Have a 2* Balance Release Day

yogi_

One day, you can pick devs (do it soon), release the rebalanced 2* Captain America, Bullseye (with 3rd ability), Moonstone and Spider-Man and give them to us all at once. If you wanna fidget with anyone else, go right ahead.

It doesn't have to be anything too fancy, I imagine Bullseye is in the works already and there are suggestions all over the place everywhere for the other characters - I mean, come on.. they don't even need anything that major done to them - not asking for a top tier character or anything... just... more usable.

dider152

yogi_ wrote:

One day, you can pick devs (do it soon), release the rebalanced 2* Captain America, Bullseye (with 3rd ability), Moonstone and Spider-Man and give them to us all at once. If you wanna fidget with anyone else, go right ahead.

It doesn't have to be anything too fancy, I imagine Bullseye is in the works already and there are suggestions all over the place everywhere for the other characters - I mean, come on.. they don't even need anything that major done to them - not asking for a top tier character or anything... just... more usable.

I don't see why there needs to be a balance of 2* Captain America. He's like the classic 3* one, only a little weaker. Bullseye may get a third opinion, but in my opinion he doesn't need it. I would appreciate it if he was level 94 like the rest, but he might be a little OP then. I find his match purple/create defense tile power really helpful, and I am able to reduce most attacks by a lot. It takes a lot of to make his second ability, but it is very powerful, and I'm able to significantly hurt or even kill most enemies outright if I'm patient. I don't see why people don't like Moonstone. I really like her warping power, but I find that keeping it at 3 power is good because it doesn't mess with too many colors, which can increase the randomness of the power. And I also like taking over ability tiles with her. When you say Spider-man, do you mean Bag-Man? If Bag-Man, he deserves a makeover because he's so useless and his one really useful power can be done, and done better, with 2* Black Widow. Spider-Man is OK, but the only really useful power of his is All Tied Up, but only if you level him up and need someone to stunlock an opponent.

MarcusGraves

dider152 wrote:

I don't see why there needs to be a balance of 2* Captain America. He's like the classic 3* one, only a little weaker.

because star spangled avenger is trash damage for its cost, 676 damage for 11 red is just absolute rubbish. even with the utility there are way better red powers to use in 2* range, it needs a damage bump.

dider152 wrote:

I don't see why people don't like Moonstone. I really like her warping power, but I find that keeping it at 3 power is good because it doesn't mess with too many colors, which can increase the randomness of the power. And I also like taking over ability tiles with her.

-purple just is too random, basically anything higher than 1 special tile makes it easily useless and a waste of AP
-red is really meh
-black is stupidly overpriced and barely usable.

junky 2* character

CNash

To improve Moonstone:

- Gravity Warp: let the user choose the tile to target; do damage at all times (i.e. even if it swaps a tile). Maybe halve the damage if it swaps a tile, a la Anti-Gravity Device.

- Control Shift: reduce power cost; let the user choose the tile to target. Perhaps with the tradeoff that it doesn't reduce the countdown, so you'd still have to wait 5 turns for a Deadly Shot CD to fire off.

- Photon Blast's effect is honestly ok as it is. It's not the best red power in the 2* set - Human Torch's Fireball is better (Photon Blast needs at least 6 reds on the board to match its damage) and cheaper (8 for Fireball, 11 for Photon Blast), but with the downside that you have to use the squishy Torch instead of the tanky Moonstone. Decrease the cost to 8 or 9 and that should do it.

Pylgrim

It is very cute that you think it takes a day to balance one character, let alone several.

Idea, code, playtest, playtest, playtest, fix bugs, playtest, playtest, playtest, fix more bugs, cover niche interactions with rare-occurring events, playtest. At any of those steps, you may find that the ability is irredeemably broken, actually weak, too bug-prone, or just not fun and you have to go back to the beginning. This process is called iteration and if you cut it short just to please eager consumers, you'll end with just plain bad stuff. See that month when Beast and Doc Ock were released, for what may be an example of that.

Trisul

None of us would want Dark Avengers buffed. They are annoying enough as-is.

pmorcs

Totally agree, 2* cap is next on my "sell to make room" list.

yogi_

Pylgrim wrote:

It is very cute that you think it takes a day to balance one character, let alone several.

Idea, code, playtest, playtest, playtest, fix bugs, playtest, playtest, playtest, fix more bugs, cover niche interactions with rare-occurring events, playtest. At any of those steps, you may find that the ability is irredeemably broken, actually weak, too bug-prone, or just not fun and you have to go back to the beginning. This process is called iteration and if you cut it short just to please eager consumers, you'll end with just plain bad stuff. See that month when Beast and Doc Ock were released, for what may be an example of that.

Pretty sure I said release them all together on the one day, not it takes a day to balance more than one.

Otherwise, so cute!!!

Pylgrim

Fair enough, but my point still remains: it's a huge amount of work, Do you really believe they should invest all that time and effort into making slightly less mediocre some mediocre, middle-of-the-road characters?

stevenbrule

My guess is that Ragnarok will be given a third power next season, slowly working their way down to 2star and 1star territory in subsequent seasons - the play-testing will take a lot of work, especially given how few people will end up using the new powers.

mohio

Pylgrim wrote:

Fair enough, but my point still remains: it's a huge amount of work, Do you really believe they should invest all that time and effort into making slightly less mediocre some mediocre, middle-of-the-road characters?

Yeah this is the real issue. There are just many more important things they could be spending their time doing like new pve content, new game modes (one can always dream), fixing 2*-->3* transition. It may seem like an easy fix for some of these characters (a la nonce's crusade to get way overcosted powers made cheaper) but even small simple changes need to be tested to ensure they don't interact in unintended ways with other powers or have now become overpowered and that can take time and resources away from other projects.

SnowcaTT

pmorcs wrote:

Totally agree, 2* cap is next on my "sell to make room" list.

I agree that one problem is many people don't use these characters after they move into 3* range (so why waste time), but I think this is the bigger problem. You can start moving into 3* land with six-seven 2*'s (Daken/Wolvey/Thor/Ares/OBW/Storm/Mags) - but HP is so scares and roster spots cost nearly 800 HP a piece if you have one of each character - why bother wasting the roster space?

Folks will need their roster spaces to build their 3* rosters, and you have to buy a ton of spaces now (with another one or two every month/season). No reason to waste spaces on the likes of Bagman/Moonstone/Bullseye/Cap/Marvel/Hawkeye - if I had it to do over again I wouldn't have any of those on my roster. Eventually I'll be selling them rather than paying HP to keep characters on my roster I'll never use.

CNash

I see it a different way - I'm not selling my 2*s to make room because I'd rather have a maxed 2* that I can use in a pinch than a 1-cover 3* that I can't use at all.

Unknown

As a 2* PVE grinder, I think tinyCap is really undervalued. However, considering he has only 2 useful abilities, his red damage should really be upgraded by about 20% to make him decent against non-goons. How is it possible that 3* Cap's red is one of the best in the game, but 2* Cap's is close to the worst 2* red in the game?

rednailz

yogi_ wrote:

One day, you can pick devs (do it soon), release the rebalanced 2* Captain America, Bullseye (with 3rd ability), Moonstone and Spider-Man and give them to us all at once. If you wanna fidget with anyone else, go right ahead.

It doesn't have to be anything too fancy, I imagine Bullseye is in the works already and there are suggestions all over the place everywhere for the other characters - I mean, come on.. they don't even need anything that major done to them - not asking for a top tier character or anything... just... more usable.

Why is it that everyone "needs" 3 skills now? I think it's stupid. Some charecters are weaker than others, and bullseye is one of them. His 2 abilities are actually pretty good for a dark reign baddy. Not everyne in the game is supposed to be exactly the same strenght.

Trisul

daibar wrote:

As a 2* PVE grinder, I think tinyCap is really undervalued. However, considering he has only 2 useful abilities, his red damage should really be upgraded by about 20% to make him decent against non-goons. How is it possible that 3* Cap's red is one of the best in the game, but 2* Cap's is close to the worst 2* red in the game?

All they really have to do is fix his red's level scaling. If 2* Cap's red scaled well with levels, he'd see some more use. As of now he's not even worth using even when boosted unless you literally have no other options.