MPQ: Rebalance verses New Characters

The rockett

How would you feel, if MPQ spent an extended amount of time rebalancing the game, and released NO new characters for 1 month?

Edit:

This survey had absolutely nothing to do with *BALANCING CHARACTERS*.  Hence, why the opening post says, "If MPQ spent an extended amount of time *REBALANCING THE GAME*."

Meaning the entire game.  How the game works.  How the game runs.  PVE.  PVP.  Alliances.  Rewards.  Tokens.  VIP.  Roster Selection.  Tokens.  Vaults.  Daily Resupply.  Etc.

No opinions necessary.  Simply would you be okay with the production of new characters taking a break while game gets updated?  Yes?  Or no?  Or are you ambivalent toward the thought? 

Tony_Foot

No way, I would hate that! I like the currecnt rate of character releases.

We all already know the answer to this poll and in all honesty no matter how many times this is brought up nothing changes. I admire you resilience but surely by now people can stop wasting their time as none of the great ideas I’ve seen on here have ever been implemented. 

Either enjoy the game for what it is in the majority or move on. Expect small changes at this point but nothing like a redirect of resources to rebalances. 

Plus with the record they have for reworks it’s probably best left alone.

Not going to vote as there are enough gash characters in this game that have sat there for years without a rework, if they care it would have been done by now. I think I’d prefer they retired them and compensated. 

peterdark

Meh...It would not matter to me. I do not care, either way.

I would sit on the fence on this one. I can see arguments for both, too many new characters, power creep, etc. On the flip side, people get attached to their characters or people try hard to get certain chars only for them to be 'balanced'. Can you imagine if you spent x months building thor only for him to be 'balanced' and not in a good way. 

A rebalance would also mean learning all the abilities again and some people are too lazy (like me).... luckily I've not learnt all 80+ 4* and all their abilities. And then the working out what combos will work. 

AlexR

It's about time! I would love that!!!

Provided "rebalance" means "buff those characters that need it" rather than "nerf hammer", I'd be all for it. Buffing a terrible character is almost like a character release, because you get a new toy to play with either way and I used to always really look forward to the Season announcements for the buff reworks. I was so sad when they stopped doing those.

captainheath

It's about time! I would love that!!!

I'm in favor of rebalancing numerous characters a season instead of just one or two a year.  

It really shouldn't be that difficult if only the numbers are tweaked and not the effects.  There are a lot of numbers:

Health
Power Cost
Damage
Match Damage
Critical Multiplier
Protect Strength
Countdown Timers

Other games do small tweaks on the numbers all the time.  

Here are a couple of examples in which I think numbers could be tweaked to let a character shine in what makes it unique:

5 Jean Grey: Give the player reason to get her down as soon as possible, because her changing into the Phoenix is her signature.  Right now everyone will just leave her for last.  Leave her health low.  If the critical multiplier were increased significantly and the power cost of the purple was changed to 5, she would be more likely to be targeted first.  It would be fun to risk taking her down early and then hopefully avoid the Phoenix.

5 Silver Surfer:  He is unique because of the black hole.  Emphasize it by reducing black from 12 to 8 or so.  If Vulture can generate just as well with only 6 ap, why shouldn't a 5 star do it better?

5 Wolverine:  He's the slasher and should feel like it.  Up the match damage big time.  Also up the healing amount because that is what makes him Wolverine.

If a bunch of the 5 star tier were rebalanced a season it would bring a lot of life back into the game.  It shouldn't take much to just adjust the numbers.

Bowgentle

So many years, and you still can't speel, rockett

Anyway, we know new characters are the thing that makes them money, so regardless of the outcome, they won't stop.
The team obviously is too small to do both at the same time, so new chars always will win out.

KGB

Meh...It would not matter to me. I do not care, either way.

It makes zero difference to me in 4* land.

The reason is that 4* land has 90 characters of which a handful are meta and those are the ones I use 99% of the time (minus essentials or featured PvP boosted). So fixing any of the 80 or so non metas in 4* land does nothing for me. Obviously 3* and below does nothing for me either.

Of course I realize the intent of this thread is really about fixing a handful of useless 5*. So the question is really about whether the rest of the game (4* and below) should pause for 5* rebalance. To answer that we really need to know what portion of players are truly in 5* land (more than 10 champs, of which at least 1 or more is one of the useless 5*s).

KGB

DAZ0273

I agree this poll should probably have been slightly more honest with the options - i.e rebalance of 5* characters is what we are really talking about.

From my personal point of view - you go ahead and rebalance Banner - it will do nothing to help me whatsoever unless the rebalance is to the colour of the 2 covers I have (black I think) and suddenly makes him viable to use based upon just that. I have quite a few more covers in Phoenix but really, the same applies unless she is made amazing all of a sudden.

So all this would be is another thing given to the "haves". If the "Haves" are the majority of the players then I guess go for it. If not then what do the rest of the player base get?

captainheath

It's about time! I would love that!!!

DAZ0273 said:

So all this would be is another thing given to the "haves". If the "Haves" are the majority of the players then I guess go for it. If not then what do the rest of the player base get?

They get a chance to use more of their roster.  Since the goal of the game is basically collect them all, reward players for collecting them. 

DAZ0273

captainheath said:

DAZ0273 said:

So all this would be is another thing given to the "haves". If the "Haves" are the majority of the players then I guess go for it. If not then what do the rest of the player base get?

They get a chance to use more of their roster.  Since the goal of the game is basically collect them all, reward players for collecting them. 

How can you realistically collect old 5*?

BriMan2222

captainheath said:

I'm in favor of rebalancing numerous characters a season instead of just one or two a year.  

It really shouldn't be that difficult if only the numbers are tweaked and not the effects.  There are a lot of numbers:

Health
Power Cost
Damage
Match Damage
Critical Multiplier
Protect Strength
Countdown Timers

Other games do small tweaks on the numbers all the time.  

Here are a couple of examples in which I think numbers could be tweaked to let a character shine in what makes it unique:

5 Jean Grey: Give the player reason to get her down as soon as possible, because her changing into the Phoenix is her signature.  Right now everyone will just leave her for last.  Leave her health low.  If the critical multiplier were increased significantly and the power cost of the purple was changed to 5, she would be more likely to be targeted first.  It would be fun to risk taking her down early and then hopefully avoid the Phoenix.

5 Silver Surfer:  He is unique because of the black hole.  Emphasize it by reducing black from 12 to 8 or so.  If Vulture can generate just as well with only 6 ap, why shouldn't a 5 star do it better?

5 Wolverine:  He's the slasher and should feel like it.  Up the match damage big time.  Also up the healing amount because that is what makes him Wolverine.

If a bunch of the 5 star tier were rebalanced a season it would bring a lot of life back into the game.  It shouldn't take much to just adjust the numbers.

I take it you weren't playing before Wolverine got nerfed???  You pretty much just described pre-nerf Old man Logan.  They aren't going to change him back.  He was nerfed because he healed so much every turn that all you needed was an old man logan with one yellow cover and he was great.  He saved on health packs with his massive healing and did great damage just on match damage.

bluewolf

It's about time! I would love that!!!

KGB said:

It makes zero difference to me in 4* land.

The reason is that 4* land has 90 characters of which a handful are meta and those are the ones I use 99% of the time (minus essentials or featured PvP boosted). So fixing any of the 80 or so non metas in 4* land does nothing for me. Obviously 3* and below does nothing for me either.

Of course I realize the intent of this thread is really about fixing a handful of useless 5*. So the question is really about whether the rest of the game (4* and below) should pause for 5* rebalance. To answer that we really need to know what portion of players are truly in 5* land (more than 10 champs, of which at least 1 or more is one of the useless 5*s).

KGB

What are the odds that either a rebalance or a new character matters to people in 4 land?

Yes, we've had some nice recent 4's.  Meta?  Ummmmm I don't really think so.  Very good, sure.  Sabretooth is kinda close to a meta, but mostly a counter Gritty or speeding up clears with Thorkoye in waves. 

Is Bishop meta?  He won't help you speed through PVE at all.  In PVP he makes people skip a lot, but you don't want to take him on any extended climbs....  
 
Let's look back..... ignoring Sabretooth and Bishop.... and my order is a bit off.....

Mysterio
Black Cat
Thanos (4)
Ronin
Magik
Talos
Namor
Prowler
Domino

Any of them getting a lot of play?  Even the ones that are good?  Or are you still using the meta from 2 1/2 years ago?

This is hardly the first time it's been brought up, but adding more and more characters has a diminishing rate of return unless you're willing to accelerate the meta (the devs do not seem to want to do that, or perhaps don't really know how to do that....I'm a bit torn on that front).

Colognoisseur

Let me rephrase your question. Why don’t we take a month off from making a steady stream of income through new releases to satisfy a tiny percentage of players.

if there is anything that would make them take a month off from releasing new characters it would be for something that appeals to the great majority of players who are at 3* or below not the tiny minority of 5* players.

Every time you have a question to ask add this to your thought process, does it mean anything to a 3* player. if the answer is no you can forget about it and move on.

ZootSax

In additional to what @Colognoisseur already said, given the previous history of character rebalancing in the game why would anyone reasonably assume that one month of rebalancing would actually solve the problems alluded to in the OP.

MPQ has not been a game with subtle tweaks during every release to balance things, like many other online games.  With possibly the sole exception of IM40, pretty much no character reworking has ever elevated an older character to the undisputed meta.  Don't get me wrong, there have been some very good reworks in there (Riri jumps immediately to mind), but none of them have changed the meta (how often do you see Riri on PVP climbs when she's not boosted).  The meta has only really changed when a new character becomes available or if the previous meta is nerfed into ashes.  That's how the game has always worked.  The best we could reasonably hope for is some Invisible Woman, Nick Fury or Elektra reworks to elevate them from low tier to mid-tier...which don't get me wrong, would be a great change for the likes of 5* Hulk, 5* Wasp, Emma Frost and others, but wouldn't address the complaint.  A solid month of gutting 5* Thor, Okoye, Kitty, Rocket & others would just cause an uproar, even if it did deal with the issue in the OP.

Obviously, this isn't how things have to be necessarily, but if we're being honest, do we really think the entire competitive landscape can reach a more broad equilibrium by only skipping 2-3 release cycles and using whatever character testing simulations the developers appear to use?   If you do think that's possible, what possible reason could the development team have to do this through rebalancing when they can monetize it over several new releases using those same abilities which otherwise would be given out "for free" in rebalancing?

bluewolf

It's about time! I would love that!!!

When 4's are released, I think it's more about keeping resource pressure up than anything else at this point.  I can't believe that the purchases go up that much, other than the rare time you see a meta character, when a new 4 is released.

But a new character means you now need to worry about another character to get to 209 to get the "free cover" from Shield Training, and therefore need to use iso, and use HP for a roster slot, and maybe you use HP to try to get a cover from the vault, and you play harder and shield more, for the covers in PVP, and maybe you are using more health packs in PVE.....etc etc.

If you don't have a new character people generally approach things a lot more casually.

The game is not always about selling you stuff at that exact moment.   All the things they give you to do are meant to keep you logging in, not finishing, coming back to see the new deal, etc.

A new character is a thing you feel a need to complete and coming back to the game to do.  A rebalanced character does none of those things, barring the occasion where you skipped someone and now feel like maybe you should work on them.

Time off for rebalances seems like a good idea and I support it, but I also don't expect it because it's actually just time to catch up/get ahead and feel less obligated to play the game.

JHawkInc

No new characters = no new spending = the game dies.

There's a lot that can be discussed with releases and the usage of older characters, but the poll topic is disingenuous with how it represents the game. Further, this isn't a choice, where these two things can be interchanged as equals.

Thanos

It's about time! I would love that!!!

They can re-balance and then re-release them in stores. That's how they still make money.

Rhadamanthus23

It's about time! I would love that!!!

As the Support hiatus continues, I seriously doubt the likelihood of anything resembling a rework like you want would take more than 2 years.

Be nice to see, especially if it took less time. But with no new content even for 6 months, the game would stagnate quickly.

CT1888

It's about time! I would love that!!!

Rebalanced a character, and run it like a new release event, so that while the top players might not play hard, it gives younger rosters something to chase, to turn a 7 cover 4* adding no value into a new champ.
It also increases the iso pressure, which would encourage them to play more. 

DAZ0273

If they are going to rebalance 4* characters (not what the OP was referring to I suspect) then why not just run System Reboot again?

Malcrof

It's about time! I would love that!!!

I am fairly sure that big changes to characters require Marvel's input, they licence all of this. Release schedule is probably set by them.