Are 4 Stars worth it for defense?

atomzed

Phantron wrote:

I never get why people ask for revamping the AI, as if they don't notice that the AI is purposely handicapped to give players an edge. For example, they can never choose who to attack first. It's not because the AI can't just say pick whoever has the least HP that cannot regen. It's because they chose not to do it. If you want a challenge, just allow the AI to pick one person to attack first. On second thought, let's not do that unless you want to use a lot of health packs.

I agree. If the AI gets stronger and better in defence, it means offence becomes harder.... do you really want more losses?

Unknown

The counter that is (in PvP) earning more points on defense, which would honestly feel more like "PvP".
It would also add meaning to carrying so many characters snice I seem to only play as a handful...
- Unreall

puppychow

atomzed wrote:

If the AI gets stronger and better in defence, it means offence becomes harder.... do you really want more losses?

But then again, I HAVE been getting more losses in pvp, ever since they changed mmr. It is common for me to lose 4-6 times per event right now. No wonder I haven't hit 1,000 points post changes.

puppychow

dkffiv wrote:

PvE especially will come down to who buys more packs.

If you are competing for the top of the leader boards in pve, it already does come down to this.

Buret0

Phantron wrote:

I never get why people ask for revamping the AI, as if they don't notice that the AI is purposely handicapped to give players an edge. For example, they can never choose who to attack first. It's not because the AI can't just say pick whoever has the least HP that cannot regen. It's because they chose not to do it. If you want a challenge, just allow the AI to pick one person to attack first. On second thought, let's not do that unless you want to use a lot of health packs.

The point would be that you could bring in more diverse teams in PvP.

Instead of needing to kill 35 weaker teams to quickly get enough points before dropping your next shield, you could finish ten matches using three different teams to cycle your health packs without having to worry about how they are just going to get slaughtered on defense.

So you might get ten wins on offense in PvP and maybe you will get more wins on defense to balance things out.

The money that they might lose in shield purchases (which I doubt they would, since you still earn points for D wins when shielded), they might recoup in health packs.

It would also encourage people to play PvP over the course of the entire cycle instead of just hammering the high ranked, but underlevelled teams in the last 24 hours of the event.

It doesn't make sense that the AI can use idiot proof abilities, but can't use the abilities that require some finesse. All that does is make you run into a wall of the exact same characters in PvP all the time.

Hood is terrible in PvP, except for his passive, which the AI can't really screw up. So you see a ton of Hood users.
Ares is on 70% of the level 94 teams that you face because he just deals so much damage for his level, and the AI can't screw that up.
Black Panther is on a ton of 166 teams because (other than matching his special tiles) you can't really screw him up.

On the other hand, you don't run into many GSBWs. Mostly because the AI doesn't collect enough Green or Red and because the AI just wastes the purple by throwing green at the board at random (instead of what you would do with it, which would ultimately lead to a massive green AP collection and probably multiple crit hits, followed by a huge snipe all on the same turn).

So maybe they make health packs regenerate on fifteen minute intervals to make up for fighting a more difficult match, but some of us actually want a challenge instead of fighting a swarm of the same teams over and over again.

Unknown

Let's ignore PvE where it's already unfair in terms of the team AI has access to and would be unbelievably broken if the AI can do anything remotely clever. Let's just take one aspect, the ability to choose target. Let's say the AI operates with a very simple priority queue that looks like:

1. Deadpool
2. Kamala Khan
3. Person with the least HP that isn't in a category below
4. Rocket & Groot
5. Daken
6. Patch

And whenever they use their move, they will attempt to use it on the person with the most HP that can still be one shot, so for example if Cyclops does a Full Blast for 11K he's going to pick the person with the most HP that's still under 11K. This is not particularly sophisticated or meant to be all encompassing but it should be sufficient as a smarter AI. Against this AI, someone like The Hood would probably not even be playable on offense anymore because he's just going to get immediately focus right away. You would no longer have any reasonably chance of avoiding a move like Full Blast (you currently could try to put someone who is about to die to at least preserve your best guys). The true regen guys would become quite useless as the AI will ignore them until everyone else is downed, which defeats the purpose of using them. Does this new AI add more variety? It probably does, but it also takes quite a few away. It also increases the health pack usage by a lot. Now I'm not one to oppose a harder game, but what exactly is it that we're gaining here? For every team that is now viable with this smarter AI there is probably one team that is no longer viable against this smarter AI. So why even go through this work for likely the same variety and just make life miserable for everyone?

Now if they have some plan to totally revamp how PvP works and need the new AI to go along with it then I'm all for that, but in the current system there isn't a point to do that.

Buret0

Phantron wrote:

Let's ignore PvE where it's already unfair in terms of the team AI has access to and would be unbelievably broken if the AI can do anything remotely clever. Let's just take one aspect, the ability to choose target. Let's say the AI operates with a very simple priority queue that looks like:

1. Deadpool
2. Kamala Khan
3. Person with the least HP that isn't in a category below
4. Rocket & Groot
5. Daken
6. Patch

And whenever they use their move, they will attempt to use it on the person with the most HP that can still be one shot, so for example if Cyclops does a Full Blast for 11K he's going to pick the person with the most HP that's still under 11K. This is not particularly sophisticated or meant to be all encompassing but it should be sufficient as a smarter AI. Against this AI, someone like The Hood would probably not even be playable on offense anymore because he's just going to get immediately focus right away. You would no longer have any reasonably chance of avoiding a move like Full Blast (you currently could try to put someone who is about to die to at least preserve your best guys). The true regen guys would become quite useless as the AI will ignore them until everyone else is downed, which defeats the purpose of using them. Does this new AI add more variety? It probably does, but it also takes quite a few away. It also increases the health pack usage by a lot. Now I'm not one to oppose a harder game, but what exactly is it that we're gaining here? For every team that is now viable with this smarter AI there is probably one team that is no longer viable against this smarter AI. So why even go through this work for likely the same variety and just make life miserable for everyone?

Now if they have some plan to totally revamp how PvP works and need the new AI to go along with it then I'm all for that, but in the current system there isn't a point to do that.

Okay, but the ability for the defender to pick who to damage is at the most extreme end of the changes to AI scale, and one that I'm not particularly interested in.

I like the puzzle side of things where you send out to take the next hit the person who just made the first match of your turn. Instead of giving the D the opportunity to select who takes damage on O, I would implement pretty much any other AI change that I suggested. Hell, I would even support making the other team unselectable in PvP (not in PvE) and forcing you to target the character that they send out based on their first match of their turn. And again, I'd rather take AI improvements over that any day. But at least it would permit you to hide a character on D in the same way as you can hide a character on O. It would also lead to more interesting team combinations using intentionally underlevelled characters to actually be able to hide behind a legit tank. Which would make moves that hit all opponents much more powerful, since you couldn't just walk in and gank the Hood or 2* Storm (which would set you up for Raging Tempest if you didn't strategically plan your match). It would also make stun more important, as you would need it to sometimes force your opponent to send a weaker target out when the tank is stunned.

Yes, matches would be harder in PvP. You can account for that by making a PvP victory worth more points on O than on D, because you actually have to control the characters and you have the risk of losing and killing your health packs. But MPQ would actually become more of a strategy game and become way more dynamic. People complain about match length being too long already, but that's because they think that MPQ should be a game of quantity over quality matches.

Also, since everyone would be facing the same thing as you, there's no distinct advantage to one group over another, except perhaps those players who have three or four maxed out characters and then no supporting cast to back them up.

Puertorico

puppychow wrote:

babinro wrote:

I think the best defensive 4* hands down is hulkbuster. I haven't finished him personally but in theory he's as good as it gets. Why? The AI can't possibly play him wrong. If they waste his blue then they still get protect tiles. There's no wasting the black ability and he can't possibly misplay red. He's got Thor levels of health to boot. I fully expect to see HB dominate pvp over time for this reason.

Ask Puerto Rico how many times I took down his max HB defense in pvp.

Did you? Thanks for the defensive wins. It's always nice to See your name in blue