Dev's please no more Spider-verse characters for new characters for a while

124

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  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @BriMan2222 said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    I think most people on here have never read an actual comic book, or at least haven't read one in the last 30 or so years, and their only Marvel experience is the big MCU stuff, the older Fox X-Men movies, and the X-Men TV show from the 90s.

    It's Marvel Puzzle Quest, not "nostalgia for middle-aged 90s kids Puzzle Quest." Witness the bizarre hype around Omega Red.

    Of course it is, why else would they give us omega red, edgier omega red, and bazillion pockets Cable costume. 90's Max to the extreme puzzle quest!

    Like, people flipped out about the Dinosaur Spidermans -- those characters were the leads in Marvel Comics' top-selling title for months!

    Folks don't have to like it, but Marvel is bigger than whatever stuff you remember from when you specifically were a kid. Moon Girl is a popular current kids' series! There are adults now that have zero attachment to any of the 90s characters we grew up with.

    Did they? Flipped out? I think it was more a rolling of eyes no?

    Anyway - Marvel 100% trades on nostalgia as does any company pushing decades old content. They want it both ways and who can blame them? X-Men 97 is the perfect example - there is no originality to the 1st season leaning on classic 80s and 90s audiences but reimagined for also an audience that didn't experience it first time round and are thinking they are seeing new content. Marvel wants it all!

    I need to go back and read the thread, but I think there were some pretty weird, angry reactions to those guys. Maybe I'm misremembering though.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,273 Chairperson of the Boards

    We should also qualify something: Spider Girl is special for reasons I never understood. Spider Girl had such a devoted fan base they convinced Marvel to stay it being cancelled on more than one occasion despite it being a low selling title so from that perspective alone Mayday deserves to be in MPQ as she is iconic.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,273 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:

    @DAZ0273 said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @BriMan2222 said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    I think most people on here have never read an actual comic book, or at least haven't read one in the last 30 or so years, and their only Marvel experience is the big MCU stuff, the older Fox X-Men movies, and the X-Men TV show from the 90s.

    It's Marvel Puzzle Quest, not "nostalgia for middle-aged 90s kids Puzzle Quest." Witness the bizarre hype around Omega Red.

    Of course it is, why else would they give us omega red, edgier omega red, and bazillion pockets Cable costume. 90's Max to the extreme puzzle quest!

    Like, people flipped out about the Dinosaur Spidermans -- those characters were the leads in Marvel Comics' top-selling title for months!

    Folks don't have to like it, but Marvel is bigger than whatever stuff you remember from when you specifically were a kid. Moon Girl is a popular current kids' series! There are adults now that have zero attachment to any of the 90s characters we grew up with.

    Did they? Flipped out? I think it was more a rolling of eyes no?

    Anyway - Marvel 100% trades on nostalgia as does any company pushing decades old content. They want it both ways and who can blame them? X-Men 97 is the perfect example - there is no originality to the 1st season leaning on classic 80s and 90s audiences but reimagined for also an audience that didn't experience it first time round and are thinking they are seeing new content. Marvel wants it all!

    I need to go back and read the thread, but I think there were some pretty weird, angry reactions to those guys. Maybe I'm misremembering though.

    Could have been. I definitely agree that people weren't too impressed.

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,640 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    I think most people on here have never read an actual comic book, or at least haven't read one in the last 30 or so years, and their only Marvel experience is the big MCU stuff, the older Fox X-Men movies, and the X-Men TV show from the 90s.

    It's Marvel Puzzle Quest, not "nostalgia for middle-aged 90s kids Puzzle Quest." Witness the bizarre hype around Omega Red.

    Does that change anything? Are those segments any less a fan than others? Does it reduce the value of their opinions? Are you trying to invalidate others because they only like a certain segments of the Marvel fandom?

    Have you seen people complain about Kamala Khan being released? She is certainly outside the scope of those 90s kids. Same with 4Miles.
    From what I can tell this game is painting a broad stroke from MCU to lesser known comic characters.
    I would posit the largest segment of Marvel fans are the MCU folk. Those don't correlate to Omega Red fans at all.

    I think the most people complained about the Zoo (too many animals/dinos in a row) and now the spiderverse. I think people want more variety more than anything else. I could be totally wrong though.

    So who exactly are they devs trying to cater to other than well... everyone?

  • SuperCarrot
    SuperCarrot Posts: 184 Tile Toppler

    I stopped buying singles two years ago because I got tired of Krakoa. I’m an X-Fan since Inferno. I also bought many Spidey comics and those adjacent like Venom. I actually enjoyed the King In Black event. Thor is another favorite of mine. I still have the Marvel Unlimited app. I currently am reading Skybound’s Energon universe.

    My main gripe is the repetitive nature of the characters they choose. Marvel has a deep catalog. I am just asking for them to be used. Mayday makes more sense to me than say doing the, very recent in comics, Nightcrawler Spidey. That two star spot could have been somebody like Silver Sable or Speedball. It really feels to me like a lack of trying on the part of the team when choosing characters, that is what frustrates me. Marvel Snap does deep cuts often and seem to have latitude in choosing characters. I feel MPQ could possibly branch out some. Just my two cents. Apologies for any ruffled feathers.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    @dianetics said:

    @entrailbucket said:
    I think most people on here have never read an actual comic book, or at least haven't read one in the last 30 or so years, and their only Marvel experience is the big MCU stuff, the older Fox X-Men movies, and the X-Men TV show from the 90s.

    It's Marvel Puzzle Quest, not "nostalgia for middle-aged 90s kids Puzzle Quest." Witness the bizarre hype around Omega Red.

    Does that change anything? Are those segments any less a fan than others? Does it reduce the value of their opinions? Are you trying to invalidate others because they only like a certain segments of the Marvel fandom?

    Have you seen people complain about Kamala Khan being released? She is certainly outside the scope of those 90s kids. Same with 4Miles.
    From what I can tell this game is painting a broad stroke from MCU to lesser known comic characters.
    I would posit the largest segment of Marvel fans are the MCU folk. Those don't correlate to Omega Red fans at all.

    I think the most people complained about the Zoo (too many animals/dinos in a row) and now the spiderverse. I think people want more variety more than anything else. I could be totally wrong though.

    So who exactly are they devs trying to cater to other than well... everyone?

    It doesn't invalidate or reduce the value of their opinions, but the 90s-nostalgia crew on here seems to want to invalidate the opinions of everyone else. Marvel has popular characters that don't wear cargo pants!

    Mayday is very popular in her own right, why is she lumped in with "spider-people?" Does Herald of Galactus Aunt May satisfy the same group as Mayday? Who would those people even be? Fans of a silly one-off What If storyline from 1984 and a popular long-running series from the mid-2000s?

    I did see complaints about Miles and Kamala, btw. Those characters are both newer and "diverse," a factor which sets off a different group of complainers that merit no attention whatsoever.

    The devs can't make everyone happy. There are way too many constituencies here. I think they do a fine job of balancing those interests, but if you can't tolerate anybody else getting what they want ever, that's on you.

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,640 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    It doesn't invalidate or reduce the value of their opinions, but the 90s-nostalgia crew on here seems to want to invalidate the opinions of everyone else. Marvel has popular characters that don't wear cargo pants!

    Mayday is very popular in her own right, why is she lumped in with "spider-people?" Does Herald of Galactus Aunt May satisfy the same group as Mayday? Who would those people even be? Fans of a silly one-off What If storyline from 1984 and a popular long-running series from the mid-2000s?

    I did see complaints about Miles and Kamala, btw. Those characters are both newer and "diverse," a factor which sets off a different group of complainers that merit no attention whatsoever.

    The devs can't make everyone happy. There are way too many constituencies here. I think they do a fine job of balancing those interests, but if you can't tolerate anybody else getting what they want ever, that's on you.

    It is what it is, and I have said many times I care about mechanics not characters. I'm not a huge Marvel fan. When I see new things I go check them out and try to give them a fair shake. I read KK's first run after finding her in the game and I liked it.

    I think more variety is more fun and I am just agreeing with OPs sentiment that too many characters are SM adjacent recently.

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,640 Chairperson of the Boards

    @ThisisClemFandango said:

    @ThisisClemFandango said:
    So the new 3 star...I don't get it

    So not to sound completely self obsessed but everybody stop and read what I wrote originally.

    I don't get it, explain it to an idiot like me.

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,816 Chairperson of the Boards

    Aunt Mays were released as full on joke characters (April). We all know this.

    Nightcrawler Spidey was probably highly encouraged by Marvel.

    I think many wanted the OG Electro after the 5 (he was dead in comics when she released) and no one really complained about him. Also he’s pretty good.

    This new pair? I mean ok. I guess you can complain but this dev team loves to find offbeat, somewhat unknown characters to release. Also female characters - we’ve seen a lot of them recently.

    It is what it is, the game provided like 8 years of standard Marvel characters to enjoy before the swing towards (often) the weird and goofy and fun.

  • MgoBlue51
    MgoBlue51 Posts: 111 Tile Toppler

    I'd like to see Bastian from X-Men 97. He wasn't big in the comics, but it'd be a clear 3/5 release with the 5* being his final form

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,640 Chairperson of the Boards

    @bluewolf said:
    Aunt Mays were released as full on joke characters (April). We all know this.

    Nightcrawler Spidey was probably highly encouraged by Marvel.

    I think many wanted the OG Electro after the 5 (he was dead in comics when she released) and no one really complained about him. Also he’s pretty good.

    This new pair? I mean ok. I guess you can complain but this dev team loves to find offbeat, somewhat unknown characters to release. Also female characters - we’ve seen a lot of them recently.

    It is what it is, the game provided like 8 years of standard Marvel characters to enjoy before the swing towards (often) the weird and goofy and fun.

    The weird and goofy is not what people are having issue with. Big Wheel rolled in and was generally liked. Dr Bong was cool. 3* Arcade was liked (not the 5). Throg was liked when he was released. People liked Goose.

    You are misrepresenting the thing people are talking about here.

    The complaints aren't about the individual characters. Just the quantity/rate of SM adjacent characters recently...that's it.

    This is common to try and shut down points of discussion or discredit others pov's. "You don't like this thing or that thing" when it is just the overarching thing that is tiresome.

  • JoeHandle
    JoeHandle Posts: 519 Critical Contributor
    edited 28 May 2024, 22:05

    Who cares what sprites they have been wallpapered with, I would just like the details of the new characters ... sometime before they are live in game :s

    EDIT to add: Finally posted at 1615 CST on Tues 5/28. Now to contemplate whether to wait another season to pull ... I believe I will .... will chase 5Mayday instead of Phylla.

  • Codex
    Codex Posts: 304 Mover and Shaker

    That surely has to be kraven.

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,816 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Codex said:
    That surely has to be kraven.

    Or a 5* Venom….

    Venom 3 is coming.

  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,816 Chairperson of the Boards

    @dianetics said:

    @bluewolf said:
    Aunt Mays were released as full on joke characters (April). We all know this.

    Nightcrawler Spidey was probably highly encouraged by Marvel.

    I think many wanted the OG Electro after the 5 (he was dead in comics when she released) and no one really complained about him. Also he’s pretty good.

    This new pair? I mean ok. I guess you can complain but this dev team loves to find offbeat, somewhat unknown characters to release. Also female characters - we’ve seen a lot of them recently.

    It is what it is, the game provided like 8 years of standard Marvel characters to enjoy before the swing towards (often) the weird and goofy and fun.

    The weird and goofy is not what people are having issue with. Big Wheel rolled in and was generally liked. Dr Bong was cool. 3* Arcade was liked (not the 5). Throg was liked when he was released. People liked Goose.

    You are misrepresenting the thing people are talking about here.

    The complaints aren't about the individual characters. Just the quantity/rate of SM adjacent characters recently...that's it.

    This is common to try and shut down points of discussion or discredit others pov's. "You don't like this thing or that thing" when it is just the overarching thing that is tiresome.

    Ok. Fair point.

    I think we’ve all seen complaints over most of the recent characters. Many times it’s over the weird and unusual, and not getting a classic version of a character people remember from comics/cartoons/etc.

    We see just one more Spider-character is coming. My intent was also to point out the ones we’ve seen recently before now all had some additional factor, imo.

  • TheVulture
    TheVulture Posts: 439 Mover and Shaker
    edited 29 May 2024, 00:07

    Though I am heartily fed up of Spidey-characters in general at this point, I think they have two main handicaps relative to other themes/factions:

    1. Spider-Man himself overshadows all the other heroes in his faction by a wide margin, since he never leaves the pop culture space i.e. there are many different answers to "who is your favourite X-Man?", but even after 60 years the answer to "who is your favourite Spider-Man?" will be 95% Peter Parker, 4% Miles, and 1% contrarians.
      However, every iteration of Peter Parker - besides the deliberately overpowered 1* - has been awful (more on that next), and the devs can't keep adding more of him without simply provoking different complaints.

    2. Web tiles are awful, and they're never going away!
      From day 1 the game has never favoured a slow build-up style of play, and as the years go by it gets faster and the player-base less tolerant of slow clears - web tiles are the antithesis of efficiency, since they have no passive benefits and the balance of effects which use them has to be conservative because of the wildly differing rates characters can create them.

    Together this creates a situation where most potential Spidey hero releases are going to yield negative reactions, as slow, defensive, non-meta characters are launched at people who don't know of or care for non-Peter Parker webslingers.

    What would I do about it?
    1. Take a break, which Devpool already confirmed is the case. <3
    2. Stick a band-aid on web tiles by introducing a support which gives them the damage reduction functionality of mid-range protect tiles (without all the interaction challenges of actually making them protect tiles). In an ideal world, changing every web tile power to be able to overwrite (not target) enemy special tiles would probably be better & more thematic, but web = protect would at least stop them being a liability.
    3. In 2025, make a big deal of releasing 2* Peter Parker (Spider-Man) - a civilian teen/young adult version, who has straight-forward powers (may create a web tile or 2 but doesn't need them for anything) inc. a powerful passive effect, and just masks up (not the full suit) for one big beat-down power. Make him the cover-boy for MPQ for a while w/ an accessible 4* head-start for vets, run a photography themed screenshot promotion etc.
    4. Six months later, follow-up with 3* Mary Jane (Girl Next Door) - plus a throwaway 5* Jackpot - who has passives designed to synergize with Peter Parker and make web tiles liveable, possibly acting as the 3* tier Nico/Kitty in terms of turning special tiles into a win condition. Basically an Iron May calibre character without the April Fools baggage.

  • JoeHandle
    JoeHandle Posts: 519 Critical Contributor

    Why are web tiles "awful"?

  • Timemachinego
    Timemachinego Posts: 492 Mover and Shaker

    There's nothing inherently wrong with web tiles and we do have some pretty good options for creating them now (though still mostly in the 4* tier). I think the BAD thing about them is a lot of the involved character design, all those active powers that create a tile or two and do almost nothing else are a complete waste of design space and make those characters actively worse on their own. All web characters should be generating webs passively while doing the things you want to be doing, just as they would in the comics.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,820 Chairperson of the Boards

    3* Spidey's 3ap web-tile-based stun was the entire metagame for a few months -- it was so bad they had to nerf him into the ground.

    There's nothing wrong with web tiles. There may be something wrong with web tile powers or characters, but the tiles themselves are neutral.

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