Coming Soon: Character Updates!

Arondite

Marhauk wrote:

- XF only losing ~ 1500 on 8ap swipe? Not terrible. Still approximately 320 damage per AP, while IW/PThor run at about 410 damage per AP. The difference is IW/PThor have substantial buildup vs a very small cd.

How do you equate 248.75 D/AP to 320 D/AP? X-Force will do on average 1,990, assuming all colors of tile(s) are equally represented and evenly distributed. That comes out to 248.75 D/AP.

- SS removing the AP gain from cracking is going to be game changing and very balanced. Looking forwards to it.

"very balanced" - Most people who don't have X-Force.

Game changing, for sure. But in the interest of Balance, Balance doesn't work in a void. X Force is the Squishiest damage-focused 4 Star hero. He works based on speed, and if you neuter his Green by reducing it's damage by almost half, taking away his ability to combo into it also is not really the operant definition of balance.

- Health upgrades are seriously necessary. I'm surprised Hood isn't on this list. Out of all the 3stars, he has a pretty strong ability, but his extremely pitiful hp pool seems like it should at least meet the regenners HP pool to be on par.

With X Forces nerfs, we're already looking at Marvel Loki Quest: Hood's Reign. Buffing Their HP certainly isn't necessary, and in fact would've exacerbated the problem we're all about to have pushed up our rears.



In short - I'm sorry there's a lot of people who are whining and complaining. Extremely happy to hear these changes and appreciate all the hard work you're putting forth.

If you made the account just to post that, you'd probably have been better off not doing so.

rdvargas1

I may be one of the only people to like the Xforce change. See, I have been running my XF with only one green cover and 5 black and 5yellow covers for a while. Green has always been an afterthought and a little teeny damager. Now my already potent surgical strike increases by 260 per tile and Recovery also increases by 260 per tile, now for 3600 damage! to me this is a bonus. I also like invisible woman changes, and i;m glad i held on to her. I wish they would have made force bubbles work with friendly tiles to protect them. i would have liked that much better. Increased health is good, mostly for PVE, as everyone will have the same scaled up health for PVP.

Unknown

Hood is severely nerfed by this -- longer matches and everyone else's health going up will really hurt him. He is already extremely fragile when targeted first.


X-Force I expected green's damage to go down to about what rank 4 did now, but it looks like the nerf bat is swinging quite a bit harder. Is he intended to now just be a board shaker?


For She-Hulk, if she now only steals enemy tiles, why bother 'selecting two and redistributing' instead of just saying she steals one? Does anything happen to the selected enemy tile that stays with the enemy? Likewise at rank 3, steal 2. Also slight PvE nerf to her, her blue was a great and semi-reliable way to target Countdown tiles.

Arimis_Thorn

So basically don't spend any ISO on leveling up until this change goes into effect, right?

Unknown

scottee wrote:

simonsez wrote:

scottee wrote:

I'm not sure why everyone doesn't understand how to use Elektra. No, purple doesn't create any strike tiles if there are none. That's why you run it back to back. And for 14 AP, you have 750 in strike tiles.

Or I could just use deadpool and do 12k damage for those 14AP... decisions, decisions...

Comparing individual abilities has a limit. And that limit is all of the other context. Like the fact that she has 5000 more health than Deadpool. Or an ability that blocks damage. Or that both her other abilities can tap those 750 in strike tiles incredibly often.

People say her red is easy to remove. That's why you wait until there are no red matches before casting it. And if the other player is using Blade or Daken to counter, that's what her purple is for (and it makes purple mega strong).

Actually, thanks for the conversation. I think I've talked myself into leveling her next.

All of that Elektra being good for X reasons aside, Double Double Cross needs to be able to do SOMETHING against enemies who don't have strike tiles, in a single cast not 2. You cast it twice you create 2-3 strike tiles out of nowhere, why can't casting it once against an empty board create 1 strike tile? Granted she's still better vs Strike Tile users, but then at least she's not USELESS vs the average character. 14 AP for 2 (maybe 3) strength 245+base (of 12?) strike tiles is not a good damage to AP ratio. And so you say "don't use her unless there are strike tiles" to which I say "Mirror match PvP forces me to user her" and "essential nodes give me no choice in the matter". She needs to be able to affect an empty board in a positive way with 7 AP, "stealing" strength 0 tiles and creating 245s would be the way I'd go.

Unknown

Any word on out of combat healing rates increasing as a result of the larger health pools for so many characters? A 15-20% increase would be reasonable.

Everyone who says they're leaving because of these changes, quit saying you're going to leave and just leave. Nobody likes long goodbyes.

snlf25

arj wrote:

I don't have any 4 stars at a useable stage. My aim of course was to eventually progress to 4 stars.

There is no such thing as a useable 4* anymore, brother! Think of them as mid tier 3* chafracters you have to spend 10 times the resources on and you will see that they aren't worth the bother. Now when Thoress/xforce become Cage/Shehulk or whatever it will be they will get nerfed too. Nothing useable lasts.

Unknown

Unlike a lot of posters, I'm fine with there being some blurring between the tiers. OBW and Ares are better than a few of the 3*s, I'm not bothered with a few of the top 3*s (LazyThor, Iron Fist) being as good as 4*s.

I think most of the 4* characters ARE approximately as good or better than the top 3* characters; Thora, Nick Fury, Prof X, maybe Starlord (the question of "twice as much iso and much harder to get for "slightly better" is another discussion)

But the new X-Force, ugh

X-Force: "2 more AP than unstoppable crash for 2k additional damage" would be a solid but not spectacular power on a 3*. It's not pushed enough for a 4*.
Surgical Strike: This is probably ok, it's still a lot of damage, cascade, and hampers the opponent getting an ability off. Still something I want to prioritize
Recovery: Even with the boost, this is still much worse than it seems on paper, because you're often going to get damage when you need healing and healing when you need damage - 9 AP for either effect (4k damage or 9k "delayed" healing) is ok, not particularly good, and this should be costed for the WORST scenario.


He's still usable, but he's like a B or even C tier 3*, not an A tier one. That bothers me.

RoryQ

...I think the changes are interesting, maybe good. Lots of character buffs and health buffs, XF needed taking down a peg but I think they went further than they needed to. Hopefully they add a wee 15-20% back on before it hits. I think if anything with XF and 4hor nerfs maybe it's readying the game a 5* release. Oh and less Iso required too.

bknfoodie

gamar wrote:

Recovery: Even with the boost, this is still much worse than it seems on paper, because you're often going to get damage when you need healing and healing when you need damage - 9 AP for either effect (4k damage or 9k "delayed" healing) is ok, not particularly good, and this should be costed for the WORST scenario.


He's still usable, but he's like a B or even C tier 3*, not an A tier one. That bothers me.

What if yellow wasn't a random tile but selectable a la Hawkeye 2*?

Unknown

Before I say anything else, it's good they're telling us about these changes NOW so we have a chance to tell them how whack they'll be.


Although I'm still working my way thru the changes, I'll just say what I think about the easiest to decipher changes:

I can't really comment on Invisible woman - She's so strange.

Elektra - health buffed, damage buffed, still sucks. Her red being less is ok, but it's still a trap tile - one of the most vulnerable tiles in game.

X-force - overall nerfed, but his does do more damage now. Need clarification on what this does to his AP denial/generation.

Beast: It'll be interesting to see what he can do with his blue at 6, but considering how bad he was its hard to tell if he'll do anything. If he can't work with a 1 turn countdown, he probably won't work at all. I'm still seeing kamala as more useful than him, but it looks like he's...not...horrible?

Doc Ock: big buff to , but in exchange he can no longer destroy any enemy special tile. I think he should at LEAST be able to destroy attack tiles. I think, again, Kamala beats him here. He only steals 2 AP in his final form.

She Hulk: I had real hope for She-Hulk. Furious charge actually looks really good. it's random, but only 6 AP. Her green will allow her to deny AP by smart players. Her blue looks better than Eletra's (Does it increase enemy tiles? Unclear). Potential Patch partner?

Blade HP increase is good. Rocket health increase is good. Kamala health increase is good.

Unknown

bknfoodie wrote:

gamar wrote:

Recovery: Even with the boost, this is still much worse than it seems on paper, because you're often going to get damage when you need healing and healing when you need damage - 9 AP for either effect (4k damage or 9k "delayed" healing) is ok, not particularly good, and this should be costed for the WORST scenario.


He's still usable, but he's like a B or even C tier 3*, not an A tier one. That bothers me.

What if yellow wasn't a random tile but selectable a la Hawkeye 2*?

Then I'd think 9 or even 10 AP was about right for it

udonomefoo

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Dauthi

What is everyone talking about, Xforce is finally balanced. He specializes in board shakeup and damage dealing, and his black is still a top notch ability since its damage output was boosted. They even buffed his yellow to reflect that, I would say it's perfectly viable and should give some variance to his build (probably green vs yellow).

There tends to be an average of 9 of any color on the board, with his new black that is 7k damage! That is about as much damage as 4* Thors blue AND red combo, but wrapped up into one ability for 11 ap and a board shakeup that has a higher % to match due to removing an entire color vs just shakeup.

I feel relieved I can finally replace him with another viable character if I want to.

Stax the Foyer

Hendross wrote:

TazFTW wrote:

Teke184 wrote:

This doesn't even go into the level changes in ISO costs, which damn well BETTER compensate those of us who have been working to put ISO into characters only to have the total cost sliced.

I'm reading that as the amount of iso to take a level 40 to 166 stays the same and that they're changing it so that the lower levels are cheaper and making the higher levels more expensive.

Whilst I agree, the sum total to 166 will remain the same, this does address the levels between

For example if I spent 400iso for level 41, because 41 is my lucky number, but now 41 is 300iso....i deserve a 100 refund

That's a reasonable assumption, but it's not how the post explains it. Assuming that the statement is accurate as written, he says that existing characters won't have their levels changed, but will become cheaper to level up.

The only way for it to be true that existing characters will become cheaper to level up is if the total ISO required to level 3*s and 4*s is reduced, and the ISO required at any given level is reduced. Otherwise, if it's the same total amount of ISO and it's just shifted to be more top heavy, someone with, say, a level 269 Xforce wouldn't find it to be cheaper to level up their character. In fact, it'd be more expensive for anyone with at least one level of ISO put into their in a 3* or 4* to level up their character, since that first level would have gotten cheaper.

If that's not the case, hopefully they'll clarify the OP like they did the Surgical Strike description. And if it is the case, that's just piling on people who maxed out their characters prior to that, especially people who maxed out 4*Thor and XForce.

Der_Lex

Guys, I've managed to find a copy of Demiurge's internal guide to character balancing. Suddenly everything makes sense.

Unknown

Yet another top character deleted.

Not sure why they keep deleting the top characters in this game.

But the Invisible Woman and She Hulk buffs look pretty nice.

Raffoon

Well, there goes all of the veteran money for forever

Unknown

onimus wrote:

Yet another top character deleted.

Not sure why they keep deleting the top characters in this game.

But the Invisible Woman and She Hulk buffs look pretty nice.

I really dont know how having ONE character, and a very old one, being simply the best character in the game hands down was helping the game.

They are introducing various 4*s and yet the usage on them was minimal, because XF was still the best there is (the puns).

For me its pretty clear they want players to have more options.

Brandmire

All I have to say is "Thank God!" This is the best set of changes ever. Why? Because now I can get my life back by no longer wasting it on what used to be a fun, hopelessly addicting game.

Like others have said, there's a reason that most games turn into an arms race - because that's FUN! Nerfing is not fun. You might think you're being clever - that you're going to make this game last longer - by nerfing every character into being the exact same power level. You call it balance. I call it boring. I want something to strive for - trying to collect the best characters, and then being able to use them. It's satisfying. But that all goes away when every time you touch the game you take away all of our investments. I'm not even talking money - for the most part, the people that spend money on this game have plenty of money to burn. The time and emotional investments are what you're destroying. You're not being good stewards of those investments, you're just betraying us. I don't even have a desire to strive for the good characters anymore when I know that they'll be gone as soon as I (finally) get them maxed out.