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

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  • Mr_F
    Mr_F Posts: 744 Critical Contributor
    edited September 2021
    @ThaRoadWarrior I will use that methapore even further. I think that too many people categorises guns as swords in this game. Still ur point is valid.

    P. S.  To a gun fight a bulletproof vest is a better option. Or SWAT like shield.  :wink:
  • Daniel2121
    Daniel2121 Posts: 207 Tile Toppler
    Btw guys, the true BRB combo is BRB + Polaris + boardclearer (1* Jugg, 4* Logan, etc) or is there another one?
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,454 Chairperson of the Boards
    Daniel2121 said:
    Btw guys, the true BRB combo is BRB + Polaris + boardclearer (1* Jugg, 4* Logan, etc) or is there another one?
    In Pick-2, it's BRB/Polaris/Required 3rd. For a brief moment it was BRB/Kitty
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,454 Chairperson of the Boards
    Mr_F said:
    @ThaRoadWarrior I will use that methapore even further. I think that too many people categorises guns as swords in this game. Still ur point is valid.

    P. S.  To a gun fight a bulletproof vest is a better option. Or SWAT like shield.  :wink:
    If your opponent has empty hands, or a stick, a single-shot black powder gun is amazing. If your opponent has an assualt rifle, you have a problem on your hands.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    In RPG, there are different classes, races, alignments and class archetypes. You have your standard classes like fighter, mage and cleric. Then, you have bard, paladin, necromancer etc. as your archetypes. Each archetype has different skills and advantages. When you have more than 20 archetypes with overlapping skills, "mediocre" characters can't be avoided. They will always exist, regardless of whether it's MPQ or any other RPG games.
    Go google "worst rpg class" and you see that there are threads, subjects or topics about this. As a matter of fact, find me a rpg where every character is good.

    With over 20 different types of abilities in this game, how do you even make sure all 5* abilities are good?

    Do we make sure that...

    1) all power damage deal 2000 damage per ap?
    2) all cd based abilities take 1 turn to countdown?
    3) all cds and repeaters are fortified by default?
    4) all repeaters are 1-turn?
    5) all special tiles have a minimum strength of 400?
    6) all passive abilities kick off at the start of the game instead of at the start of the turn?

    And more...

    How do we set a benchmark to make sure that all abilities are good? How do we set a  benchmark when it comes to tradeoff for each unique ability?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,828 Chairperson of the Boards
    That's just not what's happening here. 

    Some characters will always be better.  Someone has to be the best, and there will always be a best.  There should be a best and a worst, that provides variety.

    The problem occurs when the best *completely outclasses* everything else. 

    Compare Apocalypse and Ultron.  Apocalypse is so far ahead of Ultron that they seem to be from entirely different tiers.  That simply shouldn't happen. 

    Ultron doesn't have to be exactly as good as Apocalypse, that's neither possible nor desirable.  But a lvl550 Ultron should not be comparable to a 450 Apocalypse.
  • Mr_F
    Mr_F Posts: 744 Critical Contributor
    @ThaRoadWarrior Like I said: ur point is valid. You have to be equipped accordingly. Just bringging any gun to a gun fight does not means both sides are equally prepared.

    But my point is: if we speak in sword - gun categories then too many people in this game thinks that too many characters falls into sword category. Wasp is not weak ("sword") but she is not a nuclear missile. Just a "regular handgun".
    In my hand I would compared her to Spider-Man. An expierenced here capable of dealing with a lot of threats due to that. But still calling Spider-Man to  fight against Juggernaut or Hulk is not a good idea even despite the fact he "defeated" them in some cases.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,454 Chairperson of the Boards
    HoundofShadow said:
    In RPG, there are different classes, races, alignments and class archetypes. You have your standard classes like fighter, mage and cleric. Then, you have bard, paladin, necromancer etc. as your archetypes. Each archetype has different skills and advantages. When you have more than 20 archetypes with overlapping skills, "mediocre" characters can't be avoided. They will always exist, regardless of whether it's MPQ or any other RPG games.
    Go google "worst rpg class" and you see that there are threads, subjects or topics about this. As a matter of fact, find me a rpg where every character is good.

    With over 20 different types of abilities in this game, how do you even make sure all 5* abilities are good?

    Do we make sure that...

    1) all power damage deal 2000 damage per ap?
    2) all cd based abilities take 1 turn to countdown?
    3) all cds and repeaters are fortified by default?
    4) all repeaters are 1-turn?
    5) all special tiles have a minimum strength of 400?
    6) all passive abilities kick off at the start of the game instead of at the start of the turn?

    And more...

    How do we set a benchmark to make sure that all abilities are good? How do we set a  benchmark when it comes to tradeoff for each unique ability?

    We've heard the devs talk about "power budgets" in the past, when things like that used to trickle out of the discord. There absolutely was at one time an internal measuring stick they were using to decide what made somebody a 5* vs 4* etc even though I don't recall ever seeing it spelled out explicitly for our benefit. And yes, I absolutely think that all 5* characters should have at least one "good" ability, and we all know what "bad" ones look like, which stands to reason we should be able to see what a "good" one looks like as well. I have opinions about the items in your list, but its a bit of a straw man.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,828 Chairperson of the Boards
    Also...this game is not an RPG.  This is a competitive game. 

    In competitive fighting games, some characters are better than others.  Some may be unusable in competitive play.  Total balance is pretty much impossible.

    But when a character is so much better than the others that every competitive player must use them or lose, the developers have to act, or players will get bored of mirror matches and migrate away to more balanced games.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,828 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tiger_Wong said:
    I’m glad someone brought up fighters. 

    Here’s a few things that I know from decades of playing fighting games:

    You MUST lab/do the work. You can’t just look at something on paper or look at the frames and say “this character is better/strong/worse because of the frames vs this character” there are SO MANY times a new character was released and immediately the thoughts were “oh! Look how broken this character is!” Or “this dude is DOA”. But all the experienced people who have actually played fighters all say the same thing…..

    ”Well….. let’s see how the character is in my hands first.”

    yet, here we are, immediately saying “this character sucks!” Or “I’ll never use this character” and trying to compare a new character THAT WE HAVENT EVEN TOUCHED YET to a meta character. In a game where precious little of it is 1on1, so why even make a 1on1 comparison in the first place?

    and even worse is that the same people who are wrong about those characters just keep doing it again and again. 

    “Medusa isn’t gonna do enough damage to be relevant. Pass.”

    ”How’s Kitty gonna damage anybody? Back to the scrap heap”

    ”IHulk is gonna kill your own character! Why would I ever choose this guy? What a joke”

    ”Colossus is destined for mediocrity. The match damage meta will never happen!”

    how many times do you guys have to be wrong to finally say “you know what? The kit looks interesting. But let’s see how it is when I properly lab with them”….. ?
    Lots of these characters aren't theoretically bad, they're actually bad. 

    We can stop using Ultron as an example and use somebody like Kingpin to compare to Apocalypse.
  • Tiger_Wong
    Tiger_Wong Posts: 1,057 Chairperson of the Boards
    It’s still a mistake to make a 1on1 comparison in a TEAM GAME. 

    In UMvC3 two of the worst characters by themselves on paper by themselves were Haggar and Hulk. Neither of the could fly or triangle jump or even double jump,  their jumps were slow, they pretty much no keep away abilities, and you knew their only way to do damage was to get close and try to grab you or use their super armor. 

    But I’ll be damned if putting those 2 weird characters together with someone who has a projectile assist like Sentinels Drones (or doom’s missiles) didn’t turn them into a friggin crazy, top tier team that you couldn’t keep away and was INCREDIBLY dangerous. 

    This is a TEAM GAME. I don’t get the 1on1 comps. Kitty sucks as a 1on1 character. I’d rather have Sinister than her on a 1on1 any day of the week. There are some characters that are good/great by themselves. That doesn’t mean much in this game. Ronan probably has a better kit to kill one character faster than Apoc. But that doesn’t mean he’s better because Apoc helps virtually every character in the game. 
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,828 Chairperson of the Boards
    Tiger_Wong said:
    It’s still a mistake to make a 1on1 comparison in a TEAM GAME. 

    In UMvC3 two of the worst characters by themselves on paper by themselves were Haggar and Hulk. Neither of the could fly or triangle jump or even double jump,  their jumps were slow, they pretty much no keep away abilities, and you knew their only way to do damage was to get close and try to grab you or use their super armor. 

    But I’ll be damned if putting those 2 weird characters together with someone who has a projectile assist like Sentinels Drones (or doom’s missiles) didn’t turn them into a friggin crazy, top tier team that you couldn’t keep away and was INCREDIBLY dangerous. 

    This is a TEAM GAME. I don’t get the 1on1 comps. Kitty sucks as a 1on1 character. I’d rather have Sinister than her on a 1on1 any day of the week. There are some characters that are good/great by themselves. That doesn’t mean much in this game. Ronan probably has a better kit to kill one character faster than Apoc. But that doesn’t mean he’s better because Apoc helps virtually every character in the game. 
    What you're describing is how everyone (who knows anything about the game) does rankings.  If characters were ranked only for 1v1, that would be a different list.

    If you were to make a giant list of all the possible teams in the game, ranked by power, which characters would be overrepresented at the top and which ones underrepresented? 

    Do you think the top teams would mostly contain Okoye and Apocalypse, or mostly Kingpin and Ronan?

    That's how we rank characters.
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    His slowness is what makes him bad.
    He needs to buff special tiles for to do his job on the team, however he only buffs one tile and if there are 5 already. If he is with polaris, this feature won't be needed after two match up.
    He could reproduce 2 per turn, or buffs 2 tiles if there are 5. Nope.
    He could have a powerful nuke for to get rid of people reducing the damage of those special tiles. Nope. He has a joke of an attack .
    His black power is designed for to buy time.

    In other words, he could have something for the player could say "yes, I won that thanks to him". Because it always will seem as he didn't do nothing. 
  • JRYUART
    JRYUART Posts: 95 Match Maker
    not every 5* is going to be designed for vets.  many are game changers for transitioners even with a few covers.  imagine how a 3 to 4* transitoner feels when they pull a BSS that helps against strikes?  this is a huge QoL improvement for them.  for vets, myself included, a new 5* release is rarely a game changer in the same way that it is for someone who doesn't already have multiple options at the ready.  this may be a generalization but those who actively post and take part of discussions on this forum seem more invested in MPQ than your average player. seems like a lot of vets also.  one thing to remember is that the 5* releases aren't always designed just for us.  @fight4thedream laid it out nicely with his breakdown of the releases from this year with objective and fair insight.  if ultron doesn't fit one's playstyle, then just don't pull.  it's not like we are left with no other options in our existing rosters.  

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,828 Chairperson of the Boards
    JRYUART said:
    not every 5* is going to be designed for vets.  many are game changers for transitioners even with a few covers.  imagine how a 3 to 4* transitoner feels when they pull a BSS that helps against strikes?  this is a huge QoL improvement for them.  for vets, myself included, a new 5* release is rarely a game changer in the same way that it is for someone who doesn't already have multiple options at the ready.  this may be a generalization but those who actively post and take part of discussions on this forum seem more invested in MPQ than your average player. seems like a lot of vets also.  one thing to remember is that the 5* releases aren't always designed just for us.  @fight4thedream laid it out nicely with his breakdown of the releases from this year with objective and fair insight.  if ultron doesn't fit one's playstyle, then just don't pull.  it's not like we are left with no other options in our existing rosters.  

    Sure, vets can continue to coast, using 3 year old characters to win everything, and save resources for the next overpowered mistake, which they will immediately 550 and continue to win everything.

    It's a good thing the devs are so nice, purposely spacing out the good characters to give these vets time to hoard before the next game changer.  Obviously, their intention is to let these players keep their spot at the top forever, even though they spend nothing.

    It sure would be a shame if they released a "game changer" right after another one exited tokens.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,828 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited September 2021
    Believe me, I understand exactly what allows those players to dominate. 

    I never had much interest in winning PvP -- my alliance and I always found it much more fun to stop others from winning.  (If you've never kept a 550 player under 1200 for a full event, I highly recommend it.  They get so mad!) We did briefly hold the alliance scoring record, but that was a very long time ago, before cupcakes made it meaningless.  I also scored over 4000 a few times, before they introduced shield cooldowns.

    As for PvE, once players developed the spreadsheet/stopwatch method and it stopped being purely based on who could do matches the fastest, I lost all interest in trying to win.


    I think the character boosts are helpful in some respects, but in others they expose serious problems.  Most weeks I'm running multiple characters over lvl600, and many weeks it's a lvl650+ another 600.  I have 3 550s (OML/PNX/Surfer) and several others getting close.

    I'm finally able to compete with the meta characters, which is nice.  It's also quite satisfying to destroy players running maxed out Okoye, SW etc using a 675 Silver Surfer or 650 Captain America.  But "compete" is all I can do.

    Why should things be this way?  Why should the tier be this unbalanced?  The best characters are 200 levels (or more) better than everyone else.  It's not power creep, because the good characters are also very old.  Did power creep exist, then stop with Okoye, then reverse?  Why do new characters like Ultron still happen at all?

    The boosts have added a bit of freshness for me.  I can run OML/PNX on their week and stomp everyone.  But it hasn't impacted the matchups I see, at all.  I'm tired of fighting Okoye.  It's a wall of the same meta teams, no matter who is boosted, and it's boring.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    We can tell based on "instinct" whether an ability is good or not. However, it's still subjective.

    Personally, I think Yelena, GED, Yellowjacket, Havok, Electro, Deadpool, Heimdall, and Adam Warlock etc have good abilities. However, most, if not all, of them are "not useable", good only when boosted or are "skippable" to many others.

    If someone thinks that the above characters need to be boosted to 569 in order to be "good", then what I think is that they want power creep to happen. 

    As seen, even "good" is not enough. Some want new and stronger toys to play with frequently because they can keep up with the release, they have a stash of CPs and LTs to unload on meta characters the moment they enter LTs or CP store, or they simply get bored easily.

    Those players who have high standard of "good" need to be honest about their actual intentions. Are they giving such feedbacks because they want to reduce SCL 10 pve clears to 15 minutes? Finish a match within 45-60 seconds? 




  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,208 Chairperson of the Boards
    When they release terrible characters it gives me an excuse to not grind until they announce the next one. A few bad ones back to back means I can take a nice break, knowing I ain't missing much.

    All I end up doing is the daily missions and logging out.


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