Marvel Puzzle Quest Developer Q&A September 2022 (9/16/22)

LakeStone

Hi Everyone –

Happy pre-anniversary month (otherwise known elsewhere as September )!

Thank you again to everyone that has provided so many great questions in our previous Developer Q&A's. Let’s roll this for another month.

And just to make note, here are some Q&A details to keep in mind.

• Any legitimate question is fair game, but keeping your question clear and concise will help. It's much easier to grasp the intent of a sentence or two.

• Let's keep this to a max one or two questions each so we can manage things easily and give everyone the ability to participate. Sorry to bold the request this time but we want to make sure the team has time to answer as many participants questions each month. If you have more questions, please save them for a future month.

• Please submit your question for this Q&A by Noon PST on September 21st.

• The team will review the questions and provide answers in the forums based on the collective questions from the community.  We will post the responses before EOD September 28.

Xax

Why were some PVE events retired, never to be seen again? It would be great to play some of the old content we haven't seen in years and add a little more variety back into the game that so many of us love playing. Is there any consideration of that happening? 

ThaRoadWarrior

I've found the concurrent PVE events to be a huge drag. Should we brace ourselves for more of that, or were those truly ad hoc hiccups?

umitch

Could we see 5* characters who don't currently have a 4* feeder with shards, retroactively get one?

Will new 3* characters feed 4*  with shards?

Thank you!

Bad

It's hard to ask new questions at this rate, so I will try with another version of my questions not answered.
New affiliations seems to enhance synergies and offer a fresh dimension to the battle. Are you going to add new pves or modes to showcase the new affiliation teams, or heroic modes for force us to play it and then we can have a solid grip of it?

SandKing

Any chance we could get a "key" characters feature? Basically a way to tag characters so they always appear at the top of the list when picking your characters for fights. I use some characters as counters for specific fights and its annoying having to play 'where's Waldo?', especially since their positioning in my roster will vary over time due to leveling different characters/weekly boosts.

Punter1

Having just opened 550 Tacos... any chance vault token opening could be improved?

skittledaddy

Anniversary is coming. Surely there will be a Fan Favorites store done like as in the past. Having the collective fanbase vote on the featured 5* characters often leads to disappointment. Instead of the past approach, would there ever be a possibility for each player to "build" their own featured store, by choosing their own three 5* characters to be included? Same pull rates; no changes to the chosen trio once you "lock them in" with your first pull; Anniversary season only. Heck, you could charge a premium CP price and I suspect many would still be interested.
I'm sure 9th Anniversary is too soon to implement, but could something like this be considered for the big 10-year celebration next year?

Notepaddy

I find the weekly boost list is sometimes lacking in synergy. Some characters only shine when paired with a certain partner. What do you think about a mechanic to let users apply a boost to their own pick? Perhaps a boost token that can be applied to our choice of character, locked to a single event per use? Small/Med/Large boosts. Make em rare, sell em, whatever!

WilliamK1983

At the beginning of September when 4* and 5* She-Hulk were released, there was a stealth edit to 3* She-Hulk.  I searched and searched and couldn't find any announced info on it, please correct me and point me in the right direction if I'm wrong.  Anyways, she changed from feeding a single 4*(Gwenpool) to feeding two 4*s, Gwenpool and She-Hulk.  There are 18 3* characters who only feed one 4*, will those 18 be getting the same rework to feed two 4*s? 

And what about 4*s who are fed from two 3*s.  For example, 4* Jean Grey is fed by 3* Angel and 3* Beast.  There are 5 pairs that fit into this category including the example above.  Will that be changed so 4*s without a 3* feeder finally get a 3* feeder?

Edit: since most of my question was answered with the reveal on 9-20, can you just elaborate as much as possible on future plans for feeders?  For example, what will be the pace of making changes?  Are specific characters prioritized over others?  Are some being used as placeholders to be changed at a later date(I'm looking at you glidey spidey and Reptil amongst others)?

Pottsie1980

Looking forward to the upcoming dead pool daily and really appreciate the reduced roster cost >300.
Are there any plans to have classic 5* stores to help those of us with ‘champ them all’ mentality? There are few chances to get many covers for individual characters once they leave latest

Waddles_Pines

Have you considered making focus groups to bounce ideas off of.  You could pull random sample of ppl from different levels of gameplay and get a more well rounded reaction about potential changes.

ThisisClemFandango

Hey guys

Granted this is probably going to be partly answered by the time but are you concerned that the 3 & 5 stars are going to be too similar? I read that the idea is to emulate strange/gambit but I don't want the game to become do I use (for example...or not) 3 star Omega Red or 5 star Omega Red that just has a new hat (malibu Stacy reference for my non nerd forumites)
How do you know subtle differences in powers (more damage, an extra stun on a 5 star ability etc) is enough to keep players engaged?
If you take Strange for example his only real difference is the eye and the ludicrous ap difference on his yellow.
Not trying to be pessimistic at all just wanted to know the thinking behind the 3 and 5 star move.

samael64

Regarding Milestones:
Any thoughts on either adding in-between Milestones to the current ones or adjusting the awards so that they make more sense for the effort involved?

I understand they need to be staggered and agree that each step in the progression do not need to be of equal value. It just seems like there is a lot of gap between some of the Milestones without an obvious corresponding increase in reward value.

Example:
Recently completed the 100k boosts Milestones and the next one is at 200k. I find it odd that 1 Apocalypse cover appears be equal in "value" (as it were) to 3 Cable covers, 3 Hulkbuster covers (shards), 2 Shuri covers (shards), 8 Supports, and 1.2K ISO-8.
The Taco Tokens negate each other.

To be fair, I don't have Apocalypse, so he may in deed really be that awesome and I just don't know it yet.

atomzed

It has been about 2 months since Broken Circle took over. Your honeymoon period is almost considered over

1) What were some of the most exciting moments thus far in this period of time? Why was it exciting?

2) What were some of the most difficult moments thus far? What went wrong and what did Broken Circle learn?

Hammer3001

1. Will all the new 3 & 5 Star characters be the same person; or will you occasionally mix it up?

2. Will you be doing any rewards changes to older characters to account for new characters like you do with 3-Star She-Hulk when you added 4-Star She-Hulk shards?

**Mod note: Removed additional questions. Please respect the 2-question limit. - fight4thedream

turbomoose

Are there any plans to allow iso surplus to be exchanged for HP or LTs 

a lot of veterans have over a billion spare ISO and it just racks up every month 

would be great if we could use it for something else 

leviticuschom

Very pleased to see the direction of MPQ since May, especially the quality of characters, their versatility, and the art. Keep up the great work! Please address at the iso desert and dilution soon. 

1. When will we see the first new support(s). How will they be acquired? Will there be any differences between new & old supports.

2. Thinking about making any changes to team-ups and their role in gameplay? Maybe standardizing return rates? generating iso8 from loans again? selecting specific powers to send? 

abenness

I would really like to see the alliance raid events get a re-run - Places of Power and Sinister 600. There was angst at the time when alliances didn’t know how to optimise their players in these, but they were very welcome as an un-timed alliance event with generous rewards - the type of event that is continually requested! What is the current position on these?

abenness

I want to spend my cp, but there has been no opportunity to pull covers of Apoc or BRB or Okoye since the Chinese New Year store in February (or Colossus, Wanda, Onslaught since way before then). To solve this, every 5* store could have 2 featured characters and 500 5* shards as the third “character”. Thoughts on this or any other options for growing 5* characters?

Mrcl25

First of all, I want to congratulate the new dev team. I see a lot of positive things already, and many more to expect for the future.

Now the questions:

1. After your first 3 clears in scl 10 pve, points reduce to half. Almost all nodes reach full points before the 24h mark, following a mathematical formula. However, some nodes are "broken" and don't follow that same formula. Some are full before they should, and others only at the 24h mark. That becomes more evident in 48h subs, but happen in several other nodes. When you are competing for top scl10 placement, every point counts, and pve becomes very complicated. You don't need only to be fast, you need to use spreadsheets to predict your initial and final clears sequence and timing, and those broken nodes make it even more complicated. If pve will keep being competitive, would you be willing to simplify things by making all nodes reach full points only at the 24h mark, or at least correct those nodes that have wrong timers? Perhaps also standardize node points across all events? And get rid of 48h subs, that make you have to wait until full points just for one more clear? It would be much better to have a real day off between two events than a 48h sub.

2. Would you consider rebalancing characters that have already been rebalanced before (by the previous dev team)?