Something lacking?

Unknown

There is joy to be found in collecting the covers of our favorite Marvel heroes and villains. To live vicariously through them is a desire we all must share or we would likely not be playing. It is a very real connection we make to these characters which drives us to consume their media in all forms...comic books, animated & live action TV/Movies to name a few. To be fair, we watch shows about people who sell comic books....it's absurd. We are drawn to the battle between hero and villain. We long to see good triumph over evil or in some cases, it's inverse. Is it hero/villain, good/evil, right/wrong or the ability to turn a lose/lose into a win/win that draw you in? With no concern given to how you slice your pie, you always end up with more than one piece. To this end I finally state my case.

This game is almost completely absent any division of morality. Worse yet, there is no attempt made to promote team reconstruction or the slightest amount of "arch-ness" to any villain. When taken into account how often "actual" team members are incompatible, it seems there are intentional steps taken to obstruct this desire. The developers seem content throw the Marvel universe into a blender and hold the frappe button while laughing maniacally in their best super villain voice. *please note that this is not an attempt to be inundated with your favorite teams and gloriously keen strategies. There are enough threads holding that honor.

While I understand that this can be explained away through a storyline gimmick akin to "Secret Wars" or DC's "Gods Among Us" and that I'm ignorant of the possible specifics in this case, I firmly and possibly alone argue that this time has passed. Where is Marvel without its teams? What good is a hero without a villain? Let's just reduce these questions to their most basic level. In what universe do a hero or villain deserve existence when their actions are indistinguishable? In my opinion, and once again possibly alone, this ambiguity is at its least disheartening and at its worse a blatant rip-off for both the source material and the consumer.

That being said, I truly love the mechanics of this game and coupled with my love of the source material have become happily addicted! I truly thank the developers for delivering a great way to pass my spare time, work time, sleep time and various "other times". I am currently around 50 days into the game and have dropped a few dollars in support of it. While I may be a relatively new player here, I'm far from new to the mobile gaming scene and can truthfully say that this is one of the better run forums I've encountered. I've found the threads here wonderfully helpful and with a little searching you will find that there are few actual questions concerning characters and/or gameplay left to ask or answer. The feedback from the developers are concise and timely which makes them an example to follow to others of their kind.

Despite all of that I have managed to come up with a couple of questions anyway and though they may come across as blunt or arrogant they are asked with respect. I do appreciate the work done so far to bring this game to us. My questions to any developer willing to answer me are these.... Is the Marvel Universe merely wallpaper for your "Puzzle Quest" game? Are we, the fans of Marvel, just well of legal tender to run dry on paper-thin, cyclic and lazy "stories" or do you actually care for our opinions and the source material? Do you plan introducing new or updated gameplay mechanics or storylines in the future?

I am not the type to complain yet offer no solution so I will offer a few to be discarded at your leisure. It is always best to start with the simplest solutions and build from there so let's just leave PVP alone and continue assuming all is well on that front. We can focus on the PVE and the current "team-up" mechanic.

Why not create a list of teams and team specific maneuvers that can be used in place of the current system when the team specific conditions are met (correct mixture of active characters) and trigger exactly the same way?(Team-up tiles) These abilities can be given away as daily rewards, sold directly, level dependent, roster dependent, random in card packs, earned or any combination chosen but become constant options once "discovered". Multiple characters have many team affiliations and you basically separate them already by rarity.... Amazing, Patch and X-Force Wolverine as a limited example. On occasion super villains team up but I would tie their "team" abilities to the villain in the first position. This is a win for everyone involved! More strategy, more "things" to collect, even ultra rare team up abilities like Classic Magneto leading the X-Men and once balanced will only be a moderate change to the code.

I will stop there and save my other ideas for another rant but will say that forcing Spiderman onto my team to battle Venom isn't exactly how you handle an arch-enemy showdown and where are the actual "Boss Battles"? Something along these lines would be an amazing first step. If I were trying to draw in new players and keep longtime players, my approach would not be to flood my players with new characters every other week. Forcing them to purchase (or I should say "indirectly purchase" since it is actually gambling against an extremely unfair house) or earn them if they already have a strong enough roster and a forgiving enough job that allows them the time to do so or fall behind and be effectively excluded from placing in the following event. I would "shake the board" and think outside of the overpriced and underperforming card pack. Evolve and survive or stagnate and die. These are the two options that life gives us.

Thank you for your time goes out to developer and player alike. Even if it was only so you could caption a small and insignificant portion of it to base your written assault upon.

KrazyKeylime

This post got me thinking about a different event type the has 2( or More ) rival factions you can join like a PVE. Each faction has specific faction rewards you win with event points, the overall factions would compete for points and the wining faction wins something desirable like an introduced hero cover or a 3 and hp or roster slots. the factions currently a little unbalanced and can start off using all characters but can go to using only faction characters. some that come to mind are xmen, avengers, and villans.

esoxnepa

Cool idea. Now condense it, and post it over in the Q&A thread so we can upvote you and see if they'll answer.

I'd love to have special moves for certain characters vs an arch nemesis, too. Like Spidey vs. Venom, just to get more flare.