What needs to be done now because of the healing changes.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
1

So as we all know there has been a recent change to the game with prolonged healing now pretty much obsolete. A lot of us are very upset with this, with quite a few players no longer playing anymore or planning on quitting after this season event. Now if the Devs behind this are going to stick to their guns and keep this patch in then there are other changes then that need to be made as well, here is a list of changes to the game I feel need to be done since this update.

  1. The devs put out their main reason for doing this is so there is more diverse playing. So we don’t just see the same team set up over and over. This kind of thinking I’m ok with. If that is truly the case though, if the devs do truly want to promote diverse cover play. Then paying for roster slots needs to be removed, or at least the price needs to be set price no increases and it should only cost ISO to do it. There is honestly no reason for it to cost HP other than the fact it forces players to buy HP which costs money. But since the Devs are saying they are all about making a more diverse gameplay, then the next logical step is to do something about the rosters.

  2. There needs to be an increase in health packs. 5 is just not enough when you have such big PVP events going on, and also PVE events happening every now and then as well. This is just a complete no brainer. Yes they have speed up regen time but that is no where near enough. If the devs are going to remove the option of players being able to prolong heal then they have to increase the amount of health packs we have. My vote is an increase to 10. The other option for this though is to set up different health packs for PVP and PVE. So keep the blue health packs for PVP but then have red health packs for PVE events and the normal story chapters,also make so there are no cross overs, in other words if you use up all your health packs in PVP you can’t jump over to PVE and use those health packs to heal and then go and battle in PVP. This way players can still compete in both events equally. Though an increase in the amount is still needed, but with a setup like this I think 8 health packs each would work fine.

  3. Enemies in PVE can no longer use heal abilities, or at least need more AP to use them and an increase in the timer countdown. This is another no brainer, enemies in PVE will always have full health with every new battle. So the changes to healing doesn’t effect them at all, which is just unfair. If players are now limited to the amount of time they can play, then enemies being able to heal during battle need limintations now as well. It either needs to be removed completely or it needs to cost them more AP to do it and also timers need to be increased.

  4. Since prolong play is now out of the question unless you spend money, it is going to mean players are not going to score as high in PVP now, that is just a fact. Which means they are going to miss out on rewards you get when you reach a certain amount of points. As such this means of course the amount of points needed for them will have to be lowered. Or they are kept the same but health packs are offered when you reach a certain amount of points too. So the standard rewards stay the same, but then say at like 75 points reached you get a health pack, then at 150 you get another one, then at 250-275 you get two health packs and so on and so forth. This way players can still prolong game a bit while also keeping it diverse.

  5. New 2* characters. That also needs to be done. Especially now since it’s become much harder to grind and get ISO, so will take longer to level up 3* covers. Also maybe even a couple new 1* so newer players can have a more diverse range as well.

These are just some of the things I feel need to be done because of the new update. Otherwise players are just not going to bother anymore with this game. The only other way around this is to remove this patch and let things go back to the way they were and work on other ways to create a more diverse cover plays, if that really is what you want and aren’t just doing this to get more money from people.

Those are just my thoughts anyway, if anyone feels like adding something or give me feedback on the ideas I have put forth that would be great.

2

A diverse metagame requires good matchmaking, balanced characters, and a good feedback cycle.

For matchmaking, the MMR has never been great, and it will only be more crucial to make it work or drop it.

For balance, there are a lot of handles to tweak, but I’d focus on three:

  1. Balance the characters against each other at their level caps.

  2. Make all characters have the same level cap.

  3. Make characters vastly easier to get to the level cap. Whether this means dumping the ISO system altogether (levels are simply granted with covers) or making covers much easier to acquire (more relevant for higher rarities), or both and some other spice on top, it doesn’t matter. A diverse metagame cannot be built around the wide power differences that exist in the game at present. This, far more than the recent healing design change, is hugely problematic if diversity is desired.

For feedback, players need to be able to try new teams out and find synergies and play styles. This would be greatly facilitated by getting rid of the health pack system and just healing teams to full after each fight. Previous Puzzle Quest games worked just fine with this design, and it’s only ever been a sop to the F2P model here.

3

  1. Stop the Rubberbanding system and develop a point system, where instead of having big points at the beginning you would have an increasing amount of points and increasing difficulty. The max level should be pre-defined and once achieved, the node would be blocked. This would allow a lower region bias and reducing the current handicap expecially for People in Europe, Africa and Latin America.

  2. Have the events in time rotation. I.E. if the current event finished at 01:00, the next should finish at 02:00, then 03:00 and so on. In this way there will be less bias and the game will be more FAIR to everybody around the globe, as at one point, you have in general a zone of 8 hours of advantage per event!

  3. For the true healing, it really sucks. I must say that many of the powers that other characters have were based on the fact that healing was possible during the game. Therefore, all other super powers should be re balanced in order to cope with this. In addition, the true healing states that the character shold be healed by his own powers, therefore, spidey, OBW and she-reck should be able to heal themselves with their own power. If you do not change back to the original concept, at least be consistent and grant to these characters the power that they have.

  4. OBW became obviously handcaped. Therefore, it would be good to re-adjust also her powers. Considering Spionage, the AP stealing and damage should be always active, regardless if it is OBW time or not, in the same way that it happens to Daken or Bullseye. Additionally, the Anti-Gravity should cost either less (to be closer to Spidey), I would suggest 7 AP or alternativelly keep 11 but stunning all characters 1 round and the targeted character for 3 turns.

  5. As there is no more healing, why not considering come back to the system prior to healing, where you could play up to 3 battles against one opponent? This would help beginners a lot.

But, above all, make the changes back to the original at least till end of season 3. It is not fair with all of us playing and also think through the changes and do them all to create a balance.

4

I suggest everyone send these ideas to D3. https://d3publisherofamerica.zendesk.com/hc/en-us they have a feedback option. We need to show them that we aren’t happy about what has happened, and if they aren’t going to change it that this is how many changes they are going to need to make to keep the game fair.