November MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions

ErikPeter

Can I help design characters for MPQ?

thedude

1 When are you going to sort out event finish times for those of us outside the US? After the last week long pve, where I was in the top 5 every day and wake up to finish the event in 22nd I now have no interest in trying to place well. Seeing as you often release new characters this way then run a PvP with them after, I'm losing out on 3 fronts which is VERY frustrating.

If you don't have a perfect solution thats fine, just try an idea and listen to the feeddback - it couldn't be any worse than the current set up.

2 Sort out the AI cascades. I have been analysing AP pulls and on matches and per move, and the AI consistently pulling double or treble what I can, sometimes much more. Cascades involving tiles previously not on the board seem a particular problem

Spoit

In the October Q&A you used IM40, which is an obvious outlier in terms of AP cost, and cited outdated design principles. With that in mind, are you entirely satisfied with how the design guidelines are working in terms of cost? e.g. Beast's strong conditionals for his powers, which seem to be costed around the maximum potential as opposed to the likely use case, or both of Doc Ock's active powers, in particular how his green seems to have been calculated per his piecewise potpourri of power effects, which doesn't compare anywhere near as favorably to more focused powers, with most 12+ AP powers being actual game winners.

Actually for that matter 2) It would be great if you could go into the design process of characters more, in particular what kind of testing you do to fine tune them once they pass the whiteboard stage. You've actually been increasingly forthcoming about the conceptual stage, but the rest of it seems rather murky

DD-The-Mighty

When the concept of 'exponentially rising costs for roster slots' were created; did you foresee releasing this many characters at this rate?
Are there plans address the inevitable high cost of actually keeping most to all of the characters released in the game?

not a question, more of an observation, Hence the spoiler tag:
The post-true-healing mission statement seems to be "have a larger, diverse roster" but the steadily increasing slot rates seem to be at odds with that (particularly in the 45+ range) at the rate that heroes are being released i can see slots costing near $10+ for one slot.

ballingbees

Hi HiFi,

When you first came on board, you mentioned you'll start a basic account to have a feel of the game from the FTP route. Just wondering how is that account getting by. I'm guessing it should be a solid 2* base by now, with several half covered 3* cards. In particular, the HP pinch should be biting about now, especially having to work out 3 roster spaces for Dino, ms Marvel and Blade within 2 weeks of each other. Now with about 25 >3* characters in the token pool, at 3 colours each, an event token has a 20% chance of drawing 1/75 (or 1.3%) of a desired card. Considering these factors, what do you suppose is a reasonable timeframe for a new player today to have a first fully covered 3*?

Second question is more of a UI suggestion. Would like to suggest a live countdown timer at some corner of the battle screen when the event for which the battle is being played is down to the last, say, 2min. Would really help remind me to stop fooling around with Prehistoric Arms and get the match over.

And finally thanks for being around..

Wolarsen

Hello David,

Developers keep saying they want to add diversity to the game, but characters are too imbalanced. If you compare Sentry/Laken/Hood/XForce (most seen characters nowadays) with Daredevil/Beast/Storm/IM40 (I only keep them to not get disadvantaged on PvE Essential nodes), both groups ara galaxies away. Mischiefmaker is about to finish a great character ranking, you can check there to see the opinion of a significative amount of players; pay attention to vote dispersion, is amazingly linear.

You (maybe was IceX) have stated that D3 is actually putting more effort in incoming characters than in tuning old ones; comments actually generated much dislike.

1) So, can we expect to see the whole roster of characters being more balanced in near future?

2) Any new sharable information about measures to soothe event finishing times pain?

Juicyfruit1

What did you learn from the Guantlet? How does this affect PVE in the future?

CrookedKnight

How are the featured/powered-up characters chosen for PvE events? Do you try to look for ways the characters complement each other, or is it more about rotating everyone through evenly?

Unknown

Any chance of some kind of character perk/reward for maxing a character? Just a random thought about the possibility of further customizing your character. Perhaps a choice of more Health, or bonus match damage for one color? Not sure what the perk would be, but I thought it'd be a good incentive/reward for having a fully developed character and help foster roster diversity.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

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?

These questions are fantastic. But here are my two.

1. Any word yet on Steam linking acounts on mobile? I found out about this game on Steam.

2. In Team Fortress 2 (TF2) if you submit something that gets in the game you get awarded something with your suggestion. Like a map you make money off of stamp donations. If a weapon you get a sparkling version of it. If we suggest a character and it gets in the game the way we suggested, can we get a reward? Like a fully covered version maybe? Exclusive costume?

Professa D

Juicyfruit1 wrote:

What did you learn from the Guantlet? How does this affect PVE in the future?

They probably learned that everyone loved it because it was true PvE that allowed us to play on our own schedule but I'm guessing there's a monetary reason for not running it more regularly or permanently switching the PvE format. Competition for placement at the end of PvEs absolutely must increase health pack sales versus the "play when you want" gauntlet-style structure so it seems that the format is at odds with their business model, even if the players loved it.

Along those same lines, I would love it if they ran more events with smaller brackets like the 50 person buy in one they did or the 20 person LRs that ran during anniv week because I could place much higher without having to grind/schedule my life around MPQ/spend ridiculous amounts of HP to shieldhop. Unfortunately, however, smaller brackets = more rewards given out which messes with their business model and thus likely won't become the norm.

As much as I would like to be the big fish in a little pond, I think they would rather us be cannibalistic rats in a vat of cream clawing at each other churning up some sweet butter (profit) for them.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

ballingbees wrote:

Hi HiFi,

When you first came on board, you mentioned you'll start a basic account to have a feel of the game from the FTP route. Just wondering how is that account getting by. I'm guessing it should be a solid 2* base by now, with several half covered 3* cards. In particular, the HP pinch should be biting about now, especially having to work out 3 roster spaces for Dino, ms Marvel and Blade within 2 weeks of each other. Now with about 25 >3* characters in the token pool, at 3 colours each, an event token has a 20% chance of drawing 1/75 (or 1.3%) of a desired card. Considering these factors, what do you suppose is a reasonable timeframe for a new player today to have a first fully covered 3*?...And finally thanks for being around..

Hi there,
Thanks. I'm hesitant to answer here as it's best to keep this thread for the submission of questions only. That said, a short answer.
Yep, I'm still going the free route on my mobile account. Due to time constraints I'm probably behind where many would be at this stage. I do manage to play just about daily though. I made the newbie mistake of getting rid of too many 2*s too quickly to get some 3*s going. Unfortunately, pretty much all of my heroes need many more covers. My roster: 2* - Ares (Dark Avengers), Thor (Marvel Now) & Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men). 3* - Cap (Steve Rogers), Human Torch (Classic), Psylocke (Classic) and Sentry (Dark Avengers). Sentry was my Anniversary Pack pull. As to "reasonable timeframes" that's a question for the designers. Looks like it may take me a few months for a fully-covered 3*. But everyone puts in a different amount of time.

Professa D

Have there been any discussions regarding the imbalance between risk and reward that many have noticed and complained about? Specifically the issue of feeling like you are somehow disadvantaging yourself by levelling up your roster because you will get the same 25 points facing all 166s in PvP that a lower roster would get fighting weaker opponents? Similarly the issue of fighting ridiculously overpowered PvE opponents for the same ISO (usually 20) rewards and the quite evident trend that ppl with 94 lvl rosters continuously seem to have much easier path's to high PvE placements?

I think the PvP MMR conundrum could be fixed at least partially by allowing those with levelled up rosters the CHOICE to either battle weak opponents for small points or take on stronger opponents for substantially more points/ISO. I work in the stock market where everything is centered around the relationship between risk/reward but am failing to see that relationship play out in MPQ. Just wondering if that is brought up, if you view it as a problem and what some potential solutions might be.

I remember back when I was making the 2-3* transition I was reading the forums and seriously questioning whether or not to level my roster up which was totally counter-intuitive to everything I knew about character-levelling type games (which didn't really go beyond Super Mario: RPG for SNES). Eventually I splurged and maxed two guys up to (then) lvl 141 mainly in order to try to deter attackers in PvP, but in the current Sentrybombing meta there is absolutely no way to deter attacks once you have enough points.

Now that I have a fully developed 3* roster, it's becoming easy to see that there's not much left in the game for me anymore, except waiting for the next new character to come out so I can spend way too much for a roster slot to barely ever use him/her in multiple re-runs of events that I've already been through at least 4-5 times (day 270ish for me).

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Wolarsen wrote:

Hello David,

You (maybe was IceX) have stated that D3 is actually putting more effort in incoming characters than in tuning old ones; comments actually generated much dislike.

1) So, can we expect to see the whole roster of characters being more balanced in near future? 2) Any new sharable information about measures to soothe event finishing times pain?

Hi, just to clarify - I did not answer any of the Q&A questions. They were answered by various team members at Demiurge.

Regarding new info on Event end times - nothing specific I can add yet other than solutions are still actively being worked on and it is still "coming soon."

mohio

ErikPeter wrote:

Can I help design characters for MPQ?

Head over to the News and Announcements forum and you'll see a post from Demiurge_Will stating they have an opening (or openings?) for design interns if you can work in their boston/cambridge office. So you may be in luck!

Lystrata

Just out of interest for the future, are you going to look back at past months' questions as you go on, or if something isn't answered in X month, we should just repost and repost and repost until it gets an answer?

E.g., in the October questions, there were many, many people asking about whether or not Gauntlet style PvE would become more common, as the feedback for that was pretty much positive. For the most part. Haven't seen anything about that, so... I suppose my question would just be to re-ask about that, heh.

Seems a bit ridiculous to ask the same thing each month for however long, though. ;p

GothicKratos

"David wrote:

Moore"]
Hi, just to clarify - I did not answer any of the Q&A questions. They were answered by various team members at Demiurge.

We still appreciate you taking the time to put it all together and making it happen.

I'll post a few questions from myself and my girlfriend later on.

Spoit

Lystrata wrote:

Just out of interest for the future, are you going to look back at past months' questions as you go on, or if something isn't answered in X month, we should just repost and repost and repost until it gets an answer?

E.g., in the October questions, there were many, many people asking about whether or not Gauntlet style PvE would become more common, as the feedback for that was pretty much positive. For the most part. Haven't seen anything about that, so... I suppose my question would just be to re-ask about that, heh.

Seems a bit ridiculous to ask the same thing each month for however long, though. ;p

He said in another thread that it's a distinct possibility that more gauntlet-like pves would happen in the future

Lystrata

Spoit wrote:

He said in another thread that it's a distinct possibility that more gauntlet-like pves would happen in the future

Oh? All I've seen him say is that more Gauntlet type events in the future wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm not sure that's quite the same thing as getting the devs take on the matter. Initial query still remains regardless, about whether questions from previous months will get re-looked at.

IamTheDanger

2 questions for you guys this month.

Question #1. ) When will characters like Yelena, Hood, and BW be able to steal TU tiles along with the other 6 Ap colors?

Now, as to my 2nd question; ....
In an earlier question, someone asked about rewards scaling with enemies in PvE. Something like:...
Level 50 goons = max of 250 iso
Level 150 goons = 500 iso
Level 250 goons = 750 iso
Level 300 goons = 1,000 iso
Level 395+ goons = 1,500 iso

This seems like a very good idea, and it's more than fair also. However, if that can't/won't be done, then how about scaling our characters along with the enemy. Seriously, using a few 2* heros at level 134 to beat 395 Venom and Ragnarok is hard as kitty. Now, if scaling our characters with the enemy can't/won't happen, then how about unlocking more of our rosters as the opponents levels get higher.
Something like this:...
enemies > level 200 unlocks one extra character
enemies > level 300 unlocks a second character
enemies > level 375 unlocks a 3rd character, but, for the 3rd one, we get to chose any character from our roster we want

So....
Question #2. ) Will something be done about the insane scaling in PvE and/or the "not so great" rewards we get when, or if, we beat it?

Thanks, Sgt. JJ