MARVEL Puzzle Quest Development Update

Does make you wonder how long they've been actively working on the game and not coasting their time away.
Makes me sad, at the start bcs were excellent. Oh well carp diem

Exactly what does any of this mean? I get that there will be new developers, and I completely understand why. But it's a lot of words, and none of them show anything truly on the horizon. Maybe what's coming is that players are able to actually... Play? 6 stars and tower mode are fine, but let's not act like those are amazing improvements. They're basically just a natural progression, i.e. more of the same. This post should have been discussing what we can expect. Instead, we got who we can expect it from. Anyone wanna guess if it's STILL just more of the same?

@entrailbucket said:

@MgoBlue51 said:
Exactly what does any of this mean? I get that there will be new developers, and I completely understand why. But it's a lot of words, and none of them show anything truly on the horizon. Maybe what's coming is that players are able to actually... Play? 6 stars and tower mode are fine, but let's not act like those are amazing improvements. They're basically just a natural progression, i.e. more of the same. This post should have been discussing what we can expect. Instead, we got who we can expect it from. Anyone wanna guess if it's STILL just more of the same?

I agree with this completely. It doesn't mean anything to us, or at least it shouldn't. We have no idea what's been happening behind the scenes, who's responsible for what, or how anything will change after this.

One more on board, we don´t really care "who is doing what", we want answers and a REAL TIMELINE for improvements to the game

No more "empty promises", the ballon has been inflated to far, the players are leaving like lemmings and it seems like the employees/outside sources as well

Don't know how this coincides with a 6 star

@MgoBlue51 said:
Exactly what does any of this mean? I get that there will be new developers, and I completely understand why. But it's a lot of words, and none of them show anything truly on the horizon. Maybe what's coming is that players are able to actually... Play? 6 stars and tower mode are fine, but let's not act like those are amazing improvements. They're basically just a natural progression, i.e. more of the same. This post should have been discussing what we can expect. Instead, we got who we can expect it from. Anyone wanna guess if it's STILL just more of the same?

It’s a match-3 game with a roster building component. Or a roster building game with a match-3 mini game mechanic. Depends on how you look at it. The point is the game itself doesn’t have tons of unexplored design space left when it’s about manipulating gems and taking down the
opponents’ health as quickly as possible.

It’s funny because when people talked about 6s since Golden Oldie I’d say “why? We can clear things turn 0” and “you’d have to make the game harder to make a reason for 6s”. And here we are.

I am having trouble imagining what’s next but apparently it could be just “play matches longer because your opponent won’t die for several turns and make sure your team can outlast theirs”. I dunno how compelling that is exactly. But keep adding levels and covers! For a whole bunch of useless characters!

I kind of feel like we’ve reached the end of new stuff they can do with character design although maybe some different game modes might happen.

@bluewolf said:

@MgoBlue51 said:
Exactly what does any of this mean? I get that there will be new developers, and I completely understand why. But it's a lot of words, and none of them show anything truly on the horizon. Maybe what's coming is that players are able to actually... Play? 6 stars and tower mode are fine, but let's not act like those are amazing improvements. They're basically just a natural progression, i.e. more of the same. This post should have been discussing what we can expect. Instead, we got who we can expect it from. Anyone wanna guess if it's STILL just more of the same?

It’s a match-3 game with a roster building component. Or a roster building game with a match-3 mini game mechanic. Depends on how you look at it. The point is the game itself doesn’t have tons of unexplored design space left when it’s about manipulating gems and taking down the
opponents’ health as quickly as possible.

It’s funny because when people talked about 6s since Golden Oldie I’d say “why? We can clear things turn 0” and “you’d have to make the game harder to make a reason for 6s”. And here we are.

I am having trouble imagining what’s next but apparently it could be just “play matches longer because your opponent won’t die for several turns and make sure your team can outlast theirs”. I dunno how compelling that is exactly. But keep adding levels and covers! For a whole bunch of useless characters!

I kind of feel like we’ve reached the end of new stuff they can do with character design although maybe some different game modes might happen.

All of that is possible. But if we are as far as we can go, why even bother swapping to unity in the first place? I know it's tough to keep creating new and unseen things. And you're right, it's a gem matching game at its heart, no argument here. But if they're not moving forward, they're standing still. What keeps us spending money? And without spending, how does it survive?

I'm not saying the game is gonna die, it's lasted this long without fully evolving ever. But they have already lost a good chunk of people with this buggy nonsense, and I'm sure many people are still teetering on the edge of quitting. Time to buy back some good will, no? No handouts needed, just find something fun or cool or helpful to inject into the game. Otherwise, why even employ any coders except those who create new characters? The other coders are clearly not doing much.

@MgoBlue51 said:

@bluewolf said:

@MgoBlue51 said:
Exactly what does any of this mean? I get that there will be new developers, and I completely understand why. But it's a lot of words, and none of them show anything truly on the horizon. Maybe what's coming is that players are able to actually... Play? 6 stars and tower mode are fine, but let's not act like those are amazing improvements. They're basically just a natural progression, i.e. more of the same. This post should have been discussing what we can expect. Instead, we got who we can expect it from. Anyone wanna guess if it's STILL just more of the same?

It’s a match-3 game with a roster building component. Or a roster building game with a match-3 mini game mechanic. Depends on how you look at it. The point is the game itself doesn’t have tons of unexplored design space left when it’s about manipulating gems and taking down the
opponents’ health as quickly as possible.

It’s funny because when people talked about 6s since Golden Oldie I’d say “why? We can clear things turn 0” and “you’d have to make the game harder to make a reason for 6s”. And here we are.

I am having trouble imagining what’s next but apparently it could be just “play matches longer because your opponent won’t die for several turns and make sure your team can outlast theirs”. I dunno how compelling that is exactly. But keep adding levels and covers! For a whole bunch of useless characters!

I kind of feel like we’ve reached the end of new stuff they can do with character design although maybe some different game modes might happen.

All of that is possible. But if we are as far as we can go, why even bother swapping to unity in the first place? I know it's tough to keep creating new and unseen things. And you're right, it's a gem matching game at its heart, no argument here. But if they're not moving forward, they're standing still. What keeps us spending money? And without spending, how does it survive?

I'm not saying the game is gonna die, it's lasted this long without fully evolving ever. But they have already lost a good chunk of people with this buggy nonsense, and I'm sure many people are still teetering on the edge of quitting. Time to buy back some good will, no? No handouts needed, just find something fun or cool or helpful to inject into the game. Otherwise, why even employ any coders except those who create new characters? The other coders are clearly not doing much.

I don’t believe they’ve reached the end of the design space with character releases. I think the Hydra bunch have all been really interesting, Viper especially! She’s an absolute monster with a unique mechanic that feeds off burst health damage.
It would be interesting to have some more varied PvE events vs different combinations of the 300+ characters in the game, most of which no-one ever gets to play against.
But, as people seem to dislike simulator, and if that sounds like ‘more of the same’ to you, perhaps it’s your time with the game that’s done, rather than the games development?

On the other hand if you’ve got fantastic ideas for new game modes they could implement, feel free to share them. I’d certainly be interested, and chances are the new dev team will be more likely to listen to suggestions (BCS were very engaged at the start of their tenure).

As far as “why unity” and “why new dev team” the game, while making less than ever, still makes more than any random game. Gems of War seems to make approx 1/4 to 1/8 MPQ money and even if Marvel gets 10% as a royalty or whatever that’s a big difference.

The fact is they seem to want to keep this going and have some hope of a rebound - almost certainly they hope making 6s scarce and difficult to procure will result in whales and lesser spenders forking over cash so they can keep winning rewards which move the progress toward 6s at an snails pace. Which is the point of the game. Etc.

But Unity and IP2 are obviously a hope to reduce labor costs and almost certainly make it more nimble and controllable and scalable to game revenue conditions. If money isn’t there then i dont expect great things.

Lastly re: Viper, she’s doing Mephisto and Namor and CD powers bundled differently with some power creep on the passive side and doesn’t represent a bold new idea for design as much as a new bundle. Adding Hydra tiles and making them work together is a decent idea so I suppose that’s a different design but then you have Galactus and more 6s coming laughing at them.

This is fine because the game has over 1,158 powers in it.

@SaltyRepertoire48 said:
Thank God! I've been saying hire some qualified people. The world is healing.

How do you know the new developers are more "qualified" than the old ones?

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:

@SaltyRepertoire48 said:
Thank God! I've been saying hire some qualified people. The world is healing.

How do you know the new developers are more "qualified" than the old ones?

The fact they've produced a successful re-write of a game (Gems of War) to Unity for PC/Mobile platforms would qualify them.

KGB

Dunno, I'd like to see each employee's resume before making any decisions.