The one afternoon balancing act!

homeinvasion

There is a big problem atm. A big one. There is no balance with characters and no reason to play, level up or ultimately spend money on more than a handful of characters. There is one strategy to win, which involves Sentry and Hood, and that is all. There is more and more becoming only one way to get to sentry hop phase, which involves Xforce and I have serious doubts about any illusion of game balance with Thour (see what I did there Thor and four... I know dad joke) with Thour on the horizon.

My Suggestion is D3 should get together the ten peeps with highest rep on the forums (Nonce, Northern, mischief, Phantron you know the ones) and start skyping them and come to a consensus about an underlying foundation for character balance. Any rainbow team should be as viable as any other rainbow team. I tend to think that abilities like Heal should do far more than its equivalent damage cost ability. Mainly because there is rarely a situation where damage isn't better than heal, also heal is not really winning you the game and in most games Heal numbers are far bigger than damage numbers, but in this game heal numbers are much lower for some reason. The heals may have been right before true heal but now they are the weakest mechanic in the game.

But in the meantime I came up with a list of tweeks I think you could safely implement that are basically just a quick rejig of the numbers that would inject many characters into the meta. The played characters are probably where they should be, the forgotten characters need some love and the ugly characters need a third ability or just take a star off them and turn them into goofy 2 star characters. I actually think you could implement all of this very easily. I came up with the numbers ad hoc by thinking what would it take for me to remove one of my existing team members and put this character instead.

Yes this is a band aid fix, no i am not an expert, please tell me why I am a fool to think this would be an quick and viable fix, I don't include 1,2 or 4 star because I don't use them but I am sure someone else could easily write those up.

Edit: Anyway if I didn't make it clear, my question is this; If we can't have a complete overhaul of all the under played characters, what quick numbers change would be viable, make them get more use, not be overpowered and wouldn't break the meta?

The Played

The Hood
The Hulk
Thor
Wolverine
Daken
Sentry
Magneto
Black Panther


The Forgotten

Beast; in lieu of a complete rework his blue tiles need to be about 2-3 times stronger, his green about 4 times stronger and his yellow heal at least 4 X as much or heal team to full. Honestly this sounds like the most radical change of all of the below but if he had this change would you start to make room for him?

Black Widow; reduce all ability cost by 3

Blade; too new, will get play

Captain America; too expensive, reduce his yellow by about 6, red and blue each by a few.

Captain Marvel; The red generation makes her kind of playable but her health is too low to withstand a sentry bomb coupled with a weak red. Bump up her health to 10K and power up her red and we will see more of her.

Colossus; 13 black for another players ability is too much, I mean one of the best ability you can hope for is Rage of the Panther, which only costs 12 black and is guaranteed to go off, use Collosus' black on BP and its more expensive for 1/3 chance of success. I think if you brought the cost down to about 9 and increased his red damage he would be good.

Daredevil; Way too expensive and you rarely see his abilities work. Reduce the costs of all his abilities. I dont think he can be fixed with just a numbers shift. Should maybe be in the ugly list.

Doctor Octopus; triple his blue and green damage.

Falcon; reduce cost of bird strike to about 8

Human Torch; give him some health his damage is ok but he goes down too fast

Iron Man; Reduce all his costs by about 3

Psylocke; reduce the cost of her blue, shouldn't it be purple too?

She-Hulk; increase blue value by at least 2, her heal needs to be about 4 times as much, or heals team to full, even then not really top tier.

Spider-Man; increase heal by 2-3 times, or heal team to full.

Storm; Increase her health to 6800 slightly lower her costs

The Punisher; slightly tweak all his numbers up


The ugly
These guys need a third ability, before they could even be tweaked.

Doctor Doom
Loki
Ragnarok

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

The Punisher; slightly tweak all his numbers up

Pls, no. He is a mid-tier character. And IM40 needs more than reducing all his numbers by 3 to be an ok character.

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

Yes this is a band aid fix, no i am not an expert, please tell me why I am a fool

Okay!

The Played

The Hood
The Hulk
Thor
Wolverine
Daken
Sentry
Magneto
Black Panther

Blade? Punisher? Psylocke? Captain America? Captain Marvel? Colossus? All of them are viable; Blade is legitimately great.

The Forgotten

Beast; in lieu of a complete rework his blue tiles need to be about 2-3 times stronger, his green about 4 times stronger and his yellow heal at least 4 X as much or heal team to full. Honestly this sounds like the most radical change of all of the below but if he had this change would you start to make room for him?

This completely fails to touch on the real problem with Beast. Sure, his green being stronger would make him more useful. But the main issue is the way his blue almost immediately leads to a couple of the tiles being matched. That's not okay.

Black Widow; reduce all ability cost by 3

Not only would pistol still be ****, you want to put Deceptive Tactics at 8?! That's insane! Black Widow is the best green feeder as it is; put that at 8 and the new sentry bombing will be max boost with Black Widow.

Falcon; reduce cost of bird strike to about 8

This does absolutely nothing to touch on the real issue with Falcon - he's a support character with crummy health that tanks awkward colors and does very little to help the team win games on his own. He needs to be able to produce attack or strike tiles, or he needs better partners - his only "good" partners at this point are Daken and... uh... Spidey? Reducing Bird Strike's cost would make him better, but it wouldn't fix the problem.

Human Torch; give him some health his damage is ok but he goes down too fast

Dude, Torch is a perfect example of the "Glass Cannon" archetype... And why "glass cannon" doesn't work in Marvel Puzzle Quest. At all. And despite that, he's still playable! He doesn't need a buff. His red is one of the best skills in the game, and both his black and his green can do really solid damage. He's fine.

Iron Man; Reduce all his costs by about 3

This is not the problem with Iron Man Model 40. This doesn't even touch on the problem with Model 40. Sure, he's slow, but his slowness isn't the problem. At 17, Ballistic Salvo would still suck ****, and Unibeam would still be mediocre. (Although it's perhaps worth noting that at 3/5, Recharge would be the stupidest **** thing ever). But more to the point, it ignores what IM40 is obviously designed to be, and something not very common: a top tier AP feeder with some really costly, powerful abilities. Shame they forgot that last adjective. There's nothing wrong with that design in theory... Until you realize that Ballistic Salvo, which really should be a big fat "I win" button at 20 AP (**** 20!), does less damage than Rage Of The Panther does at 12, and way less than Whales does at 14, and I don't think I even need to mention Supernova. Oh, and Unibeam does as much damage as Star-Spangled Avenger, costs more AP, doesn't give it back after 3 turns, can't overwrite enemy tiles, and drains all your other colors. At 13 AP, that's **** pathetic.

What they should do is fix Recharge so that IM40 doesn't start to suck once you slot in that third yellow cover (make it so that, at max covers, you could choose which type of recharge you want - 6AP for just red, or 8AP for red and blue or etc.), then make his abilities the game-ending powerhouses that they ought to be! Make it so that when he hits you with Ballistic Salvo, the game is pretty much over. Make it so that when he gets 13AP, you have to decide, "well ****, do I want to lose my Punisher or my Magneto, or do I want my Xforce to barely limp away from the encounter?". That's a unique, interesting character design. Not just another bruiser.

Psylocke; reduce the cost of her blue, shouldn't it be purple too?

Again, this is an extreme oversimplification. And yes, it absolutely should be purple and there is no good reason for a skill that does nothing but steal AP to be blue rather than purple. That said, check out the Psylocke entry in the 9/14 character ranking thread. I went into almost gratuitous detail on why Bewilder is abysmal. It's just a really, really weak skill. You want to turn Psylocke from an afterthought into a high tier character? Make Bewilder purple, keep the countdown the way it is, and make it steal 3-4 across the board. BOOM. Suddenly, you have a character with 7k life, two pretty solid actives, and one of the only real steals in the 3* roster. Just make it the 3* analogue to Aggressive Recon. Because as is, it's the single most useless skill in the game. It's Marvel Puzzle Quest's "One With Nothing" - once in a blue moon it'll come in handy but if you were using it in the first place you **** up.

homeinvasion

message removed.

atomzed

homeinvasion wrote:

yawn, thanks for your troll. I kinda said this would be a quick one afternoon fix that would help inject more peeps into the meta, NOT the definitive fix. Honestly comments like this make me hate these forums.

Huh?

You asked for comments, and people gave your their honest comments in a direct manner.... what more do you want? If you didn't want comments, then well, don't ask for it.

simonsez

If you're going to buff every character that isn't Sentry/Hood/Daken, I want everyone's health to be doubled to compensate for all the extra damage I'm going to be incurring during PvE

homeinvasion

atomzed wrote:

homeinvasion wrote:

yawn, thanks for your troll. I kinda said this would be a quick one afternoon fix that would help inject more peeps into the meta, NOT the definitive fix. Honestly comments like this make me hate these forums.

Huh?

You asked for comments, and people gave your their honest comments in a direct manner.... what more do you want? If you didn't want comments, then well, don't ask for it.

because it wasn't constructive criticism, the dude just flamed me. Constructive comments would have been more like "hmm that seems a little low, more like this..."

Unknown

Nah, I'm pretty sure you're just a little thin-skinned. I disagreed, and offered constructive criticism.

homeinvasion

This completely fails
That's not okay
That's insane!
stupidest tinykitty thing ever
that's tinykitty pathetic

seems constructive

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

This completely fails
That's not okay
That's insane!
stupidest tinykitty thing ever
that's tinykitty pathetic

seems constructive

He gave at least a sentence description of what he disagreed with.

HailMary

At the very least, Rogers, Falcon, HT, and Punisher are all already solidly "part of the meta." Arguably, GSBW, Blade, and Psy are/will be very good at what they do. If your standard is "well, they're not Sentry," then very few of the tweaks you're suggesting would make them Sentry-tier. Sentry's domination is all about speed kills coupled with solid defensive capability.

That said , even if your standard isn't "make everyone Sentry-tier" but you still overwhelmingly value damage above all else, reducing Bird Strike's cost to 8 AP hardly puts Falcon on par with a tanky Beast potentially unleashing a 18,000-damage B+G (3x his current numbers) combo attack.

homeinvasion wrote:

This completely fails
That's not okay
That's insane!
stupidest tinykitty thing ever
that's tinykitty pathetic

seems constructive

If that was all his response contained, you might begin to have a point. For now, you're just the guy who didn't bother to read BPC's response competently enough to realize that "that's tinykitty pathetic" was directed at IM40's current specs.

homeinvasion

The whole purpose of this post was to try to get more use out of characters that just sit in your roster doing nothing. It took a whole year for a magneto nerf to roll around and I can't see a buff for all these characters any time soon. As I said at the top, if they are going to do a complete overhaul defer to more senior contributors like Nonce, Phantron, and yes even you Mary. If they wanted to a quick fix of just adjusting numbers up or down to to get some play out of all these characters then this is what it would take for me to play them. I don't think anything I am proposing is too broken, and by all means please inject opinion, you never know D3 may even look at it and say, yup we can adjust those easily. yes I say again it would be a band aid solution (in lieu of a complete overhaul) but do you not agree that the meta is unbalanced and dominated by Xforce/ Sentry? I just think there is far more chance of d3 doing a quick numbers adjustment than doing a complete overhaul of so many characters.

I said in my post "Blade, too new will see play" as in he isn't seen in the meta atm, but he will be because he is a well balanced character.

Yes a complete rework of Beast or IM40 would be far superior but my post was for "the one afternoon balance" Nonce made an excellent post about 'character engineering' and knows more than I will in 5 years of continuous play. I wouldn't presume to write a complete overhaul.

I didn't want to start a flame war with anyone I didn't make any attacks on anyone I just pointed out I thought budgets comments were inflammatory, for my part I'm sorry, and maybe I din't adequately express the purpose of the post. But this is the best outlet to making a better game but the underlying theme in the forums is to shoot peeps down not add insight. Did you notice my other post of "why is MPQ good"?

Anyway if I didn't make it clear, my question is this; If we can't have a complete overhaul of all the under played characters, what quick numbers change would be viable, make them get more use, not be overpowered and wouldn't break the meta?

Unknown

1. They already indicated they will Nerf sentry per the NY comic Con post.

2. Some characters aren't beasts in PvP, but are monsters in PVE. So you can't judge character efficiency just on PvP.

3. The real barriers to more diverse line ups are setting the defensive team and point loss from retaliations. The current system dictates every match's roster keep retaliations and defense on mind. Who is going to run mo storm/ beast/Loki in that environment?

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

homeinvasion wrote:

This completely fails
That's not okay
That's insane!
stupidest tinykitty thing ever
that's tinykitty pathetic

seems constructive

If that was all his response contained, you might begin to have a point. For now, you're just the guy who didn't bother to read BPC's response competently enough to realize that "that's tinykitty pathetic" was directed at IM40's current specs.

Yo Imma just give you a shoutout cuz I totally forgot I was talking about IM40 with that last quote xD

Unknown

A lot of your statements I disagree with.

Lazy Cap is not underused. I actually see a moderate number of him running around in PvP. Also, he is a top tier in PvE. Although he is mid tier in PvP, he becomes hard to stop and/or becomes a pain once he gets rolling. Getting smashed for 4K or getting Stunned every 3 turns becomes painful. Also, he is one of the best characters to quickly dispatch high health targets easily like Hulk with minimal damage taken.

I also see quite a few Punisher too. He is a well rounded and solid character. Not the strongest, but solid enough to be usable until the very high end of PvP. He is also, like LCap, a good PvE character as the execution ability on his Red is invaluable against super scaled high health goons.

Psylocke although falls flat the higher you go, she is great at dispatching transition teams due to her rapid fire damage output. Also due to her rapid fire nature, you probably might need to spend a health pack or 2 afterwards, depending on how fast you down her.

Captain Marvel has one of the best black Abilities in the game.

Also, characters like Doc Ock and She Hulk are more PvE oriented characters. Not ever character has to be good in both PvP and PvE.

This is to name a few.

wirius

I'm sorry, but you don't have the math, the underlying reasons for design, or an objective standard of balance to make those calls. Ideas are nice, but when you start to think you have all the answers? Might be time to re-evaluate.

homeinvasion

wirius wrote:

I'm sorry, but you don't have the math, the underlying reasons for design, or an objective standard of balance to make those calls. Ideas are nice, but when you start to think you have all the answers? Might be time to re-evaluate.

umm what? when did I assume to have all the answers?

mohio

wirius wrote:

I'm sorry, but you don't have the math, the underlying reasons for design, or an objective standard of balance to make those calls. Ideas are nice, but when you start to think you have all the answers? Might be time to re-evaluate.

I too disagree with some of the things in the OP, but he simply stated some off-the-cuff, quick changes that could make him use these underused (and generally underpowered) characters. perhaps calling it "balancing act" in the title was a little much since there wasn't exactly effort put in to balance anyone, just make unplayable characters more playable. Anyway - include some examples and show that you actually read the OP and not just skim what is there and then misrepresent what was there in your reply.

homeinvasion

mohio wrote:

wirius wrote:

I'm sorry, but you don't have the math, the underlying reasons for design, or an objective standard of balance to make those calls. Ideas are nice, but when you start to think you have all the answers? Might be time to re-evaluate.

I too disagree with some of the things in the OP, but he simply stated some off-the-cuff, quick changes that could make him use these underused (and generally underpowered) characters. perhaps calling it "balancing act" in the title was a little much since there wasn't exactly effort put in to balance anyone, just make unplayable characters more playable. Anyway - include some examples and show that you actually read the OP and not just skim what is there and then misrepresent what was there in your reply.

Thanks alot mate, I have been really torn over this, and all the hate I generated. It really means a lot to me.

Unknown

homeinvasion wrote:

Thanks alot mate, I have been really torn over this, and all the hate I generated. It really means a lot to me.

I don't see lots of negative votes on the OP. It's just that one message whose content I won't mention* since you removed it. However, I don't see lots of positive votes either. I wonder why. I remember both Northern Polarity, Nonce Equitor and BPC (maybe only two of them, not sure) made threads about quick changes about overpriced powers and weak characters. They had lots of positive votes because they actually knew what they were talking about.

* Btw, don't vote exclusively relying on others' perceptions guys.

Unknown

The intention behind the original post was good, but maybe overreaching? There are threads this long about single abilities. I think if you want to get more constructive criticism, I suggest you post each of the suggestions one at a time on each of the character threads. That way people can respond to each in paragraphs as opposed to a quick sentence, which is kind of forced due to the amount of material we have to work with here.

The worst someone can do is ignore this thread altogether, yet there are flames when someone tries to make it better. The downvotes were generated because someone was trying to contribute to your suggestions by tweaking them, but the outright hostility towards the response was surprising. Quoting the fool line probably wasn't the best, but really seemed to be an attempt at engaging you with supposed humility, as opposed to trying to attack you.

If you look at Nonce's similar threads, people have criticized his proposed changes: sometimes the criticism creates a change, sometimes it doesn't. No one takes anything anyone says as gospel because there's always a different angle at looking at it.

My biggest problem with this is ... Sentry. Sentry's world rupture is so overpowered that if we continuously try to improve other chars to get to his god level, we'll just end up breaking the game more. He really needs to be nerfed.

There's not much I disagree with in Budget Player Cadet's post.
Honestly, Demiurge seems to be moving to ability costs of 8-12 AP in general, to prevent game warping.


GSBW is too expensive to play, but we should look into changing her abilities if we change the AP cost.
Captain America: I think we should look into changing only Sentinel of Liberty. Honestly, I think his red is slightly overpowered.
Colossus: I agree with a reduced cost, but to 11. He's currently good with GSBW, and that's about it.
Daredevil: best discussed in the character thread. Any solution is slightly complicated.
Doc Ock: Probably a good change.
Falcon: he's designed to be a support/niche character, I think is ok as is.
Torch: Agree with BPC
Psylocke: If you wanted a quick fix, you could instead change it to target one color.
Spider-man: Lol, heal team to full would be totally overpowered.
Storm: Agree with increasing her HP. I can't help but feel her HP was inspired partially by sexism and the frail female stereotype. Mohawk Storm kicks ****; change her character model in game to showcase this.