"You're supposed to lose": the Marvel Puzzle Quest 4th anniversary event. · 12:19am Oct 5th, 2017
I'm going to paste this exactly as I found it on the main MPQ forum. This is all the information we were given: actual stats were not provided. This is because in alliance fights like this, the boss starts at a low level and gradually escalates as the collective alliance racks up wins. Under pretty much all circumstances, if you have a decent team, the first three rounds are just about freebies.
This is the exception.
I'm posting this as both my official complaining area (because for some reason, I feel like I'm going to need a place to scream) and to see if anyone has any advice on how to manage this. Because my first look at the powerset in the preview has created a strategy of "So. Just Deadpool Dailies and PVPs through the weekend, then?"
Brace yourselves. This is ugly.
The X-Men vs. Apocalypse
Details
- Alliance Boss Event
- One Boss mission and five Supporting Character missions
Apocalypse (En Sabah Nur)
- Apocalypse cannot be Stunned or sent Airborne
The Four Horsemen
- Passive Black Power
- Apocalypse calls forth his four horsemen at the start of the battle
- The Horsemen cannot be matched away or destroyed by normal means
Famine
- Destroys the player's AP.
- This tile is destroyed when the player has enough AP in their strongest color
War
- Player's matches deal less damage.
- This tile is destroyed when the player has dealt enough damage.
Pestilence
- Creates Attack tiles for Apocalypse.
- New tiles have a chance to become Attack tiles for Apocalypse.
- This tile is destroyed when there aren't any Special tiles on the board for Apocalypse.
Death
- When another Horseman is destroyed, creates a countdown tile that downs the character in front.
- This tile is destroyed when it is the last Horseman tile on the board
The Strong Will Survive
- Red Power
- Deals damage to the lowest level enemy
Rejuvenate
- Passive Yellow Power
- At the start of the turn, if there are any Horsemen on the board, return Apocalypse to full health.
...oh, buck me.
So you can't naturally remove the Horseman tiles through matching or destruction. (Conversion is a question mark.) You have to get rid of all special tiles to take out the Pestilence one, but it can potentially drop in replacements every turn. Not to be outdone, you've got to earn lots of color points before Famine goes away, and Famine? Destroys your color points. You have to do lots of damage to get rid of War, which cuts down on damage -- and bonus points: Apocalypse heals all damage every turn, so how are you supposed to do any damage? And just to finish this off, the Death tile can potentially take out one team member every time you somehow remove another Horseman tile, and does so on a countdown. How long is this countdown? I'm thinking -- three turns? And in the meantime, here come the boss matches! And the boss matches. And the boss matches. And the boss matches. And the... oops, everyone's dead. Got health packs?
I know we're lacking stats: countdown duration, number of Attack tiles which could drop each turn, damage threshold and color points destroyed per turn. But for the first time, I'm looking at the abilities for a boss fight -- a boss fight which no one has played before: this is a brand-new event -- and wondering how anyone's supposed to get past Round One.
Gah.
Oh, the prize for this? If your alliance somehow cracks this egg, you can earn up to the first three covers for the newest ***: Remy LeBeau. That's right: Gambit is finally joining the roster, assuming anyone gets that far. One of my least favorite personalities in the entire MU will be clogging up the ISO feed. And how accurately did they capture said personality in his powers?
Black (5) Stacked Deck Cost: 0, Passive & Automatic Remy understands what the purpose of a team is. A team is the people you keep around to provide an audience when you showboat. (Plus if your stupidity is going to get everyone killed, then you'd better have "everyone" around, right?) At the start of every single turn, before you make your match, add three purple and three red color points to your pool.
Remy's "allies" may not use any red or purple powers they possess for the duration of the match.
Very.
The event starts tomorrow. I have a few hours to finish beating my head against the wall.
Yikes. A British Gentleman's recent blog on skill games and money games comes to mind.
They stopped pretending its not pay to win. Is what it looks like.
Someone ranks below Maria Hill?
Wow
Wow
Okay, so looking at priorities, since Apocalypse is going to be healing anyway there's not much point in doing damage, so you probably should save War for last (after Death, but then, that's mandatory). Whether you take out Famine or Pestilence first depends on what you have for your color powers I suppose. If you have a power that lets you work around the Horsemen, or something that uses enemy attack tiles, then you should take Famine out as quickly as possible. Otherwise, go for Pestilence.
Just my opinion, and I haven't played the game in a while.
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I read it last night.
There's no doubt that money can play a part in MPQ fast-tracking: you can purchase the Hero Points for (some) extra token draws, or get into a cash alliance which actively goes for Command Point bonuses from large buys. But in this case, the question isn't pay-to-win, it's how-do-I-win? The event starts about two hours from now, and I still can't work out an advance strategy other than 'don't be seen'. Invisible characters can only be hit by team attacks or truly random fire -- so I dumped pretty much all available ISO into Susan Storm and Howard T. Duck. If I can get them the yellow and purple they need to vanish and then somehow protect the resulting invisibility titles, I might be able to turn this into an endurance contest -- presuming there's actually a way to get rid of the Horsemen tiles within the rules.
(I'm probably going to have some issues with the damage required on War in later rounds: Susan's running on nine covers and Howard's got eight. But I've also got Charles -- at four. Meanwhile, Flash is championed, but he only turns his allies invisible for a couple of turns, leaving him very much exposed and vulnerable.)
And for those who play: no, Susan doesn't have the covers in Force Bubbles to lock down all of the Horsemen titles. Presuming her powers could even affect them: I'll be watching the MPQ forums to see if anyone tries that.
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Going after Apocalypse directly depends on his Health and my team/color points. There's one situation where I could tackle him directly: any situation where I have the chance to one-shot him. He can be attacked: he just heals it all back at the end of each round if there's even a single Horseman tile left. But you don't heal back from Downed.
I have roster members who, under the right circumstances, can strike for 10K+ in one huge blast. But those circumstances require color points, so hello, Famine. And I'm guessing that by the time we start seeing Round 4, that boss Health is going to be very, very high.
As for powers when dealing with the Horseman tiles... there's still no way to get rid of every Attack tile with one power if the board is full of them. (Gwendolyn can deal with up to five, but that's the current max.) Pestilence may wind up as the biggest problem.
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A boss fight against Maria Hill would have players lined up around the block to hit her. Of course, it would also have her declare MPQ illegal and crash the game code from the inside, so the point's moot.
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And downs them regardless of Health, powers, or protection. Is there a cure for this? Of course there is: Not-Jean! If you've got Phoenix (who's a *****) with her From The Ashes power and she's downed first or second, she creates a countdown tile. If it goes off, she returns two turns later with 40% of her starting Health.
A *****.
So sort of a problem there.
Okay: in response to the MPQ forums blowing up, the game developers have released a few actual stats on the Horsemen tiles, at least as applies to the initial rounds.
So Famine requires a very fast match run in your team's strongest color or someone who can generate it directly. War is a question of both threshold and whether that auto-healing resets it. Pestilence remains a problem. Death's issue is getting to the countdown tile, and even if you've got board shufflers, a lot of that is going to be pure luck. And all of these stats could be bumped up as the rounds progress.
It's still ugly.
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I wouldn't imagine War's counter would get reset. Dealing damage isn't the same as "having damage dealt", right?
Unless they just don't want people to win, of course.
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Some of the fear in the MPQ forums centers around coding and playtesting. The last major boss fight revamp we saw was with the Strange Sights event, and that went so badly, the game company sent out all the ISO which people normally would have had some chance to win as an apology. (I managed to get through it, but it took every health pack I had and at one point, left me with a roster which was about 40% unconscious.) No one's sure if the programmers truly understand how well this first-time event works during true play, and we'll know the first crash when we see it.
They directly compared the War power to Johnny Blaze's Penance Stare, and that just counts total damage done by the target before returning a percentage to you (or, depending on his cover count, an overcharge) as a direct attack. So the auto-healing shouldn't subtract from that. Unless it does.
Less than an hour to go.
For the record: my alliance isn't a strong one. I'm not exactly in a whale team, and it's a surprise when fifteen of the twenty members play in a given day. (I'm usually one of the leading points suppliers for group efforts.) So I don't expect to complete the eight rounds of alliance rewards, both due to lower participation and what I'm expecting to be an absolute curb-stomping from Round Five on. We should be able to get grounding in Remy and maybe snag one Laura cover. That's probably it.
So here's how Round One went. Keep in mind: the initial portions of an alliance-based boss fight are meant to be fairly easy.
First, before the chaos begins: some notes how these kinds of alliance battles work.
You are playing both on your own and as part of your alliance team. Each win earns you points, which are added to both your own progress total for personal event rewards and your alliance's total for group rewards. (If you lose the boss fight, you're awarded points based on percentage of damage done.) When the alliance total hits a threshold number, a group reward is given out to everyone in the alliance (regardless of whether they played or not), and all fights increase in level.
There is one main boss fight and five sub-fights. You get one free punch at the boss. After that, each additional try requires that you win a sub-fight first. Each sub-fight can only be won once every eight hours, and they all have a Required Character attached: you can't play the sub-fight unless that person is on your roster. (However, there is one mechanic in play which is unique to such events: if the required character is, say, Tony, then you can play with your *, ***, ****, or *****. Any Tony grants access.) If eight hours pass since your last boss attempt, you can have at him again without needing to beat someone else.
When thresholds are hit, sub-fights are replaced, granting additional chances at the now-stronger boss.
In terms of sub-fight access, my roster shouldn't be a problem. I'm missing a whole bunch of *****s, but I have no worries for *** and my ****s, even if they're weak, are at least present in some quantity. Anything which requires a ***** to play is an event where I'm in trouble anyway.
All right. The appointed hour has struck. Let's see what the opening act of this nightmare looks like.
Round One:
Apocalypse: Level 100
Health: 6663
Board Configuration: Each Horseman title occupies a corner.
War (upper right): 15% damage cutdown. Must do 1507 to destroy.
Famine (upper left): Destroys 1 color point in your single strongest color per turn. Must accumulate 7 points to destroy.
Pestilence (lower right): At the start of the game, created three enemy Attack tiles of strength 31 each. Any new tile which drops in has a 5% chance of being a new enemy Attack tile. Destroyed when no enemy Attack tiles (or Protect, or Destroy, if you have powers which give tiles to the enemy) remain.
Death (lower left): Starts a 6-turn countdown on a random black tile whenever another Horseman tile is removed: if this goes off, downs the front-rank character. Destroyed automatically when it's the last Horseman tile remaining.
Initial team:
Natasha ***** (Raw damage to get rid of War tile in a hurry.)
Rocket & Groot **** (Creates Strike tiles at the start of the match: more damage.)
Susan Storm **** (Invisibility for defense, Force Field Crush as hoped-for finishing move.)
Results...
...oh, dear sweet pony gawds.
I won the first match. (War went down first, then Pestilence. I had a lot of trouble with Famine.) I also had both Natasha and R&G go down to Death tiles: they appeared in places I couldn't reach. A third Death tile appeared when Famine dropped out, but I got lucky and matched it after a few turns. By that time, Susan was invisible and managed to build up a Crush which ended the fight.
And that's what happened with this boss at his lowest level, with a fight which can be repeated five more times.
*checks health pack supply*
It's gonna be a long event.
More on Round One:
Required characters were: Wade, Ororo, James, Pietro, and Charles. (Well, it is an X-Men event.) No issues in being able to participate, and just about everything came down to 'they never got a real shot in': for Round One, the sub-fights have enemies at L26. This is a match-and-forget cakewalk.
For the subsequent Apocalypse fights in Round One:
Take Two: Only got rid of the War tile. Natasha managed to save up enough black to one-shot Apocalypse, which did in fact end the fight right there: the remaining three Horsemen weren't a factor.
#3: Got lucky. War tile went out, then got a match-five on a random drop-in: the resulting cascade did enough damage to overwhelm his Health.
#4: Got even luckier. A match-five was available on the opening board, and that led to a critical tile and match-damage one-shot.
#5: Metric ton of black available on the starting board: allowed me to match the auto-kill tile after War was gone and get together enough color points for Natasha to one-shot.
By this time, some of my alliance mates had shown up to the fight and between all of us, we crossed the points threshold and entered Round Two. This gave me:
Apocalypse: Level 125
Health: 8254 (Natasha can still one-shot.)
Board Configuration: Same.
War (upper right): 15% damage cutdown. Must do 1867 to destroy.
Famine (upper left): Same.
Pestilence (lower right): At the start of the game, created three enemy Attack tiles of strength 38 each. Any new tile which drops in has a 5% chance of being a new enemy Attack tile. Destroyed when no enemy Attack tiles (or Protect, or Destroy, if you have powers which give tiles to the enemy) remain.
Death (lower left): Same.
Again, got lucky: a match-five was available on the opening board, and Apocalypse doesn't auto-heal until the end of the full turn. The bonus move and Critical tile let me take him out.
So at this level, it's not impossible. But it still requires some fast hitters: if your point acquisition is going slowly and the death countdowns are in awkward places, it's going to be a painful fight.
More to come...
Yeah, this is an interesting boss battle event. I initially went in with Quicksilver, Medusa, and Coulson for their abilities to swap tiles or shake the board. Worked out pretty well in round 1, although my strongest color is black, so Quicksilver didn't get to use his swap very often. Also tried replaced Coulson with 4* Rocket&Groot and that worked fairly well too. It helps that the auto-heal doesn’t kick in until the start of Apocalypse’s turn - I think I’ve only taken out all the horsemen once in the five times I’ve fought him.
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You and I have very different gaming experiences. I have taken out all the horsemen each time I beat him (three times so far, since Wolverine and Storm were the only required characters I had).
I went with *** Wolverine (very high level, so lots of raw damage plus Healing Factor to let him shrug off incidental damage), *** Hulk (Anger generates lots of green tiles, Hulk is my lowest character in the triad and so gets hit with Apocalypse’s red power, and green is my top color. Plus Thunderous clap can destroy a lot of tiles at need), and *** Strange (Attack tile removal and decent damage).
OK, so it feels like it only just occurred to me today, but... You're not the one writing the descriptions that tie the characters to their MPQ abilities, are you. Seemed like a pretty good match, anyway.
This event is not so bad, I already crushed him several times without getting downed.
*** Wanda, 3/5/5
*** Iron Fist 3/5/5
*** Sam Wilson 4/4/5
Strongest color, purple - Hello arcane incantation
Red wing/Hex bolt for the countdowns/attack tiles
Exquisite Technique for auto damage
Easy victory
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Round 3
9862 HP
Famine requires 8 points now. Didn’t much care about the others once the birds came out and my team was receiving 1 damage per turn on match and attack tile damage. 10 purple and 12 black and Iron Fist doesn’t care about your heal to full every turn.
So long as my strong color isn’t black, maybe blue.
Still easy victory.
Yeah I really don't think it's that bad. I've only got a couple of properly levelled 4*s and my normally none viable 213 Cyclops is still getting the job done on round 5 with the boost.
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Right now, I'm getting through with a Carol **** + Tandy&Tyrone combo: the third position can be taken by anyone with good Health and decent damage who's higher in level than Carol is, to keep black out of the "strongest color" slot which is being drained by Famine. The tactic is basic: ignore the Horseman tiles while going for black and yellow. That's where Cloak & Dagger come in: depending on who's up front in the pair, I'm either getting auto-converted random black tiles or random yellow ones. Once I get to eight black and five yellow, Photon Blast + Executive Decision, targeting Apocalypse directly. As long as his maximum Health is below Carol's damage output, it's a one-hit.
But I'm still in Round 4. (As said, not the strongest alliance.) And his Health is going to keep going up.
The big problem remains the Death countdown tiles. I'll usually eliminate War before I can try for the direct hit, and that countdown isn't necessarily where I can get to it. Having Tyrone whipping up extra black tiles makes it easier to match away, but it's still no guarantee.
(One minor note: I keep getting into positions where the game has to auto-shuffle the board because there's no match possible -- which puts the Horsemen in some really awkward places. They count as locked tiles, and it can really mess up your matches.)
And in the meantime, trying out PvP, hoping to reach the points goal for the Anniversary token 10-pack. (I managed to draw a Fan Favorites Legendary -- and got a duplicate **** cover for a maxed-out power on a non-Champion. Well... it's ISO.)
Hey. So it's been a week since your last post on the topic. Did you not have anything else to mention? A quick search shows that there are two other parts to the anniversary, and the third started yesterday.