How much of a change would 5* Scarlet Witch need to *only* be viable when boosted?

HoundofShadow

It depends. As mentioned, either I'm expected to lose, or I've a hard time winning. Since your example was using 1v1, which seldom happens, then I expanded it to include a pick-2 or pick-3 scenario. How the situation looks like depends on the team setup, and since there are so many way to build a team, it's impossible to give one answer that applies to all situations. I prefer to use the four elements, rather than rock-scissor-paper though.

entrailbucket

I think you're being deliberately obtuse, but sure, let's do it! 

When I said "Hulk can't beat SW" what I was saying is that a team containing Hulk in a typical pick-2 PvP cannot quickly win multiple matches against a typical pick-2 PvP team containing SW.  On offense, any PvP team containing SW trivially beats any PvP team containing Hulk.

When a player's individual goal includes quickly winning multiple matches, and using a team with some measure of defensive deterrent, that makes Hulk unplayable for that player.

Is that player's goal or playstyle wrong?  Should he instead play the game only with the goal or playstyle that you prefer?

entrailbucket

DAZ0273 said:

Wait...you can't flag somebody called "Bad" for wanting to continue being "bad"...can you?!?!?

Just to make this absolutely clear, I have not flagged anyone for anything in this thread.

HoundofShadow

Can I assume that everytime you talk about x vs y in pvps, by default, the 1-2 minutes rule applies? If so, then my answers would change. In that case, the answer is yes.

As for the last question, it depends on how he weighs the tradeoffs.

DAZ0273

entrailbucket said:

DAZ0273 said:

Wait...you can't flag somebody called "Bad" for wanting to continue being "bad"...can you?!?!?

Just to make this absolutely clear, I have not flagged anyone for anything in this thread.

Me neither!

Edit and oh I wasn't saying you did - it was a rhetorical question but also obviously a silly remark.

entrailbucket

HoundofShadow said:

Can I assume that everytime you talk about x vs y in pvps, by default, the 1-2 minutes rule applies? If so, then my answers would change. In that case, the answer is yes.

As for the last question, it depends on how he weighs the tradeoffs.

Yes.  As for the rest, I'm really glad that we've reached a point on this forum where noncompetitive players can make points about noncompetitive playstyles and goals and not have those be immediately dismissed by competitive players looking down on them. 

That is unequivocally good and it hasn't always been that way.

But what seems to have happened is that we've gone way too far in the other direction.  Players who want to play fast and win stuff may have a different idea of things but they're not playing the game wrong. 

Sometimes I wish they'd slow down or just try to relax and play for fun, but there's no law that says they have to, or that they can't also have fun while they play fast and try to win stuff.

Daredevil217

Okay now that I’m getting more clarity, I really feel that what you (EB) want isn’t really found in THIS game. And I’ll explain why.

I believe the developers have stated that they make characters that are fun but slow or have a unique mechanic but might not be competitive. Mr. Sinister is a great example of this type of character. He’s not meant to crush the leaderboards but is a fun character if you don’t mind slower matches.  The developers try to cater both to the hardcore competitive types (many posters posit you get two meta releases a year) and they create characters for the casual folks as well. The win every match sub 2 minutes does not seem to be a criteria for them.

Now if you want to win every match sub 2 minutes, then they give you characters to accomplish that goal. And it seems your contemporaries understood that and went all in on that because they realized that this game caters to all types of players.  This is why your queues are filled with SW/Colossus and Apoc. And Hulkoye before that. 

Check the “I finished Goblin!” thread on the first page. A bunch of competitive folks telling him not to level Goblin up and he said:

I understand it is and will be difficult, but I have never played this game to win or do good. I play because I genuinely really enjoy the gameplay and playstyle. I build the teams I want because my focus has never been to play competitively.

These non min-max players do exist and are probably the majority. I like that the game caters to all types as not everyone wants to passive everything to death and win fast. I bet there are people who like building teams to try to get OML to transform, but they’re not going to do it and win in 1-2 minutes.

Your 1-2 minute goal is also an important one to note because it really
should be the goal of any competitive player (since the game relies on speed to determine placement). Scarlet Witch and Colossus are trash in PVE but royalty in PVP. Why? Because they don’t help PVE by speeding you up, but they do slow other players down in PVP. That is a feature not a bug. In a game with god knows how many characters… over 200? They finally realized that they could make some money from competitive players chasing defensive characters. The developers understand that the hyper competitive want to win in 1-2 so let’s give them something that prevents others from doing that. So i go back to “no change needed” because she’s working as intended.

Now to summarize, I think the developers lean into creating characters of all kinds. Having the 1-2 min restriction would limit them in a game this big. Competitive players hoard for the 2-3 characters that are “for them” and race to max them every year. You take a less optimal approach and want the game to change so everyone is winning matched sub-2 minutes which I don’t think  will ever happen for the above stated reasons. 

Bad

DAZ0273 said:

Wait...you can't flag somebody called "Bad" for wanting to continue being "bad"...can you?!?!?

I've just won another one for to complete my official collection of world flags! Still I need like 100 more...
But this time I could say the flagger that he didn't read this thread right. I would say to continue being toxic if this thread was about a nerf and coincidentally it seems not.
So you are wrong mr. Flagger!

entrailbucket

We're actually making progress now!

I don't need for any player to win all their matches sub-2 minutes -- many players have no interest in that and it's fine.  I don't need for every character to be for every player.  Some characters are slow and others are fast.  Some characters are built for fun and some characters are built for speed.

The problem is that the "competitive" and the "fun" characters in today's metagame are so far apart in terms of power level that you can't go even slightly suboptimal and still expect to compete at all.

This is only a problem for (exceedingly rare, nearly extinct) players like me, who ideally want to win stuff while *also* having fun and using a bunch of different characters.  That, incidentally, is why I'm not competitive anymore.  There's like 2-3 viable strategies now at the top of the game, and doing the same thing forever is boring.  If you just really like winning and don't care about doing the same thing over and over for years, this competitive metagame is great for you.

In this metagame (and MPQ has not been this way forever) there's a colossal gap in power level between, say, characters #6 and #7 in the rankings.  That means that any player who chooses character #7 cannot compete with #6 under any circumstances -- #7 is so far below #6 that choosing #7 means you've already lost. 

It wasn't always this way in this game.  When the gaps between character tiers are a bit smaller or less obvious, a player can choose, say, character #15, and maybe not automatically win everything, but plausibly be competitive.  There's 200 characters in this game!  There should be more than one or two available competitive strategies.

Bad

Have you seen the Fan Store? And the monthly forum contest?
This game is not about 5* players. It's not about competitors. And much less this game is about 550 MMR wanting a 1/2 minutes rules.
So good luck with what you wanted, but take a chair for waiting until devs implemented it.

entrailbucket

Bad said:

Have you seen the Fan Store? And the monthly forum contest?
This game is not about 5* players. It's not about competitors. And much less this game is about 550 MMR wanting a 1/2 minutes rules.
So good luck with what you wanted, but take a chair for waiting until devs implemented it.

If their goal was to create a single-player, noncompetitive game, why does every game mode have a leaderboard with placement rewards attached to it?  Why does one (of the two) game modes require you to attack other human players in order to participate in it at all?

Bad

entrailbucket said:

If their goal was to create a single-player, noncompetitive game, why does every game mode have a leaderboard with placement rewards attached to it?  Why does one (of the two) game modes require you to attack other human players in order to participate in it at all?

Because competition incentives business.
But it's not the beginning and the end, like you were saying.

entrailbucket

I think it's more a side effect of the metagame they've created through their inaction:

Having fun and winning are currently incompatible goals. 

If you want to win stuff you have to do the same things over and over, in the same way, with the same strategies, for years.  It might be fun at first but it gets pretty stale quickly for all but the most dedicated powergamers. 

Players at the top are familiar with this burnout, and it happens because (for example) Okoye/Thor was the only available competitive team for like 2 years.

Can you imagine playing hundreds of matches a week, for years, with only those two characters?  The players who haven't burned out are the ones who value winning so highly that they're willing to do just that.

Sekilicious

Inaction eh? Yes it is clearly due to incompetence that we still have to do our clears every two hours and Okoye/Thor are our only choice for meta characters. I need to delete this bookmark. 

entrailbucket

Sekilicious said:

Inaction eh? Yes it is clearly due to incompetence that we still have to do our clears every two hours and Okoye/Thor are our only choice for meta characters. I need to delete this bookmark. 

Everyone else seems to have gotten the idea (to be fair, this was only after I wrote about 50,000 words, made everyone very angry several times, and probably came really close to getting permanently banned), so I'm not quite sure where I'm still falling short.

Bad

entrailbucket said:

Everyone else seems to have gotten the idea (to be fair, this was only after I wrote about 50,000 words, made everyone very angry several times, and probably came really close to getting permanently banned), so I'm not quite sure where I'm still falling short.

In the end you are like me. I tried to be good, God knows it... but this is what I got.

"I tried so hard, I got so far
but in the end, it doesn't even matter
I had to fall to lose it all
but in the end it doesnt even matter"

Rock songs are full of examples.