An easy-ish way to massively increase roster diversity

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Along the lines of some of my other recent posts looking at classifications, here is another.

So, devs, you say you want increased roster diversity. Cool, so do I! Here is a reasonably easy way of getting it.

Let’s be honest, there are really only two phases in the game now - gather your 1* and 2s and then gather your 3s. So why not make it official.

Merge your one and two star characters into one ranking.

I would make them all equivalent 2*s. It also fits into my idea of having a new 1* classification of humans / prepowered characters and a step towards the related idea of a refreshed 2* roster.

You get a sudden and useful increase in the use of characters that can add a lot to the post prologue game and can support the transition onwards. Past the prologue, does any 1* character get much use past an occaisional Storm (Modern)? Now they can!!!

This way, you actually have enough colours to keep a variety of characters in play and have your long dreamed of more available teams, which let’s be honest for 2* characters is now only a large handful of them. I would also imagine people might actually want to level many of the characters.

The covers for all 1 and 2 stars are essentially falling like rain, so still easily collectable.

So, crunch the numbers, increase whatever values you need to (including the prologue enemies) and there you have it.

Ares (Dark Avengers)
Black Widow (Modern)
Black Widow (Original)
Bullseye (Dark Avengers)
Captain America (Modern)
Daken (Dark Avengers)
Hawkeye (Classic)
Hawkeye (Modern)
Iron Man (Model 35)
Juggernaut (Classic)
Magneto (Marvel NOW!)
Moonstone (Dark Avengers)
Spider-Man (Bag-Man)
Storm (Classic)
Storm (Modern)
Thor (Marvel NOW!)
Venom (Dark Avengers)
Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men)
Yelena Belova (Dark Avengers)

Suddenly, I see many more and useful team possibilities.

There are three crossovers.

  • Hawkeye - Make Modern a 3* when you balance him. Preferably not a shiny flashy one - the less of them, the better.
  • Storm - Not so sure. Have two of them in 2s? Combine the 3 Storms into their two current characters and put one of them in 2 and one in 3*? From what I hear, 3* Storm isn’t so flash hot. Do not make one of them a 4* (I already think that IW and X-FW should become 3*s).
  • Black Widow - Less sure. Have 2, 2s? Make one into a 2nd 3? Again, not a 4*, but there are 3 seperate skill sets - could one of the Widows be used as the skill base for another character?
2

too much work! too much work!

3

As an aside, True Healing in essence is fine, IF there is roster diversity.

But in this game, the character imbalance is so great that True Healing came in premature, as D3p forgot to fix the rest of the game. Or chose to, so as to make players buy the newer and shinier characters, while the older ones are left to rot or if playable, they would be then nerfed to nothingness while giving you only a measly sum as compensation.

4

We could also just buff the awful 2*.

The Black/Purple/Blues in 2* seem to be supportive characters. With that said…Bullseye and Daken could get a third blue skill. Daken’s third can easily be a copy of Laken’s, but with Yellow instead of blue. Bullseye’s third IMO should be supportive, but also has some offensive ability. His cost to his black should be cut down a lot to be usable. Make it cost 9 black and sets a crit tile at target location, clears the row without generating AP and does a bit of base damage. Makes sense for a villian who can make any object into a lethal projectile to be able to smash an entire row IMO. And make

Of course, adjust scalings as necessary.

Moonstone’s Black costs way too much. Switching control of a special tile is not that powerful. Well, maybe in PvE and scaled goons perhaps, but makes it almost unusable. If they don’t want that, then they can switch it to not include coutdown tiles. If the latter, I can see it at cost 8 black. So in other words, 8 black to switch control of a strike/protect/attack tiles and stunning the target. 8 black for a single target stun with an additional gimmick would be useful. As for her purple, maybe make it like CMags Red or Pun Green type of thing. Smash a random cluster of tiles. And make it if it priortize special tiles.

Buffing 2* Cap might as well be making him in line with his 3* version and letting his blue leave a protect tile.

That leaves Bagman. No idea what to do with him

5

A simple fix to Bagman would be to MASSIVELY reduce the cost of his purple power. Say, take it down to 4 AP when he switches 1 pair of tiles (power levels 1-4) and 6 AP when switching 2 pairs. He still won’t be “good” but at least he will be a lot more versatile

6

No more level restrictions, with one cover you should be able to max hero lvl (or with one cover for every color).
Of course buff weak chars so there will be actual reason to do so…