An analysis of the upcoming changes (+ why you should quit)

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

For a long time I’ve been on the fence as to whether the developers are clueless or greedy, and while I had hoped for cluelessness that we as vocal community members could change, a lot of the recent changes made it very hard to prove that they were not done out of greed. This upcoming character update shows that both sides of the coin are indeed true.

  1. Alliance cost changes. While it appears that it was generous to give them out for free, it probably helped their bottom line more by giving them away. It was pretty clear that you needed one to advance so I spent $100 during a sale to upgrade my own to the full 20 slots. I figured that the increase in covers + hp from top 100 placements would eventually pay for itself. Finding an alliance was very difficult if you weren’t browsing the forums and if you weren’t the best player, you’d find that you were being kicked every time you joined a new alliance. Internal analysis probably linked new player removal with people quitting so allowing players to form their own alliances for “free” was probably the best solution.

  2. Shield changes. I’m not exactly sure why the shield changes took place. People climbing to ridiculous scores must’ve taken a lot of shields and the trickle down to the regular players was fantastic. It was very hard to make top 10 but 1300 was easy. I have to believe that this was on overall loss in HP (though maybe not with forcing people to buy 24 hour shields), super spender PvPers will need to chime in. Maybe seeing super high scores scared off new players? The shield changes haven’t affected me too much, but the increased match length / greater effect of sniping is a concern.

  3. Poor character releases. She-Hulk being released alongside the true heal fiasco, the Hood getting nerfed because of 4hor and MMags/Mystique getting tweaked due to Prof X’s release are all glaring problems. Old characters shouldn’t be getting messed up because of a new character who the average player won’t be using for several months. It makes you look like amateurs, what comes to mind for me is the shadow priest nerf in World of Warcraft because warlocks were overpowered. You nerf the new problem, you don’t mess with an old character who was balanced before the changes took place. If you don’t like the interaction, you modify it slightly, not break one of the characters so it no longer occurs.

  4. Nerfing of boosts. Boosts only serve to help the player as the AI cannot use boosts. As stated many times, all matches in this game favor the AI even though their “intelligence” is lower than that of the player. Even if they’re dumb as rocks, they’ll eventually get a really nice cascade and damage they deal to the player is permanent whereas they come back with full life even if they lose. “The game is not balanced around starting with 6 AP” is bullshit. No one uses +3 all AP all time (and if they did they’re spending massive amounts of HP). Starting with only +2 AP is a massive nerf to anyone whose abilities are divisible by 3, it doesn’t reduce the number of matches you need to cast an ability unless you make a match 4. The change was done so that matches take longer and you have a greater chance of taking damage / losing. Taking damage results in increased health kit sales so this change was clearly done out of greed.

  5. Raising the boost amounts in PvP. Supposed to promote diversity but this just elongates matches and makes you take devastating amounts of damage when an ability goes off. Done out of greed, more kits are needed to score highly.

  6. MMR fiasco. Fight more difficult battles early, lose more kits on your climb. Pretty simple.

I’ve rolled with these changes and the various character nerfs but this announcement is the last straw. This is both a money grab and a product of people who don’t understand their own game so I’ll go down the list and show you what I mean:

PvEs: Enemy of the State is a horrible event. Wolverine is locked out for nearly the entirety (who is a PvE all star on easier nodes with his healing) and the new enemies are cheap. Kaishu caltrops are mostly unavoidable damage, I frequently leave goon only fights with all characters down to 50% life. Teisatsu (I believe, you know who I mean) drop very powerful attack tiles on death, another HP suck. I do not find their design to be fun and in my mind they’re only there to sell health packs. Also f tinycat your survival nodes where Wolverine pops out of nowhere with 30 red AP (built up from the previous rounds goons) and instantly downing someone with Adamantium Slash. You know tinykitty well you designed it that way on purpose as that would have been caught immediately upon play testing.

R&G is also a fairly terrible event. Almost all their harder nodes feature a character being fed AP by goons, Jugg, Mystique and Doom if I recall. More HP sucks.

Now on to characters:

Kingpin - Kingpin is garbage on his own, long CD tiles do not work. Look at how much worse Sentry’s World Rupture is post nerf, KP’s yellow is nearly the same thing. His black is decent if a CD tile is present but that condition is very difficult to satisfy UNLESS you are facing him in PvE. Pair him with a black feeding goon (Don or some of the new ones from Enemy of the State) and you will take a lot of damage. If he was to be used exclusively by the player I would say this was due to incompetence on the design staff but I foresee him being featured in either a new PvE storyline or in an upcoming Simulator event so my gut is telling me this is a money grab. You want to place highly in an event, be prepared to spend money on the new nerfed boosts or health kits.

Quicksilver - This one just looks like incompetence. I don’t know how this one got pushed through the development cycle, he’s the worst new character in a long time.

Ragnarok “fix” - So for reference a level 94 2* Thor does 4412 damage and a level 166 3* Rag does 5523 net damage. Kamala does 50% more damage for 2 less AP AND doesn’t kill your own team. Sentry does double the damage for 3 less AP (but does triple damage to your own team). LThor does nearly double the damage as well. His new red is passable but worse in most situations compared to his old, his blue is pretty terrible. This screams incompetence.

Invis Woman - Incompetence. IW needed a complete rework, tweaks were not going to be enough. Protect tiles are nice but nowhere near as powerful or valuable as strike tiles. The game usually comes down to who gets an ability off first and protect tiles do nothing against that. If she was going to rely heavily on defense her tiles needed to be % reduction, not flat amounts. 6.3k damage for 19 or 24 AP sucks, she’s still unplayable.

Elektra - Incompetence. The reason Elektra isn’t played is because her purple costs 14 AP if the enemy doesn’t have strike tiles. I use her occasionally on very specific teams and her main problem is that her red is overwritten by enemy special tiles. Traps should count as “invisible” special tiles, I don’t care if Daken can see that 1 red tile isn’t changing as he’s spamming Pheromone Rage. Would make DD more viable too

Xforce - Greed. Xforce was fast and powerful, allowing you to win with minimal damage. These changes were to make sure you take a ton of damage during a fight so you use more kits. Green was already in line Human Torch’s fireball, slightly more powerful but as it should be seeing its a 4* vs. a 3*.

She-Hulk - Incompetence. Blue still doesn’t work on an empty board which was her biggest problem - this new one is actually worse since it no longer works on CD tiles. Green is just going to be annoying and slow the game down, 6 AP to reduce 2 random AP levels to 0? This doesn’t come off as a super awesome ability, this looks like something that’s going to potentially cost me more health kits and cause me take more defensive loses due to long matches in a PvP climb.

Health changes: More health means longer matches and more chances for an opponent to get an ability off before they die. Different health tiers aren’t going to choose who I select for my team but will affect how much damage I take and thus how many health kits I’m spending. Specific characters gaining slightly more health is okay but these blanket changes just scream money trap. PvE is going to be worse as a result as well.

All of these changes looks like its pushing more and more to who is willing to spend more on all AP boosts and health kits to win at PvE and PvP. I have 40k HP built up and could probably do very well but this isn’t the kind of game I want to play. When these changes go live, which they more than likely will, I’m out.

2

Some good points in the OP

I don’t know about the bottom line, but alliance slots should always have been free and it’s better that they sucked it up and corrected that than leave the mistake

The trickle down came to me, a veteran who could now effortlessly make 600 points and top 100. It stopped there because people in my situation clogged up the leaderboard leaving no room for transitioning or lower rosters. After the change it was harder for me to get top100 so it appears to have worked

The problem is that like everything else they keep adjusting in PVP, the shield changes were a bandaid on a completely dysfunctional system that no amount of bandaids will fix even if they can make it less painful

Nobody’s perfect, but the fact is that some mechanics are more likely to “accidentally” completely make broken interactions than others, and I agree that d3p is really bad at recognizing and avoiding these mechanics in the first place (Smite for example is a really terribly designed ability that acts as an unnecessary constraint on all charged tile abilities, forever)

I think you underestimate the amount of AP you get from match4/match5s, and thus how much +3 AP boosts can affect 7 cost abilities. But “Decrease the cost of an ability by one turn” is an ENORMOUS boost that disproportionately affects some characters as you point out yourself, so it makes sense to eliminate it (which is not an endorsement of the way they eliminated it because of associated consequences on the overall game dynamics)

Do you mean raising the health? See below

I know people have gotten excited about IF and Luke Cage but for characters AND enemies “here just take a bunch of unavoidable damage, no strategy” is bad, bad design. Bad.

There’s a chance I’m wrong ( icon_e_wink.gif
) but I’m wagering that the health changes will have huge effects on who people select for their team and not much effect on length of battles and how much damage is taken (because low health characters weren’t being used in the first place)

3

For the top .5% of the players, maybe you are right. For the rest of us, these changes are all good things.

Bye

4

Overall I think its a negative change for players. A large portion of my battles result in the opponent not getting any abilities off, more health means that is much less likely to happen. Take for instance Human Torch. Getting hit by 1 ability would drop him to half life. Going into battle with 50% life is pretty dangerous considering the opponent usually gets off 0-1 abilities. With more life Torch can now get hit by 2 abilities, however, longer matches now dictate I’ll get hit by 1-2 abilities. The odds of him dying seem to be about the same but the chance I’ll take damage is much higher.

Players will still gravitate toward the best characters and these health boosts just mean the matches will drag on longer when they’re the featured character you’re forced to bring along, especially when boosted to 290.

5

If you like being told you can only play for 15m every 3 hours unless you pay $2 per 15m I suppose you are right. I don’t necessarily mind character nerfs (mainly if they are done correctly) but when you keep adding mechanics that cause you to take unavoidable damage in order to sell health kits, that’s where I draw the line.

This reminds me of the old arcade games in the 80’s and 90’s (X-Men and the Simpsons probably being the ones I remember most) where in order to win it was more a question of how many quarters you had and not how skillful you were.

6

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I feel like we just had True Healing nerf. So many health packs posts were written that day. Everything done just to sell them. It’s been nearly a year isn’t it?

I’m sorry, but thinking that all those changes are only to increase health pack sales is just silly. We have moved from 3 hour refresh pve to 8 hours, yet nobody mentioned how it will affect their sales.
Character rebalancing happen because, just maybe, they weren’t balanced in first place. I’m sad my Magstorm isn’t as powerful (or rather fast, as his Red is castable now much easier and that’s amazing skill), but his Purple was reason you couldn’t make any chars feeding on match 5 or having good Blue skills. Hood is still considered S class character after nerf which only proves how over the top he was before them.

Improving character health while nerfing the most powerful character in game? If anything it decreases need for health packs. Previously, you played Xforce + X all day long, using packs if he ever gets downed. And when they’re gone, what are you gonna do? Use your other characters? But they are so, so much weaker that it’s pointless. Now, having characters closer in power means when your A team gets wiped, your B team isn’t that much worse. Oh, and that’s PvP only. The only Dark Avenger that was buffed was Bullseye and you face them in majority of events. Having more health on characters that primarly are used to fight them means you can use them more before they need pack. And by same logic you use, having Bagnarok bad giving how many freaking events he is starrting it is working against selling health packs.

Nerfing Xforce is if anything decreasing amount of cover purchases, so far it was the easiest 4* to max, wait till daily resupply comes with all colours, take your wallet out, win.

Nerfing boosts for PvE means people who were boosting have now less advantage than those that didn’t. Double so if they used HP boosts. Sure it might decrease win% for little, but looking at bigger picture, decrease community scaling at same time. And everyone is affected same.

And finally, having to buy health packs to score well is ridiculous. PvE: 8 hours refreshes as I said, and from personal experience of someone who often score t10 and did few t2 finishes, I never needed to buy health packs (or use All AP boosts). That was both before and after obtaining fully covered Xforce. Play smart. Use right characters. Protect tiles against Ninjas. Stunner (and a prayer) against Villain+feeders. Regenners against easier nodes. Start final grind 8 hours before end instead of waiting to the very end, given how slow points regenerate now there is very little gain for waiting till last hour or two.
And for PvP, health packs past shield cooldown changes were never issue. Anything up to 600+ can be done by regenners within hour. Anything higher require shield hops with long enough span between them your A team get regenned few times over.
Also, only time I run out of health packs is when I try to join in late PvP bracket (<1 hour to go) and try to race using only my best pair and nothing else. I don’t remember last time I was blocked from playing from not having them.

7

With the new matchmaking in place, 600 in an hour with regenners doesnt’t happen anymore. Both because you’re facing tougher upponents right away, but especially because you’ll be getting olenty of attacks/retaliations from as low as 300 points.

That being said, I don’t believe the changes are to boost health pack sales. I do believe that they’re mostly in place to make the place as new player-friendly as possible to snag up people after Age of Ultron comes out.

8

Using your B team means you get attacked more. There will always be a best team and if you aren’t fielding it you’re going to be a target. With the new PvEs that they claim have been in the works forever (remember removing the Dark Reign tag?) more and more regular characters will be featured. Same thing with the Simulator and Gauntlet. The computer will get more out of the enhanced HP scaled to 395 than a player ever will. These changes will make you take more damage per match, the question is how low is too low to bring a character into a fight? Can you honestly say you haven’t taken more damage in PvP since the scaling went up to 290?

Players who spend more will win more, same as before. That I don’t mind, the thing I mind is nerfing boosts means I take more damage per node.

I’ve had top 1/2 finishes every PvE I’ve wanted for a long time. I know how PvE works, I know the math behind it. I’ve only needed to buy health packs a handful of times and that was due to PvE coinciding with PvP and having bad matches in one or the other. I never use all AP boosts except in very late very important shield hops in PvP (which I feel is what most people do, making the rebalancing around +6 AP utter bullshit). Your point about slow regening of points is wrong, an extra hour or two of cooling off makes a pretty big difference. I’ve adapted to all the changes thus far but these most recent ones are clearly aimed at trying to put a damage tax on every match.

Have you been playing recently? All of the complaints are that no, you can’t get to 600 with regenners because you’re facing 290 maxed teams right after the initial seed teams. The points are also much worse and it takes forever to climb now (this will only get worse with powerful characters being weaker and everyone having more hp). Shield hopping also doesn’t work due to the new implementation unless you plan 12-24 hours in advance. A couple of times I’ve had a bad match and blew all my kits early meaning you either remain unshielded for the 3 hours that it takes to regenerate and slide back down to your stabilization point or you shield early and spend more HP later on the bigger shields when your guys are back up again.

9

Actually you’ll be attacked under 100 points if you’re unlucky.

10

Is this your official rage quit post, then? If you are telling others to quit, then you could also lead by example.

11

Of course that will be true. Unless the difference between A and B teams aren’t as big as they were. Before it was Xforce and everything else was just magnet. Now? I don’t think there is that clear answer. I can’t say anything about ‘new’ pvp because it keeps changing all the time this month and my roster is very oddly leveled. Hulk PvP I had showned matches both with 2* players and in next node a 270 Thoress, Dino, 166+boost Hulk. That aside still managed to get 400 in 45 minutes using single team.

So emergencies, that’s fine. Then why blow this stuff like they want your money on Health Packs. It never was needed, it won’t be needed. Yes there will be more damage taken, but from diffrent reason altogether - they clearly wants game to slow down. We have characters like Cap who after getting required 11 AP, can deal 4k damage every 3 turns for net cost of ONE AP, and he is considered bad in PvP because he is ‘too slow’. We have stuff like Falcon, many abilities that generate attack.png
or protect.png
tiles, but none of this is ever used because right now, when you get 8+11 you kill your opponent (or, well, cripple team so hard it’s easy from there).

I don’t get it, why did nobody screamed that they want to sold more cover packs when they increased pull rates? I mean, it’s their main income source (unlike health packs) and more people might want to buy them. But no, not a single post on that. But they increase health on characters and suddenly is a cash grab. If they really wanted to make real mulah and nothing else, they could easily tweak every other 4* to have power of prenerf 4hor and Xforce, not change PvP reward structure lower (possibly making it unobtainable without already having 4* team) and just bask in cash people spend buying covers since earning them through progression would be nigh impossible. Make the final godlike tier that is available only by buy out.

No unlimited shield hopping, hard/expensive to get characters getting balanced closer to 3* instead of being godlike, free 3* given daily, free alliances. You might not agree with changes, you might think they don’t favour you, you might think they are going in wrong direction, but sorry, I honestly can’t see them wanting to drain money from people. Because if so, they are doing exactly opposite stuff they should.

12

I fully agree with OP: If you cannot stand a changeable meta, if you believe devs are indebted to You for life because you some day spent $20 or something instead of looking out for the overall health of the game, if you feel the need to populate the General Discussion subforum with endless threads, lists, polls, and vitriolic, self-entitled, pompous whining, you should quit. It will be better for your state of mind. And ours. So yeah, please quit. Thanks.

13

dkffiv is a monster in PVE. I’ve never seen him beaten in a sub or pve overall. His timing and discipline is impeccable. Most feared pve player in shard 2. I knew when I saw his name and chey in the middle of sub 1 at the end of the first pass, we were all just playing for top 5. I actively avoid 2 to not go up against him and “chey…” this might make it safe for me to return to shard 2.

LOL

14

One thing I will say for the people that think they are trying to drain players out of money-
It has always been apparent exactly how powerful both 4thor & XF were to every player in the game from the moment they were released. It certainly feels a little bit unethical or malicious for them to rake in a whole boat load of sales on two characters that cost hundreds of dollars to max, for months on end only for them to nerf them down to “average”.
On the shield change- while it seems like this may have been done with the best intentions (maybe). It also eliminates players from using several cheap shields each pvp. now you have to rotate between several 75 &150’s and every so often due to circumstances throw in a 300hp one in there too. Also, way back before this change you just had some really high outliers that were spending a shit load of money on shields - now everyone that wants to hit t100 needs to use a minimum of 2 for the most part.
It’s hard for me to really point at them for greed as the reason for all of these changes as they change so many things at once they are really all over the map. It really comes off as they don’t have anyone on the team that plays the game at a high level - I think miles actually admitted that they don’t, btw. Although it can seem like they are discarding the vets they have already gotten money from for new players that haven’t yet payed up. Idk.