Towards consistent character secondary titles

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

In light of the removal of the overall Dark Reign element of the game, I have done a refresh of character secondary titles. This has been formed through feedback and a few drafts but my current criteria are:

  • As they are now a clear set of covers, characters with Dark Avenger covers get that subtitle.
  • In a similar way, Marvel NOW! characters are all “Modern”.
  • Single appearance characters get “Classic”. In case either of the above two criteria are fulfilled, they take priority.
  • For characters with 2 variants, the most common public image of that character gets “Classic”.
  • Characters with 3 variations try and get more unique titles.

The list of updated characters. Characters not listed here have no subtitle change.

1*
Black Widow (Modern) – Black Widow (Classic)
Iron Man (Model 35) – Iron Man (Classic)
Venom (Dark Avengers Spider-Man) – Venom (Dark Avengers)
Yelena Belova (Dark Avengers) – Yelena Belova (Classic)

2*
Bullseye (Dark Avengers Hawkeye) – Bullseye (Dark Avengers)
Human Torch (Johnny Storm) – Human Torch (Original)
Magneto (Marvel NOW!) – Magneto (Modern)
Moonstone (Dark Avengers Ms. Marvel) – Moonstone (Dark Avengers)
Thor (Marvel NOW!) – Thor (Modern)
Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men) – Wolverine (Astonishing)

3*
Black Panther (Man Without Fear) – Black Panther (Classic)
Captain America (Steve Rogers) – Captain America (Classic)
Deadpool (It’s Me, Deadpool!) – Deadpool (Modern)
Falcon (Mighty Avengers) – Falcon (Classic)
Iron Man (Model 40) – Iron Man (Modern)
Loki (Dark Reign) – Loki (Classic)
She Hulk (Modern) – She Hulk (Classic)
The Hood (Classic) – Hood (Classic)
The Hulk (Indestructible) – Hulk (Modern)
The Punisher (Dark Reign) – Punisher (Classic)
Thor (Modern) – Thor (Classic)

4*
Nick Fury (Director of SHIELD) – Nick Fury Jr. (Modern)

And please, if you could also remove the “Gold” reference (and flashing stars) from characters and just make them “Rare” like all of the other 3*'s, that would be wonderful.

As a second alternative step, retire the 4* category and make those characters the shiny flashy 3*s ones.

Earlier drafts had all the characters all assigned the titles of “Classic”, “Modern” and “Original”.

A later draft included Black Widow (Heroic), Iron Man (Invincible), Juggernaut (New Excalibur), Yelena Belova (Pale Little Spider), Black Widow (First Class), Wolverine (Hell), Black Panther (Knights), Captain America (Heroic), Colossus (Bloodline), Daken (Original), Daredevil (Dark Reign), Doctor Doom (Doomwar), Falcon (Modern), Loki (Vengeance), Spider-Man (Amazing), Storm (Doomwar), Invisible Woman (Knights).

2

Original, Modern, and Classic are more terms for the comics and the universe. You’d piss off a lot of comic geeks if you called the current incarnation of Fury as Original. Original isn’t always the classic version. Sometimes the original version was so hideous we’d never want to see it, let alone in this game.

3

NO.

While I do not agree with all of their classifications, they are usually mostly correct.

Worst. Suggestion. Ever.

4

I took the constructive elements of that feedback and adapted my first version which aims to add more consistency across the game.

I think it presents a little better now.

5

I see no problem with their current subtitle paradigm. For the most part, the titles are accurate and consistent to the existing nomenclature used within the comics industry. You’d see very much the same nomenclature used on action figures and other secondary materials based on Marvel IP.

While there are some interesting choices, I don’t think that the user experience is at all flavored for better or for worse by the subtitles. If anything they could be MORE evocative. For instance, very few people refer to the two Thors using their secondary title, because those titles are not evocative of a difference between the two. If you’ll notice the title of the comic cover used for the 2* Thor, you’d see that it was from a story line called Thor: God of Thunder. It would have been more useful for them to have distinguished the two by making him Thor (God of Thunder). The ambiguity comes in that NOW! is the modern series on shelves, whereas Modern is a moniker given to some characters with long legacies in the comics.

I think they did it correctly with Black Panther when they chose to represent him in his subbing-for-Dare-Devil days as Black Panther (Man Without Fear) because it is evocative of the specific iteration of the character.

Where they went wrong was with Storm (Mohawk). They chose to use a more recent cover, but the take on the hair-style and wardrobe changed little from the original iteration of the 'hawk in the 80s.

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I would have rathered they be distinguished closer to Wolverine with (Astonishing) or (Uncanny) or (Amazing).

Patch Wolverine is a prime example of how to distinguish the characters based on the title of the book that they are featured in or by a significant change in the character’s appearance or behavior.

Captain Marvel (Modern) is a prime example of how NOT to name a character that has had many people take as their title. It could easily have been Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) in that case, as many could argue that there are multiple Captain Marvels on the modern market right now. They could easily have done Captain Marvel (Mohawk) and really confused everyone…

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tl;dr: This is a comics game, based on comics characters. If you wanted to simplify it best then the 1, 2, 3 star system would suffice.

6

No it presents just as badly and takes just as massive a dump on established comics lore.
Infact, the very suggestion that you think this bad of an idea could be fixed, makes it even more offensive than the initial proposition.

7

There’s no need to be rude about it.

8

You call it rude; I call it to the point. The idea presented in this thread does take a massive dump on established comics lore. It’s first iteration did, its revision still does. And yes; the fact that the OP thinks this idea can be fixed by juggling a few of his ‘consistent’ suffix classifiers around is more offensive than just the original idea. It shows the OP has no understanding of why people were finding this idea offensive in the first place; namely the fact that you simply cannot classify characters under three common, general, shared labels like that.

By the way; I find it somewhat ironic that you of all people should be lecturing on netiquette when you yourself resorted to ad hominem in accusing me of having a ‘faltering IQ’ in another thread. (You may want to go read that back, btw. I provided a rebutal for you. One that actually doesn’t have to sink to ad hominem to get the point across.)

9

Nothing like some internet outrage on a messageboard about fictional characters for a matching tiles computer game.

How bemusing.

Some interesting ideas, a little bit above. I think a unique secondary classification is cool, as long as there was a single and consistent system used across the whole game. A better overall implementation of this would be the single character with skins / costumes, but I think the devs said once they were not going to follow that pathway for the overall game.

10

Afraid I agree with naysayers, yogi. Your classification rules out ‘It’s me, Deadpool!’, which is a nonbo icon_e_biggrin.gif

11

I totally respect your right to disagree icon_e_wink.gif
.

I do understand where all the faux outrage comes from. My listing is hardly the most accurate masterpiece of work to ever exist nor do I claim otherwise - it’s just one version. I am just trying to get something more… consistent… somehow. There are some good ideas in a post a few above and I’m more than happy to read about any other ideas and suggestions people have. I’m hardly concerned about which system they go with, but you should be able to look at the second title of every character and it should easily make sense, but more so connect to other characters and the broader game.

I am also of the opinion that in this relatively young stage of the overall game, there should also only be one version of each character (no secondary names) and this is probably subtly influencing my desire for simplication as well.

The DP example was a difficult one actually… it did cause some anguish in my mind (along with how to do Bag-man). I totally see how it fits in with his character but I was just going on that categories should be consistent and I thought he had enough other character related stuff going for him already. So I overrid it. icon_twisted.gif

Let’s put it in perspective though… very little of what we seem to say here on the forums appears to make it into the game, so you are all probably pretty safe.

12

Braving the elements and dipping my toes back into the water with draft 3…

13

This list is better than your first two drafts, though I would have preferred you adding the third draft as a reply so as to not make initial responses to your post irrelevant and de-contextualized.

If I may ask, what are your criteria for naming? While there are fewer name suggestions that stoke the fires of my nerd-rage in this draft, I am left wondering how you came to the conclusions you did so that consistency can be extended to new character subtitles.

It appears you are referring to the book title as I had earlier suggested, but you are inconsistent whether you are referring to the book title (individual story name), publication title (name of ongoing series), or imprint title (the name that appears in the upper left box).

examples:
1* Black Widow: imprint - Max, publication - Black Widow, book - Pale Little Spider
1* Juggernaut: imprint - Marvel, publication - New Excalibur, book - Defenders of the Realm
3* Black Panther: imprint - Knights, publication - Black Panther, book - The Client

Black panther is actually interesting in that the cover and character model are different, as the cover is from the inagural issue of the 1998 run of T’Challa’s self-titled book but the character model is from the “Fear Itself” crossover event in 2011.

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It would make sense if the sub-names were differentiated by either book title or publication title, but using imprint or something else seems arbitrary. Many characters appear in self-titled books, so saying Black Panther (Black Panther) is obviously redundant. Using the book title to refer to the story in which the character appeared in that costume makes more sense, but does not lend itself to small parenthetical statements as some story titles are larger than the space provided.

I agree with distinguishing Nick Fury Jr. from Nick Fury Sr.

14

Your earlier post was actually the inspiration for me to try this again, so thanks!

I also had a long note here with various responses to the above but then deleted it and thought I would try and set some critieria instead.

Draft 4 - I tried for slightly more consistency and move slightly back away from individual stories. Ironically, this is much more like the current model than I originally anticipated.

  • As they are now a clear set of covers, characters with Dark Avenger covers get that subtitle.
  • In a similar way, Marvel NOW! characters are all “Modern”.
  • Single appearance characters get “Classic”. In case either of the above two criteria are fulfilled, they take priority.
  • For characters with 2 variants, the most common public image of that character gets “Classic”.
  • Characters with 3 variations try and get more unique titles.

I do have a question though. What do you think about?
Venom (Dark Avengers Spider-Man) – Spider-Man (Dark Avengers)
Bullseye (Dark Avengers Hawkeye) – Hawkeye (Dark Avengers)
Moonstone (Dark Avengers Ms. Marvel) – Ms. Marvel (Dark Avengers)

15

This is still a terrible idea. You’ve persisted with applying “Modern” and “Classic” in ways that aren’t appropriate to the genre.

It doesn’t make sense to me for internal consistency (i.e. within the game) to overrule the existing standard (consistency across media), nor do I understand how internal consistency would be “better”.