Marvel Puzzle Quest Sneak Peek: May, 2020 (Updated 5/7/20)

spatenfloot

HoundofShadow said:

Without those hazard tiles, Fight for Wakanda will be just like other PvEs.

I think FFW has great concept and  it is challenging. Unfortunately, it garnered a lot of hates. 

It was perfectly fine as long as you could use Quake on the one sub event.

Heartbreaksoup

I feel that with FFW they made an attempt to employ the "puzzle" aspect that some players like myself would enjoy seeing more of (Kaecilius, Ultron's bombs, etc).  Unfortunately this wasn't in any way successful - it kept hitting the player and never the opponent.  I found it just too frustrating for words because it claimed to be neutral.

However, if they had just sold it up front with some villain character that players cannot use (like Ultron or Gorgon) whose power was to generate and steal shield tiles, I don't think it would have made us all so mad.  Players may have hated fighting that character - like some of us hate Mindless Ones or Sentries - but it wouldn't have felt like the game was spitting in our faces.

ZootSax

It also didn't help in FFW that Nico was featured at least twice that event (including her first time featured), which meant you were always donating buffed shield tiles to the AI during Day 2, when you didn't necessarily have any way to counter them (particularly for the loaner node, back when you always had a team of the featured 2*, 3* & 4*).

I enjoyed the flavor of the event personally, but even though I am non-competitive I completely understand why this event drove the more competitive folks up the wall.

JiraiyaSannin

Wakanda pve : I remember that players would drop down a level bc cl9&8 was very difficult. I wonder how difficult would it be now on cl10.

FesterTester

For those who weren't around or need a refresher why "hazard tiles" were so hated (longish post ahead):

* There were far too many of them.  They seemed to drop at about 15% of new tiles, which meant that it was not uncommon to have four or more of them on screen at the same time once you were several moves into a fight when they were 3-turn countdowns.

* They ticked down at the start of the enemy's turn.  This meant that if a 1-turn countdown dropped in after the players' move, it reached zero immediately without either team being able to do anything about it.  Also, any resulting matches from a countdown expiring dealt damage to the player and gave AP to the AI team.

* Because they were "neutral", powers that were affected by or could remove enemy countdowns ignored them, although there were some oddball powers that treated them as enemy special tiles (3-star Doc Ock generated attack tiles from matching them).

Day 1: "Exploding Tech", 3-turn countdowns that dealt heavy damage to both sides.  Because there were so many countdowns, it was pretty much impossible to match/destroy them all.  On the first run, these did team damage to both sides, so a champed Quake mostly laughed at them (if you had one in 2018).  On the second and subsequent runs, they damaged only the character in front for both sides.  No more automatic wins with Quake.  The AI starts every fight with full health, the player has to use health packs.  Many players skipped Day 1 after the first couple of runs.

Day 2: "Royal Shield", 3-turn countdowns that generated a friendly protect tile each time they ticked down, and converted all protect tiles on the board to enemy tiles on expiration.  Due to the sheer number of countdowns, this conversion happened often.  Slowed the fight down, but not so bad to deal with when you used characters meant to counter tile spammers.  3-star Loki's black could be particularly amusing.

Day 3: "Collapsing Mine", 1-turn countdowns that destroyed AP on expiration.  On the first run, these only affected the player's team, and as stated earlier could appear and trigger without the player ever having the chance to do anything.  On later runs this was changed to destroy two random AP from each team, so no longer blatantly unfair.

Day 4: "Astral Vision", countdowns that caused powers to cost more AP as long as at least one was on the board, and stunned a random character (from either team) on expiration.  The first run didn't have a day 4, so when these were added there had already been a player outcry over the one-sided nature of the hazards in the first run.


To top it off, the event was stuffed full of Dark Avengers and Ultron Sentries, possibly the most disliked enemies in the game.

My personal opinion was that if you skipped Day 1 it was tolerable.  The addition of nearly 50 playable characters since it was last run would provide additional some options for dealing with the hazard tiles now, but I expect Day 1 would still stink and I would still skip it.  Dumping the hazard tiles completely is still a better decision than keeping the "exploding" ones.

bluewolf

Maybe they could have left a node per sub with hazard tiles just to keep some flavor.

As is, this has become a very standard PVE, but at least it'll be fast to play.  But it is a different event, so that's nice.

Feliz

I actually liked FFW event as it was but it was HARD! Can't imagine touching it at lvl 10 o.O

bluewolf

@IceIX
@LakeStone
@Demiurge_[bagman]

Did you actually intend to run a 3 day Cosmic Chaos starting 5/3 that overlaps with the final day of FFW and leaves us with a day with no PVE to play?

Because that's what is in game right now, the preview is up and join-able and the event (for Slice 1) ends Wednesday at 7 AM EDT.  Which would mean I need to somehow play two subs at the same time and have nothing to do as far as PVE for at least 24 hours.

I assume this is a bug.  Not sure if anyone is paying attention on the weekends and can fix this.

Bad

If not fixed tomorrow I will need to play FFW final stage, cosmic chaos first one, and the final slice of pvp. I dont know from where I will find the time.

axmoss

They were too busy pushing out 5s back to back rather than looking at the calendar

DarthDeVo

bluewolf said:

@IceIX
@LakeStone
@Demiurge_[bagman]

Did you actually intend to run a 3 day Cosmic Chaos starting 5/3 that overlaps with the final day of FFW and leaves us with a day with no PVE to play?

Because that's what is in game right now, the preview is up and join-able and the event (for Slice 1) ends Wednesday at 7 AM EDT.  Which would mean I need to somehow play two subs at the same time and have nothing to do as far as PVE for at least 24 hours.

I assume this is a bug.  Not sure if anyone is paying attention on the weekends and can fix this.

Uh, having a day without PvE is the thing I'm least concerned about. 

Unless I go off slice, somehow I'm gonna need to grind the close of sub 3 of FFW, do the opening clear of sub 4 while delaying the opening clear of CC (or delay the opening clear of the final sub of FFW to get the initial clear of CC sub 1 done).

Then the next night, I'd either have to do the final grind of FFW early so I could *also* get the final grind of CC sub 1 finished, or do final grind for CC early so I could then also finish final grind of FFW.

None of those options are great, so I'll likely go off slice for CC.

Unbelievable. 

zodiac339

Are they purposefully denying Immortal Hulk shards? I mean, hopefully we’ll get them the event following the boss. Thankfully, my weird work schedule means I had to choose an alternate slice anyway. Wait, wait, wait. Did that wrong. Ahem. <rage> Tgese mistapase at bad, an angry, quit, BLAAAAARGH!</rage>. Too bad Havok is leaving so much earlier. Would you please, please put in delays of some kind? 3 week instead of 2? Skip every third week? Do that rework thing and give it new release treatment?

Xception81

And looks like they were able to fix it. Thanks!

JHawkInc

zodiac339 said:

Are they purposefully denying Immortal Hulk shards? I mean, hopefully we’ll get them the event following the boss. 

We don't even know that's what's happening.

The first time was planned (Yelena's release event being Immortal Hulk's first Essential, giving her shards instead of his, it's been that way for 5's since Shards came out, that's purposeful).

The second time is speculation. We don't even know it's going to happen yet. Given that they haven't run a boss event since shards were added to events, we have no idea what exactly the boss event is going to do in terms of progression or round rewards. I'm not even completely sure why people assume that it might deny 5* shards. We literally don't know. (totally reasonable to ask the question to clarify, and to be anxious because they have the communication skills of a tree stump, but being upset about denied shards is getting ahead of ourselves for the moment)

St_Bernadus

Usually the 5E that was due for a boss event would just be pushed to the next event. That is what I expect to happen here, with iHulk the 5E for next week's pve.

zodiac339

St_Bernadus said:

Usually the 5E that was due for a boss event would just be pushed to the next event. That is what I expect to happen here, with iHulk the 5E for next week's pve.

Except, I just thought, the other thing lately is new 5 shards being in progression after first availability, replacing the 5e that event.

JiraiyaSannin

Why are the dev's communicating on discord about the pve problem being held at the same time? Isnt this the official place to do it? 

bluewolf

JiraiyaSannin said:

Why are the dev's communicating on discord about the pve problem being held at the same time? Isnt this the official place to do it? 

But.... they also posted on the forum at the same time!
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/82273/d3-is-killing-me#latest

St_Bernadus

zodiac339 said:

St_Bernadus said:

Usually the 5E that was due for a boss event would just be pushed to the next event. That is what I expect to happen here, with iHulk the 5E for next week's pve.

Except, I just thought, the other thing lately is new 5 shards being in progression after first availability, replacing the 5e that event.

Ugh yeah that is ugly. And twice to iHulk seems almost deliberate. Especially since they changed the order on the 5Es to make iHulk next rather than Havok. iHulk is supposed to be 3rd, after Sinister.

Febreze15

I hope there’s a LONG gap between now and the next 5... hardly any hulk events for shards