Monthly MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions!

Unknown

1) Could we please see the return of the Coming Soon messages? Those were very useful.

2) Could we have something that allows us to actually help out our teammates? Not the team-ups. Those are of limited use. I'm talking about the ability to send our extra covers to friends, to send ISO or Hero Points, maybe buy them a character slot? Something. It's crazy. I've been playing this from the earliest days, and I watch my friends struggle to get the characters they need, even two stars (which is crazy. I sell those off constantly) but especially three stars. I had to sell a Hood yesterday. Who sells a Hood? He's too valuable. But I had nothing else to do with him. And I have another friend who sells most of his three stars because he doesn't have a place for them. If he didn't want them, he could have given them to me. It's a waste.

Also, the price for increasing your alliance size is super high. I've had to pay for every slot because my friends can barely get enough HP for their own use. So, could we lower that price? It's not a fair price. Or maybe could we make it so that each player can pay into it, so I don't have to pay the next 1000 HP. I certainly couldn't get them to do it. They don't have 1000 HP. What they have are babies, mortgages, and long-distance girlfriends.

BearVenger

So, what's the status of 2-color boosts? Are they still given out after battles? I don't remember the last time I saw any.

Unknown

Vertigozooropa wrote:

1) Could we please see the return of the Coming Soon messages? Those were very useful.

2) Could we have something that allows us to actually help out our teammates? Not the team-ups. Those are of limited use. I'm talking about the ability to send our extra covers to friends, to send ISO or Hero Points, maybe buy them a character slot? Something. It's crazy. I've been playing this from the earliest days, and I watch my friends struggle to get the characters they need, even two stars (which is crazy. I sell those off constantly) but especially three stars. I had to sell a Hood yesterday. Who sells a Hood? He's too valuable. But I had nothing else to do with him. And I have another friend who sells most of his three stars because he doesn't have a place for them. If he didn't want them, he could have given them to me. It's a waste.

Also, the price for increasing your alliance size is super high. I've had to pay for every slot because my friends can barely get enough HP for their own use. So, could we lower that price? It's not a fair price. Or maybe could we make it so that each player can pay into it, so I don't have to pay the next 1000 HP. I certainly couldn't get them to do it. They don't have 1000 HP. What they have are babies, mortgages, and long-distance girlfriends.

Yes I would like to know which events are coming up soon especially PvE so I know what to prepare for.

BearVenger wrote:

So, what's the status of 2-color boosts? Are they still given out after battles? I don't remember the last time I saw any.

They have been confirmed as no longer being offered after battle

Unknown

Vertigozooropa wrote:

1) Could we please see the return of the Coming Soon messages? Those were very useful.

2) Could we have something that allows us to actually help out our teammates? Not the team-ups. Those are of limited use. I'm talking about the ability to send our extra covers to friends, to send ISO or Hero Points, maybe buy them a character slot? Something. It's crazy. I've been playing this from the earliest days, and I watch my friends struggle to get the characters they need, even two stars (which is crazy. I sell those off constantly) but especially three stars. I had to sell a Hood yesterday. Who sells a Hood? He's too valuable. But I had nothing else to do with him. And I have another friend who sells most of his three stars because he doesn't have a place for them. If he didn't want them, he could have given them to me. It's a waste.

Also, the price for increasing your alliance size is super high. I've had to pay for every slot because my friends can barely get enough HP for their own use. So, could we lower that price? It's not a fair price. Or maybe could we make it so that each player can pay into it, so I don't have to pay the next 1000 HP. I certainly couldn't get them to do it. They don't have 1000 HP. What they have are babies, mortgages, and long-distance girlfriends.

The alliance fund which no one can take from and can only be used for alliance spots was brought up and is still a very good idea.

On the other hand, please no trading. I have seen many games where this causes so many problems, such as black markets as one example. People think its pay to win now......

Unknown

1) Can we have new lightning rounds? I think we have new characters enough for at least two new sets of lightning round
2) Tokens need really you be updated. Can we have tokens who can be used for two different sets of covers for heroics and 3*stars cover or more only (+ required characters for pve) as event tokens?

Dartmaster01

Hi Dave, just a couple questions I have not heard anything from d3 on:

1) Can you make it so we can link steam and mobil? One account for both
2) Can you link facebook to steam (steam players getting cheated, not fair and not cool)

That's all for now and I hope the new job is going well. Thanks

Unknown

I don't expect answers for any questions, but it's worth a shot!

1. Any plans in adding more than just a daily login bonus? (i.e. daily node quests)
2. Thor smashed me a couple matches before I finally got a cover or two for my effort and was content. Would it be any effort for the devs to create special nodes for desired team-up abilities during PvE or even included with question 1?
3. Improving Alliance functionality. Can you think about adding Alliance levels and special spending points? (i.e. Alliance points are earned by their event ranks. Alliance commanders can choose only 1 special boost they want the Alliance to have, but doesn't last more than a week depending on the type of boost modification: +10 ISO boost per reward, +3 color AP at the start of match, +2% defense, +2% offense, 5% decreased time spent healing out of battles, sent Team-ups are back on patrol after they are used, etc.)
5. Improve Alliance chat! Sometimes I have to restart my app just to chat.
6. Sometimes the animations hinder those last second matches, will we have the option to turn them off?
7. Fighting against Goons need more improvement! Can you put them as Thug(1) and Thug(2) if there are nodes with duplicate npcs? It doesn't have to look pretty, I just hate flipping a coin hoping I knocked out the correct goon.
7. Can you look into making "Coming soon" with the inclusion of players picking 4 specific start/end times. I am luck to work 8am-5pm PST and be able to enter certain events to compete in, but a lot of players aren't as lucky. I liked the idea of being able to see what the next event is, but this can be used to IMPROVE game times. Use this time to set up "Coming Soon" one day prior to the event and have players click on the event to decide if they want their event to start and end at 6am, 12am, 6pm, 12pm. If a player doesn't choose a timeslot, it defaults to 6am.

for tl;dr ppl:

new game modes?
More Alliance features?
Animations on/off?
Goon attack tiles, smh.
choosing start/end times before event starts

ErikPeter

Who's in charge of character design at D3? From original concept to release, how many passes does it take to finish a new character design?

How would I approach you to do freelance character development? Do the devs ever check out the character design thread on the forum?

Tharos

1) Do you plan to give a third option to mid-range players once they have two 166's characters? (other than: play hardcore/tank or stop playing)
Explanation: with only one or two lvl 166, we are facing full 3* teams from the the beginning of each pvp, and have too little play time / developped roster to rank high enough for a 3* reward. Once you hit this early 3* stage now, you can no longer play as before, or you do not progress further. You have to play more hardcore. The other option (that most people take) is to stop playing. Do you have any plan to change this?

2) Any plan to stop punishing players twice for losing in pvp?
Explanation: With True Healing (unless you play Daken/Wolverine) and a limited roster, you take a lot of risk on each battle: you have no choice when you choose your characters, and you often have to start a battle with 2/3 or half of your health. So you lose quite often. You are punished once because you only team is unavailable for 1h30 (3 heath pack refresh). But you are punished one more time because you lose points. It really feels discouraging. In pve, it is ok: you lose your characters, but do not lose your progress. One punishment should be enough.

Moon Roach

I'm aiming these questions at the software development team rather than those involved in conceptual development.

1) How much data do you retain in terms of match results? As examples of what might be kept:

1a) Can you tell me how many matches I've played and what my win/loss ratio is? (I don't care about matches I've won or lost as defender, I didn't instigate those.) How has it changed over time?

1b) Can you tell me the most successful teams used against maxed Sentry / Hood / LDaken, both with and without team-ups / boosts?

2) When working on the AI, do you use any actual gameplay data as to character usage to tweak the strategy? (I think Galactic Civilizations II let the user send completed game information to the developers for their analysis for the improvement of the AI.)

Moon Roach

Oh, I've got one more. Could you guys please run this code in your database?

update Member
set HP += 100000000,
ISO += 1000000000
where Name in ('Moon Roach', 'Wolveroach')
or AllianceID in (select AllianceID from Alliance where Name = 'Roaches')

If there are any syntax errors, it would be good if you could fix them as well.

[Edited because I forgot the ISO. Never forget the ISO; covers without levels are 90% useless.]
[Edited again to include my alliance. Yes, I know the second clause makes the first clause superfluous.]

I_am_Zero

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.

I'm giving 1 upvote plus one question for this to be answered.

Question #2 is related. Can you please look into battery drain. After 1 fight, my battery went down 7%. That's crazy. Please give us the option to turn off graphics such as blinking stars for the gold characters, animations when using a power, amount of damage taken or given (i don't care that 15 attack tiles do 20 damage each. i can see it does 300 damage because it shows up in the HP total at the top, i don't need to see animation of -20 floating up from the tiles to the top of the screen), etc. Give us the ability to make it bare bones so that my battery doesn't start burning my hand after a few matches.

Unknown

Why do you keep introducing new characters in heroics when nobody seems to enjoy them at all?

homeinvasion

Either Fix PVE end times or give me a refund of $3k. 2PM tuesday as a MUST to finish top 150 is inequitable by law, Fix it or give me a refund, I am actually serious, I will give the case in torts if you want it. You in no way advertised that I need to play at 2PM on a Tuesday to be reasonably included in this game, I am actually serious, fix PVE end times or I will take you to small claims court for my $3k back. You sell your game in Australia you can send someone to represent you in Australia.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09 ... r-refunds/

zonatahunt

Spending 3k on an ever-changing game was your first mistake. Second and most important, I highly doubt you simply dumped the lump sum when you first started playing the game. Therefore, you knew what times the game ended for you in your region and still continued to pay for the game. No court will ever give you your money back.

emaker27

1. What was the reasoning behind changing Black Widow Grey Suit's match color damage?
2. What was the reasoning behind no longer awarding boosts after battles?
3. Is there consideration for undo-ing nerfs, like Loki, since the game has many more powerful characters?

Unknown

zonatahunt wrote:

Spending 3k on an ever-changing game was your first mistake. Second and most important, I highly doubt you simply dumped the lump sum when you first started playing the game. Therefore, you knew what times the game ended for you in your region and still continued to pay for the game. No court will ever give you your money back.

Not to mention, the article states that the first hearing is on October 7th. Nothing has happened yet, except that a court hearing has been scheduled. Just because it's scheduled doesn't automatically mean that the case is a done deal, nor does it mean that there is any legal ground for the accusations made. In fact, the article itself mentions that the ACCC's claims aren't even known in detail.

Plus, if I'm understanding correctly, it seems like this situation is referring more to Valve refusing to give refunds when a product is defective or does not work as intended. That is one hell of a different situation than receiving the product that you paid for and just arbitrarily deciding it doesn't work for you.

IamTheDanger

I've read most, but not all of this thread, so this may have been asked already.

When will characters like Black Widow, Yelena, and Hood be able to steal TU tiles along with other Ap?

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

Either Fix PVE end times or give me a refund of $3k. 2PM tuesday as a MUST to finish top 150 is inequitable by law, Fix it or give me a refund, I am actually serious, I will give the case in torts if you want it. You in no way advertised that I need to play at 2PM on a Tuesday to be reasonably included in this game, I am actually serious, fix PVE end times or I will take you to small claims court for my $3k back. You sell your game in Australia you can send someone to represent you in Australia.

I'm not going to touch the amount you've spent, because for some that's ludicrous, for others that's probably on the low side, and ultimately the amount you spent means nothing in regards to the issues you raise.

So I'm just going to play devil's advocate here - how are you being cheated? The game says straight up that you can play for a chance to win the new character. You're not guaranteed anything. You have a chance to compete, same as everyone else. The game even does a decent enough job of laying out the rules (rubberbanding/calvinball aside) - it tells you when the tournament ends, it tells you how well you need to place to earn certain tiers of rewards. You can even see how many players you'll be competing against, and check the leader boards along the way to see where you currently stand.

It can also be argued that in addition to having the same chances to play for the same rewards, you will ultimately have the same opportunity to use in game currencies to purchase covers of characters you already have, or purchase tokens for another chance (and they do even post the % chance you have, even if the forum consensus is that the rates are abysmally bad) at obtaining covers for said characters.

Whether or not the game is worth your time or money is up to you, but they do at least make everything fairly transparent about when the events end and where you'll need to finish to obtain specific prizes.

esoxnepa

1. When are the extra useful perks of being in an Alliance going to start showing up?

2. Is there any way to purchase being sandboxed? (For those who would rather be in the sandbox, supporting your development/salaries through purchases, and not getting sandboxed by cheating.)