November MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

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?

Hi. To make things easier you may want to ask again. That'll make sure your question gets on the new list. Yes, I plan on looking at past questions, but it's a challenge keeping track as we go forward.
Organizing example: When I pulled out everything last month that was an actual question, the list topped out at 18 Word Doc pages (!).

Thanks.

Nellyson

"David wrote:

Moore"]

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?

Hi. To make things easier you may want to ask again. That'll make sure your question gets on the new list. Yes, I plan on looking at past questions, but it's a challenge keeping track as we go forward.
Organizing example: When I pulled out everything last month that was an actual question, the list topped out at 18 Word Doc pages (!).

Thanks.

So what you're saying is that we didn't ask enough questions? Ok forum, we can fix this!! Who's got the meme for the all things guy?? It must say "ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS!!!" hahaha

GuntherBlobel

Casual play:
TL;DR: I've never played a competitive game that didn't have something called a Practice, Custom, or Casual mode. Are there any plans to give players a mode that is NOT competitive? I'd pay for it!


Seriously, I love the game: the whole Marvel characters and Match-3 thing. I don't love competing in repetitive, monotonous events. But, unless I compete, and compete well, there is no way to unlock the game content (at a reasonable price). I would pay (a reasonable price) to simply unlock the game content and set up matches that I actually want to play. All I'm asking for is a separate little arena where I can (for a reasonable price) unlock characters and play matches of my own design.

Have you noticed that players only care about how well Beast or Doc Ock will compete vs. Sentry? That's obviously because the game exists for competition only. Isn't MPQ supposed to be about having fun with the Fastball Special or with Blade?

Are you concerned that the game is overly "addictive?" Well, it is. By design, the only way the player can keep playing the game is to keep playing the game. Please, give your players a way to enjoy MPQ responsibly. (BTW, why does MPQ market itself as "addictive," like it's something to openly brag about? Most industries try to avoid that association.)

So, how about it? Are there any plans to give players a Casual mode?

FromPorlock

What am I doing wrong in PVP? I'm building up my roster, some 2 stars in the mid levels and I seem to get one extreme or the other. First opponents are way under my level, some level ones through tens, maybe with the event character. I beat these matches easily, than when I come back, my options are all level 95+ hard or deadly match ups I have no chance of beating.

Seems to me like the fun thing would be to have some kind of middle ground where I might not be competing for the top spot, but would have some challenging matches that would encourage me to develop a strategy, rather than relying on brute force or the wall of hopelessness to decide outcomes. Or am I going about this the wrong way?

phoenixrising2791

1. With the "charged tiles" in place (with 4* ), can we expect more "new" things that could affect the gameplay? The charged tiles are quite fun to deal with and personally, you could pull more of these however, the thing to do is how it will harmonize/affect the other tiles.

2. Are we expecting a new storyline? Where will the MPQ be leading/heading to after the Dark Reign Story/Saga? Do you have a definite storyline to follow or so? Any spoilers?

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]

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?

Hi. To make things easier you may want to ask again. That'll make sure your question gets on the new list. Yes, I plan on looking at past questions, but it's a challenge keeping track as we go forward.
Organizing example: When I pulled out everything last month that was an actual question, the list topped out at 18 Word Doc pages (!).

Thanks.

Can we have weekly Q&A instead of monthly? Many things change in a month. Especially as we see new chars every two weeks and 2-3 patches in between. Wouldn't it be easier to have:

Week 1: Week of questions
Week 2: Gather the answers
Week 3: Post answers and open new Q&A (Repeat)

There will not be a flood of questions in a week and most of them will be answered not just 10% of them.

Lystrata

"David wrote:

Moore"]

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?

Hi. To make things easier you may want to ask again. That'll make sure your question gets on the new list. Yes, I plan on looking at past questions, but it's a challenge keeping track as we go forward.
Organizing example: When I pulled out everything last month that was an actual question, the list topped out at 18 Word Doc pages (!).

Thanks.

Ouch! And cool, cool. Not a problem to do so, just didn't want to unnecessarily clutter up the Q&A thread* with q's that are already in a 'continually looked at list' somewhere.


* Kinda like I'm doing now, with this reply.

Unknown

Back in May I made this post.

Is there anything in the works that would make the game more rewarding/enjoyable for players on the casual end of the spectrum?

Sometimes we want to be able to play without pressure or take a break from the constant competition but still feel like our time is being valued. The gauntlet was a great example of this, but so far has only been run once. When Ideally there could be a version running once a week, or some other low pressure yet still rewarding type of event or other mechanic like mentioned above.

Unknown

I have one question.

Why have we never seen anything resembling iterative fixing? Like, we almost never see small, iterative changes - we never see something like, say, "Ballistic Salvo damage increased by 20%" - small, numeric changes to skills traditionally seen as underpowered. This confuses me, because it seems like this is the kind of thing that a lot of characters would benefit from (trust me when I say that it'd be very hard to crank that dial hard enough on Ballistic Salvo to make IM40 OP as a result - even doubling the damage makes him only vaguely playable), if you err on the side of caution it's legitimately hard to break, and above all it takes next to no real time. I mean, I don't mean to be presumptuous, but I've worked on a few such projects on the backend, and it should be a matter of 15 minutes or to change one number to another number. Is there a problem with the license? Do you have to pass any changes by someone at Marvel? Or is this simply a matter of intentional choice? If the latter... Why?

Unknown

1. Can You Make it to where team up tile drop more often?
2. Any thoughts on a for fun live pvp function?

russreid91

I didn't see this posted anywhere but I was wondering if we could get some insight into your testing environment. It just seems like there are some characters that don't feel like they were really tested at all or at least enough.

I get the issue with Sentry as you figured the high cost of damage done to himself would keep him in check and didn't really see him getting abused in PvP the way he is. I have an issue with Beast, I was excited when he came out and played hard in the PvP and the PvE to get him. Unfortunately after playing him for about 5 mins you immediately saw his weakness. For him to really shine he needs blue special tiles, so I save up the AP for it and then have to wait longer still when the blue tile is randomly placed on the board and the CD starts ticking down. Unfortunately it usually either gets matched immediately or it's at the edge of the board where you don't get full benefit from it. Then if it does go off at least 2 of the tiles immediately match themselves away, now I finally have my blue tiles and I can use the other AP that I have been saving up. By this point if I was playing another character I could have cast 2 guaranteed abilities in this time. He just doesn't feel like he was play tested very much at all or that would have showed up on somebody's radar.

The next question is where do you see some of these characters getting played? I could maybe play him if there was somewhere it wasn't going to hurt me. Certainly not in PvP where it is basically an invite to take points from me so maybe in PvE but pretty unlikely. In the last Heroic where he was one of the only available characters I played him and tried using his blue but it failed more often then not and only used his yellow and green once or twice when Storm was already down. If there was another non competitive story line then maybe I could play him there and figure out a better strategy for him.

Finally as somebody already posted about, why is it that you don't do small tweaks to some of the characters abilities or health. They obviously need tweaking so why not try bumping them down by maybe an AP or two and see if people start playing with it. You could change characters x, y and z this month and then monitor them for 2-3 months to see if people start using them more and to get feedback. Then the next month you could do another couple of characters. Some don't require huge overhauls because they are close to being playable they just need a tweak.

Thank you for taking the time to read our questions and provide some meaningful feedback.

Nonce Equitaur 2

1. Doc Ock's Armed and Dangerous, Nick Fury's Escape Plan, Wolverine X-Force's Surgical Strike, Blade's Nightstalker, and Black Panther's Rage of the Panther all work on the mechanic enemy's strongest color. Can a color dot or something be added to the enemy status bar to indicate their strongest color?

2. Can the disparities between tile damages and ability color orderings be fixed to make "strongest color" less confusing? Can the abilities be re-ordered to match the tile damage strengths?
Tile Dam .. Ability colors
-- - Beast (Modern)
-- - Black Widow (Grey Suit)
-- - Captain Marvel (Modern)
-- - Daken (both versions)
-- - Deadpool (It's Me, Deadpool)
-- - Doctor Doom (Classic)
-- - Loki (Dark Reign)
-- - Magneto (Classic)
-- - Spider-Man (Classic)
-- - Hawkeye (Modern)
-- - Iron Man

My last set of questions.

NorthernPolarity

Updated original post to include beast question.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Can we have weekly Q&A instead of monthly? Many things change in a month. Especially as we see new chars every two weeks and 2-3 patches in between. Wouldn't it be easier to have:

Week 1: Week of questions
Week 2: Gather the answers
Week 3: Post answers and open new Q&A (Repeat)

There will not be a flood of questions in a week and most of them will be answered not just 10% of them.

For the foreseeable future, the Q&A will maintain a monthly schedule.
Sending the developers a batch of questions every week would be great for timely responses but not so wonderful for productivity. The time spent answering questions is worthwhile, but unfortunately it takes away from time spent fixing bugs, creating new content and keeping the game running smoothly.

Nonce Equitaur 2

"David wrote:

Moore"]
For the foreseeable future, the Q&A will maintain a monthly schedule.
Sending the developers a batch of questions every week would be great for timely responses but not so wonderful for productivity. The time spent answering questions is worthwhile, but unfortunately it takes away from time spent fixing bugs, creating new content and keeping the game running smoothly.

The last set of answers hardly explained anything, though.

For these questions, the answer was basically stay tuned, not a priority.
Q: When will Loki, Doom, Ragnarok, and Bullseye get third covers?
Q: When will there be an event with times more fair for EU players?
Q: Can the AP costs of the most overpriced powers be lowered?
Q: Will Daredevil get a buff?
Q: Is there any plans on the table for a Windows Phone version?
Q: Is there landscape mode or more tablet friendly option on the horizon?
Q: I'd like to hear the developers' thoughts about characters with only two powers.
Q: Will you revisit the trap mechanism?/ Any thoughts to reworking traps?

The following questions got decent answers.
Q: Are there any new game modes planned for the future?
Q: How do you determine which characters you plan on creating and releasing?

If the questions are going to be blown off to that extent, it's best to not give answers at all.

Beast, Invisible Woman, Ragnarok, Doctor Doom, Falcon, Octopus, She-Hulk, Spider-Man, IM40, Loki, Storm (Mohawk) (BIRD FOSSILS) all look poorly engineered at the moment. Many of the questions in the first round basically asked "Are the developers good at needed game engineering?" The answer given was "We're terrible at it! And we're almost completely oblivious!"


Design -- making something nice.
Engineering -- making something better.

The players need better answers than that, or the exercise is pointless.

Unknown

Can we get an update on attempts to fix MMR? What is the logic behind placing players in the same bucket across all PvP events? Do the devs personally enjoy hitting the same players, spending tens of hundreds of ISO skipping the same players, and getting hit by the same players in every event?

theshadeofopal

1) Why make top 50 lightning winners get better rewards than top 25? Is there some reason a player can't get two different type of tokens in one event?

2) Is it realistic that players might be able to share or transfer or link steam and mobile accounts some time this year? I've played on both but while I prefer the steam ui, the ability to actually play on the go in addition to the facebook rewards is pretty nice as well. It seems like a feature that would probably benefit all players and users who had their accounts linked from the beta seem to have had few problems as a result.

_RiO_

The cover packs have terrible return value for money invested and the all-round odds of getting good enough drops to complete a chosen character without them are abysmal at best. Does the guilt over this level of extortion wash away with regular water, or does it require something special, like babies' tears?

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]

Can we have weekly Q&A instead of monthly? Many things change in a month. Especially as we see new chars every two weeks and 2-3 patches in between. Wouldn't it be easier to have:

Week 1: Week of questions
Week 2: Gather the answers
Weproductivity. nswers and open new Q&A (Repeat)

There will not be a flood of questions in a week and most of them will be answered not just 10% of them.

For the foreseeable future, the Q&A will maintain a monthly schedule.
Sending the developers a batch of questions every week would be great for timely responses but not so wonderful for productivity. The time spent answering questions is worthwhile, but unfortunately it takes away from time spent fixing bugs, creating new content and keeping the game running smoothly.

With all due respect, how long did it take you to answer this question? I honestly don't mind the feature being a monthly item, like a newsletter. But I find it hard to fathom, the amount of time it takes to answer one question per developer would significantly hinder productivity. Lol... They aren't exactly writing Shakespeare in their answers;)

Ludaa

1. With regards to team-ups, was it always your intention that players not be able to use one every match? The AI has a clear advantage now since TU drops were lowered. Alliance team-up requests have gone up significantly, yet I can only give out 3 at a time and I have to wait for hours (days even!) to get them back (or pay).

2. Devs have often promoted roster diversity in MPQ. Aside from Combined Arms and Balance of Power, the other 95% of the game is just using the top 4 or 5 characters. Now, nobody is forced to use these characters...unless they want to compete, in this very competitive game. What gives?

3. Are you happy with the punishment for failing? It can take months to fully max out a character, yet in only a few minutes the game can wipe your characters and healthpacks. This pushes people towards the "best" characters because they will win faster and take less damage. It also pushes people away from "roster diversity". Spending resources on lesser characters doesn't make sense with this setup.