Too many characters, need to retire some

Konman

I say, when a new character is added, a old character should be retired. If you have that particular character, you can keep it and use it if you like, but no new covers are going to be offered. New characters will still be offered, but your roster will not be drowning in characters that neither you nor anyone else uses unless the game forces you to, Dare Devil, Bagman, Cap'n Merica, Loki, Bullseye, Hawkeye, Moonstone, X-force Wolv, Invisible Woman...perfect examples, but the list could go on. There are way more characters that are never used, than characters that are used, and constantly adding new ones isn't going to change that situation, unless its just overpowered, and soon to be nerfed.

So I say, no new characters until we thin the herd, or at least make available characters more viable to encourage their use.

Unknown

Yeah, I'm sure they'll get right on changes to encourage players to have less rooster space.

Unknown

The first character introduced after I started playing was Cap. So with this idea I'd never get Spidey, Magneto (either), Doom, Venom, or all the one star covers. It just wouldn't work and you'd have to get all the covers within a time frame or be stuck indefinitely with partial builds.

But essentially that's how it is now anyway, especially when you start on getting a *** team together.

As they add more covers, the odds of pulling what you need diminishes. This is compunded by there only being one or two featured characters per tournament as prizes. I'm really seeing this as I'm building up my *** roster and the odds of getting a *** pull is low and as the devs keep adding more *** characters, completing one is getting impossible. It may be time for them to adjust the odds to reduce getting useless one * and Cap pulls now that the pool of *** characters has been developed.

I understand keeping higher level covers "rare" so I don't think that a big adjustment is needed, just a small twist. All of my ** characters have maxed covers and I sold off all but Storm on my one * team. None of my *** characters are complete. I have 11 for Spidey, 10 for GSBW, IM40 and Hulk And the rest are at 6 or less.

Nemek

SquishySquash wrote:

The first character introduced after I started playing was Cap.

Ah, the first one-star tournament. I even want to say that Cap was THE first cover introduced in a tournament. Fun times.

For the topic as a whole, I'm pretty on the fence about it. From one perspective, never retiring characters results in a much larger hill to climb for new players...building a fully-covered character from recruit tokens becomes less and less likely as time goes on. But, not being able to ever get a 'retired' character seems a bit blah.

Konman

Impulse wrote:

Yeah, I'm sure they'll get right on changes to encourage players to have less rooster space.

I don't think it encourages that behavior at all, and if it does, so what? No one ever uses even close to all the characters they have. So say MPQ retired moonstone, is anyone really going to be upset that they won't pull anymore unwanted and unneeded moonstone covers? There have been plenty of discussions about how ineffective her powers are, no one uses her, yet there she is taking up a roster slot. A better, useful, viable character could replace her, but you would totally have the option to hang on to moonstone all you wanted. It might even encourage greater expansion of roster slots. Right now, I can sell off Daken to open up a roster slot with ever confidence that I will easily be able to replace those covers if I fell like it later. Knowing that a character could be a limited edition could certainly increase its desirability.

Unknown

SquishySquash wrote:

The first character introduced after I started playing was Cap. So with this idea I'd never get Spidey, Magneto (either), Doom, Venom, or all the one star covers. It just wouldn't work and you'd have to get all the covers within a time frame or be stuck indefinitely with partial builds.

But essentially that's how it is now anyway, especially when you start on getting a *** team together.

As they add more covers, the odds of pulling what you need diminishes. This is compunded by there only being one or two featured characters per tournament as prizes. I'm really seeing this as I'm building up my *** roster and the odds of getting a *** pull is low and as the devs keep adding more *** characters, completing one is getting impossible. It may be time for them to adjust the odds to reduce getting useless one * and Cap pulls now that the pool of *** characters has been developed.

I understand keeping higher level covers "rare" so I don't think that a big adjustment is needed, just a small twist. All of my ** characters have maxed covers and I sold off all but Storm on my one * team. None of my *** characters are complete. I have 11 for Spidey, 10 for GSBW, IM40 and Hulk And the rest are at 6 or less.

I'm hoping that as the userbase expands and they reduce the effectiveness of "infinite playtime" characters like Spider-Man, they'll expand the number of tournaments running at once. It seems like the problem of "character creep" could be heavily reduced if, instead of having two 2-day tournaments at once giving the same characters, we'd see 6 two-day tournaments at once, all with different 2 and 3 star rewards, so players can choose which tournaments to enter based on what characters they're seeking.

Konman

SquishySquash wrote:

The first character introduced after I started playing was Cap. So with this idea I'd never get Spidey, Magneto (either), Doom, Venom, or all the one star covers. It just wouldn't work and you'd have to get all the covers within a time frame or be stuck indefinitely with partial builds.

But essentially that's how it is now anyway, especially when you start on getting a *** team together.

As they add more covers, the odds of pulling what you need diminishes. This is compunded by there only being one or two featured characters per tournament as prizes. I'm really seeing this as I'm building up my *** roster and the odds of getting a *** pull is low and as the devs keep adding more *** characters, completing one is getting impossible. It may be time for them to adjust the odds to reduce getting useless one * and Cap pulls now that the pool of *** characters has been developed.

I understand keeping higher level covers "rare" so I don't think that a big adjustment is needed, just a small twist. All of my ** characters have maxed covers and I sold off all but Storm on my one * team. None of my *** characters are complete. I have 11 for Spidey, 10 for GSBW, IM40 and Hulk And the rest are at 6 or less.

And how much do you use Cap these days? All those characters who mentioned above were already in the game before I ever started playing, the first introduced character I was around for was Hulk, and he is still stuck at level 40. And since then, there have been plenty of additions, mostly 3* characters (I think all but Ares). And during all that time, I have seen very few innovative teams, mostly the same 4 characters with everyone else as bench warmers or, at one point, tanking fodder.

There are just so many unused/ unusable characters that I see no good reason to keep on flooding the game with more and more characters which will likely have the same fate.

NorthernPolarity

Konman wrote:

SquishySquash wrote:

The first character introduced after I started playing was Cap. So with this idea I'd never get Spidey, Magneto (either), Doom, Venom, or all the one star covers. It just wouldn't work and you'd have to get all the covers within a time frame or be stuck indefinitely with partial builds.

But essentially that's how it is now anyway, especially when you start on getting a *** team together.

As they add more covers, the odds of pulling what you need diminishes. This is compunded by there only being one or two featured characters per tournament as prizes. I'm really seeing this as I'm building up my *** roster and the odds of getting a *** pull is low and as the devs keep adding more *** characters, completing one is getting impossible. It may be time for them to adjust the odds to reduce getting useless one * and Cap pulls now that the pool of *** characters has been developed.

I understand keeping higher level covers "rare" so I don't think that a big adjustment is needed, just a small twist. All of my ** characters have maxed covers and I sold off all but Storm on my one * team. None of my *** characters are complete. I have 11 for Spidey, 10 for GSBW, IM40 and Hulk And the rest are at 6 or less.

And how much do you use Cap these days? All those characters who mentioned above were already in the game before I ever started playing, the first introduced character I was around for was Hulk, and he is still stuck at level 40. And since then, there have been plenty of additions, mostly 3* characters (I think all but Ares). And during all that time, I have seen very few innovative teams, mostly the same 4 characters with everyone else as bench warmers or, at one point, tanking fodder.

There are just so many unused/ unusable characters that I see no good reason to keep on flooding the game with more and more characters which will likely have the same fate.

Balance changes are incoming in a couple of weeks, so you should expect rosters to be more diversified at that point.

Unknown

This is very literally the most insane thing I've seen on these forums.

Konman

Nemek wrote:

For the topic as a whole, I'm pretty on the fence about it. From one perspective, never retiring characters results in a much larger hill to climb for new players...building a fully-covered character from recruit tokens becomes less and less likely as time goes on. But, not being able to ever get a 'retired' character seems a bit blah.

Well, there could be reintroductions later of a previously retired character. No reason it has to be a permanent state, just reach a total in game character cap, so that once you reach that level, its always a one in, one out system. I don't even know how many characters there are right now, but I think we've reached a critical mass.

Konman

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Balance changes are incoming in a couple of weeks, so you should expect rosters to be more diversified at that point.

One of the reasons given for the Thor/Wolverine funbalancing was to encourage diversified teams, and that certainly hasn't happened to any great extent. Perhaps this round will be more effective.

Unknown

abuelo wrote:

This is very literally the most insane thing I've seen on these forums.

Agree.

Konman

abuelo wrote:

This is very literally the most insane thing I've seen on these forums.

How so? Do we continually add more and more characters until the entire Marvel universe is represented? If that is not an option, is it an option to no longer add new characters at all? I think that eventually you would have to think that there are too many characters in the game. Maybe we have not reached that yet, but it seems inevitable. Is 50 characters too many? How about 100? The exact number could be worked out, but I think there certainly needs to be a limit drawn somewhere, and then at that point, the inly way to introduce a new character, is to retire an existing one.

I think its a logical progression of the game. The only other options are to continually add more and more, or to stop adding any at whatever level is determined to be enough. Neither of those sound very appealing to me.

So why is this so literally insane?

NorthernPolarity

Konman wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Balance changes are incoming in a couple of weeks, so you should expect rosters to be more diversified at that point.

One of the reasons given for the Thor/Wolverine funbalancing was to encourage diversified teams, and that certainly hasn't happened to any great extent. Perhaps this round will be more effective.

The thorverine nerfs were enacted because they two characters were way above the power level of any other 2* character. When wolvies strike tiles are significantly more efficient than a 3* strike tile generator (punisher) to the point where there actually was no reason to transition, theres a pretty big problem at hand. Now their power level has been toned down such that you actually do want to make a 3* transition, its just a matter of getting the gimpy 2* characters up to snuff such that they can at least be a decent substitute for the characters.

Konman

Kcwei83 wrote:

abuelo wrote:

This is very literally the most insane thing I've seen on these forums.

Agree.

How so? Please elaborate.

Nonce Equitaur 2

I could see Yelena pulled out of distribution. If you wanted to collect her ... too bad, you had your chance.

In her place, Scorpion, Taskmaster, and Shocker are new 1 star characters that can be pulled from a standard token.

Then, in a few weeks, Bagman covers are retired. In his place, Sandman, Kraven the Hunter, and Tiger-Shark are new 2 star covers.

Unknown

You say it doesn't have to be perma, but then the game is already like this to a degree? IM40 was offered like candy, now not so much. Hulk had back2back events, and has now been mia for a while. Daken was handed out like crazy, now it's Wolvie. Etc, etc.

You say you want this to incentivise usage of lesser used characters. Isn't that the point of powered up and featured characters?

You say you want people to use weaker characters? How bout actually balancing the game so those characters aren't weak?

Nonce Equitaur 2

I'd like to see more variety in the standard tokens. I've seen all the 1* characters way too many times. Bring in some new one star characters, and retire the characters no-one likes.

Konman

NorthernPolarity wrote:

The thorverine nerfs were enacted because they two characters were way above the power level of any other 2* character. When wolvies strike tiles are significantly more efficient than a 3* strike tile generator (punisher) to the point where there actually was no reason to transition, theres a pretty big problem at hand. Now their power level has been toned down such that you actually do want to make a 3* transition, its just a matter of getting the gimpy 2* characters up to snuff such that they can at least be a decent substitute for the characters.

I agree with all of that, but team diversification was definitely given as at least a partial reason for the nerf. And that certainly hasn't happened. I totally support making unusable characters viable, but that's a short term fix to what I see as a future game crippling issue.

Unknown

Konman wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Balance changes are incoming in a couple of weeks, so you should expect rosters to be more diversified at that point.

One of the reasons given for the Thor/Wolverine funbalancing was to encourage diversified teams, and that certainly hasn't happened to any great extent. Perhaps this round will be more effective.

I dunno... It used to be C Storm, Thor, and Wolvie for nearly every fight. Now you see OBW replacing one of them.

Actually, I've been pretty happy to get Mag Now boosted over the past couple tournaments as he works so well with my Spidey and is just fun to use. I had already been leveling him up and maxed him a couple days ago. I alternate him and GSBW in the PVP tourneys. I found CMags and Hulk work well together also. I'm giving Venom and IM40 another look too as Venom may be helpful depending on what the devs do to Spidey and I ran up against a high level team (100+) that included Venom and they jacked me real bad. I was surprised at how effective he was behind cover. IM40 helped Walkyourpath win the first Elite tourney, his battery power helps in PVE a lot (especially with OBW and M Storm) against goons, and he's pretty tanky.

I also see a lot of people incorporating Patch, Punisher and Ares into their teams. So I think diversification is happening and the upcoming funbalance will probably push that even more.

Konman

ihearthawthats wrote:

You say it doesn't have to be perma, but then the game is already like this to a degree? IM40 was offered like candy, now not so much. Hulk had back2back events, and has now been mia for a while. Daken was handed out like crazy, now it's Wolvie. Etc, etc.

You say you want this to incentivise usage of lesser used characters. Isn't that the point of powered up and featured characters?

You say you want people to use weaker characters? How bout actually balancing the game so those characters aren't weak?

I don't think the game is currently like what I am suggesting at all. Event rewards come and go, but the covers remain and can be bought if you are compelled to do so, or pulled from a token with various chances of success. All the while, the number of total characters, most of whom never see the light of day, continues to grow, with apparently no limits.

So, when the game forces you to use a character you wouldn't use under normal circumstances, that's a good thing? That's not incentive or encouragement, that's a command, coercion, that ends when the event is over, and those characters are forgotten once again.

I am all for making unused/unusable character viable and wanted, and nothing I have mentioned should lead anyone to infer otherwise. I would much rather this happen than to add more and more new characters. But the balancing so far that I have seen has been anemic at best.

Logically, there cannot be a continual addition of new characters, eventually, there will need to be a limit, what exactly that limit is can be worked out.