A new way to do PvP

Phaserhawk

I was thinking about the current PvP and how repeative it is, so I thought of an intersting idea. What if it was not a specific character that's featured, but a color combination.

If math serves me correct. There are 6 colors and 3 are chosen that would be

6!

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(6-3)!(3)! or 720/36= 20 different color cominations

So for PvP tournament one you can say that red/green/blue gets boosted for the tournament, but only that color combination, so in this case only She-Hulk would get a buff, you don't have to use her, but you would be silly not to.

Next PvP it could be green/black/yellow--Well now we get X-Force,Mohawk, or 1* storm, only those characters get boosted.

This would still maintain the featured type characteristic, without locking you in. In the situation all those characters would be vaulted, then you just skip that color comp.

To me this would really help diversify the enviornment, especially if you allowed 1*'s and 2*'s to highly scale.

Unknown

I think the required character mechanic keeps some level of variation in the game. Letting people pick 3 all the time regardless of other buffed characters would lend to people only using a optimized 3 person team all the time.

Maybe have exclusion tournaments:

Help a virus that has affected only mutants is spreading quickly use your non-mutant heroes to find a cure!

The avengers took a vacation and are sipping pina coladas on Tony Stark's private island. No avengers are assembling for battle today...

Trisul

I'm generally FOR anything that mixes things up and rewards diverse rosters.

simonsez

I don't know if buffs are enough of a motivator. Eg, there was still no shortage of XF in nefarious foes, even though he wasn't buffed.

Instead, why not give points bonuses based on how seldom-used your characters are? Eg, if you use XF/GT/Loki, you get whatever the points are. If you use LT/BP/Hood, you get the points plus a 20% bonus. If you use Mohawk/Doom/Rags, you get the points plus a 50% bonus. If you use Colossus/Beast/Squirrel Girl, you get the points plus a 100% bonus.

Pretty much the only thing that motivates people in PvP is how many points they can come away with in a given battle.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

I don't know if buffs are enough of a motivator. Eg, there was still no shortage of XF in nefarious foes, even though he wasn't buffed.

Instead, why not give points bonuses based on how seldom-used your characters are? Eg, if you use XF/GT/Loki, you get whatever the points are. If you use LT/BP/Hood, you get the points plus a 20% bonus. If you use Mohawk/Doom/Rags, you get the points plus a 50% bonus. If you use Colossus/Beast/Squirrel Girl, you get the points plus a 100% bonus.

Pretty much the only thing that motivates people in PvP is how many points they can come away with in a given battle.

Problem with that system is you'd have to based it on global usage but since a relatively small portion of players have X Force, any global usage stats would suggest that X Force is indeed not overused due to his rarity. I guess you can tie it in to character usage relative to a certain point threshold, as you wouldn't expect X Force to be commonly used in the 0-500 range but you'd definitely expect to see him a lot in the 800+ range.

Nefarious Foes was basically a 33% nerf to Thor and X Force for not being a villian and they're probably still the best characters there, though at least the best villians could hang with them there. Well, being able to pick all 3 of your team greatly reduces the power of Thor as this will generally safely prevent any character on your team from being downed by a single X Force. I used Thor/X Force/Loki for Nefarious Foes but there were a lot of teams that were difficult to approach easily. That said, unless you somehow manage to fix people's perception, someone like Thor is always going to be overpowered by the virtue of everyone thinking Thor is overpowered. If you can convince everyone else that Bagman is overpowered and you stand no chance to attack him, then Bagman would be the best defensive character in the game. Since the game is still overwhelmingly in favor of the attackers, it takes more than a simple buff to make up for the fact that whoever is perceived as overpowered isn't going to be attacked as much, and when people win at least 95% of their games, that can be the deciding factor regardless of how good the character actually is.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Maybe have exclusion tournaments

These used to happen, but apparently the participation rate dropped a fair bit. Probably it put off people who couldn't field a team, or had to field one far worse than normal. The current structure of events like Nefarious Foes and Women of Marvel was the answer to that.

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

I guess you can tie it in to character usage relative to a certain point threshold

Yes, that'd be the most straightforward way to doing it. Or you could just say that the bonuses don't apply at all until you hit 500 points, since that's pretty much where it turns into the XF/GT show.