How important is fidelity to established lore to your MPQ gaming experience?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Poll terms explanation:

Marvel fan: I want characters to be faithfully represented within reason. (For example: 5* Thor represents the character from the movie Ragnarok well. On the other hand, 5* God Emperor Doom fails to capture the awesomeness of Doom from the S**ecret Wars storyline. 4* Sabretooth not having a self-heal ability feels wrong.)

Puzzle Quest fan: I am more interested in a character’s abilities and mechanics and am not bothered if the character does not accurately reflect lore. I try to find a use for all characters that are released. (For example: 5* Odin has a unique skill set that I like to work with. I think 4* Gorr will be an effective counter against Polaris teams. 4* Sabretooth not having a self-heal ability does not bother me).

Wild card: I just want to have fun. As long as the character is awesome or has a fun skill set, that’s the most important thing. I’d be cool with a 5* Aunt May meta. Bonus points if she paired well with 4* Uncle Ben à la Beta Ray/Polaris. I can appreciate a good gag character or meme team but I am not interested in boring skill sets. (5* Big Wheel is cool with me, especially because he rocks with my 5* Shang-Chi. Sabretooth destroys Polaris/Grocket so let’s not sweat the lack of heal).

Commentary:

With the release of Gorr, I find myself once again perplexed by the design decisions of the game makers. I play this game because I am first and foremost a big Marvel fan, and secondly, I find the game mechanics enjoyable overall. There isn’t a question in my mind that this being a Marvel game is what has kept my interest in playing this game for as long as I have.

One of the purported goals of the former dev team was to try to capture the “flavor” of a character by making sure their abilities told a story that was in keeping with established Marvel lore. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong, while most of the time characters fall somewhere in between. I understand there are various factors that need to be considered when designing a character beyond simply how powerful they are in Marvel lore and I know it’s no easy task to try to bring to life an expression of that character that both honors its lore and fits well within the dynamics of the game but this has always been a very important issue for me.

I have a number of times over the years expressed my displeasure at a character’s design “missing the mark” so to speak, starting way back when 3* Spider-man was more of a support character with his “web bandages” healing ability which they thankfully eventually changed to a strong nuke ability. However, such changes have been few and far between and the list of “misses” continues to grow for me.

I have been able to manage this dissonance by imagining that MPQ is its own universe, with its own peculiarities but there is only so much leeway I can give before I find the MPQ universe untenable. And I know I am not the only one. Last year, my good friend quit with the release of Odin and I understand why: the MPQ version is not a good representation of the character. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

I have managed to continue on despite that travesty, but I’ll be honest with you, there have been a number of significant misses over the past year that have me wondering how long I can carry on. Most notably:

The lack of Asgardian and Eternals affiliations with the release of Odin, Sersi and Ikaris.

The release of 5* Big Wheel instead of Ben Reilly, who was actively operating as Spider-man in the comics at the time, for No Way Home.

The fan voted 4* Black Knight being given rather lackluster abilities and not feeding *5 Sersi.

Gargantos, who serves as a one-off lackey in both the comics and movies, has better abilities than most of the villains in the game. (Granted, I get a lot of people see it as a stand-in for Shuma-Gorath but I think it’s pretty clear Shuma-Gorath it is not).

And finally there’s the release of Gorr the God Butcher whose character description in-game and on the official Marvel press release emphasize his hatred for the gods but whose powers have little to do with them and whose tier level makes him easy pickings by those same gods he is supposed to be a threat against.

This whole debacle has left me curious about how much other players care about Marvel lore. I know MPQ has various kinds of players, some who are Puzzle Quest fans and not all that into Marvel lore, and others who have a casual interest in both. Does MPQ failures in representing a character or character relationships faithfully bother you or are you content to ignore such failings as long as the character’s mechanics are fun or interesting?

How important is fidelity to established lore to your MPQ gaming experience?
  • Marvel Fan
  • Puzzle Quest Fan
  • Wild Card
  • Other
0 voters
2

I can’t think of any response that wouldn’t immediately get flagged by someone so I’ll leave it blank.

3

5* Big Wheel was one of the best things to happen to MPQ.

4

Though with a touch of Wild Card, I’m squarely in the Merry Marvel Marching Society. As for Gorr, he should be a god-killer within the 4* tier, but he doesn’t seem to have that kit going for him.

Except that you didn’t leave it blank. :wink: Based on prior posts, I’d guess that you’re a Puzzle Quest Fan.

5

Here just to have fun. Came originally to try a Puzzle Quest game and liked the Marvel tie-in but would have been just as happy if it was another IP.

I appreciate long term the depth that the Marvel IP provides to the Devs, but I have a very passing knowledge of it personally so zero investment in the character lore power vs MPQ power.

More excited in new game updates that can keep the game fresh or new characters that add something different that I can enjoy.

6

Marvel fan since the 80s and definitely started playing this game because it was Marvel.
Now I play it because I like the game and I don’t really care about the ‘character errors’: sure I would love to see Banner as (one of) the strongest 5* and Thor5 + Okoye make for a weird duo; however it doesn’t bother me.

7

I think I’m somewhere in between. By that I mean - when a character I like comes out, and they’re not as good as I’d hope they’d be, or they’re at a * tier that isn’t viable for me to use because of my SCL or MMR, then I definitely get disappointed (5* Magneto being lame, Cable being mediocre, Emma Frost being not just a 4* instead of a 5 but unusable even at max-champ level, etc). But conversely if a ludicrous character like Big Wheel shows up and slaps, I’m definitely all for it. I was collecting hard from about about 91-93 like most everyone else, and ever since then I mostly engage with characters via MPQ and the MCU. But even so, I still prefer a comics-accurate character look.

8

I am definitely a comics fan as I have been reading them since the 80s. The comic iterations brought me to the game and sometimes I find myself irked at the lack of representation of the comic versions. Star level I hope would reflect a characters power level, that said I am also fine with taking a goofball character and cranking them up.

9

This is a game.

It is incredibly rigid for game development if you insist everything needs to be exactly like the comics, which themselves are not any kind of consistent source material anyway.

You don’t have to like every character and every ability that gets added, just like you don’t have to enjoy every single Marvel comic issue that comes out.

10

A bit of everything really. I don’t really read much comics any more, but I like characters to have power sets in-game that represent them at least to some extent in the comics universe. If some liberties are taken, if it’s fun to play with it’s not that big of a deal. And while not always ideal, I can live with the rarity rating in-game not matching a power-rating in-universe.

Most disappointing are characters that are dead on arrival PQ-wise (e.g. Emma Frost, Wa5p), especially if they are characters I like from the comics. Here’s hoping to a good 5* Namor version :mrgreen:

11

comics fan primarily. Power sets don’t bother me mostly (though Sabretooth should have a heal), but would like up to date costumes. I understand that’s not a priority with the need to have 2 (soon to be 3) new characters a month.

12

The game is clearly not planned ahead for to showcase the best characters and to make them permanent. It’s more like designing works made to have interesting mechanics and sinergies and realeased along the way.
As a spider-man, deadpool, Xcalibur fan the characters I like the most aren’t relevant in this game.
It doesn’t matter that much to me. If former devs wanted Apocalypse, SW, SC to be so great, then I chase them. After watching the movies or shows later I often wonder why they made it meta. Probably because they were in the right time, nothing more.
I can live with all that.

13

I read the comics back in the 90s and watched the cartoons, movies.
So a casual Marvel fan.

I like it being fun and it doesn’t have to be faithful to the comics.
But when someone like Captain Marvel is so underpowered that her 4* is better than her 5* it does feel blah as a player. Then when people did find a use for her, they nerfed it.

14

I was torn between Wildcard and Puzzle Quest fan, but a 5* Aunt May really appealed to me I guess. I want the game to be fun as a game, have some checks and balances, but I enjoy fun game mechanics, and yes, Big Wheel is a great partner for Shang Chi.

The Marvel comics were not available in my country and my language when I grew up, we had different famous graphic novel characters. But we are not talking about Tin Tin, Spirou or Asterix (hey, that would make a fun match 3 franchise…). I appreciate the MCU and I have opinions about whether the newest movies work or not, but I have no ideas how characters should be from years of reading comics. So for me, I appreciate them as a fun skill set that hopefully adds something.

15

As much as I love all things Marvel. MPQ is first and foremost a game, Marvel second. I just want a game that has a wide array of competitive options and fun mechanics to try to exploit, etc. Flavor text, relevance to lore, etc are nice, and it’s particularly appreciated when spotlighting lesser-known characters like Big Wheel or Puck, but a fun game that encourages experimentation is most important.

16

I couldn’t possibly care less. Give me cool art and fun powers and I don’t care if it lands on a 17th Wolverine or a character that appeared on a single panel in 1974.

17

I agree we definitely need good 5*+ releases when new shows debut. I’m hoping we get a good 5*+ JJ when Werewolf by night drops.

A good 5*+ Kitty Pryde would be awesome as well

18

Wasn’t sure until I read your thoughts and realized I’m solidly in the PQ fan. I often see in tabletop game/card game adaptations of Marvel or other lore that the design space for making a good game necessitates lore sacrifices, or gameplay sacrifices. I’m convinced we got Big Wheel because the team figured out the mechanic and wanted to put it into the game. Big Wheel as a relatively obscure character fit best.

The bright spot is we can have more than 1 version of a character represented, as we already have seen. Trying to fit everything that makes a character unique into 3 powers is extremely limiting.

19

I’m in the mix of wild card and PQ category.

Even if the dev sticks faithfully to Marvel lore, there will still be players who will be unhappy. When I google a certain Marvel character, sometimes google search will bring up topics about X character vs Y character. When I read those threads, I see players arguing about who is more powerful. Each players will use certain plot or timeline to prove why that character is more powerful than the other. The most realistic answer is: the writer is the most powerful. If one day the writer wants to write a story about Big Wheel crushing Wanda into a pancake, they could do it. Even Squirrel Girl beat Thanos in 1v1 in the comics.

Design is a creative and subjective process. If you bring a group of people to an art gallery, you get different feedbacks. One might look at a painting with a few strokes and talk about how brilliant the artist. The other might be thinking, “what’s so special about these few strokes? It looks it has been randomly drawn.”

In MPQ, the dev chooses three traits of each character and try to represent them in-game depending on their goals. I believe all Marvel characters have more than three traits and many have easily 10 traits. If the dev tries to represent all traits of that characters into the game, it will be messy. Every characters will have 6 different powers to represent those traits. I’m not upset that Sabretooth doesn’t have healing. It’s going to be restrictive, predictable and boring if the dev design the characters according to Marvel Lore. Designing characters is about being fun and creative.

20

Darn… You’re probably going to tell us

Santa isn’t real now? :disappointed_face:

**Mod note: Added spoiler tag. -fight4thedream