Gambit Character Update Details (6/26/18)

Brigby

Hi Everyone,

Starting in the Space season that starts on July 26th, the 5-Star character Gambit (Classic) will be receiving an update. Casey Malone, Lead Designer on Marvel Puzzle Quest put together a message regarding the character update.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey everyone,

Since his release during the 2017 Anniversary, Gambit has dominated the high-level Marvel Puzzle Quest metagame. Back in December, based on some pretty strong feedback from all of you, we made some changes to Gambit’s Stacked Deck power to make him a little less powerful. When reports came in that he was still at the top of the heap, this wasn't initially cause for concern - there's always going to be a "Best" character - and we set to making 5-Star characters who could compete with Gambit and round out a robust metagame. Archangel's Aerial Superiority and Captain America (Infinity War)'s Man Without a Country powers were both designed with the intention of creating counter-play with Gambit.

Unfortunately, this clearly wasn’t enough, and Gambit is now seen as a more or less mandatory inclusion for players’ teams. Variety is hugely important in any game, and Marvel Puzzle Quest is no exception. When you're forced to play with or against a character over and over again, things get stale. So we're making additional changes to Gambit (Classic).

Our goals for these changes were:

• Keep Gambit strong enough to be a viable choice, but not so strong he's the only choice
• Allow counter-play to Gambit, so that if you don't want to play him, you can defeat him
• Slow Gambit down a bit, to provide a chance for that counter-play

Let's look at how each of his powers has changed to achieve these goals.

Ragin' Cajun - This ability now only replaces basic, Strike, Protect, or Attack tiles with Countdown tiles, and the number of tiles it creates has been reduced.

A huge number of characters rely on special tiles to not just combat Gambit, but to do their own thing as well. 5-Stars like Ghost Rider are seen as weaker than we intended because they fare so poorly against Gambit, and the counter-play we've designed to combat Gambit are shut down by this power. So, to open up design space and refresh some existing 5-Stars, we're restricting the kinds of tiles Gambit can convert to Strike, Protect and Attack. He'll still convert Basic tiles, so don't worry if your opponent isn't making these tiles - you can still fire this power. Specific numbers are below, but this also allowed us to make the Countdown tiles themselves more powerful.

Aces & Eights - This ability now costs 10 Red AP, and amount of Damage being done has been slightly reduced.

Aces & Eights was dealing way, way too much damage for its AP. Reducing the damage to make Aces & Eights fairly costed at 6 AP made the it pretty underwhelming, so we increased the AP cost as well. Now, instead of being an ability fired repeatedly to generate Charged tiles, Gambit players will have to look to team composition to create early Charged tiles to get a lot of bonus damage and AP from Aces & Eights.

Stacked Deck - Gambit's passive AP Generation has been moved to a Repeater tile which generates AP every 2 turns. It no longer destroys enemy AP.

Here is the big one. Gambit's Stacked Deck power sped up every match he was a part of, and the drawback of blocking ally Powers was not strong enough to make up for the huge gains it provided. In addition, this AP gain being purely passive means there's no opportunity for opponents to interact with Gambit's power. To slow Stacked Deck down and allow for more interactivity, we moved the AP generation onto a Repeater tile. Now the AP is generated every other turn, on a tile that can be locked, or destroyed.

The random enemy AP destruction, while random, made playing against Gambit’s Stacked Deck really frustrating. We've completely removed this component of the power.

Finally, because we've slowed Gambit down, his overall health has been increased. This should let him survive longer fights.

We know how hard people work to earn a 5-Star character, and it can feel bad to have a thing you invested time into change. So, in addition to the compensation plan outlined below if you choose to sell your Gambit, we're communicating this change a full season in advance. So, if you finally just got your Gambit, you still have a season to use him as you expected.

Thank you all for your feedback. We care deeply about making sure our players are having fun, and while it may take time to react, we'll continue to listening closely to what you have to say.

Casey Malone
Lead Designer, Marvel Puzzle Quest

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

5-Star Gambit can be sold for increased Iso-8, as well as special Legendary tokens. The number of tokens you'll receive is based on Gambit's character level, including Champion levels. These tokens can be redeemed in a new Marvel Legends Legendary cover store.

These changes, and the increased sell prices, will be in the game once the update goes live. We will also be giving out a Latest Legend token to any player who uses Gambit (Classic) over the upcoming Mind Stone Season.

The Marvel Legends store contains only the following 5-star characters:

• Archangel (Classic)
• Black Bolt (Inhuman King)
• Black Panther (Civil War)
• Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff)
• Captain America (First Avenger)
• Captain America (Infinity War)
• Daredevil (Matt Murdock)
• Doctor Strange (Sorcerer Supreme)
• Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes)
• Green Goblin (Norman Osborn)
• Hawkeye (Clint Barton)
• Iron Man (Mark XLVI)
• Jean Grey (Phoenix)
• Jessica Jones (Alias Investigations)
• Okoye (Warrior General)
• Silver Surfer (Skyrider)
• Spider-Man (Back in Black)
• Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
• Star-Lord (Awesome Mix Volume 2)
• Thanos (The Mad Titan)
• The Hulk (Bruce Banner)
• Thor (Gladiator)
• Wasp (Hope Van Dyne)
• Wolverine (Old Man Logan)

sirwookieechris

So if I use gambit even once during the next season I get a free LL? Does it have to be pvp or does pve nodes work too?

ZeiramMR

The text in the top of your power tables seems incorrect. Ragin' Cajun says 1 turn instead of 2, and Aces and Eights appears to be the rank 4 text.

waywreth

They nerfed every single power?  Come on.

Jaedenkaal

Brigby said:

 We will also be giving out a Latest Legend token to any player who uses Gambit (Classic) over the upcoming Mind Stone Season.

This is the part I'm most interested in. Whatever that says about me.

LavaManLee

Wow.  That's a lot to take in but appreciate the writeup.

AlexNapalm

Seems like a reasonable rework. Kudos.

DyingLegend

I think this is fair, they didn't nerf him to obscurity. 

Punter1

I think the nerf was needed, but feels too far, they could have left Red alone and it would have sufficed.  The 2 big issues with Gambit were the countdown overwrite that negated a lot of counters (as pointed out) and the free AP gen.  The Red damage was good and used a lot, but only because the AP gen existed.

IceIX

sirwookieechris said:

So if I use gambit even once during the next season I get a free LL? Does it have to be pvp or does pve nodes work too?

He needs to be used in an event in the Mind Stone Season.

whoami

Looks reasonable—thanks for the hard work in the rebalancing. 

spatenfloot

Seems reasonable. Is there any indication of how much iso we would get back for selling him? At minimum, it needs to be enough to champ a hero from level 255.

xdogg

While not happy with the nerf, thank you for giving us a month's notice

Borstock

This doesn't re-balance Gambit. It kills him dead.

LifeofAgony

Borstock said:

This doesn't re-balance Gambit. It kills him dead.

Good riddance.  As the post stated, back in December is when he should’ve been repaired, instead of making him more powerful.  Hooray for variety.

whitecat31

All you had to do was just remove the AP destruction and it would have been fine. 

Brigby

ZeiramMR said:

The text in the top of your power tables seems incorrect. Ragin' Cajun says 1 turn instead of 2, and Aces and Eights appears to be the rank 4 text.

Thanks for the heads up! I've gone ahead and fixed that.

spatenfloot said:

Seems reasonable. Is there any indication of how much iso we would get back for selling him? At minimum, it needs to be enough to champ a hero from level 255.

Level 450: 369,102 Iso-8
Level 550: 564,000 Iso-8

Pylgrim

Here's my perspective as a budding 5* player with a champ gambit: I hated playing with him because he makes matches repetitive, boring and non-interactive due the way he cancels other characters' powers. Still, I used him all the time because he was so efficient. So yeah, he needs a nerf. However, any nerf that reduces his efficiency without removing that restriction, makes him simply not good enough to play: still boring and non-interactive, but now also slower and more rng-dependant.

 I'd rather he takes another small hit to his numbers (and no hp upgrade) and have that restriction lifted. Then hhe'l be good enough to play as part of teams, rather than as the main attraction. Hopefully this advanced notice will allow them to take this into consideration.

Toweliesox

Welcome to the useless club Gambit. Join: Sentry, Old Man Logan, and others. 

You've killed him, and will only replace him with someone soon enough. It's hilarious how terrible this is. 

658_2

He’s still strong.  Look at that purple damage.  You can’t overwrite those tiles anymore.  3 countdowns are a lot to deal with in two turns.

The rockett

While I do believe this was needed, but he should have NEVER been released in the wild like he was. It is truly upsetting to know how much money that was dumped into this game because he was the meta of all meta’s this game has ever seen.  Thousands of Thousands of dollars spent  to get him at a high level to be nerfed like OML.  Why trust any product that is put out into this game if this is what the result will be.
 Again, he needed a rebalance no doubt, but this just shows you your investment in the game isn’t worth anything when it can be ripped away.