Debate on Character Valuation

entrailbucket

I think the idea of evaluating a character solo vs a character in a combo is worth talking about, but generally people are doing the latter.

I'd say that, at least when I'm doing it, it might sound like I'm evaluating a character 1-on-1, but I'm generally not. To revisit Magik, her damage is quite low, but when paired with a power booster she can be much more effective. I would compare her to iHulk, for example, as she fills the same basic role in a team -- "damage dealer who allows you to double-dip on passive boosts/strike tiles."

When I compare Magik to Hulk, I'm not comparing them as 1v1 characters -- they are both quite bad in that role (Hulk is worse -- he just downs himself fairly quickly!). I'm comparing Magik's performance in her role to Hulk's performance in that same role. Magik does permanent damage and can offer more double-dips, but Hulk can't die and his attack is passive. Most times, I'd choose Hulk to do that particular job.

And that, I think, is the problem. Most characters can be sort of roughly sorted into different "jobs" that they do on a team (damage dealer, support/boost, stun, AP generation), and lots of the bad characters are really good at a job that's not terribly useful in today's game. Others do a useful job, but someone else already does the same thing much more effectively.

The best characters do multiple jobs really well. Look at Beta Ray Bill's powerset, or Apocalypse, or Chasm himself. Some of these characters are among the best at multiple useful roles all at once!

Bad

It's an entertaining analysis exercise here, so I'll go with my impressions and guesses.
Magik: indeed I agree with EB that permanent damage is overvalued by BCS and former devs. Also it's something which can be useful against a minority of characters and powers, having in mind that except a few characters, healing usually doesn't makes a big difference in the battle.
Her nerf IMHO was due to 4* or 3* tiers. Probably they noticed her toolkit was too abusive against these players. Imo its ok to adjust her because of this reason. What it's not ok at all is to say she is still at tops. Because that's absolutely false( and I think she still has her new character buff, just imagine without it). Imo to say that means to not even bother to test her in a good 5* tier.
Chasm: IMHO this is an absolute fail in many layers. He is too strong, even without his zombie squad he slows down the battle too much and punishes way more than any other character. He has changed the way pvp is played and probably many players are playing for battles instead of points because of him.
He should had been properly and carefuly tested on human battles, and prenerfed.
And players or forumers should had been listened and quickly nerfing him many months ago. It's kind of hilarious the amount of counters for him that they had released and that only shows that they still don't know why he is so broken.

BoyWonder1914

@Bad said:
He has changed the way pvp is played and probably many players are playing for battles instead of points because of him.

Once I climbed to 600+ in Jeff's PVP he became a lot more frequent, and once I got to 700+ practically every other skip was Chasm. Speaks volumes that people feel more comfortable putting out two unboosted 5s on defense than two boosted ones. You'd also think it'd go without saying that having a character capable of almost one-shotting someone before the opposing player has even had a chance to touch the board would have raised some flags.

pepitedechocolat

Reminds me of the old hundreds page long balance discussion in early days of wow when multi role classes (druid shaman paladin etc...) damage dealing specs were doing lower damage than pure damage dealing classes because of "utility". The net result was theses specialisation were useless as dps in raids and thus never taken in raid. This was later changed to allow these classes to be on par or almost on par with others, in order for these specialisation to exist in PVE. this tradeoff was a bit unfair for damage dealing specialist but as long as everyone could pull their weight I think it was the right trade off to have.

Which bring me to talking about "perma damage" and other niceties (ignore protect tile, damage while airborn...) which I think should not reduce the damage of said ability, because they are so situationnal the bonus should just be icing of the cake, not a reason to have the ability be terrible 90+ % of the time and be on par with other damage dealing when in the right situation

entrailbucket

@Alex502 said:
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.

Soooo... I may have led you astray here with the Magic comparison, and in thinking about how I'd address that, I realized there's a valuable contrast to draw with MPQ.

In the MTG "Eternal" formats (there are a few different ones but that doesn't matter), yes, huge numbers of cards are legal, tens of thousands in some cases. But in competitive decks, only a few hundred are powerful enough to be viable. Decks are so powerful and so tuned that games are generally over in a few turns. The equivalent of 1* Spidey would be destroyed in seconds -- he wouldn't even get a turn.

The barrier to entry for playing these formats is also massively high. A competitive Vintage deck costs nearly six figures, and that's if you can even find the ultra-rare cards you need. Occasionally a new card is good enough to be playable in eternal formats, but it's at most one or two per year. Generally 4 or 5 archetypes are able to win, and they've been the same ones for many years.

The result? Competitively, these formats are largely dead. They're played by a few enthusiasts and collectors, and that's about it. To their credit, the game designers realized things were headed in this direction many years ago, and now the most popular competitive format is rotating. Only the last year or so of cards is legal, and every year all those cards get phased out as the newest sets become legal. Sometimes there's a "best" deck, but there are usually several that are about equal, and 1* Spidey is probably playable. This is how competitive Magic is played now -- professionals play rotating formats.

What does this have to do with MPQ? Well, we're all playing "Eternal" MPQ. In most events, all characters back to 2013 are technically legal, but if you actually want to win, you need to use the most powerful ones. I can't bring any old guys to shield sim against 550 Chasm/Hulk/Colossus -- I'd lose without getting a turn. At the highest levels, only a few teams are truly viable.

The barrier to entry for competition is massively high. New characters that are competitively playable are rare, because we're evaluating them against the strongest possible strategies from the entire history of the game. If we had some kind of rotating format (and the boosts kind of do that), then someone like Magik might be more playable -- she'd be compared to a weaker set of characters, so she'd look much stronger.

pepitedechocolat

@entrailbucket said:

What does this have to do with MPQ? Well, we're all playing "Eternal" MPQ. In most events, all characters back to 2013 are technically legal, but if you actually want to win, you need to use the most powerful ones. I can't bring any old guys to shield sim against 550 Chasm/Hulk/Colossus -- I'd lose without getting a turn. At the highest levels, only a few teams are truly viable.

The barrier to entry for competition is massively high. New characters that are competitively playable are rare, because we're evaluating them against the strongest possible strategies from the entire history of the game. If we had some kind of rotating format (and the boosts kind of do that), then someone like Magik might be more playable -- she'd be compared to a weaker set of characters, so she'd look much stronger.

This is an appealing explanation but it feels wrong both sides .

MTG : MTG had to deal with early card creation with really strong cards and wonky rules on set whose availability is extremely limited (no reprint). So the barrier of entry is between for vintage is 50K$ and 100k$ and noone plays that. However if you pick modern (cards printed since 2003) , it is actually evolving regularly with cards from latest set being picked up.
MPQ : if you look at 2022 5*releases, many of them are meta. Only recently (wong, magik probably jeff) have we got "weaker" chars. Besides magik or jeff could be strong chars with only number changes. I bet that with all the ops issues they are having, their QA metrics are also inaccurate and number nerfs are due to botched tests.

Also the games economy are very different (and also physical vs digital ). I'm pretty sure MPQ is able to keep releasing new competitive chars for a long time.

entrailbucket

Yeah, it's not a perfect parallel at all -- they're very different games.

I would point out, though, that some of the best MPQ characters are quite old now -- Okoye, Apocalypse, Colossus, Hulk, and others have been around for quite a while. Even though Chasm still seems new, it would be hard for a player starting today to get him covered, since he's been in Classics for some time.

Alex502

@entrailbucket

Just so you know, I've played MtG professionally, casually, and in almost every format available. I don't have legacy cards, so no I don't play vintage tournaments, but I've been around the block with set releases and how they play out.

I honestly think, at the reduction point, these games are incredibly comparable. Think of the investment to receive boosts, vaults, and other offers. Very comparable to buying box sets, or even the 5,000 random card box. The reality is that a single character here is about equal to a full set mechanic from MtG. Roughly equating to one set from MtG = a character release in MPQ, and the reason I say that is because of the integration, the front selling, the playtesting, and player reception.

There's been so many times that a single card in MtG has upheaved all kinds of formats for wins, and its been banned or limited very quickly. Other times, its a card mechanic that overcomes play styles, but the grouping of those cards aren't banned, they're countered by a new release. MPQ has not paid attention to this same kind of reception. Furthermore, the legacy characters vs current meta vs new releases is actually very comparable again. Legacy characters are incredbily hard to build, their very rare in the game, and they only really bring up the play styles that match them. Attempt to bring them to the modern tournament, and you'll lose handily.

However, in their own setting or comapared to similar sets, these cards/characters begin to shine. Same thing here, the kind of characters released that require synergy with legacy characters to be really good are at a huge disadvantage, where as the ones that hit biggest get the biggest hype and attention, and everyone brings them to tournament.

The similarities are actually more numerous than the differences, but here's the biggest catch around that. Because MtG has such an incredbile wealth of cards and characters to build from, they have an incredible range of "path to victory." MPQ is naturally limited more by design, but its even more limited when combating the same PvP teams over and over, and they require the same tactic to beat them, over and over, and when I don't have those mechanic specific characters maxed, I'm at even MORE of a disadvantage.

Honestly, the boost list helps, and playing for wins instead of points helps too, but by the time I'm reaching 18-20 wins, its damn exhausting because I'm facing the same mega meta teams over and over. MtG has a path to overcome any other play style, but MPQ has a much more limited vein for that.

If you don't use exactly the right counter to a situation, you will not win. Period. MtG allows for a much greater range of luck meets investment meets creativity. Here, we're limited in creativity, we are hamstrung in the luck department (thanks Chasm's instant turn 1 stun) and to pile on these meta team players have been at meta top for so long that they've built rosters that could absolutely stomp mine into the ground. Its the worst of pay-to-win meets legacy players dominating the game.

Scofie

At the risk of turning this into an MTG thread, I played in the very early days. My friend had a Black Lotus and some of the Mox stones, my brother still has several Ancestral Recalls. I had full sets of everything from Revised onwards to Weatherlight but stopped playing in about 2000. I sold all my cards to him about 15 years ago and it makes me a sad panda when I see the figures quoted.

Alex502

@Scofie said:

My heart falls for you! He best be getting you a new house too when they sell!

entrailbucket

@Alex502 Well, I feel pretty silly writing all that out now! I started playing MtG in 1996, quit for a very very long time, and only picked it up again casually a few years ago. At least I didn't get any of it too terribly wrong?

Really, I'm just glad to see some folks around here who are aware of other games where relative balance is important, and where it's actively maintained. Whether it's WoW or Magic, or even something like Borderlands, efforts are made to keep things from getting stale and boring by creating multiple "best" strategies.

One of the weird things I've found about this game is that for a lot of MPQ players, this is the only competitive/multiplayer game that they play or have ever played. When I hear things like "well, of course MPQ has one best character and everyone uses them, that's how every game works!"...no, competitive games don't generally work that way.

Usually designers try to create a metagame where players can pick from several competitive strategies. When there's one best deck in a Magic format, that's a massive, flashing-red-lights problem, that the designers watch for and fix as soon as possible. A metagame that's completely solved, in the way that MPQ is, and has been since Chasm showed up, is boring.

Bowgentle

It's a bit easier when you have more than one designer.
I'm guessing at this point there's maybe two people working on characters in MPQ and they have to release 3 each and every month.
You are seeing the effects that causes - Chasm, not enough playtesting, Chasm, Borked events, Chasm, Magik nerfed before release, Chasm, no communication.

Oh, did I mention Chasm?

entrailbucket

I think it's completely understandable that balance takes a backseat to making money/keeping the lights on, in a game that's designed and built by such a small team (not sure if this is accurate, but Crunchbase says BCS has 1-10 total employees). Also, a lot of really vocal players at the top end are really invested in an extremely unbalanced metagame.

It's still an issue, and we can still complain about especially egregious examples. They don't have to create a massive playtesting and balancing team to see some of the biggest problems.

entrailbucket

Can you talk about how dota does balance? How often do heroes get adjusted? Are there multiple "best" strategies? From a quick search, it seems like it's maintained pretty well, but I've never played it.

dianetics

Dota and LoL are balanced live. Any hero that sees a spike in win share will have their abilities looked at and potentially adjusted quickly if there is something broken. It’s been a while since Ive played those games, but the devs were generally balancing frequently when I played.

edit** There are no “best” strategies. It’s a role based game with importance in play optimization. Skill usage and cooldown management are important skills. It is a team skill based game.

But the overall dynamic of characters feels similar to what we build here.

KGB

Following along in the thread (and countless others) and I had an idea of something they could potentially do without nerfing characters (came to me after reading about how Magic the Gathering allows only certain sets).

Maybe instead they should adjust the team restrictions rules for balance purposes. For example we know the only restriction now is you can't play multiple characters of the same type on a team (ie 2 Wolverines). Maybe the answer to the Immortal reign of terror is to add another restriction that you can only have 1 character on your team who can resurrect.

So not only would the Immortal Bro's no longer be able to be team mates but neither could 5* She Hulk or Ikaris etc.

KGB

dianetics

@KGB said:
Maybe the answer to the Immortal reign of terror is to add another restriction that you can only have 1 character on your team who can resurrect.

I have literally been saying that this is the easiest fix for months. Either punish revives or only allow one reviver per team.
If the dev's believe immortal bros are a problem, then make an immortal affiliation and only allow one immortal per team. I think I mentioned this in January the first time.
It is a solution that would require no nerfs or huge investment into counter characters.

Alex502

You gave me a very interesting idea.

What if they had Affiliation styled PvP?? Where only characters from a selected list of affiliations are allowed? This would really change up the dynamic, and to avoid Mirror Matching the whole way, it could be as simiple as "Pick either 3 Heroes OR 3 Villains" but could go to something like "Pick 3 'Hero Spider-verse' OR 3 Symbiotes".

Really introducing the idea of 'sets' to PvP. Could also do a theme on year released, even.

This brings a new dynamic to PvP they can rotate in to give some relief to the Meta, doesn't punish or change any characters, and they can keep the current dynamics to PvP as well.

I've been trying to think of an all positive change that doesn't punish anyone or any character as they are, even if I (and many others) think Chasm (or revives in general) need addressed. This answer brings fresh interest to the affiliations they're doing, while being a win - win for every involved otherwise.

Alex502

Can I make a new Poll asking the forums if they'd like that?

I think its actually a really great idea.

pepitedechocolat

@Alex502 said:
You gave me a very interesting idea.

What if they had Affiliation styled PvP?? Where only characters from a selected list of affiliations are allowed? This would really change up the dynamic, and to avoid Mirror Matching the whole way, it could be as simiple as "Pick either 3 Heroes OR 3 Villains" but could go to something like "Pick 3 'Hero Spider-verse' OR 3 Symbiotes".

Really introducing the idea of 'sets' to PvP. Could also do a theme on year released, even.

This brings a new dynamic to PvP they can rotate in to give some relief to the Meta, doesn't punish or change any characters, and they can keep the current dynamics to PvP as well.

I've been trying to think of an all positive change that doesn't punish anyone or any character as they are, even if I (and many others) think Chasm (or revives in general) need addressed. This answer brings fresh interest to the affiliations they're doing, while being a win - win for every involved otherwise.

Honestly doing a pvp of full spiderverse or full "gamma mutate" seems narrow with current affiliations. That said maybe with a pick 2 with affiliation restriction +1 open spot it could add enough variety. Also it needs to be workable for people with smaaler rosters, because mirror loaners would be gruelingly boring.

That also reminds me of heroic PVE (I think it is how it was called) where you can use only a list of char. It looked nice at first but was a pain to play, the more so with incomplete rosters