we just want the game to be better

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

So, I have almost written this post at least 30 times. But I never do, because I just don’t really care anymore. After nearly 300 days, I’m still in the 2*->3* transition, and DDQ has become the entire game to me - which is to say, I’ve chosen to enjoy the occasional themed match-3 game, but have no concern for the roster-improvement game. As many have said: this game has no end game. But then every now and again I see D3 flail about with new ideas and see how they really are trying to make the game better. And I know they care. And so do all the trolls on this site, and the good posters and people asking for calm, and really everyone who plays this game - because we know deep down inside it can really be a fun game, if only it just weren’t. So here’s my post about how to make the game better.

I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think I can boil everything down to two fundamental flaws. I mean, could the UI be better? GOD YES. They could go back to no longer hiding what AP changes actually happen, for example. Could the servers be better? Of course. But for all the quality-of-life improvements, the game will still never be as fun as it COULD be until they fix these two things.

1. The entire reward model is wrong.
That’s an overly succinct way of saying it, but after my first month of playing this game I realized that every time they released a new character, it hurt players. Why would they do that? Well obviously new characters are awesome and fun, and I’m sure they’re income for the game. But the reward structure of the game is fundamentally flawed, and I think it comes down to a quote that I don’t care enough to look up so I will paraphrase:
“We believe making choices about what characters you keep is a fun part of the game.”
That is just dead wrong. Don’t you devs even READ comics? Of course you do! So how would you react if your local comic book store told you that you could never have more than 5 covers at a time, and you’d have to throw away one of the comic books you owned to purchase a new one? (Also, each book you bought cost $2 more than the last one.) The whole point is collecting. Stop punishing us for collecting. It’s not fun. Deciding what character to use - that’s fun! Deciding how to build a character - fun. Deciding how you can possibly make a good team with three disparate characters who all happen to be buffed this week - fun! Deciding whether or not to trash the 2* you never use or the 3* you only have one cover for? NOT FUN.

Someone else made the bold suggestion of giving away a cover for every new character. That’s a great idea, or at least a great direction. Maybe instead of only giving out a cover to the top 15% of the ranking, make it so that anyone who plays a PvE and tries even a little gets ONE COVER for each new character when they first come out. Make it a progression reward - like #4 or 5 on the list. (And yeah, I mean 3*, 4*, you name it.) Then you can keep the other rewards the same if you want. Also, all roster slots need to cap at 500, or 100, or maybe 50 HP. Getting a roster slot and getting one cover for every new hero should not be the thing that is hard. Getting 13 covers? Yeah, make that hard. That’s fine. We like to be challenged. But collecting? That is not a challenge, that is a basic part of the game.

You guys have done such a good job with little bits and pieces here and there: ISO is cheaper and goes further, HP is… ok it’s the same, 3* covers are more plentiful… but you keep missing the mark! And the mark comes down to the fundamental flaw that you think forcing us to throw away covers is fun. It’s not fun; the reward system is flawed. (Note: yeah, it’s flawed in other ways, too. But this is the worst.)

2. “Make everything overpowered”
That’s another quote from the devs that I won’t bother to look up. And the funny thing is, it really means “make everything balanced and feel like it is meaningful.” The devs said it’s their motto, or rather it’s Blizzard’s motto and they think it’s great and they’re stealing it. And they’re right! The catch is that they are terrible at this.

Here’s a fun fact: did you know there are only five 2* characters in the game? It’s true! There’s Mags, Storm, Ares, Daken, and OBW. THERE ARE NO OTHER 2* CHARACTERS BECAUSE ALL THE REST OF THEM SUCK. I mean, they are completely useless if you compare them to these 5. I did pull Cap out for the Ultron debacle, but the truth is that you guys have never made all the characters good. You need to make all the 2* characters as good as those 5. You need to make all the 1* characters as good as Jugs. (You KNOW the game is borked when one of the first characters you get - modern BW - actually gets worse if you level her up. Who DESIGNED this game?) And you need to fix the vast, vast gap between someone like Doc Ock and someone like Lazy Thor. It’s …well, painfully clear from your balance changes that you guys aren’t too good at this. But you need to try! And then try harder. And then try again and again and keep working on it until it is right, even if it means you don’t release the next “Vault” idea or the newest 5 characters this week. The Xforce debacle (each debacle gets its own title anymore) came about because you realized that everyone used Xforce/4hor and ignored all other characters. That’s because they were too good, yes… but it was also because all the other characters weren’t really good at all. And so when the players finally got a taste of what the game could be, that’s all they wanted. But what if there were always more good characters? And I’m not just talking about boosting a little HP here and there (side bar: making games take longer was also less fun, just FYI, but that’s a quality-of-life thing again). I mean make powers that are GOOD, where you actually have to decide between two characters because you know they will both do the job - but who can do it best when paired with THIS guy? THAT is fun. When you actually fix problem 1 and we actually have a ton of characters, we want to use them! Trying to figure out how to make those last 3 characters that aren’t dead useful in some way before the event is over - THAT is the challenge; that’s the tension! So don’t make us give up after our 2nd string is down!

At this point I’m just rambling and the odds are low that this will even get read, but I really do like this game and all I want is for it to be better. That’s all we all want. And there are tons of ways to make it better, but until you solve some really basic, core issues, the rest is window dressing. The Vault is window dressing, guys. You spent a ton of time and effort on making our chance of getting a good lottery draw go up 1/10th of a percent. Who cares? I want a 3* Squirrel Girl that is fun to play. I want a Beast and IW and freakin’ Moonstone - no, I’ll say it: I want a BAGMAN that is a respectable character that people actually want to play and that people actually think at some point in their lives: hey, I could use this one! Come on guys. Stop Bagmanning us. We just want the game to be better.

2

There’s another reason you can’t pull up that#2 quote. That’s because the developers never said that. In fact, they said something almost the polar opposite.

They said they won’t rush to change an underpowered character. However, if a character is overpowered, they make it a high priority to correct (nerf, rebalance, etc.) That character.

Also, concerning #1, to paraphrase Meet the Parents, in a scheme to actually make a profit (you know to continue letting the game exist), they might have set up some things like the rewards structures and new character releases in a manner that strives to balance f2p and make the bean counters happy. For the most part, if you look at the history of changes made, it gets more f2p friendly more and more.

You are correct that players just want the game to be fun. And tbh, I don’t have any suggestions on lieu of yours for improvement. I guess it’s hard for me to look at all the changes they’ve made and say work perspective that don’t continue to make progress on that direction. It’s really impressive how they seem to have balanced the game to be more accessible to vets and newer players at the same time now.

3

So I know new characters hurt the transition player in getting to 3*, but the reality is new characters drive revenue and drive players. Having a new character realeased gives players a chance to collect them. They have reduced the cost of the first 20-25 slots in order to help people collect characters. The reality is because they have increased odds on tokens this will also get worse for players who are low on HP. They also announced they are capping roster slots at 1000 HP until a perminant fix can be put in place. Roster slots cost me 759 HP and yet I still have 9000 HP and have not put any money into the game. The game is giving enough HP for roster slots, and they are looking to address it again.

2. “Make everything overpowered”
That’s another quote from the devs that I won’t bother to look up. And the funny thing is, it really means “make everything balanced and feel like it is meaningful.” The devs said it’s their motto, or rather it’s Blizzard’s motto and they think it’s great and they’re stealing it. And they’re right! The catch is that they are terrible at this.

Here’s a fun fact: did you know there are only five 2* characters in the game? It’s true! There’s Mags, Storm, Ares, Daken, and OBW. THERE ARE NO OTHER 2* CHARACTERS BECAUSE ALL THE REST OF THEM SUCK. I mean, they are completely useless if you compare them to these 5. I did pull Cap out for the Ultron debacle, but the truth is that you guys have never made all the characters good. You need to make all the 2* characters as good as those 5. You need to make all the 1* characters as good as Jugs. (You KNOW the game is borked when one of the first characters you get - modern BW - actually gets worse if you level her up. Who DESIGNED this game?) And you need to fix the vast, vast gap between someone like Doc Ock and someone like Lazy Thor. It’s …well, painfully clear from your balance changes that you guys aren’t too good at this. But you need to try! And then try harder. And then try again and again and keep working on it until it is right, even if it means you don’t release the next “Vault” idea or the newest 5 characters this week. The Xforce debacle (each debacle gets its own title anymore) came about because you realized that everyone used Xforce/4hor and ignored all other characters. That’s because they were too good, yes… but it was also because all the other characters weren’t really good at all. And so when the players finally got a taste of what the game could be, that’s all they wanted. But what if there were always more good characters? And I’m not just talking about boosting a little HP here and there (side bar: making games take longer was also less fun, just FYI, but that’s a quality-of-life thing again). I mean make powers that are GOOD, where you actually have to decide between two characters because you know they will both do the job - but who can do it best when paired with THIS guy? THAT is fun. When you actually fix problem 1 and we actually have a ton of characters, we want to use them! Trying to figure out how to make those last 3 characters that aren’t dead useful in some way before the event is over - THAT is the challenge; that’s the tension! So don’t make us give up after our 2nd string is down!

At this point I’m just rambling and the odds are low that this will even get read, but I really do like this game and all I want is for it to be better. That’s all we all want. And there are tons of ways to make it better, but until you solve some really basic, core issues, the rest is window dressing. The Vault is window dressing, guys. You spent a ton of time and effort on making our chance of getting a good lottery draw go up 1/10th of a percent. Who cares? I want a 3* Squirrel Girl that is fun to play. I want a Beast and IW and freakin’ Moonstone - no, I’ll say it: I want a BAGMAN that is a respectable character that people actually want to play and that people actually think at some point in their lives: hey, I could use this one! Come on guys. Stop Bagmanning us. We just want the game to be better.
I am guessing your 3* are not at higher levels because since they instituted the weekly buff’s the 3* characters have been tons of fun. I just hit 1000 running Gamora, Hood, Dare Devil. Sometimes I ran Kamala Khan, sometimes I ran IF. I had a blast using Gamora and her massive strike tiles and cheep red attack. She is now going back of the line until the next buff. The weekly buffs have made a significant amount of characters more viable. You want 2* try bullseye with his protect tiles and green that will cause massive cascades for you. Try Moonstone with her new control shift to steal Daken strike tiles, heck 2* wolvie, Thor, and HT are really good 2* that I would recommend to someone starting the game. The weekly buffs also help all of these characters, and the fact that you think Squirrel Girl is not fun to play just tells me you are not using her correctly. How can you not smile when you strike someone with Nuts from Above, or Furry Friends. Beast is also very playable, and when buffed worth using especially in PVE.
The Dev’s have done a lot of good things to make the majority of characters very playable. Are some stronger than others YES! Each character is unique and some are at the top and some are at the bottom. The reality is the bottom when buffed is not necessarily worse then the top not buffed. That means there is a lot of room for players to play the way they want.

Live on Squirrel Girl!!

4

Agreed. The game is full of a lot of interesting characters that work really well with a thoughtful combo/matchup. The weekly buffs are really good in that regard because they encourage you to try out a few different combinations to see if they’re better than the best characters that you already have at 166. My maxed LThor is responsible for getting me a lot of the covers I’ve earned in the game, but it’s pretty easy to decide to bench him when KK, Beast, or She Hulk are boosted.

I haven’t figured out a great team for QS or Vision yet since I don’t have them fully covered (and there’s just no shortage of great red abilities so Vision really is a tough sell), but it seems silly to rule out the possibility that there’s a nasty combo or bosot that would work for them. I mean if I can find a way to make the Squirrel Girl PvP fun and fast…

5

The Blizzard quote is missing a keyword of ‘feels’. Blizzard isn’t saying they want fireball to one shot everything so that it’s overpowered. What they mean is that a crit Pyroblast can one shot an equal level mob while questing and it feels overpowered, even though it usually only takes 2 fireball and a tap to kill most equal level mobs anyway and Pyroblast used to take 6 seconds to cast, which is as long as casting 2 Fireballs anyway.

If anything this game has the opposite problem. Unstoppable Crash doesn’t feel very overpowered, until Juggernaut uses it on you. Most ‘fun’ abilities in this game are actually way overpowered. It was fun to play around with the original Magnetic Field while taking 20 extra turns, and it was grossly overpowered. I think the problem is that most fun abilities in this game seems to deal with board manipulation and anything that can sufficiently manipulate the board well is always going to be overpowered.

6

Welcome back?

7

My only issue is the repetitive rewards. Over the past 2 months I’ve lost count how many times Captain Marvel or Storm has been the reward for progression rewards or top 100 placement in pvp. Neglecting the likes of Fist, Cyclops and Cage. A little variety goes a long way.

8

2* Thor, Ms Marvel, and Wolverine are perfectly serviceable 2s and Bullseye and Moonstone have become too with their latest upgrades. Hawkeye is not great but in a team that can exploit his Speed Shot he’s awesome. The only truly weak 2 characters left are Bagman, Cap and 2* Torch.

It’s …well, painfully clear from your balance changes that you guys aren’t too good at this. But you need to try! And then try harder. And then try again and again and keep working on it until it is right, even if it means you don’t release the next “Vault” idea or the newest 5 characters this week.

Dude, you can’t allege that they are not trying. They have been remaking and reworking character throughout the history of the game. Sometimes the fix is awesome and no more work is needed (Daken/Loki/Dr. Doom, etc.) and sometimes it proves to not be enough and they will surely keep trying. But if you propose that all new features, content and fixes in other areas should be put on hold until every single character is perfectly balanced, then it is you the one who betrays his lack of understanding in game design. People would leave in droves if week after week nothing new happened in MPQ except a reworked 1* Venom here or 2* Torch there.

Also, welcome back, Phantron.

9

But storm is the Dev’s favorite 3* icon_question.gif

10

In defense of torch-lite, he’s actually still a pretty great ap to damage converter/pump for a low level developing roster, especially for pve. That inferno just keeps going on and on, and buffed fireball is just amazing. Like a headbutt that doesn’t hurt and also triggers cascades.

11

by balancing do mean making enough vets quit so that newbies have a shot?

12

https://forums.505go.com/discussion/7984

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!

Not too difficult to find actually. It was the fourth Google result for “mpq make everything overpowered”.

13

Ha, thanks - as you can tell I was seriously that lazy when I wrote the post. I knew it was true, though.

Re: “feels” - sure, however you want to say it. The semantics of my post aren’t important; the gist of it is. And yes, obviously you can’t make all characters like old-school Spidey or old-school Mags or old-school Sentry… You don’t want game-breaking characters, and those nerfs were good. But you need to make current Spidey as good as current Mags, for example. You want there to be less of a massive, massive gap.

Re: but 2*s that don’t suck are… Again, not the point. You can’t say Bagman is ever useful, and you can’t say OBW is nearly ever NOT useful. That’s way too much of a gap. I understand that all characters will never be perfectly balanced, but you have to make all of them useful. The current model is very poor.

Re: trying… I definitely said the devs WERE trying, which is why I cared enough to post my thoughts. And yeah, they’ve made lots of improvements like roster slots maxing at 1000 (which doesn’t matter because it’s still WAY too high) and different characters getting boosted. It’s just a shame they appear to spend more time on things like the Vault than on things like making characters that already exist not be worthless. Seriously: stop Bagmanning us.

Re: but that’s how they make money… No. I’ve seen this excuse about a million times. I absolutely reject the notion that practically giving away a single cover of every new character and making roster slots trivial will bankrupt the game. I firmly believe their current churn rate WILL bankrupt the game, thus suggestions to fix the core of the game to make it more fun to more people and keep it going longer. The match-3+powers game is fun, at its heart. That will keep people playing. What isn’t fun is the advancement game, and the “no you can’t collect things” game.

14

I argue with this point. D3 is a business and they need to find ways to convince players to spend money on this game. A major source of revenue is new characters—players compete in events and spend hp on healths and boosts, and/or buy cover packs and try their luck.

As for slot costs, I was paying 1,050 for my 83rd slot to keep Wilson Fisk. So the reduction to 1,000 hp per slot definitely helps. The easiest way to obtain hp is to do pve events. Top 50 placement in a sub usually nets 50 hp reward. I know it’s hard to place high, but if you’re lucky to have usable characters for an event, top 50 sub is certainly achievable.

15

They do seem to be trying to rebalance/rework characters. However, relative to the size of the roster, it seems to come at a glacial pace. The moonstone rework (that almost nobody asked for) came back in May (or was it June?), and before that was… ..uhm… so far back I can’t remember anymore. The health buffs/nerfs happened, but that obviously was kind of a… different (lazy) attempt at balancing things.

Certainly, they’ve been busy with releasing new characters, etc, but comparing this to Marvel Heroes who (mostly) managed a new char release every month, plus an existing character rework every month, well. It makes their attempts at balance look pretty sad in comparison.

16

Moonstone was in May and 2* Bullseye also got his third ability that month. Just one month before that a bunch of characters got reworked: She-Hulk, IW, Beast, Elektra. Slightly before that Ragnarok got his 3rd skill and X-Force got nerfed. Before that, Dr. Doom got a third skill and 4hor got nerfed. Mystique and 2* Mags. Loki. This has been going on for a while and regularly.

17

Nice, I guess my memory stinks! So is it more or less an every month thing?

18

think about the sum of it all.. they have to work on new content per contractual obligations with Marvel and releases, work on new characters, update old ones, code it , test it, get feedback, etc..

Hard to do everything at once, the next round of balancing almost certainly will not be until after the Ant-Man PVE, unless there is a bug to fix with a skill etc..

Yes it seems slow, but compared to what all they have to do, with a much smaller staff than many other game companies, and don’t forget Adventure Time Puzzle Quest being worked on as well.

I think they are doing a great job at the pace they are working with all that have to shoulder right now.

Keep up the good work.

19

Right? Torch is my biggest damage dealer, even now that I have some 3*s in the 100+ range, and even when he’s not buffed. 1600 damage with an 8AP fireball that regens 2AP. 880 damage per turn with inferno, ~1000 damage per turn with a charged up green. All 3 of his powers are fantastic, and inferno doesn’t even require him to stay alive to keep doing damage.

He may be easy to beat up in PVP but for PVE and DD he is a powerhouse. I have used him for every single DD cover win because those guys are otherwise too strong for my 2* roster.

20

I agree about the covers thing. It drives me NUTS to have to get rid of covers. I HATE that I just pulled my first professor X from a standard token and now I may have to sell off a character I worked hard to get if I don’t get the 650+ HP before it expires. And that’s after just selling 3 Gamora covers because she’s the least interesting of all of them. And NOT building 2* Ares, Daken, Moonstone, and selling my last 1* Juggs… all because of slots. Now I just assume that’s their way of trying to get more money out of me, which is fine… but it’s not fun.

For me there’s a bigger fundamental flaw in the game.. or more than one.. but when it comes to PVE the puzzles aren’t even the game anymore. I liked it when the puzzles were the game. It was fun trying to pick the best guys for each particular match. But now, there is generally either one specific team that will do the job because only certain guys are buffed and sometimes the rest are not even an option, or because any team will do. There’s never really a middle ground. So there’s very little choice anymore when it comes to PVE and the games largely play themselves, I don’t often have to think too hard and wins are rarely satisfying.

No, the real game of PVE now is something I call Marvel Schedule Quest. Because 95% of my success depends on how well I can set my whole life aside 3x a day on a predetermined schedule to waste an hour or more, whether I want to actually play at that time or not. These days I spend way more time playing out of obligation to the game than I do out of enjoyment of it. Sometimes I have a couple hours to play and I’d love to play… but I better reserve those health packs and I can’t play this node right now or I’ll screw myself out of points later… So the game becomes whether I can get away with playing during work, or whether I can successfully put off sleep, or avoid my wife’s angry gaze when I talk about stopping family time in the middle of a day to play some rounds. And when I took a day off work to take my family out for a vacation day, my whole event that was perfectly timed up until then became completely ruined. That makes me no longer interested in Marvel Schedule Quest, because I like my family and my job and my sleep a lot more than I like playing the same tired matches over and over.

And the OP is right about one thing: There is no endgame. The only reason to collect covers is to have more options to try and win more covers. That would be fine if the game itself were fun to play, but it’s not, really, and especially not when you lock 75% of the very rosters we are building (yeah, the rosters that are 100% of our rewards for playing). I’ve never seen a game that punishes its players so much and actively works to make the game less fun.

IF they want to keep the current event formats for those who like them, fine. I’d prefer more of the normal story modes that I played when I first started. Give me challenges I can’t beat right away but can beat after my roster is stronger. Give me a feeling of progress, and then give me something shiny for finally finishing a story mode. I still say that first month was the best part of the game even if my roster was limited, because I felt like I was actually getting somewhere, not just constantly churning.

Anyway, rant over.

PS. I have decided no longer to play optimally. If I find myself playing because I “need” to play rather than because I want to play, I shut it off and to hell with the lost rewards. Having a life is a much bigger reward.