Funbalancing Queue Update?

Pats0132

I think magneto is worse than Spider-Man. Just use obw against him to steal blues and your fine. Mags ur screwed cause his abilities are low to use and cause damage.

Unknown

I actually hope they don't nerf any of those characters. I have neither, but I like actually running into challenging characters every once in a while.

Besides its more fun to upgrade good characters. I mean who really upgrades bad characters. It also makes me look forward to getting something useful. I feel like all these nerfs are getting out of hand.

Unknown

Posted this on spider man character discussion. Posting it here.

Spider Man nerf ....
Can not cast more than 1 web/turn. BOOM game changer.
He's still effective after 3 webs and capable of stun locking a team. However, not quite overpowering. In exchange, his heal no longer removes webs, just heals by the amount of webs.
BOOM.

Unknown

i believe that the only reason spidey hasn't been nerfed yet is because of me; my spidey has been one blue cover short of being maxed (he's 3/4/5, level 76) since maybe November/December when i first heard talk of a nerf. i'm convinced the moment that i just pay the 1250 for his 5th blue is the moment they will nerf him. i get by with webs costing 3, but i dream of them costing only 2...

Spoit

jozier wrote:

They've said they'd announce any changes in advance. Just wait for that instead of asking about them. We have a thread every week about potential funbalancing. They'll update us when they have an update.

Wasn't the thorverine funbalanced detailed only about 2-3 days before it happened

Copps wrote:

For spidey why not just a 5 point blue that generates 2-3 web tiles. Maybe have the base stun at 2 turns. Would still be stun lockable but would require a lot more effort. I also hope they buff xforce at the same time I'm up to 451 on mine and would love to have a reason to start putting ISO into him.

Yes, exactly. Having a cost at 5 that only did one character and 1 web is incredibly silly, since venom does that for 4. And he's a 1*

Phantron wrote:

Spiderman is a problem in PvP too, as he makes it pretty much guaranteed someone will always retaliate you so most of the time you're just running in circles, but at least in PvP time matters so you could jump out to a lead and then shield.

I'm not sure why people think the roster for Heroic Jugg was that limited. Lazy Thor, even with weak covers, is one of the strongest character in the game. The only characters that would've made a significant impact was Magneto and Spiderman. You're still going to get a lot of Headbutts your way if your team was Thor/Punisher/whoever as long as Magneto/Spiderman is excluded. Even if you have someone like The Hood, the prevalence of Flamethrowers makes it pretty hard to keep him alive and you can't steal fast enough to stop a Flamethrower, and Flamethrower hits hard enough that The Hood's lack of HP definitely matters.

Because most people didn't have an appreciable amount of covers and therefor levels for him? No one else was boosted in that event, and the other characters you could use was stuff like IM40, cap, hawkeye, and 1*s

Moral

champion9782 wrote:

Posted this on spider man character discussion. Posting it here.

Spider Man nerf ....
Can not cast more than 1 web/turn. BOOM game changer.
He's still effective after 3 webs and capable of stun locking a team. However, not quite overpowering. In exchange, his heal no longer removes webs, just heals by the amount of webs.
BOOM.

Nothing so involved.

Lower the stun cap to 2 or 3 turns instead of 5. It's one thing to get 2 blue matches every 5 turns. Good luck matching blue every other turn.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

jozier wrote:

They've said they'd announce any changes in advance. Just wait for that instead of asking about them. We have a thread every week about potential funbalancing. They'll update us when they have an update.

Wasn't the thorverine funbalanced detailed only about 2-3 days before it happened

Was it even that long?

Usually, when the "discussion thread" for a major change appears, the change usually occurred with the next 12-24 hours of the opening of the thread, regardless of what was posted on it by players.

bahamut685

IceIX wrote:

Psykopathic28 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

The funbalancing queue still exists. It's still on a burner (not the back one), but we don't have much heat on it at the moment. Getting stronger Alliance controls and features are higher up on the list at the moment and taking up more of the designer time. We still intend to get back to these at some point.

Much appreciated.

Any chance if an updated list in the near future?

It's pretty well the same as it was. Hawkeye (Modern), Wolverine (X-Force), Magneto (Classic), Spider-Man (Classic) are all on the list. We've also got a bunch of internal discussion on some other changes for other characters, but nothing has shaken out definitively yet.

It IS always nice to get responses on this subject, but if we're being serious, the 'funbalance queue' looks like it has since right after the last round of funbalancing:
"F*ck balance! Hurry to release more new (or old) characters... That's where the money's at!"

Unknown

bahamut685 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Psykopathic28 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

The funbalancing queue still exists. It's still on a burner (not the back one), but we don't have much heat on it at the moment. Getting stronger Alliance controls and features are higher up on the list at the moment and taking up more of the designer time. We still intend to get back to these at some point.

Much appreciated.

Any chance if an updated list in the near future?

It's pretty well the same as it was. Hawkeye (Modern), Wolverine (X-Force), Magneto (Classic), Spider-Man (Classic) are all on the list. We've also got a bunch of internal discussion on some other changes for other characters, but nothing has shaken out definitively yet.

It IS always nice to get responses on this subject, but if we're being serious, the 'funbalance queue' looks like it has since right after the last round of funbalancing:
"F*ck balance! Hurry to release more new (or old) characters... That's where the money's at!"

Seriously though, think about it from a development perspective.

From the Hulk event, there were around 104,000 unique players. 1% of that number is 1,040 players.

Does anyone seriously believe that there are 1,040 active players (played within the last 7 days) today that are packing full builds of Spideys and/or CMags?

Its been what... 6 weeks or so since the last time Spidey was offered as a tourney prize in Double Shot, I believe? How many long-term players with full Spidey builds have been lost to attrition over this timeframe?

Thus, the funbalancing is simply a low-priority task at the moment and not worth the devs' time and energy right, although they know that these changes badly need to occur at some point.

Unknown

Nerfing Spiderman would allow the PvE events to have something sane besides the 230X3 on everything, which would be good for everyone since scaling is community-wide.

I mean if you look at the Simulator Basic this time around, notice how many fights have Spiderman on the other team? It's certainly a lot higher than random chance. There's a rather deliberate attempt to prevent you from using OBW, Magneto, Patch, and Spiderman in these missions.

Shadow

gamar wrote:

Yep. Don't get me wrong, I think a Spidey nerf would be good for the game, but what breaks PvE isn't (just) Spidey, it's that since the AI is so bad at using abilities, the only dividing line between "nigh impossible" and "not that hard" is if your team has the health or board position to survive match-3s or that "one backbreaking attack" (headbutt, CotS) long enough to activate your own ATU, or Recon, or Judgement, etc

The difficulty doesn't scale gradually with enemy level, it's always just a solid cliff between the "can do's" and "can't do's," which makes the scaling system asinine

AI isn't bad at using abilities. It's that the devs have to make the game actually playable. Just witness the current Simulator event with the Thor + 2 goons. Thor keeps going for Thunder Strike + Call the Storm which does quite a lot of damage. If the devs really wanted to make an AI that outplays human beings, it pretty much can be done. But that won't earn them any money since everyone will find it too difficult and nobody would then play.

Unknown

Pats0132 wrote:

I think magneto is worse than Spider-Man. Just use obw against him to steal blues and your fine. Mags ur screwed cause his abilities are low to use and cause damage.

In AI's hand mags is only as good as his purple fires and that should be easy to prevent.

Polares

Magneto is a really good character (probably the second best), but I don't know if he is really 'broken'. Blue is top notch but you need the field to help you to do more than 2 or 3 lines before you have to stop. Maybe what needs to be changed is its red, because I suppose it is the combination 5/5/3 what really breaks the game. If red would cost 6 or 9 blue will just be a very good ability but maybe not that broken ( Maybe It is just that I really like the mechanic of this blue ability and I don't want it to go away )

The problem with spidey (a part from 230 lvl characters) is that with him you allmost allways win all matches in PvP, it is the same witch characters you use for defense, it is not important. Maybe you will need more time, but it is irrelevant in the end.

Unknown

Polares wrote:

The problem with spidey (a part from 230 lvl characters) is that with him you allmost allways win all matches in PvP, it is the same witch characters you use for defense, it is not important. Maybe you will need more time, but it is irrelevant.

I thought everyone "allmost allways win all matches in PvP" with or without spidey. And time is more than relevant.

Unknown

For me, the Classic Mags nerf is really quite easy. Simply bump up the AP cost of both blue and red, and increase their power levels slightly, so you get a better defensive tile with blue, and a bigger damage with red. As it stands, blue is too easy to use to throw out multiple powers in a row, and I only have it at level 4. Make it cost 8 AP with a stronger defensive tile, and people might start using it for the intended purpose (the defensive tiles), rather than for matching blue. I guess Mags purple is a little OP as well, but I don't mind that. He does huge damage but only to one character, and I think part of any match strategy should be denying your opponent key colours as much as it is about getting your own. Magneto is a hugely powerful character in the comics, should he should be hugely powerful here too.

Spidey is a lot harder because of the way every power integrates with each other. His blue is obviously the main culprit, stunning people for as little as 2 AP. The problem is that both his yellow and purple reach to the way his blue generates web tiles, so even if you simply nerfed his blue by upping the AP cost, you're inadvertently nerfing his yellow and purple powers too (less web tiles means less healing and less useful defensive tiles). I honestly think that for a Spidey nerf to work properly, they need to be willing to do it little and often. Make a small change to his blue, and run with it for a week or two. Check the data, and then tweak it as needed. Run it for another week, and so on. Making a huge change to Spidey will cause uproar (like the Rags nerf) and I don't think they want that. Small iterative changes would also give the community a chance to react to the changes, and give the devs a chance to see how we react. Surely that would be the best way moving forward?

Unknown

DaveyPitch wrote:

For me, the Classic Mags nerf is really quite easy. Simply bump up the AP cost of both blue and red, and increase their power levels slightly, so you get a better defensive tile with blue, and a bigger damage with red. As it stands, blue is too easy to use to throw out multiple powers in a row, and I only have it at level 4. Make it cost 8 AP with a stronger defensive tile, and people might start using it for the intended purpose (the defensive tiles), rather than for matching blue.

That is the very thing that ruins the game. Playing Mags was quite a game changer for me. As it like added a new mini-game. Instead of just the boring matches I have to look patterns to exploit and manage the board for different approach.

Wit cost of 8 it will go completely. Taking most of the newly discovered fun with it.

Unknown

I currently run a lv81 spiderman and I can honestly say I paid good money to level up his blue skill. Why did I do this. Because Ibelieve too many teams run OBW and he is the only real counter to her thats not her. I can also tell you that if she fires off her purple the game is over for even spiderman, because then it sets off a chain reaction with either forms of storm or any ither character she is with. I can also hobestly say when I beat an opponent they have no difficulty taking those points back so he mustnt be too scary to take on.

Unknown

big green wrote:

I currently run a lv81 spiderman and I can honestly say I paid good money to level up his blue skill. Why did I do this. Because Ibelieve too many teams run OBW and he is the only real counter to her thats not her. I can also tell you that if she fires off her purple the game is over for even spiderman, because then it sets off a chain reaction with either forms of storm or any ither character she is with. I can also hobestly say when I beat an opponent they have no difficulty taking those points back so he mustnt be too scary to take on.

+1

Unknown

They just need to stop nerfing characters, it's a cycle that needs to be broken.

In the case of spiderman, he's the big equalizer in fights with lvl230 goons that can kill you with one shot, I don't have any character that can kill with a single shot and I face them all the time, soldiers, maggia, heroes and villains, spiderman at least gives me the chance to delay that certain death and compete.

He also gives me the chance to heal in the prologue so I can keep playing after I used all my healthpacks.

Using him is not an automatic win, it all depends on the board you're getting, a good cascade against you and it doesn't matter who you play, these new levels with a strong hero and 2 soldiers is the best example, thor is hitting you with call the lighting after the 3rd turn, and again every other turn, those 3 at level 67 destroyed my team of 100's 3 straight times, spiderman included.

Instead of nerfing characters bring new ones, bring a black suit spiderman who doesn't stun but deals more damage based on the web tiles on the board, that way you can't play both at the same time and you can match one against the other, bring another ap stealer, one that steals more green or purple so he can be matched against magneto or gsbw........

Look at what happened to characters after nerf, nobody uses rags anymore, same as thor and wolvie, they become unplayable characters.

Nerfing characters is going to be a never ending cycle, after nerfing the ones on the list people are going to come up with other ones to complain about, OBW is op too, every single match has one, it's annoying having to take her down 1st in every single match and face her 99% of the matches; a high level Hood steals to many ap and doesn't let me play, GSBW is killing my whole team with her green.......this needs to stop.

Unknown

dolfanpescao wrote:

Look at what happened to characters after nerf, nobody uses rags anymore, same as thor and wolvie, they become unplayable characters.

Rags indeed mostly disappeared, and it was because of bad overnerfing -- what might be goor as starting point but then should be adjusted a few weeks after.

But thor and wolvie? Disappeared? Unplayable? How many of them I fought in PVEs ever since?

And Wolvie's decline is not due to nerf but to rise of Patch taking over his position.