Funbalancing - Mags & Spidey

Nonce Equitaur 2

Phantron wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

1. No skip tax penalty against teams with (3 most used characters). If a character is required, he would not be on this list.
2. No bonus ISO for teams containing (3 most used characters).
3. Bonus ISO for teams built from (20 least used characters).
4. If any of the (3 most used characters) have Buff crystals, they will be downgraded. If not, then they get Nerf crystals, green instead of red.
5. The (10 least used characters) get buffs.
6. If you bought a shield for a (3 most used characters) team, and they all get nerf crystals, then your shield drops with a refund.

All that would do is make characters like Spiderman or OBW permanently nerfed. You also have problems with characters who are rarely used because they are rare, like Magneto, not because they're weak.

Perhaps. There would be a good chance that in a particular bracket for an event, they would get programmatically nerfed by the players in the event for overusing them. And I'd be fine with that. If *any* character was getting over-used in a PvP event bracket, then I'd likely prefer to see less of them. I want to see a greater variety of teams to fight against. This is a programmatic fix that would accomplish this objective.

Unknown

I think stun itself is overpowered. I think it was better balanced back when it couldn't stop countdown tiles from counting down.

mags1587

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

1. No skip tax penalty against teams with (3 most used characters). If a character is required, he would not be on this list.
2. No bonus ISO for teams containing (3 most used characters).
3. Bonus ISO for teams built from (20 least used characters).
4. If any of the (3 most used characters) have Buff crystals, they will be downgraded. If not, then they get Nerf crystals, green instead of red.
5. The (10 least used characters) get buffs.
6. If you bought a shield for a (3 most used characters) team, and they all get nerf crystals, then your shield drops with a refund.

All that would do is make characters like Spiderman or OBW permanently nerfed. You also have problems with characters who are rarely used because they are rare, like Magneto, not because they're weak.

Perhaps. There would be a good chance that in a particular bracket for an event, they would get programmatically nerfed by the players in the event for overusing them. And I'd be fine with that. If *any* character was getting over-used in a PvP event bracket, then I'd likely prefer to see less of them. I want to see a greater variety of teams to fight against. This is a programmatic fix that would accomplish this objective.

It's an interesting idea but I'm not sure how it would play out in practice. OBW and Spider-man are used primarily because of AP-stealing and stunning; lowering their health or damage wouldn't change that. I'm thinking this would be rough for newer players, too -- if they don't have many characters in their roster and the only ones they have are the most-used characters, their characters would be nerfed and they'd have no other options.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Perhaps. There would be a good chance that in a particular bracket for an event, they would get programmatically nerfed by the players in the event for overusing them. And I'd be fine with that. If *any* character was getting over-used in a PvP event bracket, then I'd likely prefer to see less of them. I want to see a greater variety of teams to fight against. This is a programmatic fix that would accomplish this objective.

It's a good idea but if you know certain character are just going to be perma-nerfed for over usage then you might as well fix those characters first. However it will create a huge advantage with guys who are lucky or spent $/HP on the new heroes, who are unlikely to be used widely, so you'd have to create different buckets of rarity, so to speak.

Unknown

mags1587 wrote:

It's an interesting idea but I'm not sure how it would play out in practice. OBW and Spider-man are used primarily because of AP-stealing and stunning; lowering their health or damage wouldn't change that. I'm thinking this would be rough for newer players, too -- if they don't have many characters in their roster and the only ones they have are the most-used characters, their characters would be nerfed and they'd have no other options.

The game does not purposely try to give you a lot of OBW covers. The reason why you see OBW everywhere is because she's clearly a cut above the rest of the 2*s.

Nerfing stats won't solve everything because otherwise we'd never see Modern Storm used if stats is the only thing that matters, but it'd at least weaken the team since it at least makes these teams extremely vulnerable on defense if Spiderman now only has 2900 HP max and OBW only 1550 HP max.

Dynamic scaling based on usage is not a bad idea, but there's no need to do anything fancy when I can already tell you who is going to be permanently nerfed under such a system. It's one thing to say The Punisher can use a 10% decrease and IM40 can use a 10% increase based on usage, but right now we also know who is going to permanently have the max buff/nerf modifiers almost for sure. Okay maybe we don't care if Bagman is never viable and always have a +50% perma buff, but the other direction we definitely do care about. A dynamic system is only meaningful when we don't know for sure who is going to hit with the maximum nerf for overusage, and right now it is very easy to figure out who those characters will be. These characters should be adjusted because otherwise they'd just be perma-nerfed anyway.

Unknown

Not sure how it would be implemented but I like the idea of variable nerfs/buffs but what might actually happen is all the nerfs fall onto IM35, Modern Widow, and Modern Storm. The trouble becomes that within certain MMR levels teams become overused but across a whole tournament the numbers would be very different. And at least on the newbie end they have very few choices to diversify with.

Nonce Equitaur 2

mags1587 wrote:

It's an interesting idea but I'm not sure how it would play out in practice. OBW and Spider-man are used primarily because of AP-stealing and stunning; lowering their health or damage wouldn't change that. I'm thinking this would be rough for newer players, too -- if they don't have many characters in their roster and the only ones they have are the most-used characters, their characters would be nerfed and they'd have no other options.

Whatever the most abused characters in a bracket might be -- they'd be at half health, and thus a much easier win. There could be percentage threshholds ... the nerf only happens if 40% or more of teams have Character A.

Newer players don't have a lot of viable 2 and 3 star characters. Plus, many of the characters they used in their teams would be 1* characters in the least-used list, so they'd likely have buffs available. Few newer players have 13 cover 3* characters in their small rosters.

1* characters could be exempted from ever getting nerfs. I'd expand that to most 2* characters as well.

Unknown

You'd probably need to break down the usage into these groups:

1. 1*
2. 2*
3. 3* common heroes
4. 3* rare heroes (GSBW and Magneto are certainly a lot rarer than IM40, for example).
5. 3* new heroes (nobody's going to have modern Thor at a high level anytime soon without dumping a ton of money).

It's fine if IM35 gets nerfed for overusage even though he's nowhere overpowered because there are still other character to use in PvP. And if not, your opponent likely won't have much choices either.

PorkBelly

I really don't see the problem with either of these two characters (& I don't have a strong version of either).

They are both rare and it takes a while (or a deranged amount of $) to get them to effective levels.

When you play PvP or PvE, you are playing against an AI which never uses these characters in the same way that another player would.

I don't see the problem of working towards a very useful character. These aren't * characters.

The only problem I see is that the **** characters seem way underpowered given their rarity (I don't have even one cover for either yet). Dramatically buffing the **** characters would bring everything back into line.

over_clocked

What are you talking about, I don't even.
Just make mHawkeye's tiles non-random, lower AP cost for Cap and Moonie a tiny bit, add hard and soft and whatever counters for Magneto and Spider-Man in other characters' abilities and there, you have something actually resembling balance and not this weird nerfing system you're talking about. Who would want to see their favourite characters perma-nerfed? You guys just ruin all the fun, even in theory. Oh I get it you want to reap all the rewards while playing less and less (and other people's Spideys just ruin that dream of yours, just like you used to stomp over other people's playing experience with your Ragnaroks and GSBWs) and not allowing anyone else play with their favourite characters, I understand. Completely sympathetic. Yes.

Unknown

PorkBelly wrote:

Dramatically buffing the **** characters would bring everything back into line.

The day this happens, such glorious tinykitty will be unleashed upon the population. Most hardcore players that have been here awhile already have X-Force and IW fully covered, since they are the only consistent rewards that have been in the game since the start. Can you imagine an army of buffed X-Forces suddenly flooding the battlefield? That could be part of the reason they haven't messed with him yet -- who knows.. If it happens though, I sure as heck will be following suit

..it will be interesting to say the least

Unknown

If they made Wolverine X-Force stronger than Invisible Woman it'd be equivalent of commiting financial suicide, which is probably why they're taking a very long time to balance him even though he was either the 2nd or the 3rd character on the balance queue. IW's abilities are pretty much all defensive, so they can make her somewhat overpowered because being good at defense means basically nothing in this game. Wolverine is a purely offensive character and has far less leeway to work with without being P2W. He can't even be say Punisher with more HPs, because that'd make him better than just about every 3* character that isn't totally broken. People know what P2W looks like when they see it.

Unknown

Funnily enough i was dreading the funbalancing but since we have recently been made to try out new combinations i have been using spidey a lot less.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

If they made Wolverine X-Force stronger than Invisible Woman it'd be equivalent of commiting financial suicide, which is probably why they're taking a very long time to balance him even though he was either the 2nd or the 3rd character on the balance queue. IW's abilities are pretty much all defensive, so they can make her somewhat overpowered because being good at defense means basically nothing in this game. Wolverine is a purely offensive character and has far less leeway to work with without being P2W. He can't even be say Punisher with more HPs, because that'd make him better than just about every 3* character that isn't totally broken. People know what P2W looks like when they see it.

Very good point

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

If they made Wolverine X-Force stronger than Invisible Woman it'd be equivalent of commiting financial suicide, which is probably why they're taking a very long time to balance him even though he was either the 2nd or the 3rd character on the balance queue. IW's abilities are pretty much all defensive, so they can make her somewhat overpowered because being good at defense means basically nothing in this game. Wolverine is a purely offensive character and has far less leeway to work with without being P2W. He can't even be say Punisher with more HPs, because that'd make him better than just about every 3* character that isn't totally broken. People know what P2W looks like when they see it.

I'm not seeing it. If they make him awesome they will tick off some people who think that someone with mega $$$ to spend is going to eclipse them easily. It will also tempt some other people with money to spend to open their wallets and push to get one. I'm not seeing a P2W situation considering that one still has to win to at least one cover of each of his colors to even be in position to spend money on HP/ISO to develop him the rest of the way. While yes in theory that's possible by simply buying an *enormous* amount of Heroic Tokens, I'm not worried about it due to the mind boggling expenditure required. Someone willing to do that is already paying to win because they can have a complete roster of maxed 3* characters using that tactic. That's already a viable P2W strategy and the presence or absence of awesome 4* characters doesn't change it.

Bottom line is he's a 4* character and should be, at level 230, unquestionably better than 3* Wolverine.

PorkBelly

Jachdo wrote:

PorkBelly wrote:

Dramatically buffing the **** characters would bring everything back into line.

The day this happens, such glorious tinykitty will be unleashed upon the population. Most hardcore players that have been here awhile already have X-Force and IW fully covered, since they are the only consistent rewards that have been in the game since the start. Can you imagine an army of buffed X-Forces suddenly flooding the battlefield? That could be part of the reason they haven't messed with him yet -- who knows.. If it happens though, I sure as heck will be following suit

..it will be interesting to say the least

I think that would be the point.

At least from my perspective (as someone who usually places in the top 45 or 15 of a PvP tournament) they don't seem to be close to the effort it requires to obtain/level them. When I see them in PvP, they don't trouble me anywhere near as much as a high level Hulk.

If they were (and match making actually worked), I think there would be far less complaining about "overpowered" *** characters.

Unknown

Vector Mangler wrote:

Bottom line is he's a 4* character and should be, at level 230, unquestionably better than 3* Wolverine.

Except that's not that how this game works. Invisible Woman is not unquestionably stronger than any 3* and she has far more leeway to work with because being overpowered on defensive skills is perfectly fine since that doesn't help you win any faster.

Unquestionably stronger is the very definition of P2W. Even 3* aren't necessarily unquestionably stronger than their 2* counterparts, not to mention 3* is quite readily available to everyone without a prohibitive cost.

Wolverine currently has 9000 HP at level 230. If he simply has The Punisher's offensive stats at level 141, he'd still be 50% better than the Punisher just due to his superior HPs, and that's way too powerful.

Unknown

entropic01 wrote:

Let’s go to an extreme situation where the devs make this fight against Galactus. Galactus has 100,000 HP and has an ability that costs 1 of any AP and that ability instantly kills your entire team.
Is this encounter beatable? Yes
Is this encounter beatable w/o Spider-man? No
If you don’t see how that restricts design space and limits what devs can do for a challenging encounter and how it pigeonholes you into specific rosters, that’s fine but we have very different design philosophies.

I think Spidey does far more damage in PVE than PVP but I think he clearly warps both environments.

I’m kind of curious as to the length of time people have played that want spidey nerfed vs left alone. I used to want spidey left alone but the more I played the game, the more it was clear to me something needed to be done. FWIW, I’ve been playing since the first week of the game’s release and have spent hundreds of hours with almost every character fully covered (missing Psylocke, BP, DD, and four total 4* covers)

Very well said.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

People know what P2W looks like when they see it.

Would you call pre-nerf Rags a veyr conspicous P2W element?

Unknown

mongo wrote:

Phantron wrote:

People know what P2W looks like when they see it.

Would you call pre-nerf Rags a veyr conspicous P2W element?

I don't think there was an ulterior motive to get people to buy Ragnarok but he most definitely fits the P2W description. It seems to me that some of the original characters are just designed very poorly and that's why they're taking their time to try to fix things to avoid repeating the same mistakes.