Team Up and how to tweak it.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

I’m cutting and pasting from atomzed who has a great idea.

I applaud them for a change, and it’s indeed a fun concept. It is sorta like a free try (“hey, see how fun World Rapture, maybe you should get a sentry of your own”.

I like the idea because it changes the way the game is played. In the past I just ignore the env tiles. Now, I can’t do that anymore and I have to pay attention to them now. Do I match those tiles and deny the AI? Do I have a good enough TU ability to use it? Should I bring in a utility TU (AR) or an AOE (CoTS)? All these are important meta decisions.

While many may lament that the AI is getting stronger bec of the change, it is because they always prioritise those tiles. We have been playing with a handicap opp, and now that the AI have both hands free, they suddenly feel more difficult.

We also need to note that we are more likely to get defence wins now with the right TU in stash. Facing a COTS or a Rage of Panther is no joke. It wasn’t too long ago that people complain about how stupid AI are in defence… Now that we got an improvement, we are still unhappy.

Things that can be improved:

  • It does seems to be a bit OP when a lvl 166 CoTS is fired off by a 2* teams. What I propose is to cap the strength of TU. Maybe it can only have a max of 4 covers, or 96 levels. There should be some reduction of power.
  • delete button for the TU. That’s a given.
  • allows us to see the TU the opp is equipping before entering battle. This creates more strategy as I can select the right TU to counter his TU.if he has COTS as TU, I can bring in a low cost TU so that I can use more ability.
  • My last but I think the most important suggestion. Link the TU to a specific character. TU 1 is linked to character on left and so on and so forth.

This creates more depth for the game. You can assigned the COTS to Falcon (usually the last person I want to kill). So when I see falcon has one use of COTS, I have to decide killing him first or killing him last and risk getting the COTS fire off.

This also allows ppl to have a sense of control, as they can target the character with the most risky COTS. It also create more combination of defence teams.

If we want it to be thematic, we can only specific characters to be link to TU. Say Ares will never be linked to Cpt marvel, and storm can be link to BP. While this limit the possible combination, it gives a greater sense of control, so ppl know what to expect. Now it’s a little top random.

All in all, I think it’s a neat idea, but tweaks can be done to improve it.

This is awesome and I would be happy if team ups were done this way. Each TU tied to a specific character, knowing what is coming, capping power, etc. I would go so far as to limit what skills can be used on certain boards. Example you have forest which only green powers can be used on team up, or desert where only yellow powers can be used. This way you kinda know what you are going to be facing as well. As is, TU’s need a lot of work, but…it is nice to see effort.

2

Some good ideas there.

Personally, I feel that your teamup options (both on offense and defence, in PvP) should be based on your own roster. Simple. Every character you have, you can select, at their current covers and levels.

-eliminates the idea of ‘farming’ certain characters in pvp for niche teamup skills
-eliminates the idea of ‘farming’ level 300+ jugg or ares in stupid-scaled pve - as they basically hand out ‘i win’ buttons for your pvp matches, as it stands
-thematically it makes more sense that those on ‘your team’ are helping you, as opposed to using a skill from your fallen foes
-the strength of your teamup skill would be generally equivalent to the strength of your roster, with a bit of randomness thrown in
-it actually might encourage more evenly levelled rosters

the potential downsides to this I see are

  • you don’t get the feeling of ‘winning new stuff’ after a battle
  • potential for abuse - have a roster consisting of max level sentry, daken, and maybe someone else with a decent hard-hitting skill or two (BP? thor?). Sit back and laugh at the defensive wins as the pool of team-up options your defensive team has is limited to just a few very powerful skills. this could be avoided however by making defensive team-ups exclude current active team-members, in the same way they are excluded when on offense.
3

So, I don’t mean to be whining or anything, but here are my thoughts:

  1. It makes no sense AT ALL that if you choose a Team Up skill for a battle and you NEVER use it, you still LOOSE that skill. It’s not a boost, it’s a skill and you should keep it if you never used it.

  2. They shouldnt have completely removed environmental titles, it should be an option of each player: do I want to go this fight using Team Ups or Environmental Tiles?

  3. What’s the point of having different maps / backgrounds if there are no more environmental titles? I agree that some used to suck after a certain level, like the hot dog stand or battle plan. But thorned rose, desert and containment breach were really good, so yeah i’m kind of disappointed with the complete removal of environmental titles.

  4. I guess I don’t have to tell you all how they ruined chars like Storm with this update.

  5. I agree with everyone else that if TU wont be capped or related to the chars on your own rooster, they should AT LEAST let us know the TU the enemy has chosen.

Ok, im done crying now icon_e_confused.gif

4

If I can answer a couple of the questions…

  1. you don’t lose it if you don’t use it.
  2. you can see what TU the enemy has chosen.
5

You don’t lose it. Seriously, why do people not try things before complaining about them?

Everyone would pick environmental tiles in the vast majority of cases unless running Modern/Mohawk Storm (and especially when running them in Desert/Forest), because defensive team-ups are usually somewhat more dangerous than offensive ones (no lost resources, the AI matches team-up tiles a lot anyway, etc). Plus that makes no sense with any environment/team-up -based abilities.

Not just “good”. Desert and Forest tiles were far too good, and Desert massively slowed down play with endless Storm chains, Forest being nearly as bad. This is a fix.

By having her not be yet another Red/Green character (in fact, she used to compete for the exact same colors as Punisher) so she can actually be used with less conflict on some teams now? Black Panther’s Environment-based ability has also been massively improved, not nerfed. Daredevil’s I believe is worse now on offense (arguably better on defense), but the character was already offensively unplayable enough that it’s hardly a priority fix.

I like having to prepare for the unknown when selecting my team and boosts. Every fight being a guaranteed win before this feature was implemented made things rather repetitive.

That said, aside from the obvious (team-up discards, rejection of team-up acquisition (maybe an option to take the usual token 20 ISO or the offered team-up?), etc), I’d much prefer a team-up implementation that just gives each character one team-up ability you can earn, used at a level equal to your current team’s average level. This would be much easier to balance, as the devs would pick (or create!) one signature ability for each new character they add and make that the team-up ability, rather than having to worry about how all the characters’ actives would work as team-ups. It would also give more weight to what I see as the most interesting facet of team-ups: the ability to use single powers of characters whose overall kits are too weak to deserve a frontline slot, now that their team-ups will be at your team’s average level. For example, 1-star Storm’s team-up ability would be Rank 5 Lightning Strike (Mistress of the Elements is obviously a little silly as a team-up ability), always at a level equal to your team’s average level. Then all “Storm team-ups” would be the same, making for better inventory management as you could just stack up to 5 of the same team-up and have a limit of 10 unique team-ups (presumably expandable with HPs). Eventually this could even allow for unique team-up abilities not quite the same as anything in the character’s kit (Venom and Spider-Man would appreciate this since their abilities depend far too much on synergy or re-use), or team-up passives (oh Dark Avengers Daken, why can’t you do anything).

Only after the battle has started, unless I’m missing something massive.

6

These are good suggestions. Being able to know which character fires/fired off a TU is good to know. I lucked out in a match yesterday. Enemy used World Rupture and I was trying to mitigate the ensuing damage. I managed to kill off one of the enemy characters with the WR timers at 1 and they all disappeared. So if a TU has CDs, they can be removed if you kill off the right character. Good luck finding the right one. icon_e_smile.gif

7

Not 100% sure, but it seems that, like environmental tiles, the character who uses team-up powers is the one who has the highest team-up-tile damage value. Unlike environmental tiles, there’s a lot of variance in team-up-tile damage, so that’s usually not too hard to check. (Not defending the system as being sufficient in its current state, just offering a clue for now.)

8

Wow, honoured that the phaserhawk created a thread based on my post.

Eternal lurker mentioned some thing that I was alluding to in my original post.

In essence, the TU can be given a better thematic feel by limiting specific TU to the characters.

So Cpt America can have Cpt Marvel as TU, Cpt Marvel will have Shehulk as backup, Bullseye will backup Moonstone, and Moonstone will backup Sentry, and Iron Patriot can choose from all the Dark Avengers for backup.

What this will create is (1) players know what kind of TU skills each character has. (2) you can prevent the TU by killing that character (if cpt america die, obviously he can’t call for backup anymore!) And (3) better balancing can be achieved by giving powerful character a poor TU. (Haha sentry gets to have moonstone control shift as TU).

Of course balancing this will be a nightmare. But if managed successfully, it will be fun.

Taking this idea further, D3 may even have a “quest” system to allow TU equipping. Say a quest for Shehulk, where she needs help to find evidence for a court case. You choose only 1 character to battle some goons (to get evidence) and once successful, you get to be friends with she hulk. So if you used cpt america, cpt america will be able to use shehulk as TU.

This creates some sense of progression and also some sense of attachment.

Of course, once again, programming this will probably be a nightmare and a lot of resource drain. shrug

9

Another idea that I have is to use a “crafting” system for TU.

One problem I have is that the TU is too strong at times. That is because the level is taken straight off from the opponent.

So 1 way to tweak is tat only 1 level is dropped for each game. And the TU covers can be stacked.

Example, I got a COTS drop from opp. It only starts at level 1. If I got another COTS, it will automatically stack and go up to level 2. So if I accumulate 166 of them, it will reach it’s full power.

This has benefits as it allow ppl to decide what to farm, and also the more powerful version are few and far in between.

So what happened if you use the TU in game? We can program it such that it will deduct a certain amount of covers from it. So at level 96 and below, each use will reduce it by 5 covers, and at level 97 to 166, each use will reduce it by 10 covers.

The “cost” is the same in offence AND defence. That means that if your AI used a COTS on defence, the same amount will be deducted from the covers.

This is good because it limits the amount of “hoarding of TU” covers for defence. Right now the TU is slanted forwards the defence because it does not get used up at all.

10

There are a couple of things I like about the TU option and a couple of tweeks that I would make.

  1. I like the team up over the ENV tiles. I get to choose what I bring to the table instead of Hot dogs that are not even true healing!!
  2. don’t loose the TU when I don’t use it. Dev’s you definatly got this right, thank you. (except when I am trying to get rid of moonstones black)
  3. I like that Defensive teams get random TU’s. Having Defensive TU be random gives defensives more of a chance. Defense goes after these tiles more anyway and if your opponent gets 20-30 of 1 color they should NUKE YOU!!!
  4. I am actually fine with not knowing the TU for opponents. It is most likely a much easier program to have the AI just generate 3 random TU at the start of the match than have the TU already created before you even see the team. If they did the CPU would have to gernate TU far ahead of time and run the Hampster wheel servers extra hard.

Opportunities with TU

  1. Need a delete button (comming in the next Patch thank you again Dev’s)
  2. If I don’t use a TU it should stay in my boost section. if I am trying to go quickly I don’t want to have to keep selecting TU’s.
  3. Make it easier for Mobile players to see what the other team has in the TU. To click on the character and scroll 6 times to see the TU’s is a pain. My solution would be to assign each player their own team up and when you looked at their cover they have a 4th white dot showing the team up. Still a lot of clicking and might be worse. I have actually started ignoring the TU because I want to get a faster win now.
  4. White tiles should now act like all other tiles. We should be able to steal them, place CD/Attack tiles/Strike tiles on them. Treat them like anyothertile.

I think they have some bugs, and I like getting abilites I don’t have, or are peoples powers who are not leveld up to be usefull. I think it is a double edged sword for 2* and 2*-3* transition players becuse they can win a 3* rage of the panther, but the get hit with a 3* CoTS. Overall I think the TU is good lets us personalize the old ENV tiles instead of 2 good ENV, and give these tiles some power.

11

Interesting concept but how about getting 1 cover it would be max level and at cover #3 and if you get 2 more it would go to cover 5. So if you got a 3* cover you can still use it right away, or you can get 2 more drops to make it more uesfull.

This would also make it interesting since you have some covers that cost more AP the more covers you have so you can get a 3 cover OBW that you want to use before you get to 5 and vise versa.

12

Picking out just this line. You boiled down several issues into one simple suggestion. I like it, treat them like the AP tiles which they are.
New defensive strategy, use mnMags or GSBW to paint all the white tiles something else so the AI will stop going after them like candy.

13

Team-up features should be based on the character’s original color eg. OBW A.Recon = Purple Tiles.
(OBW not in the fight but she assist with the A.Recon power when equipped)

Then the white color tiles replace back with original enviro. tiles.

Thats more balance to the game.

14

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this but the difficulty for me since the last update has been ridiculous it makes me want to quit playing Please fix this I have spent a lot on this game. .

15

I’d like to add my voice to backing tu covers to stay selected until used or removed by the player (even better if the boosts where one use)