entrailbucket said: Either they're trying to make all the characters mediocre, like Ronan or Deadpool, and they screw up sometimes and make Okoye or Ultron, or the power level of new characters is totally random.
entrailbucket said:I think maybe you're confused about who "the masses" are. The masses are 3* players and 4* players, or brand new folks buying their first pack of roster slots. The masses are not players with fully maxed-out 550 Okoye, SW, or Beta Ray Bill. Those are the 1% of the 1%.The fact is, again, that when they were releasing characters with gradual power creep, the highest levels of the game were dominated by massive spenders who had to spend to keep up, and they spent massively.When they released a few overpowered characters combined with mediocre ones, the top .0001% of the game realized that they could stop spending, because they only needed that one overpowered guy to win everything forever.If you think they purposely did this because they're nice and they felt like letting the elite of the elite win everything without spending, that defies logic.
atomzed said: entrailbucket said:I think maybe you're confused about who "the masses" are. The masses are 3* players and 4* players, or brand new folks buying their first pack of roster slots. The masses are not players with fully maxed-out 550 Okoye, SW, or Beta Ray Bill. Those are the 1% of the 1%.The fact is, again, that when they were releasing characters with gradual power creep, the highest levels of the game were dominated by massive spenders who had to spend to keep up, and they spent massively.When they released a few overpowered characters combined with mediocre ones, the top .0001% of the game realized that they could stop spending, because they only needed that one overpowered guy to win everything forever.If you think they purposely did this because they're nice and they felt like letting the elite of the elite win everything without spending, that defies logic. Umm, entrail, I think you are the one who is confused. At the start, I already said that they can make money from the masses and/or the whales. You mentioned that D3 has been successful in earning money from the masses (2*,3 players). But you are annoyed that D3 is not milking the whales enough, as they can continue to win everything by not spending.How do you want them to earn money from the whales? From what I am seeing from this thread, you want them to release better 5* that dominates the meta. And force the whales to spend. But to keep doing this on a bi-weekly basis, is going to create massive power creep. And if the new 5* thrashes everyone, then the non-spending current players are going to leave. Look, I am not implying that the Ultron is ok as a 5*. I personally find him super underwhelming. His only unique mechanics (damage cannot be reduced) is neat but I am afraid it is not enough to salvage him. But my discussion with you is to explain why there is business sense not to release meta-skewing 5* for every single release. You keep claiming that there is no business sense, and it defies logic.Lastly, I will also ask you to consider how a new player can climb to the “peak” of this game. Compared to a lot of mobile games, the resources for MPQ is massively overpriced. How much ISO do I need to spend to champ a 5* from scratch? I can’t remember but it’s a lot for ONE single character. For MPQ, if an Arabian prince comes in and wants to reach the peak of 550 he needs to be spending ALOT, ALOT of money. Even then at 550, he is still going to be attacked in pvp if he is worth enough points. And if he don’t join any BC, he is still going to lose to those who shield hop and cupcakes. In PVE, he is not going to reach the peak, unless he studies the points recharge and hit the nodes in the optimal way. There are way too many factors for those to climb to the top and spending some money is not enough.
entrailbucket said: One more thing: how on Earth can a new player climb to the top of the game now??? Okoye is *3 years* old, and a 550 Okoye is an absolute requirement to get anywhere near the top.
MorganWick said: I haven't read all five pages of the thread, but I wonder if part of the devs' strategy is to try and space out the release of meta and junk 5*s to try and cripple the hoarding strategy, so there aren't three metas in Latest at the same time so players either hoard forever waiting for the "perfect" trio or blow their hoard when there's a junk 5* in Latest.I do sometimes get the sense the devs only consider game balance when they have to, when they specifically set out to release a counter to the current meta (or nerf a current meta character), and the rest of the time release characters without regard to the current shape of the meta. The way the game is set up you expect characters in each tier to be roughly equivalent, and it can be a rude awakening entering Versus and finding that if you don't have one of a handful of good characters in the tier you might as well GTFO. Between the Latest/Current split, the pace at which people earn CP and LL tokens, the chance of drawing a 5* in either, and dilution in Currents, it really does feel important to be able to break into that tier with any given set of characters, though favorites/shards does help. The jump in match damage relative to equivalent-level characters in any other tier helps in Story mode, but in Versus it really does feel like a new release needs to fit into the meta or it's worthless.The devs have to constantly crank out a new character every two weeks while also scheduling new events and performing other tweaks to the game, so it'd be understandable if they might lose some perspective. But then you get a character like Polaris that's hard to explain as anything but leaning hard into the A/S/P-centric meta. In terms of flavor, even though Environmental tiles haven't been a thing in ages I feel like there have been new releases that use Team-Up tiles as a proxy for environmental manipulation (I want to say 5* Iceman, Onslaught, and/or Storm), while for AoA Magneto, his main power representing his mutant power involves manipulating the color of tiles on the board, whereas his power that involves working with A/S/P tiles is described as specifically "manipulating the iron in his enemy's blood". Polaris' blue is described the same way, but her purple passive, described as "harness[ing] the electromagnetic energy and metal around her", is the one that creates new A/S/P tiles whenever you match one. And her green - "Polaris unleashes high velocity energy projectiles at the enemy" - sounds like it should be an active power, not passive, so it sorta feels like the devs came up with a cool kit and then tried to find a character they could shoehorn into fitting. And it's a cool kit where it's easy to see how it can spiral into covering the whole board with A/S/P tiles, with her blue giving her a jumpstart, her green benefitting from having more such tiles (even if they belong to her enemy), and both tilting the scales towards creating Strikes, the best and most meta of the three, and also easy to see how it can fuel and be fueled by existing A/S/P-driven metas like Kitty, Medusa, and BRB.So I don't know. Sometimes it feels like the devs release characters with no regard to the existence of the meta, sometimes they release them to try and get the meta under control (or at least to be viable in the context of the meta), and sometimes they seem to almost deliberately make it worse.
LavaManLee said: entrailbucket said: Either they're trying to make all the characters mediocre, like Ronan or Deadpool, and they screw up sometimes and make Okoye or Ultron, or the power level of new characters is totally random. I think they actually don't know. This is a very challenging mobile game to just test new players in a vacuum if you aren't a current player. Meaning, I bet we (as the public) know much more about the game and how to play it then many of the developers. We look at characters differently because we understand how the current characters work and how a new character will or won't fit in.You can test a new character as a developer over and over and over but unless you understand how that character might be used when champed in both PVE and PVP, it really doesn't matter.The other thing is that the way the rewards are set up, the number one thing to consider is speed. Whether PVE or PVP, if you are competitive, the faster you can finish the better. So anything that speeds up your win matters more than almost anything else. I think some of the powers they come up with seem "neat" but they either take a while to resolve or two many AP to matter.JMHO
entrailbucket said: The other thing that we know that supports your statement (because they've said it more than a few times) is that they all play this game, but nobody who works there is 5* player, and nobody is a competitive player.I think competitive 5* players on the whole are just a massive untapped market for them. They don't rely on us, and it doesn't much matter to them if we spend, but competitive players *would* buy stuff, if there was stuff to buy! 5* players used to spend to compete, and they'd do it again. Will it ever be significant enough to outweigh the hordes of low-tier players who pay the bills? Maybe not. But they can monetize veterans somehow.
HoundofShadow said: I think the question is, "how often should the meta change?" How often you think the meta should change affects the period which you can enjoy the meta.
ThaRoadWarrior said: Here in America we have a saying: “do not bring a knife to a gunfight.” It means you need to be properly equipped to face the challenge on front of you. Once the “gun” is metaphorically introduced to this game, the best sword in the world is obsolete from the moment it shows up. That is why I say some od these characters would be great in a different game than the one we have on front of us.