HOW TO: Prevent this streamlined team-setup.

[Deleted User]

One of the main problems with this game is that it has such a vast selection of cool characters but merely a small fraction of these are being used.
Weekly boosts are good. That makes people use someone else for a change. But look at the Simulator. Look at it.
Been skipping battles all night to find someone that doesn't use Gamora + Rocket & Groot + then some. Just a month ago it was Wasp and Carol. This takes a huge chunk of what's fun away:
Variation.

And guilty as charged: my Simulator team ATM is Gamora, Medusa and Rocket & Groot. I'd love to use my newly champed Mordo, or Mockingbird. Jean, whom I champed last week, is almost unused. But they simply don't stand a good chance against what is a very good and also fun team. So meh.

Here is my simple solution:

Monitor what character aren't used much globally and give us some rewards for playing with these. Could be a boost of ISO or maybe build up wins for a new cover. Something to motivate us to use the remaining 90% of our roster to play against an array of other interesting teams that aren't just "the meta".
Very easy.

talleman

Well spoken

Renler

That's a cool ideal. I'm using those too in sim right now and even finished it completely for the second time, since champing them! The only Team I had difficulties to beat was Thing deadpool and carol... 

GuntherBlobel

I love the idea, but I'm not sure it's going to work the way you would like it to. Even a slightly worse team won't last long near the top, which means that you still won't see the diversity that is being encouraged. I came up with that Carol, Thing, Deadpool team specifically to counter the current meta. One day after completing the Sim they have fallen below 1500. The current system eradicates diversity --- encouraging diversity isn't enough to counter it --- you need a different system altogether.

Still, I like the idea of a new ISO crystal that indicates better rewards when using that character rather than a power-up. I'd have a lot of fun trying to build a decent team around a "bonus rewards" character.

And there were other times in this Sim that I thought I should receive better rewards for winning. Rocket + Medusa + Gamora is a genuinely tough team to beat. It may be a fun challenge to beat when worth 75 pts., but once you get past 1800 pts, you start to question if completing it is even worth the difficult < 40 pt fights. I spent way too much time skiping around just looking for a R + M + G team worth the points to match their difficulty.

I think that an ISO bonus should kick in whenever you beat a similarly leveled team worth less than 40 pts.

carrion_pigeons

I think the very simplest way to do it would be to institute the old PvE restriction of not being allowed to use the same characters you're fighting.  People will still use characters like R&G but the more they do, the harder it will be to find opponents who aren't using him, so there will be an upper limit.

Also mirror matches tend to result in stupid gameplay that few people will miss.

AXP_isme

I would love a few more puzzle elements that give you bonus rewards without changing the core mechanic. This sounds like it would be a really good example and, as another positive, might help shake up the meta a bit. My only real concern is that the bonuses would have to be relatively small or you could unintentionally create a whole tier of bonus-chasing meta to keep up with the resource deficit. 

Dax317

Something I really want to see the devs explore more is team powers. They have a few IF/Luke Cage, Mr F. But on every character they have an affiliations tag. Why not use those affiliations. Inhumans, mutants, guardians, team captain, team iron man, fantastic four, villains, agents of shield, x-force, defenders, etc... And you get special bonuses for using teams made up of just those characters. Maybe you get extra bonuses for having the leaders of the group's on the team. Make it worth using characters that don't get played very often.

Tony_Foot

Sim just needs a daily boost set. One or two from each tier per day.

SpringSoldier

I don't think the solution would work. The reward would have to be significant to take the risk to play PVP with a not-so-great team. The only really fix would be to nerf/un-nerf characters periodically, especially the older ones to change the meta- you'd still have teams that are better than others, but at least they would change whenever a character drastically changes. Also, most people don't have all characters champed or don't have them at all, so many might not be able to play the new meta instantly. Creating new characters that counteract different powers would be great too- someone who deals more damage to the enemy team depending on the number/strength of enemy tiles would be a great match for Grocket. At least the older characters are available again, so, in time, it might increase the variety.

Dotproduct

Instead of doubling why don't you just halve the points from the current winning teams? Would have the same effect right? Make it so they have a decay timer like PvE? So if they want to maximise points they can only play once a day?

smoq84

I also hate how it looks now: I think 90% of fights in Simulator are Medusa + Gamora + Grocket.

This is why I loved Gauntlet event where every fight was against different team.

There should be some mechanism which would prevent to use one team over and over again.

Straycat

I don't think that would really solve the PVP Sim problem. I like the idea of rewarding you for using different teams, but unless it actually punishes you for using the same teams, nothing will change.
I use a ton of different, non meta teams in sim. Some examples
Blade, Cyclops, Coulson
Peggy, Carol, Rhulk
Nova, Iron Fist, Star Lord

But when I am ready to call it quits for the day, I play a match with Grocket, Starlord, and Carol to leave them on defense. I could win with tons of teams, but the AI can't. Unless PVP fundamentally changes, you're gonna fight the same teams a lot.

Beer40

I'll throw in an idea: How about you actually select your defensive team, and it can't be your offensive team? At the beginning of Simulator, after entering, you select 3 characters for defense and they are unavailable to play with all event (locked out).

We could even extend this to regular PVP possibly. Maybe you select 2 defensive characters each event that can't be used offensively (locked out) and they pair with either the event loaner or your featured character.

Edit: I wanted to add, if you haven't used a character on offense, they could be swapped in on your defensive team, if you don't like your defensive teams results.

SpringSoldier

@ Beer40

That wouldn't change a thing. Everyone would leave the same teams on defense, especially Cardusa and Grocket. Heck, it might do even more harm than good. At least players are forced to change teams after they're out of health packs.

Warbringa

So let's look at the Sim only, as boosts are generally good enough in normal PvP to allow a 4* boosted team to trounce any team, including G&R/3*/random guardian.  

I am curious, if the devs did look at usage data and say, ok let's try to offer an incentive to get people to use 75% of the least used 4* in the Sim, what type of reward would it take for you to do so?  Let's say they make a list of seven 4* every week or season, etc. and said for every battle you win (offensive or defensive) with one of the listed characters, you earn 500 iso, would that be enough incentive?  If you chose to use 3 characters from that list and won, that would be 1500 iso per match.  

Here would be an example of a list:  Flaptain,  Drax, Invisible Woman, XFDP, Venom, Mordo, and Thing.  

broll

The rewards for both PvE and PvP placement (and in PvP progression also) are tied to speed.  Until that changes the best characters will be used.  If that were removed somehow, it would give players more freedom to play who they want rather than who's fast.  Even then I'm not sure it would change, especially not in PvP.

acescracked

smoq84 said:

I also hate how it looks now: I think 90% of fights in Simulator are Medusa + Gamora + Grocket.

This is why I loved Gauntlet event where every fight was against different team.

There should be some mechanism which would prevent to use one team over and over again.

90%? Where do you get your data? I've never seen that team in sim.

BatteryHorse

"90%? Where do you get your data? I've never seen that team in sim."

We have a different experience, I think.  All I ever see are Medusa + Gamora + Grocket or Carol + Blade + Medusa once you get past about 1400 pts in Simulator.  Before that there's lots of variety.

There were previous debates about an achievement system that rewarded players for using different teams.  Win 50 matches with all women, 100 matches with all villains, 500 matches with x-men, and then get ISO/HP/CP rewards for each.  Apparently the devs don't like the achievement model so at the time it was a no-go.

In my opinion, it would at least encourage a player to shuffle through their roster looking for new team combinations.  A soft incentive, but a real one.  

broll

BatteryHorse said:

"90%? Where do you get your data? I've never seen that team in sim."

We have a different experience, I think.  All I ever see are Medusa + Gamora + Grocket or Carol + Blade + Medusa once you get past about 1400 pts in Simulator.  Before that there's lots of variety.

There were previous debates about an achievement system that rewarded players for using different teams.  Win 50 matches with all women, 100 matches with all villains, 500 matches with x-men, and then get ISO/HP/CP rewards for each.  Apparently the devs don't like the achievement model so at the time it was a no-go.

In my opinion, it would at least encourage a player to shuffle through their roster looking for new team combinations.  A soft incentive, but a real one.  

As a 4* player at 1500 points, the majority of my opponents are this team, Especially the ones that are worth decent points.  Over my lunch break I ended up with all 5 nodes being this team and cycled 4 times before I found one that wasn't.

Pants1000

I guess that's one nice way thing about being in between 4 and 5 stars.  There's actually quite a bit of variety.  I checked my 5 opponents and there wasn't a single Grocket anywhere.  The most common opponent for me was OML in 3/5 teams.

AXP_isme

What if you were allowed to put a random team (3 characters drawn at random from your roster) on defence in the knowledge that each loss would cost you only one point lost and you would earn 10 ISO for each defensive loss. Would anyone do that? I think I would. It would make the Sim a very much more diverse place.