I have a dream

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal” Thomas Jefferson

Why should D3 scrap what they have and create a viable meta around a core of balance?

*“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal”.*Aristotle

If you love your xforce teams, and playing the same team versus the same team maybe go and make an “I love xforce” post, but I have a greater dream.

Imagine an overarching strategy to this game, not just the strategy of in game matches and winning the match, what if there were a more complex strategy that involved character selection? What if MPQ could be all it could be? What if Beast was equal to Xforce in his own way? In this thread I try to ask; Why character balance could turn Marvel Puzzle Quest into one of the best games ever. D3 I think we can handle a more complex version of the game.

Now that it is in hindsight, I like true healing, you need to manage your roster, try to broaden it, seems like its working as intended. You need to weigh up how much damage you can afford not just can I win. I like the hood, Magneto and Sentry nerfs, seems to be working more as intended. Yes the short term sux, I just 2 weeks ago leveled them both up and need to readjust my strategy but it was broken and needed a fix. you could even argue D3 is selling far less boosts, shields and health packs because they did it, so don’t point fingers at them.

The last 4 characters seem well balanced and playable. D3 gave all the commanders a refund which was over the top nice. I really like the new characters regularly, I think it is injecting all new content regularly with a continuous desire to keep playing with a progress towards a greater variety of team choices.

So things seem to be moving towards a positive future, oh wait there is this 4 star thing. The pocket Aces of Xforce and 4Thor.

WHY DID YOU DO THIS D3?? WHAT IS WITH 4 STARS??

You created this meta with a diversity of characters and abilities that is roughly balanced then release 2 Way over the top broken 4 star characters. I largely agreed with most of your decisions for the long term, but from this point on I can only see two ways to make this game enjoyable again.

  1. Delete 4 stars all together and work on 3 star balance
  2. Stop making 3 stars, progress to 4 stars, increasing iso rewards across the board and make a viable, wide, diverse, deep, balanced, viable 4 star end game meta.

I would love to see a viable team select strategy.

Lets look at possible strategies in the game and what should hard counter them:

AP Steal > Big AOE Abilities > Fast individual damage > Heal > Defense tiles > Tanks > Strike Tiles > back to AP steal

This is very basic and wrong in many ways, I am trying to make a point. Each ability should be Excellent against the one on its right, Very good 2 moves right, good 3 moves right, bad 4 moves right, really bad 5 moves right and unplayable 6 moves right.

This post is my suggestion and wish. Please don’t flame me for being inaccurate or for having the wrong maths. I want to throw this out for everyone to come up with a viable way forward for this game to be what it could be.

“These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have”. Abraham Lincoln

2

WEll since we can’t criticize any of the actual content of your post, I will say that all the hyperbole is making it hard to discern what the point you’re trying to make actually is

3

I am saying if there were a diverse and balanced meta a much more enjoyable version of this game would mean that you need to carefully select your team before going in to battle. Like they have a heavy AP denial team I will load my strike tile team. etc.

4

Business is business. D3 cannot make money out of a balanced game. It is obvious that 3 star will be inferior very soon if every one have 4 star cover in their team. The game will nevet be balanced. Please dont dream in levelling 3 star anymore. Target on 4 cover form now on. I truly believe this is the only way to survive in this game.

5

why? 3 star, 4 star I dont care just make an end game meta to aim towards

6

I don’t understand the point this thread.

The kind of game Demiurge has made is one based on level progression. You get more characters, level them up, and ultimately get the 4*, which are the end-game content. If there was no “dangling carrot” in the form of a lv270 superweapon (or any powerful character really) that has a big advantage over everyone else, then players wouldn’t have any incentive to play and progress in this game. People say 4*'s are overpowered, and they probably are, but I think that’s the intent the developers made. They’re the end-game, “you won” content. Its not perfect, I acknowledge there’s problems with this arms-race format, but its the most practical Freemium business model that works for D3, and at the end of the day it’s all about generating revenue. I can’t speak for everyone, but the devs have made big improvements recently and I feel this game, currently, is better than ever.

It really comes off as though you personally want Demiurge to completely overhaul the game just to cater to your own desire of how this game “should” be, which is ridiculous. I mean, your arguments are contradictory and nonsensical. You suggest “Delete 4 stars all together” (which alone is impossible and absurd) so we can have 3-star balance. Then the very next line you say “Stop making 3 stars, progress to 4 stars” which completely contradicts the first. Again, this kind of game is one where level progression is a core element of the game. People who spend more money get a better chance of levelling up and winning the 4*, which gives those players and edge in combat vs. those who don’t, and provides a sense of accomplishment. What you’re suggesting, in a world where we only have 3 stars or only 4 stars, would both lead to the exact same outcome - everyone is at the exact same level (except 1* and 2* players who would argue this game is personally unfair to them), there would be no level progression to this game at all, players stop playing and lose interest, and the game shuts down. Looking back all the way to Ragnarok, there will always be an imbalance to this game, but its the developers duty to balance things out. Not “delete all 4*'s” just because you personally don’t use/like them.

And your quoting of Jefferson and Lincoln, possibly the two greatest and most influential figures in American history, to describe the injustice you feel in a match-3 toilet game is so heavy-handed and melodramatic it’s almost insulting.

If one of the things you’re trying to get at is “there should be better character balance” then I think I can agree on that.

Everyone feel free to upvote or downvote if you (dis)agree or think I’m being too mean.

7

[quote="JessyC01 “you won” content
[/quote]
thanks for explaining my point, if you are so simple as to enjoy a game where you paid to ‘achieve’ please go play that game. I believe we can achive more.

8

Business is business. To you, this is a game. To d3, this is a business. The meaning of " achieve more" in their mind is different from that in players mind.

9

MPQ is not built on a foundation of fairness. The best I think we can hope for is a fair and balanced game within a tier, which you feel already exists for the 3* game. So, that’s good.

This is the first and only F2P that I have gotten really into and it has certainly been an education. Apparently, the thing that all games of the past were lacking (from Candy Land to Chess) was a built-in mechanism to let some players win more by buying out the other players.

Let the people who buy 10 4* Thor covers have the 1000+ pt game and the Top 5 ranking awards. Demiurge will make money and the game might run for another year.

Think of it this way: in this new meta, the 2* game is for the casual/free player; the 3* game is for the devoted player who has probably paid some amount to play; and the 4* game is for the ultra-hardcore/whale.

It’s not fair, but I’m OK with it because it is just a game.

10

Your dream sounds like “xf is too hard to fight and t4or will be worse, woe is me”. Let’s all go back to playing with im35, hawkeye and mstorm, then it will really be fair to everyone!

Star levels should make a difference, or why even bother collecting 2s and 3s? And because of scaling differences, which we all learnt about in pve and balance of power, it’s much easier to take down 4s with 3s than it is to take down 3s with 2s, and 2s with 1s.

XF is hard to fight because he should be, and ditto T4or. But not even close to impossible, and that seems just the right balance to me.

And I do not have a maxed XF, or a maxed anything.

11

As I understood, the core point of the OP was not actually about fairness of the game even if quoting Jefferson & Lincoln made this point unclear maybe.

He said that the game could be more interesting if it relied strongly on a team selection strategy.
A kind of Rock - Paper - Scissors game but more complex.
And I agree on this point, it would be more interesting to use different teams, different combinations of characters from a diverse roster depending on the enemy team you are fighting. More interesting than always picking your strongest character.
But it’s just an opinion (or a dream for the OP) icon_e_smile.gif

(I emphasize the text)
Following the rationale of the OP, this team selection strategy game can’t exist anymore if there are some characters that are more powerful - the 4*. If a few characters are more powerful in any situation, you don’t have to change team combinations, you just pick the more powerful character.
So he propose two different ways to make his dream true
deleting the more powerful char (4*) OR developping the 4* diversity so that a team selection strategy may be possible with 4* (for long time players I guess)

And finally, some of the critics that were raised were about the fact that the game is a business for D3.
Sure, the existence of a few powerful characters, hard to earn, is a strong incentive to keep playing and spending money
But it’s possible with a large range of balanced characters. In this case, you keep playing not to earn the strongest char but for a diverse roster, because you need the last character to develop a new strategy against a particular team.

TLDR; a game relying on more balanced characters would be more strategic, could be fun to play and would be compatible with business IMO icon_e_geek.gif

12

I see what you are suggesting and I like it. But they will never outright scrap 4*s

What they need to do is have literal tiers. As it is now, all 1* 2* 3* and 4* players are dumped in the same bucket and told, fight for your rewards, go.

If there were actual tiers within events this could be gloriously different. 1*-2* players could fight in a casual tournament featuring a 2* character with multiple 2* rewards and first place can win a 3* cover but NO 3s or higher would be allowed into that tournament. Running at the same time but in a you can only choose one fashion, there is a more normal looking tournament with multiple 3 rewards and a 4* for first, but locking out 4s. A third choice would be a legendary tournament giving out all three covers of a 4 making those tournaments the real place to earn 4*s and compete at the top level.

This would let them release 4s much faster (and can stop releasing 3s so quickly) as they would have their own tier and eventually move into 5 star land.

Each tier could have increasing iso payouts so those fighting at the top could earn more for their efforts.

They have shown they can give us choices. It would be some work, but this would be the future I would see for MPQ

13

They do have tiers. It’s called death brackets, which might be more tolerable if they increased rewards countermeasureately

14

There are 2 types of players in this game - those with maxed X-Force and those without.
If you are in first group, you can win any prizes, so soon 4* Thor too - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
For rest it’s like a race between bicycle and car - you can try, but you’ll never win…

15

So, in an earlier post I gave the “Demiurge is a business” response, which I still stand by. But I don’t want to just dismiss your post because I like the idea here about “hard counters” and I really do wish that the Devs made more characters with this in mind. For what you seem to want, we have PvE. I use all sorts of interesting team selections in PvE that I would never use in PvP.

Unfortunately, the current PvP system simply does not allow for the type of game you imagine. If I used a Rock team, then I would just get hit endlessly by Paper teams. For your idea to work, not only would the characters need an overhaul, but the entire PvP system would need to be scraped. I would love a more strategic game with multiple winning strategies, but it’s not going to happen. I’m sorry.
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16

Right, death brackets with appropriate awards and you actually get to choose for yourself, cake or death. And if they really wanted to make that legendary tier enticing just offer a multiplier on season points for choosing death.

17

This i would love to see…

And the later post about multiplier factor to season score in death/nightmare mode.