Too many characters, need to retire some

Konman

SquishySquash wrote:

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.

I think venom would be awesome if you paired him with spidey (nerf dependent of course), and have him consume an entire team in short order regardless the hit points they may have. Add in IM40 as a battery, and I think that would stomp, but I only have one component of that combo ready to go atm.

But even if balancing is effective, I think that eventually there will need to be a limit on the number of characters in the game, we can't just continue to add them forever. And at that point you'd need to chose whether to not introduce any new characters, or to only add a new one if you subtract an existing one.

Unknown

SquishySquash wrote:

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.

I'd never used mnMags before this tournament, but i agree--he's a ridiculously powerful feed for Spidey. even with my 4B Spidey, I've been able to stunlock consistently. if i had a 5B Spidey, this tourney would be a joke no matter what the opponent levels.

I've even managed to beat the ridiculous Cap and Daredevil missions that have come along thanks to that 1-2. Well, Cap once--and that took like an hour.

Unknown

Konman wrote:

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.

.

Rooster space is the steadiest HP sink for players. The more characters, the more spots you need. Sure, you don't need to collect dark widow or bagman. But you don't know what covers you're going to pull, so it behooves you to hang onto as many decent ones as possible to see who you can assemble. Retiring covers reduces the space you need to devote to collecting. Players need less spaces, less players buy HP to extend roosters. Thus, it'll never happen.

If the size becomes a problem, it'd be more likely they offer narrower selections for recruit and heroic tokens.

Unknown

Impulse wrote:

Konman wrote:

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.

.

Rooster space is the steadiest HP sink for players. The more characters, the more spots you need. Sure, you don't need to collect dark widow or bagman. But you don't know what covers you're going to pull, so it behooves you to hang onto as many decent ones as possible to see who you can assemble. Retiring covers reduces the space you need to devote to collecting. Players need less spaces, less players buy HP to extend roosters. Thus, it'll never happen.

If the size becomes a problem, it'd be more likely they offer narrower selections for recruit and heroic tokens.

Can we stop talking about roosters? This isn't KFC.

Anyway, this change will never happen, but it's interesting to think about. Right now, it already takes a new player quite awhile to randomly stumble across enough covers to assemble full versions of the characters they want. For example, I started in early December and I still only have 1 GSBW cover, and a half-complete Classic Magneto, despite these being the two characters I wanted to level up the most.

With the current reward structure, if we had 70+ characters, it could literally take a year just to complete a single character without spending money or getting lucky through packs, and that's if you can consistently place in the top 5 of tournaments where that character is offered as a reward. Meanwhile, you're collecting a lot of 1-of's that don't help you until you get more similar covers to flesh them out. New players might start getting locked out of 3* progression altogether.

Again, I don't think retirement is a likely change, and I'm not in favor of it. I don't like the idea of certain characters being 100% unobtainable without spending money, even though it's fairly common practice in F2P games. I have faith that the devs will take steps to keep reward rotations consistent enough to accommodate a larger playable roster.

Twysta

Retiring ideas is literally the worst idea I've heard.
While some characters can and will be deemed as "useless", some of these may still be peoples favorites in teh Marvel universe and to reduce the available characters just seems impractical.
What about all the new players who start who can't get a said character because he's been "retired"?
If that was one of his favorite characters in the Marvel universe how is he going to feel about that?
Or what if their certain skillset was an ideal combination for their current squad?

You can't just leave these characters in for players who already have them and not make them available for new players. This would definitely create an imbalance and you'd hear an AWFUL lot of complaints.
The Marvel Universe has a very big diverse range of characters and mixing and matching these is half of the appeal of MPQ.
They can't retire 1*'s either because of the way the prologue works and trying to introduce new players unless you want them to replace them with other one stars - in which would still produce the same problems but now you're just adding new characters to the game which aren't mostly going to be used either way and will serve to just clog up roster space for the "collector" players or who will just be equally ignored by more advanced players.

It's more hassle than it's worth and I'm pretty sure would be a very unpopular decision.
I can understand the sentiment behind it with roster space at a premium and finding covers being difficult enough as it is, but that's a driving factor in keeping you coming back right? To get more covers?
If you already have everything you'd lose incentive to play (in most cases).

I'm all in favor of adding more characters!
But I definitely think they need to reduce the cost of roster space or have a ceiling price for it.
At the very least be able to buy multiple slots for a reduced price (group rates anyone?).

Unknown

Before anyone gets retired or new characters stop coming we wil need to see Sentry, Emma Frost, Namor, another ff, another xmen, Scarlet witch, and deadpool. Roster space prices need to be reduced and we need some more 2*. 3* are just getting alot harder to find in tokens.

Konman

Impulse wrote:

Konman wrote:

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.

.

Rooster space is the steadiest HP sink for players. The more characters, the more spots you need. Sure, you don't need to collect dark widow or bagman. But you don't know what covers you're going to pull, so it behooves you to hang onto as many decent ones as possible to see who you can assemble. Retiring covers reduces the space you need to devote to collecting. Players need less spaces, less players buy HP to extend roosters. Thus, it'll never happen.

If the size becomes a problem, it'd be more likely they offer narrower selections for recruit and heroic tokens.

First, I hope we're talking about the same thing, you keep saying covers, I keep saying characters. I'm talking about retiring entire characters.

HP is certainly poured into roster slots, but once you have a slot, you have it forever, I have 24 right now, 5 of which contain characters I choose to use, and I would bet that most rosters have a similar situation. The game has shields and boosts and elite tourneys that are going to be ongoing costs that are bought with HP multiple times eclipsing the amount spent on a roster space.

Maybe I am looking at this with a way more utilitarian view as others are, but why would players collect what they would consider useless stuff, why waste a roster slot on a character they don't want and won't use, why spend HP or ISO on one? Sure hang on to "decent" characters, but judging by the way the game is played, there are very few "decent" characters that players choose to use, either because of rarity of covers and character level, or the character simply isn't very good to use. But again, you keep mentioning retiring covers, I am talking about the entire character.

On your final point, if there are limits on characters that are gained by tokens, you have at least a partial de facto retirement, especially if those characters are not offered as event rewards. So, by you acknowledging that there could be an issue with too many characters in the future, I think that you are at least a little open to my idea, even though you protest.

Konman

Twysta wrote:

Retiring ideas is literally the worst idea I've heard.
While some characters can and will be deemed as "useless", some of these may still be peoples favorites in teh Marvel universe and to reduce the available characters just seems impractical.
What about all the new players who start who can't get a said character because he's been "retired"?
If that was one of his favorite characters in the Marvel universe how is he going to feel about that?
Or what if their certain skillset was an ideal combination for their current squad?

You can't just leave these characters in for players who already have them and not make them available for new players. This would definitely create an imbalance and you'd hear an AWFUL lot of complaints.
The Marvel Universe has a very big diverse range of characters and mixing and matching these is half of the appeal of MPQ.
They can't retire 1*'s either because of the way the prologue works and trying to introduce new players unless you want them to replace them with other one stars - in which would still produce the same problems but now you're just adding new characters to the game which aren't mostly going to be used either way and will serve to just clog up roster space for the "collector" players or who will just be equally ignored by more advanced players.

It's more hassle than it's worth and I'm pretty sure would be a very unpopular decision.
I can understand the sentiment behind it with roster space at a premium and finding covers being difficult enough as it is, but that's a driving factor in keeping you coming back right? To get more covers?
If you already have everything you'd lose incentive to play (in most cases).

I'm all in favor of adding more characters!
But I definitely think they need to reduce the cost of roster space or have a ceiling price for it.
At the very least be able to buy multiple slots for a reduced price (group rates anyone?).

In an earlier post I already said that retired characters could still be kept by players, just that no new covers for that character would be available, at least for awhile. So if Cap is your favorite/best character, and he was retired, you would still keep and use him if you wish, and maybe at a later date, if deemed prudent, he would return to active duty, not unlike being frozen in the Artic for 60 years.

In order for an imbalance to occur with this situation, you have to assume that those characters were truly accessible and active in gameplay, neither of which is true for most player's characters. Sticking with Cap, my understanding is that he was the first of the characters introduced through an event. Since then, especially with the current game, he is never used unless players are forced to, because his powers are too expensive and/or weak. Cap would need to be used and useful to effect the balance of the game.

Characters associated with the prologue are not going to be retired, you'd have too large a change to the initial gameplay. However, new players have a diminishing chance of getting a needed/wanted cover with every new character that is added to the game. If the chance of a standard token dropping a 3* is under 3%, and there are an increasing number of 3* covers, the cover you really want is incredibly unlikely to appear. So new players are at a disadvantage getting rarer characters with every new addition. And this only gets worse the more that are added, so you either reach a point where no more are added, or you begin to swap out old for new.

The Marvel universe is very big, with a huge number of potential characters, how many of those characters should be added to the game? Should there be a limit? If yes, what maximum number would be good, and is the game stagnant at that point, no new characters ever being introduced?

Unknown

However, new players have a diminishing chance of getting a needed/wanted cover with every new character that is added to the game. If the chance of a standard token dropping a 3* is under 3%, and there are an increasing number of 3* covers, the cover you really want is incredibly unlikely to appear.

True (and I'm finding the 2-star to 3-star transition already quite slow), but character retirement isn't the only lever that could be pulled here. The price of roster slots, the availability of high-level tokens and the probability of higher-level drops from low-level tokens could all be adjusted, and are all more likely to be viewed as benefits to the player than character retirement.

Unknown

Dayraven wrote:

However, new players have a diminishing chance of getting a needed/wanted cover with every new character that is added to the game. If the chance of a standard token dropping a 3* is under 3%, and there are an increasing number of 3* covers, the cover you really want is incredibly unlikely to appear.

True (and I'm finding the 2-star to 3-star transition already quite slow), but character retirement isn't the only lever that could be pulled here. The price of roster slots, the availability of high-level tokens and the probability of higher-level drops from low-level tokens could all be adjusted, and are all more likely to be viewed as benefits to the player than character retirement.

IMO the best and easiest solution is to have different types of packs. When you get a standard/heroic token, you should be able to choose between several different packs that each could contain one of 5-6 different 3* characters. The pull rate would remain the same, you'd just be able to channel your luck into getting specific 3*'s rather than any random 3* in the game.

Eddiemon

Yes you keep adding characters. No you don't retire any. There isn't any point. There also isn't any point in a limit, especially given that they create variants of the one hero and server storage space is cheap.

If there come to be too many options to progress all they have to do is create different tokens or ways to spend tokens. E.g let you use a standard token to pull a hero or a villain, or some other subgroup so you can focus on building a team. Retiring characters reduces people's options and the amount people are likely to spend. Making the game easier for freeloaders isn't a valid objective.

It is great when they force us to use characters, because it creates challenges. Daredevil for a minion fight means you basically have 2 active characters instead of 3. The game gets dull very quick if every battle is Patch, C Magneto and Spidey vs X. It also means that ou need to be good at the game and at strategy, and not just rely on a crutch team.

While you feel Cap is never used, the devs stated that he is the most used 2 star according to their stats. Possibly because he is great against minions.

Konman

Eddiemon wrote:

Yes you keep adding characters. No you don't retire any. There isn't any point. There also isn't any point in a limit, especially given that they create variants of the one hero and server storage space is cheap.

If there come to be too many options to progress all they have to do is create different tokens or ways to spend tokens. E.g let you use a standard token to pull a hero or a villain, or some other subgroup so you can focus on building a team. Retiring characters reduces people's options and the amount people are likely to spend. Making the game easier for freeloaders isn't a valid objective.

It is great when they force us to use characters, because it creates challenges. Daredevil for a minion fight means you basically have 2 active characters instead of 3. The game gets dull very quick if every battle is Patch, C Magneto and Spidey vs X. It also means that ou need to be good at the game and at strategy, and not just rely on a crutch team.

While you feel Cap is never used, the devs stated that he is the most used 2 star according to their stats. Possibly because he is great against minions.

First, I hope you aren't calling me a free loader. Second, there certainly is a point to instituting a character limit for the game. Players have choices and options now, and the choice was to use the same 4-5 characters over and over and ignore all the rest of their roster until they are forced to use it. When given the option, players gravitate toward a select few characters. The vast majority of covers earned in events or pulled from tokens, are covers that are unneeded, unwanted, or unused if they are indeed needed.

Challenges are great, but if the only reason you ever use a character is because you are forced to, it is a pretty good indication that that particular character is fairly lacking for normal game play. The top players in this game aren't brilliant strategists or Olympic level match three gamers, they have the best characters, with the highest levels, and they aren't color blind.

And I am very dubious that Cap is the most used 2*, I never see him, I can't escape Wolverine, Thor, OBW, or C Storm in every PvP event.

The Marvel universe is very large, potentially, MPQ could continue to add characters until that universe is exhausted. This, of course, isn't realistic or desirable (IMHO), so an alternative to the continual addition of even more unused characters, is to limit the total number, and for each new one added, you swap out an older one.

Unknown

TLDR: "I've got lots of covers and don't anyone else to have them so I'll be extra special snowflake!!"

Please go funbalance yourself.

Unknown

This is already being addressed. New characters are given out like candies at their release, older ones got lightning rounds.
2* are relatively easy to get with a little patience and luck, as the drop rate from standard tokens is somewhat decent, and the tokens themselves are spammed extensively.
3* are more difficult to handle but the hero LR is one step in that direction.


Now, if that Punisher jerk stopped appearing in half the events as reward (I think I sold WAY more Punishers than Bagmans), 3* distribution would look almost perfect
Ditto for 2* if Cap was not spammed that much.

Konman

rowaasr13 wrote:

TLDR: "I've got lots of covers and don't anyone else to have them so I'll be extra special snowflake!!"

Please go funbalance yourself.

I had to look up TLDR. Way to stop at nothing and stay there. You couldn't find the energy or patience to go through two whole pages of comments? And instead post some meaningless **** that in no way reflects what I or anyone else in this thread may have said or implied? And then you were just rude for no reason.

Thanks for the well thought out reasoned critique.

Konman

Il Palazzo wrote:

This is already being addressed. New characters are given out like candies at their release, older ones got lightning rounds.
2* are relatively easy to get with a little patience and luck, as the drop rate from standard tokens is somewhat decent, and the tokens themselves are spammed extensively.
3* are more difficult to handle but the hero LR is one step in that direction.


Now, if that Punisher jerk stopped appearing in half the events as reward (I think I sold WAY more Punishers than Bagmans), 3* distribution would look almost perfect
Ditto for 2* if Cap was not spammed that much.

Even with new characters flooding the game when they are introduced, I have very few of any of them since the Hulk event (which was the first new character event I was around for). I think that the only Doom covers I have ever gotten were through the Daily Resupply, and luckily there is a Hulk coming up soon.

As the game is, there are too many characters that are ignored unless the game forces us to use them. MN Mags, perfect example. Never saw him before the Mags PvP and PvE events, and I would bet that when these events are all over, it'll be rare to see him again. All these roster filling characters should have some utility before the game continues to add more and more new characters. If its difficult to find 3*'s now, think about that when 5, 10 more are added to the game. It just seems like a bad idea to me to continually add more, with no mechanism in place to control the probabilities and relegate the vast majority of the characters to benchwamer status.

MaxCavalera

Would be nice if they coded the probability for you to pull covers based on your roster so you don't continually get covers for max level and max cover characters. If they keep adding characters it might also be interesting to bracket the pools of characters so when you get a standard token you could pick 1st gen pool or 2nd gen pool etc. therefore if your new you could pick the earlier bracket if you have been missing IM40 like I am or if you have everything except psylocke pick the newest one.

Nonce Equitaur 2

For me, retiring a character would me to stop giving out their covers. The character would still be usable.

Would anyone be upset to get a new 1* Scorpion cover instead of a Yelena cover? If you never got a Yelena cover again, would that bother you?

Unknown

They could just split the old characters from the newer ones. Have the current standard packs still available and call them series #1 and then series #2 is all of the newer ones. You can use your standard tokens on either series depending on what characters your looking for. They would of course have to add new one star characters which are somewhat needed anyway.

Thanos

I say the more characters the better, variety after all is the spice of life! . A pretty simple solution would be to add 3* tokens. They can keep the current token structure the same where you can possibly pull higher level covers from basic and heroic tokens and a definite 3* or possibly 4* from the 3* tokens.