Low AP & Stockpile & Going First = One Turn Kills

Unknown

Enjoying the game, but three things could be adjusted to make it a bit more difficult/fair. I am a big fan of the original Puzzle Quest games, and they could bring back some of the features of the orignal games to make this one even better.

1) AP REQUIREMENT: I don't think any power should be activated for less than 4 AP. This way it would take at least two turns or a match 4 to enable. Ragnorak's 2 Red AP Thunderclap which then spawns 5 green for his 6 Green AP Godlike Power is simply to easy to spam over and over.

On the opposite end, I don't think any power should require more than 8 AP to activate. Some of these powers require as much as 17 to activate, and rarely if ever does this happen in tournament play. I recommend a range of 4-8 for all powers.

2) I realize the devs need to make money on a freemium game, but the power boosts give an unfair advantage to the player (yeah myself included) so that they start out with abilities enabled and so they can spam away with Ragnorak and other's low AP abilities. I would recommend removing all the Stockpile boosts (the rest are fine) from the game.

3) Finally, in the original Puzzle Quest games, the opponent would randomly go first, this should be enabled.

The above 3 changes would make the game more fair and difficult.

P.S. - When in tournament, and tapping Skip, please only give me an opponent with at least 10 reward points, I have to hit Skip 10-20 times to get a decent opponent.

P.P.S. - Like the original Puzzle Quest, show on the far left and right the total AP Colors of each player, would add more strategy to the game to block what the other player needs.

Thanks for reading!

Unknown

DaPlague wrote:

3) Finally, in the original Puzzle Quest games, the opponent would randomly go first, this should be enabled.

Slight technicality, it wasn't random in PQ and PQ2 - in the original Puzzle Quest, the character with the highest Cunning rating would go first. In Puzzle Quest 2 Agility affected this.

Unknown

The Ladder wrote:

DaPlague wrote:

3) Finally, in the original Puzzle Quest games, the opponent would randomly go first, this should be enabled.

Slight technicality, it wasn't random in PQ and PQ2 - in the original Puzzle Quest, the character with the highest Cunning rating would go first. In Puzzle Quest 2 Agility affected this.

Ah I never knew that, thanks for the learning.

Unknown

No probs, played those games to death!

Unknown

DaPlague wrote:

2) I realize the devs need to make money on a freemium game, but the power boosts give an unfair advantage to the player (yeah myself included) so that they start out with abilities enabled and so they can spam away with Ragnorak and other's low AP abilities. I would recommend removing all the Stockpile boosts (the rest are fine) from the game.

I am still non-paying player (waiting for nice promotion ) and I cannot complain about lack of boosts, in fact I have more than I need. Not to mention, I even wasn't aware you can buy them. Mission and random drops are sufficient for my needs.
And I am not the only one as there were suggestions to increase boosts limit of 10 to higher number.

Unknown

I absolutely disagree with your point number 1. Why do you think skills have to be within a range of 4-8, anyway? There's nothing wrong with some skills firing off first, then some later... it's called strategic variation. And, unless you stock 3 full boosts, it's very difficult to kill a decent team within the first turn. What I'm also saying is, if your team isn't up to par, boosts or not, you're dead anyway.

If skills are all within 4-8, that means the Devs' hands are tied when it comes to skill variety. You can't have passives, you can't have mega skills costing above 15 AP, nor can you have utility or "chipping off the block skills" that cost less than 5. Having skills that cost anywhere from 0-20 allows for a wide skill set. Using Ragnarok as an example is terrible; I don't have him leveled at all, but I don't particularly recommend nerfing him. Some characters are meant to be stronger than others (Thor is a God after all, and Ragnarok is his clone). In any case, I don't like the direction of nerfs, not in a game that is a "freemium".

Marvel PQ is based off some differences from the original PQ, and I do think it's a lot more fun than PQ 1 and 2's basic gaming elements. It's different, but it's for the better, and I would say a job well done to the guys from Demiurge studios. They actually managed to take a well polished game to another level.

Unknown

Bombul wrote:

Marvel PQ is based off some differences from the original PQ, and I do think it's a lot more fun than PQ 1 and 2's basic gaming elements. It's different, but it's for the better, and I would say a job well done to the guys from Demiurge studios. They actually managed to take a well polished game to another level.

Definitely agree with this. I loved the original Puzzle Quest, even did a complete re-run of it not long ago - unlocking the hardest of the hard enemy skills and that to create a super character. Only the battles become ridiculously easy then, even Bane or Antharg on hard. PQ2 battles were flat out boring, they dragged with very little variety and in most cases no challenge either. Seem to recall only the early Yeti battle and the Dragon battle being challenging.

MPQ on the other hand, there's loads more variety, with 3 person squads and plenty of characters to choose from. Far more strategic to me.

Unknown

The Ladder wrote:

Definitely agree with this. I loved the original Puzzle Quest, even did a complete re-run of it not long ago - unlocking the hardest of the hard enemy skills and that to create a super character. Only the battles become ridiculously easy then, even Bane or Antharg on hard. PQ2 battles were flat out boring, they dragged with very little variety and in most cases no challenge either. Seem to recall only the early Yeti battle and the Dragon battle being challenging.

PQ 1 was a load of fun. I remember my ol' iPhone 3G, and how I would play this game whenever I had time. So much so, I missed buses, missed train stops, missed calls on my phone. There was never enough battery life.

PQ 2 was just tedious. Battles were too long, and every 3 steps you took you had to fight a cretin of sorts - that's 10 mins each. And at 3 battles per hallway segment (you know those kinds), that's 30 mins just to get through a path. Plus all those random traps and chests and door bashing what-have-yous, it just felt... boring. I think one very important aspect of MPQ is how they tailored the battles to end within 5 minutes, and yet they managed to squeeze in various strategies, skills and team play within that short span of time. One would always look forward to the next match (unless it's from burnout due to the Nth grinding match in the Unstable Iso tournament).

Unknown

Dunt agree with the poster. I am surprised of the balance in this new setup. And yes it is based on chars with some good and some bad wich even differs depending on situation and opponents

Unknown

Good to see differing opinions! With Ragnorak, Storm and Venom, I still stomp the other players too easily.

I think I will just have to use some weaker teams and not worry about the rankings to have more challenging battles. I will do a self-imposed ban on Boosters, Ragnorak, Venom and Spiderman for a while, and try out some of the other characters, there are many I haven't tried at all. (Though Magneto with his placing two blue skill I find makes it too easy to keep generating criticals.)

And I agree that PQ2 got too tedious with three steps, another battle against a Skeleton with high health that took 10-15 minutes to slog away. MPQ is more quick battles and quite addictive.

Oh one more idea I would like to see, in the Prologue Missions, it should be like Borderlands that the enemies you face are auto-leveled up to a percentage of your own heroes levels. e.g. Instead of my average of level 60 heroes taking on a 15, 15, and 20 (like some missions), I take on a 100%, 100%, 130% = 60, 60, 78. I find many of the Red Iso missions too easy, and this would fix that, and insure that all missions have the desired difficulty. There would still be a minimum level for the enemies so weaker players would have to level up first.

Just some ideas, I think I am close to moving on with this game as I find it too easy to abuse the low AP and stun abilities, and not challenging enough.