Character Rebalance Plan

firethorne

Tread carefully. Some people have spent money, big money, on characters. Nerfing player favorites can leave wounds that don't heal properly, and leave players with a bad taste in their mouth (Xforce ). From the post, I take it you're itching to let history repeat itself with another Wolverine. Understandable and deserved, but it will be messy.

It is far more palatable to simply raise the others around up. Boosts to players that aren't your favorite are easier pills to swallow, and when everyone is overpowered, no one overpowered.

Eichen

It would have been great to do this before shield levels, that way we could have spent our influx of ISO accordingly. Now we are all wondering if we spent it on someone who is about to be kneecapped.

Blahahah

firethorne wrote:

Tread carefully. Some people have spent money, big money, on characters. Nerfing player favorites can leave wounds that don't heal properly, and leave players with a bad taste in their mouth (Xforce ). From the post, I take it you're itching to let history repeat itself with another Wolverine. Understandable and deserved, but it will be messy.

It is far more palatable to simply raise the others around up. Boosts to players that aren't your favorite are easier pills to swallow, and when everyone is overpowered, no one overpowered.

They buff Cho. You're still going to use OML.
They buff Mr. Fantastic. You're still going to use OML.
They buff 5* Hulk. Guess who you're probably not going to use and will instead use OML.

There's a problem when no amount of buffs will actually change the game. Sometimes nerfs are necessary.
By investing money (big money) on characters, you accept the risk that whatever balancing happens to those characters you will have to deal with.
I agree with bringing people up, but you can't buff people to the OML level and have the game survive. Sometimes you need to reach the middle-ground.

We_are_Venom

Eichen wrote:

It would have been great to do this before shield levels, that way we could have spent our influx of ISO accordingly. Now we are all wondering if we spent it on someone who is about to be kneecapped.

Since it will be an ongoing affair, even if they are "kneecapped", it'll last only so long before the numbers play out that it needs another rework.

fmftint

Nerfing OML/Phoenix won't magically change the 5☆ gamescape, 5☆s are inherently hard to cover and ridiculously expensive to level. The non whales using them now don't have the resources to just level up the new best, unless they are nerfed into oblivion (Xforce/Goddes), they will still be go tos

GrumpySmurf1002

Iceman and Cho being skipped in the PvP reward rotation was probably just a coincidence.

Polares

Afraid, I am very afraid.

I hope they start doing iterative changes, and not they big changes devs usually do.

And please Buff over Nerf, always!

DeNappa

Good news, looking forward to the changes. Will you also be revisiting some 3*s again? (Sentry and Rags come to mind.. though, go easy on Rags as we have to fight him so often )

simonsez

If you want to help get characters off the bench, there are some things you can do besides nerfs:

Introduce game modes that don't use 5s
Offer bonuses for using a deep roster
Offer bonuses for beating nodes with weaker characters. Eg, i cleared the last gauntlet node without 5s, even though my scaling assumed i'd be using them. Shouldve gotten a degree of difficulty bonus for that.

Vhailorx

Blahahah, selling an imhb at level 286 (under the current system) will not return anything close to the iso/cover investment spent building the character. And even with increased compensation, forcing players to completely sell characters id, imo, unfairly coercing players to accept the nerf. If that the only way to get compesation is to sell everything, then players will have to collect another 13 imhb covers before they can use him again. What if he isn't needed into oblivion, but is noticeably worse? Now you might have chosen to leave him at 200, and champ another 4* instead. Of the only compensation is selling imhb in his entirety, then the player suffers a pretty big hit for something that was demi's "fault."

And what about players with 4*s expiring this weekend and trying to decide if they should champ someone? Demi is welcome to make balance changes, but cs should be ready to assist those harmed arbitrarily by the changes.

As for which characters might expect buffs/needs

Imhb/rulk/ice/jg/cyc/Peggy are considered the best 4*s

CHulk/fantastic/star Lord/Elektra are generally considered the worst.

OML is the king of 5*s (there are others who are just as strong. But the community is very splintered past oml).

5Cap and SS are considered the worst (some say banner is just as bad, but i dont think there is consensus on that yet).

wymtime

"David wrote:

Moore"]Hi everyone,

Anthony and Dave at Demiurge sent word on plans for a new character rebalancing philosophy. Read on for details:

We are going to start making changes to characters in the game with the goal of creating a more balanced playing environment. To kick off these changes, the Lead Designer on

Marvel Puzzle Quest, Dave Guskin, would like to pass along a message describing the rebalance philosophy to the players.

"Our team has been looking at the health of the competitive game in MPQ, and we’ve started to identify ways to change some of the characters that are much weaker or stronger than others at the same rarity.

Our goal is to provide a more diverse competitive experience - more variety in teams encourage different strategies and more fun ways to play! Some ubiquitous, strong characters dominate competitive play - we want to reduce the power of those characters just enough so that other characters of the same rarity can compete with them for a spot. We also want to increase the power of underpowered characters - the ones sitting on the bench, fun and interesting but not powerful enough to compete - to give them another shot at competitive play.

So, beginning with the close of this Versus season, we’ll start releasing more regular updates to existing characters.

At the end of each Versus season, if we have characters to change, we’ll message those changes out.

At the start of the next season, we’ll enact those changes to characters and give players an opportunity to sell changed characters for increased value due to the changes.

This is an ongoing process - we don’t expect to achieve perfect balance overnight, but our goal is to regularly address the most significant issues in the competitive character landscape. Our team is interested in hearing your thoughts on these changes - play with them, see how you feel, and let us know which characters you’d like to see updated next!"

More information on the first characters to be rebalanced will be on Monday, September 19th.

Best communication of the day!
I hope you stick to the buffs to balance out stronger characters.

GrumpySmurf1002

Unless we're somehow shifting the PvP game away from "get in, get out quickly," things like protect tiles, invisibility, and other defensive/long range moves are never going to be balanced correctly.

This isn't a character problem, it's a game design problem.

There are some characters that are grossly under powered in any terms, and those should be buffed, but there's a reason why IM40 went from 0 to hero so quick, and it wasn't the tweaks in damage to his red/blue.

Stax the Foyer

fmftint wrote:

Nerfing OML/Phoenix won't magically change the 5☆ gamescape, 5☆s are inherently hard to cover and ridiculously expensive to level. The non whales using them now don't have the resources to just level up the new best, unless they are nerfed into oblivion (Xforce/Goddes), they will still be go tos

Plus, there's an extra level of investment now that wasn't there when 4* Thorverine were nerfed. Even after they were covered, a very substantial percentage of people with champed OML/PHX continued pulling classic tokens for their champion levels.

If they have to nerf OML, the increased sell value needs to take that into account, probably by giving significant CP compensation for each additional champion level.

Stax the Foyer

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Unless we're somehow shifting the PvP game away from "get in, get out quickly."

Good news! If you're playing on iOS, they've fixed the problem of people getting in and out too quickly.

Minox

The buffs sound awesome, can't wait.

What scares me is that I have one champed 5* (OML). If he gets nerfed, I'm going to have a tough time. Because of scaling, I still have to use him or get destroyed. I don't have any other usable 5* to switch with. So it's a tough place to be in.

Either way, really looking forward to seeing changes.

GrumpySmurf1002

Stax the Foyer wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Unless we're somehow shifting the PvP game away from "get in, get out quickly."

Good news! If you're playing on iOS, they've fixed the problem of people getting in and out too quickly.

I assumed the FB gifts bug and this game delay bug was just a buff for us Steam users.

PorkBelly

This sucks.

After the Classic Magneto debacle, I almost bailed. My roster only had two maxed 3*s at that point.

The time and cash I've spent since then chasing legendary tokens and CP to maintain any level of competition in PvP will be unrecoverable.

If they buff a bunch of 5*s to make that tier competitive, that's fine.

If they nerf OML in the same way they did Classic Magneto & X-Force Wolverine, it will be an easy decision to uninstall MPQ.

Dayv

Blahahah wrote:

Michael Kell wrote:

Hopefully Cho will get some love along the way. Any other likely suspects?

Probably Drax, Mr. Fantastic. They're considered on the bottom tier as well.

Mr. Fantastic isn't *that* bad, all things considered. His minor AP bonus for other FF characters usually goes wasted, but the chief problem is that he's mostly a support/backup character. He's never going to be the one you build a team around, or want to make your strongest character. He's probably most comparable to Professor X, if Professor X didn't have the AP generation that enables Winfinite strategies.

Drax is straight-up terrible, though.

Blahahah

Vhailorx wrote:

Blahahah, selling an imhb at level 286 (under the current system) will not return anything close to the iso/cover investment spent building the character. And even with increased compensation, forcing players to completely sell characters id, imo, unfairly coercing players to accept the nerf. If that the only way to get compesation is to sell everything, then players will have to collect another 13 imhb covers before they can use him again. What if he isn't needed into oblivion, but is noticeably worse? Now you might have chosen to leave him at 200, and champ another 4* instead. Of the only compensation is selling imhb in his entirety, then the player suffers a pretty big hit for something that was demi's "fault."

And what about players with 4*s expiring this weekend and trying to decide if they should champ someone? Demi is welcome to make balance changes, but cs should be ready to assist those harmed arbitrarily by the changes.

As for which characters might expect buffs/needs

Imhb/rulk/ice/jg/cyc/Peggy are considered the best 4*s

CHulk/fantastic/star Lord/Elektra are generally considered the worst.

OML is the king of 5*s (there are others who are just as strong. But the community is very splintered past oml).

5Cap and SS are considered the worst (some say banner is just as bad, but i dont think there is consensus on that yet).

I'm assuming that, based on the statement given, more compensation than normal will be given for the changes. I'd be remiss if it's less than the full value of your character, and if it's not then there is certainly a problem. However, as I said, based on what they've put out there in the message it's hopeful that they will properly compensate people.

You won't get your money back, but hopefully you'll get any iso, hp, and cp you spent

STOPTHIS

I'm all for buffs, but the possibilities of nerfs leave me worried. I'm just barely getting to a point where some 4* will be usable. Both my Rulk and Cyclops are 1 cover away from from being fully covered. I saw how rough the people who just maxed X-Force and Lady Thor right before their nerfs had it and I really don't want to be in that same position.