balancing the Big 5

Unknown

gamar wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

I for one would rather first see BWGS, IM40, Daredevil, Spiderman (a little bit), and a few more I can't think of get a buff first rather than nerfing everyone. Imagine if BWGS's green cost 14 instead of 19? Imagine if her red did a bit more damage. Well all of a sudden she becomes a high damage low health beast that can compete. What if IM40 didn't drain your AP, could use red at 8, use blue at 12, and have a lower costed yellow? What if Daredevil's traps were all random on where they went? All of a sudden you have characters that once the dust settles could shake up the big 5. There are a few broken things, like C.Mags and the spam, yes that does have to go although I"ll miss. Because the bigger problem is, no matter how much you nerf the top guys, they will still be the top guys, because the bottom rung is so unplayable. Sure you could bring the big 5 into the mid tier, but then you have a bunch of average guys, and a bunch of **** ones. In the end I want more playable characters not nerfs.

GSBW: I still wouldn't play her
IM40: Depending on how cheap his yellow was, he'd either still be unplayable or he'd just be the new Sentry
DD: Still wouldn't play him

And this is the dilemma with "just buff the other chars": the big 5 (except possibly patch) win battles quickly and almost effortlessly. If they bring all the other characters up, there would be no change in the game because they'd still be worse than cMags and Sentry. If they made them all as powerful as cMags and Sentry, it wouldn't matter who you picked because you're just going to wipe the other team effortlessly anyways. If, on the other hand, they brought the Big 5 down to the level of Psylocke, Punisher, HT, Falcon - you know, the guys who don't suck but you never use unless you're trying to amuse yourself - THEN the game would start feeling diverse

Well if everyone is as powerful as CMag you'd also randomly lose the game on turn 2 when they get a good cascade too and people would cry about that, so it's like creating two problems with one bad solution.

Punisher and Psylocke aren't on the same level even if both are not on the same tier as the top. Punisher and Psylocke is actually a pretty good example of what balance would look like. Although Punisher is overwhelmingly better, Psylocke matches up slightly better against characters with low HP (HT, Falcon, The Hood) so despite Psylocke's moves being generally strictly worse than Punisher's, sometimes it might make sense to bring her for a quick Psi-Katana against a low HP enemy. No that's not enough to make you want to play Psylocke most of the time but there's a rather big difference in their power level to begin with. Punisher and Black Panther are probably the limit of what the most powerful character in a balanced game would look like. They have no real weaknesses and all their moves tend to be a bit too good, but you can at least make an argument to take someone else over them. It wouldn't be right most of the time, but it can definitely be correct some of the time. Right now it is pretty much never correct to pick Punisher over Thor or Sentry, or Psylocke over Daken, or almost anyone over Magneto when not concerned about defending. You can't even construct a far fetched situation where you'd want to make such a substitution.

homeinvasion

I do think balance is obtainable, look at league of legends it has hundreds of characters with 4 abilities and they all have a place, this game should. LOL has a game mode ARAM where the character is selected at random, which I love and would love to see a version of in MPQ but the probability is you would get 3 characters with the same color combos. Also I’m not going into bat against 3/5 top tier characters with 3 low tier ones.

The other way I look at it is that the perfect zen balance of a team should theoretically be rainbow or have an ability for each color, but rainbow teams don’t work without the big 5.

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

I do think balance is obtainable, look at league of legends it has hundreds of characters with 4 abilities and they all have a place, this game should. LOL has a game mode ARAM where the character is selected at random, which I love and would love to see a version of in MPQ but the probability is you would get 3 characters with the same color combos. Also I’m not going into bat against 3/5 top tier characters with 3 low tier ones.

The other way I look at it is that the perfect zen balance of a team should theoretically be rainbow or have an ability for each color, but rainbow teams don’t work without the big 5.

I highly doubt LOL is anywhere near balanced but there's a pretty big difference between 'not balanced' and 'some guys are twice as strong as anyone else'. Punisher is much stronger than Psylocke, but Psylocke is occasionally playable over Punisher because Psi-Katana is very strong against low HP targets. On the other hand, there is almost no situation I can think of where you'd want Psylocke over Daken, who is just as good at taking down low HP targets and is also good at everything else, and has some insane combo potentials with Sentry or Falcon.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

Magneto is gonna be nerfed, i honestly see absolutely no reason to nerf the others. Sentry....while powerful will require to use 2 or 3 health packs every 3 or 4 matches which will take you all of 10 minutes to complete if you're sentry bombing, which really....isn't sustainable in the long term. Patch puts out the strike tiles for the other team as well which negates his regen(especially if you have a suicide patch build of 5/5/3). Daken we always knew was gonna be powerful no matter how you put it, but his low health is a liability on defense. Thor is a more powerful version of regular Thor, sure he's powerful....but unless you got OBW or Hood leveled decently it's gonna take forever to get off his powers.

homeinvasion

Phantron wrote:

I highly doubt LOL is anywhere near balanced but there's a pretty big difference between 'not balanced' and 'some guys are twice as strong as anyone else'. Punisher is much stronger than Psylocke, but Psylocke is occasionally playable over Punisher because Psi-Katana is very strong against low HP targets. On the other hand, there is almost no situation I can think of where you'd want Psylocke over Daken, who is just as good at taking down low HP targets and is also good at everything else, and has some insane combo potentials with Sentry or Falcon.

I guess I was trying to say I would love to see a version of MPQ where GSBW/ IM40 / falcon was as scary as Daken/ Sentry/ BP. If you have max cover for sentry and GSBW it is obvious which one you would put your iso into. It would be great if the team comps were balanced enough that I love the xmen comics and only want to use those characters it should be viable.

I mean there should be dedicated roles yes, and the more flavor the better for tank/ damage/ support/ better defender than attacker/ curve ball characters etc I just wish the slots were interchangeable it just seems the meta is stuck in 2-3 set teams that whitewash all the others. One of my favorite posts was someone talking about a team of Hood/ OBW/ Spidey that they unexpectedly got beaten by. With only a few set strategies to win there is no constant learning or improvement of strategies because all characters are not created equally.

I like that there is strike tiles and count down tiles and defense tiles and all this other weird stuff going on it should all be bringing more flavor but the imbalance means all that work by the devs goes by the wayside because it doesn't compete with the Cmags X strike tiles or the World rupture X strike tiles.

I strongly think that there is so much resistance to further balances because it takes so damned long to level up a 166, that peeps have put all this time and often money into a set team that a balance by the devs means a character could go unused.

homeinvasion

Like I was thinking of teams and came up with GSBW/ Hood/ IM40 now here is my thinking, 3 X AP accelerators, a tank in IM40, rainbow abilities, 2 big AOE attacks. On paper this is a great team. In reality it just gets crushed.

Pylgrim

I believe the best way to fix Sentry is by having the World Rupture countdown tiles go off all at the same time (like attack tiles) that way they only benefit from strike tiles once. The ability still causes a fair bit of damage and shakes the board, so it's not useless, just not completely OP. Maybe reduce the countdown to 1, to even out the nerf.

GuntherBlobel

Phantron wrote:

Do people just not notice that Phermone Rage works on other team's matches too when comparing it to other strike tile generating abilities? If it was on a color like purple at least you can say they wasted a match on an often unusable color, but green tile is prime estate in MPQ.

In fact, I thought that this was at the heart of his "disruptive" play style (IceIX said something to this effect). Maybe they should have just gone all the all the way with it. What if his strike were to appear ONLY when the enemy team matched green. You could even up the strike tile value for balance.

That wouldn't eliminate his synergy with Sentry, but it wouldn't make it as mindless as match green until ready for WR. The other option is to make his Heat addiction more of a liability. There have been plenty of good ideas on the forum along that line.

GuntherBlobel

I chose to improve the AI, but I didn't really like the poll options. Balance is really hard to pull off in this game since you never actually play another human. Imbalance is at the heart of MPQ, and besides, you know you love it.

Also:
Patch is about as balanced as they get in this game.

Thor's been around for so long that I think most players know how to handle him despite his mindless self-synergizing powers. Sentry will be the same way.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Do people just not notice that Phermone Rage works on other team's matches too when comparing it to other strike tile generating abilities? If it was on a color like purple at least you can say they wasted a match on an often unusable color, but green tile is prime estate in MPQ.

In fact, I thought that this was at the heart of his "disruptive" play style (IceIX said something to this effect). Maybe they should have just gone all the all the way with it. What if his strike were to appear ONLY when the enemy team matched green. You could even up the strike tile value for balance.

That wouldn't eliminate his synergy with Sentry, but it wouldn't make it as mindless as match green until ready for WR. The other option is to make his Heat addiction more of a liability. There have been plenty of good ideas on the forum along that line.

It's fine to have variety but right now, he generates better strike tiles than Punisher if you do all the green matches for the same AP (3 green matches on Phermone Rage generates better overall strike strength than Judgment), without needing to spend the green AP, and of course you don't even have to do the matches either. Another option would be to move Phermone Rage to a less valuable color, like purple or black. Right now it's like either you can collect the best offensive color in the game and rack up crazy killer strike tiles, or fail to defend green but still have crazy killer strike tiles. Note that your opponent (assuming you're on D) doesn't have an option of 'not collect green' because leaving green alone is a disaster waiting to happen. If it was on a weaker color at its current strength it'd still likely be overpowered, but it'd be a case of 'well we got some killer strike tiles but we don't have any use for this purple (or black) AP in our Sentry + Daken team'. That'd at least be somewhat fair.

GuntherBlobel

Phantron wrote:

If it was on a weaker color at its current strength it'd still likely be overpowered, but it'd be a case of 'well we got some killer strike tiles but we don't have any use for this purple (or black) AP in our Sentry + Daken team'. That'd at least be somewhat fair.

You're right, moving it to purple would be much better. I like it.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Phantron wrote:

If it was on a weaker color at its current strength it'd still likely be overpowered, but it'd be a case of 'well we got some killer strike tiles but we don't have any use for this purple (or black) AP in our Sentry + Daken team'. That'd at least be somewhat fair.

You're right, moving it to purple would be much better. I like it.

Well it's not a good permanent fix because what if the next powerful character has his best attack on purple? Then you're back to where we started. It'll definitely work for now though since purple is not a good color to collect. A long term solution would either lower its overall strength or it'd require something clever like your suggestion for only on enemy matches, or require certain amount of AP to create tiles, or something else complicated.

homeinvasion

Phantron wrote:

Another option would be to move Phermone Rage to a less valuable color, like purple or black.

I love it, I woke up on the weekend with an hangover a $300 credit card bill and a fully covered Nick Fury chuck in BP and I'm off to the races

OnesOwnGrief

If you want to talk about the strength of Strike tiles on Daken, I wouldn't call Punisher a good baseline to compare. Out of all the characters that can produce strike tiles after 3 matches, the numbers end up as follows:

Black Panther 5Y: (175, 250)*3 = (525, 750) Daken 5P: (68*2)*3 = 408 Punisher 5G: 122*3 = 366 Psylocke 4R: 226 Sentry 5Y: 674 Wolverine 3G: 148*3 = 444 Wolverine 4G: 148*4 = 592 Wolverine 5G: 148*6 = 888

If you want to go by raw numbers, he places at #4 with added benefit of being able to stock green AP (I counted Wolverine once at 5G. He varies from #3 to #1 depending on covers). It's obvious here that outside of keeping his green AP, he's actually not that threatening if only he is making those green matches. What could be proposed as a balance on Pheromone Rage is that matching green would only generate 1 Green AP (2 with match 5) while he's alive. Consider that a cost on the ability for strike tile generation. This would cause him to not play nice on most teams with green users like he already does while still keeping his overall strength. After 3 match 3's, you'd only have 3 Green AP which isn't enough to pop World Rupture unless you use Boosts. It's understandable that Sentry doesn't actually need Daken to get the job done and this would split them up more during normal play. It would also weaken the team on defense to a reasonable level since you could deny Red/Yellow and build up for a skill to take out Sentry or Daken.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I for one would rather first see BWGS, IM40, Daredevil, Spiderman (a little bit), and a few more I can't think of get a buff first rather than nerfing everyone. Imagine if BWGS's green cost 14 instead of 19? Imagine if her red did a bit more damage. Well all of a sudden she becomes a high damage low health beast that can compete. What if IM40 didn't drain your AP, could use red at 8, use blue at 12, and have a lower costed yellow? What if Daredevil's traps were all random on where they went? All of a sudden you have characters that once the dust settles could shake up the big 5. There are a few broken things, like C.Mags and the spam, yes that does have to go although I"ll miss. Because the bigger problem is, no matter how much you nerf the top guys, they will still be the top guys, because the bottom rung is so unplayable. Sure you could bring the big 5 into the mid tier, but then you have a bunch of average guys, and a bunch of **** ones. In the end I want more playable characters not nerfs.

I'm all for it. These "top 5" characters are lucrative because at the moment they are slightly OP. Why not buff others to match their level? Devs had the right idea when they ninja-buffed Black Panther's yellow. In my opinion buffing is always better than nerfing. Even if they overdo it. But I won't mind nerfing either if it's done very cautiously and if in the long run it helps to bring some sort of balance.

Dauthi wrote:

I find it ironic that everyone hates true healing because it cut down on how long they can play, yet this poll shows most people also want to buff all the characters rather than nerf overpowered ones. I guess they don't realize that if everyone is as strong as C.Mags or Sentry the chances of them taking damage increases dramatically. Bad luck or a mistake in any game would result in wiping out their team rather than take some damage.

True healing created the need to decrease damage values, not increase values across the board. Increasing values means turning the game over to luck of the tiles more than strategy.

Which is why I find it baffling that the devs have not buffed older characters already. With the True Healing it would serve Demiurge better if most characters would deal higher damage or as a counter measure prolong battles with better defensive shields (thus leading to harder shield-hops and either overall lower leaderboard points or more HP spent on shields/health packs). Their indeciviness in this matter is frustrating. Status quo at the moment is depressing since in a meta sense you can just invest in few key characters and nothing else matters.

Either buff or nerf but I wish they'd do something about the overall balance of characters. Once again that recent Black Panther buff was a great step in right way and I'd welcome same kind of minor buffs to other "lesser" characters.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

If you want to talk about the strength of Strike tiles on Daken, I wouldn't call Punisher a good baseline to compare. Out of all the characters that can produce strike tiles after 3 matches, the numbers end up as follows:

Black Panther 5Y: (175, 250)*3 = (525, 750) Daken 5P: (68*2)*3 = 408 Punisher 5G: 122*3 = 366 Psylocke 4R: 226 Sentry 5Y: 674 Wolverine 3G: 148*3 = 444 Wolverine 4G: 148*4 = 592 Wolverine 5G: 148*6 = 888

If you want to go by raw numbers, he places at #4 with added benefit of being able to stock green AP (I counted Wolverine once at 5G. He varies from #3 to #1 depending on covers). It's obvious here that outside of keeping his green AP, he's actually not that threatening if only he is making those green matches. What could be proposed as a balance on Pheromone Rage is that matching green would only generate 1 Green AP (2 with match 5) while he's alive. Consider that a cost on the ability for strike tile generation. This would cause him to not play nice on most teams with green users like he already does while still keeping his overall strength. After 3 match 3's, you'd only have 3 Green AP which isn't enough to pop World Rupture unless you use Boosts. It's understandable that Sentry doesn't actually need Daken to get the job done and this would split them up more during normal play. It would also weaken the team on defense to a reasonable level since you could deny Red/Yellow and build up for a skill to take out Sentry or Daken.

Patch's strike tiles have a rather obvious drawback and can't be considered as just + their value due to its mirror nature.

Sentry is not remotely balanced and being worse than him isn't saying much.

Black Panther is better but he's still a tier below the top. Using his yellow usually means you're giving up a lot because yellow has two of the best skills in the game (Thunder Strike/Sacrifice).

At any rate 'not having to spend AP' is a rather big advantage. All these moves that are better than Daken in raw numbers are 3 match moves, while Phermone Rage can trigger from 0 match since it works on their match too. There is always a rather big boost for going up in number of matches required, since the effort to get X+1 matches is likely exponential (e.g. a 12 AP move is probably twice as hard to pull off as a 9 AP move and half as hard as a 15 AP move in absence of AP accelration). If you get just double the effect for needing 3 matches instead of 0, that'd still comfortably put Daken as #1. This assumes a non boosted environment since starting with 6 AP of a color renders the difficulty of acquiring the AP mostly irrelevent. A lot of my game is halfway over by the time I have 9 AP of a particular color.

Now the fact that Phermone Rage is a passive could be considered a weakness if it is hard to find another green character to go with Daken, but we all know this isn't the case.

Spoit

I have an idea about Laken. How about if they changed either the regen color or the strike tile generator color so that they were both the same. That way, trying to making more strikes makes it more likely he goes into heat.

homeinvasion

Spoit wrote:

I have an idea about Laken. How about if they changed either the regen color or the strike tile generator color so that they were both the same. That way, trying to making more strikes makes it more likely he goes into heat.

best idea I've seen, has my vote

Unknown

So it isn't really a one solution fixes all type of thing.

With Daken, he needs some sort of regulator. Like you said, he must have a certain number of purple before he gets his strike tiles. Or maybe he needs a certain number of blue before his healing kicks in. Something along those lines.

With Magneto, it's obviously AP costs. His red and blue need to increase. Maybe 2-3 AP each. Then he'd be perfectly balanced on both offense and defense.

Patch, in my opinion, doesn't need to be changed. And no, I don't use him. I'm a Daken user. But Patch is just full of counterbalance. His red and green give the enemy amazing strike tiles and his yellow has to be one of his maxed abilities. So he definitely has some downside. Once Magneto is balanced, that should make Patch balanced.

Sentry is, again, AP costs. World Rupture should probably be something like 10 or 11 AP. 7 AP is absurd for that kind of power. His sacrifice should also be closer to 9 or 10. After that, he'd be pretty balanced.

LThor is a special case. He is very slow, but if he gets rolling he's the strongest character in the game by a wide margin. Extremely high health pool, extremely high damage and board manipulation. His only weakness is high AP costs and if you play him with an AP stealer you'll win a lot of games very quickly.
I think Thor would be one I would leave where he is.

Maybe lower his health pool a little or lower the damage on his green a little. But he isn't one of those problems that take over games, like Sentry or Magneto. It's all about the AP costs. Low AP costs win games.

Unknown

I honestly feel The Hood is much more a problem than Lazythor and Patch, but mileage may vary.