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I'm wondering what with all the recent nerfs in the name of balancing why D3 decides to add weekly powered up chars to pvp. It basically goes against the goal of us using a wider roster.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to lower featured char power or is this just about sales?

Pylgrim

Arith wrote:

I'm wondering what with all the recent nerfs in the name of balancing why D3 decides to add weekly powered up chars to pvp. It basically goes against the goal of us using a wider roster.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to lower featured char power or is this just about sales?

I'm personally liking it. 240 level Kamala is silly and I'm encouraged to pick as her partner (other than SW) one of the other powered up characters, so I end with teams that normally I wouldn't try. Also it helped me realise that I need to max my Cyclops whom I had at level 110, but after playing with it at near maxed level, I'm loving him.

I can see how some people will get screwed by having none or very few of the buffed characters or having them underlevelled, whilst having to beat the opponent's buffed ones. However, having a wide, diverse roster is the correct way of playing the game (and that's why X-Force needed a nerf -he made having a 170+ Xforce at the expense of everything else the correct way of playing.) This will encourage people to play the game as it is meant to be experienced.

rixmith

I'm actually seeing more diversity than I expected. Certainly there are some combos that have two buffed characters (GSBW + Groot, Kamala + Cyclops) but there are lot that use one buffed and a good complimentary piece. With the high health of the buffed characters (and hence the longer matches) it is pretty hard to rely on only buffed characters for every fight as they get worn down pretty fast. What I'm not seeing is X-Force, Hood and Loki every match, which is a nice change of pace. Sure, they are out there occasionally, and I use them on some of my matches as well, but I can't rely on them all the time. And, in my opinion, that's good.

And next week when we have a new set of buffed characters, the matches will look completely different. No one will be using Doom or Groot or GSBW that week. So the diversity on the macro level will be pretty large.

I'm still on the fence as to whether, overall, I like this system or not, but I'm not seeing diversity as a problem in my opponents, nor in the team compositions that I'm using.

danae

I enjoy the variety of teams I play against and it has also made me use more of my roster than ever before. My Cyclops was fully covered but was sitting at level 40. He's now gone up to 120 and being used frequently in this current PVP. Last PVP he didn't get used as I had better partners for BP. I now pay attention to various color combinations and feeder abilities in my team composition. Before I just put XForce and Hood with the required character (even post nerf).

Eddiemon

Arith wrote:

I'm wondering what with all the recent nerfs in the name of balancing why D3 decides to add weekly powered up chars to pvp. It basically goes against the goal of us using a wider roster.

How do you figure? A boosted Dr Doom may well be better than an unboosted Iron Fist, which normally would not be the case. As a result you would use Doom this week instead. Hence a broader roster is put in play.

Or maybe you bought all the Iron Fist covers cause he's optimal normally, but with a boost Ms Marvel with 11 covers is now better than him. So you get to play her instead.

Players will max their best three characters always. PvP is the featured character and your two best characters. By boosting a broad range of characters it no only changes hwo your two best are, but based on our respective collections my two best may not be the same as your two best anymore. So we get diverse characters being used.

I am a bit stumped as to how you thought the old way encouraged wider rosters.

Wouldn't it be more prudent to lower featured char power or is this just about sales?

No, sales would be driven by having one power character and everyone else terrible. Having a broad swathe of powered character means you don't need one specific person to compete, you can make do with what you have lying around. It's practically the opposite of forcing sales.

SnakesArrows

Better for my game (this week), no as they could not have tried to miss my a, b and c teams and been more accurate. Better overall for the game, I believe so. I have never fought more variety of teams in any event. Makes game more fun even if my score is not as high. Think with all the meta changes they could reduce progression rewards slightly and increase heal rates significantly and it would be good with the multi power ups.

Pwuz_

I said it last time they were doing this and I'll say it again.

IF D3 wants weekly buffed characters to increase character rotation in PvP, they need to start exclusively buffing the least used characters.

This time is better considering Thor isn't buffed again. But I really think that the easier way to work this would be to just keep track of what teams people are using, and each week run the least played characters from last week.

If a character were to go multiple weeks in a row being the least played, despite being buffed, they could even incrementally increase that characters buff (I'm looking at you Beast.) This would also give the developers a good idea of who needs to be buffed, because after 2 weeks of buffs, that 3rd week it's pretty apparent that character is useless despite all the increasing buffs.

Unknown

Pwuz_ wrote:

I said it last time they were doing this and I'll say it again.

IF D3 wants weekly buffed characters to increase character rotation in PvP, they need to start exclusively buffing the least used characters.

This time is better considering Thor isn't buffed again. But I really think that the easier way to work this would be to just keep track of what teams people are using, and each week run the least played characters from last week.

If a character were to go multiple weeks in a row being the least played, despite being buffed, they could even incrementally increase that characters buff (I'm looking at you Beast.) This would also give the developers a good idea of who needs to be buffed, because after 2 weeks of buffs, that 3rd week it's pretty apparent that character is useless despite all the increasing buffs.

I'm not sure I fully agree. For example, Rocket & Groot is boosted this week, and despite them being decent, they're just slow and I normally wouldn't play with them in PVP. Since they are boosted, I've been trying out different teams around them. They're popular enough normally that they wouldn't be boosted, and I can't see them being boosted this week as a bad thing.

I do agree that the least used character(s) from last week should get some sort of super buff, eg 75% instead of 50%.

TxMoose

from a purely selfish perspective I hate it. I have 1-166, 1-140. 1-110 and all the rest 104 and below. I spent money on them a couple months ago and automatically started doing great in pvps. now its much harder to do as well so no, I don't like it. being reasonable though, and now that I have doubled the number of characters at 104 with the iso cost reductions, I can certainly see where for broad rosters it can shake the monotony up and encourage more ingenuity with team building. I wasn't at that level but I know it was quite boring for some to play xhor over and over and over again. still see those teams but not nearly as often now and that has to be good overall. it gives a huuuuge advantage to vets who have diverse 166 rosters and with all the recent changes that help newer players, I think this one helps vets more. I still don't like it because it affects me negatively (I'm def not a vet - day 160)

puppychow

Arith wrote:

I'm wondering what with all the recent nerfs in the name of balancing why D3 decides to add weekly powered up chars to pvp. It basically goes against the goal of us using a wider roster.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to lower featured char power or is this just about sales?

I have a different take on powered up characters. One season is 3 1/2 weeks. If you have a select group being buffed for a particular week, then the characters won't be buffed again for the season, most likely. So if you view the buff on a seasonal basis, then people need to go out and buy covers for the buffed characters and spend iso to level them up. While you may see the same characters for 2 pvp events in a row, once the buff ends you'll see a different set of characters. So in the long run, the publisher is indeed achieving a stated goal of encouraging a more diverse use of characters.

puppychow

danae wrote:

I enjoy the variety of teams I play against and it has also made me use more of my roster than ever before. My Cyclops was fully covered but was sitting at level 40. He's now gone up to 120 and being used frequently in this current PVP. Last PVP he didn't get used as I had better partners for BP. I now pay attention to various color combinations and feeder abilities in my team composition. Before I just put XForce and Hood with the required character (even post nerf).

I'm in a similar boat. I used cage/cyk a lot during my soft climb in red shift event. while cyk has some nifty abilities, unbuffed he wasn't as good an option as xf.

simonsez

Arith wrote:

I'm wondering what with all the recent nerfs in the name of balancing why D3 decides to add weekly powered up chars to pvp.

It's forced "diversity". In a given week, you're going to see the same characters over and over again, but next week, you'll see a different batch over and over again.

And health packs.

Malcrof

simonsez wrote:

Arith wrote:

I'm wondering what with all the recent nerfs in the name of balancing why D3 decides to add weekly powered up chars to pvp.

It's forced "diversity". In a given week, you're going to see the same characters over and over again, but next week, you'll see a different batch over and over again.

And health packs.

Better than facing the same 3 every week for months on end.

Unknown

Far worse; without question. I don't care about forced roster diversity; I care that fights take 2-4 times longer. MPQ is just not worth the time and energy anymore.

simonsez

Malcrof wrote:

Better than facing the same 3 every week for months on end.

Those aren't the only two possible options.

JVReal

I am currently enjoying the buffed characters. I'm moving away from PVE after Ultron burn-out, and heading into PVP with my alliance to give it a try.

I'm day 220, 3* transitioning player. I have 0 - 166 characters. I have 2 cover maxed 3* characters. They are all usable, but not great until they are buffed. I played SW PVP and actually hit 800 for a second... enough to get the SW cover... then immediately was attacked and finished with 527 because I didn't save my HP for shields (got excited and bought a roster spot for She-Hulk then remembered I was saving HP for shield... doh!).

The weekly buff is allowing me, as a transitioning player, to make use of my roster of characters that aren't quite there yet. Every week will have different odds of how well I do based on who is buffed that week and if I have them covered/leveled enough. It was much better than before where I had no shot once I finished the seed teams. Last season was HORRIBLE for me in PVP. I was not able to score anything. So far... I'm enjoying the buffed characters. Seeing a diverse group out there is a good thing. Still got my butt handed to me by an underleveled IF (though he had 5 black covers) and humble pie doesn't taste so good. It was actually fun, with the exception of losing so many points from being beat.

Limit the amount of points lost AND the amount of times you can lose points in a row (say 4 battles, then you cool down for an hour or so) and it'd be even better.

Cymmina

I'm still in the process of transitioning to 3* land, so I have a lot of characters in the 78-89 range that I couldn't really use under the old 1-boosted-character system. This week has been great for me since a lot of fun characters were boosted (Cyclops, Rocket & Groot, Doctor Doom, Black Panther). It's nice to be able to play them rather than feel like they're a useless waste of space on my roster.

I like it, but I can see why it would be less fun when dominant, high health characters like Thor, Luke Cage, etc. become boosted. Maybe the boosting needs to be adjusted so that characters closer to the level cap receive a much smaller boost than characters on the low end (I know it's already like this, but make it more extreme).

Unknown

Cymmina wrote:

Maybe the boosting needs to be adjusted so that characters closer to the level cap receive a much smaller boost than characters on the low end (I know it's already like this, but make it more extreme).

It works exactly opposite of what you're describing. The higher levels get a higher absolute level boost and higher relative boost as a % of their level. This is for a good reason too because it's significantly more expensive to level up for the later levels and it'd be stupid to purposely reduce the advantage of higher levels when you're already paying considerably more iso 8 for those last levels.

Malcrof

I have an alternate idea, how about randomly boosted characters in the Simulator? This is where i find it the most fun to try out different team combos.

Only real issue would be the loss of points if you get beaten.

I would love a non-competitive Simulator, that way noone complains about 1 and 2* cover rewards (just turn them into iso) and we can test to our hearts content without worrying about losing season points.