MPQ Developer Q&A September 2023 (ANSWERS)

Bad

Or we can make a mthor nerf thread and fill up a bunch of pages with objective and subjective facts.

LavaManLee

Characters who are nerfed tend to be ones who are OP on Offense and hard/slow to beat on Defense. Yes, MT can get some lucky cascades but she is not scary to face. Chasm, however, was. He just took a long, long time. 5Gambit was both amazing at offense and hard to face on defense. Bishop was pretty good at offense and hard to face on defense.

I don't see them nerfing MT unless their stats show something otherwise.

DAZ0273

@Bad said:
Or we can make a mthor nerf thread and fill up a bunch of pages with objective and subjective facts.

Go on then! Looking forward to it! 😀😀

entrailbucket

@LavaManLee said:
Characters who are nerfed tend to be ones who are OP on Offense and hard/slow to beat on Defense. Yes, MT can get some lucky cascades but she is not scary to face. Chasm, however, was. He just took a long, long time. 5Gambit was both amazing at offense and hard to face on defense. Bishop was pretty good at offense and hard to face on defense.

I don't see them nerfing MT unless their stats show something otherwise.

Except the answer IceIX gave in the Q&A said absolutely nothing about strength on defense. Go back and read what he said.

That was my entire point.

Daredevil217

@Daredevil217 said:
You have a strong history of…. hyperbole. I was very recently one of those lower level players and I can tell you she wasn’t even on half the teams I faced let alone “almost all”. In my short time as a 550 she’s been more prevalent, but Shang has been boosted. As a 470-480 level guy I saw boosteds way more often than Jane and it’s not even close. Interesting enough, it appears the 5* rotation is now going historically with last week featuring the first ever 5s (and Shang?) and this week the next set chronologically. I know for me I’d rather use a meta 550 over a non meta 450 boosted to 550. So you might be seeing people in my roster situation at your level who don’t have a bunch of 650s to choose from. They’re choosing between 550 Shang/Thor and maybe a 590 Logan/Surfer. So it’s not like they’re being used over 650 (which IS what I was seeing with Chasm).

Offensive glass cannons tend to get a pass because players like them and only a very small minority complain/call for their nerfs. I know they don’t mention player dissatisfaction as a reason for nerfs but when I look at the Gambit/Bishop/Chasm holy trinity, I definitely see a pattern over other highly highly used offensive powerhouses.

The one thing I agree with that you said is “we’ll see”. And, I’ll leave it at that. Like I said, I’m not losing sleep. If Thor, Okoye, and Polaris skated by unscathed I’m not worried.

I know, I said I’d leave it, but I was curious about what the first PVP without Shang Chi would look like, especially with old five stars boosted I imagined I would see a ton of Thor, since those five stars are not really as strong as newer releases, or meta characters. This is what I found.

22 hours left

Climb from 0-800:

Banner/Iron Man (13)
Banner/Omega Red
Banner/Thanos (8)
Banner/Thor (2)
Banner/Half-Thor
Colossus/Thanos
Iron Man/Thanos
Okoye/Omega Red (2)
Shang-Chi/Thor (2)

800+ I started to look at names because that’s when it tightens up, and you get a lot of repeat names:

Banner/Iron Man (2)
Banner/Shang-Chi (3)
Banner/Thanos (4)
Colossus/Thor
Omega Red/ Thanos (3)
Omega Red/ Venom (2)
Shang-Chi/Thor (4) - one was a 450 baby champ

This is almost exactly the type of smattering I saw before becoming a 550 player. I would be anxious about them nerfing Jane if I had an anxiety disorder. Otherwise, I highly doubt that they would nerf her based on the subjective experience of single poster in the super duper end game. As someone who was playing around in the 470-490 tier for literal years, what you see above is pretty typical pre/post-Chasm.

Now I’m not naive enough to think that my experience encapsulates all players, but I also don’t think I’m some unique snowflake either. I’m very well aware of things such as confirmation bias, hyperbole, the frequency illusion, selective perception, naive realism, the invisible army, and one of my favorites… the overconfidence effect. Where in this case “almost all” is actually less than 20%. This is why I felt it important to do my own research. There are tons of logic fallacies people employ and when you read enough posts it’s important you consider the source.

Also, for what it is worth. I used Shang Chi and Thor almost exclusively. If I had a choice between level 560 to 580 middle of the pack five stars to go up against much higher and sometimes dual boosted 550s, I was definitely going to punch up with Shang Chi and Thor! I got smacked around a ton leaving that team out, but, no regrets!

entrailbucket

That's great! Maybe what I was seeing was just the boosted Shang-Chi effect. I won't start till tomorrow, and hopefully I won't find a wall of Thors.

I'm just glad that we now have an official statement of their balancing criteria.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:
That's great! Maybe what I was seeing was just the boosted Shang-Chi effect. I won't start till tomorrow, and hopefully I won't find a wall of Thors.

I'm just glad that we now have an official statement of their balancing criteria.

I am curious if your experience will be wildly different from mine. I only have three 550s and you have like 300 lol. I don’t know how much that matters TBH. But I would encourage you to really pay attention to the teams that show up and take a count of your own. It is easy for us to highlight in our minds what we think is happening and it is not really reflective of reality for a lot of reasons. The best example I can think of is people who complain about cascades favoring the AI team. It is not true and in fact, the developers once created a system so it would be in the players favor and there were still complaints! The mind is a powerful thing. This is why I don’t get worried when people fear monger or think the sky is falling.

entrailbucket

Well, is the sky really falling?

They just did a balance change that left an overpowered character perfectly usable but not omnipresent in the metagame.

Why can't we talk about balance changes now without getting heated and personal? I didn't even "call for" a nerf -- I just suggested one was possible -- and a bunch of folks rushed in to justify the character being as strong as she is.

ThisisClemFandango

@entrailbucket said:
That's great! Maybe what I was seeing was just the boosted Shang-Chi effect. I won't start till tomorrow, and hopefully I won't find a wall of Thors.

I'm just glad that we now have an official statement of their balancing criteria.

I think you'll find that I used to be officially definitely unofficial, but I feel my take on characters was an unmined gold mine.
Too late, too late will be the cry when the man with the bargains has passed you by.

Bowgentle

Yeah my experience pretty much mirrors Daredevil's, also with recently acquired 550 MMR.
Mostly big Thanos / Banner and of course Shang Jane, cause it's really good on offense.
But high point queues are mostly gigantic Thanos teams.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:
Well, is the sky really falling?

They just did a balance change that left an overpowered character perfectly usable but not omnipresent in the metagame.

Why can't we talk about balance changes now without getting heated and personal? I didn't even "call for" a nerf -- I just suggested one was possible -- and a bunch of folks rushed in to justify the character being as strong as she is.

This definitely isn’t me getting heated or personal. I talked about the cognitive biases and logical fallacies that human beings as a whole fall into (myself included- which is why I gathered data rather than rely on my felt sense or subjective reality/memory). I’m also a psychologist and a nerd about this stuff. If that feels personal, then, well… that’s yet another fallacy. It’s fine if you feel Jane falls into the category outlined by the developers. I didn’t feel it was an accurate statement and was wondering why I didn’t feel anxious like you would. So I looked into it. At what point it felt personal/heated to you I’m unsure (I forgot to add ad hominem to the list of things we are wired to do).

As for Chasm’s nerf, recency bias is indeed a thing. You’re right that it just happened. But the reality is they don’t happen all that often. I’ll never say never with Jane but she feels very much like Okoye/Half-Thor/Polaris/Shang in many ways including how often she’s used. In fact I’d imagine she is seen way less than those others were/are (especially in their primes) but have no way to know that.

There is a reason why the developers really try to go with counters over nerfs (that much I think we agree on). I think they want to avoid as much as possible, especially with characters that most players really enjoy (I think OML was the last one that the majority loved that got nerfed). So it’s pretty rare.

entrailbucket

The Okoye/Thor/Polaris/Shang-Chi comparison is a good one. Okoye/Hulk seems as if it would have fit the criteria that Ice cited there. Maybe that team wasn't as frequently used as we all thought? Or maybe the criteria he cited are a new approach?

I agree that they want to avoid nerfs, and one would think that they'd only nerf characters that players overwhelmingly wanted to disappear. Except...that's not what he said. Why? Why did Chasm/Hulk meet that standard but Okoye/Thor or Okoye/Hulk didn't?

revskip

@Gymp28 said:
That’s just a hateful attitude EB! You’re keen to see a large chunk of the player base suffer just for your entertainment? Nice one…
If she’s absolutely fine and doesn’t impact you why not just let everyone else enjoy the character they like?

Man, that was my exact argument for leaving Chasm alone. Some folks liked him, some folks hated him.

mThor is every bit as OP as Chasm was pre-nerf and is every bit as ubiquitous now that he's been trimmed. I'm seeing her unboosted even more often than I was seeing immortal Bros and even moreso since her kit works with a lot of different partners as opposed to Chasm's small cadre in pick 2/3.

She has a passive board shake every turn for FREE. She gains steam by blowing up charged tiles which she creates every turn for FREE. She creates unwinnable matches with certain partners as early as turn 0 just like Chasm did. But she's an offensive meta character not a defensive meta character so she gets less hate. Hit her with the nerf hammer. If you are going to tune down one OP character you should be tuning down ALL OP characters.

mani82

@entrailbucket said:
That's great! Maybe what I was seeing was just the boosted Shang-Chi effect. I won't start till tomorrow, and hopefully I won't find a wall of Thors.

I'm just glad that we now have an official statement of their balancing criteria.

The only thing good about it is the wall of Thor is definitely not as bad a wall of chasm ihulk and if she gets rebalanced ,then another one will take her place as top dog may be omega red or kang and they l get the axe according to the perception of the statement.They rather balance weaker characters to get stronger than nerf popular characters

Bowgentle

@mani82 said:

@entrailbucket said:
That's great! Maybe what I was seeing was just the boosted Shang-Chi effect. I won't start till tomorrow, and hopefully I won't find a wall of Thors.

I'm just glad that we now have an official statement of their balancing criteria.

The only thing good about it is the wall of Thor is definitely not as bad a wall of chasm ihulk and if she gets rebalanced ,then another one will take her place as top dog may be omega red or kang and they l get the axe according to the perception of the statement.They rather balance weaker characters to get stronger than nerf popular characters

That's not realistic in a game with 400 characters.

mani82

They have to gradually start doing it all rather than nerfing good characters chasm bishop and gambit nerf acc to me was warranted the rest seems just fine the lower tier characters need improvement than nerf the good ones

nwahs086

If they're gonna rebalance a character, I wouldn't waste my vote on a nerf. I'd prefer to buff any of the dozens of characters that need buffing. If you lose to Thor, use boosts. Everyone will lose to a bad cascade from Thor or Riri or Shang, but there's ways to help mitigate it. Stuns or mirror match or boosts or skip.

KGB

She's not everywhere in 4 star land. There it's boosted 5 star characters only along with Polaris and one or 2 others like BrB.

When they nerfed OML for over use he was literally everywhere in every tier because of his healing. Didn't matter that he wasn't that relevant in 5 star land at that time. I suspect she'd need to be everywhere in 4 and 3 star land before they'd even think of nerfing her.

KGB

entrailbucket

Yeah, so I think I was just seeing the Shang-Chi effect the last couple weeks.

I did 100 or so PvP fights today and didn't see a ton of Thor, maybe 20% or so. I did quite enjoy taking several hundred points off some folks who'd clearly just broken hoards for 550 Thor/Shang-Chi/Okoye (welcome to the big leagues, kids!). The rest of the Thors I saw were low 4* rosters using her with Polaris.

She does seem to have replaced Beta Ray Bill as the most popular Polaris partner, which is interesting but probably not important.

Daredevil217

Yeah 20% seems about right. I don’t think that’s near nerf territory using the criteria they listed. I still think history has shown they will nerf if they get enough outcry from players. But maybe there’s a correlation in that the ones that players have cried about are the ones who really do have a stranglehold on the tier with regards to use. Either way, I’m not going to concern myself with it. One thing that sort of shocked me was the amount of Chasm I still see in shield sim. I think that first turn stun is enough to make him annoying on defense and so he is still getting left out. If someone who 550’d chose not to sell, I can see how that’s still a better option than the paper machete fan faves I run lol.