April Q&A with Demiurge_Will

Colognoisseur

Despite my unhopeful post last month Demiurge_Will overlooked my sarcasm and offered up the best and most informative information we have received from the development team ever.

In an effort to keep the conversation going I've pulled all of the unanswered questions from last month so Will can have an easier time finding what he has the time to answer.

A few ground rules for the thread to keep it more focused on the Q&A.

Please keep your questions short. If it takes paragraphs to explain your question it probably is of interest to few.

Please do not tag Demiurge_Will when you write a Q he knows the thread is here and will answer as he has time.

Try and keep one question to a post. At this point I don't think anyone should have so many questions so I don't think it will run afoul of the mods.

Finally, don't post asking "where are the answers", "are we ever going to get answers" "why is Will ignoring my question"

Will has taken the time to give informative mostly in-depth answers so far. That means it requires him to have the time to write them which does not mean every day or even every week. It happens when it happens.

My thanks to Will and Brigby for allowing this to continue.

Here are the outstanding questions from March:

Would you ever consider using a small panel of vets as a sounding board for new ideas/characters? 

Any chance we might see a 5* version of crash of the titans this year?

Are there any plans to update mmr in a way that would allow some of us with more advanced rosters to use more than a handful of characters?

Is there any likelihood of the Heroic Events being reinstated?

Can we just have 5* weekly boosts in PvP already? 

What is your long-term plan with players having a hard time with RNG?

what are some ideas you are looking to improve PVP and season rewards?

how are the special tile users in the 5* tier (thinking Phx/Goblin, but almost all others do to some extent) going to get some relevance back given that Gambit can simply over-write their special tiles?

You see a lot of people talking about match damage and power creep especially on 5* so what is your plan on making sure that you don't make older 5* obsolete even more than they are now? 

Can we expect some tests/changes relatively soon, or is PVP more the less staying the same?  Are there any plans down the pipeline to address PVP?

In the current state of the game, burn out is real and seeing more and more players going casual or leaving.  Do you have any long term plans to address this?

How long does it take for you to look at character Rebalancing? Will we be seeing a renewal of the rebalance efforts for classic characters after the new features have been rolled out?

How do you handle the constant negativity and whining that happens with an entitled/spoiled group of participants?

Have you ever considered doing live Q&A chats? 

can we get 4* feeders linked to 5* a bit quicker?

Can we please get an update to The Prologue section?

How do the devs feel on 5* dillution in classic tokens?

What is up with the PVE bracket schedule of 5/5/6/3/5? What's the reasoning behind that spread?

Are there plans to make PVE easier on our schedules? 

Have you considered changing the end times in PvE to better reflect the current different way to play?

Lightning Rounds. Why no changes in three years?

 Is there a way being discussed to aid leveling 5*s beyond BH's or 4* progression rewards?

Are colorless covers on the horizon?

What exactly goes on with the information trickle of new character releases?

are you gonna address the iso drought that happens every time a boss event comes around usually followed by 2days subs events?

Has the development team considered moving away from the current direct-damage-to-win paradigm that currently underpins the vast majority of game play to a conditions-based win system?

Have any design conversations revolved around reducing 'speed' as the #1 focus of all gameplay?

Do the current cover odds for heroic tokens really reflect the current flow of the game?

As we are currently in a boss battle event, can the refresh jump in difficulty be re-considered for the future?

I am wondering if the content the Latest Legends tokens could be changed to reflect the first word. As in latest three 5* and latest 12 4*.

Why was vaulting discontinued?

Will there be an update to the feeders?

Will, are there any plans in the works to update the Daily Resupply?

Do you know when we will be getting more information on this new feature that is being hinted at?

Would the development team consider implementing a feature to spend cp to change the colour of a received cover?

Are we ever going to get new game play modes or will it forever be the same old boring PVE and PvP?

Do you think the current disparity of information gleaned from alternative avenues, e.g. Discord,  in comparison to the official forums is respectful to supporters of the game?

Has there ever been a thought of an “Open All” token button?

What is the plan to pump new life into this game when we can see all over the place the massive adverting for Marvel Strike Force?

The rockett

Great job @Colognoisseur. Thank you for doing this. 

Pr0spect0r

Some good stuff in there really hope he/they, get the chance to glance over this and answer a few things here and there over the course of the month.

Punisher5784

Thanks Colognisseur! I wanted to ask this last time but I’ve been so busy. Thank you Will for taking the time to answer some of our questions. I wanted to know, from a business aspect, is your team aware of all the time-consuming areas of the game that do not involve us playing matches? The more time we spend doing tedious administrative tasks, the less time we have to play the actual game, meaning less healthpack, AP/Damage boost sales. Your team made much progress with this in the past year with the improved battle UI (View count for attack/protect/strike tiles and AP), Optional animations, Filter for selling covers, level-up button, etc. However, there is still many other areas that can use some improvements, such as:

- Additional Roster Filter: Last year we received a nice Filter for the Roster page for training and selling but it was not applied elsewhere such as the Battle screen to pick your characters and when you view other opponent’s rosters in PVP. With over 100 characters, it can be very frustrated looking for a specific character, especially for events when everyone is boosted (e.g. Combined Arms, Balance of Power). Has there been any thoughts on doing this?
- Deadpool Daily Quest (DDQ): This been the most positive game mode since its creation but at this point it’s boring, yet necessary to play for the resources (e.g. Iso, covers, tokens). The system could look at SCL (maybe 60 and up) and ask if we want it auto-played for the rewards. Last year there was a survey asking if we would like auto-play. No changes came from the survey but has this ever been considered for DDQ?
- Tokens: It’s simply time consuming to open, whether we are hoarding or not. It is brought up above about an ‘Open All button’ but that likely will not work for everyone, but this is something that should be addressed. There could be a ‘+/-’ button so we can decide how many tokens we want open at once and it can speed through the opened tokens like it currently does for 10/40pks. Has your team considered doing something about opening tokens?
- Gameplay Options: This was such a great recent change with the option to turn on/off character effects (animations) and showing enemy AP, but there could be much more! I personally like the animations but turning them off has given me so much more time, but I do miss this. This problem is all the passive animations because so many new characters come with one-three different ones! Could we have a turn on/off “Passive or Active” animations button too? Another optional button could be the Token Vault. Opening vault tokens is a complete chore and again, time consuming. This could also apply to the PVE storyline scenes. We all skip them once we've read them, so make it optional. It would also be great if the match damage and attack tile effects was sped up. The match damage effects battle against boss, Kaecilius and using America Chavez is oddly but wonderfully super-fast. It would be great if we had an optional “Super-Fast mode”. Has the team looked into expanding the Gameplay Options?

Understandably there is a lot here to read and respond to. I don’t necessarily expect a direct answer, but I do hope that there are more quality life changes coming this year that reduce the time we spend on tasks outside of the actual game battles. Again, the more time we have to the play the game, the more money that could be generated. Thanks again for taking the time to answer our questions/concerns/suggestions!

Steve111

Can we have an option to remove the dialogue scenes in pve which slows down gameplay, when there is such a high emphasis on speed for ranking in pve?

SymmeTrey

Steve111 said:

Can we have an option to remove the dialogue scenes in pve which slows down gameplay, when there is such a high emphasis on speed for ranking in pve?

Related note to this.... can we have a "replay" button immediately after we win the node? Don't make me go all the way out, claim rewards, click the node again, pick my team again, pick my team-ups again, etc. The amount of clicking required to replay nodes is excessive and the current state of the game in PVE requires repeated playing of the same node multiple times.

I saw one of the Baldur's Gate designers say "every time I click I hate, don't make me hate". I think working toward minimizing all unnecessary clicking outside of the actual gameplay would be a great move.

animaniactoo

Steve111 said:

Can we have an option to remove the dialogue scenes in pve which slows down gameplay, when there is such a high emphasis on speed for ranking in pve?

Alternatively, can time spent reading the dialoque scenes be credited back towards your time/pts refresh time? Because to me, the dialogue is integral to the game, even if I have been skipping it since I hit 3* land. Mostly that's because none of it was new, but sometimes, you like to revisit.

Jomu5

animaniactoo said:

Steve111 said:

Can we have an option to remove the dialogue scenes in pve which slows down gameplay, when there is such a high emphasis on speed for ranking in pve?

Alternatively, can time spent reading the dialoque scenes be credited back towards your time/pts refresh time? Because to me, the dialogue is integral to the game, even if I have been skipping it since I hit 3* land. Mostly that's because none of it was new, but sometimes, you like to revisit.

Alternatively, can we have an option to read a sub event's story in one go after you have competed all missions once, massive a story button somewhere on the sub page

Scofie

Hi and thanks for hopefully answering when you can.

Are there any plans to consider revisiting the PVE time slices to cater for those of us in the UK/EU? The only feasible one is the one that ends at 10pm BST (6pm before and 5am after that - both unfeasible to realistically compete in if you have a job) but that seems to be hugely oversubscribed.

Thanks again. 

Stax the Foyer

The Gambit side of the burnout question has been addressed, but building on the question about minimizing button clicks with a more specific question: 

At higher SCLs, what's the point of trivial nodes (other than that it might be work to excise them)?  The only danger involved is that you might accidentally waste boosts if you moved over from PvP and you're clicking fast.

You can use it to get your Thor ready without retreating, but the tradeoff isn't worth it.  Eliminating the need to clear content we've cleared thousands of times already would be a nice player friendly change.  7 clicks and a Thanos match, 21 times an event.  It adds up.

I'd burned out on another game for quite a while due because the interesting content in each event was gated behind a bunch of trivial content which required a lot of clicks and a lot of waiting.  The annoyance of having to click through menus without challenge meant that I'd try to start an event and walk away.  Eventually, I stopped trying to start.  I was pleased to see that it had been largely eliminated when I came back.  Would be nice to see the same thing happen here.

wymtime

How often do you feel major updates should occur in the game?  Examples of major updates would be DPDQ, champion rewards, 5* tier, CL. 

Examples of of non major update: balance changes, new PVE, New boss events

wymtime

How often do you feel there should be new PVE/ boss events?

wymtime

How often do you feel there should be balance changes to characters in the game?

Phumade

Stax the Foyer said:

: 

At higher SCLs, what's the point of trivial nodes (other than that it might be work to excise them)?  The only danger involved is that you might accidentally waste boosts if you moved over from PvP and you're clicking fast.

I'd burned out on another game for quite a while due because the interesting content in each event was gated behind a bunch of trivial content which required a lot of clicks and a lot of waiting.  The annoyance of having to click through menus without challenge meant that I'd try to start an event and walk away.  Eventually, I stopped trying to start.  I was pleased to see that it had been largely eliminated when I came back.  Would be nice to see the same thing happen here.

I really think you have to keep those trivials for some important scoring reasons.

1.  From scoring perspective,  every player needs to have the same points available in the same configuration regardless of roster.  Othwerwise you just open up fairness issues on Why do scl9 players only play 6 nodes for points, but everyone else plays 9?  As a related consequence the timing  relationship is off and the big rosters actually save time (which is points) compared to players who are forced to play the trivials.

2.  If different rosters and scl see different node configurations / points.  players will optimize to their preferences and you open a big can of worms in how alliances will want people to play the nodes.

Its not a bad objective at all,  but that approach has alot of hidden pitfalls that will be hard to guess at before hand.

jamesh

Phumade said:

Stax the Foyer said:

: 

At higher SCLs, what's the point of trivial nodes (other than that it might be work to excise them)?  The only danger involved is that you might accidentally waste boosts if you moved over from PvP and you're clicking fast.

I'd burned out on another game for quite a while due because the interesting content in each event was gated behind a bunch of trivial content which required a lot of clicks and a lot of waiting.  The annoyance of having to click through menus without challenge meant that I'd try to start an event and walk away.  Eventually, I stopped trying to start.  I was pleased to see that it had been largely eliminated when I came back.  Would be nice to see the same thing happen here.

I really think you have to keep those trivials for some important scoring reasons.

1.  From scoring perspective,  every player needs to have the same points available in the same configuration regardless of roster.  Othwerwise you just open up fairness issues on Why do scl9 players only play 6 nodes for points, but everyone else plays 9?  As a related consequence the timing  relationship is off and the big rosters actually save time (which is points) compared to players who are forced to play the trivials.

2.  If different rosters and scl see different node configurations / points.  players will optimize to their preferences and you open a big can of worms in how alliances will want people to play the nodes.

Its not a bad objective at all,  but that approach has alot of hidden pitfalls that will be hard to guess at before hand.

We're already in a position where different clearance levels have different numbers of nodes (no 5* essential in CL 1-6), or different amounts of available points (5* essential has different value in CL 7-9).

Would it be that big a deal to give up the trivial nodes if you got those points back from the 5* essential?

Phumade

jamesh said:

Phumade said:

Stax the Foyer said:

: 

At higher SCLs, what's the point of trivial nodes (other than that it might be work to excise them)?  The only danger involved is that you might accidentally waste boosts if you moved over from PvP and you're clicking fast.

I'd burned out on another game for quite a while due because the interesting content in each event was gated behind a bunch of trivial content which required a lot of clicks and a lot of waiting.  The annoyance of having to click through menus without challenge meant that I'd try to start an event and walk away.  Eventually, I stopped trying to start.  I was pleased to see that it had been largely eliminated when I came back.  Would be nice to see the same thing happen here.

I really think you have to keep those trivials for some important scoring reasons.

1.  From scoring perspective,  every player needs to have the same points available in the same configuration regardless of roster.  Othwerwise you just open up fairness issues on Why do scl9 players only play 6 nodes for points, but everyone else plays 9?  As a related consequence the timing  relationship is off and the big rosters actually save time (which is points) compared to players who are forced to play the trivials.

2.  If different rosters and scl see different node configurations / points.  players will optimize to their preferences and you open a big can of worms in how alliances will want people to play the nodes.

Its not a bad objective at all,  but that approach has alot of hidden pitfalls that will be hard to guess at before hand.

We're already in a position where different clearance levels have different numbers of nodes (no 5* essential in CL 1-6), or different amounts of available points (5* essential has different value in CL 7-9).

Would it be that big a deal to give up the trivial nodes if you got those points back from the 5* essential?

and I think you already see the stratification of alliances as a result of the 5e nodes.

a global change of no 4 or 3 or 5 in full scl will only make that issue worse.

You've probably played the game long enough to remember, when commanders where under real pressure to cut people who couldn't meet cutoffs.  This will create a similar situation where alliances will say.

You need to be scl 8 eligible to be able to participate with this alliance or we need to find you a lower home.

already we see top alliances say 1.4x prog for new release.  Those types of enforced scoring will become more prevalent not less if you adjust scoring in that way by saying some scl are worth more than others.

broll

Scofie said:

Hi and thanks for hopefully answering when you can.

Are there any plans to consider revisiting the PVE time slices to cater for those of us in the UK/EU? The only feasible one is the one that ends at 10pm BST (6pm before and 5am after that - both unfeasible to realistically compete in if you have a job) but that seems to be hugely oversubscribed.

Thanks again. 

Same question/problem for EST US with day jobs.  

purplemur

I love alternate art covers! I liked the monster ones, but especially the Black Panther & Jessica Jones '18 April Fools Edition
Any way we can have a mode of changing skins? of earning and keeping them?

purplemur

Which character would you(demiwill) like to see in the game?

The Bob The

What's the likelihood of adding a daily specific 4* cover reward to DDQ? Seems like there's enough of them in the mix to introduce a rotation similar to that for 3*s, and it'd allow some further progression on 4*s once they're out of Latest.

(As always, thanks in advance for taking some time to respond!)

Straycat

I appreciate the effort to get more communication, but I was hoping for some question screening instead of bringing every open question back.

Colognoisseur said:
Despite my unhopeful post last month Demiurge_Will overlooked my sarcasm and offered up the best and most informative information we have received from the development team ever.

Using that as the mission statement, I think it would be better for us to have fewer, more substantive questions. A lot of these are just complaints, suggestions, or questions that are just unanswerable in a satisfying way.

Any complaint probably would be ignored. Any suggestion can be dismissed with a "we have looked at it/ are looking at it, will let you know if we decide". Any long term questions can be dismissed with "we are working on it and will let you know when its ready" Thats how they have done before, and really there is no incentive for them to be more forthright. Even if they are planning on something, they aren't announcing it here before its ready. Will probably doesn't want to answer all these negatively. 

I just remember after vaulting we had a 10 question post of thoughtful questions that got answered with mostly concrete answers. If we could weed out all the suggestions and complaints, pick out questions that more people are interested, then maybe Will would find it easier to come back and answer.