MPQ is in need of better event planning

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Gets on a big soap box and clears throat with an ahem

I’ve said it time and time again, but the devs really need to up their event game. I’m not going to lie, I’m genuinely excited to see Carnage in the game but at the same time I am disappointed that yet again another Spider-Man villain is being introduced in a pVe that does not feature Spider-Man as either an essential or buffed character.

As a player and a Spider-Man fan, it demonstrates both a lack of planning and respect for the source material. This is not the first time the devs have dropped the ball and I suspect it won’t be the last because they clearly consider events as being low priority which is a shame since the more pessimistic side of me ends up feeling that I am being exploited for my love of all things Marvel.

Ideally I would have loved to have seen Carnage get the Ultron treatment and have his debut in a Maximum Carnage type event with 3* versions of Venom (Eddie Brock) and/or Cloak and Dagger being potential progression rewards and NPC versions (or 2* versions) of Shriek, Doppleganger, Demogoblin and Carrion.

I understand that the devs have a limited amount of resources and what not, but the fact that Spider-Man was not even buffed for this event and information about this event sprang up suddenly smacks of pure negligence and poor planning.

What’s done is done but my suggestion for future 4* releases or at least villain releases is to make time to plan an event where that villain is the “final boss”. Make NPC related characters (even if it’s just a re-skin of existing NPCs) and make a storyline either borrowed or new. Finally, be sure to include related characters as essentials or buffed. Also give about 3-4 weeks heads up to your player base about this event and new character(s) so they have something to look forward to and talk about.

If it means the character release schedule gets pushed back a week or two, so be it. Most players won’t mind if you tell them it’s because you are working on a cool event to introduce the next 4* villain. But this cheap rehashing of old event material, especially for 4* characters, really needs to stop.

I know the devs have the talent and ability to make better events and game modes. I just want them to be more mindful of the history and lore that surrounds these characters. Thank you.

Now, I’m going to get off my soap box and head to the gym.

Best,
fight4thedreamﾞ☆⌒o(*^ｰﾟ)v

tl;dr- The devs need to plan out 4* character introductions better. No more slacking and rehashing old event material and ignoring character’s history and relationships with other in-game characters. Thanks.

P.S.- Buff Spidey. Say no to magic healing powers and yes to the Spidey laying the smack down <3

2

I couldn’t agree more about having Spidey and Venom buffed for this. For cryin’ out loud, what does Johnny Storm, IM40 and Nick Fury have to do with Carnage? It has been a while since I have read any comics and was also a big fan of the Maximum Carnage story line but come on, let’s get some characters in the mix that actually relate to the villian!!

My problem is since I have gotten my Lazy Torch almost fully covered (only need one more), I dumped Johnny when I won the Bullseye classic cover instead of paying 750 HP for another roster slot. And now, he is needed for essential nodes?? Seriously??

3

I agree with the OP 100%. However the cynic (realist?) in me can easily say “don’t hold your breath.” The only reason Ultron got the royal treatment was because his debut was tied in to the Great Big Important Movie Release. You don’t need to be negative at all to simply look at history to see it’s true. Development focus is rather obviously squarely on churning out character after character. Everything else is a distant second. That sucks, but that’s also the way it is.

4

for Ultron type events yes, we can’t really prepare for them as is

5

I feel like playing devils advocate for a change.

If D3P were to plan an awesome 4* event, with stories, characters and skins to actually be related and tie in with said release that is valuable time that they are not spending developing new characters and balancing current characters or even addressing any number of issues currently wrong with the game.

Also if some awesome event were to go ahead the servers would not he able to cope with everyone trying to play said awesome event. It is best in the long run for new 4* releases to have a mediocre launch so everyone can have a shot at playing instead of staring at error screens.

Now if you look further down you will see all the sarcasm that has dripped down there.

6

I said it in the “incoming 4*” thread: every new 4* introduced needs new content with them. It will make it feel epic, and memorable. Can’t get the new content ready in time? Oh well, hold off on that 4* for now…

(Also - buff spidey)

7

I agree with the idea of releasing the 4* in big events with new 3* and 2* as progression rewards. That way people of all tiers can aim for rewards that they think are achievable for them, and it puts more characters and a bigger variety of characters into the game. Of course them events would take a lot of planning though, like the Ultron event. We got Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Hulkbuster

8

They’ve made designing new PVEs much too low a priority. The game seems incredibly stale because it’s just the same handful of PVEs over and over again. The time they put into developing Heroic Juggernaut would have been better spent making an actual new event.

There are not enough existing PVEs to keep rotating them like that, the existing PVEs are too similar as is, and the game is getting really really boring as a result. They need to introduce some new formats and variation so that even difficult events can feel like less of a slog. They need to make more villains (preferably not OP ones like Carnage) so that we’re not facing the same Dark Avengers and goons over and over again. There needs to be more stuff.

9

Ironically , Will and the rest of the Dev staff talk constantly about how they want Character abilities to TELL A STORY, yet the actual story itself in PVE DOESN"T EVEN TELL A STORY. Or rather, it tells a re-hashed story that makes no sense and doesn’t even buff or make essential the characters that would make sense for a Carnage release (eg Spidey, Venom, heck even Doc Ock - at least Spidey related).

Look, I’m a realist - but come on Devs, don’t try to snow us reasonable adults - if you were really serious about telling good stories like you say you are, then actually go create a good story and give it to us. Heck, I’m sure some editor at the comics part of Marvel could whip out some new dialogue/story content in like 5 minutes, or you could adapt from comics like was sorta done for Enemy of the State. This isn’t Candy Crush. You serve a bigger (marketing) master in Marvel - do them proud.

In short - take your own medicine. Give us good stories that actually make sense.

PS - Re-work/buff Spidey.

EDIT - Doc Ock is on the weekly buff list - so, yeah, there you go.

10

You’re right, cover packs and characters matter more than story, which is sad, but if you could make hand over fist money using the LoL strategy…that’s what d3 does

11

The lack of new PvE events is quite insulting in this game. Yes, I know what the devs are going to say. It’s harder than it looks and if you tried to do it yourself everyone the forums will be telling you that you suck too. But I bet if I (or anyone else) on this forum were to design the nodes, dialogue, and cutscenes (which is just a picture of some guy saying something), it’ll likely suck but almost nobody is going to say, “Wow that story sucked, I totally would rather have Iso 8 Brotherhood that had absolutely nothing to do with new character being introduced instead!” This game seems to have a philosophy that rather than doing something halfway decent it’s better to have nothing at all. I’m sure you can ad lib a new character introduction as a format and even if you know nothing about a character looking it up online should at least yield enough to get started. Of course the content created this way won’t be top notch, but it’s not going to be worse than plugging it straight into another event that’s got nothing to do with the said character.

12

I can’t honestly imagine it being all that difficult to whip up a new PvE event, there’s so few enemies still that you’re basically looking at the same non essential nodes as every other PvE copy/pasted into a new layout with a few featured characters. The only solution I see for this is to release a whole crap ton of characters all at once as non-playable characters like Gorgon. You can then either tweak them based on difficulty or rework them entirely if needed. Have a large number of minions sitting on the back burner and release them as needed into random events. For example, Spider man deals mostly with common crooks and whatnot aside from the big baddies, so have their abilities read out like that “Knife” “Bash” “Grapple” etc. I don’t get why it takes so long for everything to happen unless the dev team really is just that small.

I’m certainly not saying I can personally do better at everything than d3, but taking a month to fix game breaking bugs, character reworks that happen once a year if at all, 4 month development times for PvE events (R&G to Ultron) just seems like a lack of commitment to the game and it’s community.

13

It really shouldn’t be too hard considering the back story is all there and laid out on a plate for them. A couple dozen stills for the artists to whip up and maybe 10 lines of text and 3 or 4 goons to reskin and rename. For people that this is their stock in trade it should not take that long at all.