Idea for renewing life into the game: Combining character star ranks

Glockoma
Glockoma Posts: 555 Critical Contributor
edited August 2020 in MPQ General Discussion
I was speaking with a friend, @MizzouAntler, the other day about the stagnancy of the game and the lack of rebalancing any characters. We were trying to find a solution to circumvent singular reworks as well as develop a path for the developers to create new content down the road without having to go into a 6* tier. 

That’s when it struck us, why not combine some of the tiers? The 1*,2*,3*could now become the 1* tier, 4* would become the new 2*, and 3* would comprise all of the 5* tier. (Or something to this effect.

We only came about this because of how complex the game has become with small changes over the many years we have been playing. We felt that with combining the tiers into a more simplified fashion, new players could enter into the game with more variety and veteran players would be able to utilize a far greater landscape than what is currently needed in a higher level gameplay.
 For example, I don’t even bother with collecting 1* characters. With the introduction of clearance level 10, I don’t even use my 2* characters. What if we can batch the tiers together and start to be able to carve a path that allows us to really mix in the depth of rosters and actually reignite some opportunity for future developments?

Thoughts? Thanks

Comments

  • Painmonger
    Painmonger Posts: 167 Tile Toppler
    I don't see how combining the 1-3 tiers, changing all of the prelude missions, altering SCLs & rewards, and presumably rebalancing the characters in the 3 new tiers could possibly be easier & more clear than the rebalances we've been begging for in the 5* tier for years. We've gotten a few in the 4* & 5* tiers but it's been a long time, and we were told recently that if it's something they'd do, it's on the back burner for a while. I also don't see how that addresses stagnation since that doesn't really set in until you get to the 4* tier, which would still be in the same relative place. I wouldn't hold out any hope for them basically rebuilding the whole game.

    That being said, it is a fun thought experiment. How would SCLs work in this new system? Just 3 choices? Maybe 1 for each tier & 1 in between each? Could limit options based on a percentage of how many champs you have in each tier? I would think you could drop the lower levels that already have a stronger current 3* version, ala Human Torch, Captain America, or Storm. Some of the others have totally different power sets, so you'd just have to scale them up. 
  • Glockoma
    Glockoma Posts: 555 Critical Contributor
    Dormammu said:
    There's still a reasonable number of new players to this game every day and that would be the obstacle of what you are suggesting.

    The 1-star tier has a very specific purpose - it is the gateway tier that serves as a tutorial. The 2-star tier is much the same, introducing more complex play mechanics. Swamping newer players with (literally) over a hundred characters into those tiers would absolutely ruin that experience.

    Also, I don't know if you remember, but when you're brand new you're not exactly swimming in covers or tokens unless you spend some $$$. The dilution you're suggesting at the 1-star and 2-star tiers would make it impossible for any newer FTP player to fully-cover any one character in a time-frame close to reasonable (not to mention the strain on slots). New players would become frustrated and leave the game. The developers would likely have to entirely re-work the Prologue to accommodate those new players, and that isn't very likely. (Not that what you are suggesting would ever happen anyway. That would be such a major overhaul, affecting every aspect of the game.)

    I never really examined what the mechanics should be, so I wouldn’t stake a claim that, for example, the entire 3* and 2* need to be reworked in order to achieve it’s goal. That would be a developer issue.

     One suggestion, for those that remember, would be similar to the health adjustment made (back in 2015?; can’t remember exactly). Obviously scaling (health/damage) tiers, if done once before in one fell swoop, can be done again.

    So I’ll leave speculation to you all reading this and feel free to join present ideas here. Again, This is just a foundation thought, any specifics are trivial at best. But man, for a beginner, going from a handful of characters to a all 3 of those first, (generally useless now firmly in 5* land), would be quite interesting.
  • Pongie
    Pongie Posts: 1,412 Chairperson of the Boards
    I reckon it’s time to shake up the game and have it 4 vs 4. Especially when the side bars are wasted now (on iPads). Can easily extend to accomodate the 4th member. Just imagine all the new team combinations. 
  • Glockoma
    Glockoma Posts: 555 Critical Contributor
    Pongie said:
    I reckon it’s time to shake up the game and have it 4 vs 4. Especially when the side bars are wasted now (on iPads). Can easily extend to accomodate the 4th member. Just imagine all the new team combinations. 
    Love that.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,819 Chairperson of the Boards
    Pongie said:
    I reckon it’s time to shake up the game and have it 4 vs 4. Especially when the side bars are wasted now (on iPads). Can easily extend to accomodate the 4th member. Just imagine all the new team combinations. 
    LOL, you do realize they put the bars in to standardize the graphics across devices.....

    It would be hysterical, however, if they went to 4 v 4 and changed the ratio to widen it.  And Phone Folks would either be playing landscape all the time, or have bars at the top and bottom of the phone and have a shrunken gem field.  I already make mistakes too often thanks to fat fingering.

    Talk about a mass exodus.
  • PiMacleod
    PiMacleod Posts: 1,786 Chairperson of the Boards
    I do NOT want 4 on 4.  As much as my brain loves to play around with combo ideas, here's why I don't wanna see 4 on 4.

    The time to play increase.  If the player has 4 peeps, then so does the enemy.  The time to play per day would increase drastically.  

    Team damage powers would get a strong bump in "meta" qualifications.  Team damage is a big deal normally because it gets around invisible status, and when there's 2 or more people on the board, it generally hits harder than a single hitting attack (you know, when you add the damage together to see how much of a 'chunk' you took out of the team).  Hitting 4 people?  Each team damage ability would grow in popularity, and iHulk would arguably be one of the best (read: most abused) characters.

    Too many layers.  With 3 people on the board, you have to choose your combo wisely -- you can't "have it all".  You're gonna go for an idea, and that's it!  With an extra person, now it just gets convoluted.  Some people might find it interesting and throw in tons of fun ideas, but then there's some that'll just straight up abuse it.  Example:  I love Gritty, and I love Thorkoye... lets do them BOTH!!  Or ..  how about Kitty/BRB/Bishop.... AND ROCKET!!  YAY!!  ....no thank you.

    Its not that 4 on 4 isn't a great idea.... its just not a good idea for THIS GAME (imho).  Maybe if the ENTIRE GAME was overhauled (cough, MPQ2, cough), and the characters had a different toolkit depending on the team size... then I could see it.  Example of what I just stated:  Okoye has her 3 powers, and this is for 3-man Team play.  If she's being put in a 4-man team, one of those powers reads as blank.  In other words, at least 1 power per character would have an extra text that states that it'd only be allowed in 3-man teams.  That way, 4 man teams would have 8 total powers (which is one less than 3 man teams, but the health pool is higher overall, and you'd have more variety in power combos).

    Anyways -- those are just my thoughts on it.  I'm usually not so against an idea... but I think 4 man teams would be a major drain on this game, in it's current state.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,275 Chairperson of the Boards
    I always feel more can be done with the Team Affiliations. Some sort of boost effect and in fact I would even say that if a villain is played on a majority heroic team then it should have a negative affect - why are Spider-Man and Daredevil helping Bullseye kill people exactly?
  • Kolence
    Kolence Posts: 969 Critical Contributor
    edited August 2020
    As @PiMacleod has said, the game is already "calibrated" for 3 vs 3.

    OTOH, there already exist waves in pve, for players to fight against. Maybe it would be possible to give something similar to players to use too.

    Other option for using just 4 characters could be to make a swap automatically, every turn or some other way, but that may complicate so many passives as they are already somewhat prone to bugginess on waves... :)

    As for changing character ranks... I'd be more for allowing lower tiers to continue adding champ levels, at increasingly higher cost in covers/shards. That still may bring new imbalances, though. Some 3*s, and 2*s even, have pretty useful powers... 
  • Ptahhotep
    Ptahhotep Posts: 428 Mover and Shaker
    4 characters could be accommodated by using the wave node mechanic. Select a reserve character who drops in to replace a downed one.
  • Pongie
    Pongie Posts: 1,412 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2020
    It wasn’t a serious suggestion. Just a thought. I know it will never happen. Wishful thinking of using a full fantastic 4 team or guardians of the galaxy. Though I don’t think the aspect ratio will be that bad on a phone. The ap bar is already overlapping much of the character graphics, having it not overlapped can easily make use of the 19:6 aspect ratio. For iPad, leave it overlapped.

    edit: maybe revamp team ups and bring in the 4th character that way. Part of the team without the health bar, and all their abilities require team up aps. Less broken (no passives) and makes the team up abilities multiple use per battle but limited to the one character. 
  • abmoraz
    abmoraz Posts: 712 Critical Contributor
    edited August 2020
    bluewolf said:
    Pongie said:
    I reckon it’s time to shake up the game and have it 4 vs 4. Especially when the side bars are wasted now (on iPads). Can easily extend to accomodate the 4th member. Just imagine all the new team combinations. 
    LOL, you do realize they put the bars in to standardize the graphics across devices.....

    It would be hysterical, however, if they went to 4 v 4 and changed the ratio to widen it.  And Phone Folks would either be playing landscape all the time, or have bars at the top and bottom of the phone and have a shrunken gem field.  I already make mistakes too often thanks to fat fingering.

    Talk about a mass exodus.

    If only.  The Steam interface is 1000x better than the forced portrait mode on my phone.
  • Jacklag
    Jacklag Posts: 316 Mover and Shaker
    Dormammu said:
    There's still a reasonable number of new players to this game every day and that would be the obstacle of what you are suggesting.

    The 1-star tier has a very specific purpose - it is the gateway tier that serves as a tutorial. The 2-star tier is much the same, introducing more complex play mechanics. Swamping newer players with (literally) over a hundred characters into those tiers would absolutely ruin that experience.

    Also, I don't know if you remember, but when you're brand new you're not exactly swimming in covers or tokens unless you spend some $$$. The dilution you're suggesting at the 1-star and 2-star tiers would make it impossible for any newer FTP player to fully-cover any one character in a time-frame close to reasonable (not to mention the strain on slots). New players would become frustrated and leave the game. The developers would likely have to entirely re-work the Prologue to accommodate those new players, and that isn't very likely. (Not that what you are suggesting would ever happen anyway. That would be such a major overhaul, affecting every aspect of the game.)
    As a moderately recent player (under 600 days) I see merit in the idea and your critiques. But a middle ground would be reasonable. Combining 1* and 2*s would into a single tier would be a plus, IMO. They could get rid of 2* Black Widow, and 1* Storm, giving 1* Black Widdow a black passive and leave 2* Storm as the default enter level Storm. And a single Hawkeye as well. An entering tier with 18 characters rather than the current 8+13 would not be detrimental to new players. And it might actually be more fun if you could play with Captain America, Thor and Wolverine right of the bat. Maybe the Dark Avengers could become Limited Characters too if the Roster still looks too packed.

    Some 4* characters deverve a downgrade to 3*s, as well as some 5*s deserve to be downgraded to 5*. That could spread things out a bit and help a little with dilution. 

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