I prefer a power creep over what we got / are getting.

Unknown

It essentially was in some levels where you couldn't use him (because you are fighting against a 240 level version of him)...but formats would have been an interesting way to look at this

Eddiemon

Moon 17 wrote:

DumDumDugn wrote:

This is how MTG and MAA shake up the meta without completely nerfing top tiers. Introducing hard counters.

But not exactly. They use formats with defined contents and ban and restrict cards when necessary. If MTG had had anything like what we had in Rag, it would have been banned in standard.

Alpha/unlimited magic rag equivalents.
Black lotus
Moxen
Time walk
Time twister.

Heck even lightning bolt, giant growth etc have been nerfed and the originals are no longer playable in standard.

Unknown

Part of the problem with this discussion is that every other game mentioned (afaik) is true PvP. In MPQ you can skip opponents you don't like, you're much more concerned about speed than "win percentage", and there is a significant difference between a char on offense and defense in terms of creating a counter, mostly because of the AI.

In order to create a counter character, *the AI* has to be able to play it well enough (or it has to be passive enough) to defend against/annoy/slow down the offending char. Even if there's an ability which is "15 red - kill <over powered char>" if the AI has a 5 red ability, it will routinely drain its red before using that ability and I'll absolutely run an <over powered char> team against it. Heck, if I can get a 1 turn kill against it, even if it costs 0, I'll still run <over powered char> against it.

Things like healing factors, shield generators (adamantium bones/spider sense), things which increase ability costs or deny AP, stuns, etc. are all probably up the right alley here.

Now that you have a decent character that can stop <overpowered char> you have to get people to play the counter-char on offesnse. Otherwise, nobody will ever have to attack it when they're grinding a tournament which means they'll have no incentive to switch their grinding team. (note that there's very little incentive to care about your defense, especially with shields available). This means that the counter char has to be significantly better than <overpowered char> against the meta (or at least <overpowered char>) on offense. However, this new counter char also can't be himself, overpowered. Quite a strict set of constraints to create a good counter.

tl;dr - Creating a char that a human can use to quickly stomp <over powered char> will not stop people from running <over powered char>. You also have to create a char which is annoying enough/difficult enough to kill when the AI uses it on defense. This char, himself cannot be overpowered.

Unknown

The only reason MTG doesn't nerf stuff is because its product is in a physical medium. It'd be pretty weird if you pull out an Ancestral Recall and someone tells you "Haven't you heard? It's now 2UU to cast instead of U now." And it'd be awfully hard to know if someone isn't just trying to pull a fast one on you.

Unknown

and at 2UU it would STILL be a fantastic card too! saw someone with one once...it was glorious.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

In order to create a counter character, *the AI* has to be able to play it well enough (or it has to be passive enough) to defend against/annoy/slow down the offending char. Even if there's an ability which is "15 red - kill <over powered char>" if the AI has a 5 red ability, it will routinely drain its red before using that ability and I'll absolutely run an <over powered char> team against it. Heck, if I can get a 1 turn kill against it, even if it costs 0, I'll still run <over powered char> against it.

People are confusing the fact with the offense has a overwhelming advantage with the AI's ability to defend themselves. If you have to play with the handicap of never allowed to choose who you target while the opponent can target whoever they want at will, you will get slapped silly most of the time. The first move advantage is also huge in this game. In The Hulk tournament, literally every mirror match is autolose for the defense, because the defense is forced to attack Hulk most of the time. This isn't an AI limitation. This is an inherent handicap for the defense.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The only reason MTG doesn't nerf stuff is because its product is in a physical medium. It'd be pretty weird if you pull out an Ancestral Recall and someone tells you "Haven't you heard? It's now 2UU to cast instead of U now." And it'd be awfully hard to know if someone isn't just trying to pull a fast one on you.

Except that they do this with comprehensive rule revisions. If you have an old copy of, say, Loxodon Warhammer, you have a copy of the card that's strictly speaking more powerful than the new one. Making lifelink a keyword took away its ability to stack with itself, so giving a guy two warhammers no longer gained you double life. The old card is still playable, but its wording is at odds with its effect in game.

That being said, they very rarely make such broad changes that they affect cards still seeing serious play. The old Dragonball Z card game had to make serious revisions after its first set, and a lot of the cards' altered texts were unrecognizable compared to the originals.

And as long as I'm trying to be relevant to the conversation: I've always just assumed that balancing issues are all about relative player strength on offense and not about defense. My impression is that a solid 3* team should be able to handle any other team out there (provided you don't get screwed by bad luck); the AI sucks and (as was stated) humans get both choice of targets and first move.

Unknown

They had a DBZ card game???

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

ApolloAndy wrote:

In order to create a counter character, *the AI* has to be able to play it well enough (or it has to be passive enough) to defend against/annoy/slow down the offending char. Even if there's an ability which is "15 red - kill <over powered char>" if the AI has a 5 red ability, it will routinely drain its red before using that ability and I'll absolutely run an <over powered char> team against it. Heck, if I can get a 1 turn kill against it, even if it costs 0, I'll still run <over powered char> against it.

People are confusing the fact with the offense has a overwhelming advantage with the AI's ability to defend themselves. If you have to play with the handicap of never allowed to choose who you target while the opponent can target whoever they want at will, you will get slapped silly most of the time. The first move advantage is also huge in this game. In The Hulk tournament, literally every mirror match is autolose for the defense, because the defense is forced to attack Hulk most of the time. This isn't an AI limitation. This is an inherent handicap for the defense.

Absolutely. The human should win the vast majority of the time for any number of reasons. Fortunately, the defender doesn't have to win. They just have to be annoying/slow down the attacker. Even something as dumb as "Play a 30 second animation any time you get thunderclapped" would make the character a decent defense against Ragnarok. That said, with no penalty for skipping there's little incentive to not just look for a better matchup and there's no incentive for any human to play such a character.

So if you actually wanted to create a healthy meta, there'd have to be some penalty for skipping (there kind of is, in that you have to wait to find another match that has a good amount of points) - maybe just a 30 second wait - in addition to creating a set of characters which were good on both offense and defense against a subset of other characters.

Unknown

Let's go over a matchup that I played like 20 times in the last tournament, Hulk/Spiderman/Wolverine against its mirror.

Statistically, Spiderman will get hit about 4/7 of the time because he matches blue, yellow, purple, and environment. Realistically, you'll probably be focused on red, green, blue, and black on this match, so he can take as few as 25% of the team's expected damage.

Now, the opposing Spiderman obviously takes 100% of all incoming damage. Invariably, this results in the defender's Spiderman dying while you're Spiderman is sitting around somewhere between 50-75% health unless something catastrophic occurs. There isn't anything a smarter AI can possibly do about this if you do not lift the 'defense cannot choose target' limitation. After Spiderman is down, about the only possible way things can go wrong is if you've your Wolverine or Spiderman take an Adamantium Claw, but they'll probably survive and if not you can just start stunning Wolverine earlier.

The defense cannot get around the issue of while there is usually one very obvious character you want to focus on first, they don't get to actually focus on anyone at all. Now, I think healing powers could be nerfed some, as in this matchup you pretty much always end up with 100% of your health at the end due to Spiderman. If his healing isn't so overwhelming powerful, there would be a difference between having Spiderman finish with 50% or 75% HP (because if he started next fight with 50% then you might have to worry about him going down). But that'd be a balance issue.

Unknown

But if your goal is to have a diversity of teams running around, you don't actually care about having the AI beat the player. You just care about the AI (whose characters were chosen by a previous player) be relatively stronger (annoying/slowing) against the meta-popular characters and weaker against the meta-unpopular characters. It's clearly going to lose 95% of matches either way, but the success of the AI isn't measured in wins, it's measured in delaying the player (while he gets attacked by other players).

Unknown

If Spiderman can't get my team back to 100% basically every game, I'd definitely be rather disturbed if my Spiderman is at 50% after downing their Spiderman (which happens a reasonable portion of the time). And as long as Spiderman can get everyone back to 100%, it's impossible for the AI to be annoying unless you're going for the Adamantium Bones/Phermone Rage animation annoyance combo.

You can't have annoyance in the face of overwhelming power, and currently some characters are still too powerful.

Unknown

Well, with my lvl 50+ 2* team I often avoid Bullseyes, not because I'm going to lose or run out of health (OBW heals my team) but because it will take me twice or three times as long to win. If I had a character like Loki who killed all the shield tiles (and didn't completely stink otherwise), I would consider running him if there were a lot of Bullseyes around and there was some incentive to not skip (I have a couple ideas, but they're not terribly relevant here). Again, I'm pretty sure my normal 2* team is going to win, but I'll win a lot faster with Loki than without.

That's the kind of meta/diversity I assume the devs are looking for except there's so no disincentive to skip and that example get's thrown out when you can kill Bullseye in 1 turn.

Kikujiro

MTG is a fine example. Some years ago WOTC were worried because the number of people who play Magic was going down ...

Several years before there were those things called Urza´s Saga and Mirrodin with broken cards the first and broken synergies the later which due to a broken metagame and a lot of people rage quitting. So they toned things down to avoid similar mistakes, but people keep quitting with no noise at all, simply uninterested, like new players. They became aware of the problem and thought a plan.

Then Magic 2010 hit the stores and was a total seller. Right after came Zendikar and was a total seller ... Mirrodin "2", Innistrad, Ravnica "2" ... check, check, check and ongoing. Was there a power creep ? Yes indeed.

There was/are good and bad cards at every rarity level, common and uncommons are utility cards with simple effects and values so new players are less overwhelmed. Rares have more complexity and, generally, more raw power. And mythics ? Well, there are bad ones too, pre-Magic 2010 most of them, but they are cards whole sole presence in a game change it, whole sole presence on a set make people buy it. Jace the Mind Sculptor came 2 sets after Magic 2010 and now is banned in most of the competitive formats but is, as of today, a chase card (more than 100 bucks a piece) and the posterboy for Magic the Gathering. Ragnarok (mine is 3-0) was Jace TMS, the final goal for new players among Magneto (0-0-1) and Spiderman (2-2-3), they shoulda been the mythics, the 4 stars chase covers ... not anymore.

I thought of Spidey like the real Jace because utility and Ragnarok more like a Primeval Titan, high damage plus resources ... Magneto could be a Morphling/Aetherling due to versatility. Do they deserve a nerf ? Sort of, because I think Nemek hit the nail in the first page, regular 2-turns wins is off the limits. Wizards of the Coast try to prevent 2-turn wins in Legacy and 4-turn wins in Modern, but beside bannings they print hate cards, a lot, ex. Grafdigger's Cage or Relic of Progenitus to hate graveyard based strategies. Developers could do some new 1 or 2 star heroes to counteract the "monsters", or change useless old ones like Bag Man. The "monster" owner could see one of those hate-heroes when attacking (so, no shield) and simply skip it, but he is exposing himself to a win/lose situation where a low level player who is attacking too see his team and can change to that hate-character to totally screw him ... you know, -42 points xD . I think something like that is what DumDumDugn referred to when he talk about hard counters.

But alas Rag was nerfed and some others will be too, and to keep being sort-a-nerd I´ll continue with magic references. Lets say Thunderclap is Lightning Bolt like someone says posts ago, but i think was more like a Chain Lightning only for your team. You could make it an Incinerate, slightly overcosted but with added value or a Grapeshot with the same low cost, very low damage, but somewhat "repeatable" in the right team. Now is Spark Jolt, only profitable in dreamland or with too much work. With 12AP cost could have been a Lava Axe for 1 point of damage.

Not so good

Unknown

DumDumDugn wrote:

Kiamodo wrote:

I think there are ways.

rags creates less green tiles.
Attack is lowered by 400 on red
Red costs 4 AP
An over abundance of green will shutdown rags stunning him 2 turns


Boom. 4 better options right off the top of my head.

How about, cannot use Thunderclap when there are more than 10 greens on the board, or it does damage to your own team as well.

You're right, lots of creative ways to go about this.

Why are we still talking about this? It's done, move on. I also don't understand why people post long winded posts about how they're quitting yet continue to play and complain about the same things. Rags has been nerfed. It is a good thing for the longevity of the game.

Instead, we got lowest common denominator nerf/neuter.

Kiamodo

I think you hid your post in a quote. I assume you were telling us to get over it?

Unknown

DumDumDugn wrote:

Kiamodo wrote:

I think there are ways.

rags creates less green tiles.
Attack is lowered by 400 on red
Red costs 4 AP
An over abundance of green will shutdown rags stunning him 2 turns


Boom. 4 better options right off the top of my head.

How about, cannot use Thunderclap when there are more than 10 greens on the board, or it does damage to your own team as well.

You're right, lots of creative ways to go about this.

Why are we still talking about this? It's done, move on. I also don't understand why people post long winded posts about how they're quitting yet continue to play and complain about the same things. Rags has been nerfed. It is a good thing for the longevity of the game.

Instead, we got lowest common denominator nerf/neuter.

^ This. In a game where there are superpowered people, mythical gods, and symbiotic aliens, the devs could show at least SOME amount of imagination towards their buffs/debuffs. But no, we just get hamfisted, galling changes and snide announcements 6 hours after they happen.

Unknown

This thread gave me diarrhea. Sorry this game was not meant to have covers that would enable a win without matching some tiles. I've seen top level players say their win time has not been substantially affected by the Rag change (not sure how true that is). Get over it and swipe matches like everyone else.

There cannot be power creep, this game is 1 dimensional. Defense covers are arbitrary and one can never underestimate the power of the skip. I can only imagine what kind of data D3 had on users with a 100+ Rag. The nerf clearly reflected it. So blame your own min/maxing for the extent as to which the cover was changed.

Kiamodo

panthroq wrote:

This thread gave me diarrhea. Sorry this game was not meant to have covers that would enable a win without matching some tiles. I've seen top level players say their win time has not been substantially affected by the Ragnafag change (not sure how true that is). Get over it and swipe matches like everyone else.

There cannot be power creep, this game is 1 dimensional. Defense covers are arbitrary and one can never underestimate the power of the skip. I can only imagine what kind of data D3 had on users with a 100+ Rag. The nerf clearly reflected it. So blame your own min/maxing for the extent as to which the cover was changed.

There can easily be power creep. My guess is that all the characters will get scaled back and Rags was just the begining. It's not hard to imagine.

Unknown

panthroq wrote:

This thread gave me diarrhea. Sorry this game was not meant to have covers that would enable a win without matching some tiles. I've seen top level players say their win time has not been substantially affected by the Ragnafag change (not sure how true that is). Get over it and swipe matches like everyone else.

There cannot be power creep, this game is 1 dimensional. Defense covers are arbitrary and one can never underestimate the power of the skip. I can only imagine what kind of data D3 had on users with a 100+ Rag. The nerf clearly reflected it. So blame your own min/maxing for the extent as to which the cover was changed.

I pretty much ignored everything after you started using homosexual slurs. That's how ignorant hillbillies talk. I'm the of the most blunt / offensive people on the forums and even I think your a ****. At least I only fk with stupid people like you. Welcome to this century.