MPQ Community Video - March - Character Updates

simonsez

Demiurge_Will wrote:

4-stars can attain about 160% of the health and deal roughly 160% of the damage as 3-stars can.

Elektra, IW, Dino and post-nerf GT are all huddled around a calculator trying to figure out how exactly they do 160% of the damage of 3*s

simonsez

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Elektra is a less clear-cut case. Looking at win rates of teams that include her, she's doing well in survival missions.

This really isn't a great metric to be looking at. You can do well in survival missions with Bagman as long as his partners are good enough. Just focus on how often people with a meaningful number of Elektra covers bother to use her, and I suspect it's a negligible number. Same for Starlord. I was really hoping that your answer to PvP diversity would be to buff these two and make them usable, rather than power-up everything else and make these two even more irrelevant.

KrazyKeylime

Demiurge_Will wrote:

KrazyKeylime wrote:

you still haven't addressed the extreme cost/rarity of 4*s if they are just going to be slightly better then 3 *.

4-stars can attain about 160% of the health and deal roughly 160% of the damage as 3-stars can. If you wanted to turn health and damage into a single measure of effectiveness, you'd multiply them together - one 4-star at max level is about 2.6 times as effective as a 3-star at max level. That's less than the roughly 170% more health/damage and 3x the overall effectiveness that 3-stars can get relative to 2-stars, but I think it qualifies as more than just slightly better.

sorry health is nice and all but it really comes down to damage and speed only wolverine and and 4 thor had useful game impacting move for less then 10, thor blue stun and charge tile generation and xforce high damage and board shake. all the rest of the 4* were too slow to keep up. except Devil Dino 7 ap or for 2512 damage maxed(358 damage per ap). but he is a joke. starlords red is not reliable damage and has a 2+ count down time before it can do damage. wolverine is viable at lower levels with less health cause of his speed. which 3*s are you comparing. lets go thor to thor, 3* to 4* thor, post nerf smite w/ power sugre lead up is 160% more then CotS lol wut?

Demiurge_Will

SnowcaTT wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

When a character is underpowered, it limits their usefulness, slightly reducing the number of possible solutions to a problem. When a character is overpowered, it limits the usefulness of every other character, and they become the solution to every problem. We can intentionally keep a character below the power level of other characters, like we've done with Devil Dinosaur and Bag-Man, without having a negative impact on other characters.

I don't think a single person would be upset if D3 took time out of their schedule - by say, not releasing a character in a given two-week period - to instead fix characters that need fixing rather than releasing more characters, and further obsoleting those characters that do need fixes.

Other folks later in the thread pointed out that that would have an impact on the business end of things. That's totally true, but we've also seen that improving underpowered characters doesn't have a noticeable impact on any of the ways we try to understand how much people are enjoying the game: ratings of how fun the game is and how likely you are to recommend the game from one-on-one interviews, how much people play in a sitting, how much they play in a day, how long they stick around, how much they think the experience is worth and are willing to spend, ratings on the app store, the mood of these forums and other places on the internet where MPQ players hang out, the feedback that shows up in the mail. If we saw that improving underpowered characters had big effects in those areas, I bet my bosses would choose a short-term loss of revenue in order to get to a game that people enjoy more and stick around in longer - we've made that trade-off many times.

To be totally clear: I think balance is really important. I think it's important in vital and subtle ways that only show up in the game's success in the very long term. I think improving underpowered characters plays a part in the long-term success of Marvel Puzzle Quest. We're going to continue to make balance changes, and just today I reviewed early drafts of changes to several underpowered characters. It's a piece of the puzzle, but we'll probably continue to put the majority of our effort into other things that seem to bring more joy to more people.

scottee

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Other folks later in the thread pointed out that that would have an impact on the business end of things. That's totally true, but we've also seen that improving underpowered characters doesn't have a noticeable impact on any of the ways we try to understand how much people are enjoying the game: ratings of how fun the game is and how likely you are to recommend the game from one-on-one interviews, how much people play in a sitting, how much they play in a day, how long they stick around, how much they think the experience is worth and are willing to spend, ratings on the app store, the mood of these forums and other places on the internet where MPQ players hang out, the feedback that shows up in the mail. If we saw that improving underpowered characters had big effects in those areas, I bet my bosses would choose a short-term loss of revenue in order to get to a game that people enjoy more and stick around in longer - we've made that trade-off many times.

To be totally clear: I think balance is really important. I think it's important in vital and subtle ways that only show up in the game's success in the very long term. I think improving underpowered characters plays a part in the long-term success of Marvel Puzzle Quest. We're going to continue to make balance changes, and just today I reviewed early drafts of changes to several underpowered characters. It's a piece of the puzzle, but we'll probably continue to put the majority of our effort into other things that seem to bring more joy to more people.

Totally justified thinking. The one thing to consider is that there's a tipping point, where if the game gets the reputation for being too out of balance, or the developers are too out of touch, it'll start the downhill effect toward the end of the game.

Just to keep in mind.

SnowcaTT

I know there are a lot more active folks on the forums than there are employees, and going through these takes a lot of time - time that none of you have on a regular basis.

But -Thank You- very much for a bit of back and forth today, it is really nice to hear back a bit more often than we have in the last few weeks. There often is a great deal of thought put in from the developers that isn't immediately apparent to the player community, it's nice to get a glimpse of those ideas and that process.

Unknown

Thanks for the answers. If it's not too much to ask, there's been a lot of questions, concerns, confusion, etc. on pve scaling. I hope you'll consider addressing that topic on here next month.

KrazyKeylime

getting some lazy under powered characters active on my roster would make me very happy.

First off where are you looking to balance, 1* nope, 2* unlikely, 3* too many underpowered be balanced, 4*?not likely i think most people would say the top tier is lacking of balance all of the 4*s are lackluster compared to thor and wolverine, and now with the nerfs thor moved down a couple pegs? so where is the balance there? this makes the point that the other 4* need buffs. if it was balanced we would see all kinds of teams at the top, which we clearly don't. here is my attempt to balance.

fix nick fury- yellow remove the other Ap requirements, blue leave, purple reduce cost to 10, increase Health for infinity serum in blood 12000 max

fix elektra- strongest color change to black- purple cost 5 start steal 2 for 2 scale up damage 5 cover steal 3,for black auto generate 1 trap per turn. scale up damage at 3 covers can have up to 2, 5 covers can have up to 3; 2/3 current damage for trigger ie max 500-600 damage, red cost reduced to 5

Fix starlord- purple reduce cost to 7 or leave at 10 but does team damage, yellow leave or add minor protect effect on count down time, red split damage 2/3 on cast, 1/3 on tile becomes team damage

fix IW - yellow passive generate a yellow invisibility tile that grants invisiblity to her, cost 7 yellow place a shield around target ally that blocks scaling 2000( maybe more) damage max; collapse of shield deals max 500 damage to all other visible characters , blue 7ap 1 force bubble with each cover reduce by 1 max 7( maybe 9) force bubble, green 9 shatter random force bubble dealing max 450 max to all non-invisible units destroying 4 tiles around the force bubble if a another force bubble is destroyed it does the same thing; each cover destroys an additional tile around force bubbles.

Fix dino pink remove,add ravenous hunger passive offers 30%(50% @ 5 covers) for ability to retrigger for 30%(50% @ 5 covers) current damage and destroy 1 tile (each cover, max 5) every time one of his abilities has abilities is cast/triggered

fix 4 thor un-nerf
fix xforce if still op

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

KrazyKeylime wrote:

you still haven't addressed the extreme cost/rarity of 4*s if they are just going to be slightly better then 3 *.

4-stars can attain about 160% of the health and deal roughly 160% of the damage as 3-stars can. If you wanted to turn health and damage into a single measure of effectiveness, you'd multiply them together - one 4-star at max level is about 2.6 times as effective as a 3-star at max level. That's less than the roughly 170% more health/damage and 3x the overall effectiveness that 3-stars can get relative to 2-stars, but I think it qualifies as more than just slightly better.

See, this is where I think most of us feel there is a disconnect between how you see the game and how we see the game. We see the game through the lens of the best 2 or 3 characters that exist, because there isn't a whole lot of reason to play anyone else.

3*s that see a lot of play time, and are considered top tier (taken from character rankings): Patch, Thor, BP, Daken, Hood, Hulk (mainly for Anger), Magneto, Blade, Deadpool, Captain America. Each one of these has an ability that is pretty good to amazing on the damage scale. Thor, for example, do ~9600 damage for 14 AP (on a guy with 10200 health). My argument all along for increasing 4* Thor's Smite damage is to get it up to at least better than 3* Thor. Call the Storm is 645 damage per AP, and has accelerators built in to make it happen. At "deal roughly 160% of the damage 3-stars can" Thor's Power Smite should be doing 1032 damage per AP. 19,000 damage for 19 AP is probably a lot. Especially when you can boost 12 of it in. But post change Thor does no where near 160% of the damage 3*s do, not even the 3*s with the most health. I'd gladly settle for 4* Thor doing 625 damage per AP, like she use to, but if you want me to believe that 4*s do 160% of the damage of 3*s I'm going to need a lot more evidence of that fact.

vudu3

To everyone complaining that 4* characters aren't strong enough compared to 3* characters--

If 4* characters were always able to obliterate 3* teams then the game would shift towards P2W in a disturbing way. People willing to buy ten 4* covers at 2500 HP a pop would have a significant advantage over 99% of the player base. And in six months when everyone else has managed to collect the covers through regular winnings/token luck the next new 4* character would have come out and the cycle repeats itself.

Raffoon

I still haven't seen it addressed how a change from 12 tiles to 5 tiles and a drop from a 4 turn stun to a 3 turn stun leaves Thor anywhere close to the same ballpark in terms of power.

The difference in power between 5 and 12 charged tiles, especially considering that these increases and decreases are not linear is ENORMOUS. You're saying that not only did you massively undercost the charged tiles, but also the stun as well?

I spent almost 100 dollars of my hard earned money to go from a 1/1/1 Thor to a 4/2/4 Thor 2 weeks before these changes were announced.

So that means:

A: I feel ripped off, because the character I devoted all that money to just got completely demolished

B:I am currently playing, at 4 covers, with an identical version of Power Surge as what I may some day hope to achieve again once I find that 5th cover. I can tell you that my 4 cover version (3 turn stun, 5 tiles) is NOWHERE CLOSE to the Power Surges that are used on me by fully covered characters. This is not a balance to the character, it's a gutting. Why not bring up the other 4 stars slightly in power to match Xforce and Thor, rather than kicking everyone that bought Thor in the nuts?

Unknown

First, I just want to say how cool it is of you guys (Will and Miles) to hang out in this thread and answer some questions. Really feels like community feedback is important to you, and that's good. On to new business:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

If we saw that improving underpowered characters had big effects in those areas, I bet my bosses would choose a short-term loss of revenue in order to get to a game that people enjoy more and stick around in longer - we've made that trade-off many times.

To be totally clear: I think balance is really important. I think it's important in vital and subtle ways that only show up in the game's success in the very long term. I think improving underpowered characters plays a part in the long-term success of Marvel Puzzle Quest. We're going to continue to make balance changes, and just today I reviewed early drafts of changes to several underpowered characters. It's a piece of the puzzle, but we'll probably continue to put the majority of our effort into other things that seem to bring more joy to more people.

Ok, 2 questions. A) How do we make this happen? What positive effects can we bring to show love for character boosts? And 2) Did the XF buff not get the fanfare and elation you were expecting? Because I sure thought it did.

It mostly comes down to the squeaky wheel gets the grease. It's a lot easier to complain about things than it is to praise positive change, hence the overall negative tone on the forums recently. If you tell us exactly how to promote well balanced upgrades, we will do it. At least I will, anyway.

Edit: In the past, every time you guys have made a big change I believe in I've thrown down 5 bucks on . I'm sure others have done this as well. Currently I see a lot more of "never again will I buy " than "that was cool of you guys, here's a cookie". Perhaps your HP sale data will show something different, but I imagine this round of changes has hurt your bottom line as well, so I believe you when you say balance is important and short term loss to make a game worth playing is worth it.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

To everyone complaining that 4* characters aren't strong enough compared to 3* characters--

If 4* characters were always able to obliterate 3* teams then the game would shift towards P2W in a disturbing way. People willing to buy ten 4* covers at 2500 HP a pop would have a significant advantage over 99% of the player base. And in six months when everyone else has managed to collect the covers through regular winnings/token luck the next new 4* character would have come out and the cycle repeats itself.

More so than it already has? Did you not see the effects of OperationPayHarder? People willing to spend will always have the advantage, it's the game model we are using. That is no reason to compact the top characters down to meritocracy. In fact, its even more reason to maintain a stable top level of power, so others can catch up.

GritsNGravy

Thanks for answering these changes directly.

A few points:

1. I echo the comments about 4* Wolverine being outside of the 4* power range as being disappointing and makes me want to pay for and chase them significantly less. (IMO you should be limited to only having one 4* in a match to allow for more diversity and combos while allowing any one to be more powerful).

2. The resell policy is a step in the right direction but definitely not enough. The 30 day limit makes this look like something you plan on gaming for monetization (buy now! don't worry, you'll get your money back if we nerf it soon!). If I have bought a cover on something that you changed after I bought it, I should be refunded (in your own game currency). This reinforces the value of your game in both ways. It makes me feel good about buying covers at anytime (knowing the value will stay fixed), and it should make you and your company think harder about how balanced a character is when you release them, and how often nerf or buff something, it is good you are addressing things, but it should be a rare exception, not a habit.

3. As it is now 4*Thor is outside of this 30 day window. I saw 4* Thor and knew immediately she was going to be very powerful and something worth investing in (so did you when you released her, the power level was that of 4* Wolverine). I spent many hours, and lost sleep grinding her PVE event to get her 3 covers, then I spent $100 (the only time I've ever spent close to this in any game) to buy the HP to max cover her, then I spent months saving ISO to max level her. Now the best compensation you can do for all of this is, "you had your fun, here, have a fraction of her ISO and HP back if you get rid of her"? This really makes me not want to invest more time or money in a game I really love and have been playing every day for over a year since I started, I feel betrayed. You can say people know she's too powerful and needs to be nerfed all you want, but that's only because of the shift down in 4* power level that happened after she came out, check any forum character rankings and 4* Wolverine/Nick Fury/Thor are always in the top 5.

4. Trust me, I understand the need and want to balance your game, but when you guys screw up you need to be more than fair to your players, you need to fix it. I really don't want to sell Thor, I want to keep her and play with her in this new meta, but with the changes made she is isn't a character I would have spent significant money on and that needs to be made right. Adding an option to reset back to min level 1/1/1 in general before fully selling would be a great thing that would allow more experimentation, factor that in with increased sell back (and always tracked covers bought that come back in full) would be a solid system that people could trust. In a game where balancing changes will happen, at least you'll know when they do you'll be treated fairly.

Thanks again for the direct replies, I hope you continue to make the game more interesting and compelling for players while treating the economy in a fair and predictable way.

vudu3

Lerysh wrote:

vudu3 wrote:

More so than it already has? Did you not see the effects of OperationPayHarder? People willing to spend will always have the advantage, it's the game model we are using.

What ever happened to OperationPayHarder? Oh, that's right--it was dissolved after a single event because spending that much on shields isn't appealing to the vast majority of players. Besides, the Devs implemented shield cool down, and while it has its problems you can't deny that top scores have decreased since their inception.

Also, buying shields is not the same as buying covers. You buying a shield affects my ability to find and attack you in game but it doesn't affect my ability to beat you if I do manage to get you in a node.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

]More so than it already has? Did you not see the effects of OperationPayHarder? People willing to spend will always have the advantage, it's the game model we are using.

What ever happened to OperationPayHarder? Oh, that's right--it was dissolved after a single event because spending that much on shields isn't appealing to the vast majority of players. Besides, the Devs implemented shield cool down, and while it has its problems you can't deny that top scores have decreased since their inception.

Also, buying shields is not the same as buying covers. You buying a shield affects my ability to find and attack you in game but it doesn't affect my ability to beat you if I do manage to get you in a node.

Me buying covers doesn't affect that either. You still bring Hulk and Patch and beat the ever loving snot out of me. Any team is beatable. That my team is slightly better than yours doesn't really matter, since the player has so many advantages over the AI.

vudu3

As the game currently stands, yes. I totally agree with that.

But what if all 4* characters could easily beat all 3* characters? That might not be the case anymore.

Raffoon

I'll say, as a followup to my last post that I do respect the need to make changes to character balance. I agree that 4Thor was too powerful and needed to be tuned so that character choice could be an aspect of gameplay.

I stand by my conclusion that the current changes are too much of a reduction in her power. There is a middle ground between 5 and 12 tiles. How about 7 Tiles and 4 turns? 8 or 9 tiles and 3 turns? Those seem like much more reasonable alternatives.

Unknown

vudu3 wrote:

As the game currently stands, yes. I totally agree with that.

But what if all 4* characters could easily beat all 3* characters? That might not be the case anymore.

I think the weekly buff changes will have something to say about that. I can imagine a team of 270 3*s being pretty good, and needing a buffed 4* to combat them at higher tier play.

Raffoon wrote:

I'll say, as a followup to my last post that I do respect the need to make changes to character balance. I agree that 4Thor was too powerful and needed to be tuned so that character choice could be an aspect of gameplay.

I stand by my conclusion that the current changes are too much of a reduction in her power. There is a middle ground between 5 and 12 tiles. How about 7 Tiles and 4 turns? 8 or 9 tiles and 3 turns? Those seem like much more reasonable alternatives.

Or, instead of changing the charge tiles back up, if they are comfortable at 5 tiles for 9 cost, take the extra 1400+ damage 2 more charge tiles would do, and just slap it into Smite to begin with. 5400 base for 10. 540 damage per AP, which is 160% of a 337 damage per AP power that a 3* might have. Charge tile damage at that level would actually LOWER the damage per AP (5400+725x5 = 9025/19 = 475 per AP), so Power Surge gets used more as an accelerator/stun and less as a straight damage boost.

udonomefoo

Yeah, thanks for answering some questions. Not everyone will be happy with the answers and some of them just lead to more questions, but it's really nice to have a come in and respond, even if only to let people know their concerns are not being ignored.

On the topic of "tiers" - I'm in the 2-3 transition so I know nothing of the plight of the whales. Though I will say that after your comments about the increases in dmg and health of 4s vs 3s I looked at a few and was shocked to see that a maxed 4 only does 3 more damage per matched tile as a maxed 3 (82 vs 79) while a maxed 3 does 29 more damage per tile than a maxed 2

I know that match damage is a very small component of the game and the abilities are where the real differences are but it definitely makes me look at the 4s differently and also raise an eyebrow toward the top tier players who are so surprised that the devs don't intend the 4s to be as high above 3s as 3s are over 2s.