If they actually want to create a balanced meta game...

Unknown

Then they need to actually hire some people dedicated to designing and testing characters in a rational, controlled way. It's been quite obvious that every character has been created top down with whatever kitchen sink mechanics the devs happen to come up with. This makes sense for a game about comic book characters and works in the beginning, but it's painfully obvious that the character designers are just tacking abilities together for the heck of it with no regard to game balance.
Examples of this;

Randomly tacking countdown tiles onto abilities, for purely flavor reasons and also probably in an attempt to make other character's anti countdown hosing more relevant. See black panther's blue and fury's purple. Good use of countdown tiles are flame jet and sunder.

Inconsistent costing of strike (and protect) tiles. Strike tiles are incredible, so how do you justify daken's passive strike tile making ability against anybody else's? It takes punisher 3 green matches to randomly destroy some tiles and get 3 strike tiles, in the meantime daken would get 6 strike tiles and you could use someone else's green power with that AP? Or compare with any other strike tile producer. Same with protect tiles, I mean compare spider man with black panther's blue.
Gross over costing of counter strategies. Not only are counter strategies grossly over costed, but they tend to be put on extremely narrow and limited characters. Example Loki, his black should cost half of what it does, maybe even less. Why? Because it's narrow and completely useless in many cases. Too add insult, he is a two ability character whose other ability is also best used as a support ability for chars with fixed formation abilities. If you look at games like magic, these hoser abilities are always much more efficient than the strategies they are hosing. Why? Because they are completely dead abilities in the absence of the strategy they are hosing! If you want players to mix up their team, a good way to do it is to make sure it actually matter what the matchup is when choosing your own chars. Right now, it doesn't matter who the opponent is, max sentry with daken/hood/boosts can kill anybody in a few moves, no interesting strategy or gameplay necessary. On a character as narrow as Loki there's no reason that trickery couldn't cost 5 or 6. Of course that would make his combo strong (actually viable?) with patch but those are the kinds of combos that players love to discover and make games fun. Everybody loves MMags and CStorm because it's strong and it actually feels like your team is working together instead of just "He deals damage and then he deals more damage"

This has lead to many potentially fun mechanics becoming unplayable and will inevitably lead to only one version (the best one) of each mechanic being playable. How many of you really use more than 4 chars max from your roster in PvP?

D3, you need a real character developer / format balancer! Or at least take your forum goers more seriously, *Cough cough*

Unknown

If you look at the design changes back when they still had these things there's a clear budget that's associated with each character and things don't happen completely at random. However, like you pointed out, it appears how powerful a character is in the comic book version has a direct impact on how powerful they're in the game. Regeneration, a massively powerful ability especially after true healing went in, seems to be solely tied to whether the said character can regenerate in the comic. That's like saying Thor should be able to kill most characters in one match because he's a god in the comic book. There isn't even some kind of 'extra powerful bonus for new character' because we've quite a few new characters that are surprisingly mediocre (and balanced). It seems to me whoever designed Thor or Sentry or Daken really liked these characters and felt that they're totally justified in being at least twice as good as anyone else, as opposed to any ulterior motives to make these guys P2W. After all, Deadpool is surprisingly average even though he should be more popular than Daken at least.

Unknown

I think d3p and the players themselves are either in denial or are aware of the overpowered nature of the top characters and choose to ignore it.

I think Lazy Thor, Daken, Sentry, Patch and Magneto are all incredibly inhibitive of the rest of the characters in the game, once you get to the top ranks of a pvp tournament.

And I think the main culprit behind that is how hard it is to build 3 star characters.

I have 2 maxed 3 star characters and one that I am in the process of maxing.

The two I maxed, I bought about 3 covers for each of them. Mainly because I could not compete for anything above top 100 if I didn’t. Once you get a character to level 100, you are out of the 2 star range and will fight almost exclusively 2 level 166s every match. So after about 500 points, when I only had Hulk at level 102, I had to stop because if I went any further, I would just get decimated by these much stronger teams of 166 daken and sentry vs my 94 obw and 102 hulk.

If 3 star covers were more available (like, how about I don’t get 13 2 star and 1 3 star covers from these iso brotherhood pve event tokens?) then building more characters may be possible. But as it stands today, with it so hard to build up 3 star heroes during the transition from 2 star to 3 star, you have to actually decide who you want to invest HP into to get to a playable level.
If I have to choose 1 character that I can get to level 166, I’m going to pick the best or one of the best. I’m not going to level Daredevil or Storm.

If 3 star covers were easier to get, you might actually see some of the non top tier characters every once in a while. But until the transitional period from 2 star to 3 star is over, expect to only ever see the top 5.

Unknown

I do agree that a lot of the balance seems to depend on the flavor of the characters power level in the books. Sometimes you end up with unplayables like daredevil, sometimes god beings like Sentry. I feel like this strategy needs to change a bit.

Good examples of the flavor balance are OBW, who has only support powers but is still great, or Thor, who only hits people (but hard). Both characters are good and commonly used, while feeling completely in tune with how they work in the books.

The game does need some serious rebalancing as it stands. Ldaken and Sentry so significantly outclass everyone in pvp, and cmags is just disgusting in pve. This needs fixed before they just add more bad characters.

Unknown

I love the way how you guys still believe in Father X-Mas. I'd love to believe in him too.

Don't get me wrong, your ideas are great, but it's been a long time since D3P showed, sadly, that making MPQ REALLY a fun and diverse game is not their priority. (Oh, I'm trash talking, we had True Healing and Team Up for that matter, naughty I am).

Season 5 :

XF Yellow cover as Alliance reward (who hasn't been buffed in months) after IW yellow in Season 4.

1st PvP : Nick Fury
2nd PvP : Punisher
3rd PvP : Daredevil (it would be awesome if we could win Loki or Rags covers for a great Loki or Rags PvP)

1 month without a new character.

Yet, the scores and rankings have never been so high.

Why should they change anything and try to be more creative ? The game has never been so successful.

I used to be pissed, now I am amused.

Unknown

How hard it is to build a character doesn't validate the existence of overpowering characters. If anything having less overpowering characters reduces the effect of running subpar characters. Let's say you just deleted all the top tier characters from the game: Thor, Patch, CMag, Daken, Sentry, and The Hood. So the best team now might be Black Panther + ???. So let's say you have a level 120 Psylocke and Daredevil and you've to fight Black Panther + Captain America, that's not that big of a mismatch since they only have 3 strong colors (yellow/red/black). It's certainly more feasible to beat such a team than Daken + anyone, or Sentry + anyone, and so on. Even a pure 2* team would have a much better chance if the limit they've to fight is Black Panther as opposed to Sentry or Daken.

If characters are more balanced it can only be easier for the transition guys because this game hands out covers in a fairly random basis, so your transition guy will have power roughly equal to average of the available pool of characters. Currently average versus top is way too far apart, and it's not like you can easily get a lot of Sentry or Daken covers without spending a lot of money, so outside of incredible luck the transition guy doesn't get an option like 'go for Sentry' or 'go for Daken' because those covers might not even be offered for a very long time.

Unknown

The problem is OP characters drive sales. You know for sure Sentry is making them a lot of money (also the reason why they won't nerf him right now)

IF characters were truly balanced then there'd be less motivation for people to buy the new guy that's just as good as the old guy but in a slightly different way.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

I love the way how you guys still believe in Father X-Mas. I'd love to believe in him too.

Don't get me wrong, your ideas are great, but it's been a long time since D3P showed, sadly, that making MPQ REALLY a fun and diverse game is not their priority. (Oh, I'm trash talking, we had True Healing and Team Up for that matter, naughty I am).

Season 5 :

XF Yellow cover as Alliance reward (who hasn't been buffed in months) after IW yellow in Season 4.

1st PvP : Nick Fury
2nd PvP : Punisher
3rd PvP : Daredevil (it would be awesome if we could win Loki or Rags covers for a great Loki or Rags PvP)

1 month without a new character.

Yet, the scores and rankings have never been so high.

Why should they change anything and try to be more creative ? The game has never been so successful.

I used to be pissed, now I am amused.

Technically, Venser, for everyone but the 2,000-4,000 players that got Fury from season rewards, he was a new character. The next one will probably come out the next pve, which would make two new characters within a month.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

Technically, Venser, for everyone but the 2,000-4,000 players that got Fury from season rewards, he was a new character. The next one will probably come out the next pve, which would make two new characters within a month.

Not really for those who are veterans and/or in the Top 100 (most of those are interacting on the forum).

For every newcomer, you can say he has 48 new characters to deal with.

Everything is done for the newcomers. I'm not against this policy, but there could be cool stuff for us, veterans.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

Technically, Venser, for everyone but the 2,000-4,000 players that got Fury from season rewards, he was a new character. The next one will probably come out the next pve, which would make two new characters within a month.

Not really for those who are veterans and/or in the Top 100 (most of those are interacting on the forum).

For every newcomer, you can say he has 48 new characters to deal with.

Everything is done for the newcomers. I'm not against this policy, but there could be cool stuff for us, veterans.

Lol. 2,000-4,000 is less than one season bracket that holds 5,000. So it's not just new comers that didn't have him. Not everyone was members of awesome alliances like us during the races for fury.

I think we'll be complaining again soon enough about too many new characters any way.

mjh

arktos1971 wrote:

1 month without a new character.

The last thing this game needs is a new character when too many existing ones are OP or broken (CMags, Sentry, Loki, Rags, Spidey)

Unknown

LoreNYC wrote:

The problem is OP characters drive sales. You know for sure Sentry is making them a lot of money (also the reason why they won't nerf him right now)

IF characters were truly balanced then there'd be less motivation for people to buy the new guy that's just as good as the old guy but in a slightly different way.

Yes but that doesn't explain why Deadpool was rather average. There's probably some P2W basis toward making new characters powerful, but if that was solely the case, Deadpool ought to be one of the top characters in the game.

Unknown

HawkeyeSucks wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

1 month without a new character.

The last thing this game needs is a new character when too many existing ones are OP or broken (CMags, Sentry, Loki, Rags, Spidey)

Well, as you know they are not going to change the existing characters, so, is it better to keep on playing endlessly with the same characters ?

Not sure.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

1 month without a new character.

Not to let facts get in the way of a rant, but Deadpool was released early August and Captain Marvel was released in late July

Cabol

papa07 wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

1 month without a new character.

Not to let facts get in the way of a rant, but Deadpool was released early August and Captain Marvel was released in late July

To bounce off this response, wasn't Tiny Torch recently released too?

jojeda654

papa07 wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

1 month without a new character.

Not to let facts get in the way of a rant, but Deadpool was released early August and Captain Marvel was released in late July

Heck, TECHNICALLY, Fury was just released last week. (Yeah, yeah, 3 seasons and a movie... )

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

.... There isn't even some kind of 'extra powerful bonus for new character' because we've quite a few new characters that are surprisingly mediocre (and balanced). It seems to me whoever designed Thor or Sentry or Daken really liked these characters and felt that they're totally justified in being at least twice as good as anyone else, as opposed to any ulterior motives to make these guys P2W. After all, Deadpool is surprisingly average even though he should be more popular than Daken at least.

Actually, If I had to guess, I think with Deadpool and Sentry I would say that the devs are banking on more popular characters to generate some sales based on their comic book popularity while lesser known characters are the ones that need to be more powerful since fewer people will have an emotional attachment to them. I had never heard of the Sentry or Daken before this game. I also would also say it's 50/50 that LDaken's power is more of a mistake caused by my original argument, lack of a gameplay developer/balancer. 2* Daken was not considered OP so they tacked on a third ability and let him get max leveled and threw him out the door. Anyone who knows some Magic history knows this is how Jitte, Jace, and skullclamp all got broken, last second tweaks to cards that just weren't quite powerful enough in the devs eyes before they went out the door.

Unknown

saurus wrote:

..... The game does need some serious rebalancing as it stands. Ldaken and Sentry so significantly outclass everyone in pvp, and cmags is just disgusting in pve. This needs fixed before they just add more bad characters.

No matter what the pool of Characters there will always be some that are just better than the other options, that's unavoidable and bad for both D3 and us players. I for one know that once I've covered and leveled the 4 or 5 worthwhile 3* chars I'm going to have a hard time finding any motivation to replay the same pve scenarios and the same pvp tournaments over and over again and will likely quit soon after, if not before. I've mentioned it before in this post viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14101, the only way to keep the format fresh and force people to shake up their Sentry/Daken/Hood and Patch/CMag teams is a forced format rotation. I think that the reason we see such a slowdown in new story content is that new story content doesn't make them any money. I bet that many people out there are perfectly happy to play through the 'story mode', beat it with their 1* only roster and move on, never spending a penny on the game. If they released full new scenarios or episodes or whatever they call them, they could sell them as expansions to these casual players who don't want to join an alliance and lose their life to this pvp grind and every single one of us would buy them too, because the next season would only allow characters from the new scenario to be used.

OnesOwnGrief

I have a roster of level 100-130 characters that I use in rotation. That includes LThor, LCap, Hood, Sentry, IM40, Hulk, Patch, Spider-Man , Punisher, and Black Panther. Of those, only 7 are cover maxed. I agree that strike tiles and protect tiles are have a major cost imbalance but there are some entirely power defense tiles out there but not as crazy as 2 free strike tiles per green match.

Actually, If I had to guess, I think with Deadpool and Sentry I would say that the devs are banking on more popular characters to generate some sales based on their comic book popularity while lesser known characters are the ones that need to be more powerful since fewer people will have an emotional attachment to them.

If you wanted to go the popularity route, Sentry actually wouldn't be on that list. Sentry is only popular in this game due to broken mechanics. If we wanted to go with popularity, there's a long laundry list of Avengers, X-Men, Inhumans, that have not been included in the game for the sake of just not being there. Even the Dark Avengers Venom isn't the proper one and it goes without saying that Eddie Brock will be the most popular Venom by many.

Anyways, the problem with having balance is that the developers just don't playtest. If they did, I don't see how they miss half the things that get through. There's nothing worst than a game creator who doesn't play their own product.

Unknown

I'm guessing Daken 3* went like this.

1. Statistics show almost no one use Daken 2* in PvP.
2. Therefore Daken must be really weak.
3. So Daken 3* must be like Daken but way more powerful.

Never mind that Daken 2* was rarely used because he is 16 levels lower than 3 ability 2*s or that his PvE counterpart that does match all other character in levels is consistently one of the hardest characters to defeat in PvE.

Though I'm not sure what made them decide to have Thor do about twice the damage of what he did in 2* when the 3* version was made. It's like we figure Thor 2* was a reasonably balanced character, probably still a bit on the strong side for a 2*, so if we doubled his ability damage that must be about right for a 3*.

atomzed

LoreNYC wrote:

The problem is OP characters drive sales. You know for sure Sentry is making them a lot of money (also the reason why they won't nerf him right now)

IF characters were truly balanced then there'd be less motivation for people to buy the new guy that's just as good as the old guy but in a slightly different way.

Funnily, I got my max cover Ldaken and sentry solely from rewards and tokens. Never pay a single cent for them which I'm happy you know the kind of happiness which you get when you found a good bargain for a designer bag in the flea market. (I'm really not into those kind of happiness which I spend 1k on the latest gadget).

Regarding about balance, if it's truely balanced, then sales of others covers may go up because all characters are viable. That may compensate for the drop in sales of OP characters. However, that will only happen in theory. In reality there will always be different tiers of character levels.