MPQ Developer Q&A #2 – November - Answer Time!

Unknown

So to translate these into regular human speech:

Q: Could you share with us some info on 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.)?
A: In December, there's a new event and game mode, using one bad guy you've already seen, but with new minions using red and black.

Q: Is there any possibility of adding PVE aspects to Seasons, possibly as a second award track?
A: We've thought about it. We dunno.

Q: Why so many new characters lately?
A: We just started and kinda couldn't stop...you know, like eating Goldfish Crackers?
(And the unspoken answer to the unspoken question about Roster Slot prices? - <silence>)

Q: Has the lack of active Purple powers been noticed? Are there plans of correcting that?
A: We think because purple is sneaky and evasive, steals and shields and passives work best for it. Oh, and Whales.

Q: Which characters do you think are underrated and why?
A: I use Moonstone. Moonstone is cool.

Q: Anniversary Week was amazing. Are there plans to implement any of the changes that occurred in that week on a more regular basis? It was the first time I had tried Lightning Rounds in about six months.
A: Ooooooh no. Noooooo no no nonono no. You're not getting double ISO and jackpot tokens again for another year. Heh.

Q: I really liked the answer on the AV Club interview about coolest idea that you didn't implement for practical reasons (i.e., Deadpool messing with the App store). Can you give us another story or weird idea that just wasn't feasible?
A: Here’s another Deadpool one. One of the goals we originally had with Deadpool (and eventually set aside) was to do something so big that it would be worth talking about by itself.
For example, the first sketch of WHALES! WHALES! WHALES! involved spending real dollars to drop all the whales on the enemy team. The plan there was: satire & controversy -> articles with epic comment threads on Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun -> we go on The Daily Show -> more players check out the game -> not actually a good idea.
That wasn’t the front-runner for Deadpool’s Purple power at the time, though. We had a detailed paper design and estimates for the server work required for a power with the working title - Twitch Plays Deadpool.
Whenever you fired this ability, you’d make a match. If you made the match by moving a tile left, an avatar of Deadpool, shared by everyone playing Marvel Puzzle Quest, would move west through a maze. If you moved a tile up, he’d move north. If he bumped into an Iron Man suit (lying around in the maze for some reason), you’d fire off a Repulsor Blast. If he bumped into some Hero Points, you’d get some Hero Points. If he bumped into some cheese, awesome, a cheese thing happens. You’d be able to go to our website and watch Deadpool moving around and bumping into things, controlled by every player in the world who was firing this ability. Players would work together to throw Deadpool off the edge of the world or get him through rooms full of spikes in order to bump into the cloning machine that gave out more Deadpools to everyone.
RIP, Twitch Plays Deadpool. You were too beautiful for this world.

(I'm just leaving that one as it is - Bluey)


Q: Are you going to expand Alliance functionality more? I.e. more ranks, better chat, more sharing, the ability to demote someone.
A: We already did some stuff. We'll probably do more. You know, when we can. Soonish. Yeah.

Q: 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 1s through 10s. I beat these matches easily, then when I come back, my options are all level 95+ Hard or Deadly match-ups I have no chance of beating.
A: We agree. We're trying to get that sorted. Tested some stuff.

Q: With 4* Thor’s "Charged Tiles" in place can we expect more "new" things that could affect the gameplay?
A: Sure. We'll do new stuff, just not to every character.

Q: 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?
A: Good idea, but we don't think it's that important right now.

Q: Will players be able to share, transfer or link Steam and mobile accounts?
A: We used to, but some people played with our toys and broke them, so we packed them away.
(Bluey Note: I understand their choice on this.)

Bonus Question:
Q: Choose one: Pancakes, French Toast, Waffles.
A: Waffles. No questions asked.
A2: I’m actually more of an oatmeal person, sorry.
A3: We threw this one in there to show that we're humans, just like you!

Lystrata

"David wrote:

Moore"]
Q: Why so many new characters lately?
A: OK, so we’ve definitely stepped up the number of characters that are coming out recently. We’ve had a lot of characters requested this year, and on top of that, we’ve had our own pet characters to work on. We tend to get a bit excited about making new characters, but that’s because we think new characters are awesome!

And so they are. If you don't have to worry about HP cost just to keep them, or iso expense to make them - what was the word you used? Playable.

The rate at which you release them, vs the rate at which players can keep them/level them up, is bafflingly out of alignment. Mass-releasing new characters because 'we think it's awesome' is astonishingly poor reasoning. Have you actually read any of the threads addressing this issue? I would really expect to see a better reason for it (and a breakdown of how you think anyone is meant to keep all these new additions) than 'we think they're cool kthx!'

Unknown

Many thanks for the answers. Most of them are vague but it's better than nothing.

On the new characters topic: It's cool that you want to release new characters, but I'd also like to see other new stuff too. Like I have already once said "If you get bored of the food, eating with a different fork will not make it better". Cook us some new food

All this new characters lead me to the question of Roster Slot Costs. You are talking about adding many new chars, you avoid giving any information about roster slot costs. I hope this is not because you think the prices are normal and they do not need any changes, because they do!

I have asked this question in both Q&A so far and I will try it again on December.

DD-The-Mighty

So I guess We'll never know whats going on with the roster slot costs, or any other answers that matter. If all you want is people to ask the fluffy nonsense, please say so next time. I'll be more than happy to ask stupid stuff like "Hay Giuse! Why is Deadpool wearing boxers instead of briefs?"

stevenbrule

Gotta admit I'm proud that my AV Club question had a really cool answer to it!

Thanks so much for answering the questions!

loroku

"David wrote:

Moore"]Q: Why so many new characters lately?

A: OK, so we’ve definitely stepped up the number of characters that are coming out recently. We’ve had a lot of characters requested this year, and on top of that, we’ve had our own pet characters to work on. We tend to get a bit excited about making new characters, but that’s because we think new characters are awesome! Having such a wide array of playable characters is one of the things that makes Marvel Puzzle Quest stand out. New characters means new allies, new enemies, new abilities! New characters inspire new PVE and Versus Events and spice up older ones.

Got this far and realized I didn't care what the answers to anything else were.

This is a straight up lie. New characters HURT PLAYERS, PERIOD. Every new character makes the game worse. Since I've been playing, there have been about 1 new character a week, on average. This has made the game much harder, much longer, and much less rewarding for basically no reason. New characters add nothing compared to the amount they take away.

D3 REALLY needs to take a long, hard look at its reward structure. The FACT that new characters are BAD for players (but also all they want to work on) is really messed up. They need to figure out a way to make having more characters GOOD, not HORRIBLY BAD. Right now the reward structure is completely backwards for this.

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Welcome to the November Marvel Puzzle Quest Community-Developer Q&A!

Q: Which characters do you think are underrated and why? (Looking at the forum voted character rankings - viewtopic.php?f=14&t=18101)
A: I’ve always felt Moonstone was an undervalued character. Her Photon Blast gets wildly more powerful the more Red tiles are on the board. If you use Iron Man Model 40’s Recharge, you can generate enough Red AP to fire this ability without diluting the amount of Red on the board. Gravity Warp is extremely useful for dealing with powerful enemy special tiles

Could we get devs who, yanno, actually play the game?

Just curious.

I mean, not to be a ****, but there's a reason Moonstone is valued so low. Saying, "Hey, let's pair her up with a **** 3* and maybe she won't be terrible" is kinda pointless. At that point, just use the red AP for Unibeam; it'll do more damage. Or run Wolverine; I've never seen Photon Blast do more than Adamantium Slash, and it'd need 12 or more red on the board to do it. And IM40 is also bad.

But what really gets me here is saying that gravity warp is useful for dealing with special tiles. This is just... I mean... Wow. Just wow. Do you guys even play this game? Let's look at who in the list of characters only makes special tiles on one color.
- Sentry. All over the map. I guess I'd pay 8 AP for 3 yellow AP and getting rid of a meaty strike tile, but you'd better hope that that's the only tile out there, and that he hasn't thrown down World Rupture!
- Classic Magneto. Nope, the likelihood of all your shield tiles landing on the same color is basically zero.
- Nick Fury. Nope, Avengers Assemble drops two random shield tiles.
- 3* Daken. Only one color, but spending 8AP to match one strike tile when he gets two for each green match anyone makes is not exactly a strong decision.
- Black Panther. Well, if you get it out while waiting on his Defense Grid to activate for the first time, okay. Otherwise, worthless.
- Patch. Hey, first character where this skill actually does anything worthwhile!
- Steve Rogers. Second character. Barely.
- Punisher: You aren't getting a judgment tile.
- Human Torch: You also aren't getting an inferno tile.
- Psylocke: doubtful.
- Falcon: see also: C.Mags
- Doom: Seems like it would work... But often, Summon Demons covers almost all the red on the board, so shifting a red tile to make a match-3 can often lead to that match-3 not happening, because all you've done is move the center one to the top, rather than replace the green tile on the top with a red one from across the board.
- Ares: Okay. Barely.
- IM40: It works...
- Storm: See also: Human Torch
- Spiderman: See also: Daken
- Beast: Sucks anyways; also, no.
- XForce: Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny.
- MNMags: Two different color tiles. Plus, slow and lategame.

...And the list goes on, and more importantly is compounded by the fact that these fights aren't 1v1! The skill would suck enough if that were the case, but it's not! Rather, you're almost never dealing with just one color of tile. By the time MNMags has gotten his Magnetic Flux out, odds are pretty good someone else has some kind of tile out as well, meaning that it's now a coin flip whether Gravity Warp will save your bacon or have all the impact of a wet fart. The skill is almost never useful to swap tiles, because you don't get to choose which one, or even which color to swap. In fact, it's a large part of the reason why moonstone is awful - it almost never does anything useful. Not even in PvE, because those guys DEFINITELY have more than one color of countdowntile, in all but a handful of cases.

C'mon. Whoever answered this question either doesn't play this game, or has had their moonstone swapped out for a beta test version with significant improvements. What the hell, guys? Yeah, okay, I said "not to be a ****" at the start, but this shows the kind of profound ignorance of how the game actually works that worries me. It's like if a capcom dev was asked "do you feel any characters are underrated" and they answered "I think Hsienko is underrated in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, because nobody can beat her gold armor! (Hsienko is the worst character in the game - sluggish, weak, pathetic damage output, and she only one barely-worthwhile gimmick going for her, the gold armor, that is trivially easy to get around if you understand how the game works.) It shows that they don't understand the game they're making and balancing. You do know people have been saying "buff moonstone" for a veritable dog's age, right? IT'S BECAUSE SHE'S **** TERRIBLE!

Unknown

While I love hearing new information to get excited about, I too am disappointed that certain questions weren't answered. It leaves the feeling that they are not answered because they don't want to answer them.

The asking of the question is sometimes the asking for a specific answer. If their answer isn't the same, they choose to ignore the question rather than provoke unnecessary forum ire by answering it in the negative. If there is no official answer, then it's harder to get angry about it. So whether your top concern is rewards distribution, roster slot costs, new character pacing, or some other generalized concern, odds are they've already looked at it and decided they're not going to do anything about it. "Works as intended."

Perhaps I'm too cynical?


And who uses Moonstone against X-Force? (must not be maxed x-force)

Unknown

daibar wrote:

And who uses Moonstone against X-Force? (must not be maxed x-force)

Who uses Moonstone? She's terrible!

Unknown

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

daibar wrote:

And who uses Moonstone against X-Force? (must not be maxed x-force)

Who uses Moonstone? She's terrible!

2* players looking for Pink/Black coverage?

This may be the level of many of the devs.

GuntherBlobel

atomzed wrote:

I doubt it will be the iron patroit cos they are already moving away from dark reign story. Loki is possible, and I do hope to bash some chutari brains.

I think they do actually have plans to finish the storyline. At least that is what I remember from a video interview I saw. But who knows, really?

wymtime

Now if they would just address the issue with roster slots/not enough HP, not enough ISO THAT WOULD BE GREAT!!!

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Welcome to the November Marvel Puzzle Quest Community-Developer Q&A!
Q: Are you going to expand Alliance functionality more? I.e. more ranks, better chat, more sharing, the ability to demote someone.

A: So by now you know about some of the recent Alliance & chat improvements we’ve made, like improved support for a bunch of Android keyboards and letting all Alliances have 20 players in them. We’ve got more planned out on paper, both the sort of quality of life improvements you’re talking about, and more ambitious features. No ETA on any of those, but we know that Alliances are a really important part of what has given the game such longevity for so many players.
[/list]

Woot they answered my question. Well, kinda. I would think that the QA department was getting tired of me wanting my members demoted so I could kick them when they did not follow the rules.

Quebbster

"David wrote:

Moore"]Q: Could you share with us some info on 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.)?

A: Just a couple hints on the new Event and game mode rolling out in December:
1. You’ve seen one of the antagonists in the game already.
2. There’s a new minion group, with Red and Black abilities.
3. There are a lot of them.

My guess: The Hand, ninjas galore! Red and black fits their color scheme. Members include Wolverine, Daredevil, Psylocke and.... *drum roll* Mystique! (Thanks Wikipedia!)

Unknown

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

tinykitty you.

With a rake.

Sincerely,
Peope.

I support this post. While it's nice they answered some questions; it seems like they want to avoid the really tough questions and issues.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

tinykitty you.

With a rake.

Sincerely,
Peope.

I support this post. While it's nice they answered some questions; it seems like they want to avoid the really tough questions and issues.

without a gun point to head game developer wont tell you next step

Unknown

Moonstone is a largely undervalued character. She wrecks PvE quite efficiently, and pairs nicely with Storm and the Captain to give board control options in all colors. That being said, she's on the verge of totally useless in PvP, and everybody's right in laughing at the idea of her fighting X-Force Wolverine.

I will say that listing her as undervalued is kind of an old-fashioned thing to do; it seems like there are fewer all goons PVE nodes these days, and those are the only places where she can really shine.

Also: Please Iron Patriot please, thank you.

vudu3

"David wrote:

Moore"]Q: Why so many new characters lately?
A: OK, so we’ve definitely stepped up the number of characters that are coming out recently. We’ve had a lot of characters requested this year, and on top of that, we’ve had our own pet characters to work on. We tend to get a bit excited about making new characters, but that’s because we think new characters are awesome! Having such a wide array of playable characters is one of the things that makes Marvel Puzzle Quest stand out. New characters means new allies, new enemies, new abilities! New characters inspire new PVE and Versus Events and spice up older ones.

The Marvel Universe is enormous and encompasses an insane variety of characters and we want to make sure our game has that same feeling.

Oh, come on! If you can't be honest with us just stop doing these Q&A sessions.

Just say it--MPQ is a free-to-play game. People give us money when we release new characters. If we didn't release a new character every couple weeks we wouldn't be able to keep the lights on.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]Q: Why so many new characters lately?
A: OK, so we’ve definitely stepped up the number of characters that are coming out recently. We’ve had a lot of characters requested this year, and on top of that, we’ve had our own pet characters to work on. We tend to get a bit excited about making new characters, but that’s because we think new characters are awesome! Having such a wide array of playable characters is one of the things that makes Marvel Puzzle Quest stand out. New characters means new allies, new enemies, new abilities! New characters inspire new PVE and Versus Events and spice up older ones.

The Marvel Universe is enormous and encompasses an insane variety of characters and we want to make sure our game has that same feeling.

Oh, come on! If you can't be honest with us just stop doing these Q&A sessions.

Just say it--MPQ is a free-to-play game. People give us money when we release new characters. If we didn't release a new character every couple weeks we wouldn't be able to keep the lights on.

Thank you vudu !

I was starting to think I was the only one thinking we were being taken for fools...

GrimSkald

Moon 17 wrote:

Moonstone is a largely undervalued character. She wrecks PvE quite efficiently, and pairs nicely with Storm and the Captain to give board control options in all colors. That being said, she's on the verge of totally useless in PvP, and everybody's right in laughing at the idea of her fighting X-Force Wolverine.

I will say that listing her as undervalued is kind of an old-fashioned thing to do; it seems like there are fewer all goons PVE nodes these days, and those are the only places where she can really shine.

Also: Please Iron Patriot please, thank you.

I gave Moonstone a pretty fair shakedown during the original iteration of "Prodigal Sun." I actually fielded a Dark Avengers team (well, mostly as I didn't have either version of Daken,) and I actually quite like Karla from the comics - I'm a fan of older Avengers where she was a villian and the first run of Thunderbolts where she was (mostly) a hero. I wanted to like the character, I really did.

The trouble is her powers are just to damn situational. Purple can work to your advantage on a board where there are few special tokens, but when you have any variety you're picking one and crossing your fingers and it's too damn expensive for that kind of guesswork. Her black has pretty much the same problem - when it does what it's supposed to it is awesome but it's so damn expensive you almost can never get it off when you need it. If they reduced the cost of her powers (and probably reduced the secondary effects to go with it) she'd probably be okay, but at she is she's just kind of a mixed bag of mediocre.

In a vacuum, Photon Blast is a pretty good power, but it's only one and it can get hosed pretty badly by a red-poor board. At the time I loved it, but the game had perversely denied me any AWolvie of note at the time, so I didn't have Adamantium Slash to compare it to.