Marvel Puzzle Quest: Character Rebalances Insights

S0kun
S0kun ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 1,075 Chairperson of the Boards
in MPQ General Discussion

We’ve been closely following all the feedback since we announced our plans to roll out batched nerfs and buffs across a wide range of MPQ characters. Unsurprisingly, the most heated reactions are around changes to long-standing meta characters that have made some of the most significant contributions to your rosters over the years.

We’ve said before that the game needed a shake-up because things were starting to feel stagnant. Over the past year, we’ve put a lot of thought into how to approach that in a meaningful way, and the answer came in the form of these larger rebalanced batches. Those plans assumed the game would be on a more stable foundation, but with all the turbulence from Unity’s launch and the follow-up work, the timing hasn’t lined up the way we hoped.

With that in mind, we’re going to hold off on Batch 3 of our rebalances until sometime next year, when things are in a more solid place. The previously announced characters will be reevaluated then, and we’ll also be looking not just at individual characters, but also at game-breaking synergies that clearly weren’t intended to exist (for example, Kangveil).

Before we wrap up, we want to talk a bit about the reasoning behind these changes. In simple terms, characters like Polaris and Mighty Thor have defined the meta so completely that most new designs just cannot compete with them. Their kits and their place in the ecosystem are so dominant that they crowd out other options, and that can’t be fixed just by adding more powerful characters on top. For a game with over 300 characters, the usage stats make it clear that a small handful are sitting in the double-digit percentage range across play, and from a balance standpoint that becomes unsustainable. To give more characters a chance to shine and to open up team-building creativity again, we made the difficult decision to tone down some of these top meta picks.

What about future regular rebalances like in the past?
That’s absolutely something we want to return to. Those smaller, more regular tuning passes were part of MPQ’s normal cadence, and we’ve missed being able to do them properly. The reality is that Unity-related development issues have made it hard to dedicate the time and focus needed to get back into that rhythm. Our hope is that once things stabilize, we can bring that style of ongoing rebalance back next year.

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Comments

  • amigopdude22
    amigopdude22 Posts: 35 Just Dropped In

    @S0kun said:
    we’ll also be looking not just at individual characters, but also at game-breaking synergies that clearly weren’t intended to exist (for example, Kangveil).

    So, there are over 300 characters in a game with "Puzzle" in the name. Players utilize those characters and their knowledge of the abilities to solve the "puzzle" (in this case, winning, or, beating the time trial that is the leaderboard), and because it wasn't intended, the player-base is punished.

    It's becoming indefensible. God forbid we want to run someone like Red Skull with someone who isn't Hydra or villain associated and their abilities play nice together.

    If the goal is to have people spend more time in the game or use x amount of characters, then change the entire format of the game to "Marvel Idle Quest" or make everything a Pick-1 with 2 partners that couldn't possibly be useful with any meta character. May I suggest 2 Mysterios? That would really spice things up for the 80 or so remaining players.

  • amigopdude22
    amigopdude22 Posts: 35 Just Dropped In

    @BagPuss said:
    Just > @amigopdude22 said:

    If the goal is to have people spend more time in the game or use x amount of characters, then change the entire format of the game to "Marvel Idle Quest" or make everything a Pick-1 with 2 partners that couldn't possibly be useful with any meta character. May I suggest 2 Mysterios? That would really spice things up for the 80 or so remaining players.

    Bring back Heroics :D ..

    They were supposed to with Unity but guess that got delayed too thanks to the amazing rollout it had😂

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,632 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Gymp28 said:

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I would say that cranking up the SCL10 difficulty while chopping the legs out from under the force multipliers is probably a thin line to balance on for player retention. I don’t mean that in any sort of ominous way, just saying that if you double the width of the trees and grind the edges off our axes it doesn’t equal out to a feeling of improvement really.

    I don’t know at what stage your roster is, but I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that not everyone should expect to be able to complete the new SCL 9 and 10 with ease. Isn’t that the point of a harder difficulty: to present a challenge?
    It’s something to strive towards, and when you get there you can feel like you’ve really earned those rewards.
    Plenty of tools in the drawer besides the now (only slightly) blunted axe.

    I have options, I don’t really use the nerfed characters that much outside of Polaris who I just like for tile spam for a number of reasons. I purposely have been letting RNG build my roster evenly, my in game name is m4x in WillowWatch if you want to check it. But my highest natural characters are 499, so it’s more that the new SCL difficulty takes longer than that it is incompletable. And even that is fine really. I am more just saying that as we replace the swords with letter openers and the axes with I don’t know, dull axes I guess, it just starts to feel like artificial throttling rather than natural difficulty.

  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,957 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Gymp28 said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @Gymp28 said:

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I would say that cranking up the SCL10 difficulty while chopping the legs out from under the force multipliers is probably a thin line to balance on for player retention. I don’t mean that in any sort of ominous way, just saying that if you double the width of the trees and grind the edges off our axes it doesn’t equal out to a feeling of improvement really.

    I don’t know at what stage your roster is, but I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that not everyone should expect to be able to complete the new SCL 9 and 10 with ease. Isn’t that the point of a harder difficulty: to present a challenge?
    It’s something to strive towards, and when you get there you can feel like you’ve really earned those rewards.
    Plenty of tools in the drawer besides the now (only slightly) blunted axe.

    If they had called the two new levels CL11 and 12, and defaulted most players into (the old) CL10, I think they could've avoided a lot of this. As usual, weird implementation combined with bad communication made this much worse for them.

    Yeah, apparently they couldn’t do that for lore reasons, as S.H.I.E.L.D clearance only goes up to 10.
    But I completely agree that people feeling like it’s ‘the same SCL they’ve always done’ is a big culprit in people feeling displaced from their routine, and therefore disillusioned with the game.

    But they have ways to make this clearer to players. The currently use Shield Rank for allowing you to select CL but those ranks are so easy to obtain that you can get into CLs long before your roster can 'easily' handle the opponents there especially in CL8-10.

    If they really wanted to make it clear to players that CL9 and CL10 require stronger rosters then the way to do that is
    (1) put a notice saying 'recommended for character levels 450+' type thing so you'd know if you were going in with an under developed roster.
    (2) Outright block you from joining unless you have at least 1 (or more) characters at that level similar to how Shield Clearance blocks you.

    KGB

  • kuntilanak
    kuntilanak Posts: 268 Mover and Shaker

    The way I see it, there are 2 big problems:
    1. Implementing supports in PVP. Given that supports are broken beyond repair in terms of acquiring then and the benefits they give, you'll never balance out anyone.
    2. Ascension of tiers. All the characters when introduced were designed to be good at that tier, so naturally, some will be very OP at higher tiers. Also nigh impossible to balance without really gutting them.

    Both features are made possible by the current dev iirc, so they essentially dropping 2 very big boulders on their feet. I don't see any possible ways for them to make things better (without major backslash from players, that is ..), and they can't remove these 2 feats at all.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,747 Chairperson of the Boards

    @KGB said:

    @Gymp28 said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @Gymp28 said:

    @ThaRoadWarrior said:
    I would say that cranking up the SCL10 difficulty while chopping the legs out from under the force multipliers is probably a thin line to balance on for player retention. I don’t mean that in any sort of ominous way, just saying that if you double the width of the trees and grind the edges off our axes it doesn’t equal out to a feeling of improvement really.

    I don’t know at what stage your roster is, but I think it’s entirely reasonable to say that not everyone should expect to be able to complete the new SCL 9 and 10 with ease. Isn’t that the point of a harder difficulty: to present a challenge?
    It’s something to strive towards, and when you get there you can feel like you’ve really earned those rewards.
    Plenty of tools in the drawer besides the now (only slightly) blunted axe.

    If they had called the two new levels CL11 and 12, and defaulted most players into (the old) CL10, I think they could've avoided a lot of this. As usual, weird implementation combined with bad communication made this much worse for them.

    Yeah, apparently they couldn’t do that for lore reasons, as S.H.I.E.L.D clearance only goes up to 10.
    But I completely agree that people feeling like it’s ‘the same SCL they’ve always done’ is a big culprit in people feeling displaced from their routine, and therefore disillusioned with the game.

    But they have ways to make this clearer to players. The currently use Shield Rank for allowing you to select CL but those ranks are so easy to obtain that you can get into CLs long before your roster can 'easily' handle the opponents there especially in CL8-10.

    If they really wanted to make it clear to players that CL9 and CL10 require stronger rosters then the way to do that is
    (1) put a notice saying 'recommended for character levels 450+' type thing so you'd know if you were going in with an under developed roster.
    (2) Outright block you from joining unless you have at least 1 (or more) characters at that level similar to how Shield Clearance blocks you.

    KGB

    What's extra hilarious is that they DID actually say this, except it was buried in a forum post on here that probably 5 people saw.

    This kind of stuff requires what you suggested -- explain it in the actual game, and also figure out how to lock out people who aren't ready and didn't read the explanation.

    Instead they chose to throw people into the new "we suggest you have levelled up 6* on your roster" difficulty BY DEFAULT, and called it the same thing that easymode PvE was called before.

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