Funbalanced

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

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.

I got the hp wrong, but steal 1 ap each turn is just too insane.

4.3k isn't a small amount to deplete.

I think he counters the cheap ap character perfectly.

Unknown

Wow, this thread got big. I have to say that to "nerf" characters is a bad formula. Consider that the covers that they are addressing are the most used and that all of the ones on the list are easy to tell whether they are going to get nerfed or buffed. They are buffing the 4* covers to bring them in line with their rating. They are weakening the 3* and 2* covers to "funbalance" them, but again, compare apples to apples. Thor is strong on a 2* team, so is Wolverine. I almost never use Thor anymore unless he's buffed in a tournament, because I have moved past him. I did at one point NEED him to get through some of the tougher prolog levels, including the pre-nerf Rags level. As soon as I got stronger 3* covers, Thor sat on the shelf. I could play the pre-nerf Rags level in PvE with my 3* team more efficiently than what my 2* team could do. Don't go saying that the nerf is to bring them in line with the game's balance, because it isn't. People are complaining about team diversity more than anything anymore and the issue here is not the covers we play with, but the MMR. To compete, you put in your best team and kill efficiently. Who wants to use under-powered characters? Nobody, that's who. Stop all the nerfing and instead, focus on a system that rewards us for diversifying our teams. I'm not saying penalize my choices, but make it more about the strategy and less about how everyone needs to be nerfed. If cover-levels determined MMR, there would be more diversity. I could then play with my 3x level 40 covers and be effective against a similarly leveled team.

Unknown

Thor and wolverine needed balanced.Yes I would agree that ares and obw will be next line. The point of this product is to generate revenue and fun. What's the point of buying 3 star if 2 star are extremely better than 3 and 4 star. That is like allowing Ford Pintos in NASCAR and getting rid of race engines. I mean everyone can afford a pinto and we would never worry about car crashes because they never go super fast. But it would be extremely fair because anybody could be a good NASCAR driver.

Yes I spend money on the game. I want value for my money. I don't see a point in spending money if there is no incentive. The game needs better balance. Kudos to the developers.

Clintman

That's the thing, they aren't better than a strong 3 star roster, they are just what's available so that is what people use, and they are strong enough to hang and beat an AI controlled 3 star team.

The problem now is that it seems to be focused around making everyone suck equally. But my counter is, what is the benefit of getting 3*s maxed out if they are going to be nerfed into oblivion?

The thing that gets me is that Thor, storm and olive are the *2* they give you! and they are strong enough to compete with anyone! but not dominate! now they are taking that away.

Unknown

Destro wrote:

Thor and wolverine needed balanced.Yes I would agree that ares and obw will be next line. The point of this product is to generate revenue and fun. What's the point of buying 3 star if 2 star are extremely better than 3 and 4 star. That is like allowing Ford Pintos in NASCAR and getting rid of race engines. I mean everyone can afford a pinto and we would never worry about car crashes because they never go super fast. But it would be extremely fair because anybody could be a good NASCAR driver.

Yes I spend money on the game. I want value for my money. I don't see a point in spending money if there is no incentive. The game needs better balance. Kudos to the developers.

Ares, by no means, will be anywhere in the line.
He has way too much negativity about his skills to be considered anything close to OP outside his buffed tourney.
My OBW is maxed skills but not levelled so I can't give a good opinion but due to all the praise she's received I don't doubt the possibility she could end up on "the list"

Unknown

xinyucao wrote:

I got the hp wrong, but steal 1 ap each turn is just too insane.

4.3k isn't a small amount to deplete.

I think he counters the cheap ap character perfectly.

You really must hate him.

xinyucao wrote:

I fight against a team with the Hood in the rage and ruin tournament.

And the result, omg I can not fire any abilities.

Enemy Onslaught at round 3, sunder cooldown in 1 turn, wiped by round 6.

There goes the health pack...

Unknown

Balance is good but everyone having to be equal is bland..balance to me is high level damage guys/gals negated by high level defense guys/gals. I personally like having some OP characters as it gives me something to strive for. Continually nerfing guys is a vicious cycle downward as there will always be another character that newer players will compla In about. Even though I said that, I am rooting for a huge nerf on Mags just for my cynical satisfaction and to justify my lack of desire to collect his covers.

Unknown

I'm curious to see what "nerf' they actually bring. I assume it either bumps Thor's AP costs up or lowers damage or tile production slightly.

Either way, it's more a curiosity. Thor has fallen out of my team considerably. He's replaced by whoever happens to be buffed generally. There are better support characters and a buffed character usually ends up with better damage powers.

uuddlrlr

It's great that the game now actually informs you of upcoming nerfs.

It makes sense for them to aim at those 2 heroes, because everyone seems to be using them; so they must be somewhere between good and OP (overpowered).

I still hope they won't nerf the AP generation of Thor's skills too much, because I do enjoy making tiles pop out of nowhere

Unknown

I wonder if a more funbalanced solution for Thor and Wolvy would be to actually convert them to three star characters. But I don't mean to simply raise their level cap. You'd have to rescale them. Essentially, take their powers as they are now and figure out what level character should have those powers and then rescale them to make that fit. For example, since many seem to feel that they are overpowered at level 85, perhaps they are appropriately powered for level 120. Make them 3 stars, then make their current stats attainable at that higher level. So, all of our level 85 Thors would lose some punch, but if we wanted to bring him to his current stats we could pour ISO into him, just like we might for other 3* characters now. It's scaling their level to match their abilities as opposed to just reducing their abilties.

I don't have any 3* above level 90, maybe some of the high rollers on this forum can weigh in: if Wolvy and Thor played as is but were labeled level 130 or whatever, would they be fair when compared to a level 130 punisher or gsbw? If they are still too powerful, then my idea is moot.

But it might be fun to refocus on growing them for those of us who maxed them early. More fun than just getting stuck with a less cool version of these popular heroes. Nerfing is sad.

Unknown

I am a daily player and I must say me and one of my buddies are loving this game to bits. With regards to funbalanced I would say swop Astonishing Xmen Wolvie and Patch Wolvie around in terms of Star points... and make thor a 3 star. Keep their powers limited to level 85 but make it harder to get the covers. (i am sitting at level 69 wolvie just because of my inability in luck to find wolvie yellow covers).

In terms of tournaments. Why not a capped tournament? In this tourney all level caps must be let's say 40 or 50... even if you have a level 85 wolvie you can still play him but your cap will be 50... this will give other players a great incentive to play the tournament more because nobody is too highly leveled.

I do agree with a lot of posters in this thread that instead of nerfing thor and wolvie, buff other characters or give them more powers like loki, bagman, venom, spiderman, moonstone (her purple power you dont have a lot of control over more control would have been awesome), etc. etc...

windfallstar

Nerfs to these two make sense. There's really no reason for a character to do tons of damage and be tanky at the same time. While it's in character for Thor to be both, that's not good for game play. So nerfs are necessary for the health of the game. I actually think the worst part about him is that with a lucky cascade he combos out and bam, game over. While it's generally possible to control the board, deny colors, and stun, that's not a foolproof plan and can easily go wrong depending on what cascades happen.

Anyways, I think wolverine isn't too far off from where he should be. He does a good amount of damage and has a moderate amount of hp so it's not too difficult to take him down. Even his heal isn't really a problem since getting him to a point where you can finish him off with an ability is pretty feasible. I do think a bit of counter play in his healing ability might make the game more interesting though. If for example, Wolverine generates a 1 turn countdown tile that heals instead of always healing, that would lead to different decision paths.

Unknown

I hope this will add a lot of variety in tournaments teams, as today we only encounter wolverine/Thor clones.
One thing i don't understand, they're going to change Thor but what they add as a new character ? ARES, Thor's (faster) clone...

So what's the better clone to be used with Ares instead of Wolverine, for the next fashion clone team ?

If you want variety in teams, remove this cheated [3 damage powers] characters as people will always play with them exclusively. Damage powers are unbalanced in this game, utility powers are fun but way less powerful and heals are... well only two characters can do that so.

Nerf damage powers and boost others ! What the point in destroying tiles when you can directly kill an enemy in one hit ?

Unknown

Osaic wrote:

I wonder if a more funbalanced solution for Thor and Wolvy would be to actually convert them to three star characters. But I don't mean to simply raise their level cap. You'd have to rescale them. Essentially, take their powers as they are now and figure out what level character should have those powers and then rescale them to make that fit. For example, since many seem to feel that they are overpowered at level 85, perhaps they are appropriately powered for level 120. Make them 3 stars, then make their current stats attainable at that higher level. So, all of our level 85 Thors would lose some punch, but if we wanted to bring him to his current stats we could pour ISO into him, just like we might for other 3* characters now. It's scaling their level to match their abilities as opposed to just reducing their abilties.

I don't have any 3* above level 90, maybe some of the high rollers on this forum can weigh in: if Wolvy and Thor played as is but were labeled level 130 or whatever, would they be fair when compared to a level 130 punisher or gsbw? If they are still too powerful, then my idea is moot.

But it might be fun to refocus on growing them for those of us who maxed them early. More fun than just getting stuck with a less cool version of these popular heroes. Nerfing is sad.

the problem with this suggestion is that too many people already have them so there is no real profit to be made by d3p and scrapping them from teams would create havoc and uproar. They can only scale them down for 2* levels.. its just a matter of how much and what scale they value upcoming 2* and 3* characters. As we have seen recently, high powers will be tied to a negative effect to "funbalance" it out.

Unknown

I don't mind the nerfs to Thor and Wolverine (and others) in theory, but I do have to worry about where it will end. You will always find in a game like this that there will be a few stand out characters. Either because they are very powerful on their own, or two characters working really well in tandem. There will always be a few characters who are considered "the best", and when Thorverine is nerfed, we'll just find others characters step to the fore. What happens then? Will they get nerfed as well? What about the next set of characters? Will we eventually find ourselves in a situation where every character does virtually the same damage as everyone else?

We need variety and I honestly believe we need some characters to be the stand outs. Maybe if the real stand outs were 3 and 4 star characters, it would at least make it more difficult for people to max them out, so we'd likely still see more variety in character use then.

Unknown

I think, long-term, a lot of the problem will sort itself out. The problem is, there still really aren't that many characters, the game is extremely new, and it hasn't been properly play-balanced yet. Every new game has overpowered and underpowered aspects that get smoothed out, and eventually that gives the designers a better sense of how to avoid making the same mistake in the future.

My suspicion is that Wolverine's nerf will be to add +2 or +3 to the AP cost of his green skill across the board (and I think we're going to see the same for literally every other skill under 5 or 6 ap), and that alone might be enough. Thor's harder to guess - there's not as obvious a mechanic to fix - but it will probably be two of these three: reducing tile production, reducing damage, raising AP cost.

I don't think any of the new characters will be nerfed anytime soon; I think they represent the new design philosophy for powerhouse characters. And they're probably going to be effective, with Ares and Hulk in the Thor role and Patch and Punisher in the Wolverine role. But we'll probably see a lot of Thors and Wolverines until people have others leveled up.

A healthy game will have a healthy mix of team types. The game may flat-out not have enough characters for that yet. What I'd recommend they consider, if they want more variable play, would be to do something like give every player, across the board, including new/future players, another 5-10 roster slots, and dump a ton of new characters on the game. Since that probably isn't practical, I think they should take a look at whoever the least-used character is at any given time in *, **, and ***, and work on fixing the character until people start to use them. Not just characters like Bagman, but like Marvel Now Magneto (who I think I've seen in pvp about twice), Loki, Yelena, etc.

Unknown

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.

This game was released in it's BETA state. That meant that we are the testers. Expecting developers to play the game as much as we do is just silly. And even if they did there would be too few of them to generate enough accurate feedback to perfectly balance characters.

I'm really glad that this game is A) Free; Awesome; C) Available to us earlier than it would otherwise have been.

Unknown

Here is my suggestion to address some of the less used characters; Moonstone and Bagman specifically.

These units have abilities that affect countdown tiles. These become largely useless abilities as too few units have countdown abilities. And those that do, their abilities aren't all that powerful. I think a lot more of the really powerful and currently instant attacks need to be moved to countdown tiles. This would add more risk to using these abilities and it would shift the character usage distribution a little as heroes with abilities that affect specific tiles would be included more as a safety measure against the most brutal attacks.

The beefy characters with these countdown attacks would still be used as tanks and heroes with stun abilities would be good to combo with the tanks as a stun could buy your countdown tile the time it needs to trigger.

This would also boost the use of characters that have tile removal abilities such a Hawkeye.

Unknown

Toxicadam wrote:

The game is slightly better, but it's much harder for newbies to gain traction.

Unfortunately, we have a game where the newbies have to compete (for limited resources) with people that have had to much easier to get where they are.

I think there are few truer statements.

For those who state that things are better, it's likely cause you were an early adopter and had the advantage of getting covers and advancements before more players gravitated to the game. Now, those who enter the game, can not receive a system to grant them the same opportunities to advance their characters.

Let's be honest. Most of those posting in this forum have 2 or more 3* characters with minimum 40 lvl. When everyone competes, you are all likely to finish in the Top 10 of whatever tournament you wish. For the record, it's not skill that is your advantage over those with characters 2* and 30 lvl. So for those in the middle who do not have 3*, it's extremely hard to gain enough points to get that first 3* cover in tournaments. So in summary, we have a game where the rich gets richer.

I've played quite frequently for the past month and I don't see myself getting Top 15 anytime soon to get significant covers to properly compete with the rest of you. My best 3* character is Punisher with 2 Black covers. The past tournament, I targeted the 3 OBW covers as it would be more significant than receiving another Punisher (Black). I'm slowly making my way up while the strong will continue to get stronger.

And now the developers have come to the conclusion that respec'n Thor and Wolverine will create more "fun". Please note that these two characters are 2*. Weakening them is another way of saying, we are trying to strengthen 3* characters. So in other words, it protects the "rich" and discourages newbies from playing or finding added success. I believe that when the developers are ready with a new batch of characters, that will help create variety in teams and hopefully achieve that more fun aspect. Having only 30 characters and a number of them are not very competitive, will of course encourage players to grab the best value. Especially if the general population do not have competitive 3* characters yet.

As for Shielding, too rich for the middle class here. Changing that won't do anything for the lower rung group. We fight for scraps anyways.

Lastly, I wanted to comment about Lightning Round. Or as I've come to know them as "The Draft". More like a Draft Lottery as I have no business in playing them except for that 50 progression reward to get the magical "Recruit Token". When life is low, you can only wish for some luck. The newbies can't compete so we need luck to get us 3* covers. So this leads to the idea of reducing Skip. Let me be clear, I love skipping. I do not want to use Health packs to win a Recruit token. I don't have Team USA, Team Canada, and Team Russia in my back pocket to compete like others who have 20+ characters on their roster. I want to quickly get in and get out with my Recruit token and then everyone can hammer my team to pieces for their points.

Stop creating rules to protect the rich!!! Encourage more newbies to join. Add more characters to select. Offer a separate Progression scale to help newer users to get 3*. Fix the point loss system in tournaments. (I feel for everyone who worries about losing points. I believe that all games should be playing to win. NOT playing "not to lose".) I believe those with "stacked" rosters won't mind others getting stronger teams if they didn't lose all their hard work to begin with.

I know it's not easy for the developers. I do want to comment that they have a fine product. But growing your product to new players should be your focus. The Ferrari owners aren't likely going to help pay your wage anymore. ISO and HP comes easy for most of them.

Kudos to some of you that I got whipped! I am envious of many of you but I will take the long road to get there if at all,

WiseG8

Unknown

I don't know why people ever focus on Bagman getting a buff. He's got a bag on his head. He's the way he is for a reason - there should be useless joke characters to take up spots.

He's not remotely interesting, nor is Yelena. I don't want to see them buffed because they should be end of the rotation characters at all times.