Marvel Puzzle Quest’s Next Big Feature: 6 Star Characters [FAQ Added]

@KGB said:

@Zarqa said:

Players can expect to acquire their first cover within about a month of a character’s debut, depending on participation and event performance.

This is such bad game design.

“Here is your new shiny! The new chase item! Board altering abilities! Be amazed!”

>

“Aaaaaand… Now wait a month to add one single cover to your roster so you can use just one of the three powers…”

Curious how'd you do it then.

Don't forget to consider newer players (3 star and under). Are you going to gate off Galactus in some way so they don't accidentally end up with one? They didn't gate off 5 stars and countless new players ended up with 1 cover 5s and a bunch of 1 and 2s they never used because the 5 was so overwhelming. That was at L255. Now consider what happens if a day 10 or 20 player somehow ends up with a L500 character.

It needs to take a while even for veteran rosters.

KGB

A month for a single cover is much too long. And since they’re handing out covers through shards only, they can gate newer rosters easily through the SCL system.

I don’t think I’m alone that the prospect of gaining a cover per month for the new shiny thing is a huge disappointment. And I fear it might be even worse for the first three 6 since they are at an accelerated release rate but I doubt they increase the shard gain in parallel.

I also worry that top placement will get the most shards, which can quickly result in a ‘rich getting richer’ situation: if they get stronger faster, thereby securing a firm hold on top placement, getting stronger faster, etc.

We’ll see how it plays out, but I don’t have high confidence in the Devs doing this well.

Why? Because the prospect of gaining one cover per month and taking a year to champ a 6 star is doing absolutely zero to get me invested in the game more than the current situation. In fact, it increases the likely hood for me to reduce my plays time. And I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way. The Devs can do what they want. But this doesn’t feel the best approach to increase revenue and player retention.

To be clear: I’d love to be wrong about this

@Zarqa said:

@KGB said:

@Zarqa said:

Players can expect to acquire their first cover within about a month of a character’s debut, depending on participation and event performance.

This is such bad game design.

“Here is your new shiny! The new chase item! Board altering abilities! Be amazed!”

>

“Aaaaaand… Now wait a month to add one single cover to your roster so you can use just one of the three powers…”

Curious how'd you do it then.

Don't forget to consider newer players (3 star and under). Are you going to gate off Galactus in some way so they don't accidentally end up with one? They didn't gate off 5 stars and countless new players ended up with 1 cover 5s and a bunch of 1 and 2s they never used because the 5 was so overwhelming. That was at L255. Now consider what happens if a day 10 or 20 player somehow ends up with a L500 character.

It needs to take a while even for veteran rosters.

KGB

A month for a single cover is much too long. And since they’re handing out covers through shards only, they can gate newer rosters easily through the SCL system.

I don’t think I’m alone that the prospect of gaining a cover per month for the new shiny thing is a huge disappointment. And I fear it might be even worse for the first three 6 since they are at an accelerated release rate but I doubt they increase the shard gain in parallel.

I also worry that top placement will get the most shards, which can quickly result in a ‘rich getting richer’ situation: if they get stronger faster, thereby securing a firm hold on top placement, getting stronger faster, etc.

We’ll see how it plays out, but I don’t have high confidence in the Devs doing this well.

They need to be much more specific about what kind of player will be earning one cover per month (and they won't be, we'll have to wait and see).

The details really, really matter though. If every single player can expect to earn one cover per month, then competitive players (or those who spend) will earn way more than that. But if the most competitive, highest spending players will earn one cover a month at most, then that's a totally different situation. So we just don't know yet, and they're still being vague about it.

@Zarqa said:
Why? Because the prospect of gaining one cover per month and taking a year to champ a 6 star is doing absolutely zero to get me invested in the game more than the current situation. In fact, it increases the likely hood for me to reduce my plays time. And I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way. The Devs can do what they want. But this doesn’t feel the best approach to increase revenue and player retention.

To be clear: I’d love to be wrong about this

It took me a lot lot longer than 12 months to 13 cover my first 5*. I wish I could look back because I'd bet it wasn't even done inside of 2 years. In fact getting one cover ruined me for such a long time I sold it. I remember how hard it was for me to get CP for pulls and at one time when trying to get an OML cover I went almost 80 pulls without hitting a 5*.

@Codex said:
Why are we believing the devs all of sudden? These are the same folks that brought us unity.

I dont trust their math and there are still so many unanswered questions. There are roughly 7-8 pves per month. I would guess the one cover a month is probably for players finishing in the top 250. With players in top 10 getting 5-6 covers per month. Just a guess.

I am sure they're reluctant to share this information but it certainly would help to have context for the 1 per month estimation. As you suggested, is that solely based on an average of finishing T250 in each PVE event, or is that for a T5 player who is also spending on shard offers? I would expect the former because providing an estimated earn-rate that assumes spending is not ideal unless they're clear about it. For example, when the seasonal vaults changed they indicated you wouldn't be able to fully clear it without offers.

I wasn't around for the introduction of 5-stars, but this still feels really slow. with quarterly releases of 6-stars and based on their estimations, you will have 1 single cover in each power by the time the next 6-star is released. Characters with complimentary powers (i.e. one of their powers does something to change/boost one of their other powers), will potentially only be "useful" after 2-3 months.

Obviously they can tweak the rewards later to find the optimal rate if 6-star engagement is not to their liking but that hasn't been their strong suit. Take Classic tokens as an example to see how well they were integrated into rewards. One of their early acknowledgements when they took over was the ISO desert that players endure but what was done to improve that besides re-introducing 3-star releases?

@Zarqa said:

@Read_Only said:

@Zarqa said:
Why? Because the prospect of gaining one cover per month and taking a year to champ a 6 star is doing absolutely zero to get me invested in the game more than the current situation. In fact, it increases the likely hood for me to reduce my plays time. And I doubt I’m the only one who feels that way. The Devs can do what they want. But this doesn’t feel the best approach to increase revenue and player retention.

To be clear: I’d love to be wrong about this

It took me a lot lot longer than 12 months to 13 cover my first 5*. I wish I could look back because I'd bet it wasn't even done inside of 2 years. In fact getting one cover ruined me for such a long time I sold it. I remember how hard it was for me to get CP for pulls and at one time when trying to get an OML cover I went almost 80 pulls without hitting a 5*.

I understand and agree with this. If you’re a new player, it should take a while. But if you’re someone who has every character rostered and most of the 5s champed, then it is an entirely different situation in my opinion and should go faster.

I agree with a lot of the other posters here though that it depends who the one cover per month is benchmarked on. But at this time all we can go by is their general statement, and no one in this thread has yet convinced me that is a cadence that is good for the longevity of the game.

I had every 4* character rostered and maxed out (there were no champions yet) when 5* were launched, and it took me forever to max cover Surfer. A handful of players were able to max cover every new 5* as they released, but they were spending completely insane amounts of money to do it. Most of us, even the ones who spent more reasonably and played t5 PvP and PvE, had to wait months.

The other thing we don't know yet is how strong 6* will be below max covers. With 5*, incomplete versions were still pretty good compared to 4*.

Obviously that was a long time ago and the game (and its playerbase) are very different now, but this sounds a lot like how they rolled out 5*, and that did turn out ok.

I also think that Galactus at lvl700 is going to be extremely annoying and I'd rather not have that be immediately accessible to everybody.

Appreciate the FAQ, but I find the cadence quite peculiar - such slow acquisition surely means there will be some 'feel bad' pivots.
E.g. Galactus is good-not-great, so it's pretty likely one of the next two 6 stars will be better/better for some teams - when we jump to favouriting that character, those months collecting Galactus will have very little payoff.
Imagine being 6+ months into a character then a superior one or one who counters them gets released...

With 4-star releases being replaced by 6-stars, there will be no new blood to add to the rotation of required 4-stars in PVE for the next 2 seasons at least (based on their stated intent to release the first 3 6-stars in quick succession). Without changes to the current cycle of latest and classics as required characters, we can expect to have Aikku, Captain Avalon, Maker and Arnim Zola getting a much longer boost in covers/shards than would otherwise be the case.