November MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Marvel Puzzle Quest community! It's time to ask us a question!

We hope you enjoyed our first Question & Answer session. We are now soliciting questions for the November Q&A.

Over the next two weeks, give us your questions for the Marvel Puzzle Quest team (Demiurge & D3) in the comment thread below. We'll then select a number of choice inquires and have the developers respond. We hope to post the answers to your insightful questions on or around November 17th, 2014.

*Any legitimate question is fair game, but keeping your question clear and concise will help. It's much easier to grasp the intent of a sentence or two.

* Let's keep this to one or two questions each so we can manage things easily. This is a monthly Q&A and you can submit further inquiries next time.

*Please submit your question for this Q&A by November 4th, 2014.

If you missed our previous Q&A you can find it here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17879

Thanks in advance for participating in the discussion! Now, ask away...

NorthernPolarity

1.Are there any plans to nerf Sentry given his obvious dominance in the current, shieldhopping metagame?

2. Can we get an explanation on why Beast's blue is the way it is? Was it designed to instantly match itself away 50% of the time, and are there any plans to change the ability to be more consistent?

Unknown

Here's one that I have had a problem with for weeks now :

Will you fix the scaling issue for players with a bigger roster ? With the change of Cmag, it's impossible to face 395 lvl characters, so I don't even try. Please have a new cap to 300 or lower, and make sure that if we lose a match, the scaling goes down dramatically. In the current PvE, if you lose, the scaling of the node does not go down.

The Gauntlet was also impossible for me to complete on the 3rd board.

Thank you !

Nellyson

First question:

Do you think you could reduce the "on-duty" time for sending team ups? As of right now, it's an absurd amount of time to send a team up. And if the point is for us to use this feature more often, we should have the ability to send out people without such a huge wait for them to return.

Second question:

Will you guys be eliminating the "temporary healing" powers? As they are now, they waste people's skills. I believe should have an attack power now instead of bandages. Same goes with . If you insist on keeping the idea of "temporary healing bursts" you should make them more like a shield of health. That way if the team is already near full strength, the "burst" would protect above their full health.

Unknown

1. Are there any characters for whom the developers' expectations were completely at odds with the players' responses to them? Who and how so?

2. Is there any possibility of adding PVE aspects to seasons, possibly as a second award track?

GothicKratos

Nellyson wrote:

Second question:

Will you guys be eliminating the "temporary healing" powers? As they are now, they waste people's skills. I believe should have an attack power now instead of bandages. Same goes with . If you insist on keeping the idea of "temporary healing bursts" you should make them more like a shield of health. That way if the team is already near full strength, the "burst" would protect above their full health.

I feel like "temporary healing" has a place inside of the game, especially for PvE, but as we all have noticed, they are vastly underpowered for their AP cost.

The one thing I think we should never see again is a group "True Heal", because, unless it's AP cost is astronomical, we'll just be back to the Prologue Healing days, and nobody wants that (but if we make the ability cost an arm and a leg, as to keep Prologue Healing from being time effective, it might end up just being "useless" anyways).

There's a few ways they could make them feel more valuable;

• "Temp Healing" abilities that act as a stat buff, allowing your HP to increase beyond it's normal maximum.
• "Temp Healing" abilities that act as a literal shield, decreasing the amount of damage you take as long as the ability's effects are active.
• "Temp Healing" abilities that give additional benefits, as in creating Strike Tiles, Protect Tiles, Attack Tiles, or another new style of tile.
• "Temp Healing" abilities that also deal damage, or that would deal "overflow damage" to an enemy if you healed more than your maximum health.

Modern Black Widow is a great example of a great Temp Healing ability. It heals a great amount of health if there's no CD tiles on the board, and if there are CD Tiles on the board, it increases their count - but if you have 5 covers, it heals half the amount it normally would if there are CD Tiles. All that for 9 Blue AP.

No other healing ability really brings something like that to the board, which is where they fall flat. They need to approach them with the 2* Widow prospective, is all.

Nellyson wrote:

First question:

Do you think you could reduce the "on-duty" time for sending team ups? As of right now, it's an absurd amount of time to send a team up. And if the point is for us to use this feature more often, we should have the ability to send out people without such a huge wait for them to return.

Absolutely. 6-8 hours, to match the PvE node refresh rates? Seems fair to me, but then again, I do feel like they should be scaled to level, too, so that a Fury takes longer than a IM30, etc, but that window seems fair.

Unknown

1. What is best in life?

2. What is your favorite skill in the game, and why is it Prehistoric Arms?

3. Choose one: Pancakes, French Toast, Waffles.

4. Has there been any thought given to bringing back the environmental abilities as team-ups that you can win by fighting on those backgrounds? While some were never amazing (Hot Dog), and some maybe too powerful (Jungle, Desert, the 2nd one on the winter board), there were at least some unique ways to interact in a different way, and it might be neat to see those brought back.

Pylgrim

1. Following up an answer from the previous session, do you have actual numbers that show that the playerbase at large expects so many and constant new characters that spending time in fixing the old ones seems like a poor investment of time? Because the forums at large seem to agree that they'd be very happy of having a month without new characters if that meant balancing the old ones.

2. Has the lack of active purple powers been noticed? Are there plans of correcting that?

Unknown

I only have one question and it involves the PVE node timers.

1) Currently the timers are set up so that players who want the highest score have to play each node approximately every 2 hours 24 minutes or 5 times each 12 hours. This is very cumbersome and really forces players to plan their life around the game instead of vice versa. This also seems contrarty to other previous changes made such as healing, which were meant to provide players more versatility in our playing time. Could you please make a more player/life friendly stack refresh time?

For example, keep the five stacks and twelve hour rule, but reset the nodes only once every 12 hours.

atomzed

1. Could you share with us some info the new story mode or the new game mode? There's no need to tell us the expected date, but sharing some info will get us excited. Maybe like telling us the new antagonist (apocalypse, sentinel etc).

2. Are there any long term plans on managing the "end game" content for mpq? Right now, if you have collected all the characters and level them, there's nothing else to do? One possible way of increasing end game content is to have trophies, mounts, achievements, equipment, etc... things that people can show off, but have negligible impact on the game play.

Unknown

1. Are there any additional features considered to be added about alliances that will make them something more than just a group of people sharing the same rank?

2. Is there anything being considered about MMR and Bracketing? Ever since I got my lvl 127 LCap I have been in death brackets (5+ X-Men at 1800+ points) and I do not see half lvl 2* anymore but only 94s since the very first nodes of PVP. It would be OK if I had 2 maxed 3*, but one half way there is not such a big help in such cases.

4. Considering the new heroes coming in often, what are your thoughts on Roster Slots? Will the prices keep increasing the more we buy them?

Unknown

1. What the guy above said about 2.5 hour refreshes. An earlier statement from Ice (or maybe Will?) suggested that these refresh times were encouraging the wrong behaviour - yet a few months on and they're still around? Any mechanic where the optimal playing style is 'play every 2.5 hours, regardless of the rest of your life/sleep' is not great.

2. Looking at the forum voted character rankings (assuming they're ready by the time of the next FAQ) - which characters do you think are underrated and why?

...look, no follow up question on EU end times!

Unknown

1. Will the rate that new characters are introduced continue for the foreseeable future? (1 new character roughly every 2 weeks?)

2. Could someone explain how "power ups" are calculated for featured characters in PVP and PVE?

turul

Q: Is there any chance next monthy MPQ Developer Q&A will answer our questions in a lot shorter timeframe?
50% will be outdated questions by the time answer is given.

Also agrreeing with others: Third powers > new mediocre or worse hero

Unknown

Will you stop punishing players with better rosters in pve?
Seems like every pve is dominated by 2* rosters

Unknown

turul wrote:

Also agrreeing with others: Third powers > new mediocre or worse hero

I agree with you in this. If a new hero coming up is going to be anywhere close to Beast, I'd rather have Ragnarok with a third purple ability that flaps his arms. But if new heroes are close to what Thoress is, then I'll pass on that third ability.

Unknown

Can you increase team-up drop rates, by say 50 to 100%?

GrumpySmurf1002

1. Can you give any insight on to how MMR/scaling algorithms are actually calculated?

2. Have there been discussions about releasing an event schedule, as I suggested here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17684

Bonus Question: Has level shift accomplished the goals you had for it when it was released?

Unknown

1. Can we give Loki a third power that lays out both friendly and enemy protect tiles patch style? It would allow him to slow the game down and give himself a chance to capitalize on the enemy protects with trickery. Such a slow combo would never be "top tier" but would give a fan favorite villain enough viability that he might actually get used.

2. Are there still plans for working on the "token character pool dilution" problem. The current rotation absolutely helps in the short term but has for now merely shifted the burden of the problem onto some of the older characters.

BearVenger

1. Do players' token/character redemption rates in the aggregate match the published tables, and would you be able to publish the players' character drawing rates (like quarterly)? I don't want to sound like I get jobbed, but frequently, when I redeem tokens, well, I feel jobbed (particularly in season 10-packs and the anniversary tokens). "Token letdown" is one of the reasons I've dropped off in my PvP/PvE activity.

2. Along the lines of published metrics, do your revenue streams still match the numbers from your April Venturebeat journals? I found those articles interesting and refreshingly candid, and their numbers get kicked around here a lot. Are they still the same as they were 6 months ago?

Nellobee

What steps do you plan on taking to ease the 2->3 star transition? Taking older characters out of rotation for a season does almost nothing in this regard.