Environment tile matching

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Tips and Guides
1

For some time I’ve been wondering how the game decides who matches environment tiles. We’ve generally believed that it works the same way as tile damage: higher damage takes precedence; if they’re the same, then position in the character select screen is the tiebreaker.

Over the weekend I decided to test this for myself (this is what happens when there’s only one PvP tournament, apparently), and it’s pretty conclusive that this is not correct. My results indicate that there are four groupings of environmental tile damage. Any member of a higher group will tank env tiles over a lower group. If two characters are in the same group, then position (middle, left, right) is the tiebreaker.

Groupings:

Group 1: Punisher, BWGS, Invisible Woman, Spider Man, Bag Man
Group 2: Hood, OBW, Mawkeye, Hulk, Bullseye, XForce, Loki, Daredevil
Group 3: Ragnarok, Wolverine (AXM), Ares, Doctor Doom, mBW, Moonstone, CMagneto, Captain America, Chawkeye, Yelena, Daken, Patch
Group 4: IM40, Thor, CStorm, MStorm, Venom, MMN, IM35, Juggernaut

It’s possible that there’s some hidden component (tied to level, other tile damage, whatever) that I’m missing, so I’d be curious if anyone creates a team where they find that the above isn’t correct. Also, this was tested in the Prologue – I think buffing shouldn’t affect priority any more, but I could be wrong.

2

I don’t know the values of everyone’s environmental damage offhand but I think all the guys with ‘4’ are in the first 2 tiers?

In that case I’m thinking it’s just a matter of rounding, like Spiderman’s ‘4’ is actually 3.9 and OBW’s 4 is actually 3.7, so while both gets rounded to 4, Spiderman’s ‘4’ is always higher than OBW’s ‘4’. I remember back in the Lightning Rounds when villians had environmental damage boosted, you’d see two villians that have a base ‘4’ but one of them would be 9 and the other would be 10.

3

All the 4s are in group 1 only. Groups 2-4 all have a listed damage of 3.

It might be a matter of rounding, since we’re pretty sure that’s how color tile damage works. But I don’t think it is, because anything above 3.17 would be round up to 10 AP for a match 3 (3.17 * 3 = 9.51, rounds up to 10), and I tested with OBW; three consecutive 3-matches all yielded 9 AP. Also, I know that group 4 is a flat 3, because if you set off multiple tiles with MStorm, you get a multiple of 3.

4

This doesn’t make any sense, though your list seems legit. Why would it work differently than color control tie breaking? Why’s everything gotta be so complicated!

5

Agreed. Devs, can you please sort this thing out sometime?