Player Feedback Survey Discussion (with bonus 5th Anniversary questions!)

Heartbreaksoup

IceIX said:

Just as a general note: While we are reading the responses to the survey itself (duh, why would we have one otherwise), posts like these with more information as to the reasoning behind choices are also *really* helpful for us. Thanks, as always for the responses!

Edit: And yes, before anyone asks, that includes the "Communicate more here!" comments.

If so, I'd like to add that, like others, I also answered the question about what I'd like to see in the game without considering that it meant "what are you willing to pay for."

I would love a non-competitive single player mode.  I'm one of several forum users who has typed up a lengthy idea about it in the suggestion forum.  I love my idea, and I love reading other players' ideas.  And I think every user of this forum remains baffled why that Prologue tab is there at all.  It's probable that the very competitive players would not be interested in an ongoing, noncompetitive mission/game.  That's fair.  I'm not interested in building a team around Main Event Hulk to fight another team with a Main Event Hulk, etc.  (I only do it to stack up enough points for the Heroic 10-pack.)

If there's *any* kind of cost to play a non-competitive single player mode - any - five real dollars, 10 HP a level - you would be spitting at players.  By all means, fill it with OPTIONAL costs - 99 cents to try this level again, get short-term help from a temporarily max-champed character (Lvl 550 Jessica Jones can assist your team for six hours!) for 100 HP, buy a tile-destroying power with ten shots for $1.99 - but I won't pay one red cent to enter the mode.

I'm something like 1200 levels into Two Dots.  There are more options to purchase things in that game than on the shelves of every Walmart in three states.  But the game itself is free.  That's what's expected.

Heartbreaksoup

thedarkphoenix said:

Then there are those in 5 land that want more to do but don't have anything, if you have a strong 5 roster or teams you should be able to flex your muscle here and there.

Optional events that are "HARD" and give good rewards for there difficulty, even if its shorter time events that lock you out of other events. 

I think that's a fine idea.  Make the event completely invisible - it doesn't appear on screens at all - until you've reached SHIELD Rank x, and give it a caution banner that this event features the (hyperbole)-toughest challenges and the (Stan Lee-style)-vilest villains. Show that your opponents are level 500 or whatever.  That way newer players don't wander into it by mistake, get blown out, and get angry with the game for being too hard.

captainheath

Once a player has completed the prologue 100%, the tab should change to something else:  A season-long gauntlet during seasons and something shorter during off seasons.  The gauntlet should be challenging, but accomplishable.  

thedarkphoenix

Heartbreaksoup said:

thedarkphoenix said:

Then there are those in 5 land that want more to do but don't have anything, if you have a strong 5 roster or teams you should be able to flex your muscle here and there.

Optional events that are "HARD" and give good rewards for there difficulty, even if its shorter time events that lock you out of other events. 

I think that's a fine idea.  Make the event completely invisible - it doesn't appear on screens at all - until you've reached SHIELD Rank x, and give it a caution banner that this event features the (hyperbole)-toughest challenges and the (Stan Lee-style)-vilest villains. Show that your opponents are level 500 or whatever.  That way newer players don't wander into it by mistake, get blown out, and get angry with the game for being too hard.

Pretty much, it also gives new players or mid tier players something to visibly look forward to. 

I can't wait until I'm shield rank x so I can attempt to do x and get those rewards. As long as most players know that a battle is going to be hard they don't mind.

I'd love to have an event with just some of the cheapest combinations possible for pve. A 500 level Juggernaunt JJ  and medusa, a node with Just a 550 hulk but on the wakanda stage with the shield count down tiles.

The rewards have to be worth it though, beating those shouldn't give you 550 iso or just a token.  But cp, hero points even maybe and 2000 iso minimum.

LifeofAgony

Heroic pve are my favorite but that wasn’t an option.

Rated a 6 due to still below average communication from the team to the player base.

smkspy

If "paying" means using a small amount of HP, then bring it on...but if I have to pay actual dollars, well.

Concerning improvements, I placed high easier roster development for tiers past 3 star and emphasis on earning rewards based on in-game status.

All the favorite stuff just read to me as "what can we recycle the most for you" questions.

Still gave the game a 2 overall because lack of new content, character bloat, and the entire core of the game being massively outdated. Nothing like an obscure decade old comic event to draw in players when MCU is the face of Marvel now.

ZootSax

While I didn’t read the survey question as such, now that I think about it there are definitely non-competitive PVE events I would pay for.   For example, if they created a higher level of VIP (for, say, ~50% more) and added as a bonus a Growth Industries-style mini-event (I’ll expand more on this below) along with a reset of prologue nodes/rewards for 28 days, i’d go for it.

I’d theme the new mini-events around a specific support and the associated character it best pairs with.  Each of the 5 nodes would have 6 awards on them; the base rewards at a low difficulty would give the player a 3* version of the featured support (good enough to be playable, without leading to automatic accusations of “pay to win”) and a random cover of the associated character while the final reward at the highest difficulty would be something like 5 CP, with the middle rewards getting proportionally better as the difficulty increases.  The thought is that someone who pays the extra cost for VIP should get something valuable for low effort, while people willing to put in substantially more effort get a lot more.  This also lets people actually target supports to obtain and not rely 100% on RNG, which can only help that feature.

As for unlocking the prologue, that would really help add more nodes for people to really use their full rosters if they want to (or blitz them with ridiculously over-leveled characters, if they don’t).  Any influx of easy ISO-8 is also bound to go over well.  Sure it allows you to max-champ a Bag-Man every 21 cycles of VIP, but that’s hardly game-breaking.

broll

IceIX said:

broll said:

IceIX said:

Just as a general note: While we are reading the responses to the survey itself (duh, why would we have one otherwise), posts like these with more information as to the reasoning behind choices are also *really* helpful for us. Thanks, as always for the responses!

Edit: And yes, before anyone asks, that includes the "Communicate more here!" comments.

Is there any reason you can't include optional text boxes (with all most questions) in the survey so people that want to give it directly there can?  A lot of these could be misconstrued and it would be nice for anyone that wants to give the best info possible (even if they never come to the forums, discord, reddit, etc.)

We can, but we've found that surveys that inundate people with text boxes all over cause a lot of people that would click/tap some tick boxes to just shut down and not do it in the first place. So we may get more reasoning and such in answers, but we'd get far less overall. Which, when trying to take a player poll is kind of counterproductive.

Fair enough. In this one you gave an option to provide more details. What about doing that every time? So you finish the simple survey, it allows you to finish or provide more details. It them asks the same questions but with text boxes you could explain your first answer. Just a suggestion to take or leave.

Neuromancer

Since finishing the Prologue all those years ago, I've always wondered where the Quest was in Marvel Puzzle Quest. I still haven't ground all the rewards out of each Prologue node, too little incentive.

I've always missed the Gauntlet, but perhaps participation was the lowest for that event (the rewards were feeble for time investment). I don't know why it wasn't made a permanent tab, and reset like DDQ, but monthly, or bi-weekly, or whatever, and extended with increasing Shield levels.

As you can guess, I requested more single-player content from the survey. I am reluctant to make a purchase with anything outside of in-game currencies, but it never hurts to have more actual game-play developed rather than another character or a new reward. They also need to get away from this node-grinding design. Repetition only gets you so far before players simply burn-out.

That said, if they made an actual full (replayable, multiple story paths) Quest game (with rewards) that I could use the roster I've earned playing MPQ, I might drop a one-time fee of around $20 - $30 dollars depending on how rich the game-play/puzzles proved. After all, I'd imagine this would be DLC/expansion material. I doubt they're suggesting this though. But I'd even one-time-purchase a recycling Gauntlet tab (to go right next to the Prologue tab) for a few dollars.

Hmm, I wonder if they could use current mechanics to make a Slay the Spire-esque mission tab, but that's pretty close to the Gauntlet.

Spudgutter

IceIX said:

Just as a general note: While we are reading the responses to the survey itself (duh, why would we have one otherwise), posts like these with more information as to the reasoning behind choices are also *really* helpful for us. Thanks, as always for the responses!

Edit: And yes, before anyone asks, that includes the "Communicate more here!" comments.

can you confirm that it is understood that the majority of the people asking for "non competitive events" were not understanding the question?  

follow up question,on that list of things we would "pay" for, why are 4 and 5* characters on there?  can we infer from the phrasing that you were speaking of in-game currency?  

IceIX

Spudgutter said:

IceIX said:

Just as a general note: While we are reading the responses to the survey itself (duh, why would we have one otherwise), posts like these with more information as to the reasoning behind choices are also *really* helpful for us. Thanks, as always for the responses!

Edit: And yes, before anyone asks, that includes the "Communicate more here!" comments.

can you confirm that it is understood that the majority of the people asking for "non competitive events" were not understanding the question?  

follow up question,on that list of things we would "pay" for, why are 4 and 5* characters on there?  can we infer from the phrasing that you were speaking of in-game currency?  

That last question is a bit muddled with choices that are both direct pay and not direct pay. For example, it's unlikely that we'd offer "for real money only" Supports or 4/5-star characters. VIP rewards on the other hand are by its nature a paid thing. Non-competitive events could go either way. It's something that we'd want to dig into more if that ends up being one of the higher ranked choices.

DFiPL

IceIX said:

Spudgutter said:

IceIX said:

Just as a general note: While we are reading the responses to the survey itself (duh, why would we have one otherwise), posts like these with more information as to the reasoning behind choices are also *really* helpful for us. Thanks, as always for the responses!

Edit: And yes, before anyone asks, that includes the "Communicate more here!" comments.

can you confirm that it is understood that the majority of the people asking for "non competitive events" were not understanding the question?  

follow up question,on that list of things we would "pay" for, why are 4 and 5* characters on there?  can we infer from the phrasing that you were speaking of in-game currency?  

That last question is a bit muddled with choices that are both direct pay and not direct pay. For example, it's unlikely that we'd offer "for real money only" Supports or 4/5-star characters. VIP rewards on the other hand are by its nature a paid thing. Non-competitive events could go either way. It's something that we'd want to dig into more if that ends up being one of the higher ranked choices.

The SCL bundles belie the idea that players wouldn't direct-buy 4/5* covers, tbh.

alaeth

Tony_Foot said:

People have miss read the last question. Non competitive events are not for free, it what you are willing to pay for. Hence the words “what offers.....”

They didn’t make it clear enough that they were basically asking what you would pay for. I just voted supports as they are rare anyway and I wouldn’t pay for any of that other stuff.

The problem with the English language is that is up to interpretation...

An "Offering" doesn't necessarily mean monetary cost to join.  And that's not how understood the question. I interpreted it as "What new Features would you most like to see in game?"

Judging by the responses here, and elsewhere, I suspect the vast majority of the community read the question the same way I did...

Devs should be very careful in how they process the data and understand that the last question can be interpreted two different ways.

abmoraz

Dormammu said:

As for the rest of the survey, I found parts of it to be a bit odd. It's not like they don't know the answers to some of these questions. Usage data tells them what characters we like.

Usage data tells them the characters we're forced to use based on the meta or the event, not necessarily the characters we like.

Dormammu said:

As for events, they have their pulse on that as well - look at how quickly they yanked Boss Rush and Wakanda. I would have preferred they asked why we like or dislike the things we do.

Agreed.  I liked boss-rush and Wakanda v1.0 was the first and only event to really make Quake usable.  v2+ have been pretty nondescript. 

Also, the "WHY" portion is key.  I absolutely love the Boss events.  I love the fact that they are extremely non-competitive and that there are no placement rewards.  The only thing I dislike about them is that they always start on a Thursday and end on Sunday, so 75% of my alliance can't play them. 

abmoraz

marshall said:

Please more non competitive events, perhaps something that gets us to use different characters.

It seems like you've thrown down a GAUNTLET to the Devs.  I would suggest a new event, but we all know that they have to run a GAUNTLET of approvals and QA steps to get anything like that approved.  It's so overwhelming that then end up giving up and playing that old 4-person arcade game where the Red Elf always shoots the food... what was it called?  Oh yeah: GAUNTLET.

/gauntlet

Waddles_Pines

abmoraz said:

marshall said:

Please more non competitive events, perhaps something that gets us to use different characters.

It seems like you've thrown down a GAUNTLET to the Devs.  I would suggest a new event, but we all know that they have to run a GAUNTLET of approvals and QA steps to get anything like that approved.  It's so overwhelming that then end up giving up and playing that old 4-person arcade game where the Red Elf always shoots the food... what was it called?  Oh yeah: GAUNTLET.

/gauntlet

GAUNTLET!!!!

Towards the end of the run the rewards were kinda lacking in the event, but it provided a challenge to gauge your roster.  I think they missed an opportunity with Infinity War tie-ins (course they could do this for A4).  Basically instead of the 3 gauntlet events, make one for each stone and rename the event INFINITY GAUNTLET.  Since it's non-competitive just leave it open for the whole season, and just refresh it each new season.  

Wumpushunter

Non competitive will win this by a mile but it will never happen or it will be so disappointing rewards wise it will make you cry.