Debate on Character Valuation

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  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    Here's what I don't get: why does an MPQ character have to be either "good" or "fun?" Whenever they release somebody underpowered, the response is inevitably "Well, this character isn't meant to be "meta," this is a "fun" character!" as if some players don't find it fun to do damage.

    It's happening in the Magik thread right now. Why can't a character be both good and fun? Why are the "fun" characters necessarily underpowered? Look at Shang-Chi, a great example of design. He's fun to use and he hits hard.

    Why would they purposely design characters that are underpowered? Who is that fun for? Is there really a significant group of players out there that sees Apocalypse and says "I really like his mechanics, but he'd be so much more fun to use if his numbers were 40% lower?"

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    Big wheel is just an example of a character who's underpowered because the AI can't play him well. There are characters like that, that'd I'd consider "fun" but not "good," only because they're much worse on defense because playing them is complicated. We do need characters like that and I have no issues with them at all. Dialling up his numbers wouldn't change his usage significantly unless they really went crazy on them.

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,656 Chairperson of the Boards

    He's fine as he is, and his numbers are good. Not every character can be useful in the AI's hands.
    We have to slot characters into either PvE or PvP categories. If character dominate both, then there is a problem. ((Hello Okoye)).

    Obviously you cannot kill PvE, but you can reduce PvP effectiveness. The question is how, without breaking the game.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    I think 5* Storm falls into this category - she has fun board control powers but is limited in her damage potential by the charge tile cap. The AI is never gonna wait for the optimal amount of charged black tiles so if you raised it up or did away with the cap I don't think she would be OP on defence but she might luck into being dangerous.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    Storm is almost always my MVP in Puzzle Gauntlet, where board control is generally the most valuable thing, and she's probably the best at it. Her damage is super low though, and she's very slow, which really limits her effectiveness everywhere else.

    She's a weird case for me, honestly. Board control itself is not something that's terribly useful in most fights. I think it would be just fine for her to hit much harder than she does, so she'd have some degree of usefulness outside of Puzzle Gauntlet.

    That's the thing, right -- 5* are really hard to get. Can we really fault players for not choosing to invest resources into a Puzzle Gauntlet specialist? Is a Puzzle Gauntlet specialist really a character that needs to be in the game, at the very highest tier? (These are real questions, not rhetoricals)

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    I'm not sure which came first actually - 5* Storm or Puzzle Gauntlet? If it was Storm did they design some of the Puzzle Gauntlet nodes to find a use for her? Or was it just co-incidence?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    Looks like Storm was released in 2019 (to a collective "ugh" from the forum). Puzzle Gauntlet seems to have started in 2021. I doubt the two were related.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    Almost certainly not but I sort of like the idea of the Devs finding uses for some of these guys n gals!

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    Anyway Storm is a fine example of what I was talking about. She does board control, which is occasionally quite useful. But her damage is very low.

    If she did, say, 75 or 80% more damage than she does today, would that make her less "fun" to use? Is there a large group of players using her now, who would stop using her if she hit way harder? Why can't she have good board control and also do damage?

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    My suspicion is that it is because she does AOE damage. But it costs her AP to do that AND she needs a board condition whereas say iHulk can do it for free. So I dunno why she can't keep the AP cost and lose the board condition. She still won't be as good as iHulk but at least she isn't fighting with a hand tied behind her back.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    Anyway Storm is a fine example of what I was talking about. She does board control, which is occasionally quite useful. But her damage is very low.

    If she did, say, 75 or 80% more damage than she does today, would that make her less "fun" to use? Is there a large group of players using her now, who would stop using her if she hit way harder? Why can't she have good board control and also do damage?

    I mean she's bound to get her balance pass eventually.
    Maybe they'll do just that.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    And that's why I get exasperated when people say "well you can't compare someone like Storm to Hulk!" I mean, why not? All of us make those comparisons every single event when we decide who to use, or when we decide who to level up, or when we decide whose covers to get.

    Storm should get credit for being good at board control, but board control just isn't that important in this game. She shouldn't have all those extra conditions on her AoE (that Hulk can do for free), just because she's good at a thing that doesn't matter 90% of the time!

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,503 Chairperson of the Boards

    I would be very interested in this game mode variation.

    Gauntlet, no mirror matches, enemy teams based on actual teams played by similar size roster.

    So 25 match straight line path. Scale so the last 5 matches are +100 teams.
    The main “twist” is that enemy selection is “elo” based pvp. But no retaliation nodes, the server simply presents the last 8 teams in your MMR range with scaling modifier.

    The idea/challenge is allowing players to creatively beat meta combos and see hw far you can advance based on what players view as meta

  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,746 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    Why would they purposely design characters that are underpowered? Who is that fun for? Is there really a significant group of players out there that sees Apocalypse and says "I really like his mechanics, but he'd be so much more fun to use if his numbers were 40% lower?"

    At this point, it has to be difficult to design a new character who can hit like a truck where they don't also synergize with another character into something that's broken.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards

    I agree, but I think that's a problem they should try to solve. Some characters in this game aren't obviously overpowered, but they do a thing that can very easily break a new character.

    The best example is 5* Hawkeye. He's mostly fine on his own, but his passive AP generation limits the design space they can use for countdown-based characters. Remember, 4* Cap was only broken combined with Hawkeye's AP generation. Now Hawkeye has showed up in another combo, with Kang. I think that combo is probably ok, but any new countdown character that uses red or blue has the potential to be broken because Hawkeye exists.

    And, like, obviously nobody is screaming for Hawkeye to get nerfed, and neither am I, really, but he's sort of a hidden problem that can easily create issues for new characters that otherwise seem ok.

  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,746 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    I agree, but I think that's a problem they should try to solve. Some characters in this game aren't obviously overpowered, but they do a thing that can very easily break a new character.

    The best example is 5* Hawkeye. He's mostly fine on his own, but his passive AP generation limits the design space they can use for countdown-based characters. Remember, 4* Cap was only broken combined with Hawkeye's AP generation. Now Hawkeye has showed up in another combo, with Kang. I think that combo is probably ok, but any new countdown character that uses red or blue has the potential to be broken because Hawkeye exists.

    And, like, obviously nobody is screaming for Hawkeye to get nerfed, and neither am I, really, but he's sort of a hidden problem that can easily create issues for new characters that otherwise seem ok.

    I agree with your eval of Hawkeye. He's one of the reasons Bishop and WorthyCap got nerfed. Not the only one, especially with Bishop, clearly.

    I then look at a character like Shang-Chi. That character can do absolutely insane damage, but most of the time it's all him. You make red and purple matches until his match dmg multiplier is insane and you never give the AI the board back. Very few people, if any, have called for him to be nerfed. I believe the reason to be that he's easy to defeat when he's on defense.

    So, is that how they need to create new characters? Is that why we're seeing new tile types? To force characters who can do a lot of dmg into isolation? Good characters get to do dmg, but can't have a dangerous synergy, and characters who do synergize well have to get pre-release nerfed into laughable numbers? Doesn't that sound a lot like Chasm and Magik?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2023

    @Colognoisseur I like that article quite a bit, and I like Mark Rosewater's philosophy too. I think there are problems adapting this particular philosophy to MPQ, though.

    In 2006 when those terms were first coined, Wizards released 4 expansion sets and about 1000 new cards. Each set was roughly balanced out so that each archetype of player got a whole bunch of new options to try out -- and that philosophy continues to this day.

    In 2013, when that post was updated, they released even more cards. Today, the numbers are even bigger, and in some Magic formats, almost every card ever printed in the game's 30-year history is legal.

    When you're releasing 250 new cards at once every few months, players play with 60 (or 100) cards at a time, and there are tens of thousands of existing cards that are legal for play, that is much, much different than what we have in MPQ.

    If the MPQ designers release a Spiky character, then Johnny and Timmy get absolutely nothing that month. If they release multiple Johnnies in a row, Spike and Timmy start to feel abandoned.

    The great thing about MPQ is that characters have multiple powers, and can be very complex! So the best-designed characters can (and do) cater to multiple player types at the same time (which of the 3 types likes Shang-Chi? All of them!). In fact, I'd argue that given MPQ's much, much slower release cadence, most characters should bring something to the table for all 3 player types.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,992 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2023

    @Borstock said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    I agree, but I think that's a problem they should try to solve. Some characters in this game aren't obviously overpowered, but they do a thing that can very easily break a new character.

    The best example is 5* Hawkeye. He's mostly fine on his own, but his passive AP generation limits the design space they can use for countdown-based characters. Remember, 4* Cap was only broken combined with Hawkeye's AP generation. Now Hawkeye has showed up in another combo, with Kang. I think that combo is probably ok, but any new countdown character that uses red or blue has the potential to be broken because Hawkeye exists.

    And, like, obviously nobody is screaming for Hawkeye to get nerfed, and neither am I, really, but he's sort of a hidden problem that can easily create issues for new characters that otherwise seem ok.

    So, is that how they need to create new characters? Is that why we're seeing new tile types? To force characters who can do a lot of dmg into isolation? Good characters get to do dmg, but can't have a dangerous synergy, and characters who do synergize well have to get pre-release nerfed into laughable numbers? Doesn't that sound a lot like Chasm and Magik?

    It's possible. I think the explanations for both Chasm and Magik are pretty simple though, for different reasons.

    I think Chasm is an example of overvaluing downsides. They've made this mistake on quite a few other characters. For example, when he was released, Thanos was insanely powerful compared to characters of the time. He was considered to be balanced, though, because he hurt your own team so badly. The downside made up for how strong Court Death was.

    Chasm, on paper, is way, way too good. But -- he has a very significant downside. He eats your own AP! If you played MPQ as it was back in like 2014, I'm not sure he'd be so popular, because he makes it very hard for you to cast powers. The problem, of course, is that in 2023 we have a ton of characters who can kill you super dead, super fast, and never cast a thing. Chasm's downside might look bad, but in today's metagame it's an absolute nonfactor.

    Magik, I think, is a case of overvaluing new mechanics. Again, this is a pattern. Look at Ultron's red. The damage is low for its cost, so the designer clearly placed a very high value on "cannot be reduced.". How much would you pay for that power without that mechanic? 3AP? 4 at most? Is a one-shot "cannot be reduced" worth 3-4 extra AP? No chance.

    I think they overvalued Magik's permanent damage, and that's why she does less of it. Permanent damage is a cool mechanic, but I don't think it's worth as much as they do. It's only useful against healers -- if the enemy doesn't heal, then permanent damage is just regular ol' damage. Paying this much for it is a bad deal.

  • Alex502
    Alex502 Posts: 183 Tile Toppler

    Excellent comments and evaluations, everyone. I appreciate the viewpoints.

    MtG is a hard comparison to MPQ but the ideals of character release are very close. And frankly, the gameplay isn't far off either. You mentioned how nearly any card is legal in certain formats of MtG, well here's the thing, almost any character can have their day if paired correctly. I'm sure no one has forgotten that 1 star Spider-Man still does one thing any 5 star team would be happy to have with them, making crit tiles.

    So if even a 1 star can be a valid choice, I feel the comparison is actually rather on point. Each new release of cards is like a single character. That set has some new dynamic the cards are meant to highlight and take advantage of. Same thing with our new characters, the overall interaction with the character base is something they consider.

    Frankly, I'd like to know what team they had Magik on when they realized they wanted to nerf her. Some other character boosted her damage ridiculously, perhaps even a few characters that might have done it, but overall I don't think it was Magik herself that called for the nerf, it was in play testing and pairing her with different teams that they realized their mistake.

    And this might be a big reason Chasm isn't getting the change we've asked for. He doesn't have amazing syngery with the entire cast of characters, he's a great pairing for a few of them. Magik, on the otherhand, might have filled the role of Red/Purple on a team that rocketed her effectiveness through the roof. While Chasm is just annoying on every level, including for the player using him, Magik got this huge reduction so that she didn't overcome the entire roster.

    Pointing out Ultron's ridiculous red is actually a great example of other interactions making this better. Alone, its whimpy, but paired correctly could be really powerful.

    So I guess the most valid point so far is really this: is a new character a valid solo choice, or do they require a specific pairing to unlock their potential? Chasm needs no one to help him (he won't help anyone else either, really), and Magik needs the right teammate. Unfortunately we have to guess at the direction the dev's have set a character in, and find out on our own where a new release falls into the tier list.

    To a previous point about this actually, Jessica Jones is a great example here. She's effective alone, not a true danger like Shang Chi, but she's a heavy hitter. Paired with the right teammates, her effectiveness goes up dramatically. I don't really see any character paired with Chasm that changes his potential. Magik might have been too strong solo or paired with someone, and that overtook the rest of the roster on damage and so she had to be reduced. That's my educated guess about it, but I still don't see why they haven't acknowledged that Chasm needs a change.

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