The Surfer is a big shiny shield.

zonatahunt

I've been giving the recent influx of the first 5-star character a lot of thought about how it might affect the health of the game. After over a week's worth of deliberation, I must say I'm not excited about the immense health gauge of our silver friend (and the apparent health tier of the 5-star peeps). The reason being is that with that kind of health, just SS alone has almost the same amount of health as 3 4-stars. When the competition within a PvP gets really intense, it can be very difficult to finish a single match without being hit by someone else. Anyone attempting to fight a match against a fully covered SS and two other 4-stars is looking at a match that will probably take on average three times longer than a normal match composed of three 4-stars. That kind of situation is simply not worth the risk, regardless of whether or not it's a 75-point match. Fighting a match of a maxed SS and two other 4-stars will almost guarantee several hundred points lost, as opposed to the possible 75-point gain. Once again, the high health of SS makes it not worth the risk to fight. Effectively, once you max SS, you have a beautiful shiny shield for 0 HP. I'm telling you, there is no way I'll attempt to fight that team, even with my maxed 4-star roster, because the almost guaranteed multiple attacks that I'll accrue during that single fight will kill my PvP score. We all know how PvP works...the higher your score, the juicer you are to everyone else. If I'm at 1400 and fighting the only fight I can worth any points (say a SS-led fight), the number of attacks that'll start pouring in after a minute or two will decimate whatever benefit I had hoped to gain.

I understand needing to progress the game to 5-stars, but the exaggerated health is a REAL problem. We're all numb to how the Devs generally approach these situations; they'll let the data come in, analyze, and then change way down the road if necessary. Attributing so much health to the highest class of characters will spawn many real problems that are just laying below the surface of the current PvP design. Why does the average health need to be in the 40-thousand range? Why can't 5-stars average 25 thousand health? Having an unbuffed character with even 25 thousand will increase the length of each match to dangerous lengths. As things stand now, I guarantee you that those with maxed 5-stars will experience a massive decrease in the amount of HP they'll need to spend on shields simply because they won't be worth the risk of attacking. Therefore, they'll sit atop the leaderboards, excluding even more players from the top-5 and ultimately creating a wider divide between 3- and 4-star players. I agree the meta needs to grow, but not at this massive of a jump.

If I can see the major issues this will cause, why doesn't it seem the devs can? I'll be the first to say, I've really enjoyed the changes this game has undergone lately. It can't be easy trying to continually produce a quality game with good balance. However, SS's abundance of health is anything but game balance...and I hope the devs realize this looming problem sooner rather than later.

I'll step off my soapbox offering a solution (that way I'm not just complaining). As many other players have mentioned before...after you unshield it might be ideal if players are invisible for 3-minutes or so before they can be queued by the community. In the past I thought that was a bit too much, but now, I really think it might be the only mechanic that could keep the PvP design from breaking down.

Just my thoughts, and thanks for listening.

thisone

That wall of text is quite the shield itself

Wobby

Fought my first surfer in the wild. Crushed his face. /thread

GurlBYE

Wobby wrote:

Fought my first surfer in the wild. Crushed his face. /thread

So it was fully covered silver surfer in pvp while you had a high score?

Sometimes it seems like you guys read a posts first 3 lines and type a reply out thats equivalent to a post that says 'FIRST' on a youtube video.



It's going to be as op described, unless the flow of characters moves around more.
And the op is talking with fully covered 4 stars.

Imagine a 3 star person trying to reach 1300 against a character who gets tickles from your attacks and can one shot a character of their choice.

Wobby

GurlBYE wrote:

Wobby wrote:

Fought my first surfer in the wild. Crushed his face. /thread

So it was fully covered silver surfer in pvp while you had a high score?

Sometimes it seems like you guys read a posts first 3 lines and type a reply out thats equivalent to a post that says 'FIRST' on a youtube video.



It's going to be as op described, unless the flow of characters moves around more.
And the op is talking with fully covered 4 stars.

Imagine a 3 star person trying to reach 1300 against a character who gets tickles from your attacks and can one shot a character of their choice.

I'm entertained by the current thought that 5*s are going to be leaping fully grown into the meta game when that's anything but accurate.
Jean Grey is still avoidable for people doing the 4* transition too.

I do agree, however... It is going to be a massive wall someday in the future for newer players. The current sharding system will need to break even more so that folks can compete somewhat closer to their own weight class.

zonatahunt

I'm entertained by the current thought that 5*s are going to be leaping fully grown into the meta game when that's anything but accurate.
Jean Grey is still avoidable for people doing the 4* transition too.

By no means do I think that fully covered 5-stars will run rampant within the PvP meta later this week. However, eventually there will be fully covered and leveled 5-stars...and the situation I described will exist. Regardless of whether it happens tomorrow thanks to a whale who spent many thousands of dollars, or in a few months...it will happen; at that time if something isn't done about how people can queue you when your unshielded and the number of defeats you can take during that time, the game will suffer dramatically.

brisashi

All I imagine now is saying: "Bite my shiny metal tinykitty"

mohio

Well-thought post, kudos and +1 from me.

What this makes me wonder is how on earth they're going to retcon 4* buffs to make them more in line with maxed 5*? Sure that's several months at least in the future, but likely so is the prospect of even a dozen maxed SS hanging out unshielded in PvP. Are they buffing their hp to insane levels as well so matches still take forever but are at least roughly even? Or are they buffing damage so match lengths stay roughly the same when taking down 40k hp with your buffed 4s (which would also make every other match without buffed 4s or 5s comically easy)? These are rhetorical obviously since I doubt they're anywhere near figuring it out, but it's a little scary to think about.

Also was just commenting to my alliance earlier tonight that they already need a 3rd "class" for sharding since graduating from "noob" doesn't mean you can compete with 4* transitioners and forget about top 100 when it takes a 1k score to get there. Anyway, +1 to that as well Wobby.

Unknown

First things first, it's gonna take a long time until a handful players have a maxed 5*. When that happens, they will most likely be spread, that's how slices work on pvp. Then between a few thousands you will see... Two, three maxed 5*s in the next 6 months? Just skip them.

If/when 5*s become a regular threat, instead of a handful you see an entire T5 made of them in a single bracket of a crowded slice, then the 4*s will be as deadly as those maxed 5*s.

Yoi are over thinking too early. Chill.