Character Design Going Forward

Warbringa

I think a major issue with the game and character design going forward is that so many of the powerful meta characters simply have too good of passive powers. Let's face it, they are meta because you don't need AP to have their awesome abilities begin working. I think this has become a fundamental issue with the game. I saw the same issue with Magic the Gathering the card game when I used to play it and it leads to power creep, which eventually is not sustainable unless you reset or choose to just not make characters better over time. Magic has sustained to varying degrees but MPQ isn't to the level of Magic (card game), which has more ways of balancing the game due to its complexity.

No one wants to see massive character nerfs/power resets. However most seem tired of a meta that continues to be dominated by a select handful of characters. My view is that it is the meta passive powers in the game that are too disruptive and unbalancing so they are the powers that should be addressed. My proposition is that passive powers should be split into two categories:

Passive - act right now as current powers do automatically
Passive Fueled (x)- requires X AP per round of that passives color at the start of your turn to work or when normally triggered (at revival, etc), otherwise the passive is not active

The passives that are ok but not game breaking can stay passive, the amazing passive powers would be converted to passive fueled, which once again would shift the game back to being about collecting AP to use and fuel your powers

This would slow down these awesome meta characters initially which is why so many characters are considered not playable because in the current meta you have to have a character that does something turn 1 or you lose (in PvP but also relevant in PvE).

Characters who steal or destroy AP would be stronger, boosts would become more important if you wanted those fueled passives to start right away or sooner, and non passive characters would have perhaps a few more rounds to collect AP before getting devastated by these really good passive powers.

It is a just a thought and I know it has its downsides of slowing down the game. It also doesn't really slow down some meta characters like 5* Thor, but no one is really complaining about him over the many years. The other option is to significantly increase non passive characters damage and/or reduce AP costs with rebalances but the past devs and the current ones don't seem like they are willing to do that. Yeah, their rebalances have made the characters better (but only marginally) and I can't think of too many that have become meta after a rebalance for example. This tells me that rebalances are not the long-term solution.

entrailbucket

Agree. Active powers need to be significantly better than passive powers, in every case. When some character has an active AoE that hits for 10k, then you look at Hulk's completely free, every-turn AoE for the same amount, why would I ever choose to use the active power character?

If they don't want to nerf all the passives, just buff every active power in the game by 100% or so. There has to be some benefit to matching tiles and collecting AP.

dianetics

I really don’t like the comparison to MTG. Magic took a long time to come to some sort of balance. Probably after ice age.
Magic has one trick up its sleeve that MPQ doesn’t, and that is banning cards in tournament play. If something is broken they just don’t let you use it period.

Chasms beginning of game stun really killed the diversity of the game. There have been plenty of characters that did well without massive passives previously like Beta Ray Bill.

I like the idea of fueled passives, but generally AP drainers have not been strong. Chasm broke that part too.

Your best idea there is to take another look at the power budget of fired powers and most likely reduce a lot of them across the board.

edit:: reduce fired power costs significantly, not the budget 😂

Punisher5784

To me, this game is built on Passives since the beginning.

During my 2* days, I relied heavily on Daken, Wolverine and OBW. Wolv match green, Daken passively creates Strikes, then you double dip on the strikes with OBW's black passive while also stealing AP. Plus I had two passive healers.

Moving to 3* land, I relied heavily on Ironfist and Luke Cage for the free passive Attack and Protect tiles. I also utilized SW for the passive CD to create Purple AP. There is also fan favorite Strange's damage passive. Don't forget Hood's passive steal in the very early days.

Prior to Grocket and Polaris, the early days of 4* was ruled by Peggy's passive. PvE was all about Charlie's Angels with Professor X's passive creating a winfinity. You also had Carnage's free attack tiles with Medusa giving you healing and free AP. Personally, I mostly relied on Captain Marvel and Wasp. Wasp passively creates a CD to steal AP while Cap Marv buffed special tiles.

Later, I started investing in 5*s when Kitty was released. Plus you had Okoye and Half Thor. Thanos ruled for a bit. You also cannot forget pre-nerfed Gambit passively giving you AP.

These are just my personal play style examples. The point is, Passives have always drove the meta.

entrailbucket

Passives have indeed always driven the meta -- you just can't compete with free.

OP's point (which I agree with) is that passives have become significantly more powerful over time, to the point that now there's no reason for most active powers to exist at all.

Punisher5784

@dianetics said:
I really don’t like the comparison to MTG. Magic took a long time to come to some sort of balance. Probably after ice age.
Magic has one trick up its sleeve that MPQ doesn’t, and that is banning cards in tournament play. If something is broken they just don’t let you use it period.

During the early days, the Developers used MtG as an inspiration for MPQ so it makes sense to me to compare. MtG has some great high cost cards, but they're not fitting in my 60 card deck because the game is about speed, like MPQ. Using Sliver creatures as an example. I don't need the high cost, multiple colored Sliver Queen in my deck because all the low cost Slivers "passively" did all the work for me before I could ever have enough Land (AP) to bring her out.

My decks were about low to no cost abilities, giving me free land, searching my deck for needed cards, etc. Not much different than MPQ.

dianetics

The comparisons are superficial at best. The early days of magic were dominated by two colors and no cost artifacts.
This aligns much closer to DoTA or LoL than magic.
I’m probably dating myself here but I played magic during the unlimited phase through ice age, and even early on they would limit or outright ban cards. It took almost 10 years for magic to actually have some sort of balance and they achieved that through limits and bans.

Mechanically magic is very different from how this game works. So it may be the inspiration, but if you want to compare it to something champion based games are much better comparisons.

atomzed

A few of you have mentioned that MTG has balanced the meta through outright bans/limits. The MPQ equivalents are in the form of (1) buff list and (2) event rules.

We have seen how buff list have affected the meta. I actually hope that they curate the characters list better so that there’s more synergy between the buff characters.

Examples of event rules include the pvp which can only run characters with green powers. There’s also BOP, which totally upends the meta. One simple rule example that they can change is to institute only one 5* in pvp. Suddenly you would see a lot more 4-5 pairings in pvp, which the 4* synergise with the chosen 5*.

I am not advocating such a change, but to illustrate how a single rule can change the meta. Much like how bans/ limits work in MTG.

Bowgentle

@atomzed said:
A few of you have mentioned that MTG has balanced the meta through outright bans/limits. The MPQ equivalents are in the form of (1) buff list and (2) event rules.

We have seen how buff list have affected the meta. I actually hope that they curate the characters list better so that there’s more synergy between the buff characters.

Examples of event rules include the pvp which can only run characters with green powers. There’s also BOP, which totally upends the meta. One simple rule example that they can change is to institute only one 5* in pvp. Suddenly you would see a lot more 4-5 pairings in pvp, which the 4* synergise with the chosen 5*.

I am not advocating such a change, but to illustrate how a single rule can change the meta. Much like how bans/ limits work in MTG.

Yeah those limited PVPs must have bombed HARD, we haven't seen them in years.
I don't think that's the way to go for MPQ.

atomzed

@Bowgentle said:

Yeah those limited PVPs must have bombed HARD, we haven't seen them in years.
I don't think that's the way to go for MPQ.

Has it been years? I remember BOP happens quite regularly. The Evergreen happened at least 6 months back? Or maybe much longer… There’s also the 2-3-4* pvp which happens once a year?

I not sure whether it bombs or not, but it definitely shake up the meta so much that it affects player’s experience. It may not be such a bad thing.

Bowgentle

I haven't seen BOP since I came back, and that has been 14 months.
Or Combined Arms, or Evergreen, or that terrible snowball thing.
Shaking up player's experience is nice, but when participation drops off a cliff, it's not helping their revenue streams.

Wolvie171

Yes, most of the themed PVPs were off season events with a few exceptions added to the regular season (e.g., PVP Matchmaking & Best Friends Forever in February, Evergreen & Snowball Fight during the winter months). There were other themed PVPs that uniquely ran during the winter holidays: Naughty or Nice, Reunions, and Festival of Fights.

For some inexplicable reason, Demiurge stopped running them. Despite some events being a snipefest (looking at you, BOP), I welcomed the variety it added to the off season. If BCS were to bring them back, I think they would be well-received by the players. And to stay on topic, running these themed PVPs would reduce, or eliminate altogether, players from falling back to using characters with OP'ed passive powers.

Below is the list of these off season events and the last time they were featured PVPs, according to my records. It's been a while and my record-keeping may be off, but the data wizards at D3/BCS should have the full details.

@Scofie / @IceIX, any chance of getting these back on the radar?

entrailbucket

Most of these were terrible.

None of them locked out any characters at all, they just had themed boost lists. The problem was that the boost was the +15 levels that we get in boss fights, and not the +100lvl feature boost.

They basically just ended up being Shield Sim -- the themed boost was so low that none of the theme characters were better than the "meta" teams. Like, if they ran Black Vortex today, it'd be the same old wall of Chasm/Hulk.

Wolvie171

Not all of them, e.g., BOP and Combined Arms locked out characters based on their themes. For other events, these could be updated with increased boosts or restricted characters ala Heroic events. They weren't perfect (really, there's no such thing), but they added something different to what players were getting during the regular season.

entrailbucket

BOP and Combined arms were fun for a lot of players, just not much fun for us! They were really popular with lower tier players though...I'm not sure why they disappeared.

I agree with you, Black Vortex etc could be fun, if they either locked out or they had the +100 boost for 5*. The existing versions of those events were kind of pointless though.

Wolvie171

Oh, I couldn't agree with you more lol. BOP, or "When Noobs Strike Back" , and Combined Arms were popular with smaller rosters as they gave players the ability to level up to 5-star god mode, but they also leveled the playing field for all players regardless of roster strength.

In a way, they were similar to the weekly boosts which I suspect may be why these events went away. Even so, they boosted all of the characters and I particularly enjoyed the many options this introduced to my choice of teams. In the absence of a sandbox to playtest characters, you would think this would incentivize players to chase characters once they've had a taste of using the 550 versions.

Scofie

@Scofie / @IceIX, any chance of getting these back on the radar?

Mod mode off

For what is worth, I think versions of those events with limited characters or conditions would be great and I think at this point in the game life cycle, anything that might increase participation in PvP events for newer rosters could be essential for the continuation of the game.

Alas, I am but a mod on the forums, so have no decision-making ability whatsoever, but Ice has been tagged and that's the right person to make this move if there's appetite to do so.

DAZ0273

I am trying to think what the difference between Avengers (which I don't think I ever played) and Earth's Mightiest would be? Maybe EM replaced Avengers and Nefarious Foes replaced Villains?

War of the Realms had very nice artwork though.

Snowball Fight must be the most pointless of all - the effort put into coding the snowball bit was probably time badly spent for the actual impact.

I would play them though.

Bowgentle

I think Snowball was a side effect of the CD tiles they had coded for Wakanda, they probably wanted to get more use out of those.
Funnily enough, they sucked in PVE AND PVP, who could have known.

DAZ0273

That sounds about right on all points.

Bad

There is a point in this thread that is missing.
In 5* land there are some characters who are crucial, and they have powerful passives too.
And there is only one character who doesn't need them (SC):
Of course I'm talking about boosting characters. For to deal with huge healthpools on scl10, or pvp, any character needs:

• a character boosting any active or passive power (okoye, apoc, SW, Emma,...)
• a godboost of 110 levels
• a good amount of beefy strike tiles (kitty historically has helped here).

Those boosting characters with their passives, or a mix of passive and AP(SW) are what actually makes all powers and passives to be really considerate at what they do.
Without these characters any power could be free to be a big nuke, any character without help could defeat big foes. But it's impossible to change it now.
Also right now there are added passives enhancing, or crippling enemies by via affiliations.
Also supposedly in pvp there will be added passives via supports (sometime).
So the game is taking exactly the opposite approach than restricting OP passives.