What's the point of support equip restrictions?

Theghouse

With the huge windfall of rewards that came from milestones, I'm sure many players like me got a nice stack of support tokens and even unlocked some pretty good supports.  And some of them, also like me, probably found a really good interaction only for that to be spoiled by a limit on who the support can be used by.

I imagine the limitations are designed to be thematic?

But this game is already a "sandbox" game, from a thematic standpoint, like playing with your action figures as a kid. Outside of the prologue, if you want to fight against the main storyline villain Carnage with Carnage, you can. If you want to team up Onslaught and Apocalypse with Professor X, you can.  You can have Thor, Lady Thor, and Worthy Captain America fighting together wielding 3 Mjolnirs simultaneously.

And when you look at the support limits in closer detail, they don't even make sense... 
- the Children of Thanos can be paired with any villain, but the Dora Milaje can't team with anyone except Black Panther... not even Okoye or Shuri?
- If anyone can use Taskmaster's Sword, Star Lord's element guns, or Black Widow's batons, why can only heroes use Wasp's gauntlets and only Spider-verse use the webshooters?
- If any hero can pilot the Quinjet or the Royal Talon Fighter, why can only X-Men pilot the Blackbird and only Guardians pilot the Milano?
-  Anyone can use the Kingdom of Atlantis, yet Avengers tower is heroes only even though Avengers tower has been taken over by villains before (like the storyline in MPQ where Norman Osborn and the Dark Avengers take over Avengers tower)?

In the interest of keeping a thematic element, encouraging pairing supports with their main companions is still achieved (with better result I'd argue) with giving extra benefits for a specific character or group, and a number of supports already have this type of design.

So why have support equip restrictions at all?  I'm sure a number of players are getting their first shot at advanced support tokens and drawing good supports that can't be equipped to their best characters, washing away the excitement of the rewards and leaving supports to be ignored... Is it time for these restrictions to go?

Daredevil217

Probably because game balance is more important than thematic accuracy. Part of the strength/weakness of a support is the flexibility (or lack there of). 

PiMacleod

Daredevil217 said:

Probably because game balance is more important than thematic accuracy. Part of the strength/weakness of a support is the flexibility (or lack there of). 

did you just use "game balance" while describing an aspect of MPQ??!!?  lmao...

Banner, W5sp, Okoye, and Kitty have a powerpoint presentation they'd like to share with you.

Please know that may statement is just in fun -- and maybe you're right in the fact that this MAY have been what the devs wanted to achieve by this... but I'd find it hilarious if they started to think about "balance" because of supports, and not just, i dunno, the characters themselves...?

Theghouse

Daredevil217 said:

Probably because game balance is more important than thematic accuracy. Part of the strength/weakness of a support is the flexibility (or lack there of). 

You must be referring to the game balance where a few players get otherwise unattainable ultra-powered supports that can be used by any character by being the top player out of a group of 5000 for 28 days straight in the less popular game mode where you can't even use supports?

And other players have one or two good supports they've unlocked with their hard-to-come-by advanced support tokens that are only able to be used by one specific character, and that character isn't even one that they use?

HoundofShadow

I think the restrictions probably came from RPG games. Your standard RPG has restrictions for things like weapons, armours and helmets etc. The restrictions are typically based on class, alignment or weight. So, I guess in MPQ, these are our restriction equivalent.

Rhipf

Theghouse said:

And other players have one or two good supports they've unlocked with their hard-to-come-by advanced support tokens that are only able to be used by one specific character, and that character isn't even one that they use?

Are there actually any supports that can only be used on one character? I know there are other restrictions to which group of characters a support can be used on and that there are extra benefits for using a particular support on a particular character but are any supports really restricted to use on only one character?

BriMan2222

Rhipf said:

Theghouse said:

And other players have one or two good supports they've unlocked with their hard-to-come-by advanced support tokens that are only able to be used by one specific character, and that character isn't even one that they use?

Are there actually any supports that can only be used on one character? I know there are other restrictions to which group of characters a support can be used on and that there are extra benefits for using a particular support on a particular character but are any supports really restricted to use on only one character?

Carol corp can only be equiped to captain marvel, Dora Milaje and astral plane can only be equipped to black panther, and arc reactor can only be equpped to iron man.

Dogface

BriMan2222 said:

Rhipf said:

Theghouse said:

And other players have one or two good supports they've unlocked with their hard-to-come-by advanced support tokens that are only able to be used by one specific character, and that character isn't even one that they use?

Are there actually any supports that can only be used on one character? I know there are other restrictions to which group of characters a support can be used on and that there are extra benefits for using a particular support on a particular character but are any supports really restricted to use on only one character?

Carol corp can only be equiped to captain marvel, Dora Milaje and astral plane can only be equipped to black panther, and arc reactor can only be equpped to iron man.

But of all the characters you mention, there are more than one. Carol corps can be equiped to all 4 Carols, same goes for 4 Black Panthers and 4 Iron Men.

PiMacleod

BriMan2222 said:

Rhipf said:

Theghouse said:

And other players have one or two good supports they've unlocked with their hard-to-come-by advanced support tokens that are only able to be used by one specific character, and that character isn't even one that they use?

Are there actually any supports that can only be used on one character? I know there are other restrictions to which group of characters a support can be used on and that there are extra benefits for using a particular support on a particular character but are any supports really restricted to use on only one character?

Carol corp can only be equiped to captain marvel, Dora Milaje and astral plane can only be equipped to black panther, and arc reactor can only be equpped to iron man.

Dont forget...
Spider-Sense -- Spider-Man only
Ancestral Plane -- Black Panther only

Dogface said:

BriMan2222 said:

Rhipf said:

Theghouse said:

...

...

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But of all the characters you mention, there are more than one. Carol corps can be equiped to all 4 Carols, same goes for 4 Black Panthers and 4 Iron Men.

This is true.  But still, it IS highly restricting.  Especially in a game where we're literally mixing villians, heroes, non-supers, etc.  So many combinations, but yet, there's these restrictions.

My opinion on it is irrelevant.  I'm just echoing the idea of the topic.  I can't help but understand what they are getting at.

Rhipf

Never mind I was mistaken in my original version of this reply.

Theghouse

Maybe in their original vision for supports they saw nearly every character getting exclusives and new supports releasing with every new character, but clearly that vision has changed over time (support circuit?)...

I still can't see any reason to keep the restrictions.  I've already tackled the thematic argument.

From a balance standpoint, when some players are dominating PVE scoreboards with 550 rosters equipped with multiple infinity stone supports, I don't think letting somebody put a 3* Dora Milaje support on their only 5* champion level 450 Apocalypse is going to break any PVE game balance.

DAZ0273

My main gripe was when high level Supports were tied into one single power. The only 4* Support I have is Arc Reactor however the 5* perk you get relates to House Party Protocal, a cover for 5* Iron Man which of course I don't have. So it might as well be a 3* Support for all the extra use it gives me.

Rhipf

DAZ0273 said:

My main gripe was when high level Supports were tied into one single power. The only 4* Support I have is Arc Reactor however the 5* perk you get relates to House Party Protocal, a cover for 5* Iron Man which of course I don't have. So it might as well be a 3* Support for all the extra use it gives me.

Technically there is no rank 4 perk for Arc Reactor so a 4* AR support would always only use the rank 1 and rank 3 perks. The 5th rank (requiring 5 stars) is the third one listed and does apply to any of the Iron Men that support can be attached to. The Synergy Perk is only available if used on IM Mark XLVI though but is active even if the support is only at level 1 (i.e. only has one star).