Devs, stop releasing dead-on-arrival 5s !!! What is the point of releasing mediocre chars?!?!?
Comments
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So why are some characters so much better than the rest of the tier? Why do Okoye and Apocalypse outclass Ultron and Ronan such that they're +200 or more levels better?
There's only one explanation that fits: either the devs don't know what makes a character good or bad, or they don't care if new characters are good or bad.
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.
Why don't they fix the outliers? There's no upside in it. In this game they make their money from the masses of 2, 3, and 4* players, not from the elite champion 5* players.
Nerfing or buffing a character only affects the elite. A nerf of an overpowered character causes entitled vets to flip out, review bomb them, and get threatening and scary. It has no impact at all on the lower tiers who pay the bills.
Buffing some old character like Kingpin doesn't affect anyone, because nobody has him and nobody cares about him. They won't sell more Kingpins if they buff him, and the small amount of good PR they might get isn't worth the effort they'd have to put in.1 -
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.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.
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.
JMHO3 -
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.0 -
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.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.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.3 -
I get it, the elite feels like they've outsmarted the game and they're entitled to stay on top forever because of that.atomzed said:
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.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.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.
But you have to understand that these players are worthless. Any player who doesn't spend contributes nothing to the game from the devs' perspective. The devs will not miss them when they're gone and they have no reason to retain them (beyond the colossal hissyfit tantrums they throw when anything mildly upsets them).
The game won't end because a few entitled vets get power-creeped out -- new players will take over for them and absolutely no one will notice the difference.0 -
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. Apocalypse? He's 18 months old. Sure, they can get SW and Colossus, but you're not winning a PvE with them.
This entire argument is about vets feeling like they're entitled to keep their place forever, for free, because they're smarter than everyone else.1 -
That isn’t entirely true actually - F2P games need a high volume of players, not just big spenders, to thicken the ranks. Spending players need people to defeat, show off to, encourage, etc. you absolutely need a vibrant player base if you want to keep paying players. The psychology of mobile games and how to monetize players isn’t really a secret sauce, it’s all out there if you look for it.1
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A ton of veteran players quit when Gambit was released, invalidating every single character who came before him. The game had become "buy Gambit or stop playing"
They were not missed. The community's argument at the time was "suck it up, your old characters are bad, we have power creep. You have to stay current!"
Something similar happened when Gambit was destroyed and Okoye appeared. Again, "there's power creep! You have to stay current!"
It's very interesting that certain people change their minds about this now that people have questions about their characters.
So, here's my question: if it's so important to make sure there's no power creep, that veterans are valuable and must be kept around and engaged, why is my OML/PNX/Surfer combo at 550 not the best set of characters in the game? Why do those characters lose to unchamped Ultron? Is there power creep or not?
**Mod note: Post edited to remove acronym containing profanity. Please see rule 6. - fight4thedream0 -
The answer is no, they can't.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.
Now here comes another question: Do they need it?.
Because a 5* player without being in a top alliance can champ almost all new releases just playing consistently scl10 and ranking t100 or 50.
As you said the top competitive on high rankings are the 1%.
It depends on each player and his ambition.0 -
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 stop playing. 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.
**Mod note: Post edited to remove acronym containing profanity. Please see rule 6. - fight4thedream
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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.
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My 2 cover Knull carried me a lot and it's still doing the job. He has bigger lifebar than most 5*'s and has good synergy with Polaris. I wouldn't say he is useless1
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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.I agree.I think Apocalypse is the embodiment of that argument. His powers hit so hard. He boosts everybody including his already hard hitting powers. Immune to stun as a passive. And he has 10k health more than our new Ultron here....That isn't a mistake. They made that guy to be a beast on purpose. I can guy that some devs might not have the best grasp on the current state of the game.... but everybody knows math. And with somebody like Apocalypse his numbers even without his boosting are vastly superior to most new characters even though he came out 18 months ago.0 -
**Mod note: I had to edit two posts for acronyms containing profanity. Please refrain from using such acronyms as they are a violation of rule 6. Thanks!1
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LavaManLee said:
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.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.
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
Most developers have a curve that they use to develop characters. The idea is to create characters that hover around the 50th percentile. Even when a character is given some insane power, they are usually also given some sort of drawback. Peggy Carter, for example, can stun 2 enemies. That's a devastating ability to have, however, she can only stun the two in the back. Once those enemies are downed, that power becomes worthless. I do agree with @LavaManLee in that this is a challenging game to test due to the shear number of characters. Not to mention supports. Also, devs are constantly trying to introduce new powers or variations on previous powers to keep it interesting. As a result, some overpowered characters are going to slip through the cracks during testing.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.
If a character is above the 50th percentile, it's not the end of the world. I would argue that a character as high as the 75th percentile is still borderline ok. At this point the character should be addressed with other characters that can counter them. It's not until a character hits a range of 85th to 100th percentile that a nerf really needs to be employed. As far as boosting characters, the same applies but on the opposite end of the curve. Yes, developing most of your characters to be around the 50th percentile sounds mediocre, but MPQ was designed around team-building and a little wit rather than power. As a result, each character has to be able to hang with its peers. The only way to do that is to make each one unique, but hovering around the same percentile in relation to its peers.
All characters should fall near a certain percentile compared to other characters. For example:
Rarity Percentile among same rarity Overall percentile
1*. ~40-60 ~1-20
2* ~40-60 ~20-40
3* ~40-60 ~40-60
4* ~40-60 ~60-80
5* ~40-60 ~80-100
Going back to a previous point, playing the game from a developer's perspective may refer to play testing rather than competitive play. Developers should be extensively play testing every character to be released. What they are looking for when playing is different than what players are looking for and there is nothing wrong with that. It is impossible to see every possible outcome before releasing the product into the world. Many game designers learned that the hard way. Not all characters will be exactly as the devs expect. I'm not going to do the math, but I'm sure some math enthusiast here can provide the number of possible pick 3 combinations there are in the game. All I know is it's way too many for a small development team to test extensively.3 -
I’ve seen other studios employ neural network based balancing tools to ensure that their thousands of gear combinations didn’t break the game. I wasn’t able to attend this session when I was at this GdC because I was manning the booth, but it seemed very relevant to a game like this one: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1026365/Balancing-Nightmares-An-AI-Approach1
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I believe that some of us keep forgeting one thing: if everything is meta, nothing is. Not every character has to be "good" or better. Sure, some arent equal in power but albeit meta combos I do not have problem dealing with any 5* with my Wasp. All of the 5* can do that.In a term of raw power people tend to divide champions in 3 categories:-best-mediocre-trashwhich is stupid. Just because destruction power level of sword is far away from nuclear missile does not mean its a trash weapon.4
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This is the question. Your answer will depend on where you're at and why you play.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.
If you're at the very top of the game, in the .0001% of players winning stuff, your answer is "never." If super old random characters are the best and stay the best forever, you can win everything forever.
If you're trying to get to the top of the game, your answer is "now, then never again." You want to move up, but then you want to make sure that you can stay on top forever.
If you don't much care about winning and you play for fun, your answer is "whenever I get bored." Personally, I get bored if a metagame stagnates for 6 months or more, depending on which meta it is. (I'm bored with SW now and I was bored with her pretty much immediately)
Since Okoye was released the meta was "high level Okoye + a low-level character (Thor or Hulk)" That lasted for 3 years. During that time, group #1 saved all their resources, which enabled them to immediately jump into any new meta when it arrived.
Changing the meta every 3 years means the same players stay on top forever.0 -
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.0
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Yeah, the problem is not that some characters are better than other characters. That's completely unavoidable, and it's also desirable.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.
The problem is that (to extend the weapons metaphor) Beta Ray Bill is a nuclear missile and Ultron is a pebble.
There shouldn't be discrepancies this wide.0
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