Ascended Winners and Losers

BriMan2222

@LavaManLee said:
I must be missing something. Why would people use a 4a5Anti-Venom in DDQ?

Match damage. When they banned the few 4a5's that were bugged and being allowed to be used in the 4 star node of ddq, they forgot anti-venom. Even though he's terrible, just killing everything with 5 star match damage can be faster that trying to kill everything with 4 stars.

entrailbucket

@Gymp28 said:

@Borstock said:
What's funny about Anti-Venom is that, as long as they let you use the 5* in DDQ, he will probably get very good usage numbers. Which means they won't be rushing to buff him.

Surely they can tell what game mode a character is being used in? If it’s only DDQ I don’t think that counts as ‘balanced usage’. Hopefully antivenom is still on the cards for full rework…

It’s definitely odd that they seem to only look at total number of matches any given character gets used in (if indeed that is the case).
A better measure would be to look at no. of matches, but standardised by the proportion of players with that character champed, and also compared with players who have that character ascended.
If 98% of people with a 3Asc5Magik use her in every match (for example, obviously this won’t be the case) then surely that’s the cause for balance concerns and a nerf consideration.
Equally if 0.5% of people with a 4a5Antivenom uses him for anything (and that’s only DDQ), that should be a balance red flag.

Everyone who reads any social media relating to the game has been told to focus on champing Shang chi and MThor for years, of course their usage is sky high…

Not raging against you at all @Borstock, it’s just these devs frustrating the life out of me.

I mean, nobody is telling players to focus on m'Thor or Shang-Chi (or Chasm or Juggernaut/Sam or Polaris) because they have the best animations, or they're in the best movies, or they have the coolest costumes.

They're telling everyone to focus on the best characters because they're way, way better than everyone else. That kind of word of mouth, without even looking at usage, is a great way to find the overpowered characters!

Borstock

@Gymp28 said:

@Borstock said:
What's funny about Anti-Venom is that, as long as they let you use the 5* in DDQ, he will probably get very good usage numbers. Which means they won't be rushing to buff him.

Surely they can tell what game mode a character is being used in? If it’s only DDQ I don’t think that counts as ‘balanced usage’. Hopefully antivenom is still on the cards for full rework…

It’s definitely odd that they seem to only look at total number of matches any given character gets used in (if indeed that is the case).
A better measure would be to look at no. of matches, but standardised by the proportion of players with that character champed, and also compared with players who have that character ascended.
If 98% of people with a 3Asc5Magik use her in every match (for example, obviously this won’t be the case) then surely that’s the cause for balance concerns and a nerf consideration.
Equally if 0.5% of people with a 4a5Antivenom uses him for anything (and that’s only DDQ), that should be a balance red flag.

Everyone who reads any social media relating to the game has been told to focus on champing Shang chi and MThor for years, of course their usage is sky high…

Not raging against you at all @Borstock, it’s just these devs frustrating the life out of me.

Yeah, I mean, logic says one thing, but the devs keep doing other things. And they don't seem too concerned with balance these days. They can talk about power budgets all they want.

Gymp28

@entrailbucket said:

@Gymp28 said:

@Borstock said:
What's funny about Anti-Venom is that, as long as they let you use the 5* in DDQ, he will probably get very good usage numbers. Which means they won't be rushing to buff him.

Surely they can tell what game mode a character is being used in? If it’s only DDQ I don’t think that counts as ‘balanced usage’. Hopefully antivenom is still on the cards for full rework…

It’s definitely odd that they seem to only look at total number of matches any given character gets used in (if indeed that is the case).
A better measure would be to look at no. of matches, but standardised by the proportion of players with that character champed, and also compared with players who have that character ascended.
If 98% of people with a 3Asc5Magik use her in every match (for example, obviously this won’t be the case) then surely that’s the cause for balance concerns and a nerf consideration.
Equally if 0.5% of people with a 4a5Antivenom uses him for anything (and that’s only DDQ), that should be a balance red flag.

Everyone who reads any social media relating to the game has been told to focus on champing Shang chi and MThor for years, of course their usage is sky high…

Not raging against you at all @Borstock, it’s just these devs frustrating the life out of me.

I mean, nobody is telling players to focus on m'Thor or Shang-Chi (or Chasm or Juggernaut/Sam or Polaris) because they have the best animations, or they're in the best movies, or they have the coolest costumes.

They're telling everyone to focus on the best characters because they're way, way better than everyone else. That kind of word of mouth, without even looking at usage, is a great way to find the overpowered characters!

Sure, and I’m not suggesting it’s not because they’re not good, or even OP. But are they oppressive? Chasm was, he oppressed fun. I would argue that Sam/Juggs is oppressive. And juggs was fine before Sam came along, so I think we know the culprit…
Not as many people have this combo because it takes a lot more resources to get juggs to 5star than to champ MThor or Shang Chi.
Because they’re easier to get at a useable level they’re fairly ubiquitous, so I get BCS wanting to try to spice up the characters everyone is facing in PVP constantly.

I guess what I’m saying is that Sam/Juggs and M’Baku/Namor are much more punishing to face, but they’re not rushing to nerf those (yet), and maybe that should be a higher priority?
I honestly don’t mind repeatedly splattering MThors and Shangs in their current state…

I guess they spiced up the meta with the 1a5hawkeye buff… maybe we can hope for more of the same with other characters?

Gymp28

I think - back to my original point - if the devs looked and saw that loads of people were targeting Juggs to 5star, then using Sam/Juggs constantly - even though a smaller proportion of the player base are using this combo, the ratio of player at higher levels who have these as their top level characters that they use constantly for every event and fight would probably be similar, if not higher than the proportion of the whole player base using Shang/Mthor.
But as @Borstock says, logic doesn’t really apply where the devs are concerned. I may as well be trying to teach arithmetic to a palm tree.

entrailbucket

@Gymp28 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Gymp28 said:

@Borstock said:
What's funny about Anti-Venom is that, as long as they let you use the 5* in DDQ, he will probably get very good usage numbers. Which means they won't be rushing to buff him.

Surely they can tell what game mode a character is being used in? If it’s only DDQ I don’t think that counts as ‘balanced usage’. Hopefully antivenom is still on the cards for full rework…

It’s definitely odd that they seem to only look at total number of matches any given character gets used in (if indeed that is the case).
A better measure would be to look at no. of matches, but standardised by the proportion of players with that character champed, and also compared with players who have that character ascended.
If 98% of people with a 3Asc5Magik use her in every match (for example, obviously this won’t be the case) then surely that’s the cause for balance concerns and a nerf consideration.
Equally if 0.5% of people with a 4a5Antivenom uses him for anything (and that’s only DDQ), that should be a balance red flag.

Everyone who reads any social media relating to the game has been told to focus on champing Shang chi and MThor for years, of course their usage is sky high…

Not raging against you at all @Borstock, it’s just these devs frustrating the life out of me.

I mean, nobody is telling players to focus on m'Thor or Shang-Chi (or Chasm or Juggernaut/Sam or Polaris) because they have the best animations, or they're in the best movies, or they have the coolest costumes.

They're telling everyone to focus on the best characters because they're way, way better than everyone else. That kind of word of mouth, without even looking at usage, is a great way to find the overpowered characters!

Sure, and I’m not suggesting it’s not because they’re not good, or even OP. But are they oppressive? Chasm was, he oppressed fun. I would argue that Sam/Juggs is oppressive. And juggs was fine before Sam came along, so I think we know the culprit…
Not as many people have this combo because it takes a lot more resources to get juggs to 5star than to champ MThor or Shang Chi.
Because they’re easier to get at a useable level they’re fairly ubiquitous, so I get BCS wanting to try to spice up the characters everyone is facing in PVP constantly.

I guess what I’m saying is that Sam/Juggs and M’Baku/Namor are much more punishing to face, but they’re not rushing to nerf those (yet), and maybe that should be a higher priority?
I honestly don’t mind repeatedly splattering MThors and Shangs in their current state…

Your definition of "oppressive" or "fun" is subjective. There were players who loved Chasm, and they weren't wrong to have that opinion, even if we disagreed with them.

Characters are "oppressive" to me when they're everywhere, regardless of the boost list. There are a million characters in this game. We should see more than 3 of them.

The new combos are indeed more powerful, but also much more rare. Maybe at some point Juggernaut or M'baku will be ubiquitous enough to need a nerf, but they're not there yet.

I really don't understand this idea that characters are too good/should be toned down ONLY if they're hard to beat. Imagine some character that immediately wins every fight on offense but immediately loses every fight on defense. That character takes over the metagame completely and reduces it to "X Puzzle Quest." They're awful on defense -- the worst possible! -- but obviously overpowered.

Gymp28

Definitely not disagreeing with you there @entrailbucket.
In fact, I think we broadly want the same thing. A narrowing of the power variation between characters.
I suspect they’ll never be able to amp up the antivenoms and Natasha Romanovs of this world, and tone down those characters that we’ve already mentioned, so that they’re on exactly equal footing, but if they could put some effort into trying appropriately, that would be nice.
Then we could live in a world where more people target a character because they had cool animations, or were their thematically favourite character.
(I’d like to point out that Sinister will be my first 550, currently 531, because I think he’s thematically cool, whilst also not mechanically equivalent to a paperweight)

entrailbucket

@Gymp28 said:
Definitely not disagreeing with you there @entrailbucket.
In fact, I think we broadly want the same thing. A narrowing of the power variation between characters.
I suspect they’ll never be able to amp up the antivenoms and Natasha Romanovs of this world, and tone down those characters that we’ve already mentioned, so that they’re on exactly equal footing, but if they could put some effort into trying appropriately, that would be nice.
Then we could live in a world where more people target a character because they had cool animations, or were their thematically favourite character.
(I’d like to point out that Sinister will be my first 550, currently 531, because I think he’s thematically cool, whilst also not mechanically equivalent to a paperweight)

Years ago it would've been impossible -- there's no world where even an amped up/rebalanced 5BW can compete with somebody like Juggernaut. Their power sets are just too different! Doing a passive AoE, or match damage increase/resistance is always going to be better than active powers, even if you try hard to balance them.

But we don't need that anymore! Not even close! With weekly boosts, all we need is for Natasha to be obviously better than Juggernaut when she's boosted +100 levels. It's such a low bar that they can get there with just a handful of up/down moves.

In fact, the "characters must be exactly the same" thing is the most frequently deployed strawman against ever fixing anybody. "Why do you want everyone to be the same? That would be boring! Are you some kind of MPQ communist????" The answer to this argument is boosted characters. I don't want all the characters to be the same, I want them to be within, like, 200 levels of each other. How can anyone justify asking for the opposite of that?

(Sinister is actually crazy good since his buff. You probably didn't start levelling him up after that, but he will serve you well at 550.)

Timemachinego

@Gymp28 said:
Definitely not disagreeing with you there @entrailbucket.
In fact, I think we broadly want the same thing. A narrowing of the power variation between characters.
I suspect they’ll never be able to amp up the antivenoms and Natasha Romanovs of this world, and tone down those characters that we’ve already mentioned, so that they’re on exactly equal footing, but if they could put some effort into trying appropriately, that would be nice.
Then we could live in a world where more people target a character because they had cool animations, or were their thematically favourite character.
(I’d like to point out that Sinister will be my first 550, currently 531, because I think he’s thematically cool, whilst also not mechanically equivalent to a paperweight)

One of the things they often miss when making these balance changes though is how those characters actually fit within the current ecosystem... Baku/Namor are quite strong, but ironically it's Sam Juggs that make them trivial. Sam Juggs used to fall pretty quickly to Pol/Mthor, I imagine that hasn't changed too much since Pol is still mostly functional, but I haven't ran them in ages. Baku/Namor could delete Pol/Mthor on round one. We used to talk a lot about rock paper scissor balancing and those teams actually represented that.

ThaRoadWarrior

Sinister actually is way better after his adjustment, and I used to use him before when I could just because I liked his powers.

I think one of the things that makes this game’s roster hard to balance is the time scales involved in all of it. When it takes months or years to build a character to menacing levels through regular play, I can see that “problem” sneaking up on the dev team. I can also say that people who have invested that much into their favorite toys are going to feel pretty rug pulled when the balance pass ruins them, so you have to be wary of that backlash. It’s not like a fighting game where you have all the characters at once and you can make constant adjustments and people just move to the next one if it’s an over correction. It may take somebody months to build a backfill for their fallen hero.

entrailbucket

@Timemachinego said:

@Gymp28 said:
Definitely not disagreeing with you there @entrailbucket.
In fact, I think we broadly want the same thing. A narrowing of the power variation between characters.
I suspect they’ll never be able to amp up the antivenoms and Natasha Romanovs of this world, and tone down those characters that we’ve already mentioned, so that they’re on exactly equal footing, but if they could put some effort into trying appropriately, that would be nice.
Then we could live in a world where more people target a character because they had cool animations, or were their thematically favourite character.
(I’d like to point out that Sinister will be my first 550, currently 531, because I think he’s thematically cool, whilst also not mechanically equivalent to a paperweight)

One of the things they often miss when making these balance changes though is how those characters actually fit within the current ecosystem... Baku/Namor are quite strong, but ironically it's Sam Juggs that make them trivial. Sam Juggs used to fall pretty quickly to Pol/Mthor, I imagine that hasn't changed too much since Pol is still mostly functional, but I haven't ran them in ages. Baku/Namor could delete Pol/Mthor on round one. We used to talk a lot about rock paper scissor balancing and those teams actually represented that.

And all of those teams will faceroll the other 99.9% of characters in the game -- often characters 200+ levels higher than them!

It's actually like rock/paper/scissors/trash, where rock beats scissors, sure. But rock, paper, and scissors all beat trash, and trash beats nothing at all.

entrailbucket

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
Sinister actually is way better after his adjustment, and I used to use him before when I could just because I liked his powers.

I think one of the things that makes this game’s roster hard to balance is the time scales involved in all of it. When it takes months or years to build a character to menacing levels through regular play, I can see that “problem” sneaking up on the dev team. I can also say that people who have invested that much into their favorite toys are going to feel pretty rug pulled when the balance pass ruins them, so you have to be wary of that backlash. It’s not like a fighting game where you have all the characters at once and you can make constant adjustments and people just move to the next one if it’s an over correction. It may take somebody months to build a backfill for their fallen hero.

I agree. But this was less of a problem when they still cared, and they regularly nerfed all the strongest guys. Back then you knew not to go all in, because you'd always get screwed. Now we have people teaching new players how to go all in!