How do you define MPQ "skill?"

entrailbucket

Wait, aren't you the one who exclusively snipes 75 point fights in PvP?

DAZ0273

@HoundofShadow said:

So, MPQ matches are down to either RNG or personal tolerance threshold of certain meta team,

Are you saying they are not in some large part then? What is the skip button for then if not personal intolerance of certain teams/characters (don't even need to be meta)? I would add two extra values: desperation for points/wins and co-ordination.

And to conclude, MPQ is all about patience?

When you play PVP, you only (your words, not mine) ever go after teams with large point values. Are these always immediately available on demand or do you have to skip and have, what is the word, uhm...oh yeah, patience to find them?

assuming everyone follows instruction?

This one I dunno but certain characters do rely upon certain things to work as best they can - like Apoc yellow first before red & black, so there is an element of it, no? Or Shang Chi not placing his purple power effectively therefore wasting it. Not following those "instructions" is what makes the AI dumb.

HoundofShadow

After reading the various comments, patience might not be the correct word. If I were to replace "patience" with "being in control of one's emotions", will that be better?

DAZ0273

@HoundofShadow said:
After reading the various comments, patience might not be the correct word. If I were to replace "patience" with "being in control of one's emotions", will that be better?

Better for who?

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:

@HoundofShadow said:
And assuming all players have the same group of characters that can deal with a particular team of meta in their respective mmr, and we have 1) one group of players who can make it work, 2) the other can't, 3) the other neutral and 4) another group for any others, what would be the factor(s) that cause such a big difference in terms of gameplay/experience? Would it be only RNG, given that no skill is needed?

You've mischaracterized the groups. Everyone is in the group that can "make it work." Do you think these players are just losing to Chasm, 100% of the time? Their winrate is the same (or likely better) than yours. They're complaining because fighting Chasm sucks.

This is exactly right. He keeps changing what the arguments/complaints are. “It’s human nature to do this” (classic), because people tend to feel better about their own lives if they can believe that they are more capable and skilled than their contemporaries. Even if it’s not the case, pushing and believing said narrative is important because it feeds the ego.

Please stop conflating issues.

I’m not talking about the difficulty here. The “get gud newb” posts are great. Really. We get it. You are a superior match-3er. 550 rosters tremble in fear when they see your PVE grind skillz. Chasms run in the other direction in the face of your super easy counters and 4D chess moves.

This is about variety in the meta, not difficulty. It hasn’t “always been like this”. Prior to Chasm, the meta rotated on a weekly basis. The boosted 5*s, unless truly awful, were the meta because the game was much more balanced pre-Chasm. A Ronan with 110 levels would easily be the best choice for this week before Chasm, and now playing Ronan is a liability. That is not balanced. I actually enjoyed using all of my roster and seeing what the boost week held. That’s gone now and the game is much less fun to me as a result.

As an experiment, I just used Hulk/Chasm all the way from 0-1200 in one push. Ended with a half hour left. Was only attacked twice. One was a defensive win. The other a big loss, but just the one hit. In the PVE prior I used Ronan/Sersi and it was a bloodbath. With plenty of time left in slice 1 no less I was getting hammered because I wasn’t using chasm and had to resort to wins. This is the problem.

This was my third post in the Chas thread. First was my successful experience with a counter team that I thought could be helpful to others and second was me talking about seeing the Chasm wall. Hound knows my stance. He knows how to read and practically remembers everything on these boards. He spends more time here than perhaps anyone. So he sees the seas of posters who fall into the “He’s boring to play” and/or “he killed diversity” camps. By making it about difficulty, it supports the ego. Did people struggle with Chasm when he first dropped? Absolutely. But we all read the same message boards/chats and know how to follow a recipe book. Are there some that can’t/don’t? A few that struggle with Chas still or maybe don’t have the ingredients of said recipe? Sure. But I don’t consider them unskilled.

Just like I said about my PVE experience. Me getting T5 doesn’t mean I have MaD SKillZ. I’m just following the same blueprint I always have. The same one everyone else is running. But I attribute my success to others (choosing not to compete or messing up their grinds). While I’m highly competitive in just about everything I don’t need the ego boost of being more skilled in a match 3 game.

I’m glad you find Chasm to be this amazing complex character and talk about how he brings the “puzzle” back to Marvel Passive Quest. Wait… isn’t the guy ALL passives? Ah that’s right. Paired with Hulk (who is also almost entirely passives as well) there is little thought in playing him. Beating him takes more thought sure, but like others have said, once you complete the same puzzle 800 times it gets boring.

My biggest issue that I named in the very beginning of this thread is game balance and variety. I thought the meta was finally perfect pre-Chasm. Two baby champs became a better option than REALLY good characters god boosted, making them and the diverse ever-shifting meta I love mostly irrelevant. I know you want to make this about how you’re a superior MPQ player and people just aren’t as smart as you, but for me it really is about this meta being a step backwards in terms of my enjoyment after I finally feel like we were in the best era ever.

I wrote this a billion pages later in the same thread when I realized that Hound and Bad were still beating the same dead horse into a bloody pulp. Again, most people just believe he’s unfun to play. But it’s also “human nature” to notice data/examples that support what we already believe to be true and ignore evidence that refutes our worldview (it’s called confirmation bias). When said evidence is also threatening to my sense of self-worth, watch out…

entrailbucket

@Daredevil217 I didn't read the entire Chasm thread, but your posts there sound dangerously like the old-man-yells-at-cloud nonsense about diversity and metagame balance that I used to post here a couple years ago.

It's interesting tracking boost weeks vs chasm complaints, and what's funny is that it affects how I feel about him too!

Last week I was stomping him with boosted Surfer, but this week they've given us two old losers (I have BSS and BW at near-max and they are both completely unusable), half of a combo (Eyeface but not Hawkeye) and one new loser (Ultron is...to be charitable, mediocre).

I was hoping we'd get a BSS or BW buff last week, but this really reinforces the uneven nature of the 5* tier, and Chasm makes it worse/more obvious.

Bowgentle

Yeah it would be pretty cool if they handpicked the boost list to make sure good pairings are boosted together.
But you know, then someone will forget to update it, and we'll have another month of boosted Odin.
Nobody needs that.

entrailbucket

Curation would be nice but it's not totally necessary. I'd actually prefer a randomizer with some controls to prevent repeats -- it's fun when it's unpredictable.

It's more that some of these guys are still just SO bad. At this point, even the most basic buffs would make the bad old 5* nearly usable. Like, just bulk-apply a flat health/match damage/and maybe power damage scaler to everybody who's below par and then revisit if needed.

Sekilicious

Speaking of BSS and BW, Devpool posted in response to a question on Reddit they expect to make 2 to 3 adjustments a month depending on the complexity of the changes made. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer and every boost is playable.

Bowgentle

Let's say 3 per month.
With 35+ 5s in need of a adjustment, that's many moons to go.

entrailbucket

@Bowgentle said:
Let's say 3 per month.
With 35+ 5s in need of a adjustment, that's many moons to go.

Just sayin'...if the goal is to reduce the "effectiveness gap" between the best and the worst characters, they could get there twice as fast by doing adjustments to the best and worst characters.

ThaRoadWarrior

I'm not sure that the idea of half a combo being boosted isn't a bad thing - at least if diversity of teams is valuable to you. I usually start my grind with a boosted/unboosted if there is such a team in play. In this case I'd say that boosting shuma gorath is probably better than hawkeye since boosted he doesn't make any more AP than he does now. to me, Ultron was DOA and is only getting used now because of the pumped up health and match damage.

entrailbucket

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I'm not sure that the idea of half a combo being boosted isn't a bad thing - at least if diversity of teams is valuable to you. I usually start my grind with a boosted/unboosted if there is such a team in play. In this case I'd say that boosting shuma gorath is probably better than hawkeye since boosted he doesn't make any more AP than he does now. to me, Ultron was DOA and is only getting used now because of the pumped up health and match damage.

It's more that Eyeface isn't very good outside of that one specific combo.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:
@Daredevil217 I didn't read the entire Chasm thread, but your posts there sound dangerously like the old-man-yells-at-cloud nonsense about diversity and metagame balance that I used to post here a couple years ago.

It's interesting tracking boost weeks vs chasm complaints, and what's funny is that it affects how I feel about him too!

Last week I was stomping him with boosted Surfer, but this week they've given us two old losers (I have BSS and BW at near-max and they are both completely unusable), half of a combo (Eyeface but not Hawkeye) and one new loser (Ultron is...to be charitable, mediocre).

I was hoping we'd get a BSS or BW buff last week, but this really reinforces the uneven nature of the 5* tier, and Chasm makes it worse/more obvious.

Nah, it’s been my contention that god boosts solved the diversity issue. Every week it was different combos. At least for me anyway. YMMV of course. Now you are starting to see some different combos some weeks, but Chas is in at least 50% of the matches every week (more on an **** boost week and even more than that the higher you climb) and I’m tired of facing them. I miss the meta pre-Chas.

Also I really liked Ultron in Deathlock’s PVP. Him being a synthetic made for some nice free blue AP for Garg.

atomzed

@Daredevil217 i completely agree with you. Before Chasm, every boost week there’s a new meta. Most people would have to find the best champ 5* for the week.

For example,

1) Everyone remember the week with Killmonger and Chavez pvp… Killmonger was absolutely essential for that pvp.

2) There was the week which 5* Arch Angel was boosted (after his buff) along with Thor. I was running the pair together and that was the fastest pair, because Angel tank more colours than Thor. That was refreshing.

3) There was the week which Hela and Knull were boosted. The pvp was for some new 4* character, so everyone was mainly running a loaner. My strategy was to chase black, use hela black to flood the board with attack tiles. Then I kill off the loaner, which buffed up all the Strike tiles and attack tiles. That was different.

4) There was the week which I played SW and Odin. Yes, Odin. It was funny because I have to get Odin to tank the opponent SW passive reflector damage, so that Odin generate more fortified tiles. Then I will get Odin behind, so that he can jump forward and take 1 damage from his defensive passive. It was very different.

I have much less of such experiences after chasm is released. Why? Because Chasm-IHulk are such a great pair that even when going up against boosted 5*, they can still win. What is worse, is that those using boosted 5* have to jump through many hoops to kill them, esp when the boosted 5* don’t have any AOE. This contribute to the vicious cycle of Chasm-Ihulk being a good defensive deterrent, and them just floating. Then the queues get clog up.

It’s just much less fun after chasm was released. Less variety in the meta.

entrailbucket

It's because Chasm is a really strong counter to all active powers. A lot of the boosted 5* have to match tiles and cast stuff to win (the audacity!), and the constant passive AP drain makes it really hard to do that.

I still cannot understand the design process behind this character in relation to the metagame. The MPQ metagame, for years, has been dominated by really strong passives. Active abilities that cost lots of AP often do less damage than totally free passives, and yet somebody thought -- "hey, what this metagame really needs is a character that counters ALL active abilities!"

Sekilicious

@Bowgentle said:
Let's say 3 per month.
With 35+ 5s in need of a adjustment, that's many moons to go

With each one released there is less of a chance for weeks where none of the boosted characters are good.

entrailbucket

@Sekilicious said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:
Let's say 3 per month.
With 35+ 5s in need of a adjustment, that's many moons to go.

Just sayin'...if the goal is to reduce the "effectiveness gap" between the best and the worst characters, they could get there twice as fast by doing adjustments to the best and worst characters.

Nerfing while boosting would take just as long. Not only would you have to nerf the current meta, you would have to nerf the meta adjacent combos that would suddenly dominate once they were no longer suppressed. BCS apparently does not have an unlimited supply of resources for this. They are not going to be able to suddenly address 6 characters a month because some are nerfed.

They don't need to take these big flashy swings to do it, and players hate those anyway. Do, like, 5% changes up or down, then reevaluate and change again if necessary.

Bowgentle

@entrailbucket said:

@Sekilicious said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bowgentle said:
Let's say 3 per month.
With 35+ 5s in need of a adjustment, that's many moons to go.

Just sayin'...if the goal is to reduce the "effectiveness gap" between the best and the worst characters, they could get there twice as fast by doing adjustments to the best and worst characters.

Nerfing while boosting would take just as long. Not only would you have to nerf the current meta, you would have to nerf the meta adjacent combos that would suddenly dominate once they were no longer suppressed. BCS apparently does not have an unlimited supply of resources for this. They are not going to be able to suddenly address 6 characters a month because some are nerfed.

They don't need to take these big flashy swings to do it, and players hate those anyway. Do, like, 5% changes up or down, then reevaluate and change again if necessary.

They don't do that I think.
I would have expected an adjustment to Cap and Iron Man by now if they did.

entrailbucket

Is it easier or harder than completely redesigning multiple characters from scratch?

Like, would Chasm be as oppressive/overpowered if his match damage boost was 5% lower? They have tons of ways to adjust these characters in more nuanced ways than buffing them to the sky or nerfing them into the ground, and lots of those ways could be batch-applied.