Banner Hulk…Painful

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Nothing much to report here other than the experience of Bruce Banner / Incredible Hulk being boosted…

Essentially no direct damage abilities until he transforms, no news there; but when he transformed and I was greeted with a L451 Hulk in contrast to his separate Banner character that’s boosted. I couldn’t even double-dip in match damage.

It goes without saying, he’s forgotten. I know this…Frankly we’ve collectively always known this. But without sparking huge debates over whether rebalancing is worth it, or it’s “in the pipeline”, or other challenges, let’s look at a fact…it’s one of the most iconic and popular characters under Marvel and his representation as a 5* in this game for literal years now is trash.

To have allowed this broken of a character to linger in the game this long is just shameful.

This rant was not to offend anyone. I put money in the game; happy to support the team and what not. It was simply to bring up a long standing issue that just needs to be dealt with already.

EDIT: I do understand there’s new oversight for MPQ.

2

We got Immortal Hulk though. It’s still Bruce Banner. :smiley:

I remember the dev or vet players said fixing this Hulk is difficult, coding wise.

I also remembered that dev manage to boost the alt form manually and it was effective only for that particular event or boost week. For some reason, it won’t stay.

3

Not to steal your thunder ( pun intended) but is DocThor broken . I don’t even know how to play her but at 9 covers 333 she is cascading over 100K damage every time I fire a power . I use her with Gargamel, coined EyeDocThor

4

I’m something of a Banner apologist, I actually like the character and use him quite frequently.
But there’s no denying that he’s woefully underpowered, which was even more clear when he was boosted: my lv455 Banner’s HP was boosted to 100K+, but when he transformed he went down to 25K…
You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry indeed, because then he turns into a weak wimp!

Banner needs a revamp, but it’s mainly the Hulk part that could do with some serious improvement!

5

It’s this.

Thanks to all who chose to read through my frustration last night. I’m just a snowbird anymore with this game and when I come back I always hope that they would update this game. Here’s to the new devs:

We’ve been here before: new management comes in, high hopes, yada yada…eventually maybe they discover the juice isn’t worth the squeeze and things slow way down. Albeit, enough to get by, but ultimately very mundane.

Who knows, I could very well be wrong. 2014 was very different time to play this game.

My two cents? Just take a couple weekends, give a few interns a bounty, and whoever comes up with the best fix for Hulk and Wasp, congrats. Anything is likely better than the current state with absolutely no resolution for years.

While your at it, perform the same health adjustment (throw match damage in this time) that occurred maybe 5 years ago to put all the old characters (to you all) on an even keel. No need to bother with “rebalancing” when most these characters can take this treatment and be ok at least.

6

These devs been in charge only a few months. I get that your post says you know that, but with the rest of the text this just rings hollow. It feels like saying “no offense” at the end of an insult and expecting that makes things better.

Yeah I agree Banner needs fixing and it sucks that he is so broken, but we can hardly blame the new devs for years of problems. They’ve inherited this shit show and are making fixes to things. Personally I’d rather see changes to more global aspects to the game like Deadpool Daily and supports and feeders than a 5* Banner fix.

With projects like this it will always be about prioritization. I get that people think time/bodies can be pulled out of thin air to work on their pet projects, but that isn’t how it works. That time/bodies are already working on higher priority tasks.

Also to your recent comment, this game has never changed developers before the D3 Go acquisition, so Idk what the “we’ve been here before” is about.

7

@jsmjsmjsm00

This game’s developers have had their share of hands exchanging, one example here and this was after the acquisition by SEGA in 2015:

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-04-02-demiurge-co-founder-buys-the-studio-back-from-sega

I do not know if specific outcomes, processes, or goals were effected. All I know is what has been exchanged in information here on the forums for my past 7 years of being a member. And only one thing has been constant; a roller coaster. Some ups, some downs, and a lot of stagnation. While taking the ride and reading about a couple acquisition deals going back and forth, who knows what was a result of one thing or another. They say nothing was effected or maybe it was, I don’t for sure; I don’t subscribe to a weekly newsletter. I’ve just logged in over the years, seen some logo changes, witnessed a few QoL changes or new content, and went along my day.

About the post ringing hollow, I only added that edit because I happened to come across an article of demiurge being bought out. It seems it went down in June, and I’ve been gone since about last year sometime, so just a bit of recognition of the event, but the problem remains. Game feels the same as when I left frankly.

To the point, however, I’ll say that I won’t be the only person with their version of a litmus test as to whether the new devs will stand up to the “**** show” as you put it or not.

As @dianetics simply put:

“In all fairness though he is so bad and underused virtually nobody notices.”

This is true on many levels. And if I didn’t recognize Hulk being abysmal, he’ll likely stay that way.

I’m ok with some folks being fine with that but happy when others aren’t. To your point, global changes over Hulk… I agree that would be far more ideal. But cranking characters put on a biweekly bases seems to lend an easier task by maybe revisiting old wounds in broken characters already in game than overhauling the in-game chat or something along those lines.

8

The devs did not change in what you linked. It was Demiurge before and after. What changed was who owned Demiurge. It just went from Sega owned to an independent studio. It was the same team and the same dev studio.

9

I think we are getting a bit lost in semantics; I’m happy to have this topic of a forgotten character out in the ether and I’m sure devs got their eyes on this. Success either way, hope to see the global changes you proposed above as well.

10

It’s a MUCH bigger deal to change an older character than it is to create a new one.

If you accidentally make that old character really relevant (ie in the top 20% of characters) then you will really annoy all the player base that wasn’t around when that character was released 5+ years ago because they have zero way to access that character.

And yes, I know they can offer a special store but how many special stores can you afford to spend your CP in (since you can’t spend LT’s in one) if they make 2, 3 or 5 such old characters suddenly relevant? Also that special store is gone in 5 days (unlike 3 months that a new character spends in latest + PVE/PvP shard possibilities).

I know they are going back to rebalance older characters but I REALLY REALLY hope they spend the first 5 or 6 months doing just 3* and 4* to get the hang of doing it and what it means in terms of game balance and accessibility before attempting anything more than match damage/health updates on 5*.

KGB

11

@KGB

Global match and health updates ftw. Good point on taking caution with new team and new game, but I believe they were introduced as “long time fans”. Certainly as a business owner myself, I vet for a quite a while before investing.

I think they will have to take many steps forward eventually, but certainly some good points there.

In terms of teams coming in and out of relevance, welcome back 5* Hawkeye!

12

The problem with banner specifically is that it seems Hulkform is a separate character who needs to be separately included in the boost list additional to banner for it to work. It was hit or miss whether The previous dev team would remember any given boost week. Something I’ve noticed of late though is that if Hulkform is last man standing, he used to revert to banner when downed but now it’s ending the match.