Character Rebalance - **** War Machine (James Rhodes) ****

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Comments

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,588 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    I don't care who they rework, and I don't really care if they do reworks at all. I just play the game that the dev's give us.
    From what I have seen of the recent one's it makes the characters marginally better (Phoenix is the exception). Lockjaw has seen no more use from me. Ghost Rider has not shown up any more often in PvP. Phoenix does show up when boosted, but not really much at all when unboosted.

    I think it is fine to slightly buff a character to try and bring them more in line with the current characters.
    I also don't think it makes sense to make older characters (especially 5*'s) significantly more powerful if much of the player base will have a difficult time rostering that character.

    I would much rather see the dev's create new PvE content and game modes than slight reworks of older characters that will not see much usage increase.
  • tonypq
    tonypq Posts: 557 Critical Contributor
    Rebalancing can be tricky in a game like this. With so much separation between meta/bad, have/have not characters. Plus as others have mentioned it really seems like some on the dev team don't play and or understand their own game.

    I've always been in favor of rebalancing, but I'll admit I was naive to think the they could properly pull it off with consistency and effectiveness. I feel like rebalance may be a train wreck like everything else they do with the game. It's likely to be a roller coaster ride of not doing enough at all like Lockjaw/WM to something half way decent as 5JG. 

    Where will this lead us ultimately, who knows. On the current pace it seems a good portion of rebalanced characters, they didn't do nearly enough to make them much better at all. At that point it's like why bother in the first place, seems a waste of time and resources to rebalance and the changes be almost unnoticeable. 

    Not sure how many characters each year will get a rebalance, but let's just say they managed to do one a month. If 8 or 9 out 12 end up with almost unnoticeable tweaks, it just seems like a waste of time. Especially considering they're not just starting from the bottom floor and working their way up. At this rate it could be years before characters that need rebalance or tweaks the most ever get them. 

    I also feel like they should concentrate more on rebalancing 5s which I believe need it the most. I feel like there's just too many 4s in that tier and to me the gaps between characters aren't nearly as bad as the 5 tier. That and all the time they spend rebalancing a 4* just to get the Lockjaw/WM treatment, it doesn't seem worth bothering at all when they could address a 5* that needs it more. To me it would make the game healthier if they were able to balance out the 5 tier first and do what they can to get that settled. 


  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think the dev is stuck in a terrible situation when it comes to rebalancing.

    For years, players have been asking for regular rebalances because it was stopped for a long time due to lack of time. I think Dr Ock was the one who kicked off rebalancing again, followed by Mr Fantastic a few months later. Then, we had long breaks here and there. In the last couple years, I think we had about 6-8 tweaks/rework/number buff, not including nerfs.

    Unfortunately, the score for impact of buff is at best 2 or 3/10, for some it's 0/10. However, the dev get 10/10 for giving this group of players a glimmer of hope that rebalancing is not dead, and there are possibilities of more rebalances down the line.

    As you can see, with each frequent rebalance having a impact of 2 or 3 out of 10, players start to question the dev's abilities in term of all these buffs: Are the dev out of touch? Do they not play their game? Why choose x when it should be y? Now, some are wondering if the dev are wasting their time doing all these rebalances. 

    What's the solution? Does getting the dev to announce that the goal of rebalance is not to make characters close to meta, but to make it better within its category help? Players will probably thank the dev for saying this, but I don't think it will answer the above questions, neither would it help a lot.

    Currently, we have 121 4* and 66 5*. 

    Let's assume that the top ~10% of each tier are the meta. The bottom tier would be the last 30%. So, we have 
    12 meta 4*,  40 bottom tier, and the rest of  69 4* sandwiched in between. If we rebalance the 4* in such a way that it moves from position 121 to position 81, what impact does it have? The impact is virtually zero. As for 5*, if we move 5* Wasp from position 65 to 44, does it make any significant impact at all? I think it's very likely to be no. For example, Dr Ock, Jean Grey and GR hardly made any significant impact.

    I think a lot of players have been poisoned by the meta game. It's apparent from the comments about pointing out the difference between meta and bad. So, as long as rebalances don't come close to the current meta of each tier, they will continue to be disappointed by future buff of such impacts.

    As such, I think the dev should stop rebalancing older characters because they will get more flakes for rebalancing characters rather than not rebalancing characters. It looks strange to see this happening, but it's happening.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    on the topic of understanding their own game or character, why would the quoted text require the best possible Gatling Gun outcome to be blowing up 15 red? Because that is the most damage it can do after factoring in the tile destruction damage and the static base damage? That misses the "point" of the power, which is to create cascades by blowing arbitrary holes in the board so that his Red CD can have maximum opportunity to airlift in attack tiles. The new version does less damage and destroys less tiles in a less arbitrary grouping (arguably but probably worse for creating cascades), with the only positive tradeoff being that it happens right away rather than being tied to 1-turn CDs. This is exactly the kind of "missed the point, broke the internal synergy" issue that Robbie Reyes's rebalance had when they removed the AP accrual from Hell Ride and made it a single recurring, unfortified countdown rather than 3x repeaters. That's the kind of choice you'd make if you saw that this power was underused, but didn't arrive at the correct conclusion as to why, and your fix made it very likely to be used even less, but of course that remains to be seen.

    That may all indeed be true and there is not going to be any easy reasons for knowing why the power is used so little but the fact is that they identified something and tried to "fix" it. It would be really useful if 6 months from now we got an update that told us whether the fix worked and now WM's new power gets more use.
    I'm not going to pretend to understand the rationale of any of this - why do we have certain broken synergies left in game when others are tackled? Why do we have a character like W5sp who uses a mechanic that has no synergy with any other character in the game still? I have no clue - I just know that we can ask questions without being flat-out insulting. Do you for example believe this comment is true:
    I feel like rebalance may be a train wreck like everything else they do with the game.




  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    No, I don't think it's helpful to be like "argh, you're all incompetent!" and I certainly don't think that this game is a trainwreck. I do though wish that we could stop getting one step forward, two steps back changes to characters though. I'm not sure how a rebalance like this, where we get an acknowledgement that 9ap is to much for a red power, happens in the same week that a brand new 5* comes out with a 9ap red power. Like if we know that 9 is too much, and powers that do stuff on a delay are unpopular, let's stop introducing powers that cost that much and do stuff on a delay maybe? 
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    No, I don't think it's helpful to be like "argh, you're all incompetent!" and I certainly don't think that this game is a trainwreck. I do though wish that we could stop getting one step forward, two steps back changes to characters though. I'm not sure how a rebalance like this, where we get an acknowledgement that 9ap is to much for a red power, happens in the same week that a brand new 5* comes out with a 9ap red power. Like if we know that 9 is too much, and powers that do stuff on a delay are unpopular, let's stop introducing powers that cost that much and do stuff on a delay maybe? 

    Completely reasonable points.
    And I just wanna say I don't mean to be dunking on @tonypq because much else he says in his post is fair and reasonable but then it all gets burned down with throwaway snarky comments. People have every right to scratch their heads and express dis-satisfaction or confusion. But being mean about it - I mean c'mon, Hound was just waiting to don his armour, it got a new coat of shine and everything! ;)
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think we are missing out one important detail, that we never or hardly discuss.

    When I first started playing MPQ, I remember Will and Casey as the one leading MPQ design. After that, I think Paige took over. Now, we have a new design lead, I think. (I don't know every game designer names for the last 7-8 years but these three are the more prominent names that I can remember).

    Why does it matter? Design is largely a creative process and they shared with us the general process of how they design abilities. So, creative gameplay holds a higher weightage than practical gameplay.

    Anyway, with each new design team or lead, we are likely to get different direction or preferences, design ideas or biases from each new design lead. For example, Banner was designed by Casey? but he has left the company. Likewise, I think the dev who designed Wasp probably left the company.  

    Anyway, there are a few game developers here. So, maybe they can share if new design lead does affect the direction of design process.


  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think we were all hinting at somebody new who wasn't as familiar with the game may be part of the consistency issue we are seeing. It in many ways feels like somebody who knows the game has been doing all the recent 4*s, and somebody new has been doing the 5s to me. The art has similarly been like that - characters like Knull get the A-team, characters like Rambeau get the b-team. Whoever programmed Spider-Ham knew how to make a countdown that would continue to burn down while he was airborne, then a month or so later Maria Hill's release said nobody knew how to do that so her jetpack power made her invisible instead. It's just interesting to see it all play out. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    It does feel like the design philosophy has changed fundamentally of late. Characters like War Machine and Ghost Rider seemed to come from a time when it was important for a character to have an internal self-sufficiency or acceleration, like you really want to use the powers in this sequence, and they shouldn't require that you have a specific second or third character for it to do something. You wanted to fire hell ride to gather AP for Chain Whip or Damnation in that order, or you wanted to put War Machine's red down in the same turn as Gatling Gun so that all his attack tiles could drop in. I don't really think that's all that important for new characters anymore, and the people reviewing older characters who do it arent' as concerned about preserving that element of their essence for whatever reason when it comes time to rebalance. 
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think one of the old MPQ videos has the dev discussing how they design characters. Sometimes, someone from Marvel side will chime in some ideas. I think one of the characters have a lot of input from Marvel writers. Overall, all developers will discuss which three traits they will pick that will best represent the character, and also discuss whether any shakeup is needed. Then, someone will be in charge of the overall design.

    If that's the case, who designed SC? The one who designed 4*? Assuming all remained design team remains the same, are they doing round robin? If so, it's a little difficult to control who design characters since it's an internal affair. 


  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    Obviously i'm not on this design team, so I can only speculate. I would be very surprised to find out that Sersi, Odin, Abigail, and Shang-Chi came from the same designer, or if they did, some of those characters were designed at 4:30pm on a friday when that person had someplace to be in the evening.

    The most correct way to design a game like this would be to have powers that were "fun" designed without any fiction. You need fun mechanics that don't rely on the animation or flavor text to be fun. You can either have a huge grab bag of individual powers, or you can have a bunch of cards with 3 powers pre-grouped, or some combination of both, and then you can creatively skin them once you decide which characters you are going to roll out. Applying a fictional wrapper to a game mechanic is the easiest part of the process. As a professional game developer, i'm often approached by people who are like "i've got a great idea for a game..." and then they jump right in describing their story, and you have to be like "no you have a fiction you're describing, not a game." This game is still fun when you turn off animations for people, right? And nearly all of us skip the cut scenes? It is largely a very fun game. It's little things that stick out to me sometimes and make me go "huh. that doesn't seem better..." which is a far cry from "these people are the literal worst!"

    Looking at community facing interviews where people who aren't on the dev team throw in their ideas and the developer has to nod and make it look like how things are done are not to be taken as gospel. That stuff is theater, and developers are generally very resentful of those outsiders coming in and being scope bombers they have to placate. Again, i'm not affiliated with this dev team, but that is the way it is in industry.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,622 Chairperson of the Boards
    People get upset about this stuff because it's really inconsistent.  Is it accidental or is it by design?  None of us can know that.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Actually, it's not just the gaming industry. I believe it applies to all industries. Any outsiders with zero relevant experience who try to teach a professional how to do his job will make that person unhappy. Or if your competitor want to teach you how how to do your job (for free), it can be disrespectful. It's a normal human reaction to feel disrepected. Anyway, I believe we have more or less found a believable possibility about all the inconsistencies in the game from the past to the present. And this is something out of our control. We can give feedbacks, but it doesn't mean that they have to implement every feedbacks. So, I have no idea what's next.




  • tonypq
    tonypq Posts: 557 Critical Contributor
    DAZ0273 said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    No, I don't think it's helpful to be like "argh, you're all incompetent!" and I certainly don't think that this game is a trainwreck. I do though wish that we could stop getting one step forward, two steps back changes to characters though. I'm not sure how a rebalance like this, where we get an acknowledgement that 9ap is to much for a red power, happens in the same week that a brand new 5* comes out with a 9ap red power. Like if we know that 9 is too much, and powers that do stuff on a delay are unpopular, let's stop introducing powers that cost that much and do stuff on a delay maybe? 

    Completely reasonable points.
    And I just wanna say I don't mean to be dunking on @tonypq because much else he says in his post is fair and reasonable but then it all gets burned down with throwaway snarky comments. People have every right to scratch their heads and express dis-satisfaction or confusion. But being mean about it - I mean c'mon, Hound was just waiting to don his armour, it got a new coat of shine and everything! ;)
    I feel like you did a Shaq slam and break the backboard dunk me heh, jk. 

    I'm not the only who's said the devs seem out of touch with the game. It certainly can be partly due to a rotation of different developers coming and going. Whatever it is would be nice if they got on the same page. 

    As far as playing this train wreck if my alternate match 3 game would be Candy Crush, I'll continue to tread through the mud here with MPQ. We're obviously all passionate about this game being the forum nerds that we are. As much as there is with MPQ that irritates the heck out of me, unfortunately it's still in a category of it's own as far as a Marvel match 3 game goes. 

    I'd just really like to see them get rebalancing right as well as character design. When there isn't much new content added aside from new characters, they really need to make sure each release and rebalance are spot on. 
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,385 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited February 2022
    All we can do is help train any hypothetically new designers that are chipping in by informing them about the things that matter to us. Ideally in a non-toxic way.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,622 Chairperson of the Boards
    Making changes is out of our control, but we can use the official forum to post feedback on these designs.

    The alternative is to say nothing at all, or lie and say they're doing a spectacular job of consistent design.  Which method has a better chance of achieving change?
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    tonypq said:
    DAZ0273 said:
    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    No, I don't think it's helpful to be like "argh, you're all incompetent!" and I certainly don't think that this game is a trainwreck. I do though wish that we could stop getting one step forward, two steps back changes to characters though. I'm not sure how a rebalance like this, where we get an acknowledgement that 9ap is to much for a red power, happens in the same week that a brand new 5* comes out with a 9ap red power. Like if we know that 9 is too much, and powers that do stuff on a delay are unpopular, let's stop introducing powers that cost that much and do stuff on a delay maybe? 

    Completely reasonable points.
    And I just wanna say I don't mean to be dunking on @tonypq because much else he says in his post is fair and reasonable but then it all gets burned down with throwaway snarky comments. People have every right to scratch their heads and express dis-satisfaction or confusion. But being mean about it - I mean c'mon, Hound was just waiting to don his armour, it got a new coat of shine and everything! ;)
    I feel like you did a Shaq slam and break the backboard dunk me heh, jk. 

    I'm not the only who's said the devs seem out of touch with the game. It certainly can be partly due to a rotation of different developers coming and going. Whatever it is would be nice if they got on the same page. 

    As far as playing this train wreck if my alternate match 3 game would be Candy Crush, I'll continue to tread through the mud here with MPQ. We're obviously all passionate about this game being the forum nerds that we are. As much as there is with MPQ that irritates the heck out of me, unfortunately it's still in a category of it's own as far as a Marvel match 3 game goes. 

    I'd just really like to see them get rebalancing right as well as character design. When there isn't much new content added aside from new characters, they really need to make sure each release and rebalance are spot on. 

    Shaq slams that backboard in an affectionate way!
  • mdreyer93
    mdreyer93 Posts: 144 Tile Toppler
    I'm just happy we're getting more rebalances and I hope it continues, especially with some of the DOA characters. It shows that they're committing resources to looking at these things and continuing to develop the game instead of just letting it float and popping out new characters every two weeks.

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