MPQ Community Video - March - Character Updates

PuceMoose

(Sorry if anyone else posted this - just did a quick thread scan) Was anyone else amused that Miles and Will had a pen and a notepad, and no mug, and Kabir had a mug, a pen, and no notepad? It's as if they each had to pick two from a list of three things: (Mug, notepad, pen), and Kabir just went with Mug & Pen to mess with the others (what is he going to write on? I wish he had stirred whatever was in the mug with his pen at least once.)

I'll also admit I giggled a bit at how it looks like Hulk is about to punch Kabir in the back of the head.

Raffoon

Lerysh wrote:

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.

I like that idea in terms of power.

One reason that I think she needs more charge tiles is that they are the most fun thing about her.

Charge tiles change the board in a fun way. Like was mentioned in the video, they shake up the situation. Her whole playstyle is about interaction with charged tiles.

Do you Smite early and hope that some blue tile gets charged so that you can stun next turn? Do you try to rush blue instead and guarantee a kill with the Smite?

The charge tile interaction is the fun part. Less tiles = less fun.

Edit: I'll add that the more tiles = more fun argument holds up so strongly that I actually LIKE going against other 4thors with my 4thor, because it means I get to make use of all her charged tiles too.

simonsez

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.

We're specifically complaining that Will's assertion that they do 160% of the damage of a 3* just isn't true for the most of them.

Nooneelsesname

I've made some posts critical of the way you all have handled things recently, but I want to say that I really appreciate the amount of time and interaction that you are putting into this thread and that you seem to want to make a good game that everyone enjoys playing.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

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.

We're specifically complaining that Will's assertion that they do 160% of the damage of a 3* just isn't true for the most of them.

There seems to be something really wrong with the statement because a character that's got 160% more HP and 160% more damage is at equal to 2.56 times as effective. For a comparison, recall the single level 395 3* Thor battle in the Simulator. Without stuns or AP steal, which former only works because he's alone and the latter is a pretty broken concept to begin with that's especially effective against a single opponent, the level 395 Thor will generally straight up annihilate your team if you tried to fight him straight up as pretty much any of his moves can kill you while your moves will barely scratch him. Okay so in this case a level 395 Thor is about 137% better in HP and damage compared to a 3*. Convert this to HP * effectiveness we get he's about 5.66 times as good as a level 3*. Okay, so that means you can take any 2 4* (which are about 2.56 times 3* if formula is true) + some other guy and they should straight up annihilate the opposition. This is simply not true. Not even Thor/X Force can do this in a straight up battle (as in no stunlock tricks, note that a decent level 395 3* certainly wouldn't need any tricks to annihilate a similar team) let alone after the nerf. I'd say the game will be pretty bad if this was actually true, as fighting any 2 level 270s in this formula would be the same as fighting a level 395 3* that you can't stun based on a simple power = HP * damage.

Unknown

While HP grows proportionally to level, damage does not. Will may have simply have forgotten about this in the heat of the moment.

If Will said, a 4* at Lv270 has 160% HP and 125% damage as a 3* at Lv166, therefore 1.6*1.25 = 2 times as powerful, would you accept that answer?

Maybe the majority of the players expect an obvious power advantage of 4 stars over 3 stars even at the same level, while the devs are aiming for a less definitive advantage when at the same level, and that difference in expectation is what's causing a lot of discontent over how 4Thor is nerfed.

Dauthi

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

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.

The part of me that wants to fix all of my mistakes, and the part of me that's a big Sue Storm fan, wishes we could make changes that make powers stronger as quickly as we make them weaker. But overpowered characters and abilities tend to have a much larger negative effect on the game than underpowered ones, and fixing them typically has to happen more quickly.

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.

We've both strengthened and weakened characters and powers over the life of the game (and some of the changes we've made, like the latest Magneto (Marvel NOW!) one, are mostly sideways) and will continue to do both, but fixing overpowered characters will often take priority.

Thanks for the response. This leads me to another question too: was Ragnarok's change considered a buff? Honestly to most of us it feels like a nerf, but the feeling I get from the developers is that it was supposed to be a buff (and in all likelihood getting a 3rd ability should buff any character).

If this was a buff/rework to Ragnarok, why didn't this attention go to Invisible Woman first? She was clearly hurting more than Ragnarok, who at least could find a role with his red-green combo.

Unknown

Davyx wrote:

While HP grows proportionally to level, damage does not. Will may have simply have forgotten about this in the heat of the moment.

If Will said, a 4* at Lv270 has 160% HP and 125% damage as a 3* at Lv166, therefore 1.6*1.25 = 2 times as powerful, would you accept that answer?

Maybe the majority of the players expect an obvious power advantage of 4 stars over 3 stars even at the same level, while the devs are aiming for a less definitive advantage when at the same level, and that difference in expectation is what's causing a lot of discontent over how 4Thor is nerfed.

No... not at all and this is why...

Increasing a heroes health by 60% doesn't make them 1.6 times as "powerful", or useful, or impactful or any other term you want to use. The fact Will thinks you can equate increases in health to being as important as increases in damage is worrying enough, but the concept 60% more health = 1.6 times as powerful is SO far off the mark it begins to make me wonder how much they play the game at all...

REASONS: (Since I can't just say that and wander off without any justification 8) )

1) Boosts have a multiplicative enchancement to a hero's damage and do nothing of the sort for health. The more damage a hero does, the more impactful boosts are (in reducing the number of turns it takes to kill something). Since boosts exist they inherently make damage more important than health.

2) The AI is stupid. I'll get full value out of damage in my matches but not full value out of mt health because the AI is so bad it doesn't reallty test my health value throughout a match. When the AI is lucky to get one decent damaging ability off in a match i'm never getting much value out of that health. In fact health will only come into the equation when the enemy gets a big cascade WHEREAS my damage comes into the equation every match by letting me win faster.

3) Damage saves health, health doesn't do damage (apart from Hulk's anger). What I mean by this is.... if I do more damage I win faster. Every turn I shave off my winning time is one less let of match damage AND one less chance for the AI to get an ability off. Both these things save my heroes' health. On the other hand having a large health pool does no damage.

4) Saving arguably the most important one til last.... damage isn't linear. There are heroes who have acceleration abilties which cause their damage output to snowball BUT, even without those heroes damage is still not linear (over time).

So lets say I have a 3* team vs another 3* team. I have a guy with 6.8k health in front of me and I start matching away, fire off an abiltiy or 2 and he's dead, NOW let's assume he has 10.2k health... will he take an extra 50% turns to kill? No. When I've done 6.8k damage firstly there is a good chance I had a degree of overkill but more to the point i'll have other AP kicking around getting me close to firing off another ability. You rarely get to just zoom to the colours you need without having to match other AP (or cascading, or 4/5 matching etc). So if your team has any kind of decent colour coverage you are now MUCH closer to firing off another ability to chunk off more of that health than starting from scratch. So each of those extra health points are less useful than the ones at the start.

That's why most ppl will say damage is so much more important than health (well that and time to win being so important in PvP BUT the fact we equate damage to being more important in time to win in PvP is because everyone realises our damage is much more important than the opponent's health). The time it takes to down a 10.2k health target is nowhere near 50% longer than a 6.8k health hero.


So that's why I don't agree. 25% more damage and 60% more health is not even close to 2x as effective/powerful of a hero. It's more than 1.25 times, but not by all that much.

Pylgrim

Hopefully I still manage to catch the eye of Will if he's not gone away. I have a few questions that have been rolling around and that you guys didn't answer in the video:

- Why is Rag's green so bad compared to Thor's Call the Storm? Same cost, but less damage to the player in front and added damage to your party. Moreover, Thor's Thunder Strike is much better at facilitating the acquisition of 14 AP than Lightning Rod, so actually Godlike Power also has basically a worse cost.
- I have played a lot with Mystique, before and after knowing about winfinite and I've never gotten that many matches. For winfinite, I actually had to use Mmags's purple twice to collect enough AP to be able to cast Master Plan twice in the same turn to reliably get enough purple to go infinite. And I still didn't get it. My point is that her blue is extremely unreliable and weak (when not part of game-breaking combos) and now it will be even worse. If you take a look at other blue abilities at the same cost, especially Dr. Doom's, Mystique's blue simply doesn't cut it and I'm pretty sure that Northern Polarity has simulation data that proves it. All this on top of having the squishiest HP in 3* land. Have you considered that you overnerfed her, a character that was already not a powerhouse, just to walk on the safe side of preventing winfinite?
-Can you talk more about 4hor's Yellow? I believe that for her Yellow to be even just as good as the Yellow power of a 3*, such as Thor, you'd have to have an scenario with several (over 5) enemy special tiles which is extremely situational. How was that particular power going over the 4* "power-band"?

I'm actually afraid that your response is going to be that Call the Storm, Thunder Strike and Technopathic Strike are too powerful and that's why similar powers have to be made worse, but if we walk that way, doesn't it mean that we have to nerf everybody until all abilities are equally mediocre?

sinnerjfl

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.

Reworking underpowered characters should be a priority, it leaves a poor impression of your game to have so many weak characters. Do it for the integrity and balance of the game, you won't get a lot of data on those things, theyre intangible just as you mentionned.

The payoff for D3/Demiurge is not immediate but it is really important that you do not have so many characters that are literally useless. They don't have to be all powerhouses but at least make them useful to a point.

ayatorahxephon

oh god... really felt the players can make better balance than these developers. you should really try to listen from the players. .. 4hor yellow should remain unchanged and blue should either 4 turn stun with 6 charges or 3 turn 7 or 8 charges would make more sense.

KrazyKeylime

Kelbris wrote:

Still can't see the god damn enemy's AP on my god damn phone without scrolling EVERY god damn turn because the banner autoadjusts to show me the face of my god damn heroes that are being hit, who are way god damn bigger than they need to be ON the god damn banner, even when there's room for the **** AP totals at the top of the god damn banner, if you would just turn the god damn health crosses into god damn health bars like every other god damn game uses. Not to mention if you shrunk the heads of the god damn banner heroes, you could probably get the god damn AP totals for BOTH teams in the god damn banner without scrolling, because nobody is looking at the god damn characters when all the action happens on the god damn board!

Mod edit for language.

But hey, Rags got a blue power!
i agree with the sentiment and the disappointment that this issue hasn't been fix yet, but you can communicate with out the harsh language just the same.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

Increasing a heroes health by 60% doesn't make them 1.6 times as "powerful", or useful, or impactful or any other term you want to use. The fact Will thinks you can equate increases in health to being as important as increases in damage is worrying enough, but the concept 60% more health = 1.6 times as powerful is SO far off the mark it begins to make me wonder how much they play the game at all...

REASONS: (Since I can't just say that and wander off without any justification 8) )

You bring up some really good points. I'm adding some comments to your points, not to be confrontational, but to point out additions or exceptions. I'm not an expert in this game but thinking about how stats work is one of my hobbies.

bonfire01 wrote:

1) Boosts have a multiplicative enchancement to a hero's damage and do nothing of the sort for health. The more damage a hero does, the more impactful boosts are (in reducing the number of turns it takes to kill something). Since boosts exist they inherently make damage more important than health.

I agree that since speed is important in the most of the meta, damage matters more, and boosts amplify damage. If you ignore the meta, I think health is equally meaninful, because the reason you need to boost is to counter the enemy's health. As an extreme example, boosting doesn't matter if enemies die from 1 match.

bonfire01 wrote:

2) The AI is stupid. I'll get full value out of damage in my matches but not full value out of mt health because the AI is so bad it doesn't reallty test my health value throughout a match. When the AI is lucky to get one decent damaging ability off in a match i'm never getting much value out of that health. In fact health will only come into the equation when the enemy gets a big cascade WHEREAS my damage comes into the equation every match by letting me win faster.

3) Damage saves health, health doesn't do damage (apart from Hulk's anger). What I mean by this is.... if I do more damage I win faster. Every turn I shave off my winning time is one less let of match damage AND one less chance for the AI to get an ability off. Both these things save my heroes' health. On the other hand having a large health pool does no damage.

In any situation where the enemy damage can't do significant damage on you, damage is all that matters. But the opposite is also true. When damage is significant, eminent, and unavoidable (let's pretend you are stunned), health is all that matters. While 160% health doesn't mean 160% better, there is a world of difference being able to survive a hit versus not being able to survive a hit. Your point is valid, especially for someone who spend significant amount fighting easily winnable battles, and speed matters in most of the meta, but let's say we're playing some kind of game mode where the enemy damage is extremely high and comes extremely fast (boosted high Lv Ares with green feeders), health is as important as damage. Dead heroes have no damage. If you have rainbow coverage, with every dead hero you take a hit to your damage output.

bonfire01 wrote:

4) Saving arguably the most important one til last.... damage isn't linear. There are heroes who have acceleration abilties which cause their damage output to snowball BUT, even without those heroes damage is still not linear (over time).

So lets say I have a 3* team vs another 3* team. I have a guy with 6.8k health in front of me and I start matching away, fire off an abiltiy or 2 and he's dead, NOW let's assume he has 10.2k health... will he take an extra 50% turns to kill? No. When I've done 6.8k damage firstly there is a good chance I had a degree of overkill but more to the point i'll have other AP kicking around getting me close to firing off another ability. You rarely get to just zoom to the colours you need without having to match other AP (or cascading, or 4/5 matching etc). So if your team has any kind of decent colour coverage you are now MUCH closer to firing off another ability to chunk off more of that health than starting from scratch. So each of those extra health points are less useful than the ones at the start.

This is a good point. Damage dealt and damage potential gained per turn fluctuate greatly throughout the match and 50% more health does not translate to 50% more turns needed. Let's say I'm in 2-star land where my fastest team is CStorm + Magneto boosted with purple/blue AP, if by having 50% more health the enemy survives the Wind Storm combo, instead of a minimum 2-turn win, I now need to get another 9 purple or 11 blue from a board potentially empty of purple and blue. In fact, that 50% more health on the enemy's part could result in more than 5 times the number of turns I needed to win.

bonfire01 wrote:

That's why most ppl will say damage is so much more important than health (well that and time to win being so important in PvP BUT the fact we equate damage to being more important in time to win in PvP is because everyone realises our damage is much more important than the opponent's health). The time it takes to down a 10.2k health target is nowhere near 50% longer than a 6.8k health hero.

In PvP you get to chose your battles, and you would logically pick battles where your win rate is close to 100%. In PvE you don't get to pick your battles (if your competition can beat every node). Sometimes in PvE your win rate on a difficult node is less than 40%. In these cases the speed meta complexifies, because health packs is now equally, if not more so, a limiting factor to your score, and heros with more health generally reduce your health pack usage so health becomes significantly more important.

bonfire01 wrote:

So that's why I don't agree. 25% more damage and 60% more health is not even close to 2x as effective/powerful of a hero. It's more than 1.25 times, but not by all that much.

I don't think I can agree or disagree with your assessment. Balance is complicated and depends much on the meta and the situation. Speed being important in almost all the meta certainly ensures that damage is important, but for many of us, especially in the PvE meta, extreme scaling and health pack limitations make health values equally important. If you think of a health pack as a boost, a hero with 50% more health benefits 50% more from health packs. It might sound like I'm using a lot of examples from PvE, but I think the situation is very similar for anyone in PvP who are fighting against rosters that are 1 tier above. Since the AI can't make very good use of damage and you are likely boosting to avoid damage, a lot of times it feels like enemy health is the main reason to pick or not pick a specific enemy.

Unknown

@Davyx seems i've been unclear with context

Boosts were a small part of the explanation . Although stating an extreme example can be useful... nothing dies from one match. There is about one important end game threshold which is.... can XForce one shot you? So from that point of view, Hood's health is relevant.... or is it XForce's damage that's relevant? Once you cross that singular threshold which very few heroes relate to my explanation holds.

Now... regarding inevitable damage. I get the impression you think i'm talking about cherry picking matches in PvP... i'm not. I'm talking about mirror matches which is about all I play in PvP after facerolling lower level teams I get given. In those mirror matches, my health isn't tested. Those mirror matches are my [insert best 2 heroes in the current meta] + featured vs their [you get the idea] + featured. In those matches... my health isn't tested. I can go from 600 to 1k in mirror matches without even using up 5 health packs... and that's me topping off heroes at 50% just in case of cascades.

Regarding over-scaled PvE... still damage is king. If you can's explode an over leveled ares with 2 green feeders then his extreme (and unbalanced) damage kills you. Lasting one more inevitable onslaught won't make the difference... having a stun and doing a ton of damage will. I will concede health is a bit more useful in PvE (still not as much as damage, but closer than in pvP) because of health pack efficiency if you're going for a big end of sub grind. Still need that damage though and it still has more impact.

Your 2* example isn't very useful. First up if you're one hitting teams with a single windstorm after a polarity shift they are pretty damn fragile. Being in the situation where you can explode the enemy in one boosted move isn't really a thing (aside from XForce detonating Hood as mentioned above). Far more common to be looking at multiple moves and that means spare AP or AP acceleration and, again, means that EXTRA health beyond a certain level is less useful than the health that got you to that level. So 160% health is not 1.6 times as useful... it's 1.something times as useful but hard to quantify because in reality it more comes in bands.....

So Hood going to 6.8k from his bugger all health would be a given % increase in health BUT would be a MASSIVE improvement in his usefullness (until XForce gets nerfed then his orioginal health is less useless). However increase him from 6.8k to 7.5k say and the difference is minimal. Chances are he dies about as fast (2 abilities at top tier will kill either health total). So where is the next cut off? Well in an XForce dominated meta probably 10k. Because that's more than the damage you expect from SS + Xforce. Then again the extra health over an XForce combo is probably almost already dealt with by spare AP being used by another hero....

PvP thing covered above. I'm talking flavour of the month mirror matches AND no... high health doesn't reduce health pack usage unless it comes with damage. In fact.... XForce + Hood is FAR FAR FAR (insert more FARs) more effective health pack wise than, say, Xforce + Hulk since Hood accelerates you and decelerates the enemy (his steal is like doing more damage because of AP acceleration). Or alternatively.... Xforce FIST is FAR FAR FAR (you know the deal ) because of acceleration and inherent damage. The game is VERY damage heavy compared to health, so all those extra health points just get chunked to pieces very quickly as long as you bring the damage.

Re: last statement on PvE.... I won PvE all the time (as in first) and have always had stupid scaling. 4Thor was vital for PvE but NOT for her health... it was for her stun + damage + acceleration (into chain stun + insane damage). Drop her to 10k health and she would STILL have been the most important PvE hero. Or 8.5k health... not sure how much lower I would go but you get the point. It was NEVER about her health.

Also re: fighting up one tier. The fact ppl regularly go 2* vs 3* or 3* vs 4* is great proof of what i've written. The ai plays poorly so can't output the damage the enemy team SHOULD be doing BUT you can't screw up having health. So IF health was equally as important as damage then the fact the AI uses damage sub optimally would easily be countered by all that extra health... it isn't and ppl fight up tiers all the time.

Nooneelsesname

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Colognoisseur wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

I hope you'll give the changed Magneto some playtime before making a final decision about what you think of the change. He's involved in different combos than he used to be, but most of our testers feel that the change ends up making him a tiny bit stronger overall, outside of the loss of the infinite turn combo with Mystique.

Would these be the same testers who failed to realize what an overpowered character Iron Fist was before release?
Would these be the same testers who think the new Ragnarok is an improvement?
Would these be the same testers that thought rolling out team-ups without a delete button was a good idea?
Would these be the same testers who saw no need to add a cooldown timer to shields?

You might understand why I have little faith in the opinion of these testers when they can't get the obvious things right.

Please don't evaluate the skill of the test team of any game, Marvel Puzzle Quest or any other, by the quality of the resulting game. They don't determine what we work on in what order, which is what three of your four complaints are about. (The fourth, the Ragnarok complaint, is about a character rework involving a third ability you haven't played with yet.)

Direct your frustration this way, please, toward my face, not toward them.

And Will fwiw, it's your last sentence here that made me feel okay about spending money on this game again.

Unknown

Thanks for the long reply, bonfire. I think you are actually agreeing with me more than you think you are.

Remember that I said "In any situation where the enemy damage can't do significant damage on you, [your] damage is all that matters." What you are saying is that for you, mirror matches basically fall under this category, therefore in end game PvP, pretty much damage is all that matters, and your health doesn't come in to play until the AI gets a lucky cascade and damage is unavoidable.

I'm still in 2-star land, so once I get past 500 or so in PvP, the mirror matches disappear and I now face guys who are 1 tier higher. We call this the 166 wall for a reason--even with boosts, the number of fights I can partake in is limited. For the most part, damage is now unavoidable and the health of my heroes as well as the health of the enemy heroes become bigger considerations. Of course, their damage dealing potentials is still the number one consideration, but health is no longer negligible. In 2-star land, my favorite damage dealing heroes is Ares. Due to the "adjustable" output of his green, the effect of the enemy's health is less "banded" than in the end game meta you are describing.

Balance is a difficult thing, because the worth of a stat is partly determined by how often that stat comes into play. If in your situation, health is negligible, then for you the worth of a character is solely their damage. I am at a place where I spend about 1/3 of the time fighting fights where damage taken is significant, and since I can't overkill the enemies with my damage output, the health of both my heroes and the enemy are bigger factors to consider. In my situation I would consider that the actual benefit of +60% health is worth 1/3, so about worth +20%. The worth of damage varies depending on how easily you or the enemy can get the damage out, but for the most part the heroes that we designate as top tier typically has full usage of their skills, so usually worth 100% (only for when you are the one in control -- the worth of a skill is different when the AI is using it).

ngoni

It is very obvious the devs think of this as THEIR game not OUR game. They only care about one viewpoint and it shows.

MarvelDestiny

Raffoon wrote:

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?

I have to agree. I've also put $100+ into the game and all these nerfs make me EXTREMELY unwilling to invest further. I want to support the devs but I don't want to throw my money away.

MarvelDestiny

Lerysh wrote:

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.

Thanks for the positive Lerysh! I'm in the `never buy again` camp but wholeheartedly agree with you. Devs, give us an option to participate and improve the game WITH YOU and outlooks will change. Besides, outside playtesting is a proven method of product development. I'm sure there are more than a few RPGers in the forums and at least some of us have experience with playtesting.

Unknown

MarvelDestiny wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

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?

I have to agree. I've also put $100+ into the game and all these nerfs make me EXTREMELY unwilling to invest further. I want to support the devs but I don't want to throw my money away.

This is basically why I think their new policy should cover all purchases within 30 days of a change, not just on characters released within 30 days of the change. If you want to give up the character after a change and bought covers/leveled him or her within 30 days of the change, HP and ISO back. If they can do it for Iron Fist, I don't see why they can't for all changed characters back 30 days.