Update 0.36: Events (Early Access Patch Notes)

[Vangor]

@Tresk

At some point someone has to decide to make a great game first, before trying to sell the players things

This is an excellent point. GoW was successful because it was a fun game to play. Then IP2 started focusing on mind numbing events (looking at you ToD), and ridiculously priced upgrade packs.

I have absolutely no problem spending money on a game I enjoy. The last game I played I spent literally thousands on it (between Mrs. Vangor and myself). The game before that, same thing. Both those games I played for like 6 months each. I played GoW for years and spent maybe $100. Tops.

I am really enjoying pq3 and I hope IP2 doesnt ruin it by being greedy.

[hbellis17]

@Sibelios

With

I never heard anyone complain about earning too much ore. If anything the opposite is true. They should have halved the food production - that was reasonable as they have refused to provide players with more uses for food within the game. BUT they should have doubled the ore production, not halved it. Players were already at a major disadvantage where ore was concerned and this new update has made the game so much more frustrating. It makes me, as a loyal player who has played every single day since I downloaded the game, feel like forward progression within the game is pretty much impossible. It has left me feeling less excited to play the game. I feel discouraged by the majority of these changes. Balance is not being struck.

[Tresk]

@PowerPlay

So far? Puzzle Quest 3 is the worst match-3 RPG I’ve played

OH… I’ve played worse. haha I will not name the game that shall never be named. You’ll have to just trust me that it’s way WAY worse. haha

That said… I feel your pain here and agree that it shouldn’t be.

[PowerPlay]

DM me what you mean by that.

[hbellis17]

Overall the feedback I am hearing about this update is overwhelmingly negative. Unless the goal was to alienate loyal players who have been around for longer than a week…

I loved PQ1, PQ2, and I was so excited to see that PQ3 had dropped early access. I think the game has so much potential. But both 0.35 and 0.36 have left me feel incredibly frustrated and very disappointed to see the game’s potential squandered.

I understand balance is important - but that isn’t being achieved yet. Instead most of the changes make the game more difficult to navigate and almost impossible to progress. I currently have 5 characters (one of each class) and my lvl 50 character has been slogging away for a long time and I still haven’t gotten my citadel. And these new changes make it so I probably won’t achieve my citadel.

You have made gear and weapons so much more important but it’s been impossible to evolve gear and nearly impossible to have anything above Rare drop in a chest or anywhere. I have high level characters but have been unable to upgrade my gear above lvl 15, most are still below lvl 10.

It is also incredibly frustrating that the developers did not address the extremely crucial issue of a lack of space for gear, spells, and minions - but most especially the gear vault. Players are being hamstrung by not having sufficient space in order to participate successfully in most arenas of the game.

This sucks the fun out of the game.

It has become so unbalanced that it feels like it is impossible to progress. And I am so disappointed.

Here are a few suggestions:

It would also be a huge help if every time anything is salvaged, we get a listing of what we received during the salvage. Every item or category should be detailed and listed like when a chest is opened.

Players should earn more than gold when salvaging a chest.

We desperately need increased storage. The current levels of storage should be doubled at the least. For gear, spells, minions, especially for chests.

If you have a duplicate of any item (armor, weapon, spell, minion, etc.) it would be nice if they only counted as 1 slot. That could go a long way to addressing the storage issues.

Right now there isn’t a lot of transparency on how damage is inflicted on enemies or other players during a battle. The accounting needs to be clear so players can effectively strategize. Right now it’s a lot more like throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks.

This game has so much potential - but it seems to be heading in the wrong direction.

[melonfresh]

So much constructive feedback was posted after 0.35 concerning progression coming to a halt, yet 0.36 slams progression intona brick wall

If this game becomes the grinding P2W hell that is WWE Champions I am out of here and Puzzle Quest as a beloved franchise is officially dead to me

[Cyrup]

Thank you for the feedback, everyone.

[lemeuble]

It’s time to un-nerf bone ring, right ?

[Alpheon]

And @Lyrian as you also posted on this, thought I’d jump in to provide some context on why some of your existing items have more attributes than they usually would for that rarity.
As part of the process which updates your items to the new Attributes, the first Attribute is always Life or Strong, depending on the type of item it is. As we didn’t want to take away any attributes from existing items, if they didn’t already exist on an item, we instead added them on top of what was there.
The balance to this is that they won’t get the next attribute when upgrading rarity as they already have it, so it eventually balances itself out as items are upgraded.

[Lyrian]

@Tresk

@Tresk I can’t check your numbers because I’m still hanging in 35, but I’ve never seen you throw numbers unless you have numbers… so I believe.

They are numbers shown on my various gear pieces, except for the Mythic numbers which were calculated by adding the in-game projection numbers for leveling my Legendary 45s to Mythic 50. Just putting this out there for disclosure and independent verification purposes.

@Tresk

What i want to ask is this. Do you feel these changes are a positive, negative or neutral on game play.

These changes are designed for one specific purpose, to enforce a desired in-game behavior requiring leveling and ascending gear.

For fights at level 30+, this concept hits players rather heavy-handedly because of the exponential nature of the power curve.

For example, before the update landed, I was farming Bridge of Mornath (a level 37 dungeon) for dungeon achievements, on which one requirement is using an Essgard Flail. The dungeon was easy, as I was over-geared for it and had a gear score advantage. In 0.36, the advantage bonus was eliminated and replaced with the gear stats exponential scaling. The problem, for me, is that my flail is stuck at Rare 25. As the dungeon is level 37, the flail is significantly underpowered and does little damage because it is not Epic, where the dungeon is tuned at. As my spells are at 35, they do appopriate damage for that dungeon, so I am getting through runs with them because skulls are not a significant damage source on these runs.

The pain for Normal/Hard dungeons runs should be temporary until players actually start leveling up their gear (which has always been intended). That said, the damage scaling still has the same issues at 40+ as it did in 0.35, just now with larger numbers. IMO offensive DPS spells need a damage boost at Legendary and Mythic rarities to bring them in-line with the exponential scaling at those levels.

I also think that level 70+ dungeons are not meant to be farmed at this time, which likely was always the intention with these very high level dungeons. But, that’s just a hypothesis at this time, as no one has a full set of 50 Mythic gear/spells to test the limits of what is realistically possible without perpetual stunlocks (which the increase in spell costs were supposed to stop, but they didn’t… they just delayed the loops for a few turns at the start of a run. The devs might go back and make further adjustments here).

[Lyrian]

The typo causing Octoghouls to have high bonus key chances at low levels appears to now have been hotfixed.

It’s sushi time.

[Salty]

Just wanted to pop in and say that I have been collating feedback and suggestions made in this thread. The discourse has been very useful thus far, thank you! (I’ll also be collecting more, so please keep posting.)

[Vangor]

For the event buffs and debuffs, there should be a way to avoid having buffs that conflict with debuffs. See example below.

Match red gems and regain health but lose armor. Those seem to cancel each other out.

[Avenger]

@Vangor

Match red gems and regain health but lose armor. Those seem to cancel each other out.

Sort of, but they don’t all affect at the same time.

A physical attack will hit armour first and then health. If you match red gems it will contribute to breaking your armour faster, but maybe no health to regen as you may not have lost any of it yet. Once your armour breaks then matching red gems can’t break the armour any more, but will help heal your health.

For elemental damage it will hit resistance and then health. So you could take damage this route, while still having armour intact.

The third item - burning gems - means that on matching gems you will inflict burn on you, which I forget the % but it will be on the tooltip in game when it triggers - will cause a small amount of HP loss each round until it expires. Matching more red gems should help heal this part, though also inflict further round(s) of burn damage.

[Lyrian]

I’m not an economist…

… but maybe, just maybe, this Daily Deal offer might be just a wee bit overpriced.

[Tacet]

@Lyrian

this Daily Deal offer might be just a wee bit overpriced.

I got an uncommon upgrading one for 600 crowns ($12) today.

It can go in the pile with the $20 weapon, $4 for 1/15th a follower upgrade, and the other absurdly priced items that I hope just have randomly generated numbers for them as no one would be insane enough to have input the numbers there knowingly.

[Sibelios]

Some of the Uncommon-to-Rare Relics seem to be incorrectly priced. I’ve seen most at 3,340 gold or ~150 gems but I’ve also seen one for an absurd # of crowns like the one pictured or another was nearly 13,000 gold.

[Lyrian]

@Lyrian

but maybe, just maybe, this Daily Deal offer might be just a wee bit overpriced.

The pricing errors appear to have been corrected with 0.36.1.

The offer was updated to be a single unit of the Legendary Relic for the Runic Crystal set for 1500 Gems.

This prices a single Legendary piece of gear at 4500 Gems for Relics + appropriate 2 Glyphs (2250 - 4500 Gems), for a total cost of 6750 - 9000 Gems per gear piece.

Anyone have a third mortgage to spare?

[Lyrian]

Weekend errata:

• All “Hard” (Normal in 0.35) mode activities appear to be locked to level 35. Difficulty (number) activities are functioning normally.

• Changing difficulties sometimes causes the game to become stuck (infinite spinning loading circle). Force quitting and restarting the app returns the player to the appropriate difficulty screen with the difficulty change made. Unsure of the cause of this.

• There are inconsistencies with the nomenclature used in-game regarding application of the Shaman Ultimate Ancestral Blight.

  • In 0.36, Venoms were renamed Bad Jujus.

• However, the spell effects for Shaman spells still refer to applications of Venoms and not Bad Jujus.

• And so on with the rest of the Shaman’s spells.

• One lone brave soul, all weekend, was brave enough to join Lyranica and myself for our co-op sessions.

  • It didn’t end well.

  • In 0.36, co-op with parties greater in size than 2 players still seem to be very unstable. Parties of 2 continue to function without issue.