*** Magneto (Classic) ***

NorthernPolarity

PorkBelly wrote:

I feel we're probably just going to ultimately disagree but a few more points.

You state that the strength & unfairness of the C Mags is that he creates multiple attacks per turn. I'm not sure why this is not seen as a legitimate mechanic to be exploited within the game. We already have characters like the Hood who have powers that prematurely end your turn. I'd love to see a Kang time traveler character that explicitly uses this mechanic as a power.

it's the efficiency at which he does it is the problem. You can have an ability that says "take an extra turn" and it'd be perfectly fine if it didn't cost 0 or 1 blue AP like C. Mags and Spidey (Spidey is 5 turns for generally 4 blue AP).

PorkBelly wrote:

In addition, I'm all for the developers giving us multiple ways to solve the same problem with characters like Falcon. It definitely improves variety in gameplay.

Right, it's a good thing to have.

PorkBelly wrote:

Another point I would make is that this is a superhero game. It should expressly make you feel powerful once you go through the significant time, luck, & play to acquire one of the rare 3* characters. I like feeling powerful whether it's with Lazy Thor's Call the Storm or BP's Rage of the Panther, or Patch's Best There Is. Both C. Mags & Spidey are rare characters. Any cover for these characters is a 0.9% chance from a heroic token! And you need 13 of them! That's opening roughly 1300 tokens to fully cover C Mags! Until very recently, getting into the top 50 in PvP was a tricky prospect for me. Understanding the meta helps a lot but I feel like top players end up with a skewed perspective regarding the difficulty it takes to max these characters without dropping massive coin. So when I get a rare character maxed, I feel like he should dramatically change my gameplay experience.

Characters don't have to be overpowered in order to dramatically change your gameplay experience. You said so yourself: characters like Black Panther do this without being completely overpowered. You can change Spidey/C. Mags in such a way that retains this feel while making it so that the characters aren't overpowered.

Unknown

@pork: cable.

@northern:
1. *skip*

2.if you are grinding out nodes, THAT is the problem. A knife isn't a problem. An idiot with a knife is. Most players are not high lvl. Ppl in the 1-2** range make up the majority of the games 100k+ population. Those ppl are not using either character and those ppl are creating the huge community scaling bumps, which is about the only reason my nodes tend to start around 50-70 and end at around 150....as I am the antithesis of a grinder. Mags doesn't heal anyway, and hat is the biggest culprit if there is a "receive damage" issue. Otherwise magneto is effectively the same thing as l.thor/bp/patch in that you are doing high damage:turn ratios. For every match I have an amazing blue board that let's me 1 turn an enemy with blue there is a board where I use the blue maybe 3-4 times total and if effectively only functioned to gain me 3-4 green for thor's cots. Just like sometimes you get a nice green and yellow board with thor or a heavy black board for bp or a red green one with patches.

3. I wasn't really meaning to ONLY do this. More like, until a mag nerf occurs, these are good options that would benefit the game in the meantime..and still be an interesting mechanic.regardless. also, bandages cover wounds. If its a scrap that might be all you need to fix it until further developments unreleated to the occurrence fix the problem (ex: having the next 3-4 characters being insanely strong like thir and thusly mag is just the norm instead of an outlier). At the very least its a good.idea to cover a wound go disallow further infection as best you can until a more proper response is available.

4. So we agree then. The other ideas in there are more of "well, I guess they can do this if the option are horrible change or this" my preferred change is just simply moving blue to 6....I am bias though. Unbias, 7 might be a bit closer to balanced. Each ap makes a pretty huge shift in how good it is though, given the nature of the move. 10 ap @5 let's you go infinite and even literally set up 5 matches out of nowhere. 5 5 matches later you are still @10. 10 ap @6 let's you make 3 5 matches before you ap is too low. @7 10 only let's you do 2 5 matches and leaves you basically drained of blue.

Also, pork has a point that I have mentioned before. More personal things like feeling powerful or having fun really should be part of balancing a game. This isn't a tournement with money being won, this is a game where ppl are buying thier fav marvel characters to have fun competing for fun against eachother to earn more of thier favorite marvel characters. Aiming for "fun" needs to be one of the goals of the game. Mag's blue is fun and powerful...so is his purple. His red is not. Both have mechanics that make you think, and whenever you have to think to accomplish something, your enjoyment increases as you feel you had an affect on the outcome. Despite the hate, daredevil is kinda fun to use. He makes you play differently AMD that is interesting. He just...isn't very good as the boring "do huge damage" moves totally outclass his more conniving traps. Bp I find boring. He is massively powerful, but there is little thought there. L.thor is massively powerful, but at least there is a mechanic of building red to make yellow and yellow to make green that gives players a feeling of accomplishment. I feel that is good design. So characters need to be strong enough to warrant use, or they are ignored, and interesting enough to feel like you are actually part of why your team won the match. Mags accomplishes the combination of both better than any other character in the game imo. I want more interesting moves like fury's or magneto's and less (COD, t is silent)call of the derp style moves. d rather a little imbalance, but have fun, than have everyone play like 1* ironman. I think that needs to be taken into account too.

NorthernPolarity

soenottelling wrote:

2.if you are grinding out nodes, THAT is the problem. A knife isn't a problem. An idiot with a knife is. Most players are not high lvl. Ppl in the 1-2** range make up the majority of the games 100k+ population. Those ppl are not using either character and those ppl are creating the huge community scaling bumps, which is about the only reason my nodes tend to start around 50-70 and end at around 150....as I am the antithesis of a grinder. Mags doesn't heal anyway, and hat is the biggest culprit if there is a "receive damage" issue. Otherwise magneto is effectively the same thing as l.thor/bp/patch in that you are doing high damage:turn ratios. For every match I have an amazing blue board that let's me 1 turn an enemy with blue there is a board where I use the blue maybe 3-4 times total and if effectively only functioned to gain me 3-4 green for thor's cots. Just like sometimes you get a nice green and yellow board with thor or a heavy black board for bp or a red green one with patches.

Over half of the games I get in desert/jungle go something like this: make 2 blue matches to get 6 blue AP. Find a blue match-5 crit such that I can make an match-3 env crit. Make the crit match. Either get 5 AP of all colors, or 2 desert activations, at which point that leads to either more env crit matches or just ending the game with all of this ap. I wouldn't call that the same thing as LT/BP, of which I've found that they take significantly more turns to do the same thing, especially if you're against enemies that don't just get one shotted by rage/call.

soenottelling wrote:

3. I wasn't really meaning to ONLY do this. More like, until a mag nerf occurs, these are good options that would benefit the game in the meantime..and still be an interesting mechanic.regardless. also, bandages cover wounds. If its a scrap that might be all you need to fix it until further developments unreleated to the occurrence fix the problem (ex: having the next 3-4 characters being insanely strong like thir and thusly mag is just the norm instead of an outlier). At the very least its a good.idea to cover a wound go disallow further infection as best you can until a more proper response is available.

My bad, I thought you meant creating a completely new character that players could use to hardcounter C. Mags/Spidey, in which case I thought that development effort might as well been going to just fixing C. Mags/Spidey in the first place. Adding a goon would be reasonable since that takes far less effort.

soenottelling wrote:

Also, pork has a point that I have mentioned before. More personal things like feeling powerful or having fun really should be part of balancing a game. This isn't a tournement with money being won, this is a game where ppl are buying thier fav marvel characters to have fun competing for fun against eachother to earn more of thier favorite marvel characters. Aiming for "fun" needs to be one of the goals of the game. Mag's blue is fun and powerful...so is his purple. His red is not. Both have mechanics that make you think, and whenever you have to think to accomplish something, your enjoyment increases as you feel you had an affect on the outcome. Despite the hate, daredevil is kinda fun to use. He makes you play differently AMD that is interesting. He just...isn't very good as the boring "do huge damage" moves totally outclass his more conniving traps. Bp I find boring. He is massively powerful, but there is little thought there. L.thor is massively powerful, but at least there is a mechanic of building red to make yellow and yellow to make green that gives players a feeling of accomplishment. I feel that is good design. So characters need to be strong enough to warrant use, or they are ignored, and interesting enough to feel like you are actually part of why your team won the match. Mags accomplishes the combination of both better than any other character in the game imo. I want more interesting moves like fury's or magneto's and less (COD, t is silent)call of the derp style moves. d rather a little imbalance, but have fun, than have everyone play like 1* ironman. I think that needs to be taken into account too.

Yeah, C. Mags blue is definitely the funnest ability in the game for me. It doesn't meant that the character can't be balanced in such a way as to retain the same feels though. Characters don't need to be doing broken things in order to feel powerful.

over_clocked

Mags' 5 blue... wins you matches you have no hope of winning otherwise. Spidey relies on a source of blue too but he doesn't have tools to replenish blue. That's why many people pair him with MMN, even if their Spidey has high leveled blue.

I utterly enjoy 5 blue and while I understand it's probably too OP, I will miss it because it's the most fun ability for me. No boosting required, just some board trickery to no end, mind you, original PQ allowed all kinds of shenanigans with the board too, but most spells had a cooldown period which totally made things balanced. <--- no sarcasm here.

Proof:
against lvl 358 baddies in the Simulator (cStorm, the Hulk and Daken). No boosts. cStorm has to be downed first as usual.





Now note the amount of health I lost while nuking Daken and whittling down the Hulk. That's right, a lot of blue shenanigans behind the scene. 2 red AP move helps too.

Unknown

I very rarely believe that a nerf is the best way to go about balance especially when its a fun character. Even more so when you are talking about free to play when the dev economy revolves around players spending money on specific characters. People get burned out on spending money only for a nerf to happen later. The real reality is that most characters in this game need small buffs to balance it out. More buffs mean more players spending money on covers or iso to bring those characters up too.

Magneto doesnt need a nerf. If he receives one it should be a tiny one that changes the amount of matches in a row he can make. Maybe more of a framework cap in the actual game itself for all characters. Diminishing returns so to speak. Maybe after 2 matches or spells cast the 3rd starts to do less damage and so on. It shouldn't be mana based as that changes his structure completely. A diminishing return change also future proofs other characters from similar turn taking. Magneto is fun because he can control the board and do damage matching. Plesase dont change that.

IMO buff the characters people arent using. Marvel Heroes the "Diablo clone" is doing a great job of this currently. They are constantly revisiting characters to make sure all characters have similar times in clearing content and if they dont its balanced by a different trait like defense. The power creep is very easy to manage in a simple puzzle game as well. If you look at any long lasting community its often buffs in games that continue to a strong player base. Games that have stood the test of time like WoW or even street fighter 4 have been about more buffs. Games like Diablo 3 lost a massive part of the player base early when they handed out nothing but nerfs. They never recovered from that, and while many people play D3 with the new expansion and loot its only because some players came back after the recent buffs.

Phaserhawk

So after seeing spidey I think it's safe to say we know what's gonna happen to C.Mags. First off his Red is more than likely going to cost 5AP. Assuming this, I hope that they do 1 of a few things. Increase the damage, allow it to net you AP, blow up more tiles. Honesetly if this did what it did but you got 5 random AP from the destruction I would be happy.

Purple, probably gonna stay the same, might get a dmg buff who knows, but I think this stays as is, if anything, they may tweak the number of matches needed per lvl like lvl 5 so it does same amount of dmg with less matches.

Blue, ah yes, this is what will make or break C.Mags as we know it. You can easily balance red and purple, blue not so much. Blue is going to go 1 of 2 ways, it's either going to stay as is but at a higher cost and probably more defense on the tiles, or it's going to stay at cost and limit what it can do. I personally hope they leave blue at 5, increase the protect tile def just a little, but not allow it to overwrite any tile. Here's classic Hawkeye

Take Aim - Purple 8 AP
Hawkeye prepares to place the perfect shot, turning a selected Purple tile into a Critical tile.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Also transforms basic Red tiles.
Level 3: Also transforms basic Yellow tiles.
Level 4: Also transforms basic Blue and Green tiles.
Level 5: Also transforms basic Black and Protect tiles.

Here' what I think Mags Blue becomes

Magnetic Field - Blue 5 AP
Magneto summons an electromagnetic shield, turning 2 chosen purple tiles into Blue Protect tiles, each with a strength of 9.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Also transforms basic Red tiles.
Level 3: Also transforms basic Yellow tiles.
Level 4: Also transforms basic Blue and Green tiles.
Level 5: Also transforms basic Black and Protect tiles.
Max Level: Damage reduced by 59 per Protect tile

Now you could make Lvl 5 say strike instead of protect, or the like, but this severely limits C.Mags in what he can do and really cuts off the forever turn if he can't overwrite everything. This also preserves power in other characters like Captain America who pays 12 to overwrite everything. We don't need another 12 cost blue to overwrite everything, which is why C.Mags should retain his unique blue but can only overwrite somethings, thus limiting the power, still allowing for cascades, but not forever.

Spoit

The problem people have is the cascades, not the ability to overwrite as much. I expect a AP increase. And not a reasoanble one. Maybe 9, making Mn Mag's purple way better

Phaserhawk

Spoit wrote:

The problem people have is the cascades, not the ability to overwrite as much. I expect a AP increase. And not a reasoanble one. Maybe 9, making Mn Mag's purple way better

agreed, but if you limit what he can overwrite, you limit his ability to cascade

PorkBelly

I think nerfing his red is fine in terms of upping the AP to what it is around level 3 but the blue change you propose is a Spidey/Rags level nerf.

It would be fine to restrict up to level 5 in the way you propose but restricting that much at max would make him useless especially compared to his 2* counterpart.

Phaserhawk

PorkBelly wrote:

I think nerfing his red is fine in terms of upping the AP to what it is around level 3 but the blue change you propose is a Spidey/Rags level nerf.

It would be fine to restrict up to level 5 in the way you propose but restricting that much at max would make him useless especially compared to his 2* counterpart.

That's exactly what his 2* counterpart does, he can only touch colored basic tiles, i don't remember M.Mags being able to overwrite tiles, if he does my aplogizes. My hope is that they keep Magneto's blue cheap, but reign in it's power in terms of what it can do rather than let it do what it does and jack the cost up. If they make C.Mags blue cost 12 it's Captain America's blue, so I say make it cost 5 but not overwrite everyting, just overwrite somethings. They key is that it would still allow some chains, but not infinite, it would also perhaps encourage people to use the defensive portion.

Unknown

I've enjoyed 3* Magneto so much and worked hard to get him to where he is (5blue/5red/1purple). They're going to cripple him so bad when he gets nerfed.

PorkBelly

Phaserhawk wrote:

PorkBelly wrote:

I think nerfing his red is fine in terms of upping the AP to what it is around level 3 but the blue change you propose is a Spidey/Rags level nerf.

It would be fine to restrict up to level 5 in the way you propose but restricting that much at max would make him useless especially compared to his 2* counterpart.

That's exactly what his 2* counterpart does, he can only touch colored basic tiles, i don't remember M.Mags being able to overwrite tiles, if he does my aplogizes. My hope is that they keep Magneto's blue cheap, but reign in it's power in terms of what it can do rather than let it do what it does and jack the cost up. If they make C.Mags blue cost 12 it's Captain America's blue, so I say make it cost 5 but not overwrite everyting, just overwrite somethings. They key is that it would still allow some chains, but not infinite, it would also perhaps encourage people to use the defensive portion.

If they restricted overwriting enemy cd & strike tiles, I'd be ok with it.

But environmentals & all friendly tiles should still be fair at level 5.

Unknown

Cmag actually has a really fine line between OP and complete garbage.

I hope they balance him properly unlike the spidey nerf because tons of people love cmag and he could be broken very easily with a rush fix

Unknown

LoreNYC wrote:

Cmag actually has a really fine line between OP and complete garbage.

I hope they balance him properly unlike the spidey nerf because tons of people love cmag and he could be broken very easily with a rush fix

Hope dies last... looking at what they done to spiderman and even explained it as a sensible thing I'm sure MAgs gets the very same treatment and see no play afterwards.

Unknown

Hope died with the heavy-handed Rag nerf. Looks like DDD was right =X

Phaserhawk

pasa_ wrote:

LoreNYC wrote:

Cmag actually has a really fine line between OP and complete garbage.

I hope they balance him properly unlike the spidey nerf because tons of people love cmag and he could be broken very easily with a rush fix

Hope dies last... looking at what they done to spiderman and even explained it as a sensible thing I'm sure MAgs gets the very same treatment and see no play afterwards.

I have hope for C.Mags. The whole problem with Spidey is the web-tile thematic. They tried to keep that and you got what he is, if they allowed a random creation of a web-tile with say match yellow or purple in addition to what they do, then spidey wouldn't be bad, I mean 5 AP for a 3 turn stun is awesome, except it has a web-tile factor, that's what sucks. I have some faith they still tweak him, but this is about C.Mags so here is my analysis.

Magnetic Translocation 10AP: I think we can all agree this skill is fine where it's at, depending on how bad they nerf red and blue it actually may be a little underpowered. I think 13 matches is a little much, I would rather see the skill drop the number of matches done per lvl but also increase the dmg per match, that way you could go full in lvl 5 and get all the dmg instead of maybe 3/4 anyway, this skill is okay.

Magnetized Projectile 2-6AP: I think we can all agree as well this skill is going to be a minimum of 5 AP, I"m even thinking 6 AP. So knowing they are going to do this, what could we hope the skill does in addition since we are adding cost. I'm hoping they either A. Allow it to net you AP, similiar to HT's red, B. It does more extra damage C. All of the above. I would love 6AP destroy 5 random tiles, does 400 extra damage, generates AP. This I could live with.

Magnetic Field: This is the problematic skill. how do you tackle this one, it's self sustaining, it's cheap, it's not what is wanted. So how do you reign in the power. I have suggested earlier they leave it at 5 but limit it's ability to overwrite non basic or enviro tiles. I honestly believe this would work, alas I look at the skill itself and what they wanted it to do, and what it was meant to be was a tile overwrite skill that also created defense, just like Captain's Peacemaker. So if that is what they want, then they can easily fix this skill by just adjusting the color the tiles create. If this skill did nothing else but doing what it does except it makes purple defense or red defense tiles instead of blue, then you get exactly what D3 wanted in the character, you can't self sustain. However, I beleive all skills should tie into each other, so my suggestion is to all this skill to cost 5-6 AP and create 2 defensive tiles that can overwrite anything, but one blue tile and one red tile, thus helping you create matches for purple. This would keep you from creating infinite turns, yet you could still make matches. I think this would still retain his flavor, while at the same time making him feel the same, but lessen his power. I hope his nerfs are like this, I would still be able to play him although would probably respec him to 3/5/5 or 4/4/5 depending on how they break him down.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Magnetized Projectile 2-6AP: I think we can all agree as well this skill is going to be a minimum of 5 AP, I"m even thinking 6 AP. So knowing they are going to do this, what could we hope the skill does in addition since we are adding cost. I'm hoping they either A. Allow it to net you AP, similiar to HT's red, B. It does more extra damage C. All of the above. I would love 6AP destroy 5 random tiles, does 400 extra damage, generates AP. This I could live with.

LOL, I would love that one too. Therefore it has no chance happening.

Unknown

Assuming the abilities aren't redesigned, keeping them similar to their current incarnation you'd probably have:

Magnetized Particle 5R - destroys 5 random tiles + 500 damage, does not generate AP.
Magnetic Field 5B - Converts 2 random blue tiles to protect tiles

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Magnetized Projectile 2-6AP: I think we can all agree as well this skill is going to be a minimum of 5 AP, I"m even thinking 6 AP. So knowing they are going to do this, what could we hope the skill does in addition since we are adding cost. I'm hoping they either A. Allow it to net you AP, similiar to HT's red, B. It does more extra damage C. All of the above. I would love 6AP destroy 5 random tiles, does 400 extra damage, generates AP. This I could live with.

Haha, of course you would love it. 1 AP for direct damage and cascade potential? You're taking an incredibly good move and making it even more overpowered, just in a different way.

I'm thinking "fair" would be:

Magnetic Field: 5 blue, can place only on basic tiles
Mag Projectile: Destroys a couple more tiles as it levels up, costs 5 AP
Purple: Same as it is now

Of course, I expect we'll get:

Magnetic Field: 5 blue, places ONE protect tile on a random blue basic tile
Mag Projectile: Same as it is now, costs 6 AP
Purple: Costs 12, only does swaps, no damage

Phaserhawk

Phantron wrote:

Assuming the abilities aren't redesigned, keeping them similar to their current incarnation you'd probably have:

Magnetized Particle 5R - destroys 5 random tiles + 500 damage, does not generate AP.
Magnetic Field 5B - Converts 2 random blue tiles to protect tiles

I could live with Magnetized Particle that way, Magnetic Field, ugh.....I do like my idea of it making one blue and one red thus negating the infinite turn. I do think though it's the combination of the 2 thats the problem and not necessarily the skills unto themselves. If they did what you propose for MP, and then wait to see how that plays out before touch MF I think that is the smarter way to go. Because if you Make MP cost 5, you can't abuse the Patch/C.Mags strike tile combo. Yes you still have MF, but eventually you run out of blue, however this can take awhile. If they do what you say to MF then they better have it be massive in protect tile strength, like base strength 150 or something