"This too shall pass"

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Long time forumers will be familiar with “this too shall pass” as an enduring game design philosophy in these parts.

It was from an article from many months ago found formerly at http://almnop.tumblr.com/post/863062742 … ce-changes which was a post by “Al” who I believe is the head / one of the top people of the company.

Sadly, the link is now inactive, the site obviously owned by someone else or totally different content and archive.org does not have a copy of it.

So, reposted from here, let’s all reminisce.

It is a never-ending challenge to keep our live games balanced. In Marvel Puzzle Quest, there are no mechanisms to self-balance overpowered characters and so if a single character is overly powerful, our spenders will tend to gather around them. All players have access to these characters so it’s not unfair, but it results in gameplay that lacks variety, which is ultimately bad for everyone’s enjoyment and ultimately our long-term retention.

In free-to-play, the balancing of durable goods presents a particular challenge. Players may have spend real-world dollars to upgrade the character and those who haven’t may have invested many hours grinding away. We’ve been through a few of these re-balancing passes and have learned some valuable lessons:

  • This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.

  • Telegraph the change – As soon as you know a character is overpowered, make sure you let your players know that you know. Months ago, we published a list of the top-5 incorrectly balanced characters. A week ago, we published the specific changes that were coming to Spiderman. This week we expect to roll out the change

  • Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!

  • Give players an out – If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer. During the period after a balance change, we massively increase the sale price of characters.

When we made that sale-price change, there was only a small bump in the rate at which players sold those characters. Here’s a chart showing the number of people who sold those cards in the window surrounding the nerf:

CHART

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

2

Did you mean to tie this in to a current character?

3

When they posted this, mpq was a very different world. Seasons just started (or haven’t started), 2* teams are the average team, and Xforce was called Xfarce.

I feel that D3 would probably change some of their points now, if they have been interviewed now.

It is a never-ending challenge to keep our live games balanced. In Marvel Puzzle Quest, there are no mechanisms to self-balance overpowered characters and so if a single character is overly powerful, our spenders will tend to gather around them. All players have access to these characters so it’s not unfair, but it results in gameplay that lacks variety, which is ultimately bad for everyone’s enjoyment and ultimately our long-term retention.

Sadly, this challenge holds true more than ever. They have try to differentiate the characters, and some are really fun (like blade and cage), but in the cut throat world of pvp, you only need Xforce and 4thor.

  • This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results. In the early days of MPQ, Ragnarok was massively overpowered and the day we changed it players were furious. A week later, it was no longer a topic of widespread conversation.’

This still holds true, as you see that if they believe a change is the “best for the game”, they will change it.

  • Telegraph the change – As soon as you know a character is overpowered, make sure you let your players know that you know. Months ago, we published a list of the top-5 incorrectly balanced characters. A week ago, we published the specific changes that were coming to Spiderman. This week we expect to roll out the change

This has changed, as they no longer announce the rebalancing before they have it nailed. Look at daredevil, Loki and doom. No announcement prior to the release. They probably have learnt that if they announced it and do not meet the deadlines, they will suffer a backlash.

Some thing good I noticed is that they have settled into a rhythm of rebalancing characters and releasing new ones. I really really like the changes to the three characters mentioned above… I am looking forward to the change for Rag, Dr Oct and Beast.

[Quote[- Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!
[/quote]

This has obviously changed. I will say that they have been more conservative than before. Days of Rag and Cmag low ap power have passed. Now is the days which power have multiple conditions to trigger it’s true power. Cage and Mystique black are examples of huge damage moves, but needing to meet one condition.

Even the 4* (with exception of 4thor)have not truly light up the scenes. Elektra is meh. Questions are asked about Starlord.

  • Give players an out – If players truly feel that your balance changes have made the durable no longer useful, then selling it for hard and soft currency should be a no-brainer. During the period after a balance change, we massively increase the sale price of characters.

This remains true.

We playtest the changes a ton and run them through some mathematical analysis that we’ve developed since launch. The end result is that if you’ve taken the time to max out your Spiderman ahead of your other rare cards, he’ll remain your best character.

I think this still holds true. Even if your first max 3* is GSBW, it is still better to.max her than to keep yourself to 2*. Is it the same for 4*? I believe so too, though Elektra and starlord may not light up the scenes, a max 4* is still marginally better than 3*.

4

“This too shall pass.”

As timely as ever.

5
  • Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!

See this here is something I think they have gotten away from with the Thor and XF changes. Clearly this is no longer their philosophy. Thor and XF were NOT game breakingly borked, as in infinite turn combos or 6 AP wins. They WERE however very very good. And now they’re not.

The king is dead, long live the king.

6

A lot of people are mentioning this lately (more than in the past), but I can’t tell if they are trying to mock it or simply say that they too have been through this before.

7

You know, I’m actually going to give them credit for this one and more so recently than in the past. “Make Everything Overpowered” doesn’t mean broken. If you read what Blizzard’s CEO meant by that, he didn’t mean actually OP. He meant make the player feel OP with the possibilities of some unit or power that generates excitement, but obviously, Blizzard’s games have balance and counters so that nothing is intentionally OP.

The recent powers of redflag.png
icon_lukecage.png
, blackflag.png
icon_ironfist.png
, purpleflag.png
blueflag.png
icon_professorx.png
, and yellowflag.png
icon_kamalakhan.png
all feel like they are way OP because the Devs did something unprecedented with them and weren’t shy with them. There were “please nerf” threads to prove it (I even wrote one). But so far, they haven’t broken the game (well maybe icon_professorx.png
will, but still). They even seem kinda balanced.

(Don’t talk to me about :quicksilver:; he doesn’t exist in my game.)

8

“A little from column A, a little from column B.”

9

Yea, and that’s great and all, but why did XF and Thor have to die to make room for these?

On some level I think Star Lord’s Red was supposed to be XFs counter. Delay his green for 3 rounds and then punch him square in the face for half his health. The problem there is CDs are TERRIBLE in the old game, plus random CD’s are extra terrible. The new higher health game has more room for them, and double shafts XF with no health bump to true healers. Plus his high being Purple makes him ideal to face off vs XF/Thor even if you take the SS to the face they only get purple.

Instead of giving vets a chance to get Proffesor X and Star Lord and Kingpin using their XF’s tho the devs have cut the legs out from under the 4* game, making 1000 harder to reach with match changes and also hitting the two good 4*s with the nerf bat.

Also, I stand by my statement that XF was never “broken”, just “good”. I want more characters like old XF, not for new XF to be closer to Groot than to Kingpin. If you want to change the AP dynamics of Surgical Strike and up it’s base damage then whatever, but his green merited no change.

10

Something puzzles me though :

X-Force was the 1st 4* released (since IW was the second). It was completely useless by then.

It took nearly a year to buff him. Wasn’t there enough time to playtest and avoid this disaster ?

How can one be taken seriously when he releases a character that is useless, rework him, and 6 months later nerf him ?

In the meantime, most of the playerbase has invested in X-Force (he’s probably been the most successful character in the game), thinking he could not be nerfed back (I thought it could be impossible they made a mistake twice on the same character).

Of course, this too shall pass. It’s not the end of the world.

But the best and oldest players have left the game, and D3 never expressed any regret about it. They are as cynical as companies like Hasbro though they show a friendly face on Youtube videos.

Some months ago, I said their strategy was aimed at becoming appealing to another company which would buy them. It happened.

And that kind of strategy is bad for the consumer, and with time, it will be bad for the company. By that time, the founders of Demiurge would have made enough money, and that’s all that counts, doesn’t it ?

11

Sorry for being a dumb-ass but this phrase is driving me crazy - I see it all over the forum and I don’t understand it’s tru meaning.
is it:
a. As in time passes:- This is happening and we must just tolerate it?

b. As in good: This “passes” our criteria and is accepted?

c. another interpretation?

Sorry again for being idot.

12

Mostly it means “the mob will disburse eventually”

Look at the True Healing change for a perfect example.

Devs: “We are doing this”
Us: “OUTRAGE!”
Devs: “This too shall pass”
Us: plays more MPQ

13

“This too shall pass – While you need to expect and accept that there will be a backlash and the first couple of days will be painful, give it a few days before you judge the results.”

It’s elements of everything and different perspectives. It’s intent (from the dev perspective), is that “we make changes to the game that we think are good and people might not like them but the negative outrage will pass in time”. It’s a dismissive and slightly demeaning statement to have ever made but as a pure theoretical statement has some basis.

Since it was first made, it’s now a statement used by the community broadly aimed at the devs that broadly says “yeah, we know you have to make changes to the game, we’re not fussed about them so much but we feel they might be poorly designed, without justification, a waste of our earlier investment, why do we keep getting lumped with this and a lot of it is really just fiddling at the edges, when really there are much more fundamental issues in regards to the game which you refuse to do anything about”.

As the example above, “True Healing” is the textbook example (there is a 70 something page thread about it somewhere) - it’s such a flawed game mechanism as a whole and it was even more poorly presented to us, which only added to the absurdity.

14

I don’t think it has to be that complicated. They changed their minds about what a 4* character should be once before. And now they’ve done it again. The slow nerf to the entire 4* tier may have started with Elektra and finally ended here. Who knows?

15

Agree with Gunther… I think when GT was introduced, they wanted 4* to be a notch about the 3*. You could argue that when Fury was released, it was the same too, as he was the first character that could deal 10k dmg.

But it was not the same for Elektra, Starlord, Prof X and Kingpin… Some are good… But definitely not way better than the 3*.

So my observation is that they have decided to rein back the power level of 4*. The dev, for better or for worse, decided that 4* are not required for high end competition.

Is it better for the game? Well I feel that it’s better for the game diversity… But it also kill off the sense of progression for the game. Many has rightly said it “why should I spend so much effort in getting 4*, when it doesn’t increase my competitiveness?”

16

Whynotboth.jpg?

17

Awesome quote! Wherever did you find this little nugget of d3 kryptonite to dust off and toss into the ring? Love it!

18

Wasn’t me, I just took it from the top post and made a comment on it.

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  • Listen to Blizzard – “Make Everything Overpowered” is a design motto at Blizzard and we try to adhere to that here at Demiurge. At the end of the day, you need to think not just about the numbers but the emotional impact of a character. When you’re done, aim to have players think you didn’t go far enough!

AAAHHHH HAHAHAHA. Guess they forgot about this part. Thor and Xforce sure as hell prove they did.

20

I’ve seen this quote many more times recently. Other changes that had the community in an uproar have come and gone, but recently it’s been changes primarily seen as negative one after another (4hor, MMR, XF…)

I’m starting to read it as “This Game shall pass…and soon”.