REQUEST: Preview of New Blocks Yet to Land on the Board.

Unknown

GumisK wrote:

I was an eager Magic: the Gathering CCG player for quite a few years. The game required complex tactics and having a firm, yet flexible gameplan. All in all, even very experienced players with fantastic decks lost some matches due to bad luck, and I remember being furious when that happened to me. Still, I wouldn't change it even a bit, because that's the way the game is played.

And how much of blue is about erasing that randomness? Brainstorm, Future Sight, Impulse, Tomorrow, the entire Scry mechanic, etc. A similar stratagem is being suggested for this game as well. Now mind you, there's a huge difference b/w seeing what's coming and altering what's coming, but there are plenty enough similarities.

That being said, I'm not sure I like the idea of a preview either. On the one hand, it could make characters like Daredevil stronger; it could help preserve your special tiles as well. On the other hand, it's another ability the AI isn't quite ready to use properly, giving the offensive player yet another advantage in PVP; additionally, it doesn't actually add anything to the game, it just pushes the gameplay to more extremes (i.e. you either plan for additional cascades in which case you still can't see far enough ahead to know how everything is going to land, or you make sub-par moves to avoid cascades thus gimping yourself).

Unknown

I think that if a character is ever introduced into Puzzle Quest that is a powerful psychic with precognitive abilities then a latent preview ability would be awesome.

Unknown

WeakAssNewb wrote:

So, EVERYONE in here favor chaos over control?
You guys would rather "get lucky" rather then say,
"Yep, I've earned that. Your death came by my calculations!"

I would prefer
"Yep, I've earned that, because I know my mathematics very well and can calculate not only with deterministic numbers but also handle stochastics and risk management...
which make the calculations much more complex and interesting."

Unknown

I vote against this, does not make sense.

Besides the already established mechanic, look at it this way:
You are increasing the play field with 1 more line (granted you cannot move tiles in that line).
So what if this is implemented? Will you start requesting that they add 1 more line to see because you dont know what will fall from the 12th? And so on if you catch my drift...

Unknown

Can we please end this thread.

Where would you even set the limit for how many blocks ahead you should be able to see?
You are still going to get massive cascades when a vertical match-4 destroys the entire row and you were only able to foresee the next 2-3 tiles.

Give a hero the ability to see the next row of tiles? No thank you. That would be a weak ability.

This whole game idea is based on random luck. I've had bad cascades against me where a 5 tile match drops onto the board for the enemy TWICE during a single cascade.

This is NOT an e-sport worthy game unlike Fighting games, shooters or strategy games where every outcome is based on the decisions and randomness is minimal or nonexistent.

Unknown

I don't think it should be added, I've not seen this Gambit cover, so I think I'm missing something somewhere... But if there is a Gambit cover and he were to have this as a passive, I'd prefer it to only see a couple of columns, not all of them... More covers... More columns.

For example:

It starts with 4 columns.
2 covers = 5
3 covers = 6
4 covers = 7
5 covers = 8
But only the next line of tiles that will drop.

Although this would consider him a useless cover overall, it would somewhat help... If this sort of thing won't happen, then I say scrap the whole idea of seeing the next line.

BearVenger

That might be a neat mid-high power for Scarlet Witch. Rough example ensues:

:Probability Manipulation. For 12HP, Scarlet Witch can forsee the coming line of gems.

2 Covers: Reduced to 11 AP.
3 Covers: Scarlet Witch can change the color of one gem to another random color.
4 Covers: Reduced to 10 AP. Selected tile can also become a Critical Tile.
5 Covers: Scarlet Witch can swap two neighboring tiles' places in the upcoming row.

IceIX

Normally don't post in Suggestions for obvious reasons (OMG a red posted my suggestion is being done!), but I see some more general random PQ misinformation that I wanted to correct.

None of the PQ games have ever had extra line omniscience. The gems/tiles/hexes that come onto the board are generated on an as needed basis. MPQ is no different. Absolutely not saying that doing the engineering for a tile preview is impossible but the game doesn't, nor has the series ever, had a feature like this.

Unknown

I don't see the point in this. How would you even implement it? Would it be one line visible at the top for drops? You see the whole board and you can set up your matches to create cascades. Would seeing one extra line above help so much? I think it's just the player's obsession with thinking AI's "cheating". Seeing one line will not stop you or the AI getting crazy cascades from time to time. If it's more than one line, then it's you who is cheating. Oh, let's divide the screen horizontally and put a second board above so we can see everything that's going to drop. No, it's not going to happen. Also, like others pointed out something like this has never been done in any of the Puzzle Quest games.

Unknown

I've landed on the side of against this for one simple reason: it's not friendly to new or low skill players.

For the amount of complication it adds, the benefit is negligible, targeting only the players who both really love examining the board and would love a bigger board. That niche is too small.

louisng114

tyru_yaka wrote:

WeakAssNewb wrote:

So, EVERYONE in here favor chaos over control?
You guys would rather "get lucky" rather then say,
"Yep, I've earned that. Your death came by my calculations!"

I would prefer
"Yep, I've earned that, because I know my mathematics very well and can calculate not only with deterministic numbers but also handle stochastics and risk management...
which make the calculations much more complex and interesting."

My thought exactly.

Unknown

Allowing characters with precognitive abilities to preview tiles is not an inherently bad idea, but it appears that the OP's tone has attracted strong backlash from match-3 traditionalists.

One of the great features that distinguishes Puzzle Quest games from other Bejeweled clones is the lack of a time limit (let us not speak of Puzzle Quest: Galactrix). When combined with the powerful abilities that can be used in battle, this challenges players to think carefully about every move they make rather than mindlessly match away tiles. While the random nature of tile drops introduces an interesting stochastic element to the strategy of matching tiles, allowing precognitive characters to see some new tiles is hardly sacrilege, and in fact follows the Puzzle Quest custom of encouraging careful matching.

MPQ as it currently stands is already full of innovations that were never seen in previous Puzzle Quest games, so it would be illogical to shoot down this suggestion by citing tradition. There are reasonable solutions to all the objections raised in this thread, and I suspect the developers may even enjoy the challenge of resolving them. The greatest obstacle to implementing this suggestion will simply be programming time, but no one here can say with certainty how costly that will actually be.

In the interest of furthering the discussion, I'll make a list of the objections that have been raised so far:

• Precognition is overpowered
  Would precognition be overpowered if it only revealed a single tile? What about two, or three? What if the power required 10 AP, 15AP, or even 20 AP to use? Maybe it's tied to a special tile too. Clearly the effectiveness of precognition depends on the number of tiles revealed, as well as the conditions under which it may be used, and both factors can be tuned in innumerable ways.
• Unpredictably is fun
  People have fun in different ways. Look on the bright side: it's one less PvE you have to grind in if you don't like a new character's powers.
• It violates the tradition of match-3 games
  The original Bejeweled is still on the market if you're feeling nostalgic. I will happily take my MPQ with a side of innovation.
• Players will have an even greater advantage over the AI
  For PvE, this depends on whether you take scaling into effect. For PvP, there are already plenty of characters that the AI cannot handle effectively, yet no one is calling for their removal from the game.
• If you ask to see one row today you'll ask for two tomorrow. Where will it end?
  Slippery slope fallacy.
• It's not friendly to new or low skill players
  This depends entirely on the interface of the game, and is not a problem with the power in itself. In any case, if someone clicked on a power that said reveals the next row of tiles that will drop from the top of the board and colored symbols (or even tiles) immediately appeared at the top of the board, followed by the tile dropping animation showing those symbols dropping down into tiles of the same color, I'm pretty sure even a 10-year-old would be able to put two and two together.
• But what about the 9-year-olds!?
  Pfft! They shouldn't have a credit card anyway.