Praise for the new era of character design

Pylgrim

At some point during the previous season, I champed 4* Blade. He, along with Peggy and Medusa quickly became my favourite SHIELD SIM team, being quick, powerful, somewhat resilient, good in defense, and more importantly, fun to play. I found other fun teams with characters like Wasp, Carol, Coulson and even 3* Hawkeye, but I ended playing mostly with that team.

While doing so, I realised how different most of my games were compared to just a season before (when my go-to SIM team was IM40, Peggy, and Jean/Iceman). Rather than focusing on powerful individual activated abilities, my team was successful due to the complex interactions of their passives, aided by a few, also interacting, activated powers. It felt much more puzzle-y, strategic and overall interesting, turn by turn. Whereas I previously raced to collect the AP for a powerful nuke or AoE power every single game, repetitively, I now win games by making smart choices when building my team and making every move count towards a board state. Even Peggy's remarkably powerful activated abilities were used mostly as a finisher/mop up (if I actually managed to collect the AP before the game was quickly over) rather than the main event of the match.

I believe this is a huge improvement over the previous correct strategy that was basically to choose a character with the best AP-damage ratio activated power, accompanied by a character that generated AP in that colour and a third character with activated powers in the missing colours to mop up (or simply, the "essential" 3* in PVP doing almost nothing). This strategy put unduly amounts of power and responsibility in the AP-generating characters, most particularly IM40, which was basically the best character in the game for that reason--or Scarlet Witch, who is objectively a very mediocre character outside of her purple production, and yet, was one of the most used characters in the game.

It is obvious to me that this didn't come by accident but as the fruit of the coordinated, well-thought developer's intention in the last year. This can be seen in the reworks of old characters (e.g. Drax) who have made them more like "modern" characters than simply improved versions of their old selves.

DrDevilDinosaur

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts in the next season now that countdowns don't deal additional damage when they expire.

Magic

Agreed Pylgrim. The new characters are not a simple power creep we could have expected. They are usually unique and very combo-friendly. I am looking forward to trying your go-to team next season when I champ Blade. He sound like good fun. 

I have noticed in Simulator that I now have 2 teams I rock. Peggy-Carol-Medusa and my old go-to group of Iceman-Nova-IM40 and I prefer the ladies. I am happy to add Blade to the group and create a third one (maybe Carol-Punisher-Wasp or something like that). Gives me more variety and makes the events more enjoyable.

Lystrata

@Pylgrim - Good post. I've also noticed that my 'go to' team has been changing and evolving more, as of late. Each new character seems to introduce another thing to take into consideration as you play / create teams (particularly in simulator, where you don't already have 1/3 of the team chosen for you). Coulson in particular is someone that I was less than impressed with initially and regretted champing. Putting him in various combos though finally led me to some interesting scenarios, and he's not so bad now.

Jaedenkaal

Yeah, we're finally getting a piece of this "synergy" thing that Ultron Sentries and Symbiotes have had for well over a year.

Starfury

While I agree that the new characters are in general quite creative, I'm not too thrilled with what I see as an over-reliance on passive skills and special tiles.

The latest 12 characters currently contain three characters, each of which are capable of boosting special tile damage to levels only a lone Professor X could hope to match.

smkspy

I just used Carol, Peggy, and Janet in the Avengers pvp and it was amazing. So different than how I play with Iceman, IM40, and Peggy. Good stuff doing like 5,000 damage on a match three.

DaveR4470

I think in general the focus of design has gone from burst damage being the be-all and end-all to snowballing team damage being the goal -- hence the powerful support or hybrid characters like New Carol, Medusa, Phil, etc.  I also think it's a change for the better. 

Starfury

DaveR4470 said:

I think in general the focus of design has gone from burst damage being the be-all and end-all to snowballing team damage being the goal -- hence the powerful support or hybrid characters like New Carol, Medusa, Phil, etc.  I also think it's a change for the better. 

Isn't that exactly why Venom Bomb is oh so popular?

Pylgrim

Starfury said:

While I agree that the new characters are in general quite creative, I'm not too thrilled with what I see as an over-reliance on passive skills and special tiles.

The latest 12 characters currently contain three characters, each of which are capable of boosting special tile damage to levels only a lone Professor X could hope to match.

I feel like maybe we're overcompensating a bit right now, after two years of characters designed under the old "get X AP, win" philosophy. I imagine that there's not that much design space left for effects triggering from countdowns expiring, for example. In fact, the new R&G seems like an exploratory step towards a newer philosophy.

GuntherBlobel

I totally agree.

And I also think that the passives they've introduced to modify countdown tiles have been brilliant, since CD-based powers have been largely shunned by players in favor of direct damaging powers. I love the newer characters because they use synergy to "buff" aspects of the game that players have traditionally avoided. Another example is how Wasp and Iron Fist make boring protect tiles lethal by turning them into powerful strike tiles.

And there are more powers that players undervalue, such as invisibility and burst healing, that could also be improved with synergy. I want new characters that do something interesting when Agent Venom or Sue Storm turns them invisible. Or, how about a passive that deals damage whenever an active healing ability (like 3* Spiderman's yellow) is fired?

And when direct damage powers finally get boring, why not introduce powers that amplify them? How about a passive power that doubles the damage of any active red power?

It's taken 100+ characters, but MPQ has finally found synergy. I'm excited to see what the future brings.

JackTenrec

GuntherBlobel said:

I totally agree.

And I also think that the passives they've introduced to modify countdown tiles have been brilliant, since CD-based powers have been largely shunned by players in favor of direct damaging powers.

If you have the choice between a countdown versus a direct power, all other things being roughly equal in terms of effect and AP cost, the direct power is almost always superior, since the countdown always runs the risk of being matched/destroyed/negated (e.g. Falcon Redwing).  Adding passive effects to countdown powers is a helpful offset to the risk of that power being fired but never taking effect.  

It's a good sign that a lot of recent characters appear in different permutations in the "Your new favorite team" thread (especially Carol/Wasp/Medusa), since it shows that some of these characters produce synergies across a large section of any roster.

atomzed

GuntherBlobel said:

And there are more powers that players undervalue, such as invisibility and burst healing, that could also be improved with synergy. I want new characters that do something interesting when Agent Venom or Sue Storm turns them invisible. Or, how about a passive that deals damage whenever an active healing ability (like 3* Spiderman's yellow) is fired?

We have 1 5* character that does something when invisible. BP red passive. like you, i like to see more of such abilities that makes defensives skills shine. 

A passive that interacts with Burst healing sounds interesting. how about something that goes "whenever your team has a burst in healing, opposing team takes equivalent dmg". that would make ALL burst healing dangerous. 

mpqr7

I'm really enjoying the teams that create massive amounts of CDs that all interact together well, such as Coulson/SL/Drax... and more!

Pylgrim

GuntherBlobel said:

I totally agree.

And I also think that the passives they've introduced to modify countdown tiles have been brilliant, since CD-based powers have been largely shunned by players in favor of direct damaging powers. I love the newer characters because they use synergy to "buff" aspects of the game that players have traditionally avoided. Another example is how Wasp and Iron Fist make boring protect tiles lethal by turning them into powerful strike tiles.

And there are more powers that players undervalue, such as invisibility and burst healing, that could also be improved with synergy. I want new characters that do something interesting when Agent Venom or Sue Storm turns them invisible. Or, how about a passive that deals damage whenever an active healing ability (like 3* Spiderman's yellow) is fired?

And when direct damage powers finally get boring, why not introduce powers that amplify them? How about a passive power that doubles the damage of any active red power?

It's taken 100+ characters, but MPQ has finally found synergy. I'm excited to see what the future brings.

Invisibility and stun are indeed two areas where they can start working out synergy as well. I am also intrigued by the possibilities hinted at by 4* Grocket, with powers that give you an immediate advantage in exchange for being nonfunctional through the match.

Jarvind

I'm super into the newer character designs as well, so long as older ones continue to get updates to bring them up to speed. The power creep has really kicked into overdrive - if new Rocket & Groot had been out back when Jean Grey and X-Pool were getting released, they'd dominate so hysterically hard that a nerf would be all but guaranteed. Even Hulkbuster, once regarded as the end-all, be-all of smackdown, is looking kind of mediocre these days. If he didn't make monster strikes he'd just be a red battery with lots of health.

Orion

I took a 3-cover R&G at min level (boosted), a champed but unboosted Star Lord and a champed, boosted Carol and beat the level 412 Bullseye/Muscle/Lieutenant node.  The same node that my champed OML/Thanos team wiped twice on.

Carol is stupidly powerful.

Crowl

Orion said:

I took a 3-cover R&G at min level (boosted), a champed but unboosted Star Lord and a champed, boosted Carol and beat the level 412 Bullseye/Muscle/Lieutenant node.  The same node that my champed OML/Thanos team wiped twice on.

Carol is stupidly powerful.

It is not that she is stupidly powerful, the strength of that team is in their synergy and on them being a far better matchup than your previous team.

Jaedenkaal

And besides, most 4*s seem ridiculous when boosted.

wingX

It seem like there are a lot of new characters that focus on countdowns like something happen when countdown ends, something that depend on number of countdown etc. However, it seem nobody mention Sentry in any of the combo yet, with the amount of countdowns create by Sentry's green, he can have combo with Coulson, Starloard, Drax, Carol, etc. With one of the Countdown friendly character and a character who accelerate green, maybe he can see some used again?

Pylgrim

wingX said:

It seem like there are a lot of new characters that focus on countdowns like something happen when countdown ends, something that depend on number of countdown etc. However, it seem nobody mention Sentry in any of the combo yet, with the amount of countdowns create by Sentry's green, he can have combo with Coulson, Starloard, Drax, Carol, etc. With one of the Countdown friendly character and a character who accelerate green, maybe he can see some used again?

The thing is that you need 1) Sentry, a 3* character that brings very little to the team besides his green and self-damage, 2) a character that accelerates green because his power is way too expensive and 3) one character that takes advantage of those countdowns. Why bother when you could use three 4*s, one of which puts down countdown tiles (Coulson, Antman, etc.) and TWO characters that benefit from countdowns expiring?