The upcoming X-Force nerf: The final nail in the coffin?

bknfoodie

onimus wrote:

Jameson2014 wrote:

Xforce isn't even a huge problem. He's a great board shaker, but damage wise, he's pretty on par. Dismantling him if far more unreasonable than finding new ways to counter him. Nerfing him is just silly at this point.

The devs need to be more creative than that.

If this were true, then Xforce wouldn't be in 100% of team comps past 200 points.

He's pretty obviously imbalanced.

But I blame D3 for never releasing anyone that could stand up to him and nerfing the one character that came close.

Where does this stop though? Once the 4* are ****, Then the best 3* are used in 100% of high end comps. So, let's nerf them too because they're "overpowered"? Thor/Hood/Loki. Let's just nerf everyone and play bejeweled? In any competitive game there has to be a power curve OR counters. You can't have counter strategy in this game because their goal is to release more characters/mechanics.

How does it make any sense that LThor whos 3* better than 4* characters once Xforce is nerfed?

GrumpySmurf1002

Phaserhawk wrote:

ynglink wrote:

Jameson2014 wrote:

They aren't just tweaking black.

Without any evidence shown, all we have is speculation. If you'd like to show us or even just PM the "nerfed" stats and abilities, then we can discuss with the same knowledge. Without that though I will hold with my thoughts that I previously posted.

Agreed. What do you know? I've read this thread up and down and I've heard gloom and doom but nothing stated as to what it will be.

There's at least one (unconfirmed) spoiler in the turul thread. Based on what's there, he's certainly weakened and would likely need to be respec'd as well.

Arondite

san-mpq wrote:

Arondite wrote:

Cold Hard Fact : If they nerf X Force, I become a 100% F2P player.

I'm with you here, bud. X-Force is the ONLY character I spent real money on, because it is absolutely necessary to get anywhere near the 700-800s at any consistent rate, without spending hours upon hours sitting there defending. He's fun, and definitely not OP, especially on defense. I've had him killed by a 2* OBW/2*Thor/loaner combo (sad, I know). Since having XF at 220, I have actually had way more fun playing this game.

Thing is, on my (mostly)F2P account, I've been able to hit mostly 800 point scores with a measurable degree of consistency using 3 Stars. That account doesn't have a completed X Force. But X Force is the goal. He's the end game. And it's not because he's too good or too strong, it's because he's the only 4 Star they've appropriately powered to make any sort of meaningful progression over 3 Stars. If they nerf him, why would I spend money to 'progress' into the 4 Star territory where characters are not measurably stronger and just have bigger health bars - when I could isntead spend no money and coast through the 3 star land and continually grow a larger roster that is essentially just as effective?

I'm not a rage quitter, nor a quitter for that matter. If they nerf, I will still keep playing. I have no nostalgia about the game, having started just before the anniversary, and never having seen sentry bombing, rag bombs, enviro tiles, or 2* wolvie, thor and others before their nerf. If they nerf XF, I will still likely play, but just not with nearly as much conviction, or fun.

Same here. If they nerf him, I'll switch over to cruise control and never make another purchase on either of my accounts.

Fact: funbalancing is not the same when you take out the F...

The problem is that most people think X Force is morphing the game and that he's out of control. X Force automatically makes you a top end player and you just wreck everything in sight and you can only place well with X Force and X Force this and X Force that.

Its true that X Force is the best character in the game - now. It's true that X Force is measurably more effective than any 3 Star, and more effective than any 4 Star. The devs problem is they see the first part of that statement (measurably more effective than any 3 star) as the problem rather than the second part (more effective than any 4 star) as the problem.

4 Stars need to be better as a whole. Goddess Thor was an outlier. I'm fine with her being nerfed, though they went heavy-handed on it. X Force? He's in a good place. He defines top end gameplay without ruining bottom end gameplay.

The reason a change to X Force would put me F2P goes even deeper than that, though. It would mean I simply can't trust the developers to make decisions healthy for the game and decisions that don't actively hurt me anymore. I can't trust them not to morph matchmaking so that my Transitioning account faces 270's from point 150 onward. I can't trust them to take the rewards I worked hard for and render them useless or equal in comparison to the freebies they hand new players. I can't trust them not to throw overscaled nodes at me that I can't beat because the characters that overscaled them are now incapable themselves of defeating them.

If they take away the last remaining "prize character", I can't trust them not to release a new prize character, let me earn and purchase it, then take that away too.

ynglink

Switchman wrote:

People looking at code,

are you sure you are not just seeing the Old Xforce Code? The devs leave old code in the scripts.

I got a PM just recently and it's not comparable to his old abilities. However, there is one part that I can see is uncalled for with his nerf. I was also not given the AP costs of his abilities if they changed those as well. So I am basing it off of what it currently is.

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

The reason a change to X Force would put me F2P goes even deeper than that, though. It would mean I simply can't trust the developers to make decisions healthy for the game and decisions that don't actively hurt me anymore. I can't trust them not to morph matchmaking so that my Transitioning account faces 270's from point 150 onward. I can't trust them to take the rewards I worked hard for and render them useless or equal in comparison to the freebies they hand new players. I can't trust them not to throw overscaled nodes at me that I can't beat because the characters that overscaled them are now incapable themselves of defeating them.

If they take away the last remaining "prize character", I can't trust them not to release a new prize character, let me earn and purchase it, then take that away too.

This right here, this is why buff don't nerf. If they released Hulkbuster tomorrow and he had ~14000 health and was able to drop over 9000 damage for say, 12 red AP, then the meta could shift. It shifted overnight when Sentry was dethroned to become XF exclusive, and it shifted again with the release of Thor, and it will shift again if something that competes with XF is released. The problem is they aren't even aiming that high since "XF is above the power band". Even taking that statement to be true, then MOVE the power band so that he's in in, and release a character that can go toe to toe with him.

I want more characters like XF, not for XF to be like more characters we have.

BillyBobJoe

My two cents:

It's not that I'm against nerfing characters. Some of them needed them. Rags, cMags, Spidey, and Iron Fist had abilities that allowed spamming the board. What I'm against is the over-nerfing of characters. Especially when people (meaning me) spend time, iso, and hero points on leveling said character. Rags got nerfed to the power level of a 2*. Sentry got nerfed to uselessness, unless you use him as a meat shield. Back b4 he was nerfed, I even suggested taking away boosts. I got laughed out of town! Boosts got nerfed anyways. Which is fine, I barely use them because I'm too cheap to spend the iso.

Now this Thora nerf brings down a 4* to the power level of a 3*. After spending sooooo much time over Thanksgiving weekend to obtain her, I feel the devs don't respect the amount of time and/or money players put into these characters. (and Kingpin over Easter weekend, but I digress) If the devs really want to shorten the gap between 4*s and 3*s, why did they expand the gap between 2*s and 3*s back in the day? 4*s at 141 became 166, 2*s at 85 became 94...... If people are complaining about the strength of 4*s, then maybe the devs need to look at the reward system and fix that first.

The shield nerf may make me walk away from the game by itself. I have a job, family, and other responsibilities. I would play when I could, and shield up. Now with cooldowns, I practically have to schedule my day around cooldowns. If you use the 3, 8, 3, 8 hr shield alternating, you have to plan your day to have an one hour window to play after your shields cooldown but before your shield expires. Between 8 hr refreshes in pve, and 8 hr cooldown in shields, I play less too.

Sorry Johnny1Punch, environment tiles sucked. Everybody only played the jungle and oasis. Hot Dog Stand sucked. TUs offer a little more depth to the game.

I still enjoy the game. And probably will still play. But I will not grind pve for new 4*s because it's too much effort for little payout. Top 50 personal & alliance rewards? It causes strife even within those alliances competitive enough to switch players to maintain top 50.

What I'm upset about is the 800,000+ Iso I invested in Thora & XF to get them to 270. I just don't think it was worth it. (Assuming, of course, XF gets a nerf) If 4*s have the power range of a 3* then people with 4*s are getting screwed in PVE because of scaling. I would sell my Thora & XF, but that would be a huge waste of time, iso, and HP (for all the shields I used to climb). I would rather the devs offer to scale back a 270 4* back down to 166 so I wouldn't lose all my hard work, but be able to have fun again in PVE.

ynglink

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27379

Discuss the X-Force nerf here. Now that it's been officially released, his green did not need to be touched at all.

rawl316

This nerf is exactly what I was told it would be. I refused to believe it.

It was good run guys. I'll play out this last week, but I'm done.

rawl316

His green is a joke. Ares might have a better green

Unknown

Build the character correctly, nerfs are bad.

I bought a sportscar (XForce) because I want to drive fast and play hard. If the car dealer decided I was too fast and having too much fun and nerfed my sporstcar into a minivan I'd look to spend my money elsewhere.

I hear there are other match 3 games.

Arondite

TaoSpoons wrote:

ephyzephy wrote:

If a 4* isn't supposed to be significantly better than a 3*, the what's the point?

The question is how you define "better". For a lot of people, better seems to be measured only in raw strength; ie, higher damage output, health, and utility of the individual hero. I think that's because these things are the most visible and that makes them easy to understand. However, they aren't the only measure of "better" you can have and from a game theory standpoint, promoting only those measures is ruinous in the long-term. There can be only one "best" in that scenario. You know this because it's the current game design and you've seen it happen with X-Force/4-Thor/Whatever.

However, there are alternatives.

My personal theory is that the 4-star class is going to be reworked to become a class of generals. They won't be meant to be played with each other necessarily, though as the roster of 4-stars expands that may become viable. Instead, they'll be designed to have high synergy with 3-stars who use certain mechanics.

Here's a short list of synergy themes I'm starting to see:
4-Thor and charged tiles
Invisible Woman and locked tiles
Kingpin and countdown tiles
Elektra and trap tiles
Professor-X and boardshakers

The game can change at any time and none of the abilities these heroes currently have need remain as they are forever. If these characters are reworked to promote this "enhanced synergy" design and new characters are released to complement it, I foresee a series of naturally competing teams who aren't necessarily better or worse than each other occurring as a result. If the game does build towards that state of affairs, it would preserve endgame play diversity while at the same time not completely devaluing the entire 3-star roster the devs spent a year+ creating.

Mind you, this is pretty hefty speculation but it has at least some evidence to back it up. Also, even if this speculation is right, I'm sure some 4-stars are going to be standouts from this theme because you can only have so many game mechanics to cluster around.

On the whole, though? This theoretical game I'm foreseeing is a game I'd be excited to play.

And that is my answer to your question.

The problem with Generals is that they'd still need to stand out to be usable. How do I mean?

Take 4 Thor (the example of a general who ramps up the hardest, of your list). For General + 3Star Heroes that Use the General's Function to be worth using, that format of team would need to be significantly stronger than a team that doesn't require cohesion and time to ramp up to be worth using. Why would I bother leveling 3 specific characters (one of which is wildly expensive) that need 15-20 turns to ramp up when I could level 3 characters randomly selected from the top 20 list and get roughly the same strength level minus the ramp up time? The 4 Stars need to either
- Be Strong enough as a standalone to justify their use in and out of position of "general"
- Significantly ramp the speed of their respective "trait"
- Make the power of slower-ramping traits positively overwhelming, IE impossible to overcome once it gets going

If X Force is nerfed, depending on how heavy-handed it is, the only 4 star who will effectively fill her role is going to be 4Thor.


Also, I dont' see how Professor X is general of the board shakers when A) He hates Board Shake and X Force Wolverine is the king of Board shake himself. Professor X would more be a General of Special Tiles.

BillyBobJoe

TaoSpoons wrote:

ephyzephy wrote:

If a 4* isn't supposed to be significantly better than a 3*, the what's the point?

My personal theory is that the 4-star class is going to be reworked to become a class of generals. They won't be meant to be played with each other necessarily, though as the roster of 4-stars expands that may become viable. Instead, they'll be designed to have high synergy with 3-stars who use certain mechanics.

Here's a short list of synergy themes I'm starting to see:
4-Thor and charged tiles
Invisible Woman and locked tiles
Kingpin and countdown tiles
Elektra and trap tiles
Professor-X and boardshakers

I think you're partially right about this. The devs seem to be looking at synergy more closely. The clear proof is the synergy between Iron Fist and Luke Cage. The devs hit that combo right on the head! Straight from the pages of Heroes For Hire, they complement each other fantastically. Also you can see that they want characters to support each other, but not at the expense of being spammable, I give you Mystique/mMags. I wasn't upset by the mMags 'nerf'. I don't think he got nerfed, his play style just changed. He still can produce AP, just not in the abundance (and specific color) it once did.

But 4* 'generals' SHOULD BE more powerful. This Thora nerf makes her basically a moderate 3*.

Thora 9 blue + 10 Red = about 13K damage. You can argue that it was a bit much, but to nerf it down to 7650? Take a look:

Deadpool, WWW, 14 ap = 12,207 total dmg
Black Panther, Rage of the Panther, 12ap = 11,124 total dmg
Thor, CtS, 14 ap = 9036 total dmg
Cyclops, Full Blast, 13 ap = 8171 dmg
Luke Cage, RU, 13 ap = 7141 dmg
Human Torch, casting Fireball twice = 14 ap = 6780 dmg

So compare those to 19 ap for Power Surge+Smite. It takes longer for Thora to charge up to do less damage. And Thora's yellow ability was still underwhelming and yet they thought it was too powerful? I don't get that one at all.

Unknown

http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27379

Well god damn it...

So XF loses 2000 damage off green, which he can no longer feed with black. Goes from ~5000 to ~3000 damage for 8 AP putting him at 375 damage per AP at full covers max level which is just terrible, and not 160% better than ANYONE in the 3* tier.

Unknown

Arondite wrote:

...
4 Stars need to be better as a whole. Goddess Thor was an outlier. I'm fine with her being nerfed, though they went heavy-handed on it. X Force? He's in a good place. He defines top end gameplay without ruining bottom end gameplay.

The reason a change to X Force would put me F2P goes even deeper than that, though. It would mean I simply can't trust the developers to make decisions healthy for the game and decisions that don't actively hurt me anymore. I can't trust them not to morph matchmaking so that my Transitioning account faces 270's from point 150 onward. I can't trust them to take the rewards I worked hard for and render them useless or equal in comparison to the freebies they hand new players. I can't trust them not to throw overscaled nodes at me that I can't beat because the characters that overscaled them are now incapable themselves of defeating them.

If they take away the last remaining "prize character", I can't trust them not to release a new prize character, let me earn and purchase it, then take that away too.

This can be said many different ways, but ^these^ (in my estimation) are the core truths.

The point of having a tiered system is, well, it's tiered. I don't have any fully covered 4* characters, or even 3 * characters, thus I'm solidly in 2* to 3* transition land, which is fine. Perfect.

While I wish I had gained more 3* characters over my 500+ days, I haven't honestly tried exhaustively, so again, I'm fine with that.

My goal atm is to work harder to get 3* characters (read: better than the 2* characters I currently have), and ultimately 4* characters that will in turn be better than the 3* characters I will own. The amount of work necessary should be commensurate with the strength and attributes of each successive tier, right?

My concern is, as I quoted above, that it seems a bit pointless to try and work harder to gain better items that will potentially be devalued anyway, and every nerf only serves to increase this feeling of foreboding and apathy. It's not exactly rocket science, or even regular science...

IAH, I don't even know if the X-F nerf is reality, but what I do know is that devaluing items that have already been fought for and earned by your customer base is not necessarily a good idea... and further, stripping the value away from said items does little to encourage those who have not earned the items to even bother trying in general, let alone specifically to earn (or purchase) the affected characters. Finally, consider the rhetorical question: How many characters are people going to work for whilst observing the repeating pattern of releasing, waiting for people to fully cover them, nerfing, releasing yet another "hot new thing," waiting...

Edit: Was going to post this, went away from my computer for a bit, came back after the X-F nerf news dropped... Yeow.

DBC

Vankysher

Drummerboycroy wrote:

My concern is, as I quoted above, that it seems a bit pointless to try and work harder to gain better items that will potentially be devalued anyway, and every nerf only serves to increase this feeling of foreboding and apathy. It's not exactly rocket science, or even regular science...

Bingo.
Players, paying and non, who stick around and see this happen repeatedly will up and leave.
I've only played consistently for 6 months and already tire of seeing these types of changes especially with "new content" primarily being only new characters which only further reinforces this notion that these digital rewards are expensive to obtain but worth little-to-nothing once received.

greengiant33

X-Force D-balled Day

Lets make him powerful so everyone spends HP on him then lets nerf him because we obviously made him to powerful. Everyone pumps money into X-Force and then after they are done you D-Ball him. Nerf the Black gain AP ability okay but let him remove the most powerful AP from the opponent "Also drains the enemy’s strongest AP pool by 10 AP". Why would you take 2000 damage out of the green ability. He would do 4500'ish damage.... heck a 3* Classic Magneto does that in his blue ability. I would think a 4* should be able to do that damage with less AP hence leave his green alone.

D3 please reconsider your X-Force D-Day. De-balling him is not how you keep your long term players. Lazy Daken nerf-gate and now X-force D-ball-gate. I am sure the slew of people upset like myself will hopefully strike some action. If you give all x-force players 2500 HP for each cover they have in X-force I think that would only be right if this nerf will go forward.

Very unhappy player thinking this may be the last few days playing this game and spreading the word of unhappiness on facebook.
Greengiant33

Unknown

I am a 100% FTP player already, so my staying or leaving won't affect D3's bottom line, BUT I saved for months to drop 5000 HP on the last two black XF covers I needed a few weeks ago, and just last week finished leveling him to 270, so I KNEW this nerf was coming soon (Sentry nerf came within two weeks of my max'ing him as well. I had leveled him to 165 before they announced the nerf, never put the last ISO into him).

I will continue to play with the new changes, at least for awhile. It seems like the recent change to +AP boosts, plus shield timers, plus sharding, plus the changes to MMR, plus now a ~20% health boost to most characters all points in one direction: They want people to spend more on shields (use multiple 24h shields per event!). Seems like you'll need to start shielding at 300 points, and do 1-2 fights at most per hop from there forward. Since everyone else will be in the same boat, it'll be 25-35 point fights. I'm not sure I'll ever see the 1000 progression reward again, but since any good 4* character gets nerfed anyway, there's no real incentive.

TL;DR I'll play casually, and not spend $$ on this game.

To the folks who are quitting: Be sure to leave a review in your app store with your feelings. Be polite about it, but they've said before, that's where the feedback needs to go; not in the forum, but in the app store.

orionpeace

To answer the OP's question: Yes.

bknfoodie

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Unknown

bknfoodie wrote:

onimus wrote:

Jameson2014 wrote:

Xforce isn't even a huge problem. He's a great board shaker, but damage wise, he's pretty on par. Dismantling him if far more unreasonable than finding new ways to counter him. Nerfing him is just silly at this point.

The devs need to be more creative than that.

If this were true, then Xforce wouldn't be in 100% of team comps past 200 points.

He's pretty obviously imbalanced.

But I blame D3 for never releasing anyone that could stand up to him and nerfing the one character that came close.

Where does this stop though? Once the 4* are ****, Then the best 3* are used in 100% of high end comps. So, let's nerf them too because they're "overpowered"? Thor/Hood/Loki. Let's just nerf everyone and play bejeweled? In any competitive game there has to be a power curve OR counters. You can't have counter strategy in this game because their goal is to release more characters/mechanics.

How does it make any sense that LThor whos 3* better than 4* characters once Xforce is nerfed?

This must be your first competitive game.

...Because that's exactly what is going to happen.

Competitive balance in every game is always a merry go round of buffing and nerfing.