State of Play: No Consideration for 3-Star Tier.

Unknown

Mawtful wrote:

Demiurge_Kabir wrote:

Nipping this in the bud too. Please don't rely on the spoiler thread for your character info; we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either.

I'm honestly surprised by this quote. I think there's significantly important implications which don't exactly fill me with confidence.

I'm talking about everything past the semi-colon, "we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either." Demiurge says they operate a highly agile development cycle; I believe it's been said that they generally work to two week sprints. One of the key pillars of agile development is adaptability or "response to change". It's already something which I think can be recognised as missing from MPQ anyway - small incremental changes to characters each week or two would be agile, reworking a huge stack of characters all at once is not. But even dumping a huge "Balance-ageddon" of character updates all at once could be reasonably followed up with monitoring and incremental changes. Instead it's all quiet on the western front.

To really spell this out, no work is being done on the following characters:

Beast
Black Panther
Black Widow (Grey Suit)
Blade
Captain America (Steve Rogers)
Captain Marvel
Colossus
Cyclops
Daken (Classic)
Daredevil
Deadpool
Doctor Doom
Doctor Octopus
Falcon
Gamora
The Hood
The Hulk
Human Torch
Iron Fist
Iron Man (Model-40)
Kamala Khan
Loki
Luke Cage
Magneto
Mystique
Psylocke
The Punisher
Quicksilver
Ragnarok
Rocket & Groot
Scarlet Witch
Sentry
She-Hulk
Spider-Man
Squirrel Girl
Storm (Mohawk)
Thor (Modern)
Vision
Wolverine (Patch)

Emphasis in bold for characters which I think that, at a minimum, should at least be being considered/monitored (both OP & UP). Emphasis in italics for characters which have at least 1 ability which is commonly considered to lower their overall ranking/usability.

To have nothing even concieved or in consideration for any (existing) 3*s just leaves me completely floored. I want to say that it's either a confession of incompetance or a lie, but I don't want to upset anyone. Still, that last statement really wasn't necessary information; keeping it to "Nipping this in the bud, please don't rely on the spoiler thread for character information" would have sufficed.

I just don't know what to think, but I am concerned about the direction MPQ is headed. It feels like someone at a switchboard with no understanding of how it works, so they're just flicking switches and pressing buttons waiting for something to happen.

Edit: To clarify, the quote comes from this post: viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=29594#p356964

I think you are way out of context. This was in response to the rumored nerf that being assumed to be Prof X, until Kabir squashed the 4 star part. Then it was being assumed that it was GSBW, so he squashed the 3 star part.

I think his response was completely about the mystery nerf that is now assumed to be to mBW, since it is not affecting the 4star or 3star tier at all. Anything else is just making assumptions on your part.

Unknown

Malcrof wrote:

SlamDunc wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

Server issues aside, the Ultron event brought even retirees back to play. I have a feeling they are looking into some new PVE or other content to jumpstart interest for new people and vets alike, and maintaining focus on that to give us different things to work on, instead of messing with characters too much.

This is a hope anyway

Love the optimism, and I hope that's the case, but at the same time, unless the coding is absolutely atrocious, It would literally take a few minutes to go through all the old characters and give them a bump to damage, or tweak a single ability on them. Do that somewhat consistently for the duration that this game is expected to be supported for and you'll be right where every pseudo competitive game was years ago.

Since half the time, ability damage doesn't update until partway through the level, I can imagine everything being in a massive database filled with manual entries, but if that's the case, then they need a new programmer.

Ok, the way i see it is this.. everyone wants characters boosted to do more damage, yet everyone is also complaining about having to use health packs after every fight... you can't have both. Give the characters more damage, you will need MORE health packs in PVP and some PVE, and people will clamor for higher regen or more health packs, leave them alone, and people want them buffed to do more damage, round and round it goes.

It is a no win situation for the devs and the players.. they do 1, there is outrage, they do the other, there is outrage..

You completely missed the point I was making there, so I'll try again.


Look at AP cost/Damage on a lot of abilities and you'll see that there are some characters that have been left to rot, so people that were fortunate enough to get some covers early and level them up are now seeing that work go to waste because the character is completely outclassed. Easiest example is IM40, the same argument I've made in several posts now.

Costs 20 AP but drains 2 from every other colour, so you're left with an ability that could literally cost you 30AP, with that kind of AP cost, it should be a game changer right? But here's the thing, you're better off if you bring 2* Storm along and use her wind storm twice, it costs less AP, does more damage, and stuns for 4x longer with 2 targets. In what way is he balanced with, say Kamala, who deals 3400 damage for 12 green? a 2 turn stun is not worth twice the AP cost and 300 less damage. Even his fails miserably at its damage/cost compared to even other old characters like Daredevil or Thor, never mind people like Cyclops

Why use Psylocke at all anymore with Blade completely replacing her kit and doing a better job at it?

I'm not talking about buffing everyone, or nerfing everyone. But there's a lot of work that could be done on older characters to bring them up to the level of new characters so that no matter who you wind up with, they FEEL strong and useful. At that point they can stop buffing for flavour of the week characters because roster diversity will happen naturally. People are pissing and moaning about a 2* getting attention at this point in the game, but anyone getting looked at is a good thing, and I wish they would do it more often.



As people have said, yes, the quote is a bit out of context but I still haven't seen anything from the devs that changes what I've said.

Unknown

Mawtful wrote:

Demiurge_Kabir wrote:

Nipping this in the bud too. Please don't rely on the spoiler thread for your character info; we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either.

I'm honestly surprised by this quote. I think there's significantly important implications which don't exactly fill me with confidence.

I'm talking about everything past the semi-colon, "we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either." Demiurge says they operate a highly agile development cycle; I believe it's been said that they generally work to two week sprints. One of the key pillars of agile development is adaptability or "response to change". It's already something which I think can be recognised as missing from MPQ anyway - small incremental changes to characters each week or two would be agile, reworking a huge stack of characters all at once is not. But even dumping a huge "Balance-ageddon" of character updates all at once could be reasonably followed up with monitoring and incremental changes. Instead it's all quiet on the western front.

To really spell this out, no work is being done on the following characters:

Beast
Black Panther
Black Widow (Grey Suit)
Blade
Captain America (Steve Rogers)
Captain Marvel
Colossus
Cyclops
Daken (Classic)
Daredevil
Deadpool
Doctor Doom
Doctor Octopus
Falcon
Gamora
The Hood
The Hulk
Human Torch
Iron Fist
Iron Man (Model-40)
Kamala Khan
Loki
Luke Cage
Magneto
Mystique
Psylocke
The Punisher
Quicksilver
Ragnarok
Rocket & Groot
Scarlet Witch
Sentry
She-Hulk
Spider-Man
Squirrel Girl
Storm (Mohawk)
Thor (Modern)
Vision
Wolverine (Patch)

Emphasis in bold for characters which I think that, at a minimum, should at least be being considered/monitored (both OP & UP). Emphasis in italics for characters which have at least 1 ability which is commonly considered to lower their overall ranking/usability.

To have nothing even concieved or in consideration for any (existing) 3*s just leaves me completely floored. I want to say that it's either a confession of incompetance or a lie, but I don't want to upset anyone. Still, that last statement really wasn't necessary information; keeping it to "Nipping this in the bud, please don't rely on the spoiler thread for character information" would have sufficed.

I just don't know what to think, but I am concerned about the direction MPQ is headed. It feels like someone at a switchboard with no understanding of how it works, so they're just flicking switches and pressing buttons waiting for something to happen.

Edit: To clarify, the quote comes from this post: viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=29594#p356964

I'm just confused how they can say no 3* are being worked on after they told us certain characters were being pulled out of packs to be worked on. Does that mean with HP increases, 3*Iron Man is fine?

Are you tinykitty tinykittying joking?

GothicKratos

raisinbman wrote:

I'm just confused how they can say no 3* are being worked on after they told us certain characters were being pulled out of packs to be worked on. Does that mean with HP increases, 3*Iron Man is fine?

Are you tinykitty tinykittying joking?

This is the kind of thing that just irks me about the forums. Never, ever, in the history of ever, did Demuirge or D3 say that every character being pulled out of rotation was getting a rework. That wasn't even the main reason they were doing the rotation. The rotation was implemented to decrease the delusion in token draws, due to the large amount of character covers available at the time.

Additionally, 3* Iron Man has been explicitly used as an example of character they said they think is not in line with their power curve, so I'd say no, they don't think that at all. However, I feel like it's easy to assume that he's not getting much attention because his covers are just not that popular, or maybe because they don't know how they want to rework him.

People say things like this and it gets misconstrued as fact because nothing on the internet could be wrong. Stop spreading misinformation, please and thank you.

========

Annoyance aside, I think Stax makes a lot of fair points. I don't know if they went ahead with those types of changes we would get desired results, per se, but it sounds good on paper.

The only thing I would really say is that we've been griping about certain characters being "too OP" (even though we complain that characters get balanced - even before they're released) and that PvP doesn't work how it should (even when they make changes that are in-line with what we ask for) and now that they're doing things to change those things we're throwing them to the wind again. This isn't directed at anyone in particularly, especially not Stax - just an observation.

========

Lastly, as for the OP, I think you're reading way too far into it. Context is important when deciding the meaning and connotation of someone's statement. The context of both conversation were about balancing characters - and Kabir came in and stated they have no plans to change any 3*/4* characters. "Either" is a very key word here.

He couldn't say "any characters" because that would be a lie. Moonstone is getting a change. Maybe some other 2* (or maybe even a 1* - though I think that's unlikely unless they're adding third abilities) like Bagman or Bullseye might be getting some love soon. Who knows.

Unknown

ok, so what is the correct information, i'd gladly spread that instead if I knew it, but all signs are pointing to a 3*BW nerf, possibly a 1*BW nerf

I tried looking at the dev quote and all I saw was some vague 'we ain't changing 3*' and we don't have any info on characters being worked on since everyone's in rotation now

So are you saying they're being contradictory?

That's even worse.

It's one thing to say we have nothing to OFFICIALLY say. It's another to say "we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either."

Lee T

In the january and february Q&A Will mentions that they work on a two weeks schedule and most of the stuff they mentions as potential project have come to fruition in the last two months. Will says in the january Q&A that there is no rebalancing in the work but that he wished to work on Dock Ock, Invisible Woman, etc. sometimes, which happened last month. My guess is Kabir means that nothing is in the work right now (current two week schedule). That doesn't mean we wont see other changes in the months to come.

Unknown

Lee T wrote:

In the january and february Q&A Will mentions that they work on a two weeks schedule and most of the stuff they mentions as potential project have come to fruition in the last two months. Will says in the january Q&A that there is no rebalancing in the work but that he wished to work on Dock Ock, Invisible Woman, etc. sometimes, which happened last month. My guess is Kabir means that nothing is in the work right now (current two week schedule). That doesn't mean we wont see other changes in the months to come.

I would still like them to say "we plan on rebalancing XYZ" instead of "there are no plans".

I mean, I don't care if those plans mean "We plan on working on IM*3 in the next 8 years to the Apocalypse" anything would be good.

Don't half finish a job when you just released Vision who......Shuma Gorath, I'm tired. Not even gonna say it.

GothicKratos

raisinbman wrote:

ok, so what is the correct information, i'd gladly spread that instead if I knew it, but all signs are pointing to a 3*BW nerf, possibly a 1*BW nerf

I tried looking at the dev quote and all I saw was some vague 'we ain't changing 3*' and we don't have any info on characters being worked on since everyone's in rotation now

So are you saying they're being contradictory?

That's even worse.

It's one thing to say we have nothing to OFFICIALLY say. It's another to say "we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either."

Sometimes I wonder if you're intentionally daft or not. My statement about your spreading misinformation was clearly addressed to your statement about covers being removed from rotation for balancing (which you used to assert that they think 3* IM is 'okay as is'), which is plainly false, as I pointed out, however, to amuse you, here is the current information regarding the rumored 'nerfs'.

Note: There is actual spoilers going forward, in regards to information in the code database, so if you're not interested in spoiling that information, do no continue reading.

Information: They literally said there are no plans to change any 3* or 4* characters. That's the current information.

Speculation: Will they change any 2* or 1* characters in the near future? Maybe. We don't have that information. There is speculation that a Black Widow iteration is going to get a change, but there are numerous instances in the code where there is information for characters that don't exist (such as another Magneto), abilities for characters that exist in-game but the ability themselves do not exist (a black ability for Juggernaut), and additionally even enemies that don't exist current but have existed in the code for nearly a year.

Extrapolation: One can extrapolate from multiple things happening right now (Moonstone changes being individual rather than in a group like the last couple batches, several official statements on a lack of changes, etc) that there are no current planned changes for anyone, across the board, as it does not bode with their recent behaviors.

Heartburn

i think we may have taken this one too far... but after the ultron round 2 ultimate fakey, alliance destruction master plan, operation no one will win, lets see how many alliances won't make the cut, operation false step, mischief managed play from those sneaky reds i can see why people are on edge

Unknown

GothicKratos wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

ok, so what is the correct information, i'd gladly spread that instead if I knew it, but all signs are pointing to a 3*BW nerf, possibly a 1*BW nerf

I tried looking at the dev quote and all I saw was some vague 'we ain't changing 3*' and we don't have any info on characters being worked on since everyone's in rotation now

So are you saying they're being contradictory?

That's even worse.

It's one thing to say we have nothing to OFFICIALLY say. It's another to say "we have nothing planned, conceived or in consideration for any 3*s either."

Sometimes I wonder if you're intentionally daft or not. My statement about your spreading misinformation was clearly addressed to your statement about covers being removed from rotation for balancing (which you used to assert that they think 3* IM is 'okay as is'), which is plainly false, as I pointed out, however, to amuse you, here is the current information regarding the rumored 'nerfs'.

Note: There is actual spoilers going forward, in regards to information in the code database, so if you're not interested in spoiling that information, do no continue reading.

Information: They literally said there are no plans to change any 3* or 4* characters. That's the current information.

Speculation: Will they change any 2* or 1* characters in the near future? Maybe. We don't have that information. There is speculation that a Black Widow iteration is going to get a change, but there are numerous instances in the code where there is information for characters that don't exist (such as another Magneto), abilities for characters that exist in-game but the ability themselves do not exist (a black ability for Juggernaut), and additionally even enemies that don't exist current but have existed in the code for nearly a year.

Extrapolation: One can extrapolate from multiple things happening right now (Moonstone changes being individual rather than in a group like the last couple batches, several official statements on a lack of changes, etc) that there are no current planned changes for anyone, across the board, as it does not bode with their recent behaviors.

And I dunno if your point was that every character getting taken out was going to get looked at because that's not what I said and no one believes that. I didn't assert anything that's why they said they were takin' characters out of rotation, and because not all characters who needed looking at(you even said IM*3 was one of them) and now they say no plans. Nada. Nothing. Vision is perfect. That doesn't smell funny to you?

Information: This displeases me, as it's a slap in the face because they said they'd look at certain characters.

Speculation: We haven't been steered wrong yet, I'd rather trust them than D3. I don't trust D3 until it's ingame

Extrapolation: Current Planned changes? Doesn't matter if there's planned changes we know there's gonna be some. There's a 3* character who has an ability that a 2* character was nerfed for yet has remained untouched. There's a Winfinite-tier combo that exists in game right now. There are changes.