Monthly MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions!

Unknown

1. Is there any plan to revamp the UI controls of the game to allow for swipe gestures (character screens once you go into one from your roster) and/or add scrolling to certain areas of the game (roster, leaderboards, etc.)? Can any lazy loading be done to help make that kind of scrolling possible?

2. While the first redesign of the match screen was great (powers and the fill bars at the top), has there been any talk to how it might be changed again to allow the player to see AP totals from both teams all the time, instead of scrolling left or right? This is mostly to see the enemy's AP totals as typically the player is only concerned with AP totals for the powers they use and those can be seen by the ability fill bars.

Unknown

loroku wrote:

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.

Have several PVE tabs with various start/end times. Each player can only enter one tab. Each tab rewards individual rewards when it ends. The alliance rewards are compiled in a separate tab similar to PVP and Season tabs. Alliance rewards are rewarded after the final PVE end time has elapsed. Easy, peasie, unless you have to program it...then....well...good luck?

BearVenger

Three more:

-Would you consider more consistent advance notice for events, or a weekly schedule? I see that Season 6 is starting in 75 minutes. In reality, that doesn't make a huge difference in my gameplay, but it feels "ambush-y" and gives a vibe that y'all are flying by the seat of your pants.

-For event brackets, would you show the current leaders in each tier (player #2/5/10/25/50/100)? I know these places will always be in flux, but if there is a PvP starting, a PvP concluding, a multi-noded PvE, SHIELD training, and Lightning Rounds going on, I like to see what is the best use of my time and points. If I'm at the cusp of a tier, I'd rather spend my time there than move up places and get the same prize.

-Bonus question: Can we get a week of Lightning Rounds with the 2nd-gen 3* heroes (DD/HT/Thor/CapAm/Psylocke) -- or maybe LRs with the newer 2*s (Ares/HT/Daken/BagMan/MHawkeye)? The current LRs seem like "They're what we've always done" rotations, and the 1st-gen 3*s are showing their age and limitations (or design shift, however you want to look at it). Since the LR character is no longer guaranteed in token, it's not a huge race to max out my Doom or IM40.

simonsez

Are there any plans to change the mechanics of PvP so that it's not all about who can repeatedly win 2-3 battles in the shortest amount of time? You can nerf Sentry all you want, but that still doesn't address this weakness in the gameplay design. All it'd do is lower scores and increase frustration. Instead of it being all about speed, speed, speed, I'd prefer to see you put the "puzzle" back into Puzzle Quest.

Colognoisseur

Has there been any thought given to forming a test group on a dedicated test server of players to playtest changes before they go live?
I think if you had a small test group of players some hiccups like no delete button on team-ups would have been caught before having to inconvenience the entire playerbase.
In my opinion had you had a test group the roll out of team-ups would have gone smoother and with wider acceptance.

loroku

stephen43084 wrote:

Have several PVE tabs with various start/end times. Each player can only enter one tab. Each tab rewards individual rewards when it ends. The alliance rewards are compiled in a separate tab similar to PVP and Season tabs. Alliance rewards are rewarded after the final PVE end time has elapsed. Easy, peasie, unless you have to program it...then....well...good luck?

Allowing players to self-select tabs seems like a good option, but I am afraid it would be abused somehow. Or some tabs could be jammed full and others sparse. Then again, as long as there are lots of players, this sort of solves itself.

Cragger

Recent updates allowed for scrollable in-game pop-up windows. Why is the pop-up for points lost/gained to attacks in PvP mode not made scrollable? It currently says "(and others)."

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

<snip>

... just noticed the "1 or 2 questions each" part.
Feel free to grab some of these questions and I'll hack them out.

Basically what he said. I hereby give my 2 questions to Nonce (as I think did 24 other people judging by the post rep).

Also just want to take this time to thank Hi-Fi for doing an awesome job as Community Manager. I feel, for me at least, D3 is listening to it's player base more than ever and I attribute that in no small part to your efforts. Great work!

turul

Will 4**** match damage be improved so they are not basically a 3***, just more expensive?

2) Are we getting replies only weeks later to these questions? (After Oct.2.)

Nonce Equitaur 2

A recent Versus event had Hulk awards. Can player has 13 Hulk covers? be the initial bracket criteria for that event?

Players trying to win cover awards should be in their own bracket.

Phaserhawk

turul wrote:

Will 4**** match damage be improved so they are not basically a 3***, just more expensive?

2) Are we getting replies only weeks later to these questions? (After Oct.2.)

I can answer that questions for you. NO. The tile match damage is designed on purpose. They did that so you can at least combo with other 3*'s otherwise the 4*'s would tank every color and the game woudl be even more pay to win. The trade off as we are seeing is that 4*'s get some better skills than the 3*. Look at Fury, his blue is essentially a 1000% better Daredevil red. Fury's Purple is a straight damage skill, plus Psylocke's Bewilder, plus Sentry's Sacrifice if it resolves. Fury's yellow is 5 different skills in one. Xforce Green is a cheaper better Beserker Rage, His Surgical Strike is unparrelle and his healing/Dmg CD tiles are also new. Hopefully they will be reworking Invisible Woman soon. So sure, they don't do as much tile damage, but they have skills and health points that their 3*'s dont, and that's what makes them awesome.

turul

Phaserhawk wrote:

turul wrote:

Will 4**** match damage be improved so they are not basically a 3***, just more expensive?

2) Are we getting replies only weeks later to these questions? (After Oct.2.)

I can answer that questions for you. NO. The tile match damage is designed on purpose. They did that so you can at least combo with other 3*'s otherwise the 4*'s would tank every color and the game woudl be even more pay to win. The trade off as we are seeing is that 4*'s get some better skills than the 3*. Look at Fury, his blue is essentially a 1000% better Daredevil red. Fury's Purple is a straight damage skill, plus Psylocke's Bewilder, plus Sentry's Sacrifice if it resolves. Fury's yellow is 5 different skills in one. Xforce Green is a cheaper better Beserker Rage, His Surgical Strike is unparrelle and his healing/Dmg CD tiles are also new. Hopefully they will be reworking Invisible Woman soon. So sure, they don't do as much tile damage, but they have skills and health points that their 3*'s dont, and that's what makes them awesome.

My opinion is, their average skillset is not better then average skillset of playworthy 3***s. If there is no considerable match damage improvement(and more health maybe), lets just convert them to 3*

NorthernPolarity

turul wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

turul wrote:

Will 4**** match damage be improved so they are not basically a 3***, just more expensive?

2) Are we getting replies only weeks later to these questions? (After Oct.2.)

I can answer that questions for you. NO. The tile match damage is designed on purpose. They did that so you can at least combo with other 3*'s otherwise the 4*'s would tank every color and the game woudl be even more pay to win. The trade off as we are seeing is that 4*'s get some better skills than the 3*. Look at Fury, his blue is essentially a 1000% better Daredevil red. Fury's Purple is a straight damage skill, plus Psylocke's Bewilder, plus Sentry's Sacrifice if it resolves. Fury's yellow is 5 different skills in one. Xforce Green is a cheaper better Beserker Rage, His Surgical Strike is unparrelle and his healing/Dmg CD tiles are also new. Hopefully they will be reworking Invisible Woman soon. So sure, they don't do as much tile damage, but they have skills and health points that their 3*'s dont, and that's what makes them awesome.

My opinion is, their average skillset is not better then average skillset of playworthy 3***s. If there is no considerable match damage improvement(and more health maybe), lets just convert them to 3*

After playing around with X-Force, I'm convinced that he's one step up from any skillset that an existing 3* could have. X-Force and Surgical are probably the best standalone green / black skills in the game (which no one initially realized, but the cascades that these abilities cause push them over the top), and I don't ever see myself using any 3* character in the same role as X-Force. Fury, meh, but X-Force is definitely one tier above everyone else. You don't really realize how good he is until you notice all the ridiculous cascades / match-5 setups that occur because of surgical removing an entire tile type from the board.

Unknown

Is there any plan to make alliance not a cutthroat situation? Currently as an alliance you should not trust anybody you just recruited because they're probably just there for the free stuff, and as a player you should not trust your alliance because they'll probably kick you the moment your performance slips if they want to be at all successful. As is right now the game seems to be social experiment proving the people can backstab each other for a 3* cover.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

After playing around with X-Force, I'm convinced that he's one step up from any skillset that an existing 3* could have. X-Force and Surgical are probably the best standalone green / black skills in the game (which no one initially realized, but the cascades that these abilities cause push them over the top), and I don't ever see myself using any 3* character in the same role as X-Force. Fury, meh, but X-Force is definitely one tier above everyone else. You don't really realize how good he is until you notice all the ridiculous cascades / match-5 setups that occur because of surgical removing an entire tile type from the board.

There's a very large variance on the cascade caused by X Force but it should be near the top on average. Surgical Strike suffers slightly from the ability being unwieldy as you don't always remember what the strongest color is, but when you do it is one of the best ability in the game.

turul

NorthernPolarity wrote:

turul wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

turul wrote:

Will 4**** match damage be improved so they are not basically a 3***, just more expensive?

2) Are we getting replies only weeks later to these questions? (After Oct.2.)

I can answer that questions for you. NO. The tile match damage is designed on purpose. They did that so you can at least combo with other 3*'s otherwise the 4*'s would tank every color and the game woudl be even more pay to win. The trade off as we are seeing is that 4*'s get some better skills than the 3*. Look at Fury, his blue is essentially a 1000% better Daredevil red. Fury's Purple is a straight damage skill, plus Psylocke's Bewilder, plus Sentry's Sacrifice if it resolves. Fury's yellow is 5 different skills in one. Xforce Green is a cheaper better Beserker Rage, His Surgical Strike is unparrelle and his healing/Dmg CD tiles are also new. Hopefully they will be reworking Invisible Woman soon. So sure, they don't do as much tile damage, but they have skills and health points that their 3*'s dont, and that's what makes them awesome.

My opinion is, their average skillset is not better then average skillset of playworthy 3***s. If there is no considerable match damage improvement(and more health maybe), lets just convert them to 3*

After playing around with X-Force, I'm convinced that he's one step up from any skillset that an existing 3* could have. X-Force and Surgical are probably the best standalone green / black skills in the game (which no one initially realized, but the cascades that these abilities cause push them over the top), and I don't ever see myself using any 3* character in the same role as X-Force. Fury, meh, but X-Force is definitely one tier above everyone else. You don't really realize how good he is until you notice all the ridiculous cascades / match-5 setups that occur because of surgical removing an entire tile type from the board.

Yes, xforce may be considered better than all 3*, but the other 4****s not.
Edit: Also, xforce will be rebalanced again right after sentry

Unknown

All/any of Nonce's questions.

Also, three "behind the scenes" questions:

1. What is your process for testing new characters prior to release?
Do you have a simulator that steps through possible team combinations, and outputs match results at various character/cover levels?
...or does a team of human game-testers just play around with the character?

2. Who creates and approves the artwork? Is Marvel involved at all?
As a number of threads have pointed out, there are some weird ones - Cap.Marvel looks constipated, Beast looks like he's trying to barf a hairball...

3. Is there any concern that MPQ will stop due to licensing agreements with Marvel?

Unknown

Questions and statements.

First of all, thanks for XForce. Cmags is still useful.

1. Have you ever considered adding in player health percentage? I would like to know regardless of using Punisher.

2. Falcon's Redwing would make more sense if it cost 5 blue and returned 6 blue or lost it with destroying the countdown.

3. When checking enemy powers in-game it would be nice to see how many covers of each power they have.

4. What do you think of being able to trade in so many 1 star tokens for a 2 star and 2 stars for a 3 star?

5. How about being able to add shield time while being shielded instead of having to be on top of the game waiting for a shield to run out or breaking it?

Unknown

I do have one unasked question: Why does She Hulk's Power of Attorney move do 0 damage for the tiles broken? Not even to the front enemy. Everyone takes static damage listed in the power. What was the design reasoning behind this decision?

Unknown

1. -daken(classic) healing: 8 "black" tile to avoid drug instead of blue tile
-daken(classic) chemical reaction: 5 blue ap for consume own strike tile, 10 blue ap to consume enemy strike tile
2. 10 standard pack, and heroic pack buyable via iso(once per day perhaps?)
3. LR pve version?
4. gallery/bio mode, where we can read he/she bio and see some
5. horizontal mode
6. new U.I too

thanks.