My Thoughts & Suggestions

Unknown

This thread will probably rehash various suggestions and complaints made by other people on the forum through various threads, but while I have it all figured out in my head I figure get it all out at once right here. Sorry for making the regulars hear read the same things over and over again if that is indeed the case.

First let me start off by saying I enjoy the game. I loved the first Puzzle Quest game and fine the faster paced action of this Puzzle Quest game very enjoyable. I've been playing it pretty non-stop for months now and think if a few things were tweaked, removed, or changed this could be one of the best mobile games out there. Now I'll get into some of the problem areas.

First off, remove the health system. I know it's a central aspect of the game but the game would be soooooo much better without it. This horrible trend in free-to-play games right now where developers impose a hard time limit on playing the game has to go. I should never be told by the game that I have to wait to play the game unless I pay money. That is awful. An idea for using the health packs could be during a battle to save a downed hero but after the fight their health resets. This allows players to play the game the devs made without waiting 40 minutes for key heroes to heal!

Second, the randomization award system needs to change. The draw for this game is for people to use their favorite heroes in battle. Once players finally get that favorite cover of theirs, the randomization feature makes it near impossible to upgrade their hero without extreme luck, especially if their hero is 2 star or higher. I've gotten modern Storm, Hawkeye, or Black Widow about 80% of the time through standard recruit token uses which is ridiculous. I don't want them yet am forced to get them and I can only resell them for 100 ISO. Maybe let me trade them in toward a cover I want? Also, getting covers for heroes I've maxed out just pisses me off. It's a complete waste of a token and it happens all the time. Since getting spiderman a few months ago I've yet to get a cover for him. I could pay hero points for covers but the value for that is awful. It's usually well over 1000 hero points. It takes weeks to get that much hero points and the fact the the premium currency is tied to so many other things makes buying covers badly overpriced. Why tie covers for heroes to hero points? Make learning moves tied to ISO. That makes sense within the story YOU'VE crafted devs. Allowing players to be able to pick the covers they want as prizes while also having the choice of randomization for that gambling feel would be the best way to handle the system.

What's with the max power limit? It seems completely arbitrary to tell players they can't max out their hero's skills. Especially since players have no say over what covers they randomly get for their heroes (unless they pay money).

Why do the cover slots keep increasing in hero points? That's possibly the most annoying. With all these interesting heroes I've seen and have sitting in my rewards list, I can't obtain them because it costs too much damn hero points to have them. It makes no sense to keep increasing the amount of hero points it takes to increase your roster. I'm not saying remove the hero point cost. I see the slots as a good revenue stream opportunity, but increasing the price after x slots have been bought just seems greedy and punishes the players for wanting to play with different heroes.

"You need X hero to play this mission". Stop it. Having missions in events that require a rare hero that 99% of the population playing your game doesn't have is unfair. Further infuriating is the fact that to definitely get the hero you'd have to pay several thousand hero points, which is basically impossible to obtain without dropping 20 plus dollars on this free to play game. It's also highly inconsistent because other missions the game decides to just give you the hero for that match. What?! Why do I get the Punisher, Invisible Women, whomever, for this mission but not in other ones? The events basically punish players for having the audacity to not pay lots of money to have all the heroes required to beat all the missions.

Change the shield mechanics. The devs answer to what was most likely a very common complaint, players getting attacked and losing more points then they could gain, was worse then doing nothing. Linking the shields to the premium currency just makes it easier for players to pay-to-win. Now players can pay to have super strong teams AND pay to defend themselves from attacks. Just remove attacking mechanic altogether, there is no fix that can be made that won't just annoy players. At least link the shields to ISO instead of hero points.

Google's recent update to Google Play should mean this game can get asynchronous multiplayer support, which it desperately needs. Fighting AI opponents is just not very fun. It's nearly impossible to lose unless you get very unlucky.

Honestly, I would gladly pay for this game. I feel the free-to-play microtransaction model just gets in the way of this being a truly enjoyable game, but if some of these changes were made I could find myself having a lot more fun with the game instead of feeling like I'm just grinding it out.

Unknown

Hm, no pun intended but it seem you just better look for a different game. Your list of points is IMO pretty fundamental in the design -- if you suggest some tweaks and alterations it could work but your list would be practically a start-over.

While I cetrainly agree on frustration with tokens -- and would expect the chance formula published. As over 70% of my *gold* tokens dropped redundant volverine and further 25 also redundant captain or bw, only ~5% something else. What indicates that the real chance is NOT following just the * ** *** **** indication, within same rarity group certain cards have 2-5x chance. (In *** spiderman seem to be the most common), and even the different colors of a characters seem to pop up with very different frequency. What is not necesarily an evil thing but should be public information for sake of fairness.

Unknown

...not sure where the pun was, but regardless, I disagree. The only change I suggested that would be "a start-over" would be to change the game from a free-to-play business model to a regular paid one. As a developer myself I'm aware of what would take serious development time to do and what wouldn't, and none of my suggestions are overly difficult to implement. What would prevent them from being made is the money D3 makes from these forced microtransactions. The more they make the game a grind to do the more people are likely to just pay for stuff.

The fundamental design of this game is Puzzle Quest, that's the selling point and why people buy the game. The match 3 gameplay with the Puzzle Quest abilities and battling system. None of my changes change that formula, they just change or remove the aspects that get in the way of why people want and play the game.

The devs have made some serious UI changes and gameplay changes in previous updates so it's not out of the question to request reversals of some poor decisions. Publishing frequency of cover chances is literally the least they could do and doesn't fix the inherent problem in such a system. As I said, the randomization just punishes people who want to just improve the heroes they like