Popular questions that weren't answered in Feb Q&A

lukewin

Popular questions not answered
54 upvotes

orbitalint wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby orbitalint » Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:47 pm

What are the plans for this "4* transition" that are in the works? The release of Star Lord was the same ole model of severely limited distribution in a single PVE event with a PVP event to follow. It seems like the transition is not even something most of us will ever achieve when you get 1 chance at all of them in a single event and then a growing rotation where only the top spot of events get any additional covers. Nothing in that seems like a possibility for anyone that isn't already there.

Are you considering more regular 4* events where we can compete for them maybe once a month? Expanding distribution of rewards upon initial release? We haven't heard any status updates and the release of a new 4* before this issue got resolved is hard to swallow for many of us.

44 upvotes

camichan wrote:

Clarifying the mechanics of scaling
Postby camichan » Mon Feb 09, 2015 5:46 pm

Is there any plan to address scaling in PVE?

As it currently stands, there is an incentive to not level your characters to avoid this problem, and players who level their 3 and 4* chars to 166/270 suffer from disproportionate difficulty relative to low level rosters. You'd imagine the game would want to unequivocally encourage players to level up characters.

Thank you for any comment!

Edit: Regarding the word scaling, which can have several interpretations, I'm more specifically referring to initial enemy levels, not to community scaling or individual scaling of difficulty.

37 upvotes

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby JCTthe3rd81 » Mon Feb 09, 2015 6:39 pm

Last month, you guys said that co-op play was too complicated with so many players. It felt to the player as if their contributions were nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

But what about alliance based co-op? An alliance enters an event, and when all scores are added up and reach a certain amount, every member gets a reward.

Rewards would, of course, be given out after the event to prevent players with high scores going to multiple alliances and getting multiple rewards.

32 upvotes

fight4thedream wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby fight4thedream » Mon Feb 09, 2015 9:11 pm

In my opinion you guys did a wonderful job with the Daredevil, Loki and Doctor Doom buff so i was wondering if there are any plans to give Spider-Man an attack power? (i know he is not at the top of the buff list but every time i hear NorthernPolarity call Spidey a worthless 3* character i cry. mighty, manly tears. on the inside.)

Spidey

31 upvotes

Scoregasms wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Scoregasms » Mon Feb 09, 2015 5:22 pm

Are there (or has there) been discussions on revamping the Placement Award system (for PVE only)? Has the thought of maybe moving the current Placement Rewards as Progression Rewards instead ever been discussed (and just give out Heroic 10-Packs to the Top 10 instead like what was done this current Gauntlet)?

Player community has grown and with factors like personal scaling (newbies vs vets), luck in bracket placement, etc, it seems to be a bit too erratic of a reward system. Perhaps have 4* Covers at 3x/4x/5x current Top Progression Reward levels instead (leaving Alliance Rewards the same). This would drive more folks playing the PVE's and incentivize more players to go for more points for covers. I'm going to assume most of players will probably not grind out what is needed for these point totals anyway, but it would alleviate the stress of these "bloodbath" type PVE's for new characters. The work to get there is still required, but it removes the x-factors out of a players control (i.e. folks are still going to grind optimally since that is required to even score 5x the top Progression Reward).

EDIT: Changed 4x/5x/6x to 3x/4x/5x to be a bit more reasonable :)

EDIT 2: Link to previous Suggestion thread on this topic for more background: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20979&p=294070#p294070

31 upvotes

Colognoisseur wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Colognoisseur » Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:43 pm

Would you consider forming a players advisory board? So maybe some simple things could be caught before they are rolled out while still flawed.

29 upvotes

zonatahunt wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby zonatahunt » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:44 am

The "skip" system in PvPs is clearly a train wreck. Many, many, many times we'll have to spend over 500 ISO just to see a new set of five possible opponents. Sometimes we'll even be matched with the same opponent we JUST skipped! The "skip tax" was initially introduced so that the strong wouldn't devour the weak by continually skipping strong adversaries. However, most of us skip to find matches worth any credible points (I.e., 15+ points). With shield costs now so expensive and cooldown times so long many of us won't break shield until we find a match with points that justify breaking shield. The current skip system is so obviously flawed that we can't help but feel that our ISO is being swindled from us.

When can we expect the skip system to receive a desperately needed overhaul that will benefit the game BY benefiting the players?

28 upvotes

bonfire01 wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby bonfire01 » Tue Feb 10, 2015 3:12 am

Is there any chance we can get a +1 level button alongside or instead of the max level button? Watching levels slowly dribble up is frustrating as hell and I will fairly often want to add a hand full of levels to a hero (5-10) who is featured but I will very rarely want to hit the max level button. Either because the hero doesn't "deserve" all that ISO or I simply don't have it.

If that's not possible can the rate ISO goes into a hero increase the longer I have the up arrow selected?

This is particularly annoying on PC which seems to level up heroes slower than my android phone.

20 upvotes

soursenseless wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby soursenseless » Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:43 pm

Howdy!

There seems to be a general consensus in the community about which characters are "good" (X-Force, Thor(s), Blade, Daken, etc.) and which ones are "bad" (Beast, post-nerf Spider-Man, Doc Ock, Elektra, etc.). Presumably when you're designing new characters you have some sense of how big an impact they'll make on the metagame and how their power compares to other characters.

My question is: could you share some examples where the community reaction to a character has been very different from what you expected (positively or negatively) or their impact on the metagame has been much bigger or smaller than you anticipated? (Surely how Sentry ended up changing the game must not have been intended.)

Non-Moonstone examples please :)

19 upvotes

BlueFish wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby BlueFish » Tue Feb 10, 2015 9:49 am

What are your thoughts on offering a Deleveling option?

There are some characters that I feel would work better at levels slightly lower than the max to allow stronger characters to tank for them. Currently there is no way to drop a character back a level.

15 upvotes

Larimar wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Larimar » Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:39 am

When will you re-work Invisible Woman?

During the january 2015 Q&A, you said you would like to rework her. Could you be a little more specific as to when this will likely happen?

Questions that were answered

55 upvotes

Nerdgarcon wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Nerdgarcon » Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:50 pm

There have been rumblings about a daily noncompetitive PVE or a third "liquid" in the game to add ease with the transition to 3*. Can you provide any updates on this?

29 upvotes

Chirus wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Chirus » Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:42 pm

With more 4 stars coming into the mix, are there any plans to increase the amount of iso that can be gained from rewards?

19 upvotes

Pylgrim wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Pylgrim » Tue Feb 10, 2015 8:45 am

Any progress you want to share on the fix for the roster slots prices?

32 upvotes

jralbino wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby jralbino » Mon Feb 09, 2015 5:32 pm

What's the timeframe for a visible shield cooldown timer? Once you've shielded, there's no way to see the remaining time left on the cooldown of a different length shield.

4 upvotes

Infrared wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Infrared » Mon Feb 09, 2015 5:12 pm

We generally understand that tiles are generated "randomly" during a game. However, that has not stopped many of us from anecdotally observing that there are periods when the AI seems to constantly get favourable cascades, or that friendly countdown tiles (especially X-Force recovery) often seem to get cleared away in a ridiculously unlikely fashion. This could be explained by confirmation bias. Still, it would be nice if you could go on the record to settle any doubts and explain the game's tile generation process, and whether there are situations where it is not totally random.

2 upvotes

Nellyson wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Nellyson » Mon Feb 09, 2015 6:25 pm

When deciding the artwork for a new character, are you allowed to use Marvel's previous works in comics or must you start your own from scratch?

4 upvotes

Fineberg wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Fineberg » Mon Feb 09, 2015 6:11 pm

How do you decide which characters get multiple versions(Storm, Wolverine, Thor, Black Widow, etc.) and should we expect to see many more multiple versions of existing characters to show up in the "near future?"

5 upvotes

Trisul wrote:

Re: February Community Q&A - Now open!
Postby Trisul » Mon Feb 09, 2015 5:29 pm

What are your favorite MPQ teams to play as?

I wasn't as big a fan of the Feb Q&A as I was of the Jan Q&A. When I watch the videos, I'd like to get insight into the game, understand why things are the way they are, and possibly be able to play better. As you can see above, a lot of the forum's popular questions went unanswered, while some of the not so popular questions got answered (no offense to those posters asking those questions). How about for March Q&A, we just ask the same popular questions from the Feb Q&A that went unanswered?

My thoughts on Feb Q&A.
-Deadpool's daily quest is great, so I'm glad they did address it in the questions about the non-competitive PVE, 4-star transition for more ISO, and fix for roster slot prices. I can buy into the first 2 questions, but don't think that it really does anything to help the roster slot prices issue.
-Nice to see they have already planned a visible Shield cooldown timer and them explain that tile generation is completely random, except for the missions in Ch 1 where there are no team up tiles, and red is more abundant for IM35's red.
-Artwork questions/answers were nice, but they take time away from gameplay questions that could be answered.
-Multiple versions question/answer was nice.
-"What are your favorite MPQ teams to play as?", nice to hear that Will goes back to the start to get the beginner's POV, meaning he is focusing on existing players as well as newcomers. Good sign for the health of the game. Miles is a fan of winfinite. Jae is obviously in 2* land with an LThor, unless he meant Thor 2, good thing DP DQ is around, otherwise, you'd be stuck in 2* land for a while. I feel bad for Casey, if Patch and DD is his team. But reinforces they earn their covers, otherwise, he'd use Patch and Doom or SheHulk for her red after BR.

orbitalint

Thanks Luke. I'm pretty sad they didn't even address my question. A simple "we're still trying to figure it out" kind of thing would have been better than ignoring it.

They didn't have to even tell us what they are considering just that it was on their radar. They've acknowledged that the roaster slots were an issue... Still haven't done anything about it. How is this different unless they don't think it is an issue?

Ah well.

Unknown

They did a pretty good tap-dance this month, "answering" questions already addressed in the interim with the daily content. This sort of goes against the spirit of a Q&A session, and they could have summed up a lot of the issues they addressed with far less exposition and moved onto things that are still outstanding that people have been asking about for quite some time. The art stuff was pure filler, and I felt bad for the guy they trotted out there to talk about it because he looked pretty uncomfortable. One little tease about some stuff that's coming that they're not ready to talk about was about all we got, and that's not much for a nearly 20 minute video. Format is still a good idea, and the first one was pretty interesting, but not a super awesome job this month. Better luck next time.

Unknown

This was fun to read thanks. I made a post about the slot princess getting ridiculous a few months ago I think when sentry first came out. Anyways I got criticized badly from the community saying things like "that's how the devs can keep the game free", "they have to make money some how", "they're not that expensive" and other negative comments. Now everyone seems to have come to the conclusion that they are expensive and that it's hard to keep up with the new characters. The devs have already admitted that they need to be fixed but instead they keep introducing new characters and forcing us to buy the overpriced roster slots, so my question is no longer. When will you fix the slot prices? but will you stop the release of new characters until you fix the slot prices or until you come to a final decision for the slot prices?

Trisul

My answered question about favorite MPQ teams was a sneaky attempt to figure out each devs' familiarity and competitive level in the game. Mission accomplished!

Unknown

orbitalint wrote:

Thanks Luke. I'm pretty sad they didn't even address my question. A simple "we're still trying to figure it out" kind of thing would have been better than ignoring it.

They didn't have to even tell us what they are considering just that it was on their radar. They've acknowledged that the roaster slots were an issue... Still haven't done anything about it. How is this different unless they don't think it is an issue?

Ah well.

Actually, they did increase the hp in daily rewards. I doubt we'll get much more acknowledgement past that.

thanos8587

the way i heard it they said they answered three issues - 2-3* transition, iso shortage AND roster slots all with dpd and increased daily rewards. period. i think they think theyre done.

now well have to see how high roster slot prices get before they outstrip hp gains. im "only" at 700 hp per slot as of now and ive got almost enough for two slots, iron fist and hopefully lazy daken. lets hope for lots of tasty tacos, at least one of those 1000HP bad boys.

Wonko33

I'm just disappointed that they waste time answering the "omg the Ai just cascaded me " question.

Even the art questions have merit vs the "Cascade conspiracy" and the people who don't understand that some weird stuff happens with randomness.

It's as if the President talked about the Fake Moon Landing during the State of the Union

Infrared

Wonko33 wrote:

I'm just disappointed that they waste time answering the "omg the Ai just cascaded me " question.

Even the art questions have merit vs the "Cascade conspiracy" and the people who don't understand that some weird stuff happens with randomness.

Hey, I represent that remark

I was the one who asked the question, so obviously I thought it was worthwhile. The reasonable assumption is that tiles are created randomly, but having them officially confirm that helps to prevent conspiracy theories. I personally knew that it was random, but couldn't rule out the possibility that it was be weighted in some way so they could tweak things now and then to change the chance of cascades for different events.

Their answer actually revealed something that I previously did not know about the inner workings of the game. That is, the early levels are weighted towards red tiles. This gives me hope that they may someday use that capability to create new game modes. Some examples from my old suggestion:

Maybe have colour challenges like cast Escape Plan on a board with no purple.
Or keep Daken alive with no blue.
Or opponents are A.Wolverine and Rocket+Groot, on a board with 50% higher chance of yellow.

Unknown

Infrared wrote:

The reasonable assumption is that tiles are created randomly, but having them officially confirm that helps to prevent conspiracy theories. I personally knew that it was random, but couldn't rule out the possibility that it was be weighted in some way so they could tweak things now and then to change the chance of cascades for different events.

Not to put a damper on your enthusiasm about them "officially" addressing this, but let me ask you a question. Let's just say, hypothetically, that you're one of the developers and you've rigged the generation of tiles in some manner for some purpose. Are you going to spontaneously confesses this during a Q&A session where you handpicked the questions? Or would you respond with a dismissive answer blaming random generation and confirmation bias?

TLCstormz

Exactly.

And it's the same thing with the %odds on the tokens.

As if they would ever SAY that they haven't been completely honest with us. lol. Please.

Infrared

Thugpatrol wrote:

Not to put a damper on your enthusiasm about them "officially" addressing this, but let me ask you a question. Let's just say, hypothetically, that you're one of the developers and you've rigged the generation of tiles in some manner for some purpose. Are you going to spontaneously confesses this during a Q&A session where you handpicked the questions? Or would you respond with a dismissive answer blaming random generation and confirmation bias?

I think that hypothetical developer would find it easier to just ignore the question altogether (especially since it only got a few upvotes) and leave it to the reasonable forum posters to continue to assure everyone that cascades are truly random.

The devs may sometimes give unconvincing reasons for some of the changes they make, but I have never seen them lie about the mechanics of how the game works.

Unknown

Infrared wrote:

The devs may sometimes give unconvincing reasons for some of the changes they make, but I have never seen them lie about the mechanics of how the game works.

Because you would know if they were lying about game mechanics? How exactly? I'm not accusing them of anything, and it's nice that you believe them at their word, but their solemn oath that there's nothing hinky going on behind the scenes constitutes approximately the same level of proof as a playground pinky swear.

Trisul

They've said before that tile generation is truly random.

Lots of RNG in this game, and the human mind is notorious for being bad at accurately tracking random results, so I doubt this question will ever really be put to rest, despite multiple assurances by the devs that tile generation is random. There's no financial or gameplay reason to cheat players via altered RNG.

@Thugpatrol
You are way too paranoid, man.

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

@Thugpatrol
You are way too paranoid, man.

Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you.

And again, I'm not accusing the developers of anything. I just don't see how them saying "we swear, it's totally random" would convince anyone to alter their belief one way or another. It isn't proof of anything, and if you were inclined to think the game was cheating you already there's no reason to think they wouldn't also lie about it. I don't personally subscribe to this line of thinking, mind you. Just disputing the notion that this somehow totally debunks the conspiracy theory.

Pylgrim

It was so ridiculously dumb to ask (and upvote in such amounts) about the upcoming Daily quest thing. We knew it was coming, that it was imminent, and hell, we almost had all the particulars about it. Just needed to wait a little bit more. But nooo, let's waste a question and dozens of upvotes only to get an outdated answer that ended eating almost half of the allotted time of the video. Next time can we not ask about rumoured things, so the questions about real concerns or complete unknown stuff will get their chance in the sun?

orbitalint

daibar wrote:

orbitalint wrote:

Thanks Luke. I'm pretty sad they didn't even address my question. A simple "we're still trying to figure it out" kind of thing would have been better than ignoring it.

They didn't have to even tell us what they are considering just that it was on their radar. They've acknowledged that the roaster slots were an issue... Still haven't done anything about it. How is this different unless they don't think it is an issue?

Ah well.

Actually, they did increase the hp in daily rewards. I doubt we'll get much more acknowledgement past that.

I actually meant my 4* transition question. Ya know, the first most up voted question that wasn't answered... Just seems silly to ask for feedback and then ignore it to fit your needs.

I used the hp roster slot thing as an example because they at least sort of acknowledge it as an issue but have gone silent on how anyone except people who have xf/4hor, are supposed to get any more 4*s to complete with said 4* rosters. PvP is ugly if you don't have them already and they keep putting a growing rotation of 4*s into the mix to delay getting any more. It creates an unhealthy divide in the game that they should be thinking about before people give up. I've almost entirely stopped playing PvP BC of this issue.