Why abilities' colours are so stereotype?

Unknown

& - damage (Psylocke (red), Thor (both colours, all versions), Wolverine (both colours, all versions), Human Torch (both colours, all versions), Hulk (both colours), She-Hulk (red), Captain America (red), Captain Marvel (red), other characters).
- AP generation (Storm (Modern & Mohawk), Captain Marvel (all versions), The Hood (before nerf), Thor (all versions)).
- stun (Black Widow (Modern), Daredevil, Iron Man (all versions), Thor (Godess Of Thunder)).
- tile effect (Daken, Bullseye, Moonstone, Hawkeye (Classic), Magneto (Marvel now), Falcon, Black Widow (Grey Suit)).
- attack tile (Psylocke, Storm (Modern & Mohawk), The Punisher, Human Torch (all versions), Doctor Doom).

brisashi

Ok.

What is your question?

GothicKratos

The developers do this on purpose. They've talked about it in the past a few times, that basically, it helps each character 'tell a story' with it's powers.

From QnA #2 wrote:

Q: Has the lack of active Purple powers been noticed? Are there plans of correcting that?

A: Part of the process for developing an ability is coming up with what story the ability is telling: What is the Super Hero doing when they fire this ability? It’s part of the design that we think adds a lot of the flavor to the game and really makes the characters feel like their comic book selves.

Purple is a sneaky, subtle kind of color, so we aim to tell stories of subversion and intrigue with those abilities. As a result, a lot of them end up with passive or reactionary triggers. Having said all that, we are aware that there are some colors that are more prominent than others and keep that in mind when designing new abilities or revisiting old ones.

This is the most recent example I could think of them talking about why certain colors represent different things.

Chrono_Tata

I think it's something that's kind of a legacy of Puzzle Quest being originally a fantasy-theme game. The gem colours represent different elemental mana and are supposed to represent something.

Red = Fire = direct damage
Blue = Ice = freezing (stunning, disrupting the opponent's special tiles)
Green = Earth = board affecting moves
Purple = Stealth = stealing and other sneaky type stuff
Yellow = Light = healing and boosting
Black = Darkness = "underhanded" tactics like causing bleeding (attack tiles), evil stuff

Obviously at this point, many of the abilities in MPQ don't actually follow these so it's more of a guideline. In the original PQ games, each ability can consume multiple colours of mana (for example, a damaging move that cause stunning might cost red as well as blue mana), but since in MPQ, each ability only costs 1 colour, the concept doesn't quite translate as easily.

Unknown

There is nothing wrong with associating certain colours with certain kinds of abilities.

GuntherBlobel

In addition to the theme aspect mentioned above, I think it's an essential aspect to game balance.

No one runs Ares/Thor/Sentry, even though it would be a high health team with mostly direct damage powers. If "heavy hitters" covered the rainbow, they would dominate team composition and leave support characters to waste. I think an unwritten rule about MPQ characters is that the generally fill the role of character classes. Low health, support characters make good additions to most teams because they allow the team to cover other colors even if they lack the most popular powers. There are also exceptions to the theme, which are rare, but may greatly increase the utility of the character (X-Force and BP have unusual black powers) because they increase the number of direct damage abilities possible for a typical team.

A lot has been said about color ability themes, but in the Marvel.com interviews they also mention character class, like Heavy Hitter, Brawler, and Sniper. Thieves are also a common role (BW, Fury) and they also share similar health levels and colors. So, there are several ways that the characters get stereotyped, but again, I think it's just an easy way to ensure team composition balance.

Unknown

The current color system just means you can't possibly compete without a strong coverage on some color (like green). It's not bad as a design philsophy but at some point you got to face reality. MTG had an article about card drawing, which is normally the theme for blue/black, but card drawing is so powerful in MTG that they found that they need to put some of that in the other colors or people will just play only black or blue. In MPQ right now apparently the theme for green is 'mega damage with great side effects and no drawback' and well, it's pretty hard to compete against that as a color.

GothicKratos

Phantron wrote:

The current color system just means you can't possibly compete without a strong coverage on some color (like green). It's not bad as a design philsophy but at some point you got to face reality. MTG had an article about card drawing, which is normally the theme for blue/black, but card drawing is so powerful in MTG that they found that they need to put some of that in the other colors or people will just play only black or blue. In MPQ right now apparently the theme for green is 'mega damage with great side effects and no drawback' and well, it's pretty hard to compete against that as a color.

The big difference here is you don't run one color or theme in MPQ. Yeah, sure, it's a huge drawback if you don't bring one of the good Green abilities to the battle, but bringing three(/all) Green abilities to battle in MPQ is going to be a hindrance. MPQ is about synergy, which usually means being as rainbow as possible (which is why, as mentioned previously, you would never run Ares/Thor/Sentry because there's too much overlap --- all of their abilities in all three colors are hard hitting, but you'd never use them all so it's just a plain hindrance), or using a core composition that counters your opponent's (i.e. Daken/Falcon/Blade in PvE Goon Nodes).

GuntherBlobel

GothicKratos wrote:

MPQ is about synergy, which usually means being as rainbow as possible (which is why, as mentioned previously, you would never run Ares/Thor/Sentry because there's too much overlap --- all of their abilities in all three colors are hard hitting, but you'd never use them all so it's just a plain hindrance), or using a core composition that counters your opponent's (i.e. Daken/Falcon/Blade in PvE Goon Nodes).

I'm sorry to nitpick semantics, but MPQ is actually all about "complementation" and a just a little about "synergy." Complementation in MPQ is all about compensating for the weakness of one character with the strengths of another, which is what you do when you run a rainbow team. Synergy would be the amplification of an existing strength, like the effect of Falcon's Inspiration on Strike Tiles (without Strike Tiles, Inspiration does nothing). Or the effect that Strike Tiles have with rapid-firing powers like we saw with the old Patchneto or with Daken/Sentry combos. There isn't a lot of synergy between the characters actually... in MPQ, good synergy tends to lead to overplayed teams that eventually get nerfed. MPQ is all about complementation.

The Devs get this wrong in the Marvel.com interviews as well, so your are in good company. Again, I hate to nitpick. Sorry.

In any case, I totally understood and liked the point of your post.

Unknown

Outside of obviously broken abilities like Dormammu's Aid (which would be overpowered in any color) there's no real synergy because green is damage and tile destruction. Tile destruction invariably leads to cascades which leads to more AP which leads to more of everything else. If X Force doesn't exist, there's nothing particularly threatening if there was a mode where you can only use red/green/yellow active skills while your opponents still have access to all their skills. Sure, it'd be harder, but it wouldn't be that much harder. Now flip that around so that you can only use black/blue/purple. I hope you got Nick Fury or X Force, because otherwise your game is going to take forever to win.

NorthernPolarity

GuntherBlobel wrote:

GothicKratos wrote:

MPQ is about synergy, which usually means being as rainbow as possible (which is why, as mentioned previously, you would never run Ares/Thor/Sentry because there's too much overlap --- all of their abilities in all three colors are hard hitting, but you'd never use them all so it's just a plain hindrance), or using a core composition that counters your opponent's (i.e. Daken/Falcon/Blade in PvE Goon Nodes).

I'm sorry to nitpick semantics, but MPQ is actually all about "complementation" and a just a little about "synergy." Complementation in MPQ is all about compensating for the weakness of one character with the strengths of another, which is what you do when you run a rainbow team. Synergy would be the amplification of an existing strength, like the effect of Falcon's Inspiration on Strike Tiles (without Strike Tiles, Inspiration does nothing). Or the effect that Strike Tiles have with rapid-firing powers like we saw with the old Patchneto or with Daken/Sentry combos. There isn't a lot of synergy between the characters actually... in MPQ, good synergy tends to lead to overplayed teams that eventually get nerfed. MPQ is all about complementation.

The Devs get this wrong in the Marvel.com interviews as well, so your are in good company. Again, I hate to nitpick. Sorry. In any case, I totally understood and liked the point of your post.

I think that MPQ has a lot of team compositions with "synergy" as you call it. The complementation side is forming a rainbow team as you said, but once you have that, you can start looking at inherit character synergies in order to form better team compositions.

Take Daken / Falcon / Blade for instance. There is massive amounts of synergy involved in Blade / Daken both independently generating strike tiles in different ways, and fueling Chemical Reaction, Blade's purple, and falcons yellow. The lines get pretty blurry and arbitrary for some of this stuff though - for instance, is the lack of an active red "complementation" in that blades weakness is if his thirst isn't active, or is it "synergy" in that the team doesn't require red, making blade naturally strong and thirsty?

Tangent - I think a really cool complementary and synergistic team is Grocket / DP / BP - theres a ton going on here.
1. All rainbow coverage in 6 rainbow abilities.
2. Grocket tanks 3 colors for true healing
3. Strike tiles with BP / Grocket help out with AoE / DP red (whose liability makes having strike tiles a lot better).
4. Relatively few board clearing effects (just grocket green, low priority) means strike tiles can turn online.

In MPQ, theres really just a couple of strategic things going on, and some of these do go beyond just "make team compositions that have rainbow colors"
1. Strike tiles go well with cheap abilities, AoE, and attack tiles
2. Special tiles do NOT go well with board clear.
3. Chaining board clear into board clear is good, esp if the board clears each destroy a random tile color.
4. True healing + the ability to tank colors is good.

Phantron wrote:

Outside of obviously broken abilities like Dormammu's Aid (which would be overpowered in any color) there's no real synergy because green is damage and tile destruction. Tile destruction invariably leads to cascades which leads to more AP which leads to more of everything else. If X Force doesn't exist, there's nothing particularly threatening if there was a mode where you can only use red/green/yellow active skills while your opponents still have access to all their skills. Sure, it'd be harder, but it wouldn't be that much harder. Now flip that around so that you can only use black/blue/purple. I hope you got Nick Fury or X Force, because otherwise your game is going to take forever to win.

TLDR: "X-Force is so broken that everything else is completely irrelevant, so why are we talking about it".

GothicKratos

Phantron wrote:

Outside of obviously broken abilities like Dormammu's Aid (which would be overpowered in any color) there's no real synergy because green is damage and tile destruction. Tile destruction invariably leads to cascades which leads to more AP which leads to more of everything else. If X Force doesn't exist, there's nothing particularly threatening if there was a mode where you can only use red/green/yellow active skills while your opponents still have access to all their skills. Sure, it'd be harder, but it wouldn't be that much harder. Now flip that around so that you can only use black/blue/purple. I hope you got Nick Fury or X Force, because otherwise your game is going to take forever to win.

That's irrelevant, because no such mode exists. Theorycraft is nice, but it's not how you balance things.

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

The developers do this on purpose. They've talked about it in the past a few times, that basically, it helps each character 'tell a story' with it's powers.

IMO, instead of deciding which colour should have which ability type, they should choose colours that associate with a character & then add abilities, with associate with that character, without making a fixed connection between colour & ability (WTH Psylocke doesn't have purple, Spider-Man & Blade don't have red?).

brisashi wrote:

What is your question?

Can't read?

over_clocked

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Tangent - I think a really cool complementary and synergistic team is Grocket / DP / BP - theres a ton going on here.
1. All rainbow coverage in 6 rainbow abilities.
2. Grocket tanks 3 colors for true healing
3. Strike tiles with BP / Grocket help out with AoE / DP red (whose liability makes having strike tiles a lot better).
4. Relatively few board clearing effects (just grocket green, low priority) means strike tiles can turn online.

Pst, how do Grocket tank blue? By all accounts, BP should have blue over them. It's still a nice combo, so kudos ^_^
Edit: unless you mean TUAP, then it's quite glorious indeed!

rednailz

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I think that MPQ has a lot of team compositions with "synergy" as you call it. The complementation side is forming a rainbow team as you said, but once you have that, you can start looking at inherit character synergies in order to form better team compositions.

Take Daken / Falcon / Blade for instance. There is massive amounts of synergy involved in Blade / Daken both independently generating strike tiles in different ways, and fueling Chemical Reaction, Blade's purple, and falcons yellow. The lines get pretty blurry and arbitrary for some of this stuff though - for instance, is the lack of an active red "complementation" in that blades weakness is if his thirst isn't active, or is it "synergy" in that the team doesn't require red, making blade naturally strong and thirsty?

I like blade in that combo but still prefer HT or Pun, so you do get the red (although you aren't matching a lot of red which is why HT is nice with low red AP cost) and so matching green gives you an AP ability instead of only a stike tile.

brisashi

Magic the gathering does the same thing.