Game moving in the right direction...

Unknown

I honestly think that the changes that D3 are making are pushing the game in the right direction. I'm on Day ~220 or something and I still enjoy playing it pretty much every day when I have some time to kill.

TU Tiles > Environment garbage: Good change here, I'd rather have some flexibility and versatility instead of being forced to use w/e garbage map I end up on.

Character Rebalancing: You nerfed my what?... you bastards, I quit! But seriously.. problem characters are a problem and need to be dealt with. The recent Daken / C. Mags / X-Force changes are very healthy changes and needed to happen. Mags used to get 5 blue and win the game, Daken can no longer tank green for his Sentry / Thor buddies (hurts more on O than on D)... and X-Force now feels like a 4* character that i'll probably never have the ISO to max.

Obviously, there are still issues out there and some character tweaking could occur, but the game itself is still fun to play. Every QQ thread and "I'm quitting" post is usually from the same type of people... the elite who just dump waaay too much time into this game. You don't have to get top 1 - 5 in every event... it's okay to take a break, relax and just enjoy it.


There's so much negativity on these forums towards the game... I just needed to throw in a "good job" post.

Wobby

Agreed. Am I unhappy my Magneto is no longer an I win button? Sure, same as I was when Spidey met the same fate.
Am I unhappy I don't have a Sentry/Daken combo to keep moving the "I win" forward? Sure.

But the game should be fun. Sentry's day will come -- playing against him is not fun.

Spider-Man and Magneto can still be fun to play with. The emphasis for those two has just shifted further towards Defense tiles -- which is not a competitive way to play in the top level environment since Sentry can boost past those. The meta-shift towards defense being a viable counter to strike and attack tiles is something they've tried pushing... This is another step in that direction.

Lidolas

I agree. I like the idea of TUs. I think they can still be tweaked a bit, but it adds another dimension to the game. The character changes were well done, all around. Of course, CMags got nerfed. It surprises me to still see people upset about that. I just hope that it doesn't take them as long to nerf Sentry and give Sue the buffs she needs to hang with Nick and Logan.

mohio

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

wymtime

I think the balancing they did to CMags was definatly better than Spiderman. Spiderman went to an extreme support character with protect tiles and limited stuns. CMags is still very playable. My hope is that they take a look at some of the older 3* characters and give them a much needed buff. BWGS, IM40, Lcap's yellow, Dare devils traps, and the 2 cover villians. I never see any of these characters in PVP events or simulator and with some AP reduction or given a 3rd ability the could be really good and playable. It might also take them nerfing sentry or getting rid of AP boosts to make these characters more viable as well. I look forward to when they come out with new storys as well it will help.

NorthernPolarity

mohio wrote:

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

He was changed because he completely trivializes pve/pvp on offense. Being able to enter any pve match without worrying about the opponent because you can take infinite turns is a huge issue, and im still surprised that people think that being able to win any match trivially is a good thing for the game. Did you see all the people in simulator saying how hard mode is now actually hard and that theres actually more strategy involved with pve cause you cant trivially clear all the nodes with cmags? Yes, the ability was insanely fun to play with but its insane to say that he wasnt completely broken as a character.

And yeah, he isnt seen in hgih level pvp because sentry daken is much better there, but thats terrible logic to rely on. Youre basically saying at that point that a character that has an ability that says: "wins the game on offense in 3 mins without taking any damage, does nothing on defense" is perfectly balanced because it doesnt see play in pvp because of the 3 minute limitation. Doesnt that statement sound crazy to you?

MarvelMan

NorthernPolarity wrote:

mohio wrote:

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

He was changed because he completely trivializes pve/pvp on offense. Being able to enter any pve match without worrying about the opponent because you can take infinite turns is a huge issue, and im still surprised that people think that being able to win any match trivially is a good thing for the game. Did you see all the people in simulator saying how hard mode is now actually hard and that theres actually more strategy involved with pve cause you cant trivially clear all the nodes with cmags? Yes, the ability was insanely fun to play with but its insane to say that he wasnt completely broken as a character.

And yeah, he isnt seen in hgih level pvp because sentry daken is much better there, but thats terrible logic to rely on. Youre basically saying at that point that a character that has an ability that says: "wins the game on offense in 3 mins without taking any damage, does nothing on defense" is perfectly balanced because it doesnt see play in pvp because of the 3 minute limitation. Doesnt that statement sound crazy to you?

NP, I think you missed his points. The difference is that he didnt consider CMag "completely" broken. He wasnt saying that CMag should have been left alone, he was saying he didnt need nerfing (ie wholesale change). Making the changes he suggested, such as increasing the AP cost of blue and bringing red into line with other skill costs, would have done what you seem to have wanted. Also, he wasnt part of the PVP metagame before SLaken. As you point out, the AI wasnt programmed to take advantage of his blue the way (good) humans could and paired with poor the timing of red minimized his effectiveness on defense. Having good offense but poor defense CAN be well balanced. Maybe it wasnt perfectly done here but the glass cannon approach is balanced in quite a few games.

I never really used CMags red, but I am deeply saddened by the type of strategy we lost when his blue was nerfed.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

mohio wrote:

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

He was changed because he completely trivializes pve/pvp on offense. Being able to enter any pve match without worrying about the opponent because you can take infinite turns is a huge issue, and im still surprised that people think that being able to win any match trivially is a good thing for the game. Did you see all the people in simulator saying how hard mode is now actually hard and that theres actually more strategy involved with pve cause you cant trivially clear all the nodes with cmags? Yes, the ability was insanely fun to play with but its insane to say that he wasnt completely broken as a character.

Why is infinite turns "a huge issue" to you? You said it yourself, it's fun and fulfilling. The "puzzle" aspect of it serves to temper the brute force attrition that this game otherwise requires. If defense is practically non-existent anyways, how you lost doesn't really matter to the player - a loss is a loss that is worth the same -40 no matter what attacking chars were used. In this regard, mohio is right - it's an "issue" only because you limit health pack usage.

And yeah, he isnt seen in hgih level pvp because sentry daken is much better there, but thats terrible logic to rely on. Youre basically saying at that point that a character that has an ability that says: "wins the game on offense in 3 mins without taking any damage, does nothing on defense" is perfectly balanced because it doesnt see play in pvp because of the 3 minute limitation. Doesnt that statement sound crazy to you?

What's "crazy" is that your brokenness argument applies tenfold to Sentry, but his nerf is still TBA. Sentry "completely trivializes" any match, "wins the game on offense" in < 3 mins, and does a lot more on defense than CMags. If you're this worked up about Magneto's brokenness, I can only imagine your enmity toward Sentry.

GrumpySmurf1002

mohio wrote:

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

I understand this point, but from the bits and pieces IceIX has leaked on the topic, I don't think it has anything to do with damage taking/health packs.

They've made it clear they're looking at metrics, and also made it clear that roster diversity is something they want to promote. The latter is not surprising, as you've got people (allegedly) devoting a lot of time to creating characters, so it's a waste of resources if those characters are subsequently sidelined forever. (Loki and Beast jokes aside)

They obviously saw a ton of veteran players hanging out in prologue with their healers, and decided rightly/wrongly to address that by only allowing self-healing characters to persist. Goal: roster diversity. You can run Patch/Daken all day long, but you'll have to find someone else to pair with him. Obviously there are teams where even that's not necessary, but I'm sure they can live with that to some extent.

Then came Team-ups. The message is still clear here. Use other characters. Explore other abilities. If you want specific characters, get them from teammates (if they can afford to spare them). The early functionality was (is?) blech, but the concept is strong. You can't have Devil Dino, but you can have his 6AP nuke.

Finally, they clearly saw Magneto/Daken as highly used characters, and XForce/Hawkeye underused (within some pre-determined threshold). So they addressed those characters at a glacial pace. Keep in mind this is not a PvP exclusive category. When people question how Sentry wasn't included on this go around, I doubt he has even 1/10 of the usage in PvE that Magneto did.

They've already mentioned Sentry, so I'm sure he's next to get a nerf bat to the head. His metrics will never shine because of PvE, so that's presumably what they're analyzing. How do we limit him in PvP while making him more appealing for use in PvE? Any rebalance will certainly have that idea in mind.

You can discuss at length how bad their balance algorithm is (Beast and FatThor are equal?), but the end game is always the same. They want the player base to use the characters they designed. It doesn't matter if all the 1300+ players are using exclusively Sentry, as long as the percentage of people using him is roughly in line with the percentage of people using everyone else.

NorthernPolarity

MarvelMan wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

mohio wrote:

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

He was changed because he completely trivializes pve/pvp on offense. Being able to enter any pve match without worrying about the opponent because you can take infinite turns is a huge issue, and im still surprised that people think that being able to win any match trivially is a good thing for the game. Did you see all the people in simulator saying how hard mode is now actually hard and that theres actually more strategy involved with pve cause you cant trivially clear all the nodes with cmags? Yes, the ability was insanely fun to play with but its insane to say that he wasnt completely broken as a character.

And yeah, he isnt seen in hgih level pvp because sentry daken is much better there, but thats terrible logic to rely on. Youre basically saying at that point that a character that has an ability that says: "wins the game on offense in 3 mins without taking any damage, does nothing on defense" is perfectly balanced because it doesnt see play in pvp because of the 3 minute limitation. Doesnt that statement sound crazy to you?

NP, I think you missed his points. The difference is that he didnt consider CMag "completely" broken. He wasnt saying that CMag should have been left alone, he was saying he didnt need nerfing (ie wholesale change). Making the changes he suggested, such as increasing the AP cost of blue and bringing red into line with other skill costs, would have done what you seem to have wanted. Also, he wasnt part of the PVP metagame before SLaken. As you point out, the AI wasnt programmed to take advantage of his blue the way (good) humans could and paired with poor the timing of red minimized his effectiveness on defense. Having good offense but poor defense CAN be well balanced. Maybe it wasnt perfectly done here but the glass cannon approach is balanced in quite a few games.

I never really used CMags red, but I am deeply saddened by the type of strategy we lost when his blue was nerfed.

So a couple of things here:
1. I was exactly responding to his point of not considering cmags completely broken, he is! His post talks about how he thought the power level of cmags was with reason ("maybe" could have used a nerf) and how its all a conspiracy to get people to buy more healh packs (sigh. Not even going to go there). This is the exact same thing that we went with spidey last month: just because a character doesnt see play in high level pvp doesnt mean that he isnt broken and bad for the game. There seems to be this general player bias of "if im the one doing broken things, its not broken" attitude going on, and what a lot of people fail to see is that even if they are winning all their pve with cmags, everyone else is doing the exact same thing, leading to everyone grinding a lot more than they would if the character was nerfed so that this wasnt happening. Its bad for the game, even though people cant directly see that.

2. Patchneto defined the metagame before daken sentry was around, so he actually was half of the metagame before sentry daken.

3. Having good offense and poor defense can be balanced to some extent, but when the "good offense" entails 5 blue ap: take infinite extra turns, you have a problem. There needs to be a limit (as youve said with your proposed nerfs) to how good offense is because otherwise it turns pve into a scaling grindfest.

4. Regarding your modifying ap costs suggestion, im not arguing that that change would be more in line with what players now expect out of the character. Im just saying that it doesnt make any sense to consider current cmags balanced. Those changes would have probably been fine, but d3 wanted to play it safe and eliminate any potential for abuse, while shifting the focus of the character to what they originally envisioned (blue for defense as opposed to infinite turns, etc). Im not saying that this was the correct line to make, but the result is that we have a balanced, midtier cmags that still works well with his main combo of patch, and an overall better game because of it. Complaining about the redesign is fine, complaining about why he never needed any sort of nerf in the first place isnt.

Unknown

I'm extremely happy with the direction the game is taking.

Only thing i'd like dealt with is the endless Sentry/Daken/Hood teams

Nonce Equitaur 2

On Team-ups ... pre-R60, they were tedious to pick out before every game, and the enemy team used World Rupture with a disgustingly high frequency.

With R60, not tedious. The enemy team no longer uses World Rupture. But mostly, not tedious to pick them out.

NorthernPolarity

gobstopper wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

mohio wrote:

The reason I think people think cMags didn't really need nerfing (maybe just increase the cost of red and blue to line up with more recent chars) is that he wasn't a huge part of the pvp metagame and he's not even a pain to play against. The reason he "needed" to be changed was because devs at d3 decided people weren't taking enough damage playing with cMags since he shortens the game in terms of how many turns the opp gets. Personally I think his blue was what put the 'puzzle' in puzzle quest, and I'm sad to see it gone.

He was changed because he completely trivializes pve/pvp on offense. Being able to enter any pve match without worrying about the opponent because you can take infinite turns is a huge issue, and im still surprised that people think that being able to win any match trivially is a good thing for the game. Did you see all the people in simulator saying how hard mode is now actually hard and that theres actually more strategy involved with pve cause you cant trivially clear all the nodes with cmags? Yes, the ability was insanely fun to play with but its insane to say that he wasnt completely broken as a character.

Why is infinite turns "a huge issue" to you? You said it yourself, it's fun and fulfilling. The "puzzle" aspect of it serves to temper the brute force attrition that this game otherwise requires. If defense is practically non-existent anyways, how you lost doesn't really matter to the player - a loss is a loss that is worth the same -40 no matter what attacking chars were used. In this regard, mohio is right - it's an "issue" only because you limit health pack usage.

And yeah, he isnt seen in hgih level pvp because sentry daken is much better there, but thats terrible logic to rely on. Youre basically saying at that point that a character that has an ability that says: "wins the game on offense in 3 mins without taking any damage, does nothing on defense" is perfectly balanced because it doesnt see play in pvp because of the 3 minute limitation. Doesnt that statement sound crazy to you?

What's "crazy" is that your brokenness argument applies tenfold to Sentry, but his nerf is still TBA. Sentry "completely trivializes" any match, "wins the game on offense" in < 3 mins, and does a lot more on defense than CMags. If you're this worked up about Magneto's brokenness, I can only imagine your enmity toward Sentry.

Your first point focuses on pvp: see my previous points on how he is bad for pve, which i think is where the real problem lies. Not wanting to attack patchneto teams at your point level as much at around 800 also feels bad when you know they can beat you while taking near 0 losses.

For your second point, what sentry doesnt do nearly as well as cmags is sustained pushing, which is incredibly important in pve. Sacrifice wr is nowhere near as good as magnetic field in pve. In pvp shield hopping, yes. He is clearly broken and needs to be nerfed, as you can see from all th forum posts complaining about him. The cmags nerf took seven months though so im not holding my breath

Unknown

On the topic of giving a thumbs up where it is due, I actually have been using teamups now that it remembers I had some equipped. Clearly this says I am too lazy to take the time to equip something every match, but that with that barrier to laziness removed having team-up options in some fights has been actually fun and useful. If only it worked like that back when they released it.

Additionally, he is very different now, but rather digging magneto's new style I must say. And I would have lost to a patchneto on his release day if Captain Marvel hadn't also been there to clear the shields out so I would say he is even better on defense than before.

Unknown

I like to keep a stock of lvl 140 Thunderclaps and Godlike Powers for climbing in PVP.

However, I cannot stand that goons get to use Team-Ups.

MarvelMan

I dont have enough time right now, so just to this item:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

1. I was exactly responding to his point of not considering cmags completely broken, he is! His post talks about how he thought the power level of cmags was with reason ("maybe" could have used a nerf) and how its all a conspiracy to get people to buy more healh packs (sigh. Not even going to go there). This is the exact same thing that we went with spidey last month: just because a character doesnt see play in high level pvp doesnt mean that he isnt broken and bad for the game. There seems to be this general player bias of "if im the one doing broken things, its not broken" attitude going on, and what a lot of people fail to see is that even if they are winning all their pve with cmags, everyone else is doing the exact same thing, leading to everyone grinding a lot more than they would if the character was nerfed so that this wasnt happening. Its bad for the game, even though people cant directly see that.

I think I read it differently than you. He was saying CMag WAS broken, just not completely (which is my stance). Also, I took (right or wrong) that the maybe was related to that as a possible fix, not the need to change him: that was a given. (btw, totally agree with you on the health pack piece)

Unknown

they really need to add a limit to how many same type ability you can have for TU. Defeats the point of exploring other abilities when / people farm 20 Dino bites or L395 call of the storm. With that in your stockpile, you will simply ignore or delete all other skills.

Unknown

and then the event ends and you either use your stockpile or keep it to show off at parties

IamTheDanger

+1 thumbs up, could not agree more. I for one enjoy ALL the recent changes. Yes, there are a few minor things I'd change, like getting to pick opponent on the enemy team drops the TU, and which one they drop. But overall, I love the game.

Even "true healing". I never used OBW, or Spidey, or any kind of proloque, pvp, or any healing tricks. So the only change I noticed was faster healing for my heros.

As for Xforce, .... well I used him frequently before the buff. So now it's like, Oh heII yeah baby, Wolvies ready to really kick some @ss.

As for C Mag, I mainly used his blue to overwrite CD tiles, and his red/purple to do damage after hitting Patch green. His new red and blue now are still usable, especially after Patch's green. The only thing I lost was his ability to overwrite CD, but I have Steve Rogers for that, so I'm good.

Maybe one reason I like the changes is because I focus less on getting top 2 or shield hopping, and focus more on having fun. It is a Game after all.


All in all, I completely agree with the OP. Well said.

Sgt. JJ

orionpeace

I'm undecided whether this game is moving in the right direction.

The fix for TU's and other issues give me hope.

Launching mostly useless heroes like Beast fill me with trepidation. Like they are more concerned that I have to shell out another 500HP for a spot than they are with providing heroes that improve gameplay or increase the fun factor.

Right now, for me, the fun-line is trending neither up nor down. I'm waiting for them to show they have vision for this game. Cause I don't believe they have one. And I want to believe.

Unknown

orionpeace wrote:

I'm undecided whether this game is moving in the right direction.

The fix for TU's and other issues give me hope.

Launching mostly useless heroes like Beast fill me with trepidation. Like they are more concerned that I have to shell out another 500HP for a spot than they are with providing heroes that improve gameplay or increase the fun factor.

Right now, for me, the fun-line is trending neither up nor down. I'm waiting for them to show they have vision for this game. Cause I don't believe they have one. And I want to believe.

I think that Beast was one of the most well thought out characters they've released in awhile. While he's not the most powerful, I love the interactions that they built into him as it adds a nice "combo" system into his kit.

Just give him something cooler than a heal and he's set.