Marvel Puzzle Quest Developer Q&A September 2022 Answers (9/28/22)
LakeStone
Posts: 1,377 Community Moderator
Hi Everyone -
Thank you again for all the fantastic questions...by the way my favorite pie is a pizza pie (just no pineapple on it). As always, thank you to James Finley (Game Director) and everyone at Broken Circle Studios for answering these community questions.
We hope you enjoy the read as we prep for the upcoming Anniversary, with the details for it coming later this week.
Question - Can you put a power in the game called "feels like a slap in the face"
Often you run special vaults or offers, for example Banner which was run after his PVP event. This is often done. Surely it makes more sense to have these offers run prior to a PVP event. When the rotation is about 2 years with all these characters I have never seen the reasoning why this is done so much? (Tony_Foot)
Answer - With regards to a power named "feels like a slap in the face", never say never. I never thought we'd have an ability called "Yeet" but here we are! As for offer and vault planning, those are activities that can and will benefit from more cohesive planning with the game content side. Agreed completely, and it's an overarching goal for those to walk hand in hand.
Question - 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? (Xax)
Answer - Without giving away too much right now, you can expect to see some of that retired content making its way back into the game soon. How soon is soon? Probably not as soon as this year because of Anniversary and Holiday content being the present focus.
Question - 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? (ThaRoadWarrior)
Answer - Those are rarely intentional, and usually a response to compensating for some error (like the Hunt running repeatedly for the Reptil release). Sometimes it's planned and due to some compression in the schedule (like the addition of 4* She-Hulk to celebrate their Disney+ show).
Question - 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? (umitch)
Answer - We're continuing to fill in the feeder gaps with plenty more updates on the way! This is inclusive of the new 3*s feeding 4*s, yes.
Question - 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? (Bad)
Answer - Affiliations open up a world of possibilities. Heroic modes and ability synergies are where we're starting, and supports are likely the next best avenue to explore what they can do. I don't know that we have any traction on new modes that focus on affiliations, but who knows where it will lead us!
Question - 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. (SandKing)
Answer - This is a cool idea! We have some QoL topics related to filtering and fast access to characters in your roster - will make sure this note is factored in. Thanks!
Question - Having just opened 550 Tacos... any chance vault token opening could be improved? (Punter1)
Answer - As a player who had to go through the same thing recently, we do need a better solution for this. When the systems were built, I don't think it was expected that players would hoard as much as they do. Since this is indeed the reality, the UI / UX should accommodate. UI infrastructure overhaul is still in its planning and approval phases, but rest assured that when we do move on improvements that this is something we're planning to address.
Question - 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? (skittledaddy)
Answer - This is a really interesting idea. Believe it or not, we're in the process of building what I've internally been calling "choose your own adventure" tech that will allow for players to make decisions on certain types of things. The 9th Anniversary stuff is more or less done and in the books, but Anniversary X could serve as a great venue for this!
Question - 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! (Notepaddy)
Answer - Wildcard boosts - awesome! The players have mused over boosted characters and our decisionmaking behind them. In truth, the tools do almost all of the work, though it would benefit greatly from a more cohesive and manual approach that worked in lockstep with event planning and offer planning (which we are inching towards, but we have to walk before we can run and have yet to master this huge game). In a previous answer to this I had mentioned we are working on some "choose your own adventure" tech which, until now, I hadn't even considered applying to boosts. You've opened my eyes and I thank you.
Question - Can you 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)? (WilliamK1983)
Answer - The goal is to make changes and then stop making changes. At least as much as is possible. What players witnessed in the recent Champion Rewards Update(s) is what might be considered "Phase 1" of a much grander and more comprehensive feeder update. Sometime very soon (we haven't locked in specific calendar dates, but when I say soon I do very much mean soon) we'll be rolling out more of these feeder updates. After we do it, the plan is to keep them as is and look to the future.
Question - 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. (Pottsie1980)
Answer - Classic 5*are in a bit of an awkward place, and the growing roster does grow the necessity to do something about them. That said, we don't feel that the issue is urgent just yet, and so our efforts are focused on improving QoL, economy, shaking up the meta, and rebuilding the game's MMR (yes, you heard right). All of this to say that I acknowledge that something should be done in the realm of classic 5*s, but that's a fight for a later date.
Question - 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. (Waddles_Pines)
Answer - Yes, we have considered this. My stance at present is to continue to work on improving the game's infrastructure to a point where it is more modernized and maintainable. What I'd hate to do is put together a group of players, ask for their feedback, and then have it seem like we aren't taking any of their suggestions because the game isn't adaptable enough.
Question - 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. (ThisIsClemFandago)
Answer - Honestly at this moment I'd take 1* Omega Red, but that's besides the question. When we talk about rarity internally, Magic: the Gathering invariably comes up. I don't think it's been a core philosophy since the outset, but a mentality we are aiming to adhere to strategic complexity. In a game like MtG, it's entirely possible to perform at a high level with a deck that consists almost entirely of basic cards (I'm looking at you, competitive Mono-Red). For many, many reasons this isn't not an apples-to-apples comparison with MPQ, but philosophically we want 3*s to be competitive yet lower complexity versions of their higher rarity counterparts. In the same way that a game can have any number of ways that X resources deals Y damage yet still possess enough variation, we believe that 3s / 5s can be different enough to matter.
Question - 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. (Samael64)
Answer - We'll be looking into making some improvements to milestones. Just have a few other systems to fix before we get there!
Question - 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? (atomized)
Answer - We've been at it for over 2 months! Does that mean the honeymoon is over already?
Most exciting moments? Engagement with the community and bringing new features, improvements, and changes to this game. Going from players to developers of MPQ has been a surreal experience, and I think a big part of that has been interacting with and watching the community's reaction to the choices we're making. We've ran development for plenty of other games, but the MPQ community is really what makes MPQ special.
Most difficult moments? Oof, where to start! The most difficult moments have sort of all been variations of the same thing: something not going according to plan. The difference between a successful event versus one that has all of its subchapters unlocked is like, one click. The number of time zones the game internally uses would give Dr. Strange a headache. And don't get me started about Taco Tokens. Part of this is to be expected; we're working on an infrastructure that we didn't build for a game that is rather complex under the hood. I think the players understand this. Part of it that is less understood is how much of the game isn't very testable. Our players are pretty savvy, and many of them are developers themselves. In the face of blaring issues, sometimes players will take to the forums and openly ask if we test at all, and if we did how could we not notice things that are so blatantly wrong. Well, it's difficult to express, but the bold summary is that some aspects of this game simply cannot be tested in an isolated environment. We test what we can and have internal and external teams responsible for that. Some things, however, don't surface for us until they surface for you. Day in and day out, this is the most difficult string of moments for us as developers on MPQ. What did the BCS team learn from this? That we need to fix it, and so we are.
Question - 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? (Hammer3001)
Answer - The default plan is for 3s and 5s to be the same character, but in different incarnations or iterations. That isn't a set rule though, and we'll deviate wherever it's fun to do so.
As for reward changes to older characters and reward changes, nothing is safe from us doing what we think is right for the game and a win for the players.
Question - 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. (turbomoose)
Answer - We are aware that ISO economy is in a weird place depending on where our players are in the game. No current plans for any sort of conversion. This is something we need to be careful and methodical about. Though the game's economy could very well improve from changes, to act too hasty on a direction could send it spiraling.
Question - 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? (leviticushom)
Answer - Thanks for the kudos; I'll pass it on to the team and it's always a joy to see your engagement with the community!
New supports? I have to be a little hand-wavey there. I can say that we haven't begun work on one yet. Part of this is because the last thing we want to do is just add more supports for the sake of adding supports. Supports are systemically flawed, so there's alot of fixing ahead of us. I can say that alot of the groundwork we're laying in the way of affiliations is directly tied to supports, but we have a long way to go.
No present plans on team-ups. That isn't to say that there are improvements to be made there, but rather that what's presently on deck is plenty of work for the team to tackle.
Question - 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)? (Mrcl25)
Answer - The congratulations are much appreciated; thank you!
A lot of this is an artifact of how parent events work with subs. Much of the time, the 48 hour or whatever reset nodes are parts of a completely different sub than the one that's currently being cleared. It's something that can be changed, but has knock on effects on progression and other points earnings. That is to say, it's something that can be fixed, but ends up being more complicated than just "switch the refresh on this/these nodes to 24h".
Rebalancing characters that have already been rebalanced? Absolutely. The goal is to make characters presently valuable and fun, and if that means multiple passes, then that's what we'll do.
Question - Not really a question maybe, but I just wanna put Orrgo the Unconquerable on the radar as a possible future character
(or any other of the Howling Commandos, really 
)
/edit: I just thought of a question: would you consider adding a UI option to reduce the amount of flashes during cascades/power firing? Especially if you're playing in a dark room, it's really straining on the eyes/brains. (DeNappa)
Answer - Awesome, and noted!
As for the UI option, that's a good idea and something we'll keep in mind when we get the UI / UX infrastructure overhaul underway.
Question - 1. About wave nodes
Is it possible to change it so it awards full points only upon completion of the final wave? Sometimes you get unlucky with enemy cascades (it's worse when ultron fighters are present) and by the time you get to the last wave you're low on health or the enemy has so much ap they can fire powers 3-4 times. I know bad rng happens sometimes but when that happens I would like the option of retreating and trying again like all normal nodes instead of losing out on a portion of the points.
2. About supports
Can we send our duplicate supports to Forge's workshop/Shuri's lab to break them apart into shards so we can rank up our favourite supports?
Thanks to the team for doing such a great job! (Bzhai)
Answer - Interesting note about wave nodes; will consider it.
As for supports, they are a sort of "dead-end" in the overall game's economy. We haven't yet decided on an improvement to the "convert them to Red-ISO" approach, but we do agree that the systems surrounding them need to be more fluid, joyful to use, and add at least a bit more player agency.
Question - Are there any plans to update the loading screen? Not a big priority but it would be nice to see a new one for Broken Circles time in charge now.
Carried over from the DDP revamp thread - will the new 3* get multiple rotations as essentials in Story events like the 4 and 5s do? Thanks! (DAZ0273)
Answer - Yep, we want to update the loading screen! At the very least, we want to rotate out the characters and do seasonal things. It's low priority, but I'm super pumped about it and there's something to be said about passion
Regarding the 3* getting multiple rotations as essential, that's the idea. There are lots of nuanced aspects of the game that we rely heavily on tooling to help us with. Despite the fact that 3* characters have indeed once been part of the normal content cadence of the game, the tools are presently less than helpful. For now these sorts inclusions are manual (read prone to error) and until we improve the tools or get really good at not forgetting anything, we're likely to need some time smoothing out the wrinkles.
Question - Can we get a quick claim button for bonus rewards instead of having them pop up on the screen all the time? Also, having the ability to disable pop-ups for deals would be great. Maybe reduce the size of the Campaign button on the homepage and put something like a treasure chest for unclaimed rewards, and a new button to show that there are new deals in the store. Because when I'm playing pve it's really annoying to have stuff always pop up on the screen when I'm trying to tap on a node and then inadvertently tap on the pop-up for a bonus reward. (Shardwick)
Answer - The dreaded "claim" button certainly has garnered mixed feelings among the community. I myself have suffered its wrath. QoL improvements would be nice there. As stated before, however, UI changes are presently difficult to enact, but we're doing what we can.
As for those popups, I think the real problem at work here is that data pushes are intrusive to players. We need to hunt that flow down and improve it. No easy task, but we're well aware of it. Players who reach out to me direct because they got bumped by one of these: I hear you, I'm sorry, I want to fix it.
Question - Can we start seeing more ways of earning 5 star shards like adding some in the Taco Vaults?
Are you open to reducing the 560HP cost of 20 shards for the 5 star characters? (NMAN0Z1)
Answer - I think something we've done that has been mutually appluaded is our introduction of richer rewards (in Boss events, for instance). Early theories were that these richer rewards were put in place to win over the community. I can't deny that a goal of ours is to make the players happy (I mean, isn't that what this is all about?), but more directly we are trying to solve a real problem. We don't think that MPQ gives players enough for their time, effort, and loyalty. We're on a steady campaign to improve that, and while I can't say that Taco Vaults are the venue, the players can expect to continue to see reward richness rise until we're happy with it. To answer your followup, broadly we're open to anything, but specifically we have our eyes on HP costs as a major spot for improvement in the game's overall economy.
Question - Any change of releasing MPQ on OSX? Alternatively, as M-series Macs support iOS apps natively, any chance of adding Mac support there? (Kwahder)
Answer - I'm a Mac user, would love this, and am pushing for it. It's lower priority, but I won't stop bringing it up until it's done or they kick me out of the room.
Question - I know you will give us MCU's releted charcters in the future because you are "forced" to do it. When is devs turn to give character which they want and WE want (omega red)? (Woiciu)
Answer - Believe it or not, we aren't forced. At the same time, we can't do anything we want. We have a terrific collaboration with Marvel, and part of being a good partner with them is working together on the lineup for MPQ. When BCS came onboard, alot of the planned roster for 2022 was already decided, and it's been an absolute blast bringing those characters to life. The first draft of 2023's is undergoing approvals. Players, I hope you're ready!
Question - Any chance you guys can figure out how to roll our Savory Taco tokens into our Sweet ones. Having hundreds if not thousands of tokens stranded is annoying and opening them all before Monday is hours worth of work.
Surely it's no more complicated than script that takes X tokens from the Savory vault and adds X number to the Sweet total because these 2 vaults contain the exact same thing (ie these are not limited character vaults).
Happy to wait a month or two for it to be completed as those tokens aren't going anywhere anytime soon. (KGB)
Answer - Fear not, wielders of Savory Taco tokens. You have not been forgotten - we have a developer working on getting you a working solution for this and repairing those unsightly post-event vaults.
Question - 1. Will you guys be adding new game modes or maybe new story events in campaign?
2. Will you guys start making more Events based on Marvel Comics and MCU Movies and would the characters that take place in the event be boosted? (MikeyMikeMike)
Answer - New game modes: very probably. New story events: count on it. New story events specifically for campaign? Haven't talked about it much.
More events based on Marvel Comics and MCU? Certainly, and yes it would make sense for characters featured there to be boosted.
Question - I really enjoyed the last boss event you designed, particularly the introduction of a new enemy type, the Shadow Monster minions, and how they were implemented in the boss node. There are still a lot of villains not in the game that I think would make awesome "Boss" battle villains such as Master Mold, Arcade, the Collector and the Progenitor, and I would be fine with them being NPCs. So my question is this: Going forward, do you plan to always use playable characters as the "Boss" for boss events or are you open to using non-playable characters like Galactus as well? (fight4thedream)
Answer - I think in the long term our goal is both. Some characters are just great at being a boss and a playable character. There are also some big threats that might really make sense as just a boss. The reason we've been leaning on characters as bosses is simple: we're new to managing the game and we wanted to bring fresh new content quickly. As our confidence grows and as we get a better lead on content, you can count on us to do bold things with our bosses and their mechanics.
Question - How do you feel about the overall in game resource economy? Any plans to make adjustments? Specifically, there are certain "walls" that player in different stages of play encounter, e.g. lack of Heroic Points in the early stages of play when you keep getting new characters without having the required slots for them, or the infamous "iso-8 drought" during the transition from 4* to 5* land. (Domitronas)
Answer - We're very aware of those economic hardships at various stages of play. It's on our radar and something we're being careful about tuning.
Question - Is there any chance that we will get some old school characters like Arcade, Arnim Zola, Chameleon, or some way back characters like Ka-Zar. (capt)
Answer - Yes
Question - Let's see...... Any updates coming for VIP and Daily Resupply? Playing 2500+ days and getting 500 iso is a bit on the lame side Any future improvements to address acquisition of classic 5 stars? Dilution gets worse and worse every day, the second a 5 star enters classic, you may never see them again. Maybe bring back Bonus heroes or give us more ways to earn shards? (DyingLegend)
Answer - VIP and Daily Resupply will be addressed, but no significant work has gone into them. As for the Classic 5* dilution question, I think that's answered a couple of times above.
Question - First question is on the design process. Do you say "We're going to make a 5* Howard the Duck" and go from there or does someone come up with a cool power set that gets applied to a character?
Second question, is it possible to have a vault that each player could select the three 5* that are in it? Or possibly improve the odds of drawing the selected characters? (Grizwald)
Answer - The character planning process starts really early and is very, very high level. We try and get an entire year's worth of characters pre-approved. We essentially populate the calendar with character names that are driven by ideas, passion, player interest, etc. We have backup plans in case the various parties involved need shifts or removals. In the early months of BCS getting started, I pitched an original take on Spider-Man that I was hoping would be a 2022 MPQ Original. I was reminded that we have lots of Spider-People. I tell you this anecdote to confirm that *sometimes* the origination of a character in the lineup is simply one of us has an idea and really wants it to see the light of day. I also tell you this anecdote to share just how fluid and flexible we need to be, as a lot of things need to go right for a character to stay on the list. And just because it's a "no" now doesn't mean it's a "no forever." From there, we try to balance two impossible tasks: do service to character's identity whilst giving them a unique and meaningful voice in MPQ. Specifics on those challenges are brought up during our dev blogs, so keep your eyes peeled for those!
As for your idea of players choosing the contents of a vault to some degree, I answered earlier in this post that we're working on some tech right now that might be great for that in the future!
Question - While I appreciate your speedy responses whenever something has gone wrong, it has been happening a lot. Is this due Frankenstein code, that you're getting used to/plans to fix?
Is there one thing that drives you crazy in the game that you want to fix/change but you can't justify the time needed? (Omegased)
Answer - Typically there are two culprits involved when something goes wrong in MPQ. Either we're doing something new and couldn't test every aspect of it in isolation (the new DDQs and the Taco Tokens are an example), or we just goofed (like with Reptil's debut event) and also couldn't test it very well. What are we doing to fix it? We have it on our nearterm roadmap to improve the overall testability in the game, thereby allowing us to review all aspects of the game prior to them going out to the players.
A question that this probably raises is why do these issues occur with greater prevalence and frequency following the developer change? Quite simply, we do not yet have years of muscle memory, instinct, and pure mastery of the game. We'll get there, and until we do are ever grateful for the MPQ community's stalwart understanding.
Question - 1) What made you want to change some important words used in the game? For exanple, increase by x to empower.
2) Currently, it's not easy to tell whether power/match damage boosts can stack with one another, or the game simply chooses the one that gives the highest damage boost. The only way to tell it is via trial and error. Are there any rules of thumbs to determine this, or how do you plan to simplify this? (HoundofShadow)
Answer - Over the years, MPQ has suffered from lacking a core lexicon that standardizes its mechanics so that they can be definitively communicated and understood. This lexicon has more or less been built, and at this point it is a matter of us updating the text for all of the character abilities. Rebalances serve as the most logical timeframe for this (we have the files open already), but if a more expedient and sensical window opens up we'll take it.
Question - Why does every 5 Star have different Health and Match Damage "progression tiers"? Seems like it would be easier for Users to understand (and easier for the devs to maintain) to have them share from a smaller set of progressions like the other rarity tiers do.
Rambling: 2/3rds of the 5 Stars are not viable for top end play almost just because of this, and it get worse when newly released 5 Stars have increasingly higher Health and Match Damage. It's so bad there are several early era 5 Stars whose Level 450 Health & Match Damage are lower than newly released ones halfway to Level 450. Some are different by only like 30-100 in Health. Some of this is from back when 5 Stars were becoming established and less frequently released and had only about 8 to 10 in number. But now with 70+ 5 Stars, this just makes things clunky and confusing (and drives my OCD a bit crazy I'll admit). Invisible Woman and Reptil have the same Match Damage. Why can't 5 Stars? If the intent is to have 5 Stars feel special/different from the others, at least limit the amount of Health Tiers to 12 or 15 like the other tiers, and if there is still a desire to have different Match Damage from other 5 Stars, limit that to only about 3 to 5 Match Damage Tiers. The differences would be the starting/final values for whatever Color1 thru Color6 and Crit % would be. This would allow some diversity without the wild swings we currently have and provide another thematic element for character design. Could even name the Match Damage tiers to things like "Offensive Match Damage", "Protector Match Damage", "Support Match Damage", etc. The struggle is real to get certain team combinations where a specific character tanks one color over another (COUGH Thorkoye COUGH). A system like this could make that more intentional and not get into a situation where I accidentally leveled a character 1 level too high and broke a meta team. Leveling up a character should never feel like a "mistake". Example = My Okoye, Kitty, Polaris team is broken because I leveled up Polaris 1 or 2 levels too high and now she tanks Blue. Don't know how many levels I need for either Kitty or Okoye to tank Blue again, but it will take a long time due to 5 Star scarcity and Blue being Polaris's Color1 for Match Damage.
Much older example from Back in the Day = You could break the Charlie's Angels winfinite team by leveling up 4 Star Professor X too high and gain a color other than Purple from the 5 Star cascades of 3 Star Black Widow's Purple. Perhaps both bad examples as they straddle rarities (and therefore Match Damage tiers), but the concept still stands = Getting Okoye to tank Red & Yellow for Thor.
It's become what I call the "Dragonball Z effect" = when a new character was introduced, to show off their power they totally trounced the character that was currently established as the strongest. Do that 4-5 times, and suddenly most of the characters are now too weak to do anything and are nothing more than a Greek Chorus commenting from the sidelines. (TheViceroyReturns)
Answer - This is because of a couple different changes in 5-Star design philosophy that haven't yet been combined into one cohesive thing. At first, 5-Stars were designed to be one of three "types"; offensive, neutral, and defensive. These would give boosts to match damage, health, or ability effects at the cost of other areas. The first half dozen or so followed this pattern depending on the character. From there till more recently, that was left off to create characters on a more generational basis where the character's power budgets went up over time. As of Kamala Khan however, we've halted this increase and are looking to get characters rebalanced at this level.
Question - First off I’d like to thank all at BC for the design thought and great changes that you’ve brought to the game. I can easily forgive a few speed bumps for all the good that’s come from them. Keep up the good work!
1) Could you please go into some detail on how the maths for Chasm’s black power works? From the power description it isn’t all that obvious, but after a little testing I think I’ve settled on the following: Self damage to Chasm = Chasms match damage x3 of friendly colour being drained + small bonus damage. Damage to front enemy = Chasms match damage x3 in enemy colour being drained + small bonus damage.
I’ve noticed when the enemy team has no AP and without any damage boosters on either team (E.g. Okoye), strike or protect tiles on the board I’m getting wildly inconsistent results for the damage dealt this way though. Sometimes the damage to each team is identical (though rarely) but other times my Chasm takes maybe 3x the damage that the enemy takes. Sometimes the enemy takes slightly more than Chasm. The numbers can fall anywhere in between that range. How is the game choosing which enemy colour to base the damage on and is this working as you intend?
I absolutely love Chasms design, but would prefer to be able to predict a little better what happens when using him. I’ve got a number of screenshots if they’d be of any interest. Many thanks in advance (Gymp28)
Answer - Thanks for the praise and the patience when we don't stick the landing! I'll tell you what; I'll arrange for a developer blog post that covers Chasm's engineering. I'll request that the lead engineer behind Chasm go into detail on the specific algorithms involved, challenges encountered, and even go into detail on how those infamous Chasm launch bugs came to be and were corrected. How does that sound?
Question - As mentioned chasm usually takes more damage than the enemy, at best it takes the same. Also sometimes the enemy takes the passive damage at the start of their turn. Finally if the enemy ends their turn making a match and chasm dies and there is a cascade, that cascade belongs to AI and it damages chasm's partner which can be really dangerous for the player given that chasm needs alive partners. Chasm is already meta and these issues don't benefit him. (Bad)
Answer - Chasm is one of the more polarizing characters recently released, and for good reason. Whilst designing and developing them, the words "you either love him or you don't" were said alot. Some players swear by Chasm, and others loathe Chasm. As for whether or not Chasm needs to be looked at, we're still looking to gather more data so we can take into account all of the voices and all of the matches to date.
Question - Hope this hasn't asked before, but one of the major annoyances is the slow special tile generation, especially at the beginning of the match. It has been shown that the first time you run the game after a reboot of your ios device, special tiles generate quite a lot faster.
Are there any plans to fix this and run the game a little bit more smoothly in general? The Kaecilius boss matches feel a lot faster, and the often heard argument that this is because the match damage needs to be calculated doesn't make any sense, we're not talking about complexity arithmetic operations here. (GammernonTheGatherer)
Answer - I literally spoke with our head of feature planning today on this subject. Speedier play, banner time reduction, and QoL options to control what you see and for how long are planned and on the roadmap. If all goes according to plan you'll be seeing these land next year.
Question - Will Gorgon ever be released as a playable character? (Ptahhotep)
Answer - We talk about this a lot. Answer? Probably. Maybe we should let the community decide?
Question - 1. Can we expect the new 3* releases to "double-feed" 4* characters like some do today? Or will some only feed one 4* upon release?
2. The updates to DPDQ are great to see! Were adding the Classic Legend tokens or 5* shards considered for the refresh? If so, any insights into why they didn't make the cut and would you revisit this in a future update to DPDQ? (First311)
Answer - 1. Variable. When it comes to feeders, we make judgment calls each time.
2. While not an official announcement, one of the reasons the DDQs were updated as they are is to allow us to flex on rewards based on a variety of factors. While the reward structure today is locked in, it may be subject to change to incorporate some of the reward types you describe (again, not an announcement, but be on the lookout).
Question - hi, thanks for bringing the Q&A back again. I'm reposting a question i asked back in July that wasn't answered.
1) can you incorporate a "shard bank" into the game please? Meaning, if we don't want shards for a certain character, we can move or transfer them to a bank to be used for a character we like. Like everyone else, I have 550 okoye and a few other 550 characters, I have 2500 shards sitting wasting space. I would like move that to a bank and use it for another character as we see fit. Creating or building a duplicate is pointless, because of roster slot cost and that a low level 5* does nothing for a 550 player. Or for the "choose your adventure " shard bundle, move to a bank and not be forced to use it on characters we don't use at that moment. At least, give us option to apply shards to more than one character rather then be forced to use one. This would be a good replacement for bonus heroes since shards are horrible and have a painful drop*rate. This question and request have been in Suggestions and feedback for over a year.
2) any immediate feedback regarding dilution in the vaults and how the Classic Legend tokens will be incorporated into the game and the vault? (illusionist_KA)
Answer - Sorry for not getting to your question earlier, and appreciate the repost! The bank idea is an interesting one. I don't have a definitive answer as to whether or not we'll build it as you've described, but certainly noted.
As for the feedback on Classic 5* dilution, as stated previously in this post it is something we think needs to be addressed, but hasn't reached a state that is pressing enough to shake up the current priorities.
Apologies: I do hate giving answers that are non-answers (and I know some players do too). As soon as we have something conrete on these matters, you can expect something big and official to be announced.
Question - A lot of players get excited for the anniversary fan favorite store. But frequently this store will include meta characters that more and more players have already built to 550 (eg Okoye, Apocalypse, maybe now Shang Chi.) The Chinese New Year “Good Fortune” store allowed those players to swap covers for 550 toons to others in the store. Will this be offered again, for any other store? (Ulik)
Answer - I don't have an answer for this (sorry), but I have passed along this inquiry to our store designers and implementers.
Question - I noticed you took the support tokens from the taco vault. Are you planning on giving us another way to get supports? (Daddy_o2541)
Answer - We're experimenting with the contents of the Taco Vaults to make them richer and more interesting in general. I wouldn't consider absence of support tokens to be a sign of something deeper or systemic.
Question - 1. A small visual change to the icons of played nodes in PVE would be very helpful. Instead of Yellow for "has prizes remaining" and green for "played all the way through" (and red for "can't be played again"), it would be really great if the yellow icon had a number in it - either the number of prizes left or the number of times you've played. Either way, it would make it easier to know which nodes you've played how many times.
2. Given the volume of 4* and 5* covers, can you consider a new token (along the lines of mighty tokens and classic LT) that would allow the player to identify the YEAR of covers they would like to pull from. This would allow players growing their roster to focus on a year at a time. (nbperp)
Answer - 1. I recall having this same problem and have to coach new players through it all the time.
2. This is rooted in Classic 5* pack dilution. It's on our radar, but not something we are pressingly addressing at the moment.
Question - Would you consider running a contest in which the winner gets to help design their favorite character? (Godzillafan67)
Answer - Personally I think this is awesome, and YES we do read all of the posts, reddit and discord fan designs (you all are brilliant, by the way). Like I alluded to previously, there are several parties involved with decision making, but I for one like the idea and would like to see it take root in some fashion.
Question - There are a few pvp events that have special conditions restricting the use of part of your roster. One of them was an event called "Evergreen" or something like that, where you could only use characters that had green powers and tiles falling had an increased chance of being green. That was a pretty cool event, I remember using Thor/Storm/Chavez for some endless cascades. I was expecting others like that with other colors, but they never came. Are you considering doing other pvp events with special conditions like this? Feels like even in off season all we have now are the boring regular events. (Bubba3210)
Answer - Have you been reading our studio-internal e-mails?
Question - 1. What do you like doing in your spare time when you're not developing games?
2. Favorite pie? (killaKlown)
Answer - Personally? I like reading comics. I'm so busy these days and apps like Marvel Unlimited have made it so easy to carry a collection around with you. And no, I don't exclusively read Marvel. I'm a huge fan of Image comics as well, and I'll always be a sucker for Batman.
Banana Cream Pie. Final Answer.
Thank you again for all the fantastic questions...by the way my favorite pie is a pizza pie (just no pineapple on it). As always, thank you to James Finley (Game Director) and everyone at Broken Circle Studios for answering these community questions.
We hope you enjoy the read as we prep for the upcoming Anniversary, with the details for it coming later this week.
And for my boilerplate line here, I (Lakestone) apologize for any weird formatting, condensing, typos or such as I put this up in the forums today.
Thanks again everyone!
Question - Can you put a power in the game called "feels like a slap in the face"
Often you run special vaults or offers, for example Banner which was run after his PVP event. This is often done. Surely it makes more sense to have these offers run prior to a PVP event. When the rotation is about 2 years with all these characters I have never seen the reasoning why this is done so much? (Tony_Foot)
Answer - With regards to a power named "feels like a slap in the face", never say never. I never thought we'd have an ability called "Yeet" but here we are! As for offer and vault planning, those are activities that can and will benefit from more cohesive planning with the game content side. Agreed completely, and it's an overarching goal for those to walk hand in hand.
Question - 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? (Xax)
Answer - Without giving away too much right now, you can expect to see some of that retired content making its way back into the game soon. How soon is soon? Probably not as soon as this year because of Anniversary and Holiday content being the present focus.
Question - 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? (ThaRoadWarrior)
Answer - Those are rarely intentional, and usually a response to compensating for some error (like the Hunt running repeatedly for the Reptil release). Sometimes it's planned and due to some compression in the schedule (like the addition of 4* She-Hulk to celebrate their Disney+ show).
Question - 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? (umitch)
Answer - We're continuing to fill in the feeder gaps with plenty more updates on the way! This is inclusive of the new 3*s feeding 4*s, yes.
Question - 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? (Bad)
Answer - Affiliations open up a world of possibilities. Heroic modes and ability synergies are where we're starting, and supports are likely the next best avenue to explore what they can do. I don't know that we have any traction on new modes that focus on affiliations, but who knows where it will lead us!
Question - 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. (SandKing)
Answer - This is a cool idea! We have some QoL topics related to filtering and fast access to characters in your roster - will make sure this note is factored in. Thanks!
Question - Having just opened 550 Tacos... any chance vault token opening could be improved? (Punter1)
Answer - As a player who had to go through the same thing recently, we do need a better solution for this. When the systems were built, I don't think it was expected that players would hoard as much as they do. Since this is indeed the reality, the UI / UX should accommodate. UI infrastructure overhaul is still in its planning and approval phases, but rest assured that when we do move on improvements that this is something we're planning to address.
Question - 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? (skittledaddy)
Answer - This is a really interesting idea. Believe it or not, we're in the process of building what I've internally been calling "choose your own adventure" tech that will allow for players to make decisions on certain types of things. The 9th Anniversary stuff is more or less done and in the books, but Anniversary X could serve as a great venue for this!
Question - 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! (Notepaddy)
Answer - Wildcard boosts - awesome! The players have mused over boosted characters and our decisionmaking behind them. In truth, the tools do almost all of the work, though it would benefit greatly from a more cohesive and manual approach that worked in lockstep with event planning and offer planning (which we are inching towards, but we have to walk before we can run and have yet to master this huge game). In a previous answer to this I had mentioned we are working on some "choose your own adventure" tech which, until now, I hadn't even considered applying to boosts. You've opened my eyes and I thank you.
Question - Can you 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)? (WilliamK1983)
Answer - The goal is to make changes and then stop making changes. At least as much as is possible. What players witnessed in the recent Champion Rewards Update(s) is what might be considered "Phase 1" of a much grander and more comprehensive feeder update. Sometime very soon (we haven't locked in specific calendar dates, but when I say soon I do very much mean soon) we'll be rolling out more of these feeder updates. After we do it, the plan is to keep them as is and look to the future.
Question - 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. (Pottsie1980)
Answer - Classic 5*are in a bit of an awkward place, and the growing roster does grow the necessity to do something about them. That said, we don't feel that the issue is urgent just yet, and so our efforts are focused on improving QoL, economy, shaking up the meta, and rebuilding the game's MMR (yes, you heard right). All of this to say that I acknowledge that something should be done in the realm of classic 5*s, but that's a fight for a later date.
Question - 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. (Waddles_Pines)
Answer - Yes, we have considered this. My stance at present is to continue to work on improving the game's infrastructure to a point where it is more modernized and maintainable. What I'd hate to do is put together a group of players, ask for their feedback, and then have it seem like we aren't taking any of their suggestions because the game isn't adaptable enough.
Question - 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. (ThisIsClemFandago)
Answer - Honestly at this moment I'd take 1* Omega Red, but that's besides the question. When we talk about rarity internally, Magic: the Gathering invariably comes up. I don't think it's been a core philosophy since the outset, but a mentality we are aiming to adhere to strategic complexity. In a game like MtG, it's entirely possible to perform at a high level with a deck that consists almost entirely of basic cards (I'm looking at you, competitive Mono-Red). For many, many reasons this isn't not an apples-to-apples comparison with MPQ, but philosophically we want 3*s to be competitive yet lower complexity versions of their higher rarity counterparts. In the same way that a game can have any number of ways that X resources deals Y damage yet still possess enough variation, we believe that 3s / 5s can be different enough to matter.
Question - 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. (Samael64)
Answer - We'll be looking into making some improvements to milestones. Just have a few other systems to fix before we get there!
Question - 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? (atomized)
Answer - We've been at it for over 2 months! Does that mean the honeymoon is over already?
Most exciting moments? Engagement with the community and bringing new features, improvements, and changes to this game. Going from players to developers of MPQ has been a surreal experience, and I think a big part of that has been interacting with and watching the community's reaction to the choices we're making. We've ran development for plenty of other games, but the MPQ community is really what makes MPQ special.
Most difficult moments? Oof, where to start! The most difficult moments have sort of all been variations of the same thing: something not going according to plan. The difference between a successful event versus one that has all of its subchapters unlocked is like, one click. The number of time zones the game internally uses would give Dr. Strange a headache. And don't get me started about Taco Tokens. Part of this is to be expected; we're working on an infrastructure that we didn't build for a game that is rather complex under the hood. I think the players understand this. Part of it that is less understood is how much of the game isn't very testable. Our players are pretty savvy, and many of them are developers themselves. In the face of blaring issues, sometimes players will take to the forums and openly ask if we test at all, and if we did how could we not notice things that are so blatantly wrong. Well, it's difficult to express, but the bold summary is that some aspects of this game simply cannot be tested in an isolated environment. We test what we can and have internal and external teams responsible for that. Some things, however, don't surface for us until they surface for you. Day in and day out, this is the most difficult string of moments for us as developers on MPQ. What did the BCS team learn from this? That we need to fix it, and so we are.
Question - 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? (Hammer3001)
Answer - The default plan is for 3s and 5s to be the same character, but in different incarnations or iterations. That isn't a set rule though, and we'll deviate wherever it's fun to do so.
As for reward changes to older characters and reward changes, nothing is safe from us doing what we think is right for the game and a win for the players.
Question - 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. (turbomoose)
Answer - We are aware that ISO economy is in a weird place depending on where our players are in the game. No current plans for any sort of conversion. This is something we need to be careful and methodical about. Though the game's economy could very well improve from changes, to act too hasty on a direction could send it spiraling.
Question - 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? (leviticushom)
Answer - Thanks for the kudos; I'll pass it on to the team and it's always a joy to see your engagement with the community!
New supports? I have to be a little hand-wavey there. I can say that we haven't begun work on one yet. Part of this is because the last thing we want to do is just add more supports for the sake of adding supports. Supports are systemically flawed, so there's alot of fixing ahead of us. I can say that alot of the groundwork we're laying in the way of affiliations is directly tied to supports, but we have a long way to go.
No present plans on team-ups. That isn't to say that there are improvements to be made there, but rather that what's presently on deck is plenty of work for the team to tackle.
Question - 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)? (Mrcl25)
Answer - The congratulations are much appreciated; thank you!
A lot of this is an artifact of how parent events work with subs. Much of the time, the 48 hour or whatever reset nodes are parts of a completely different sub than the one that's currently being cleared. It's something that can be changed, but has knock on effects on progression and other points earnings. That is to say, it's something that can be fixed, but ends up being more complicated than just "switch the refresh on this/these nodes to 24h".
Rebalancing characters that have already been rebalanced? Absolutely. The goal is to make characters presently valuable and fun, and if that means multiple passes, then that's what we'll do.
Question - Not really a question maybe, but I just wanna put Orrgo the Unconquerable on the radar as a possible future character
(or any other of the Howling Commandos, really )
/edit: I just thought of a question: would you consider adding a UI option to reduce the amount of flashes during cascades/power firing? Especially if you're playing in a dark room, it's really straining on the eyes/brains. (DeNappa)Answer - Awesome, and noted!
As for the UI option, that's a good idea and something we'll keep in mind when we get the UI / UX infrastructure overhaul underway.
Question - 1. About wave nodes
Is it possible to change it so it awards full points only upon completion of the final wave? Sometimes you get unlucky with enemy cascades (it's worse when ultron fighters are present) and by the time you get to the last wave you're low on health or the enemy has so much ap they can fire powers 3-4 times. I know bad rng happens sometimes but when that happens I would like the option of retreating and trying again like all normal nodes instead of losing out on a portion of the points.
2. About supports
Can we send our duplicate supports to Forge's workshop/Shuri's lab to break them apart into shards so we can rank up our favourite supports?
Thanks to the team for doing such a great job! (Bzhai)
Answer - Interesting note about wave nodes; will consider it.
As for supports, they are a sort of "dead-end" in the overall game's economy. We haven't yet decided on an improvement to the "convert them to Red-ISO" approach, but we do agree that the systems surrounding them need to be more fluid, joyful to use, and add at least a bit more player agency.
Question - Are there any plans to update the loading screen? Not a big priority but it would be nice to see a new one for Broken Circles time in charge now.
Carried over from the DDP revamp thread - will the new 3* get multiple rotations as essentials in Story events like the 4 and 5s do? Thanks! (DAZ0273)
Answer - Yep, we want to update the loading screen! At the very least, we want to rotate out the characters and do seasonal things. It's low priority, but I'm super pumped about it and there's something to be said about passion
Regarding the 3* getting multiple rotations as essential, that's the idea. There are lots of nuanced aspects of the game that we rely heavily on tooling to help us with. Despite the fact that 3* characters have indeed once been part of the normal content cadence of the game, the tools are presently less than helpful. For now these sorts inclusions are manual (read prone to error) and until we improve the tools or get really good at not forgetting anything, we're likely to need some time smoothing out the wrinkles.
Question - Can we get a quick claim button for bonus rewards instead of having them pop up on the screen all the time? Also, having the ability to disable pop-ups for deals would be great. Maybe reduce the size of the Campaign button on the homepage and put something like a treasure chest for unclaimed rewards, and a new button to show that there are new deals in the store. Because when I'm playing pve it's really annoying to have stuff always pop up on the screen when I'm trying to tap on a node and then inadvertently tap on the pop-up for a bonus reward. (Shardwick)
Answer - The dreaded "claim" button certainly has garnered mixed feelings among the community. I myself have suffered its wrath. QoL improvements would be nice there. As stated before, however, UI changes are presently difficult to enact, but we're doing what we can.
As for those popups, I think the real problem at work here is that data pushes are intrusive to players. We need to hunt that flow down and improve it. No easy task, but we're well aware of it. Players who reach out to me direct because they got bumped by one of these: I hear you, I'm sorry, I want to fix it.
Question - Can we start seeing more ways of earning 5 star shards like adding some in the Taco Vaults?
Are you open to reducing the 560HP cost of 20 shards for the 5 star characters? (NMAN0Z1)
Answer - I think something we've done that has been mutually appluaded is our introduction of richer rewards (in Boss events, for instance). Early theories were that these richer rewards were put in place to win over the community. I can't deny that a goal of ours is to make the players happy (I mean, isn't that what this is all about?), but more directly we are trying to solve a real problem. We don't think that MPQ gives players enough for their time, effort, and loyalty. We're on a steady campaign to improve that, and while I can't say that Taco Vaults are the venue, the players can expect to continue to see reward richness rise until we're happy with it. To answer your followup, broadly we're open to anything, but specifically we have our eyes on HP costs as a major spot for improvement in the game's overall economy.
Question - Any change of releasing MPQ on OSX? Alternatively, as M-series Macs support iOS apps natively, any chance of adding Mac support there? (Kwahder)
Answer - I'm a Mac user, would love this, and am pushing for it. It's lower priority, but I won't stop bringing it up until it's done or they kick me out of the room.
Question - I know you will give us MCU's releted charcters in the future because you are "forced" to do it. When is devs turn to give character which they want and WE want (omega red)? (Woiciu)
Answer - Believe it or not, we aren't forced. At the same time, we can't do anything we want. We have a terrific collaboration with Marvel, and part of being a good partner with them is working together on the lineup for MPQ. When BCS came onboard, alot of the planned roster for 2022 was already decided, and it's been an absolute blast bringing those characters to life. The first draft of 2023's is undergoing approvals. Players, I hope you're ready!
Question - Any chance you guys can figure out how to roll our Savory Taco tokens into our Sweet ones. Having hundreds if not thousands of tokens stranded is annoying and opening them all before Monday is hours worth of work.
Surely it's no more complicated than script that takes X tokens from the Savory vault and adds X number to the Sweet total because these 2 vaults contain the exact same thing (ie these are not limited character vaults).
Happy to wait a month or two for it to be completed as those tokens aren't going anywhere anytime soon. (KGB)
Answer - Fear not, wielders of Savory Taco tokens. You have not been forgotten - we have a developer working on getting you a working solution for this and repairing those unsightly post-event vaults.
Question - 1. Will you guys be adding new game modes or maybe new story events in campaign?
2. Will you guys start making more Events based on Marvel Comics and MCU Movies and would the characters that take place in the event be boosted? (MikeyMikeMike)
Answer - New game modes: very probably. New story events: count on it. New story events specifically for campaign? Haven't talked about it much.
More events based on Marvel Comics and MCU? Certainly, and yes it would make sense for characters featured there to be boosted.
Question - I really enjoyed the last boss event you designed, particularly the introduction of a new enemy type, the Shadow Monster minions, and how they were implemented in the boss node. There are still a lot of villains not in the game that I think would make awesome "Boss" battle villains such as Master Mold, Arcade, the Collector and the Progenitor, and I would be fine with them being NPCs. So my question is this: Going forward, do you plan to always use playable characters as the "Boss" for boss events or are you open to using non-playable characters like Galactus as well? (fight4thedream)
Answer - I think in the long term our goal is both. Some characters are just great at being a boss and a playable character. There are also some big threats that might really make sense as just a boss. The reason we've been leaning on characters as bosses is simple: we're new to managing the game and we wanted to bring fresh new content quickly. As our confidence grows and as we get a better lead on content, you can count on us to do bold things with our bosses and their mechanics.
Question - How do you feel about the overall in game resource economy? Any plans to make adjustments? Specifically, there are certain "walls" that player in different stages of play encounter, e.g. lack of Heroic Points in the early stages of play when you keep getting new characters without having the required slots for them, or the infamous "iso-8 drought" during the transition from 4* to 5* land. (Domitronas)
Answer - We're very aware of those economic hardships at various stages of play. It's on our radar and something we're being careful about tuning.
Question - Is there any chance that we will get some old school characters like Arcade, Arnim Zola, Chameleon, or some way back characters like Ka-Zar. (capt)
Answer - Yes
Question - Let's see...... Any updates coming for VIP and Daily Resupply? Playing 2500+ days and getting 500 iso is a bit on the lame side Any future improvements to address acquisition of classic 5 stars? Dilution gets worse and worse every day, the second a 5 star enters classic, you may never see them again. Maybe bring back Bonus heroes or give us more ways to earn shards? (DyingLegend)
Answer - VIP and Daily Resupply will be addressed, but no significant work has gone into them. As for the Classic 5* dilution question, I think that's answered a couple of times above.
Question - First question is on the design process. Do you say "We're going to make a 5* Howard the Duck" and go from there or does someone come up with a cool power set that gets applied to a character?
Second question, is it possible to have a vault that each player could select the three 5* that are in it? Or possibly improve the odds of drawing the selected characters? (Grizwald)
Answer - The character planning process starts really early and is very, very high level. We try and get an entire year's worth of characters pre-approved. We essentially populate the calendar with character names that are driven by ideas, passion, player interest, etc. We have backup plans in case the various parties involved need shifts or removals. In the early months of BCS getting started, I pitched an original take on Spider-Man that I was hoping would be a 2022 MPQ Original. I was reminded that we have lots of Spider-People. I tell you this anecdote to confirm that *sometimes* the origination of a character in the lineup is simply one of us has an idea and really wants it to see the light of day. I also tell you this anecdote to share just how fluid and flexible we need to be, as a lot of things need to go right for a character to stay on the list. And just because it's a "no" now doesn't mean it's a "no forever." From there, we try to balance two impossible tasks: do service to character's identity whilst giving them a unique and meaningful voice in MPQ. Specifics on those challenges are brought up during our dev blogs, so keep your eyes peeled for those!
As for your idea of players choosing the contents of a vault to some degree, I answered earlier in this post that we're working on some tech right now that might be great for that in the future!
Question - While I appreciate your speedy responses whenever something has gone wrong, it has been happening a lot. Is this due Frankenstein code, that you're getting used to/plans to fix?
Is there one thing that drives you crazy in the game that you want to fix/change but you can't justify the time needed? (Omegased)
Answer - Typically there are two culprits involved when something goes wrong in MPQ. Either we're doing something new and couldn't test every aspect of it in isolation (the new DDQs and the Taco Tokens are an example), or we just goofed (like with Reptil's debut event) and also couldn't test it very well. What are we doing to fix it? We have it on our nearterm roadmap to improve the overall testability in the game, thereby allowing us to review all aspects of the game prior to them going out to the players.
A question that this probably raises is why do these issues occur with greater prevalence and frequency following the developer change? Quite simply, we do not yet have years of muscle memory, instinct, and pure mastery of the game. We'll get there, and until we do are ever grateful for the MPQ community's stalwart understanding.
Question - 1) What made you want to change some important words used in the game? For exanple, increase by x to empower.
2) Currently, it's not easy to tell whether power/match damage boosts can stack with one another, or the game simply chooses the one that gives the highest damage boost. The only way to tell it is via trial and error. Are there any rules of thumbs to determine this, or how do you plan to simplify this? (HoundofShadow)
Answer - Over the years, MPQ has suffered from lacking a core lexicon that standardizes its mechanics so that they can be definitively communicated and understood. This lexicon has more or less been built, and at this point it is a matter of us updating the text for all of the character abilities. Rebalances serve as the most logical timeframe for this (we have the files open already), but if a more expedient and sensical window opens up we'll take it.
Question - Why does every 5 Star have different Health and Match Damage "progression tiers"? Seems like it would be easier for Users to understand (and easier for the devs to maintain) to have them share from a smaller set of progressions like the other rarity tiers do.
Rambling: 2/3rds of the 5 Stars are not viable for top end play almost just because of this, and it get worse when newly released 5 Stars have increasingly higher Health and Match Damage. It's so bad there are several early era 5 Stars whose Level 450 Health & Match Damage are lower than newly released ones halfway to Level 450. Some are different by only like 30-100 in Health. Some of this is from back when 5 Stars were becoming established and less frequently released and had only about 8 to 10 in number. But now with 70+ 5 Stars, this just makes things clunky and confusing (and drives my OCD a bit crazy I'll admit). Invisible Woman and Reptil have the same Match Damage. Why can't 5 Stars? If the intent is to have 5 Stars feel special/different from the others, at least limit the amount of Health Tiers to 12 or 15 like the other tiers, and if there is still a desire to have different Match Damage from other 5 Stars, limit that to only about 3 to 5 Match Damage Tiers. The differences would be the starting/final values for whatever Color1 thru Color6 and Crit % would be. This would allow some diversity without the wild swings we currently have and provide another thematic element for character design. Could even name the Match Damage tiers to things like "Offensive Match Damage", "Protector Match Damage", "Support Match Damage", etc. The struggle is real to get certain team combinations where a specific character tanks one color over another (COUGH Thorkoye COUGH). A system like this could make that more intentional and not get into a situation where I accidentally leveled a character 1 level too high and broke a meta team. Leveling up a character should never feel like a "mistake". Example = My Okoye, Kitty, Polaris team is broken because I leveled up Polaris 1 or 2 levels too high and now she tanks Blue. Don't know how many levels I need for either Kitty or Okoye to tank Blue again, but it will take a long time due to 5 Star scarcity and Blue being Polaris's Color1 for Match Damage.
Much older example from Back in the Day = You could break the Charlie's Angels winfinite team by leveling up 4 Star Professor X too high and gain a color other than Purple from the 5 Star cascades of 3 Star Black Widow's Purple. Perhaps both bad examples as they straddle rarities (and therefore Match Damage tiers), but the concept still stands = Getting Okoye to tank Red & Yellow for Thor.
It's become what I call the "Dragonball Z effect" = when a new character was introduced, to show off their power they totally trounced the character that was currently established as the strongest. Do that 4-5 times, and suddenly most of the characters are now too weak to do anything and are nothing more than a Greek Chorus commenting from the sidelines. (TheViceroyReturns)
Answer - This is because of a couple different changes in 5-Star design philosophy that haven't yet been combined into one cohesive thing. At first, 5-Stars were designed to be one of three "types"; offensive, neutral, and defensive. These would give boosts to match damage, health, or ability effects at the cost of other areas. The first half dozen or so followed this pattern depending on the character. From there till more recently, that was left off to create characters on a more generational basis where the character's power budgets went up over time. As of Kamala Khan however, we've halted this increase and are looking to get characters rebalanced at this level.
Question - First off I’d like to thank all at BC for the design thought and great changes that you’ve brought to the game. I can easily forgive a few speed bumps for all the good that’s come from them. Keep up the good work!
1) Could you please go into some detail on how the maths for Chasm’s black power works? From the power description it isn’t all that obvious, but after a little testing I think I’ve settled on the following: Self damage to Chasm = Chasms match damage x3 of friendly colour being drained + small bonus damage. Damage to front enemy = Chasms match damage x3 in enemy colour being drained + small bonus damage.
I’ve noticed when the enemy team has no AP and without any damage boosters on either team (E.g. Okoye), strike or protect tiles on the board I’m getting wildly inconsistent results for the damage dealt this way though. Sometimes the damage to each team is identical (though rarely) but other times my Chasm takes maybe 3x the damage that the enemy takes. Sometimes the enemy takes slightly more than Chasm. The numbers can fall anywhere in between that range. How is the game choosing which enemy colour to base the damage on and is this working as you intend?
I absolutely love Chasms design, but would prefer to be able to predict a little better what happens when using him. I’ve got a number of screenshots if they’d be of any interest. Many thanks in advance
(Gymp28)Answer - Thanks for the praise and the patience when we don't stick the landing! I'll tell you what; I'll arrange for a developer blog post that covers Chasm's engineering. I'll request that the lead engineer behind Chasm go into detail on the specific algorithms involved, challenges encountered, and even go into detail on how those infamous Chasm launch bugs came to be and were corrected. How does that sound?
Question - As mentioned chasm usually takes more damage than the enemy, at best it takes the same. Also sometimes the enemy takes the passive damage at the start of their turn. Finally if the enemy ends their turn making a match and chasm dies and there is a cascade, that cascade belongs to AI and it damages chasm's partner which can be really dangerous for the player given that chasm needs alive partners. Chasm is already meta and these issues don't benefit him. (Bad)
Answer - Chasm is one of the more polarizing characters recently released, and for good reason. Whilst designing and developing them, the words "you either love him or you don't" were said alot. Some players swear by Chasm, and others loathe Chasm. As for whether or not Chasm needs to be looked at, we're still looking to gather more data so we can take into account all of the voices and all of the matches to date.
Question - Hope this hasn't asked before, but one of the major annoyances is the slow special tile generation, especially at the beginning of the match. It has been shown that the first time you run the game after a reboot of your ios device, special tiles generate quite a lot faster.
Are there any plans to fix this and run the game a little bit more smoothly in general? The Kaecilius boss matches feel a lot faster, and the often heard argument that this is because the match damage needs to be calculated doesn't make any sense, we're not talking about complexity arithmetic operations here. (GammernonTheGatherer)
Answer - I literally spoke with our head of feature planning today on this subject. Speedier play, banner time reduction, and QoL options to control what you see and for how long are planned and on the roadmap. If all goes according to plan you'll be seeing these land next year.
Question - Will Gorgon ever be released as a playable character? (Ptahhotep)
Answer - We talk about this a lot. Answer? Probably. Maybe we should let the community decide?
Question - 1. Can we expect the new 3* releases to "double-feed" 4* characters like some do today? Or will some only feed one 4* upon release?
2. The updates to DPDQ are great to see! Were adding the Classic Legend tokens or 5* shards considered for the refresh? If so, any insights into why they didn't make the cut and would you revisit this in a future update to DPDQ? (First311)
Answer - 1. Variable. When it comes to feeders, we make judgment calls each time.
2. While not an official announcement, one of the reasons the DDQs were updated as they are is to allow us to flex on rewards based on a variety of factors. While the reward structure today is locked in, it may be subject to change to incorporate some of the reward types you describe (again, not an announcement, but be on the lookout).
Question - hi, thanks for bringing the Q&A back again. I'm reposting a question i asked back in July that wasn't answered.
1) can you incorporate a "shard bank" into the game please? Meaning, if we don't want shards for a certain character, we can move or transfer them to a bank to be used for a character we like. Like everyone else, I have 550 okoye and a few other 550 characters, I have 2500 shards sitting wasting space. I would like move that to a bank and use it for another character as we see fit. Creating or building a duplicate is pointless, because of roster slot cost and that a low level 5* does nothing for a 550 player. Or for the "choose your adventure " shard bundle, move to a bank and not be forced to use it on characters we don't use at that moment. At least, give us option to apply shards to more than one character rather then be forced to use one. This would be a good replacement for bonus heroes since shards are horrible and have a painful drop*rate. This question and request have been in Suggestions and feedback for over a year.
2) any immediate feedback regarding dilution in the vaults and how the Classic Legend tokens will be incorporated into the game and the vault? (illusionist_KA)
Answer - Sorry for not getting to your question earlier, and appreciate the repost! The bank idea is an interesting one. I don't have a definitive answer as to whether or not we'll build it as you've described, but certainly noted.
As for the feedback on Classic 5* dilution, as stated previously in this post it is something we think needs to be addressed, but hasn't reached a state that is pressing enough to shake up the current priorities.
Apologies: I do hate giving answers that are non-answers (and I know some players do too). As soon as we have something conrete on these matters, you can expect something big and official to be announced.
Question - A lot of players get excited for the anniversary fan favorite store. But frequently this store will include meta characters that more and more players have already built to 550 (eg Okoye, Apocalypse, maybe now Shang Chi.) The Chinese New Year “Good Fortune” store allowed those players to swap covers for 550 toons to others in the store. Will this be offered again, for any other store? (Ulik)
Answer - I don't have an answer for this (sorry), but I have passed along this inquiry to our store designers and implementers.
Question - I noticed you took the support tokens from the taco vault. Are you planning on giving us another way to get supports? (Daddy_o2541)
Answer - We're experimenting with the contents of the Taco Vaults to make them richer and more interesting in general. I wouldn't consider absence of support tokens to be a sign of something deeper or systemic.
Question - 1. A small visual change to the icons of played nodes in PVE would be very helpful. Instead of Yellow for "has prizes remaining" and green for "played all the way through" (and red for "can't be played again"), it would be really great if the yellow icon had a number in it - either the number of prizes left or the number of times you've played. Either way, it would make it easier to know which nodes you've played how many times.
2. Given the volume of 4* and 5* covers, can you consider a new token (along the lines of mighty tokens and classic LT) that would allow the player to identify the YEAR of covers they would like to pull from. This would allow players growing their roster to focus on a year at a time. (nbperp)
Answer - 1. I recall having this same problem and have to coach new players through it all the time.
2. This is rooted in Classic 5* pack dilution. It's on our radar, but not something we are pressingly addressing at the moment.
Question - Would you consider running a contest in which the winner gets to help design their favorite character? (Godzillafan67)
Answer - Personally I think this is awesome, and YES we do read all of the posts, reddit and discord fan designs (you all are brilliant, by the way). Like I alluded to previously, there are several parties involved with decision making, but I for one like the idea and would like to see it take root in some fashion.
Question - There are a few pvp events that have special conditions restricting the use of part of your roster. One of them was an event called "Evergreen" or something like that, where you could only use characters that had green powers and tiles falling had an increased chance of being green. That was a pretty cool event, I remember using Thor/Storm/Chavez for some endless cascades. I was expecting others like that with other colors, but they never came. Are you considering doing other pvp events with special conditions like this? Feels like even in off season all we have now are the boring regular events. (Bubba3210)
Answer - Have you been reading our studio-internal e-mails?
Question - 1. What do you like doing in your spare time when you're not developing games?
2. Favorite pie? (killaKlown)
Answer - Personally? I like reading comics. I'm so busy these days and apps like Marvel Unlimited have made it so easy to carry a collection around with you. And no, I don't exclusively read Marvel. I'm a huge fan of Image comics as well, and I'll always be a sucker for Batman.
Banana Cream Pie. Final Answer.
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Comments
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Very insightful. Thanks again Devs!1
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Banana Cream Pie. Final Answer.
Waaaaaait, so we're getting a Gargoyles crossover?!?!?
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I think this question has the wrong answer.LakeStone said:
Question - A lot of players get excited for the anniversary fan favorite store. But frequently this store will include meta characters that more and more players have already built to 550 (eg Okoye, Apocalypse, maybe now Shang Chi.) The Chinese New Year “Good Fortune” store allowed those players to swap covers for 550 toons to others in the store. Will this be offered again, for any other store? (Daddy_o2541)
Answer - We're experimenting with the contents of the Taco Vaults to make them richer and more interesting in general. I wouldn't consider absence of support tokens to be a sign of something deeper or systemic.0 -
Haha... I was really excited about that question too. Was so bummed when I saw the answerMrcl25 said:
I think this question has the wrong answer.LakeStone said:
Question - A lot of players get excited for the anniversary fan favorite store. But frequently this store will include meta characters that more and more players have already built to 550 (eg Okoye, Apocalypse, maybe now Shang Chi.) The Chinese New Year “Good Fortune” store allowed those players to swap covers for 550 toons to others in the store. Will this be offered again, for any other store? (Daddy_o2541)
Answer - We're experimenting with the contents of the Taco Vaults to make them richer and more interesting in general. I wouldn't consider absence of support tokens to be a sign of something deeper or systemic.0 -
Question - As mentioned chasm usually takes more damage than the enemy, at best it takes the same. Also sometimes the enemy takes the passive damage at the start of their turn. Finally if the enemy ends their turn making a match and chasm dies and there is a cascade, that cascade belongs to AI and it damages chasm's partner which can be really dangerous for the player given that chasm needs alive partners. Chasm is already meta and these issues don't benefit him. (Bad)Answer - Chasm is one of the more polarizing characters recently released, and for good reason. Whilst designing and developing them, the words "you either love him or you don't" were said alot. Some players swear by Chasm, and others loathe Chasm. As for whether or not Chasm needs to be looked at, we're still looking to gather more data so we can take into account all of the voices and all of the matches to date.Chasm's description says "At the end of each turn..." Unfortunately, that NEVER happens. The damage is always down during the passive phase of the next turn, often at the end. If damage seems to be dealt at the end of the turn, that's because no passives are happening at the beginning of the next turn so you can't tell. Try going up against iHulk. After you finish your turn, Chasm's black power won't deal damage. At the beginning of the next turn, iHulk's green resolves BEFORE Chasm's black power damage from the previous turn. iHulk's green power states, "At the start of your turn..."This has made me lose several matches against iHulk, an opposing Chasm, mThor, and a few others because the opponent's start of passives all (or maybe most) go before my Chasm's damage is applied. Knowing this, I have used this to bait the AI so my Chasm dies first to get the stun instead of theirs. The power description is not what is happening in the game.I've also seen situations where the opposing character receives a lot less damage or no one receives any damage even though there are abyss tiles out. I haven't tried to figure out exactly why it's happening, but there's definitely a bug here too.Should I open a CS ticket for this?2
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As always thanks for the responses, so many tidbits and interesting things sprinkled through the answers. I know I probably missed a bunch of stuff too! Makes me impatient for things to come!!0
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That's may bad and I refer to my earlier boilerplate statementMrcl25 said:
I think this question has the wrong answer.LakeStone said:
Question - A lot of players get excited for the anniversary fan favorite store. But frequently this store will include meta characters that more and more players have already built to 550 (eg Okoye, Apocalypse, maybe now Shang Chi.) The Chinese New Year “Good Fortune” store allowed those players to swap covers for 550 toons to others in the store. Will this be offered again, for any other store? (Daddy_o2541)
Answer - We're experimenting with the contents of the Taco Vaults to make them richer and more interesting in general. I wouldn't consider absence of support tokens to be a sign of something deeper or systemic.
Fixed3 -
@LakeStone These were my questions but Illusionist_KA's questions were actually answered. I can try again next month if needed.
Question - 1. Can we expect the new 3* releases to "double-feed" 4* characters like some do today? Or will some only feed one 4* upon release?
2. The updates to DPDQ are great to see! Were adding the Classic Legend tokens or 5* shards considered for the refresh? If so, any insights into why they didn't make the cut and would you revisit this in a future update to DPDQ? (illusionist_KA)
Answer - Sorry for not getting to your question earlier, and appreciate the repost! The bank idea is an interesting one. I don't have a definitive answer as to whether or not we'll build it as you've described, but certainly noted.
As for the feedback on Classic 5* dilution, as stated previously in this post it is something we think needs to be addressed, but hasn't reached a state that is pressing enough to shake up the current priorities.
Apologies: I do hate giving answers that are non-answers (and I know some players do too). As soon as we have something concrete on these matters, you can expect something big and official to be announced.
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So why are we getting concurrent PVE events (VB + Sinister Six + Puzzle Gauntlet) again so soon?LakeStone said:
Question - 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? (ThaRoadWarrior)
Answer - Those are rarely intentional, and usually a response to compensating for some error (like the Hunt running repeatedly for the Reptil release). Sometimes it's planned and due to some compression in the schedule (like the addition of 4* She-Hulk to celebrate their Disney+ show).
2 -
Have to second this. Would be curious why what is happening in game is different from the answers in this Q&A.justsing said:
So why are we getting concurrent PVE events (VB + Sinister Six + Puzzle Gauntlet) again so soon?LakeStone said:
Question - 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? (ThaRoadWarrior)
Answer - Those are rarely intentional, and usually a response to compensating for some error (like the Hunt running repeatedly for the Reptil release). Sometimes it's planned and due to some compression in the schedule (like the addition of 4* She-Hulk to celebrate their Disney+ show).1 -
Another one of my user errors...I just fixed it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.First311 said:@LakeStone These were my questions but Illusionist_KA's questions were actually answered. I can try again next month if needed.
Question - 1. Can we expect the new 3* releases to "double-feed" 4* characters like some do today? Or will some only feed one 4* upon release?
2. The updates to DPDQ are great to see! Were adding the Classic Legend tokens or 5* shards considered for the refresh? If so, any insights into why they didn't make the cut and would you revisit this in a future update to DPDQ? (illusionist_KA)
Answer - Sorry for not getting to your question earlier, and appreciate the repost! The bank idea is an interesting one. I don't have a definitive answer as to whether or not we'll build it as you've described, but certainly noted.
As for the feedback on Classic 5* dilution, as stated previously in this post it is something we think needs to be addressed, but hasn't reached a state that is pressing enough to shake up the current priorities.
Apologies: I do hate giving answers that are non-answers (and I know some players do too). As soon as we have something concrete on these matters, you can expect something big and official to be announced.1 -
Thanks for the feedback - looking forward to seeing the new loading screen!0
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Wow talk about wall of text haha. Thanks for all the responses.0
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I tried marvel insider for a bit but it just didn't work well on my phone. I had to zoom in to read comfortably, then zoom out to turn the page lol. Got it going on my PC but it wasn't saving my spot at all.0
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Always enjoy these. I'm so not used to regular feedback I almost forget they exist! (and forgot until it was too late to get my question in this time, but I was going to ask about 3/5 releases that aren't explicitly the same character like the 3Elektra/5Daredevil release, so I went ahead and cracked that can of worms with a character speculation thread).
One answer here gives me thought for a follow-up question, though:Answer - Honestly at this moment I'd take 1* Omega Red, but that's besides the question. When we talk about rarity internally, Magic: the Gathering invariably comes up. I don't think it's been a core philosophy since the outset, but a mentality we are aiming to adhere to strategic complexity. In a game like MtG, it's entirely possible to perform at a high level with a deck that consists almost entirely of basic cards (I'm looking at you, competitive Mono-Red). For many, many reasons this isn't not an apples-to-apples comparison with MPQ, but philosophically we want 3*s to be competitive yet lower complexity versions of their higher rarity counterparts. In the same way that a game can have any number of ways that X resources deals Y damage yet still possess enough variation, we believe that 3s / 5s can be different enough to matter.
Is there any thought on doing something to make the lower-tier characters more competitive? I mean, the MtG idea of a deck of basic cards is almost the opposite of MPQ. Required nodes (and farming champ levels for rewards) are basically the only reason to keep lower-tier characters. I mean, who has more than the one 1-star required for the DDQ node?
The idea of 3's being competitive but lower complexity is nice, but not really the reality of the game. But I think of Balance of Power, or the third day of the Spidey2099 PvE event, and how an even playing field of character level makes more options viable. So like, wouldn't 3's actually BE more competitive if they didn't max out 200 levels lower than 5-star characters? There's a ton to balance in making the change (actually making sure characters scale right at the higher levels, champ rewards, individual character balancing so a power like 2-star Storm's blue doesn't overshadow stun/AoE options for higher tier characters, etc), but I think it would be interesting to actually see 3's be competitive for higher tier players. 5-star players basically saw new 3's as dilution and expensive roster slots (thanks for addressing the latter, by the way!), and it would be nice if they were actually competitive. Or even worth thinking about outside of required nodes. And not just in the 3/5 space, either. It would be cool for 1-star Juggernaut to have a purpose outside of DDQ. And if he did, suddenly the idea of a 1-star Omega Red sounds like lot more fun (or maybe a 1-star Weapon X Wolverine with the funky headset and everything so we have a legitimate reason for Wolverine to exist at all tiers of the game....)0 -
"Question - 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)
Answer - This is a cool idea! We have some QoL topics related to filtering and fast access to characters in your roster - will make sure this note is factored in. Thanks!"
You are wellcome. But as you can see I'm not SandKing.
It seems a name no villain at all.0 -
Two concurrent boss events in a row.
"Rarely intentional"0 -
There are going to be two VERY free covers in SS6 for any half decent Alliance. They could make it an Heroic as well if they really wanted to screw players over! Most top Alliances will knock this out in 20 minutes and have plenty of time for Venom Bomb.jbtilley said:Two concurrent boss events in a row.
"Rarely intentional"0 -
For those complaining about this question, I’m pretty sure the answer was more directly about two concurrent placement PvEs… not a Boss event, which isn’t time sensitive in regards to placement competing against other players and the such (yes it’s every 8 hours but that’s totally different).jbtilley said:Two concurrent boss events in a row.
"Rarely intentional"3 -
I suppose I should have phrased that better in the question then. To me this is the same phenomenon of an additional full fledged PVE alongside other full fledged story content. Puzzle Gauntlet is effectively untimed, but alliance events are super timed with the 8hr refresh.Xception81 said:
For those complaining about this question, I’m pretty sure the answer was more directly about two concurrent placement PvEs… not a Boss event, which isn’t time sensitive in regards to placement competing against other players and the such (yes it’s every 8 hours but that’s totally different).jbtilley said:Two concurrent boss events in a row.
"Rarely intentional"2
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