Marvel Puzzle Quest Developer Q&A July 2022 Answers (7/26/22)

StanleyBurrell

Daredevil217 said:

StanleyBurrell said:

Keep the god boost but flatten the MMR is all that’s being suggested. If I have unboosted 550’s and you have toons boosted to 570 I should be able to see you. On those weeks where my 550’s are boosted to 672 I understand not being able to see you. I don’t think it’s that crazy of an ask tbh.

It is because it punishes people for champing their characters. Instead of being rewarded for champing a mediocre character and getting to overpower other characters with them for a week, I now instead get hit by a bunch of 550 Steel Witches? Might as well softcap at that point. The boost is supposed to be a bonus/reward, not a punishment that appeases the 550 crowd and gives them easier queues. 

itsuka7 said:

I hear two 550 problems. Lack of hittable prey and god boosts.

The god boost will not change the available pool. If a 450 SC is boosted to 550, yours will be 650. If a 550 is unboosted, your will still be 550 and the other one will be 450. No competition. Boosts only make a difference if your opponents get to work with a 550 that you did not invest in. And of course, that makes that you cannot float without shields anymore, but I doubt the devs are going to want to support removing that last bit. Spending hp in pvp helps fund their salaries.

Specialization has its drawbacks, or maybe the very specific gamble that the chars that were picked for 550 would guarantee the top pvp spot for all eternity without having to shield much did not pay off. That is the risk of a niche strategy, that future game changes make it less advantageous. It is possible to ask that the clock be turned back so those 3 or 6 or 9 550’s can rule the rankings again, but I strongly suspect the devs are not going to listen. The boosts are a huge success, both in pvp and in pve, and have even brought back players to the game because their old 5* champed rosters are viable at times.

As for hittable prey, the mmr system never changed so this was a known risk. If the 550 guys go and sit in the same alliances and the same slices together and do not hit each other, doesn’t that make the problem a lot worse for them as they are locking out almost all viable prey? The game was not created with the idea that friends should not hit each other in pvp, or it would have made alliance mates invisible (other games do). The 550 habitat is small, a broad non hit policy does not seem to agree with it. Rethink the strategy first, maybe unfriend a little. I am not sure you can ask the devs to intervene if you keep insisting that you do not want to hit most of 550 players out there.

I wish I could like this post more than once. This sums it up well. 

illusionist_KA said:

jsmjsmjsm00 said:

Guy I am not missing the point, you are missing the point.

You aren't being victimized by God boosts. You are clearly advocating to just make things easier for you and the "veterans".

As I said before, people are playing their strongest teams. If those are boosted 5s, then you need to beat boosted 5s to climb. If this is a problem, then stop wasting skips on other teams just because you know them. Or do any of the several other things brought up so far to change how you play PvP. 

Saying "oh there are easier teams also climbing so I should be able to hit them every time" is not a valid complaint. You aren't entitled to everything because you think you've played the game long enough. 

WOW. you don't get it. JRYU and I are 550 rosters. We don't need grills, or seal, or even walrus teams. what we are asking is for MMR to be wide open.  come to s5 and see how often we hit 550 and boosted teams. there are no grills in s5. however,

what we are trying to say. for example. you get to 300 points...see 550 , 550 , 550, 550 ,550 and repeat.  regardless who those opponents are. But if you look up the leaderboard, all you see are supercharged prius rosters sitting at 870 to 1k unshielded. 

MMR needs to open up so we can see those up top and not the same people at the bottom. i would like to hit 1k points so i can get progression faster, but we are locked due to our roster and MMR. 

The problem to add, those who are on top of the leaderboard that we can't queue, that they can hit us from 0 to anything higher at any given time. we can't always retaliate because the points are not worth it.  the god boosts, exacerbated the problem. the basic rosters can get higher and bypass our mmr, all due to their roster not being in our MMR without boosts.  Boosts should be removed, or at least  increased by 25/50 levels only.  they shouldnt be able to punch above players who spent many years building their roster to 550. 

I do have 550, and i hit boosted rosters all the time. but the time spent hitting them, is getting worse and slower. I do not want to keep fighting PVE CN over and over again. it's getting stale and old.

PVP was not meant to be played with LINE or outside communication. you play to hit anyone at anytime.  that means i should see you and your 450 roster at any given moment. no grills , no cheat codes, no buddy buddy system.

SO if you want the boosts to stay, ask the devs if they can open up MMR so the 550 rosters can see the unshielded boosted players in the top of the leaderboard from 0. That will help the veteran players out so much. 

1) “The problem.. that they can hit us from 0 to anything higher at any given time” I can’t queue 550 rosters from 0 to anything whenever I want. 

2) “we can't always retaliate because the points are not worth it”. If they open up MMR and allow you to see weaker rosters without having to “break”, the points still won’t be worth it. So you’d be more or less in the same situation. 

In fact, if they open up MMR so everyone can hit everyone, then PVP as we know it would be over. I (and I’m sure others) would switch to wins as I can kill 2/3* rosters in one move. No more shields. Easy progression smacking around those baby rosters. MMR does serve a function. 

3) “they shouldnt be able to punch above players who spent many years building their roster to 550.” And I’d argue the devs shouldn’t take away boosts from players who spent many MANY years champing every single character in the game and building their roster evenly. 

Appeases the 550 crowd? GMAFB. Yes I have 550’s, I also have every 5* champed except Havok so spare me the “your fault for only concentrating on 3 characters” ****. Fact is my wide roster of champed 5’s are made less valuable than yours because it doesn’t matter if I use them or not my MMR is locked.

Daredevil217

I’m sure you knew that by 550ing you would be in 550 MMR, no?  You had to have known that once you got [insert meta here] to 550, your other characters would be obsolete (read: less valuable). This is why I hesitated becoming a 5* player at all. Because I knew once I jumped, my 4*s would be nothing more than champ reward factories. I don’t even read 4* power descriptions anymore sadly.

You feel your “wide roster” is less valuable than mine and I strongly disagree.  Your non-550’s perhaps. But my guess is that you can speed clear PVE faster than me and get way better rewards with meta 550s (650 on boost weeks) than I can. That’s the benefit. The drawback is less variety. Can’t have it all. Removing the variety that god boosts bring from people who chose variety ain’t it. That’s all I’m saying. 

StanleyBurrell

Daredevil217 said:

I’m sure you knew that by 550ing you would be in 550 MMR, no?  You had to have known that once you got [insert meta here] to 550, your other characters would be obsolete (read: less valuable). This is why I hesitated becoming a 5* player at all. Because I knew once I jumped, my 4*s would be nothing more than champ reward factories. I don’t even read 4* power descriptions anymore sadly.

You feel your “wide roster” is less valuable than mine and I strongly disagree.  Your non-550’s perhaps. But my guess is that you can speed clear PVE faster than me and get way better rewards with meta 550s (650 on boost weeks) than I can. That’s the benefit. The drawback is less variety. Can’t have it all. Removing the variety that god boosts bring from people who chose variety ain’t it. That’s all I’m saying. 

I get what you’re saying, I do. The way the game is designed means I may as well hoard for a better experience which blows. I still will champ em all cause I always have but the boost lists rarely mean anything to me which is disappointing.

Bad

That "can't have it all" is a good point.
By 550 leveling okoye, by joining a top alliance, by playing since the beginning, all that changes the way you play this game.
The rewards you are getting on all these factors allow you to champ all characters to 460 without any worries but limit you to play a very specific play.
In another gacha game that never wouldn't be happened as character's utility doesn't last for more than a few months.
But sadly to prey on less vet players who champed a less meta character with a lot of effort, just because that bad character got a god boost for a week for to see some play, is not a valid argument: it's still a bad character and your 550 meta not.
As I said, ask devs to implement some 550 bots help if your q's are too limited.
Or you can always try an alt account.

HoundofShadow

The main problem is not lack of opponents for them. It lack of non-ally opponents. Majority of their queues are their allies and some alliances are not limited to 20 members. I saw instances where an alliance can go as high as 100 or more (via Line). 

The easiest solution which will take effect immediately is to join other slices. Albert Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”  

DAZ0273

StanleyBurrell said:

DAZ0273 said:

You can see them once you break MMR. Just like they can see you when they break MMR. Otherwise everybody is fighting at their own base level boost or not.

In my experience this is inaccurate. I can be hit from below at 500 points by people I couldn’t  Q up when I’m above 1000.

Above 1000 means you have broken MMR, you might not be able to hit them because they are climbing and are worth too few points. No doubt the retal is worth peanuts because of how the points system works being a trade off of differential - there is a thread somewhere with a table that shows how the points you win works based on the players point value at time of battle - it also gets weird when you go over 1000 points I seem to remember. When players get that high it is well recorded on the forums that there is a short window where you can queue all sorts of strange teams you can never normally see but you also become a genuine 75 point target whereas at lower levels you don't lose the full points when hit. Now it could be that 550 MMR is broken, I can't say it isn't and I am also not saying that 550 rosters don't operate in a unique situation. Only the Devs can say for sure.

KGB

Here's an example of breaking MMR in the Vision PvP.

At just over 800 points about 1 hr to go (slice 5) I was hit by a 550 Steel/Witch team. Neither of those are boosted so this is a pure 550 team (I peeked at the players roster and they have at least 8 550's).

My roster has no characters over 350 and only my L330 Shang was boosted to 440 range. So clearly I *am* visible to 550 rosters once I break MMR. I won 2 more battles to get to 25 wins and shielded out since for this event MMR is lower than normal and I am not going to be able to climb higher than 800.

As an FYI, the retal was worth 68 points so based on my 800ish score they must have been well over 1200 points or more. Clearly they could not have gotten more than a handful of points for the win but also clearly they felt those points were worth since it since I would obviously not retaliate with my roster.

KGB