OK, which character would prevent you from complaining ?

Unknown

I would not put Deadpool or Luke in the OP camp. They are good, but not over powered. Currently I'd say the OP camp is comprised of XF, TGT, and IF and that's it.

Game balance is a hard thing to achieve, especially with such diversity of health, powers, and interactions. Rock, Paper, Scissors (Lizard, Spock) is the most balanced game in the universe. You win 50% of the time, and not every choice is the same. The same principals can apply to any game, where X beats Y but gets beaten by Z. Currently MPQ has too much "speed damage" beats everything. There is no Z to beat XF or TGT, there is just more X. MPQ suffers from the same thing plauging most RPG games, the best status effect is "dead" so given a choice between "do 5,000 damage" and "do 4,000 damage and add a shield tile" almost all players will opt for the former.

The other problem with that type of game balance approach is you only win 50% of the time. I think pretty much everyone here would be pissed if they lost 50% of their games. There are enough advantages to being the player that you win most times over the AI, and that's how it should be. 90% win rate is about right, 1 in every 10 games or so the board just murders you but what can you do?

When Luke Cage initially came out I think it was a good change in the dynamic. A power that is always active for a decent size shield tile. The problem is now there is no counter to Cage and IF passives. You just have to suffer the existence of the tile while it's out. Cage is a supposed counter to speed damage but he only negates match 3 damage basically even at level 5 strength. And now we get IF who is even more speed damage than any character to come before him, except maybe pre nerf Sentry. The game is set up to reward speed right now, so speed is what the meta will focus on. The reason IF is less broken than Sentry is Sentry was an all in 1 package deal, he brought everything you needed to the table. IF doesn't have a black active power, even tho his other powers get boosted by having 12 black AP. You have to bring some other character who benefits from the large pool of black AP.

simonsez

Lerysh wrote:

I would not put Deadpool or Luke in the OP camp. They are good, but not over powered.

Totally agree, but "Sentry before car accident" made me laugh, so that's good for a +

Pylgrim

Phantron wrote:

Since the cost of an extra match is exponential, this also means scaling effect/AP cost by the same back is a bad idea. Polarity Shift is 9 blue AP to place 5 blue tiles. If you divide that by half, you get Magnetic Field, which is 5 blue AP to place 2 blue tiles, a move that's known for creating infinite combos on turn 2. Actually, this move is slightly worse in terms of ratio, as if you're truly doing half/half it should be something like 4 blue AP to place 2 blue tiles which just be that much more broken.

This paragraph actually breaks your analysis since the problem with Magnetic Field was not 2 tiles for 5 AP but rather that it was in the colour of the same ability. That's what made it hilariously broken, as it kept self-feeding forever. In other colours I'd believe 5 AP is fair to place two tiles, and I'd even consider testing as low as 4. It's basically trading 4 AP of one colour for 4-7 AP of another colour, a tiny bit of damage and a tiny bit of board sake. When you consider that for 9 AP you can get as much as 18 AP with OBW, while screwing the opponent's AP, it's not that much.

DaveR4470

Pylgrim wrote:

It's basically trading 4 AP of one colour for 4-7 AP of another colour, a tiny bit of damage and a tiny bit of board sake.

I know it's just a minor typo... but I love the concept of board sake. You get too much of that, and pretty soon you're all "Lemme shell this 94 OBW sho I can rec.. rec.. recruit thish Beasht that's exsphiring. THATSH GONNA BE AWSHUM!!! (hic)"....

Unknown

Wanted to add something now that I've played with IF a bit more and faced a lot of opponents in the last days (LR, SIM, PvP) :

For those who play a lot (I am one), characters like IF are very useful.

LRs are really cool with him. Some Hard Core players play something else in SIM, and use IF too, making the game more fun.

Many players want quick matches, because we play all events, and we need fast climbing.

I could notice that IF is NOT being played in the last hops and high end scores in PvPs.

So, IF is NOT OP. The more I play with him, the more I like him.

Don't judge a character when he is played using boosts. Boosting is NOT playing. Boosting should be used for shield hopping and high scaling only.

Ludaa

I'm lucky enough to have a max IF as well, and agree that purple costs too little...but it isn't this game breaking skill everyone is claiming. You need a board with lots of black already on it, something that might be in contention if facing XForce/BP. Do you not match black in hopes the AI leaves it, so you can fire purple?
In the couple days I've played him, I found that 10 purple was required for the fireworks to happen. His green always took a back seat to XForce's. His greatest asset was the attack tile...when facing squishy supports. Also, as others have noted, you will switch him out for GT when you start hopping.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

I could notice that IF is NOT being played in the last hops and high end scores in PvPs.

So, IF is NOT OP. The more I play with him, the more I like him

How surprising !
The more you play with an OP character, the more you like it. I wonder why...
I just played in the Cage PvP against two teams of maxed XForce/Cage/IF in a row and it went exactly the same way twice : black cascade -> black cascade -> Surgical Strike -> black cascade -> etc... with a few Xforce here and there.
This was not fun. Not in the slightest.

So no, the problem is not that IF is OP because he's quick in attack. The problem is that he's the worst thing that ever existed to play against. I would prefer to play twenty matches in a row against XForce/Goddess (a.k.a. a usual day in PvP) rather than one single match against the sheer abomination that represents an IF/XForce team. From now on a maxed IF means insta-skip for me and I'm prioritizing maxing IF over anything else.
And if the future of PvP is to fight hordes of XForce/IF, I'll skip PvP altogether.

We might still massively use GT as our usual companion to XForce, but IF is going to be mandatory for the last match to get a good defense team. Because GT might be OP, but at least she's quite easy to circumvent, making her weak in defense. IF is certainly not as strong as GT but he's also not as weak.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

I think they crave for this character:

Mr. Ideserv Towin
After a tragic accident involving radiation or some other plot device, Ideserv developed the uncanny power to always win at everything. Now, he seeks personal validation in random match-3 games and he will not rest until he gets the wins he and only he deserves.

I Deserve to Win, ALWAYS!
Passive. If Ideserv is in your team, you always win, no matter what.Even defensively. If the opposing team also has Ideserv, both of you win, but the player quickest to create a thread on the forums complaining about everybody is playing Ideserv, wins more. After all, only YOU, the one reading this, deserves to play with Ideserv.

I Deserve to Win, QUICKLY!
Passive. If I deserv is in your team you somehow win in the first turn, no matter what. You don't even have to make a match.

I Deserve to Win, MORE!
Passive. At the end of a battle, if Ideserv is in your team, you get double rewards plus a thousand HP!

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Cyclops is an example of a character that no one complained about, because, you know, he was actually balanced and had interesting mechanics.

You just wait until it starts appearing maxed more often. He just doesn't have an ability that immediately suggest that you need to change your playstyle to defeat him, but once they see he's powerful enough, tears will be shed.

I believe there is one of these characters... and it's owned by Jamie Madrox

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Don't judge a character when he is played using boosts. Boosting is NOT playing. Boosting should be used for shield hopping and high scaling only.

Why would people not use iso 8 boosts given there's a relative lack of reason for leveling up extra characters? IF, by the way, is terribly oppressive without boosts because his black is insane in a long drawn out game. That's not necessarily overpowered, but it's not very fun to play against him just like Daken pre nerf was pretty un-fun when it's inevitable he'll spew out several hundred damage worth of strike tiles regardless of you do, and Iron Fist is even more reliable than that. All he does is force people to use boosts against him because taking triple the attrition damage (normal match 3 = 200, match 3 + IF black ~= 700 damage) is not something your health pack can possibly keep up. If there was a way to get everyone to agree to play less and not use boosts his black is probably borderline okay, but there isn't so it's just going to be either an auto skip or an auto boost. Yes it's not his fault that boosts are ruining the game, but he's so powerful that he always brings this broken aspect of the game in because you sure aren't going to fight him straight up and try to outlast him. In fact I think only guys who play 'for fun' would ever use him without boosts as you'd have to already have mostly everything and not in a hurry to win anything to not bother with the paltry cost of an iso 8 boost, and I just don't see too many of those guys.

From my testing he's about as good as Loki unboosted. He's way better than anyone when starting with 3 purple. Yes sometimes you get those bizarre situation where you're sitting on 30 black with nothing to Surgical into but honestly it's pretty hard to lose a game under any circumstance with 30 black and X Force. He also turns the 'grows on trees' +crit damage into a deadly boost since he's got a 4.5X modifier and he creates insane cascades. You'll occasionally whiff on his purple but it's pretty much always game deciding if not outright game ending when it connects.

Unknown

Fisben wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

I think they crave for this character:

Mr. Ideserv Towin
After a tragic accident involving radiation or some other plot device, Ideserv developed the uncanny power to always win at everything. Now, he seeks personal validation in random match-3 games and he will not rest until he gets the wins he and only he deserves.

I Deserve to Win, ALWAYS!
Passive. If Ideserv is in your team, you always win, no matter what.Even defensively. If the opposing team also has Ideserv, both of you win, but the player quickest to create a thread on the forums complaining about everybody is playing Ideserv, wins more. After all, only YOU, the one reading this, deserves to play with Ideserv.

I Deserve to Win, QUICKLY!
Passive. If I deserv is in your team you somehow win in the first turn, no matter what. You don't even have to make a match.

I Deserve to Win, MORE!
Passive. At the end of a battle, if Ideserv is in your team, you get double rewards plus a thousand HP!

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Cyclops is an example of a character that no one complained about, because, you know, he was actually balanced and had interesting mechanics.

You just wait until it starts appearing maxed more often. He just doesn't have an ability that immediately suggest that you need to change your playstyle to defeat him, but once they see he's powerful enough, tears will be shed.

I believe there is one of these characters... and it's owned by Jamie Madrox

Relevant: http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21635&start=50

firethorne

The problem isn't who should or shouldn't be added, removed, nerfed or buffed. I'm fine that level 270 legendary characters exist. The problem is the frequency people below that are matched against or attacked by them. I literally have a single maxed three star. The absolute highest level team I can field is 166 Magneto, 127 Punisher, and 114 Ironman (and that really isn't a good combo, so I'd actually use someone lower than Iron man).

So, how many times should my team, with a cumulative level of 410 or lower, be matched against teams levelled to a cumulative 810? That is the reason to complain.

rednailz

firethorne wrote:

The problem isn't who should or shouldn't be added, removed, nerfed or buffed. I'm fine that level 270 legendary characters exist. The problem is the frequency people below that are matched against or attacked by them. I literally have a single maxed three star. The absolute highest level team I can field is 166 Magneto, 127 Punisher, and 114 Ironman (and that really isn't a good combo, so I'd actually use someone lower than Iron man).

So, how many times should my team, with a cumulative level of 410 or lower, be matched against teams levelled to a cumulative 810? That is the reason to complain.

There's probably an appropriate thread for that complaint kickign around somewhere too. If I understand you right, the answer is simple - you are matched based on your pvp score, not the cummulative level, which actually would be arbitrary. If it was based on cummulative level everyone would just underlevel fully covered rosters, so your "level" 400 team with 13 covers each would be going against some poor sap with a "level" 400 team who only has 8 covers for each charecter. I could fosee an ocean of issues with that system.

racanrpa

arktos1971 wrote:

Wanted to add something now that I've played with IF a bit more and faced a lot of opponents in the last days (LR, SIM, PvP) :

For those who play a lot (I am one), characters like IF are very useful.

LRs are really cool with him. Some Hard Core players play something else in SIM, and use IF too, making the game more fun.

Many players want quick matches, because we play all events, and we need fast climbing.

I could notice that IF is NOT being played in the last hops and high end scores in PvPs.

So, IF is NOT OP. The more I play with him, the more I like him.

Don't judge a character when he is played using boosts. Boosting is NOT playing. Boosting should be used for shield hopping and high scaling only.

Ok, let´s take boost out of the picture and imagine a match between XF/IF vs XF/Thorine... make only two matches of and you have surgical strike ready or almost. You fire it, there are 2 scenarios, either you clear all , making Xforce ready to fire or clear all making Thorine virtually harmless (let´s face it, without the red power, blue is only a good stun power). And in just 2 moves you can easily beat XF, with his almost 11k health
Face this team with his mirror, and is worst, surgical will always clear green, fueling Xforce again.
The problem with IF is that with 2-3 moves you can beat a high health character (and that is without boosts), making this a new kind of "sentry bombing" which is not fun at all

As some people say, a maxed IF is an instant skip for me, and believe me, I tried many ways to defeat him. I have an underleveled Thorine, so I run with Lthor, and Thorine doesn t scare me much, at least as much as a maxed XF. But with IF is almost a sure death because that is just too damned cheap for what it does

NorthernPolarity

racanrpa wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

Wanted to add something now that I've played with IF a bit more and faced a lot of opponents in the last days (LR, SIM, PvP) :

For those who play a lot (I am one), characters like IF are very useful.

LRs are really cool with him. Some Hard Core players play something else in SIM, and use IF too, making the game more fun.

Many players want quick matches, because we play all events, and we need fast climbing.

I could notice that IF is NOT being played in the last hops and high end scores in PvPs.

So, IF is NOT OP. The more I play with him, the more I like him.

Don't judge a character when he is played using boosts. Boosting is NOT playing. Boosting should be used for shield hopping and high scaling only.

Ok, let´s take boost out of the picture and imagine a match between XF/IF vs XF/Thorine... make only two matches of and you have surgical strike ready or almost. You fire it, there are 2 scenarios, either you clear all , making Xforce ready to fire or clear all making Thorine virtually harmless (let´s face it, without the red power, blue is only a good stun power). And in just 2 moves you can easily beat XF, with his almost 11k health
Face this team with his mirror, and is worst, surgical will always clear green, fueling Xforce again.
The problem with IF is that with 2-3 moves you can beat a high health character (and that is without boosts), making this a new kind of "sentry bombing" which is not fun at all

As some people say, a maxed IF is an instant skip for me, and believe me, I tried many ways to defeat him. I have an underleveled Thorine, so I run with Lthor, and Thorine doesn t scare me much, at least as much as a maxed XF. But with IF is almost a sure death because that is just too damned cheap for what it does

If this were true then we would have seen all the crewsaders switch to IF / FIst for the Cage PvP. The problem with your scenario is sure: you've killed XF. Now how do you quickly kill 16k HP of 4or now that you have 0 AP. Probably have to slog out another 10 turns to kill her, and the extra second from IFs passive is going to make that excruciatingly slow. Yes, he's too good for a 3*, but saying that he's better than 4or or on the same lines of sentry bombing (which was literally 30k damage on turn 3, this is 10k damage in most cases). is going a bit far.

Unknown

Where does these 'I have 30 black and don't know how to win' scenarios come from? Sure if you're just messing around casually that can happen. I had a game with IF/X Force/Thor where I had 25 red, 30 black, and a lot of everything else but green and blue and that game went on for a surprisingly long time because Smite without Power Surge is pretty useless and there was only 2 tiles to Surgical into the whole time. The reason why you might be sitting on 30 black with nothing to Surgical into is because IF is too fast. With his extra speed you can just take some time to collect green tiles, just like had you used Thor and not have 25 black AP fall to your lap then you'd still have to collect red/blue AP the old fashion way too. If you're boosting with 6 AP in 4 colors you still wouldn't have 6 in either red or blue (unless you didn't take green/black boost) so one of those you got to collect 2 matches, which is the same case as having to take 2 green matches (or less, if you used the same number of boosts) because you accidentally have 30 black with nothing to use it on. Another X Force will almost always open up the board again for Surgical Strike and even if you're Surgical into dead colors it's still more than enough damage to end the game with a pile of black. You can also just use the purple for damage straight up before hitting a ridiculous number of black. There's some adjusting to how IF works because he's too fast and gets you too much black and with more experience it'd be clear to just use his purple for damage so you don't end up with sitting on 30 black. At any rate for all but shield hopping scenarios there's no conceiveable way you'll lose while sitting on 30 black. For that matter there's almost no conceiveable way to win had the reverse happened.

racanrpa

NorthernPolarity wrote:

racanrpa wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

Wanted to add something now that I've played with IF a bit more and faced a lot of opponents in the last days (LR, SIM, PvP) :

For those who play a lot (I am one), characters like IF are very useful.

LRs are really cool with him. Some Hard Core players play something else in SIM, and use IF too, making the game more fun.

Many players want quick matches, because we play all events, and we need fast climbing.

I could notice that IF is NOT being played in the last hops and high end scores in PvPs.

So, IF is NOT OP. The more I play with him, the more I like him.

Don't judge a character when he is played using boosts. Boosting is NOT playing. Boosting should be used for shield hopping and high scaling only.

Ok, let´s take boost out of the picture and imagine a match between XF/IF vs XF/Thorine... make only two matches of and you have surgical strike ready or almost. You fire it, there are 2 scenarios, either you clear all , making Xforce ready to fire or clear all making Thorine virtually harmless (let´s face it, without the red power, blue is only a good stun power). And in just 2 moves you can easily beat XF, with his almost 11k health
Face this team with his mirror, and is worst, surgical will always clear green, fueling Xforce again.
The problem with IF is that with 2-3 moves you can beat a high health character (and that is without boosts), making this a new kind of "sentry bombing" which is not fun at all

As some people say, a maxed IF is an instant skip for me, and believe me, I tried many ways to defeat him. I have an underleveled Thorine, so I run with Lthor, and Thorine doesn t scare me much, at least as much as a maxed XF. But with IF is almost a sure death because that is just too damned cheap for what it does

If this were true then we would have seen all the crewsaders switch to IF / FIst for the Cage PvP. The problem with your scenario is sure: you've killed XF. Now how do you quickly kill 16k HP of 4or now that you have 0 AP. Probably have to slog out another 10 turns to kill her, and the extra second from IFs passive is going to make that excruciatingly slow. Yes, he's too good for a 3*, but saying that he's better than 4or or on the same lines of sentry bombing (which was literally 30k damage on turn 3, this is 10k damage in most cases). is going a bit far.

Did Sentry bombing was a go since day 1? Can´t remember. There should be some "testing" time but it could happen. I m not saying that he is better than a 4 but surely he is more fast when pairing with x force... My point is, when sentry was at full power, the only way to kill him was to play with sentry. This is a close scenario. To beat IF you need him to fire his before or pray the AI choses any other color.
I m not saying IF needs a big nerf or even that is broken. He just need an adjustment. I think the devs design him to play along LCage (Heroes for hire), which complement great, but didn´t realise other sinergys. Same happened whit Thorine, i believe that iit was Nonce who noticed the perma-turn it would have been if pairing with hood before nerfed, they admited they missed it.
Regarding the part of killing Thorine with 0 AP, as i said before i run XF/LThor. For last games against XF and her i full boost all colors+green/black. Once XF is out, i usually have little AP, and collecting for another Xforce to be fired is not that hard, and by that time Thorine would still be collecting blue (that, of course, if one of those nice and beautiful killing cascades doesn t appear lol), so that, s not an issue

Unknown

So, the guys complaining finally got what they wanted.

And the ones who PAID to max Iron Fist are just screwed, 2 weeks after release ?

D3 could not think twice before releasing such a character when the forum was filled with comments about him being OP ? And when the specs are "subject to change" BEFORE release ?

My proud is really badly hurt as I feel I am taken as a fool this way.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

So, the guys complaining finally got what they wanted.

And the ones who PAID to max Iron Fist are just screwed, 2 weeks after release ?

D3 could not think twice before releasing such a character when the forum was filled with comments about him being OP ? And when the specs are "subject to change" BEFORE release ?

My proud is really badly hurt as I feel I am taken as a fool this way.

I decided to hedge my bets and only put 3750 HP for maxing out the purple but not anything else (like the black) since I was quite sure it's going to happen at some point.

I don't think it's correct to say 'well the last overpowered character was left alone for 5 months so I expected him to last that long' but D3 should definitely take some responsibility for making people thinking this way. I was 100% sure he will be nerfed and I spent HP on him anyway figuring that based on history, I could get at least a month worth of rental if not much longer for his brokenness. It is my fault for taking a gamble, but it is also D3's fault for having a history that makes people gamble on obviously broken characters. I know nerfs in the past you can sort of justify it as 'you got your money back with Magneto/Sentry/whatever' but this, you really don't have time to get your money back and he was way too tempting to pass up.

NorthernPolarity

arktos1971 wrote:

So, the guys complaining finally got what they wanted.

And the ones who PAID to max Iron Fist are just screwed, 2 weeks after release ?

D3 could not think twice before releasing such a character when the forum was filled with comments about him being OP ? And when the specs are "subject to change" BEFORE release ?

My proud is really badly hurt as I feel I am taken as a fool this way.

Oh come on. I can understand all the whining about the 4or nerfs, but a nerf from 9->7 tiles on purple is pretty minor, and honestly I think they didn't go far enough with this one. We all knew it was coming, and this was definitely the most reasonable nerf that they put in. It just doesn't make sense to complain about this one when it isn't changing the way the character plays at all, nor does it make him that much weaker either.