Soo... No more rebalances?

Domitronas

It was so nice to see the developer team take the initiative in the past few months with the rebalances for some of the more obscure characters, my personal favorite being Wiccan.

But now they suddenly stopped? For what it's worth, I know that I and many other players were quite excited to see the updates for these characters, and even if they did not bring them to S tier - any update is better than no update, and it gave people something to look forward to + it shows that the team cares.

The one thing I would really like to know is why?.. Was it due to the reception of these rebalances not reaching the levels you expected? Lack of developer time? Perhaps you don't feel like there are any more characters left to rebalance? It would be really cool if we could at least get some "closure" on this. 

HoundofShadow

I think it's lack of developer time or rebalances are not a top priority. Our last rebalance was 66 days ago. However, we gained new boss event in return. 

Timemachinego

HoundofShadow said:

I think it's lack of developer time or rebalances are not a top priority. Our last rebalance was 66 days ago. However, we gained new boss event in return. 

A bit of both, I think. They committed to rebalances and more recently said they're working on supports but thus far only really addressed them by band-aid measures like rotating 5* boosts or the puzzle gauntlet. I've got the distinct impression there's only a skeleton crew really running this day to day and they're the ones putting out the fires and likely making slow, steady progress on stuff like that behind the scenes.

tonypq

At the rate they're doing rebalancing, they need to stop tweaking characters that are already in better standing compared to others on life support. If they're going to rebalance with such randomness they need to address the worst characters first and stop playing games. Giving tweaks to characters who weren't terrible in the first place and leaving others who've been garbage for years is just idiotic. I don't care how small the dev team is or if it's down to a couple guys in their parents basement at this point. It's not like the rebalances were game breaking changes that needs a large team to implement. We're talking about for many characters a simple boost to health/match&ability damage and maybe a reduction in power costs is enough to bump them up quite a bit. 

Sure there are others like Wasp and Banner who probably need quite a bit of attention and consideration for a rebalance, I don't know if a simple boost across the board fixes all their issues or makes them much more playable. Considering all the new content in this game really boils down to mainly  new character releases, they should put in more consistent effort to tweak and rebalance some of the ones who need it most. 

Timemachinego

I've said all along that they could cool off NEW character releases by re-releasing bad but retuned characters. All the art is there (unless they REALLY change them). I'd rather we get a reworked Banner or Wasp AND a new PVE event vs the next 5* being good enough to draw heavy on.

HoundofShadow

Maybe you want to email Disney/Marvel and tell them to stop dictating character tie-ins in MPQ just because their movies, comics or tv series are coming out. Just in case you don't know, many character releases are dictated by Marvel because that's a contractual agreement. Failing to fulfil a contractual agreement is a breach. 

IceIX

I have no direct news on this, but it *is most definitely* something we still have planned and in mind.

Palookaville

It is a bit annoying when an old character is boosted to 570 and I still do more damage with my level 450 Colossus

Bzhai

I hope Kingpin is somewhere on that list coz holy moly even boosted he is useless.

BriMan2222

Bzhai said:

I hope Kingpin is somewhere on that list coz holy moly even boosted he is useless.

I haven't tried it myself but some one on fb said that boosted kingpin with boosted elektra is awesome. 

"when an enemy attack tile is created she will passively steal it. Kingpins cheap blue power will then flip it back to the enemy and cause damage. She is yellow purple red, he is blue black green. So they don't share AP pools either which is great."

HoundofShadow

One plus point for Kingpin is he synergises with Polaris/BRB in Puzzle 
Ops pick-3 node where you have to match enemy's protect tiles to deal damage. They make that node a breeze. Mantis can't even touch the level of synergy that Kingpin has with them.

Domitronas

IceIX said:

I have no direct news on this, but it *is most definitely* something we still have planned and in mind.

Thanks a lot for this comment! It's super nice to know that things like this doesn't fall on deaf ears.

Bzhai

We are getting back to back Marvel releases so they're probably busy aligning with their marketing schedule. Even if they've already have some reworks done they're probably saving it for the later part of the year when nothing much is happening.

HoundofShadow

They are probably comparing the pros and cons of rebalancing characters after gathering reviews about them.

The last 4 5* buffs/reworks were: Dr Ock, GR, JG and Starlord. Out of these 4, a quick summary of reponses towards them are: 2 negative (Dr Ock, Starlord), 1 mixed (GR), and 1 good (JG).

If you look at new 5* releases, most of them have modern health and match damage. However, it doesn't prevent them from being boxed into bottom tier ranking due to how their abilities don't fit a certain mould that some players want.

We have 6 5* released this year, and a quick summary of the responses towards them are: 2 bad (AB, MK), 2 fine (Elektra, Crystal), 2 good (Gargantos, KK).

The characters with higher number of requests for buffs/reworks are: Bruce Banner, Wasp and Kingpin. If these three got buffed with modern health and match damage and got some tweaks/full rework but the responses are similar to Dr Ock/Starlord, wouldn't it be a waste of time? 

Vhailorx

At this point, I would not even bother with power revisions that require testing/QA and would just refresh the health and match damage for all of the 2015-2017 5*.  It can't get much easier than altering a data field.

MoosePrime

HoundofShadow said:

The last 4 5* buffs/reworks were: Dr Ock, GR, JG and Starlord. Out of these 4, a quick summary of reponses towards them are: 2 negative (Dr Ock, Starlord), 1 mixed (GR), and 1 good (JG).

People didn't like the Starlord rebalance?  It was only a numbers adjustment, increasing damage and reducing costs.

Vhailorx

MoosePrime said:

HoundofShadow said:

The last 4 5* buffs/reworks were: Dr Ock, GR, JG and Starlord. Out of these 4, a quick summary of reponses towards them are: 2 negative (Dr Ock, Starlord), 1 mixed (GR), and 1 good (JG).

People didn't like the Starlord rebalance?  It was only a numbers adjustment, increasing damage and reducing costs.

My impression of all the reworks is that people said it was fine to make the characters better, but the reworks weren't nearly enough to make them meta relevant.

(Edit: for clarity I was referring to the most recent round of 5* reworks like starlord, JG, etc).

HoundofShadow

As for rework, we don't have a lot of reworks. Generally, those reworked abilities are not impressionable or overall not positive. By rework, I'm not referring to slight ap change or health/match damage buff. Think along the line of 5 Dr Ock's or Mr Fantastic's reworks. As for Starlord, he was pretty much bottom tier and still is, despite having the highest match damage in the game.

Reworked Characters Since 2018

1. July 26 2018: 5* Gambit - final nerf

2. December 13 2018: 5* Dr Ock - full rework

3. January 10 2019: 4* Mr Fantastic - full rework

4. September XX 2020: Captain America (Worthy) - nerf

5. September XX 2020: Bishop - nerf

6. October 29 2021: 5* Ghost Rider - stat buff, damage power increase and one ability reworked

7. February 14 2022: War Machine - reduced ap costs, power damage buff and one ability reworked

All the above abilities that got reworked got an 'F', based on what I remember. Feel free to correct me.

One of the main problems in this game or with the players is that they are biased against certain abilities. And because of characters like Thor, Okoye, Kitty, BRB, Polaris etc, players are getting more impatient: they want cds or repeaters to resolve in 1-turn, or they need to deal damage at least once immediately upon firing, and they need to be fortified.
 
Generally speaking, characters whose abilities revolves around the following gets negative impressions:
1)  (random) trap tiles
2)  repeaters or cds that take more than one turn to goes off. If it's unfortified, magnify the negativities towards them.
3) high ap costs (anything 9 and above; not sure about 8),
4) tiles destruction abilities that don't deal "significant" damage.

5) abilities that require certain "complicated" or non-immediate setups , like Electro's black, Odin's, Elektra's red etc.

As long as the dev releases such abilities or rework characters with such abilities, what they get are largely negative feedbacks. The question is, should such abilities be banned from the game to appease these players? 

KGB

There's nothing wrong with unloved abilities (those you mentioned) because they can involve interesting mechanics that are sometimes useful in the right team/fun to play.

What we don't want as players is a character that gets more than 1 of those unloved abilities. That's what makes characters that players loathe and call trash tier.

KGB

HoundofShadow

I think that would be largely subjective and depends on your goals. Okoye, Thor, Polaris and the likes have spoilt the game. We can't turn back the clock to remove all the damage they have done to this game.  As long as players use them as a reference to judge characters, they will be disappointed with releases most of the time. I think some players are already giving up on waiting for the "best" characters and are opening up to "fun" characters. 

Timemachinego

HoundofShadow said:

I think that would be largely subjective and depends on your goals. Okoye, Thor, Polaris and the likes have spoilt the game. We can't turn back the clock to remove all the damage they have done to this game.  As long as players use them as a reference to judge characters, they will be disappointed with releases most of the time. I think some players are already giving up on waiting for the "best" characters and are opening up to "fun" characters. 

That's probably because unless/until a REAL answer to Colossus and Wanda appear there's no real reason to wait around, it's only the 550 crowd that are entirely holding out for that exact circumstance now I think.