"I think they made the Mindless Ones too hardcore." · 12:59pm Nov 4th, 2016
By this point in my exploration of Marvel Puzzle Quest, I've assembled what I feel is a decent mid-level team. I don't exactly win every fight. Actually, in player vs. player events, I generally get curb-stombed by those who've been around a lot longer than I've been and have had the chance (or cash) to put together a fully five-star (explanation upcoming) roster. But I know how to work with the heroes I've gathered and with a little luck, I can pull out the occasional direct battle win. And when it comes to story events, when it's player vs. computer... for the most part, I can muddle through to the end.
However, there's a new story event in town. As you might imagine, it's Doctor Strange week over at MPQ, and this means the game is doing two things: introducing him as a collectible character for the first time -- and putting at least one of his major enemies into the game: the Mindless Ones.
At this point, I need to do a little work in setting up the punchline.
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Marvel Puzzle Quest, as some of you might recall, is at its heart, a Match-3 game played on an eight-by-eight grid. But in order to get the joke across, I need to explain game mechanics in a little more detail this time.
When you go into the grid, you are playing with a team of Marvel characters. How do you get them? When you first start the game for the first time, you're given a few one-star characters (with only one starting power active) for free, and then you have to earn the rest.
Now, characters are rated in strength at one to five stars, and the more stars your character has, the higher their ultimate level. One-star characters can only reach a maximum of L50. Two-stars can get to L144, three-stars L266, four-stars L370, and five-stars L550. The more levels you have, the more effective your powers are, the more hit points you have, the more damage you can take... the usual.
Playing the game allows you to earn recruit tokens. At first, as you go through the story's prologue, you'll just earn Standard tokens. A Standard token is about an 85% chance of a one-star character -- or rather, a classic Marvel cover featuring that character. This cover will be coded to a power. Spend that cover, improve your character's power and then your character. Ultimately, you can't have more than thirteen covers spread between three powers, with a maximum level of 5 in any one power. So eventually, you're going to max out your one-stars, and a topped-out one-star who can really absorb damage might have around 3000 hit points.
However, that remaining 15% on the Standard results in two-star and three-star characters. And if you have the roster space, you can add them in. Their powers are more effective. You can reach higher levels. And you can start to earn Heroic tokens, which allow a random chance of getting two-star through four-star characters. (Mostly two-star.) Once you finish the Prologue, you get access to the Deadpool Daily, in which every single day sees a random three-star cover available for earning through gameplay. Now, there's a catch -- you need to already have that character on your roster with one cover assigned -- but it'll let you gradually improve them. It also gives you a chance at Deadpool's daily random recruit tokens, which offer a tiny chance to go Legendary. Get access to a Legendary token through random draw or finishing a ton of story events, and it guarantees you'll draw a four or five-star character -- who will eventually need thirteen covers. Good luck with that...
But you get the idea. Earn enough Standard tokens (you can usually get seven a day, plus one or two Deadpool Taco Tokens -- don't ask) and eventually, you'll draw and add a three-star character. After some time, you might randomly pull another cover for that character, and then the Daily will cycle around to offering one for that hero or villain. Win a hard fight -- it'll be very hard at first -- and in time, you'll start to move up. Every character has powers which affect the game. Some deal extra damage. Some target opponents. Several alter the board. A few automatically respond to enemy actions. See what your opponent has, hope you have the right powers to counter it, and go in swinging.
Of course, it's a Match-3 game. So your powers are... powered. There are seven tile colors. Each character is strong in three, weak in three, and moderate in one. You do damage based on matching colors (match a strong to do more: highest-level character who's strong in that color makes the match, moves up front, and takes any damage on the counterattack), and earn color points. Get enough color points and your powers go active. Spend them and they're gone. (You can't have more than thirty in a single color at once.)
So there are times when it's a race. Can you energize the power you need to save your life before your opponent finishes charging theirs? Why has the board not dropped a yellow in five turns? Oh dear sweet pony gawds, they just pulled out a team-up (that's what the white tiles charge: a one-shot guest visit by up to three characters per fight) and it's Wilton Fisk! It's strategy: can I set up a cascade next turn? What am I charging first? What's the computer going for? The game is kind there: you can tap the opponent and find out just what their powers are, along with which colors will charge them -- and the AI has one built-in fatal flaw. As in any Match-3 game, you want to try matching four or five whenever possible. The game's AI will do that, with one exception: it can't "see" potential L-shaped five-matches. So once in a while, you'll sneak one through and get a bonus turn to try and use the critical tile you just earned.
Assuming you want to match five. As said, powers affect the game. MPQ is a little like Knightmare Chess: a perfectly normal game until someone slams the breaker down. So if your opponent has Loki with the green power active, matching four or five will create a few countdown tiles which, if they aren't matched themselves, will steal some random color points from you. (Loki will force you to rethink your entire game strategy, and Thor help you if you get an accidental cascade: if the damage doesn't take him out, the aftermath may just steal your entire color pool.) Match five when you're up against Jean Grey and you won't earn the critical tile, plus one of your characters will be automatically stunned. You've got an attack which is about to do so much damage that it'll take out the opposition's healer in one shot? The opposition brought Ben Grimm with them and anything which does that much damage automatically brings him to the front rank, where he not only takes the hit for his teammate, he alters a couple of tiles and turns them into shields which will moderate the next hit and beyond.
That's where the real strategy comes in. Who are you up against? What's the best counter to it? If you don't have an ideal counter, what's second-best? Can you just hope to absorb enough of a pounding to deal a death of a thousand cuts? Who do you target first? (Generally healers.) No matter how many heroes you have on your roster, you can only use three at once, plus three team-ups. Do you have the right trio? Your highest-level character will generally be taking most of the hits: can they last long enough? Do you have all colors strong between the group? What if the one power you're going to need most is possessed by a weak character and has a slow charge time? Can the other two shield her long enough to get her going? (For me, this is usually Ororo: her Wind Storm renders one opponent incapable of movement for four turns and damages the entire enemy team at once -- but she's a two-star with an incredibly low hit point total even at maximum level, and that power takes eleven blue points to set off. Get her running and she can disable the opposition's most powerful member for a while as they all get whittled down. Leave her out front for ten seconds and g'bye.) And of course, no matter what you plan, it's a Match-3 game, so every so often, the other team is going to get the Cascade Of (Your) Death.
Since I don't spend money on the game for recruit token draws (and yes, you can directly buy extras from Heroic up), I'm stuck with random draws and the ones (specific covers and more random draws) you win from completing story events. That makes it hard to power up the higher-level characters, as you're forever hoping to draw that one cover. And there's a lot of characters to draw from, so the odds of hitting the one you need at four stars and up...
Still... I've made progress. I now have one five-star character with two covers, and Natasha's job is to try and save me when the enemy countdown tiles get thick: her purple power can convert three of them (or anything else) to normal tiles in one shot. At the four-star level, I've earned Marc Spector and his incredible Healing Fist. (Knock someone out with the attack, recover some of his health. Don't and... you'll really wish you had.) Three-stars? I recently got Kamala Khan up to a semi-viable levels, and her enthusiasm for the business manifests as an automatic, no-color-points-required health boost to the entire team every time someone else fires off a power. Team her with three-star Tony, whose armor can generate red, blue, green, and purple color points on a cost of six yellow (and then knocks himself out for two turns) and her green hit-everyone-at-once ability just keeps on coming. Two-star Hawkeye? Keep Clint alive (somehow), pray for match-fives, and every time you make one, he converts (for free) four purple tiles into two-turn countdown ones. They all go off and whichever enemy is up front just took about six thousand points of damage.
Play it carefully, plan out who you're bringing to the fight and how they might work together, and the right two and three-star team can take out fours and fives -- if you're careful, get the colors you need early, and can strike before those Legendary powers kill you. It's possible to win.
And then we hit today.
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As discussed in previous blog posts, only character opponents move the board on their own turns. Rank-and-file just constantly generate their own color points from within, then use them to create countdown tiles. Don't match or destroy those in time and they go off. They hurt when they go off. And up until now, it's been Maggia thugs, HAMMER agents, symbiotes, Hand ninja -- all the people you love to hate.
But it's Doctor Strange week. So they brought in the Mindless Ones.
Now, in the comics, the Mindless Ones are known for... pretty much the name, but they're also famed for not stopping. Point them in a direction and if they're not blocked, everything between them and the next blockade is dead. So you kind of had to figure that their MPQ incarnation would be tough.
Try this on for "tough."
The fight starts. It's your team vs. three Mindless Ones.
Before the first move, each Mindless One randomly converts a tile into one of three special types: Attack, Strike, or Protect. An Attack tile does automatic damage to your front-rank team member at the end of every enemy turn. Strike adds to match damage. Protect subtracts from yours. This tiles starts around, say, a strength of 160, so it'll do, add, or take away that much damage until it's destroyed or matched away. And the conversion is random, so it could be anywhere on the board.
As the fight progresses, the Mindless Ones create purple countdown tiles. They go off in three turns. Sometimes you'll have two or three counting down at once. They also create green countdowns, which go off in six turns. Maybe you'll have three or four of those by midgame. They don't move the board: they just create countdown tiles. But the green ones? Those are the Eye Beams. They damage your whole team for, say, 1200 points. And the purples? Well, they do two things. If there are no special tiles working for them when the purple goes off, it randomly converts something into one. If there are special tiles, it strengths a random one by another 160 or so.
So now that Attack tile is doing 320 points of damage per turn. Then another purple goes off, and all incoming damage from you is subtracted by 320. Pretty basic, right? Surely nothing to worry about.
My strongest character, for sheer level, is my five-star, two-cover Black Widow. Natasha is level 285. She's got about 11,000 hit points. The most damage she does through a standard three-match is 498 points.
Now, let's say that Protect tile created by a Mindless One gets strengthened four times...
...right. It reached the point at midgame where I had one tile doing a thousand points of damage to the lead character every turn, another which was subtracting close to 1600, all the purple countdowns were in a place where I couldn't reach them, I didn't have the powers available which would let me just try to destroy a lot of random tiles at once because silly me, I'd left Bruce at home -- I really need to bring Bruce next time -- and Ororo? Well, in addition to her wonderful stunning attack, she can also randomly take out eight tiles with her green power. And she's still wonderfully fragile. By the way, that Eye Beam countdown just went off. Again.
And that was the opening round. Because in MPQ, you can repeat a given fight up to six times -- and if you can do that? Then in every round from second to fourth, your computer opponents will be progressively strengthened. Just to make it a challenge for you.
They started at having four to seven thousand hit points each.
...all right. I managed to win the opening round of the first day's story chain. Somehow. I was out of health packs. I had hurting heroes. I had Ares on the verge swearing off battle forever. I got my end-of-chain recruit token and completely failed to pull a Stephen Strange of my very own, not that I have the roster space for him anyway. And I got access to the boss fight.
Sometimes you get a boss fight.
Now: boss fights can work a little differently. In this case, it was three on one: my chosen team against The Big Bad. I'm not going to tell you his name because there's a tiny chance that his existence might be a film spoiler. I'm just going to tell you his stats and powers, and I want you to keep in mind that because he's a character, he moves the board and makes his own matches. Ready?
Level: 354
Hit Points: 22,650
Damage (per tile matched or destroyed):
Yellow: 33
Red: 35
Green: 30
White: 140
Blue: 217
Black: 248
Purple: 279
Critical: Multiply damage by four. (Critical tiles appear when you match five or more: the bonus damage counts on the next match.)
Powers:
Purple: Shape Reality (Costs 5 purple.) Creates two random Strike tiles with a strength of 395, of any color, anywhere on the board. Also creates a 3-turn Countdown tiles. If not matched, this creates an additional Strike 395 tile each turn.
Black: Forbidden Power (Costs 15 black.) Deals 9104 damage to the enemy team, plus 1822 additional damage for each Strike tile he has on the board. Destroys all strike tiles in the process, but earns color points for each one destroyed.
Blue: Invincible (Passive, constant: costs 0 blue.) All damage done to this character through any matches or powers is negated. He cannot be stunned or sent airborne.
However... if your team makes a match which includes one or more of his Strike tiles, he will take 4046 points of damage. Therefore, six such matches will knock him out -- and nothing else will. Nothing at all.
*deep breath*
So. Here's how this works.
You start the fight. He starts hurting you. If he matches his strong colors, he will hurt you a lot. As soon as he gets five purple together, he creates tiles which will hurt you even more. Your team is taking damage. He is standing there and smiling at you. There are tatters of bloody costumes all over the field. And your only chance in the world to win this is to let him create the tiles which hurt you more and then pray they show up in a position where you can match them. And if he hits fifteen color points in black? I told you how many hit points my strongest character has. Fifteen color points in black for me, and it's Game Over. Period.
...gah.
I did not win this fight. I lost this fight in most of the ways it was possible to lose it, as long as they were humiliating. I brought my strongest characters in. Gone. My stunners? He can't be stunned. How about the healers? Yeah, like they're going to last long enough to get a shot off. Tile destroyers? Destroying the Strike tiles doesn't matter: you have to match them away. My arms were too short to box with thinks-he's-God. And then it got worse from there.
I've been... looking over my roster. I've been trying to strategize this out. I think I have a team which might work.
Jennifer? Maybe... at her current strength, She-Hulk's green power randomly takes one of the enemy's accumulated colors and removes all the points from it, along dropping a second random color by 25%. So maybe if I got lucky, she'd get his black pool. That takes six green points to set off. So go for green. A lot. It's a dice roll, so try to roll them as much as possible.
Let's add Loki to this mix. His purple power cost a mere five points, and it shuffles the board (except for the white tiles, which it leaves in place). So once there's a lot of Strike tiles up, it could put me in a position to match them -- and Loki's power can shuffle things into automatic match alignments, which count as normal matches and do damage without costing a turn. I can set it off as many times in a row as I have purple to pay for it. Also, his black power -- well, that's eleven points, but it turns enemy Strike tiles into Protect tiles on my side. I have to try and match black tiles before the boss anyway, so I might as well use them. Protect tiles on the board could buy me time. And if the boss makes a match-four on up, I could wind up potentially stealing some of his color pool and adding it to my own.
And lastly? Tony. His three-star red and blue offensive powers are useless here. Every offensive power is, from absolutely everyone. But his yellow power... for a cost of six yellow, he turns three (also yellow) tiles into two-turn countdown tiles. And when they go off? They charge your color pool. Four red, four blue, three green, and one purple for each one that goes off. I can't do anything much with red and blue, but those green and purple are going to boost Jennifer and Loki. Sure, Tony will be stunned for two turns afterwards, but it's not as if he was going to be any good on offense anyway. He's just there to power up the other two and take a few hits.
Yes, with a lot of luck, this is a team which could work. All I need is some early matches, preferably throwing in some yellow, play keep-away with the black tiles if I can, and try not to take too much damage on a team with no healers or shielders before it all works.
A team which, given their current levels, has the following full-strength hit point totals:
Tony: 8948
Jennifer: 5985
Loki: 4690
Honestly? That's still the team with the best shot. All they need is the world's luckiest opening board and to keep that luck going all the way through. So I will now pause this blog composition long enough to take them into battle.
...
...and everyone's dead.
Total elapsed time: forty-eight seconds. (Loki lasted about ten...) But hey, they made three Strike matches before they all died. Progress!
So here's today's lesson: strategy can only take you so far...
Oh, and the punchline? Well, they added Stephen to the attainable roster today. I don't have him yet and may never pull it off. But he came on at the same time the game introduced the Mindless Ones. Guess what one of Stephen's powers does?
Every time the enemy creates a countdown tile? Do automatic damage to that enemy. Passive power. Costs nothing to use. A passive, free, life-saving power which may be the only way to dismantle the Mindless Ones in a hurry.
Fired off by a five-star character.
Whose entire story event is basically a sales tactic to make sure you'll need him, because the Mindless Ones will be coming back.
A lot.
...
...help.
Game Designers: Ok, we have a functional game with tricky strategy that people love and is bringing in good revenue with positive public relations.
Marketing: Great, let's add this character, and this bad guy, and make them able to do this.
Designers: But... that'll break the game!
Marketing: And we'll need it done by next Tuesday or we'll hire somebody else to do it.
Designers: Tuesday? We can do that.
This game sounds so frustratingly impossible if you're not willing to pay-to-win. D:
This actually sounds fun. I might have to give it a try.
Its a pity legislation wasnt brought in for pay to play games, where the total cost possible at most equaled the price of the hard copy game. Pokemon Rumble world as an example has in game jewels, which you can buy for real money, but when you purchase enough jewels to equal the price of the cartrige game, it locks the buy jewel method and instead gives you a free daily gem mine. After all, theyve made the money off you.
Unlike Pokemon Go, where I believe the Repeatable purchase is about $100. And they get all your mapping data etc.
A game should allow you the option. Speed run the thing as an expert and get moola for being the best, then Not be a totally sadistic tyranical abusive despot by preventing you from spending your time, effort, and money equiv, turtling, grinding, until the point where One And Only, you can crush the crap out of the bosses.
Dont forget, it doesnt matter how advanced your stuff is, you only need to be hit by a big enough rock, moving fast enough.
Really hope the RNG gods do a Discord, or even a Pinkie for you. The game makers want to abuse you? Do em back.
Wow.
Also, Dwarf Fortress reference!
Once again, they've released a Beta Test version on the public. Hey, they only knew a year or so in advance that they were going to need this. Can't expect perfection in that small amount of time.
Wow. That is legendary bullshit right there. I gave Magic Puzzle Quest by the same developer a try, because I'll give anything card game-related a shot, and I think it may contain fewer dodgy design choices than this version... though that may only be because I didn't get terribly far in it before deciding that it wasn't remotely worth the time I was putting into it. (Still, at least cascades don't mean instant death, just that the opponent gets to empty their hand. That's delayed death.)
I have to echo Antsan: Why are you still playing this pile?
This sounds awful.
This kind of shit is why I played Magic for like a week, watched one night of tourney matches, and swore it off forever.
And then learned that pretty much every card that my brother owned that built him a viable (read; unless hard-countered by people who spent more money, get rekt) deck would be made illegal by the new expack. Fuck pay to win.
I think that explanation was longer than most my stories
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It's not pay-to-win so much as pay-for-random-recruits-who-might-help-you-win (and-probably-will). I'll get into that below.
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That sounded like fun? Okay... Well, it's available for PCs free off Steam: for smartphones and tablets, check your app store. But if you're really thinking about it, let me throw in some ignorable advice from someone who's been taking the slow path.
1. Try not to quit during the tutorial. The tutorial assumes you don't know what three matching tiles in a row is supposed to look like. This is pretty much the only time your intelligence will be this insulted during the game.
2. There are two Currencies Of The Realm which can be both earned and purchased: ISO crystals, which are the XPs you use to level up, and Hero Points. Hero Points are the crucial one. Hero Points are harder to come by, and they do three things: buy extra token draws (but not Legendary), buy instant health pack recharges (which otherwise come back at one per thirty-six minutes, to a maximum of ten -- although if you get a health pack reward from the Deadpool Daily, you can exceed that) -- and they buy extra roster slots.
Let's go a little deeper into that. When you start the game, you get eight roster slots. Once those are filled, each additional one costs you Hero Points. Eventually, a lot of Hero Points. So to add characters, you'll need to save your points and expand your roster regularly. If you're not spending actual cash for HPs, then this should be your only use for them. Don't ever spend on extra tokens: you'll earn a few every day. Save up so you can keep what you draw from your hard-won tokens. Don't spend on ISO: it'll come along eventually. Health packs will recharge: you're seldom going to be that desperate, and most of that will be if you stick to player vs. player events. For me, Hero Points are used for improving the roster, and that's it. For someone else... well, it's your budget.
3. The game has player rankings. My version of the Mindless Ones is for those at SHIELD Clearance 7: I've been playing long enough to earn that. You advance in rank by completing missions, earning bonus ISO every time you go up. Your opponents also scale up when you advance. So your version of the Doctor Strange event would be intense -- on the new arrival level. To that degree, the game tries to stay fair, letting people of similar ranks compete against each other. Event rewards also scale up as you advance -- but by that time, you'll have a shot to earn them.
4. Initially, you're going to be focused on earning ISO and covers during the prologue, trying to get your 1-star roster to the point where you can reach the story events. And once you get the story events, or start to see what 2-star and up characters can do -- you may start to feel like you wasted a lot of ISO. The game gives you the option to sell characters for ISO and clear roster slots, but you'll never get back what you put in. Still, if you're desperate...
However, you should always save a few 1-star characters. In the name of game balance and making story events accessible, every week will see different characters boosted in power for that part of the story. (They can go beyond their normal level limit this way.) So some of your 1-stars will remain viable for a long time. Also, every Deadpool Daily has one mission which can only be finished by an all 1-star team. If you don't have at least three, you can't get the bonus for finishing the set.
If you get to the point where you're thinking about dumping 2-star characters on up? Don't. Story events will feature three characters per event (a 2, 3, and 4 -- at least at my rank), giving one exclusive mission to each. You can't assess those missions without them. And some story events will lock out portions of your roster, forcing you to play with six to twelve characters.
5. Play at least one mission a day: there's a daily bonus you can earn. Here's the list. See all those covers and Hero Points bonuses? You'll want those. Also, if you get the 3-star Deadpool, try to win one mission with him each day because eventually, you'll want to drop a whale on someone.
No, seriously.
And try to get through the Deadpool Daily: you can win Hero Points there, along with covers and ISO.
6. When possible, join an alliance. If you feel you're being pestered to spend, leave it and join another one. But some story events are alliances-only -- and when you get your daily bonus, you will receive 100 ISO for every person in your alliance who played on the previous day, yourself included, up to 2000 ISO.
7. Covers expire two weeks after you draw them. If you're not using them, you can sell them to the game. 1-star covers are going to be sold a lot once those characters are maxed out. 2-star on up are trickier, because then you have to consider Champion levels.
Here's how it works. A 1-star gets to L50 and stops forever. A 2-star freezes at L94. However, you then have the option to spend some more ISO and turn them into a Champion. This gives you access to Champion bonuses, which are visible on the linked page. You will no longer spend ISO on that character. Instead, every time you get and use that character's cover, it will add one level and provide bonuses. You'll eventually get all the ISO you spent back. You will also receive Hero Points. Command Points (and more on this later). Heroic Tokens. Covers for 3-star characters, and each 2-star Champion will ultimately provide three of those covers, one for each power -- so by the time your 2-star Champion is at L144 and can truly go no further, you have someone new to work on. (After that, just sell the covers for that 2-star character. 144 is the limit.) Moonstone leads to Bruce: Clint delivers Tony. Your roster progresses. Similarly, 3-star characters normally go to L166. Champion them, and the first new cover you apply will give you a Legendary Token. Creep up the slow road and eventually, you'll get three four-star covers, along with everything else.
(4-star and 5-star characters can be Championed, but the 4-stars don't offer 5-star covers along that route -- and good luck getting enough covers anyway.)
So hang onto your covers for as long as you can. Work on the Hero Points and eventually, levels will come.
Oh, and there's one other benefit to going Champion: you can freely reassign how strong your character's powers are before every fight, for free. This can be useful.
8. Command Points come from winning extra-hard battles, the rare daily bonus, increasing Champion levels, reaching threshold levels in story events, and in-game purchases will give a few. (Also, if you're in an alliance and someone else spends at the crucial level on up, you'll get one to seven.) They have two uses.
* They can be used to improve powers without getting the associated covers. 20 points buys a 3-star power. 120 for 4-star, 720 for 5-star. You'll need to have at least one level in that power already, so they can't be used for acquiring a whole new power. Also, getting 720 together is just about Mission Impossible. But...
* They are used to purchase Legendary tokens. 20 points gets you a standard character draw (and the game will tell you the odds on anyone coming out). 25 provides a chance at the three most recent additions.
So rather than spend 720 points to improve a 5-star power, assuming you somehow put that together, it can be more practical to just buy a bunch of tokens and hope to draw... but if it doesn't work out, it's frustrating. Still, maybe you'll get a good start on someone else.
9. Never burn a Legendary Token unless you have the roster slot open to keep the results. There's no hurry. Standard, Heroic, and Legendary Tokens never expire. (Story event tokens are lost one day after the event ends. Deadpool Dailies expire whenever the vault's selection is refreshed; every six days or so.) Selling 4 and 5-star characters for a pittance of ISO stings.
10. When you get far enough, the game will assist your roster upgrade by allowing you to earn Elite Tokens, which offer a 75% chance of a 2-star character, 25% for a three. These are awarded for the end of story events, story chapters, and p.v.p matches.
11. Every story event earns points based on how many missions you complete. You'll be put into a pool with 999 other players and yes, you get something just for showing up, at least when it's all over. But the more points you get, the better you'll do. There are threshold rewards to be earned for getting X and Y and Z points during a story. Daily rewards are offered for your placement standards, as well as an end-of-chapter bonus for your final standing. (I won one of these -- but my reward was Carnage...)
12. For p.v.p events, you can also get threshold rewards. There's also a chance to randomly win a 1-star or 2-star cover in every match. (Two game characters can only be earned this way.)
So basically: show up at least once a day, spend carefully, don't stress out over a Theoretically Free game. It all comes together eventually.
And lastly, a few things on game strategy.
Always consider how your characters might interact. The 2-star Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) has a yellow power which when maxed out, can ultimately (and randomly) convert up to nine tiles to white. The key here is that she converts any tiles, including enemy countdown and special tiles. One lucky strike with Carol can solve a lot of problems, and if she converts in such a way as to create a match of three or greater, that counts for damage, might start a cascade, and doesn't use up your turn.
And then we have 2-star Hawkeye. Get a match-five and as mentioned, he creates his Speed Shot countdown tiles from available purples. Any match-five. Any color. White included.
You can see where this is going. Load up on yellow. Fire it off. Assuming Carol didn't ruin the local purple supply, Clint then comes in and two turns later, injury is joined by lots of injury.
If you have someone whose powers can damage the team, try to partner them with a healer. Characters who can create special tiles are best off with those who can improve or switch them around. Anyone with a degree of board control is great to have, stunners are essential, and it seldom hurts to have one big heavy hitter. Unless you're up against Ghost Rider, who can take all the damage you've dealt out and make you feel it. In the hit points.
Play around with your combos. It's not just raw strength.
...okay, now you're scared off. Whew!
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Honestly? I was initially very frustrated with the game, as seen in that first blog post. But once I started to play through the game mechanics, it opened up. This is the first time it's hit me with this level of hideous.
The game designers are known to tweak the system: characters are nerfed and buffed once flaws are seen. And I think they're seeing the flaws in the Mindless Ones. I just checked my ranking for today's event. I'm in the top 200 -- after only beating the opening round of each mission. That tells me people are having trouble getting through this one, and that's going to register up the line eventually. So this probably should be fixed. Just not necessarily in time.
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Possibly the single worst possible result for a Legendary Token draw. You have pulled that little-known Marvel character, Legendary Horse Apples!
(Imagine the powers.)
(Look, they recently added Gwenpool. Legendary Horse Apples is not out of the question.)
As for why I'm still playing it... there's a little bit of Thrill Of The Draw in it, yes: getting that first 4-star character is a small moment, and pulling a 5-star is memorable.
But mostly it's because the game can be fun.
It has an occasional sense of humor. There's a Howard The Duck story event, which is basically a whole chapter of Villains Out Shopping, or in this case, villains having a corporate retreat in Central Park and doing trust-building exercises. (Bullseye does not understand or appreciate the whole falling-backwards thing.) Also, the Kingpin is sponsoring a Broadway musical (Guys & Dolls with actual mobsters) and Doctor Octopus runs into his ex. Who's Aunt May. Awk-ward... And Howard himself can be acquired as a character. His purple power is taking off all his clothes and getting on all fours among other ducks, effectively turning invisible, and his blue power is complaining to people about his grievances until the target falls asleep for two turns in self-defense. You haven't played MPQ until you've taken on Ultron Prime or Galactus with a three-foot perpetually ticked-off humanoid duck. And won.
(Also, as with every medium he shows up in, Deadpool is aware he's in a video game and takes vicious advantage. Why does he drop whales on the entire enemy team? Because he can.)
The gameplay, beyond the randomness which will always plague any Match-3 -- the time you were thinking about bringing Clint and didn't is the time a five-match will be available as your opening move on the board -- is about alchemy. The strategic element of figuring out how characters might work together (and the horror of learning which ones don't) is the Puzzle part of the Quest. Every character does something. Some of them are loathed by the community -- right up until a player figures out who they go best with.
Draw a new character and old ones can become more viable. For example, I always had trouble with 2-star Ororo because in order to charge her stunning power, she needed those eleven blues -- and as the highest-level, most effective blue collector, she'd go out front when I got those tiles. Then she'd get hit. Then she'd die. A lot.
And then I drew the Surfer. Who has blue as a strong color and, as a 5-star character, goes to the front rank when matching that hue. And even with only one power on board, he absorbs enough damage to go out there, collect those blue points, which went into the team pool -- and suddenly, Ororo is protected long enough to become viable. (Until someone hits the team with a group attack, at which point, she still dies just about instantly.) Norrin became the human shield, or at least the Zenn-Lavian. Throw in the 3-star version of Tony, who can generate blue, and I had my primary wave attack team: Norrin takes hits, Tony gets the points flowing before taking his mandatory nap, and then Ororo stuns everyone over and over until they all drop. It was enough to let me start reliably winning the Deadpool Daily final rounds. One character changed everything.
In CCG terms, there are very few cards which can't work in the right deck. It's just the issue of building the right deck, especially with a card count this limited. There is no perfect Kill Everything team available at any level, and the game proves it through a p.v.p event called Balance Of Power in which everyone goes to L550 for the duration. You're just trying to... put the right ingredients together.
Also, let's face it: that first 5-star pull? Memorable.
(Unless you got the Green Goblin. Because, you know, @#$% him.)
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I can definitely understand that. My first rare in Magic Puzzle Quest wasn't a dragon, angel, or eldritch god. It was Brain in a Jar. Not a terribly impressive card in the game, not all that impressive in M(tG)PQ. All it does once it's out is give each of your spells in hand one mana every time you match gems.
(As I noted earlier, Magic Puzzle Quest doesn't directly equate gem matches to damage. They become mana that's assigned to the cards in your hand, which are either creatures that form a team of three or fewer that beat your opponent's face in every turn, spells that are one-and-done effects, or supports that stick around on the field and do something nice until matched enough times or destroyed through some card effect.)
However, while I didn't have some ungodly beatstick to swing, I did have Chandra Nalaar, everyone's favorite fiery redhead. Once I gave her the Brain and loaded her up with cheap burn spells, suddenly everything started exploding. In a good way.
(In case you're wondering, you only get one character per game in this version, and you have to unlock the various abilities by leveling them up. The currencies work identically to Marvel Puzzle Quest; just replace ISO crystals with mana runes and Hero Points with crystals. The level cap is locked in at 60. Also, while five characters are available for a pittance, you're basically never going to get to play with anyone else without paying real money or a lot of patience.)
Unfortunately, the fun was outweighed by several factors. PvP events almost always pitted me against people at the level cap, and the only reason I won any of those games was a combination of luck and bad AI. Worse, the matchup system in non-event PvP works just fine, so they have no excuse. Some of the story opponents have insane powers and color affinities to compensate for an AI that has to fit on a phone. (Sure, churn out 10/10s when most creatures don't break 4 power. That's fair.) Some cards are buffed or nerfed for no apparent reason in comparison to their cardboard counterparts. Oh, and your collection is completely dependent on the RNG, with no way to control what you get no matter how much you pay, with very limited resources for buying new cards available for free. Naturally, the story opponents have beautifully streamlined and synergistic decks.
... Huh. That was cathartic.
reminds me of a Game i played for a while: "Clash of the dragons". it's a rpg/card game, where all the cards represent character skills or spells.
now let me describe two of the most overpowered cards i've seen: i forget the names, let's just call them Ultimate...
-ultimate Mana card: while in the players deck (not just active hand), the player gains 1 Mana for every damage point inflicted OR received.
-ultimate attack card: inflicts one damage for every Mana point the player has.
there's also a rule that players can't have more than one of the same card in his deck at one time...unless he learns a certain level 100 skill, then he can have two.
but this only applies to human players, not npc opponents!
you can probably guess where this is going...
a "wizard" enemy who has at least SIX ultimate Mana and six ultimate attack cards!
so if i do 5 damage to him, he gains 30 Mana, then hits me for 30 damage!
no kidding. this guy once hit me for 500 damage! considering that my character only had 35 health...sheesh.
but here's this kicker: this wizard is NOT A BOSS! half the enemies in the third story mode area are just like him!
and to top it off, it's one of those stupid games that limits playing time with "energy", so every player has to wait 50 minutes (real time) before the next game...unless you PAY REAL MONEY PER MINUTE!
and that's why i quit.
oh, that game does have pvp, but since you have to pay for high-class cards like those two i described (which i did NOT have), it's definitely pay-to-win.
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Constructed magic is not really pay to win so much as it is a game with a high financial barrier to entry. Decks are very expensive but you don't gain any additional advantage by spending more than that amount of money.
Magic is easily the best game of its type in existence. There's nothing better than Magic at what it is. It is probably one of the best designed games in existence.
The downside is that it is horrifically expensive to the point where I can't justify playing it simply because, no matter how good it is, I have better things to do with my money.
I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, not because it isn't a great game, but because it is simply too expensive to get into.
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Fortunately, serious Constructed Magic is far from the only way to play it. Drafts, Sealed, just sitting around with friends while someone offers a bunch of decks he put together... It can be orders of magnitude cheaper than the worst case.
Don't get me wrong, that worst case definitely exists. Heck, I don't play the more expensive variants of the game. It's just that those aren't the only ones there are. Plus, finding the right community can do wonders. Granted, that's far from guaranteed, but when it does happen, it's wonderful.
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I love constructed. I used to play tournament-level magic back when it was only like $200 for a standard or extended deck.
I quit during Lorwyn after figuring out that faeries was the best deck and cost more than a new video game console.
I enjoy limited formats, but I want to use those cards for something.
So I avoid Magic now.
I avoid Marvel Puzzle Quest too; it is addictive, and it plays to my worse tendencies. I installed it, played it for a couple days, then uninstalled it because I realized I kept wanting to play it even more, even though I wasn't having that much fun playing it.
4284930 Thanks for the advice. I've given it a shot now. I definitely am nowhere near ready to take on the story missions, but otherwise the game is fairly interesting.
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It depends. It's definitely doable with time put in and no money, but it can be quite a lot of time. Estee is doing a great job examining why it sucks for a newbee. I've though been playing for over two years nearly entirely free to play and didn't lose one match to the Mindless Ones.
I'm mainly 3* complete with all of them championed with one or two fully viable 4*s with a bunch more in various stages of development and I ain't even close to competing with the whales or even those with decent well covered 4* rosters. What I do have though is enough roster depth to have the right boosted characters to handle the pve.
Saying that Kaecilius is still an utter arse of a fight even at my advanced level. I'm lucky enough to have an Elektra who can give him strike tiles for me to match to do damage to him, but basically unless you have her or Patch (another character than can generate opposing strike tiles) as Estee said you're basically shit out of luck. I have the right tools but it takes me a good 5-6 tries to get a win.
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I just wanted to say that after seeing your post, I pulled Patch (James 3.0) into the fight: I do have him and recently Championed him, but I haven't been using him much because his powers are such a double-edged claw. He always seemed to come down to "Either I take down the enemy this turn or thanks to Mr. Strike Tiles For Everyone, they take me down on the next." I hadn't considering using him for the boss fight before that because I thought the matched tiles had to be created by the boss. And of course, you were right -- it's any Strike tiles on the opponent's side, no matter who generates them.
I didn't win. I never won that fight. The computer started matching its own advantage tiles just to keep them away from me, and of course I'd enhanced the damage on those. But I did get up to four of the necessary six hits, so improvement. And the one time I did that, it gave the boss enough time to fully charge on black: game over.
So glad this story event is over. The only thing I got out of it was a pair of 3-star Spidey covers and a pounding headache.
4284930 Just so you know, you now got me to get this on Steam, because "match 3" games are definitely my cup of poison joke.