New Health Tier [Updated]
Mawtful
Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
Edit: I figured it was now a good time to readdress this topic, since we've got the full preview for the next character, Iron Fist, who also shares the 7650 health total.
In the character thread, Demiurge Miles describes health as a measure of how hard a character is to put down. It's as I suspected, and was discussed in this thread originally.
I can definitely see the argument for giving Iron Fist the extra health, and I agree with it.
Should Cyclops share the same health as Iron Fist? That's debatable, but there are certainly some good arguments that can be made both for and against.
I'm also not yet convinced that this isn't the beginning of power creep in the 3* tier. Hmm, a double negative, that can be confusing. What I mean is, although there are good arguments for creating a new health tier for both of these characters, this could still be power creep (the two points are not mutually exclusive). Of course, it also might not, and I'm happy to accept that could be the case.
For me, Beast is still the enigma - 8500 health would have been too much, but 6800 doesn't seem like it's enough. For whatever reason, the 7650 tier wasn't started by him. Perhaps it was still in design discussions at the time. Whatever the case, I would think that he should get bumped up when it comes time for him to be fixed.
Is there anyone else who should be bumped up (or down) to this health tier?
My original post is below, inside the spoiler tags. It might be fun to read for the sake of historical reference, but I think it's generally agreed that this is not power creep at the moment.
In the character thread, Demiurge Miles describes health as a measure of how hard a character is to put down. It's as I suspected, and was discussed in this thread originally.
(The post can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=24256&start=120#p303328)Demiurge_Miles wrote:The health of a character doesn't just represent their physical well-being or resilience: it's a measure of how hard it is to take them down. When you deal damage in D&D it doesn't always mean you hit the opponent, you might have just forced them to making an effort-intensive dodge. You made them easier to take down. So it's not always about who has the best armor or who has a healing factor, sometimes it's about "How hard is it to take this character out of the fight?"
I can definitely see the argument for giving Iron Fist the extra health, and I agree with it.
Should Cyclops share the same health as Iron Fist? That's debatable, but there are certainly some good arguments that can be made both for and against.
I'm also not yet convinced that this isn't the beginning of power creep in the 3* tier. Hmm, a double negative, that can be confusing. What I mean is, although there are good arguments for creating a new health tier for both of these characters, this could still be power creep (the two points are not mutually exclusive). Of course, it also might not, and I'm happy to accept that could be the case.
For me, Beast is still the enigma - 8500 health would have been too much, but 6800 doesn't seem like it's enough. For whatever reason, the 7650 tier wasn't started by him. Perhaps it was still in design discussions at the time. Whatever the case, I would think that he should get bumped up when it comes time for him to be fixed.
Is there anyone else who should be bumped up (or down) to this health tier?
My original post is below, inside the spoiler tags. It might be fun to read for the sake of historical reference, but I think it's generally agreed that this is not power creep at the moment.
Note: I end up taking this conversation along a few different tangents before I get to the point that I want to make, so tl;dr: Is a new health tier the equivalent of power creep? Why is Cyclops deserving of more health than, say, Beast?
Cyclops will introduce a new health tier, and I'm curious about the implications and/or consequences that provides.
Part of the problem in determining this is the way in which the concept of health is understood in MPQ; I think we often conflate health with strength, or physical endurance. We understand that a character has health, and they lose health when they take an attack, when they run out of health, they are "downed".
I would propose a slightly different way of looking at this value. For starters, I want to call it "focus" instead. It's a measure of a characters endurance, willingness, or ability to remain in a fight; once it hits zero, that character is out of the fight. For characters like Thor or Hulk, they get right into the thick of it and won't stop until they are too exhausted to move. But characters like Loki or The Hood looks after themselves first, when people start raging or firing blasts of energy, it doesn't take much for either of them to decide to get out of there. I feel that this also helps clarify the way healing currently works. Most healing abilities are supportive in nature. They're keeping allies in the fight just a little longer to maybe turn the tide of battle. Physical endurance can still be a factor which determines "focus" - Hawkeye is just a normal human, but he runs with the Avengers, so he's sticking to the fight right through to the end, but he just can't take as many hits before he's out cold.
Given this way of thinking, I'd probably want to shuffle some health values up a bit. I think Spider-Man should probably move up a tier - he's an agile hero that's kind of renowned for ducking and dodging his way through fights. A larger health pool would represent the fact that it takes more attacks to knock him out. A character like Storm should also be taken up a notch or two - she's easily got just as much "focus" as the rest of the 6800 crowd.
So where does that put Cyclops? Right now, it means he can last longer in a fight than Punisher, Squirrel Girl and Psylocke. That's probably valid. And I'm going to give Wolverine and Daken a pass, since their regen and fast recovery gives them fairly well inflated health pools. I think the two big outliers from the 6800 health tier are Beast and Magneto. Physically, Beast definitely outclasses Cyclops. Is there an argument that Beast would step away from a fight sooner than Cyclops? Maybe - Cyclops is fairly stubborn, so perhaps this extra bit of health represents the fact that he's often unwilling to give up, even when the odds are stacked against him. So that leaves us with Magneto. He's someone who is able to fight against multiple X-men simultaneously, but as a villain, he's also known to partake in a bit of self-preservation and leave battles that are turning against him.
Is Cyclops deserving of this extra health? Or is could this be the beginning of MPQ power-creep?
Cyclops will introduce a new health tier, and I'm curious about the implications and/or consequences that provides.
Part of the problem in determining this is the way in which the concept of health is understood in MPQ; I think we often conflate health with strength, or physical endurance. We understand that a character has health, and they lose health when they take an attack, when they run out of health, they are "downed".
I would propose a slightly different way of looking at this value. For starters, I want to call it "focus" instead. It's a measure of a characters endurance, willingness, or ability to remain in a fight; once it hits zero, that character is out of the fight. For characters like Thor or Hulk, they get right into the thick of it and won't stop until they are too exhausted to move. But characters like Loki or The Hood looks after themselves first, when people start raging or firing blasts of energy, it doesn't take much for either of them to decide to get out of there. I feel that this also helps clarify the way healing currently works. Most healing abilities are supportive in nature. They're keeping allies in the fight just a little longer to maybe turn the tide of battle. Physical endurance can still be a factor which determines "focus" - Hawkeye is just a normal human, but he runs with the Avengers, so he's sticking to the fight right through to the end, but he just can't take as many hits before he's out cold.
Given this way of thinking, I'd probably want to shuffle some health values up a bit. I think Spider-Man should probably move up a tier - he's an agile hero that's kind of renowned for ducking and dodging his way through fights. A larger health pool would represent the fact that it takes more attacks to knock him out. A character like Storm should also be taken up a notch or two - she's easily got just as much "focus" as the rest of the 6800 crowd.
So where does that put Cyclops? Right now, it means he can last longer in a fight than Punisher, Squirrel Girl and Psylocke. That's probably valid. And I'm going to give Wolverine and Daken a pass, since their regen and fast recovery gives them fairly well inflated health pools. I think the two big outliers from the 6800 health tier are Beast and Magneto. Physically, Beast definitely outclasses Cyclops. Is there an argument that Beast would step away from a fight sooner than Cyclops? Maybe - Cyclops is fairly stubborn, so perhaps this extra bit of health represents the fact that he's often unwilling to give up, even when the odds are stacked against him. So that leaves us with Magneto. He's someone who is able to fight against multiple X-men simultaneously, but as a villain, he's also known to partake in a bit of self-preservation and leave battles that are turning against him.
Is Cyclops deserving of this extra health? Or is could this be the beginning of MPQ power-creep?
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Comments
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I dunno, is the glass half full or half empty? I know nothing about comics but id imagine cyclops is as tanky as captain america, yet captains at 8500 compared to cyclops 7k. Power creep, or power deflation?0
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NorthernPolarity wrote:I dunno, is the glass half full or half empty? I know nothing about comics but id imagine cyclops is as tanky as captain america, yet captains at 8500 compared to cyclops 7k. Power creep, or power deflation?
Actually cyclops has regular human physique. He should be about as tanky as Hood.
Yes, it makes no sense that a guy with a standard human body would live through a battle where something is threatening to characters like Jean Grey or Iceman. It's always been one of my biggest problems with him.0 -
NorthernPolarity wrote:I dunno, is the glass half full or half empty? I know nothing about comics but id imagine cyclops is as tanky as captain america, yet captains at 8500 compared to cyclops 7k. Power creep, or power deflation?
How is he as tanky as Cap? Cyclops hasn't got the Super Soldier Serum in his body. His mutant ability is optic blasts, nothing more.0 -
Currently due to X Force's ability to abuse anyone under 6K HP I don't mind if there's a significant HP inflation on all the new characters just so that there's a remote chance they'll be able to do something useful when faced against X Force. Obviously the existing guys under 6000 HP are pretty screwed but hopefully they've some long term plan to deal with it. I don't know if Cyclops warranst the extra HP without seeing his full stats but better safe than sorry as long as X Force is around.0
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ark123 wrote:NorthernPolarity wrote:I dunno, is the glass half full or half empty? I know nothing about comics but id imagine cyclops is as tanky as captain america, yet captains at 8500 compared to cyclops 7k. Power creep, or power deflation?
Actually cyclops has regular human physique. He should be about as tanky as Hood.
Yes, it makes no sense that a guy with a standard human body would live through a battle where something is threatening to characters like Jean Grey or Iceman. It's always been one of my biggest problems with him.
Yeah, this is why I added the huge preamble/tangent about "focus". Comic book Cyclops endures a lot. I see that as a combination of his stubbornness and his "leadership" ability. For a long time, Scott was always the honorable boy scout, so I he thinks along the lines of "the captain goes down with ship" and thinks he needs to stay fighting even after everyone else has been knocked out or is too exhausted to go on. And "renegade" Cyclops is probably more stubborn than ever before. I think there are a lot of reasons to give Cyclops a bigger health pool than Hood, but I'm hard pressed to find a good excuse to rate him higher than, say, Punisher or Psylocke.0 -
Cap having more health than Cyclops is completely reasonable. Growing up in the 90s, Cyclops was always seen as a wimp, especially compared to Wolverine. Cyclops seems best-suited as a glass cannon. Him having more health than DP, Spidey, and Beast seems a little weird.0
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Again, I don't read comics so I have no idea what I'm talking about. I just looked at the art between cyclops and cap, thought "hey, these two like normal humans without anything crazy going on and so are probably about equally tanky". Okay... now I feel like I have offended a legion of comic book fans that are probably thinking of **** me, so I'll be running off now.0
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Next time just run into a Star Wars convention, yell "Greedo shot first!" and run out.NorthernPolarity wrote:Okay... now I feel like I have offended a legion of comic book fans that are probably thinking of **** me, so I'll be running off now.
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NorthernPolarity wrote:Again, I don't read comics so I have no idea what I'm talking about. I just looked at the art between cyclops and cap, thought "hey, these two like normal humans without anything crazy going on and so are probably about equally tanky". Okay... now I feel like I have offended a legion of comic book fans that are probably thinking of **** me, so I'll be running off now.
I thought Magneto has like a force field around him so shouldn't his HP be well above anyone else's if it's a measurement of how much punishment you can take? I guess that's what Coercive Field is supposed to represent but um... it's just not quite the same.0 -
Yeah cyclops acts like a wimp, especially in the movies. I think him as a stubborn leader would put him at at least 6800 health but 7600? Not sure if he deserves it.0
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NorthernPolarity wrote:Again, I don't read comics so I have no idea what I'm talking about. I just looked at the art between cyclops and cap, thought "hey, these two like normal humans without anything crazy going on and so are probably about equally tanky". Okay... now I feel like I have offended a legion of comic book fans that are probably thinking of **** me, so I'll be running off now.
Omg, we've just found something MPQ related that NP knows nothing about!
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There are always going to be some gaps when you're dealing with issues of lore and game balance. There has to be some connection or there's no point in even using the license in the first place, but ultimately it has to be a game that functions first. If you really want to get into the lore discrepancies, it's the people on the high end not the low end that have been treated the worst. I mean, yeah, Iso-8, blah blah blah, but is there really any number of goons--HAMMER, Maggia, Hand or otherwise--that can take down The Hulk? Can Thor really just take one or two more hits than The Punisher? This game also lacks any kind of damage element system so you run into things that don't make any sense at all, like Magneto going down in a hail of gunfire or The Human Torch getting burned to a crisp by dudes with flamethrowers.
There really isn't any excuse though, lorewise or balancewise, for 3* Storm being so soft in the hit points. If she still had the old 5 cost Mistress maybe, but not with her powers the way they are and the state of the game being what it is. She doesn't deserve that kind of shabby treatment.0 -
You say it's a new Tier. But it's exactly halfway between L Cap and Beast. IF Beast had been raised the the same health as Cyclops it would be health creep. All this is saying is that they wanted this character to have more health than Beast tier, but less health than L Cap tier.0
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Logically, Cyclops would be one of the toughest humans without body-based powers, putting him just a bit below Captain America. CA is (or used to be a least) not really super-powered, simply a human at absolute peak physical performance, like the top Olympic athlete in all sports. Cyclops is a normal human who has been training excessively since he was a teen. That puts him well above Hood, above Psylocke, and technically above Magneto, who's physically over the hill. Beast would be well above Cyclops...
But, that's not what hp actually represents. If it were all 'realistic' then Collosus would have double what he does, and the Hulk possibly quadruple.0 -
Square wrote:Logically, Cyclops would be one of the toughest humans without body-based powers, putting him just a bit below Captain America. CA is (or used to be a least) not really super-powered, simply a human at absolute peak physical performance, like the top Olympic athlete in all sports. Cyclops is a normal human who has been training excessively since he was a teen. That puts him well above Hood, above Psylocke, and technically above Magneto, who's physically over the hill. Beast would be well above Cyclops...
But, that's not what hp actually represents. If it were all 'realistic' then Collosus would have double what he does, and the Hulk possibly quadruple.
Captain America is roided to the gills (inspirational!) plus has an unbreakable shield. He's earned that 8500 hp.0 -
Your "focus" explanation is pretty similar to what they said about SG in that last Marvel interview. Something about her health reflecting how difficult she is to get rid of, basically. I'm glad he's not another Human Torch glass cannon type, personally. But I doubt its power creep based other recent characters. Perhaps the conditional nature or Full Blast helps counter-balance his extra health.Marvel.com:
We still wanted to make sure players got the feeling that she’s a tough nut to crack though, and tried to tell that story in a couple ways.
One was through how much health we gave Doreen. Health in our game represents more than just how much of a beating a character can take; for example, Black Panther has as much health as Iron Man, despite Iron Man being inside a giant metal suit! But T’Challa’s got agility and tactics on his side that make him harder to knock down than your average guy in a panther suit, so he gets a little more health. So in order to make Squirrel Girl feel a little more unbeatable than she would otherwise, she got a little extra health.0 -
ClydeFrog76 wrote:NorthernPolarity wrote:I dunno, is the glass half full or half empty? I know nothing about comics but id imagine cyclops is as tanky as captain america, yet captains at 8500 compared to cyclops 7k. Power creep, or power deflation?
How is he as tanky as Cap? Cyclops hasn't got the Super Soldier Serum in his body. His mutant ability is optic blasts, nothing more.
I think his mutant ability is that anyone still cares about him after he got written as a whiny lilliputian feline so many times.0 -
It must be because of his new suit.
His new suit is giving him more defense so he gains more health (just like Black Panther),
unlike Mohawk Storm/Hood who only use street clothes or Beast who only uses pants.0 -
But to be fair, who doesn't seem like a wimp compared to Wolverine? That guy is all mangobstopper wrote:Cap having more health than Cyclops is completely reasonable. Growing up in the 90s, Cyclops was always seen as a wimp, especially compared to Wolverine. Cyclops seems best-suited as a glass cannon. Him having more health than DP, Spidey, and Beast seems a little weird.
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Spidey justfiably has lower health as he has shields. His spider powers enable him to take less damage in the first place, which help him go on longer. There have been plenty of times where Spiderman has been knocked out of battle or forced to retreat due to a powerful blow.
Agree Beast makes no sense having such low hp; he should be a modest tank, but they probably lowered his hp because he had the possibility to create shields, albeit haphazardly.
Considering Mohawk Storm has no defensive benefits, this version of her should definitely have more hp.0
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