May 2018 Q&A with Demiurge_Will

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Demiurge_Will has continued to pop in when he has time and answer a few questions. He has done this for March and April and hopefully will find time in May. To make it a bit easier for him I am condensing some of the topics that have been mentioned over the past two months below so Will can pick up on any of them as he chooses.

Please ask new questions below with these ground rules:

  1. Do not tag Demiurge_Will he is aware this thread exists and his answering questions is a function of time not being alerted that a question has been asked.

  2. Try and keep your question concise. If it requires paragraphs to explain it probably isn’t of general interest

  3. Don’t post “where are the answers” or “Hellooo where are you Will” we have received more information over the past two months in these threads than the previous twelve.

I repeat my Thanks to Will and Brigby for allowing this to continue.

Outstanding Topics from previous months:

Versus/PvP

Are there plans to open up MMR?

Are there any plans to add 4* into the rotation?

Can we get weekly 5* buffs?

Can we change the roster of required villains and heroes in Lightning rounds?

Story/PvE

Time slices being made more convenient for those who don’t have an ideal choice ATM?

Is there a way to move the dialog screens to someplace where we can see them all at once and not have to skip them while playing?

Could the animations for Mindless Ones be accelerated? The placing of their tiles is very slow.

Roster Slots

Any thought to changing the cost?

Boss Events

Difficulty of Side Node Scaling jumping so severely after 24 hours, could it be more gradual?

Rewards seem to be lesser than for a typical Story/PvE event, will they be normalized?

Can you increase the difficulty of the Boss; advanced rosters have more trouble with the side nodes.

Deadpool’s Daily Quest

Will there be a node which rewards a 4* added?

Can we have a daily Crash of the Titans?

Supports

Will the flow of Red-ISO be increased?

How often are you planning on releasing new supports?

Will they be added to Daily Resupply?

Will there be a token store dedicated to allow purchase via in-game currencies?

Quality of Life

Can Prologue be updated?

Can we have an “Open All” token button?

Can we have a token which can be purchased for Purple-ISO?

Are there new game play nodes on the drawing board?

More alternate Covers?

Can we have some more information on how you view the flow rate of 4* as 5* feeders?

Token dilution in both the 4* and Classic 5* pools

Has there been consideration to a puzzle-based/conditions-based win condition?

Is there consideration to a re-balancing within the 4&5* tiers to make some of the older characters who have become obsolete due to power creep?

I think I got everything. Please add in anything I missed in a comment please.

Again my thanks to Will for taking time to answer.

2

Are you working on an UI for support so we can actually have some notion about what’s where?

  • in roster, some icon if a support is attached, preferably also which support
  • in supports, show what toons they are attached to, preferably with the cooldown timer
3

Are there any more plans to tie into the biggest movie in MCU history and maybe the biggest movie of all time? All we have had is a Boss event and will have 3 or 4 character tie in.

Any new PVE tied to Thanos and the black order?

Any plans for a Boss Events tied to Thanos and the Black Order?

Where the Supports the big tie in to Infinity Wars?

With the other Marvel game properties promoting with this movie, why is D3/Demi not promoting Marvel Puzzle Quest?

4

I can actually answer that first bullet point. Yes. In the upcoming R152 update, there will be an indicator on characters that shows which one has a Support attached to them.

5

How many spots has the Steam UI climbed in the priority list since the past month?

6

your counter turns yellow when a support is attached

7

Something I asked a while back that apparently got lost: If the low number of Steam players is a concern, why not add Steam Trading Cards and Achievements?

Both take an absolutely minimal amount of effort to implement. Cards are a free revenue stream. Achievements are free marketing and publicity. Neither creates a disadvantage for non-Steam players. What’s the downside?

8

Take them out, dude. None of them are going to be worth untold thousands in the years to come or anything. Only reason to keep them in the box is if you think it looks nice. And that’s entirely subjective =)

As for questions: what is the mission statement, design philosophy and future plans for the supports feature? Because currently the entire thing’s been a mess and the players are hungry for answers.

9

It was insightful to the development process to hear the explanation to the changes to 1* Spiderman last month. What factors do the development team look at when they decide to rebalance an existing character? In the past, some have been widely called for, but many have not, so it would be interesting to see what factors exist which many forum-goers may not consider.

10

@ZootSax Will answered this question in the previous thread before.

https://forums.505go.com/discussion/71795/april-q-a-with-demiurge-will/p3

"Key metrics we look at are:

  • Win rates
  • Usage relative to ownership
  • How many resources players are investing in this character vs. others

And we look at player perception, including:

  • Sentiment about the character on the forums and elsewhere
  • How expert players at the company feel about the character
  • Where the character shows up in power rankings/tier lists
  • Comments about the character from reviews/surveys/player interviews

When those sources give us signals something might need to change, we ask:

  • From a pure numbers perspective, considered by themselves, is this character balanced? What assumptions underlie that and are they correct?
  • How’s the meta impacting the strength of this character? Is the problem with this character secretly a problem with another character or another class of characters?
  • How is the way the meta is likely to change in the future going to affect this character?
  • If the character is too strong and that’s causing a bad player experience, is there something other than a nerf that will help? Releasing a counter, or adding a buff to someone else?"
11

I don’t know what this means.

12

Has Auto-play been considered and can we possibly expect it in the future?

Last year there was a Survey asking if we would want Auto-Play. I don’t know what the results of the survey showed but the perfect place to do this is Deadpool Daily Quest (DDQ). This been the most positive game mode since its creation but at this point it’s boring and timeconsuming. However it is necessary to play for the resources (e.g. Iso, covers, tokens). The system could look at Shield Rank (maybe 60 and up) and ask if we want it auto-played for the rewards.

13

Funko is a company that makes a huge line of vinyl figurines called “POP!”.

14

Has there been any consideration to adding a “Remove” button on the Team-Ups selection tab like there is for the Boosts tab? Or is the thought that a Team-Up will be auto-selected anyway if the space is blank so the player may as well select one?

15

Thanks, @HoundofShadow Totally missed that somehow. Carry on.

16

It was posted elsewhere (if someone could link me, that’s be great!) that supports are initially PVE-only and that you all are going to take into account player feedback (broken combos for example) before moving them to PVP as well.

How do you expect players to give you feedback on supports when most of us have no real way to obtain and/or level them?

Will you proceed to implement them in PVP even without our feedback?

17

April 10th was the last time since we’ve gotten a real response to anything on these threads. This was a nice thing that lasted for a minute.

18

Are the Guns-N-Roses references deliberate? Is there a big fan on the design team?

  • Symbiote Destroyers have an “Appetite for Destruction” ability.
  • In the last sub of The Hunt story, Iron Man says “Welcome to the Jungle!” (its the first panel on that node, so I see it briefly every time before I hit the skip button)
    There’s probably more that I’m forgetting or missed. Would these be too on-the-nose for one of the Storms to have a “November Rain” ability or one of the magical or Hand characters have a “Use Your Illusion”.
19

There are other musical references lying around. I believe in the first sub of Meet Rocket and Groot there are nodes called Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop and Don’t Stop referencing the Beastie Boys song. I remember others scattered around but can’t recall them off the top of my head.

20

There are other subs named for Rolling Stones and Wu-Tang songs (Wu-Tang in EotS if I recall correctly). I tried to compile a list at one point and gave up. Perhaps a good spin-off thread?