It's about time.

Orangecrush

Phantron wrote:

I don't think it's necessary to appease the high end players but it's not like Sentry's dominance at the high end of PvP is some kind of accident. Magneto may have a bigger overall impact when measured by the amount of players affected, but it's rather obvious that Sentry is also causing a lot of problems too. Do devs really think as more people get characters maxed they'll be seeing Punisher + Psylocke + Nick Fury beating the Sentry teams? Sentry's on the top of the PvP ladder for a rather obvious reason, and it's particularly bothersome because unlike most balance fixes that could be complicated, Sentry you can solve most of the problems by fixing his interaction with strike tiles. I think he'd still be overpowered but won't be more so than Thor and while Thor is of course not balanced either, but at least Thor takes some time to win instead of just bombing the opposition to oblivion by turn 5.

All you need to do to balance sentry at the high end of the player base is eliminate boosts. We can all agree that would be best, right?

Unknown

Sorry but I really can´t be happy for 2 unasked (by my part) nerfs to the ground, a buff to a char that wont make any difference and only 1 buff that makes sense ...

Jathro

PPPlaya wrote:

First of all Loki 2 Star confirmed.

Source?

Unknown

Jathro wrote:

PPPlaya wrote:

First of all Loki 2 Star confirmed.

Source?

Haven't you seen the movies?

I like how this is an announcement for an annoucement. So very meta

Thanos

Meto5000 wrote:

I think 3* Daken could produce 2x strength 1 strike tiles, and as long as he still tanked green with a high regen people would use him almost as much as they do now.

The Daken change was announced over a month ago. I believe it involved just lowering his strike tile strength. I would almost prefer they had him make only one double strength strike tile cause then he'd synergize much better with Psylockes red.

orionpeace

AdrianoD wrote:

Sorry but I really can´t be happy for 2 unasked (by my part) nerfs to the ground, a buff to a char that wont make any difference and only 1 buff that makes sense ...

And you are assuming that they will nerfed into un-usefullness. Basically, you are complaining because they are correcting an issue they knew they have needed to fix for past 6 months. It's not like you weren't given enough notice that it would happen.

Two nerfs? I only know of one. CMags.

Are you including the change to Daken in that? It may be a nerf in some way, but he is getting a buff in other ways. The net effect may be neutral or a slight nerf.

But I do agree that there are MANY heroes that need a buff and I encourage D3 to sort that out.

GrumpySmurf1002

j12601 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

wymtime wrote:

Thanks iceEX. If X-force is the beast you are saying then PVP is going to be death brackets big time.

ice can you let us know when the next new character is going to be released? We are still waiting for the X-men starting with a B.

Beast is coming with the start of Heroic Chapter 3. That starts Friday. After that we've got on the docket Colossus, a 2*, and a 3* that haven't been announced yet with as yet undecided launch order. I'll give some slight teases there and say that the 2* is a variant that's about as similar to their other form as Black Widow (Original) is to Black Widow (Modern). The 3* is a good guy at heart, when it comes down to it. Really.

Sounds like 2* Sentry to me. He was an Avenger prior to joining up with Osborn & Co.

I'm thinking other direction, like 2* Venom or Yelena. Similar powers but stronger + a 3rd

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Any idea when the backlog will be added to tokens? It's up to four characters now.

I know Fury is getting added very soon, so that's one less. Not so sure on the rest. The reason it's backed up is that we're trying to work out a way to get more characters in without pulling a Disney Vault thing where we have to remove characters to add more so that the odds stay somewhat reasonable. It could happen that Vaulting is what we go with, but we don't want to add now then have to do a mass remove later if something like that is the solution.

Why not oh idk take a percent off every 2* character and add that to the 3*, heck there are WAY more 3* now why not balance it by making them just abit more common in drops ^^

that or have a pure 3* type of token

Meto5000

Thanos wrote:

Meto5000 wrote:

I think 3* Daken could produce 2x strength 1 strike tiles, and as long as he still tanked green with a high regen people would use him almost as much as they do now.

The Daken change was announced over a month ago. I believe it involved just lowering his strike tile strength. I would almost prefer they had him make only one double strength strike tile cause then he'd synergize much better with Psylockes red.

That was in response to how someone mentioned D3s crusade to get us to use more health packs and how Daken's regen alone makes him a high tier character just because he tanks green.

Unknown

BigMac3 wrote:

Please nerf the hell out of Classic Magneto. I understand that he's an uber-mutant in the lore, but he's obnoxiously powerful in this game. I hate fighting him, no matter the build i'm facing. I have no particular fixes for him, but raising the AP on both his red, blue, and purple may be appropriate. He's fantastically powerful at the moment and I hate to have him on the other side.

Before I could use Mags myself, I always denied him blue. Plus the computer never could use Mags to his full potential.

When I finally got him to decent levels and could start using him, I got these impressions: At 7 AP for blue, Mags was useful to me but not too powerful. At 6 AP, I started seeing his true potential, but I didn't feel he was overpowered. At 5 AP, I totally understood the problem, being able to create those neverending criticals. Now I use him as often as I can, despite the nerf threat hanging over us.

Now, I feel that raising his AP cost for blue to only 6 AP at level 5 would actually solve the problem with his blue ability. His red ability is way too cheap when it costs only 2 AP. 4 AP is something I can generate quite easily, often enough to be useful, not often enough to be overpowered. 3 AP would probably also be overpowered.

His purple ability isn't really a problem, it has a decent cost and does decent damage when it works like it should, but why are the number of moved tiles random? It should be fixed, as long as there are enough tiles to move.

Unknown

SunCrusher wrote:

I really appreciate that there's 'funbalancing' and that the devs are interested in keeping a good balanced game going, but from a 'playing catch up/I'm not good enough or spending enough to be running at the front of the pack' point of perspective, this is getting really, really old and YES, I HAVE spent money and more than just $10 on this game.

Kind of makes me glad I never got a chance to build CMags even though Mags is my favorite character. How ironic; I'm getting my CMags blue card tomorrow!

So I guess what's becoming a pattern now is, 1) release some decently powerful/useful characters, 2) the people who were able to build them first get the most out of them, 3) when it's time to move on, nerf the heck out of them because of the supposed OP-ness, and 4) leaving behind neutered characters for the people who never had the chance to build them at the beginning?

1) I got my first Ragnarok pull right before his nerf.

2) I just started building Wolverine and Thor right before both of their nerfs.

3) I built OBW to being something a little more than tissue a few weeks before her nerf.

4) I get my CMags blue card tomorrow (yeah, I missed some logins) and his nerf is coming up.

5) I was just ready to start being able to truly participate in the Lightning Rounds when the cards got removed from the Lightning Rounds.

Is this ever going to end or is the message I'm supposed to be getting is, "Either cough up more money or simply be content playing with everyone's leftover neutered characters when they finally become unpopular because they're finally deemed too OP and all the big boys and girls no longer want him around?"

I admit this; there's a personal bend to this gripe and I can admit to it.

Thing is, I pulled CMags as my first introductory Heroic Token pull way back when and I so tinykitty looked forward to building him (didn't give too much of a care about the others) that I pushed myself to participate in events so I could finally participate in his LRs so I could build him some more... only to not just have the LRs end but to also see him nerfed before I could play him as he was originally created.

Really, really disappointed that this is the pattern that I've personally kept experiencing.

The only reason I'm not more upset is because I spent my money on roster slots and not on covers.

I never got a chance to use Spiderman before they nerfed him but I had to play against him on occasions and boy was he annoying. Now, I have maxed his covers and built him the way I want, I use him often because he's still really good, and he's still annoying but not as massively annoying as before. So I appreciate some "funbalancing", at least in this case.

Actually, it was the same with Ragnarok. Never got to use him before the nerf but had to play against him and he was way too powerful. Now, I have him myself and he's still annoying and powerful, his abilities often tie into each other so he still seems like a neverending strike machine to me, but now he's not so incredibly overpowered as before.

The common factor regarding these and other nerfs seem to be that there's often one or several abilities that are too cheap, creating completely ridiculous situations. That was the case with Spidey, that was the case with Rag and it is the case with Mags.

But yes, I have also seen that pattern and it kind of feels like we were a little late to the party, but I think you arrived even later than I did. Before the healing nerf, I rushed from 0 to 900 in no time, in the PvPs. Then I started entering 3-star land and suddenly I couldn't even reach 800. And then they nerfed healing. Lol.

Unknown

Re: valuting

What if each player were given their own personal vault. Put Loki in the vault and you can no longer get his covers from tokens. Make vault slot costs similar to roster slot costs and voila. Players pay a small convenience fee to stop getting drops they don't want.

Can have different tier's of vaults for 1*,2*,3*, and even 4* all priced differently but have a soft cap of number of slots for each tier so you cannot vault ~everyone~ and the RNG still has a job, but who wouldn't buy some vault slots to make your chances of something you need from tokens go down to like 1/8 from 1/28

Unknown

Knyghtmare wrote:

Since death brackets were mentioned, one thing that would prevent it greatly is to not allow alliance members to fight each other (major trick used is to attack shielded members in your team). It would also help accidental attack which create drama. Think about it, if you were in a real-life alliance, would you attack your friend. It may not fix it completely, but it would definitely help.

That is actually a super good suggestion that would completely halt the point inflation where the super alliances keep attacking their teammates to boost all their scores up into oblivion (1500 and above).

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

As a 2* player I'm excited by the 2* Daken and Hawkeye updates. Also glad I didn't invest in CMags yet!

In Hearthstone, the devs allow full crafting cost refunds for changed cards for a limited amount of time. Do you think MPQ might be able to do something similar (i.e. CMags sells for more iso for a week or two post-change)?

Previous nerfs have come with a possibility to sell the whole character and get sh*tloads of iso and hp for it, but then you're back to square zero if you ever want to build that character again. So a complete refund of all iso and covers on that character would be nicer to get.

Unknown

For the Sentry versus boost abuse, it's both. Boosts are abusive, and Sentry happens to be most overpowered in combination with boost abuse but he's still overpowered without them. For boosts, it seems to me they tried to pull the plug on boosts with teamups, with the whole 'boosts are kind of cheaty' bit, except they didn't actually pull the plug as long as you still pay for them. I used to compare boosts to taking extra turns, but recently I realized this is a bad analogy because an extra turn is only possible against an all goons team. Rather, we have to model boosts like this. Suppose you're given a certain number of rounds where all enemy's ability to do damage and gather AP is suppressed, and you gather normal AP and match damage (or no match damage if you want to be fair, but it's fairly irrelevent unless you're running Daken). How long do you need the other side suppressed to get 6 AP of 2-4 colors you need? Well, that's really the same as any normal game you play without the benefit of this magical ability, and it can take a long time to get 6 AP of the colors you need because the other side is at least moving the board so you can't possibly say make a move such that the next move is a match 5 (because the enemy would take it on their turn).

For Sentry, the problem is that in this game you can say that in the absence of AP acceleration abilities (Magnetic Field, Dormammu's Aid, Aggressive Recon) it's roughly exponentially difficult to get one more match. That is a 4 match move is likely at least twice as hard to get compared to a 3 match move, which isn't surprising when you consider a lot of the time the board doesn't start out with 10-12 tiles of a given color let alone letting you match them all. Sentry has 2 match 3 moves that are effectively game over when used in combination, and if we assume the scaling is twice as hard, then getting 2 3 match moves is no harder than a single 4 match move. I'd argue realistically it's far easier to gather the former, but even if it's not, no 4 match move ends a game as reliably as Sacrifice + World Rupture. Thunder Strike is the only thing that comes close, and you still need about 2 match's worth of greens (it'd rarely going to provide all 14 green AP by itself), and Call the Storm is devastating but not enough to end a game by itself. After that you got Rage of the Panther, and then nothing else is even close. And this also goes back to boosts. Intimidation + World Rupture + Sacrifice can very reliably end any game and that's 3 match 3 moves, which is already relatively easy to get, but if you start out with 6 AP on red/yellow/black, you suddenly only need 1 match of each, which is trivial. If you started with 6y + 6g, you'd still need 2 matches to get a Thunder Strike going, and again I'd argue the scaling factor between # of matches is not just a factor of 2. That is, I can't think of anything outside of a truly bad board where you can't collect 1 match of 3 colors, but getting 2 match of a given color can take a while even on perfectly normal boards.

So one really cheap fix would be to increase World Rupture and Sacrifice to 10+ AP. That'd slow down the combo exponentially, but I don't like going that way because I do like Sentry's design of a fast character that has drawbacks instead of just another guy with really big moves that kills everything.

CrookedKnight

PPPlaya wrote:

First of all Loki 2 Star confirmed.

I am 100% down for Kid Loki to join the 2-star ranks.

Meto5000

@Phantron

Something happened to me yesterday that's never happened before in my 150+ days of playing. For five straight turns got a match 3 green with Daken and with no cascades or stealing I cast Call the Storm on turn six. It was glorious.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

The 3* is a good guy at heart, when it comes down to it. Really.

Hmmm...The Void finally?

vudu3

Daige wrote:

Knyghtmare wrote:

Since death brackets were mentioned, one thing that would prevent it greatly is to not allow alliance members to fight each other (major trick used is to attack shielded members in your team). It would also help accidental attack which create drama. Think about it, if you were in a real-life alliance, would you attack your friend. It may not fix it completely, but it would definitely help.

That is actually a super good suggestion that would completely halt the point inflation where the super alliances keep attacking their teammates to boost all their scores up into oblivion (1500 and above).

This would stop X-Men from attacking X-Men but it would do nothing to stop X-Men from attacking X-Men 2, X-Men 3 or X-Men 4 players. Same goes for the 5DX alliances.

mischiefmaker

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Re: valuting

What if each player were given their own personal vault. Put Loki in the vault and you can no longer get his covers from tokens. Make vault slot costs similar to roster slot costs and voila. Players pay a small convenience fee to stop getting drops they don't want.

Can have different tier's of vaults for 1*,2*,3*, and even 4* all priced differently but have a soft cap of number of slots for each tier so you cannot vault ~everyone~ and the RNG still has a job, but who wouldn't buy some vault slots to make your chances of something you need from tokens go down to like 1/8 from 1/28

Personal vaults are a great idea -- good for D3, because they'll make more money, and good for players, because it'll reduce the frustration of opening tokens to get characters you already have. Also, good for optimizers, who get an opportunity to break out a spreadsheet to figure out whether buying personal vault slots is a good idea or not.