Color Pie Discussion Thread

Unknown

Yes that's right, all the colors bleed into each other, the game is so young that entirely new effects are bound to pop up with nearly every character, and we all know that the only true way to do character colors is what their costume looks like, everything's made up and the points don't matter. Well, SHUT UP AND LET ME HAVE MY FUN

Out of mental illness and boredom, I've decided to do my own TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC AND NOT AT ALL SUBJECTIVE analysis on what "types" of effects there are in the game and where they fall, so we have some numbers to back up the completely obvious things everyone already knows anyways:

Obviously this thread was partly inspired by the HT discussion/debate. As you can see here, out intrepid true believers on the forums were smart enough to figure these things out themselves.

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

The power in question
Flame Jet (green): 5 AP, creates a green countdown that deals 14 damage for every green AP the team has, up to 126. Tiles cost 1 green AP per turn.
L2: 20 damage/AP, 176 max

Compare to damaging Yellow powers: Battleplan, Twin Pistols, Thunderstrike, Sunder, and Armored Assault.
Compare to damaging Green powers: X-Force, Sniper Rifle, Godlike Power, Thundreous Clap, Judgement, Berserker Rage, Onslaught, Feral Claws

Phantron wrote:

If you want to talk about how certain power not makes sense in a certain, why is Dorammu's Aid blue? Blue is stun/defense primarily, nothing to do with stealing APs.

I suspect Psylocke has a black simply because there's probably something written in blood somewhere that says anything that creates attack tiles must be black. This is also why there are very few usable characters with an active purple power in the 3*, since purple seems to be reserved for the 'weird' abilities.

Mawtful wrote:

The way I see it, blue is primarily "support" - and sometimes it requires a little bit of stretching to fit, but you get there in the end. Stealing AP from the opponent and giving it to your team? That's support. Stuns? Those are definitely support. Locking tiles? Support.

Doom's blue starves your opponent's support and feeds his black ability, so I think it's excellent support. MN Mag's Blue is the only ability that I find hard to fit into the support role. I can't remember if it's his blue or red that has the hidden ability of actually giving you the AP from tiles removed. (I have a feeling it's the red - which would mean he should probably have his red repainted green and blue repainted red.)

Yellow is bit all over the place, but I also see it as a kind of support tending more towards health - healing/regen, damage mitigation through Invisibility/Protect tiles, even Classic Storm's passive could be considered "discouraging" big attacks that will proc Tempest. Thor's and The Hood's yellow abilities are in completely the wrong colour here - you could probably make an argument for Twin Pistol's being green, but I don't think there's much that can be done for Thunder Strike.

BubBLeB0y1977 wrote:

I think they should ignore what colours are a percieved association with a character (ie Psylocke purple) and focus more on what colours character A would synergize best with character B. This way we have more rainbows, more diversity, instead of everyone using red/green patch/hulk/punisher/fathor

IceIX wrote:

Abilities (and color strengths) are based on what that ability does and character traits. Green tends to be a board control/board affecting color with a damage component which is exactly what Flame Jet is.

But I demand PROOF, set in WARM, CRUNCHY NUMBERS

Methodology: Whenever an effect in the listed category is on a power or has a chance to be on a power, I count it. Thus, a power that stuns and does damage is counted once in each category. Human Torch is not included.

Damage
4/20/2/3/4/5 - Direct Damage
1/2/2/0/3/3 - Direct Damage to enemy team
0/2/1/0/4/0 - Shatters Tiles with no AP

AP Generation
1/4/1/0/4/0 - Shatters Tiles
1/2/2/0/0/0 - Generates AP
0/0/2/5/0/1 - Steals AP

Creates Offensive Tile
1/1/0/1/4/0 - Strike Tiles
0/0/0/0/0/4 - Attack Tiles
0/0/0/1/0/2 - Creates Critical

Defense
3/0/4/2/0/0 - Protect Tile
1/0/0/1/0/0 - Makes Character untargetable
0/0/2/0/1/0 - Locks Tiles
5/0/1/0/0/1 - Heals
1/0/0/0/0/1 - Retaliates
0/0/9/1/0/1 - Stuns

Delayed or Repeating Effects
3/4/4/0/0/1 - Creates a Countdown
0/0/1/0/0/1 - Creates a Cyclic Countdown
1/1/1/4/0/1 - Activates on Match

Drawbacks
1/2/1/0/0/0 - Drains "off-color" AP
0/0/0/0/1/1 - Gives Enemy AP
1/0/0/0/0/0 - Stuns Self
1/2/0/0/0/1 - Damages Allies
0/0/0/0/1/0 - Creates Enemy Strike Tiles
1/0/0/0/1/0 - Ends the Turn

"Charges"
2/4/2/1/0/2 - Boosted effect with certain Tiles on board (colors, web tiles, etc)
1/1/0/0/4/0 - Boosted effect with AP stockpiled
2/1/0/0/0/0 - Does more with low health

Board Manipulation
2/3/1/1/0/2 - Changes random tile color
2/2/3/1/0/0 - Changes chosen tile color
0/0/0/4/0/0 - Swaps Tiles
0/0/0/0/0/3 - Steals Enemy Special Tiles
0/0/0/0/0/2 - Reduces Countdowns
1/0/1/0/0/0 - Increases Countdowns

Power Cost
0/5/2/2/4/1 - Quick (6 AP or less)
3/1/2/1/2/2 - Expensive (15 AP or more)

Color Analysis:
Yellow: Heals, Creates Protect Tiles, and has slow or conditional "big damage"
Red: Damage damage damage damage, cheap abilities, delayed effects
Blue: Stuns, creates protect tiles, delayed effects
Purple: Steals AP, likes swapping and matching tiles
Green: Damage, strike tiles, board destruction, ramps with AP
Black: Damage, Attack tiles, steals enemy's special tiles

Commence telling me how Smash depends on GREEN AP so ACTUALLY that totally counts as a "GREEN" effect and I have it ALL WRONG

NorthernPolarity

Nah, Anger depending on green is just for flavor purposes. Hulk generates green when he gets angry, so the angrier he is, the more he smashes. But if green is Hulk's representation of anger, then why does he use it to clap... The questions are endless!

Cousin Simpson

... where's the pie?

HailMary

gamar wrote:

everything's made up and the points don't matter.

Now rewrite this post in the style of ZZ Top!

NorthernPolarity wrote:

But if green is Hulk's representation of anger, then why does he use it to clap... The questions are endless!

Well, Thunderous Clap is more "two semis boxing you on the ears" than "celebratory applause."

Nonce Equitaur 2

The Wikipedia article on Infinity Gems mentions the powers of the gems.
Green - Soul - Allows the user to steal, control, manipulate and alter souls, living or dead, and is the gateway to an idyllic pocket universe.
Orange - Time - Allows the user total control over the past, present and future. Allows time travel, can age and de-age beings.
Purple - Space - Allows the user to exist in any or all locations, move any object anywhere throughout reality and warp or rearrange space.
Blue - Mind -Allows the user to greatly strengthen and enhance mental and psionic power and access the thoughts and dreams of other beings.
Yellow - Reality - Allows the user to fulfill wishes, even if the wish is in direct contradiction with scientific laws.
Red - Power - Accesses all power and energy that ever has or will exist, and can boost the other gems' effects.

Also, there is some good color discussion in the Human Torch thread. Steal or summarize some of it. If this thread is good enough, I'll make it sticky.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Also, there is some good color discussion in the Human Torch thread. Steal or summarize some of it. If this thread is good enough, I'll make it sticky.

No need to sticky. It matters not what the different colors are geared towards.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Also, there is some good color discussion in the Human Torch thread. Steal or summarize some of it. If this thread is good enough, I'll make it sticky.

Ooo, I didn't see that discussion, sneakily hiding in the Character Discussion forum - let me think about how to work it in

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

The Wikipedia article on Infinity Gems mentions the powers of the gems.
Green - Soul - Allows the user to steal, control, manipulate and alter souls, living or dead, and is the gateway to an idyllic pocket universe.
Orange - Time - Allows the user total control over the past, present and future. Allows time travel, can age and de-age beings.
Purple - Space - Allows the user to exist in any or all locations, move any object anywhere throughout reality and warp or rearrange space.
Blue - Mind -Allows the user to greatly strengthen and enhance mental and psionic power and access the thoughts and dreams of other beings.
Yellow - Reality - Allows the user to fulfill wishes, even if the wish is in direct contradiction with scientific laws.
Red - Power - Accesses all power and energy that ever has or will exist, and can boost the other gems' effects.

And let's not forget the powers from the classic Marvel Super Heroes!

Power
Gives the character increased attack strength. Special users are Spider-Man (creates a mirror image of himself on the opposite side of the opponent), Captain America (creates multiple hits from his special moves that were later turned into Hyper Combos in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter), Wolverine (creates blurred shadow images that resembles his Berserker Charge to follow him and multiply his hits), and Psylocke (creates a clone similar to Ninjutsu back in X-Men: Childern of the Atom in front and behind her. The duplicates can deal damage but are invulnerable).

Time
Speeds up the character's movements. Special users are Hulk (allows him to hit twice on his strongest attacks) and Shuma-Gorath (normal attacks turn opponents into stone).

Space
Gives the character increased defense. Special users are Juggernaut (makes him immune to all attacks, similar to how he was in X-Men: Children of the Atom) and Magneto (gives him his magnetic shield, making him immune to all attacks, again similar to his boss version's move in X-Men: Children of the Atom). But this gem depletes fast on special users when your opponent attacks the special defense.

Reality
Causes elemental attacks such as fireballs(light punch to shoot high and light kick to shoot low), icicles (medium punch to rain down from the upper level of body and medium kick to rise up from the ground), lightning balls(heavy punch to shoot 4 shots in 4 directions and heavy kick to shoot 3 shots with homing capabilities) and even a Halloween pumpkin (Start button to throw in a concave arch) (can hit 3 times to stun opponent) to accompany the character's regular attacks. Special user is Blackheart (turns invisible, in addition to the gem's normal effects).

Soul
Causes the character to regenerate health. Special user is Iron Man (adds extra electric damage to his normal attacks that can drain the energy from the super attack gauge).

Mind
Causes the character to regenerate their super attack gauge.



GREEN regenerates health, not YELLOW. D3P how dare you DISREGARD CANON

Mawtful

I got quoted \o/

Great analysis. I've got some thoughts about splitting colour roles into two categories (something like "Damage Type: Low/Medium/Conditional/High" and "Added Effects") since dealing damage is a part of the game and even colours like Blue and Yellow should be allowed to have some damaging abilities. Maybe I'll write it up later.

HailMary

Mawtful wrote:

I got quoted \o/

Great analysis. I've got some thoughts about splitting colour roles into two categories (something like "Damage Type: Low/Medium/Conditional/High" and "Added Effects") since dealing damage is a part of the game and even colours like Blue and Yellow should be allowed to have some damaging abilities. Maybe I'll write it up later.

Well, there's a lot of existing color bleeding: CStorm B basically "Thor G with curves and a pipe wrench to the head." (L)Thor Y hits harder than (L)Thor R. Both fill support roles (stun, AP gen), but they also hit pretty hard.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

Mawtful wrote:

I got quoted \o/

Great analysis. I've got some thoughts about splitting colour roles into two categories (something like "Damage Type: Low/Medium/Conditional/High" and "Added Effects") since dealing damage is a part of the game and even colours like Blue and Yellow should be allowed to have some damaging abilities. Maybe I'll write it up later.

Well, there's a lot of existing color bleeding: CStorm B basically "Thor G with curves and a pipe wrench to the head." (L)Thor Y hits harder than (L)Thor R. Both fill support roles (stun, AP gen), but they also hit pretty hard.

The "pipe wrench" makes Storm's U fit though: Blue's big attacks are costly and have a stun attached.

To me Thor's Yellow is one of the weirdest abilities (along with Hood's Yellow). OBVIOUSLY Thor's Yellow needs to make 9 green PROTECT tiles! BOOM FIXED

Unknown

The problem is if you break it down by the color pie, you get that yellow is generally defensive support abilities, which is generally not very useful. That's why an aberration like Thunder Strike is very strong. Likewise purple pretty much has a wide grabbag of 'everything else', which means it's sometimes extremely powerful and sometimes not so much. Green abilities tends to be the most powerful offensive because green occupies damage and board control, which are the two primary things you want on offense. I think it's a mistake to tie key concepts like board control to a specific color. Sure, green should be the color with the most form of board control, but it shouldn't have all of them.

NorthernPolarity

Phantron wrote:

The problem is if you break it down by the color pie, you get that yellow is generally defensive support abilities, which is generally not very useful. That's why an aberration like Thunder Strike is very strong. Likewise purple pretty much has a wide grabbag of 'everything else', which means it's sometimes extremely powerful and sometimes not so much. Green abilities tends to be the most powerful offensive because green occupies damage and board control, which are the two primary things you want on offense. I think it's a mistake to tie key concepts like board control to a specific color. Sure, green should be the color with the most form of board control, but it shouldn't have all of them.

I don't think the devs intend to tie ability traits down to colors: there's a lot of bleeding across colors as we've seen with abilities such as Thunder Strike and torch's green.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The problem is if you break it down by the color pie, you get that yellow is generally defensive support abilities, which is generally not very useful. That's why an aberration like Thunder Strike is very strong. Likewise purple pretty much has a wide grabbag of 'everything else', which means it's sometimes extremely powerful and sometimes not so much. Green abilities tends to be the most powerful offensive because green occupies damage and board control, which are the two primary things you want on offense. I think it's a mistake to tie key concepts like board control to a specific color. Sure, green should be the color with the most form of board control, but it shouldn't have all of them.

I don't think the devs intend to tie ability traits down to colors: there's a lot of bleeding across colors as we've seen with abilities such as Thunder Strike and torch's green.

It's not 100% but there's a very strong bias. For example strike tiles are heavily tied to green, while attack tiles are heavily tied to black. Now that'd be fine if attack tiles and strike tiles are equally strong, but of course we know in practice strike tiles tend to be a lot more useful than attack tiles, so that also contributes in green's dominance as the premier offense color. If Godlike Power cost 6 purple or 6 yellow, Ragnarok would suddenly be a much more powerful character, simply because great board controlling abilities are dime a dozen in green, but severely lacking in all other colors.

Unknown

People like to talk about this from time to time



but
.
.
.

threads get lost

GEFPenst wrote:

Well, I thought about relations between abilities and their colors. After playing awhile it's just interesting if my impession is same as for other players:
I'd divide them on three groups - Damage, Support and Sabotage.
Red - Direct damage
This is most obvious out of six. I mean, look at Wolv, IM, Rag, etc. Only noticable exception would be Thor - his red creates tiles, not destroys them. Why?

Black - Indirect damage
mStorm's Hailstorm, Moonstone' steal of attack and Bullseye' creating of critical. From that point of view Punisher's black supposed to be mainly for creation of strike tiles, not direct damage. On other hand, it creates red countdown, same intercolor relation as Daken's black-yellow passive.

Green - Agressive support
Punisher' and Wolv's strike tiles, Storm' trading in colors. Although I'm not sure, Rag and Thor create tiles, not getting AP or buff.

Yellow - Defending support (heal, resupply, protect)
This is mostly defensive color (well, it was until Ares advent - and even then it has heal in description). Wolv, IM, Spider, Cap - usual examples. Even cStorm's yellow kinda fits with hurricanes being defensive weapon. As for Hood, I guess it's mainly to get AP? Sounds more like green ability, no?

Blue - Stun, direct sabotage
On one hand, mHawk, mBW, cStorm, adding on countdowns for oBW, on other hand - Magneto with his blue protect and blowing.

Purple - indirect sabotage, confusion
Mag, Loki, Bag and Moon's swaps, mBW and oBW steals. On other hand - gBW's purple effect similar to Thor's red, although description fits.

Any thought? Maybe you have some ideas?
*Sorry for butchered English*

Bugpop wrote:

Red - of or pertaining to physical power
Purple - of or pertaining to manipulation or change
Blue - of or pertaining to control
Green - of or pertaining to action
Yellow - of or pertaining to energy
Black - of or pertaining to the darkness/enmity (literal or figurative)

Eddiemon wrote:

Red = anger, commonly assault.
Green = environment, commonly destruction. Changes the board massively, sometimes generating AP, sometimes adding strike tiles to the environment.
Blue = slowing maybe cold, magic, commonly stuns. Also has a heal? Hard to categorise beyond the stun. Has many misc powers like obw heal, dooms tile change which I think should be purple, hood stealing AP which also sounds purple but they are both magic effects so maybe that explains it.
Purple = stealth, misdirection. Steals AP, changes owned tiles, rearranges the board, changes tile colours.
Black = evil, decay, commonly attack tiles. Lower direct damage abilities but all seem to have side effects.
Yellow = life, commonly regeneration and defence tiles. Thor's yellow attack generates environment, which ties in with life.
I have no explanation for hoods yellow attack here.

Bugpop wrote:

Eddiemon wrote:

Red = anger, commonly assault.
Green = environment, commonly destruction. Changes the board massively, sometimes generating AP, sometimes adding strike tiles to the environment.
Blue = slowing maybe cold, magic, commonly stuns. Also has a heal? Hard to categorise beyond the stun. Has many misc powers like obw heal, dooms tile change which I think should be purple, hood stealing AP which also sounds purple but they are both magic effects so maybe that explains it.
Purple = stealth, misdirection. Steals AP, changes owned tiles, rearranges the board, changes tile colours.
Black = evil, decay, commonly attack tiles. Lower direct damage abilities but all seem to have side effects.
Yellow = life, commonly regeneration and defence tiles. Thor's yellow attack generates environment, which ties in with life.
I have no explanation for hoods yellow attack here.

Consider that colors seem to have more to do with the rationale for the ability. Tiles changing color would ordinarily be purple however when Dr Doom does it, he makes it happen with control. When Thor does it, he does it as a result of the consequence of the attack.

Dr doom controls the blue tiles to become black. He doesn't manipulate anything. It just happens.

Thor slams the earth with mjolnirs might. As a result all sorts of energies are kicked out of the earth (yellow - earth... volcanic ash is earthy and becomes charged when spewing into atmosphere). GSBW has red pistols. The pistols are intended to only deal damage, including destroying targeted tiles. Useful for removing enemy special tiles and doing some damage.

Yellow deals with the absorption and dissipation of energy. Thor dissipates energy with yellow. Captain America throws out defense tiles which absorb energy. The Hood has guns with big bullets (more energy, less piercing) that grab the surrounding tiles (absorbtion).

Black isn't necessarily evil but it can be. Anything to be done in darkness, without detection, is black. Usually deals with Enmity.

From
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2262

Unknown

I came in expecting pictures of colored pies.... oh how disappointed I am.

In all seriousness, this thread should get some kind of sticky, or at the very least someway of making it stand out so it makes for some easy reference in the future. This is a good compilation of ability colors and general usage.

Unknown

Skyedyne wrote:

I came in expecting pictures of colored pies.... oh how disappointed I am.

In all seriousness, this thread should get some kind of sticky, or at the very least someway of making it stand out so it makes for some easy reference in the future. This is a good compilation of ability colors and general usage.

Heh, jokes or not, I think it's a good idea to add some (possible) background for the term(s) used.

The term "color pie" likely stems from the Magic: The Gathering CCG (mtg for short) where one of their longest standing designers decided to clean up the game and start assigning specific effects to each of the game's colours. This helped to give the colours a stronger identity and some amount of balance in terms of ability and effects. It was highlighted that the assignments only meant that a colour has a higher chance of getting that effect/ability and the effect/ability will mostly be seen in that colour (i.e. they get to call "dibs"). It does not mean that a colour has absolute monopoly over that effect/ability, it's just that the other colours will have a harder time getting to use those effects.

This is where "bleeding" comes in. It's pretty outrageous to keep certain abilities locked into one colour, even more so in a game that involves a wide range of different worlds with wildly different backstory and characters. So for specific purposes, other colour(s) are able to dip into and obtain a colour's effects and get them in a much higher amount than usual.

As for in MPQ, I don't think the developers are this specific in their designing of abilities and colours so there is no specific, fixed role that each colour play but the developers, being human as well (I assume), cannot avoid gravitating towards certain colours when thinking about certain abilities. I also think that part of the reason for the semi-chaotic state of the colours so far is down to them being a group of people. Just look in the forums and you can see multiple different camps on how the colours should be distributed on each character (by costume colour, by elements, by statistics etc.), I doubt the developers are any different, which is why we see the amount of bleeding and inconsistency here and there.

Personally, I feel that assigning specific types of abilities to each colour would be overly restrictive for a relatively simple game like MPQ and I would rather it not happen. Just look at the amount of characters needing red we have just from red being type-casted as an offensive colour and imagine actually cementing it's status. I would prefer the devs getting the freedom to mix up the colours and effects more and just give us some information on why this character/ability is this colour.

Der_Lex

In IceIX quote from the Human Torch thread that's relevant and interesting for this discussion:

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Ice, any chance his Flame Jet can be made Yellow instead of Green?

Unlikely, but not impossible. Abilities (and color strengths) are based on what that ability does and character traits. Green tends to be a board control/board affecting color with a damage component which is exactly what Flame Jet is.

Unknown

eclyspe wrote:

Personally, I feel that assigning specific types of abilities to each colour would be overly restrictive for a relatively simple game like MPQ and I would rather it not happen. Just look at the amount of characters needing red we have just from red being type-casted as an offensive colour and imagine actually cementing it's status. I would prefer the devs getting the freedom to mix up the colours and effects more and just give us some information on why this character/ability is this colour.

I agree - I hope this game allows a lot more "bleeding" than modern-era MTG tends to allow.

But it's still fun to discuss and speculate!

Unknown

eclyspe wrote:

Personally, I feel that assigning specific types of abilities to each colour would be overly restrictive for a relatively simple game like MPQ and I would rather it not happen. Just look at the amount of characters needing red we have just from red being type-casted as an offensive colour and imagine actually cementing it's status. I would prefer the devs getting the freedom to mix up the colours and effects more and just give us some information on why this character/ability is this colour.

Yepp, just like the good Capatin should really be red-blue-WHITE, right? Like for Lazy War Machine.

Unknown

I was promised pie, and yet, i see no pie.

#betrayed