A Question For Ice about Character Balancing

Unknown

Ice, I want to say that I am grateful for the additions to the game and the increase in forum attendance. Thank you. But now the question.

I am not a developer and do not know the difficulty of creating and updating game content. I assume that there is alot more to it than the average layman knows. I have read countless posts from people that say that a majority of issues in the game would be solved if the characters already in the game were balanced, and other that say that the tweaking of a few numbers would not be difficult at all. With this being said, could you comment on why the characters that are often complained about (IM40, yelena, bagman, to name a few) have not been at least tweaked? Has there been any discussion on character balancing, and if so, what time frame are we looking at?

I know I am speaking for alot of people when I say that we want to use the established characters, if only they were a touch more appealing.

Thank you for your time, and once again thank you for a great game.

Unknown

They don't tweak and balance existing characters because it makes more sense financially to keep pushing out new ones

john1620b

gobstopper wrote:

They don't tweak and balance existing characters because it makes more sense financially to keep pushing out new ones

Exactly what I was going to say.

LordWill

They are never going to balance any character. This is what you must accept and resign yourself to believe.

Then if they ever do, it will be a pleasant surprise.

hurcules

LordWill wrote:

They are never going to balance any character.

Oh but they do. But statistically, significantly more in one direction than the other.

MunitionsFrenzy

gobstopper wrote:

They don't tweak and balance existing characters because it makes more sense financially to keep pushing out new ones

What's your rationale for that statement? Unbalanced 2-star characters drive away new players and thus make no financial sense; thus, they do indeed try to balance 2-stars. Of course a few stronger 3-stars can become grind-targets which is good for cash, and weak 1-stars aren't relevant because it's so easy to get 1-star covers that anyone can easily get the stronger ones, but having a large viable cast of at least the 2-star characters is necessary so new players aren't turned off by getting a bunch of weak new characters and being placed against swarms of strong new characters in PvP. And overall I feel 2-star characters are indeed pretty balanced, with only a couple being too weak (oh 2-star Cap, why does your red do nothing?).

GrimSkald

Certainly adding new content is more exciting and attention-gathering than improving old content, I'm sure this contributes to your answer. Still, I'm very interested in the response - are there any plans to improve any of the older 3* characters that are distinctly sub-par? I like IM40, he'd be really cool if his red and blue were more viable - but as it stands I don't see using him as anything other than a AP battery.

FaerieMyst

Part of the problem is one of subjectivity. Who decides if a character is balanced or is worthless or is overpowered?

Let me give some RL examples. Four of us in my family play MPQ and we all play differently.

2* Captain America - I never grooved to him. One of the few 2* that never got fully leveled and my earliest 2* sell. My daughter, Avari, has a maxed out 2* roster and Cap is her star player. She loves him and uses him all the time.

CMags - for me, he is one of my rotating roster. I regularly use him but he is one of many. My husband, Mystwalker, would leave me for CMags if he could. He loves him and plays him nearly every single match.

1* Hawkeye is one of two 1* characters I still have. I use him regularly in PVE. I, alone, in my family sing his praises. Everyone else never even had him long enough to level up.

I regularly read about characters that are worthless . . . . to the person posting. That doesn't mean that the character needs tweaking. It just means that person doesn't like it. Even if a lot of people on the forums chime in, it doesn't mean anyting because we here are a small minority of players.

emaker27

FaerieMyst wrote:

Part of the problem is one of subjectivity. Who decides if a character is balanced or is worthless or is overpowered?

As the game developer, it becomes a lot less subjective since they have access to usage data. If only 1% of the player base uses Bagman, then he's probably worthless. If 75% of all veteran players use Magneto, then he may be overpowered. The majority of characters will still be subjective, but there will be outliers that should be addressed.

And normally you can see the extremes in-game as a player. When Spiderman was OP, you saw him a lot. Bagman is worthless and you barely see him.

IamTheDanger

FaerieMyst wrote:

Part of the problem is one of subjectivity. Who decides if a character is balanced or is worthless or is overpowered? We all play differently.

Everyone has a different play style, therefore prefer different characters. Especially players like myself. I love chess and when I play MPQ, I treat it as I would if I were playing chess. Example; I enjoy DareDevil and Bagman both. ( yes I meant to type "DareDevil and Bagman" ). I use DD to place a tile, then I use Bagman to move tiles of the same color around it to make a match 3 or 4 if possible.

Each peice/character has different moves. Some by themselves are weak unless used along side certian others. The chalenge is finding the combos that best fit your play style. If you do it right, then a pawn can not only Beat a Queen, but can become one.

As to the OP saying it only takes a few minutes to push a few buttons to make character changes. I am not a game programmer, so I have no idea how long the actual changes take. But I do know that after a change is made, but BEFORE it is released to the public, it must be tested. The hero that was changed has to be played with and against every other charater in the game at low, medium, mid-high, high, and max levels. And that takes a long time. Weeks to months even. ( at least that is how new changes are tested by a game maker I do security for every now again, I have no idea how D3 does it ).

Spoit

emaker27 wrote:

FaerieMyst wrote:

Part of the problem is one of subjectivity. Who decides if a character is balanced or is worthless or is overpowered?

As the game developer, it becomes a lot less subjective since they have access to usage data. If only 1% of the player base uses Bagman, then he's probably worthless. If 75% of all veteran players use Magneto, then he may be overpowered. The majority of characters will still be subjective, but there will be outliers that should be addressed.

And normally you can see the extremes in-game as a player. When Spiderman was OP, you saw him a lot. Bagman is worthless and you barely see him.

Usage statistics and power are not necessarily linked though. Back during the thorverine days, IceIX said that Cap was a very solid 3rd place in usage numbers (in terms of 2*s, though that was probably overall, even with rags and spidey actually being useful), even with how terrible he is.

Unknown

LordWill wrote:

They are never going to balance any character. This is what you must accept and resign yourself to believe.

Then if they ever do, a cold day in hell just happened.

There! Corrected it for you

MunitionsFrenzy

Spoit wrote:

Usage statistics and power are not necessarily linked though. Back during the thorverine days, IceIX said that Cap was a very solid 3rd place in usage numbers (in terms of 2*s, though that was probably overall, even with rags and spidey actually being useful), even with how terrible he is.

Usage statistics and power are totally linked. It's just that there are also other factors such as ease of obtainment, which is one that in particular skews Cap's numbers way up and always has.

Spoit

EternalLurker wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Usage statistics and power are not necessarily linked though. Back during the thorverine days, IceIX said that Cap was a very solid 3rd place in usage numbers (in terms of 2*s, though that was probably overall, even with rags and spidey actually being useful), even with how terrible he is.

Usage statistics and power are totally linked. It's just that there are also other factors such as ease of obtainment, which is one that in particular skews Cap's numbers way up and always has.

This was back during the days before cstorm was nerfed too, so she had ridiculous synergy with thor (who still had a red which was even better than LT's is now) and again, those were all 2*s

Spoit

Here:

IceIX wrote:

Edit: These are older stats, see stats from 3/18/14 here.

Let's see, what can I say without giving numbers away...

- There are very slightly more regular Android players than iOS players overall. Regular being those that stick around for a while. - iOS is more spikey with new players joining more often then leaving as quickly, Android players stick more often, but come in more slowly. Platform app discovery issues? - Steam is our fastest growing segment (duh, brand new), with players being the most sticky there compared to either mobile platform. - Brazilians on Android love themselves some Puzzle Quest, beating out both the UK and Canada in total users. Not so many iOS Brazilians, but they're still high on the list of countries overall. - Android version 4.1.0 is by far the most popular OS to play the game on, followed by 4.2.0 and 4.3.0. - iOS users update their OSes much more often in comparison, with most users being on either 7.0.4 or 7.0.3. - The Nexus 7 is by far the most popular single Android device to play on. Samsung as a manufacturer dominates the pack though with tons of devices being very high up on the usage list across many models. - The vanilla iPhone 4 is the most popular iOS device, with the iPad 2 being the strongest tablet in use for either iOS or Android. - About 10% of our regular userbase overall is either jailbroken or full rooted, much higher than we were expecting. The vast majority of said users play perfectly nicely, unlike popular depictions of those users being natural pirates/cheaters. - The character with the most purchased ability upgrades (minus Tutorials) is Iron Man (Model 35). His Repulsor Blast wins out with over triple the upgrades of the next highest character's total upgrades, Storm (Modern). - Dropping 1 stars, the most purchased ability upgrade in total crown goes to Black Widow (Grey Suit), and the most purchased ability upgrade singly goes to Daken's Pheremone Rage. - Most popular character overall is Iron Man (Model 35), which should come as no surprise since he's used so often by everyone early game. - Stripping out 1 stars the top 5 used in order are: Thor, Storm (Classic), Iron Man (Model 40), Captain America, Wolverine (Astonishing). Devil Dinosaur ranks dead last. - The Lightning Round played most regularly is Hood's, followed by Ragnarok. The one participated in least is Doom's, with Loki being slightly higher in participation.

I was wrong, cstorm was above him, but wolvie was below,

Nonce Equitaur 2

The Team Up powers are just magnifying the obvious problems.

These powers are like a fleet of cars. They spent a considerable amount of time programming all of these powers.

A lot of the cars were too nice and spiffy, so they upped the costs to unusable levels. They basically put 2 ton boat anchors on many of the cars.

Now, with Team Up powers out, we're actually expected to use these cars. These spiffy, hard-to-program cars with boat anchors attached.

The blatantly obvious solution is to take off all the boat anchors. Much like it only took a few minutes to eliminate spam, it would only take a few minutes to take the boat anchors off the overpriced powers in the game by lowering the costs. If there's a car that becomes too spiffy, then they can make more adjustments.

Balancing is programmatically easy to do. Lack of balance is ruining the game. Spending a lot of programming time for a power that is unusable is developmental insanity.

Those cars with boat anchors, they really mess up the road. And there is no reason for them.

Meanwhile, World Rupture and Supernova are way too speedy. A car that goes 400 MPH isn't all that safe on the highway either, especially when Porsches-with-boat-anchors going 10MPH are all over the place.

MunitionsFrenzy

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Balancing is programmatically easy to do. Lack of balance is ruining the game. Spending a lot of programming time for a power that is unusable is developmental insanity.

Pretty sure you are massively overestimating what percentage of development manhours are in the raw coding. o_O That's almost never the biggest time sink in a large-scale project.

Unknown

Bump as I wait for some acknowledgement.

Spoit

Paintsville wrote:

Bump as I wait for some acknowledgement.

Good luck with that

I_am_Zero

EternalLurker wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Balancing is programmatically easy to do. Lack of balance is ruining the game. Spending a lot of programming time for a power that is unusable is developmental insanity.

Pretty sure you are massively overestimating what percentage of development manhours are in the raw coding. o_O That's almost never the biggest time sink in a large-scale project.

I think the framework is pretty much done. Adding new powers shouldn't be that hard if they've done a good job with the base framework. Their framework should make it easy for them to say, "Character A, Power 1, Level 1 = 1 strike tile, 5 cost" We've seen them have the ability to tweak powers without having to push out an update, so some of us would like to see them doing minor tweaks here and there. After a certain time period has passed, see if anything has gone crazy. For instance, instead of doing what they did to spiderman, they could've just added 1 to the cost of his blue power and then looked at the data after a few weeks. If they see that no change in usage has occurred, add another 1 to the base cost and collect data. Or lowering the cost for yelena's black by 4 and seeing if anyone started using her more. Little tweaks here and there to help balance the game without going crazy. Instead, we see posts about how changes were playtested internally and was deemed "good to go" by the testers which resulted in 60+ page posts from the player base about how the changes were too extreme, making that character useless in most situations.

If they truly wanted roster diversity, they'd try to balance the characters little by little so that all characters are usable in more situations than they are now. Even though bagman is a joke, if they tweaked his numbers just a little bit, people would probably think more about the fights in which he'd be a very good support character instead of cannon fodder for tanking.

Spoit

I am Zero wrote:

EternalLurker wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Balancing is programmatically easy to do. Lack of balance is ruining the game. Spending a lot of programming time for a power that is unusable is developmental insanity.

Pretty sure you are massively overestimating what percentage of development manhours are in the raw coding. o_O That's almost never the biggest time sink in a large-scale project.

I think the framework is pretty much done. Adding new powers shouldn't be that hard if they've done a good job with the base framework. Their framework should make it easy for them to say, "Character A, Power 1, Level 1 = 1 strike tile, 5 cost" We've seen them have the ability to tweak powers without having to push out an update, so some of us would like to see them doing minor tweaks here and there. After a certain time period has passed, see if anything has gone crazy. For instance, instead of doing what they did to spiderman, they could've just added 1 to the cost of his blue power and then looked at the data after a few weeks. If they see that no change in usage has occurred, add another 1 to the base cost and collect data. Or lowering the cost for yelena's black by 4 and seeing if anyone started using her more. Little tweaks here and there to help balance the game without going crazy. Instead, we see posts about how changes were playtested internally and was deemed "good to go" by the testers which resulted in 60+ page posts from the player base about how the changes were too extreme, making that character useless in most situations.

If they truly wanted roster diversity, they'd try to balance the characters little by little so that all characters are usable in more situations than they are now. Even though bagman is a joke, if they tweaked his numbers just a little bit, people would probably think more about the fights in which he'd be a very good support character instead of cannon fodder for tanking.

That's antithetical to their design philosophy. IIRC, they said somewhere that there is always a backlash against nerfs of any kind, so rather than trying to zero in on a balanced point, it's better to take one big move, because "that too will pass" (and then they forget to ever balance it back up)