card to be closer to the 13 cards and max DareDevil. A maxed DareDevil will be a great asset for tournaments.
 

shaowebb

Member
Well, the important part is not to get the card to use it in the event, is to get the card to be closer to the 13 cards and max DareDevil. A maxed DareDevil will be a great asset for tournaments.

Yeah, there is a big difference between low level Daredevil and high level Daredevil abilities. He starts off super sketchy, but turns out mad scary. Sort of like Punisher that way which only makes sense considering both drop gimmick tiles for most of their strategy. A high level Purple would be a helluva drain on a team once it got out there. The red ability and blue scare the hell out of me...I haven't ran into a high level Red cover Daredevil yet. I imagine its like a terrible game of russian roulette. Might even be a hard counter to Storm based teams that are filled with high cost cast that require massive tile bursts to run. Could you imagine doing a Lightning burst on the screen only to find you hit a couple of lvl 5 cover reds, blues or purples from Daredevil? Scary as hell.
 
I dont know i kinda lost faith in this game. first missions were around lvl 180 or so im not doing another event like this. The last two days i been doing two missions for daily login in bonus (got a black Loki :))
 

shaowebb

Member
Got my Classic Storm up to level 39 now. She's no good in the Daken bouts though...too reliant on popping green and doing so makes the match worse for everyone. In those I have to use Widow stuns instead of Storm's battery/stun setup. Her battery is just too risky till Daken's dead and it seems to pair him with liutenants and you ALWAYS kill the liutenants first otherwise they heal for so much everything you do becomes pointless anyway.

Tricky event to say the least. I'm maintaining between 13 to 30 at all times in this one, and the rank decay isn't bad compared to prior events. However, I am NOT looking forward to the last day as they have never reset this event even once. I'm beginning to fish away all my areas by accidently drawing all their drop list. Its gonna make last hour farming rough if I dont have any of the lower level bouts left to hit for score.
 

hamchan

Member
I'm just trying to farm for ISO this event. I still don't think rank matters very much since top 50 all get the same cover.
 
I am NOT looking forward to the last day as they have never reset this event even once. I'm beginning to fish away all my areas by accidently drawing all their drop list. Its gonna make last hour farming rough if I dont have any of the lower level bouts left to hit for score.
Rubberbanding was removed completely for this event.
 

shaowebb

Member
Rubberbanding was removed completely for this event.

Ouch...well it is what it is. BTW folks if you can make a run at it for those Red covers on Daredevil DO IT.

Just tried taking on a team with my Thor/Storm/Daken that had a Daredevil that was pretty fair. Nothing too leveled but it had a few covers.

ABSOLUTELY MURDERED MY CASCADES.

Thor/Storm was no longer a tool to strike fear in them. I got a cascade and MURDERED my team's health. Absolutely ruin. Also lost some AP too because I must have popped his purple trap.

Daredevil is the destroyer of cascade/battery teams. The only one there is to my knowledge.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
That was me and it was fun. I could've have gone on but I stopped because it wasn't worth the point.

I had shielded after that. You could have had some freebie points. I am sorry about that though, I was stuck in MMR hell and you were my best option of the 4 possible opponents I could choose from.


I don't even know why I shielded. I desperately need that 5th green Widow cover, but I'm getting a free one in 4 days.
 

NomarTyme

Member
I had shielded after that. You could have had some freebie points.


I don't even know why I shielded. I desperately need that 5th green Widow cover, but I'm getting a free one in 4 days.

Its ok. You were worth less than 20 points so it wasn't worth it to me...

I just shielded and won 30 points lulz.
 
Its ok. You were worth less than 20 points so it wasn't worth it to me...

I just shielded and won 30 points lulz.

Happened the same, for me. Got shielded just in time to avoid losing 39 points... and the next two attacks has been wins, that gave me a total of 34 points. I even went from #13 to #12. I'm sure that I'll get surpassed by 3 people and I'll get only one card, but is still good. I got out of health kits.
 

zulux21

Member
Can totally feel no one playing this PvE since I'm 16th place and I've barely played it. Since 1 to 50th place are all the same cover there's no point really trying that hard.
I'd play it if it was possible... but I can't get past the third mission.... I am just slowly grinding the second mission to 100 points and calling that that... if their missions continue to be this horrid I won't get very far in general.
 
Either they've fixed matchmaking, or having your top characs not going past 60 in a No Holds Barred tourney is the dream approach.

My match ups are really great. Nothing super easy, but no "Oh, fuck this, there's no earthly way" matches to be found.

It's sublime.
 
I really tried to play the heroic enought to reach 10k points, for the purple DareDevil card, but it's too boring to fight the same 2 fights (80's venom and grenaders and 80's Bullseye and pyros), that are the only that are easy enought to win 90% of the time and give more than 100 points. But it's too boring. I'll keep playing a few matches to get sure I'm in the top10 (only a few people still play the event on my bracket) and I'll get the red card.

I'm more interested in the tournament. I need a blue Hood.

The lack of a decent single player event makes very difficult to get ISO. I need an average of 12 combats to get a single level of Patch (and he's still below 70). I'm thinking about doing a roster suicide with the SHIELD training to get to the bottom of the table and then be able to fight easier (so faster) combats.

Edit: A guy with 700 points attacked me. He took me 9 points. I retaliated him, getting 41 points. He attacked me again, taking me another 9 points. I retaliated him, getting 41 points. Let's see if he learns the lesson or he wants to attack me again.
 
I'm pretty close to jumping ship.

I recognize that I'm on an out-dated piece of hardware (iPhone 4) but the game has increasingly become unplayable. It now takes more than a minute to launch and several seconds for moves to register. During the early days of the game's "beta" period the response time was near-instantaneous.

The constant changes and re-balancing to the distribution of ISO, HP, Covers etc. The game has no consistency to it and I no longer trust it. I was a happy camper with my classic Storm until she was drastically nerfed. Wolvering & Thor have been equally hampered. I've only got a few Rags/Mags/Spidey covers so I never go to enjoy them in their heyday, but I imagine its a similar story. I feel like whoever I pump ISO into is the lucky recipient with a giant caveat.

I have been playing this game every day for months and months and each day seems like a slog toward some Jugs/Yelena tokens and maybe a needed cover every couple of weeks. I'm not kidding-I've had fun with the game and got in near day one but I only just drew a Hood this past weekend...and it was the first card I needed in 10+ days. The constant balance changes and performance degradation are really hurting the fun.
 

hamchan

Member
It's really bad that they've been nerfing everything but not buffing anything. Half the roster is pretty much useless with how bad they are.
 
It's really bad that they've been nerfing everything but not buffing anything. Half the roster is pretty much useless with how bad they are.

Well, Wolv is still a good char (at least on 5/5/3) and the new chars are not great but all of them have new skills that are interesting. Patch approach of buffing you and the enemy is interesting to make a gather AP - spend all tactic (more or less like Ares), Hulk passive is a good green builder, DareDevil seems perfect for tournaments, Punisher seems nice to kill characters with tons of life (like PVE missions with characters that are level 150-200), etc.

The problem of the game is the lack of ISO. Is very costly to go over 85, even if you got the cards. And you can't even buy a good amount of ISO with real money (how can cost 20k HP the same as 52k ISO?). Leveling cost needs to be halved (or even less), or people will start quitting the game because they will feel that their progression is blocked. A few weeks ago, my problem was not having enought 3-star character cards to level them over 85. My current problem is that I have four 3-star characters that I could level over 100, but all of them are in the 70-40 range, because of the ISO cost of level them.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
I think every problem boils down to 'too few people on staff, too inexperienced to handle the job'.


Basically every decision they have made is been to 'protect' their limited amount of content. Constrain the ISO, the HP and slow the game down.

They aren't big enough to make the changes they need to quickly and they aren't big enough to thoroughly playtest the changes they have made.


Not to mention the incredibly poor customer service. I have never played a F2P game (no matter how big or small) that didn't reward the player with some kind of token prize when things goofed up. It's such a small thing to do and goes a long way to soothe your player base. It's unbelievable they don't do something like it. I just think it speaks to their inexperience.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
I think every problem boils down to 'too few people on staff, too inexperienced to handle the job'.


Basically every decision they have made is been to 'protect' their limited amount of content. Constrain the ISO, the HP and slow the game down.

They aren't big enough to make the changes they need to quickly and they aren't big enough to thoroughly playtest the changes they have made.


Not to mention the incredibly poor customer service. I have never played a F2P game (no matter how big or small) that didn't reward the player with some kind of token prize when things goofed up. It's such a small thing to do and goes a long way to soothe your player base. It's unbelievable they don't do something like it. I just think it speaks to their inexperience.


yeap, i agree.

i dont really have much will to keep playing since they nerfed the only two guys i really liked playing with. killed the game for me.

it was easily my favorite game of last year, now its like a mediocre game that i dont even want to go into because it makes me sad.
 
I think every problem boils down to 'too few people on staff, too inexperienced to handle the job'.


Basically every decision they have made is been to 'protect' their limited amount of content. Constrain the ISO, the HP and slow the game down.

They aren't big enough to make the changes they need to quickly and they aren't big enough to thoroughly playtest the changes they have made.


Not to mention the incredibly poor customer service. I have never played a F2P game (no matter how big or small) that didn't reward the player with some kind of token prize when things goofed up. It's such a small thing to do and goes a long way to soothe your player base. It's unbelievable they don't do something like it. I just think it speaks to their inexperience.

I agree with a lot of your points, but the customer service was great when my account got reset. It look several days but they did restore it and threw in a couple of Heroic tokens which was a nice gesture.
 

animus82

Banned
I'm jealous of you guys who are able to participate in the PVE event. I sold my moderb BW and I don't have C storm of 2* wolvie leveled.

I have like Modern hawkeye at lvl 30 and IM 35...... I can only beat the first two events.
 
Nerf was the best thing that happened to my roster and also now PVP is more fun and less of a wall of Thorverines.

I don't blame D3 really. The forums have become just a Daily News Comments Section of hate and entitlement. I'd never post there again if I were them.

I remember some poll they did there and if you compare the people that entered to the total people playing, it was like .5% of the player base, but they act like if D3 doesn't swoop in with an update on their daily operations (GEE MAYBE YOU'LL SEE HOW THEY'RE ADDRESSING THE PROBLEMS IN THE NEXT EVENT OR PVP TOURNAMENT? THEY'RE ALL TIMED.) then they'll start about 40 threads about it and put the company out of business.

Ugh.
 

ToxicAdam

Member
I agree with a lot of your points, but the customer service was great when my account got reset. It look several days but they did restore it and threw in a couple of Heroic tokens which was a nice gesture.


I don't doubt they handle individual tickets well, but it's the broader customer service that they have been horrible with. Compensating the userbase when things go badly or communicating drastic changes they want to make or maybe even reasons why.

A tangent of that is their inability to provide as much game information to the "in-game user". No list of what boosts effect which character. No list of the max stats for a character when fully leveled. No list of the five cover abilities so users can plan their builds ahead. All that stuff should be provided in-game.

The forums have become just a Daily News Comments Section of hate and entitlement. I'd never post there again if I were them.

The forums have really gotten sour in the past week or so. They really need to empower some user into becoming a moderator to 'drain the swamp' a bit.
 

Gotchaye

Member
YES to these new lightning rounds!!!!!

I could never get villain covers, now I'm tearing ass with a full buffed roster.

I have the roster to do well - nobody wants to mess with a buffed Patch, and my other 3* heroes are at least level 50 or so - but I'm not very motivated to compete because those tokens aren't terribly valuable. It seems like an odd decision to make it so that the top prizes, which are probably only being won by people with fairly impressive 3* rosters, are random 3* covers. For my part, the only available covers I have any need for are purple Grey Widow, purple Spider-Man, and black Hulk. But those are 1/6 of all possible covers, so I'm pretty much wasting my time trying to get them here rather than just waiting for them to be placement rewards.

I could see this being really welcome for a new-ish player who managed to get a bunch of Patch covers in the last PvE. But they've still got to be able to place top 25, which was pretty hard in the old LRs (you only needed top 50 for a Diabolical Token). Perhaps competition will be weaker since probably many of the players with very strong rosters have no use for these new tokens whatsoever.
 

shaowebb

Member
Doin' okay for now. I've had an absolute shitload of work and college lately but the decay rate on your rank is very low for this. I'm still 28 and I got Storm up to lvl 40 now. Went ahead and used the yellow cover it gave me for progression. I was going to build 5/5/3 but as rough as this tourney is a 5/4/4 sounds cool given the extra shots it'll net me. I should probably go and put some more levels on Widow. Running Ironman/Widow/Classic Storm is actually working out better than my 1 cover daredevil who I was using just to absorb hits since in a pinch I can steal a decent chunk of AP or go for blue stuns early. Damage is the name of the game so I try to hold off for Storm's stun since it hits so hard, but vs heavy tile oriented teams its nice to have that either/or setup in play.

Not doin' bad. I'll get at least the second level of red covers for this. Does that mean I get 1 or 2 covers if I do that?
 
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