MPQ Community Q&A #3 – December - Answer Time!

Unknown

Vertigozooropa wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

There isn't anything worthwhile in these answers. If you're going to have a Q&A session each month, at least put in an interesting answer in somewhere.

We really do hope this is something helpful and informative for the MPQ community. If the community would like to suggest/vote on something else or have us end the Q&As - we welcome the feedback.

Thanks!

What we want are less political answers. You've asked if we want an end to the Q&A's. We don't, unless the answers are always going to be noncommittal or disingenuous, in which case, I don't think we'd notice if they never came back.

The players ask passionate question about deficiencies in the game. The Devs answer, "We're okay with that. We don't think it's a problem." The players are disregarded.

The answer we want is this: "We're working on ways to make this better." The answer we never want is this: "It's working as intended."

The answer we're desperate to hear is, "We're sorry we ruined healing so terribly. We will be undoing our mistake soon."

You've actually given us a lot of good answers in this post. They've been overshadowed by the questions you've avoided answering. For instance, too many characters have been introduced, and the price of character slots has not been adjusted to account for this. Instead of making the price of slots static after a certain point, the answer is, "We can't give you more HP. That would make it too easy for beginners." But what about making the slots cheaper?

The next question is also answered with a, "We can't help you." Speed is important in competitions. That is all.

Then there's a good answer: "No, we can't make The Hood steal TUAP. He's OP, and you know it." No mention of how his Twin Pistols ends the turn.

I think the next question pretty much overshadows everything else. It contains the words, "Healing is currently roughly on par with Protect tiles," and goes on to defend Reprieve and Medical Marvel while saying that Spider-Man is good as-is and of average strength. A lot of us do not agree with this. I'm pretty sure Reprieve would end up at the very bottom of the list, were all 3* abilities ranked, and I've read recently that random AP drain is the only game ability worse than temporary healing. That's one person's opinion, but I'd suspect it's not a minority one.

Now that Rocket and Groot can be near dead and suddenly heal to full strength, Web Bandages is looking a lot weaker than before. And Medical Marvel should really be true healing, anyways. It's a medical marvel, not a web bandage. And how, exactly, does She-Hulk have first aid powers? She's a super-strong lawyer.

I'm not going to do the whole list. Later, you say that you'd like to re-work Beast, and that the Devs have limited resources, and have to pick their battles. This is what we want to hear. We want to hear that our concerns are being heard, and not ignored. We can't expect it all to be fixed right now, but we don't want to be told that what we feel are the Devs biggest mistakes are working as intended.

So, in conclusion, we like the Q&A's, and we don't want them to go away.

And therein lies the problem. I was happy with the Q&A because I am happy to get a little insight into why they're doing some of the things they're doing. Whereas half the posters in this thred see the Q&A as a prosecution with a hostile witness

The forums say they want dev feedback, but they don't. They want the devs to turn over design duties to them.

Unknown

Pucco wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi folks – it’s time for the December Marvel Puzzle Quest Community Q&A!

we’ll be releasing more 4*s this year, a lot more.

I'm actually quite sad to hear this because it'll render my collection of 3*s useless (and that's 20 of them). As for now, i've been using xf/thorita almost exclusively for PvP and high levels PvE.

I welcome new characters and new buffs, love them and i try to use them wherever possible, but Please give us some reason to use 3* (or even 2*) other than just heroics.

Some example:

• Using alternate teams between fights in PvP gives bonus ISO.
• Implement some "character" special day or week gives slight buff or special ability.

And one more thing, just to reiterate what others been saying all along, i know this game supposed to be competitive and all, but the method of obtaining 4* in PvE is just horrible and very taxing to our life and health.

I think the gauntlet is the perfect way to reward 4*.

I thought you were just enjoying this article with a hot cocoa milk...

ballingbees

Hi HiFi,

I think its a classic case of expectations floating off. When you gave us the message a month ago that the roster slots issue was prioritised and being seriously looked into, I guess the majority was expecting a more definitive resolution in terms of cut costs or such. Hence the general disappointment that nothing is being implemented yet, nor is any form of action decided on. And those who are/been through 2*to 3* transition will remember the pain, so bringing up a new 3* to 4* transition proposal is just... not appealing at all.

I'm sorry that you have to be the bringer of these information, and thus also the recepient of the resultant backlash. Do have a happy holidays nonetheless.

Unknown

Thank you ballingbees, I did not pay attention to the Christmas Greetings from Demiurge.

So ironical.

Lystrata

Huh. I actually found these answers remarkably more informative than past months, so for that - thank you. You also chose questions that really matter, rather than puff-piece questions for puff-piece answers. Again, thank you.

It's great to know that Beast is at least on the radar for being looked at - I won't delete him just yet, then.

The only answer I have a real problem with is the roster slots. Specifically:

Q(a): Each new character needs a Roster Slot. Resources are needed to purchase Roster Slots. Over time, resources are not increasing, but Roster Slot prices are./What are your plans for addressing the high costs of Roster Slots with so many characters?

We do expect that most players will have to make choices about which characters join their roster and which they spend their Iso-8 on, just as you have to make choices about which of a character’s powers get upgraded to level 5.

These are two completely different things. Players aren't asking for HP to buy 10 covers. They just want to be able to keep the characters they win. You punish players for winning covers - with both the time restraint before they disappear, and with the incredible roster slot costs (which starts from Day 1).

This design actually becomes self-defeating. Why should I play if I know that I can't actually keep the things I win? If I put in the effort of playing your game for 7 days straight, and I win an Elektra - I should have a reasonable chance of being able to then buy a roster slot for her. I shouldn't be forced to choose between who I want to keep - I've played to earn them. In no other game I play (and believe me, the list is extensive) do I have to delete something I've earnt, in order to keep something else (loot caps in mmorpgs aside).

If you can't see why it's a problem that players are finding it increasingly difficult to keep the characters they've spent time earning - to the point that almost the first 2 pages of the Questions for this Q&A were asking about roster slot prices - then I think there's a serious chasm between developer viewpoints and player viewpoints.


EDIT: Additional thought - you're also making it harder for me (and others) to spend HP. For instance, I recently bought a LDaken cover. I purchased HP during the sale to do this. Which gave you revenue. I couldn't have done that if I didn't have him on my roster to start with. I have no problem with spending HP to improve a character. But I greatly object to - and will not buy HP for - the privilege of keeping something I already spent days playing for.

Pylgrim

People are, as expected knee-jerk reacting about this. This Q&A set was more informative than the previous; problem is, that some the answers are not very popular. Let me address a couple:

-"Healing powers are fine and Spiderman is fine". Many people find this hard to believe, but there are a few of us that believe that Spiderman is indeed fine and use him to good results. Many of the current Spidey-haters are the ones that enjoyed his previous, busted version and cannot get over the fact that he's not a top character anymore. He may not be a top character (and I hope we can all agree that not every character can possibly be "top") but he's a serviceable, strong, middle-of-the road one. It is true that his yellow ability almost never comes into play, but his other to abilities are good enough and that's fine in the same way that there's no reason to complain about the comparatively super-weak Mjolnir's Might. I think we all should agree that fixing some of the real weak characters and abilities should happen way before we even start thinking about improving a superfluous ability in a decent character.

As for healing, they clearly stated that they are moving away from pure-healing based defensive abilities, which are inherently weak, to more interesting and efficient ones, which we have clearly seen in the newer characters. The only truly troublesomely weak healing abilities left, Beast's and She-Hulk's are now confirmed to be slated for re-design. I think that overall, the answer to that point was satisfactory and filled with good news (except to the hardcore fans of a strong Spiderman).

-ISO, HP and roster slots prices are fine". This one is a bit more problematic but let's look at the brighter side first: They have indeed been increasing the rate of ISO and HP handing-out and they are constantly looking at it; they also welcome player feedback in this regard. I also totally understand their concern for striving to keep a balance on rates that are useful for top-end players without being too liberal for new and transitioning players. I believe there's a more or less balanced situation right now. I get thousands of Iso per day and my complete roster of 3*s is slowly but surely developing into the last levels. I also get enough HP that with a little bit of careful saving, I managed to outright buy a black cover for my X-Force and even though that reduced my HP to 0, in a few days I've raised the 600 I will need for Elektra's slot.

Having said that, the increasing roster slot prices ARE a concern, especially when the Devs answer hint that the solution is to "choose who to keep". This following bit is feedback for the Devs as requested: Choosing to keep some and dismiss others is NOT a viable solution. First, most players that play this kind of games are OCD-ish completionists. We don't like not having all that is possible to have and you know this as you pointed in another answer that it's important that completionists feel that they checked all the marks. Second, every character will become an essential character in a competition at one point or other. Not having an essential character makes competition an uphill battle especially when the reward is a new character. Choosing not to keep a character, then, may very well set you in a road where you just cannot get a series of other characters, regardless of your desire to "keep them or not". Roster slot prices NEED a ceiling.

Unknown

Lystrata wrote:

Huh. I actually found these answers remarkably more informative than past months, so for that - thank you. You also chose questions that really matter, rather than puff-piece questions for puff-piece answers. Again, thank you.

It's great to know that Beast is at least on the radar for being looked at - I won't delete him just yet, then.

The only answer I have a real problem with is the roster slots. Specifically:

Q(a): Each new character needs a Roster Slot. Resources are needed to purchase Roster Slots. Over time, resources are not increasing, but Roster Slot prices are./What are your plans for addressing the high costs of Roster Slots with so many characters?

We do expect that most players will have to make choices about which characters join their roster and which they spend their Iso-8 on, just as you have to make choices about which of a character’s powers get upgraded to level 5.

These are two completely different things. Players aren't asking for HP to buy 10 covers. They just want to be able to keep the characters they win. You punish players for winning covers - with both the time restraint before they disappear, and with the incredible roster slot costs (which starts from Day 1).

This design actually becomes self-defeating. Why should I play if I know that I can't actually keep the things I win? If I put in the effort of playing your game for 7 days straight, and I win an Elektra - I should have a reasonable chance of being able to then buy a roster slot for her. I shouldn't be forced to choose between who I want to keep - I've played to earn them. In no other game I play (and believe me, the list is extensive) do I have to delete something I've earnt, in order to keep something else (loot caps in mmorpgs aside).

If you can't see why it's a problem that players are finding it increasingly difficult to keep the characters they've spent time earning - to the point that almost the first 2 pages of the Questions for this Q&A were asking about roster slot prices - then I think there's a serious chasm between developer viewpoints and player viewpoints.

To expand on this, I'm sympathetic to the "the point isn't to collect them all" game philosophy, especially as the game lives on and more characters get added, it's probably almost inevitable, and as I've said before most other card battlers have so many cards it's ludicrous to expect to collect them all

But none of the systems in your game support that game philosophy. "Essential" PvE nodes, the way PVP is generally "one character required," the way players don't get to choose who to develop because rewards are always specific covers... You can't say "well we expect players to choose who to have on their roster" and then 40% of your game is "Here's who you HAVE to have on your roster or else you're severely handicapped and also the rewards are worthless to you anyways"

Ducky

"David wrote:

Moore"]56% of MPQ players this month started playing after September, more than half in the last two months.

I'd like to know if this is because the game is growing or if it is because older players are simply leaving. That would give us a big insight into why the devs do what they do. I'd be interested in knowing how long the average player has been playing MPQ.

Unknown

No improvement for 2 to 3 star roster transition. No more of my money.

Clueless.

fmftint

Switchman wrote:

No improvement for 2 to 3 star roster transition. No more of my money.

Clueless.

But they want to bury you in an avalanche of 4* characters that you will never be able to use

Sword user

fmftint wrote:

Switchman wrote:

No improvement for 2 to 3 star roster transition. No more of my money.

Clueless.

But they want to bury you in an avalanche of 4* characters that you will never be able to use

Please D3P, please don't do this. I have 1 fury and 1 4hor and that's all I expect I'll get of those two for 6 months, at my current rate. If you are going to continue offering new 4* in PVE, change the essential character feature or change the 4* rewards to sub 150. The first 4* cover is not worth anything, in fact it's worth less than nothing, it's a roster slot for completionists, and 1000 iso for everyone else, excepting for its use in the following PVE with rewards that transition players are likely to want. Frankly, if I grind hard to get T50 in PVE for a cover, I hate to toss it without being able to assess its abilities, which is impossible when I am unlikely to see a 4* at completion for a year. That's the real rub here, if I forgo effort, then I get punished on the next event.

You say that you want us to decide, to pick and choose, well, you're going to have to make covers rain for that. If I know that selling a cover means that I won't see that cover or character for a month, or 2 months, then that decision is practically irreversible.

Please, please limit the cost on roster slots. Everyone asked about it, and you replied that we should be grateful for more HP and ISO in drops.

On the topic of what skills have 5 covers, I can only speak for myself when I say that's mostly luck and what rewards I can actually actively seek and win. If you don't provide the covers as T100 PVP or PVE, then I'm depending on the lotto, and that's laughable with the rate that getting one particular cover is.

Unknown

I for one am the most pleased with this Q&A than any of the others. What was it? Justification, justification, justification. The devs are confirming that they do indeed do things for a reason. Because the forums contain such high level players, we don't see eye to eye with the average player on a lot of things.

Spidey probably gets tons of use because 1. His shields let you play longer more relaxed games, and 2. He's Spiderman. The OBW balance perspective seems naive (1 great ability, 2 pretty good abilities), but they're entitled to their opinion. The roster slots issue seems like people just aren't willing to spend money, or are not willing to work for the hp, or just want things to happen faster than everyone else without putting in money. I'm impressed that the devs responded as maturely as they have, though I guess that's the benefit of a marketing department. I guess there was good news in the first 2 Q&A's, but no real good news here except 'more characters!' which many forumites also **** about, but regular people and whales like.

One of the biggest so called problem is that the game has become harder for people used to winning easily. People are complaining that they didn't get the answer they wanted, but few are bothering to even try looking at it from their view. It almost seems like if it benefited them, some people wouldn't mind if D3 broke the game for 80% of other players.

Holy victimization complex.

ronin_san

Beast rework? -- We're happy with how things are, but we *might* fix him.

That's what you took from it? They mentioned Beast 2x and She-Hulk once. I see him getting reworked. Doc Ock needs it, too.

Unknown

what i understand of release more 4* : Only follow the old path like tons of fallen game . Number inflation but not game revolution. I forsee they will failure too.

more 4* is only character power inflation > we can get 3* more easy and transtition form 3* to 4* is today 2* to 3*. A pieces of **** only. PVP is dominated by those " pay" to buy 4* cover, 3* is no place . 166 wall become 27X wall .

character balance is still problemic , The problem current in 3* pool is move to 4*. Tons of unusable 4* is just waste of time

i dont see any solution the dev team put on the desk .

Unknown

The issues with this, yet again, most answers are fluff, not substance.

There were at least 30 people who asked about the cost of roster slots. The answer never covered the cost of roster slots. It said that HP has been increased over the past year, but never covered the fact that, a year ago, when there were 20 characters, to keep them all, the 20th roster spot cost around 250 HP. Now, there are 58 characters and the 58th roster spot costs 750 HP. In the past year, HP flow has not tripled to keep up with the cost of rostering new creations. New characters use to come out every 2nd (or 3rd) PvE, giving players time to earn the HP. Now they come out almost every PvE.

While I understand that the flow of HP cannot be increased and maintain the challenge of the game, there is no reason why the cost of roster spots could not be decreased to maintain the integrity and challenge. Currently, costs increase by 50 HP for every 4 spots. If instead costs were to increase 50 for every 10 spots, it would allow players to keep up with the number of spots needed without compromising the challenge for all levels, as well as allowing players to keep roster diversity and maintain the characters that will be required for future events.

I am sure I am rambling, my apologies. I'm late and it's tired

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Haven't you heard of the phrase "a sop for Cerberus" ?

There isn't anything worthwhile in these answers. If you're going to have a Q&A session each month, at least put in an interesting answer in somewhere.

That breakdown of the time slice point/effort disparities by Will yesterday answered a lot more than this whole Q&A

This is the second month in a row Will has done something around the time of q and a (last month was hood discussion) that is just heads and shoulders better than anything on the q and a. At this point, I say cancel q & a, as it has really failed to deliver. I rather just have a short thread by will each month of they'd be as interesting as his last two breakdowns.

Unknown

I find the Q&A informative, even if the answers aren't always as comprehensive or direct as I'd like them to be. I hope they are here to stay.

h4n1s

I was thrilled to see the thread with answers! Yay!

Then I read it ... I am playing for over 330 days I am stuck in 2*-3* transition and there's literally nothing I would be looking forward based on those answers.

The main message I got is - "Either you have to be already transitioned or you have to be completely new to this game to enjoy it. If you think you can compete for top ranks with your current transitioning roster, you are wrong. And you won't be competitive for long enough. Do you want to have fun using wide roster? Say goodbye to solid ranking, because it is speed which decides and if your roster is not capable of it, you are screwed. You don't have ISO to level up characters for which you have decent amount of covers? Sorry, we won't increase its availability because it would be too easy for you to play our game. We'll be throwing lots of new characters in your way - mainly 4*, they will be essential at some point in time, but you have to pick which you want to keep and which not. And by the way, in order to level them up - you need either to be lucky to get the covers, or already transitioned to compete for top places or sit on hundreds spare dollars to buy them, else they are useless to you. And we have a special KPI where we measure awesomeness per person day.... that is saying it all..."

Unknown

Good way to avoid an actual answer on roster slot costs. I'll try again next month!

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi folks – it’s time for the December Marvel Puzzle Quest Community Q&A!


56% of MPQ players this month started playing after September, more than half in the last two months. A lot of these players have 2* rosters, and increasing rewards for them too much would throw off the balance of the game this early, making it too easy. It’s a problem when the game is too challenging, but the reverse is also bad, as a lack of challenge will quickly bore you. Progression in any RPG eventually slows down, and speeding things up in one place often just hastens the moment when things get slow. On the other hand, increasing rewards just for more advanced players contributes to a widening gap between veterans and newer players.

This is the worst answer i ever read. Yes perfectly agree Progression in RPG everntually slows down! but not before assess to the BIGGEST part of the game > the 3* chracter area > the most largest content within the game. Every competitive RPG is easy to assess the largest content and difficult to be the top guy. Thats why 3* should be more easy than and 4* is the real road to sucess.

Use diablo as an example , They are selling " legendary item" well yes it drop like rains but the power range of them is different. Players are happy to get their " non perfect drops" and play to get a more powerful version ( may be only 10 damage more from 1000 damage) . Oh your content is great , 3* character are great but totally unassessable.....it is just waste of time.

Oh we are still 2* to 3* and you told us their are more more 4* coming...Are you kidding me?