MPQ Developer Q&A April 2023 (ANSWERS)

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
If they communicated with us more than once a month, we wouldn't have to overanalyze everything they said.

After Demiurge nerfed Ragnarok with no notice, they created a list of "characters we're looking at" for either buffs or nerfs. Like so many other things from the early days, they eventually gave up on that, but why can't we have something like this now?

Because the absolute panic it would set off would be off the charts.

No one other than you, would pull tokens for character X until they were removed from the nerf list and players would be posting here daily asking 'is character X off the nerf list or going to be nerfed'.

KGB

entrailbucket

Is that better or worse than the situation now, where any character can be nerfed at any time with no notice?

Bowgentle

Let me generalize that: more communication from the devs would be good.

Scofie

@entrailbucket said:
That's just a very 5* centric way of looking at things. (Which is fine, since that describes everyone here! Even the ones who choose to artificially kneecap their 5*).

There's a whole lot more lower-tier players who may have a very different view of things. Again, this all started because the devs' own words put Polaris, Chasm, and Gambit in the same group.

Mod mode off

It's not a 5_-centric way of looking at it, it's a holistic way of looking at it. That's why I used an example of 3_ v 1*. The point I was making is, with every increase in rarity, there is a step up in power that reduces the relative strength of the previous tier. Boosted characters just make that easier against the best in class. Boosted 5* baby champ Wasp can pretty easily kill Polaris.

The major difference now is that I have seen rosters with less than 10 roster slots that have a 5* at 1 or 2 covers. That was never really a thing in the recent past. I've no idea who they face in PvP or at what level they're at but I doubt it will be champed anything.

So the availability of 5s is allowing people to punch up much higher than ever before with match damage. There is no way to do that against 5s other than boosted characters of the same tier.

dianetics

PvP gets really weird when you have a single cover of something several tiers above where you actually play at.
At one point during my alt run, my roster was all 2*s. But I had a few covers for Polaris. When I'd drop into pvp many of the matches I would get paired against were usually people with 1 or 2 champed 3s. A complete tier above me, and many were more than a hundred levels. With a 2 star roster it was ... difficult. Once I champed my first few 3s not much changed though.

revskip

If they do nerf Chasm i hope they also nerf Polaris.

I don't think either needs a nerf but it sure would make these boards interesting for a couple of weeks.

toecutter3095

10. @BlixTheFrog [Official Forums]

_Question: We know 3 * Deadpool’s whales are a way of getting through tough matches. Can we have an easy accessible spot where the number of DP points is mentioned? Happened a few times that I found out I was below the 28000 mark when trying to use the power.

Answer: Not a bad idea. Not sure exactly where that variable "lives" and whether we could surface it easily, but will investigate!_

The devs may have given up reading this thread (assuming they do) but just in case, I think the problem you need to solve is UX for a touch screen device. In the Steam UI, if you hover the mouse over Deadpool's power it pops an overlay that shows the number of Whale points you currently have. So the variable is accessible and is currently shown in the Steam UI, you just need to figure out the UX for a phone.

jeffsterz

I still use Polaris in the Puzzle Gauntlet...

ElectricVasting

I am a 4* player, with about 25 4s champed and all rostered. I use Polaris all the time, and see Polaris all the time in PVP. I usually see her partnered with a 1-5 cover BRB or mThor, or with a champed Medusa, Grocket, or boosted-5* with a couple covers. Polaris is similar to Shang-chi, incredibly powerful on offense, and pretty mediocre on defense. You target her first and take her out, and unless the enemy gets lucky with cascades (which granted happens not super-infrequently), it's not too tough. I don't have much experience with Chasm, but I think that's very different from what I hear about him. I very rarely skip an opponent because they have Polaris, whereas I think most 5-star players seem to skip Chasm when they face him.

If they nerf Polaris, it will make it much harder for 3-star and 4-star players to advance in both PVE and PVP. My pre-Polaris clears in SCL7 took an hour, and grind took another hour. After 7 covers of Polaris, it dropped to 45 minutes. After fully champing her, it dropped to 25 minutes. If I had to wait to have 3 champed 4s before I could tackle SCL7, it would have taken me much longer to progress my roster. I am very thankful to have her.

In PVP, if they nerf Polaris, then 3-4 star PVP will become almost exclusively about either 1-2 cover boosted 5s match-damaging each other to death, or trying to Deathlok/Kang each other to death. It will be incredibly boring and difficult, until people's rosters have enough champed 4s that they can work with each other synergistically to beat boosted 5s.

So in total -- she's relatively easy to beat on defense, and helps people progress in 3-star land and 4-star land more quickly, which is becoming more difficult as the tiers continue to expand. If she experiences a significant nerf, I think you will see a lot of 3/4 star players quitting before they are able to reach 5-star land ... because it will become such a slog.

Bad

Polaris is a character designed for fast play and for that reason she is the best 4*.
Chasm starts the battle really powerful but after a few turns he reveals what he is: a character for to slow down everything, player using him included, and for to lose a lot of health, player using him included.
He has no use on pve CL10, there are hundreds of teams faster. He only has use in pvp because he is broken and for that reason he deserves his nerf but since his second month since his release.
His best use is to make players get tired and semi retiring pvp. And talks one of them.

entrailbucket

We still have no idea how long they expect it to take to progress your roster.

Now that you've confirmed that Polaris is a shortcut to the next tier, and also that she's the only shortcut to the next tier...how do we know for sure that they want such a shortcut to exist? If they did, wouldn't more than one character be able to fill that role?

ElectricVasting

I imagine their goal would be to have the game continue attracting new players and to flourish, which is not easy to do when a game hits 10+ years and has released hundreds of characters. And as a relatively new devotee to the game who is in touch with a dozen other players at my level, that doesn't happen without Polaris.

Alternatively, I suppose they could decide they want to preserve the purity of the game for 5 star players and make it impossible to progress past the 3-star stage without spending massive amounts of money. In which case the game becomes a dying cash-cow.

entrailbucket

That sounds awful!

If they wanted to keep the game from becoming totally unplayable/dying/exploding/other horrible stuff, why would they pin all of that on one character? Wouldn't every 4* be able to help a player progress in that way? At the very least, wouldn't more than one character be able to do the job?

And why would they choose a relatively unknown/unpopular character like Polaris as the key to roster progression, vs someone like Wolverine or Spider-Man?

ElectricVasting

Haha, that's a great question. Why are Shang-chi, Chasm, Okoye, or Beta Ray Bill so strong for that matter? Doesn't really make any sense. Maybe the devs should nerf the whole 5-star tier so that Wolverine is the strongest character in the game again.

Hmm ... and how about 3-star Dr. Strange? Kind of a niche character to be so critical to 2* players advancing to 3* land ... funny choices that the devs have made.

entrailbucket

Exactly! If they choose to nerf Chasm, the game will become completely unplayable. Currently, he's the only character that players can use to float at high scores without using shields. He also heals at a high rate, saving health packs.

If they were to change these things, players would be forced to spend massive amounts of money to win, turning the game into a dying cash-cow.

Timemachinego

@entrailbucket said:
That sounds awful!

If they wanted to keep the game from becoming totally unplayable/dying/exploding/other horrible stuff, why would they pin all of that on one character? Wouldn't every 4* be able to help a player progress in that way? At the very least, wouldn't more than one character be able to do the job?

And why would they choose a relatively unknown/unpopular character like Polaris as the key to roster progression, vs someone like Wolverine or Spider-Man?

Sounds like the argument should be to bring more characters to Polaris's level, then. FWIW I'm a relatively "new" player compared to a lot of the board here (just hit my 3 year anniversary rewards). I hit the 4 star tier properly right around when Polaris released; Polaris simply isn't overpowered in any way that matters unless we're specifically trying to keep players from challenging SCL10 PVE without at least a few big 5s. 90-120 minute grind+clears aren't challenging anyone's ranking and I intentionally looked for Polaris based teams in PVP because there were so many solid counterplay options to take them down quickly and easily.

entrailbucket

Absolutely they should bring more characters to her level, if that's a level that they want the 4* tier to be at! That's why she's so weird -- if there were more like her, the game would be easier for transitioners, and it'd confirm their intentions for the tier in general. As it stands, nobody can say if her power level is intentional.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
That's why she's so weird -- if there were more like her, the game would be easier for transitioners, and it'd confirm their intentions for the tier in general. As it stands, nobody can say if her power level is intentional.

I disagree with that reasoning. If there is only 1 over powered character in a tier, then all you need to do is chase that 1 character which is easy enough to do with shards. But if there are a bunch of OP characters and you need them all it's a lot harder to chase a whole bunch for new players.

In other words, fewer meta characters are better for new players but bad for older players looking for variety.

The game is really geared now for everyone to be a 5* player. The faster they can push everyone into the 5* tier the better because that's where new character releases are (yes, they release 4's too but it's so diluted and matters so little game wise for PvP or PvE that there is no incentive to be there or care beyond collecting for rewards/feeders).

I was thinking today that there are 139 4* characters which means you need 1807 covers to champ them all. They could hand out 4.95 (essentially 5) covers a day for free (daily login) and it would take 365 days (a year) for a new player to champ all 139 and then another 9 years for them to max champ such characters. If the goal is to get players to the end game where everyone else is, they should make it rain 4* covers.

KGB

entrailbucket

I agree with you that having one or two extremely overpowered characters at a tier is beneficial for some players. It's mostly beneficial for minmaxers who choose to exclusively play with the most powerful characters in order to win more. These players are massively overrepresented in Line, Reddit, and on this board, but they are by no means a majority of players.

Unfortunately, everything either set of devs have ever done indicates that they do not prefer a metagame where a tier is dominated by the one best character. When there's a best character, they try to make counters to them. And if that doesn't work -- nerf time!

This game exists to sell you roster slots. That's how they make their money. This is why the pace of releases never slows down, and it never can. If every character but one is totally irrelevant, that's really bad for their bottom line (even though it's GREAT for powergamers!) and they've always stepped in to fix it.

It's funny, I guess everyone forgot (or wasn't around?) but we just had this with Bishop. Lots of players now think that Bishop's nerf was universally praised, but that's revisionist -- it wasn't, at all. Tons of lower tier players made the same kinds of arguments about him that are being made about Polaris. "Bishop is intentional -- the devs want to give us a way to punch up!" "Without Bishop nobody could ever move up a tier, he's the only way to achieve X and without him the game would die!"

Well, it turns out that Bishop was an accident (they admitted as much). The stuff he enabled players to do was never stuff they were meant to do. When he was murdered, there was no mass exodus. Players kept playing, and kept moving up tiers. The game was better for it overall.

KGB

EB, I essentially agree with everything you say except where you say 'they do not prefer a metagame dominated by 1 character' that only refers to the the highest tier.

In other words, when the 3 star tier was the top tier in the game, nerfs for the 3 star meta were common. Later when the 4 star tier was the top tier in the game, 4 star nerfs were common. Now that the 5 star tier is the top tier, 5 star nerfs (or characters who affect the 5 star tier like Bishop) are common.

We have no evidence of them going back and nerfing characters in bypassed tiers (note, a tweak to a character does not classify as a nerf in my opinion, it has to be an actual nerf to a specific meta) because some meta appeared there (otherwise they would not be releasing OP 3 stars like they are).

That's why Polaris being OP in the 4 star tier doesn't matter. She does not affect roster slot sales in any meaningful way.

KGB