Discussion on Beta Ray Bill and Bishop

bluewolf

Michael1957 said:

Naturally my suggestion will receive harsh criticism from unimaginative one trick ponies , but I’d love to go against every character in the deck instead of the same monotonous 3 offerings ad nauseum offered by whale clones .

Let me say that I would accept some ideas to change up the monotony.  I kind of liked the special PVPs they ran in December, but others didn't.

The problems laid out are not pushing back for the sake of being "unimaginative" but are inherent in the game's design as it exists now.

The devs have left full dilution firmly in place to keep roster slot need high.  (They also have the potential for every character to be an essentials for the same reason.)  Rather than somehow controlling the size of the tiers they created targeting, which means when someone comes into a tier, they get the same advice about which characters to chase, ensuring that the variety of teams has taken a nosedive as newer rosters come in and are forced to focus on the best characters to have any hope of champing ANYONE at all (option b being pulling/earning 94x13+ covers for the 4 tier, or north of 1,222 covers, and hoping you get some good ones covered first).

The game is also built on speed so you are by necessity, most of the time, running the meta teams unless you are experimenting when playing PVP or PVE.

You also will find - obviously - that meta teams are pretty good on defense (often as a result of ramping up dmg quickly) so people who are playing PVP and looking for points run the best teams.  They want to deter hits as much as possible while gaining points as quickly as possible.

All this is to say the system that was designed by the devs heavily incentivizes players to pick the (same) best teams as everyone else.  The players just are reacting to the incentives built into the system.

A carrot vs stick approach would be better if the goal was variety of teams in the game as it exists (with full dilution).  You could set up a system where if you ran certain teams (say, don't use these x characters) you might be able to hit certain progression targets with less points/wins, or give more points from matches when you use non-meta teams, or other concepts.  Maybe if you accepted upon entering a PVP that you wouldn't run certain characters, you get more rewards/higher currency amounts.

Note that none of these changes seem very likely, but you never know.  The devs prefer to introduce new characters that they (at least sometimes) hope modifies the meta enough to create variety through power creep or occasionally different ways to play that are equally effective as the current meta.

SnowcaTT

jredd said:

BigSoftieFF said:

Bill = broken beyond belief.

glad i'm not the only one that sees this.

remember when they nerfed oml cause he was used upwards of 10% of the time they said? not sure how the characters that are in 98% of the teams i see in pvp fly under the nerf radar...

Well, now a lot of the teams out there aren't BRB, they are Hulk....but I think that's because if you want to chew through hulk teams all day you are going to be using healthpacks, and players aren't accustomed to using more than their allotted healthpacks after all these years of Okoye and BRB.

I still contend that BRB is the most broken character in the game. Almost every new character that comes out I see discussions that basically come down to: "Does this character pair well with BRB? If not, why bother"

You can play around Okoye, you can play around Thor, you can play around Hulk, you can play around Kitty, you can play around JJ/PX and Carnage somewhat.There is simply no way to play around BRB. Since he both puts out free tiles and matching those free tiles gives him the INCREDIBLY cheap power to fire to get more free tiles - it's going to happen, probably multiple times, every single game.

Most matches you play -can- go bad, but more often than not the BRB matches -will- go bad. I've seen team compositions where BRB is simply thrown in the mix to "slow the other team down", because that's what he'll do.

And Bishop is exactly the same thing - I've seen so many huge 5* teams using Bishop instead...and as long as you're going that route, why not pair him with BRB: the two characters that you can just toss in any match to slow the other team down the most, pairing together just about perfectly. The difference is BRB is a 5* - more difficult and challenging to get, more health and more damage done - it's natural that people will use the good 5*'s. That Bishop is by far the most common 4* to go alongside those 5*'s....

The sooner Bishop gets hit with a nerf bat, the better, it should have been done six seasons ago.

bluewolf

SnowcaTT said:

jredd said:

BigSoftieFF said:

Bill = broken beyond belief.

glad i'm not the only one that sees this.

remember when they nerfed oml cause he was used upwards of 10% of the time they said? not sure how the characters that are in 98% of the teams i see in pvp fly under the nerf radar...

The sooner Bishop gets hit with a nerf bat, the better, it should have been done six seasons ago.

What a great day that will be.

The sooner the better.

Just sayin'.

BriMan2222

SnowcaTT said:

jredd said:

BigSoftieFF said:

Bill = broken beyond belief.

glad i'm not the only one that sees this.

remember when they nerfed oml cause he was used upwards of 10% of the time they said? not sure how the characters that are in 98% of the teams i see in pvp fly under the nerf radar...

Well, now a lot of the teams out there aren't BRB, they are Hulk....but I think that's because if you want to chew through hulk teams all day you are going to be using healthpacks, and players aren't accustomed to using more than their allotted healthpacks after all these years of Okoye and BRB.

I still contend that BRB is the most broken character in the game. Almost every new character that comes out I see discussions that basically come down to: "Does this character pair well with BRB? If not, why bother"

You can play around Okoye, you can play around Thor, you can play around Hulk, you can play around Kitty, you can play around JJ/PX and Carnage somewhat.There is simply no way to play around BRB. Since he both puts out free tiles and matching those free tiles gives him the INCREDIBLY cheap power to fire to get more free tiles - it's going to happen, probably multiple times, every single game.

Most matches you play -can- go bad, but more often than not the BRB matches -will- go bad. I've seen team compositions where BRB is simply thrown in the mix to "slow the other team down", because that's what he'll do.

And Bishop is exactly the same thing - I've seen so many huge 5* teams using Bishop instead...and as long as you're going that route, why not pair him with BRB: the two characters that you can just toss in any match to slow the other team down the most, pairing together just about perfectly. The difference is BRB is a 5* - more difficult and challenging to get, more health and more damage done - it's natural that people will use the good 5*'s. That Bishop is by far the most common 4* to go alongside those 5*'s....

The sooner Bishop gets hit with a nerf bat, the better, it should have been done six seasons ago.

There are lots of ways to play around Brb. Use kitty and you will have his shields removed in no time, even if you can't deny blue kitty will have his blue countdown removed soon enough.  Use thorkoye and use thors red ignoring protects and okoye boosting damage.  Use apocolypse also protect ignoring red and boosting dmg with his yellow.  use daredevil and simultaneously stun bill, steal his protects, turn them into strikes, and deal boosted damage to him since he's stunned.  Bring medusa or a medusa team up or other tile stealing team ups. BRB is never a problem for me in pvp, unless he's paired with bishop but then bishop is the one that is the problem not BRB.

But even brb/bishop I am able to hit much easier now thanks to apocalypse plus mutant.  Who are you fighting with BRB?  I notice that every time I see you in pvp you're running okoye/hulk.  If that's who you are fighting him with then that's your problem.  BRB/Kitty eat hulkoye teams for lunch.  Just get blue on the board so hulks passive is giving you a free 3 protects every turn and then work on getting kitty red to add 9 attacks into that.   BRB is the anti hulk, I've been on both sides of this fight and it's tough for the hulk team to win once bill gets his blue on the board,  but that doesn't make him broken because he counters one specific character very well.

BRB has a number of counters and one character that he counters hard, well 2 as he does the same thing to 4 star juggernaut and his team damaging passive.  Bishop on the other hand counters every 5 star and has only one counter, apocalypse, and even then you need 2 characters to counter him since you need a mutant partner.  IMO the only broken character in the game is bishop.

SnowcaTT

BriMan2222 said:

 I notice that every time I see you in pvp you're running okoye/hulk.  If that's who you are fighting him with then that's your problem.  BRB/Kitty eat hulkoye teams for lunch.  Just get blue on the board so hulks passive is giving you a free 3 protects every turn and then work on getting kitty red to add 9 attacks into that.   BRB is the anti hulk, I've been on both sides of this fight and it's tough for the hulk team to win, but that doesn't make him broken because he counters one specific character very well.

The 'problem' of BRB is like the 'problem' of Bishop: it just delays whatever the true problem is. All of your solutions require time - so by the time you've dealt with BRB, he has a bunch more tiles out, they are likely buffed (with kitty), or those solutions weren't real solutions because your team is stunned (with Bishop)

I'm actually surprised you think BRB is anti-hulk and tough for hulk teams. As a recent hoard-breaker I have no problem with BRB's of any size: indeed Bishops are no problem at long last. I'd suggest quite the opposite - that hulk is anti-brb because yes you can take it down, but it's going to cost you healthpacks and time. I guarantee I'm faster on the other side.

Before my hoard break - I had no solution for BRB/Bishop, though Thorkoye could get BRB/Kitty at around the same success rate (almost always) and around the same speed. But then the problem is Thorkoye could be beat by almost anything, and that wasn't (and isn't) the case with BRB. Also the problem is Thor/Okoye/Hulk/Apoc have only a few characters they can pair well with - again that isn't really the case with BRB, whom I see paired with a wide variety of characters...because he is that "slow down until the real problem arrives" character.

But yes, Bishop was -usually- the real problem, and a nerf would help a lot of other teams that haven't had a giant hoard break deal with this one 4*/5* team that is everywhere. Oh, for that day to arrive.

BriMan2222

@SnowcaTT

"I'm actually surprised you think BRB is anti-hulk and tough for hulk teams. As a recent hoard-breaker I have no problem with BRB's of any size: indeed Bishops are no problem at long last. I'd suggest quite the opposite - that hulk is anti-brb because yes you can take it down, but it's going to cost you healthpacks and time. I guarantee I'm faster on the other side."

I guess it depends on which team you as the player are using.  I know when I see ihulk in pvp I use brb/kitty and use plus blue ap boosts, and unless I get extremely unlucky and there's absolutely no blue on the board, it doesn't take long until hulks passive is doing -1 damage each turn, usually no health packs are needed.  I supposed if you are on the opposite side of that fight it's easy enough to deny blue from BRB.

So I guess hulk and BRB counter each other.

jackstar0

Weird that the game is super easy for some people. I wonder what that's like.

Daredevil217

SnowcaTT said:

BriMan2222 said:

 I notice that every time I see you in pvp you're running okoye/hulk.  If that's who you are fighting him with then that's your problem.  BRB/Kitty eat hulkoye teams for lunch.  Just get blue on the board so hulks passive is giving you a free 3 protects every turn and then work on getting kitty red to add 9 attacks into that.   BRB is the anti hulk, I've been on both sides of this fight and it's tough for the hulk team to win, but that doesn't make him broken because he counters one specific character very well.

The 'problem' of BRB is like the 'problem' of Bishop: it just delays whatever the true problem is. All of your solutions require time - so by the time you've dealt with BRB, he has a bunch more tiles out, they are likely buffed (with kitty), or those solutions weren't real solutions because your team is stunned (with Bishop)

I'm actually surprised you think BRB is anti-hulk and tough for hulk teams. As a recent hoard-breaker I have no problem with BRB's of any size: indeed Bishops are no problem at long last. I'd suggest quite the opposite - that hulk is anti-brb because yes you can take it down, but it's going to cost you healthpacks and time. I guarantee I'm faster on the other side.

Before my hoard break - I had no solution for BRB/Bishop, though Thorkoye could get BRB/Kitty at around the same success rate (almost always) and around the same speed. But then the problem is Thorkoye could be beat by almost anything, and that wasn't (and isn't) the case with BRB. Also the problem is Thor/Okoye/Hulk/Apoc have only a few characters they can pair well with - again that isn't really the case with BRB, whom I see paired with a wide variety of characters...because he is that "slow down until the real problem arrives" character.

But yes, Bishop was -usually- the real problem, and a nerf would help a lot of other teams that haven't had a giant hoard break deal with this one 4*/5* team that is everywhere. Oh, for that day to arrive.

I only ever see Bill paired with Kitty or Bishop in pick 2. That’s really it. Who are these wide variety of teams you are seeing (and since when is playing well with others a bad thing?)?

Bri, beautifully articulated several ways you can “play around” BRB. You don’t like them because they take time, but that doesn’t mean counters don’t exist. Also, I destroy BRB/Kitty with Thorpocalypse. Kitty can buff the tiles to a billion and it doesn’t matter when Apoc cuts right through them. I know Thor was mentioned, but Havok’s cheap red ALSO cuts through the protect tiles. That’s three characters in the 5* tier that flat out ignore the worst part of Bill (slowing down the game). How many more counters do you need? I haven’t mentioned stunning, stealing, overwriting or... denying blue (which you can’t do with Bishop as his partner; which is why he’s the only broken part of the combo). 

krakenoon

Daredevil217 said:

I only ever see Bill paired with Kitty or BRB in pick 2. That’s really it.

Pretty sure Bill=Bishop here. Or was BRB supposed to be Bishop?

Daredevil217

krakenoon said:

Daredevil217 said:

I only ever see Bill paired with Kitty or BRB in pick 2. That’s really it.

Pretty sure Bill=Bishop here. Or was BRB supposed to be Bishop?

Edited! Thanks. 

_Vitto

So far, the suggestions to deal with BRB (let alone bishop) are:

- Havoc (plenty of Havoc teams around, in fact);
- he/worthy (so gimmick vs gimmick);
- mirror bishop (see above);
- Kitty, 5* daredevil, Medusa, ant man, 5 * dr strange,  5 * star lord, 5* thanos, 5* thor,  okoye, ant-man, kraven, and spider-woman (I guess there's no need to comment further here).
- and my personal favourite: think harder about your moves and pay more attention.

I cannot wait to see all these players in competitive PvE or PvP brackets to check how they are doing, since the game seems so smooth to them with BRB/bishop around.

Polares

Bishop should be nerfed, he should have been nerfed months ago. I can't really comprehend why Devs didn't nerf him already, and what is worse, why they created worthy cap with the same broken mechanic (at least worthy just pairs with HE).


BRB is super strong but I dont think he is broken (if we compare him to the other god tier chars like Okoye, Thor, Kitty, Apoc, Hulk, etc). The problem is that he pairs extremely well with both Kitty and Bishop (and also Apoc). And also that in a game that is all about speed he is pretty tough to face and requires more time and more thought than others. 

He is borderline OP though, and in another time a char like this would have been OP for sure. It was a big mistake giving him so much life....

One of the main problems of this game is that it lost balance a long time ago. It used to be difficult to find chars with a ton of like, with very strong cheap and powers, with higher match damage, etc. Now you have chars like BRB or Apoc that have everything, massive hitpools, massive match damage, incredible powers, etc. It is very easy now to find combinations that break the game.

PS: If chars were not that hard to cover and max, this game would really need a balance pass to nerf all these chars, and buff the weakest ones. Sadly, if they do this now, I would probably stop playing as a massive change in the meta like this would leave most probably in a bad state... (specially because Devs dont know how to nerf).

Xair

I agree that bishop is op, and should have been nerfed immediately when it was obvious how op he was.

But as for 5* like brb, and Apoc “having it all”, match dmg + cheap powerful spells + passives. I don’t mind it at all, actually I like having op 5* like those which are meta defining. Tring to achieve perfect balance only results in having too many weak and lame chars. The natural progression of the game means the new chars should be better than the old ones, and if u stop playing u should fall behind. The latest legends on average should be stronger than the classics, cause that motivates players to keep pushing forward, and keep trying to champ the most recent legendes, in order to stay on top of the meta.

I like that the meta keeps evolving.

Polares

Xair said:

I agree that bishop is op, and should have been nerfed immediately when it was obvious how op he was.

But as for 5* like brb, and Apoc “having it all”, match dmg + cheap powerful spells + passives. I don’t mind it at all, actually I like having op 5* like those which are meta defining. Tring to achieve perfect balance only results in having too many weak and lame chars. The natural progression of the game means the new chars should be better than the old ones, and if u stop playing u should fall behind. The latest legends on average should be stronger than the classics, cause that motivates players to keep pushing forward, and keep trying to champ the most recent legendes, in order to stay on top of the meta.

I like that the meta keeps evolving.

I agree meta should evolve, but power creep is the cheapest/easiest/most boring way of doing it.

Also one thing is having more powerful chars over time, and another one is completely disregard any balance notion at all. You can have stronger chars, but that they are balanced.


Said that, I kinda prefer how they do it in other games like MtG, Street Fighter / League of Legends (these ones are far easier as they have way less chars), etc.

Now that Destiny is about to go the sun-setting/vaulting route I think that this is probably the best way of doing it in games like this one (like MtG has done since the beginning). The problem is that chars are too hard to cover here, so sun setting a char every year would be pretty crazy (people would be pretty mad), but that would be the way of always evolving the meta, and that would also help Devs try new things without too much fear of breaking the game (in the worst it would be broken for a year :P ). And as a char would only be useful for a year if a char would be nerfed in that year because he is OP I dont think people would be that mad.... The game would need an "Unlimited" kind of mode though were you could use all chars, like these other games have (the char can not be used in normal PvP and PvE but he can be used in other Unlimited modes).

But I guess this is a completely different debate...

bluewolf

@Polares

When I listened to the recent podcast about the history of MPQ, they painted themselves as being on the leading edge of the trend of "game as a service" aka something that keeps going for a long time.  They said they started out development without that in mind and switched the design direction, if I recall. The game's success was not a given and I would guess their development ideas have shifted as things went along.  Maybe they are honestly a little surprised they are still running today.

The point is that it's possible they would have come up with a different design plan as far as meta curation if they had expected to still be running 6 2/3 of a year after they started on some of this stuff.  Maybe they would have tried harder on the vaulting concept, for example.

I dunno how some of the other games make most of their money but in MPQ it's all about character acquisition for the most part.  That makes it very hard to change things too dramatically because they don't want to discourage spending on characters.  I suppose it's possible that if they had more successfully launched monetization through other features (supports, costumes) then we would be seeing a more dynamic meta today.

Michael1957

I find the multi purpose Legion now handling BrB without another meta partner. He drains chosen AP (blue, green),  remains invisible to most damage , destroys enemy special tiles and ignores Protects . He counters everything BRB can do, a lot faster. 

   Bishop is still a problem although I’d like to see if Apoc/ Rogue/Okoye will work.

Polares

bluewolf said:

@Polares

When I listened to the recent podcast about the history of MPQ, they painted themselves as being on the leading edge of the trend of "game as a service" aka something that keeps going for a long time.  They said they started out development without that in mind and switched the design direction, if I recall. The game's success was not a given and I would guess their development ideas have shifted as things went along.  Maybe they are honestly a little surprised they are still running today.

The point is that it's possible they would have come up with a different design plan as far as meta curation if they had expected to still be running 6 2/3 of a year after they started on some of this stuff.  Maybe they would have tried harder on the vaulting concept, for example.

I dunno how some of the other games make most of their money but in MPQ it's all about character acquisition for the most part.  That makes it very hard to change things too dramatically because they don't want to discourage spending on characters.  I suppose it's possible that if they had more successfully launched monetization through other features (supports, costumes) then we would be seeing a more dynamic meta today.

Yeah, I agree that the sun-setting/Vault chars concept is a bit hard to do here because of how hard is to cover new chars, but I guess a change like this would also affect how chars are covered. I mean, If they make new chars easier to get (5s specially), maybe even easier to buy, then I dont think people would be mad that chars are "retired" after a year. In the end we want the meta to evolve so we dont get bored of the game.

MtG has demonstrated over and over again, having a fixed window where you can use a particular card is the single best way of having an evolving healthy meta without crazy power creep. And I think it is the only way that really works.

Destiny2 is another example of a game that has run into a wall because some weapons were so good that people didnt chase the newer ones, if they were even crazier. And this made the Devs a really tough job balancing the content, as enemies were easy to defeat with the meta weapons, but super hard without them. Does this remind you of anything? (coff coff scl10 coff coff)

KGB

The Champion reward system effectively killed vaulting.

Remember back when they had latest 12 4* in LT's and vets were complaining they could no longer get champ levels for their vaulted 4*s. So they reversed course and now we have massive dilution.

Like most players I love the champion reward system but it essentially killed the chance of going the vaulting route.

KGB

IIAlonditeII

KGB said:

The Champion reward system effectively killed vaulting.

Remember back when they had latest 12 4* in LT's and vets were complaining they could no longer get champ levels for their vaulted 4*s. So they reversed course and now we have massive dilution.

Like most players I love the champion reward system but it essentially killed the chance of going the vaulting route.

KGB

One might think the simplest solution would be the one already existing for 5-Star Characters - Latest Legends gives only the 12-15 most Recent 4* Heroes, in addition to the 3 most Recent 5-Star Heroes. Classic Legends can award any 4 or 5 Star not in that pool. 

Special Shops more frequently with 3 Featured 5* and 12 Featured 4*, costing 25 CP like Latest for the benefit of targetting specific characters.

KGB

IIAlonditeII said:

KGB said:

The Champion reward system effectively killed vaulting.

Remember back when they had latest 12 4* in LT's and vets were complaining they could no longer get champ levels for their vaulted 4*s. So they reversed course and now we have massive dilution.

Like most players I love the champion reward system but it essentially killed the chance of going the vaulting route.

KGB

One might think the simplest solution would be the one already existing for 5-Star Characters - Latest Legends gives only the 12-15 most Recent 4* Heroes, in addition to the 3 most Recent 5-Star Heroes. Classic Legends can award any 4 or 5 Star not in that pool. 

Special Shops more frequently with 3 Featured 5* and 12 Featured 4*, costing 25 CP like Latest for the benefit of targetting specific characters.

Except that's the opposite solution most vets would want. They don't care about new 4*, they mostly want to level their existing ones to 370 for the champ rewards. Those players almost exclusively pull from latest legends and never from classics so they would be cut off from leveling older heroes.

The only semi-viable solution would be to let the players select 6 of the 12 so they could target 6 older heroes at a time in addition to the latest 6. But Demi has shown no willingness to consider this type of solution.

KGB