Passives are ruining the game

irwando
irwando Posts: 263 Mover and Shaker
in MPQ General Discussion
Remember when you actually had to match tiles to charge powers?  Gee, those were nice days.

The explosion of passives is just ruining this game.  Gone are any need to plan out moves so you can charge up your powers.  Gone are preventing your opponent from getting the ISO you need.  Nah, just throw down the right combo of passive powers and just wait.  Let's see:

Medusa + Carnage / R&G / any special tile generator - Well, you're going to take a ton of damage.  Your only real choice is to bring your own Medusa and hope you match more tiles than they do leading to incredible long matches.  Medusa / R&G / Yondu in this PVP?  Well, let's just keep generating cheap strike tiles and draw out hte match forever.

5* Hawkeye & Coulson - Just broken.  Self fueling cheap powers?  Wow.

4* Carol - Has actually caused me to kill my team multiple times as accidental cascades cause matches I don't want.  That's really fun, killing yourself because of the random tiles that fell. 

And we know what will happen. Either a) major nerf hammer for these character that are now being used all the time (Medusa/Carol) or b) even more of these passives leading to even longer, more frustrating matches.

I'd ask if you actually tested these things and though they were fun, but we all know how much testing actually goes into this thing.


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Comments

  • irwando
    irwando Posts: 263 Mover and Shaker
    Wumpushunter said:
    I respectfully disagree. I would not have made it from two star to three star without Doctor Strange's Flames of of the Faltine. One of the best passives in the game. You seem to have just burned out in PVP.

    Yet many, many, many people did so.  It just happens to be the path you took.   
  • AlexxKats
    AlexxKats Posts: 99 Match Maker
    You can really beat all of them relatively easy. 3* and 4* tier is really packed with good synergies (5* has a couple, but it's still 'early' due to limited 5* popuation). So work on your teams and ready some counters.
    Taking massive damage from round 1? Use thing or either of luge cage. or some healers.
    Enemy turns invisible? Use some aoe or board destruction.
    enemy gets free ap from stealing? counter with a stealer as well.
    Enemy turns the board ap to his color often? counter with an ap color changer.
    Enemy has no aoe but huge damage? use invisibility.

    Join a pvp early. try different combinations, have fun with them. Not all games can be beaten (be it standard bad luck or a critical timed bad move), but if you've build your roster, all fights you can queue can (and shall) be beaten.

    try some out of the box thinking. Use those "horrible" rated characters, make them work. Use your ap/damage boosts when you think that fight is hard, you will get more of them.

    Ask your alliance for technical team ups than can be better used when "X" character is in your team. Talk with other gamers and never be afraid to ask for advice on how to counter some team.

    Some teams are (ridiculously) tough though, no matter how well set your team is to counter them (carol/hawkeye/coulson comes into my head). Either skip them, or keep challenging yourself. Make the game into the puzzle game that it is supposed to beat.

    Want some extra practice? try the original puzzle quests with their super unique mission types (which are story driven, hence limited in time that you can spend there).
  • Blergh
    Blergh Posts: 159 Tile Toppler
    Skrofa said:
    Passives are part of the game. 
    You always had them in all the tiers.
    2* storm hurts you when you hurt her or an ally.
    3*
    Loki. Don't make a match 4
    Hood. Uhm... Don't have AP
    QuickSilver. Don't make 4 blue matches.
    4* prof x. Don't let him make a match 5
    Teen jean. Don't you make a match 5

    I am sure there are plenty more old characters with annoying passives.
    I think your issue is that the new ones have synergy as well.

    Well, finding that synergy to create a broken combo is also part of the fun for many people and also finding the answer to these broken combos is another part of the fun.

    When I used to play mtg there would always be dominant decks or variations of them in tournaments. But 90% of the time, a guy would show up with a deck to beat those and find himself in t10-20. It's part of the fun
    There has been a major power creep with the passives.

    All of the passive you have listed had a dedicated colour and there is no active power attached to them. Compare that to the likes of Vulture, and Coulson - both of which have three active powers, with three passive attached. You could argue that they have six colour covers, not three. Although, from what I've seen of them, they seem pretty balanced.

    And it's the same with a lot of the more recent releases - passives are being attached to active powers - Mockingbird, Carol, Gamora, even Hawkguy has one. It can feel like they've extended some characters abilities beyond the normal three on times. 

    I'm not calling for a nerf, or saying that one cover should only have one power attached. Just saying there is a difference. 
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm enjoying the growth in passives personally.  The only complaint I have is it makes any character without a strong passive seem weak by comparison.
  • GuntherBlobel
    GuntherBlobel Posts: 987 Critical Contributor
    The recent passive power sets are bringing a lot of fun synergy to the game. I like them. I'll admit though, too much synergy can be a problem if there aren't enough equally matched combinations. You could argue that the solution to this is to make more of it. And there are a number of teams on the Medusa/Carnage level already.

    Perhaps they should think about putting upper limits on some passive powers to keep them in check. Medusa might be better if constrained to one heal and AP steal per turn.

    Or... create characters that turn these passive powers on their head. I'm surprised we don't have a Medusa killer yet.
  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
    What we're seeing is the developer's response to us. The strong-passives characters are popular and we chase their covers to get them fully covered as fast as possible. The developers see the data in cover stores, CP expenditures, etc. and then make some more for us all to chase.

    I agree with the OPer at some level but I don't think passives are ruining the game, they're just changing it. PvP matches are taking twice as long, but PvE matches are taking half the time. That's a trade-off, but one of the more annoying aspects of these changes is the shield sim. It's almost impossible to find a player in 4-star land that isn't using a team made up of the same four or five characters - Medusa, Carnage, Blade, Carol, or Gamora. I'm as guilty as anyone - my go to team is Medusa/Carnage/Reed because it's just so darn effective in the current meta. When one of these is boosted it bleeds over into the loaner PvP events. It's killing variety, for certain.

    But the one thing that remains effective, and has always been in the game, is stun (or air-born). If you effectively use stun - countdown's stop, healing stops, and passives stop.
  • wingX
    wingX Posts: 253 Mover and Shaker
    Maybe it's a about time they come out with a character that temporarily shut down passive for a while (beside using stun and causing air-born). They already come out with a character's move that prevent healing temporarily (Kate Bishop) and stun (Silver Surfer), maybe they can come out with character with moves to prevent passive from firing and also hitting air-born characters, etc.
  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,700 Chairperson of the Boards
    I enjoy the passives and I think the game is more interesting now. I just think the game could be a teeny bit more balanced so it's not just Carol and/or Medusa on every single PvP team at the 4* level. They're beatable, it just gets boring facing the same combos all the time.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    wingX said:
    Maybe it's a about time they come out with a character that temporarily shut down passive for a while (beside using stun and causing air-born). They already come out with a character's move that prevent healing temporarily (Kate Bishop) and stun (Silver Surfer), maybe they can come out with character with moves to prevent passive from firing and also hitting air-born characters, etc.
    Interesting idea.  Leech comes to mind.  Another interesting one would be Rouge who could nullify an opponents passives and start using them herself (while a certain countdown tile is on the board).  I could be behind that.
  • sinnerjfl
    sinnerjfl Posts: 1,275 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2017
    I agree that some of the passives on some newer characters are strong but honestly, they add a puzzle element to the fights that wasn't there before. And there is indeed a lot of chars with them now, it makes fights really interesting and actually makes you think what to do next.

    That said, some of them could be toned down *cough* MEDUSA *cough* :)
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    Passives a hugely important part of the game, especially on defense.  But that has always been the case.  It's not really fair to suggest newer passive combos that dominate the meta in a way that is different from the past. 

    Hood used to be part of the meta
    Patch used to be part of the meta
    Cage used to be part of the meta
    Iron fist used to be part of the meta

    All of those characters were released prior to the switch to a 4* end game (approx. June 2015).  And even before those guys, OBW + punisher and 2* wolverine + 2* thor were meta teams thanks in part to their strong passive powers. 

    This has literally always been a feature of mpq.  It's perfectly legitmate to dislike it; but it's just wrong to think that it is a new phenomenon. 
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,939 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm currently #5 in PVE CL8 with only one boosted 4 whom I'm not using (Coulson) and no useable 5s.  Thank you passives!

    for easy nodes my team is
    - 4* Grocket
    - 5* Star-Lord w/ a single cover (to boost Grocket's strikes)
    - 4* Punisher w/ 5 in Blue (to boost the strikes another 25%.)

    2,468 additional damage on top of Star-Lord's 5* match damage. Three matches, three kills- thanks to passives. 

    For hard nodes this PVE I've been using
    - 3* Blade (boosted)
    - 4* Carol (unboosted)
    - 3* Iron Fist (unboosted)

    Basically using Fist Purple to fuel Black and get a bunch of Blade countdown tiles out so Carol can buff his strike tiles. Again, thank you passives!  My roster would be getting stomped if not for the ability to create synergistic teams (even with an unboosted low health 3*).

    This game is much better off than simply focusing solely on AP acceleration/denial. Much more strategic now. 


  • Orion
    Orion Posts: 1,295 Chairperson of the Boards
    The 5* meta is currently Panther/Thanos, which can kill champed 5* teams without firing a single active power.

    Passives have become very powerful.  A passive counter would be very interesting, but it would have to be a passive itself to stop characters like Grocket or Medusa.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yeah I agree it's not the passives themselves that are causing the "problem" that the OP is describing, but the positive interaction between passives these days that is much larger than in the past.

    Sure, Hood's passive was strong (mostly because it generates AP; a key part of previous teams). But it never really interacted with other passive abilities. Same with Healing Factor or Exquisite Technique. They just did their own thing, more or less independently of whatever else you were doing.
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    Passives can be annoying but if anything is ruining this game for me it's watching the same animations over and over and over in a match. Don't see why the game can't just do the animation the first time and then do a text overlay after it kinda like when Strange gets triggered by goons in a limited amount of time with his yellow.

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