continous changes by D3 to MPQ. Reason?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I am here to discuss changes that D3 has implemented to MPQ under the term “balancing the game”.

I will discuss recent changes only as I have only been playing for around 200 days.

When 3D says balancing the game, what exactly are they referring to? They nerfed characters like Thora and XF that people were playing with a lot. Are they balancing them to be like 3* characters? If so what is the point of being 4* when they cannot win against 3* characters?

Are they balancing them because some people spent money on them and some did not so it is not fair for people that did not spend? Then what is the point of having the option to spend money on the game if D3 will tailor to non-spenders? Yes spending is optional but if I spend money I should have the right to be at an advantage.

Reducing boosts from 3ap to 2ap only also as balancing the game; if I decide to spend the ISO to buy boosts then I decently should have the advantage over people who do not.

In simple terms, there should be nothing called balancing the games; 4* characters should be superior to 3* characters and people that spend the money should have this advantage. Game gets balanced by changing MMR like they did; I have 4* characters, I do not see 2* characters or unleveled 3* characters so what is the point of making 4* characters weaker when I mostly see other players with 4* characters; we have the same advantage or disadvantage; that is called balanced game.

The reality is, all changes are tailored to generate more money to D3, whether everyone sees it or not; here is how is really worked with the recent changes.

Thora was nerfed because she was a beast; well did not D3 run simulations on the character before releasing her? Did they not know what she can do? Of course they did; as she came in people spent money on her as we could see in a very short time that people had her maxed out; good revenues for D3. Once she generated enough cash, and we all know D3 can track what characters are out there and who is spending on what so they know how many Thora’s got leveled, they then nerfed her.

XF was out for so long and they changed him only now because he was generating good money. But as people started using XF and Thora all along, this stopped being good business as people ignored the other characters. You can see this clearly in the text that came out by D3 when they first introduced the weekly buffed characters. They said, so people do not say I bring in the same two characters with the featured one; sounds familiar? Meaning so people do not only bring in Thora and XF they did the weekly buff so now people have to work on other characters.

XF what totally destroyed; they improved his yellow which people mostly kept at 3; yes black is stronger but lost its most power of getting ap.

People used to level their other characters relaying on XF green and black so when a character had green or black they did not focus on them; Thor for example, would be 553 as for green they had XF, now with the change to XF, people need strong green and they have to go change all their characters; good revenues for D3.

If XF’s destruction was to balance the game, why bring in the Hulk Buster with his so power red? Which D3 will obviously change to balance the game once he generates the intended revenue as he now is one of the strongest.

Reality is PVP does not need balancing characters as MMR is taking care of that. D3 is focusing, in addition to making money on covers and changing characters, on making PVE harder and require more hp and ISO spending thus more money. When our characters get weaker, PVE gets harder, nodes now need 2 or 3 tries before you get lucky with the board to win, no strategy, more hp spent on health. With boosts giving only 2ap that also makes it harder and more chance our characters will die or just get more damage that you cannot go into the next node without needing health, more revenues.

When they introduced Professor X, he became a killer combo with Mystique and 2* Magneto; what did they do? They changed these 2 which people had for so long but not Professor X as he was new and did not generate enough money yet.

Why not nerf Juggernaut that D3 puts in almost all PVE’s and he only needs 6 red ap and boom your character is dead? Why improve Moonstar’s black which is also used by D3 in PVE to now steal the special tiles we put on the board to try and win our games? Why now add a 3rd ability to Bullseye 2* which D3 uses in PVE a lot? And let us not forget Ragnarok also. See the trend, what they use for PVE they improve and make it even harder for us.

I know some people will start arguing about how well balanced games are now but these are mostly people that just started and do not have these nerfed characters or do not spend money and want us to suffer.

If D3 wants to make money, fine but do not destroy our game. So many people quit after XF got nerfed, they saw that there is no point; D3 brings a strong character, people invest, they nerf him and bring a new stronger character so people have to invest, they nerf and bring another and so on. I am sure there are many legal clauses in the game terms and policies allowing D3 to make all these changes so they are legally covered but that does not make it ethical. If I buy something I have the right to keep it as is; want to balance the characters? Buff weaker ones or introduce now ones but do not destroy what we spent money on to make it worthless.

I know some will argue abiut how they added daily Deadpool, for easy 3* yes but does this out way the negative of the changes above? Seems this is a 3* character game and if you have 4* well too bad, your investment is a waste and just making everything harder.

And for peole telling me why not quit; well after all the money I put in…

2

This is 100% untrue, Thor/XForce/any other 4* will wreck a 3* team. People were playing them a lot because they were forced to. You either played Xforce/Thor every day or not play competitively.

Reducing boosts from 3ap to 2ap only also as balancing the game; if I decide to spend the ISO to buy boosts then I decently should have the advantage over people who do not.

4ap in any color you like is an extremely huge advantage.

If XF’s destruction was to balance the game, why bring in the Hulk Buster with his so power red? Which D3 will obviously change to balance the game once he generates the intended revenue as he now is one of the strongest.

My Thor can still pull way better numbers than my Hulk Buster over long term battles. HB is just more burst damage.

When they introduced Professor X, he became a killer combo with Mystique and 2* Magneto; what did they do? They changed these 2 which people had for so long but not Professor X as he was new and did not generate enough money yet.

If this is true, where is the nerf to Grey Suit? Prof X is nowhere near where XForce/Thor were.

I know some people will start arguing about how well balanced games are now but these are mostly people that just started and do not have these nerfed characters or do not spend money and want us to suffer.

So many people rejoiced for the nerf too. We finally a got to play Marvel Puzzel Quest, not XForce Puzzle Quest. I was on the verge of quitting because I was sick of playing the same tired characters for hours every day.

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there are other was to fix this like make the other 4* up to that level and boom more diversity. it is the same for most games if you want to play competitively you use your strongest team. Also, what were you saying about 4s… cough whales cough*

Reducing boosts from 3ap to 2ap only also as balancing the game; if I decide to spend the ISO to buy boosts then I decently should have the advantage over people who do not.

4ap in any color you like is an extremely huge advantage.
a lucky cascade from the enemy can make you lose a fight boosted with 6ap in a useful color and 3 to all others.the whole point of boosting was to set you up with a clear advantage so you will win the match. except the developers didn’t like that ppl were boosting every game which isn’t a huge deal cause come on we have lives other then MPQ and would like to speed through some matches or get the edge in crucial fights. if they were so worried about it they could of put a limit on how many times you can boost per day, and make the player really choose what fight will need it.

When they introduced Professor X, he became a killer combo with Mystique and 2* Magneto; what did they do? They changed these 2 which people had for so long but not Professor X as he was new and did not generate enough money yet.

If this is true, where is the nerf to Grey Suit? Prof X is nowhere near where XForce/Thor were.
which is one of the major problems: where to go after 3* since 4* are so lackluster. also, why not fix the character that has not been release? the other character can’t be part of a broken combo if it doesn’t exist in the first place.

I know some people will start arguing about how well balanced games are now but these are mostly people that just started and do not have these nerfed characters or do not spend money and want us to suffer.

So many people rejoiced for the nerf too. We finally a got to play Marvel Puzzel Quest, not XForce Puzzle Quest. I was on the verge of quitting because I was sick of playing the same tired characters for hours every day.
i have pretty much quit because of these changes, I don’t see an end game past 3*s. Also, most people agreed that they were nerfed too hard in both cases.

4

@ the OP - I almost laughed when I saw your post and then your start date in the forum.

Yeah, welcome. I wish I could give you more up-votes, but only mods can monkey with that stuff.

Suffice it to say, nerfing as opposed to buffing is always a pretty bad idea. Anyone who’s played games for a even a short period would likely agree with that, because, well, it’s pretty obvious. It would have been nice to have the devs do a bit of lesser tinkering with a bunch of the 3*s (decreased AP need here, higher damage there, an extra strike tile here, etc.), but then, we used to have “true healing” until they realized we might actually, you know, use it.

FWIW, you’re not crazy, at least not in my estimation. In most games, the point is to build and get stronger. You start out weak, continue to do your thing, and then one fine day, you are finally awesome. One of the absolute best parts of playing a game competitively is getting beat over and over by “that guy” until that first time you beat him. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of progression and accomplishment, and games give us a chance to enjoy those sensations in very microcosmic environments. In most games, you’re aiming for the best whatever so you can finally dominate after doing your time in the trenches. With MPQ, it appears that the end-game will actually be fought in the trenches. Woo hoo.

As for your overarching commentary on “balancing?” They did accomplish that, in a way. Start out outclassed and weak, end up, well, relatively outclassed and weak (tip o’ the hat to scaling, shields, roster slot prices, scarcity of HP, ridiculously slow healing rates, etc. ad nauseum).

Good luck out there, and welcome to the forum. icon_e_wink.gif
icon_e_biggrin.gif

DBC

P.S. Yeah, DDQ remains the one untainted bright spot in MPQ and is likely significantly responsible for the game not completely hemorrhaging the entire player base at this point. Let’s see how long it lasts.

5

Every high end PvP battle I’m seeing in Falcon is HB. I can’t even remember seeing a GT. Unless everyone else is wrong, makes me think you’re overestimating her.

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Oh, I don’t know, I’ve got some dude in a node with an xf and a GT. According to alliance stats he has something along the lines of 1.2k in the event and we still have nearly 18 hours to go. How high a score do you need to be counted in high end pvp?

I’ve used both GT and HB in pve and in sim. He does faster burst damage, but if you set things up right for her she’s a mean one too.

They’re both good, in different ways.

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I’ll reply, despite the condescending tone. Of course he’s high end. Congrats on finding one. Maybe he doesn’t have a functional HB yet, and doesn’t have the option. I’m in the xmen shard, so they all do, and every hop battle I had last night, was versus an HB. And if all you’re giving him credit for is burst damage, it sounds like you’re not using black5 with Fist or another attack tile generator. You’re doing almost 2k damage per turn, on top of the 6k damage black’s AP generation already did. That’s major hemorrhaging, not just burst damage.

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I’m not saying hb is no good. I love my punchyrobot. He’s fantastic with the right partners. I’m just saying he absolutely is not vital to doing well in pvp. I’m having fun using quicksilver and deadpool, myself, after trying out a few of the other boosted characters in different combinations.

There are a lot of hb/ifs in falcon pvp, but I suspect that if’s compatibility with falcon has a part to play as well. I’ve also encountered a couple of professors.

Both luke and if are seeing quality time despite not being buffed.

Honestly the buffed set this week don’t seem to be as heavily used as in previous weeks. It’s just a difficult set to find colour/power compatibility.

9

One of the things that’s the most frustrating about the constant changes is, it makes it impossible to set goals as a player of this game.

This game takes time, focus and planning. You pick which characters to keep, which to sell, and plan how to build each one, plan teams that work, etc. The constant changes can frustrate the time, focus and planning that players have been working on building for months.

Am I saying nothing should ever change? No. That’s impossible and unreasonable.

But, so many characters changing in such a short period? A character’s core powers changing twice in a few months time? It’s destroying the time, focus and planning and making it all seem worthless.

to the devs: let’s put a cap on how many characters you can change. I suggest 1 for every 3 months. That way a bit more thought and planning can go into new characters being launched, more thought can go into changes and the community knows their goals and plans won’t be dashed – at least not for 3 months.

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You do realise that it was the community itself the one begging for 4hor’s nerf because she was so prevalent, right?

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Reason? Here’s a few in my opinion with no particular order in terms of priority/importance:

  1. Profit
    Many changes to the game have to be done with profit in mind for obvious reason. This is a free to play model and needs to adhere to certain expectations to stay in business.

  2. Developper’s Vision
    Some people seem to ignore the fact that this game has had a clear direction for a long time now and nearly every change made has adhered to this. Boost reduction, tightening the power levels of 4*'s versus 3*'s through nerfs and buffs. Increasing health pools dramatically for lesser used characters while keeping high control characters ‘weak’. These all lead to a clear direction of a more balanced game experience that requires longer matches and therefore more strategy to complete. Another clear direction is to ensure continuous value of the entire roster. This is being done through weekly boosted characters, featured nodes in PvE, DDQ and PvP. It’s abundantly clear that you’re not intended by design to simply sit on 6-8 characters for the life span of this game should you want to ‘compete’ in all events.

Naturally there are plenty of other ‘questionable’ repercussions that come from these changes but the dev’s vision has been a clear one for several months now. Furthermore, common sense tells me that any character combination that essentially decides a match reliably by turn 3 or 4 is at risk of being nerfed going forward.

  1. Player Feedback
    The devs don’t work in a vacuum so to speak. We’ve seen a TON of changes that can be attributed to player feedback on the forums despite the fact that forums only make up fewer than 10% of the total playerbase. We have the power to influence change without question. Some examples were the quick nerf to Iron Fist purples, the proactive nerf to Xavier prior to his release, several of the MMR changes beyond the original tests, the increased 4* pve alliance covers from 50 to top 100, and so on.
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Well yeah, the problem with Thor is she is a push over when the AI uses her, even pre-nerf. For her to be scary she always had to do blue then red, and what is the likelihood the AI will do this? Considering other character abilities, and you messing with the board, very unlikely.

HB is definitely scarier to fight because he has burst damage with no real setup needed, just possible acceleration. Using him in this PVP made me realize he his self-inflicted damage can really add up when considering incoming damage as well.

He is definitely better when left on your teams defense and can put up great numbers for damage, but nothing can compare to when Thor gets rolling still.

Burst damage means he drops his load, and is stuck for awhile. Granted, its a hefty load though. To avert this you have to team him with other characters. It certainly helps the damage flow, but Thor doesn’t have this problem. She gradually accelerates herself (and without self infliction), and post-nerf more often than I thought she would.

If IF ever gets nerfed, HB would work more as intended. Until then, his bursts can come a lot more often. I do believe over longer battles Thor pulls better numbers, and like I said, without giving herself heart attacks.