'Doctor Octopus Interview' Now On Marvel.com

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hey everyone,

Another excellent interview with Marvel Puzzle Quest's Joe Fletcher and Michael Cerven has gone up at Marvel.com. This time around you can gain some insight on Doctor Octopus and delve into this six-armed villain's in-game powers.

You can find the chat here:
"PIECING TOGETHER MARVEL PUZZLE QUEST: DOC OCK"
http://marvel.com/news/video_games/2336 ... st_doc_ock

Quote:
"He’s the first character in the game that has the Blue-Black-Green color strengths, so he’s an interesting color combination. And the first of his abilities is Manipulation, so basically in combat he can swap a whole bunch of tiles, and if they happen to be enemy tiles, like Attack Tiles, Defense Tiles or such, then he will actually destroy the tiles and also deal extra damage with that. So not only manipulating the board, but he will actually utilizes your enemy’s tiles on the board."

_RiO_

All I'm going to say is this:
Thanks for ending Doc Oc's PvE event at 5:00 AM again.
And thanks for arranging him to be last-minute stolen out of the hands of all your non-US players, again.

Here's a suggestion; if you know an issue is a sore spot and if you know you've left people out in the cold with an answer to that issue for over a year and counting, then it would really help if in the mean time, while you continue to be stuck internally debating how to fix this, you would not take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot.


I could not possibly care less about any game mechanic related to the Doc Oc as long as I have no viable means to get a playable version of him into my roster for the next 8 months ongoing.

CrookedKnight

Not that midnight finishes aren't a giant pain in the rear, but unless they've radically changed the final phase of this event since the last time it ran, the final 12 hours are composed of one-time, and thus non-grindable, nodes located on the main map. So if you're in Europe you have a short time to finish all of them, but you're not missing a mad rush to repeat fights for maximum points at the deadline. The mad rush comes when the final sub closes at 5 PM-ish European.

turul

So based on screenshot, play testing is used on Yelena teams.. Makes so much sense!

So will random stun not hit already stunned character, as told in interview?

turul

CrookedKnight wrote:

Not that midnight finishes aren't a giant pain in the rear, but unless they've radically changed the final phase of this event since the last time it ran, the final 12 hours are composed of one-time, and thus non-grindable, nodes located on the main map. So if you're in Europe you have a short time to finish all of them, but you're not missing a mad rush to repeat fights for maximum points at the deadline. The mad rush comes when the final sub closes at 5 PM-ish European.

5PM = standard work finishing hour, even worse than 5AM

_RiO_

CrookedKnight wrote:

The mad rush comes when the final sub closes at 5 PM European.

Don't even pretend for a moment that this is a favorable end-time for Europe. Everyone is stuck at work until 5:30 PM and on average is stuck commuting until 6:30 PM.
A 5 PM finish still does nothing for Europe.

Ofcourse, it does hit the sweet spot of closing later in the morning for a considerable portion of the west-coast of the US stretching inland, giving everyone the time to play a final clear in the early morning before commuting for work. Given that nodes take 2.5hrs to refresh anyway, that window is again pretty much optimal for them...

Unknown

My main concern besides the end time (well, it's just another sleepless night), is the scaling this time. Lvl 303 for the bullseye node on the 2nd sub... Now lvl 203 for Sentry hard node on the 3rd sub...

Also, something that is pretty unfair : the guy who is ranking 1st in my bracket, 8K points ahead of me, has a noob as can be roster... And I've been grinding this PvE very seriously...

I used to be furious, I am now just annoyed.

I am just concerned about ranking in the Top 10 now... The Alliance cover is NOT the one you could get in the Top 10.

It's become harder and harder to get new characters in PvEs... And also less and less fun.

David, IceIX : if you think Scaling makes the game more sexy for people with big rosters, I can testify it is not.

_RiO_

arktos1971 wrote:

David, IceIX : if you think Scaling makes the game more sexy for people with big rosters, I can testify it is not.

It doesn't seem like something that was implemented for the good of players with big rosters.
It seems squarely aimed at giving an advantage to beginning or casual players: scaling handicaps veteran and hardcore players by putting them up against some very tough opponents, that are at times close to impossible to beat.

NorthernPolarity

Exactly. And his third ability is kind of his power ability. It’s the one that does a little bit more direct damage, but it does a little bit of everything. So his Green ability is called Armed and Dangerous. It does four different things that he’s capable of doing with his tentacles all at once. First he deals damage, he then stuns one of the enemies for a turn, then he reduces AP, and then after that he destroys enemy Countdown Tiles. So, he does all four of those things every time he uses the ability. It takes a little bit extra AP, but it’s always pretty powerful and pretty varied in what it can do.

So is the entire forumbase wrong and undervaluing the ability, or are the devs significantly overvaluing the ability? I find it interesting how disparate opinions can be between the devs and us regarding characters.

_RiO_

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Exactly. And his third ability is kind of his power ability. It’s the one that does a little bit more direct damage, but it does a little bit of everything. So his Green ability is called Armed and Dangerous. It does four different things that he’s capable of doing with his tentacles all at once. First he deals damage, he then stuns one of the enemies for a turn, then he reduces AP, and then after that he destroys enemy Countdown Tiles. So, he does all four of those things every time he uses the ability. It takes a little bit extra AP, but it’s always pretty powerful and pretty varied in what it can do.

I find it interesting how disparate opinions can be between the devs and us regarding characters.

They should start eating their own dog food. And by that I mean starting to play the game as a regular user, with no option of pulling additional ISO or HP out of thin air when convenient.
I give it about a month or 2 before the first phones start flying up against walls.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

I used to be furious, I am now just annoyed.

Does that mean given time you'd be moving onto being indifferent? I think that is the direction the devs would like you to go in lol.

As for end times, I'm in Aus so the end times will never be any good for me. It's either 3 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon. I just take it with a grain of salt and move on because I know we would never be favoured by demiurge.

DD-The-Mighty

If you are answering questions in this thread: Are heroic PVEs the new standard for new character releases?

Unknown

Is it just my dirty mind that sees: Do ****?

HailMary

from the docock article: "The stun also affects a random enemy, so you gotta make sure that you've got other people stunned or down so you can make best usage of the stun, or you can just use it and get a person out."

So docock's stun is intentionally **** with randomization. Interesting. Also, for 12 and 1/3 the off-target damage of LT's CTS, you'd think that one of the four awesome things it does would be something a bit more than "remove a single random CD tile."

_RiO_ wrote:

Here's a suggestion; if you know an issue is a sore spot and if you know you've left people out in the cold with an answer to that issue for over a year and counting, then it would really help if in the mean time, while you continue to be stuck internally debating how to fix this, you would not take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot.

Seeing as how MPQ's one-year anniversary hasn't arrived yet, how have people been left "out in the cold" for "over a year"?

Also, if not fixing the issue qualifies as "take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot", what's your solution? Don't run PVEs at all until the issue is resolved?

_RiO_

HailMary wrote:

Seeing as how MPQ's one-year anniversary hasn't arrived yet, how have people been left "out in the cold" for "over a year"?

Since they said not to expect an immediate solution. I.e. this is going to pass well into and past the anniversary.

I should probably have written "are leaving" instead of "have left", shouldn't I? Excuse the mistake. That's probably due to the fact that I typed that response some time past midnight, waiting to grind my last node refresh in a (quite likely vain) attempt to atleast reach the event token at the 80,000 pts progression point. I've already made peace with the fact that my geographical location means I'm out of the race for Doc Ock. (Which is to say; I've made peace with not getting him now. I have not made peace with Demiurge continuously screwing over myself and other non-US players.)

HailMary wrote:

Also, if not fixing the issue qualifies as "take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot", what's your solution? Don't run PVEs at all until the issue is resolved?

The sharp stick is that they continue to run PvE events for new characters exclusively at timeslots that are favorable to the US. And even if it is followed up by a favorable timeslot for those outside of the US, then you can bet essential nodes and boosted characters are going to correspond to the **** new character you didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of earning.

As for solutions; well, maybe instead of sitting on their **** and debating (for close to a year now, and I'm not expecting any kind of final answer let alone an implementation within that full year) they could proactively try out some of the low cost-to-implement solutions offered on these forums as temporary mitigation: rolling end-times for brackets; letting players pick one of a number of event instances corresponding to a favorable time zone; running high profile events at a schedule that uses rolling end times so everyone gets a bit of a shot and is occasionally put at the disadvantage.

Moon Roach

The thread's kind of been hijacked into a time zone discussion, so why not join in.

We went to daylight savings time on Sunday, so the Heroic finishes at 5 pm, Fresh Cut at 6 am, both on Thursday for NZ players. Which is great as I finish work at 4:30 pm and so get 30 minutes of final node-clearing. And I get up at 5:30 am, so I have 30 minutes of last-minute "lose 500 points while gaining 24" if I'm so inclined.

But for the last 6 months events have been ending before I finish work (not counting weekends / holidays) or before I get up (not counting poorly children). It isn't just Europe that has been at a serial disadvantage.

Mawtful

Derailing the hijack thread back onto thread topic - sorry.

Is Doc Ock's Blue just a better version of Loki's Illusions? I get that it's more than twice as expensive, but it certainly seems to present some better options for cascades.

Alright, go back about your business.

It isn't just Europe that has been at a serial disadvantage.

See the thing is: New Zealanders and Australians are already accustomed to being screwed over in videogames one way or another. This is new to Europeans, so clearly they are more important than everyone else.

Unknown

Look, the ending times as they are aren't fantastic, but I really wish the EU players would stop being with the persecution complex and step back from playing the professional victim about it.

I absolutely agree that your finishing time of 5 am or 5 pm or what the hell ever isn't great for you, but don't think for one second that every North America based player is getting off that much lighter. I play on Steam, so I have to be sitting at my desktop to play. I get up for work at 5:30am, I come home around 8:30pm. For me, in Eastern Standard Time (Ohio, USA), the events end at 1am and 1pm respectively (except some of the PvE's which end at 12pm instead.)

I know this is hard to imagine, but it's not actually ideal for me (or, I'll assume, a good portion of the US players) to stay up until 1am to play on the computer when they have to get up for work a few hours later. It's not ideal for me, either, to say to the boss "Sorry, just popping home for a few hours over lunch to finish up a computer game." These times don't work for me, nor do they work for a lot of people outside the Pacific Standard Time (9-10pm, 9-10am finishing times).

So please stop thinking that it's all about the US having a significant advantage over Europe and the rest of the world. For the most part, it's just PST - that narrow strip of planet Earth. Because for those of us with responsibilities and living outside of the PST zone, even still within the US, aren't that much better off. The only real difference is, you don't often hear us crying victim about it.

Do with this opinion what you will. Have a nice day.
-Bluey

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

HailMary wrote:

Seeing as how MPQ's one-year anniversary hasn't arrived yet, how have people been left "out in the cold" for "over a year"?

Since they said not to expect an immediate solution. I.e. this is going to pass well into and past the anniversary.

I should probably have written "are leaving" instead of "have left", shouldn't I? Excuse the mistake. That's probably due to the fact that I typed that response some time past midnight, waiting to grind my last node refresh in a (quite likely vain) attempt to atleast reach the event token at the 80,000 pts progression point. I've already made peace with the fact that my geographical location means I'm out of the race for Doc Ock. (Which is to say; I've made peace with not getting him now. I have not made peace with Demiurge continuously screwing over myself and other non-US players.)

HailMary wrote:

Also, if not fixing the issue qualifies as "take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot", what's your solution? Don't run PVEs at all until the issue is resolved?

The sharp stick is that they continue to run PvE events for new characters exclusively at timeslots that are favorable to the US. And even if it is followed up by a favorable timeslot for those outside of the US, then you can bet essential nodes and boosted characters are going to correspond to the **** new character you didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of earning.

As for solutions; well, maybe instead of sitting on their **** and debating (for close to a year now, and I'm not expecting any kind of final answer let alone an implementation within that full year) they could proactively try out some of the low cost-to-implement solutions offered on these forums as temporary mitigation: rolling end-times for brackets; letting players pick one of a number of event instances corresponding to a favorable time zone; running high profile events at a schedule that uses rolling end times so everyone gets a bit of a shot and is occasionally put at the disadvantage.

I'll be honest, they seem to be on the verge of a workable pve format for other time zones. It's not perfect, but it's an improvement. I think having sub's end at 12pm eat would work if, and only if, the last 12 hour main was not repeatable. This way pretty much where you are when the last sub ends is where you place in the tourney. Everyone would have 12 hours to do one clear of the non-repeatable nodes, so they should be able to work it around their work, school, sleep, etc.

I think alternating this format with the regular one for every other new character release would be a nice temporary fix until a better, more permanent one can be found.

NorthernPolarity

Mawtful wrote:

Derailing the hijack thread back onto thread topic - sorry.

Is Doc Ock's Blue just a better version of Loki's Illusions? I get that it's more than twice as expensive, but it certainly seems to present some better options for cascades.

Alright, go back about your business.

It isn't just Europe that has been at a serial disadvantage.

See the thing is: New Zealanders and Australians are already accustomed to being screwed over in videogames one way or another. This is new to Europeans, so clearly they are more important than everyone else.

Being twice as expensive is kind of a huge deal. With Doc Ock's blue, you have to prioritize the color and have a good amount of special tiles on board if you want any value out of it. With Loki's purple, a random purple cascade gets you halfway there to a cast, meaning that you don't even have to prioritize the color to get value out of it, not to mention that you don't care about having special tiles on board for it. I would say that Loki's purple is far better than Doc Ock's blue, and it's not even close.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

from the docock article: "The stun also affects a random enemy, so you gotta make sure that you've got other people stunned or down so you can make best usage of the stun, or you can just use it and get a person out."

So docock's stun is intentionally **** with randomization. Interesting. Also, for 12 and 1/3 the off-target damage of LT's CTS, you'd think that one of the four awesome things it does would be something a bit more than "remove a single random CD tile."

_RiO_ wrote:

Here's a suggestion; if you know an issue is a sore spot and if you know you've left people out in the cold with an answer to that issue for over a year and counting, then it would really help if in the mean time, while you continue to be stuck internally debating how to fix this, you would not take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot.

Seeing as how MPQ's one-year anniversary hasn't arrived yet, how have people been left "out in the cold" for "over a year"?

Also, if not fixing the issue qualifies as "take a sharp point stick to poke at that sore spot", what's your solution? Don't run PVEs at all until the issue is resolved?

Good day, Mary. Suggestions about end times have been posted elsewhere. Also, we are under no obligation to come up with solutions. It's not like we'd get a commission for making a suggestion they use. It's up to the devs, not the playerbase, to address the known issues.