Anyone Else Joining the Nerf Thanos Movement?

Kevmcg

Full disclosure - I have had a champed Thanos for over a month and initially loved the quicker PVP hops and speedy PVE grinds.  Now that the shine has worn off, I find MPQ increasingly boring. To be competitive, everyone is increasingly locked into using their best 2 toons. For me, that is Thanos and Phoenix.  For many, many others, it is Thanos and Black Panther - a great combo.   Maybe, too good a combo.  

PVP:
We just had a lot of discussion about the OML nerf because of 10% of play including him.  This season you would have to skip and skip to find the 10% of matches WITHOUT Thanos.

PVE:
4 of 9 nodes or 28 of 63 daily grind matches can now be beaten in one move. The other 35 are simply finding the lowest health goon and starting the Thanos Court Death chain reaction. Lightning Rounds can consist of 4-5 minutes with 8-10 one-match battles to get to 200+ points. Mindless activity, one step removed from the Auto-play button in many games.

This is not new to anyone with Thanos. Any player can play with any characters, so this is self-imposed. But, if others are using the fastest toons, options get limited fast to also compete and progress your roster (which is one main reason the collector in me plays).

My concern is that as you progress further in MPQ, Thanos causes the game to lose its complexity and challenge.

So what can MPQ do about it:

1) Nerf Thanos - too strong compared to the other 5 stars. The game needs variety and balance.
It was more fun when I was in 3-4 star land and I looked forward to see what was boosted for the week. All kinds of different combos were used to climb in PVP and PVE took some thought on how to survive on 10 health packs, sometimes with lesser teams. 

2) Eliminator Mode - a play mode that rewards our 100+ rosters.
A game mode where you need to survive unlimited waves, or work though a node chain, BUT - you can only use a given character on one node or wave. Use Thanos early and he is then locked out for the rest of the chain. Add some planning and strategy back into completing a set of challenges using a wide variety of characters.

3 More ACTIVE Powers - the character design is moving to passive powers that cause auto-damage. Thanos Black, Black Panther Red, Doctor Strange Yellow.   I much prefer characters like Cyclops, Iceman, and Kate Bishop (3 actives) where you need to think about ACTIVELY using the powers with the AP you generate in the best way to optimize your match. 5 Stars should require even more precision and planning to execute their awesome effects.

I've played this game a lot over the last 2 years.  I like a lot of what has been added. The current Thanos is not healthy for the life of the game. You joining the Nerf Thanos Movement?

jgomes32

This just makes me kind of relieved, maybe even happy to still be in 4* land (about to champ #28, Coulson). There's so little diversity in 5* land. Not to mention you need to champ two together (and two good ones) or you'll regret joining the big league. It's a flawed design in every possible way (RNG and the dilution, ISO cost, lack of variety as you'll be stuck using the character in everything, etc). It's hard to get there and once you do it's worse...To a lesser extent same happens for 4* too i guess (everyone running Jean+Cage last week), but at least there's weekly buffs. From where i am 5* looks like a boring place to be.

IlDuderino

From a personal perspective, due to RNG and hoarding, Thanos and OML are two of my highest covered 5*s and I am going to be very p****d if they both end up nerfed. At a minimum he should be made as good in a different way. 

snlf25

No. #Nevernerfer.

Vhailorx

The problem is not thanos, just like the problem wasn't OML.  The problem is availability.  It's incredibly hard to build a single 5*, most players will never even get 1 to 450.  

Playing the same teams over and over just reminds everyone that 50+ match3 game matches a day is boring.  So of course it sucks being stuck using your best 2 characters all the time.  That is true in the 3* tier and the 5* tier.  But 5* acquisition is totally different from any other tier.  The game is designed so that getting the first few 3*s or 4*s makes it way easier to get more.  But 5* is all rng, and a 4* roster can get just as much cp as a 5* roster.

Thanos is fast and strong, but it's not as if every pve and pvp leaderboard is full of thanos and nothing else.  Other characters are still competitive.  All demi needs to do is jeep introducing good new 5*s and make the 5* transition less awful.

Also, please stop parroting the 10% explanation for OML's nerf.  That wasnt a threshold or some new golden rule of mpq, it was just a talking point thrown out by demi so they could say something to explain what they knew would be a controversial change.  And given that it was totally out of context, it's a meaningless stat anyway.  

vinnygecko

As someone who's mostly a 4* player, (and semi casual at that),  I'm fine with Thanos as he is. Selfishly he's the only 5* I have fully covered, but I'm not going to be bringing him past 315 anytime soon. 

I use him a lot in PVE when I'm scrambling to get progression, or when I'm just getting bored and want to end the grind as soon as possible. I also have no fear of going against him in PVP because I'm only going against him at lower levels/covers. Since I've recently champed a bunch of the newer top tier 4*s, I'm still having fun trying out different combos of them on him and other scarecrows, especially when they are buffed. 

So I'm not on the nerfwagon yet. I really don't think OML should have been nerfed either. Most of the newer characters have been designed really well - to the point that they have good counters to the existing top tier (or more interesting/fun powers). I wish the devs had more confidence in much of the newer characters in their ability to affect the meta. If they keep things interesting, there's no need to nerf anyone.  

Finally, I know the star-level is supposed to be based on rarity and not power, but if anyone made sense to be slightly OP, it would be Thanos. 
#endrant#

jamesh

If you sell all of your 5* characters, you should see more diversity in PVP enemy teams.

IlDuderino

jgomes32 said:

Not to mention you need to champ two together (and two good ones) or you'll regret joining the big league.

And it also appears you shouldn't champ anyone too popular / good as they will be nerfed making you regret joining the big league / regret having spent money to join the big league

Spidurman27

And due to horrific token draws my thanos is sitting at a nice solid 0-2-2.  I could probably focus and get into 5* tier in a few months if I wanted to, but I don't think I do - I'm missing literally too big a weapon.  

I went into 4* land and competitive PVP without Peggy or Icy when they dominated the landscape and got a good extended taste how bad a new tier can be without the elite chars.  I'm not eager to repeat that.

Uthgarprime

Please, the 10% is the biggest lie of an excuse ever.  Thanos was used more before OML's nerf. Thanos won't be nerfed cause you have to use health packs when you use him.  He is the perfect character for this company.  He makes you spend money for health packs. 

sinnerjfl

He could use a little less health...  Its kinda ridiculous how tanky he is.

carrion_pigeons

The 10% stat was about PvE.  If it had been about PvP, then OML would have been banned a year ago when he was literally in 90% of PvP matches up and down the tiers.  I don't know why everyone's mind jumps to PvP whenever they hear that stat, but it was *obviously* about PvE.  Thanos will never hit that level of ubiquity just because the 5* tier has thinned out too much for lower tier players to get a meaningful number of covers.  The fact that actual 5* players see a ton of him is irrelevant.

The argument that Thanos is boring is a better one.  Court Death is fun to do in theory, but the fact that it's so easy to use for grinding means it kinda takes over the game.  It isn't that CD isn't fun, but that it comes up too easily and too often.  Maybe if they made it so CD only triggered if you "overkilled" a target by 2000 HP or something, so that you actually had to use a different ability to trigger it instead of just match damage.  That wouldn't hurt him much in PvP, but it would be a significant nerf in PvE, which is where the boring grinding problem is really an issue.

turbomoose

I wouldn't know I don't have any champed five star characters though I'd say that being overpowered is right for the character as he is supposed to be powerful, 

FokaiHI

I'm not in 5* land, but having an 11 cover Thanos at 360 makes the pve go buy a little better. So for those of at 4* and lower, it's not really a problem. The problem is probably that there aren't enough players in 5* land. 

tbighead21

Easy fix - sell your Thanos or stop shield checking and eating pvp cupcakes. 

slidecage

how about instead of  nerf them   just ban them from pvp

mpqr7

Thanos isn't that hard to defeat. Given that it takes the average person either over a year or else a lot of money to champion a 5*, it's a huge kick in the teeth when that 5* gets nerfed.

I don't personally have a championed Thanos, but I'm sure I will within a few years.

Bowgentle

Don't worry, he'll get nerfed after CL based scaling is implemented.

Wumpushunter

#never nerfs

why not ask for buffs to bring other characters up to thanos level?

Spoit

I admit that I'm not in 5* land, so I really can't comment on the PvP side. But I agree with Bow, the problem is really going to be on the pve side, especially if (when) they implement the fixed scaling.

Even if having champed 5*s in general will make CL7 and below fairly trivial in general, even other 5* rosters who would be able to take the other enemies down with a single power won't be able to compete with the sheer speed (IIRC it was like 20 minute 4-clears?) that a champed Thanos could give. And even ignoring the speed, and thus competitive, advantage, the more important part is that using Thanos would make the burnout significantly less of a stress. Which is the real thing you fight in this game.

And given the way bonus heroes work, if you didn't get thanos champed already? You pretty much never will, so good luck actually trying to catch back up.

Starfury

To be honest, the problem isn't with Thanos, it's requiring us to play all those trivial matches.

SCL based scaling made that even more obvious, with the easy nodes turning into 18 daily lightning round seeds.

If you actually make us fight a battle, make it matter.

And if you just want to give us free resouces, do it in a way that doesn't consist of 30 seconds of gameplay and 10 minutes of waiting for the interface.