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

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  • Zarqa
    Zarqa Posts: 561 Critical Contributor

    @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.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,792 Chairperson of the Boards

    @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.

    Why is it too long? Surely the Devs can set whatever pace they want?

  • Zarqa
    Zarqa Posts: 561 Critical Contributor

    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

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,583 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited 11 October 2025, 18:45

    Boss Galactus is immune to 5* Gamora’s yellow repeater that says allied damage cannot be reduced. I haven’t tried to get him with Deadliest Woman yet but when my next round of clears opens I’ll see if I can trigger it.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,395 Chairperson of the Boards

    @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.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,792 Chairperson of the Boards

    @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

    Why were you playing so much before then? Before you knew about 6* ( a month or so ago) what was driving your interest? Why does a delayed acquisition rate of 6" suddenly transform your usual gameplay experience into suddenly defcon1?

  • Read_Only
    Read_Only Posts: 39 Just Dropped In
    edited 11 October 2025, 19:56

    @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
    Codex Posts: 480 Mover and Shaker
    edited 11 October 2025, 20:16

    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.

  • toecutter3095
    toecutter3095 Posts: 106 Tile Toppler

    @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
    Zarqa Posts: 561 Critical Contributor

    @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.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,395 Chairperson of the Boards

    @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.

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,637 Chairperson of the Boards

    @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 all the 4* covered and champed. I would say it took me 4-6 month range to get my first fully champed 5* (hulk banner -who was 4th release). I spent few hundred dollars so not exactly FTP, but yes I did a few buyclubs for cp.

    Smarter people than me can debate out the economics of a rollout plan, but what they've said is pretty similar to 5* debut.

    Whether or not it feels the same as before will be open to debate. but I will say this.
    1. Getting all 3 colors was excruiating. 0 Yellow OML covers more or less invalidates his use vs 1/1/1 was at least playable as intended. Yes we have color exchanges now which makes it a race to at least 3 covers. which is more reasonable than praying for the even distribution.

    --- I only pray a 1 or 2 cover G-man is usable in sense you get a feel for his play. I sincerely hope that make the starting point a 3 cover version so when some gets "OVER" the threshold, its a usable but weak variant vs nerfed (cause you didn't get the good color)

    -- For me personally, playing with a 1/1/1 style 5* was a reasonable experience because other peer rosters also had simiar types of builds. Yes, of course their were plenty of Day 1 whales, but in my experience the whole first year you will see plenty of partial build chars. I think it will be well over 8 months before you see all 8ish que slots /enemy cache filled with 13 cover 6*s

    establish a normal 1 a season type schedule

  • TheVulture
    TheVulture Posts: 452 Mover and Shaker

    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...

  • toecutter3095
    toecutter3095 Posts: 106 Tile Toppler

    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.

  • Scofie
    Scofie GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards

    Yeah I think you're right about the impact on new players. My experience of 5☆s was probably similar to yours (though I was in from the beginning but didn't look online at anything for about 4 years) in that it wrecked PvP but made PvE so much more quicker.

    My PvP experience was already wrecked though as I'd accidentally hit a bracket flip at some point and placed 1st to get a 4* Wolvie (when he was new) which I now know destroyed my MMR, and made PvP horrible from pretty early in the game as I didn't really understand what was going on our why I was getting battered into oblivion and unable to match other teams strength.

    Side note: I remember when my DDQ wave node team was 4Wolvie, 2 MBW and Ares. I'd grind through 3 waves or whatever or was at the time saving up Purple, green and black (healing when needed) and waited for the final wave, unload Ares' Green, 3xMBW Purple, Ares' Green again and then Wolvie's black. That one node used to take me 25 minutes.

    When OML arrived, there was no way I was selling him so I doubled down on 5☆s and gave up PvP for about 8 years. I still don't play much. Things have changed since then: SCL etc, so progressing quickly through PvE should be a goal.

    I guess the real question is: what allows new players to be able to catch up quickly? Buying 5☆s does nothing any more, unless you buy 350 covers and even then you can't compete without 1.5m Iso and the HP to roster what you win. Most new players won't have the patience to be miles behind for 5 years and still be 3 years behind the top 1000 players.

    So I dint think it's a direct cash grab, it's about minimizing the distance to go to catch up by allowing a way to do that. Perhaps finding a way to gate PvP opponents behind SCL is more the way to go to prevent the experienced we both had.

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,583 Chairperson of the Boards

    It appears Deadliest Woman at least does some damage to Boss Galactus; I just killed him with it after finally setting it up with Sersi and storm, but his health was low enough that it may have just done the final slug of throttled damage.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,395 Chairperson of the Boards

    The matchmaking thing is real, but it's entirely a symptom of bad balance. That's why I don't understand folks who are so opposed to better balance -- it completely solves all this nonsense.

    The game tries to match you with peers. The algorithm doesn't know that Cable is awful and m'Thor is great, or whatever other enormous mismatch there is in power level between characters. So it sees that you have a 5* and matches you up with other players who have 5* at similar levels.

    This is how it should work! Matchmaking should show you peers, the whole reason it looks at your roster is to prevent you just stomping noobs. The problem is these massive power discrepancies. A 450 Cable is not even in the same power universe as m'Thor, but the algorithm doesn't (and ultimately can't) know that.

    You should absolutely be able to roster any 5* and be competitive against any other 5*. But to get there they need to address these huge balance problems.

    This won't be a problem with 6* for awhile, in the same way that it wasn't with 5* until the tier filled out enough to have huge power discrepancies. When Surfer showed up he was instant gas for every single roster, no matter what else you had. He was just that much better than the entire 4* tier. If they've done Galactus right (and I think they have, but we'll see) nobody will have to worry about breaking the game by rostering him, because he'll stomp everything.

  • JaGo
    JaGo Posts: 110 Tile Toppler

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    It appears Deadliest Woman at least does some damage to Boss Galactus; I just killed him with it after finally setting it up with Sersi and storm, but his health was low enough that it may have just done the final slug of throttled damage.

    I got into trouble with one of the matches with Galactus and since I have Deadpool Whale points maxed and always carry a Whales team up I thought I'd hit the easy button and move on to the next...nope, whales does not down Galactus. He avoided all the damage. Was this a glitch or by design? Anyone else have that experience?

    -JaGo

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,637 Chairperson of the Boards

    @JaGo said:

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    It appears Deadliest Woman at least does some damage to Boss Galactus; I just killed him with it after finally setting it up with Sersi and storm, but his health was low enough that it may have just done the final slug of throttled damage.

    I got into trouble with one of the matches with Galactus and since I have Deadpool Whale points maxed and always carry a Whales team up I thought I'd hit the easy button and move on to the next...nope, whales does not down Galactus. He avoided all the damage. Was this a glitch or by design? Anyone else have that experience?

    -JaGo

    by design.

    DB whales is just a massive AOE attack bomb, and G-man has specific damage avoidance counter.

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