Calling for a Rebalance - AKA How to gain positive engagement from the player base.

Kevmcg

I know not everyone reads the forums, but let's channel some positive energy and effort and see if we can save this game.

Step 1a - Survey In-Game to see which character is most wanted to be improved. Gather data on a 3*. 4* AND 5* as separate questions. Each season should focus on improving 1 or 2 and in different tiers for different player development.

Step 1b - Have a forum discussion / vote to get feedback on the same. Maybe even playoff style like the recent 4* 1 vs 1 bracket. That was an example of positive engagement - lots of discussion, some surprises, but we all know for the most part who is good and who needs work.

Step 2 - Once the player community / developers decide that Example - 3* Ragnorak, 4* Kraven (see playoff results), 5* Banner Hulk are selected, we go through 1/2 season of discussing generating ideas.

Example - 5* Banner Hulk should get tougher as the match goes on, unlike Phoenix who you save for last, Hulk must be downed early or he gets stronger in damage/health as he gets more angry. If he transforms to Hulk, it should be game over, like when OML pops his claws - Huge health and devastating damage. There is a reason the movies are scared of him changing. (Side note, currently, when playing against him boosted, we prefer the weaker Hulk form - terrible game mechanic).

Step 3 - Developers take a half season to add their spin to the ideas and "surprise" us with the new re-balanced character or 2 at the start of the next season.Why not work with players? Overall, we all feel more invested in the game and have something to look forward to when the re-balanced character launches in the next season.

I can't believe the approach of involving the player base is that difficult or time consuming. Especially, after seeing the effort that went into all the tweaks for Supports. Tweaking stats is BORING - adding 12 or 120 or even 1200 damage for red is BORING.  Redesigning 5* Hulk to represent his true character could be fun if done the right way.

Step 4 - Process repeats for the next character on the list - anyone think that 5* Doc Ock's cunning scheme should actually happen from time to time..... ever?  How about 4* Kraven adding more and more traps that actually cause significant damage.

I would take 1 revamped character over the next 50 Supports that are thrown out into the game.

Borstock

I consider the devs interacting with us at all to be a courtesy, not a requirement. 

Kevmcg

I agree that interacting with us forum-goers specifically is a courtesy.
However, it is a requirement for successful businesses to interact with their customers and those that want to last, do it well and often.

Tiger_Wong

Maybe the characters are just fine the way they are. They’re not all OP. As long as they have uses and can do work on a certain team, isn’t that all that matters?

HoundofShadow

I read an article a couple of days back and based on my memory, it was mentioned that the developers work with Marvel on the abilities of characters. Marvel, I think, have to approve it or the abilities have to be as close as the characters as possible. The developers could "work with" the players, but no matter how much engagements they had with the players, approval still has to come from Marvel. What if players work with the developers for a few weeks on "re-balancing" the
E character and it ends up getting rejected? I don't think the players in this forum can withstand that kind of rejection.

I read somewhere that MPQ has made $100 million in sales. I'm going to make an unbelievable assumption next so that the number of players estimated would be conservative. Assuming that on average, each player spent 1,000 on MPQ, the number of players would be 100,000,000/1000 = 100,000. Let's assume that 50% of the players left MPQ, we are left with 50,000 players. Every month or so, they send an in-game survey to all the players. Assuming that 25,000 players or 50% of the players completed the survey, the number of feedbacks they get from the game compared to this forum (about 150 frequent posters) is 167 times. The community in this forum might think that they are right on certain matters, but could it be possible that in-game surveys say so otherwise? I suppose majority wins most of the time.

Technically, they are already interacting with customers via a few channels, official or non-official: in-game survey, interviews(?), facebook, twitter, forums, discord(?), email etc.

Dormammu

Kevmcg said:

I know not everyone reads the forums, but let's channel some positive energy and effort and see if we can save this game.

Save it from what, exactly?

Kevmcg

Save it from:  several words come to mind ... stagnation, staleness, boredom, mediocrity, auto-pilot. The point of my post is to inject some FUN back into the game - involve the players.  Just got a survey today - could have asked which of a group of characters would be best to rebalance. Take the winner from all surveys (forum or not), do a little tweaking, and BOOM we got some improvements. Does not have to be so hard.

Dormammu

Kevmcg said:

Save it from:  several words come to mind ... stagnation, staleness, boredom, mediocrity, auto-pilot.

Re-balancing characters isn't the answer to any of these issues.

The rockett

Kevmcg said:

Save it from:  several words come to mind ... stagnation, staleness, boredom, mediocrity, auto-pilot. The point of my post is to inject some FUN back into the game - involve the players.  Just got a survey today - could have asked which of a group of characters would be best to rebalance. Take the winner from all surveys (forum or not), do a little tweaking, and BOOM we got some improvements. Does not have to be so hard.

Kev is right here.  We used to be in the same ally for almost 2 years.  Here is the issue I posted in another thread.  

The vets are bored.  They are looking to Demi/D3 to come up something cool in this game that ties into the bigger Marvel Universe. That’s why i am saying about people moving to another game because it is new and cool. 

To be honest it is not that much we are asking for.  Support could have been a cool thing but this slow slow roll out and now with the Infinity Stone reward structure, this is not it.  I am not a negative person in real life, but it is hard to be with this with all the missed opportunities.  

Jarvind

It seems like the era of rebalances is over. They were doing it consistently for a few months there, to our surprise and delight, and then...nothing. They just stopped, and nary a word since. 

I'd love to see 5* Hulk fixed (along with his 3* version for that matter), but I'm not holding my breath.

HoundofShadow

I found the recent interview with MPQ developer. I'm pasting something relevant to your proposal. It might be for new heroes creation, but it's not unrealistic to say that rebalancing characters need approval from Marvel as well.

"Dtoid: How involved was Marvel, and how do you decide which heroes to use?

Josh: We review each character, not only as long-time Marvel fans but also researching their abilities based on how Marvel is using them, then we write out the powers and decide the star level. After we have written out the paper design and sketch out the art, we work with Marvel to make sure the characters are in line with how they designed them. It’s a collaborative effort with all teams involved, and it’s great to work with Marvel as we get designs, videos and more to help with character creation."

As for rebalancing characters, players feedbacks probably represent ~10% of their decision making process.

"Key metrics we look at are:
- Win rates
- Usage relative to ownership
- How many resources players are investing in this character vs. others

And we look at player perception, including:
- Sentiment about the character on the forums and elsewhere
- How expert players at the company feel about the character
- Where the character shows up in power rankings/tier lists
- Comments about the character from reviews/surveys/player interviews

When those sources give us signals something might need to change, we ask:
- From a pure numbers perspective, considered by themselves, is this character balanced? What assumptions underlie that and are they correct?
- How's the meta impacting the strength of this character? Is the problem with this character secretly a problem with another character or another class of characters?
- How is the way the meta is likely to change in the future going to affect this character?
- If the character is too strong and that's causing a bad player experience, is there something other than a nerf that will help? Releasing a counter, or adding a buff to someone else?"

I believe it's going to take more than half a season to or a full season to complete the rebalancing. There could be exception though. End of the day, they still have to follow a methodology when re-balancing a character.

Kevmcg

Thanks for the article. I agree with the ideas in there. Unfortunately, we have gone several seasons with no application of that thought-out process.

I'm not saying they should let players design the character in exact detail, and I fully expect Marvel to have the final approval.

Whatever time it takes, it would go a long way to see continuous improvement to existing content added to the endless flow of new characters.

DAZ0273

I’m not overly convinced that Marvel would be that hands on with character re-balances generally, although there might be exceptions. The reason I say this is that from a Marvel commercial aspect EVERY character should be a great representative of the Marvel brand at launch. If Marvel were concerned about brand damage then a sub-par Kraven (potential future movie IP) or Hulk (important current movie IP) would get fixed in double quick time.

The nuts and bolt mechanics of the game are something the devs deal with. And we are talking about something they have spent time and resources developing so they are not going to make any hasty decisions.

Some of the data referenced in the article HoundofShadow posted can only be obtained over a very long period – for example usage relevant to ownership – first you have to account for spikes caused by PvP/Essentials/Boss Event required before you can even look at data for use otherwise. I would also imagine that if a character is not used that much during a boost week then that might be a more qualifying determination that something is wrong but that is also just a snap-shot – maybe there were just even better boosted characters that week. As we are also dealing with different tier players across the board then that factors in to. The data may well show that, for example, use of 3* Doctor Strange drops off in the 4* tier and above but that doesn’t mean he needs a re-balance, nor does his strong use in 2/3* tier mean he is overpowered.

Then you come to player feedback. You only need look at the current Infinity War Black Widow thread to see that feedback from this (before the character is even launched, mind) is all over the place. Either she is a solid 4* or she is a poor version of Star-Lord or she is REALLY good. It isn’t uncommon to see this sort of feedback about characters across the board. Is Sandman terrible? There are players who will go either way.

My favourite re-balances are also the ones that are done in mind with synergy for other characters. A perfect example is the Wasp re-balance which paired beautifully with 3* Falcon’s re-balance and made them a team that could take down champed 4*. I would rather have something like that than another Kingpin. If that takes a bit longer then hey ho.