MPQ Community Video - March - Character Updates

theshadeofopal

Only gonna comment on rags/4thor cause ifs fix was necessary, even if the timing was less than ideal and I don't have mmags, so I can't comment too much on the winfinite pairing.

Rags- I like the idea of him having charge tiles but burst healing should be a dead thing at this point. I'm not saying bring back true healing, just give him a beefy protect tile(s) or some other effect to represent him powering up. The fact that the burst healing as part of his abilities in the video isn't even addressed makes me question why the move just didn't do a little damage or produce more tiles instead makes the burst healing feel very tacked on.

I don't think the general change in his green is highly disputed, rather the numbers and effect. At 487 damage per ap, godlike can't hold a candle to other decent all party 3* moves.

colossus at 569, conditional but also significantly faster at 11 ap
gsbw 617, though realistically a bit more due to 16 tiles destroyed and subsequent cascading
bp 927
dp 871
3*thor 645

A lot of these you can debate because of character health, other negative or positive effects of the skills but at the end of the day hes outpaced by quite a bit, even with characters in comparable health range like bp or 3*thor who also have significantly more useful secondary moves in the form of their yellows. Destroying one column does not help balance this. Power of attorney has a slightly lower damage per ap but is a much better move because its significantly faster and the nature of its tile destruction is much more likely to cause additional matches. I honestly don't understand the reasoning a move that is already not very good on its face needs self damage. The only reasoning that makes any sense is its kind of designed to help give lightning rod a little more purpose, like ares sunder/rampage interaction.

4* Thor- Hard to sound off on this one without repeating everyone else but I'll specifically address somethings stated. I've come around a bit on the drastic reduction of charge tiles from 12 to 5. I've use her enough to know how easy it is to get a permastun chain on one or two characters until they just get smited to death. I still think its a little low but isn't the real problem. Smite needs to get a much larger amount of damage per tile, probably somewhere around 300-400. It's going to be that much harder to get enough red for multiple smites without consuming charged tiles, so it should be adjusted to reflect that. The slight damage boost smite got was a start but it needs a bit more.

The yellow feels like a change akin to sentry's red. No one saw it coming because no one really thought it was necessary given the other changes. If anything one might have expected a slight buff in the damage department. Relegating the countdown tile effect to level 5 kills the idea of any build outside of 5/3/5, even if the only other one was 4/4/5.

Just a bit of an aside here, I think the number of tiles/types converted changes is related to a disconnect between the player base and devs on how valuble such skills are. Radar sense, coercive field, trickery, settlement are not necessarily completely terrible skills but they aren't what one would call worthwhile either. Coercive is arguable because its a weird random hybrid does provide another effect, albeit rather weak relative to other. Any abilities designed to be counters should be more efficient compared to the abilities they are countering. If the only way to counter spells in mtg was to pay the same amount, i don't think anyone would ever play blue. I think nuts from above is a move towards this, as even though it doesn't get rid of such tiles, it does benefit from their presence quite a bit but still does a little something in their absence. Radar sense designed this way would be something like deals 4000ish damage but 500 less for each tile removed, up to 5 tiles.

Unknown

clay_peterson wrote:

Found this video mostly informative, except they glossed over the Rags changes too much. I was especially hoping to here why they made his green iflict self-harm. But for that, I think he'd be a reasonably solid mid-level 3*.

Or, if they reaaly want to keep green's self-damage, they could make his blue grant True Healing. That would work.

Because a balanced green ability cannot do that much damage (CtS is a gross anomaly compared to even low HP class characters let alone guys in Thor's HP class). If you look at Juggernaut's design there is this philosophy of 'if do X damage is okay, then do 2X damage and X to self is okay." So instead of doing something like 1.5K maybe to all enemies it does 2K to all enemies + 500 to your own team because 1500 seems too small to matter. Whether that actually works is anyone's guess, but it's a workable framework. The appropriate attack to compare Godlike Power would be something like Smash, which uses 14 red + up to 10 green (and doing no damage with them until you've more than 10) and possibly doing 30% damage to your own team. Of course Smash is pretty bad too, but high HP characters aren't supposed to be the go-to guys for your damaging moves.

Unknown

theshadeofopal wrote:

A lot of these you can debate because of character health, other negative or positive effects of the skills but at the end of the day hes outpaced by quite a bit, even with characters in comparable health range like bp or 3*thor who also have significantly more useful secondary moves in the form of their yellows. Destroying one column does not help balance this. Power of attorney has a slightly lower damage per ap but is a much better move because its significantly faster and the nature of its tile destruction is much more likely to cause additional matches. I honestly don't understand the reasoning a move that is already not very good on its face needs self damage. The only reasoning that makes any sense is its kind of designed to help give lightning rod a little more purpose, like ares sunder/rampage interaction.

BP and Thor 3* are way above the power curve. BP may or may not be balanced by the fact that one of his skill is basically useless (Defense Grid).

She-Hulk has a very strong red, but her other two moves are very bad. There are a lot of combination of enemies where you can't even use Settlement at all, and Reprieve is even worse than Settlement. While it's not clear if a particular move gets a better budget because the other two move sucks, that has to count for something from a gameplay point of view even if the budget doesn't care. BP may have benefited from this rule since at one point both Battleplan and Defense Grid sucked and that may have justified why ROTP was so great (and then Battleplan got buffed anyway).

theshadeofopal

Bp and 3* Thor are definitely better but I wouldn't put him that far out of class with shehulk or Gsbw doesn't speak well. All 3 have 1 more or less useless moves. Shulk and Gsbw both have second best moves that are situational or shifty on defense but have better all partys than rags, so kind of a toss up. At this point new 3* characters, which rags essentially is, should probably be a little more balanced.

ronin_san

Once they get your money (which is the only way you can get a refund), they'll refund your coins spent. It's the most modest gesture they can make and still appear to be extending an olive branch. Why so negative, right?

Arcades - the ones that force you to use tokens, in this case, in-game coins/HP. If the game breaks mid-game, they're not refunding your money spent. They've already got it. And nothing short of a fit to a manager will get that real money back.

All of it to say that money spent is never truly recuperated. It's simply recycled. But the word refund carries weight.


TL;DR Please use caution spending money on this game. You'll never really get it back.

KrazyKeylime

Firstly, thank you for addressing the community and diving into the toxic waters. Thanks for the attempt of a policy, but it only works for newly created characters not recently nerfed characters.

Secondly, i would have to agree with the conditional abilities being over valued. i had Daredevil max 5/4/4 and i hardly ever had the chance to use his purple and never used it to it's full effect of 5 tiles it was 3 or lower. i would literally sit in fights and mid fight reread his ability to confirm i can't use it in this fight with 20 ap just sitting there wasted. i did good in the event to get dd cover and immediately respec'd to 3/5/5. I think you are thinking conditional powers are better then they actually are, i liked the previously mention to change dd purple to be 4000 damage minus 400-500 for each tile destroyed. if that was the case i would most likely try to respec to 5/3/5 cause DD need some consistency to stay relevant with his other 2 abilities being too gimmicky. I also think people are over valuing Health as well other wise hulk and 3* thor would be op, but when i use them they are sinks that end my playing, so i have to make strategies to limit the damage to them with out killing my 551 4* wolverine, but it is hard to to get his baby heal off. 3* thor i only get maybe 2-3 games before i need to heal him, hulk can go 3-4 cause he accelerates my wolvine as he gets pummeled. i think it has been a while since hulk got some love why not add a small burst of health when angry goes off 300-500 health, because once it is down to him it is usually a lose. but back to the point.

another question why not buff other 4 stars instead. If one unreleased character is going to break 4thor then i think you did your job poorly. You can use count down tiles to charge objects that blow up or trap tiles for tiles that explode when touched.
this brings me to my final point, are there never going to be 5*? really? if i was managing this game i would want to project some growth in the future and would see them some where on the horizon. if there is going to be 5* then 4 * need to be stronger then 3* and the 4* need to be close to lvl to be able to compete with 5 *. I think you did a wonderful job with 4* wolverine and 4* thor pre-nerf, i was disappointed with starlord, elektra, and devil dino. i made some suggestions to make them better

fix nick fury- yellow remove the other Ap requirements, blue leave, purple reduce cost to 10, increase Health for infinity serum in blood 12000 max

fix elektra- strongest color change to black- purple cost 5 start steal 2 for 2 scale up damage 5 cover steal 3,for black auto generate 1 trap per turn. scale up damage at 3 covers can have up to 2, 5 covers can have up to 3; 2/3 current damage for trigger ie max 500-600 damage, red cost reduced to 5

Fix starlord- purple reduce cost to 7 or leave at 10 but does team damage, yellow leave or add minor protect effect on count down time, red split damage 2/3 on cast, 1/3 on tile becomes team damage

fix IW - yellow passive generate a yellow invisibility tile that grants invisiblity to her, cost 7 yellow place a shield around target ally that blocks scaling 2000( maybe more) damage max; collapse of shield deals max 500 damage to all other visible characters , blue 7ap 1 force bubble with each cover reduce by 1 max 7( maybe 9) force bubble, green 9 shatter random force bubble dealing max 450 max to all non-invisible units destroying 4 tiles around the force bubble if a another force bubble is destroyed it does the same thing; each cover destroys an additional tile around force bubbles.

Fix dino pink remove,add ravenous hunger passive offers 30%(50% @ 5 covers) for ability to retrigger for 30%(50% @ 5 covers) current damage and destroy 1 tile (each cover, max 5) every time one of his abilities has abilities is cast/triggered

fix 4 thor un-nerf
fix xforce if still op

IF you must insist, and i emphasize must, keep 4* around the abilities of 3* then get rid of the crazy cost of them. 2500 hp for a 3*+ character when there are 3* better then most of the garbage tier 4* and also increase the tile damage of the 4* i was amazed at how long it took me to down a seed team of punisher loaner and 2 1100 health characters with a bad board. but i think there are 5* coming down the line so save us some trouble of buffing the 4*s later as they are now most of them are a joke. also nerf beast.

edited: reread refund policy

loroku

Anyone have a transcript or summary or something for those of us who can't watch it?

esoxnepa

I'm very happy to see a formally defined refund policy for new characters.

I believe Mystique should have come to a lower cost power for less tiles, to keep her fit as a disruption character. Taking her to 10 AP, or 4 matches, really weakens a weak character for PvP. While you were adjusting the ratios of conversion, it would have been nice to give her blue some additional speed of disruption. So while it wouldn't be a game winner, it would disrupt the ability to gather red, green, and yellow earlier in the match, while still eliminating the infinite turns.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Moon 17 wrote:

Great news on the return policy, and I love the new video chats. Much nicer than just reading forum text.

I'm interested to hear that Rag's old ability was overcosted, though...is that because of its relatively high cascade rate? Just to be clear: he's kind of awful now. Like, maybe even less desirable than he was with 2 covers.

Do you really think all those wipeouts due to Ragnarok in PvE event was because the AI secretly activated a 'better cascade' button? Of course it's undercosted for the amount of cascades it causes. Like they said in the interview, they made a lot of mistakes with AP generation because when you've something that shakes up the board it's not trivial to figure out what exactly this means. A character with a ton of HP should be picked mostly because of their HP.

Just to clarify: I'm not some conspiracy nut who suspects the computer of cheating every time I'm on the wrong end of a bad cascade. But old-school Godlike Power doesn't seem any more impressive and cascade-y than Power of Attorney; the fact that it had no attached abilities made it seem like a pretty underwhelming thing to have happen to you. Eating his post nerf Thunderclap was usually waaaay worse, but I still left Rags for last because he only screwed you if you got hit by an unlucky cascade. So, again: it's interesting to me that Godlike Power was called out for being undercosted; I wonder what its average AP-return rate ends up being, and what number would be too high...

Unknown

Follow up question to all this nerfing:

You said in this video that even Thor's yellow was out of line in terms of power for a 4 star.

If her ability that most people didn't even bother using (IE a 5/0/5 Thor was already an elite character) is overpowered, do you think Xforce is overpowered as well?

Because if you're going to nerf him, you should just tell us now.

It'd be pretty cruel to just let us sit in limbo while you "decide" even when you've set such a low precedent that there's no way we can believe that you believe Xforce isn't overpowered.

Unknown

Wow, this actually answered a lot of questions I had, particularly:
1. Mystique's nerfs because of Mystique/Xavier + nerfed MNMags
2. Why charged tiles remain at 3AP as opposed to 2.

Reactions:
Mystique's infiltration is pretty weak if you only cast it once, or haven't been farming RGY. This puts her infiltration into even more of a niche. With her low health, I don't think she's close to top 10 now.
6:25 Lol, at unconvincing Stormneto placation.
I do think GSBW/Xavier is pretty powerful: 11 Pink to start for 8k single target from master plan + 4k to all enemies.

How is IFoKL still 5 AP?

Regarding X-Force, I'm really hoping that because he's not as good on defense they still don't consider him as good as Goddess.

Unknown

I believe you guys should add a watch list of sorts...similar to the FBIs most wanted...if you have a list of characters you are working on redoing...it should be on this list. This will put everyone on notice that these characters will be experiencing a change. That way people will be well informed prior to purchase of said covers. It just makes the impact a lot easier to swallow if there is this level of transparency. I just feel the risk of customer dissatisfaction far outweighs the benefits whatever that may be.

Unknown

Crystal Ball mode on :

Here is the story of Prof X (same as many other stories in MPQ, nothing new, just a reminder) :

It was so hard to get him that very few players have him maxed. Therefore, there isn't a major impact on the metagame.

A few months have passed, and many more players have Prof X EXCEPT all the newcomers that joined the game after the release of Prof X.

Those players start to voice their opinion out to nerf Prof X.

Very cynical mode on

When most of the playerbase has invested in Prof X, it's time to release a new character to renew the metagame.

Very cynical mode off

Prof X is nerfed, and since it is after Day 30, no one gets refunded.

Crystal Ball mode off

Unknown

Thank you for taking the time to address the issues raised by these nerfs, but it seems that you left some questions unanswered in regards to the nerfs.

1) Why does ragnarok's green do the same or less damage as other abilities with the same cost, but hurts the team?

2) There was discussion about Iron Fist being OP before he was released, why was this feedback ignored?

3) Why did you nerf Mystique both ways rather than just one way and see how it played out?

4) Thor's nerf direction wasn't a suprise, but the magnitude was. Why choose 5 charged tiles for the blue ability over 7-8? It feels like you're overnerfing rather than interating and incrementing

Unknown

We decided charge tiles were too good... so we drastically reduced the number of charged tiles 4Thor makes (makes sense)... oh btw we're dropping her damage output per AP by over a 3rd as well.... because charge tiles are too good?

Thanks for the info! That logic is stellar.... or did you not realize there was a link between her charge tiles and her damage? Maybe you think you are only looking at AP generation and didn't otherwise touch her? I prefer to think you just forgot to talk about it but bottom line is the damage reduction is what has really hurt. Charged tile sustain made her far too good, remove that AND **** her damage and you're left with what? A ball of health with 3* damage (worse than some 3*s) and a 3 turn stun that is far, far less impressive when you aren't getting tons of AP in those 3 turns. Stuns are always overrated.

It's like I wasted 12 minutes of my life waiting for you to justify the damage reduction to 3* damage per AP levels since THAT is the bit that made no sense.

And ROFL at implying 4Thor was the only outlier in 4* land and with that fixed you will now have a balanced and interesting choice from amongst all the 4* heroes..... ofc XForce won't be in every team where ppl have a choice just like he wasn't in every team before.

Still, at least it all confirms what I had assumed about the long term vision of 4* heroes, so that's handy.

Unknown

onimus wrote:

It'd be pretty cruel to just let us sit in limbo while you "decide" even when you've set such a low precedent that there's no way we can believe that you believe Xforce isn't overpowered.

It took them 11 months to buff him.

This game is all about data, as has been said.

When they think they have made enough money on X-Force, and the sales have decreased, they will nerf him, and release a new 4* character that is "really OP".

It wouldn't be a problem IF the money some dump in this game was not so important... If we paid let's say $80 and a monthly subscription, they could release as many characters as they wished, and nerf them whenever they find it useful.

The Freemium business model is probably the most cynical we've ever known. Apparently, it can be one of the most lucrative ones...

mjh

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Random thoughts and musings:
Average 3* HP = 6800, Average 4* HP = 10960.
Therefore, 3* HP * 1.6 = 4* HP, and we can apply the same scale to damage.

I'd like to expand on this and say 3* to max 160k x 1.6 = 256k which is what it should be to level a 4*

scottee

ronin-san wrote:

Once they get your money (which is the only way you can get a refund), they'll refund your coins spent. It's the most modest gesture they can make and still appear to be extending an olive branch. Why so negative, right?

Arcades - the ones that force you to use tokens, in this case, in-game coins/HP. If the game breaks mid-game, they're not refunding your money spent. They've already got it. And nothing short of a fit to a manager will get that real money back.

All of it to say that money spent is never truly recuperated. It's simply recycled. But the word refund carries weight.


TL;DR Please use caution spending money on this game. You'll never really get it back.

You never get any money back in any video game though.

Except in trading communities, in which case you're taking the money that someone else is putting into the economy.

Or online poker, which they need to make legal in the States again.

But people need to stop seeing this game as an investment. From a financial standpoint, it's consumption, not investment. Any "value" you think you're getting can never be taken out in the form of money.

Unknown

Either way, MPQ is keeping your money.

They can just wait 31 days before nerfing new chars to avoid hp refunds. Which is fine, ppl need to know what they are doing when putting money into this game.

Unknown

Also, devs dont even go in depth into the actual problems everyone had with the specific changes. Not a single word on the # of tiles decrease on 4thor's blue other than they want 4* to be weak. Great devs care enough to do video, but the video was pointless.

So XForce is for sure getting a nerf since 4* are meant to be not that much stronger...actions? words?