Devs, stop releasing dead-on-arrival 5s !!! What is the point of releasing mediocre chars?!?!?

Tiger_Wong

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Tiger_Wong said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Coming back to Ultron - why are we worried about AP denial in 2021? As Tiger-Wong pointed out, we're here deep in that heavy match-damage meta (which to be quite honest, I don't think is actually what the 5Witch/Colossus meta is - it's a heavy defense meta that rewards stunners and big single target hitters rather than the free AOE meta we are coming off of. 5Witch punishes heavy cascades just as much as she does bulk micro-hits, and Colossus's black is doing the heavy lifting offensively more than his match damage in my experience) so what is the point of only reducing AP? Odin does that too, which makes me think the devs think it matters for some reason? Or potentially is going to matter?

I also don’t think Scarlett Steel is about the match damage meta as much as great defense. You either stun them then hit them or hit one of the hard with a one hitter nuke. 

I also agree that Ultron doesn’t look stellar on paper but he has to be controlled to know the deal. His CD I’m looking to use for the stun more than the AP destruction. A black stun that costs 8 AP? I’m here for it. Not a fan of the CD but it is fortified. 

I really feel like a passive CD/repeater manipulating character would turn the meta upside down. And I think it’s coming soon. 

If you had a character who was passively decrimenting Repeater tiles, you'd suddenly see a TON of Ronans I can tell you that much.

Oh I think Ronan has got some DIRT. His black is really good too. I think highly of him and Electro. She’s got dirt too with Wanda/Onslaught.

ThaRoadWarrior

Anon said:

In his 5* thread @Daredevil217 mentioned that in a tier like this, it's better to do one thing extremely well than do a bunch of things mediocre, and it's true. You look at all the meta characters and they're used for 1 or 2 specific reasons. Kitty, Okoye, and Apocalypse are used for boosting. BRB, Wanda, and Colossus are used for defense. Thor is used for AP generation. 

Then you look at characters like Knull, Ultron, and Ronan who are trying to do too many things at once and failing miserably.

Simplicity is key.

Ronan does two things - wait for countdowns to resolve and wait for repeaters to resolve. As soon as either happens its lights out. He is a prime example of a  character that would slay in a slower paced game, or needs to be a boss character with ap feeding goons to either side of him.

Sekilicious

justsing said:

Sekilicious said:

ThaRoadWarrior said:

Sekilicious said:

As a 4* player looking to transition to 5* play these ‘mediocre’ characters are better than anything I have. There is a thread that showed we can transition using the Robbie Reyes Ghost Rider as a solo champ. In a meta with Griity and Thoyoke. 

I get everyone’s philosophy is if you’re not first you’re last but this is kind of ridiculous 

That was my first Grand Experiment thread that seems to have been retired with the sub-forum it existed in during a site cleanup. Mediocre chracters from the above tier are definitely better than who you have, but as soon as you champ them, the threats you get matched up against in PVP will immediately scale up to a degree you are likely to find oppressive. The big takeaway from my GRRR experience was that he was thoroughly ill-equipped to combat the Kitty/Rocket meta, because the qualitative difference between Kitty and Ghost Rider is not something that MMR takes into account, except I was then exclusively matched up against single champ kitty and max-champ rocket basically until Sabretooth was released. Her ability to scale damage turn on turn immediately and passively was something that even a hard hitting (relative to the time) Ghost Rider was too slow to do anything about. At that time pre-shard, it was very difficult to chase counter characters, even at the 4* tier, so I spent the entirity of that meta trying my best to come up with some sort of reasonable team to exist in there. Main event Hulk, my second champed 5* Dr Doom could do it if he legit died in the match, so that left me trying to go solo...it just felt incredibly punishing and there was no reasonable time-frame character growth option for me besides sticking it out or selling off my 5*s to drop back down.

Thanks for clarifying your perspective. Mine is that a single champed Ultron would make PvP significantly more difficult than Polaris and her various counters with a 4* MMR. A single champed Kitty or BRB may make PvP more bearable than Ultron, but a single champed Ultron would make PvE in SCL10 possible beyond spamming endless Winfinites, though maybe not the challenge node. Getting to top-50 to 100 in SCL10 every event is a significant hurdle to champing every 5* as they are released. 

Not sure why you think a single champed Ultron would be more useful in SCL10 PVE than single champed Kitty or BRB…….. I play SCL10 PVE with a single champed Kitty on my alt account and do fine. Kitty is faster than BRB, especially when you can use R4G as a 3rd. But champed BRB isn’t that slow either since Polaris pairs well with him and fuels his AP gen. 

I don't. I think Ultron would be better with Grocket and Polaris than Juggern4ut is for clearing SCL10. The point is Kitty and BRB would be better, and though Ultron is a step below but he is far from useless. 

entrailbucket

Anon said:

In his 5* thread @Daredevil217 mentioned that in a tier like this, it's better to do one thing extremely well than do a bunch of things mediocre, and it's true. You look at all the meta characters and they're used for 1 or 2 specific reasons. Kitty, Okoye, and Apocalypse are used for boosting. BRB, Wanda, and Colossus are used for defense. Thor is used for AP generation. 

Then you look at characters like Knull, Ultron, and Ronan who are trying to do too many things at once and failing miserably.

Simplicity is key.

Sort of, but also: the good characters actually do more than one useful thing, and they all do multiple useful things really well.

Okoye boosts powers but she's also a true-healing tank who has a passable damage power. 

Apocalypse boosts powers but he also has two huge nukes that he can apply his own boost to. 

Beta Ray Bill provides defense, but has two huge damage powers and generates his own AP for both of them. 

Kitty boosts tiles but also creates tiles and also removes enemy tiles/does damage.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

I think the obviously successful business model of 2 meta per year we already have observed as set in stone . You’re talking to the wall if you think they’re going to sacrifice profits for your personal preference. 

acescracked

Polares said:

PS: On a personal note I disagree with some of the analysis of single chars, specially with Adam. After Colossus and Wand/Elektro were released Adam has basically disappeared from my teams. 
...

Adam dominates top end pve. Though obviously with okoye as a dance partner. Not a good PvP character.

ThaRoadWarrior

Characters who can "make their own luck," also known as being "ai proof," are also popular. You can have a character who looks slow/bad/useless on paper, but can in practice be quite fast if they take advantage of the way the AI does things. I think Carbage is maybe the best example of a character who was written off but is good actually because he does things that add up to more than the sum of their parts. I'm hopeful such a thing will be the case with Ultron, but you know, there for sure have been some duds. Ultron's black is like a reverse Crimson Bands of Cyttorack (a hilariously named blue power), which stuns at the beginning, then has a long-tail CD that does damage to whoever is in front and destroys AP every turn until it expires. That power costs 1 more blue ap than Ultron's CD that attacks  AP pools for 2 turns THEN stuns them, and Dr 5trange is a years old character. 

There have been some pretty weaksauce red powers coming out lately, I think the comparison to Jessica Jones's red is the most favorable one, but remember that Jessica Jones has a damage dealing trap passive that also provides AP on the player's strongest color when you match it, so she has a soft self-accelerant to compensate for the low damage it does. But more recent characters like Odin and Sighclops have pretty unforgivable dump-stat reds if you ask me.

entrailbucket

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

I think the obviously successful business model of 2 meta per year we already have observed as set in stone . You’re talking to the wall if you think they’re going to sacrifice profits for your personal preference. 

They could make a lot more profit if whales had an actual advantage vs the zero-spend players who dominate now. 

If the meta required you to have more than 2 characters at a high level to win, the free to play hoarders would get priced out pretty fast (and nobody would miss them).

TheEyeDoctorsWife

entrailbucket said:

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

I think the obviously successful business model of 2 meta per year we already have observed as set in stone . You’re talking to the wall if you think they’re going to sacrifice profits for your personal preference. 

They could make a lot more profit if whales had an actual advantage vs the zero-spend players who dominate now. 

If the meta required you to have more than 2 characters at a high level to win, the free to play hoarders would get priced out pretty fast (and nobody would miss them).

I think even the whales would get out priced and give up as there’s always a bigger whale out there . Plus can you imagine the fanboy hoard lovers who wait for that meta to arrive if every release was a “must have to keep up with the Jones”? This isn’t Apple where every release is better than the previous . And even in that business paradigm , customers aren’t waiting in line because they absolutely must have the newest device released . 

entrailbucket

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

entrailbucket said:

TheEyeDoctorsWife said:

I think the obviously successful business model of 2 meta per year we already have observed as set in stone . You’re talking to the wall if you think they’re going to sacrifice profits for your personal preference. 

They could make a lot more profit if whales had an actual advantage vs the zero-spend players who dominate now. 

If the meta required you to have more than 2 characters at a high level to win, the free to play hoarders would get priced out pretty fast (and nobody would miss them).

I think even the whales would get out priced and give up as there’s always a bigger whale out there . Plus can you imagine the fanboy hoard lovers who wait for that meta to arrive if every release was a “must have to keep up with the Jones”? This isn’t Apple where every release is better than the previous . And even in that business paradigm , customers aren’t waiting in line because they absolutely must have the newest device released . 

So, in a game that is a business, that's trying to make money, they have purposely created and cultivated an optimal player strategy that earns them no money?

entrailbucket

One important piece of information: most of these players used to be big spenders, many in the five-figure range.

They stopped spending completely once they realized you only need one or two characters to win everything.  If you still needed to spend to win, they absolutely would.  These are not sane people.

I don't think the devs woke up one day and suddenly decided "let's voluntarily give up hundreds of thousands of dollars to make our most dedicated, angriest players stick around forever!"

TheEyeDoctorsWife

entrailbucket said:

One important piece of information: most of these players used to be big spenders, many in the five-figure range.

They stopped spending completely once they realized you only need one or two characters to win everything.  If you still needed to spend to win, they absolutely would.  These are not sane people.

I don't think the devs woke up one day and suddenly decided "let's voluntarily give up hundreds of thousands of dollars to make our most dedicated, angriest players stick around forever!"

While I can’t speak for all of humanity , I will speak for everyone I know who could afford to spend 5 figures a year on a video game . Not one of them plays video games . And there may be a demographic of tech nerds still living in their parents’ basement with no girl friend who could do that however I believe hopefully that is a statistically insignificant percentage of the population. 

   We have 2 players in our alliance with a 7 figure net worth and even they only drop about $5K a year . Is anyone here in an alliance where players spend over $200 a week? ( Invite me if so)

entrailbucket

I have personally seen former members of my alliance drop $1000 more than once a day in back-to-back-to-back transactions.  For a long time, you could easily find multi-stark buy clubs if that was something you wanted. 

I don't know what motivates people to spend that much on a mobile game, but they did.  I don't know who those people are, but they exist.

It stopped happening when those players realized there was no longer any advantage to be gained from their spending.  That happened because of infrequently released overpowered characters, combined with frequent mediocre/bad releases.

To suggest that this was by design defies all logic.

helix72

I've found it more useful to look at characters in tiers:

Tier 1: good enough to use frequently even when unboosted 

Tier 2: specific niche/counter use when not boosted and/or good enough to use when boosted

Tier 3: doesn’t really do enough to merit use even when boosted, but doesn’t make your team worse if forced to use them

Tier 4: does something to make your team worse

Now a character can be in different tiers for PvP and PvE, and for PvP in particular a character can be in one tier on offense and a different tier on defense. For example, for me iHulk is tier 1 for PvE, tier 1 for PvP offense, but tier 4 for PvP defense because of all the Wanda teams that will target you for an easy win.

Before totally deciding a character is garbage, I like to play with them a fair bit. Right now for me I haven’t figured out Odin, and since he’s boosted in PvE he’s tanking over Okoye making her worse and healing half Thor making him worse, so right now in PvE he's a 4 for me. I haven't played him at all in PvP so no idea there but I'm struggling to see his value. Still early, but not really liking him.

HoundofShadow

How players expect the abilities of new 5* should be shapes how they look at the game. If the questions they ask are:

"Can this character replace or do x better than the meta characters?"
"Can this character win matches quickly?"
"Can this character hit hard (damage/ap)?"

Then, chances are they will be disappointed by new releases most of the time. 

For me, I see characters' abilities in terms of synergies and variations. The question I ask is "How can I create synergies that bring out the best of this character's abilities?"

No one is right or wrong regardless of how they think characters' abilities should be. It's personal preference. That's why it's good to have variations that satisfy different groups of players' playstyles and expectations. However, the problem come when you try to force your expectations on the devs and make them do things your way. 

Talking about whales, somebody in MPQ reddit  started a thread a week or two ago about a famous whale (within Line group) who max champ new 5* characters the moment they enter HP or their special store.  It's max champed (550), not just champed (450). I think those in Line can verify this or correct me.

marshall

I've been at this game for almost 6.5 years and I can say that players are right about what is going to be meta 50% of the time at best.

More recently Knull was hyped up to be the must crack hoard open char to take to 550 and while fine, he did not change the meta at all. Colossus on the other hand was quickly dismissed and is now a mainstay even without SW.

It's hard to predict what will disrupt an established meta. I'd say the current state is favouring a new char with bigger single hits that can avoid building SW charges or stuns as opposed to the endless passive multihits of yore.

In the famous words misattributed to Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Borstock

marshall said:

I've been at this game for almost 6.5 years and I can say that players are right about what is going to be meta 50% of the time at best.

More recently Knull was hyped up to be the must crack hoard open char to take to 550 and while fine, he did not change the meta at all. Colossus on the other hand was quickly dismissed and is now a mainstay even without SW.

Who the heck thought Knull was a must have? I don't remember that at all.

I do remember being wrong about Colossu5.

HoundofShadow

Knull was a "must have" because Cyclops was deemed the worst of 2. You either go Cyclops/Colossus/Wanda or Colossus/Wanda/Knull. If players had a choice, Knull won't even be in the picture.

entrailbucket

Knull got hyped as an anti-Hulk due to his permanent damage ability.

It turned out nobody needed him because SW completely nerfed Hulk.

HoundofShadow

I don't remember him being hyped as Anti-iHulk but SW was hyped as the iHulk killer. I remember him being hyped as having monster hp after all the numbers were out. The permanent damage ability is a counter to iHulk's revive. That's about it. He's classified under fun team.

I just remembered that he was hyped as a fast team with R4G/Kitty, when he's boosted. However, the context is likely for pve SCL 9 and lower.