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

KGB

@Codex said:

@Bad said:

Then why okoye didn't get nerfed? And thor? Ihulk? SW and colossus? Kitty polaris grocket?
And cap worthy, bishop were really that used or they were nerfed because of complaints and defensive wins?

That's is probably because effective counters were made those you mentioned before a nerf was needed. Okoye-ihulk being SW; Kitty polaris grocket mthor being chasm; SW colo didn't need a counter anyone with a stun would work. I don't consider any of the BCS attempts for a chasm counter to be effective hence the nerf.

A better argument would be why was oml nerfed it was definitely not for usage rates.

Actually he's the very definition of a usage rate nerf. Not among 5 star players, but every other tier was abusing the Yellow heal power so that new players were hiding behind a 1 cover OML to win endless matches. That's a big reason why he no longer heals when he no longer has team mates.

KGB

Bad

@bbigler said:
I judge a character on how fair the fight is.

Against MThor, it’s not a fair fight! The AI gaining about 3 times more AP than you isn’t fair (plus the extra match dmg). Colossus only solves the lesser of 2 problems. That’s why she should be nerfed.

Against Kang & Deathlok, it’s only fair for now because you can down Deathlok quickly, but once he’s ascended, that duo may become the new meta calling for a nerf.

Already answered, but AI actually doesn't care a bit about charged tiles. So unless having a lot of bad luck, actually it's the player and their choices the responsible of winning the battle. And as I stated, the loss ratio for Mthor is one of the greatest in game (I can't remember where icelX said it).
Kang and deathlok! Aren't you running quite a bit here? Not everyone will have an advanced deathlock. The majority of players only will be able to level up a single 4*, besides the tops who already could have 3 deathloks maxed. Either way, just remember that deathlok has a blue power, and AI will waste the blue AP in it generously, playing dumb as it's specialized.
Teams AI fool proof, like the chahulk team, are another reason behind his nerf.
Edit: finally found it (the shadow criature would saved me the effort here, for these things he was reliable . My memory isn't that great)

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/1019028/#Comment_1019028

JimboJambo

@entrailbucket said:

@LavaManLee said:

@entrailbucket said:
Maybe someone should ask them how they decide which characters to nerf...

Oh wait, someone did, and they told us that it was based on usage rate (and nothing else). Not win rate, not defensive wins, not complaints, not popularity.

Not true. Their actual answer was far more nuanced.

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/89282/mpq-developer-q-a-september-2023-answers/p1

The answer they provided was not "the only thing we look at is usage rate (and nothing else)". They never said they only look at usage rate. The answer was:

"Devpool: There are a surprising number of factors involved here. One is definitely player usage. Sometimes, player usage is a function of a character being great, but occasions do exist in which players perceive characters differently than what the metrics say. In other words, very strong characters simply might not be perceived as strong (yet). For reasons like this, we don't want to be too hasty with rebalances. Such was the case with Chasm, a character that, upon release, was believed to be very, very weak. It wasn't until some time after Chasm's release that players started to grasp his potential.

IceIX: It is impossible to really answer, but generally, it's when they dominate meta. As in, nearly any successful team uses them even when they're not buffed against teams that are, just because they're that powerful."

Both of these answers only talk about usage though...

Unless you're reading heavily into "surprising number of factors" or "impossible to really answer," all I'm seeing here is a discussion of how much characters are used.

Why wouldn't they bring up, say, defensive strength here, if that's a major reason?

Your final question is one for the devs to answer. LavamanLee is correct though, neither of the answers provided by Devpool and IceIX are complete answers to the question. In fact I think the question was quite poorly answered, but it is obvious from both responses that there are multiple factors involved that either they don't want to reveal, or just didn't want to take the time to explain. The one thing that is clear from both responses is that they don't just look at usage and nothing else.

entrailbucket

I find the whole discussion kind of weird. Let's remove Thor from the equation -- I don't see her being used excessively at the moment.

If a character appears in nearly every PvP team and they're used over weekly boosted characters, are people really opposed to nerfs in that case? Why? What possible justification could there be, in a game with 400 characters or whatever, and where a subset of characters gets a massive boost every week, for the same character or characters to be strong enough to be used in every single event?

Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

I lived through the Okoye/Thor and Okoye/Hulk metagames and they were both HORRIFICALLY boring. Who wants that?

Bad

@entrailbucket said:
Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

In here you are doing 2 things: talking about an ideal game which doesn't exist, and questioning the gacha system, which is the game we actually got.
And in these games, and because of several factors, people will play meta characters, others will play the character they like the most, and many people will play the best character they have.
To the last group you cannot say them to stop playing that for the supposedly greater game's health.

DrClever

No one's telling players what to do, just wishing that the game encouraged more variety.

entrailbucket

@Bad said:

@entrailbucket said:
Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

In here you are doing 2 things: talking about an ideal game which doesn't exist, and questioning the gacha system, which is the game we actually got.
And in these games, and because of several factors, people will play meta characters, others will play the character they like the most, and many people will play the best character they have.
To the last group you cannot say them to stop playing that for the supposedly greater game's health.

I mean, it's not some ideal that can't exist. It currently does exist. It existed before Chasm, too.

I'm not seeing a wall of Thors, at least not right now. If some "Wall of X" does appear, though, they should nerf that guy, because a Wall of Anybody makes the game boring.

Zalasta

You’d probably see a wall of “that guy” if it weren’t for weekly boosted characters. Some weeks though, “that guy” is still a better option than any of the boosted characters.

I will say though, that it’s disappointing how often the boosted characters have no synergy. Often times there’s significant overlap in colors. If boosted characters were planned better, “that guy” would be even less of a concern.

entrailbucket

@Zalasta said:
You’d probably see a wall of “that guy” if it weren’t for weekly boosted characters. Some weeks though, “that guy” is still a better option than any of the boosted characters.

I will say though, that it’s disappointing how often the boosted characters have no synergy. Often times there’s significant overlap in colors. If boosted characters were planned better, “that guy” would be even less of a concern.

I agree with all of this. If there were no boosted characters it'd be a wall of somebody, and that's why the boosts have made the game so much better.

I also agree that they should try to curate the boost lists somewhat -- OR just fix the remaining terrible 5*. This week we have Cap (very very good), Goblin (ok), plus Black Bolt and BSS (bottom tier, pretty much useless). I have all 4 of these characters maxed out at 550. At 672, one is great, one of them is just ok and the other two are basically unplayable. That is not acceptable.

DrClever

Do you not find that BB's charged tiles and passive damage make him okay when boosted?

I don't have him (or anyone) at 550, but he's been alright for me alongside Cap.

bbigler

@BriMan2222 @Bad
The reason MThor collects more AP than you is due to her cascades from destroying tiles every turn AND after every time she uses a power. The charged tiles can go for either team, but she always gets cascades, nearly every turn. No matter how smart I play to match the charged tiles and avoid setting them up, she always outpaces my AP by about 3 to 1. So I fire 1 power while they fire 3.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:

@Bad said:

@entrailbucket said:
Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

In here you are doing 2 things: talking about an ideal game which doesn't exist, and questioning the gacha system, which is the game we actually got.
And in these games, and because of several factors, people will play meta characters, others will play the character they like the most, and many people will play the best character they have.
To the last group you cannot say them to stop playing that for the supposedly greater game's health.

I mean, it's not some ideal that can't exist. It currently does exist. It existed before Chasm, too.

I'm not seeing a wall of Thors, at least not right now. If some "Wall of X" does appear, though, they should nerf that guy, because a Wall of Anybody makes the game boring.

I think some of this can be explained by a couple soundbites that you like. One of them, is that “we don’t matter”“, another is that the game wants us to “only see what is in front of us and not behind us“. I think some combination of those two maxims is contributing to what you are seeing presently. Meaning, you are part of the elite .0001% of the base. You will see a wall of Steel Witch, then Hulkoye, then Chasm, and now maybe Jane, because people at the very endgame tend to go all in on powerful meta characters. They can’t conceivably 550 every single character, so they pick and choose where to put their resources. You see a disproportionate amount of meta people because that is what most of the endgame players choose to invest in and then will play over other characters that they didn’t go all in on who are boosted (Would I rather play a 550 Jane or my 465 Goblin/Bolt that end up pretty close to 550 when boosted?).

The “we don’t matter” piece means just because it’s a problem for you, it doesn’t mean it’s a problem for other players at different levels, or that your experience is that of the much much larger player base. If they nerf a character due to overuse within a small subset of the population, it has impact on a bigger subset of players who may view the character as fine and not disproportionally used .

BriMan2222

@bbigler said:
@BriMan2222 @Bad
The reason MThor collects more AP than you is due to her cascades from destroying tiles every turn AND after every time she uses a power. The charged tiles can go for either team, but she always gets cascades, nearly every turn. No matter how smart I play to match the charged tiles and avoid setting them up, she always outpaces my AP by about 3 to 1. So I fire 1 power while they fire 3.

I'm Sorry, but I've fought her probably hundreds of times by now. I've been hitting mthor teams almost exclusively all week, hit them excessively in sim, and hit them every time I saw them pre-chasm nerf. It can happen where things go side ways, but it's exceedingly rare in my experience.

If you target her first and focus on matching the charged tiles you'll kill her before she ever gets the chance to fire a power. Her cascades have gotten me less often than onslaught and/or prof $ have taken me down.

entrailbucket

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bad said:

@entrailbucket said:
Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

In here you are doing 2 things: talking about an ideal game which doesn't exist, and questioning the gacha system, which is the game we actually got.
And in these games, and because of several factors, people will play meta characters, others will play the character they like the most, and many people will play the best character they have.
To the last group you cannot say them to stop playing that for the supposedly greater game's health.

I mean, it's not some ideal that can't exist. It currently does exist. It existed before Chasm, too.

I'm not seeing a wall of Thors, at least not right now. If some "Wall of X" does appear, though, they should nerf that guy, because a Wall of Anybody makes the game boring.

I think some of this can be explained by a couple soundbites that you like. One of them, is that “we don’t matter”“, another is that the game wants us to “only see what is in front of us and not behind us“. I think some combination of those two maxims is contributing to what you are seeing presently. Meaning, you are part of the elite .0001% of the base. You will see a wall of Steel Witch, then Hulkoye, then Chasm, and now maybe Jane, because people at the very endgame tend to go all in on powerful meta characters. They can’t conceivably 550 every single character, so they pick and choose where to put their resources. You see a disproportionate amount of meta people because that is what most of the endgame players choose to invest in and then will play over other characters that they didn’t go all in on who are boosted (Would I rather play a 550 Jane or my 465 Goblin/Bolt that end up pretty close to 550 when boosted?).

The “we don’t matter” piece means just because it’s a problem for you, it doesn’t mean it’s a problem for other players at different levels, or that your experience is that of the much much larger player base. If they nerf a character due to overuse within a small subset of the population, it has impact on a bigger subset of players who may view the character as fine and not disproportionally used .

Read what I wrote again...I'm not sure what you're responding to here. Are you saying that YOU currently see a wall of Thor, and my experience isn't representative?

entrailbucket

@DrClever said:
Do you not find that BB's charged tiles and passive damage make him okay when boosted?

I don't have him (or anyone) at 550, but he's been alright for me alongside Cap.

I have Ascended Thing at 459 (boosted to 578) and he has more health than 672 Black Bolt. Black Bolt's passive at 672 does about 30k, but it's not always-on, it's slow, and his charged tile creation makes him an easy target for Thor teams. 30k is also pretty puny for a 672 -- I can do that much or more every turn with Cap's match damage.

Bolt is just not good. I've actually been using Cap with Thing.

Daredevil217

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bad said:

@entrailbucket said:
Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

In here you are doing 2 things: talking about an ideal game which doesn't exist, and questioning the gacha system, which is the game we actually got.
And in these games, and because of several factors, people will play meta characters, others will play the character they like the most, and many people will play the best character they have.
To the last group you cannot say them to stop playing that for the supposedly greater game's health.

I mean, it's not some ideal that can't exist. It currently does exist. It existed before Chasm, too.

I'm not seeing a wall of Thors, at least not right now. If some "Wall of X" does appear, though, they should nerf that guy, because a Wall of Anybody makes the game boring.

I think some of this can be explained by a couple soundbites that you like. One of them, is that “we don’t matter”“, another is that the game wants us to “only see what is in front of us and not behind us“. I think some combination of those two maxims is contributing to what you are seeing presently. Meaning, you are part of the elite .0001% of the base. You will see a wall of Steel Witch, then Hulkoye, then Chasm, and now maybe Jane, because people at the very endgame tend to go all in on powerful meta characters. They can’t conceivably 550 every single character, so they pick and choose where to put their resources. You see a disproportionate amount of meta people because that is what most of the endgame players choose to invest in and then will play over other characters that they didn’t go all in on who are boosted (Would I rather play a 550 Jane or my 465 Goblin/Bolt that end up pretty close to 550 when boosted?).

The “we don’t matter” piece means just because it’s a problem for you, it doesn’t mean it’s a problem for other players at different levels, or that your experience is that of the much much larger player base. If they nerf a character due to overuse within a small subset of the population, it has impact on a bigger subset of players who may view the character as fine and not disproportionally used .

Read what I wrote again...I'm not sure what you're responding to here. Are you saying that YOU currently see a wall of Thor, and my experience isn't representative?

No, I’m saying for any character historically, and not just Jane specifically, if they are a problem for us and/or we see them a lot, it doesn’t mean the character is an issue for those at other tiers. We can be skewed into believing something is a bigger problem than it is. I imagine the 550 meta game is much less diverse than the 450 which is less than the 4* game. The higher you go, the more it tightens up. But we often forget about the sea of people behind us. That’s all I’m saying. It wasn’t about Jane specifically and I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear (I agree with you that she’s not problematic).

entrailbucket

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Bad said:

@entrailbucket said:
Is that really the game you want to play? Do you really want a game where every fight in PvP is Team X vs Team X, we get a new character every 2 weeks, and none of them have any impact or use unless they happen to be strong enough to replace a guy on Team X?

In here you are doing 2 things: talking about an ideal game which doesn't exist, and questioning the gacha system, which is the game we actually got.
And in these games, and because of several factors, people will play meta characters, others will play the character they like the most, and many people will play the best character they have.
To the last group you cannot say them to stop playing that for the supposedly greater game's health.

I mean, it's not some ideal that can't exist. It currently does exist. It existed before Chasm, too.

I'm not seeing a wall of Thors, at least not right now. If some "Wall of X" does appear, though, they should nerf that guy, because a Wall of Anybody makes the game boring.

I think some of this can be explained by a couple soundbites that you like. One of them, is that “we don’t matter”“, another is that the game wants us to “only see what is in front of us and not behind us“. I think some combination of those two maxims is contributing to what you are seeing presently. Meaning, you are part of the elite .0001% of the base. You will see a wall of Steel Witch, then Hulkoye, then Chasm, and now maybe Jane, because people at the very endgame tend to go all in on powerful meta characters. They can’t conceivably 550 every single character, so they pick and choose where to put their resources. You see a disproportionate amount of meta people because that is what most of the endgame players choose to invest in and then will play over other characters that they didn’t go all in on who are boosted (Would I rather play a 550 Jane or my 465 Goblin/Bolt that end up pretty close to 550 when boosted?).

The “we don’t matter” piece means just because it’s a problem for you, it doesn’t mean it’s a problem for other players at different levels, or that your experience is that of the much much larger player base. If they nerf a character due to overuse within a small subset of the population, it has impact on a bigger subset of players who may view the character as fine and not disproportionally used .

Read what I wrote again...I'm not sure what you're responding to here. Are you saying that YOU currently see a wall of Thor, and my experience isn't representative?

No, I’m saying for any character historically, and not just Jane specifically, if they are a problem for us and/or we see them a lot, it doesn’t mean the character is an issue for those at other tiers. We can be skewed into believing something is a bigger problem than it is. I imagine the 550 meta game is much less diverse than the 450 which is less than the 4* game. The higher you go, the more it tightens up. But we often forget about the sea of people behind us. That’s all I’m saying. It wasn’t about Jane specifically and I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear (I agree with you that she’s not problematic).

Sure, and I imagine this is why they left Chasm as he was, for as long as they did. I think that was a mistake (we're generally the canary in the metagame coalmine -- when the high level players start exclusively using someone, lower tier players tend to follow along), but I can understand it if they wanted to hold off until he hit a certain usage metric across the entire playerbase.

Glockoma

It’s been 10 years. Just give the remaining 5’s balanced health, damage, and powers based on the current scheme of tank, support, dps. Work the rest out later.

bbigler

@BriMan2222 said:

@bbigler said:
@BriMan2222 @Bad
The reason MThor collects more AP than you is due to her cascades from destroying tiles every turn AND after every time she uses a power. The charged tiles can go for either team, but she always gets cascades, nearly every turn. No matter how smart I play to match the charged tiles and avoid setting them up, she always outpaces my AP by about 3 to 1. So I fire 1 power while they fire 3.

I'm Sorry, but I've fought her probably hundreds of times by now. I've been hitting mthor teams almost exclusively all week, hit them excessively in sim, and hit them every time I saw them pre-chasm nerf. It can happen where things go side ways, but it's exceedingly rare in my experience.

If you target her first and focus on matching the charged tiles you'll kill her before she ever gets the chance to fire a power. Her cascades have gotten me less often than onslaught and/or prof $ have taken me down.

I also fight MThor all day every day, but my experience is very different. I target her first, but she always fires off her active powers before I can down her. I try to mitigate the damage with Crystal and use either Shang or Omega for damage output. If I’m lucky I don’t need a health pack when it’s over, but many times I do.

Let me put it this way, if I ever lose a PVP battle, 99% of the time it’s due to MThor. There are too many times where it felt unfair because I played it perfectly but still lost (or I barely win and need 2 health packs).

This does not happen with any other team I fight. If I choose the right battles and the right characters to fight with and play smart, then 99% of the time I win and usually don’t need health packs. But MThor is the exception to that.

Bad

@bbigler said:

This does not happen with any other team I fight. If I choose the right battles and the right characters to fight with and play smart, then 99% of the time I win and usually don’t need health packs. But MThor is the exception to that.

You aren't choosing right characters at all. Cristal is practically for defense and omega is a bit slow too, plus both are relying in cds or sap tiles which Mthor will destroy. No wonder you are losing.
Anyway, icelX said mthor is just behind kitty in losses. I just can't find the other comment where the % was revealed. https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/1019028/#Comment_1019028