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

dr tinykittylove

Lystrata wrote:

Wow. What on earth does it matter what the precise percentage on a single forum poll is? Is that really the main concern here? It's still fairly clear that the vast majority find the tidal wave of new character releases to be impractical, for whatever reason.

I really like new characters. As the devs said, they can in fact be awesome. But that's hardly the point. The point is that awesome or otherwise, the rate at which they're being released is causing problems on numerous levels (HP expense for slots, iso for levelling up, and removing characters during seasons from tokens because of there being too many, just to name a few).

New characters in and of themselves are not the problem here. It's the fact that there doesn't seem to be any connection between releasing them, and how people are ever meant to keep/level them, at this rate. Arguments of 'we want people to have a diverse roster' are inconsequential if people have no way of keeping/using that roster.

The fact that the forum consists of a relatively small group of players isn't really a good argument for why the views here should be dismissed. A lot of new players may not even know of the forums, but are still facing the same problems (arguably moreso than vets, on some matters). And if you take a quick trip to the FB page, you will see exactly the same concerns by a much larger number of people there. This isn't the only place people are expressing dissatisfaction (or satisfaction, before anyone starts to detail this whole thing based on one omitted word).

Yes to everything. If anything, vets are likely to be having a much easier time of it. I know I am. Sure my roster slots cost more, but I also have more ways of getting hp - placement in pvp, grinding shield sim etc. And if all else fails I have lots of unused lower tier characters I can sell off for space without crippling my core roster. I also know enough about the metagame like brackets and rubberband to optimise my play.

What about say someone who joined later, when there were already 50 characters and no idea who or what to keep and why? What about 2* rosters who levelled up their Dinos and xforces when the covers are far from useful? I've seen in just this last webslinger and lightning rounds far too many xforces with 2/2/5 or similar at Lvl200+, how does that affect their MMR or pve scaling?

With the vaulting, it's far more likely we'll get more people wondering why aren't there any odds for Patch or Punpun and HT in tokens because they just need 1 more to get them to Lvl102 so they can use them with Ares/OBW! (I feel your pain, guys, I've been trying to cover my bagman for 3 seasons now.)

Unknown

New characters are indeed awesome!

So is PVE without ranks.
And PVE without ridiculous scaling.
And better token drop rates.
And covers that are out of rotation.
And better roster slot costs.
And a monkey in a space suit because today is my birthday.

But I guess everything past the 1st line does not produce enough income for you. I finally cracked your logic. Whenever I see "awesome" again typed from you, I'll replace it with "income source".

mags1587

I wanted to share my thoughts on the new character releases. For me, the big problem is the rate at which the new characters are being released. Right now we're getting a new character every other PvE. That does not allow me any time to really use a new character and decide if I want to invest ISO or even HP in them. Because by the time I get a decent amount of covers for a character, there's already a new one being offered so they just sit in my roster, mostly forgotten.

For instance, with Mystique -- I like her colors, I'm intrigued by her power set, I think I might want to work on maxing her, to the point where I was considering buying a cover or two for her... but now Rocket & Groot are coming out, with Gamora soon after, and so Mystique is just going to sit in my roster, being ignored, until the next time she's featured. Much like Blade. This seems counter-productive.

Unknown

While I was messing with my idea of having a seasonal rotation of characters I thought of a good idea to handle the 'too many characters' issue. Let's say each season you have a list of 3*s (those are usually the one people care about) that you want to promote, which can simply be any character that isn't currently vaulted. All featured character you automatically can play them and level up/apply covers without concern to roster limitation. Once that character is rotated out the character goes into the limbo until you purchase a roster slot or he comes back to the seasons rotation. That way everyone can try whoever is the latest guy and if you like him then you should save up for the roster slot and if not he'll just go into the limbo until the next time he's part of the seasons rotation. Make it so that PvE required character can only come from characters who are currently in the seasons rotation, so that way you know if you got every character at some point you'll always have all the correct required 3*s for PvE. For example, let's say you got Mystique and you don't want to level her up, and next season she goes out of rotation so you can't use her, but if she can only be a required PvE character (PvP is okay because you can always use the loaner in the worst case scenario) when she's back in the rotation then you don't have to worry about making room for her. The interface for this might get pretty cumbersome but it should at least work.

Dayv

Phantron wrote:

While I was messing with my idea of having a seasonal rotation of characters I thought of a good idea to handle the 'too many characters' issue. Let's say each season you have a list of 3*s (those are usually the one people care about) that you want to promote, which can simply be any character that isn't currently vaulted. All featured character you automatically can play them and level up/apply covers without concern to roster limitation. Once that character is rotated out the character goes into the limbo until you purchase a roster slot or he comes back to the seasons rotation. That way everyone can try whoever is the latest guy and if you like him then you should save up for the roster slot and if not he'll just go into the limbo until the next time he's part of the seasons rotation. Make it so that PvE required character can only come from characters who are currently in the seasons rotation, so that way you know if you got every character at some point you'll always have all the correct required 3*s for PvE. For example, let's say you got Mystique and you don't want to level her up, and next season she goes out of rotation so you can't use her, but if she can only be a required PvE character (PvP is okay because you can always use the loaner in the worst case scenario) when she's back in the rotation then you don't have to worry about making room for her. The interface for this might get pretty cumbersome but it should at least work.

Dude, did you forget to take your meds?