To Devs - Marvel puzzle quest or Marvel vs. kitty ?

tiomono

KGB said:

tiomono said:

abmoraz said:

turbomoose said:

Time to nerf kitty , if you have a roster with 3 champed 5*s then most pvp fights are Gritty after the first few wins 

it’s not too bad if you have kitty with 10-13 covers but if not then you have to get lucky 

they nerfed oml then gambit so surely it’s only a matter of time before they nerf her

if they don’t pvp will continue to be boring and a big grind if you want to score over 500 points 

Kitty isn't the issue.  Grocket is.  The quickest fix is to change his passive to be "At the start of his turn, if one doesn't exist, add a sword tile with strength X to the board for each member of the GotG on his team." (Where X is the total of his multiple strike tiles today divided by 3).

This way, he still gets the damage boost.  It stays if they get removed (showing he's always tinkering), and it rewards the team synergy more and reduces the absolute insanity of the power.

This right here. Nobody thinks kitty on her own is scary. Its grocket and kitty. No grocket and people will respond to kitty as they did in her release thread. Too slow starting off to even remotely compete with thorkoye.

The only thing making her overbearing is a character that puts 7 strikes on the board for free at game start. Even pairing her with carnage takes till the players 4th turn before she starts boosting anything unless one of your attack tiles gets matched then it's even longer.

This will murder PvE for 4* players who rely on Grocket for fast clears. PvE is *much* larger in terms of player numbers than PvP. So nerfing Grocket should be a non-starter.

Just adjust Kitty's boost so that she only boosts 5* character created tiles at her normal boost rate and 4* and below tiles at say 1/3 the rate.

KGB

There are 5* players that rely on grocket for fast clears. Kitty is not the problem. The one consistent trend is grocket.

You could apply the same logic to kitty. That it would murder 5* players who rely on kitty for fast clears. So nerfing kitty should be a non starter.

Only kitty alone is not the problem or that speedy. She only is the terror that she is because of being paired with grocket.

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

Palookaville

I can see a couple of ways to help the problem, not a "nerf" as such, more of a redistribution.

(BTW - using random numbers for damage totals, can't remember the exact score)

For Grocket, instead of him putting down 7 tiles at the start of each match (for say a total of 1000 damage each)
have him put down three tiles (for the same 1000 damage total)

Rocket is not nerfed (his strikes do the same damage) Kitty Can't boost tiles on the first turn (only 3 on the board - unless she has an X-Man withe her)  but once one more is added, you can start the boost (which gives the opponent a fighting chance to remove a strike before a cascade wipes them on the first move). The team is still fast on PvE against drones (they can't match the strikes away) and in PvP the player gets a chance to remove a couple of tiles before any major boost related damage can happen.(explained above)

Or put Kitty's boost power on a repeater of two turns. So the tiles are not boosted every turn, just every other turn (but that would be a small nerf)

I don't hate Kitty, I like her, she has a good move set, but unfortunately she works too well with one of the 200+ characters in the game, so a large percentage of players in PvP use that team to blast through players when shield hopping.

Dormammu

tiomono said:

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

I've thought twice about Kitty/OML. Those two can get out of hand real quickly together.

(edit: Not that I condone a kitty nerf. Just sayin' - Kitty ain't the creampuff everyone says she is without Grocket.)

DAZ0273

tiomono said:

DAZ0273 said:

tiomono said:

abmoraz said:

turbomoose said:

Time to nerf kitty , if you have a roster with 3 champed 5*s then most pvp fights are Gritty after the first few wins 

it’s not too bad if you have kitty with 10-13 covers but if not then you have to get lucky 

they nerfed oml then gambit so surely it’s only a matter of time before they nerf her

if they don’t pvp will continue to be boring and a big grind if you want to score over 500 points 

Kitty isn't the issue.  Grocket is.  The quickest fix is to change his passive to be "At the start of his turn, if one doesn't exist, add a sword tile with strength X to the board for each member of the GotG on his team." (Where X is the total of his multiple strike tiles today divided by 3).

This way, he still gets the damage boost.  It stays if they get removed (showing he's always tinkering), and it rewards the team synergy more and reduces the absolute insanity of the power.

This right here. Nobody thinks kitty on her own is scary. Its grocket and kitty. No grocket and people will respond to kitty as they did in her release thread. Too slow starting off to even remotely compete with thorkoye.

The only thing making her overbearing is a character that puts 7 strikes on the board for free at game start. Even pairing her with carnage takes till the players 4th turn before she starts boosting anything unless one of your attack tiles gets matched then it's even longer.

I remember former player Jarvind describing R4G as the first ever 4.5 star when he was released. So true

But he is extremely meh without those strikes. That's his one good power. And it is silly strong with kitty, nico, thanos, etc, etc.

Agreed. One trick pony and a mediocre 4* without the strikes. We all still want him levelled pretty high because he has the best passive there is - instant free match damage from turn one. We HAVE to match 3 no matter what, right? R4G makes it count from turn 1.

tiomono

Palookaville said:

I can see a couple of ways to help the problem, not a "nerf" as such, more of a redistribution.

(BTW - using random numbers for damage totals, can't remember the exact score)

For Grocket, instead of him putting down 7 tiles at the start of each match (for say a total of 1000 damage each)
have him put down three tiles (for the same 1000 damage total)

Rocket is not nerfed (his strikes do the same damage)

That would still be a nerf to grocket. Puts much more value in a single title. You lose 1 out of 3 and he takes a big hit in usefullness.

ammenell

I've never seen a kitty over 400.
don't go to 5* land. 

tiomono

Dormammu said:

tiomono said:

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

I've thought twice about Kitty/OML. Those two can get out of hand real quickly together.

(edit: Not that I condone a kitty nerf. Just sayin' - Kitty ain't the creampuff everyone says she is without Grocket.)

Not a cream puff no. But even with oml it requires kitty to fire yellow or oml to fire black before the buffs come online.

I honestly feel her purple does not get enough attention. It's amazing at keeping special tile creators under pressure.

KGB

tiomono said:

KGB said:

tiomono said:

This will murder PvE for 4* players who rely on Grocket for fast clears. PvE is *much* larger in terms of player numbers than PvP. So nerfing Grocket should be a non-starter.

Just adjust Kitty's boost so that she only boosts 5* character created tiles at her normal boost rate and 4* and below tiles at say 1/3 the rate.

KGB

There are 5* players that rely on grocket for fast clears. Kitty is not the problem. The one consistent trend is grocket.

You could apply the same logic to kitty. That it would murder 5* players who rely on kitty for fast clears. So nerfing kitty should be a non starter.

Only kitty alone is not the problem or that speedy. She only is the terror that she is because of being paired with grocket.

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

As a 4* player with no character higher than 295, I would not attack a team of 3 5* simply because match damage can wipe my team or force health pack usage. A skip or two will always net a much easier team for me.

5* players relying on Kitty for fast clears are really just relying on Grocket for the fast clears because they aren't using her with anyone else for those fast clears. Hence nerfing Grocket = nerfing fast clears in PvE. But nerfing Kittys boost of 4* or under specials won't adversely affect anywhere near the number of players or the PvE speed.

I suspect the reason Grocket isn't nerfed in PvP is because so many PvE players would be adversely affected by it. 

KGB

tiomono

KGB said:

tiomono said:

KGB said:

tiomono said:

This will murder PvE for 4* players who rely on Grocket for fast clears. PvE is *much* larger in terms of player numbers than PvP. So nerfing Grocket should be a non-starter.

Just adjust Kitty's boost so that she only boosts 5* character created tiles at her normal boost rate and 4* and below tiles at say 1/3 the rate.

KGB

There are 5* players that rely on grocket for fast clears. Kitty is not the problem. The one consistent trend is grocket.

You could apply the same logic to kitty. That it would murder 5* players who rely on kitty for fast clears. So nerfing kitty should be a non starter.

Only kitty alone is not the problem or that speedy. She only is the terror that she is because of being paired with grocket.

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

As a 4* player with no character higher than 295, I would not attack a team of 3 5* simply because match damage can wipe my team or force health pack usage. A skip or two will always net a much easier team for me.

5* players relying on Kitty for fast clears are really just relying on Grocket for the fast clears because they aren't using her with anyone else for those fast clears. Hence nerfing Grocket = nerfing fast clears in PvE. But nerfing Kittys boost of 4* or under specials won't adversely affect anywhere near the number of players or the PvE speed.

I suspect the reason Grocket isn't nerfed in PvP is because so many PvE players would be adversely affected by it. 

KGB

I have 6 5* champs. I will hit any team. But I will bring anybody I want if they don't have gritty. Just kitty and 2 5*'s I will bring whoever out of my 5*'s that have enough health to jump in a match.

When I run gritty I consistently get beat by thorkoye. That is my most frequent pair I see beating me. So I assume it must be fairly reliable. 

To me gritty brought another option to the meta. Nerf kitty you are back to thorkoye being far and above any other option in pvp. They are so fast and reliable it's silly. Gritty is a health pack eating monster for both sides.

JRYUART

Gritty isn't a problem and can be beaten by a multitude of team choices. Seems to me that the issue is that people are griping about higher healthpack usage when facing a gritty team after getting used to basically occasionally having to.heal when using thorkoye.

There is a tempo to playing PVP in 5* land and gritty seemed to disrupt that for a bit until people started figuring out how to counteract.  What used to be an easy 2-3 match shield.hop is no longer as safe as it was before because a gritty team can be super efficient, especially if you get a good board. However, if gritty gets a really bad board or suffers a cascade that takes out the strikes, they're pretty much sitting ducks.  Granted, some anti-gritty teams are preferable to use (BSS/DD) but it's not like gritty is absolutely not beatable with other, more inspired choices.  The thing is, your health *is* going to take a hit but that's part of the game.  As a former thorkoye user I used to love that my healthpack usage was minimal at best. But I don't think that creating a meta team that saves on healthpacks like thorkoye was on the minds of D3 at all.  And players got to enjoy that unintended benefit for awhile . 

The rock paper scissors game where you have gritty beats thorkoye, thorkoye beats DD/BSS, DD/BSS beats gritty is really a step in the right direction by the devs.  

This whole gritty argument was never about them being definitively overpowered - it's about not wanting to lose health, matches or both more frequently than people have gotten used to since thorkoye came into the scene. 

What would players say if Okoye's healing were changed to burst, instead of true to accompany their half-health Thor's? I wonder...

spidyjedi84

Dormammu said:

tiomono said:

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

I've thought twice about Kitty/OML. Those two can get out of hand real quickly together.

(edit: Not that I condone a kitty nerf. Just sayin' - Kitty ain't the creampuff everyone says she is without Grocket.)

You cut the legs out of Kitty/Grocket, the meta will just move to Kitty/Carnage/Medusa. There's always another tile spammer she'll pair with. I'm not endorsing a nerf, either. She's too good of a helper on QoL in PVE by speeding up that grind.

moss04

spidyjedi84 said:

Dormammu said:

tiomono said:

Would you hesitate to attack a team of 3 5*s with kitty on the team? 

I've thought twice about Kitty/OML. Those two can get out of hand real quickly together.

(edit: Not that I condone a kitty nerf. Just sayin' - Kitty ain't the creampuff everyone says she is without Grocket.)

You cut the legs out of Kitty/Grocket, the meta will just move to Kitty/Carnage/Medusa. There's always another tile spammer she'll pair with. I'm not endorsing a nerf, either. She's too good of a helper on QoL in PVE by speeding up that grind.

I've faced that team and it's miles and miles easier to beat.  Strike tiles are much better than attack tiles, they always have been.  The way most lose to a gritty team (at least one without a bishop) is you get a board that you can't clear the strikes from and then on turn 4 or 5 the gritty team gets a cascade and deals 40k damage at once to your front hero.  The strike tiles add damage to every match and they add damage to attacks tiles and they add damage to powers.  Attack tiles just deal their damage once and that's it.  Once you add in the fact that grocket drops his tiles at the start and carnage takes a few turns before kitty can start boosting and you get that much more chance to kill her off before they get too strong.  If that were the backup team people moved onto it would be infinitely better because I'm sure it would still be quite offensively strong but would far less ridiculous on defense.

spidyjedi84

Prowler and Carnage, C4P Marvel and Valkyrie, W4sp and Ant-Man.... Take your pick. Anyone who generates tiles in quick succession is going to replace Grocket if the nerf hammer comes down on him. People have outlined ways in fighting Kitty and her weaknesses without tiles. The near incessant whining of the need for a nerf on a character who is far weaker than Gambit ever was, just because she has the off-chance of disrupting the Thor Okoye meta from steamrolling all the way to the top is becoming tiresome. The OP has made it clear in his posts over the past few months he has a hard on for seeing Kitty nerfed.

turbomoose

Have thought about it and I agree with a few posts about kitty on her own is very beatable. 

so I changed my mind on the nerf. Maybe an overhaul of Grocket but it would need to be done carefully as without the strike tiles he’s not that great 

I actually tried using black suit spidey and it was not too bad so I’ll try and champ him when I can as I only have 12 covers for him 

Zeofar

So, I see this topic getting endlessly recycled on these forums and it frustrates me to no end to see people talking past Gritty's core issues in favor of a bunch of red herrings. I wrote this because I really wanted to address the subject as comprehensively as I could and just perhaps shine the spotlight on some of the real issues. Hopefully, I'll feel satisfied enough to never think about this again.

Where's the Problem?

Shortly following Kitty's release, Gritty became a ubiquitous combo. A force to be reckoned with in both PvE and PvP, remarkably above the curve on defense. They got even stronger when Bishop came around and made it much trickier to fight back. Even some seemingly purpose-built counters have ended up too slow or too unreliable to feel worthwhile. Many prefer to just skip these teams until they see something else.

So what's causing this? Obviously, Kitty is the new part, but R&G is the root of the problem. I think most players acknowledge that Kitty would not be considered the S-tier meta defining character she is today if Grocket were not in the mix. Some want to paint her as dumpster-tier trash in this hypothetical situation, but I don't buy that; she'd likely be an A-tier or high B-tier character, which although a fall from grace, doesn't bring her anywhere close to Wasp territory. R&G are the ones making it possible to stack up insane strike tiles before the opponent has a chance to react, so I'm going to set Gritty aside for the most part and focus on Grocket alone.

Are Rocket and Groot Unbeatable?

To start: In PvP, no, not nearly, even when it comes to Gritty. R&G have a number of hard (BSSM, Bishop, Kraven) and soft (Kitty, Prowler, Thanos 4, MEH, etc.) counters that makes beating Grocket teams totally feasible and not necessarily harder than other meta teams. Their power is pronounced and very focused but not so backbreaking that it's impossible to outdo the AI.

In PvE, there's a bit of a different story. Especially with the mechanics of combat vs Goons, it's pretty much impossible to build a non 5-star team that is better off without R&G. There's usually someone you can cut that simply isn't going to do as much as those strike tiles. But admittedly there's a point in 5-star land at which R&G is just an 'option' rather than 'mandatory to compete'.

Rocket and Groot are an Unhealthy design

So, if R&G aren't just 'too strong to beat', how can they possibly be a problem? It's because they're a degenerate, unhealthy design--comfortably the worst design in the game at the moment. The role they have in the metagame is removing real choices and trivializing gameplay. They're the rare character that takes more away from the game than they add.

There's really no other character in the game that provides the up-front, turn 0 power that R&G add. Fundamentally, there is nothing else that says you start with X material advantage, guaranteed. And when that advantage is a generic +1000 or more on every instance of damage dealt by your team? It's insane. It would be like Mr. Fantastic's passive firing a random friendly power at the start of the match, or if Mockingbird's Opportunist just gave you 12 AP in a random color to start with. Would those effects be beatable? Yes. Would they be interesting, fun, or fair? No, no, no. Starting the fight with that kind of advantage is incredibly lame and is at odds with the design principles that seemingly inform every other character in the game.

It's a particularly awful flavor of up-front power to add as well, since it guts the tactics that make battles in MPQ fun. Strategy? Planning? Making matches in colors you need? Nope, just make your choice of characters that either buff the strikes or deal damage every turn, then make random matches until the enemy dies! It doesn't make for engaging gameplay in the least.

When it comes to speed, R&G sets a bar that really isn't matched until you're including champion 5-stars in the conversation. It's nice to say "Wow! That's great for a 4-star!", but the cost is ignoring how much else is eliminated as a meaningful choice along the way, whether you want to do something similar or even something totally different. Grocket is good at aggressive face-smashing, but of course you can do something else, right? Well, you can try, but you're gonna run up against the fact that the likely outcome is spending more time and energy to build and play a team that's possibly a little better and probably significantly worse than lazy Grocket team #142.

By the way, those slower, "more defensive" teams you want to try? Well, those usually rely on collecting AP and firing powers, which the AI is notably terrible at, so you can expect to lose lot more on defense for your trouble. Lame. In PvE, aggressive face-smashing is so important and R&G sets the bar so high that you're almost certainly losing placement for the sake of novelty. So much for choices, eh?

It's not enough to say that Gambit was an unhealthy design AND extremely oppressive while R&G is 'just' a bad design. R&G's design is bad for the game, and being able to use something else to defeat or surpass them is not enough to discount this.

Look How They Massacred My Boy

So, of course, I submit that Grocket need to be changed, and it's easy to imagine several alterations that maintain the spirit of the ability without just making seven large turn-zero strike tiles. "But," you think, "It's not possible to change R&G without making him worse." And, yeah, you are right. If you replace their ability to dump a big fat kitty load of strikes on the board at the very start of the game with anything else, they'll probably become less useful. That should've been your first sign that there was something wrong with them: the character's entire power budget has been spent on one ability, doing one specific thing, once during the match. You can't shift power anywhere else without making the character worse when their entire identity depends on that single power spike.

And then there's the "grind" Elephant. What about all the people that use Grocket for faster clears!? People would burn out without them. Well, you know what else is likely to burn people out? Spending two years with a character that reduces the game to making 6 random matches and winning, then repeating ad infinitum. I'm not surprised that people who have been doing that to themselves this long are sick of the game.

R&G enable and drive awful grinding, not minimize it. They force you into a mindless, non-game of a procedure for the sake spending 10 minutes less playing a game. That love you feel? That's Stockholm syndrome. If a R&G nerf helps you break out of a dysfunctional relationship with a video game then I'm all for it, whether or not it means less profits for a game I do enjoy.

So really, a change still ought to be made. Grocket is a problem that has festered, and Kitty bringing them back to the forefront is an opportunity to deal with them once and for all, not an excuse to embrace a toxic design.

Red Herrings

So now, we get to the constant stream of counterproductive distractions injected into the Gritty conversation. The first red herring: "I don't remember people talking about Grocket that much before Kitty. So, of course, Kitty is the problem." This one is too easy. R&G has been an obnoxious part of the 4-star tier forever. But they could be escaped: get to the 5-star tier, and they get outclassed. The only change Kitty has made is making them relevant at higher levels of play (to the dismay of many). Take Kitty out of the picture and Grocket isn't relevant in the highest tier of PvP, but that doesn't address their effect everywhere else.

The second red herring: "Kitty will still be part of the meta, therefore no change ought to be made." This makes sense only if you ignore the drastically different pace of and opportunities to interact with Kitty teams that don't involve R&G. It's not an issue of "I don't like Kitty" or "no good teams allowed", it's a problem with what teams should be good at, how good they should be at it, and how the game is affected by those strengths. Grocket, with or without Kitty, makes the game worse with their focus on generic, massively up-front power. That's what warrants a change, not a desire to kick Kitty Pryde out of the meta.

Third and final red herring here: "You don't have Gritty and wish you did! It's envy! Sour grapes!" Well, no. Personally, Kitty is my highest-level character. R&G aren't that rare, and if you want to max one out it's as simple as pressing the heart and cracking tokens. Plenty of people with access to these characters agree that there's something wrong. It's not sour grapes, it's the ability to recognize when something isn't fun to interact with from either side.

This is a tangent, but I've seen this particular claim paired on this forum with wildly inaccurate car analogies several times (XYZ is a Ferrari, how dare you force people to drive a Honda). There must be something unique about the MPQ demographic because I've probably seen car-based comparisons made here more than in any other video game community. But it's an awful analogy. We're not talking about vehicles with extraordinarily different engineering priorities, price points, upkeep costs, and manufacturers. These characters are all made by the same people to be used in the same context, and presented with the premise that you can use the ones you enjoy. From a design perspective, the differences in the characters are largely vanity features for the sake of character fantasy and personal expression more than anything else, and you'd probably think a manufacturer was nuts if they only put the most powerful engines in the red cars because some people like it that way. Better yet though, just drop the car analogy entirely because we're not talking about cars at all. MPQ is a strategy puzzle game, and if cars are your closest point of reference you're probably lost.

Gritty's Real Power

One last thing I want to talk about and certainly deserves to be part of the conversation more than Car Talk: why Gritty really stands out to so many players. It boils down to one insidious flaw MPQ has carried since its inception: terrible, terrible tile matching AI. MPQ's match scoring is basic enough that it's only a small step up from just choosing any legal match--and worse a fair amount of the time, since prioritizing tiles matching the color of friendly powers means that friendly countdown and special tiles are frequently matched away as soon as they're placed.

What truly sets passive-driven characters and teams stand out on defense is not just that passives are powerful (they are great, but that's not the whole story). It's the lack of room for failure on the part of the AI. Sitting one AP short of firing a power with abundant matches available in that color? AI does that all the time. But when it comes to taking free AP from Carol, or making useless matches while your special tiles are endlessly buffed? You can't really go wrong there.

If the AI could understand match damage, account for the value of ally and enemy special tiles, comprehend in just a small way that using powers is Very Good, I have the impression that Gritty would not seem nearly as special in PvP. Gritty itself would only be a little worse on offense and even a little better on defense, but I think a whole range of strategies would not look as pathetically weak as how the AI currently handles them, and having a team that can bite back from time to time would not be nearly so surprising.

Nevertheless, I don't really expect a change on the AI front. There's an old Demiurge engineering article on the subject that confirms improvements were considered (to me it reads a lot like an acknowledgement that the AI sucks but hands were tied after the game was shipped), but as far as I can tell it never went farther than that. It's a little sad since the AI is definitely the game's biggest flaw, but it indeed would probably represent the largest change to how the game works (implying bugs, confusion, and complaints), and it would no doubt ruffle feathers among the apparently extant faction of "The Game Is Too Hard and the AI Cheats Despite The Half-Dozen Advantages Over It I Carry Into Every Fight". It's too much to hope for at this point, but I do wonder what MPQ would look like with those kinds of changes.

Oh Well. Anyway... just change Grocket. That's all.

NotBAMF

Zeofar said:

A bunch of words

I'm not inherently disagreeing with anything you say, and you make several fine points. I'm not as dedicated to huge posts, personally, but I totally respect your effort and opinions.

That said, my stance is a couple of issues:

1) As others have noted, Grocket/Gritty both have several counters. They may not be the counters people WANT to use because they would rather keep mindlessly steamrolling with Thorkoye or whatever their regular team is, but if you change up your team between matches, Grocket isn't that much of an issue. He is a defining character who impacts how you play against him, but he's not unbeatable or unbalanced. He does one thing ridiculously well. JRYUART said it best up there... people can beat Grocket, they just don't seem to want to use the health packs to do so.

2) I submit Bishop is a bigger issue that Grocket or Kitty. I don't ever mind taking on Gritty teams in PVP because they are challenging but beatable. Honestly, I think they are fun to play against... unless they are matched with Bishop. Then I hit the Skip button in fear.

3) This is the biggest one for me, and I say this a lot lately: Gritty makes PVE tolerable for me (and probably many other 4* players). And it's probably the ONLY thing that enables 4* players to even have a prayer at placement rewards against 5* players. If Grocket is nerfed, the 4* players are going to be back to having no way whatsoever to compete speed-wise against 5* players for placement. Nerfing Grocket (and/or Kitty) cripples lower-end players in PVE.

For transparency's sake, I don't play for placement in PVE. I hit max progression and bail. But that said? If Grocket gets nerfed? I'll honestly probably stop playing MPQ. PVE is insufferably tedious and repetitive, and the auto-pilot feature of Gritty is the only thing that keeps it playable to me where I am in the game. I'm not trying to martyr myself and claim there would be a mass exodus, and I can only speak for myself. But I really despise PVE, and if I had to do it without Grocket… I just wouldn't. That's just me speaking for myself.

jp1

@Zeofar that’s a well thought out post which I can respect. You presented a few opinions as facts there which I don’t agree with, but as a whole we all have to understand other’s opinions come from a place of good intent (for the most part, hopefully). 

I think you are wrong about the car analogy for instance. I don’t care what philosophical designs the game is supposedly based on, what I care about is when I’m sold one thing and then it is taken away from me by means of complaints from others. I am sold a (insert luxury car here) which makes my commute both more enjoyable and shaves some time off too. Great! Queue the complaining from a group of people that feel the car is too nice to exist because it invalidates all their preconceived notions of what a car should be and isn’t just a different color (insert completely generic commuter car here). Now all the time, money, sacrifices to my roster, etc... that have been made are in jeopardy because everyone should have equal privilege despite their choices or economic contributions. Sorry, can’t get behind that. 

I would agree that not everyone who wants nerfs is because of envy or sour grapes. I’m quite sure some of them have Kitty, possibly even champed like yourself. I would wager good money that a large percent of them also
have another meta to fall back on though. Nobody wants to **** their own roster to near trash tier (yes Kitty is quite bad without Rocket, tell me an instance where this isn’t true if you want to prove me wrong). If you have Thorkoye or Panthos or DD and a number of different teammates you probably don’t worry much about one of your options getting burnt to a crisp. If you have just cracked the tier and Kitty is your only Meta that improves your QOL and shaves hours (not minutes) from your grind, you probably want to hold on to her and Rocket. You did earn them fairly, why shouldn’t you enjoy that advantage?

It matters if they could be beat or not because this is the only metric that should be considered when getting ready to strip someone’s roster. Gambit could not be beat without Gambit. He was so utterly broken that it was nearly unanimous he needed fixing. As demonstrated on the forums many times, this isn’t the case with Rocket or Kitty. There isn’t good cause to devalue someone’s hard earned or very expensive roster. That matters, whether you want it to or not.

With all of that said. We all want different things from the game. From your perspective I see your point. From mine it makes little sense. I’m sure that feeling is mutual. The important thing is that they both get voiced so we have a balanced discussion for consideration instead of an angry hoard chanting “Nerf!”.

The MCU isn’t perfectly balanced and in my opinion, neither should the game based on characters within it be perfectly balanced. If anything we should have more awesome characters, not less. We should also have a better means of making meaningful progress on the characters we love. This would give more people access to someone like BSSM which fixes the PVP issue pretty effectively.

optimus2861

The point about the AI isn't being presented quite correctly there. I remember that article, where one of the game developers experimented with making a smarter AI and tried it out in some matches in a test build. 

The gameplay experience became SIGNIFICANTLY worse! The AI became good enough that it was very nearly a fair fight, meaning players would start taking many more losses than they're accustomed to doing. And this game punishes you pretty hard for losses. Loss of time, loss of points, loss of health packs, or huge loss of time waiting for characters to heal. Roll such an AI out to the game now, and you'd also need a similar overhaul in the game scoring, economy, and design decisions about how the player suffers from a loss. Absent all those you'd get a surge of rage quitters and massive frustration.

The game is designed with the notion that you're expected to win 90+% of the time. Drop that number to 50% and it's an entirely different game.

Anyway  Back to your regularly scheduled Gritty conversation. 

DAZ0273

Well I'm biased because I don't have a working Gritty but can't we just lock Rocket & Groot out of PvP?

KGB

I disagree with pretty much everything Zeofar wrote.

It's absolutely clear that the problem in Gritty is Kitty's passive. I'll say that because:
1) The Buff train is uncapped (ie happens every turn forever rather than say max buffing tiles by 200 or 300% regardless of turns required to get there) so tiles can go to infinity esp in wave nodes.
2) The Buff is an absolute number (which is *very* high near and above champ level) rather than a percentage (say 33% increase per turn which would ramp the tiles up much more slowly on 4* and below characters)
3) Lastly, and most importantly, lets say I offered a massive Grocket nerf of 90% reduction on his tile strength (7 strength 13 or 28) at L270. This would nerf Grocket into oblivion like Sentry was. But would it fix the Gritty problem? No, because the Buff train is still improving 5 of them by 653 (3000+) a turn at champ levels. It would just delay things by 1 turn.

Look, Kitty Buff is the problem. It's uncapped and increases by X amount instead of a percentage so that it turns even weak tiles by lower tier characters into killers.

As far a PvE goes, I'm with NotBAMF. Removing Grocket would make PvE intolerable because the Devs are not going to reduce the clears. My clear time (4 clears) went from over an hour before Grocket to 30 minutes or less with him (that's using GrockMorDusa since I don't have a functional Kitty yet). So we are not talking about saving 10 minutes a day, we are talking an hour or more saved a day when considering 6 or 7 clears. That's significant time.

And all for what? 4* players like me (<L300 characters) just skip Gritty teams since there is so many others to target. Veteran 5* players (12+ champs with Thorkoye/BSSM) don't find Gritty to be a problem. It's just 5* transition players who only have a few champs and no working Gritty counter at the 5* tier that post endlessly asking for a Nerf (and never to their 5* Kitty who is the problem, always to the tier they are leaving an no longer want to care about). I wonder what % of PvP players Gritty is really a problem for vs the whole of MPQ PvE and PvP players in the 4/5* tiers. I bet it's <5%.

KGB