Solution to the MPQ balance issues

TranscendGod

Crowd-sourced simple small periodic balance changes.

For each update, the community votes on the weakest and strongest character in each rarity (with the option to vote "No character is too weak" and/or "No character is too strong"). The community then votes on proposed balance changes to the characters considered weakest and strongest within each rarity.

The changes should be simple so they are trivial for programmers to implement. While it would be more fun to have completely redesigned characters with new kinds of abilities, it's better to get some improvement rather than nothing. They could be limited to increasing or decreasing a value by 1 (such as an AP cost) or by 0-20% (like for damage).

Balance changes should be small so that people don't have to worry too much about their favorite characters getting nerfed into the ground. I'd recommend one small change per ability.

Example:

A community vote decides that Bruce Banner is too weak and Gambit is too strong in 5* land. Balance proposals are submitted and voted upon with the winning proposals strongly suggested to the developers.

Bruce Banner:
Blue passive transforms 3 tiles instead of 2.
Black reduced from 7 to 6 AP.
Purple transformation begins at 5 instead of 6.
Green: +20% damage.

Gambit:
Purple AP cost increased from 11 to 12.
Red AP cost increased from 7 to 8.
Black generates 1 less red AP.

Worst case: The game developers ignore the suggestions and we have a bit of fun debating balance issues. Best case: MPQ gradually becomes a much more fun and well balanced game.

Calnexin

I fear "the community" (assuming you mean this board) may have bias that the entire player base does not share.  People who read and post here are an extreme minority.

D3 has visibility to character usage, which seems to be how they decide which characters get the rebalance treatment.  I like the idea of users recommending changes and having some sort of voice.  Theoretically we do ("we are listening") when we create topics on here.  But bear in mind that we are relatively ignorant of the overall direction and upcoming content additions.  E.g. something might be introduced that we find useless only to have it be a perfect counter for the seemingly overpowered thing that comes after it.

DFiPL

Calnexin said:

I fear "the community" (assuming you mean this board) may have bnoias that the entire player base does not share.  People who read and post here are an extreme minority.

They're completely capable of pushing a poll link via in-game news.

They do it all the time for player surveys and new character requests.

If they wanted to poll the community on rebalances, it would be trivially easy to make that poll available to the entire userbase.

Getting the entire userbase to engage? Different question.

Daiches

DFiPL said:

Calnexin said:

I fear "the community" (assuming you mean this board) may have bnoias that the entire player base does not share.  People who read and post here are an extreme minority.

They're completely capable of pushing a poll link via in-game news.

They do it all the time for player surveys and new character requests.

If they wanted to poll the community on rebalances, it would be trivially easy to make that poll available to the entire userbase.

Getting the entire userbase to engage? Different question.

Getting the entire userbase to be savvy enough as a game designer to understand what the implication of any rebalance is? Damn near impossible.

For instance, there are many groups dedicated to creating custom Magic:The Gathering cards. 90% of the output is unplayable jank, doesn't work in the rules or most commonly is severely unbalanced/broken.
And that is from players that actually seek out card creation as one of their creative outlets. Imagine what you would get if you gave day 4 Joe Seal the same vote as day 300 Mike Walrus or day 1500 Timmy Whale?

Colognoisseur

This always flows from a flawed premise that the "community" is a better game designer than someone who does it as a job.

Hint: The "community" is good at being noisy not thoughful

Sim Mayor

Calnexin said:

I fear "the community" (assuming you mean this board) may have bias that the entire player base does not share.  People who read and post here are an extreme minority.

D3 has visibility to character usage, which seems to be how they decide which characters get the rebalance treatment.  I like the idea of users recommending changes and having some sort of voice.  Theoretically we do ("we are listening") when we create topics on here.  But bear in mind that we are relatively ignorant of the overall direction and upcoming content additions.  E.g. something might be introduced that we find useless only to have it be a perfect counter for the seemingly overpowered thing that comes after it.

Agreed. Without picking on anyone (because it's far too widespread for that), many of the people who post character "rebalances"  on these boards are really saying that they want their favorite character to be as unbalanced as they perceive whichever character they just lost to in a fight to be. Search for the word "rebalance" in this forum and read the first dozen or so posts that come up (ignore Gambit threads). Now pretend you're in a fight against someone with that power and tell me how many of those you really think are good ideas.