Happiness with the game

Nonce Equitaur 2

There are threads of people discussing in a not entirely favorable way about team ups and the unfairness of EU event ending times.

However, devs IceIX, Demiurge_Will, Lakestone, and Silverhawk have all been active on the forum recently and have answered many questions. Some changes for Team-Ups are already promised. Deadpool is coming out soon. New scenarios start Aug 1. The Sunder bug is fixed. Daredevil and Black Panther got buffs. Storm has been made more strategically important (though it might decrease mStorm's utility). The minor change to BWGS will make tile-matching easier for her and is middlingly popular (though it wasn't announced and might be a bug). Spam issues have been mostly eradicated.

When I posted the nerfs list on June 30, the game was ebbing (in my opinion). A nerf to mStorm was made without justification or announcement and that turned out to be a bug. UnwiseOne and Clintman posted retirement threads. Demiurge_Will defended the changes, but dev interactions were mostly missing for weeks.

In my opinion, forum attitudes are much better now than a month ago. Perhaps the IW cover for Season 4 is causing a lot less stress than the Fury cover for Season 3. Perhaps the developers talking to us has helped. Perhaps tossing a mix of mostly good and some bad has helped, instead of the mixes from previous months.

Anyways, I think developer attitudes have changed, and I believe the game is better for it. They say they'll fix Team-ups, and I believe them. I expect to have fun with the Deadpoll event.

What are the thoughts of others? Are you happier with the game?

EDIT: Sheesh -- Polls and Positive posts almost never get upvotes.

over_clocked

The Sunder bug is fixed.

The scar doesn't hurt, everything is well!

GrumpySmurf1002

I voted for staying the same. Pretty sure I'm in the gross minority of the player base:

-Don't mind the true heal change, almost have come to embrace it.
-Don't mind the team up change, pending the delete function and maybe some of the other suggestions out there.
-Don't read the comic books or know much about the characters beyond that they keep making Wolverine movies.
-Don't know who Deadpool is or why he's exciting to be available.

The game for me has always been a match-3 battle game with some characters that are vaguely familiar. It's addicting as tinykitty, and it would take a lot for me not to be happy playing it. It would also take a lot for me to think it was significantly better. Thus, think it'll stay the same, which is pretty good as is.

Unknown

In a vacuum, I like the team up concept. In actuality, it cuts play time in half and again disproportionately affects the 2 star transition players.

If this change had happened 2 months ago, I would have drifted away from the game. Now, I have 4 or 5 3 stars that become useful with 1 more cover, so there is light at the end of the tunnel that I can start playing again soon.

Definitely less happy with the game - not while playing, but in general, since I am playing less.

Nonce Equitaur 2

papa07 wrote:

In a vacuum, I like the team up concept. In actuality, it cuts play time in half and again disproportionately affects the 2 star transition players.

I'm pretty sure it's affecting everybody. I had three losses in a row from what should have been easy teams, mostly due to the Sentry powers that seem to be on 50% of the enemy teams I'm facing. I expect the problems will get fixed quickly.

GrimSkald

That's a very good question. In general, I would definitely say that the game has been getting harder of late - the "True Healing" and Team-Up changes definitely limit play time and make certain things more frustrating.

That being said, I do not agree with those that believe that these changes are trying to milk more money out of us. I believe "True Healing" came about because of the developers vision for the game (that "Healing" wasn't really supposed to be a character role.) I think Team Ups came about because of a real desire to make the game more interesting. The fact that both things made the game more difficult was a side-effect. I do believe that the developers will take steps in the other direction.

At least I hope so. Still, I remain optimistic. Certain other changes definitely made the game easier - much more forgiving award tiers (I can get a 3* cover by just ending up in the top 100!) better progression awards, etc.

Unknown

I am generally an optimist so even if I am having an annoyed day I voted for getting better.

My current gripe specific to Team-ups is the randomness of defensive team-ups. I am fine with them adding to the difficulty but that should be applied to everyone evenly. Defensive team-ups should be consistent. Each node should have its own set every time you play it. Heck that would even work in PVP give each environment a resident hero or two and make the defensive team-ups always belong to those characters.

FierceKiwi

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Anyways, I think developer attitudes have changed, and I believe the game is better for it. They say they'll fix Team-ups, and I believe them. I expect to have fun with the Deadpoll event.

I have no doubt they'll eventualy fix Team-Ups the question is how long it will take let's face they tend to move at a glacial pace when it comes to changes (and I seem to recall them even saying they'd rather make large changes rarely rather than lot's of frequent little ones (the only devs I've ever heard in the last 10 years with that mindset)). The game still feels like it's on a downward trend just not nearly as steep as before.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

I expect the problems will get fixed quickly.

Why would anyone believe that? When have any fixes come quickly?

Make up your mind D3 do you want this to be a casual game or a competitive game? TU's are great for a PVE environment they totally ruin pvp play. Great for casual play a horrible idea for competitive play.

The team up concept could have been great if it was based on the team you selected and nothing else. You put Capt America and Falcon on a team you get a special power. This encourages mixing up the teams and using lesser chars.

As it is now it completely throws what little balance there was out the window.

OK OK you might say ZenMonkey, but its fun who cares? Great then stop trying to make this a competitive game and end seasons. Make more pve events or other game modes where I don't feel cheated when a low level player snipes me using over powered Team Ups.

No you don’t want to end seasons?

Then for the love of god stop releasing patches during events or seasons. There is no excuse for this except for the complete lack of respect for the community. Schedule a patch release let everyone know when it’s coming and release it between seasons.

If you want me to care about a season then you better start respecting the seasons as a developer.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

papa07 wrote:

In a vacuum, I like the team up concept. In actuality, it cuts play time in half and again disproportionately affects the 2 star transition players.

I'm pretty sure it's affecting everybody. I had three losses in a row from what should have been easy teams, mostly due to the Sentry powers that seem to be on 50% of the enemy teams I'm facing. I expect the problems will get fixed quickly.

Not my intent to imply that it doesn't affect everybody equally, just that the impact to the 2 star transition players is felt more severely, as they have a more limited character base to play with. Therefore, these random wipings take out a higher percentage of their playing time compared to someone with twice as many usable characters.

Unknown

ZenMonkey wrote:

The team up concept could have been great if it was based on the team you selected and nothing else. You put Capt America and Falcon on a team you get a special power. This encourages mixing up the teams and using lesser chars.

YES! We need this! Powers that just show up using certain combos of people and are cast with white AP. Even if they keep the current team-ups please please add in some teamwork powers as well.

Unknown

I'm more optimistic for PvE than PvP simply because I can't think of how they can possibly break the current limbo in PvP where everyone has the same five teams under the current structure. Even if you deleted the ten most powerful characters from the game it'd just be the same five teams made up of the next ten most powerful characters. PvE at least we can have new stuff by having a new story line, though we seem to have way too many reruns.

I don't particularly care about the new teamup feature. It might turn out to be something good but right now it's something I don't bother with. It makes all the PvE events way harder but that applies to everyone, though it sucks when you get hit by 2 World Ruptures.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

ZenMonkey wrote:

The team up concept could have been great if it was based on the team you selected and nothing else. You put Capt America and Falcon on a team you get a special power. This encourages mixing up the teams and using lesser chars.

YES! We need this! Powers that just show up using certain combos of people and are cast with white AP. Even if they keep the current team-ups please please add in some teamwork powers as well.

That'd only work if you already know who sucks so that those combination of people get better combo powers, but if you already knew that, you could just fix the game too.

Unknown

Not long ago, before hearing about TUs coming, I was about to make a thread to discuss with others about environment tiles and how useless most of them were. The best I could have hoped for was slight tweaks to make some of them somewhat usable, nothing more. Then, BAM! The whole thing was overhauled into a brand new system which allows me to bring more special moves into a fight (variety is the spice of life!) and give me an extra reward for tougher fights. I know enemy TUs will often screw me over and shorten my play time, but the collector in me just drool at the idea of hoarding unusual TUs of characters I otherwise couldn't use.

Plus, incoming new storyline. I love story missions.
But before that, they released one of my top 2 characters I wanted in the game. (Small hint: It starts with "C" and ends with "aptain Marvel" )
Not to mention, the devs have even returned to the seemingly forsaken forums. Gasp!

All this to say I'm surprisingly optimistic about the game right now.

FaerieMyst

Okay, I'm a match 3 junkie - and I'm very clear about how much I love MPQ. For me it keeps getting better.

Healing change just confirmed my plan of creating a deep roster.
Character nerfs are improvements from my perspective. Spidey has become my MVP since his nerf.
Team Ups needs some tweaking but I love it. I like the variety it brings and the surprises in play. If you want predictability, there is Candy Crush and Farm Heroes.
I really enjoy the Season play - especially the SHIELD PVP which is like a playground for me.
I was already a Marvel movie fan but this has me reading comics. My daughter, Aramina, put her Marvel Unlimited on my tablet and I'm hooked.

Yes, I am naturally an optimistic happy person and that applies to everything I do. Life is too short to be angry or bitter at virtual reality. From time to time I get fed up with Farm Heroes or Bubble Witch and quit for a while. I've given up on Candy Crush because it started to frustrate me. There are days that I put MPQ down for the rest of the day but I enjoy enough that I keep playing.

Unknown

Small addendum to my previous post:

They also removed Spiderman Bagman from the main tokens. How could I not be happy with the game?
Tokens without Bagmen in them...so beautiful.

mohio

I have been pretty unhappy with team ups ever since I got the update pushed onto me early this morning in the middle of a mildly important match. Maybe the update thing is my own fault, but I saw a lot of people saying it was more frustrating than fun in its current implementation, so I wanted to hold off until after the PvP at least (If not an additional day or 2 for the PvE to end as well). Anyhow, I'm not going to confuse frustration/unhappiness with one feature to be unhappiness with the game as whole, and as others have said, with the steps they've taken lately (and even just making changes to try something new but stay on top of it to change things) I'm pretty positive that they will make the game better in the long run. Call me naive, the devs overall track record over the several months I've been playing and on the forums has been pretty poor, but I see recent improvement and for some reason trust them not to completely muck up their game.

rixmith

Overall the game has improved for me over the last few months. True Healing + Level Shift has reduced PVP grinding and made many more characters relevant for me. Team Ups is interesting, though it needs some tweaking because as currently implemented it overwhelms gameplay instead of augmenting it. Overall I feel that the dev team is guiding the product in positive direction, even if there are a few missteps along the way.

atomzed

I am happy with the progress of the game. While some ppl are unhappy with the "slow" progress, I still classify D3 as a small studio, so my expectations of them are lower (I expect much flame for this comment).

The progress is steady with at least one new character every 2 months. They are also trying new things like balance of power pvp, create a new system and giving us deadpool vs mpq. To me it shows that they are genuinely trying to improve the game.

I like the true healing change (hated obw). I didn't like the roster slot bundling. But in the end, I don't see an obvious cash grab by the D3 in this game, contrary to what many said (I believe those ppl are just upset about changes and wants to blame it on D3 "greed").

I enjoy the game as I can plan my schedule around it. I can play less if RL demands attention. I can play more when I have the free time.

I just hope that the game continue to progress for a year or 2 so that I can get sufficient ROI from the amount of money I paid.

GuntherBlobel

Cryptobrancus wrote:

ZenMonkey wrote:

The team up concept could have been great if it was based on the team you selected and nothing else. You put Capt America and Falcon on a team you get a special power. This encourages mixing up the teams and using lesser chars.

YES! We need this! Powers that just show up using certain combos of people and are cast with white AP. Even if they keep the current team-ups please please add in some teamwork powers as well.

It's a great idea! I think that would be lots of fun. They could still do it in the future with TU AP, but practically speaking it would require a lot of new powers to design and test. So, I would imagine that we would be waiting a long time for this.

HairyDave

I'm quietly optimistic.

Team Ups are a neat idea but horribly flawed at the moment. Once they get those sorted out I'm sure the game will be a lot more fun to play again.