PVP Supports: Feedback Thread

dianetics

@Sandilord said:
It's been years since I logged onto the forums but feel like I must now. I've been playing and loving this game since almost the beginning of MPQ, joined somewhere in the first year.
I'm baffled and frightened about the responses from players regarding supports in pvp in this thread (very different in our alliance family Line chat)

I never considered quiting the game but I'm very close now. Supports in pvp have sucked out all the fun I had. It's completely unpredictable now and besides the powers from 100s of characters, I now also have to know all these supports powers and check them out before every match. And most importantly some supports break the game.
I'm one of the commanders of a pvp oriented alliance and weve lost about 5 burnt out players at the end of this season because of this. If supports in pvp stay I'll probably step out too and move away from this game.

I sincerely hope there will at the very least an option to enable or disable supports to our own likings and starting next season or it might be too late for a lot of players.

The devs have made a choice, and it isn't one you will like. No doubt supports in PvP are here to stay. Yes they legit suck, but they don't care about the long time players.
They want Sunday Sam to punch you in the mouth and take 20 minutes of your life every other day.
Be happy and have a nice day Sunday Sam will make you irrelevant in 2 weeks.

Have a nice day

WhiteBomber

Counter:

I will play a few extra PVP matches every day for each player that claims they are leaving because of supports (though I think we all know they were burnt out to begin with).

I've been playing since the very beginning and very much appreciate you devs breathing life in to PVP, it's just an added bonus I also win harder on offense and more defense with supports.

revskip

@WhiteBomber said:
Counter:

I will play a few extra PVP matches every day for each player that claims they are leaving because of supports (though I think we all know they were burnt out to begin with).

I've been playing since the very beginning and very much appreciate you devs breathing life in to PVP, it's just an added bonus I also win harder on offense and more defense with supports.

Seconded. Thanks for leaving. Made it that much easier to get placement at even lower scores.

Scofie

I play PvP now more than ever and definitely more enjoyable for me. But it's a big shame that others no longer enjoy it as a result. I mentioned earlier that it seems that competitive PvP players hate it but more casual PvP players enjoy it. It's a really difficult balance to get right. I don't feel the need to know every support because if it's an unusual one, then I'll look it up. I'm not on the clock for that as I'm not shield hopping or anything and it's a nice distraction occasionally to think why they're on that character and which others I might want to use them on.

I played a match the other day and every second turn it seemed my character was downed. Think it was 1* Spidey at 672 with a power stone. Lost a few points, used some health packs, fought someone else.

KGB

I suspect competitive players hate it because:

1) They pretty much have all the relevant supports at R5. Many casual players are missing plenty of supports entirely or only have them at R1-3 or don't even deploy them optimally on their teams. This means supports affect battles at lot more at competitive high level play.

2) A lot of people just don't like or aren't comfortable with change. The game is 10 years old and PvP hasn't changed (other than Meta characters) in the last probably 5 years (prior to that there were cup cakes and other scoring nuances that happened during years 1-5). So those players had all but memorized exactly what had to be done when to beat team 'A'. Now all of a sudden with supports that doesn't work any more (hence the endless comments about needing to read all the support descriptions to figure out their own team) and they've been forced out of their routine and they don't like that.

KGB

DAZ0273

My biggest problem with Supports is remembering to equip them around boost rotations or specific PvP. If the game could have a banner that says "Equip Supports, you numpty" pop up that would be super helpful. The Hunter would not have received a Support under normal circumstances and went into battle for the first few days un-Supported entirely.

Beyond that I see all sorts of Supports equipped to all sorts of characters whereas I am very guilty of having parked them on thematically appropriate ones and leaving them there. I did after being annoyed a bit by Leapfrog and Eros arrow thingy bring my own in to play to be annoying back.

entrailbucket

@KGB said:
I suspect competitive players hate it because:

1) They pretty much have all the relevant supports at R5. Many casual players are missing plenty of supports entirely or only have them at R1-3 or don't even deploy them optimally on their teams. This means supports affect battles at lot more at competitive high level play.

2) A lot of people just don't like or aren't comfortable with change. The game is 10 years old and PvP hasn't changed (other than Meta characters) in the last probably 5 years (prior to that there were cup cakes and other scoring nuances that happened during years 1-5). So those players had all but memorized exactly what had to be done when to beat team 'A'. Now all of a sudden with supports that doesn't work any more (hence the endless comments about needing to read all the support descriptions to figure out their own team) and they've been forced out of their routine and they don't like that.

KGB

This pretty well sums it up, I think. To add to #1: a lot of the players who really like supports are noncompetitive players who have a strong set of supports but are matched against players who don't.

I've basically adapted to it. I still don't like it, mostly because it creates more non-games (matches decided before anybody makes a move).

I also don't like that players have standardized on the same set of optimal supports, after a period where some really fun experimentation was happening. I'd like to see more balance among the supports themselves -- there are some totally useless ones and some universally excellent ones. This would be a chance for the devs to introduce some real variety and team-building strategy.

But I don't hate it enough to quit, and I guess that's all that matters.

ThaRoadWarrior

I would like to see some way to enlarge support and power description text in the in-game UI so I can figure out what the heck something does on my phone without having to bring my electron microscope everywhere I go.

bluewolf

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I would like to see some way to enlarge support and power description text in the in-game UI so I can figure out what the heck something does on my phone without having to bring my electron microscope everywhere I go.

….the new engine will allow more flexibility in text formatting etc.

No word about whether it’ll help perks and abilities to be described in a more clear manner.

entrailbucket

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
I would like to see some way to enlarge support and power description text in the in-game UI so I can figure out what the heck something does on my phone without having to bring my electron microscope everywhere I go.

One of the benefits (?) of your (presumably non-550) matchmaking is probably that you see different stuff.

I've only had to memorize like 3 or 4 supports because that's all I ever see.

ThaRoadWarrior

It appears I see nothing but level 5 Omnipotence City, Eros’s Arrow, and maybe one or two others.

entrailbucket

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
It appears I see nothing but level 5 Omnipotence City, Eros’s Arrow, and maybe one or two others.

Include leapfrog, fantasticar, and low level AI and that's pretty much all I ever see. I do occasionally see some of the "6 free AP" ones as well.

Counting the infinity stones, there are 72 supports, so folks actually use about 10% of them.

ThaRoadWarrior

I've had my shards set to the purple infinity stone since we could shard things; i am currently at level 4 with ~1200 shards out of 1600. For having just under an 11% chance to fire a free power on the supported character once per turn, it seems to fire off quite often. I only have 3 5* shards: chimichanga, shuri's lab, and royal talon fighter. A fair amount of 4* ones though.

BriMan2222

@entrailbucket said:

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
It appears I see nothing but level 5 Omnipotence City, Eros’s Arrow, and maybe one or two others.

Include leapfrog, fantasticar, and low level AI and that's pretty much all I ever see. I do occasionally see some of the "6 free AP" ones as well.

Counting the infinity stones, there are 72 supports, so folks actually use about 10% of them.

I would add the power stone, the chance to fire a power for free every turn on a character that tanks a lot of colors is very useful and the Thanos Copter. I have seen quite a few Thanos Copters equipped to 4 star ascended juggs and the free moves can cause some crazy cascades. It's basically the Fantasticar for villains but it doesn't end after 4 turns. It's a newer support, but I'm sure we'll see it more often when more people acquire it and rank it up.

entrailbucket

@BriMan2222 said:

@entrailbucket said:

@ThaRoadWarrior said:
It appears I see nothing but level 5 Omnipotence City, Eros’s Arrow, and maybe one or two others.

Include leapfrog, fantasticar, and low level AI and that's pretty much all I ever see. I do occasionally see some of the "6 free AP" ones as well.

Counting the infinity stones, there are 72 supports, so folks actually use about 10% of them.

I would add the power stone, the chance to fire a power for free every turn on a character that tanks a lot of colors is very useful and the Thanos Copter. I have seen quite a few Thanos Copters equipped to 4 star ascended juggs and the free moves can cause some crazy cascades. It's basically the Fantasticar for villains but it doesn't end after 4 turns. It's a newer support, but I'm sure we'll see it more often when more people acquire it and rank it up.

Yeah, there are a couple more.

But why do we have two (!!!) supports that can only be equipped to Black Panther, and one that can only be equipped to Captain Marvel, all of which are much worse than the ones players actually use? Have you ever seen Sharon Carter, or Hulkling, or Quinjet? Why would I ever choose to equip any of them?

DAZ0273

I am sharding the power stone also being at 1310 shards out of 1600 so hopefully that will be my next R5 fairly soonish. I think my R4 Fantasticar will be next project.

DyingLegend

I quit PVP because of supports. Some supports drag out matches, some make certain characters impossible to fight, etc. I don't want to research every team I have to fight considering pvp is very time centric. I just wanna hit and go.

I will say, I don't agree with nerfing supports because of it either. The majority of the player base is pve focused, so nerfing supports hurt the overall community.

I think a more reasonable approach, having support function one way in PVE and another in PVP. Separate the support sandbox. Certain video games devs do this, a perk in pve does 20 % damage but in PVP caps at 5%.

entrailbucket

I'm not expecting nerfs to supports at this point (barring some future character that combos with a support to create an unbeatable superteam, which honestly seems unlikely).

A change to a support that causes it to function worse in PvP than in PvE would absolutely be a nerf.

KGB

@entrailbucket said:
I'm not expecting nerfs to supports at this point (barring some future character that combos with a support to create an unbeatable superteam, which honestly seems unlikely).

A change to a support that causes it to function worse in PvP than in PvE would absolutely be a nerf.

Technically everything is a nerf 'from a certain point of view'. For example every time they buff some old dusty 5 to modern standards they nerfed every other character relative to the one who was buffed (eg the Devs could stealth nerf MThor if they doubled every other 5 stars health/match/ability damage but hers all without having to give out nerf compensation).

Changing how supports work in PvE vs PvP isn't really a nerf as much as a game balance change. For example if they changed supports in PvP to only use only 1 of the supports powers on offense and 1 on defense (different powers) which is something I argued for WAY back when they announced it, then that's a game balance change more than a nerf.

KGB

entrailbucket

@KGB said:

@entrailbucket said:
I'm not expecting nerfs to supports at this point (barring some future character that combos with a support to create an unbeatable superteam, which honestly seems unlikely).

A change to a support that causes it to function worse in PvP than in PvE would absolutely be a nerf.

Technically everything is a nerf 'from a certain point of view'. For example every time they buff some old dusty 5 to modern standards they nerfed every other character relative to the one who was buffed (eg the Devs could stealth nerf MThor if they doubled every other 5 stars health/match/ability damage but hers all without having to give out nerf compensation).

Changing how supports work in PvE vs PvP isn't really a nerf as much as a game balance change. For example if they changed supports in PvP to only use only 1 of the supports powers on offense and 1 on defense (different powers) which is something I argued for WAY back when they announced it, then that's a game balance change more than a nerf.

KGB

If I invested a bunch of scarce resources into, say, leapfrog, a support which has approximately zero value in PvE currently, and the developers changed it so that it got way worse in PvP...I think I might not be too happy about that. That seems like pretty much the definition of a nerf.