New Supports Experience Update

Greetings MPQ Community!

Since taking on the role of development team for MARVEL Puzzle Quest, Broken Circle Studios has sought to make meaningful updates and put our own unique take on the game to enhance its decade long legacy. As you can imagine, we had a lot of cool areas that we could’ve tackled and hopefully you’ve seen the fruits of our labor over the past year as we continue to make the game more enjoyable for all players.

We began the journey with what would improve your experience now. That meant rolling out new Boss encounters to tie into key moments happening in the MARVEL universe, making rewards better than ever, overhauling the Deadpool Daily Quest format, re-introducing and making room for new 3* Characters (which have been making a splash in the early/mid game), upgrading the reward structure for PVPs to honor the hard work of our combatants, unleashing a deluge of retro-rewards via restructuring our feeder mechanic, and a lot more.

We certainly didn’t do it alone either. From the start, the MPQ community welcomed us warmly, helped us through our stumbles, and engaged with us as fellow players and friends. Every decision we have made for this game has been in response to our conversations with you so THANK YOU for being such an integral part of our adventure. We’re honored and thrilled to be building this game with you and look forward to what comes next!

So…what comes next?

Supports…FINALLY!

We’re here with an exciting update on Supports! This is an aspect of the game that our players have been asking to see improve and we’re eager to share some of our plans.

We’re doing a phased rollout on Support features and there are some serious changes headed to MPQ. We’ll share more details as these get closer to going live, but here are some things to prepare for:

• Supports will be upgradable: In addition to leveling them up, you’ll be able to promote them from one tier to another. 3* Supports grow up to become 4*s, and so on and so forth.
• Supports will be making their way into more reward structures and won’t be limited to Puzzle Ops like they presently are.
• Most Supports that are currently represented by Characters (like Wong and Hulkling) will be reimagined.
• Supports are coming to PVP: This has been a long-time restriction of Supports and, in order to make our supports more impactful in all areas of gameplay, it’s one we are lifting. There will also be changes to the UI so that you’ll be able to see what Supports your opponent has equipped before engaging with them.

When are new Supports coming to the game?

As you may have noticed, we’ve already released the first of our two supports! We began last week with our re-introduction of the Kamar Taj Support. From here on out, players can now expect new Supports to be released at a steady cadence. The first few will arrive more frequently, with our next support Krakoa releasing on 3/30/2023 hot on the heels of Kamar-Taj. Supports are an important part of MPQ; we believe they should be more powerful, more accessible, more impactful, and that there should be more of them at your disposal to solve the various challenges of MPQ.

What’s new with Supports?

Lots! We wanted to improve the Supports experience and make them feel like they’re as important to your MPQ gameplay as a team’s makeup. Moving forward, supports will feature:

• More interaction with affiliations, including unique and useful Synergy Perks
• More power, utility and consistency through new, custom Perks
• Better scaling across character rarities

Here’s how we’re doing it.

We’re building Supports as a combination of restrictions and rewards. Current Supports typically target a specific character or a huge affiliation group (Heroes & Villains); this felt pretty limiting. We worked hard to make them more interesting. For many months now we’ve been updating MPQ’s roster of characters and their affiliations – one of the reasons for this is to broaden the impact of Supports!

Here’s Kamar-Taj (Mystical Land) – which comes with a new character affiliation all its own, aptly named Kamar-Taj (and check out that art!):

We have Kamar-Taj equipped to 5* Wong here and the associated affiliation is for residents or allies of Kamar-Taj who might be able to call on their aid. Here’s who gets this affiliation to start:

• ?* Upcoming Character 3/23
• 3* Dr. Strange
• 5* Dr. Strange
• 4* Mordo
• 5* Shang-Chi
• 5* Wong

Now, what about that reward? We mentioned Synergy Perks above; many existing Supports, and every new Support, gets a Synergy perk unlocked just for meeting the equipment requirement. Let’s see what you get for including someone from the Kamar-Taj affiliation:

This powerful utility effect is  one you can use to help deal with characters that won’t stay down – but it only works once per battle, so it’s not a complete answer on its own.

As another example, let’s look at Krakoa (Mutant Haven), which will be releasing shortly after Kamar-Taj:

Though it might be tempting to equip Krakoa to any mutant, to maximize your rewards for equipping Krakoa, you’ll want to be strategic about your team – the first two perks give you different bonuses depending on your team’s affiliations (balance numbers subject to change before release):

(We really like these two in particular for design and flavor reasons – a nod to how Mutants differ, what they share, and how they all benefit from those differences when they come together.)

To solve the problem of scaling across rarities, we’re prioritizing percentages and we’re working on other ways to scale flat values across rarities. Here’s one way we’re handling it, on Kamar-Taj’s Rank 5 perk:

(We like to think they went to the Kamar-Taj library and learned a thing or two.)

Finally, we’ve also increased the power budget of Supports to make them more exciting and meaningful in play, and we’re trying new things with their level progression: the first and second perks from Kamar-Taj and Krakoa will reach their full power earlier than max level, following this pattern:

• Rank 1 Perk: Reaches max power at level 100
• Rank 3 Perk: Reaches max power at level 200
• Rank 5 Perk: Reaches max power at level 250

They should be an active part of the team building synergy process, giving you more opportunities to customize your team.

What about the existing Supports?

Similar to our character rebalancing efforts, every season we’ll be updating an existing Support. These changes will range from minor to complete overhauls and will start with some classic supports, after new Supports have been introduced. And speaking of new Supports, if you thought Kamar-Taj and Krakoa were exclusive hotspots, they’ve got nothing on the people-watching opportunities of our next upcoming Support!

When will new Supports be available in the Supports Token Store?

New Supports will rotate at the same time everything else currently does at the start of a new season. Nice and simple.

We’ll keep you posted as these additions get closer to release. As you’ll soon discover, these changes stand to put tons of power along with versatility into the hands of MPQ players at all stages of the game. We can’t wait to see what you do with them!

MARVEL Puzzle Quest is available on the App Store, Google Play, Amazon Appstore and Steam.  Click the PLAY NOW button to start your puzzle battle!