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MARVEL Strike Force
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| 1s | [Music] greetings Marvel Strike Force Community I am Cerebro your senior community manager and |
|---|---|
| 11s | welcome to your community update show we have a lot to get to today want to give a quick shout |
| 15s | out to steelseries for sending me a pair of their Arctis Nova 7 headphones these are the |
| 22s | most comfortable things I've ever put on my ears so thank you very much and I will be using these |
| 27s | for today's interview please welcome to the show principal game designer Matt Danuser-Grant how are |
| 33s | you doing sir hey good how are you I'm doing well thanks for asking well I'm really excited that I |
| 40s | got the opportunity to book you for an interview today uh because we've worked together before on |
| 46s | another game it's uh kind of a small industry isn't it Matt it's kind of ridiculously small |
| 51s | uh I keep running into the same people but usually I love it um and yeah we work together on another |
| 58s | hero collector I love that name by the way uh kind of these the strategy RPG like whatever you |
| 64s | want to put Marvel Strike Force into I've heard players come up with this name hero collector |
| 69s | and I like it I think I think right I I've been collecting Heroes since I was a kid collecting |
| 75s | little trading cards so yep it rings true for me for sure well I consider myself really lucky uh |
| 82s | in my job because I get to talk directly with game designers and I have some of the most fascinating |
| 89s | conversations with game designers because the way they think about games and the challenges in games |
| 95s | is really just on another level are there any like philosophies game design philosophies that you've |
| 104s | uh either accrued or developed over the years that you brought to Strike Force yeah I think |
| 112s | the the big one for me is to especially with hero collectors is to take big swings as early |
| 118s | as possible because you really want to get to that point where the team is is clearly overpowered |
| 126s | uh and then scale back from there so the earlier you can hit that oh this team is really |
| 131s | overpowered uh the the better you can kind of rain things in and get everything get everything going |
| 140s | um one of the my favorite examples of this was actually back when we were working in Sacramento |
| 145s | one of our balance testers had uh this crazy idea like what if what if this new debuff set |
| 153s | the target's speed to zero and you know I think he was joking I think he was at least half joking |
| 159s | uh but I was like you know what I'm gonna make that work and we did it and it was awesome the |
| 165s | that's so funny that that's not the first time that I've heard that either from a game designer |
| 170s | or like they're sitting around talking I'm like wouldn't it be funny if we did this they're like |
| 174s | yeah that would be funny if we can't do that but it'd be funny and they're like but what if we did |
| 182s | yes you ever had any conversations go like that with other designers all the time all the |
| 187s | time that's a very very common sentiment is like find the crazy ideas and then say what if we did |
| 193s | do that and find the like a couple of limiting factors that you can slap onto that thing that |
| 198s | make it you know reasonable so what are some of the projects that you've worked on so far |
| 203s | that our players would likely recognize yeah so uh I work exclusively on characters and my most |
| 211s | recent uh teams were the War Dogs and the Masters of Evil yeah what was your favorite character |
| 218s | to work on in the Masters of evil that's a great question Kang super fun uh I really loved working |
| 225s | on Kang but actually I think Titania was the more surprisingly kind of interesting character to work |
| 232s | on uh just because she was coming out first so we had a little extra leeway to like boost her up a |
| 237s | bit more alright let's get Marquee topic which is the brand new nowhere team which characters are |
| 245s | going to make up the team and do you have a little bit of insights as to which characters were chosen |
| 251s | yeah so the knower team has first of all Cosmo uh a very good dog and then Korg uh Star-Lord the |
| 262s | annihilation War version a new Thor the infinity War version and our next legendary character Nova |
| 270s | uh there's a few factors when we were whenever we are pulling together a team so we've got |
| 276s | MCU Affinity uh you know the new Guardians is coming so we got some Guardians in there |
| 282s | uh it's all tied to the the nowhere location it's all kind of space and Cosmic based |
| 287s | and the third thing is we actually like to do a little bit of our own spice a little a little |
| 293s | bit of our own flavor with teams so this is our take on a nowhere based Cosmic team with these |
| 298s | characters I know some of those have also been like our fan favorites like I I know I've seen |
| 303s | players asking for some of these characters or these versions of characters before yeah so yes |
| 310s | yes yes of course uh yeah we're always tuned into what players are asking for and you know people |
| 315s | have been asking for Nova for a long time so I I was personally very excited to be working on Nova |
| 321s | well we're not going to be able to go through the entire kits for all five characters here |
| 326s | in the show but we do have them up right now over on marvelstrikeforce.com on the updates |
| 333s | page find that Weekly blog and you can read along we'll give you some additional context as we're |
| 339s | doing that what you could please do is give us some highlights of the team how those characters |
| 345s | synergize together and uh in which game mode we're going to expect for them to really shine |
| 352s | I know that's a massive question so I'm just gonna sit back and and let you tackle that one |
| 359s | all right let's see where to begin so so first off generally they're the best team in war and |
| 366s | Apex meaning that they don't necessarily have any offense or defense Specialties let's see diving |
| 372s | into the team a little bit they do have one team mechanic to note and that each member of the team |
| 379s | has a passive ability that turns on when that character has deflect so when you're fighting |
| 386s | as or against nowhere you want to pay attention to the deflects and if you see an opportunity to |
| 391s | clear the deflects off of a nowhere person you generally want to do that all of the effects are |
| 397s | different per character so there's a lot of high skill ceiling there to learn what each one does |
| 402s | they generate a lot of deflects as well because you know it's their whole thing so it might be |
| 406s | difficult to do that but something to keep in mind Cosmo is a very good support character she |
| 413s | has debuff clearing and and buff clearing she clears both Buffs and debuffs on every attack |
| 419s | so her basic doesn't little bit her special does more and her ultimate actually just clears all |
| 424s | debuffs and all Buffs all over the board it's very impactful Korg is the protector for the |
| 429s | team he does not have an active taunt but he has a passive taunt whenever nowhere allies become |
| 436s | hurt he also has a revived mechanic so as long as any other nowhere team member is alive whenever |
| 443s | another nowhere Ally presses their basic ability they will revive cork you generally don't want |
| 449s | to hit him very much until the rest of the team is taken care of Star-Lord Annihilation War he |
| 455s | is the primary debuffer of the team his big thing is kind of riffing on star-lord's classic ability |
| 462s | he delivers a very powerful blind it's actually a blind for two turns and it wore I believe it hits |
| 468s | two people both the primary target and the target with the highest damage it's really hard to not |
| 474s | blind Red Hulk and he he also applies a vulnerable which usually only comes from the iso system |
| 480s | Thor Infinity War he is the big damage dealer of the team he kind of liked an Infinity War he |
| 486s | shows up and just starts splashing people down he does apply some debuffs and he does have a |
| 492s | direct counter to protectors that use the charged mechanic specifically to counter She-Hulk at the |
| 500s | moment as gamma is the current Apex war team and this new Apex war team is coming to uh show them |
| 506s | what's what last but not least we have Nova he introduces our second ever Battlefield effect |
| 513s | and our first ever positive Battlefield effect Red Hulk introduced gamma radiation which is a |
| 519s | negative Battlefield effect and we've always had this plan where Battlefield effects would |
| 523s | cancel each other out so if you're afflicted by gamma radiation you can now bring in Nova |
| 528s | when Nova uses his ultimate he will apply Nova force and that will override gamma radiation on |
| 535s | your site so there's some back and forth also be aware that if you use your Nova force first |
| 539s | then the Red Hulk can come in and use his gamma radiation to clear your Nova Force so keep that |
| 544s | in mind as for what Noble Force actually does it actually ties into deflects again kind of |
| 551s | pulling the whole team together this Nova Force Battlefield effect will grant you all of your |
| 556s | allies get deflects per turn and they gain damage per deflect on them it's a bit more of a support |
| 561s | ability than the gamma radiation but there is still some damage output generated from it and |
| 566s | that's pretty much the Highlight for the team that was easy I should just ask questions in |
| 571s | that manner going forward because I just got to sit back and listen I didn't have to do anything |
| 576s | so with you talking about the team and you know me reading the kits seems like Nova is especially |
| 585s | useful as kind of the you know glue that holds the team together uh is there anything else in |
| 592s | Nova's kit that we should probably highlight yes as the legendary he definitely has a lot of the |
| 597s | power is allocated to him and he has a lot of cool stuff but one thing he specifically does |
| 603s | which was a change I made to kind of not counter apocalypse but to let him like stand toe-to-toe |
| 610s | with apocalypse is that Nova has both on spawn Safeguard and his first ability grants Safeguard |
| 618s | each of these is only one duration apocalypse still has value and that he will prevent the |
| 623s | on spawn Safeguard but then Nova will come around and take his turn and still Grant Safeguard anyway |
| 628s | so you can kind of sneak around that that little bit of Apocalypse everything helps |
| 634s | when you're fighting that guy alright so it is obvious that they are going to shine brightly |
| 639s | in war in your personal testing are you favoring them a little bit more on offense versus defense |
| 648s | that is a great question uh that I am going to leave to the players to answer [Laughter] |
| 659s | I have a personal preference I have my own personal preference but okay my personal |
| 664s | preference and honestly I don't really like to influence the ongoing meta with my own opinion |
| 671s | because it might be wrong I actually really value the player experience of testing and like kind of |
| 678s | deciding I actually put a lot of work into making sure that the team functioned well on both sides |
| 685s | to the point where they actually don't have any call outs to offense or defense anywhere in their |
| 690s | kits um that that was important to me all right Matt I'm gonna let you off the hook now but I'm |
| 695s | gonna come back to this some in a future episode I'm gonna come back and I'm Gonna Wanna I'm Gonna |
| 700s | Wanna answer to this one all right honestly I'm excited to see you I'm really excited to |
| 705s | see how it shakes out all right well if you can't give us the recommendation on offense |
| 710s | versus defense could you uh at least give us some of your personal recommendations into isolate for |
| 718s | each of the characters I suppose I could do that so I'm gonna I'm gonna try and give you at least |
| 721s | two for each Cosmo's pretty straightforward she has healing abilities so healer is a natural kind |
| 728s | of default fit though you can take skirmisher for the extra Focus generally this one's more cut and |
| 736s | dry healer healer's great Korg I tried to make it one of the rare instances where you actually |
| 740s | want fortifier so fortifier is good it re-triggers each time he revives he can revive multiple times |
| 747s | depending on how the fight goes so that generally works out pretty well the other choice for him for |
| 753s | me is just healer you know more heals on the protector that that's usually a fine choice |
| 758s | Star-Lord Annihilation War he's an interesting one his abilities apply vulnerable which usually |
| 764s | only comes from the iso system he's a strong candidate for Striker because he provides his |
| 771s | own vulnerables so he can place vulnerables and Striker them though I also had a lot of |
| 776s | success with him as a Raider making him just a fountain of vulnerables both on any crit and |
| 783s | all of his abilities Thor pretty straightforward damage character I would say Striker he's one of |
| 789s | those kind of more standard damage characters where it's like Striker or Raider probably |
| 793s | actually similarly for Nova I would lean towards Striker for Nova but he does have a lot of AOEs |
| 801s | so Raider also works it depends and and those last two you generally want to invert them if |
| 807s | one's the striker you want the other one to be a Raider and finally when can we expect to see |
| 813s | the nowhere team in the game yeah so all five new characters including the legendary event or Nova |
| 820s | are currently scheduled for release over the course of the next major release Version 7.1 which |
| 827s | is coming very soon all right Matt thank you for taking the time to sit down and run through all |
| 833s | that stuff with us uh it's really been a pleasure chatting with you hey man my pleasure it's always |
| 838s | great to see you all right guys please welcome to the show Mr RJ Young producer super happy to have |
| 844s | you here appreciate it man my pleasure thank you for having me so RJ you and I have been working |
| 849s | at the boundless studio for quite a while now but I think you even predate me how long have |
| 854s | you been working with the studio I started with the studio a little bit over five years ago now |
| 858s | because I started just a couple couple weeks or maybe a month before our worldwide launch |
| 864s | so yeah it's been it's been a good five plus years so there's one thing I've actually been meaning |
| 869s | to thank you for for a long time you were really helpful for me on many occasions because I record |
| 875s | the gameplay for for these episodes of most of the gameplay anyway so I'm recording it on our debug |
| 881s | device and I don't know how the debug commands work so like you were one of the main people |
| 886s | that I went to and you were like always like so willing to help me you were never like annoyed |
| 891s | with me so I like really I want to thank you for that yeah that's that's my pleasure we we got a |
| 897s | lot of talented people a lot of talented Engineers working on this game and they've put in just loads |
| 902s | and loads of tools like I'm not even familiar with all of them so any chance that I get to you know |
| 907s | pay it forward a little bit and share some of that with everybody else that's absolutely my pleasure |
| 912s | you weren't the only one who asked yeah it's interesting I've actually asked a few times uh I |
| 917s | I don't think you but somebody else and I said hey can our debug Bill do this and at first they're |
| 922s | like I don't think so but let me check and then come back to me like apparently we can do this |
| 926s | now I didn't know this but this is a new thing and that happens it happens a lot and there's always |
| 932s | more getting added because someone will have an idea like oh hey can we add this can we add that |
| 937s | and they're like oh I don't know if we have that yet let me try that out and sometimes it'll just |
| 941s | be like a day later oh hey you know that thing that I you asked for yeah there you go so our |
| 945s | players love to hear from the studio members what some of their favorite teams are so what are some |
| 952s | of your characters that you're personally enjoying playing with recently how much time you got so I |
| 958s | always try to mix in Silver Surfer when I can that was one of my favorite characters growing |
| 963s | up the story always appealed to me so I like to mix him in with the Mystic teams I'm a big Raider |
| 969s | so I've used a lot of the our new Invaders team a lot in the skill nodes uh I'm happy that two |
| 979s | of my favorite four X-Men are really useful in raids so Bishop's team with the astonishing X-Men |
| 986s | and uh Psylocke with the dead seed team I use a lot of uh Silver Surfer right now with Kang Dr |
| 996s | Doom Quicksilver and I round it out with one more character who's escaping right now oh Apocalypse |
| 1004s | of course so yeah those five right now I've been really successful with if I had to put a number |
| 1010s | on it I'd say like 90 percent of my fights right now are wins so I guess I chose the right statue |
| 1015s | today yeah I was gonna I was gonna say yeah that was that was the nice thing I was like a little |
| 1019s | bit of serendipity there so as a producer that can mean a number of things on our team uh what |
| 1026s | are some of the things that are under your purview yeah so right now my direct responsibility number |
| 1032s | one is toward the web development pod so a lot of the things that we've been pushing out recently |
| 1037s | like the save squads feature on the website what I also assist with are a lot of our build deployment |
| 1044s | work I help out with that a bit uh coordinating some with liveops and some of our offers that we |
| 1052s | try to put up through the website as well but right now my number one priorities with the |
| 1056s | website development team so you mentioned save squads which is oh my gosh it's amazing thank |
| 1061s | you so much for doing that I've been trying it out it is very helpful in my squad management |
| 1068s | um I'm not going to ask you for a full breakdown could you just like really quickly if if some |
| 1072s | players out there are not sure how to use Save squads on the web give us a breakdown absolutely |
| 1078s | yeah so once you have your account linked via Scopely ID and you log into the website you'll |
| 1084s | notice that you have the option to sync or connect your account once your account synced or connected |
| 1089s | you'll be able to access pretty much the save Squad feature on the website with all the bells |
| 1095s | and whistles that you would expect that you have in game with the extra perk of hey hey now if |
| 1101s | you feel so inclined you can share some of your save squads with your friends your alliance mates |
| 1106s | Etc and there'll be an option over in the side to share and once you share it'll bring up a |
| 1111s | link that you can then share on social media you can share with your friends in your alliance and |
| 1116s | that'll basically bring the squads that you've selected over to their safe Squad section in a |
| 1122s | separate folder and they can actually pick and choose the ones that they want to bring over and |
| 1125s | copy them into their different folders so it's a feature that's like a lot of the things that |
| 1130s | we're doing on the website geared toward bringing our website closer to our game because as it grows |
| 1136s | we want to be able to have something that's easy for players to use because not only do we have |
| 1143s | save squads we've got our war analysis page that can give you some pointers on how you want to set |
| 1148s | your defenses we've got our ISO Aid analysis page that can kind of give you some guides on okay well |
| 1155s | I'm not sure what class to put on side lock what the concepts exactly the confidence page so it'll |
| 1162s | give you the jumping off point so it's not meant to like say Hey you must do this but it's a very |
| 1168s | valuable resource to our players and hopefully we keep building on that and making it a a more full |
| 1174s | and more robust experience for all the players so we got some great Engineers great designers and |
| 1179s | great folks on the team that are really excited about what's coming down the pipe and are just |
| 1184s | super passionate about the game right like they love the game themselves so obviously if there are |
| 1190s | features for safe squads that players likely have they probably want to do the same things even for |
| 1196s | themselves because they want to have it too so absolutely those are those are always the ones |
| 1201s | that are the most exciting because you can see people's eyes light up when you talk about okay |
| 1208s | we got this in we got this feedback what do you think about it and the eyes will light up |
| 1213s | and be like yeah yeah let's let's do this so you mentioned potential additions refinements to save |
| 1220s | squads in the future um how would players go about giving their feedback or stuff they'd like to see |
| 1227s | yeah so the best place to do that is they usually are consumer Insight uh survey that goes out to |
| 1233s | players there's usually a text field that you can fill out when those come back everyone on the team |
| 1238s | takes those pretty seriously so we'll read over pretty much all of them and they'll make their way |
| 1243s | to the website team and pretty much what happens from there is we'll get it we'll get a list we'll |
| 1249s | go over it as a group and a lot of times there will be something on there that our Engineers |
| 1255s | other developers as Avid players will look at that and be like oh yeah yeah that's that's something |
| 1261s | that escaped my mind and that's something that we can do let's plan to get that in all right so save |
| 1266s | squads is awesome are there any other features coming up fairly soon that we can talk about |
| 1272s | yet one thing I can say though is we are going to be looking to revamp our main home page for |
| 1280s | players as they log in all in an effort to like I mentioned before make the site more accessible and |
| 1285s | make it a basically a destination hotspot for our game all right RJ thank you so much for taking the |
| 1291s | time I know you're a busy man so thank you for coming on the show and telling us what's going |
| 1296s | on with the web team thank you so much yeah my pleasure again appreciate it anytime hello Marvel |
| 1301s | Strikeforce Community it is I Archangel your community manager It's Time To Shine the spotlight |
| 1306s | on some of our fellow players achievements that would even catch the eye of the collector first we |
| 1311s | have the Alexia Elise who got rank one in Arena with her impressive gamma team I particularly |
| 1319s | like her lineup Hulk is front and center she has She-Hulk on the end donning the awesome costume |
| 1325s | and she has red Hulk in between the tanks so he is in position to get those charges to unleash |
| 1332s | that devastating ultimate on the enemy team congratulations on rank 1 and Arena that will |
| 1337s | for ever be on your commander profile next bmq osborne816 pulled a zombie Ironman chase figure |
| 1346s | that's a pretty good find for just going to drink a soda congratulations to player pickle Rick who |
| 1353s | unlocked dormammu that is an amazing achievement in the game and you're going to really enjoy that |
| 1358s | character don't forget to do your second run of dd5 so you can get those sweet rewards and |
| 1365s | also to get domamu to Seven Stars the wealth of knowledge our community has about Marvel Strife |
| 1371s | force is immeasurable you might know about the confidence page on marvelstrikeforce.com which |
| 1376s | gives Community recommendations on important things like ISO 8 but did you know you can get |
| 1382s | the same information from a Discord bot first head to the official Marvel Strikeforce Discord server |
| 1388s | scroll down to the msf.gg category and then select the channel use msfgg bot here in the message box |
| 1396s | type forward slash and a number of options will appear you can click an option or start typing |
| 1402s | we are going to click on forward slash ISO next click on either team or character we are going |
| 1410s | to select character and then type the name of the character for example type do and select dormammu |
| 1418s | then press enter notice that over 90 percent of players have equipped Striker on him the bot and |
| 1425s | the website also show information you might not see in the game like their assist counter |
| 1430s | info which can greatly influence the choice you make for ISO 8 and while you're on the official |
| 1436s | Discord server go to The Fan Art Channel and take a look at some of the amazing artwork our |
| 1441s | players have made scroll up just a little bit to 1126 and take a look at the 21 page comic Mr |
| 1448s | Luke Taylor Made featuring Moon Knight and Doctor Strange thank you for sharing all your |
| 1453s | amazing artwork for all of us to enjoy please keep sharing your accomplishments your questions and |
| 1459s | your artwork on the official Discord and just maybe you'll get caught in the next Community |
| 1465s | Spotlight thank you so much for watching please be sure to like And subscribe and check out all |
| 1471s | the great content that we have here on the Marvel Strike Force Channel we will see you next time |
| 1476s | I love Marvel stickers, |
| 1484s | they make me so happy yeah let's go smash it |