MARVEL Puzzle Quest Development Update

@entrailbucket said:

@KGB said:

@bluewolf said:
It would be easier to be more optimistic if they told us a plan of some sort now.

All I’m reading is vague promises of future improvements and more to come in 2026.

That’s well and good but how about some kind of more solid information? Even just something about areas they plan to work on. Like say UI improvements for pve or making some new events for PvP.

"Starting in 2026, IP2 will transition into the role of being our main development team in charge of MPQ and its full live service operations. While the IP2 team have already begun familiarising themselves with the project, as you can imagine, MPQ is a big game with a long history, so they will be transitioning over the coming months. Their first priorities will be ensuring content continues to be delivered smoothly and a focus on some QoLs while they come up to speed, before taking bigger swings. But the team is very keen and already making plans. We expect to have exciting things to talk about early next year after the team has had a chance to fully get to know the game."

This paragraph lays out a timeline. Comments in () are my interpretations based on being in S/W development.
1) IP2 takes over starting in January (don't expect anything between now and end of year beyond trivial bug fixes).
2) They will be transitioning over several months (it will take that long before they can make real changes to the game itself).
3) First priority is ensuring smooth content (game loads, no crashes, no buggy offers, PvE/PvP events) and a focus on QoLs (reducing battery usage/over heating/crazy CPU/hard drive requirements).

To me, there will be no new content till at least June of next year (6 month transition to rewrite most of the game). Hence why they said they'd talk more in the new year after IP2 has given a timeline on the rewrite so they know when they can start talking about new game features.

KGB

I really, really hope they're not planning to rewrite the entire game again (and I very much doubt they are, and they don't mention it here anyway). Sounds like they're just cleaning some stuff up.

As players we tend to think of the game as just the part that runs on our device (PC/Phone/Tablet). In reality that's just a small part of it (the bigger part is probably the back end on the servers).

I suspect the part that's going to be rewritten is the part on our device. It's very sub par in terms of games running Unity on phones. We still have weird bugs reported where board is full of matches that don't resolve along with high battery use etc. That says the client side is a mess and it's going to make sense to totally redo that rather than try and wade into someone else's buggy code and hope to straighten it out. Since you are in S/W development too, you know that when one team is kicked off and replaced by another it means the entire development is suspect and thus likely to be redone.

The back side of things is probably more stable. There they can fix things (asset downloads, PvE events missing nodes, wrong rewards/tokens for PvE events or offers etc) as opposed to rewriting from scratch.

KGB

It all depends on how integral the old engine code was to the gameplay logic I would expect. Sometimes it is more abstracted (and reusable) than other times base on the technical design. It’s possible that there is still a sizeable amount of magic numbers and technical debt present in the remaining game logic that needs to be cleaned up before the gains of being in a commercial engine can be properly realized, I really couldn’t say. I don’t think what happened here was that “the whole thing” was rewritten, nor do I expect it to be rewritten when the new team gets it.

I assume that, when the publisher wanted/needed to move on from Demi and tried shopping the game built on custom Demi code to new devs, it suddenly became a publisher goal to shift the code base to an industry standard to make it more marketable. BCS was saddled with that task, and, by accomplishing that, no matter how well or poorly, they worked themselves out of a contract renewal. May not have wanted a renewal.

The game had become very stale under Demi's neglect.

BCS initially breathed a LOT of new life into it ... I left (again) in early '22, returned in mid-'23, and, having missed the transition and 1st year of BCS' work, was shocked (in a good way) at the difference.

And then, after another 2 years, the Unity push derailed all.

I don't expect things to improve ... will be happily surprised if they do.

By my count looking at Gems of War, the credits for that game and MPQ are roughly the same size between IP2 and BCS.

I don’t know of course if every person listed is still working on the game or in what capacity or how much. (Are they splitting time between GoW and the next Puzzle Quest game? Other games? Etc.

Anyway just another thought. I would guess the transition is already happening and has been going on, and the goal is a hard cutoff in December for BCS involvement given the revenue drop and an urgent desire to cut costs.

Obviously an inhouse team you’re already paying will be easier to balance the economics of vs a separate company seeking its own profits.

@SaltyRepertoire48 said:
I'm still shocked the investors let it go on this long

Are there investor's in MPQ? More likely investors in Digital Bros, and a board of some kind. Scrutinizing the company's portfolio as a whole. Not passing judgment on individual games. Whether it's producing like gang busters at the moment, or not, the license has a lot of value, so long as it is maintained.

If MPQ did have direct, individual investors, it's amusing to think they are whales ... whales feeding themselves their own tails.

I once worked for a small digital publisher that was VC-funded. Whenever a financial decision had to be made, the goofball "CEO" would immediately go out to his car and call up the main money guy. Didn't hide it. Didn't save up such items for a weekly check-in. Apprently didn't have authority to even buy office supplies w/o "permission." Man, that was weird. And it never changed.

@ThisisClemFandango said:
There's a new 6 on Thursday, yes this Thursday, as in 2 days.
I am expecting an image coming soon and no powers.
So exciting.

Heh ... I'm barely halfway to acquiring the first one.
(never gonna be a Whale) 🦐
Obviously, the 6* characters are going to be a rather long term goal for this player.
Especially since the recent changes have very much diminished my verve for playing regularly.

BCS used outside contractors regularly.

It’s true that it seems likely that IP2/505 go will continue the practice of using outside help.

I was checking the credits for their two actively run games (Gems of War and PQ3) and the credits have a lot of repeating names. Probably some are focusing on one more than the other and vice versa.

In any case it seems likely a way to manage a 3rd game would be to assign some of it to inhouse and use outside help as well, if they aren’t adding staff.

@DAZ0273 said:
We know nothing about anything. Let's not forget that IceIX declared that he had a very heavy hand in designing the ascension system. Ice is 505 side. Let's just judge things when the new coders get on board.

You can't say this! People are just stating their opinions about how they think the team is organized, and how they think game development is done! Opinions can't be wrong, therefore we do know everything about everything!