On Nerfs, Dilution, and tiny kitties...

abmoraz

While we all agree that Gambit needed nerfed, the solution presented is waaaay too late and seems to have swung the pendulum from one extreme to the other, making him practically useless as a 5*.

While hoarding tokens and CP was a perceived problem, re-introducing dilution seems to have swung the pendulum from one extreme to the other.

Suggested solution to both: Use the Magic:The Gathering philosophy and retire older sets when newer ones come out. 

Examples:

   - Season PvP events could only use 4 and 5 star characters released in the last (6 months, year, 2 years [pick one]).  1, 2, and 3 star chars have no restrictions.  

   - Broken cards tend not to get fixed until long after they are released, with this format, they would be cycled out before then.

   - The meta would constantly change with each new release and retire.

   - The whales still have incentive to spend and max the newest releases (thereby keeping the game going financially)

   - Off-Season and PvE events could still use any cards (within the scope of the event's rules, such as the one that requires a 2* and 3* and a 4*), so older characters wouldn't be completely useless.

   - A PvP battle arena could be added that has no rankings and no rules.  Use whatever cards you want to fight whoever else is in there for standard PvP rewards (30-70 ISO or a 1* cover).  The catch: you don't know who you are fighting or what their roster is until after the match starts.  You can't tailor make a counter team and you can't skip because you looked at their roster and see that they have all 550s.  it's just random matching.

I'll admit that I haven't fully thought this out yet and am just spitballing ideas, so discussion and changes are welcome.  I really miss the old "Heroic" events with the limited rosters.  They really resonated with me, but I am a collector, not a min-maxer.  I strive to have every character rostered, I don't particularly care if they are maxed, so those events spoke to me.  I always had a full compliment of whoever was allowed.

Tiny kitties tax:

abmoraz

Just some more thought(s):

By retiring older chars and/or requiring newer ones, this would alleviate some of the problems with getting new players.  As the game stands right now, new players are totally hosed.  They cannot compete for top rewards because their roster is too weak.  They can't increase their roster strength because they can't get top rewards and the token draws are waaaay too diluted.  Even spending money... lots and lots of money... some resources are just too sparse for a new player to catch up, even after a year.

Every survey MPQ sends out asks how likely I am to recommend a game (that I obviously enjoy and play at least 2hrs each day for nearly the last 5 years) to my friends, and my answer is always the same: 0.  I wouldn't put my friends through the hell that is trying to be a new player in the current landscape.  If I did, I wouldn't be much of a friend, would I?

Sim Mayor

I would quit the game the instant they retired any character I use. It's the reason I no longer play CCGs IRL, because I got tired of them making my investments of time and cash worthless.

MPQ is already heading down the path of most of those CCGs by continuously releasing more and more powerful characters, which is essentially "retiring" older characters already. The next thing most of them did was take a minor and oft-ignored mechanic and suddenly promote it to god-like status, quickly rendering obsolete any characters who don't have it (passives, anyone?).

That gets followed by an attempt to introduce a new mechanic to move the focus off of whatever is already breaking the game (*coughSUPPORTScoughcough*). When that fails, they go back to making bigger, more powerful characters until the game eventually implodes under some poorly thought-out interaction between two cards that breaks things so badly that you just can't win without it.

I...I think I need to lie down. And rethink things. A lot.

*Edit: Fixed reference to MPQ characters as "cards"

Dormammu

Please stop calling them cards. This isn't a card game.

Sim Mayor

Dormammu said:

Please stop calling them cards. This isn't a card game.

It's a collectible game, and the closest real-world analogy is CCGs. That being said, the first use of "cards" was a slip, which I have fixed. The second reference is to actual cards, as I am talking about the things that put me off of CCGs.

ThaRoadWarrior

I would rather they sort the stores by set than a character just get full on retired. when I used to play CCGs, you could decide which expansion you wanted to buy cards from. I never played tournaments, so i didn't worry about this or that being disallowed. I mostly played the Star Wars CCG from Decipher, and they had a base set, then per-movie expansions as the re-releases were hitting the theaters before I fell off of it. You could do the same here, just group the characters by whatever arbitrary dividing line you like (MCU phases?), and then put them in a legendary store of whatever pool size strikes the balance of dilution they want. But to full-on retire characters would be punishing in my opinion.