Thoughts on a new common: Rogue

ErikPeter

I've read a few people suggesting new commons or new characters, but it's usually a list of D-listers I've never heard of. However the Lone Star tournament showed that successful early rosters all follow a very specific trend (Storm+Iron Man). I do think it would be fun to have a new level 50 common (which, admittedly, I'd have to make room for) to give low-level rosters more variety, and make those recruitment tokens exciting for a little while.

Considerations: A new hero should...

...overlap with Storm a bit, as a viable alternative for AP generation. Also, sort of overlap with other characters so there's no clearly ideal team to put her on. ...be identifiable to a wide audience and exciting to collect. ...have an interesting set of powers, yet not be too complicated for new players ...be part of the X-Men. X-Men are underrepresented right now (not counting duplicates). And fan favorites.

Anyway I pick Rogue (Classic). She's cool, she's well known, and while she has a lot of power she is pretty low-key and perfect * material. Plus she's sort of tied into Moonstone with the Ms. Marvel angle. AND the Brotherhood.

In terms of powers, she definitely needs an energy drain ability, Absorb Power. While AP steal makes sense, you need to avoid overshadowing Aggressive Recon. You could give her a Purple of her own, a cheap/passive, "steal 1 AP of various colors" power, but instead, let's give her a power that makes her attacks better and her opponents' worse, e.g., a power that adds one strike tile and one defense tile to the board. Higher levels could create more tiles. To step on Iron Man's (& Cap's) toes a bit, let's make the defense tiles it changes yellow (and for reasons noted below, the strike tiles purple).

It should be Red, because Red is thematically tied to super strength, or Black, which keys to exploiting an opponent's weaknesses. However, Black is more often environmental, like summoning hail, demons, or creating opportunities for attacks/criticals. So let's make it Red.

I also said she should have AP generation. It should be Green to keep synergy low, but instead of a big, random spread like Storm, I give her a small, targeted Green attack (Forceful Punch, since Green is all about overwhelming force) that destroys 1 tile and gains AP. At higher levels it destroys 2 target tiles and costs less AP. So often in MPQ I wish I had the one-tile destruction of "Weaken" from Puzzle Quest 2!

This power would be much cheaper than Lightning Storm but useful in its targeted nature (much like Grey Suit Widow's Pistol), allowing the player to create matches and cascades without ending the turn as well as deal with countdown tiles. If targeting a countdown ends up being too powerful the power could scale in what type of tile it targets or be limited to basic tiles (aiming for simplicity).

Finally I think she should have a passive that encapsulates her flight and invulnerability. Yellow usually represents resilience but it is a bit of a mixed bag, and there are already many Red/Green/Yellow characters. To create interesting low-tier choices we need to pay attention to possible synergies and overlap with all characters but especially the * ones (to avoid creating a perfect niche for her to fill). Red/Green is a common combination, and most often shows up with Yellow, so I suggest we cheat a bit and make her power Purple. Indestructible!

There are already a couple Purple-defense oriented characters and you don't want those combinations to get out of control (especially since Rogue's primary already creates defense tiles!). So my idea is to give Rogue a passive purple that reduces the amount of damage she takes--not her teammates--based on the number of purple tiles on the board. It essentially makes every purple tile a mini-protect tile, but only when she's the target of the attack.

Rogue's powers are straightforward but would create some interesting gameplay considerations:

I would order Rogue's strongest colors Purple-Green-Red, so that on a maxed

* team with Iron Man and Storm, only Purple is going to bring her to the front and her other powers have a lot of overlap.
Juggernaut would still match green over her (Despite being only 40).
Only one other character has Purple/Green/Red abilities, and no other character uses PGR for primary damage values.
I contend that with the right numbers she could be a useful alternative to Storm on teams of every level (at least until 85+).
On a team with characters of high level, or lower characters with Purple as their 1st or 2nd color, especially Bullseye or Spider-Man which capitalize on those colors defensively, Rogue wouldn't get her Purple benefit as easily (until her allies are downed, uh-oh).
Since the strike tiles she creates (using Absorb Power) are purple, it reduces the ability of those purple defense tiles to compound her defenses (but could block enemy defense tiles if there are no more basic purples left).
And of course against Rogue as an A.I. you can simply pick a different target, until she's the only one left.

tldr; here is one possibility
Rogue (Classic) *
Forceful Punch 7 AP
Rogue has absorbed the strength and training of fallen foes. She punches with incredible force, destroying a target basic tile and generating AP.
Level 2: Affects any non-countdown tile. Level 3: Costs 6 AP. Level 4: Costs 5 AP. Level 5: Targets 2 tiles. Costs 7 AP.
Absorb Power 7 AP
Rogue's touch weakens her enemy, while increasing the power of her attacks. Adds 1 yellow defense tile and 1 purple strike tile to the board. (roughly 6 per tile at level 50)
Level 2-5: +1 AP, +1/+1 tile each level
Indestructible
Passive: Rogue is resistant to all forms of damage. Reduce the amount of damage she takes by x for every 6 purple tiles on the board. (x roughly 10 at level 50)
Level 2: For every 5 purple tiles. Level 3: For every 4 purple tiles. Level 4: For every 3 Purple tiles. Level 5: For every 2 Purple tiles.
~~~~

Snickity

I think there definitely need to be more 1* covers, I'd like to see twice as many, at this point we've got more 3* than anything else. I'm sure the thought is that stronger covers bring in more money, and I'm sure that's true, but I think a lot of people would increase there roster size to include the new covers, even if they don't plan on using them right very often. It'd be nice to get some needed covers in recruit packs, I think I'm down to 1 cover at 2* and below that I need (Red/Green Ares).

ErikPeter

There's a careful balance. If you just added 6 new commons to the game, they wouldn't really be all that common anymore:

• It would take twice as long to find all the covers you need to max the non-core common characters, which makes it harder to get your roster to a competitive level, and restricts players' rosters even more. Just imagine early on, how frustrating it would be to never see covers for the characters you committed to, because you get many more you don't have room for.
• New commons would be weaker and less desirable to experienced players. I have trashed every single Juggernaut and Yelena Belova cover I've ever gotten... Someday I'll have room for them just in case, but not yet (and I'm at 25 roster slots!). If there were a half a dozen more?
• And there would be outcry from players who already think roster slots are too expensive and see a new batch of characters as nothing but a cash grab.

I think the game right now could handle one more, as long as she fills a niche of her own and is useful as a support character for higher-level teams. For example, Storm (Modern) is a great level 50 support character. During the ISO-8 Brotherhood event, I even switched out Storm (Classic) (who was powered up) for Storm (Modern) and certain missions became much, much easier.

I purposefully designed Rogue (Classic) to be a bit more resilient on a high-level team, yet not outshine any of the other commons (Especially Storm and Iron Man, the 50s) or be a must-have. Her powers combine especially well with other strike tile users and offer cheap, small scale board control to help you get the AP you need for other characters' big blasts. Even at their lower levels I think Daken/Rogue with a good third (Classic Storm, perhaps, or maybe Cyclops if they ever make him as a two-cover 69 or 115) could be competitive in a meta dominated by OBW+Thor.

Dayv

If they were toimplement Rogue without her being able to copy abilities somehow, they'll have failed.

I think there could be a lot of fun to be had in an ability that mimics a randomly selected enemy (non-passive) power.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

If they were toimplement Rogue without her being able to copy abilities somehow, they'll have failed.

I think there could be a lot of fun to be had in an ability that mimics a randomly selected enemy (non-passive) power.

I think such an ability might be very difficult to implement, programming wise.

Dayv

Emeryt wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

If they were toimplement Rogue without her being able to copy abilities somehow, they'll have failed.

I think there could be a lot of fun to be had in an ability that mimics a randomly selected enemy (non-passive) power.

I think such an ability might be very difficult to implement, programming wise.

Agreed, it's not easy, but it would be fun.

Unknown

There is literally no point in adding any more 1 stars. You'd have to give them such a gimmick they'd be required and even then they'd still be completely flattened.

It's much more likely we'll see star inflation, where 4* becomes the new 3* because 5* gets introduced.

Unknown

Emeryt wrote:

DayvBang wrote:

If they were toimplement Rogue without her being able to copy abilities somehow, they'll have failed.

I think there could be a lot of fun to be had in an ability that mimics a randomly selected enemy (non-passive) power.

I think such an ability might be very difficult to implement, programming wise.

She could just steal opponents CD and attack tiles and switch them to your benefit. That's what at least Moonstone and Loki already do.

Unknown

I would love there to be a Rogue though I think I'd prefer Marvel Now. I think one way to do this would be the following. I'm sure a list is out there find the one color that is most commonly used by all the characters (if i had to guess: red) make it a red ability and she uses the red ability of one of the enemies.

On another note, MarvelNow Rogue does have enough control of her ability that she can absorb a power without harming the source mutant. Yo could make it that she can select a random ability from your roster to use for a fight.

So for example if the source mutant has a level 5 red ability Rogue can select to use that power before the fight.

Limitations I believe should be as follows:
1 your character must have the ability you want to use
2a level of the power is limited at most the level of the source character
2b level cannot exceed how far Rogue has developed her own Absorb power

ErikPeter

I don't know how to use "copy an opponent's power" would work but there's gotta be a way to do it. I think that would be pretty cool, too. Absorbing a teammate's ability would kind of be unnecessary to implement because they can simply use their own ability during battle (and changing things around outside of battle would be a clunky mess and require a ton of work.)

The ability to copy your opponent's power would have incredible utility, in most situations. I think it would have to be black, because energy drain seems to fit in with stuff like Loki's Trickery.

It could simply be "Copy the target opponent's topmost ability", and immediately create the effect of whatever power it is. Passive abilities could stay stolen until you use the power again.

I believe topmost abilities are always active except in a few cases, like Daken. Otherwise, each character could have a specific power that Rogue always steals, which would require a bit more design work (every character has an exception) but be easier to balance overall.

I still like my * version, but a *** version with that kind of utility could be pretty cool.

I haven't read any Marvel Now! but I am interested in checking it out more and more. MPQ is doing it's subtle job, I guess!