I thought we were moving away from same rosters?

Unknown

Really trying not to moan here. I believe the reasoning (or one of them) for the True Healing was "we, as developers, want players to have more roster diversity, rather than everyone with OBW etc". And, for a while. I did see some mixed teams.

However, over the past couple of months I have either seen Sentry/Hood teams, or XForce teams.

Today, all I have seen is xForce teams.

I appreciate I am a sample size of one, that this proves nothing and no doubt people will post "well I see Moonstone/Bagman teams loads" but I am pretty sure I am not the only one getting this. I am not even sure what the solution is, and I am not saying that they remove True Healing. But if that was one of the main reasons for the change, in purely my experience, it doesn't seem to have worked.

So, um, yeah, do something

ps - I know the real reason was probably that we were not spending enough money on Health Packs, but I am trying to keep sceptical Herman out of this thread.

Unknown

We're not going to see true roster diversity in PVP until the developers start doing something to specifically encourage it. The game does a few things to strongly discourage diversity in PVP:
- it uses the last team you win with as your defensive team
- it fairly brutally punishes risk taking via the healing system,
- any team that is different from the rest is liable to get targeted due to novelty and team-up acquisition
- there are too few truly elite characters and too many middling ones

As a result, the game does a lot to encourage everyone to use the same team and discourage any kind of risk-taking or innovative play in pvp.Iit's part of why pvp is so terrible. If they truly want to see diversity, they need to put some mechanisms in to reward it (or at least not punish it).

Unknown

All valid points. I guess they have decided that this is OK for PVP and are just rolling with it. Just seems a shame that they roll out a billion characters over the course of a year, yet the pool of effective PVP characters is very low.

Nellobee

Really, if the devs want roster diversity, they need to be faster with the buffs/nerfs.
With them leaving X-Force so overpowered, this was inevitable.

JamieMadrox

Nellobee wrote:

Really, if the devs want roster diversity, they need to be faster with the buffs/nerfs.
With them leaving X-Force so overpowered, this was inevitable.

I'll say this again; X-Force is OP because he's a 4* and therefore SHOULD be OP compared to 3* characters. That's the way the game works in most cases (Bagman, IW, Moonstone, etc excepted).

Unknown

if the devs want more roster diversity, they should rush out new characters @ an insane rate that burns everyone out and pisses all over their loyal fanbase.

That sounds like a winning strategy to move toward roster diversity. I wonder why the geniuses @D3 havent started doing this yet...

oh, wait....nevermind...

so, working as intended?

marc

Unknown

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Nellobee wrote:

Really, if the devs want roster diversity, they need to be faster with the buffs/nerfs.
With them leaving X-Force so overpowered, this was inevitable.

I'll say this again; X-Force is OP because he's a 4* and therefore SHOULD be OP compared to 3* characters. That's the way the game works in most cases (Bagman, IW, Moonstone, etc excepted).

Yea, I know, I'm posting. But this is 100% correct. When Lady Thor comes out it will be the same. If they give IW the X-Force treatment, then she will be a true 4* as well.

1* < 2* < 3* < 4*

That's why I keep saying 3* is the new 2* and the reward structure should be changed to reflect that so players can correctly transition. Not by sharding or mmr changes to place higher. The truth is someone who has no played as long, hard, as well as another player should not place above them in PvP. And no you cannot say it is just because veterans have better characters. In BOP, veterans still kick tiny kitty because they better at playing the game even with the 1* and 2* characters that newer players use all the time.

With all the 3* characters, it would not dillute the game to lower the reward structure or guarantee if a player plays enough events in a month they can cover max at least one character going in order from oldest to newest.

Unknown

X Force's dominance is due a a variety of reasons. I do agree that 4* should be stronger than 3* but not overwhelmingly so. Unfortunately, he's pretty much top of the line amongst what a 4* should be, and on top of that he starts with true healing which would have made him a staple on any team even if he wasn't the best 4* in the first place. Surgical Strike is also overpowered due to a lack of variety of teams because it is virtually impossible to run a character that has a strongest color that can stop Surgical Strike from chaining into something nasty. Changing Thor to blue as strongest would at least slow Surgical Strike down a lot even though X Force's moves pretty much completely owns charged tile conceptually (either destroys them or collects them).

MarvelMan

I feel that 4* should be above 3*, but XF is even OP for 4*. Facing 3* its not terribly daunting, and facing another XF its a race to black. The only 4* (pre-Thoress) that stands a chance, and not a good one, against XF is Fury. And I dont see a lot of those (itll go up) plus they just arent that scary.


Im not saying tone him down (and by gods, avoid a nerf). Its more an indictment of the quality of the other 4*s, as well as volume.

Unknown

4*'s (even XForce) are not unbeatable or even overly difficult to beat. They do have a greater likelyhood of winning and winning faster than lower *'s.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

I feel that 4* should be above 3*, but XF is even OP for 4*. Facing 3* its not terribly daunting, and facing another XF its a race to black. The only 4* (pre-Thoress) that stands a chance, and not a good one, against XF is Fury. And I dont see a lot of those (itll go up) plus they just arent that scary.


Im not saying tone him down (and by gods, avoid a nerf). Its more an indictment of the quality of the other 4*s, as well as volume.

Fury has yellow as strongest color, which is a poor matchup. If his strongest color was blue or purple he'd be a very strong matchup against X Force. Of course he doesn't have true healing and takes a long time recover from sustained damage, and if you put him with The Hood you don't have red/green on your team if the featured doesn't cover it. In general the 4*s have a lot of HP which translates to a very long time to recover and X Force's recovery and double regen makes him far better anyone else even if he was on par with them overall, and he's stronger than the 4*s by a comfortable margin.

Unknown

by day 180 the game gives everyone three free x-forces from daily resupply. This means anyone who has been playing that long has the ability to invest into an x-force. Even those who don't know about the forums or know how strong x-force is can see oh man FOUR STARS awesome let me invest in this guy and he will be better than my half covered 3*s of which I have 15.
None of the three stars offered have the set handed out so there is no promise of getting three colors for them to even begin investing in if the player cannot win them on his own.
Invisible woman also has guaranteed covers the third of which you get at day 370. (or over twice as long as it took to get the x-forces)

It was a no brainer for veterans to start maxing x-force when he got buffed, it was also a really good plan for transitioners and even newbies to pay some up front to get x-force covers once they had a full set easily making him the cornerstone of their entire roster. And with sentry nerfed he is the obvious top contender and everyone has one even if they haven't maxed him yet. And those who haven't maxed him yet wish they could and are likely concentrating their resources towards that goal.

It is not surprising in the slightest that is he so common. Whether intentional or not all the factors point to use x-force if you got him. The question is what do we want to happen from here. People say lady thor will be awesome and game changing, but unless they are literally handing out one of each color to everyone she will not even put a small dent in x-force's current popularity.

mohio

I do think true healing, or rather just the current healing system, is the big culprit for this happening. If you look at people's "top tier" lists of characters you'll see some variety, but you basically see either true healers or guys who can end the match asap (or hood, who, through DA accelerates your abilities and also helps you take less damage by not allowing the opponents to get off abilities). And it's not that other characters aren't sufficiently powerful or "balanced" with these other guys we consider top tier, but because they are a little slower, matches usually end up taking just a little bit longer, which means everyone takes more damage and you'll run through health packs faster. Think about LT and LC and BP. I could run these guys and have a pretty reasonable expectation of winning any match because they are quite powerful. But they take longer to get off their moves, so I can't just chain match after match with these guys like I can with X-Force/Daken (my climbing team of choice lately), who not only deal damage faster, but they also have true healing to boot. Obviously I'm not the only person who realizes this, so you end up seeing the same teams over and over again.

GothicKratos

PvP will always be monotonousness, especially at the top percentile. It's a competition to be the best, so people naturally gravitate the most effective combinations for maximum results.

Anything that has a competitive scene has this; Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone, StarCraft, League of Legends, Call of Duty, etc. Hell even a lot of games that don't have a huge PvP following end up being this way; World of Warcraft, Destiny, Final Fantasy (and any other RPG), etc.

Granted, it's less than optimal that there's basically two teams you see at the top, and there are things they could do to alleviate this some, but it's really a delicate balancing act. Do they work on new content (PvEs/Events/Etc)? Do they work on fixing bug/glitches (Sunder bug, mid-air matches)? Do they work on things literally breaking the game (Lollipop, iOS, etc)? Do they tweak mechanics in-game to make things more fluid (MMR/ELO, time slices, character balancing)?

At this point, I feel like it's hard to argue about character releases (disclosure: the character release schedule doesn't bother me a single percent), as I said recently in another thread, I feel like 99% of their income comes from the Seasons driving folks to but Health Packs, Boosts, and ISO and the character release regiment driving people to buy ISO, Roster Slots, and Covers. They have to have income and without something in my face telling me they're making bank off of this game, I don't believe they are after the overhead of servers, employees, branding fees, contractual obligations, etc. I won't fault them for trying to make a penny off their hard work.

They've been doing a damn good job at taking the steps (even if they're baby steps) to fixing everything that needs to be addressed. They've made some missteps too, but they've also been great about compensating people for their inconveniences. When do we start cutting human beings some slack? When everything is perfect?

Unknown

In fairness I think they get plenty of slack, just that, as human beings, they do some stuff well and some stuff bad. I am just a bit confused as they presented roster diversity as a (the main?) reason for a massive game change (true healing), yet there doesn't seem to be any more diversity now than before. So, if they were prepared to massively change the game over the diversity issue, and it hasn't worked, would we not conclude that it is still on their radar as a pressing issue? Or have they just given up (given up not meant to be disparaging, just that they are not sure how to "fix" it and have therefore moved onto the various other issues you have mentioned).

Wolarsen

by hermanbloom » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:28 am
I am just a bit confused as they presented roster diversity as a (the main?) reason for a massive game change (true healing), yet there doesn't seem to be any more diversity now than before.

I am 99% sure they did that because you could perfectly heal a team to almost full in 5-10 minutes using prologue and a 2* BW, wich was bad for health pack sales.
And I undestand that as a legit move from a company wicg tries to get some revenues, but tinykitty for "blah blah diversity" explanations (as well to "we flood chars because they are so cool we can't help it!" and similar bullsh).

Linkster79

GothicKratos wrote:

Anything that has a competitive scene has this; Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone, StarCraft, League of Legends, Call of Duty, etc. Hell even a lot of games that don't have a huge PvP following end up being this way; World of Warcraft, Destiny, Final Fantasy (and any other RPG), etc.

Try competitive Pokemon and you will see a massive diversity in character and strategies used. Of course you have to go by competition rules and stay away from Ubers but any team can win With the right player using them. Calm Mind Suicune, and CurseLax were awesome back in the days of Pearl when I last played.

iLL619

Ben Grimm wrote:

We're not going to see true roster diversity in PVP until the developers start doing something to specifically encourage it. The game does a few things to strongly discourage diversity in PVP:
- it uses the last team you win with as your defensive team
- it fairly brutally punishes risk taking via the healing system,
- any team that is different from the rest is liable to get targeted due to novelty and team-up acquisition
- there are too few truly elite characters and too many middling ones

As a result, the game does a lot to encourage everyone to use the same team and discourage any kind of risk-taking or innovative play in pvp.Iit's part of why pvp is so terrible. If they truly want to see diversity, they need to put some mechanisms in to reward it (or at least not punish it).

10000% agree

Spoit

Even ignoring true healing, it takes the better part of a day for someone like lt to heal after being downed. Like for example my cmarvwas downed at the beginning of my last refresh and my next one she still has 4 hours and change left to heal. So that's at least 3 refreshes to be at a usable health level, 4 to heal completely

Spoit

Even ignoring true healing, it takes the better part of a day for someone like lt to heal after being downed. Like for example my cmarvwas downed at the beginning of my last refresh and my next one she still has 4 hours and change left to heal. So that's at least 3 refreshes to be at a usable health level, 4 to heal completely

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

X Force's dominance is due to a variety of reasons. I do agree that 4* should be stronger than 3* but not overwhelmingly so. Unfortunately, he's pretty much top of the line amongst what a 4* should be, and on top of that he starts with true healing which would have made him a staple on any team even if he wasn't the best 4* in the first place. Surgical Strike is also overpowered ....

I'm torn on Xforce. My sense is he's in the neighborhood where a proper 4* should be, not unbeatable by 3*, but definitely a risky fight. I don't blame those who can invest in him to do so and use him as much as possible. Having said that, the consequence of this is he dominates PVP nodes greatly reducing diversity of opposing teams. It's difficult to find a foil for him as well, given his low green/black ability costs (a slight nerf on those costs may be debatable). So, while individually he's great, I can't help but feel his presence is a net negative for PVP overall and PVP would be better without him -- the same may go for 4*Thor.

David Sirlin discusses balance in fighting games and how a primary aim is to compact the power of the tiers of characters. I wouldn't say Xforce is in the "god tier", but the available roster for reasonable PVP play is quite narrow, as, and for the reasons Ben Grimm described. The Sentry nerf was probably a net positive for PVP -- despite those of us who ran him losing a key edge. I gather there is still quite a bit more to be done toward achieving a modest roster balance in PVP.

I'm hoping the new upcoming game mode allows for a broad application of rosters. The other positive news is that the game has slowly been moving towards greater balance in recent months, 4* Thor being an exception to a leveling spirit.