Where are the Puzzles?

Early Access Archive Early Access Game Feedback
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I’ve come to a conclusion after some contemplating on how I’m spending time in this game, what the gameplay of this app has to offer and the overall experience I am seeing.

I understand this is early access but its quite troubling to me, in that I’ve been playing a few months already and I have to ask…

Why is there almost no puzzle aspect to matching gems on this tiny board we have? Besides mindlessly going “match gem maek hit and gud spell” and “do it before this arbitrary health timer runs out” what really is this game offering in terms of puzzles?

Do the developers intend on creating more interactive puzzle experiences on the game board to give us any semblance of a puzzle for players to work out? If you’re going to slow the game down, give us something to do besides just relying on whatever stats and conditions (that are pretty boring so far, really) that you place on the gear we equip for gem interactions with the player.

Coming from Marvel Puzzle Quest, where there is at least some aspect of puzzle challenge given to the player in gem interactions, or WWE Champions that have more interactive conditions to deal with… this game is very sorely lacking.

I hope there are lots of ideas in the pipeline otherwise I really don’t see much life in this game for long term play…

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Was it a previous Puzzle Quest or another match-3 type game that had “clear the board” type puzzles to unlock spells or some other rewards?

I can remember it from somewhere where there was a preset puzzle layout and you had to move the pieces in the right order to fully clear the board. Higher rarity prizes had tougher puzzles needing to plan ahead for 3/4/5 matches.

I think another variant had the matches evolve into higher items. So instead of big gems, coins would merge and leave a big pile of coins, match those to make a small chest, and so on up through several tiers of prizes.

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The puzzle is how many times you’ll need to give the owner of the microtransaction shop your credit card number to buy the necessary amount of items from said shop in order to actually progress through the story of the game.

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I’ve often thought the same thing. Having the word ‘puzzle’ in the title is very misleading. This isn’t a puzzle game. It’s a strategy/grind fest!

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Hey all!

Thanks for sharing this feedback in regards to creating more puzzle specific mechanics. We have added to our current report!
As always, being in early access there is the potential for change in the future.

Jeto - Support Human :woman_mage:t2:

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Thanks for acknowledging this post. I hope whoever is in charge of the gameplay interactions in the studio have a good think about it and implement something more complex and engaging.

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Yes. It was Puzzle Quest 1 and 2, that had different variations on puzzle mechanics in order to win certain battles. Not all battles were monsters… some were crafting a spell, an item, picking a lock, taming a mount, etc… and they all had different win requirements based on the task at hand.

Also, the monster battles were a bit slower… but in such a way that I enjoyed, honestly. Damage was ONLY skulls or spells, or using your weapon as an action in PQ2.

I miss all of these elements. But I also understand that they made PQ3 a gacha game, instead of the “pony up $20 - $30 and own it” sort of game.

This game does do one thing that exactly the same as Marvel Puzzle Quest – it’s pricing model (i.e. goods cost a TON, and yet, won’t take you far). I’ve been playing MPQ since beta (and I still do it daily), but my drive there is purely based on longevity, stubbornness, and …well… I gotta hand it to them, their roster is HUGE, and I enjoy the Puzzle Gauntlets, Bosses, and other non-standard events. Challenges are nice over here in PQ3, but the game doesn’t really change much at all from one days challenge to the next. It’s just more of the same idea: matching for stuns and mana, casting your spells in your preferred order, hoping to kill the opponent quickly, while setting yourself up for the next fight if necessary. Any daily buffs/debuffs are negligible for the most part.

If I had a suggestion… it’s to remove some of these daily “gauntlets”, and replace them with daily “craftings”… a follower you’ve unlocked hosts a Puzzle challenge for you to create a thing (shards for Grungli, spells for Xione, etc) by completing a puzzley challenge (clear the board, or make a full screen cross, or collect 100 of X color mana, etc). You can make them tiered like challenges are now., or maybe tie their tiers of challenge to their actual level, so that there’s another benefit to leveling the followers.

I’m just spitballing here. We all want the game to get better… but a slog of same ol same ol fights doesn’t really help. Make these NPCs do something else, while presenting a new style of gameplay (at least new for PQ3). Just my 2 cents.

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Puzzle Quest 2 had a lot of different challenges for unlocking doors, picklocking doors or magically breaking barriers (match x amount of different colors to win, match 3 gems at the bottom of the board that you can’t move, or match gems on 80% of the board positions).
Same for putting out a fire in a house, certain bosses healing or taking damage from certain gems and status effects, certain parts of the board being locked or filled with skulls, etc.

Same for the treasure maps from GoW as a different mechanic - as long as the rewards are much better, maybe lock it to a few runs per day as well to make it not stale.

There’s plenty of inspiration that can be drawn from there :slight_smile: That type of challenges would be a very welcome addition, and make the playing a lot less stale.

And I definitely agree that swapping out these daily gauntlets for something else would be a welcome addition :slight_smile:

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Hey everyone!!

Just wanted to jump in and let you know that we’re considering adding mini-game-like features to the game at some point (but nothing is set in stone or being planned at this moment - we’re just investigating the idea). We thought they were a really engaging and fun part of PQ1 that we’d love to consider bringing back! :slight_smile:

OminousGMan - Support Human :male_detective:

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