OK Devs, so you screwed up

2

Comments

  • GothicKratos
    GothicKratos Posts: 1,821 Chairperson of the Boards
    MarvelMan wrote:
    GothicKratos wrote:
    Personally, I'd rather have them go "you know, we don't know what do to with this guys so we're going to neuter them for the time being" then just ignore it and let them run wild.

    Except that that is not what they say, nor is it what their actions indicate. Spidey hasnt seen use from my roster, unless forced, in quite a while. Neither has Sentry. I think both needed some work, and better to neuter and sort out than run wild. But that requires that they acknowledge that it was over done and will get some attention (doesnt even have to have a timeline).

    Real cute how you chose not to quote the part where I basically said that (in a perfect world we'd see them revisited and actually fixed in a reasonable amount of time) icon_lol.gif but on topic to your post - timelines are dangerous - what happens if you have to delay something? Or how they did in the past saying they were reworking people with no deadline, they just got badgered about it constantly. We taught them that was a bad idea lol.

    That, and, they have come out and said that there are several characters (She-Hulk and Beast are the first two that come to mind that were name dropped but I know there were more) that are not hitting the mark they want to hit and they are working on them, but they have to balance that and new content in their workload, as well as mechanical workflow.

    MarvelMan wrote:
    And Id add in Hood's yellow. Decent damage, but a horrible skill that is almost unanimously left at level 3 now. It should be GOOD (Im not saying great) damage if you have to leave a squishy out front. And Im sure there are others.

    I thought it was unanimously 'whatever covers I get first other than five Blue' after the Sentry nerf? icon_lol.gif
  • Arondite
    Arondite Posts: 1,188 Chairperson of the Boards
    MarvelMan wrote:
    And Id add in Hood's yellow. Decent damage, but a horrible skill that is almost unanimously left at level 3 now. It should be GOOD (Im not saying great) damage if you have to leave a squishy out front. And Im sure there are others.

    Most people will disagree with you here. It's better than his black.
  • Raffoon
    Raffoon Posts: 884
    GothicKratos wrote:
    MarvelMan wrote:
    GothicKratos wrote:
    Personally, I'd rather have them go "you know, we don't know what do to with this guys so we're going to neuter them for the time being" then just ignore it and let them run wild.

    Except that that is not what they say, nor is it what their actions indicate. Spidey hasnt seen use from my roster, unless forced, in quite a while. Neither has Sentry. I think both needed some work, and better to neuter and sort out than run wild. But that requires that they acknowledge that it was over done and will get some attention (doesnt even have to have a timeline).

    Real cute how you chose not to quote the part where I basically said that (in a perfect world we'd see them revisited and actually fixed in a reasonable amount of time) icon_lol.gif but on topic to your post - timelines are dangerous - what happens if you have to delay something? Or how they did in the past saying they were reworking people with no deadline, they just got badgered about it constantly. We taught them that was a bad idea lol.

    That, and, they have come out and said that there are several characters (She-Hulk and Beast are the first two that come to mind that were name dropped but I know there were more) that are not hitting the mark they want to hit and they are working on them, but they have to balance that and new content in their workload, as well as mechanical workflow.

    MarvelMan wrote:
    And Id add in Hood's yellow. Decent damage, but a horrible skill that is almost unanimously left at level 3 now. It should be GOOD (Im not saying great) damage if you have to leave a squishy out front. And Im sure there are others.

    I thought it was unanimously 'whatever covers I get first other than five Blue' after the Sentry nerf? icon_lol.gif

    So, the problem with Rag, Sentry, Spidey, and to some degree (I will admit a bit less) 4Thor taking a sandbox time-out is that people have invested resources in them. If you could swap to the next best alternative at no cost, then it wouldn't be as much of an issue.

    We're talking about the characters that were the best, though (which also means that changes to them are going to affect more players). To have them drop so drastically and then never be touched again after people have spent effort, time, and money on covering/leveling them is where the problem lies.

    What if they did it in smaller pieces but more often? I think that would be a lot better. The problem with these changes are they're all-or-nothing, and then never revisited. I understand that there's testing and the act of pushing a build through that can cause this to take a bit more time, but the final outcome would be so much better with small changes that could be partially tested live. I mean, besides playtesting and keeping track of builds, does changing 12 tiles to 5 really consist of more than going into a file and changing the number 12 to the number 5? If it does, then they haven't built their system very well, have they?

    Imagine instead that they nerfed Power Surge to 4 turns, 9 tiles. They took a look again in 2 weeks and said. "You know what, this still feels a bit strong" and so next update they bump it to 3 turns 8 tiles. No one's going to be happy about a nerf either way, but this would be so much more reasonable.

    Instead we get: Hey, know that character you just dropped some immense combination of time/money/effort into? Well......... We decided to err on the side of demolishing her. Have fun trying to convince yourself she's not comparable to Devil Dino, now.
  • Polares
    Polares Posts: 2,643 Chairperson of the Boards
    It is so clear they made a big mistake with 4hor that I find it unbelievable that they have still said nothing about it.

    Another big evidence they over-nerfed 4hor. Now in PvP we have some chars upgraded from rarity, so a 3* now should feel like a 4* (their words not mine). So we had a 256 3* Thor, and guess what, it is so much better than 4hor that they seem two rarities away, not the same. Lighting strike creates 12 green and does 4200 hps and CtS 7000 and 3500, and it has 15000hps. He is so much better that nobody used 4hor in the event, NOBODY, you could see XForces, even some ProfX but never a 4hor. And it is going to be the same with any other good 3*, BP is going to do around 5000 hp to the entire teams, IF around 6000 for 5AP, Cyclops 12000 using black, etc, etc. All these boosted 3* are clearly way better than 4hor, and they should be on par.
  • GothicKratos
    GothicKratos Posts: 1,821 Chairperson of the Boards
    Raffoon wrote:
    What if they did it in smaller pieces but more often? I think that would be a lot better.

    I agree, actually, something like how League of Legends does it would be perfect. Small tunings here and there and watching how they affect everything and then making more small tunings and watching how those go. New characters in League almost always get nerfed a month or so down the line - balancing is a lot more complex than most people give it credit - but the nominal adjustments makes it feel less like they're disabling the Champion, but more like they're actually making them healthy. Lucian and Yasuo are both great examples of Champions that sculpted the meta, and ultimately got adjusted - even to the point that some of their actual mechanics were tweaked - and are still prevalent picks in the ranked meta.

    However, it seems pretty clear that the development team here is a lot smaller and has a much smaller window of opportunity to work with these types of things. I feel like the right thing for MPQ is somewhere in the middle - again I'll lean on League of Legends, where annually, there's on average on character rework and one new character to each month. Characters like Sion, that before their rework were considered troll picks, are now meta staples.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    League of Legends has to operate differently because they have a "free character rotation" where a handful of all the characters are available to F2P players only, other characters must be unlocked. Thanks to this, they get to see 5 characters a month played very very heavily, reguardless of their balance or power level. They can fine tune based on their data. MPQ has no such restriction, and so the 5 characters that get played all the time by developed rosters are the 5 most powerful.

    I understand the need and the want to balance. But someone has to be on top. Even if you keep hitting the top character, someone takes his place. So far, I've agreed with every character change they have made. I just can't support the Thor change. Magneto/Spiderman/Sentry had to be tweaked, they had broken mechanics. Where was Thor's broken mechanic? She couldn't reliably stun lock an entire team, she didn't cause or support infinite loops, and she wasn't winning on turn 3 thanks to boosts. She was really strong, yes, but she's Thor. Isn't she supposed to be strong? Her only sin was being the most popular character.

    Like I said many times in the character changes thread; you want to rebalance charge tiles, that's fine, great even, but give her back the 3k damage you stole from her. I don't care where you put it, on to Power Surge, back on Smite, up charge tile damage by double, whatever, but she needs that damage back.
  • GothicKratos
    GothicKratos Posts: 1,821 Chairperson of the Boards
    Lerysh wrote:
    League of Legends has to operate differently because they have a "free character rotation" where a handful of all the characters are available to F2P players only, other characters must be unlocked. Thanks to this, they get to see 5 characters a month played very very heavily, reguardless of their balance or power level. They can fine tune based on their data. MPQ has no such restriction, and so the 5 characters that get played all the time by developed rosters are the 5 most powerful.

    To be honest, that logic sounds good on paper, but it's not really true for a multitude of reasons. Dropping $10 to get three or four (maybe even more depending on sales) Champions is extremely common (similar to those impulse purchases in mobile games icon_lol.gif), unlocking Champions with IP is relatively easy (anywhere from like 18 games to 30 games, depending on how new the Champion is), and regardless of this, most of the data they gather and use if from Ranker and LCS play - which Ranked is restricted to Level 30 players, so a limited player pool is not an issue for any of these players.
    Lerysh wrote:
    I understand the need and the want to balance. But someone has to be on top. Even if you keep hitting the top character, someone takes his place. So far, I've agreed with every character change they have made. I just can't support the Thor change. Magneto/Spiderman/Sentry had to be tweaked, they had broken mechanics. Where was Thor's broken mechanic? She couldn't reliably stun lock an entire team, she didn't cause or support infinite loops, and she wasn't winning on turn 3 thanks to boosts. She was really strong, yes, but she's Thor. Isn't she supposed to be strong? Her only sin was being the most popular character.

    Like I said many times in the character changes thread; you want to rebalance charge tiles, that's fine, great even, but give her back the 3k damage you stole from her. I don't care where you put it, on to Power Surge, back on Smite, up charge tile damage by double, whatever, but she needs that damage back.

    I mostly agree with you. There will always be a top dog, especially in competitive play, however, sometimes there's too much of a power gap between the top and the rest of the pack. There should be a reasonable amount of plausibility to play other characters and do "okay". 4* Thor was not necessarily "broken", but her power spike was so high above everyone else's that every choice in the meta was made around her. She was popular because she was so strong everyone else, including X-Force, was trivial. That's pretty ridiculous, in my opinion. So was so powerful people were using her to skip the transition phases. Let that sink in.

    I completely agree they over-nerfed 4* Thor, but I don't agree it was uncalled for. I've said it in other threads, and I'll say it again here for posture, but I think the sweet spot for 4* Thor was 6-8 Charged Tiles and a wee bit more damage (1-2k depending on where the Charge Tile number falls).

    If a character is so good that nobody else matters either that character is unhealthily powerful, or everyone else is unhealthily powerless.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Was Thor really that powerful tho? If you compare 280 Thor with 270 Thor it's difficult to tell. Thor was a high health slow rolling damage monstrosity. But the slow rolling part made her not that terribly OP, combined with the AI not able to pull off Power Smite anyway, and I feel she was in line for 4* damage output. 160% strength, that's the number we got from the devs. I don't see Thor as she is now being 160% damage output of even a moderate 3*.

    I feel like if the buff test came first, and the devs saw other characters besides Thor being used, her fall from grace could have been avoided or at least had it's impact lessened.
  • rednailz
    rednailz Posts: 559
    Lerysh wrote:
    Was Thor really that powerful tho? If you compare 280 Thor with 270 Thor it's difficult to tell. Thor was a high health slow rolling damage monstrosity. But the slow rolling part made her not that terribly OP, combined with the AI not able to pull off Power Smite anyway, and I feel she was in line for 4* damage output. 160% strength, that's the number we got from the devs. I don't see Thor as she is now being 160% damage output of even a moderate 3*.

    I feel like if the buff test came first, and the devs saw other characters besides Thor being used, her fall from grace could have been avoided or at least had it's impact lessened.

    but they've explained more chars will have charged tiles, so going forward chances are she'd be way too much. Although I agree, she wasn't much to worry about attacking.
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Unless those new charge tile powers are A) Not blue or 2) generate more than 5 for 9 AP it won't help. Plus she shouldn't need to be propped up by Gambit.
  • rednailz
    rednailz Posts: 559
    I think "propped" is a bit of a stretch....how about we meet in the middle at made more effective?

    icon_e_wink.gif
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    Ok, sure, still tho.

    I understand that the 12 charge tiles into 2 characters being stunned into 20k damage output reliably was no good. I get that. She still needs that 10k damage pop tho, and she doesn't have it now. If you get her rolling to the level she use to be rolling at you are doing maybe 12k damage, but getting that going is much harder on 5 charge tiles. She needs another 3k damage to Power Smite. The most elegant way to do that, IMO, is add 3k damage to Power Surge. Thor shouldn't have any "does not do damage but does a thing" powers anyway.
  • Raffoon
    Raffoon Posts: 884
    Still an issue. Still no response from the dev's other than "try it and you'll see it will still be fun".

    Still pissed. Still not spending any more money on the game.
  • ayatorahxephon
    ayatorahxephon Posts: 94 Match Maker
    yes... don't spend any more on this game cause we as customers don't get what we purchased for
  • Raffoon
    Raffoon Posts: 884
    Wooo boy. Now a new character is essential in the PVE for another new character. (pretty sure they said they weren't going to do that again)

    I think their plan is to get people to spend money, then drive them away so that they don't burden the servers, then get other people to spend money. It really can't be player retention when they are so blatantly going against every piece of advice, suggestion, and feedback that they get.
  • ayatorahxephon
    ayatorahxephon Posts: 94 Match Maker
    yeah with new overpowered characters introduced, they gonna get people to buy their cover and nerf them just to release newer overpowered characters and the cycle goes on
  • Unknown
    Unknown
    The real victim here is 4* progression. Now the only really desirable 4* character is the one you get at day 150...after that, it's just a bunch of sometimes interesting but always overpriced dudes. They need to make 4* characters desirable again, pronto.
  • Raffoon
    Raffoon Posts: 884
    Lots of changes, lots of dev posts today.

    Still not even a real acknowledgement that they even *may* have gone too far on Thor.
  • ayatorahxephon
    ayatorahxephon Posts: 94 Match Maker
    Judging from the rest of the characters changes like Spider-man, sentry, x force, c.mags and so on they seems to just change(buff or nerf) them once and forget about it unless Ragnarok which they nerfed and rework on him since he is missing a color. All in all I don't think they really play this game in a competitive way. There are so many 3* characters that are better than 4* thor heck even 3* thor is stronger than 4* thor now especially when buffed and this should tell you developers something
  • Raffoon
    Raffoon Posts: 884
    ayatorahxephon wrote:
    Judging from the rest of the characters changes like Spider-man, sentry, x force, c.mags and so on they seems to just change(buff or nerf) them once and forget about it unless Ragnarok which they nerfed and rework on him since he is missing a color. All in all I don't think they really play this game in a competitive way. There are so many 3* characters that are better than 4* thor heck even 3* thor is stronger than 4* thor now especially when buffed and this should tell you developers something

    The only thing to do is keep the discussion alive, vote with the wallet, and vote with reviews on the app page. This is a pretty terrible change and they haven't even acknowledged the feedback on it at this point.

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