Agent Venom; a lesson in bad design

homeinvasion

1. Agent Venom makes me believe you actively made the worst character you could. It is painfully obvious that, if you raised the amount of tinykittys you gave, it would go up to one tinykitty.

2. Start talking to the players or hire a few people onto your team. Magic the Gathering did this and now nearly exclusively hire from the top ranks of players.

3. Go back and rework Agent Venom already, he would have slot into slight lower than old Totally Awful Hulk and old Bag lady. How do you not know this when you release a character?

4. Could one of the devs post some meeting notes? "I've got this great idea it will work really well with GSBW sniper ability, oh wait that doesn't work, it works really well with that..where the tinykitty is that beer coaster I wrote the character notes on"?

5. New challenge can the community come up with a worse character? Ima start 18 drains all health from your lead character and grants it to the opposition.

6. **** Marvel if you had Venom's powers why would you become a B grade Punisher with a gun?

Sorry gtg there's a little vomit in the back of my throat.

El Satanno

Way to keep your tone constructive there, buddy. You'll surely get some attention that way.

ronin_san

If you listened to the podcast and heard the way devs work cycle flows, you would know there has been some transition in character development, in terms of ownership. I gathered that Agent Venom started in the hands of one person, and ended in another.

Frankly, a lack of AP makes more sense than a surplus. The symbiote attacks you when you are spent, rather than when you are able to deal huge damage (and in control of your facilities).

So I think his rework should include a reconsideration of his black. His red needs to have a symbiote caveat rather than AP? I need some sort of Drax feel in his red, in that he should be able to deal huge damage if the caveat is met.

Astralgazer

AV's biggest weakness is that he hinders the heavy hitters that require lots of AP before firing their powers. Everyone with power that requires more than 10 AP will be at disadvantage when paired with AV. Those AOE hitters, man... they're out. And also teams with accelerators and lots of passives, for these teams always have unused color(s). Without any means to spend these colors, they will trigger Alien Weakness.

With AV, we are forced to use a team with characters that cover every possible colors; and fast, light hitters. Maybe this is what the devs intended? To create a niche for non-accelerated, non-AOE teams?

Mr_Sinister

I have him fully covered, level 166. I like him.

Vhailorx

Chulk both had useless powers (black, kinda blue) and a woefully underpowered nuke. At least AV has a red and yellow that are pretty solid, hitting decently hard and offering some ally protection to boot. But unlike Chulk, AV'sblack can be a net negative for the whole team, slowly killing AV while eating up precious AP. He is clearly best built 5/0/5, suggesting that black needs a significant rework. Overall, he is less useless than original chulk, but if not properly managed his black could be worse than a "mere" useless third wheel.

StarScream

Bad designs is the motto of this team.

Remember the prologue? Remember the way too overpowered things? Things like a sniper rifle doing 700 damage to your character who only has 1,000 health and the sheer amount of countdown tiles they put on the board? The best thing to do when making a game is to ease the players into difficulty. These programmers could not even do that. What makes you think they can be successful when creating a "new" recycled character?

I was looking through rewards in PvP the other day and it showed that I ad to get to 900 for a two star cover. I can only dream about cracking 300 on a consistent basis. But, I have to get to 900 to put one lousy cover on a two star character? It was not like I had a week to do it and I had to play against four star and five star teams. Bad design. Horrible design, actually.

I like the game. I will continue the game for the foreseeable future. But, I have no faith in the programmers to do anything right. All they have done really is push me away from opening my wallet. Yes, at one time, I thought about doing it. No way will now.

And for the record? Agent Venom is beyond awful. Not as bad as Carnage but up there.

dr tinykittylove

Boo. I like Agent Venom. Leave him alone!

wymtime

The biggest issue with his black is if you only have 1-2 covers. The more covers for black the more AP is required to flip the switch. AV is not bad he has some good uses. AV is someone you won't realize how good he might be until you have him fully covered and potentially fully leveled.

cyineedsn

Hes awful with one cover in his passive. But when ppl have him at 355 and maxed, he'll be haves uses as a support/ap outlet. Lets not go nuts with hot takes on underleveled/undercovered loaners.

Mercalla

I like him with just one point of criticism that could use some rework/retooling. The Black active ability becomes the passive self damage when you eclipse a certain amount of resource. So when I get a sweet cascade that inflates my black resource to 20+, you're stuck with a locked out black ability you would normally use to remove some of that inflated resource, and just eat self-damage for multiple turns. The solution I guess is to bring another character taht can spend black, but you're already limited in teammates that have cheap powers.

Koffitok

Mercalla wrote:

I like him with just one point of criticism that could use some rework/retooling. The Black active ability becomes the passive self damage when you eclipse a certain amount of resource. So when I get a sweet cascade that inflates my black resource to 20+, you're stuck with a locked out black ability you would normally use to remove some of that inflated resource, and just eat self-damage for multiple turns. The solution I guess is to bring another character taht can spend black, but you're already limited in teammates that have cheap powers.

the swapped black does drain the excess black (if that's the highest color) every turn, but yeah, not as fast as firing the active would.

I agree with most of the assessment here, though. He definitely gets more useful with more black covers than fewer, compared to most abilities.

Even at one cover though, the self damage isn't very worrying. Seems mostly for flavor than anything. Overall I like him; his yellow as a teamup is amazing

kmaroz

His black power will be totally awesome if all stuff related to AP is reflect on your enemy. So, its prevent enemy from collecting AP. Can you imagine how powerful AV will be.

sweegy

He's such a liability as a loaner character, I keep trying to put him out front so the other team will just kill him off for me. He kept draining Scarlet Witch's purple I needed to Reality Crush, and his Alien Weakness kept destroying her countdown tile. Sometimes the weakness going off would get a lucky cascade, but not worth killing your own special tiles sometimes.

GuntherBlobel

I like him. Yes, he changes the way you play the game. After 100+ characters, game-changing is probably a good thing. I'm enjoying it.

You want to pair him with characters that don't rely on special tiles (strike tiles are good, though) OR characters that have cheap enough powers to manage the AP. I'll bet he's not the most fun with OML. If you don't want to strategize around him, he's not worth keeping.

If given the chance, I'd tweak and before touching . Alien Weakness is the reason that I target AV first in the PvP. 2 AP for a potentially game-winning cascade is a too good of a deal to give to the other team.

monsieurmojo

GuntherBlobel wrote:

I like him. Yes, he changes the way you play the game. After 100+ characters, game-changing is probably a good thing. I'm enjoying it.

You want to pair him with characters that don't rely on special tiles (strike tiles are good, though) OR characters that have cheap enough powers to manage the AP. I'll bet he's not the most fun with OML. If you don't want to strategize around him, he's not worth keeping.

If given the chance, I'd tweak and before touching . Alien Weakness is the reason that I target AV first in the PvP. 2 AP for a potentially game-winning cascade is a too good of a deal to give to the other team.

This.

To me, red looks like his weakest power, and the yellow is going to make Agent Venom a health pack sink. Alien Weakness, however...Alien Weakness is awesome. I've been running my 1/2/2 Agent Venom instead of the loaner with Black Bolt, and the destruction is pretty considerable at just 2 covers. The cascade potential at 5 covers is going to be absurd. It's like Storm's green or Red Hulk's red going off every turn for 2 AP. The biggest problem I see with it at higher covers is that the AP limit is *too high;* you want it going off every turn, and the higher AP limit makes that tougher. It almost makes more sense to build a team with an accelerator and incomplete color coverage, so you can pile up the AP and just let the symbiote run wild.

jobob

I have him champed at 272 and he seems decent enough.

Ducky

Please keep all discussions about Agent Venom in the official character thread located here. Please keep conversations constructive and flame/insult free, as well! Thanks!