MPQ At Marvel.com: Survival Mode & New Episode Revealed!

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hearty holiday greetings everyone,

If you're ready for something fresh and new in MPQ, then you'll want to hop on over to read first details from Marvel Puzzle Quest Producer, Joe Fletcher at Marvel.com. The interview reveals the all-new 'Enemy of the State' Episode and unveils a new way to play: Survival Mode! (You can also spy some awesome new art for Wolverine.)

You can find it here: http://marvel.com/news/video_games/2386 ... _the_state

PIECING TOGETHER MARVEL PUZZLE QUEST: ENEMY OF THE STATE
Quote:
"With D3Publisher releasing an all-new, all-awesome episode, Enemy of the State, and a brand new Survival Mode on December 23, you’ll have plenty to celebrate while sipping on eggnog in front of that open fire.

Marvel.com: Hey Joe, what do players need to know about Enemy of the State?

Joe Fletcher: Enemy of the State—the episode starts on December 23—is the 'Marvel Puzzle Quest' take on the classic story of the Hand’s brutal kidnapping and reprogramming of Wolverine. Of course, things work a little differently in the Iso-8 powered universe compared to 616, so the details are a little changed. But expect to see the likes of Elektra, Gorgon, Hand Ninjas, and an assault on the Xavier Institute in store for Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. to handle."

turul

Some additional leaks

PVE

sub places:
Avengers Tower
X Mansion
Hells Kitchen
Hand Castle
SHIELD base (x2)

PVP

Elektra ShowOff Season (most possibly similar to 4hor-LR)

Gorgon

colors: unknown, black, purple
Awaken The Hand
Debilitating Slash
Gorgons Gaze

Warning: Ninja and Gorgon abilities might be incorrect - cannot 100% distinguish

Ninjas

Ninja types
Kishu
Konran
Shinobi
Teisatsu

Abilites
Black Arts
Caltrops
Dark Arts
Meteor Hammer
Shuriken
Smoke Bomb
Strength In Numbers
Turn To Smoke

CrookedKnight

Okay, but seriously, is Survival its own mode separate from individual "Story" events or not? Joe dodged his company's own question!

IamTheDanger

I literally just finished reading this article and thought "Why is this not all over the forum?". So I come here and what do I see? This new thread from David. This was a fast response.

So +1 to Hi-Fi for doing a great job as community manager .

Oh, and loved the article. And the the main pic of Wolverine at the top of the page is so cool . I hope they put that version of Xforce in the game.

One thing I'm wondering about though. Do we play as Wolverine, or against him?

Hulk11

Can I get a quicky-answer whether the wolverine art is a permanent change? One day out, I guess from knowing anyway.

brisashi

Happy to hear about a new event, please tell me it won't be spoiled by 3 hour cooldowns on the nodes.

Unknown

Does the survival mode reset your AP/board on the new wave? Otherwise I can see some cases where you have Captain America beginning every fight with 30 red + blue AP or Falcon putting 5 digit strike tiles on the board that just instantly obliterates anyone who shows up if they can't go over level 395. Or better yet, do both like Captain America + Daken + Falcon. Takes a bit to get going but once you have the board setup correctly it would be almost impossible to lose.

turul

Phantron wrote:

Does the survival mode reset your AP/board on the new wave? Otherwise I can see some cases where you have Captain America beginning every fight with 30 red + blue AP or Falcon putting 5 digit strike tiles on the board that just instantly obliterates anyone who shows up if they can't go over level 395. Or better yet, do both like Captain America + Daken + Falcon. Takes a bit to get going but once you have the board setup correctly it would be almost impossible to lose.

I think every downed opponent will be replaced with a new enemy hero/minion of the 3 you normally fight against, with no AP reset.

Unknown

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

One thing I'm wondering about though. Do we play as Wolverine, or against him?

I'm going to say, "against," and most definitely never, "as," as in, "Don't bother leveling that X-Force. You won't be using him for a while."

Also, you'll have 20 Wolverine team-ups by the end of this.

Unknown

Survival mode looks interesting and heavily based towards any healers. So fake healing characters will have some use? My Spidey is covered in cobwebs.


It'll also be interesting to see which teams are better at long term sustainability.

Unknown

turul wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Does the survival mode reset your AP/board on the new wave? Otherwise I can see some cases where you have Captain America beginning every fight with 30 red + blue AP or Falcon putting 5 digit strike tiles on the board that just instantly obliterates anyone who shows up if they can't go over level 395. Or better yet, do both like Captain America + Daken + Falcon. Takes a bit to get going but once you have the board setup correctly it would be almost impossible to lose.

I think every downed opponent will be replaced with a new enemy hero/minion of the 3 you normally fight against, with no AP reset.

The description sounds like say there are 10 Wolverines in wave 1, then each Wolverine you defeat gets replaced by a new one but the last Wolverine is still the last guy. Now after he gets defeated then you might get the next wave of 20 Wolverines and the same thing applies, but it looks like you'd be able to set up your death trap on the last guy of the wave by just repeatedly stunning him while accumulating AP if there is no AP reset/board state reset. Sure, eventually your enemy will overwhelm you but that can take a while if you're sitting on 30 red AP/blue AP with a thousand damage worth of protect tiles waiting already.

GrumpySmurf1002

Love the token: "Look you can use Beast now" blurb at the end.

Unknown

Characters that reduce incoming damage like Colossus or Spider-Man and healing characters like Black Widow (Original) or Beast will help greatly in allowing teams to make their ways through these new challenges.

More on Marvel.com: http://marvel.com/news/video_games/2386 ... z3Mf7GyPDW

Yeah, I can see protect tiles and healing getting a boost in usefulness here. But I could swear I just saw "Beast" and "will help greatly" in the same sentence. Nice try d3p, but I'm too clever for your tricks

turul

Worst thing will be having a weak, low-leveled Elektra as essential team member in these survival nodes.

Unknown

I could see survival mode helping the fortune of someone like Spiderman who also brings utility protect tiles and stuns, but I question whether the very low healing values from Beast or She-Hulk will be enough to overcome incoming damage and make them usable on the node. Recovering 500 hp every other wave is not going to do much unless the enemies are doing pitiful damage, and if the enemies are doing pitiful damage it is still going to be better to have more offense and clear the wave faster.

lukewin

CrookedKnight wrote:

Okay, but seriously, is Survival its own mode separate from individual "Story" events or not? Joe dodged his company's own question!

I read it as nodes in the PVE. So new PVEs might have it as well, or they might work it back in to re-runs of other PVEs. I hope I am wrong though, because with the way time slices have been implemented, PVEs are a pain to play thru now. If they fix / don't repeat the bugs that occurred during Prodigal Sun, then I would see these nodes as a welcome change.

-Joining slow filling brackets where leaders have an insurmountable lead
-Scaling, on for some, off for some, then turned back on/fixed
-Events completely disappeared, PVE and PVP
-Points did not count towards total, some folks reporting the pts did kick in, others saying no
-If they are nodes in the PVE, please don't make them operate on the 3hr refresh. And please extend the 3 hr refresh to 4, 6, or 8 hrs, to curb PVE being a "grinding required for placement" event.
-If there are 12 or 36 hr subs, then might as well chalk up the time slices as a failure, like the initial version of team ups. Those refreshes negate the "benefit" of choosing an end time.

I am still hoping for the best though. Glad to see new stuff incoming.

lukewin

"David wrote:

Moore"]
...The interview reveals the all-new 'Enemy of the State' Episode and unveils a new way to play: Survival Mode!...

PIECING TOGETHER MARVEL PUZZLE QUEST: ENEMY OF THE STATE
Quote:
"With D3Publisher releasing an all-new, all-awesome episode, Enemy of the State, and a brand new Survival Mode on December 23...

Actually, the bolded parts, make it seem like a different game node, than a PVE node.

_RiO_

CrookedKnight wrote:

Okay, but seriously, is Survival its own mode separate from individual "Story" events or not? Joe dodged his company's own question!

It's a specific 'mission type', so my guess is; no, it's just a node type we get to encounter on various events from now on and it isn't going to be new permanently present story content, like some (many?) forumites have been requesting. D3P/Demiurge did mention something about a 'new game mode' meant to partially address that concern, so let's hope for the best.

As for the new survival mode ; all I see is a health-pack sinkhole. Especially once scaling has kicked in. Enjoy your near-endless waves of lvl 200+ everyone...

atomzed

Survival mode!

atomzed wrote:

Game modes I like to see are community boss mode, an endless dungeon mode, a 4v4, 5v5 mode. That would fundamentally change how the game is played.

- community boss mode: where every mpq cooperate and fight against a boss. It could be sentinel, it could be thanos or galactus. It change things bec the mpq players are no longer competing with each other.

- endless dungeon mode: choose 3 characters, see how many games you can keep playing, without any way to rest, change characters or equip boosts. Fake healing will be important now as the game just continues. (Note I do know that ldaken and patch will be op in this mode)

- 4v4, 5v5. This changes things so much because fringe characters can become an integral team. I can see how Mohawk storm and loki will shine in a 4th or 5th man role.

Alas such changes requires lotsa effort. And I don't presume that d3 have the resources to changes things at a fundamental level.

Which is why the new game mode intrigues me. Because if indeed it's a new game mode, then it shows that d3 is in for the long haul, and they are putting resources in increasing the game longevity.

We should see.

Looks like my wish came true

atomzed

_RiO_ wrote:

As for the new survival mode ; all I see is a health-pack sinkhole. Especially once scaling has kicked in. Enjoy your near-endless waves of lvl 200+ everyone...

Well, in a survival mode, the endless wave is *expected*. You *will* lose... it's a matter of how many rounds you can survive.

And if this is well done, it should be fun, as this tells your skill... I'm waiting for the thread when ppl say proudly "I have pass wave 1000! Beat that!". And a month later, someone else will use a great team to beat wave 2000.

It depends on how they implement it... but I'm genuinely excited by it.

Unknown

Wouldn't survival mode by definition have to be persistent content if the enemies never run out? And even if they do run out at wave 100 or whatever, it'd be fairly unrealistic to expect even a small percentage of players be able to clear it in a time-limited environment.