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

Hulk11

What's the point of QA really, it only leads to more questions, just let us know what your doing in the news.

san

I read the Q&A with the best of intentions. I re-read the Q&A because I thought I wasn't comprehending it. Then I thought that the answers were jokes...Then I saw 4 pages of posts, with approximately 1 post per page being a positive review of the Q&A, and the rest... well, read for yourself.

A piece of my mind: when 90% or more of the community is unsatisfied with the Q&A and calls it out for lack of information, it might be a good time to reassess whether the Q&A really was as 'helpful' as you seem to think it is...

whitecat31

"David wrote:

Moore"]
For starters, we’ll be releasing more 4*s this year, a lot more. We’re currently devoting a lot of thought to making that transition smoother than it was from 2*s to 3*s.

Q: Beast’s Blue power, Mutagenic Breakthrough, is incredibly inconsistent because it has a high probability of having its special tiles matched right away, or in the following turns, because they're so close to each other. Do you have any plans of redesigning it?

A: Yeah, Beast is a character we’d like to revisit, balance-wise.

-

Is there any chance, of instead of releasing a new four star you improve Invisible Woman who we rank Lower than Beast? Invisible Woman still equals Bag Lady and is considered worse than Beast. Think about that.

Let's revisit the past this old post.
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2184&hilit=Invisible+Woman+Changes+Coming%21

4-star heroes are intended to be formidable, end-game caliber opponents. Prior to this revision, Invisible Woman (one of the most powerful heroes in Marvel canon) wasn't fulfilling her role, or rating, as intended. Did somebody call her bag-lady ?

Can you maybe take Invisible Woman and Beast out of Rotation and fix them, before releasing new four stars?

Dayv

"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!

I think these answers were fine for what they are, but some more positive spin on roster slots could have helped... not lies, just something more firm if they're actually being looked at (as was implied previously). Also, for such a long time gathering questions, not very many of them got answered. A lot of them were very narrow in focus, but could still have provided interesting answers.

So yeah, I like the Q&As, but I'd like to see stronger answers and more of them, including brief answers to some of the more trivial or unusual questions.

It doesn't help, though, when the most cynical people on the forum are the first to respond with their preloaded rage.

Enoc99

san-mpq wrote:

I read the Q&A with the best of intentions. I re-read the Q&A because I thought I wasn't comprehending it. Then I thought that the answers were jokes...Then I saw 4 pages of posts, with approximately 1 post per page being a positive review of the Q&A, and the rest... well, read for yourself.

A piece of my mind: when 90% or more of the community is unsatisfied with the Q&A and calls it out for lack of information, it might be a good time to reassess whether the Q&A really was as 'helpful' as you seem to think it is...

I share several people's frustration with some of the non-answers (though there really weren't as many as people think there were), but just because you don't agree with the answers the Developers gave doesn't mean that the Q&A was a waste. Rather, it gives us as the community insight into what the Developers are thinking with regards to the future direction of the game. If we as a community disagree with the answers, this is our opportunity to engage in a constructive and civil means with Mr. Hi-Fi and the developer staff to tell them what our opinions are

This whole process is meant to be a channel of communication between us and the developers.

I will step up at this point and volunteer, with Mr. Hi-Fi's approval of course, and offer to work on collecting information of what we as the community feel are our largest concerns with the game environment. I will then compose a formal letter that I will deliver through Mr. Hi-Fi to the development staff to see about getting traction on some of our larger concerns. Would you be in support of this approach, David 'Hi-Fi' Moore?

fmftint

I think this is it for me, granted I have not been playing as long as some of you but thing just don't seem to be improving. And based on this round of Q&A the dev team isn't interested in player satisfaction.

I found MPQ looking for Puzzle Quest because I really enjoyed Puzzle Quest 2, I stayed because of the Marvel license but this is not worthy of the Puzzle Quest franchise. MPQ is a generic match 3 hamster wheel cash grab.

I may even buy Puzzle Quest 2 again because it is just a better game

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

I think these answers were fine for what they are, but some more positive spin on roster slots could have helped... not lies, just something more firm if they're actually being looked at (as was implied previously).

The problem was that the number 1 question asked this month was about roster slots. Probably half the posts referenced this issue. Nowhere in their answer did they address roster slots. They mentioned that they do not want to increase the flow of HP, as it could remove the challenge from the game and remove the need to make HP spending decisions from the game.

When half the people on this forum agree to anything (even asking the same question), you need to take time and care with addressing it. If they had said something like

"Since we first designed roster slot pricing, we have tripled the available characters and doubled the speed of their release. For game balance purposes, we do not believe it is appropriate to increase HP opportunities. We do need to redesign roster slot pricing. At this point, we have not determined the appropriate method, whether a cost cap, making more slots available at each price point, or some combination of these and other ideas. We will get back to you when we have come to a decision."

That, in combination with their current track record of communication and follow through, would have eliminated a lot of outrage.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Enoc99 wrote:

I will step up at this point and volunteer, with Mr. Hi-Fi's approval of course, and offer to work on collecting information of what we as the community feel are our largest concerns with the game environment. I will then compose a formal letter that I will deliver through Mr. Hi-Fi to the development staff to see about getting traction on some of our larger concerns. Would you be in support of this approach, David 'Hi-Fi' Moore?

If you'd like to gather info and concerns and send me a letter, please do. I'll send it round to the devs.

Hulk11

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

It doesn't help, though, when the most cynical people on the forum are the first to respond with their preloaded rage.

I don't have pre-loaded rage. I was hoping the devs would toss us a few bones. That they could picked some things out of 20 pages of questions and given a definitive answer. For example, they could have had this in the Q&A.

Q: Magneto and Psylocke have critical multipliers of 3.2 and 3.8. Is there a reason for that?
A: Nope. We'll changed them to 3.5 and 4.0 in the next release to line them up with other characters.

I was shocked at their answer to "Could sorting options be added?" Just about every other game I have with collectible components has sorting options. Their answers: "We'd need to code that", "It would add complexity", "It wouldn't meet our awesomeness quotient." A year from now, the roster will have sorting options, and the answers here today will look even more ridiculous than they do now. "At Demiurge, we often use 'awesomeness-per-person-day' to decide what we should be working on." -- this is not a good way to blow off a question.

Awesomeness, really. Where is this brought up? This almost sounds like a joke.

Unknown

I just got my Devil Dino login rewards, so I am firmly not in the 'new since September' camp. I have probably now spent $2000+ on this game, picking up a Stark Salary pretty much whenever I run out of HP so I truly have no idea what 'normal' HP income looks like or if it is sufficient. Buying roster spots is an annoyance, but not something that necessarily makes me stop and think about it.


I play this game to collect all of the characters. I have only a handful of 3* characters fully maxed, but most of the 3*'s newer than a few weeks old are fully cover maxed and on their way to L110+. I keep and have almost every 1* fully leveled (I throw random iso their way when I finish a new 3*). I keep and have most 2*'s half-way leveled or better. Whenever I get a new hero, I almost immediately buy a second copy of the cover that I just acquired.

If we are about to experience an influx of 4* heroes, and they are going to be given out at rates comparable to previous 4* heroes (e.g. Thor4 and Elektra), it is probably time to hang up my spurs. These extended PvE grinds requiring top 50 are NOT fun. Missing a character and having to gamble at terrible odds on token packs is NOT fun. Missing out on a character is not an option because of OCD, but if the burden of maintaining that OCD keeps ramping up, the answer is going to be to stop playing.

I play this game to collect the covers. If you are telling me that this is a game where I cannot reasonably collect all of the characters, and that the friction of deciding who to keep is a GOOD thing, then you are telling me to stop playing this game.

esoxnepa

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

I was shocked at their answer to "Could sorting options be added?" Just about every other game I have with collectible components has sorting options. Their answers: "We'd need to code that", "It would add complexity", "It wouldn't meet our awesomeness quotient." A year from now, the roster will have sorting options, and the answers here today will look even more ridiculous than they do now. "At Demiurge, we often use 'awesomeness-per-person-day' to decide what we should be working on." -- this is not a good way to blow off a question.

I think your love of the game has you taking some of the answers in the wrong way. I'd like you to consider another way to read these responses. Read it something like:

"We have a limited amount of development time, and while we'd love to give you sorting ability, we are working hard on the more important feature that bring all of you the most awesome daily experience we can."

Elite players who love the game will hit walls and find edge-cases that the developers were never able to see. We just passed the first year in this game. It survived. Now it needs to grow and mature.

I've been on play-test teams for CCGs, and so many times there are combinations and uses designers NEVER imagined. This happens for a couple reasons, one is numbers of people working on the playtest, and two is creativity. Development looks at features from a creation aspect, and creating joy. Top players look to the competitive advantage. I've seen the SW:CCG World Championships ruined because the designers wouldn't accept that certain cards they designed were so abusive in quantity that it would destroy the competition.

World of Warcraft, the first year, was almost unplayable. It was terrible, crashed all the time, and yet when it matured, became a huge success. Right now this game is trying to grow and develop.

So yes, give the design team and developers feedback. So when you blast them with the heat, try to do so as to forge the game better. Do not attack them personally (you didn't, just saying). Remember, the top players are the beta testers, if you want to be or not.

The fact that Will still comes to the forums and jumps on issues is HUGE. Try to understand that means he loves this game as much as we all do, and is working hard to make it the best experience for everyone.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

It doesn't help, though, when the most cynical people on the forum are the first to respond with their preloaded rage.

Please. The sum total of solid information in this Q&A is "Yeah we hear you guys are worried about these things, maybe something will be done about it in the future. Be ready for a bunch more 4*s next year though!"

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]

Dev 2: That said, most Story Events will continue to have leaderboards and placement rewards. Some folks engage with the leaderboards, and lots of people play those Events as if the placement rewards didn’t exist. Totally non-competitive gameplay is more likely to show up outside of the Event format.[/list]
-

This right here is reason enough for me to stop playing. What they're forgetting to mention is the people that "play those Events as if the placement rewards didn’t exist" most likely see how ridiculous it is to place even top 100 so they don't even bother. If this new Elektra PVE doesn't shake things up then it will be the end of PVE for me.

Also I don't see anything wrong with speeding up 1-2* transitions if it means a better progression for 3-4*. All MMOs do it. When they release the 5th expansion there's typically a exp boost so new players can still experience all the content. What D3 is really worried about is for people to stop being so desperate to keep up that they spend their next paycheck on iso. The entire F2P strategy is to prey on people with addictive and obsessive natures (which most gamers have) and it's pretty disgusting when you get into the real psychology of it.

Unknown

papa07 wrote:

The problem was that the number 1 question asked this month was about roster slots. Probably half the posts referenced this issue. Nowhere in their answer did they address roster slots. They mentioned that they do not want to increase the flow of HP, as it could remove the challenge from the game and remove the need to make HP spending decisions from the game.

When half the people on this forum agree to anything (even asking the same question), you need to take time and care with addressing it. If they had said something like

"Since we first designed roster slot pricing, we have tripled the available characters and doubled the speed of their release. For game balance purposes, we do not believe it is appropriate to increase HP opportunities. We do need to redesign roster slot pricing. At this point, we have not determined the appropriate method, whether a cost cap, making more slots available at each price point, or some combination of these and other ideas. We will get back to you when we have come to a decision."

That, in combination with their current track record of communication and follow through, would have eliminated a lot of outrage.

They probably don't want to do that. They want you to either:
1. Have an incomplete roster. OR
2. Pay

"David wrote:

Moore"]We’re finding a balance point between a world in which those decisions are uninteresting and a world where the constraints mean that you can’t meaningfully progress. One thing that makes that difficult is that the balance point is in a different place for different players: some enjoy very difficult decisions about who to keep and level, some expect to be able to acquire and max everything, and most are somewhere in between.

Having an incomplete roster is obviously not satisfying to anyone who wants to be competitive. After all we already know most competitive players are crazy enough to wake up in the middle of the night 2 or 3 times. The only 'fix' I could really see them doing is lowering roster slot costs at the high end. Once you're hooked, they know you'll pay for it. But they don't want to say that out loud.

The problem now with 2* covers so quickly is you reach that pay point so much quicker, eg even within a day. Take this part of a steam review:

SwitchBL8 wrote:

More heroes. That's why I wouldn't recommend this game. You start with roster of 4 heroes. For every extra hero you need to buy an extra slot for Gold. You guessed it, gold is real money.
Four hero slots is nothing. I played less than a day and already had 10 heroes (5 rostered and 5 waiting to be recruited).

If that part of the game was any different or if buying with real money doesn't bother you: play this game. It's nice. Good graphics, nice sound effects, good skills and there's even a storyline.
For me however that's a dealbreaker. You will not progress enough if you do not buy extra roster space.

So...byebye MPQ.

Even new players are hitting that pay wall faster. D3 could do a much better job in setting expectations in that they expect you to sell covers.

Regarding casual PVE playing:

SUPERTOM wrote:

This right here is reason enough for me to stop playing. What they're forgetting to mention is the people that "play those Events as if the placement rewards didn’t exist" most likely see how ridiculous it is to place even top 100 so they don't even bother. If this new Elektra PVE doesn't shake things up then it will be the end of PVE for me.

I bet many of these people play casually or are new to the game. When I was new, I played PVE for the story, and didn't compete since I wasn't that invested in the game. I'd grind nodes for the node rewards! Crazy, I know. If that's enough to make you stop playing..., well that's kind of weird.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

It doesn't help, though, when the most cynical people on the forum are the first to respond with their preloaded rage.

I don't have pre-loaded rage. I was hoping the devs would toss us a few bones. That they could picked some things out of 20 pages of questions and given a definitive answer. For example, they could have had this in the Q&A.

Q: Magneto and Psylocke have critical multipliers of 3.2 and 3.8. Is there a reason for that?
A: Nope. We'll changed them to 3.5 and 4.0 in the next release to line them up with other characters.

I was shocked at their answer to "Could sorting options be added?" Just about every other game I have with collectible components has sorting options. Their answers: "We'd need to code that", "It would add complexity", "It wouldn't meet our awesomeness quotient." A year from now, the roster will have sorting options, and the answers here today will look even more ridiculous than they do now. "At Demiurge, we often use 'awesomeness-per-person-day' to decide what we should be working on." -- this is not a good way to blow off a question.

Firstly, you guys need to learn the difference between "blowing off" or "non answers" and "giving a clear answer but not the one you want"

Secondly, It's telling that when you (and a few others) in this thread gave examples of what the Q&A "should be," every example involves "Player: hey you should change this" "D3p: I agree we will change that soon"

Instead you're getting "no plans to change that and here's a brief explanation why." You don't have to be happy about not getting your way but it isn't a "deflection" and it certainly isn't "lies"

Hulk11

gamar wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

It doesn't help, though, when the most cynical people on the forum are the first to respond with their preloaded rage.

I don't have pre-loaded rage. I was hoping the devs would toss us a few bones. That they could picked some things out of 20 pages of questions and given a definitive answer. For example, they could have had this in the Q&A.

Q: Magneto and Psylocke have critical multipliers of 3.2 and 3.8. Is there a reason for that?
A: Nope. We'll changed them to 3.5 and 4.0 in the next release to line them up with other characters.

I was shocked at their answer to "Could sorting options be added?" Just about every other game I have with collectible components has sorting options. Their answers: "We'd need to code that", "It would add complexity", "It wouldn't meet our awesomeness quotient." A year from now, the roster will have sorting options, and the answers here today will look even more ridiculous than they do now. "At Demiurge, we often use 'awesomeness-per-person-day' to decide what we should be working on." -- this is not a good way to blow off a question.

Firstly, you guys need to learn the difference between "blowing off" or "non answers" and "giving a clear answer but not the one you want"

Secondly, It's telling that when you (and a few others) in this thread gave examples of what the Q&A "should be," every example involves "Player: hey you should change this" "D3p: I agree we will change that soon"

Instead you're getting "no plans to change that and here's a brief explanation why." You don't have to be happy about not getting your way but it isn't a "deflection" and it certainly isn't "lies"

We prefer awesomeness to come into play at some point.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Regarding casual PVE playing:

SUPERTOM wrote:

This right here is reason enough for me to stop playing. What they're forgetting to mention is the people that "play those Events as if the placement rewards didn’t exist" most likely see how ridiculous it is to place even top 100 so they don't even bother. If this new Elektra PVE doesn't shake things up then it will be the end of PVE for me.

I bet many of these people play casually or are new to the game. When I was new, I played PVE for the story, and didn't compete since I wasn't that invested in the game. I'd grind nodes for the node rewards! Crazy, I know. If that's enough to make you stop playing..., well that's kind of weird.

It's weird that I've grown tired of playing the same nodes dozens of times for hours on end to earn 1 or 2 new covers? I'm pretty sure this is why everyone I know has quit playing the game. The effort does not equal the reward.

Unknown

Hulk11 wrote:

gamar wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

It doesn't help, though, when the most cynical people on the forum are the first to respond with their preloaded rage.

I don't have pre-loaded rage. I was hoping the devs would toss us a few bones. That they could picked some things out of 20 pages of questions and given a definitive answer. For example, they could have had this in the Q&A.

Q: Magneto and Psylocke have critical multipliers of 3.2 and 3.8. Is there a reason for that?
A: Nope. We'll changed them to 3.5 and 4.0 in the next release to line them up with other characters.

I was shocked at their answer to "Could sorting options be added?" Just about every other game I have with collectible components has sorting options. Their answers: "We'd need to code that", "It would add complexity", "It wouldn't meet our awesomeness quotient." A year from now, the roster will have sorting options, and the answers here today will look even more ridiculous than they do now. "At Demiurge, we often use 'awesomeness-per-person-day' to decide what we should be working on." -- this is not a good way to blow off a question.

Firstly, you guys need to learn the difference between "blowing off" or "non answers" and "giving a clear answer but not the one you want"

Secondly, It's telling that when you (and a few others) in this thread gave examples of what the Q&A "should be," every example involves "Player: hey you should change this" "D3p: I agree we will change that soon"

Instead you're getting "no plans to change that and here's a brief explanation why." You don't have to be happy about not getting your way but it isn't a "deflection" and it certainly isn't "lies"

We prefer awesomeness to come into play at some point.

Which is weird to me, because sure, "Well ACTUALLY I think letting us sort our rosters is way more awesome than fiddling with PvE scaling so everyone is level 50" is a perfectly reasonable thing to get upset about, but as I read it "adding roster sorting would be a very small improvement for a lot of work and so it's not a high priority [compared to new characters, new pve modes, etcetc]" is on its face a really uncontroversial statement and I don't see why people are getting upset over it

Unknown

SUPERTOM wrote:

daibar wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Regarding casual PVE playing:

SUPERTOM wrote:

This right here is reason enough for me to stop playing. What they're forgetting to mention is the people that "play those Events as if the placement rewards didn’t exist" most likely see how ridiculous it is to place even top 100 so they don't even bother. If this new Elektra PVE doesn't shake things up then it will be the end of PVE for me.

I bet many of these people play casually or are new to the game. When I was new, I played PVE for the story, and didn't compete since I wasn't that invested in the game. I'd grind nodes for the node rewards! Crazy, I know. If that's enough to make you stop playing..., well that's kind of weird.

It's weird that I've grown tired of playing the same nodes dozens of times for hours on end to earn 1 or 2 new covers? I'm pretty sure this is why everyone I know has quit playing the game. The effort does not equal the reward.

--edit because I might be being too much of a ****

Ok, so the reason for you wanting to quit is more because it seems like D3 doesn't acknowledge the issue, instead saying look at these other players who play non-competitively! Yeah, that's all well and good for them, but what about our problems? I may have misinterpreted your initial response.

The biggest overall problem with D3's response was that we said 'We have problem X', and they said, 'well these players need to do Y'. It wasn't necessarily obvious to everyone how X and Y connect, and it might have seemed like they're blowing off the question entirely. Also, it seems like an avoidance response as opposed to acknowledging that particular difficulties are in the game intentionally. I cynically believe they don't want to say it's intended for PR reasons.

If anyone feels that the effort to earn a 4* (or whatever cover) isn't worth it than they shouldn't put in the effort. Why are they doing it? Break the compulsion. D3 won't change anything until the numbers change, so be the change you want to see: a mass of players so dissatisfied with current PVE structure that they just don't play. It's why D3 stopped running heroics.

Demiurge_Will

DuckyV wrote:

"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.

The game is growing, and that 56% figure is actually exceptionally low relative to other, similar games - MPQ players are very dedicated. The average player in the China chapter of Prodigal Sun has been playing for over 5 months.