MPQ Community Video - March - Character Updates

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Greetings everyone,

For this month's Marvel Puzzle Quest community video, the team at Demiurge wanted to focus on a single topic - the character updates planned for March. Community members have expressed concerns about changes to Mystique, Magneto (Marvel Now), Iron Fist, Ragnarok and Thor (Goddess of Thunder) - and the developers discuss thoughts behind the upcoming balancing.



Visit the link to view the chat with Will, Miles, Kabir (and Hulk) and please provide your valuable feedback. We are eager for your thoughts.

You can watch the video here: http://youtu.be/33is12qMw_Y

Thank you!

*Update: For information regarding Iron Fist and our new buyback policy see this post.

spydoorman

Good move on making an official 30 day policy. Please make sure the customer service representatives are aware of it.

Also, Do you guys have armed guards? Or is that Siren I've heard in all the videos on a loop?

Unknown

The 30 days HP refund policy for a changed power is definitely a good step in the right direction for not just this game but gaming in general.

rixmith

I'm glad to hear that there is a desired power band for 4* characters to fit into. This begs the question whether X-Force fits into that band or not? Not to mention whether IW and Elektra are below that band?

morph3us

We appreciate that you've taken the time to address some of our concerns.

One follow up question, Will, if you're around, please? You spoke at length about the cost of powers that cause tile conversion, with regards to Mystique, and specifically about a tile conversion power curve. Would you be able to elaborate on where Iron Fist's black generation fits that tile conversion power curve?

Unknown

Great news on the return policy, and I love the new video chats. Much nicer than just reading forum text.

I'm interested to hear that Rag's old ability was overcosted, though...is that because of its relatively high cascade rate? Just to be clear: he's kind of awful now. Like, maybe even less desirable than he was with 2 covers.

Unknown

rixmith wrote:

I'm glad to hear that there is a desired power band for 4* characters to fit into. This begs the question whether X-Force fits into that band or not? Not to mention whether IW and Elektra are below that band?

They say Thor's yellow was still too powerful for what they're shooting for in a 4* and unless there's a 'The Best There Is" modifier for X Force's power, his green/black is obviously way better than Thor's yellow.

For characters like Elektra and IW I think they overvalue traps and defensive stuff. For example Shadow Step in theory can negate a ton of damage but most likely it's just one move plus a couple of match 3s and that requires 4 black matches to do. Likewise I'm assuming Elektra's red is considered good enough because your opponent can't see it, without realizing that attack is the far more likely scenario than defense and inability to see the trap makes no releveance to the AI with the sole exception of Falcon, so to the AI it's just another attack tile and you don't get the expected power. In IW's case there's a rather consistent overvalue of defense at least in budget. Just look at Luke Cage versus Iron Fist's passives. They're about as close as you'd get for an exact parallel of offense versus defense you'll find in this game and Iron Fist's attack tile easily overpowers Luke Cage's protect tile, and this ignores that offense is generally inherently more valuable even if they're equal.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

Great news on the return policy, and I love the new video chats. Much nicer than just reading forum text.

I'm interested to hear that Rag's old ability was overcosted, though...is that because of its relatively high cascade rate? Just to be clear: he's kind of awful now. Like, maybe even less desirable than he was with 2 covers.

Do you really think all those wipeouts due to Ragnarok in PvE event was because the AI secretly activated a 'better cascade' button? Of course it's undercosted for the amount of cascades it causes. Like they said in the interview, they made a lot of mistakes with AP generation because when you've something that shakes up the board it's not trivial to figure out what exactly this means. A character with a ton of HP should be picked mostly because of their HP. You shouldn't be picking them because they're good at anything else because if they are, where does this leave for the guys with less HP? A guy who can do everything like Thor is an exception and really should be nerfed. If we look at all the characters in the Thor or higher HP class after this pach we got:

Juggernaut 1* - Way overpowered at high levels
Venom 1* - Never meant to be viable at high levels
Thor 2* - Pretty balanced
Ares 2* - Way overpowered at high levels
Thor 3* - Top tier 3*
She-Hulk - Marginally useful
Ragnarok - Less marginally useful than She-Hulk
Sentry - Better than people give him credit for but still an extremely hard character to play effectively
Hulk - Good for some suicide tricks with Patch
Thor 4* - Probably not going to be considered a top tier character anymore

If you removed all the 'way overpowered' guys, characters with this class are all pretty humble with the sole exception of Thor 3*, who was pretty close to the definition of P2W before he was supplanted by Sentry.

Moon Roach

We didn't get to ask questions this time, unless I missed the thread.

Will we be able to submit questions again one day?

:edit: Never mind, I just watched it, they make it clear that the Q&A will be back.

Ludaa

Thanks for the video chat! I'm still not convinced Mystique needed a nerf. Where does having 5950 health fit into her power curve? Shouldn't low health characters have more power to make up for the fact that they can't fight for more than 1 or two matches before needing healthpacks?

Mixed feelings about your 4* vision. GT and XF felt like they were worth the cost of HP/ISO, and would give a noticeable boost to your progression. If the 4* power band is being reigned in, I think the costs should be as well. I don't want to spend those resources just to have higher health characters.

Unknown

Ludaa wrote:

Mixed feelings about your 4* vision. GT and XF felt like they were worth the cost of HP/ISO, and would give a noticeable boost to your progression. If the 4* power band is being reigned in, I think the costs should be as well. I don't want to spend those resources just to have higher health characters.

That's because of scaling, which should be fixed. 4* regenerate faster and have significant more HP base, so if everything else is equal that's still a pretty significant advantage. Now, this doesn't actually work because your PvE enemies magically gets higher levels due to scaling to compensate for this, but they should fix that. I'm perfectly fine with paying a premium for "Punisher with 60% more HPs", as long as my enemies don't magically get 60% more levels too.

lukewin

I think if you would've released this video the same time you announced the nerfs, it would've went a lot better. I do like the institution of the refund policy, for HP. I do like your explanations, but I hate the fact that I am no longer able to benefit from these exploits. Luke Cage, Mystique, and Magneto were the only reason I was able to clear some of the harder nodes, and finish first in my bracket for The Hunt. I will miss these exploits because they help solve other problems I face, that you haven't addressed, which is PVE scaling.

You definitely need to do more testing before releasing characters. Try to release them as you want them, not in whatever build, knowing that you can nerf later. It's better to always have weaker characters that can be made stronger, than OP characters that you have to nerf. This might require that you slow down on character releases, but I don't think anyone will be upset with you doing that.

If we didn't know how awesome Prof X could've been, we wouldn't have missed out on anything. So before you release details or characters, make sure they're the final builds, so you don't get our hopes up, then crush them later with nerfs.

Ludaa

Phantron wrote:

Ludaa wrote:

Mixed feelings about your 4* vision. GT and XF felt like they were worth the cost of HP/ISO, and would give a noticeable boost to your progression. If the 4* power band is being reigned in, I think the costs should be as well. I don't want to spend those resources just to have higher health characters.

That's because of scaling, which should be fixed. 4* regenerate faster and have significant more HP base, so if everything else is equal that's still a pretty significant advantage. Now, this doesn't actually work because your PvE enemies magically gets higher levels due to scaling to compensate for this, but they should fix that. I'm perfectly fine with paying a premium for "Punisher with 60% more HPs", as long as my enemies don't magically get 60% more levels too.

Makes sense, just doesn't sound very fun or powerful feeling at all to me.

LXSandman

The HP refund for Iron Fist is cool...

But why are you limiting it to "within 30 days of release" ???

Shouldn't it be "anyone who bought a cover in the last 30 days"? why does it matter that the character happens to be less then 30 days old? Anyone who has paid HP for any of the characters that are changing are going to be just as upset as people who paid for Iron Fist.

This is coming from someone who has never paid for a cover. Still just feels like the right thing to do.... and it costs you literally nothing

LXSandman

SnowcaTT

I can't watch this without worrying about Kabir. Watch out, you are about to be Hulk Smashed!

Unknown

Thanks for the video David. Is it just me or do they sound a little more solemn in this one than the previous videos? The backlash from the forum must have caught them off guard. So they felt that 4* Thor was a class above the rest of the 4*. Isn’t she in the same league as X-Force? I could be wrong since I’m a transition player. For Iron Fist, I think he's still a good 3* even with the change, I doubt he'll be traded in by the players. Were the MNMag + Mystique that commonly used that it HAD to be updated? Obviously I’m a little upset that the MNMag change will have an affect on CStorm. Do we really want to be using MNMag with 2* Thor’s rather mediocre Red? I guess we’ll just have to try it on the 23rd.

Dauthi

You just released Xavier who makes an invis on himself that has AMAZING special effects too for 7ap. Now, lets compare this to Invisible woman who can make a invis tile with no special abilities for 14 AP???

In a time where 4*s are few, why wouldn't she be a priority to fix when you obviously shown her Invisibility at least is extremely underpowered.

NorthernPolarity

dathremar wrote:

Thanks for the video David. Is it just me or do they sound a little more solemn in this one than the previous videos? The backlash from the forum must have caught them off guard. So they felt that 4* Thor was a class above the rest of the 4*. Isn’t she in the same league as X-Force? I could be wrong since I’m a transition player. For Iron Fist, I think he's still a good 3* even with the change, I doubt he'll be traded in by the players. Were the MNMag + Mystique that commonly used that it HAD to be updated? Obviously I’m a little upset that the MNMag change will have an affect on CStorm. Do we really want to be using MNMag with 2* Thor’s rather mediocre Red? I guess we’ll just have to try it on the 23rd.

Yeah they definitely sound more solemn, but you can't blame them given the tone of the forums recently. I actually remember during one of the first QAs, one of the developers thought it would be funny to jokingly say that Moonstone's black was useful for taking out X-Force's recovery tile, and the people here took that comment literally and basically mocked them for saying that for several weeks. It makes sense for them to be more serious on these questions given the rage thats been going on here.

As for the 4or comments regarding yellow, it still seems off. Two main reasons for this:
1. Their reasoning for the nerf to yellow implies that pre-nerf yellow would now be the dominant color of choice for 4or builds, but I'd argue that 5/3/5 would still be the dominant build due to intertia and lack of dependence on the enemy having special tiles out. Did this nerf really have to occur in order to have more build variety? If anything, since we knew that pre-nerf yellow wasn't overpowered, leaving it as is has a better chance to lead more build variety as opposed to what I'm assuming to be the uniform 5/3/5 that will still reign supreme.

2. In what way was thor yellow too strong compared to other 4* abilities? The baseline we're seeing is roughly 1000 direct damage / ap for semi-conditional abilities for the 4*s strongest power (Demolition, Starlord purple, the outlier that is Surgical Strike). Given that 4or yellow was 6.6k AoE damage (AoE damage is worth less than single target damage in most cases) for 12 ap, it seems well within the power levels of what a 4* should be (since it's a lot weaker than the strongest power, so its fine as a support ability).

I think the changes went something like this:
The Devs: All 4* abilities should be between 4000 and 5000 cost. Charge tiles were previously worth 100 cost but that was way too low so now they're worth 300 cost. So nerf blue and red accordingly, and now we get these values. But wait! Yellow is also way too high! Lets nerf that too to get it within that cost.

While this is a good way of modeling how abilities should be balanced in general, it doesn't make sense when it seems completely contrary to everything that I've seen when using the ability, which is that:
1. The ability is pretty bad if the opponent has 0 special tiles out.
2. Even with special tiles out, the best case usage of the ability is probably what I would expect out of a "good" 4* ability, meaning that the average case is far worse than that.

This leads me to conclude that the devs are probably overvaluing the charge tiles generated by yellow: maybe they aren't considering that the tiles are conditional?

Random thoughts and musings:
Average 3* HP = 6800, Average 4* HP = 10960.
Therefore, 3* HP * 1.6 = 4* HP, and we can apply the same scale to damage.

In 3* land, 4or yellow does 2.2k / 1.6 = 1375 team damage. Imagine a 3* ability that said:
12 AP - 1375 team damage, destroy 5 special tiles, make 5 charge tiles.

How would this ability rank in 3* land? Comparing this to other AoE abilities:
1. Rage of the Panther - not even close, but this is a top tier ability so lets dig some more.
2. She-Hulk red - she-hulk red is an example of a good AoE ability, and it dealing 1.5k damage + board shake for 9 AP still seems a lot better than 4or yellow scaled down to 3* land. Probably because you're guaranteed the board shake whereas the special tile removal may or may not be useless.
3. Punisher black. Ehh... 4ors yellow is probably around this level or slightly better.

So we have 4or yellow in its prenerf state to be between she-hulk's red and Punisher's black in power level. Given that this seems like a perfectly balanced power level, something seems screwy with the formula that they're using, and it's pretty much the same problems that we've been seeing:
1. Abilities that do multiple things are being overvalued. Doc-Ock green syndrome - combining all of these parts probably results in it looking reasonable point distribution wise, but the fact that theres so many conditional parts to it that may or may not matter make it a lot worse than it normally would be.
2. Conditional abilities are being overvalued. Given the fact that this only makes charge tiles if your opponent has special tiles out to begin with, 5 charge tiles on this ability shouldn't be costed anywhere near 5 unconditional charge tiles on something like surge or smite. It's as if the developers costed this under the assumption that it always destroys 5 special tiles, when it should really be costed under the assumption that it destroys say 1-2 special tiles.

I think what alarms me the most is that 4or yellow is being considered by them to be too powerful in 4* land, but if you scale it down to a 3* power, it's not even close to what would be considered a "powerful ability", but rather merely a "good one" at best, which I think implies that their balancing formula is off by a pretty wide margin.


Edit: Thanks to the developers for making a video! The additional communication is much appreciated, and while you guys get a lot of flak in general, it's good to see the increased effort that you guys are making to address concerns in the community.

dr tinykittylove

So... 4* characters are supposed to be high health 3*s?

No, thanks. I'll just play with my 3*s that are much easier to acquire and level, and which get buffed regularly for pvp and pve events.

Dauthi

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I think what alarms me the most is that 4or yellow is being considered by them to be too powerful in 4* land, but if you scale it down to a 3* power, it's not even close to what would be considered a "powerful ability", but rather merely a "good one" at best, which I think implies that their balancing formula is off by a pretty wide margin.

What I got from them is that they have a balancing scale for the charge tiles themselves. When considering how much red and blue were nerfed and what they can do, nerfing yellow does make sense in line with how many charge tiles any ability should produce along with other abilities. Remember, yellow does area damage while removing special tiles.

Not that I agree with the change, but I imagine this was their line of thinking. Personally I think they went from undervaluing charge tiles to overvaluing. It's hard to consider the double edged nature they represent, because those tiles could easily be your opponents in a bad game.

clay_peterson

Found this video mostly informative, except they glossed over the Rags changes too much. I was especially hoping to here why they made his green iflict self-harm. But for that, I think he'd be a reasonably solid mid-level 3*.

Or, if they reaaly want to keep green's self-damage, they could make his blue grant True Healing. That would work.