The monotony of PVP

Unknown

LoreNYC wrote:

The raw nuts and bolts. This is a match 3 game with a variety of characters and abilities. All rewards and point systems have little to do with the fun part of the game. Using a variety of enemies to play against a different set of enemies is fun and sometimes challenging. Who can triple buff hop and shield more often than the next guy with the exact same party every time is not. Oh and yes you can use anyone. Right that argument. Well if you want stupid fast wins you use sentry. You can't have any variety as long is there's a character who can do like 12k to each of 3 enemies on his own in 3 turns. May as well make a character who let's you win automatically for 20hp and 240 ISO without bothering to load the fight screen.

D3 is aware sentry is broken. Very very broken. They're looking into it carefully because of all the people who went out and fully covered him with cash so they could also be competitive. They obviously have to be careful with their comments and deflect to metrics and what not to avoid blame but the fact is that he was intentionally released as broken to make cash. Fine his time is up already. Can we have variety back?

But putting things off just makes it worse because unless they plan on never fixing it you're just going to have more people who feel they must have Sentry and either quit the game because they don't or spend money on him and that gets more angry people when they eventually do fix him.

I don't think Sentry was released to make money. They must not have thought about how willing people are to buy boosts even when it costs a significant amount of HP, which greatly amplifies Sentry's advantage. Not that he's fair without boosts, but starting with 6 AP in 2 colors turns the game into making 2 matches and then it's probably over. The problem I have with D3 is that they seem to assume problem with a small portion of the game doesn't matter. That's not to say I believe catering to people at the top is necessarily good thing, but if there's some really bizarre behavior at the top it tends to indicate the underlying game is messed up. The PvP Sentry bombing is both a symptom of a character being too powerful and that boosts skew the game. This is similar to the problem of how high end PvE is all around playing every 2H 24M. It's not that a bunch of crazy guys at the top play every 2H 24M is a problem. It's that the system greatly punishes those for missing any cycle that should be fixed, and the guys at the top is an extreme example of the system's flaw.

LegendReborn

The point wasn't that Sentry was released to make money but, instead, that he's been so dominant for so long, that many players have invested money to get covers on him and to nerf him too much would cause a massive backlash among consumers who were most willing to spend money. I don't agree with how long it has taken to nerf him but I do understand the pickle D3 have put themselves in by making covers able to be purchased and making them as expensive as they are now. Mind you, I don't have any sympathy for them because I think the covers are stupidly expensive and create a pay or wait many months environment so I think they deserve all the flak they receive.

Unknown

LegendReborn wrote:

The point wasn't that Sentry was released to make money but, instead, that he's been so dominant for so long, that many players have invested money to get covers on him and to nerf him too much would cause a massive backlash among consumers who were most willing to spend money. I don't agree with how long it has taken to nerf him but I do understand the pickle D3 have put themselves in by making covers able to be purchased and making them as expensive as they are now. Mind you, I don't have any sympathy for them because I think the covers are stupidly expensive and create a pay or wait many months environment so I think they deserve all the flak they receive.

They're trying to think of a way to weasel their way out of not nerfing him but Sentry's power is way too high for this to happen.

For example, Thor is also quite overpowered, but maybe they can get away with it now that X Force might be the best big everything guy, even though he is a higher star tier. The Hood is also way overpowered, but maybe if they released enough guys that can kill him in one move people might not notice how powerful he is. I'm not convinced these strategies actually work, but it's plausible they might succeed or at least work as a reasonable distraction. Sentry isn't going to somehow be okay just by power creep or some shift in meta game unless there's a new character whose ability is "instantly kills a guy with red/green/yellow as their primarily colors in that exact order (so Thor/Patch doesn't apply)'.

quadiak

In the fictional reality of the marvel universe Sentry is actually this strong, if not even stronger. With this in mind I can see how it may be difficult to justify a Sentry nerf and stay true to the character. On the other hand Sentry is rarely seen in comics where there are groups of: x-men, avengers, even dark reign.

That being said I would propose that Sentry not be nerfed in terms of strength and abilities, instead he should have a daily timer, where as he can only be used a certain amount of times per day. Because no other character has any type of daily limiting factor, I think it would make an interesting and effective game change, especially if he was reduced to only a single use every 12 or 24 hrs. I understand that reducing his hit point value is not really staying true to the character, however I think it would still be an effective yet easy change for d3 to manage, and simply make him less of a tank. Even out his hit points on a scale along with patch and mags or even black panther.

Unknown

Pretty sure "staying true to the character" is not something on their To-Do List...this is a game where guys like Hawkeye and Daredevil can effortlessly crush guys like Juggernaut and where Nick Fury can beat up Sentry...

mohio

Don't want to quote a bunch of guys, but my big issue with monotony in pvp boils down to all matches being the same almost regardless of who the opponents are. There is no "puzzle" in this puzzle quest game. I don't even really need to tailor my team to better counter my opponent's team. The player has such an advantage over the AI, that just brute forcing your main strategy is likely going to be the best strategy. This is all with or without sentry, although he clearly is a huge culprit in the matter since if you're playing him the game becomes "get to 7 green and 8 yellow and win".

At least in pve sometimes your main guys are locked out (either from heroic mode or on the opposing team) so you have to come up with different teams to counter what they're doing. You also don't have to worry about a defensive team so you can use "suboptimal" chars that you like or are just fun to play.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

Don't want to quote a bunch of guys, but my big issue with monotony in pvp boils down to all matches being the same almost regardless of who the opponents are. There is no "puzzle" in this puzzle quest game. I don't even really need to tailor my team to better counter my opponent's team. The player has such an advantage over the AI, that just brute forcing your main strategy is likely going to be the best strategy. This is all with or without sentry, although he clearly is a huge culprit in the matter since if you're playing him the game becomes "get to 7 green and 8 yellow and win".

At least in pve sometimes your main guys are locked out (either from heroic mode or on the opposing team) so you have to come up with different teams to counter what they're doing. You also don't have to worry about a defensive team so you can use "suboptimal" chars that you like or are just fun to play.

There's plenty of stuff to figure out if you don't have Magneto or Sentry that just utterly dominates a game. The most strategy insensitive team would likely be Daken + Falcon, but even there you've to make sure all the chains you're putting together doesn't end up with you leaving a color completely uncontested.

I think people are just too used to max boosting and Sentry bombing their way and they somehow think that's how they'd have played normally. Without boosts bailing you out of any board problems it is quite easy to get a board where there aren't 3 available matches for green or yellow or both for a very long time. Looking at people's progress in PvE where it'd be prohibitive to run HP boosts on every fight I do not see how the human have any advantage aside from boosts over the AI given how quickly people flame out even with really cheap characters on their side.

Unknown

I dunno, I made my way from 0 to 940 points in less than an hour yesterday using LDaken and Patch with no boosts or TU's. From there (obv) it's Sentrybomb city, but there was virtually no challenge to me before that point.

h4n1s

DrUnpleasant wrote:

from 0 to 940 points in less than an hour

can't wait to have any of those two leveled to some competitive level. With solid 2* roster in transition to 3* roster it in average takes me 1 hour to get like 300 points tops in PvP disregarding the featured character...

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

I dunno, I made my way from 0 to 940 points in less than an hour yesterday using LDaken and Patch with no boosts or TU's. From there (obv) it's Sentrybomb city, but there was virtually no challenge to me before that point.

That's the advantage to just playing late.

No one above your desired tanked level can see you and in the 'less than an hour' many people probably didn't find you in their queue since half the gaming population was shielded at that point. Also by waiting until the end, all the scores were inflated a lot more meaning you fight easier opponents for much longer.

Patch / Daken would get demolished once you reach a majority of the other people using the blue orangutan and 2 * 166

But for all the people who cry about Patch getting destroyed in cmag nerf, he still has a ton of great combos and is still a top 10 character. Just not when you can use Sentry's green instead . . .

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

I dunno, I made my way from 0 to 940 points in less than an hour yesterday using LDaken and Patch with no boosts or TU's. From there (obv) it's Sentrybomb city, but there was virtually no challenge to me before that point.

I don't see how that's even possible unless all your opponents are vastly weaker than you. If you get 40 points per game and was never attacked, you need to play 24 games in an hour which averages out to less than 3 minutes per game. You can only attack from green with this combination. Your own team has Daken and Patch, which means a lot of 'Healing & Heat' and 'Healing Factor' slow down. You can't even blitz a strong character like Thor, Sentry, or Hulk with damage because you got no cheap combos. Magneto slows down the game with his very long animation on Magnetized Particles, and Daken/Patch would just be mirror matches. Even if you just lucked out and fought a bunch of 2* teams, your team composition prevents you from using Berserker Rage early on and it still takes a while to match 3 your way against a 2* Thor or Ares.

Unknown

LoreNYC wrote:

But for all the people who cry about Patch getting destroyed in cmag nerf, he still has a ton of great combos and is still a top 10 character.

Patch would be more useful if there weren't so many people who steal his main match colors from him, making him not nearly as good a regen tank as he should be. Low hit point characters like Hood, Falcon, HT, and MoStorm who all desperately need a bodyguard take colors from him, colors you generally want to be grabbing if you're going to use them. Even Sentry, Thor, BP, Cap, IM40, Spidey, Cap Marvel, Deadpool, and Psylocke all take one of his main match colors. That's half of the 3* characters in the game, including most of the top tier powerwise. It's pretty easy to make a team that looks good on paper only to realize Patch is going to end up tanking just a single color, and that's before you consider the boosted featured character in most PvPs. His regen is great for sustainability when you can leverage it, but that isn't always that easy, and in a post-Patchneto world it's going to be that much harder.

_RiO_

Ralstonator wrote:

Pretty sure "staying true to the character" is not something on their To-Do List...this is a game where guys like Hawkeye and Daredevil can effortlessly crush guys like Juggernaut and where Nick Fury can beat up Sentry...

It's only on their to-do list when it stacks the odds in favor of the AI and gets you to spend HP on boosts or health-packs.
Like when Demiurge_Will made his crazy argument that countdown tiles generated from team-ups should not be linked to anyone on the enemy team, because "it doesn't fit the story" behind the team-up moves...

Unknown

quadiak wrote:

In the fictional reality of the marvel universe Sentry is actually this strong, if not even stronger. With this in mind I can see how it may be difficult to justify a Sentry nerf and stay true to the character. On the other hand Sentry is rarely seen in comics where there are groups of: x-men, avengers, even dark reign.

That being said I would propose that Sentry not be nerfed in terms of strength and abilities, instead he should have a daily timer, where as he can only be used a certain amount of times per day. Because no other character has any type of daily limiting factor, I think it would make an interesting and effective game change, especially if he was reduced to only a single use every 12 or 24 hrs. I understand that reducing his hit point value is not really staying true to the character, however I think it would still be an effective yet easy change for d3 to manage, and simply make him less of a tank. Even out his hit points on a scale along with patch and mags or even black panther.

I agree with what you are saying here. But I have to add 1 thing...

In the Fictional World of Marvel... Sentry gets beat. And Sentry gets beat by, of all the worst characters in this game... Yelena Belova. I won't argue the symantic about how or whatever, fact of the matter, she beat him. She is arguably one of the worst characters in the game.

So, should they buff her to be a unique Sentry killer? Or should they maybe consider re-balancing both of these 2 characters in particular...?

mohio

Phantron wrote:

mohio wrote:

Don't want to quote a bunch of guys, but my big issue with monotony in pvp boils down to all matches being the same almost regardless of who the opponents are. There is no "puzzle" in this puzzle quest game. I don't even really need to tailor my team to better counter my opponent's team. The player has such an advantage over the AI, that just brute forcing your main strategy is likely going to be the best strategy. This is all with or without sentry, although he clearly is a huge culprit in the matter since if you're playing him the game becomes "get to 7 green and 8 yellow and win".

At least in pve sometimes your main guys are locked out (either from heroic mode or on the opposing team) so you have to come up with different teams to counter what they're doing. You also don't have to worry about a defensive team so you can use "suboptimal" chars that you like or are just fun to play.

There's plenty of stuff to figure out if you don't have Magneto or Sentry that just utterly dominates a game. The most strategy insensitive team would likely be Daken + Falcon, but even there you've to make sure all the chains you're putting together doesn't end up with you leaving a color completely uncontested.

I think people are just too used to max boosting and Sentry bombing their way and they somehow think that's how they'd have played normally. Without boosts bailing you out of any board problems it is quite easy to get a board where there aren't 3 available matches for green or yellow or both for a very long time. Looking at people's progress in PvE where it'd be prohibitive to run HP boosts on every fight I do not see how the human have any advantage aside from boosts over the AI given how quickly people flame out even with really cheap characters on their side.

The advantages over the AI I was referring to are going first and being able to set the AI up with match 4s that do nothing for them. Additionally the AI sometimes doesn't really stick to a plan. E.g. They're one yellow match away from thunder strike but they make a red instead of an available yellow cause it'll deal more damage.

As for the strategy thing maybe I'm too focused on the top tier characters since I'm now in the position where I have them all. I can run daken/LT against basically any team combination and while they might not be the optimal team to counter who my opponents are, it doesn't really matter cause I can just do my thing, collect some green and yellow and red and end the game. Same thing can be said for patchneto or sentry teams. They might have to strategize a little due to a bad board but the end goal is the same every time and will work against any team. The only chars who make me alter how I play or who I use are hood and hulk (and I guess cpt marvel, but no one really uses her).

Anyway, my main point is that pvp right now would be monotonous regardless of the opponents, because we aren't forced or incentivized to use anyone besides our top 3 or 4 guys and those teams play each match more or less the same.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

The advantages over the AI I was referring to are going first and being able to set the AI up with match 4s that do nothing for them. Additionally the AI sometimes doesn't really stick to a plan. E.g. They're one yellow match away from thunder strike but they make a red instead of an available yellow cause it'll deal more damage.

As for the strategy thing maybe I'm too focused on the top tier characters since I'm now in the position where I have them all. I can run daken/LT against basically any team combination and while they might not be the optimal team to counter who my opponents are, it doesn't really matter cause I can just do my thing, collect some green and yellow and red and end the game. Same thing can be said for patchneto or sentry teams. They might have to strategize a little due to a bad board but the end goal is the same every time and will work against any team. The only chars who make me alter how I play or who I use are hood and hulk (and I guess cpt marvel, but no one really uses her).

Anyway, my main point is that pvp right now would be monotonous regardless of the opponents, because we aren't forced or incentivized to use anyone besides our top 3 or 4 guys and those teams play each match more or less the same.

While I'm not a big fan of rainbow coverage it is probably your opponent's fault if they can easily let you setup any color that isn't TU in a match 4 that doesn't benefit them more than you. Starting first is a huge advantage but I don't see any clear ways to go about it, because if you make it 50/50 then that means you can easily go on a bad streak where the AI always go first and also have boards where the first guy who moves will easily win (stuff that starts out with multiple available match 5s, for example) and that's a bit too random.

At the high end of PvP right now it's mostly get your green/yellow, which naturally denies the other side from getting green/yellow and you'll probably be fine because the vast majority of the top characters are on green/yellow for their primary attacks. This is a game design issue that should be fixed by reassigning colors. If World Rupture is on purple and Sacrifice is on blue, that'd make the usual green/yellow strategy pretty ineffective when facing the most powerful PvP character in the game. I think they need to just stop with their obsession with the color distribution and balance it accordingly. It doesn't have to be perfect but right now it's like green >= yellow >>>>> everything else minus purple (because purple doesn't exist as a color).

wymtime

I think one thing they are trying to do before they nerf Sentry is to find some players to counter him. CMags will now throw out 9 protect tiles that can overwrite CD. Beast for as bad as he feels can give temp healing and protect tiles. She-Hulk does strong board shake up and Colosus is comming out as the Tank of all Tanks!! They have even stopped boosts from dropping so you only get TU.

The problem is boost+Sentry=high scoring, higher progressions, higher placement. If they want to keep Sentry the same they should just eliminate AP boosts. This will make players need to generate 3 matches of green and yellow to kill everyone. People will still use Hood to make this happen faster but at least it will create a battle instead of the current game set. Sentry+boosts is broken. Without boosts Sentry is really good, and would still be everyone's defense of choice but he will no longer be broken.

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

I think one thing they are trying to do before they nerf Sentry is to find some players to counter him. CMags will now throw out 9 protect tiles that can overwrite CD. Beast for as bad as he feels can give temp healing and protect tiles. She-Hulk does strong board shake up and Colosus is comming out as the Tank of all Tanks!! They have even stopped boosts from dropping so you only get TU.

The problem is boost+Sentry=high scoring, higher progressions, higher placement. If they want to keep Sentry the same they should just eliminate AP boosts. This will make players need to generate 3 matches of green and yellow to kill everyone. People will still use Hood to make this happen faster but at least it will create a battle instead of the current game set. Sentry+boosts is broken. Without boosts Sentry is really good, and would still be everyone's defense of choice but he will no longer be broken.

That's only because everyone else is also a lot worse without boosts. 7g + 8y is still generally much easier to get than 12y + handful of green for Thor, and that isn't enough to put the game away most of the time. Likewise 12 black can't put the game away either on Black Panther. Getting rid of boosts would rein in the crazy score inflation, but it doesn't make Sentry any more fair. It might work as a band-aid because a lot of people can't seem to figure out that ending a fight early results you taking way less damage than Sentry's self inflicted damage, but that'd be a dangerous model to balance anything on. I use World Rupture on 2* teams that I run into because I only take about 1200 damage (600 to 3 guys but Daken gets to regen that for free) and even a 2* move can do more than that, and as your opponents get stronger the tradeoff becomes increasingly in favor of just using World Rupture on everything.

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

I think one thing they are trying to do before they nerf Sentry is to find some players to counter him. CMags will now throw out 9 protect tiles that can overwrite CD. Beast for as bad as he feels can give temp healing and protect tiles. She-Hulk does strong board shake up and Colosus is comming out as the Tank of all Tanks!! They have even stopped boosts from dropping so you only get TU.

The problem is boost+Sentry=high scoring, higher progressions, higher placement. If they want to keep Sentry the same they should just eliminate AP boosts. This will make players need to generate 3 matches of green and yellow to kill everyone. People will still use Hood to make this happen faster but at least it will create a battle instead of the current game set. Sentry+boosts is broken. Without boosts Sentry is really good, and would still be everyone's defense of choice but he will no longer be broken.

Based on the current state of PvP, eliminating boosts will just increase the need and frequency of shields. It will become arguably more P2W because at least half the boosts could be purchased with ISO. PvP will turn into a cesspool of frustration and burnout as you are forced to shield after every battle (or two if you're lucky).

Phaserhawk

X-Force comes the closest to countering Sentry, not even the new C.Mags can. Assume a game with no TU's. Sentry gets 16 tiles out, you destroy a few, CD tile to 1, Sacrfice is cast, you get hit, maybe some more tiles die. You have this turn to difuse the situation. Lets ay there are 12 tiles from the original 16 plus the Sacrfice tile. You you have 13 enemy tiles. You can overlap all and create 9 tiles. If my math serves me correct you have a 2.8% chance of destroying the Sacrifice tile and a 25% of converting at least 1 tile to your defensive tile, because face it, unless you can destroy that sacrifce tile, even Mags shields won't save you, however X-Force and C-Mags are probably your best 2 options since they are reactive, the preventative method of Hailstorm or Falcon's purple makes it harder to control.

Sentry warps the enviornment, he just does, and that is not good. It's okay to have a "Best Lineup" because that does give order, but there always needs to be a counter. Magic the Gathering is an example of this, there is many times a top deck or maybe decks that win the fastest with the least amount of resources or effort and they defeat a majority of the enviornment. However, most of the time one can create a counter deck that can complete destroy the top deck, the only problem is that it usually doesn't fair well as it is so specific, however in MPQ you could always leave the counter lineup as your defensive match. If everyone pushes with Sentry/Daken/Hood because its the fastest, but a lineup of X/Y/Z completely hoses that matchup, but it in itself is countered because it cannot push with the speed of Sentry/Daken/Hood, well at least you have a form of control. You can slow or stop a deck with a counter, but the counter deck could not be used to push as it is slow. This forces the "pushers' to have to reinvent the way they push in a PvP enviornment, and that's where you begin to see diversity.