Monthly MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions!

Pwuz_

#1. Why does MPQ use the Health Pack system it does? Why was this changed from the original PQ with a full heal between battles to the current model? Couldn't Health Packs be used only to revive characters that were K.O.ed?

#2. What are the odds of seeing a draft or sealed tournament?

Pwuz_

Puertorico wrote:

Question from the ✖️➖MEN. Can we please get more rewards in pvp and seasons. A 1300 score in a pvp is easily obtainable. And 7500 a season is reached by many in only a few events. Thank you.

1300 SHOULDN'T be easily obtainable. This is a symptom of the broken shield hopping strategy that has popped up in the meta-game to be competitive. Shielding should be a way to protect points while inactive for thing like sleep and real life, not as a means for 2 or more players to coordinate attacks so they can reach goals that are only there to give some motivation to #1 ranked players to keep playing.

h4n1s

A bit of technical question - the game itself becomes slightly heavier with every new release and it lags on older android devices. Is there any possibility to make an option to run the game in 'light' mode, with slightly decreased quality of graphics or something like that?

It is painful to wait few seconds for the animation to complete every time I perform a move.

GothicKratos

h4n1s wrote:

A bit of technical question - the game itself becomes slightly heavier with every new release and it lags on older android devices. Is there any possibility to make an option to run the game in 'light' mode, with slightly decreased quality of graphics or something like that?

It is painful to wait few seconds for the animation to complete every time I perform a move.

In case you didn't see it yet, they seem to be aware and are apparently cutting the fat off of the client on mobile clients in R61.

Wolarsen

Thanks a lot for the thread; if you manage to give good feedback on the suggestions we are posting, would be a giant's step on customer management.

1) MPQ being an almost pure competitive game, events scores are way too dependant of last hour performance. What are the position and plans of D3 regarding rubberband (application and information to players) and freedom of playing time (specifically european players and off-times players).
2) I am somehow confortably installed in my roster, but if I had to start 2->3 transition today I would feel overwhelmed. Does D3 have plans to ease that, like picking a small number of 3* characters and making them easily obtainable on low scores?
3) Any of Nonce's question, really!

Unknown

Thank you for this thread and I hope we get some feedback as a community from this.

1) What are your plans about roster slots? Will they continue to be bought with HP? And if yes, will the cost continue to increase to unspeakable amounts?

Having an incremental cost for the one roster slot each time does not make any sense to me. It is like saying if you buy a Mercedes it will cost you $30.000. However, if you buy the same Mercedes model 2 times the second one will cost you $40.000. Unless there is some incentive for that second Mercedes or I need it really bad and I have no choice, I will never buy it. In this case you give us no choice and it clearly feels unfair.

2) Have you considered any changes for PVE? (Rubberbanding, rewards, new story etc.)

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

4. When will there be an event with times more fair for EU players?

Here I go. I am anticipating a huge backlash like the last time I mentioned this in the forums. Also forgive me as I am using Google to translate to English.

Everyone is so worried about European players getting the shaft but how about us Asia based players. It's already horrible timing wise for us and it would be even worse if it shifted to accommodate European players. Right now in Seoul we are 13 hours ahead of East Coast US who have the best times in my opinion for playing this game. If it is switched to the other side of the Atlantic ocean the end times would be even worse for us as that would be directly during our work days.

Now I know what you all will say as I have heard it many a times here. Asia has the best and fastest internet there is. Everyone has fiber. While true when connected physically it is anything but with cell reception. It is still fast and unlimited but there are dead zones because of the way our buildings are constructed.

If the developers would like to make different regions for each event and align the times for such i.e. Asia/Europe/Americas then that is fine. However if they want to just shift end times further to accommodate other players I would rather they not so that the least amount of players are screwed. Right now the US and Asia are close enough that I can take a late lunch or stay up late to finish at night. Asia and Europe based players are hurt by this. But if we shift then only the European players benefit and everyone else is out of luck as there is almost nothing on the opposite side of the world except a vast ocean.

Also I am unaware if they shift to adjust for daylight saving time as I started playing afterwards. This will further shift Asia players as we don't change our times because research has proven this has no benefit to energy saved of production increased.

y2fitzy

I don't think anyone is suggesting to shift times to suit us Euros, and screw everyone else.

I know there are people who don't like the 'everyone share a bit of pain' approach, but I still think the fairest way of doing things is rotating end times. Sometimes it will suck to be on the West Coast, sometimes it will suck to be in London, sometimes it will suck to be in Tokyo. But that's still an improvement on the current situation and doesn't require any additional developer spending, so far as I can see.

I don't have any questions that haven't already been asked, so I'll throw myself behind a random selection of Nonce's questions

Unknown

Will MPQ ever be available on the Amazon app-store? I'd love to play this on my kindle instead of my **** phone.

Enoc99

Thanks for using my idea for the monthly Q&A, I think this will really benefit the community!

Anyway, on to my questions:

1). How do you determine which characters you plan on creating and releasing? What factors go into deciding which character the development staff chooses to focus their work on?

2). What characters were the hardest to design in a way the development staff was satisfied with? Which characters were easiest? Are there any characters that the development staff is still struggling with creating?

mhorham

First , let me set up the question, when a character such as magneto goes through a almost total revamp it is in my opinion that it is unfair for the player who has spent time and effort to get a certain build of a character to be suddenly at the mercy of what the developers decide where to place displaced covers. There should be an opportunity for the player to respec his character with the amount of covers that that character had, a respec cover if you will. In addition it would be also cool to have a blank cover, sort of like a blank check for a player to pick whatever cover he needed. These could be offered as rewards in 1,2,3, or 4 star character respectively. Is any of this possible?

Unknown

I'd like to hear the developers' thoughts about characters with only two powers.

(1) Were they intended to be less powerful than characters with three powers, or just different? Most of them are villains. Is there a thematic reason for this? (i.e. Dark Avengers not measuring up to the real thing?).
(2) Are there plans for more characters with only two powers in the future, or this being phased out?
(3) Now that Daken (Dark Avengers) has a third power, many are wondering whether you plan to do the same for characters like Loki and Doom. (Personally I don't mind if some characters only have two powers, but in those cases their two existing powers should be extra potent to compensate)

Unknown

Pwuz_ wrote:

#1. Why does MPQ use the Health Pack system it does? Why was this changed from the original PQ with a full heal between battles to the current model? Couldn't Health Packs be used only to revive characters that were K.O.ed?

#2. What are the odds of seeing a draft or sealed tournament?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

yendi

1. Are there any current plans for a Mac version of the Steam game?

2. Any of Nonce's questions.

Unknown

fsentell wrote:

Right now in Seoul we are 13 hours ahead of East Coast US who have the best times in my opinion for playing this game. If it is switched to the other side of the Atlantic ocean the end times would be even worse for us as that would be directly during our work days.

I completely support a fix for the plight of the non-US players, but just to be clear about the East Coast thing, midnight and 1AM finishes (or noon finishes for that matter) are not at ALL ideal for the 30-somethings that make up the majority of the player base. If anything, the West Coasters have the best setup for participating in the last hour of tournaments, which we all know is where the magic happens.

As far as my questions:
1) Are there any plans to improve the chat interface to allow for a landscape mode, SWYPE, screenshots, etc?
2) Are the metrics supporting whatever you were hoping to achieve with shorter PvEs? I think it's been a HUGE change for the better and sincerely hope it sticks.

jojeda654

We can currently see the ability descriptions for the next cover. When will we be able to view descriptions for all upgrades?
As far as UI, tapping/clicking on one of the 5 circles should update the blurb beneath.

Will you revisit the trap mechanism? One of the Devs explained that traps are overwritten to prevent players from triggering them when using abilities that randomly place special tiles. When played against Daken, I believe it is unfair that a passive ability can negate a 7AP power. My suggestion would be for the tile and trap to be destroyed, and maybe apply reduced damage and/or AP reimbursement.

loroku

Re: time zones, there is a very, very simple fix for this (although I don't know how hard it would be to do programmatically). Start events in waves. You already slot everyone into different shards so this would be similar. Every 6 hours would be fine, although every 4 or less would be amazing. Based on your IP (or whatever factor D3 likes) you get slotted into whatever wave best fits your time zone. Still wouldn't cover 100% of people but it would cover way more than the ~15% of the earth they cover now. There's no advantage / disadvantage to knowing what's happening earlier / later so it's really just about making different shards that start and end at different times.

Re: questions, I second the "what's up with tokens?" ones.

Pwuz_

clean_cut_hippie wrote:

fsentell wrote:

Right now in Seoul we are 13 hours ahead of East Coast US who have the best times in my opinion for playing this game. If it is switched to the other side of the Atlantic ocean the end times would be even worse for us as that would be directly during our work days.

I completely support a fix for the plight of the non-US players, but just to be clear about the East Coast thing, midnight and 1AM finishes (or noon finishes for that matter) are not at ALL ideal for the 30-somethings that make up the majority of the player base. If anything, the West Coasters have the best setup for participating in the last hour of tournaments, which we all know is where the magic happens.

I couldn't agree more! I'm on the East Coast myself, and do not think that these times are best for us. The middle of the day Noon/1pm EST end times are the worst for me, since I'm at work and don't have the option to play for the last 3-4 hours usually. Midnight & 1am EST end times are probably not the best for my sleep schedule since I can either choose to stay up well past the time I should be up to close out the event strong OR go to sleep at a reasonable time and skip the last 2-3 hours (my doctor thinks I should be getting 8 hours of sleep, what does he know?)

I don't think there is a single time that will work for everyone, but having multiple end times would spread the pain around a little. Though then there is the balancing of what rewards are offered would be an issue of contention. West Coast US players have a favorable end time for the new character (which of course will be required in the next event), and the players in EU have the advantage in earning Loki covers.

GrumpySmurf1002

1) Are there any other game modes in development?

Edit: Nevermind. I guess there is. True PvE FTW!

Kolence

vudu3 wrote:

Are you planning to fix the cover color order / color power mismatch several characters?

Daken cover order is purple, black, blue but his power order is black, purple, blue
cMags cover order is yellow, red, blue but his power order is blue, red yellow
Deadpool cover order is red, purple, black, but his power order is purple, black, red
Dr. Doom cover order is black, blue but his power order is blue, black, purple
Capt. Marvel cover order is red, black yellow but her power order is red, yellow, black
Spidey cover order is yellow, blue, purple but his power order is yellow, purple, blue
GSBW cover order is green, red, purple but her power order is purple, green, red
She-Hulk cover order is blue, green, red but her power order is blue, red, green
Beast cover order is blue, green, yellow but his power order is blue, yellow, green
Loki cover order is black, purple but his power order is purple, black, green

Poor IM40, he's plagued by this too. His cover order is red, blue, yellow and power order is red, yellow, blue.