MPQ Developer Q&A #1 October - Answer Time!

Spoit

But yeah, it's pretty laughable that they think that the 2 existing powers need to be nerfed even more than they already have when they haven't been left in the dust by power creed, they've been lapped.

Unknown

Cautiously optimistic about the EU end time point - it certainly sounds like they're going to implement the 'choose your event timeslot' approach (touted many times as the best solution on these forums) but lack of timescale is a bit concerning. By the end of the year?

As for the focus on new characters rather than 3rd powers for Doom, Rags etc - I totally understand that because of the revenue streams, but I don't understand why overpriced powers aren't reduced in cost. Surely that's a bit of a no-brainer?

As for turning towards lower AP, more spammable powers - this is something the player base should be against in many ways. Low cost powers play to the strengths of the AI because it goes against a 'deny X colour' strategy which we (the players) can use to control the board. Cheap spammable attacks are prime fodder for 'lucky' cascades...

...but yeah, they are kinda fun. Meh.

Unknown

I was disappointed to read many of these answers - especially the ones that indicate a focus on new characters over revising existing ones. I would much rather have a more competitive Doom than a new character.

Many of the weak characters are ones I was originally so excited to get, only to have them now sit, unusable, in my roster. I worked like mad to get invis woman covers when they first were released, scoring top 1 and 2 in several events to get her started. To have done that for a character that simply doesn't work is really frustrating.

The x-force buff turned 4* Wolvy from a dud into one of my favorite characters, one that I will spend ISO and even hp on. Hawkeye too! So hearing that they do not prioritize doing the same for other existing weak characters is kind of baffling. I, like some other posters, still don't see the reasoning behind it. I appreciate there are some technical obstacles to changing a character completely, but it really does seem to be an AP economics issue for most of the weaknesses, which is a very easy thing to tweak. Adjusting high costed powers down would be a simple way to make many of those characters more competitive, and therefore make rosters more varied. Isn't that one of the goals D3 has repeatedly stated is important? I think their approach to making adjustments is too conservative.

I urge the designers to increase the effort to make some adjustments to existing characters. Especially to those that are important in the marvel universe. I don't really need to see a better moonstone, but I do care a lot about Doom, iron man, doc ock, and invis woman, for example, because they are key players in that universe. It would be fun to have them competitive.

loroku

DayvBang wrote:

loroku wrote:

ps. That quote about Spiderman is RICH. "Trust us, this nerf will be ok!" has proven 100% wrong in hindsight.

I disagree. It's certainly been wrong some of the time (Spider-Man and Ragnarok come to mind), but others have been handled well. Daken's nerf truly was a balancing, leaving him still quite useful. Classic Magneto was changed from a game-breaking character to one that is still in the upper third of 3* characters with a lot of power and variety to his moves.

I was only talking about Spiderman (not sure why you thought I wasn't). I agree Daken and Magneto nerfs were well done.

Dayv

loroku wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

loroku wrote:

ps. That quote about Spiderman is RICH. "Trust us, this nerf will be ok!" has proven 100% wrong in hindsight.

I disagree. It's certainly been wrong some of the time (Spider-Man and Ragnarok come to mind), but others have been handled well. Daken's nerf truly was a balancing, leaving him still quite useful. Classic Magneto was changed from a game-breaking character to one that is still in the upper third of 3* characters with a lot of power and variety to his moves.

I was only talking about Spiderman (not sure why you thought I wasn't). I agree Daken and Magneto nerfs were well done.

My bad. I thought you meant that Spider-Man was just one example of how awful all their nerfs had been.

loroku

Actually, I think it's a good point all around: Spiderman (and apparently Rags) were done really badly, but the more recent nerfs and buffs have been very good. In fact, more people are pleased with the recent character changes than most of the recent character additions. More food for thought (devs).

babinro

In regards to traps...

I think thematically you could adjust the game so traps trigger whenever they are 'tinkered' with rather than simply matched. It makes sense and also creates the necessary buff needed to fix daredevil. Fiddle with a trap tile in any way and it goes off.

- Did a goon fiddle with a trap tile and make it into a CD tile? Face Kick on the triggering Goon!
- Did Daken attempt to replace your trap with a strike tile? Face Kick on Daken!
- Sentry cast WR over a trap tile? Face Kick on Sentry!
- Did Hulk Thunderous Clap and shatter the board? Face Kick on Hulk! *his only weakness*
- Did Loki's trickery disturb the volatile trap? Face Kick to Loki!
- Did Thor charge up that trap tile? Oh you better believe that's a Face Kick to Thor!

That was fun but I'm sure you all get the point

Traps would still become disabled when the character is stunned or reduced to 0hp.

Benefits of the change:
- Daredevil becomes less useless vs goons
- Daredevil acts as a direct counter character against Daken and Mohawk
- Daredevil becomes a potential counter or deterrent against board shake/cascade/board fill characters like Sentry/X-Force/Hulk/Loki
- Fury is barely buffed by the change since it's exceedingly rare to go 2 or 3 rounds without triggering Demolition regardless. Thus the impact of these trap changes only truly buff the characters most in need of them.
- This change immediately adds more value to the stun condition as a counter to trap characters

Unknown

babinro wrote:

In regards to traps...

I think thematically you could adjust the game so traps trigger whenever they are 'tinkered' with rather than simply matched. It makes sense and also creates the necessary buff needed to fix daredevil. Fiddle with a trap tile in any way and it goes off.

- Did a goon fiddle with a trap tile and make it into a CD tile? Face Kick on the triggering Goon!
- Did Daken attempt to replace your trap with a strike tile? Face Kick on Daken!
- Sentry cast WR over a trap tile? Face Kick on Sentry!
- Did Hulk Thunderous Clap and shatter the board? Face Kick on Hulk! *his only weakness*
- Did Loki's trickery disturb the volatile trap? Face Kick to Loki!
- Did Thor charge up that trap tile? Oh you better believe that's a Face Kick to Thor!

That was fun but I'm sure you all get the point

I like, but one slight tweek, not face kick, it should be crotch kick.

Unknown

babinro wrote:

- This change immediately adds more value to the stun condition as a counter to trap characters

Does stunning DD prevent its trap tile activation?

Nellyson

KevinMark wrote:

babinro wrote:

- This change immediately adds more value to the stun condition as a counter to trap characters

Does stunning DD prevent its trap tile activation?

Currently, no it doesn't. But if they do change the mechanics of a trap tile to actually work, then yes, stunning should have it so his trap won't go off.

GothicKratos

Phantron wrote:

The biggest recurring maintenance cost is usually the CS guys. You only need a few knowledgeable guys to take care of even a relatively large number of servers while one guy, no matter how knowledgeable, has a physical limit to how many email/phone call/tickets he can answer and yet the number of issues to resolve is expected to be linear to the number of players.

What? Customer Service reps cost more than IT personnel? I have a lot of respect for you and your opinions, but this is flat out wrong. Not just because it is, but because I honestly highly doubt they have a dedicated "Customer Service Team" so to speak - it's very likely that it's a subset of the studio that handles these requests (which is why it's generally subpar quality and slow response times) and not dedicated staffing. I feel like that would be a truly stupid business decision. A simple waste of money for a game this small, unless this team is one person whom only works like three hours a day, which is practically equally useless.

Phantron wrote:

For example I have heard of a lot of MMORPG that expanded too quickly and then failed due to having ghost town servers, but I never heard of a MMORPG failed because it cost too much money to keep the said ghost towns around. It's not like companies have a problem with sacking the extra staff/hardware that later turns out to be useless.

I've heard of plenty of studios and games that have failed due to lack of resources (post- and pre-release). Kingdoms of Amalur comes to mind as a game that was semi-recently.

Professa D

Thanks for taking the time to field all the questions and acknowledge that you are aware of the issues that have been brought up. It is nice to know you are listening, even if you don't have an immediate and detailed solution ready for a response.

To the people complaining that their answers were not descriptive enough, please remember that Q&A answers and Patch notes are two different things. Patch notes contain changes to the game with specifics and details because they are actually near completion. Answers to Q&As are vague because they are still on the whiteboard or not close enough to completion to share (yet). They are merely "mini updates" in between actual patch notes to let us know what they are working on fixing for the next update.

I for one prefer honesty and acknowledgement rather than radio silence so I'm just happy we have an open dialogue going.

We can all agree that the message of preference for attention to new characters over old/unused/overpriced characters is a bit underwhelming (mainly due to the fact that recent new characters have been more bad than good 80+% of the time), so let's hope that they continue to read this discussion thread and shift their priorities towards helping out the BUFFNOW characters Nonce has outlined even if it is just a simple power cost reduction across the board to bring them back into the "barely playable" range. Cause right now they just aren't playable. At all.

Unknown

Been wondering if there will ever be a for fun live pvp option in the game

Unknown

We usually try to adjust numbers first, the behavior of powers second, and fundamental mechanics last...

Maybe I'm taking this out of context (as it was specific to the reply regarding traps), but if this is intended to be a more general statement of the Devs' approach to ability adjustments, this would be great... Except that, for example, the Loki nerf could have been done by simply adjusting the number of pinks created or upping the AP cost, but instead they work out a whole different power ...or Magneto could have been adjusted sooo simply by upping the AP cost of red and blue slightly, but instead they revamp all his abilities!

As already stated by Nonce earlier, it should require virtually no development resources to adjust numbers slightly (keyword:slightly), as compared to the cost to change ability behaviours. I sure hope that the Devs' reluctance to re-balance existing characters is not a result of how much resources and time it took to nerf Magneto. ...because really, all that many characters require to be viable is a minor tweak to the numbers...

Personally, I think an in-game sandbox (could be presented as "alternate universe or reality-thread" simulator), where tweaks can be calibrated is a great idea, and ensures that characters can be adjusted and made viable with minimal effort.

Daeft

Thanks David. I appreciate you guys taking the time to answer our questions

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'd highly appreciate just an option that will allow me to put the game in Landscape in the settings for Tablets. Plenty of other games out there don't have the screen flip function and do just fine. Some are even landscape locked which I'd prefer for this title.

I think you did not take their answer seriously and you are still hopping for such a thing to happen.

Let me, from a developer's persective, simplify their answer. An application has layouts and textures connected to those layouts. A layout in portrait mode is not the same as one in landscape mode. The same layout has to be created twice if you want to incorporate it in both modes. There is no such a thing as a dynamic layout that will flex itself when you turn your phone in landscape.

That being said, they would have to recreate the whole game in order to incorporate landscape mode. Every single screen would have to be created from scratch and tested like they have done up to now.

After they are all created, actual code has to be implemented in every activity of the game so that it recognizes the landscape mode and automatically adjusts the screen.

By the time they are done developing it, you will have so many new textures and layouts and frames that the game will almost double in size and it will create so many other bugs (Because there is no perfect coding anywhere in the world) that it will totally not be worth their time.

It is a simple feature for you to use when you feel like it, but it is a hell lot of work for them to create it. And frankly, it is a luxury thing that they cannot afford to spend time on at the moment.

Unknown

While I appreciate some of the responses, I feel a little dissatisfied about questions that weren't really answered.
Original thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16270

Top of concerns that I hope are eventually answered:
1. Sentry nerf
2. More Purple powers
3. Synch between platforms

As for the answer of balancing sucky characters of "Well, maybe but don't count on it," I'm really hoping that this is just an expectations management thing, and that they will continue to release good balancing changes, like R60.

OnesOwnGrief

Okin107 wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'd highly appreciate just an option that will allow me to put the game in Landscape in the settings for Tablets. Plenty of other games out there don't have the screen flip function and do just fine. Some are even landscape locked which I'd prefer for this title.

I think you did not take their answer seriously and you are still hopping for such a thing to happen.

Let me, from a developer's persective, simplify their answer. An application has layouts and textures connected to those layouts. A layout in portrait mode is not the same as one in landscape mode. The same layout has to be created twice if you want to incorporate it in both modes. There is no such a thing as a dynamic layout that will flex itself when you turn your phone in landscape.

That being said, they would have to recreate the whole game in order to incorporate landscape mode. Every single screen would have to be created from scratch and tested like they have done up to now.

After they are all created, actual code has to be implemented in every activity of the game so that it recognizes the landscape mode and automatically adjusts the screen.

By the time they are done developing it, you will have so many new textures and layouts and frames that the game will almost double in size and it will create so many other bugs (Because there is no perfect coding anywhere in the world) that it will totally not be worth their time.

It is a simple feature for you to use when you feel like it, but it is a hell lot of work for them to create it. And frankly, it is a luxury thing that they cannot afford to spend time on at the moment.

Wow, I didn't think my comment would upset you. I'm so sorry that me still wanting them continue to look into a landscape mode for tablets got so under your skin. It's a real shame that the current interface is just a poor use of real estate and often times laggy compared to mobile. I'll just continue to game with thier poorly designed product and keep any want of some improvements to myself.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Okin107 wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'd highly appreciate just an option that will allow me to put the game in Landscape in the settings for Tablets. Plenty of other games out there don't have the screen flip function and do just fine. Some are even landscape locked which I'd prefer for this title.

I think you did not take their answer seriously and you are still hopping for such a thing to happen.

Let me, from a developer's persective, simplify their answer. An application has layouts and textures connected to those layouts. A layout in portrait mode is not the same as one in landscape mode. The same layout has to be created twice if you want to incorporate it in both modes. There is no such a thing as a dynamic layout that will flex itself when you turn your phone in landscape.

That being said, they would have to recreate the whole game in order to incorporate landscape mode. Every single screen would have to be created from scratch and tested like they have done up to now.

After they are all created, actual code has to be implemented in every activity of the game so that it recognizes the landscape mode and automatically adjusts the screen.

By the time they are done developing it, you will have so many new textures and layouts and frames that the game will almost double in size and it will create so many other bugs (Because there is no perfect coding anywhere in the world) that it will totally not be worth their time.

It is a simple feature for you to use when you feel like it, but it is a hell lot of work for them to create it. And frankly, it is a luxury thing that they cannot afford to spend time on at the moment.

Wow, I didn't think my comment would upset you. I'm so sorry that me still wanting them continue to look into a landscape mode for tablets got so under your skin. It's a real shame that the current interface is just a poor use of real estate and often times laggy compared to mobile. I'll just continue to game with thier poorly designed product and keep any want of some improvements to myself.

I am not upset by your comment. I just added my understanding of their answer as a developer. And while we did get an answer to the question, many people will come and say a gain "Well, I hear what you say, but can you still do it please?".

Personal opinion is that this game works great on portrait mode. I can see how it can be a problem on tablets, but their problem for creating it is bigger than this. I'd rather see some new way of displaying the enemy team's AP rather than have a landscape mode.

Unknown

Okin107 wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'd highly appreciate just an option that will allow me to put the game in Landscape in the settings for Tablets. Plenty of other games out there don't have the screen flip function and do just fine. Some are even landscape locked which I'd prefer for this title.

I think you did not take their answer seriously and you are still hopping for such a thing to happen.

Let me, from a developer's persective, simplify their answer. An application has layouts and textures connected to those layouts. A layout in portrait mode is not the same as one in landscape mode. The same layout has to be created twice if you want to incorporate it in both modes. There is no such a thing as a dynamic layout that will flex itself when you turn your phone in landscape.

That being said, they would have to recreate the whole game in order to incorporate landscape mode. Every single screen would have to be created from scratch and tested like they have done up to now.

After they are all created, actual code has to be implemented in every activity of the game so that it recognizes the landscape mode and automatically adjusts the screen.

By the time they are done developing it, you will have so many new textures and layouts and frames that the game will almost double in size and it will create so many other bugs (Because there is no perfect coding anywhere in the world) that it will totally not be worth their time.

It is a simple feature for you to use when you feel like it, but it is a hell lot of work for them to create it. And frankly, it is a luxury thing that they cannot afford to spend time on at the moment.

Awwww, the devs have to put some time and work into making the game more aesthetically pleasing and easier for the majority of the player-base? Whooopie-dooo. I mean, this game is over a year old and anyone playing on a mobile device still can't see the amount of AP the enemy has unless they scroll over each turn. It's downright pathetic.