Trisul wrote: rednailz wrote: Yes, it's gotten a lot better since true healing, and I'm all for the true healing move. Here's a current example, you're talking about it right now: xforce was buffed, boom - we're needing another nerf becuase the meta was shaken up. Or Cmags was nerfed, and xforce wasn't too useful, thus leaving sentry to run a muck and control the game for a few months just as patchneedo did. I don't care if you agree at all, it's just an opinion of one person. I don't write algoryithims of the game or get out my abicus when trying to determine who's balnces with what when what happens - it's just an observation. The meta seems to be driven more by nerfing and who needs to be nerfed than the machanics of the game, that's it. That's all, and that's also based off of months on these forums. There's always some one on the hit list to be nerfed. Maybe if they fixed IW and put in a "hold person" type approach it would balance things out a little more. But my only point was, the meta of this game is 100% based on what team is on top, and they are on top until they get nerfed. It's a cycle. So I would expect once GT and xforce get nerfed there will be some one else on the hit list. I'd love to be proven wrong on my knee-jerk opinion. In my expierance I'd say it'd be a 50/50. I see countless posts on here from people who are pissed that xforce beat them and they don't have a fully covered one. You're on here a lot, I'm sure it's not a stretch for you to acknowledge that. C'mon dude, every game like this goes through balancing cycles, and there's nothing wrong with nerfing top tier characters if they are deemed overpowered. To deny that is to deny the reality of game development. You didn't need an abacus to figure out the Rags/Spidey/CMags/Sentry needed nerfs.(for the record, I'm fairly neutral on the "nerf XF/GT" topic. My opinion is more "wait and see what new 4*s are released"... though NP is pretty persuasive in his above posts.)
rednailz wrote: Yes, it's gotten a lot better since true healing, and I'm all for the true healing move. Here's a current example, you're talking about it right now: xforce was buffed, boom - we're needing another nerf becuase the meta was shaken up. Or Cmags was nerfed, and xforce wasn't too useful, thus leaving sentry to run a muck and control the game for a few months just as patchneedo did. I don't care if you agree at all, it's just an opinion of one person. I don't write algoryithims of the game or get out my abicus when trying to determine who's balnces with what when what happens - it's just an observation. The meta seems to be driven more by nerfing and who needs to be nerfed than the machanics of the game, that's it. That's all, and that's also based off of months on these forums. There's always some one on the hit list to be nerfed. Maybe if they fixed IW and put in a "hold person" type approach it would balance things out a little more. But my only point was, the meta of this game is 100% based on what team is on top, and they are on top until they get nerfed. It's a cycle. So I would expect once GT and xforce get nerfed there will be some one else on the hit list. I'd love to be proven wrong on my knee-jerk opinion. In my expierance I'd say it'd be a 50/50. I see countless posts on here from people who are pissed that xforce beat them and they don't have a fully covered one. You're on here a lot, I'm sure it's not a stretch for you to acknowledge that.
onimus wrote: NorthernPolarity wrote: The deeper answer to my "power creep" suggestion is that LadyThor is NOT at a state where a simple counter character that isn't completely overpowered could counter her. I was actually thinking about someone that could counter her, and the only one I could come up with was: 4* Hulk - Passive - If ANY member of your team gets stunned, spawn an anger tile and drain all of your opponents red AP. Now, you could release a character like this without breaking the metagame, but it's obscenely inelegant, and frankly just lazy from a design perspective. Instead of trying to buff everyone to obscene amounts of power level or introduce specific, narrow counter characters for LadyThor, the simpler solution seems to just nerf ladythor instead. But again, given all the hate surrounding the term "nerf", I'd be willing to try doing something like buffing Fury to X-Force tier, and then propose the ladythor nerf again once it's painfully obvious that she's actually just overpowered even in the context of the 4* meta. I've never personally been a fan of silver bulleting strong characters. That just creates a scenario where, if a player doesn't have the silver bullet, they are right back where they started, essentially making that character just as necessary as the one it was meant to counter. I agree with you that really you just need to nerf Thor. Nothing severe. Just something that would make her not the best character in every scenario. I think people are scared of the word nerf simply because of the axe jobs D3 has done with the likes of Ragnarok, Spiderman and Sentry. I personally thought the Magneto nerf was very nice. They actually changed him a little, rather than just taking his numbers down.
NorthernPolarity wrote: The deeper answer to my "power creep" suggestion is that LadyThor is NOT at a state where a simple counter character that isn't completely overpowered could counter her. I was actually thinking about someone that could counter her, and the only one I could come up with was: 4* Hulk - Passive - If ANY member of your team gets stunned, spawn an anger tile and drain all of your opponents red AP. Now, you could release a character like this without breaking the metagame, but it's obscenely inelegant, and frankly just lazy from a design perspective. Instead of trying to buff everyone to obscene amounts of power level or introduce specific, narrow counter characters for LadyThor, the simpler solution seems to just nerf ladythor instead. But again, given all the hate surrounding the term "nerf", I'd be willing to try doing something like buffing Fury to X-Force tier, and then propose the ladythor nerf again once it's painfully obvious that she's actually just overpowered even in the context of the 4* meta.
Thugpatrol wrote: A lot of this started with Lazy Thor (possibly even BP and Lazy Cap to a lesser degree). After that it was Sentry, now it's X-Force and 4* Thor. When you make characters like these who are among the most resilient and the most damaging you have started down a very slippery slope. That slope inevitably leads to where we are now, where if you have these tank-mages available to you there is almost no reason to use any other character, ever. That's bad. You can say "then make more characters that are powerful", and that is certainly one solution. It's called power creep, and while it does create more viable options over time it also pushes the rest of the pack further into the background. Or you can attempt to adjust the outliers, top and bottom, and balance the game as a whole (some of which we've already seen here). Of course all of this talk seems to assume that ultimate balance is the goal of their design decisions. Is it? Because there's no way they'd intentionally cause some imbalance to artificially stimulate demand in order to make more money, would they?
NorthernPolarity wrote: Thugpatrol wrote: Of course all of this talk seems to assume that ultimate balance is the goal of their design decisions. Is it? Because there's no way they'd intentionally cause some imbalance to artificially stimulate demand in order to make more money, would they? Yeah, because obviously buffing X-Force, a character that literally all the veterans at the time had at that point, to top tier would obviously make them a ton of money in sales. If they really were doing this, don't you think they would make the new 4*s actually good instead of strictly worse than xor?
Thugpatrol wrote: Of course all of this talk seems to assume that ultimate balance is the goal of their design decisions. Is it? Because there's no way they'd intentionally cause some imbalance to artificially stimulate demand in order to make more money, would they?
Thugpatrol wrote: NorthernPolarity wrote: Thugpatrol wrote: Of course all of this talk seems to assume that ultimate balance is the goal of their design decisions. Is it? Because there's no way they'd intentionally cause some imbalance to artificially stimulate demand in order to make more money, would they? Yeah, because obviously buffing X-Force, a character that literally all the veterans at the time had at that point, to top tier would obviously make them a ton of money in sales. If they really were doing this, don't you think they would make the new 4*s actually good instead of strictly worse than xor? My, we are salty today aren't we? Are vets the only people who spend money on this game? Is there no one out there with a partially covered X-Force who might be nudged into buying covers? There are more markets available to them than just the people at the top of the leaderboard. And I would also like to point out I used the phrase "intentionally cause some imbalance". I did not say "break the game dramatically every week with a new overpowered character". My cynical little dig was just meant as food for thought, that perhaps there are conversations going on at their offices not merely related to making a super fun game for all the good little boys and girls. There may in fact be other voices in the room when they make their decisions, voices that care more about dollars and cents than what's fair and balanced. Take that for what you will, with or without salt.
NorthernPolarity wrote: What can I say, these threads are basically a salt mine for me. I've seen this logic so many times already, and while it may be fun to muse about Demiurge as this evil company out to take your money by creating OP characters, that doesn't even make sense if you think about it. Just briefly think about the options: 1. Have an imbalanced metagame such as now. Xor is so much better than everyone else that once you buyin, 95% of the characters that they release are completely irrelevant, making them poor investments and money sinks. Only time they make more money is if they power creep and release someone even more OP, which given their release schedule, will take maybe 4-5 months. 2. Have a balanced metagame. Every new character actually is relevant in some way, so people will want to buy all of them! Yay! More money and fun for everyone!