Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Marvel Puzzle Quest: The One-Year Check-In! An interview with MPQ's Kevin Teich
*
It’s hard to believe that @MarvelPuzzle Quest has
been around for a whole year, but my favorite mobile game did indeed celebrate
its first anniversary last week. Now that it’s reached the ripe old age of one, I
thought it would be good to touch base with the developers and see how things
have grown and changed since its debut.
Fortunately, MPQ executive producer
Kevin Teich was good enough to take a few minutes and fill me in.
Here’s what he had to say!
*
Happy
birthday to MPQ! A year after launch, how is the game doing?
RKT: Thanks! It’s doing super well! We just had our
best week ever in terms of number of players playing the game, number of
downloads, and sales. Our feedback is also better than ever. It’s really
encouraging, and we’re psyched that so many people are enjoying the game.
 |
| Cap's about to open a can of whoop-ass on these goons. |
What
are some of the biggest lessons the team learned during the last year?
RKT: Listen to the players! That may seem obvious,
but we’ve learned it’s really hard to balance making the features that we want
and understanding what players want.
It’s also important to know how listen to
different kinds of players; our experienced, hardcore players posting in
the forums may be asking for one thing, while at the same time, we see
thousands of players not making it through our tutorial missions.
We’re a small team and can only do so much, and it’s
impossible to listen to everybody. But we’re trying!
What
were the biggest assumptions you had at the beginning that eventually proved
wrong?
RKT: I underestimated the importance of our live
events.
I remember the day after we went live, our producer
told me that he’d need a few hours of work from one of our designers to see
what was going on in the live version of the game and make some tweaks. Now, we
have a developers who are dedicated to making content that goes live right
away.
We also try to make as many improvements and bug
fixes to the live version as we can, instead of waiting for the next version to
ship.
 |
| Modern Hawkeye's new Speed Shot ability makes him a solid choice! |
The
team seems to have become quite a bit more sophisticated in how the new
characters are designed. The gap in usability between new faces and old is
quite large at times… Are there Modern Hawkeye-style revamps planned for old
characters that just aren’t seeing action?
RKT: I’d love to freshen up some of those characters
that don’t seem to be used that much. There are also some characters that are
unbalanced right now, and those are higher priority.
We’ve learned a lot of making characters for our
game, and what kinds of character features players like, and we love applying
those lessons to our older designs. I can’t talk about specifics, but we
definitely keep a close eye on this stuff.
 |
| Nobody but Brandon Bales loves this loser. |
Speaking of unloved characters, which ones
have been used the least over the last year? Bag-Man seems the obvious
non-starter, but any others who’ve been ignored by players? Who have been the
most popular?
RKT: Our forums are a great source for this kind of
information. Our players run polls on all kinds of subjects, including
character popularity. Yelena Belova is another unpopular character.
When we were making the first batch of characters
before the game launched, it was hard to look at them all in relation to the
rest of the game, because there wasn’t much to rest of the game yet. Now, it’s
easier to evaluate how a new character will fit into somebody’s existing
roster.
Thor, Goddess of Thunder has garnered a huge amount
of interest. We’re really excited to bring her to the playing field in Season
7.
On
a more macro level, what’s the team’s philosophy when designing characters? Is
the intention that each one should be roughly equal in power/ability, or if
not, what sort of roles are you looking towards when creating new heroes and
villains?
RKT: We start by digging into the character as they
appear in the comics, and identify elements about the character that we want to
capture in powers and mechanics. Sometimes this means the character gets a
brand new type of power never seen in the game, and sometimes it means they get
a simpler power that reflects their personality.
We also look for roles and color combinations that
are under-represented in the current roster of characters. We always want
characters to be balanced; part of our efforts to make this a deeply strategic
game is to not have any one character be clearly superior. Some characters have
great synergy with other characters; we also have to consider how characters
will be used in combinations.
 |
| The most recent implementation of Team-Up info before a battle. |
The
addition of Team-Ups was a big change to the game. How have they been received
by the players, and how happy is the team with their current implementation?
Also, will we ever see location-specific tiles/effects again in the future?
RKT: The initial roll-out of Team-Ups was not
received very well. Part of our development philosophy is to get new features
out to our players as fast as possible, and sometimes this means that we
deliver features who promise in the fullness of time aren’t readily apparent.
Team-Ups was an unfortunate example of that.
We have lots of plans for them,
and have been steadily rolling out features to make them better. In R63, you’re able to see what Team-Up your
opponent is using before you select your own Team-Ups, which will make it a
more strategic choice.
As a cool side effect of Team-Ups, people were able
to collect Thor, Goddess of Thunder Team-Ups in the Lightning Rounds we ran
last week, so they can call her in for help before she’s available as a full roster
character.
I
have several EU/UK players in my Alliance, and they often mention that the
start and end times of events are usually incredibly inconvenient for them,
putting them at a disadvantage compared to NA players. Any word on whether
something can be done for them? EU/UK-specific servers, perhaps?
RKT: We are actively working on a feature that will
make this better, not only for EU/UK players, but all players with busy lives
who can’t stay up until midnight. No details yet, but stay tuned.
 |
| Those teeth aren't just for show! |
After asking for him since the start, Devil Dinosaur was finally made a playable character. You have no idea how happy this makes me! What other
characters have been heavily requested, and who’s on the team’s unconfirmed
wish list for future characters?
RKT: This is another area in which forum polls give
us a wealth of information. X-Men characters are hugely popular. Deadpool was a
top request; we were really excited to bring him into the game.
Thanks
so much for your time and answers. On a final note,what would you say to get
someone to try MPQ if they haven’t yet, a full year after it’s been out?
RKT: It’s an authentic Marvel experience with dozens
of characters and a uniquely strategic match-3 game at its heart, and new
events every week. What’s not to love?
*
Infinite thanks to Kevin Teich for the interview and to the whole MPQ team for giving me high-quality entertainment while stuck in boring places for the last year. Also, mega thanks to Albert Reed for making this interview happen!
*
Posts
Bag-Man best friend 4-ever. Nobody gets me like him.