MPQ 12th Anniversary Celebrations
Comments
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I'm looking forward to nearly everything mentioned here. We've been playing the same EVERYTHING for so long now... the same PVEs... the same SCL difficulty... the meta that only shifts if something crazy gets released, but its okay because we still have winfinites and Kang/Darkveil... the same formula for a lot of stuff.
And yes, I DO enjoy the game still. I enjoy theory-crafting and the "labwork" involved.
So, I'm just going to wait and see... like everyone else. I've rode out this game for so long, getting to this point that its nice to see this "old dog learn new tricks".
I have my theories, and its a combination of what some people have stated here already, and I'm going to leave it at that. There's no point of speculating any further -- all I know is that I can't wait to see what happens.
...oh, and please update the loading screen when it all happens. Would be nice to see a fresh design as we enter this 'brave new world'.
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I had a cool idea that I don't think I've seen put forth... what if 6 stars were like a full combined 5* TEAM? Basically you only get the one character in play but it requires having all the 5s involved. It's one way you could implement it without upending (and let's be honest, probably ruining) the current economy. You could probably still drive sales if you were willing to devalue the 5* store costs, and honestly in introducing a still higher tier you would kind of have to.
Off the top of my head you could do something like introduce 5* Terrax and then when you team 3 Heralds of Galactus you get the big G himself.
It would also fit the release cadence well, when you wanted a new 6* you could announce them while launching the 5* with a release store that would feature all 3.
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I'm very sceptic. From one day to another they've just deactivated some supports for pvp. I get the intention to balance the game, but to have the players chase and invest in these supports for multiple years and then poof - just gone without any form of compensation is just cruel.
If the 5* nerfs are handled in a similar way, I see many players turn their back.0 -
As I have said before and in other things, the devs just need to explain what they are doing. Anticipating things is not always good.
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@bluewolf said:
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
I don’t give a fark what various players have said needed to be fixed or the game will die because obviously they’ve been wrong up to now. The thing that matters is really just how much money it brings in vs how much they spend to run it (labor and servers).
**It seems clear they wouldn’t push all these changes if they weren’t in a dire situation financially. Because it’ll make people upset. **
People may have gotten too comfortable, but regardless, they are comfortable with short scl10 clears. And the only effective way to make people want to spend money is to make short scl10 clears again about 1.5 to 2 years away without spending thousands of dollars.
So it is impossible that they were gonna do these things anyway? This stuff is normally planned a LONG way in advance in terms of development, sure they might have looked at the hit taken from cover swaps and changed course accordingly but don't pretend they have just made this all up since Unity was implemented a few short months ago. Remember the Devs had originally targeted Fantastic Four movie in July for new content.
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
But didn't they also say that only 1% of players are 5* players? So that means the other 29% must be 4* and lower which means there is a good chance that
a.) They progress to become 5* players and become more addicted to the game, taking the place of any high end players quitting
b.) There is a healthy amount of players still progressing to the upper tier.We have definitely lost players over Unity (I was very nearly one of them) but my experience with that is that these players didn't want to quit but couldn't play the game in state it is in with game freeze and lag. There is nothing to say these players won't come back if things get sorted out.
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@NMANOZ1 said:
With the 6 stars, they just need to be standalones. So no accending 1 to 5 stars to 6. This would save them a huge amount of times trying to rebalance every character in the game (plus the many issues that will occur).Agreed. Give them stun, away and airbourne immunity as standard also. Then we have to figure out how to beat them. Trial 6* in one off events for live testing.
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@DAZ0273 said:
@bluewolf said:
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
I don’t give a fark what various players have said needed to be fixed or the game will die because obviously they’ve been wrong up to now. The thing that matters is really just how much money it brings in vs how much they spend to run it (labor and servers).
**It seems clear they wouldn’t push all these changes if they weren’t in a dire situation financially. Because it’ll make people upset. **
People may have gotten too comfortable, but regardless, they are comfortable with short scl10 clears. And the only effective way to make people want to spend money is to make short scl10 clears again about 1.5 to 2 years away without spending thousands of dollars.
>
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
But didn't they also say that only 1% of players are 5* players? So that means the other 29% must be 4* and lower
Just because 30% play scl10 doesn't automatically mean that only 1% of those are 5* players.
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@KGB said:
@entrailbucket said:
@NMANOZ1 said:
With the 6 stars, they just need to be standalones. So no accending 1 to 5 stars to 6. This would save them a huge amount of times trying to rebalance every character in the game (plus the many issues that will occur).This would be awful. We've finally got some variety. If they keep the current ascension the way it is, the game will be dominated by 1 or 2 6* characters.
Well if they don't delay ascending 5s into 6s then it will be dominated by 1A6s since every semi top player has dup 550s of the 1 star tier and will ascend minute 1.
I'd be very surprised if u can ascend current characters into 6 stars day 1 or anytime soon.
KGB
In the short term, yes. But over time players will level up other characters, and build the natural 6* too. If they don't allow it at all then the metagame will be 100% Red Skull or whoever, forever.
Maybe it's something that happens after a few months.
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@Pantera236 said:
@DAZ0273 said:
@bluewolf said:
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
I don’t give a fark what various players have said needed to be fixed or the game will die because obviously they’ve been wrong up to now. The thing that matters is really just how much money it brings in vs how much they spend to run it (labor and servers).
**It seems clear they wouldn’t push all these changes if they weren’t in a dire situation financially. Because it’ll make people upset. **
People may have gotten too comfortable, but regardless, they are comfortable with short scl10 clears. And the only effective way to make people want to spend money is to make short scl10 clears again about 1.5 to 2 years away without spending thousands of dollars.
>
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
But didn't they also say that only 1% of players are 5* players? So that means the other 29% must be 4* and lower
Just because 30% play scl10 doesn't automatically mean that only 1% of those are 5* players.
If out of all players playing 30% are playing in SCL10 they said 1% of all players are 5* players then surely the maximum amount of 5* players as a total of all players cannot be higher than 1%. So it is possible that there are less than that amount of 5* players in SCL10. I mean I don't think so but ask @entrailbucket, this was his absolute holy grail of an answer from the Devs for ages as to how many 5* players there are. So if 1% of all players are 5* players it follows that the maximum amount of 5* players in SCL10 can't be more than that. I mean it sounds a bit fishy to me but that is what was told. Maybe the amount has gone up?
No idea. Of course possible that neither of these figures have any qualifying data attached - is the 1% calculated based upon playing every day or based upon anybody who has ever downloaded the app? How many players are we talking about? 1% of 1 million players is still a LOT of players.
Anyway, the proof will always be in the pudding. Let's see if they can even fix the game before worrying about anything else.
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Anyway, the proof will always be in the pudding. Let's see if they can even fix the game before worrying about anything else.
That is the rub, for sure. I just decided to set up a 2 person saved team by putting a 1 cover 1storm in the middle that I could sell. Sold her. NOW the saved team inexplicably has 3 HEVO in the middle.
There are still so many display errors and weird bugs and things that work wrong in so many places and it takes weeks to get fixes.
And they're doing all this?
My football analogy is like imagine if your favorite team is down by a score with 5 seconds left to play on the 2 yard line. Half the starters are injured and your second string quarterback can't pass so they decide to run a trick play because the defensive line is one of the top in the league.
Maybe if they can pass the ball back and forth 3 times and get it to the 3rd best rusher they can get an open lane to run it all the way in, but we know how these usually go.
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@bluewolf said:
Anyway, the proof will always be in the pudding. Let's see if they can even fix the game before worrying about anything else.
That is the rub, for sure. I just decided to set up a 2 person saved team by putting a 1 cover 1storm in the middle that I could sell. Sold her. NOW the saved team inexplicably has 3 HEVO in the middle.
There are still so many display errors and weird bugs and things that work wrong in so many places and it takes weeks to get fixes.
And they're doing all this?
My football analogy is like imagine if your favorite team is down by a score with 5 seconds left to play on the 2 yard line. Half the starters are injured and your second string quarterback can't pass so they decide to run a trick play because the defensive line is one of the top in the league.
Maybe if they can pass the ball back and forth 3 times and get it to the 3rd best rusher they can get an open lane to run it all the way in, but we know how these usually go.
You said football and I was all ears and then I didn't understand anything you said in relation to football! But sure, I hope they rush down the open lane! Maybe they can score from a corner!
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@bluewolf said:
Anyway, the proof will always be in the pudding. Let's see if they can even fix the game before worrying about anything else.
That is the rub, for sure. I just decided to set up a 2 person saved team by putting a 1 cover 1storm in the middle that I could sell. Sold her. NOW the saved team inexplicably has 3 HEVO in the middle.
There are still so many display errors and weird bugs and things that work wrong in so many places and it takes weeks to get fixes.
And they're doing all this?
My football analogy is like imagine if your favorite team is down by a score with 5 seconds left to play on the 2 yard line. Half the starters are injured and your second string quarterback can't pass so they decide to run a trick play because the defensive line is one of the top in the league.
Maybe if they can pass the ball back and forth 3 times and get it to the 3rd best rusher they can get an open lane to run it all the way in, but we know how these usually go.
I think the question is how much all that stuff actually matters. You could say that all those little low-priority bugs are causing them to lose goodwill among the veteran players, but I'd argue that they haven't had any goodwill from that group for many years.
It'd be great if they could earn some back, but I don't think there's ANY change they could make that would do that. They could give everybody 10 million CP, or fully maxed out characters, for free, and the majority of vets would still have zero goodwill toward them.
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Analogies?????!!!
Why i oughta1 -
They do sell cheeseburgers at football games, so football is a perfect place for mpq analogies
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@Zarqa said:
@entrailbucket said:
What would those players do? They're not going to quit, ever. The game's been a buggy disaster for months and they're all still playing, and complaining about it. They didn't quit when their swaps got taken away. They certainly won't quit with 6*. They'll pay, because they don't want to get passed by.But they did quit?
Flips are happening slower. PvP numbers are down. Forum and Discord have considerably less people posting. It’s so (so!) much harder to recruit people for alliances.This is where we probably disagree. The game has lost a huge amount of players since Unity. And certain Dev choices will lead to more people quitting. I’m not the one tracking, but I trust those who do and have posted about it here and on Discord.
Your stance (I think?): people won’t quit no matter what they say or do!
My stance: we recently lost a core part of the long term player base and it’s really hard to replace them with new blood.This. 1000%
There is no question that players have quit since the Unity rollout. In our alliance family, we've lost players due to Unity, some who were frequent buyers and had 550 rosters. It didn't matter if they were casual players or whales, as the game issues have overwhelmingly turned them off. They have stopped playing and others are playing considerably less. There has also been an increasing number of alliance families pooling their players together to form co-op alliances. This, too, is a symptom of a dwindling player base where a lack of recruits has prompted alliances to explore other options.
The number of bracket flips is down significantly. How do we know? As a moderator for several of the Line chats that update bracket flips, I've personally witnessed this happening day in and day out. I also maintain the MPQ Brackets spreadsheet daily for the last 7 years, so I'm speaking from first-hand experience. For PVE, the CL10 brackets now take longer to flip, flip less than they did before Unity, or struggle to flip even once. This is true for the few CL9 brackets that get updated. On the PVP side, there are fewer season bracket flips for SCL10, and SCL9 and SCL8 take longer to flip once for the entire season.
I'm not sure how refactoring the CL brackets will improve the situation either, since it shifts the problem to a different CL. Instead, it will likely highlight the dearth of players needed to flip the brackets and, worst case, further thin out the brackets.
Player engagement is down. Attrition is a normal part of any game, especially one that has been running for as long as MPQ. The drop-off after Unity, however, is significant and the lowest it has been in the game's history. How do we know? Players don't have access to the back-end data, but the game does report on 1 metric that can be tracked at the end of each event: Total number of Alliances based on Alliance Rank
Using this data point, we can get an idea of the number of active alliances in the game. It's not an exact science since it reports on teams, not individual players. An alliance may qualify, whether 1 or 20 players are active, for example. Nevertheless, tracking the total number of alliances provides a picture of overall engagement. The number varies from event to event. I've been collecting this data point for over 3 years until Unity no longer made it possible, as the event disappears as soon as it ends. I can still capture the number for PVP during the brief period it shows in-game after an event ends, but PVE no longer shows for me because I play S5 and there isn't time for the results to tally.
Before Unity, the total number of PVP alliances was hovering in the mid-6000s. After the Unity beta was rolled out to all platforms, the number dipped to the low 6000s. After MMR broke, the number took another nosedive to the low 5000s. The lowest on record was 4,606 alliances on 8/9/2025, from a high of 10,625 alliances on 12/29/2021.
On a seasonal basis, the total number of PVP alliances has been declining steadily. The game has averaged a loss of roughly 2,000 alliances every year (13 seasons). More recently, the game has shed 1,000 alliances in all of last year (2024). After Unity, the number dropped another 1k, from the 9000s to the 8000s. The lowest on record was 8,422 alliances on 7/21/2025, from a high of 14,744 alliances on 3/1/2021. I don't have the number from the last season, which ended on 8/18/2025, but it likely dropped lower.
On the PVE side, the total number of alliances has been declining at a similar rate. The game has averaged a loss of roughly 1,500 alliances every year (13 seasons) over the past 4 years. This number includes not only the 16 regular Story events but also the regular and Heroic Boss events. The lowest on record was 6,770 alliances on 8/14/2025, which was also the last data collected for PVE, from a high of 13,451 alliances on 1/24/2021. It doesn't show on this chart, as it was the only data point I could capture post-Unity. (Long story short, I played S1 which allowed me to see the final number.)
With the Boss events removed, the troughs (dips) in the chart are less pronounced; however, the downward trend is still irrefutable.
Taken together, the evidence points to one undeniable conclusion: the game has been hemorrhaging players and Unity, with all of the issues it has created, has accelerated the loss of players.
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@DAZ0273 said:
@Pantera236 said:
@DAZ0273 said:
@bluewolf said:
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
I don’t give a fark what various players have said needed to be fixed or the game will die because obviously they’ve been wrong up to now. The thing that matters is really just how much money it brings in vs how much they spend to run it (labor and servers).
**It seems clear they wouldn’t push all these changes if they weren’t in a dire situation financially. Because it’ll make people upset. **
People may have gotten too comfortable, but regardless, they are comfortable with short scl10 clears. And the only effective way to make people want to spend money is to make short scl10 clears again about 1.5 to 2 years away without spending thousands of dollars.
>
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
But didn't they also say that only 1% of players are 5* players? So that means the other 29% must be 4* and lower
Just because 30% play scl10 doesn't automatically mean that only 1% of those are 5* players.
If out of all players playing 30% are playing in SCL10 they said 1% of all players are 5* players then surely the maximum amount of 5* players as a total of all players cannot be higher than 1%. So it is possible that there are less than that amount of 5* players in SCL10. I mean I don't think so but ask @entrailbucket, this was his absolute holy grail of an answer from the Devs for ages as to how many 5* players there are. So if 1% of all players are 5* players it follows that the maximum amount of 5* players in SCL10 can't be more than that. I mean it sounds a bit fishy to me but that is what was told. Maybe the amount has gone up?
No idea. Of course possible that neither of these figures have any qualifying data attached - is the 1% calculated based upon playing every day or based upon anybody who has ever downloaded the app? How many players are we talking about? 1% of 1 million players is still a LOT of players.
Anyway, the proof will always be in the pudding. Let's see if they can even fix the game before worrying about anything else.
My point was that I would assume that most of the 99% of non 5* players are in lowered scls whereas most of the 5 ⭐ players are in scl10, therefore the percentage would be higher than 1%. What percent? 🤷
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@Pantera236 said:
@DAZ0273 said:
@Pantera236 said:
@DAZ0273 said:
@bluewolf said:
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
I don’t give a fark what various players have said needed to be fixed or the game will die because obviously they’ve been wrong up to now. The thing that matters is really just how much money it brings in vs how much they spend to run it (labor and servers).
**It seems clear they wouldn’t push all these changes if they weren’t in a dire situation financially. Because it’ll make people upset. **
People may have gotten too comfortable, but regardless, they are comfortable with short scl10 clears. And the only effective way to make people want to spend money is to make short scl10 clears again about 1.5 to 2 years away without spending thousands of dollars.
>
At one point they said somewhere that 30% of players are in scl10. Based on tracking flips the number has dropped from 12-13 flips to approx 10 across all slices since May-ish. So, 2000-3000 players in SCL 10 as a ballpark. Extrapolate that to be about 1/6 of all players over this year.
But didn't they also say that only 1% of players are 5* players? So that means the other 29% must be 4* and lower
Just because 30% play scl10 doesn't automatically mean that only 1% of those are 5* players.
If out of all players playing 30% are playing in SCL10 they said 1% of all players are 5* players then surely the maximum amount of 5* players as a total of all players cannot be higher than 1%. So it is possible that there are less than that amount of 5* players in SCL10. I mean I don't think so but ask @entrailbucket, this was his absolute holy grail of an answer from the Devs for ages as to how many 5* players there are. So if 1% of all players are 5* players it follows that the maximum amount of 5* players in SCL10 can't be more than that. I mean it sounds a bit fishy to me but that is what was told. Maybe the amount has gone up?
No idea. Of course possible that neither of these figures have any qualifying data attached - is the 1% calculated based upon playing every day or based upon anybody who has ever downloaded the app? How many players are we talking about? 1% of 1 million players is still a LOT of players.
Anyway, the proof will always be in the pudding. Let's see if they can even fix the game before worrying about anything else.
My point was that I would assume that most of the 99% of non 5* players are in lowered scls whereas most of the 5 ⭐ players are in scl10, therefore the percentage would be higher than 1%. What percent? 🤷
This is exactly my point. The Devs never gave us the full picture of any of this. Is this daily active players? Is it anybody who ever downloaded the game? Obviously it has to be 30% of players who have at least qualified to play SCL10 but that doesn't mean all of them are doing so. It is therefore basically a useless statistic that has no qualifications and does not help us. Just think - if the 1% of 5* players is based upon 1 million players total whether casual or not that is 10,000 5* players! That seems a lot!
Probably we are best just relying on what we know or think we know - game is broken, players have left, players come back all the time, evidence suggests at the top players are not bleeding anywhere near as much as they are in middle or lower, Devs were gonna do all this anyway coz you don't make a development plan based upon a couple months lead in, Devs were either surprised about older device performance or negligent/duplicitous and we are getting Red Skull.
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@Wolvie171 said:
That's some pretty tragic looking data. Thanks very much for sharing some facts.
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All that data shows that the game has been losing players steadily for 4 years. How is that related to any particular change? I'd say it's a symptom of not changing anything -- players get bored of doing the same thing for years and quit. Maybe 6* and new PvE will bring some back, or maybe it'll get new players interested.
It's very, very interesting that things like "no more swaps" don't seem to have accelerated the decline at all, when we heard that that would kill the game over and over again.
3 -
@entrailbucket said:
All that data shows that the game has been losing players steadily for 4 years. How is that related to any particular change? I'd say it's a symptom of not changing anything -- players get bored of doing the same thing for years and quit. Maybe 6* and new PvE will bring some back, or maybe it'll get new players interested.It's very, very interesting that things like "no more swaps" don't seem to have accelerated the decline at all, when we heard that that would kill the game over and over again.
The swapping system has opened up a lot of extra possibilities and lets players prioritize the characters they are actively going to use over random pulls. I know people were grumbling a lot when it came out, but it all in all has been an extreme net positive for the game (at least, for the game as it's played.) So long as you have spare Hero Points and you've maxed out at least one version of the character, you can decide what covers you want and accelerate your favorite characters so much more.
It's actually another reason why I don't think they're going to open ascending lower tiers to 6★s for quite some time after they're introduced (months at least, possibly more.) I've maxed out all my 1★s at this point (the only one I bought was Juggernaut, and now I've maxed him twice,) but to be honestly only Juggs and Spider-Man are worth using (maybe Yelena? I haven't really tried.) I've already gotten my second 550 Juggs and if I could ascend my 550 Spider-Man I could just focus all my 1★ covers to him -- the HP cost would be trivial compared to the use. I'm sure it would take me weeks at most.
2
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