devs: please fix the characters we already have...

loroku

...before introducing any more new characters.

I thought maybe it would help to be as explicit as possible. Maybe you need a more direct voice to help guide your decision process. Please STOP making and releasing new characters, and please instead spend your development time rebalancing the characters we already have. Personally I'd start with 4* Invisible Woman, and then move to the 3* characters that everyone always talks about, and eventually down to a few errant 2*s. The forums can easily guide you to those in need of the most help. The order really doesn't matter that much as long as they get some attention.

Think of it like this: playing this game is like going outside to enjoy a beautiful summer's day. Except after a minute, you realize there is a fly buzzing around your head. You want to enjoy the day. You can see how beautiful it is. But that fly just won't leave you alone... and pretty soon, that's all you can think about. It's all you can focus on. It doesn't matter how much more wonderful the day gets, if that fly won't leave you alone you really can't enjoy it.

Please fix the existing characters before working on new ones. Thank you.

IlDuderino

I fully agree - what's odd is some of the newer characters need fixing as much as or more than some of the old (I am thinking mainly of Beast who I have now have seven covers for without particularly trying to get him at all as he is completely rubbish!)

I am hoping that this is why they are pulling certain covers from the tokens this season and that Rags, Doom and Loki are going to get third powers - though I am not sure why Punisher and Patch have been dropped as these are characters that work fine and I don't think changes to them are necessary, let alone a priority

Unknown

I think they already answer this in Q&A answer. Have a look there.

Unknown

First of all, they cannot afford to stop working on new characters. The game has a revenue flow and it mainly comes from new characters. If they stop doing that in order to fix the older ones, they will lose time and effort to recreate something that is created already and people have it. So no actual profit comes to them. Before you put an argument, you must think of what the impact of it will be on the development team. They have a plan and they run on a budget. If they hit the brakes for just one or two weeks, they will put themselves in a very tight spot.

I do not think old characters or characters with 2 powers need any fixing. Instead, what they can do is have this characters considered as "inferior" ones and make them easier to achieve. For example they can give them as lower progression rewards in PVE or PVP and/or lower ranking rewards (Not make them free though). Maybe even put them as PVP node rewards like they have 2* now. They can make them have higher drop rates in tokens.

The reason that we have many 3* characters does not mean that all of them will be awesome. Some of them will be better and some lesser. Those lesser characters can be given out more often than the better ones. At least this way, their lesser power will be justified by them being more available. If they manage to do this, then players will not "suffer" while they try to transition. Instead they will get some lesser chars to work with while they transition to get those better ones.

The problem currently is that we treat all 3* chars as equal. They are not and they should not be treated that way. There must be a ranking within the 3* tier which differentiates better and less better characters. In every similar game out there, there are characters that you can get easier than others, even though they seem to have the same rarity. That is because some of them can do better. Braking those characters into "mini tiers" and assigning proper availability into them will give the game more levels to play for. There will not just be a plain 1*-2*-3* transition, but there will be several layers of characters in between them.

loroku

Kcwei83 wrote:

I think they already answer this in Q&A answer. Have a look there.

That is the point of this thread. It is a response to the Q&A.

Okin107 wrote:

First of all, they cannot afford to stop working on new characters.

Unless you're in the business office of their company, you honestly cannot make this statement, or anything like it. Disagreeing is fine; but please stick to actual counterpoints. (By contrast, I believe that fixing the existing characters and tightening up the game would be great for their bottom line. But neither of us can prove either statement so it's pointless to debate them.)

Also, I think making the bad characters easier to achieve would be a horrible idea, but thanks for making suggestions.

Unknown

Adding new characters is obviously huge profit for them, heavy spenders drop cash to max them through Hero points (can imagine 4* Thorina will be rushed by quite few people who manage to grab her first covers), on low spend/f2p players it creates pressure to drop something to even have slots for new character.

I doubt they will slow it down, but they should fix old heroes. It just takes ages, how long did it take for Hawkeye redesign after announcement? 2* still have few bagpeople (Cap Red damage fix pretty please?) but have way more viable options with playabe Hawkguy and Daken than before. Hopefully devs also see the difference and will work on improving underrepresented 3*.

I'm definitely against creating pseudo tier. 1-4 are enough, and they all should be on similar power levels. Of course some would be better in some situation than others, but none should be in trash tier. Especially that it would create even worse trap for new people. Get easy covers for Loki and Ragnaros, waste hundreds of thousands Iso lost in them and enjoy having higher scaled PvE and worse team than oBW+Ares/Thor they've been using before.

simonsez

How about a compromise? Fix the old ones that just require a 2 minute fix (overpriced abilities) and stop releasing new characters that need fixing from Day 1 (hello, Beast)

Unknown

loroku wrote:

Okin107 wrote:

First of all, they cannot afford to stop working on new characters.

Unless you're in the business office of their company, you honestly cannot make this statement, or anything like it. Disagreeing is fine; but please stick to actual counterpoints. (By contrast, I believe that fixing the existing characters and tightening up the game would be great for their bottom line. But neither of us can prove either statement so it's pointless to debate them.)

Also, I think making the bad characters easier to achieve would be a horrible idea, but thanks for making suggestions.

It is not very hard to figure out where their revenue is coming from. New characters are certainly the biggest part of it. If they keep bringing fixes to Rags, Loki, Spiderman no one will ever be satisfied. They are suffering enough already from the decisions they have taken about those characters and all the nerfs and buffs. Never will the crowd be satisfied as a whole from a change.

They are trying to move away from that trend and keep on bringing new stuff. Unless you are sentimentally attached to some of those heroes, you can let it go and enjoy the new ones that are coming or will be coming. I'd like the game to move forward instead of tweaking what we already have until we minimize the whining on this forum.

There are just some characters that are just not at the level that others are. It happens everywhere in every game. Nerfs and buffs come when extreme measures need to be taken (Sentry is an example), but most of them characters can still be played depending on the occasion. Loki is pretty damn good with cascades, and Doom's tiles are not at all bad at max level. Spiderman can still stun and protect them team. They are just not at the level of some top tier characters. LCap is not that good in PVP as he is very slow, but in PVE he is the king. Characters have different uses and they can all be used (Except from Bag-Man and IW) in various circumstances.

So, if you are claiming roster diversity by claiming a "fix" on certain characters, I can safely say that you already have roster diversity. Now, if you want to compete for the big stuff there will always be those 2-3 characters that will make the best of the best combo. The point is for you not to compare everyone else's power by this combo only.

You are still obsessed with that fly, but, what you are forgetting here is that you are not the only person in this park. While that fly is ruining your day, many other people are not even paying attention to it.

Tharos

It is not as easy as "New characters means more income. Old characters are not that important". They can do a lot of money with old characters and a lot of frustration: XForce must be a huge money source now.

Unknown

Tharos wrote:

It is not as easy as "New characters means more income. Old characters are not that important". They can do a lot of money with old characters and a lot of frustration: XForce must be a huge money source now.

While XForce may have provided them with some extra bucks, what about Thoress? I bet everyone will go nuts on spending that HP for her covers. With XForce it was different as many people already had a few covers of him. But Thoress is something completely new and exciting. All big spenders will throw their wallets at D3's face after they get the three covers.

IlDuderino

Okin107 wrote:

You are still obsessed with that fly, but, what you are forgetting here is that you are not the only person in this park. While that fly is ruining your day, many other people are not even paying attention to it.

The fly bothers me too

Simonsez has a sensible compromise suggestion

Raffoon

IlDuderino wrote:

Okin107 wrote:

You are still obsessed with that fly, but, what you are forgetting here is that you are not the only person in this park. While that fly is ruining your day, many other people are not even paying attention to it.

The fly bothers me too

Simonsez has a sensible compromise suggestion

No, no, no. If they changed ability costs, they'd have to test those changes, right? I mean... they do test things before they implement them, like when they put in anniversary rewards (or LR progression rewards), or release characters that can destroy the entire opposing team within 3 turns, or characters that are just plain weak. I mean, they're testing these things, right?

Oh wait, nevermind, I don't think that's actually part of the process. I say let's do it!

thbrown81

I concur with the others in this thread. Mainly because I need five posts to DM.

Unknown

What about people who are paying 600+ HP for their next roster spot? How many **** characters should they have to hold on to because "Not every 3* needs to be good"? But you can't delete them, because they may be buffed or essential in a PvE, or maybe have a PvP centered around them. So my choices are cripple my future by deleting the **** characters, or spend resources to keep them around and level them?

What people should be saying is "Not every 3* needs to be great, but they should all be good."

Seriously, what other business would profit from having a sub-par product on the shelves? Just because this is a digital game where you can turn out new product every 2 weeks DOESN'T mean that the clutter of discarded **** characters doesn't affect the game in many ways.

Linkster79

Sloppy work is sloppy and shouldnt be accepted in any industry. If time, money and resources were as limited as some make out then it is in a companies best interest to make sure things are done right first time. We as players have to keep useless, broken or just plain unfinished characters clogging up valuable and expensive roster slots as they will be needed in order to ne competitive in future events.

We keep being told roster diversity is key to being successful, well look at the top of any PvP and all you see is Patch, Lazy Daken or Sentry, Patch/Lazy Daken/Hood. Roster diversity only works for PvE and specifically Heroics, and even PvE is broken by the use of scaling and leaderboards.

Unknown

Personally, I don't care about characters already released. But they promised new ones will come. I really hope they get it right with the new ones so that we don't have more Beasts to sit around in our rosters.

GrimSkald

This isn't a question of tier - some characters are better than others and that will always be the case. The fact of the matter is that there are some powers (and by extension some characters) that are actively bad and will almost never be used. It's a pretty long list. Many of these powers can be fixed with minor tweaks. The game has evolved quite a bit since it's first inception, and this means that powers that were kind of okay because you didn't really have an alternative (I'm looking at you, IM40,) are now just plain awful.

GrimSkald

Also, releasing new characters at a constant rate has its own problems - it severely dilutes the token pool and the PVP/PVE schedule and makes it extremely difficult for newer players to get a viable 3* Roster. Every new character they introduce will extend the 2*-3* transition for newer players - this will have a long-term detrimental effect on the game by causing burnout on what is almost certainly their largest player base.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't introduce new characters, I'm saying they should probably slow it down, and they should probably do at least some work on the existing characters.

Unknown

GrimSkald wrote:

Also, releasing new characters at a constant rate has its own problems - it severely dilutes the token pool and the PVP/PVE schedule and makes it extremely difficult for newer players to get a viable 3* Roster. Every new character they introduce will extend the 2*-3* transition for newer players - this will have a long-term detrimental effect on the game by causing burnout on what is almost certainly their largest player base.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't introduce new characters, I'm saying they should probably slow it down, and they should probably do at least some work on the existing characters.

Isn't that the plan? 2-3* transition for players forever. They probably have metrics showing that once players get their Sentry-Daken-Hood combo, they stop chasing other 3*.

Also, the token pool rotation has sort of fixed token dilution.

Unknown

Yes we will keep getting new characters and yes it would be awesome for some old characters to get a boost. But I think what the game needs more than anything else is a quick and effective anti-strike tile ability. (No Daken's anti-friendly strike tile ability does not count)

Many of the power combos are driven by strike tile abuse. For whatever reason it is cool to have a character that can destroy ALL protect tiles for 7 red ap but the only thing even remotely close to dealing with strike tiles is trickery. Which is a powerful yet conditional power yet it is too expensive to stop most of the faster strike tile users and Loki himself is far too weak for anyone to use seriously. Lady Thor seems to have a slow ability that will counter anything, but on a 4 star that most will not have in use for many many months to come that hardly changes the meta at all.

I don't want an expensive ability that converts or steals strike tiles, nor something that explodes them for facemelting damage. I just want a cheap power (7 would be perfect) that removes multiple strike tiles.

Making loki viable with a third power might be able to bend the current meta some, Having a (blue or yellow) ability that lays friendly and enemy protect tiles patch style would give Loki a chance to slow a game down, and even then turn the tide with a trickery. Slowing things down is how the current meta is beaten.

So that is my suggestion. "Fix" Loki to make him an anti-strike tile specialist. Let him be able to outwit Sentry, Patch, Panther, and Daken. Having a counter to massive strike tiles gives other characters more room to shine. Which is what we want in the end. After giving Loki an update give us a character who can effectively and efficiently remove strike tiles, while still packing a punch themselves so people will actually want to play with them. Step 3 please just tweak some of the numbers on terrible old powers. Either make them cheaper or ramp up their damage. IM40 doing 2669 AOE for 20-30 AP when panther is throwing around 3708 for 12, and Lthor is doing 4518/2259 for 14 is embarrassing.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

Also, the token pool rotation has sort of fixed token dilution.

It has allowed them to add the newer characters into the pool (which is good and we waited far too long for). It has not fixed the long term problem, I will call it a necessary bandaid. Hopefully they are still working on long term solutions with the time this fix will buy them.