Oh right... The Cash Grab Aspect

Raffoon

So I'm sitting here thinking.... who ever can fill this massive hole in my roster for the purple active ability slot? Oh I know, FURY!

So now they've created a massive hole for which people to pour their money. Level up your purple Fury slots now to fill in the gap!

Suddenly the color swap for Magneto purple makes sense!

NorthernPolarity

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Unknown

No, don't shuffle away just yet crowds, I think OP actually has a good point here. The obvious red replacement is Deadpool (or CapMarvel) and the obvious purple replacement is Fury (or DeadPool). Let's take a wild guess at where the fewest covers in the game currently exist, and the least leveled characters.

They would be...?

Furthermore, none of this impacts in any way on the 'must-have' whale (cMags' old function, after Rags): Sentry, where all of the ISO must now flow to be competitive in PvP.

Want to guess who we'll be talking about being nerfed in a month from now?

Raffoon

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Taking away one of the few strong options in a color that's overall weak and underrepresented, so that the clear best option is behind a paywall? Seems a bit different than your standard meta shift, I'd say.

Spoit

qtquazar wrote:

No, don't shuffle away just yet crowds, I think OP actually has a good point here. The obvious red replacement is Deadpool (or CapMarvel) and the obvious purple replacement is Fury (or DeadPool). Let's take a wild guess at where the fewest covers in the game currently exist, and the least leveled characters.

They would be...?

Furthermore, none of this impacts in any way on the 'must-have' whale (cMags' old function, after Rags): Sentry, where all of the ISO must now flow to be competitive in PvP.

Want to guess who we'll be talking about being nerfed in a month from now?

D-deadpool? But he's already only B-tier to begin with!

(But really no one, since when have they been able to have only a single month turn around?)

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

qtquazar wrote:

No, don't shuffle away just yet crowds, I think OP actually has a good point here. The obvious red replacement is Deadpool (or CapMarvel) and the obvious purple replacement is Fury (or DeadPool). Let's take a wild guess at where the fewest covers in the game currently exist, and the least leveled characters.

They would be...?

Furthermore, none of this impacts in any way on the 'must-have' whale (cMags' old function, after Rags): Sentry, where all of the ISO must now flow to be competitive in PvP.

Want to guess who we'll be talking about being nerfed in a month from now?

D-deadpool? But he's already only B-tier to begin with!

(But really no one, since when have they been able to have only a single month turn around?)

Uh, no, not Deadpool. I really hope you were trying to out-facetious me there

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Fair point but it doesn't address the OP. He's giving his hypothesis on the color shift, which was neither a buff nor nerf in and of itself.

Unknown

Ooh, I never thought of the color shift as a money maker. Thats good. I'd also like to point out that they nerfed him and not sentry because sentry encourages the purchase of health packs with his self damage. Cmags won too fast to take a lot of damage, discouraging the purchase of health packs. Yes, cmags was agnowledged as op way before sentry was, but in any well run game the most needed balances should happen first. The most needed balances were sentry and cmags. It's the same logic with hawk, who was totally nerfed no matter what d3 says. Avoid meant you didn't have to use health packs on him. So they got rid of it. Laken now heals less, encouraging the use of health packs. See a pattern?

Unknown

qtquazar wrote:

No, don't shuffle away just yet crowds, I think OP actually has a good point here. The obvious red replacement is Deadpool (or CapMarvel) and the obvious purple replacement is Fury (or DeadPool). Let's take a wild guess at where the fewest covers in the game currently exist, and the least leveled characters.

They would be...?

Furthermore, none of this impacts in any way on the 'must-have' whale (cMags' old function, after Rags): Sentry, where all of the ISO must now flow to be competitive in PvP.

Want to guess who we'll be talking about being nerfed in a month from now?

Icex did say a while ago that they were looking at sentry next for balancing

NorthernPolarity

Raffoon wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Taking away one of the few strong options in a color that's overall weak and underrepresented, so that the clear best option is behind a paywall? Seems a bit different than your standard meta shift, I'd say.

Do you seriously think that D3 is cunning and deceitful enough to recognize that by removing C. Mags purple, people will move to Fury as a response? What happened to all the forum posts that claimed that d3 had no idea what they were doing when they implemented team-ups and released underpowered characters like beast? I'm getting tired of seeing all of the posts where people are accusing d3 of cash grabs premised on the thinnest of threads.

Here's another, more plausable scenario:
Faceless Dev 1 : "Hey guys, C. Mags has color strengths of blue/yellow/red, lets change the abilities to match those colors like we're doing for Daken while we're doing this redesign thing."
Faceless Dev 2 : "Hmm... translocation feels more blue than yellow (or coercive field feels more yellow than blue)... lets swap the colors".

This is the exact reasoning presented in the C. Mags change post, and it seems very much like we're putting on tin foil hats if we're assuming that a cash grab is the main reason otherwise.

h4n1s

There should be a specific forum alongside Tips & guides and General discussion which will be perfect fit for topics like this one.... lets call it... hmm.. Conspiracy theories... yep that's right, in few weeks it would beat General discussion in amount of topics opened.

Spoit

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Taking away one of the few strong options in a color that's overall weak and underrepresented, so that the clear best option is behind a paywall? Seems a bit different than your standard meta shift, I'd say.

Do you seriously think that D3 is cunning and deceitful enough to recognize that by removing C. Mags purple, people will move to Fury as a response? What happened to all the forum posts that claimed that d3 had no idea what they were doing when they implemented team-ups and released underpowered characters like beast? I'm getting tired of seeing all of the posts where people are accusing d3 of cash grabs premised on the thinnest of threads.

Here's another, more plausable scenario:
Faceless Dev 1 : "Hey guys, C. Mags has color strengths of blue/yellow/red, lets change the abilities to match those colors like we're doing for Daken while we're doing this redesign thing."
Faceless Dev 2 : "Hmm... translocation feels more blue than yellow (or coercive field feels more yellow than blue)... lets swap the colors".

This is the exact reasoning presented in the C. Mags change post, and it seems very much like we're putting on tin foil hats if we're assuming that a cash grab is the main reason otherwise.

In that case, wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to make the defense tile move purple? Purple is the color of spidey's passive, the flock of falcons, and bullseye isn't it?

And the TU tile destruction should have been yellow, as it's just a higher damage, higher cascade, but still ultimately worse version of storm's yellow.

Unknown

Who need a purple skill when you have a sentry?

Unknown

Justdangit wrote:

Who need a purple skill when you have a sentry?

And who all have Sentry?

Only it seems the top Aliancers, and the Whales.

And who can defend against Sentry now that Mags is down?

Not to many....

X-Force has a chance at removing the countdown tiles, but only if you have his powers at a high enough level.
Hulk, but only if he is not downed.
The new Mags has a chance at overwriting the tiles if and only if you have 5 covers.
Either of the Caps can but only maybe 2 of the tiles.

Of course there is the denial game.
The Stealers: OBW and the Hood. But in the 3* game OBW is just too squishy and now has less to hide behind (one fewer character that can tank Purple.)
Hood, is ok, but in the long run you are only prolonging the inevitable.

Sentry is Marvel's "Superman" and the Devs have finally made him so.

So did I miss anyone?

wymtime

dragma wrote:

Justdangit wrote:

Who need a purple skill when you have a sentry?

And who all have Sentry?

Only it seems the top Aliancers, and the Whales.

And who can defend against Sentry now that Mags is down?

Not to many....

X-Force has a chance at removing the countdown tiles, but only if you have his powers at a high enough level.
Hulk, but only if he is not downed.
The new Mags has a chance at overwriting the tiles if and only if you have 5 covers.
Either of the Caps can but only maybe 2 of the tiles.

Of course there is the denial game.
The Stealers: OBW and the Hood. But in the 3* game OBW is just too squishy and now has less to hide behind (one fewer character that can tank Purple.)
Hood, is ok, but in the long run you are only prolonging the inevitable.

Sentry is Marvel's "Superman" and the Devs have finally made him so.

So did I miss anyone?

You don't have to be a Whale or top alliance to max sentry. He is one of my 4 max covers becuase I did well in his PVP and PVE's that gave him out. My alliance is sometimes top 100 sometimes not. Sentry is definatly OP and will probably get the next fun balancing. I don't think a bunch of people are going to go spend a ton of money so they can have a purple user on there team. A true Whale is buying the covers regardless becuase that is what they do. They want to use a character right away instead of getting covers over time. The dev's make more money by bringing out new characters so people will pay money for HP on roster slots and then buy the covers. I think with the change to CMags purple it means that one of the new 3* will have a purple ability to balance CMags not having one anymore

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

You don't have to be a Whale or top alliance to max sentry. He is one of my 4 max covers becuase I did well in his PVP and PVE's that gave him out. My alliance is sometimes top 100 sometimes not. Sentry is definatly OP and will probably get the next fun balancing. I don't think a bunch of people are going to go spend a ton of money so they can have a purple user on there team. A true Whale is buying the covers regardless becuase that is what they do. They want to use a character right away instead of getting covers over time. The dev's make more money by bringing out new characters so people will pay money for HP on roster slots and then buy the covers. I think with the change to CMags purple it means that one of the new 3* will have a purple ability to balance CMags not having one anymore

You seem to be one of the ones that are the exception, Well done I guess. (though to me Top Alliance means able to make it to the top 100 on a regular basis).

I am more fustrated because my wife has been giving me an earfull how she hates the changes, the problem is that her stratagy has been cMag's heavy. Also her MMR is messed up because all she is seeing now is Sentry+ teams.

My own MMR has evend out, and I am seeing a lot lless intimidating teams. so who knows.

NorthernPolarity

Spoit wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Taking away one of the few strong options in a color that's overall weak and underrepresented, so that the clear best option is behind a paywall? Seems a bit different than your standard meta shift, I'd say.

Do you seriously think that D3 is cunning and deceitful enough to recognize that by removing C. Mags purple, people will move to Fury as a response? What happened to all the forum posts that claimed that d3 had no idea what they were doing when they implemented team-ups and released underpowered characters like beast? I'm getting tired of seeing all of the posts where people are accusing d3 of cash grabs premised on the thinnest of threads.

Here's another, more plausable scenario:
Faceless Dev 1 : "Hey guys, C. Mags has color strengths of blue/yellow/red, lets change the abilities to match those colors like we're doing for Daken while we're doing this redesign thing."
Faceless Dev 2 : "Hmm... translocation feels more blue than yellow (or coercive field feels more yellow than blue)... lets swap the colors".

This is the exact reasoning presented in the C. Mags change post, and it seems very much like we're putting on tin foil hats if we're assuming that a cash grab is the main reason otherwise.

In that case, wouldn't it have made a lot more sense to make the defense tile move purple? Purple is the color of spidey's passive, the flock of falcons, and bullseye isn't it?

And the TU tile destruction should have been yellow, as it's just a higher damage, higher cascade, but still ultimately worse version of storm's yellow.

I'm not arguing that what they decided was the best line of action to take, I'm just saying that their given reason aligns a lot more with their previous, questionable decisions (Messing up Beast's blue, nerfing ragnarok and spidey to the ground, etc) than it being a cash grab (which d3 has tended to not really previously do).

Raffoon

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Taking away one of the few strong options in a color that's overall weak and underrepresented, so that the clear best option is behind a paywall? Seems a bit different than your standard meta shift, I'd say.

Do you seriously think that D3 is cunning and deceitful enough to recognize that by removing C. Mags purple, people will move to Fury as a response? What happened to all the forum posts that claimed that d3 had no idea what they were doing when they implemented team-ups and released underpowered characters like beast? I'm getting tired of seeing all of the posts where people are accusing d3 of cash grabs premised on the thinnest of threads.

Here's another, more plausable scenario:
Faceless Dev 1 : "Hey guys, C. Mags has color strengths of blue/yellow/red, lets change the abilities to match those colors like we're doing for Daken while we're doing this redesign thing."
Faceless Dev 2 : "Hmm... translocation feels more blue than yellow (or coercive field feels more yellow than blue)... lets swap the colors".

This is the exact reasoning presented in the C. Mags change post, and it seems very much like we're putting on tin foil hats if we're assuming that a cash grab is the main reason otherwise.

I mean.... I can make up hypothetical conversations too:

Faceless Dev 1: Hey, let's switch Mag's Yellow match strength to purple so that it matches his abilities, since most people are filling the underrepresented purple active slot with him
Faceless Dev 2: No, let's take away his purple ability so all that's left on the color is Loki, Harvey Birdman (Falcon), Deadpool, and Fury. People are going to want a new purple nuke, so now Fury and Deadpool are going to be the PRIME candidates! We'll make a swimming pool out of money and swim like Scrooge McDuck! Plus, let's make his nuke BLUE!
Faceless Dev 1: But.... there are already barely any purples. That would leave a huge gap in people's rosters. Plus, since when is blue a nuke color? And his costume is purple!
Faceless Dev 2: I don't think you heard me.... a SWIMMING POOL FILLED WITH MONEY

Honestly, I was half joking on my OP, but only half. D3 has a definite history of waiting long enough for everyone to shift to the new favorite, then nerfing them to the ground so that HP has to be spent on another character. Does anyone honestly think that Yellow/Blue/Red makes more sense than Purple/Blue/Red for the character?

NorthernPolarity

Raffoon wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

By that logic anytime a metagame shift occurs due to buffs/nerfs is a cash grab because character X is now better than character Y. Move along people, nothing to see here.

Taking away one of the few strong options in a color that's overall weak and underrepresented, so that the clear best option is behind a paywall? Seems a bit different than your standard meta shift, I'd say.

Do you seriously think that D3 is cunning and deceitful enough to recognize that by removing C. Mags purple, people will move to Fury as a response? What happened to all the forum posts that claimed that d3 had no idea what they were doing when they implemented team-ups and released underpowered characters like beast? I'm getting tired of seeing all of the posts where people are accusing d3 of cash grabs premised on the thinnest of threads.

Here's another, more plausable scenario:
Faceless Dev 1 : "Hey guys, C. Mags has color strengths of blue/yellow/red, lets change the abilities to match those colors like we're doing for Daken while we're doing this redesign thing."
Faceless Dev 2 : "Hmm... translocation feels more blue than yellow (or coercive field feels more yellow than blue)... lets swap the colors".

This is the exact reasoning presented in the C. Mags change post, and it seems very much like we're putting on tin foil hats if we're assuming that a cash grab is the main reason otherwise.

I mean.... I can make up hypothetical conversations too:

Faceless Dev 1: Hey, let's switch Mag's Yellow match strength to purple so that it matches his abilities, since most people are filling the underrepresented purple active slot with him
Faceless Dev 2: No, let's take away his purple ability so all that's left on the color is Loki, Harvey Birdman (Falcon), Deadpool, and Fury. People are going to want a new purple nuke, so now Fury and Deadpool are going to be the PRIME candidates! We'll make a swimming pool out of money and swim like Scrooge McDuck! Plus, let's make his nuke BLUE!
Faceless Dev 1: But.... there are already barely any purples. That would leave a huge gap in people's rosters. Plus, since when is blue a nuke color? And his costume is purple!
Faceless Dev 2: I don't think you heard me.... a SWIMMING POOL FILLED WITH MONEY

Honestly, I was half joking on my OP, but only half. D3 has a definite history of waiting long enough for everyone to shift to the new favorite, then nerfing them to the ground so that HP has to be spent on another character. Does anyone honestly think that Yellow/Blue/Red makes more sense than Purple/Blue/Red for the character?

Yeah, I got that you were have joking, but this is exactly the attitude that's corrupting the f2p fanbase. Everyone is so jaded and paranoid that they'll jump on every little thing no matter how far fetched it is and call it a cash grab! If anything, d3 has had a history of incrementally trying to fix their mistakes at a glacially slow pace and is becoming marginally better. When the Ragnarok nerf happened, everyone complained and called it a cash grab because it was so unannounced. And so what did they do? They released a list of characters that they said that they would nerf, and waited 7 months before posting the announced nerfs 2-3 weeks ahead of time. And you call this behavior a cash grab because people shifted to the "new" favorite? The C. Mags nerf has been announced on the forums for 7 months! How is he a new favorite?

And yes, purple/blue/red is obviously better for the game, but the far more plausable explanation from this is simply from developer incompetency, which has been an issue ever since the beginning of the game. The thing that bothers me is that you're accusing them of being one of those evil, EA types of companies that tries to extort as much money out of their customers when that's not it at all. I wouldn't care at all if you complained about them being lazy, incompetent, or anything along those lines because previous history has definitely indicated tendencies to do that. It's just this f2p fanbase paranoia of every single company trying to screw you out of your money and trying to spin every single little negative change into them trying to cash grab that bothers the hell out of me.

Related tangent: When Hearthstone's Naxxramas expansion was released, I remember seeing people complaining that the expansion was p2w! The entire cost of the expansion was 20 dollars or 2800 gold coins, with daily quests giving you ~50-60 gold per day. Even when a game releases expansions on a model like that, which is honestly the fairest/best example of monetizing f2p games I've ever seen, you still get a ton of completely entitled gamers expecting to get the expansion with 0 work or money. It's utterly ridiculous that people even thought that way at all, and seeing these types of posts is extremely reminiscent of that for me.

babinro

So X-Force switching to Black finally gives us a black skill to use? Sorry...not every game change equates to a cash grab.

Maybe with mags gone people will finally appreciate just how powerful spidey has become since true healing was implemented. He plays beautifully with Deadpool, GSBW, or even just on his own as an hp sponge while you focus on other characters. The best part is that the devs have flooded us with spidey covers to boot! He's the MVP to prolonged play now. Fury is great option...but he's hardly our only viable option.

HailMary

Were they going for a simple cash grab, they could easily have nerfed CMags into the ground (hint: they didn't, see: CMags vs. Ragnarok). Similarly, they could easily have skipped buffing X-Force at all, instead of turning a character that many vets already had a bunch of covers for (and whose covers are part of daily rewards) into a top-tier character.

Typhon13 wrote:

Ooh, I never thought of the color shift as a money maker. Thats good. I'd also like to point out that they nerfed him and not sentry because sentry encourages the purchase of health packs with his self damage. Cmags won too fast to take a lot of damage, discouraging the purchase of health packs.

Health packs aren't a big money maker for MPQ. I have no idea why people keep declaring that health pack purchases are some grand pillar of MPQ revenue. First, it was "True Healing is CLEARLY a health-pack cash grab," and then it's "Sentry's very existence is CLEARLY a health-pack cash grab," and now "the CMags nerf is CLEARLY a health-pack cash grab."

Copy, paste, repeat, facepalm.

Typhon13 wrote:

Yes, cmags was agnowledged as op way before sentry was, but in any well run game the most needed balances should happen first. The most needed balances were sentry and cmags. It's the same logic with hawk, who was totally nerfed no matter what d3 says. Avoid meant you didn't have to use health packs on him. So they got rid of it. Laken now heals less, encouraging the use of health packs. See a pattern?

Yes, CMags is much older than Sentry, and as you yourself noted, CMags' nerf was announced long before Sentry was even introduced. Given that, I don't see how you make the leap to "Sentry wasn't nerfed before/with CMags, thus health-pack cash grab!", and that's without even accounting for the fact that the devs already mentioned that they're trying to change game mechanics to shorten play sessions, or the fact that Spidey & CMags were at least as OP in PVE as they were in PVP (whereas Sentry is OP pretty much only in PVP).