Character Rotations For Season IX (*Updated)

Unknown

TheBraintrust wrote:

Why would Patch possibly be nerfed? He's neither broken nor overpowered. He's a good solid character - on par with Punisher, LCap, and Torch. However, he's hardly at the same tier as top level of 3* characters like Thor, Panther, or Hood.

Healing is powerful. Patch can mow through minions or low level characters. However, he's giving up a power that will actually help win a fight to avoid use of health packs for the next one. He doesn't have particularly high hit points and his active powers are so/so. His green is a randomizer with a 50/50 chance of killing him, and his red is expensive (and only really powerful when he is the last man standing).

Patch is easily as powerful as BP. Thor is more powerful than him, and Hood is as good as the 4*s.

He's about a billion times better than Lcap and Punisher. Maybe two billion.

Unknown

Due to the game's limiting resources being health packs, any character with true healing is overwhelmingly more powerful than any character without if everything else is equal. In extended play, attrition can be a matter of winning or not. Suppopse you have 50% chance of beating some encounter with everyone at full health. Your chance of beating that encounter with everyone starting at 50% health is not just 25%. It's more like 5% if even that. A character like Patch will never have to worry about starting a fight being hurt if it's a fight where his starting health would matter, and that translates to saving you a lot of health packs. In the 'no Wolverine' essential section of Simulator Basic I found that Nick Fury was a lot better than I thought, but he bleeds health packs because he's slow and you need every single HP out of his 9590 for him to last long enough to get going, whereas in the same situation X Force would just use Recovery at the end of a fight, or if needed go to prologue to heal backup and this applies to any other true healing character.

Unknown

TheBraintrust wrote:

Why would Patch possibly be nerfed? He's neither broken nor overpowered. He's a good solid character - on par with Punisher, LCap, and Torch. However, he's hardly at the same tier as top level of 3* characters like Thor, Panther, or Hood.

Healing is powerful. Patch can mow through minions or low level characters. However, he's giving up a power that will actually help win a fight to avoid use of health packs for the next one. He doesn't have particularly high hit points and his active powers are so/so. His green is a randomizer with a 50/50 chance of killing him, and his red is expensive (and only really powerful when he is the last man standing).

Same reason Wolvie 2*'s healing was nerfed - "blah, blah, Wolverine is not supposed to be a tank." Because he can mow through minions and low level characters without needing healthpacks.

Unknown

Wow. Someone got mad at my joke.

yogi_

The only commentary that I want to make here, is that until there is a change in the model, approximately 1/3 of the 3* characters will be out of rotation at any one time. As more characters get introduced and with this continuous changing, it means that there is almost another rank in the game - pseudo 3* - they exist, but not really. It adds a lot of complexity for the player moving on from their 2*s.

The devs have expressed a clear disinterest in wanting to create more sets or varieties of covers within the current model. Within the current game, a possible medium term solution is to have a complete revamp of all character rankings and tokens and their distribution. Everyone would get placed into new 1*-3*, 1*-4* or 1*-5* rankings (and a framework introduced as to how and where future characters fit) and there are at least 3 token varieties to cover this. Also be open to retiring characters from the game.

The actual long term solution to this problem is to seperate the token / cover system and the way that characters gain levels and abilities but the game is not currently physically set up this way, so yeah...

Quebbster

I was thinking about making a list like this, but decided I didn't want to maintain it. Glad to see someone else wants to.
One comment is that it could be more useful with a chronological list instead of an alphabetical one as characters that have been out of rotation long have a greater chance of coming back.

Lystrata

Echoing sentiments of others... GSBW and LDaken? What on earth? Particularly LDaken - he is absolutely key to anyone starting their 3* roster (or trying to improve it), in a way that so many, many other 3*s aren't. I can't see any 'fix' to him that would justify him being taken out for a month+.

If you're going to continue with the path of removing characters, I'd really like to see some better reasons for why they're taken out than 'as a reminder, this lets us work on them'. (Especially since, as we saw with Sentry and Hood, that's not necessary.)

There have been so many suggestions in the forums about other ways to fix the token issue... why are you persisting with a method that punishes players? For all that gets spouted about 'roster diversity', making it impossible to actually get covers for/level up X-amount of characters each season doesn't particularly support that ethos.

Dayv

Lystrata wrote:

Echoing sentiments of others... GSBW and LDaken? What on earth? Particularly LDaken - he is absolutely key to anyone starting their 3* roster (or trying to improve it), in a way that so many, many other 3*s aren't. I can't see any 'fix' to him that would justify him being taken out for a month+.

If you're going to continue with the path of removing characters, I'd really like to see some better reasons for why they're taken out than 'as a reminder, this lets us work on them'.

They've never said that all "vaulted" characters will be modified in their absence -- just that they may be. I expect Daken will be unchanged when he returns to token odds.

yogi_

I think this article - Marvel’s dealings with Spider-Man, X-Men, and Fantastic Four are a mess right now - summarises possibly more of the actual reasons why certain characters in the game might be out of rotation or considered lower tier.

Let's take a look - starting with the most obvious, the Fantastic Four. Doctor Doom and Human Torch are out of rotation, Invisible Woman is considered a poor character and has never been suitably boosted (particularly given her * rating), it's hard to believe that we've never had a Mr. Fantastic or Thing and 2* Human Torch is neither here nor there in the broader picture of the game.

This could play out in a couple of ways. If things largely stay with the status-quo, Doom and HT will come back into the game (both 3 abilities, both not high tier characters), IW may or may not ever get boosted and don't expect any more FF characters. Less likelihood of them featuring in events. Alternatively and with some % of refund, remove one or more of the characters from the game. This causes complications, but does save hassle in terms of their licensing.

Spider Man and co. Not much to say here. We have a low tier older character (Spidey), a low tier newer character (DocOc), a joke character out of tokens (Bag-Man), a forgotten about 1* character (Venom) and a largely forgotten about tile ability (web). Harldy a ringing endorsement of this collection.

X-Men. A mixed collection of characters. Maybe not a main priority, but too significant to downplay much.

The main complication with removing characters is in relation to PvE, but nothing that new beginning missions (currently Dark Reign, formerly know as Prologue) with none of the above characters couldn't fix. This is alternate way of dealing with FF / Spider-Man - make all the above characters 1* and 2* (excluding some X-Men) and give them the introductory PvE missions. Then once you transition, you are largely done. Though, this does sound like a lot of work, particularly if you are trying to lessen the focus and from what I have read, particularly FF seem to be out of flavour - so maybe a Spidey/X-Men story.

eaise

We should have a PVE with Ldaken rewards during off season before he gets vaulted. Allow people to get a few covers of one of the best characters before he goes away for awhile.
He becomes usuable for me with two more purples

Unknown

Honestly, I think you d3 guys have the best intentions, but on this issue, you guys are completely tone deaf and do not relate to how frustrating and unfair character rotations are to many of your players.

Edit: I also think it's a real shady move, that you're not making it more clear to non-forumites (ie. clearly stating the characters not openable in packs in recruitment window). Many users would quit the game or not buy packs, but
of course you wouldn't, because you would lose sales, so instead you just stealth it. For real life products, companies have been successfully sued for way less deceptive practices.

Edit edit: I also want to emphasize that I don't think all d3 staff are responsible for this (afterall, people have jobs to keep, if it was disadvantageous to challenge this), but it speaks about the integrity of management/people responsible for these decisions.

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Greetings MPQ Community,

Here's the latest Character Rotation plan set to go live with the start of Season IX on Friday, December 12th. (To see the original post outlining the Character Rotation Plan visit: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=17494).

Loki is back and he's sporting a new, third ability (to be detailed soon). Daredevil has also been revamped and is more dangerous than ever! Wolverine (Patch) will be returning to the active fray after a little time off, and he's been keeping up his exercise regimen.

Rotating In: Groot+Rocket, Gamora, Loki, Daredevil, Wolverine (Patch). (and 4* Thor, confirmed in comments. -DayvBang)

Rotating Out: Black Widow (Grey Suit), Daken (Classic), Iron Man (Model 40), Psylocke, Black Panther.

Characters that are taken out of packs will start rotating back in as other characters ahead of them in the rotation queue return. We'll always communicate in advance which characters will be rotating out.

Reminder: This allows us to work on the characters that are out of the spotlight.

Thank you!

Although it is nice that this information is shared on these forums, D3 should inform the entire playerbase with an in-game popup or by other means.

Chrono_Tata

So who wants to bet that once Loki's buff goes live, they will run a PvP with his third cover as the top 5 reward and his PvE event will give out one of his original covers as a progression reward?

Unknown

when i get 5 3* thor cover they remove it

when i get 5 BP / 4 BW cover they remove them again....

I only get 1 Loki / 3 Gamora / 3 Goot / 0 DD / 1 patch /

so my path to 166 is extended! what the ****!

Unknown

Damn, i was hoping punisher was back in

orbitalint

So, licensing of movie rights has nothing to do with their licensing in other mediums. Marvel has retained their rights to digital media, games, comics, etc. It's why you see Spidey in that disney infinity game for kids as well as xmen in the marvel heroes mmo.

Marvel licensed probably most of their character catalog to PQ for this game and if not, d3 can get rights to them easily. I don't think this plays any role in their character design or lack of power in game. That's on d3.

Phaserhawk

benben77 wrote:

when i get 5 3* thor cover they remove it

when i get 5 BP / 4 BW cover they remove them again....

I only get 1 Loki / 3 Gamora / 3 Goot / 0 DD / 1 patch /

so my path to 166 is extended! what the tinykitty!

but the odds of you getting that exact cover are so low you have a better chance of it being a prize than you do of getting that exact cover, and....they can always make it avaiable in a special event token where that character is boosted.

Unknown

No one should be relying on tokens to build their roster. In the last 100 Heroic and 1000 standard tokens I've opened I've gotten maybe 6 usable covers. And it seems a little selfish to think that new players should get a better shot at building their rosters and vets should just tough it out. If you're really just dying for one more cover, save up the HP and buy it.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

benben77 wrote:

when i get 5 3* thor cover they remove it

when i get 5 BP / 4 BW cover they remove them again....

I only get 1 Loki / 3 Gamora / 3 Goot / 0 DD / 1 patch /

so my path to 166 is extended! what the tinykitty!

but the odds of you getting that exact cover are so low you have a better chance of it being a prize than you do of getting that exact cover, and....they can always make it avaiable in a special event token where that character is boosted.

They have clearly stated that any vaulted character will not be a featured character/special event prize. The only way to get a vaulted character is through daily reward.

Additionally, due to the quick release of characters, the vaulting period will get longer and longer

Season 7 Characters In - 7, Net Characters Vaulted - 7
Season 8 Characters In - 2, Net Characters Vaulted - 9
Season 9 Characters In - 5, Characters Out - 3, Net Characters Vaulted - 11.

If they continue the same pattern as Season 9: Vault 5, Release 3, Add 2 New then the Average length of time in the vault is as follows.

Season 7 - 2.7 Seasons
Season 8 - 3.0 Seasons
Season 9 - 3.4 Seasons
Season 10 - 4.0 Seasons
Season 11 - 4.6 Seasons

As we are witnessing with 11 characters (many of whom are the focus of a transitioning roster) vaulted, the current method and timeframe is not a viable longterm solution to this issue

wymtime

Chrono_Tata wrote:

So who wants to bet that once Loki's buff goes live, they will run a PvP with his third cover as the top 5 reward and his PvE event will give out one of his original covers as a progression reward?

I sold Loki a long time ago for roster space. I look forward to getting him back if he is improved Otherwise he will be a level 40 trophy