Medusa's passive abilities are inconsistent

Blindman13
Blindman13 Posts: 504 Critical Contributor
edited July 2017 in MPQ Bugs and Technical Issues
Both The Resolute Queen and Entanglement have passive abilities that activate when a tile match is made, but they do not activate at the same time.

When the Entanglement countdown tile is matched or destroyed the game pauses immediately to create the Attack tiles, before the tiles have fallen to fill in the match. In theory, it is possible for the attack tiles that this creates to then get matched away in an ensuing cascade. This is not necessarily wrong, and as a bonus: if it does happen, it will trigger the other passive, so you still get something out of it.

However, when matches are made that trigger The Resolute Queen ability, nothing happens until the end of any cascade. Hypothetically, if you are facing someone like Jean Grey or the dog symbiotes that do passive damage on certain matches, and you deliberately match one of your own special tiles to get a health boost, the ensuing cascade could activate the enemy's passive first downing someone on your team before Medusa has a chance to heal them.

It seems that most passive's that activate 'when a match that includes xyz is made' are triggered, they happen immediately. So maybe this is a bug with the Resolute Queen ability, or maybe I haven't seen it with others yet.

Edit - did some more 'testing' and found times when the Resolute Queen ability did trigger in the middle of a cascade.  Seemed like it would happen when someone else's passive was also triggering.

Comments

  • TPF Alexis
    TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
    Blindman13 said:


    Edit - did some more 'testing' and found times when the Resolute Queen ability did trigger in the middle of a cascade.  Seemed like it would happen when someone else's passive was also triggering.
    I have noticed that some passives will interrupt cascades and some won't. But if one does, all the non-interrupt passives will then go off before the cascade resumes. The two categories are at least consistent over a wide range of characters, but I do not know if having two different categories of passive is intended or a bug.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    Technically, Entanglement triggers when the tile is "destroyed" (including, but not limited to by being matched), while Resolute Queen only triggers upon being matched. So the trigger conditions aren't identical.
  • Blindman13
    Blindman13 Posts: 504 Critical Contributor
    Jaedenkaal said:
    Technically, Entanglement triggers when the tile is "destroyed" (including, but not limited to by being matched), while Resolute Queen only triggers upon being matched. So the trigger conditions aren't identical.
    I agree that the trigger conditions are not identical, but as TPFAlexis points out, this seems to be a symptom of a larger potential issue: some passives that trigger from a match will interrupt the cascade to activate, and some will wait until the cascade is over to activate.  I haven't done extensive enough research to be able to list all the affected abilities, but it is prominent with Medusa because she has one of each.
  • Dayv
    Dayv Posts: 4,449 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited July 2017
    To make things a little more complicated, the function of her Entanglement that creates attack tiles when destroyed is a property of the countdown tile, like the damage from destroying countdowns generated by 4* Deadpool's purple.  The passive power is the ability that creates this countdown and causes it to do damage every turn.  For this reason, an Entanglement countdown tile can make attack tiles even if Medusa is stunned or airborne when it is destroyed, but she won't make a new countdown until she returns to play.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    Dayv said:
    To make things a little more complicated, the function of her Entanglement that creates attack tiles when destroyed is a property of the countdown tile, like the damage from destroying countdowns generated by 4* Deadpool's purple.  The passive power is the ability that creates this countdown and causes it to do damage every turn.  For this reason, an Entanglement countdown tile can make attack tiles even if Medusa is stunned or airborne when it is destroyed, but she won't make a new countdown until she returns to play.
    Actually, that explains why XFW's Recovery tile behaves the same way (and Demolish, and other trap-type tiles). They probably even borrowed the recovery-trigger code.

    So the Entangle tile is really just a visible trap stapled to an attack tile, with a countdown timer.

Categories