MPQ Developer Q&A February 2024 (ANSWERS)

MPQBlaine · 8 March 2024, 19:00

Hey there folks, apologies for the delay but we've got some fresh answers to your questions for the DEVs!

@KGB [Official Forums]
Question: Can the Post Event vaults please be sorted by name. I have so many of these and searching for a specific one means scrolling one at a time looking at the names.

Answer: Devpool: Or maybe we should move them to a different tab and add a search function? Will think about this.
@meadowsweet [Official Forums]
Question: Feature Request: pop-up message that appears during matches the instant you have completed a Quest (Daily, Events, or Milestone.) I feel like there are times I'm trying to match 15 yellow, purple, black, and team-up tiles and wasted time making 30-40

Answer: That's one of the many improvements we have on our list for later down the road. Noted!
@Bri-Man2222 [Official Forums]
Question: Are there any plans to release Red Skull this year, or ever? He is in pretty much every other marvel mobile game and not having Captain America's biggest foe seems like a pretty glaring omission.

Answer: Nev.......... not gonna say it! But no, no plans to release Red Skull this year in particular. This year is focusing on non-Avengers related characters to get our overall numbers of the various Marvel groups a bit more in parity. I know it seems like we have a lot of X-Men, what with Wolverine, Storm, etc, but there are a LOT of Avengers too. Doesn't mean that one may not sneak in, but less likely than a Marvel Knight, or an Inhuman, or a Guardian or such.
@Xception81 [Official Forums]
Question: Now that Ascension has rolled out, is there any thought to changing the number of covers needed to level up? It doesn't seem reasonable to need 4 covers of a 1* and a 4* character to gain one level of their 5* version when 1* covers are so common.

Answer: IceIX: The numbers are actually balanced around the 4-Star range and everything else was reduced to be in line with that. I'd have to go back to the original calcs, but 1-Stars would actually need something like 300 covers per level if we took in pure rarity via pack pull amounts. So it's not that 4-Stars take a lot in relation to cheap 1-Stars, it's that 1-Stars are SUPER CHEAP to level. So if we changed it and wanted to keep the 4-Star economy intact, you'd actually just be needing more of everything else.
@gellin [Official Forums]
Question: Are there any plans to treat the 1* and 2* characters like all other ranks and allow them to equip supports, be favorited, or collect saved covers?

Answer: IceIX: It's actually a more difficult thing than you'd think. Not that it's impossible, but 1s and 2s are just built a bit differently on the back end. We could fix that by rebuilding all of them, but that causes issues with how those characters are handled as opponents, especially in the Prologue and such. Not impossible, and likely something we will tackle at some point, but I wouldn't hold your breath in the near term.
@Bzhai [Official Forums]
Question: Support tokens continue to be the rarest form of currency. The shards in pvp are great but shouldn't they be offered in pve, the mode where it can be used?

Answer: Yes, they should be. We've been meaning to inject them into the overall game economy, we just haven't found the time yet. This will happen though.
@bigjojo04 [Official Forums]
Question: To help out defensively for PvP, any chance to allow the user to set in which order your teams powers are used? So instead of using Vultures blue being able to set it to wait for enough AP to use Kang’s instead?

Answer: The current AI system just isn't built to handle that. It's actually extremely naive both in gem matches and ability use. We'd love to build a more robust AI system that matches better and uses abilities more intelligently (and hand over some of those reins to player customization), but it's actually a pretty huge change beneath the hood that would still need to work with every ability in the game and not break things in some edge cases.
@skittledaddy [Discord]
Question: Can you add an optional "Battle Log" to PVP showing a basic recap of battles fought against you? My team, their team, health lost, number of matches, boosts used, etc. This would allow us to learn more from our wins/losses on defense.

Answer: All that data is recorded, so it's really a matter of displaying it nicely and intelligently. Which requires additional UI screens which we just aren't set up to easily do.... yet.
@Argoll/Carnifex [Discord]
Question: Do you have any plans to return to milestone quest rewards ? Some of the objectives require several years to complete, but the associated rewards are often paltry and can be obtained in less than a week for regular players.

Answer: Yes, yes we do. In both the manner of reward variety and milestone steps/variety. Stay tuned!
@Heartbreaksoup [Official Forums]
Question: 5* Strange's revamp means that when the opposing team fires a Team-up, Strange no longer retaliates. No enemy actually takes damage. I preferred him retaliating against the character in front anyway, can you pls reverse these?

Answer: Thanks for pointing this out - might be a bug. We've sent this over to QA to look at.
Adric1123 [Reddit]
Question: I just noticed that 2* Nightcrawler wasn't in this week's Sweet Taco Vault. Was that an oversight or is he waiting until later?

Answer: Waiting till a bit after release.
@y4747 [Official Forums]
Question: can we change the skip button in pvpv to re-open the node? i guarantee you 99% of the time someone skips they immediately reopen the node.

Answer: Sent this good idea over to engineering to see if they can fit it into their schedule!
ReturnalShadow [Reddit]
Question: It is said that when it comes to making matches or winning fights in MPQ, it doesn't require any skill. What's your thought on this?

Answer: IceIX: It's a balancing act. You certainly don't hear that about most of the Puzzle Ops, or Quandary's first Boss Event. Something like high end PVP right this second is more about choosing the right target(s) for your striking team so that it's as quick and brainless as possible. It's how that meta works at the moment. But yes, we're aware overall that players as a whole tend to lean more towards the "All Passive let the matches do the work" style of play versus more active play.
@Scofie [Official Forums]
Question: If I put a critical on a tile with 2 Red above, 2 Yellow to the left, 2 Green below and 2 Purple to the right, what order does damage resolve?

Answer: Top to bottom, left to right.
@St Bernadus [Official Forums]
Question: I like to save up tokens for events (as well as tacos), but opening a bunch of them is pretty painful. Are there any plans to make opening vault tokens easier?

Answer: Not right this second, but with Vaults being more of the regular methods to get covers compared to even a year or two ago, usability here is something we're aware of needing some updates.
@Codex [Official Forums]
Question: In the new 3* and 4* releases posts, is it possible to show what their respective ascended stats and abilities would become?

Answer: IceIX: We actually leave that off on purpose, since we've had situations where new releases go through an almost immediate balance pass or two after they hit Live. It's also why most characters can't be Ascended off the bat (2-Stars excluded).
@entrailbucket [Official Forums]
Question: Does the AI prioritize certain colors over others? ie does he prefer matches in his strongest colors?

Answer: Yep, pretty much exactly how it works. It prioritizes color strengths on its team, then Team-Ups, then color strengths on the enemy team, then anything else. It'll then do a little weighting math so that it's not TOTALLY predictable and matches whatever comes up. It also priorizes Match-4s before any Match-3s, has no clue what a T or L shaped match is, and doesn't know what abilities do or don't do.
@CASSIDYFROST [Official Forums]
Question: From now on, new 2* characters will have a greater focus on copies of 3*, 4* or 5* counterparts or we will also have original characters such as Night Thrasher, Lockheed, Noh-Varr, Pixie, Blink, Hellion, etc.

Answer: Really just depends on the character, nothing written in stone in any direction. Nightcrawler made sense to do a variant because, well, 4-Star is already his Classic form. Black Widow's 2-Star is decidedly "Classic", as in it's one of her first ever outfits, but not what we'd actually call that. So really, just depends on the character that fits that slot and what already exists in-game. And just because it's a character's first outing in the game doesn't mean that that version will be 'Classic" (see: Blob for an example)
@CarnageWing [Official Forums]
Question: Are you satisfied with the direction and prominence that Ascension is currently taking in the game? Do you think most players are enjoying it too? Do you plan on expanding this functionality to other levels in the future (6*...)?

Answer: No plans for 6-Stars right now. It's more likely (not an announcement!) that we'd do something like extend 5-Star leveling through a limit break style thing than create a whole new tier. As for Ascension, it's still early days really. Are we satisfied? For this very second, fairly satisfied, yes. Players are still mostly starting out their journeys in creating Ascended characters, so we don't want to upset any apple carts by integrating them too deeply right now.
@LOKI2355 [Official Forums]
Question: The face of the original Nightcrawler 4* that we have is very "strange", could his art be updated (just like they did with Wanda 3) to look a little more similar to that of the 2 which is much better (even cute)? Seriously, his arts are AMAZING!

Answer: We have loose plans for a lot of art updates on the line. There are several other characters that need it too (Spider-Gwen for example, looking decidedly sketch-like compared to others, or Blade Modern's... interesting fangs). We'd love to get around to them, but at the moment we're focusing the team in pushing out timelines instead. Meaning that character art (and design) are finished earlier than current allowing for more testing and iteration before release. Once we're in a comfortable place there, we can start doing some re-dos. Incidentally, that's where updating Supports away from 'characters' sits too.
@PHOTONrumbeau [Official Forums]
Question: Will we have any updates soon about the feature to change character covers that you were planning as informed in previous Q&A?

Answer: It's cooking. The actual ability to swap the covers is simple, we do that already sometimes via a patch. The hard part is putting that into the player's hands with UI that's satisfying and easy to use, as well as sourcing additional covers. We could go out with the current cover swaps, but that's really a small handful when we'd like a bigger stock there.
figzilla [Reddit]
Question: Blinking powers (indicating that there's enough AP to fire) yet cannot fire due to a conditional (not enough countdowns, lacking AP, etc) can that be displayed differently (maybe not blink)? I dislike using 4*Kingpin and The Hunter because of this.

Answer: It's one of the many things on the list to change once we have some engine changes on-line. The current engine is surprisingly inflexible in some ways, and this is one of them.
@fight4thedream [Official Forums]
Question: Is it too early to get on the Deadpool & Wolverine hype train? Can we get a sneak peek of what the dev team is cooking in the kitchen?

Answer: MPQBlaine: Spoilers, there will be plenty of Deadpool.

ThisisClemFandango · 8 March 2024, 19:57

You missed my question @DevpoolMPQ_BCS @IceIX @MPQBlaine

captainheath · 8 March 2024, 21:10

I wish they would answer some of the questions regarding the upcoming changes to supports. It stinks to be earning shards on supports that may end up getting nerfed.

frachr · 9 March 2024, 01:39

You missed my question too!

Daredevil217 · 9 March 2024, 02:45

Mine too haha

entrailbucket · 9 March 2024, 06:00

@ThisisClemFandango said:
You missed my question @DevpoolMPQ_BCS @IceIX @MPQBlaine

Yeah, I wouldn't say they missed it...

ThisisClemFandango · 9 March 2024, 12:31

Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

DAZ0273 · 9 March 2024, 14:58

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I just read your question - you asked "Would it be possible" in connection with a character who could counter charged tiles. No offence but what answer were you expecting to that? "Yes it would be possible". Are we getting one? You didn't ask! So I would probably not have answered that one either in any way that was not sarcastic especially when you are referencing pointless exercises.

slidecage · 9 March 2024, 15:08

Still no 6 stars. So what the hell am I going to do with 300 open slots lol (really though got like 97)

bigjojo04 · 9 March 2024, 16:56

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I’ve asked 4-5 questions thus far over the months and all of mine have been answered. They just don’t care about you specifically.

ThisisClemFandango · 9 March 2024, 18:29

@bigjojo04 said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I’ve asked 4-5 questions thus far over the months and all of mine have been answered. They just don’t care about you specifically.

Ah....yeah, makes total sense

ThisisClemFandango · 9 March 2024, 18:36

@DAZ0273 said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I just read your question - you asked "Would it be possible" in connection with a character who could counter charged tiles. No offence but what answer were you expecting to that? "Yes it would be possible". Are we getting one? You didn't ask! So I would probably not have answered that one either in any way that was not sarcastic especially when you are referencing pointless exercises.

OK that's fair next time I won't ask pointless questions even though it's relevant to every player, I don't want Jane nerfed she's perfectly beatable but say, if Jane was scissors and then a character was rock then they would be Jane's counter.
I won't ask any questions from here on, I just try and provide this forum with some barely funny hijinks.

entrailbucket · 9 March 2024, 18:49

@ThisisClemFandango said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I just read your question - you asked "Would it be possible" in connection with a character who could counter charged tiles. No offence but what answer were you expecting to that? "Yes it would be possible". Are we getting one? You didn't ask! So I would probably not have answered that one either in any way that was not sarcastic especially when you are referencing pointless exercises.

OK that's fair next time I won't ask pointless questions even though it's relevant to every player, I don't want Jane nerfed she's perfectly beatable but say, if Jane was scissors and then a character was rock then they would be Jane's counter.
I won't ask any questions from here on, I just try and provide this forum with some barely funny hijinks.

Just out of curiosity, are you entering your questions in the Google form or just putting them on the forum?

For a long time, I thought they were specifically ducking me too, but it turns out that they only answer questions if you put them in the Google form.

Zarqa · 9 March 2024, 19:05

They definitely don’t answer all questions, even when put into the google form. At least three of mine have not been answered in past Q&As, including this one. I think my server stability question was fair, but I also understand they might not want to publicly comment on it. Any case, they always make a selection.

DAZ0273 · 9 March 2024, 19:48

@ThisisClemFandango said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I just read your question - you asked "Would it be possible" in connection with a character who could counter charged tiles. No offence but what answer were you expecting to that? "Yes it would be possible". Are we getting one? You didn't ask! So I would probably not have answered that one either in any way that was not sarcastic especially when you are referencing pointless exercises.

OK that's fair next time I won't ask pointless questions even though it's relevant to every player, I don't want Jane nerfed she's perfectly beatable but say, if Jane was scissors and then a character was rock then they would be Jane's counter.
I won't ask any questions from here on, I just try and provide this forum with some barely funny hijinks.

Oh c'mon matey, you know I am not being mean or trying to be a Rimmer. The fact is that we have to know they are aware of Jane's Thunderyness and generic questions about her will either be ignored because

A) THEY KNOW!
THEY KNOW and have a plan they can't tell us or
C) Gazpacho Soup

So getting down in the dumps about it is probably not worth the effort?

BUT...BIG BUT like does my bum look big in this BUTT... obviously never stop asking.

Wait...forget about C above, nothing to see there...

Scofie · 9 March 2024, 19:55

I think I had a couple unanswered a while ago so I don't think it's personal. I might see if we can get a bit of clarity on what won't get answered and put it in the next Q&A thread.

I know it was raised a while ago and there were a few types: questions not on the Google form, non-questions, criticism veiled as a question, commercially sensitive questions, questions that were asked in the previous months etc. They've also said they bunch similar questions together so as not to be repetitive.

But I did enjoy reading the answers this month. I learned a fair bit about how the game works, so thanks to the devs for answering the questions they did candidly and with good humour.

BriMan2222 · 9 March 2024, 20:00

I suppose they could have just answered the Jane counter question with a good old never say never

ThisisClemFandango · 9 March 2024, 20:29

@BriMan2222 said:
I suppose they could have just answered the Jane counter question with a good old never say never

You said the thing!!!!
Yay!!

DAZ0273 · 9 March 2024, 20:32

@Scofie said:
I think I had a couple unanswered a while ago so I don't think it's personal. I might see if we can get a bit of clarity on what won't get answered and put it in the next Q&A thread.

I know it was raised a while ago and there were a few types: questions not on the Google form, non-questions, criticism veiled as a question, commercially sensitive questions, questions that were asked in the previous months etc. They've also said they bunch similar questions together so as not to be repetitive.

But I did enjoy reading the answers this month. I learned a fair bit about how the game works, so thanks to the devs for answering the questions they did candidly and with good humour.

If you can ask whether it is OK to ask about whether any of the team like to dress in Emergency Services Uniform that would be appreciated.

For a friend. Asking I mean. Especially if Fireman costume.

I mean for health and safety purposes.

ThisisClemFandango · 9 March 2024, 21:32

@entrailbucket said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:

@DAZ0273 said:

@ThisisClemFandango said:
Isn't it strange that they ask for questions but then don't have the manners to answer them?
What a pointless exercise.

I just read your question - you asked "Would it be possible" in connection with a character who could counter charged tiles. No offence but what answer were you expecting to that? "Yes it would be possible". Are we getting one? You didn't ask! So I would probably not have answered that one either in any way that was not sarcastic especially when you are referencing pointless exercises.

OK that's fair next time I won't ask pointless questions even though it's relevant to every player, I don't want Jane nerfed she's perfectly beatable but say, if Jane was scissors and then a character was rock then they would be Jane's counter.
I won't ask any questions from here on, I just try and provide this forum with some barely funny hijinks.

Just out of curiosity, are you entering your questions in the Google form or just putting them on the forum?

For a long time, I thought they were specifically ducking me too, but it turns out that they only answer questions if you put them in the Google form.

Yeah I did both. Just bums me out they ask for questions and then pick and choose.
It's kind of like Bethesda asking the community if they find any bugs in their game then doesn't do anything about it.

fight4thedream · 11 March 2024, 09:57

@Bri-Man2222 [Official Forums]
Question: Are there any plans to release Red Skull this year, or ever? He is in pretty much every other marvel mobile game and not having Captain America's biggest foe seems like a pretty glaring omission.

Answer: Nev.......... not gonna say it! But no, no plans to release Red Skull this year in particular. This year is focusing on non-Avengers related characters to get our overall numbers of the various Marvel groups a bit more in parity. I know it seems like we have a lot of X-Men, what with Wolverine, Storm, etc, but there are a LOT of Avengers too. Doesn't mean that one may not sneak in, but less likely than a Marvel Knight, or an Inhuman, or a Guardian or such.

Well this certainly explains the Victor Mancha release. Those are some interesting groups to highlight but I am bit disappointed that the Eternals weren't mentioned. Still would be cool if we got Richard Rider as he is the most notably absent Guardian. I wonder who is left for the Marvel Knights group?

MPQ Developer Q&A February 2024 (ANSWERS)

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