Prevalence of MThor and could she be the target of a rebalance?

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  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 1,019 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @entrailbucket said:

    @Bad said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    If she's no good, why is everyone using her?

    Maybe because she is fun?

    And because she's fun for you, she must be fun for everyone? Everyone should enjoy what you enjoy, or they're wrong?

    I enjoyed playing with and against Chasm. I also didn't argue that others might not feel the same way.

    I don't enjoy playing with or against mThor. Several folks in here arguing that I'm wrong to feel that way.

    Passive board shake is OP. Every other character that has board shake has conditions attached or AP expended to fire it off. mThor is in a lot of ways the exact same kind of problems as Chasm. While she doesn't have the first turn stun her passive functions as a massive AP producer in the same way that Chasm acted as an AP drain. Her powers are all perfectly aligned in a way that exploit that passive to maximum effect so the AI plays her nearly perfectly just like it did Chasm whose lack of passives made him impossible for the AI to screw up. With the right partners mThor can absolutely rock characters boosted far far above her just like Chasm did. She absolutely removes the ability to use SAP creators and repeaters much more effectively than Chasm ever did.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    ROFL.
    Now nerfers argument is "you are saying that I'm wrong feeling that I don't like her" (I'd invite them to search the exact post were someone said that... there isn't any?... ooops).
    To that silly argument I reply another stupid thing: then you are saying that I'm wrong enjoying playing her.
    (Let's continue the laughfest a bit more)

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    Talking about other things, today I went a bit more into pvp. Look at this

    Clearly she should be nerfed. A maxed Mthor hit hardly my poor kingpin for almost 20k damage in all the battle.
    Also I fought another 3 SC Mthor teams with the same outcome :o

  • DrClever
    DrClever Posts: 584 Critical Contributor

    I don't think anyone is suggesting MThor is not easy to beat with any top level team, even when she's not partnered with notably weak team mates like Strange.

    We get that for some a character is only unbalanced if beating them means occasionally having to use health packs.

    But there are other things some people think are worth discussing in relation to game balance.

    It's probably not going to happen on these forums but I'd be really interested to hear what people think about MThor when they first start to encounter her - which will be very early in the piece I'd imagine these days.

    I'd also like to know how many people get fed up with the randomisation she brings, whichever team she's on. I find it quite tedious sometimes not being able to plan ahead - now obviously if you generally win in three moves or whatever that's not really relevant but for those that like the puzzle element a bit more, regularly running up against MThor (or having her as your strongest chatacter) might make things less fun.

    In other games that have a more organised balancing process (there's a certain deck based super hero game that springs to mind) something would almost certainly have happened by now too shift her nearer the mean level of usage.

    Being easy to beat ought to do that, but MPQ's peculiar semi-PvP model doesn't work in that way.

    My view is that she's a bit boring through a combination of both prevalence and her particular mechanics and I'd be happy to see less of her.

    So for me it's reasonable to ask if she should be the target of a rebalance and "no, don't nerf her, she's easy for me to beat" is missing more than one point, a key one being that a rebalance that targets MThor needn't be a nerf (or any sort of change) to MThor herself.

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,328 Chairperson of the Boards

    Yes, she should definitely not violate surfers hole :D

  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 1,019 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @Bad said:
    ROFL.
    Now nerfers argument is "you are saying that I'm wrong feeling that I don't like her" (I'd invite them to search the exact post were someone said that... there isn't any?... ooops).
    To that silly argument I reply another stupid thing: then you are saying that I'm wrong enjoying playing her.
    (Let's continue the laughfest a bit more)

    Actually my argument is that she is OP because free board shake is something no one else has and it has a variety of very predictable effects.

    @revskip said:

    Passive board shake is OP. Every other character that has board shake has conditions attached or AP expended to fire it off. mThor is in a lot of ways the exact same kind of problems as Chasm. While she doesn't have the first turn stun her passive functions as a massive AP producer in the same way that Chasm acted as an AP drain. Her powers are all perfectly aligned in a way that exploit that passive to maximum effect so the AI plays her nearly perfectly just like it did Chasm whose lack of passives made him impossible for the AI to screw up. With the right partners mThor can absolutely rock characters boosted far far above her just like Chasm did. She absolutely removes the ability to use SAP creators and repeaters much more effectively than Chasm ever did.

    I know you have some trouble with subjectivity versus objectivity so I repeated the important parts here. I also woke up to nothing but red nodes with mThor/Shang in both active PvPs today despite running double boosted pairs in both. No one was hitting me with boosted characters but these two unboosted sure did snack on me. Leads me to believe that at my MMR at least she's nearly ubiquitous. Which does not a healthy meta make.

    @DrClever said:
    I don't think anyone is suggesting MThor is not easy to beat with any top level team, even when she's not partnered with notably weak team mates like Strange.

    I'd also like to know how many people get fed up with the randomisation she brings, whichever team she's on. I find it quite tedious sometimes not being able to plan ahead - now obviously if you generally win in three moves or whatever that's not really relevant but for those that like the puzzle element a bit more, regularly running up against MThor (or having her as your strongest chatacter) might make things less fun.

    In other games that have a more organised balancing process (there's a certain deck based super hero game that springs to mind) something would almost certainly have happened by now too shift her nearer the mean level of usage.

    Being easy to beat ought to do that, but MPQ's peculiar semi-PvP model doesn't work in that way.

    So for me it's reasonable to ask if she should be the target of a rebalance and "no, don't nerf her, she's easy for me to beat" is missing more than one point, a key one being that a rebalance that targets MThor needn't be a nerf (or any sort of change) to MThor herself.

    That is my exact complaint. Thank you for elucidating it so concisely.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @revskip said:

    Actually my argument is that she is OP because free board shake is something no one else has and it has a variety of very predictable effects.

    If she was so OP she would had damaged me a lot fighting a maxed Mthor in the grill I fought, don't you think? She did something really close to NOTHING .
    Just try to do the same with a maxed chasm, pre nerf or post nerf.
    However it's needed to be skillful fighting her matching the chargeds in order to make her defenseless.

    @DrClever said:

    So for me it's reasonable to ask if she should be the target of a rebalance and "no, don't nerf her, she's easy for me to beat" is missing more than one point, a key one being that a rebalance that targets MThor needn't be a nerf (or any sort of change) to MThor herself.

    Any small change you do on her in order to stop her usage is a NERF so please don't mask words.
    All gacha games I've played nerf characters if they are broken, and never nerf a character because it's good and popular, that's a nice shoot in the foot.
    In any case, MPQ never has nerfed popular characters in this way. It takes a lot of investment to raise a 5*.
    As many (salty) chasm users know well.

  • Zalasta
    Zalasta Posts: 293 Mover and Shaker

    @revskip said:
    Actually my argument is that she is OP because free board shake is something no one else has and it has a variety of very predictable effects.

    Half health Thor has a free board shake every turn.

  • Pantera236
    Pantera236 Posts: 527 Critical Contributor

    @Zalasta said:

    @revskip said:
    Actually my argument is that she is OP because free board shake is something no one else has and it has a variety of very predictable effects.

    Half health Thor has a free board shake every turn.

    I wouldn't call losing half your health "free", also he can only do it once per turn.

  • allen_koholic
    allen_koholic Posts: 103 Tile Toppler

    The only change I’d make is that her blue board shake power no longer prioritizes CD tiles for removal. I’m not sure it’s a nerf so long as it applies to friendly and enemy tiles. It just changes who she works well with and who she counters. It’s probably a nerf.

    Other than that, she’s fine. She’s a glass cannon.

  • revskip
    revskip Posts: 1,019 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @Zalasta said:

    @revskip said:
    Actually my argument is that she is OP because free board shake is something no one else has and it has a variety of very predictable effects.

    Half health Thor has a free board shake every turn.

    He has the condition that he is at half health to get that board shake. Which means you are at the disadvantage of any power taking you out. It also means that when playing against him that condition doesn't come into play until you choose to take him down past half health so you can choose to leave him for last and not have to deal with the board shake at all.

    5 * Vulture shakes the board with his green power by destroying 4 tiles, that power costs 7 AP
    5 * Hit Monkey shakes the board with his black power but is contingent on keeping an unfortified countdown on the board and moves 4 tiles per turn of that countdown also the power to get the countdown out costs 7 AP
    5 * Starlord shakes the board with his green but it costs 10 AP to destroy 2 columns
    5 * Cyclops can shake the board with his red but requires an unfortified repeater, 9 AP and only destroys green tiles
    5 * She Hulk shakes the board but only green and red tiles and only at the bottom of 5 random columns at a cost of 8 AP
    iHulk passively shakes the board but only conditionally depending on at least 8 green tiles to be on the board
    Black Bolt can shake the board with his green but only the middle two rows unless you have 5 AP in every color in which case he destroys the entire board but at a cost of 10 AP
    5 * Storm shakes the board with her green power at a cost of 10 AP but only in one chosen color
    5 * Magneto can shake the board with his blue power for a cost of 7 AP but only in two colors
    Onslaught shakes the board passively but has the condition that a match 4 or better is executed and only hits TU tiles
    5* Professor X shakes the board passively but requires a match 4 and only destroys 1 tile.

    mThor passively shakes the board every single turn with greater and greater amounts of tiles destroyed as more charged tiles are added to the board. Which she does with every single one of her active powers. No conditions, no AP needed to get the ball rolling. That is massively OP relative to every other 5* who shakes the board. On top of that she is one of the top damage dealers with two of her actives one of which is also an AOE. An AOE that once it has removed the charged tiles from the board throws down 4 more to keep the passive shaking the board the very next turn. She makes every other character with board shake a bad choice to take relative to her.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @revskip said:
    @Zalasta said:

    @revskip said:

    5 * Vulture shakes the board with his green power by destroying 4 tiles, that power costs 7 AP
    5 * Hit Monkey shakes the board with his black power but is contingent on keeping an unfortified countdown on the board and moves 4 tiles per turn of that countdown also the power to get the countdown out costs 7 AP
    5 * Starlord shakes the board with his green but it costs 10 AP to destroy 2 columns
    5 * Cyclops can shake the board with his red but requires an unfortified repeater, 9 AP and only destroys green tiles
    5 * She Hulk shakes the board but only green and red tiles and only at the bottom of 5 random columns at a cost of 8 AP
    iHulk passively shakes the board but only conditionally depending on at least 8 green tiles to be on the board
    Black Bolt can shake the board with his green but only the middle two rows unless you have 5 AP in every color in which case he destroys the entire board but at a cost of 10 AP
    5 * Storm shakes the board with her green power at a cost of 10 AP but only in one chosen color
    5 * Magneto can shake the board with his blue power for a cost of 7 AP but only in two colors
    Onslaught shakes the board passively but has the condition that a match 4 or better is executed and only hits TU tiles
    5* Professor X shakes the board passively but requires a match 4 and only destroys 1 tile.

    Conveniently forgetting that all of them deal damage and/or generate AP and Mthor doesn't do any damage or generate AP with her passive ;)

  • DrClever
    DrClever Posts: 584 Critical Contributor

    @DrClever said:
    a rebalance that targets MThor needn't be a nerf (or any sort of change) to MThor herself.

    Any small change you do on her in order to stop her usage is a NERF so please don't mask words.

    I'm not asking for a nerf.

    Which is precisely why I specified that the change needn't happen to Thor herself. I know I've told people never to read my posts but if you take that advice you might also avoid replying to them.

    All gacha games I've played nerf characters if they are broken, and never nerf a character because it's good and popular, that's a nice shoot in the foot.

    I'm not asking for a nerf.

    There's a Marvel game in the top 20 mobile earners (it's not MPQ) that had great comms around its routine and regular rebalances (which includes buffs and nerfs) and it explicitly refers to usage rates as well as the effect on team success.

    Other games focus more on win / loss rates as it appears happens in MPQ but the crucial difference in real PvP is that in a character that doesn't win doesn't get used, so rebalancing on one factor automatically addresses the other whereas MPQs semi-PvP means that a character could be used in every single match and as long as it won every time on offence and lost every time on defence it would not stand out.

    I'm not asking for a nerf to MThor, but I do think that changes that made for more varied teams, and hence reduced her ubiquity, would be welcome.

  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,328 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @revskip said:
    @Zalasta said:

    @revskip said:
    Actually my argument is that she is OP because free board shake is something no one else has and it has a variety of very predictable effects.

    Half health Thor has a free board shake every turn.

    He has the condition that he is at half health to get that board shake. Which means you are at the disadvantage of any power taking you out. It also means that when playing against him that condition doesn't come into play until you choose to take him down past half health so you can choose to leave him for last and not have to deal with the board shake at all.

    5 * Vulture shakes the board with his green power by destroying 4 tiles, that power costs 7 AP
    5 * Hit Monkey shakes the board with his black power but is contingent on keeping an unfortified countdown on the board and moves 4 tiles per turn of that countdown also the power to get the countdown out costs 7 AP
    5 * Starlord shakes the board with his green but it costs 10 AP to destroy 2 columns
    5 * Cyclops can shake the board with his red but requires an unfortified repeater, 9 AP and only destroys green tiles
    5 * She Hulk shakes the board but only green and red tiles and only at the bottom of 5 random columns at a cost of 8 AP
    iHulk passively shakes the board but only conditionally depending on at least 8 green tiles to be on the board
    Black Bolt can shake the board with his green but only the middle two rows unless you have 5 AP in every color in which case he destroys the entire board but at a cost of 10 AP
    5 * Storm shakes the board with her green power at a cost of 10 AP but only in one chosen color
    5 * Magneto can shake the board with his blue power for a cost of 7 AP but only in two colors
    Onslaught shakes the board passively but has the condition that a match 4 or better is executed and only hits TU tiles
    5* Professor X shakes the board passively but requires a match 4 and only destroys 1 tile.

    mThor passively shakes the board every single turn with greater and greater amounts of tiles destroyed as more charged tiles are added to the board. Which she does with every single one of her active powers. No conditions, no AP needed to get the ball rolling. That is massively OP relative to every other 5* who shakes the board. On top of that she is one of the top damage dealers with two of her actives one of which is also an AOE. An AOE that once it has removed the charged tiles from the board throws down 4 more to keep the passive shaking the board the very next turn. She makes every other character with board shake a bad choice to take relative to her.

    Mthor does have conditional board shake, as you said yourself. She requires charged tiles. If she is set up the "optimal" way she only creates 2 to start the fight (3 if you have more than 3 in blue). It's not that hard match her charged tiles and it benefits you with extra ap and match damage. This is what makes killing her so easy, use her passive against her.

    Gladiator hulk does board shake every single turn passively with absolutely no requirement other than being in the fight.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DrClever said:

    @DrClever said:
    a rebalance that targets MThor needn't be a nerf (or any sort of change) to MThor herself.

    Any small change you do on her in order to stop her usage is a NERF so please don't mask words.

    I'm not asking for a nerf.

    Which is precisely why I specified that the change needn't happen to Thor herself. I know I've told people never to read my posts but if you take that advice you might also avoid replying to them.

    All gacha games I've played nerf characters if they are broken, and never nerf a character because it's good and popular, that's a nice shoot in the foot.

    I'm not asking for a nerf.

    There's a Marvel game in the top 20 mobile earners (it's not MPQ) that had great comms around its routine and regular rebalances (which includes buffs and nerfs) and it explicitly refers to usage rates as well as the effect on team success.

    Other games focus more on win / loss rates as it appears happens in MPQ but the crucial difference in real PvP is that in a character that doesn't win doesn't get used, so rebalancing on one factor automatically addresses the other whereas MPQs semi-PvP means that a character could be used in every single match and as long as it won every time on offence and lost every time on defence it would not stand out.

    I'm not asking for a nerf to MThor, but I do think that changes that made for more varied teams, and hence reduced her ubiquity, would be welcome.

    Nobody here plays or has played any other competitive multiplayer game, ever.

    Players of other games cheer for nerfs, bans, rebalances, anything that encourages variety and a diverse metagame. MPQ is the only community I've ever been a part of where players not only prefer but DEMAND a stagnant metagame with "one best team" that everyone uses, as long as that team minimizes the amount of time spent playing the game.

    I think the really interesting thing about the MPQ community is that the dominant attitude among non-casual players is "maximum rewards for minimum time invested." Once you reach a certain level, tons of players decide that they just have no further interest in playing the game part of the game -- and we're all ok with and encourage that attitude. People who continue to enjoy the gameplay are weird and wrong, and a change that would force others to play more is anti-fun.

    Most people play games because they enjoy playing them. MPQ players like MPQ rewards but not MPQ gameplay.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards

    That guy disagreed pretty vehemently with every version of that rant I ever posted, so I'm not sure what you're even saying.

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

    You're not wrong.
    But the PVE structure encourages that mindset.
    People transfer that mindset to PVP, where they COULD play how they wanted to.

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