The end of board control / manipulation?

GuntherBlobel

I'm looking at Quicksilver not just as a poorly designed character, but as the victim of a game that can no longer offer board control to players. I like gsBW and other characters that allow the player to precisely change the board. Board control solves puzzles. Without it, most characters can be simply reduced to a AP/damage ratios. But, based on the changes that Quicksilver took during playtesting, I now think that (non-random) board control is doomed.

First, the AI has always thrown away AP using these powers, because the Devs think that if the AI made a match-5, we would revolt. Since 1/2 the game is PvP, this is a huge problem. Why would you purchase a character that you would never use in PvP? How do you even accurately cost a power that is a boon to the player, but a detriment to the AI? For example, Moonstone does damage if there is no special tile to swap, so the best defense is to provide a special tile for her to swap. How backwards is that?

But to make matters worse, with each new character that amplifies match-5's or generates a specific color of AP, the asymmetry between the player's use and the AI's use of board control becomes greater. Quicksilver is probably problematic when paired with just one other character in the game. Because of that, he's been made useless when paired with any other character. Apparently, we've come to the point where swapping a tile is OP.

What's the solution? Should the Devs be more clever with their ability designs? Should the AI be improved? Should problematic character combinations be banned?

MarvelMan

My favorite skill ever no longer exists (old CMag blue) because it was exploitable. But I loved it because it involved solving a puzzle (how do I place blue to achieve the return to create an endless loop). Board control through tile placement was the best part of MPQ: it required thought.

Unknown

I would much rather that Mystique and MMN be banned from playing together and have their old powers than both get nerfed because of it.

The problem with that is that it is incredibly hard to communicate that picking one disables the other. Thor4 disabling Thor3 disabling Thor2 makes sense. Mystique disabling 2* Magneto? There would be no obvious reason for it outside of knowing about the combo. It is much easier just to 'fix' it by making them not work together as well.

Unknown

One that I've noticed (and I'm sure others have, too) is that the AI seems to prefer a 4-match to an L-shaped 5-match. I've been operating on the assumption that the AI is a little dumb and the crit tile is better than the row or column clear.

veneretio

jclast wrote:

One that I've noticed (and I'm sure others have, too) is that the AI seems to prefer a 4-match to an L-shaped 5-match. I've been operating on the assumption that the AI is a little dumb and the crit tile is better than the row or column clear.

The AI will always make a match 4 instead of a match 5. The only way the AI makes a match 5 is if there's no way for them to make only a match 4.

Basically, avoid the following pattern and you're fine.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

My favorite skill ever no longer exists (old CMag blue) because it was exploitable. But I loved it because it involved solving a puzzle (how do I place blue to achieve the return to create an endless loop). Board control through tile placement was the best part of MPQ: it required thought.

I also miss the old CMags. Not just because he was powerful, but because he was fun to use. I loved old LRs with him and Rags boosted, picking and choosing how to use the various tools at my disposal to shake the board, make match 4s and 5s, take extra turns, and profit from my own cleverness and creativity. Sure CMags survived his "adjustment" pretty well, and he's still a good character, but he's not nearly as much fun as he used to be, and the game is less fun for me without him as he was.

I feel similarly about the X-Force retirement. Taking so much of the front end damage out of his green was excessive, but what really makes him less of a draw for me as a player is that all the interesting bits were stripped out of Surgical. Was gaining AP, draining AP, shaking the board by removing a color entirely, AND doing massive damage probably a little too much? Yeah. Probably. But it was something that didn't exist anywhere else in the game. It was interesting. There was strategy to how you approached a battle to get the most out of it. Who do you bring with you to capitalize on pilfered AP? Should you use Surgical to down someone or wait to down someone then use it and steal a different color? There was more to it than match tiles, press button, do damage, repeat, which is what much of the game has turned into.

The bottom line is we need more interesting powers, not less. Quicksilver could have been interesting, but he's not. He's an overcosted mess with annoying random locked tiles. Tweak some numbers, balance characters, whatever. But stop taking away our most interesting toys and replacing them with ones that just aren't as interesting or as much fun to play with.

GuntherBlobel

jclast wrote:

One that I've noticed (and I'm sure others have, too) is that the AI seems to prefer a 4-match to an L-shaped 5-match. I've been operating on the assumption that the AI is a little dumb and the crit tile is better than the row or column clear.

Apparently, early play testers didn't like the AI getting extra turns. It was a decision by the Devs to handicap the AI which shows MPQ's age, while simultaneously conditioning it's players to continue to expect easy wins.

Gems of War, for example, doesn't feel the need to handicap it's AI.

Unknown

Personally I would favor better AI as a solution to this problem. Nobody wants an uber-ai that can calculate exactly the optimal move to make in all circumstances, but they need to add a few rules so it can make semi-intelligent use of board control abilities like gravity warp, idle hands, and so forth.

Unknown

Quicksilver could have and should have been better...but tile swapping as a power is incredibly problematic. When (I think it was) Ronin started the thread on how Quicksilver should function in the game, a power that swapped tiles was one of the favorite suggestions. It's just super cool. But being able to swap two pairs of tiles even for eleven AP would have been much too much. A player is basically always going to get a 5-way out of a swap; if you can follow that up even with two normal matches then you've just broken even on AP cost while doing damage, shaking up the board, and generating a critical tile. Chances are players would have usually come out ahead on total AP even without the stupid locked tile discount mechanic.

That being said...it would have been a slow way to win the game, and so would have been a value neutral power in PvP in much the same way that old CMags blue was. It would have also been fun, and cool, and flavorful...this game sacrifices much on the altar of "balance." I have to wonder what it would look like if the vast majority of the games available weren't simply variations on a theme of inter-player competition.

Unknown

I'm fine with the don't swap 2 pairs of tiles, but making ONE Swap cost 11-7 AP is too damn much. I don't know about the end of board control, but they clearly over value it from an AP cost standpoint over at D3. If you left Quickilver's blue alone, then every other power he has should cost 7-3. He's the fastest man alive for Pete's sake, no reason his powers should cost more than Psylocke's. Balance the damage and utility around this cost (and get rid of the random crit tile), but make it so that at cost 3 it's actually GOOD and not balanced for 3 and therefore at 7 terrible.

Board control seems to only have value insofar as it lets you delay the AI. Without infinite turn combos most players would prefer "does 1000 damage" to "does 600 damage and swap 2 tiles" I think. Although if you really want board control there is the new IW to contend with.

Unknown

The fault belongs to cheap transformers like cyclops, khan, mystique, if.

In it's most basic form, it basically takes out any special tile, countdown or otherwise.

If the move was 7AP unconditionally, now it'd be too cheap. With judicious use, you should always be getting at least 6AP back if not twice that. When combined with board transformers, 2 crits or a crit and a line clear are often possible. 8AP seems reasonable. 9AP would make it ok, but not the greatest.

The other problem is that without a board transformer, his ability is quite often over costed, with a line-4 or countdown removal generally being the best use of the ability.

GuntherBlobel

daibar wrote:

The fault belongs to cheap transformers like cyclops, khan, mystique, if.

is fine as long as abilities always output damage and minimize board manipulation.

But, is the one that just absolutely kills me. Clearly, the Devs think it is very important that it costs 5 AP, because they left that aspect intact post-nerf.

However, because of that one ultra-cheap power, the Devs have (unknowingly?) made all future abilities boring. From now on, if a ability could possibly generate 5 AP reliably (like Idle Hands), then it will immediately be deemed OP upon (pre)release.

Unknown

The devs pigeonhole themselves in a corner in everything they do. Their balancing is completely black and white. They refuse to explore new revenue streams. They are allergic to minor tweaks. The way they operate leaves no room for flexibility or adaptability (see: 2-week cycles that absolutely cannot be changed; once an event goes live, there is no restarting it no matter how much it goes haywire). It's little wonder that they lack the creativity to introduce proper counters, gifting the game with a nerf culture instead.

GuntherBlobel

I know I already got to ask the questions, but now I think I'll answer them too.

Of the three options I suggested, I think the Devs should program in a way to ban problematic character combinations. If certain board manipulators are a problem with Prof X, just make it so that the combo is not selectable.

So, if characters A + B + C are a problem, simply lock out the third whenever the other two are selected. Change the current Pop-up to state the character interaction problem.

In some cases, we can just forgo the nerf cycle entirely if just one or two characters are affected. Otherwise, with this many new characters, we're going to see character reworks every week. It's hard on the paying customers and its hard on the Devs.