If'n I were God....
Similar to the song in the subject, as a long-time board/card game designer, I often have this thought about computer games that I play. Having played MPQ for over a year and a half, here's my list of things I would do if I were a designer at D3, from most important/simplest to most complex:
1: Reorder powers in the correct order on each character, so that their strongest match color is at top. Fix character's match values that aren't their color list. This is a simple fix and is long overdue.
2: Put in a simple indicator as to what the enemy's "strongest color" is to eliminate guesswork when there are ties (and to save the time of clicking through and checking the relative match values). Nothing worse than expecting to blow up 15 black tiles and getting 3 pinks instead. This could either be always shown in the interface, or dynamic in the powers themselves. (Black Panther's Black, Wolverine(3)'s Black, Deadpool(4)'s pink, etc.) "Destroys every tile in the enemy's strongest color (RED), ..."
3: Add in a "Game Rejoin" to handle crashes/disconnects. The client still crashes occasionally. All code crashes at some point. What it doesn't do is let you restart the client and jump back into the match you were in the middle of. You should have a few minute window to reboot your computer if necessary and rejoin the match instead of just taking an automatic loss. (If this is because the server doesn't save track the game state, you can fix this by having a second process cache the current game state in memory and/or the main process write it out to disk every few seconds. If you use memory, then a computer crash can't be recovered from, but you save disk access. If you write to disk, a full crash can be recovered from the most recent saved turn.)
4: Exhaustive rewards: Currently, if a match offers multiple possible rewards, even after you gain a reward, it randomly picks from all rewards, but substitutes 20 ISO for the already-won rewards. This is especially punitive for the early players trying to pick up their covers in the prologue to move on to the main events. Just randomly choose from remaining rewards and then grant the 20 ISO if all rewards gained. Four passes through any prologue match should be plenty.
5: Fixed non-repeatable rewards: If a match can only be done once (non-repeatable), only put a single reward on it. It feels bad to do a bunch of non-repeatable events and always get the 100 ISO or grey token instead of whatever the good reward (Gold token or 500 Iso or whatever) for the event is.
6: Do a balance pass on the formulas. I've seen references to formulas that are used to balance champions, but something is clearly out of whack. Compare Iron Man(3)'s Red to Cyclops' Red. Now, clearly there are other factors, like hit points on the champ and overall package, but it's hard to argue that Iron Man isn't incredibly weak both on an individual power per power basis and as a total package, compared to Cyclops. There are many other examples. Compare the powers that just stun to each other. Black Panther's blue or Squirrel Girl's Yellow compared to other armor generating abilities, including Magneto(3)'s Yellow and Captain America(3)'s blue. Compare Hawkeye(2)'s output using countdown tiles to what other characters can do at a similar cost without a countdown (Storm(2)'s Blue and Widow(1)'s Blue). Look at Ragnarok's AOE vs. Thor's and Deadpool's. (For that matter, Deadpool's AOE is far stronger than Thor's for the same cost.)
7: Split countdown tiles to Countdown and Duration tiles. The difference being that you want the former to end faster and the latter to stick around longer. Then have Hood increase the duration on duration tiles instead of decreasing. (And Widow(2) decrease their duration instead of increase.) Examples of duration tiles: Countdown to What, Small Time Crooks, Shapeshift.
8: Decide whether colors should be assigned to power types (random tile destruction + Damage is prevalently green and a lot of the AOE are green) and powers assigned based on hero flavor OR colors should be assigned based on hero flavor (All the FF should have a blue power! Hulk should have a pink power, to match his pants. Or all villains should have a black power. Etc.) and powers should also be created this way and matched to an available color on the hero. Whatever you decide, be consistent.
Right now there's a mix of both, it seems. Some heroes have their iconic colors. Y/R/Blue on Iron Mans and Captain America(2&3). Early villains all had black powers, but now they're all over. Some color assignments just seem random, neither in flavor of the power or the character.
9: Either way: A better job balancing out the prevalence of color combinations and active powers should be done. There are no top-tier three star heroes with Green/Blue, for example. (She Hulk isn't top-tier in my opinion and Doc Ock definitely isn't. Rocket and Groot are the closest.) Red/Yellow/Green are common, especially Red/Green. This has changed over time, but near the start of the game, Red/Green was the most common color combination, from Storm(1)/Juggernaut to Ares/Thor/Wolverine at 2, to Ragnarok/Wolverine at 3. (And continuing shortly after with Punisher, Hulk, Thor as more 3's with that color scheme.)
10: Every character should have an active ability which does damage. Spider Man(3&2) both suffer from this lack.
11: Rebuild the "useless" heroes: Spider Man(3), Spider Man(2), Yelena, Devil Dinosaur, etc. (Also, we get it. Bagman and Devil were developer jokes. But why not make them fun jokes instead of just a drag?)
12: There should not be only one good build of a champion. When you compare the last cover in all abilities in a character, most characters have one or two "right" builds, instead of the potential six builds. Ever see a Widow(3) that wasn't 5/3/5? They did it wrong. An Ares that has 5 covers in his green? Poor choice. How about a Deadpool(3) with more than 3 covers in the black power? Or Captain America(3)'s Yellow? Or Black Panther's Blue? LOL. A Hood that didn't max his blue? Etc. Etc. Etc.
++++: Individual Fixes that seem obvious, in light of the above.
Individual Fixes:
Hulk: Have his red and green powers count his BLACK (anger) for their fuel instead of making the Red nerf his other active. Optionally: Make his red an AOE power (and retune to match).
Deadpool(2): Passive ability shouldn't be so complex. Just every time he takes damage, he heals a bit. (Roughly equal to Patch's per-turn heal.)
Captain America(2): Tune up Red to make him competitive with other 2-Stars. Should be doing roughly twice the damage.
Captain America(2&3): Cut cost and effect of Yellow in half. And better yet, make them strike tiles (Strategic Command). Does anyone really need two armor-generating abilities?
Bullseye: Murderous Aim promises an awesome combo that is in-practice damn near impossible.
Panther: Either give an immediate armor OR spit out a smaller armor every turn.
Invisible Woman: Force field tiles should protect what's under them if it's friendly, not turn it off. This lets you use her to protect your cooldown tiles until they go off, or your super strike tile from Bob, etc. (Then when she detonates, don't blow up the friendly tiles in force fields. She's a 4-star, let her shine.)
Doom: We don't need a notification about his traps every turn and again when they're destroyed. Unlike other traps, nothing happens when they're hit, and we know they're going down every turn.
Oh, and PS: Punisher's Green doesn't need two animations. The Rocket Launcher is enough.
If I went into individual character complete rebuilds, I could be here forever. ;p Doom's flavor feels like they emphasized very minor parts of the character. Where are the doombots? What about his iconic armor? How many times has he summoned demons vs. just smiting someone with his energy blasts? Cap(2/3) would have been so much more flavorful if all three of his abilities were Countdown tiles (Damage, Less damage+Strike, Stun+Armor) that had the red shield return ability, but have them cycle: Red returns blue, blue returns yellow, yellow returns red.
1: Reorder powers in the correct order on each character, so that their strongest match color is at top. Fix character's match values that aren't their color list. This is a simple fix and is long overdue.
2: Put in a simple indicator as to what the enemy's "strongest color" is to eliminate guesswork when there are ties (and to save the time of clicking through and checking the relative match values). Nothing worse than expecting to blow up 15 black tiles and getting 3 pinks instead. This could either be always shown in the interface, or dynamic in the powers themselves. (Black Panther's Black, Wolverine(3)'s Black, Deadpool(4)'s pink, etc.) "Destroys every tile in the enemy's strongest color (RED), ..."
3: Add in a "Game Rejoin" to handle crashes/disconnects. The client still crashes occasionally. All code crashes at some point. What it doesn't do is let you restart the client and jump back into the match you were in the middle of. You should have a few minute window to reboot your computer if necessary and rejoin the match instead of just taking an automatic loss. (If this is because the server doesn't save track the game state, you can fix this by having a second process cache the current game state in memory and/or the main process write it out to disk every few seconds. If you use memory, then a computer crash can't be recovered from, but you save disk access. If you write to disk, a full crash can be recovered from the most recent saved turn.)
4: Exhaustive rewards: Currently, if a match offers multiple possible rewards, even after you gain a reward, it randomly picks from all rewards, but substitutes 20 ISO for the already-won rewards. This is especially punitive for the early players trying to pick up their covers in the prologue to move on to the main events. Just randomly choose from remaining rewards and then grant the 20 ISO if all rewards gained. Four passes through any prologue match should be plenty.
5: Fixed non-repeatable rewards: If a match can only be done once (non-repeatable), only put a single reward on it. It feels bad to do a bunch of non-repeatable events and always get the 100 ISO or grey token instead of whatever the good reward (Gold token or 500 Iso or whatever) for the event is.
6: Do a balance pass on the formulas. I've seen references to formulas that are used to balance champions, but something is clearly out of whack. Compare Iron Man(3)'s Red to Cyclops' Red. Now, clearly there are other factors, like hit points on the champ and overall package, but it's hard to argue that Iron Man isn't incredibly weak both on an individual power per power basis and as a total package, compared to Cyclops. There are many other examples. Compare the powers that just stun to each other. Black Panther's blue or Squirrel Girl's Yellow compared to other armor generating abilities, including Magneto(3)'s Yellow and Captain America(3)'s blue. Compare Hawkeye(2)'s output using countdown tiles to what other characters can do at a similar cost without a countdown (Storm(2)'s Blue and Widow(1)'s Blue). Look at Ragnarok's AOE vs. Thor's and Deadpool's. (For that matter, Deadpool's AOE is far stronger than Thor's for the same cost.)
7: Split countdown tiles to Countdown and Duration tiles. The difference being that you want the former to end faster and the latter to stick around longer. Then have Hood increase the duration on duration tiles instead of decreasing. (And Widow(2) decrease their duration instead of increase.) Examples of duration tiles: Countdown to What, Small Time Crooks, Shapeshift.
8: Decide whether colors should be assigned to power types (random tile destruction + Damage is prevalently green and a lot of the AOE are green) and powers assigned based on hero flavor OR colors should be assigned based on hero flavor (All the FF should have a blue power! Hulk should have a pink power, to match his pants. Or all villains should have a black power. Etc.) and powers should also be created this way and matched to an available color on the hero. Whatever you decide, be consistent.
Right now there's a mix of both, it seems. Some heroes have their iconic colors. Y/R/Blue on Iron Mans and Captain America(2&3). Early villains all had black powers, but now they're all over. Some color assignments just seem random, neither in flavor of the power or the character.
9: Either way: A better job balancing out the prevalence of color combinations and active powers should be done. There are no top-tier three star heroes with Green/Blue, for example. (She Hulk isn't top-tier in my opinion and Doc Ock definitely isn't. Rocket and Groot are the closest.) Red/Yellow/Green are common, especially Red/Green. This has changed over time, but near the start of the game, Red/Green was the most common color combination, from Storm(1)/Juggernaut to Ares/Thor/Wolverine at 2, to Ragnarok/Wolverine at 3. (And continuing shortly after with Punisher, Hulk, Thor as more 3's with that color scheme.)
10: Every character should have an active ability which does damage. Spider Man(3&2) both suffer from this lack.
11: Rebuild the "useless" heroes: Spider Man(3), Spider Man(2), Yelena, Devil Dinosaur, etc. (Also, we get it. Bagman and Devil were developer jokes. But why not make them fun jokes instead of just a drag?)
12: There should not be only one good build of a champion. When you compare the last cover in all abilities in a character, most characters have one or two "right" builds, instead of the potential six builds. Ever see a Widow(3) that wasn't 5/3/5? They did it wrong. An Ares that has 5 covers in his green? Poor choice. How about a Deadpool(3) with more than 3 covers in the black power? Or Captain America(3)'s Yellow? Or Black Panther's Blue? LOL. A Hood that didn't max his blue? Etc. Etc. Etc.
++++: Individual Fixes that seem obvious, in light of the above.
Individual Fixes:
Hulk: Have his red and green powers count his BLACK (anger) for their fuel instead of making the Red nerf his other active. Optionally: Make his red an AOE power (and retune to match).
Deadpool(2): Passive ability shouldn't be so complex. Just every time he takes damage, he heals a bit. (Roughly equal to Patch's per-turn heal.)
Captain America(2): Tune up Red to make him competitive with other 2-Stars. Should be doing roughly twice the damage.
Captain America(2&3): Cut cost and effect of Yellow in half. And better yet, make them strike tiles (Strategic Command). Does anyone really need two armor-generating abilities?
Bullseye: Murderous Aim promises an awesome combo that is in-practice damn near impossible.
Panther: Either give an immediate armor OR spit out a smaller armor every turn.
Invisible Woman: Force field tiles should protect what's under them if it's friendly, not turn it off. This lets you use her to protect your cooldown tiles until they go off, or your super strike tile from Bob, etc. (Then when she detonates, don't blow up the friendly tiles in force fields. She's a 4-star, let her shine.)
Doom: We don't need a notification about his traps every turn and again when they're destroyed. Unlike other traps, nothing happens when they're hit, and we know they're going down every turn.
Oh, and PS: Punisher's Green doesn't need two animations. The Rocket Launcher is enough.
If I went into individual character complete rebuilds, I could be here forever. ;p Doom's flavor feels like they emphasized very minor parts of the character. Where are the doombots? What about his iconic armor? How many times has he summoned demons vs. just smiting someone with his energy blasts? Cap(2/3) would have been so much more flavorful if all three of his abilities were Countdown tiles (Damage, Less damage+Strike, Stun+Armor) that had the red shield return ability, but have them cycle: Red returns blue, blue returns yellow, yellow returns red.
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Comments
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Devs: I glossed over details on a lot of these; if you're interested in having an in-depth analysis on any of them, message me and I'll do a writeup for you.0
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I wholeheartedly support points 1 and 2. Making players do fiddly stuff just to get key information, or worse, requiring outside research to know exactly how powers work is bad design. Reordering the AP bars to match damage level makes sense. The cover order is not useful information during a match. Use that space to convey helpful information.
Provide the color an ability will target in its description, and do the simple math to figure out how much damage it will do. I'm tired of counting tiles so I know how much damage cMags is going to do.
I disagree a bit on point 8. I've read design discussions that indicate the devs consider a color wheel when making new powers. The ability to break from the color wheel gives another way to add value to powers. (i.e. "Yes, that blue ability doesn't do as much team damage as green ones and is expensive, but it's blue AOE...")0 -
BlackSheep101 wrote:I disagree a bit on point 8. I've read design discussions that indicate the devs consider a color wheel when making new powers. The ability to break from the color wheel gives another way to add value to powers. (i.e. "Yes, that blue ability doesn't do as much team damage as green ones and is expensive, but it's blue AOE...")
A color wheel would be fine if it were consistently applied *and* if heroes only got powers that matched them thematically. Instead we have Spider(3) with a heal instead of a damage ability. It's not like he needed a yellow power or a heal. He could have had a nice red single-target damage ability that keyed off of his web tiles. That would fit him thematically (as a power), fit the color wheel of color to power type, and fit him color-wise (red is an iconic Spidey color). And if you're going to build a color wheel, one or two colors shouldn't be "most of the passives". The passives should have been spread out over different colors with passives that fit their place on the color wheel. (This is changing for the better, but it used to be Pink then Yellow were most of the passive powers.)0 -
I agree with most things mentioned here. Especially invisible woman's locked tiles. Should "lock" the tile in effect if it is friendly. Would make her immensibly more valuable.
I disagree a bit with "fixing" all of the characters with flaws just because they aren't as powerful. My concern isn't that an older version iron man (3) is not as powerful as a recently added iron fist (3) but what erks me is how the star value given to most characters is not based on their actual abilities in the marvel universe as compared to each other.
This will not happen because of how the game has developed to this point but as the topic title indicates.... I would love to see a balancing of characters on the whole. Look at the entire marvel universe and rank characters.
Classic characters to get new ones interested. Spider-man, Iron Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Thor, etc. characters that people know and love in their iconic old comic style. Heroes and villains with no super powers (sorry nick) this list would include Hawkeye, Black Widow, Punisher, Black Panther (vibranium suit doesn't quite cut it), Daredevil (no super speed/strength) nick fury (if he got in a fist fight with Thor who would win?) etc powered heroes villains who are beefed up but without awe inspiring powers - Captain America, Iron Man, Star-Lord, Colossus, Luke Cage, Daken etc there would likely be much debate about the difference between 3/4/5 stars - powerful yet not quite there... Thing, Human Torch, Deadpool, Etc powered up heroes or villains with awe inspiring powers - Thor, Storm,Gamora(most dangerous woman in the universe) Wolverine (you can't kill him) Doom, etc and imo there should be more villains higher up because often multiple heroes team together to take on 1 powerful villain in comics the ultra elite. Hulk, silver surfer, professor x, jean grey, etc, thanos, apocalypse, Ultron
Well that was fun
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