Funbalanced

LordWill

I sometimes wonder if the Dev team actually PLAYS the game.

If even half of them did, I think most of these problems would be addressed and solved in short order. But because they don't spend hours and hours in the events and level up characters they way everyone else does, they lose touch with the player base which really is a bad thing. It's one thing to listen to people here and I am glad they at least listen to some of it but to actually PLAY the game is an entirely different thing. When you invest your time and cash into your characters you will have a much different attitude toward them than just making knee jerk decisions.

It's the old catch 22, its getting time to play the game instead of coding/programming/fixing/planning/balancing the game.

Kiamodo

LordWill wrote:

I sometimes wonder if the Dev team actually PLAYS the game.

If even half of them did, I think most of these problems would be addressed and solved in short order. But because they don't spend hours and hours in the events and level up characters they way everyone else does, they lose touch with the player base which really is a bad thing. It's one thing to listen to people here and I am glad they at least listen to some of it but to actually PLAY the game is an entirely different thing. When you invest your time and cash into your characters you will have a much different attitude toward them than just making knee jerk decisions.

It's the old catch 22, its getting time to play the game instead of coding/programming/fixing/planning/balancing the game.

We do it for fun. They do it as a job. Don't blame them if they don't play too much. But I'm sure they are all gamers at heart at least. It's probably really hard to balance a free fun experience with trying to get people to pony up more money.

Unknown

Magento's red seems weak because his purple and blue are both way overpowered so you never see people with 5r anyway. At 2 AP, it does about 200 damage which puts it at about half of what Adamantium Claw does per AP, but it can cause cascades for more AP and is obviously way faster. It can destroy special tiles (can be positive or negative, but you probably wouldn't use it when all the special tiles are yours). At 2 AP it's probably still slightly overpowered just because you can shake up the board so often with it. His blue should not be generating tiles of the same color and that'd solve most of the problem. Also it should not be able to overwrite any special/countdown tiles, because tile destruction abilities are generally pretty expensive. Purple flat out does too much damage, especially given purple is never supposed to be the big damage color.

The high end characters needing forever to heal up is clearly by design and supposed to slow down the pace of the game and/or encourage buying health packs. However currently the game favors playing an insane amount of hours to get ahead so people will do whatever they can to continue playing. There should be some changes to the game so that this isn't the overwhelmingly the best strategy to do well. Playing more should count, but right now playing more is the only thing that counts as long as your base team is good enough.

For the AI, it's pretty clear the AI is built without telling it stuff like "Feral Claws is good", even though it'd be pretty trivial to simply tell the AI that. The way the AI uses ability pretty much assumes everything is perfectly balanced, and that expensive abilities are clearly worth waiting for (even though they're usually not). This is a design issue, not an AI issue. You shouldn't have to tell AI stuff like 'don't ever use Captain America's yellow, it's useless', because you shouldn't start assuming certain skills are completely useless. Right now, the expensive skills are rarely worth the risk of simply not being able to use them before you die. That should be fixed.

mooken

Phantron wrote:

Magento's red seems weak because his purple and blue are both way overpowered so you never see people with 5r anyway. At 2 AP, it does about 200 damage which puts it at about half of what Adamantium Claw does per AP, but it can cause cascades for more AP and is obviously way faster. It can destroy special tiles (can be positive or negative, but you probably wouldn't use it when all the special tiles are yours). At 2 AP it's probably still slightly overpowered just because you can shake up the board so often with it.

At 2AP, it's also a great way to get extra Strike Tile damage, when you don't have/want to splurge 10AP on Adamantium Claw. The break-even damage per 10AP is at 6.25 Wolvie Strike tiles -- 6 tiles or less, Adamantium Claw is better damage-per-red-AP; 7 tiles or more, Mags' 2AP Red does more damage-per-red-AP. In both cases, that's not including any 1) strike tiles getting destroyed by Mags' shatter 2) extra strike tile damage from cascade matches.

Unknown

With a 6 ap blue and his purple working correctly I don't think magneto is overpowered. He is a glass cannon, his purple is very context based for damage (when based on blue and red) and his blue is garbage when used by the machine so his def is.t very good. That said, I fully expect the ap cost of his purple to rise along with his blue. I just hope they don't destroy him, but I haven't lvled him in 2-3 weeks now and he is staying at 125 until I see the outcome. Going to 141 costs some 30-40k iso I could spend to make a tourney buffed character viable. The purple could also have the ap nerfed but I think if you nerd the ap you shouldn't "fix" the blue/red factor to it as getting 5-8 red AND blue down will be average and at max you are talking about 3000-5000 damage probably. Doing that to a single.target for 10-12 ap I think.is perfectly fine for a 3***...unless they plan to.nerf grey suit as well since her green at 19 nets you something.similar except to.the entire team and doesn't requiring board context for damage while being a controlled location.destroyer.

@ nonce: my greatest hope is that most of the balance of mag goes towards his red. If they up his blue cost to 6 (I'd prefer untouched but I just don't see it happening with thier attempts to.make layers take more.damage) and just make the purple "work properly" and change the red I will be happy. I suspect his red will be more like hulk's green except it will probably cost 6 ap or so.

You know what would be interesting though? If they totally changed magneto's red to work like a purple generating version of mjolnir to help counter whatever nerf comes to his purple. Highly doubtful as most changes seem to use the same in game mechanism but they change and remove values here and there. They did totally rework spidey's purple though so it is possible.

@koolbird mag isn't like spidey or rag. He isn't a hassle to play against outside of lightning rounds where the issue is non buffed SHOULDN'T have an easy time competing. Has anyone actually argued against his damage outside of theory? If I see a team with mag i say "yum yum yum." On offense if he isn't teamed with a purple character he gives you 40s instead of 180s for tile matching too. Personally, I think the only really harmful ability to the game was the blue, and only @5 as it let's you create crit tiles for no cost (only.way to win those 240s without a lot of luck/buffed/spidey)...nd even then it was useless on defense (not USELESS) .

Thor and wolvie needed balance not as much because they are op but because they don't fit into the 2** class. Therefore they were 2** cost 3***s that were easy to obtain and so everyone's team had one or both of them in it. They need balancing to make them more in line with other 2** to increase diversity. How much diversity it causes is questionable because ppl just starting are STILL pushed towards a wolvie/thor/storm team based on prologue covers . Ppl who have been playing will likely stick with wolvie thor since they are already levled and ISO is a pain to farm. Thier ISO will go to 3*** that they plan to use in the future or already have decent covers for (see: the reason why punisher might end up the most common 3***). Events like the hunt where a single cover is pushed like ares is good in a way though as it creates a time stamped form of diversity as New players come in and earn the ares and then lvl him as thier first 2** since for them at that moment he is more common than thor or wolvie. Ares is strong, but id never take.him over thor wolvie or obw (whose strike tile dipping I suspect will be nerfed at some point).

LordWill

I play a lot of MMORPG's and in those games you have characters and specs you can build your characters, similar to this game and choosing your roster and who you take with you into matches.

So the underlying issue isn't that Thor and Wolverine are OP. It's just all the rest pretty much fail and are not worth using. In MMO's everyone tries to find the perfect character spec. Then everyone starts using that and it becomes the cookie cutter for that character. Everyone starts playing that character because its so much better than all the rest.

Higher level teams should be amazing because that's why I am putting my time and money into those characters... They should be hard to beat. You put in the time to earn them.

I do see a lot of those thor/wolve combo's in the tourney's but that is only because we really don't have much of a choice.

Gimping all the "good" characters to be inline with all the other weak characters makes no sense at all.

Unknown

Magneto's blue is workable at its cost if the tiles it generated isn't blue (say, purple protect tiles or red protect tiles) and cannot overwrite special tiles (abilities that can arbitarily destroy any special tile usually cost 10+). For what it does right now, even 10 blue is too cheap compared to other abilities just for the ability to eliminate any special tiles.

I believe Magneto's purple currently simply does # of blue X base damage, even though it should be the lesser of blue or red tiles (you can only swap a number of times equal to the less available tiles). Its overall damage is still too high either way.

Nonce Equitaur 2

soenottelling wrote:

@ nonce: my greatest hope is that most of the balance of mag goes towards his red. If they up his blue cost to 6 (I'd prefer untouched but I just don't see it happening with thier attempts to.make layers take more.damage) and just make the purple "work properly" and change the red I will be happy. I suspect his red will be more like hulk's green except it will probably cost 6 ap or so.

If the blue cost 6, that would eliminate about 80% of the "free move" possibilities, but would leave the scalpel in Mags' toolbox.
Mags Red is very weak but useful. 2AP is a good price for it, currently, since it does so little. If they messed with it and made a different power for him, costing 6AP, I'd be fine with that. If they just up the AP cost but leave the power alone, then that's an unfair nerf. One possibility -- make it like the Blue power. If I could put down 2 red for 6AP or 2 blue for 6AP, then he'd be even more of a dangerous and surgical character than he is now, but wouldn't have as much board control as he does now.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Magneto's blue is workable at its cost if the tiles it generated isn't blue (say, purple protect tiles or red protect tiles) and cannot overwrite special tiles (abilities that can arbitarily destroy any special tile usually cost 10+). For what it does right now, even 10 blue is too cheap compared to other abilities just for the ability to eliminate any special tiles.

I believe Magneto's purple currently simply does # of blue X base damage, even though it should be the lesser of blue or red tiles (you can only swap a number of times equal to the less available tiles). Its overall damage is still too high either way.

There was a period of time C.Magneto only had red and blue powers. He wasn't that great.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

<snip>

The proper fix for Spiderman is to make the healing faster, especially for higher-level characters. And much faster for regenerators.

This is sort of tangential, but I agree completely. I don't understand why the healing is an absolute rate instead of a relative rate, i.e., characters should heal at the rate of x% every y minutes, not x health every y minutes.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Magneto's blue is workable at its cost if the tiles it generated isn't blue (say, purple protect tiles or red protect tiles) and cannot overwrite special tiles (abilities that can arbitarily destroy any special tile usually cost 10+). For what it does right now, even 10 blue is too cheap compared to other abilities just for the ability to eliminate any special tiles.

I believe Magneto's purple currently simply does # of blue X base damage, even though it should be the lesser of blue or red tiles (you can only swap a number of times equal to the less available tiles). Its overall damage is still too high either way.

There was a period of time C.Magneto only had red and blue powers. He wasn't that great.

His blue basically converts 1 blue to 4 random APs assuming you never do worse than a match 4. Nobody comes close to this kind of efficiency in generating AP aside from pre nerf Ragnarok. If he wasn't that great back then, I can only assume that's because Ragnarok was around. The culprit here is that the tile generated with his ability is the same color as what was consumed. If he generated say purple tiles, now you're looking at 5 blue -> 4 purple + 4 random. While this is still a very good ratio (basically 1 to 2), it's nowhere on the same league as the current 1 to 4.

Spoit

Yeah, but how many people have 5 red c.mag covers? I still don't buy that his red is really that great, especially wrt to the kind of damage you're talking about. Only get an extra match with it, much less a cascade, like every 3rd or 4th cast

Nonce Equitaur 2

Spoit wrote:

Yeah, but how many people have 5 red c.mag covers? I still don't buy that his red is really that great, especially wrt to the kind of damage you're talking about. Only get an extra match with it, much less a cascade, like every 3rd or 4th cast

I have 5 red c.mag covers. The damage is around 150, about the same as a tile match. Cascades are rare.

It's fast but pitiful. 2 AP is an appropriate cost for what this 5-cover skill does.

The devs have signaled they want powers to cost 6AP or more. If they had the same thing cost 6AP, I'd object, but not strongly. Usually, Mags is with someone else that uses red more effectively. If they changed Mags Red to something else, I'd likely be fine with it.

There are many ways that Mags can be balanced without breaking him. His Red power is his least useful.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Yeah, but how many people have 5 red c.mag covers? I still don't buy that his red is really that great, especially wrt to the kind of damage you're talking about. Only get an extra match with it, much less a cascade, like every 3rd or 4th cast

Not weak is not the same thing as powerful. Magneto's red is probably slightly better than Adamantium Claws (I'd prefer it over Adamantium Claws most of the time). Adamantium Claws is fairly average as far as red skills go. So compared to his two superb skills obviously no one would max his red, but that doesn't mean his red is weak. It's merely average, maybe even slightly above average.

Unknown

It's a utility skill. It compliments main dps skills, not replaces them. Both his blue and purple skills require certain conditions for optimal usage. His red skill better allows for that.

Personally, I think 5 in Magnetic Translocation can result in either overkill or wasted potential. 5k is average health and the skill potentially does more than that. It's good to have for select characters, but I like 5 red for it's ability to farm lower health characters more efficiently and just hit skip for tanky teams.

Unknown

I just started playing this game, and I think its sad that they are removing synergy between characters. I actually would like to see more ways to have characters work with each other like. Instead it looks like its moving towards a system of individual one off characters with no rhyme or reason other than raw power to have them on your team.

It would be nice if they could go to a rock paper scissor type of system where you can just use different characters or combo of characters based off of a specific situation, otherwise what's the point of collecting all the characters. I'm actually surprised there's no synergy between avengers, xmen, the brotherhood.. etc...

Spoit

I meant is as in more "who has the patience to get top 2 in mags rounds 5 times"

Unknown

The hood + patch + Loki probably is a strong option soon.

How can the hood get 5800 hp at max level, that's way too hard to kill...

My number 1 ignore is a max leveled hood. Even more annoying than cmag and any 2 *s.

Unknown

xinyucao wrote:

The hood + patch + Loki probably is a strong option soon.

How can the hood get 5800 hp at max level, that's way too hard to kill...

My number 1 ignore is a max leveled hood. Even more annoying than cmag and any 2 *s.

The character threads lists him as 4500 HP. His HP certainly looks exceptionally low compared to other 3 star characters.

The Hood works well as a character I think. He certainly doesn't kill fast on his own, but he's a very strong deterrent after you run against him once. Therefore, even though he's not packing a lot of firepower for you, it might still be fine because his passive is quite annoying and is one of the few things that can punish the standard 6 AP boost blitz.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Yeah, but how many people have 5 red c.mag covers? I still don't buy that his red is really that great, especially wrt to the kind of damage you're talking about. Only get an extra match with it, much less a cascade, like every 3rd or 4th cast

I have 5 red c.mag covers. The damage is around 150, about the same as a tile match. Cascades are rare.

It's fast but pitiful. 2 AP is an appropriate cost for what this 5-cover skill does.

The devs have signaled they want powers to cost 6AP or more. If they had the same thing cost 6AP, I'd object, but not strongly. Usually, Mags is with someone else that uses red more effectively. If they changed Mags Red to something else, I'd likely be fine with it.

There are many ways that Mags can be balanced without breaking him. His Red power is his least useful.

I used a level 69 with 5 reds to take a full power (level 85) wolverine down from max to 500. Would have won but my magneto was down to 54 life and eventually ran out.