MPQ Developer Q&A November 2022 (ANSWERS)

Sekilicious

The reference to being targeted in PvP perhaps suggests they were playing in Slice 2? That slice is famous for point suppression.

Bubba3210

A member of one of my alliance families was targeted and bullied several times through this forum’s private messages.

HoundofShadow

Actually, slice 3 to 5 points are pretty low too. If I were to rank them in terms of ease hitting 1200 without shield hopping, it would be

1. Slice 1
2. Slice 4

That's it. For slice 4, I need to hit ~28 wins to score 1200. Slice 2 and 5 definitely needs shielding hopping. And I believe slice 3 needs some shield hopping too.

GrimSkald

@killahKlown said:

@GrimSkald said:

@allen_koholic said:

@GrimSkald said:

@Bad said:

@HoundofShadow said:
I'm not sure how you interpret that Chasm is a real problem from that reply. There are already counters out there countering them "well" and the overall duration of play is okay but they are monitoring. If you are choosy about the availability of counters, you can continue playing mirror match. Riri/Dr Thor is also a counter, but you don't seem to be happy with them.

I'm just informing, not interpreting. The chahulk meta is a real problem because right now is the better team to play.
Sure there are counters, but aren't satisfactory. The best counter is a character preventing AP loss.
Also many players are already using unchamped ihulks. I will explain it clearly:
Friends, if you use an unchamped Ihulk chasm always will tank and the only way to be defeated is an AoE. Just be sure to put purple chasm on 5. And you only need a few covers for Ihulk! Tasty defenses guaranteed.

An infinite battle is a lame way to win, though. Just saying.

The biggest issue with the Cha/Hulk meta is that it basically is a great counter for any team that, y'know, needs AP to fire powers. It takes out whole swaths of characters from the game. The Hulk is just there to keep you from just downing Chasm last.

I was going to express some disappointment in the fact that we're not getting any 4* PVPs, but because of Chasm, we wouldn't get much of a chance to use them anyway. He's honestly made the game a lot more boring and I don't think a simple soft counter is going to cut it.

The "revive" meta isn't the issue with Chasm, it's the AP drain. Even without his revive, that AP drain would be top tier. The revive is an issue because you can't match your way out of dealing with him. My issue with Chasm isn't that he's an S-tier character, it's that he's aggressively unfun to use and even more aggressively unfun to face. He feels oppressive from a design standpoint.

High level Jessica Jones and Yellowjacket? Too bad, you're never going to have enough AP to make them work the way they're supposed to, and unless your timing is exquisite you're not going to take down Chasm at the right time even on the rare occasion you get to fire a power.

You might need to experiment with your roster more.. I found boosted JJ to be an ideal counter to 550 Chasm
Hulk teams. AP drain is irrelevant because her passive is enough to take out both revivers at the same time.. The tools are out there to take down this team easily. You just have to stray from your favorite go-to teams.

Your luck must be much, much better than mine -- I found JJ's passive to be far too unpredictable to be a good counter. Even assuming you can get and keep enough Blue AP so you could see the traps, a significant portion of the time the traps are unmatchable because of board position. The longer the match goes on, the more Chasm clogs the board with void and web tiles, and the less AP you gain, as well as the less tiles are available for you to put things like traps and strike tiles on it.

killahKlown

@GrimSkald said:

@killahKlown said:

@GrimSkald said:

@allen_koholic said:

@GrimSkald said:

@Bad said:

@HoundofShadow said:
I'm not sure how you interpret that Chasm is a real problem from that reply. There are already counters out there countering them "well" and the overall duration of play is okay but they are monitoring. If you are choosy about the availability of counters, you can continue playing mirror match. Riri/Dr Thor is also a counter, but you don't seem to be happy with them.

I'm just informing, not interpreting. The chahulk meta is a real problem because right now is the better team to play.
Sure there are counters, but aren't satisfactory. The best counter is a character preventing AP loss.
Also many players are already using unchamped ihulks. I will explain it clearly:
Friends, if you use an unchamped Ihulk chasm always will tank and the only way to be defeated is an AoE. Just be sure to put purple chasm on 5. And you only need a few covers for Ihulk! Tasty defenses guaranteed.

An infinite battle is a lame way to win, though. Just saying.

The biggest issue with the Cha/Hulk meta is that it basically is a great counter for any team that, y'know, needs AP to fire powers. It takes out whole swaths of characters from the game. The Hulk is just there to keep you from just downing Chasm last.

I was going to express some disappointment in the fact that we're not getting any 4* PVPs, but because of Chasm, we wouldn't get much of a chance to use them anyway. He's honestly made the game a lot more boring and I don't think a simple soft counter is going to cut it.

The "revive" meta isn't the issue with Chasm, it's the AP drain. Even without his revive, that AP drain would be top tier. The revive is an issue because you can't match your way out of dealing with him. My issue with Chasm isn't that he's an S-tier character, it's that he's aggressively unfun to use and even more aggressively unfun to face. He feels oppressive from a design standpoint.

High level Jessica Jones and Yellowjacket? Too bad, you're never going to have enough AP to make them work the way they're supposed to, and unless your timing is exquisite you're not going to take down Chasm at the right time even on the rare occasion you get to fire a power.

You might need to experiment with your roster more.. I found boosted JJ to be an ideal counter to 550 Chasm
Hulk teams. AP drain is irrelevant because her passive is enough to take out both revivers at the same time.. The tools are out there to take down this team easily. You just have to stray from your favorite go-to teams.

Your luck must be much, much better than mine -- I found JJ's passive to be far too unpredictable to be a good counter. Even assuming you can get and keep enough Blue AP so you could see the traps, a significant portion of the time the traps are unmatchable because of board position. The longer the match goes on, the more Chasm clogs the board with void and web tiles, and the less AP you gain, as well as the less tiles are available for you to put things like traps and strike tiles on it.

Not really luck, as I never wiped with this team and had over 80 wins. Maybe I was just more thoughtful of the mechanics than you were. Blue is her weakest color, so it's easy to hold onto enough blue so long as you keep matching the other colors. Also I paired with Wanda to minimize the damage I would take and to generate extra red tiles every turn. Black also came in handy, down Chasm, let him revive, the 1shot him with that black.

One of the more fun weekly boosts I've had in a long time.

Sekilicious

@Bubba3210 said:
A member of one of my alliance families was targeted and bullied several times through this forum’s private messages.

Hopefully that member reached out to a moderator or community manager. That behaviour won’t be tolerated.

Bubba3210

@Sekilicious said:

@Bubba3210 said:
A member of one of my alliance families was targeted and bullied several times through this forum’s private messages.

Hopefully that member reached out to a moderator or community manager. That behaviour won’t be tolerated.

He did and they issued a warning.

Timemachinego

@S0kun said:
Answer: Definitely considering things like this. Characters like you mention that have been on our idea list include:
Moon Girl / Boy and Devil Dino
The Warriors Three
The Power Pack
Multiple Man, Multiple Man, and Multiple Man
Team Venom ( Riot, Lasher, etc )

I love any and all of these, but especially Power Pack and Multiple Men.

HoundofShadow

I find it easier to match JJ's trap tiles against Chasm/iHulk and it's partly because of Chasm's web + Abyss tiles. If a board is too clean, her trap tiles will be harder to match due to them being placed in a wider area. Also, JJ can put only a maximum of 4 trap tiles in three specific colours (red, black, blue). Those web/Abyss + three specific colour trap tiles help you to narrow down where her trap tiles are if you don't have 6 blue aps.

Assuming equal number of tiles for simplification, there are 27 possible places her trap tiles can be found. Again for simplification purpose, if half the board is filled with web and Abyss tiles, it gets narrowed down to 13-14. Since AI is likely to match black and red more often due to them being their strongest colours, this will further increase the chance of trap appearing in blue because your trap placed in black and red tiles would likely to be matched by them.

That is why during her boost week, my strategy was to get iHulk's to JJ's match damage range and Chasm's health to 20k range. So that you can one match her trap tiles and down both opponents.

revskip

@_TrashPanda said:
I'm enjoying the current chasm/ ihulk meta. Like the previous op teams, they'll come out with some sort of counter/ nerfish thing for them soon enough so I'm enjoying them while they're op. It's not like Chasm would be difficult to develop a "hard" counter to that would still promote the rps aim. I've even posted ideas on what their powers could be in character suggestions section of the forum. I don't understand the rush people have on nerfing/ hard countering OP's shortly after they come out. Yes, it would be nice to see a bit more variety in qs/ rps but that will come back. It always does. Most of the slices people play in battle chats anyways and will put out easier teams for each other to hit. In other words, once you get to the point where you're # hopping, you rarely have to mirror match anyways so i don't really understand why people have such an issue with them. My Chasm/ iHulk are lvls 456/453 respectively and I don't have any issues taking out 550 Chasm/ ihulk teams. They can sometimes take a bit longer (5-10min matches or so) but that only typically happens during when a person is climbing to their 1st #. I go into chasm/ ihulk matches with an aoe/ 3pun/ mbw tus but rarely need them. I just kept hitting fat chasm/ Hulk teams and wiping until I got the hang of how to beat them fairly easily. Maybe people just need to practice how to match 3 better? 🤔

Pretty much my exact take on the situation. During the Okoye/Ihulk meta people were calling for nerfs and thankfully they never came. Then the SteelWitch counter came out and people were calling for a nerf to the defensive meta. The Chasm/IHulk meta will pass, just let it run its course and then prepare for the next meta group that people will ask for nerfs on. My bet is on Riri/Dr. Thor.

JHawkInc

@JHawkInc [Forums]
Question 1: The transition to 7-day Deadpool Daily cycles has been mostly positive. But is there any chance you could take another look at the weeks with two Crash nodes, and consider running two separate characters?

Answer: This was a long topic of discussion when moving Deadpool Dailies to 7 days. A major factor that lead to us utilizing the same character for both Crash nodes on weeks that have two Crash nodes is about boosting the value of that character and offering a more direct goal when preparing for the upcoming Crash. It's a new feature that we're keeping an eye on, and it is very possible that we might switch things up in the future.

(bold for emphasis is mine, not part of original reply)

That's precisely the problem! There are, what, 130ish 4-star characters? As-is, Crash gets through 52 of them a year. So in a year, you have 26 that get two crashes the same week, 26 that get one crash, and about 80 that get no crash. Take a handful of players with, say, 50 4's that are "crash-ready", you could have greatly different experiences, where one of them might repeatedly get 2 LTs from getting lucky and having the "right" character, the one with a boosted value, and another could get completely ****, because none of their 4's showed up at all, because it takes forever for each of the characters to get a chance to be featured.

Compare to a setup where the 2-crash weeks feature 2 separate characters. 26 weeks feature one character, 26 weeks feature two characters, we get through 78 characters in a year, leaving only about 50 that don't get a crash. And all of the ones featured are "worth" the same, a single LT. There's no worry about having a character on a "good" week vs a "bad" week, the odds of a character you have being featured within a year are greater, and the whole cycle progresses faster, so the time it takes for a character to come up is shorter.

I appreciate the idea in theory, but boosting the value of a small pool of characters is selecting against the rest, boosting the value of 26 (featured twice in the same week), hurts the value of 26 that could be featured in those weeks as the second crash character, AND hurts the value of the remaining group that will take longer to show up in a crash at all.

Qazzy

@Mrcl25 [Forums]
Question 1: Is there any progress on the idea of a more flexible pve, where you can start at any time in a 24h frame? This thread has some great ideas: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/87707/proposal-for-play-when-you-want-pve

Answer: We've been reading over the thread and talking internally about things, and it's definitely on our list of things to tackle, but it won't be near term. Right now the biggest discussion is whether to further codify the speed meta, but make it easier to play any time, or to do "something else" so that it's not all about clearing fast/minumum turns. We're not sure where we land there yet.

Hey devs, if you want to add something to make the game being not all about fast/minimum turns (that's a good intention and surely can make pve more flexible), I think the "gem craft" series of games might be able to provide some reference.