Please Devs, there is still time, give a passive to 5* Magneto while he is Airbone

Polares

I know that the chances of this succeeding are less than 0.000001%, but for a char like Magneto that I love so much.... I need to try.

Please Devs, the same way you nerf some chars before they were released because they were more strong than you anticipated you can still buff Magneto, he will clearly underperform in the current meta. This char in its current condition it is going to be dead on arrival, he is not the worst character out there but he is also not good. His 3 powers clash between them, go airbone for 3 turns but then red adds repeaters that will not go down while he is airbone?!?!? also you need to hoard yellow, but then he has a cheap yellow power, much cheaper than his blue?!?!?.

So please Devs, give him a passive that does something while he is Airbone, in his thread I will suggest two possibilities :

 - "convert X tiles from green to yellow each turn while he is airbone", so you can match a lot of yellow tiles while he is airbone for when he comes back

or the one I actually prefer myself

- "reduce all friendly repeaters on the board by one additional turn while he is airbone", so his red repeaters would still work while airbone, but more importantly this would be an amazing power that would make him work great with so many chars like Apoc, Gambit, Carol, etc!!! This should be Magneto signature power!

There are other great suggestions in his Thread, so you have a lot of options to chose from (and I am sure you Devs have also plenty of ideas).

Please Devs, hear our plea. Give us a bit of faith back in the game! Listen to your players! Give us a good 5 Magneto!!! 

PS: Please to players, like this thread so Devs can see it. Thanxs!!!

ThaRoadWarrior

Either of those two powers would be great. Additionally they could see what happens if his flight works like Vulture's, who does AirborneStuff regardless of how he gets there. So have his blue do what it does if Danver5 or Heimdall throw him up (both do it on yellow, so there's a risk/reward there, but the cascade potential wouldn't be nothing).

My vote is that he needs to be doing SOMEthing while airborne, because if he's last man standing there is no way you'd go airborne and give the enemy 3-turns to collect AP to nuke you when you get back. As much as I'd love a repeater adjuster character, I think just letting his repeaters tick down while he's airborne might be enough. I really feel like converting green to yellow every turn he's airborne is the missing piece though.

Tiger_Wong

I say give him an entirely new mechanic. Instead of Airborne, give him HOVER. 

HOVER - under this status, the character can be targeted by single powers and match damage but is unaffected by team damage and random damage/attacks. Character can also still do match damage and fire other powers. 

Then Magneto (in the case) can still do stuff but when he returns from HOVER, he can do the big damage. 

Marc_Spector

Tiger_Wong said:

I say give him an entirely new mechanic. Instead of Airborne, give him HOVER. 

HOVER - under this status, the character can be targeted by single powers and match damage but is unaffected by team damage and random damage/attacks. Character can also still do match damage and fire other powers. 

Then Magneto (in the case) can still do stuff but when he returns from HOVER, he can do the big damage. 

He's a bit of a discordant mess and definitely needs a quick rework.

I love all the ideas above! -- especially the HOVER status.

Although, its name also reminds of Philip Glass' Christmas play music. ^_^
/// hoverrr hoverrr hoverrr... everybody hoverrrrr ///
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tPsv00Caag

Taganov

I'm adding to this thread solely to keep it on the front page. Fix Mag5.

wymtime

After starting Weber Wonder and playing Mags in PVP I just got to say Heimdall is a much better support character than Mags.  I am also not a Heimdall fan as he is only good as a 3rd.  While his reduction of AP cost can be very useful he isn’t as fun as OMD.

for Heimdall here is why he is better.  The teams he works on don’t need blue.  This allows him to use his true healing and can fortify other color tiles to speed up his friends.  I personally use Apocalypse with him and fortify red tiles causing Apocalypse red to cost 3-4 AP.  Next Heimdall’s yellow is a good secondary yellow.  I already have Apocalypse tiles out fire Heimdall yellow to generate extra AP.  Because Heimdall can reduce the cost of friendly powers and accelerate AP he can fit on multiple teams.

for Mags his blue is his best power, but to take advantage of his blue you need someone who accelerates blue.  In the 5* land that is BRB or if you have him high enough JJ.  The issue with BRB is you want to use BRB blue.  For JJ you need to hit hidden trap tiles.  If you run BRB you are using Mags for his yellow passive and Kitty is better since she buffs them over the long haul.  Mags yellow active is garbage as it does not automatically convert enemy tiles.  

Overall he has some interesting mechanics, but unfortunately is just not that good.  

Polares

Tiger_Wong said:

I say give him an entirely new mechanic. Instead of Airborne, give him HOVER. 

HOVER - under this status, the character can be targeted by single powers and match damage but is unaffected by team damage and random damage/attacks. Character can also still do match damage and fire other powers. 

Then Magneto (in the case) can still do stuff but when he returns from HOVER, he can do the big damage. 

This would be great, but being realistic I doubt they would implement it in time for his release. But it would be a much useful mechanic than Airbone for sure...

ThaRoadWarrior

It would be my preference not to introduce a new character state if the existing ones we know can be used to the same effect. But as long as he is appropriately good when it’s all said and done.

HoundofShadow

We can have a new battle mechanic centering around airborne characters. What happens is airborne character can target another enemy airborne character using only active power, and all airborne battle damage receives a 1.5x to 2x boost. This will probably requires a character who can choose who to go airborne for both teams, or the number of characters who can go airborne increases. This could create a little more strategic battle. 

DrDevilDinosaur

Absolutely agree with the sentiment that Mags really should be doing something - anything - while airborne. In a previous suggestion, I'd tried converting a lot of his active components to occur passively while airborne, but I think we can actually go quite a bit simpler.

As others have said, move the tile color conversion from active to passive and have it occur for each turn he is airborne. I still also want this passive to potentially keep him Airborne for longer, since it would really cement this as his key/unique ability and I think it allows for some much more interesting play.

Polar Coordination (Blue, 10 AP)

Magneto goes airborne for 1/2/3 turns. For every 3 Yellow AP Magneto has when he returns from being Airborne, deal a blow of X damage to the enemy (up to 8 times).

(Passive): At the start of his turn, if Magneto is Airborne, convert 4 basic Green tiles to Yellow to increase Magneto's Airborne timer by 1.

This means that the damage is still tied to the active portion, so there's no cheeky combo to have someone else throw him Airborne for a shorter period of time. The passive will kick in regardless of how he gets up there though. Also, I used wording to indicate that if there are less than 4 green basic tiles, none are converted and his airborne counter is not incremented. Still, this should allow him to stay up until most of the board has been cleared of green and he should have accrued a nice amount of Yellow AP in the meantime. While it potentially makes him even slower, it's now probably a lethal threat if you leave him to last.

And sure, his yellow and red abilities could both use some tweaking of their own, but I think everyone is in agreement that blue is where he needs the most urgent help.

Omegased

I agree with the second one. His red and blue powers are literally unusable together.
I can't think of any other character that has such an opposing Moveset.

His blue completely destroys his red. You can not use those powers together, so you'll be either 5/5/3 or 3/5/5. It's insane how opposite those two powers are.

While we're at it, his blue is too expensive, or should have a base damaged. If you don't have 3 yellow, it does no damage. 10 blue ap that does minimal board manipulation is a joke 

Polares

Omegased said:

I agree with the second one. His red and blue powers are literally unusable together.
I can't think of any other character that has such an opposing Moveset.

His blue completely destroys his red. You can not use those powers together, so you'll be either 5/5/3 or 3/5/5. It's insane how opposite those two powers are.

While we're at it, his blue is too expensive, or should have a base damaged. If you don't have 3 yellow, it does no damage. 10 blue ap that does minimal board manipulation is a joke 

Yeah this is one of those things that surprises me a lot. How did it end his design phase and went into production without no one noticing that his powers are unusable together. It baffles me. And it is kinda the same for yellow and blue...

ThaRoadWarrior

I also really wonder how characters this disjointed get evaluated and approved. Like what kinds of challenges are they being presented with to see if they work?

DAZ0273

The power doesn't even work thematically. If his blue is meant to be "surveying the battlefield" he should actually gain some useful intel from doing so (various posters have made many good suggestions as to what this could be) - instead his repeaters don't work and his troops are left to fend for themselves. If he is on his own he gains nothing in terms of yellow AP. So what was the point of looking about if no strategic benefit is gained?

HoundofShadow

What they do is they pick three traits that they think represent that character the best. However, if they think that the meta needs some shakeup or counter, they will not stick to this way of design 100%. 

It seems like they design this Magneto to be more of a supportive character with one big damage or chip damage every 2 turns. Compared to his 2* and 3* version, he doesn't have any ability that destroys tiles. It's about "purifying" the field via removal of enemy SAP tiles.

PiMacleod

See... its character designs like this that REALLY REALLY make me disbelieve that the devs have decent testers.

No, I'm not knocking the devs directly...

All we (the forumites) had to do was read the powers... and BAM -- we saw issues.  We didn't even play it!  Then, the introducing event came forward, and we got a small taste of it in practice.  The issue we foresaw showed themselves to be a reality.

A tester for this game should be someone that's given an account full of everyone at champ levels -- and then let loose to play for a bit.  THEN -- they should be given mock matches based on what can be CURRENTLY FOUND on the servers for PvE and PvP scenarios.

This way, they don't interfere with what's going on, and the fake account could never be seen -- but they get to test against what is commonly seen.

Even better, the testers should be of 3 types....  one with max champs for all.... one with baby champs for all... and one with a single cover of each color.  This way, you can get a glimpse of each stage, and see if the results vary... also, the matches pulled from live server play would be wildly different, since all 3 levels generally have different metas.

I'm not even saying that the tester has to be a "invested veteran" of the game ... just a set of people given our real server fights to base things on.  Because as it is now, it DOES just look like they are making characters that are trying to emulate some sort of actions that the character does, without much regard to how it could be a fair-n-balanced character in the current climate.

ThaRoadWarrior

You could even do this 1 better and implement a "smart AI" player as was described in the legendary article about AI behavior that gets posted a few times, and then just let the AIs play any number of other AIs and calculate the wins percentage to see how well any particular team does. You'd only need to make a couple adjustments to it to get a decent degree of verisimilitude - let the AI chase L-shaped match 5s on purpose, and then let the AI fire the same color power until they've run out of AP, and you'll have a "pretty good" idea what a human will do.

Polares

PiMacleod said:

See... its character designs like this that REALLY REALLY make me disbelieve that the devs have decent testers.

That is not testers responsibility, in general testers just check that the game works properly and has not bugs. They can do suggestions obviously, but this is Game Designers responsibility.

i will say though, that the best games listen very carefully to what their best players say, as they play their game more than their designers and have some insights they might not have. Sadly this rarely happens here

PiMacleod

I've seen instances where testers show their chops and report on such things.

And lets just say I didnt, for the sake of argument -- why on earth (or any other planet) would you ever NOT listen to your employees that you pay to play your game?!

Yes, that's a question of simple business practice.  And, lets just say that testers are considered "entry level position", as they usually are.  Then, listen to your "lead testers" then.  I've walked around game testing grounds before, within companies such as Midway.  There's a lot of detail going on, and people taking tons of notes, not just about glitching, and graphical bugs, but numerical ones too (i.e. this buff to my fireball damage doesn't seem to add anything).

Maybe I'm asking too much for a small mobile game business.  Or maybe I'm raising a point that would kill two birds with one stone -- 1) allow the testers to give proper balance feedback if they don't already, which would 2) deliver a product that your player base could have a higher approval rating for.  The game testers dont even have to make the fixes (obviously), just report what's not performing at what levels (i.e. this new character doesn't seem to perform at any levels even close to our Beta Ray Bill we released a year ago).

It's just very bitter to me.  You have the resources RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU.  Use them.

...or is this just one of those things where the people that make the game aren't gamers themselves, and so, they just churn out a product for a buck?  I, for one, have a passion for proper game balance/development.  If its just a business with no passion, then all questions are answered, and I have no further comment.

I think the main reason this kills me is that we're RIGHT HERE.  We're constantly reporting on what will work and what won't.  And while we have our disagreements amongst ourselves, any group of individuals will do the same on any topic.  We offer up our knowledge and experience for free.  We take the stuff they give, and we're joyous for it (usually), but critical too, especially when it comes to how well it'll perform.  We allow for different playstyles to a point -- for example, we all know that Shuri isn't meta, but we all also know that she deserves mention because she definitely has a place on some teams, depending on the goal and the opponent.  The same can be said for other niche characters.  And no one has a problem with that.  We aren't expecting Polaris every time... but we're DEFINITELY not expecting Talos EVER.  There's no reason when you have testers in-house, and a forum of experience to draw from.

It just seems overly lazy at the end of the day...  and I just realized right now that I'm putting too much of myself into this statement.  I expect the devs to treat this like its their baby, and that they'd want to make this the best game they can... when really, that's what I would do.  I focus on balance all the time, to the point of self-destruction sometimes, and I know it.  Thanks for dealing with my monologue -- it's been nice to figure out its actually just me expecting better based on what I see from my position, instead of the fault of people I don't really know, and who may not have the same drive/desire that I do.

ThaRoadWarrior

QA Testers are not looking for qualitative impressions of features, just quantitative. Does this thing work as designed, yes or no? if no, what are the specific conditions you need to reproduce it? Did whatever you did fix it?  It's the job of the game designer to make sure that a design fits in to the overall picture of the game. I will say that this game in particular has interesting challenges when it comes to qualitative playtesting testing - because it takes actual literal years to build a roster, and roster growth is wildly dependent on RNG, there are infinite possible shapes for what kinds of teams people are going to have and at what levels. So if you're using a dev account where you can just give yourself any character at any level, and play against other characters at any other level, you can say "yup, works like a charm!" even if the reality of the messy true landscape of play immediately says otherwise. You could see how largely out of touch the dev team was in those character release blogs for 5*s where they'd unironically suggest pairing them with 2* or 3* characters for synergy. 

jp1

Hard to argue with all the free information they have at their disposal right here on the forums they willingly ignore though.

Just seems incredibly foolish to let such a valuable resource go untapped.