Marvel Avengers Alliance: Questions and Developer's Answers August PART II (13 September, 2013)

Part I
Part II

Development
Q. Do you have any plans to improve weapon management? Equipping/selling/slotting in pvp armory requires lots of scrolling and searching. It will be nice to have favorite list (for equipping), sorting and filtering
A. There is no such planned feature right now.

Q.  Do you plan to add Challenge Mode to Special operations?

A. We currently do not have any plans to add a Challenge Mode to the Special Operations.

Heroes and Villains

Q.  Do you have a list of heroes you are not allowed to put in the game? If you do, can you share it with us so we can stop suggesting and hoping for them to be in the game?

A. The list of characters that we are going to put in the game is built in collaboration with Marvel and takes into account both the direction we want to take the game and the storylines that Marvel wants to showcase in the near future.

Q.  I am a big xfactor follower. Thanks for releasing shatterstar. So is there more to come? Madrox? Yea or nay?

A. Any character is possible. Whoever thought we’d get Shatterstar or Squirrel Girl? How about Thundra? Anything is possible. Players need not ever ask if their favorite character is possible - the answer is always yes.

Agent and Items

Q.  In terms of debuffs, can we expect to see agents or hereos using gravity or water based debuffs?

A. We will craft new buffs or debuffs as new heroes appear when necessary.

Q.  What do you think about introducing special ISOs which in addition to stat bonus (or instead of) would grant some buff, like PvP armors?

A. That is something we have been considering.

Q.  4 slots for weapons is too few, especially when we consider current PvP meta, do you plan on adding more slots?

A. This is something we’ve wanted to do for a while. The first step in this process is offering players different loadouts for Missions as well as Offensive and Defensive PVP teams. After that is released and we see how it goes, we will consider further expansion to the agent’s gear.

Q.  Do you have plans to create something to limit the amount of Quick Actions an Agent can take per turn?

A. This is an idea that is being given serious consideration and may end up in a future balance pass. If we do, we will make sure it doesn’t break things such as Omega Sentinel and Punisher’s class change abilities.

PvP
Q.  Can you explain how in PVP you can be attacked twice in a row by the same guy?

A. There was an issue with the way we handled errors in matchmaking that caused players to fight the same opponents back-to-back. There are fixes to this in the next Tournament that should prevent this from happening.

Q.  What does the system actually use to select opponents in PVP?

A. Our matchmaking system separates players into pools based on player level and current tournament rating. Beyond that, the choice of opponents is purely random. Factors such as class composition and Agent gear are not taken into account.

We do have plans in future tournaments to better match players in Silver and Gold league based on the difficulty of the opponents (taking into account their total heroes owned and armory bonus) to provide a better PVP experience for new players as well as a more gradual increase in difficulty as players climb the leagues.

Q.  It was stated that the AI doesn't have any increased chance to proc any ability but from the testing from many of the players see about a 20% to 30% increase for the AI than the player on things like Cosmic Power. In practice mode during off season the proc rate appears to be the same but in a current live season this doesn't seem to be the case. Could this be some side effect in the proc rate between live and practice/testing that has been overlooked?

A. Not to beat a dead horse, but that is not the case. The testing done by the community, while thorough, is not correct in its conclusion. The AI proc rate is identical to the players’ proc rates across the entire game.

Q.  Since the revenge fight was taken away there is not means to see what heroes were used to beat you in PvP, is there some type of simple log that can be viewed as to what was used to beat you so you can design a better strategy to defend?

A. Such a system is under consideration, but not likely to happen in the near future. However, you can visit an opponent’s profile to see what armory items, Agent gear, and heroes were used.

Game Mechanics
Q.  Will you add a separate inventory for the Spec Ops items and the normal items? Or an update for the inventory interface? A system for searching by name, buffs and debuffs would be very helpful for us.

A. Many of our systems haven’t grown to accommodate the changes in our game and our inventory system is one of them. We’d like to put in improvements to these areas as we find the time. A search system as described is probably beyond any improvements we would make.

Q.  When adding items to your inventory can they be sorted or ordered by the total PvP bonus so you don't have to click through pages to find those items you are going to put in?

A. This is something we are considering.

Q.  Why are Mini and Epic Bosses in some chapter/mission a forced team-up but are not in others?

A. Generally mini-bosses and epic bosses aren’t forced team-ups, but there may be exceptions due to story reasons.

Q.  Is the chance to stun based on any other stats such as accuracy or is it purely a % based chance?
Are the odds for counter and protect depending on stats?

A. All status effect chances (including stuns, counters, and protects) are a fixed percent chance and do not depend on any character stats. This is, of course, assuming that the attack hits - which does depend on Accuracy.      

Source: Playdom