No X-Force No Point

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

Phantron wrote:

scottee wrote:

I actually feel bad sometimes that there are people who have spent hundreds of dollars and whose rosters are still not developed. That's how much this game is NOT pay-to-win.

I haven't spent money on this game and there's really nothing I need. Unless you're just into the PvP shield hopping mechanism you don't need anything even without spending money let alone those who do. This is not a good model for sustainability. The problem is that if the game lacks sufficient motivation for P2W then where does the money come from? Are people supposed to spend money to not win?

I continue to be more than a little puzzled (no pun intended) as to how this game is monetized. Rather than micro-transactions, they seem to depend on whales dropping tons of money on packs and maxing out whatever the overpowered new character is. I spent some money way back in the day, but it was for roster slots and a couple of select covers to max out my first 3*s when I was transitioning (which was way easier at the time).

Having taken some time off, and there being some new characters that I missed, I wouldn't mind dropping some money to catch up a bit. The problem for me is there's no real way to do that. I could spend $20 on a 10-Pack, but at about 1/6 chance of even getting a 3* or 4* per drop, and about half of those in packs being ones I don't need, that's not really a good gamble. It's essentially the same problem for the transitioning player, because what's that $20 buying me? A big gamble that I'm getting something that's going to help me and a really good chance at nothing but 2*s to sell, which means what I really did was buy Iso at a rate ever worse than the actual rate for buying Iso, which is universally mocked as a total waste of money.

So why provide such a bad value? Why depend on whales and gamblers? Why not lower the price and raise the drop rate on packs, make them way more accessible to the vast majority of players who are trying to build their rosters and get more competitive? This game has become even more about the haves and the have-nots, and it seems like there are better ways to make money and grow a playerbase than what they're doing now. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

The pull rate for the top characters is within what can be expected for a game like this. If anything it's slightly too generous. The problem is what happens after. Suppose you found a gold mine in your back yard so you don't have to worry about money anymore so you spend $10k on the game and got everything maxed out. But you'll quickly found that if you don't pay the 300-500 HP per PvP your score is likely to be somewhere around 700 if we assume now that you have all this money you probably have better things to do than playing a match 3 game all day. Now you can say what's 300 HP to someone who has a gold mine in his backyard? But why are you nickle & diming someone who already spent a ton of money? It takes 12500 HP to get a 1/1/1 3* to 13 covers. Is it really worth it to insult someone for 300 HP more? And that's for a 3*. It's several hundred dollars to max out a 4* from scratch, and even after that you're still demanding an equivalent of $2 per event? Wouldn't the whales simply be insulted? Does D3 really think it's more valuable to try to nickle & dime everyone for a 75 HP shield compared to a whale dropping 10K+ HP at once? But a modest expendtiure on shield/boosts doesn't even make D3 any money because you do get HP for just participating in PvP and you get some supplement income from PvE too. Heck, they even increased the amount of HP you get from daily missions. And yet no matter how much money you spent on the game, you can always count on D3 asking for $2 more for whatever PvP event you plan on doing well. Isn't that totally backwards? The standard model is that you nickle & dime the cheap guys and hope they cough up enough money if you annoy them enough. You're not supposed to nickle & dime the whales, but the way this game is setup, you always have to nickle & dime anybody because shield/boosts are a recurring expense, and the most bizarre part is that they're a minuscule recurring expense. Some games succeed by making the recurring expense the heavy one, but of course shields/boosts aren't even your big ticket expense. D3 maintained that shields/boosts are small source of revenue compared to other sources, but they sure seem awfully obsessed in making sure you got to pay up what should be a very small source of revenue.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The pull rate for the top characters is within what can be expected for a game like this. If anything it's slightly too generous.

I'm having trouble with these statements. Using the "most popular" conversion rate for HP sales, you're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 a cover, either from packs (10-pack has about a 20% non-2* drop rate) or buying covers directly. So that's somewhere around $130 for a fully covered 3*. I know I'm taking some liberties, but even as a rough mark that's a lot of money. That's two new games for consoles or PC. That's almost a year of a subscription game like WoW. And what did you get here? One maxed 3*, Iso to level it up not included? If you want to make that a 4* instead you can basically just double the price. So...$250? Clearly your idea of generosity is very different from mine.

Obviously somebody is spending money in chunks and supporting the game. I'm not debating that. Just wondering out loud if they wouldn't do better making the prices for these things WAY more reasonable, and get many more people dropping a few bucks for something of way more reasonable value.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The pull rate for the top characters is within what can be expected for a game like this. If anything it's slightly too generous.

I'm having trouble with these statements. Using the "most popular" conversion rate for HP sales, you're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 a cover, either from packs (10-pack has about a 20% non-2* drop rate) or buying covers directly. So that's somewhere around $130 for a fully covered 3*. I know I'm taking some liberties, but even as a rough mark that's a lot of money. That's two new games for consoles or PC. That's almost a year of a subscription game like WoW. And what did you get here? One maxed 3*, Iso to level it up not included? If you want to make that a 4* instead you can basically just double the price. So...$250? Clearly your idea of generosity is very different from mine.

Obviously somebody is spending money in chunks and supporting the game. I'm not debating that. Just wondering out loud if they wouldn't do better making the prices for these things WAY more reasonable, and get many more people dropping a few bucks for something of way more reasonable value.

An overwhelmingly percentage of the players never spend a dime in most of these games, so the guy paying usually has to pick up the tab for about 10 guys. In light of that, spending hundreds isn't as much as it sounds. I have plenty of friends who play similar games and from what they say you shouldn't even expect something really good for $100. Now the difference between this game and those games is that the upfront cost is a lot but it's usually a one time deal. If you got the latest OMG rare thing you're usually set until the next big content shakeup comes in and the game does acknowledge you spent that much money and won't bother you with the nickle & dime stuff. In this game the upfront cost is less but the shield/boost recurring costs never goes away and yet is also not a major revenue item based on released stats, so in this sense the tokens are a very bad buy because first, you're never 'done' with the minor expenses and second, the minor expenses like shield trumps the big ticket purchases. In most games where spending 4 digits is common for the top, you're talking about guys with a team that they can't lose to a F2P player even if they tried. Certainly there's no way you can get that kind of power in MPQ.

Now there's an acknowledged flaw in the whales model in that there are only so many of those guys to go around so it is a valid question to ask would the game be more successful if it did get $10 from every other player as opposed to hoping a few guys spend hundreds? But why would you even need to spend $10 on this game? The smallest expenses, shields/boosts, still trumps everything else and you probably don't have to spend money on that if you managed your boosts/HP well. It's ironic because go to a featured PvP event and it'll say "Join soandso and blah blah blah. Want soandso? Buy soandso's comic pack". So let's say you've to pick one of the two options:

1. Spend whatever money it takes to max soandso out.
2. Use shields/boosts.

In almost all cases #2 is going to be overwhelmingly more effective than #1 despite #1 cost way more, and that's the game's problem. If #1 is overwhelming the better choice, it might make sense to then occasionally make deep discounts on characters since maxing someone out trumps shield/boost. Of course in reality it's the other way around. You see plenty of loaner featured heroes at the top end of PvP and that's okay because as long as you got shields and boosts you don't have to worry. Heck, sometimes it's better to have a loaner so that he wouldn't get in the way of X Force/Thor on defense. But if there's no meaningful advantage for the big ticket purchases (maxing out a character), then of course there is also no incentive whatsoever for D3 to make it cheaper. It almost feels like they're only selling the big ticket purchases to guys who just love collecting stuff and maxing things out, but that's got to be an even harder market to capture compared to just whales.

mohio

I'm not usually one to buy into the argument that people are asking for things without being willing to work for them, but I think in this case it is almost 100% true. 1000 points is definitely reachable for a 3* roster, you just have to be willing to put in some leg work. Hell, my alliance mate just scored 1100+ In webslinger and he has a grand total of 3 166 3*s. The biggest factor is going to be finding the highest point slice and joining that one. After that just be willing to climb a little earlier than you're used to and do 2 or 3 shield hops if necessary. It's even doable f2p since you can pick a 4* to go after and save up hp in all the other events that don't offer that char.

Phillipes

Im sorry but I cant agree with original post.
X-Force is superior but I should be.
Game is not P2W.
Im on day 286, I spent 20,-€ first week of playing for roster slots. Not more.
I bought 4 covers for X-Force for 10.000 HP. It was stockpiled HP. Im top 10 pve most of the time, there are PVEs when you can win several hundreds HP durint it.
So to buy cover evn for 2500 HP is not som big deal. I have bought 2 covers for GT adter then. I have 4000 HP now, I have every character.

So I think creator of this topic is probably newer player (Im mean less than day 200)
And I think it OK to have fully covered X-Force as late game now.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

An overwhelmingly percentage of the players never spend a dime in most of these games, so the guy paying usually has to pick up the tab for about 10 guys. In light of that, spending hundreds isn't as much as it sounds. I have plenty of friends who play similar games and from what they say you shouldn't even expect something really good for $100.

Phantron wrote:

Now there's an acknowledged flaw in the whales model in that there are only so many of those guys to go around so it is a valid question to ask would the game be more successful if it did get $10 from every other player as opposed to hoping a few guys spend hundreds? But why would you even need to spend $10 on this game?

Apologies for the quote chop job, the pyramid was getting a little steep. Anyway...I don't doubt there are games where you can drop a ton of money for an overwhelming advantage, but most games of this ilk also feature substantial micro-transactions. This game oddly feature almost nothing of that sort. Nothing that can be considered an impulse buy that satisfies the itch for any kind of tangible gain for just a buck or two. Yes, boosts and shields, but those are game aids, not something meaty like a new character that you can play with. You have people mired in this 2* middle class with no way even to buy their way out of it except at exorbitant rates. We're not talking about buying the best in the game, we're just talking about shaving time off their stint in purgatory.

How many more packs do you think they would sell if they doubled the drop rate and halved the price? Now a ten pack gets you around four non-2*s for $10. Hell, go back to throwing in a guaranteed featured character and give people a chance to buy their way into essential nodes in PvE, or buy up a bunch of covers for their favorite character when they're featured. There's still money to be made there, and people will still need to buy roster spots which as I recall was a major source of revenue. It also solves a lot of the current problems with people just getting stuck without much hope of progress. How many people quit because the hit the wall? How many of those do you think would occasionally buy better packs for less money and keep playing instead?

There are ways to make money off games like this without whale hunting. We haven't even gotten into vanity items, which is a goldmine this game still stubbornly refuses to address in any way. You can make any example about how and why things don't work under the current model, but that's just because they've married themselves to this model unnecessarily, and it's a shame because it's hurting the game.

Druss

Not sure I agree with the lower pack prices argument as this has no bearing on being a successful player or not.

who is going to be the most successful of these 3:

Player 1 owning 30 maxed 3* & all maxed 2* & no money in the bank

Player 2 owning 3 maxed 3* & money in the bank

Player 3 owning IM35 Lv 1 & max x-f & 4hor & money in the bank

In order: 3-2-1 showing that in order to do well you only need a) x-f/4hor & b) money for shields. Roster diversity has no bearing, so offering packs at reduced prices does not offer any tangible gains

Mikaveus

I feel the problem is competitively pairing players with similar levels and the rewards tier. As soon as I hit 600, I start seeing teams with xforce and 4hor which is pretty maddening for a 3* player. Well, goodbye 1000 points reward. If I'm lucky, I'll make it to 800.

Usually the 1000 point reward is a 4* character, so I'm not as bothered not picking one up. I love the 3* variety and the characters can be leveled at a reasonable pace. However, my biggest issue is being shut out of a Top 5 ranking. Does that third 3* cover really benefit the Top TEN 4* players? Doubtful.

And as frustrated as it is for me, I'm sure it's the same way for 2* players looking to graduate to 3* land. D3P needs to fix the brackets to a more level playing field and/or tier the rewards to a more satisfying end.

Unknown

Druss wrote:

Not sure I agree with the lower pack prices argument as this has no bearing on being a successful player or not. who is going to be the most successful of these 3:

Player 1 owning 30 maxed 3* & all maxed 2* & no money in the bank
Player 2 owning 3 maxed 3* & money in the bank
Player 3 owning IM35 Lv 1 & max x-f & 4hor & money in the bank

In order: 3-2-1 showing that in order to do well you only need a) x-f/4hor & b) money for shields. Roster diversity has no bearing, so offering packs at reduced prices does not offer any tangible gains

Your examples are all well and good, but you've skipped over the part where you have to acquire those rosters first. How did this mythical Player 3 get a maxed 4* power team? Did he win events and hit 1k placement rewards in PvP with his two-man team of IM35 and a loaner? Yes, even a good pairing of 3*s can make you competitive if you're willing to invest time, boosts, and shields. But you still need to get those key 3*s first. How did that happen? Building a 2* roster isn't a problem, it's what happens after that where the issues begin for many, many people.

There are ways to squeeze wins out of a 2* roster, but pushing beyond 600 in PvP with even a strong 3* team is becoming difficult against the wall of XForce and 4* Thor. 2* teams are just more meat for the grinder. Once you're established your example might work, but getting there is the issue, and how they monetize and otherwise dispense rewards is quite to the point here.

Xenoberyll

it was sentry + hood before xforce was buffed and sentry nerfed. you may not be able to place in the top spots but the 20s are good too...

Unknown

Some perspective as an ex-steam player. Many are telling their strategies for being successful with or without certain characters. And those strategies sound like they would work perfectly for mobile users who can get in a few matches at any scheduled point through the day. There is no effective way for the steam player to work around the cooldowns and shield hop when you have to be at work without also relying on 24 hour shields.

The bottom line is MPQ is designed so that if you want to play with powerful characters you have to earn them ---> To earn them you have to play competitively ---> to play competitively you must work your way around MPQ's schedule.

If the game is not something I can enjoy and progress ON MY TIME then it is a bad game for me. I was happy to spend some to help ~enhance~ my enjoyment of the game. But it became clear that a little spending was not going to help me enjoy the game on my schedule. You can either spend a lot and play on your own terms, or spend a little to none if you can't put in the time and schedule yourself around the game.

For those of us who want to play when we have time even if that is a few hours a day but at the wrong time of day, progression becomes a nightmare. Someone who can play scheduled throughout the day can break 1000 points with a moderate amount spent on shields. Compared to someone who can only play one larger chunk of time in the evenings they will do much better with less matches played and less total time spent.

People like me get frustrated and quit because this is a great game and tons of fun, and worth supporting but as designed it forces you to play on its schedule to do well and that is not something games do, that is what jobs do. I wish MPQ was a game I could play on my terms and it may take me longer to earn all the best rewards but I'll get there eventually, as it is now you have to play above a certain threshold of competition or you will never get there, ever.

So, that is what I would want MPQ to be more game-like and less job-like. Because I don't have enough room in my life for two jobs. But I do have some free time I would be happy to fill with good games.

Unknown

Glad this thread has so many reviews. It's good to see that there are vary varied opinions. You can tell the ones that have xforce (usuable) and the ones that dont (undercovered). The problem I was trying to say is its almost imposible to get to 1k (yes almost) as you will look at everyone in your bracket and if you jot in top 10 have a look at them. All max x force. If my x force was maxed I would use him as he is a 1 hit game changer. My point is if max force is used they will try and line up 3* opposition rather than 4*. So making it harder for the transitioners to get there.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

Apologies for the quote chop job, the pyramid was getting a little steep. Anyway...I don't doubt there are games where you can drop a ton of money for an overwhelming advantage, but most games of this ilk also feature substantial micro-transactions. This game oddly feature almost nothing of that sort. Nothing that can be considered an impulse buy that satisfies the itch for any kind of tangible gain for just a buck or two. Yes, boosts and shields, but those are game aids, not something meaty like a new character that you can play with. You have people mired in this 2* middle class with no way even to buy their way out of it except at exorbitant rates. We're not talking about buying the best in the game, we're just talking about shaving time off their stint in purgatory.

How many more packs do you think they would sell if they doubled the drop rate and halved the price? Now a ten pack gets you around four non-2*s for $10. Hell, go back to throwing in a guaranteed featured character and give people a chance to buy their way into essential nodes in PvE, or buy up a bunch of covers for their favorite character when they're featured. There's still money to be made there, and people will still need to buy roster spots which as I recall was a major source of revenue. It also solves a lot of the current problems with people just getting stuck without much hope of progress. How many people quit because the hit the wall? How many of those do you think would occasionally buy better packs for less money and keep playing instead?

There are ways to make money off games like this without whale hunting. We haven't even gotten into vanity items, which is a goldmine this game still stubbornly refuses to address in any way. You can make any example about how and why things don't work under the current model, but that's just because they've married themselves to this model unnecessarily, and it's a shame because it's hurting the game.

There aren't any good impulse buys in the game but I think D3 actually knows this which is why they don't budge on anything either. Even if you can buy say 1 cover of each color for a character for 3800 in that character's featured event (which pretty much goes against anything D3 has ever done), the effect of spending even that much HP with odds you'll never get in the game still pales compares to getting about 500 HP worth of boosts/HP. Since the featured character is likely useless shortly after his event, why spend 3800 for 3 covers when you can spend 500 for shield/boost for far greater effect? But even if there are no shield/boost, in that case you probably just wouldn't buy anything because again the effect of spending thousands of HP on your featured character usually matters little. There's a fundamental breakdown in this game's model. Usually in such games you're supposed to pay big money for the big advantages and small money for smaller advantages. In this game you pay a very small amount for the game breaking advantages (shields/boosts, just try to play without them and you'll see roster means almost nothing compared to those, especially shields) while the big money items (like maxing out a 4*) gets you relatively little, even on the top characters let alone anyone else. Another bizarre side effect is that 4*s gain very little from their levels so you don't really even need them at a high level.

I still think this game never had a plan on how it's supposed to have sustained sales. The devs sort of just took it on faith that if you build a good game it'll make money, which is true to some degree but you're not going to get too many sales of any kind once people figured out the smallest expenses (shield/boost) is responsible for the greatest gains.

GrumpySmurf1002

Cryptobrancus wrote:

There is no effective way for the steam player to work around the cooldowns and shield hop when you have to be at work without also relying on 24 hour shields.

For those of us who want to play when we have time even if that is a few hours a day but at the wrong time of day, progression becomes a nightmare. Someone who can play scheduled throughout the day can break 1000 points with a moderate amount spent on shields. Compared to someone who can only play one larger chunk of time in the evenings they will do much better with less matches played and less total time spent.

I haven't found this to be true. "Chunks in the evening" is basically my time block, and I haven't really struggled to hit 1000 unless my initial surge flames out. You do have to plan it a bit, but it's not out of realm to do it with 300-375hp spend tops, which is only 3 shields (3-8-3 or 8-3-8). That has to be a cheaper path than some others are taking to get there.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

Are you talking better/stronger or unique? I don't think X-Force is very unique, you can't staple multiple abilities onto one ability and call it new.

Surgical Strike is completely unique. No other ability looks at the enemy's strongest colour, and erases it from the board. That's a very mean trick. Adding damage, AP collection, and AP reduction to it may or may not make it more unique (your mileage may vary, as they say) but it doesn't change its basic nature as the most universally mean ability in the game.

I'm talking stronger, better, and unique. I think Fury's ability to call down five separate effects with one command, depending on your AP stores is strong and unique. Also, I just remembered that before the recent Daredevil buff, Nick Fury was the only character to put down traps that you could match for bonus damage.

If the two abilities synergize in a devastating way, that's unique in its way. Also, unique abilties aren't limited to 4* characters. It's just that 4* characters tend to be uniquely dangerous.

woopie

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Cryptobrancus wrote:

There is no effective way for the steam player to work around the cooldowns and shield hop when you have to be at work without also relying on 24 hour shields.

For those of us who want to play when we have time even if that is a few hours a day but at the wrong time of day, progression becomes a nightmare. Someone who can play scheduled throughout the day can break 1000 points with a moderate amount spent on shields. Compared to someone who can only play one larger chunk of time in the evenings they will do much better with less matches played and less total time spent.

I haven't found this to be true. "Chunks in the evening" is basically my time block, and I haven't really struggled to hit 1000 unless my initial surge flames out. You do have to plan it a bit, but it's not out of realm to do it with 300-375hp spend tops, which is only 3 shields (3-8-3 or 8-3-8). That has to be a cheaper path than some others are taking to get there.

Same here. I play on mobile, but I get limited service (1x for those on Verizon) at work so playing without leaving the building is a no go. If the tournament ends at 1AM EST, I'll push to ~300 the morning of the close. Get back home ~7ish and push to 600-700 and wait until my HP regens and do a final push with 3 hours left. Has been good enough to get me to 1k in each of the tournaments this season. Yes my team consists of a properly covered XFW and GT at 255, but I was doing similar tactics with XFW/Hood, and LThor/LDaken prior to that. Has been working out for me pretty well. Also, prior to dropping cash on GT, I was a F2P player except for the occasional HP for roster slots. That helped move me from top 10 occasional top 25 to pretty consistent top 5 and occasional top 10

Dauthi

EpicBeastmode wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

By this logic nobody should ever be nerfed. What we are arguing here is the line that should be drawn when a character makes others completely obsolete. These are the things developers think about when nerfing/buffing/creating characters.

If not nerfing character's is your perspective, I can tell you for a fact that it is not the perspective of the developers, or likely any game. Balance is important.

And by your logic no cover should be better than another...because if one actually is, everyone will use that cover and you will see exactly what you see now in pvp. Nothing will change except the name of the cover. I don't understand why people fail to see this. Even if this cover is ever so slightly better than another and "more balanced" you won't see any diversity, and that cover will render all others "obsolete" in pvp because why would competitive players use inferior covers...even if it's ever so slightly inferior?

This is absolutely not true. Yes there will always be characters that are better than others, there is no such thing as perfect balance. You would be right if you don't take into account synergy with other characters. Characters have different color combinations making them synergize well with eachother. For instance Daredevil isn't top tier, but his colors synergize well with X-Force perfectly so it makes him that much more viable as a character pairing vs Steve. Then you have synergy with abilities as well, we will use X-Force again as an example again. His synergy is poor with characters who drop special tiles on the board because of his guaranteed board destruction. Because of this mid tier or even low tier could still be used even with a tiered system.

The problem starts when a character is so good synergy becomes only a trivial boost. You will use X-Force when Storm is featured in PVP because he is that good. This won't happen when characters fall closer in ability level with each other, and this is possible.

I'm not even sure how you can make an argument when the developers have already implemented nerfs in the past making my logic in line with theirs. They know rampant imbalances ruin the game.

Competitive players want to win. Nerf all the 4stars to 3 star level, won't matter, then the top players will just find the best 3 star and use those to dominate because they spend money on shields and other players don't or won't spend to the degree they do.

What? You think people would ignore the 100+ levels a 4* has? Do you choose to fight 166 Black Panther over a 94 Ares? If so, you might want to rethink your strategy here.

Everyone realizes that we will have to fight 4*s still in PVE right? I would think 2* and 3* rosters wouldn't want 4*s stronger per capita than the other ranks because this would give a huge advantage to 4* rosters since everyone is scaled to their roster. If I have a 4* who is outright mechanically better than 1* 2* and 3* when they are equivalent levels, how is that fair to those rosters?

Vertigozooropa wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

Are you talking better/stronger or unique? I don't think X-Force is very unique, you can't staple multiple abilities onto one ability and call it new.

Surgical Strike is completely unique. No other ability looks at the enemy's strongest colour, and erases it from the board. That's a very mean trick.

Kinda, but I wouldn't say it is unique as charged tiles, billy club, etc. I see his black as targeting enemies strongest color to do (X), which has been done, and specified tile destruction which has been done.

Adding damage, AP collection, and AP reduction to it may or may not make it more unique (your mileage may vary, as they say) but it doesn't change its basic nature as the most universally mean ability in the game.

I'm talking stronger, better, and unique. I think Fury's ability to call down five separate effects with one command, depending on your AP stores is strong and unique. Also, I just remembered that before the recent Daredevil buff, Nick Fury was the only character to put down traps that you could match for bonus damage.

If the two abilities synergize in a devastating way, that's unique in its way. Also, unique abilties aren't limited to 4* characters. It's just that 4* characters tend to be uniquely dangerous.

I will agree it is definitely the meanest ability in the game, but it really is just hash of mean abilities from other characters. I agree that nick's yellow is unique in that it gets stronger with the variety ap you have saved.

Unknown

Unique isn't quantifiable. Something is either unique or it isn't.

Dauthi

ark123 wrote:

Unique isn't quantifiable. Something is either unique or it isn't.

The definition in the game is arguable though. Can a skill/mechanic can be considered unique in one definition even if it reuses the same ingredients of other abilities? I think of Taco Bell in this scenario, where they have different menu items but the same ingredients (basically) in all of them.

On the other hand, no other ability has taken all those pieces of other abilities and hashed them together before, is that unique?

My definition stems from the enjoyment of doing something different in the game, breaking the monotony, so those abilities that do things that haven't been done to me are unique.

Nellobee

Dauthi wrote:

This is absolutely not true. Yes there will always be characters that are better than others, there is no such thing as perfect balance.

Not in this game. But which character is more powerful, paper or rock?
There is no reason the balance can't be a lot closer.