Significant Characters MIA from MPQ:

entrailbucket

@meadowsweet said:

@entrailbucket said:
Would you spend $100 on Shuma Gorath? Or Kevin Bacon? A lot of casual fans of Wolverine or Spider-Man would be happy to shell out for them, even if they aren't as good as Polaris or m'Thor or whoever.

Do you have any data at all to support your claim that more players spend more money on well-known but bad characters than high-quality but more obscure characters?

So according to you, the two characters that players have spent the most money on must be Captain America & Iron Man, right? But characters like Okoye or Polaris must rank near the very bottom of a list of hundreds of characters, correct? Almost no one has ever spent money on them because they're among the least well-known characters in the entire game?

The evidence is that we've got 35 Wolverines and 100 Spidermens (and 12 Iron Mens and 135 Captains America, sure) in the game. They're there because they sell. If BCS could make a bunch of money selling "significant" characters like Sasquatch and Batroc the Leaper, those guys would probably be there already.

Would you seriously spend $100 on an MPQ Kevin Bacon? How much have you specifically spent on Okoye and Polaris?

Blazpheme

I agree that Red Skull is the most obvious, followed by Dormammu and Nightmare. Considering how much I used to see Leader pop up in the comics I read as a kid, I am surprised he is not already in the game as well. I would also say Galactus, but he is technically in the game already, so maybe he doesn't count.

After that, it comes down to personal taste, so I would be down with anything from the 1990's Midnight Sons titles - like Blackheart, Dan Ketch, Vengeance, Modred the Mystic, Blackout, Victoria Montesi, Hannibal King, Strange, Zarathos, Centurious, or Lilith. Most of which aren't likely, given that they are not very significant, but there's always next Halloween...

I am not hardcore enough to recognize half of the names in that long-azz list above, and I imagine that a good chunk of them might be a bit too obscure for the game. I mean, I am a huge fan of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. tv show, but Fitz & Simmons couldn't defend themselves against Grant Ward (even before he was Hive), let alone face off with someone like Doctor Doom, Hela, or Mephisto. Besides, they are from a show that the larger MCU made zero effort to acknowledge its existence, so it's reasonable to expect that we would probably never see them in the game anyway. Maybe as a Support, but not as a full character.

As for the whole Kevin Bacon thing, I get that it is funny to list him since he was in the Holiday Special, but he is not really a Marvel character. Using that logic, one could suggest the band KISS or characters from Battlestar Galactica, since they did appear in Marvel Comics many decades ago, and that would just be silly. If any real-life person deserves to be in the game, it would be Stan Lee.

Anyway, if the developers really wanted to, I'm sure that they could eventually come up with a way to do Red Skull without the risk of offending people, or violating laws in certain countries regarding the specific symbols related to his character. None of that junk is what makes him cool, so it is doable. Then again, maybe they would rather just play it safe and avoid any potential controversy by ignoring him altogether, which they have every right to do so.

However, with Dormammu and Nightmare, there is no justifiable reason for either one of them to not be in the game yet, so make it happen already.

entrailbucket

Fwiw, I think it's fantastic that folks are passionate about their favorite obscure Marvel characters and want them in the game.

I don't understand getting upset about this topic, in the way that so many seem to do. Framing the issue as "MPQ is missing significant characters from Marvel lore" sure seems to suggest that -- as if the game is somehow incomplete if it doesn't include Smokescreen, Piecemeal, and Impossible Man.

Red Skull is a pretty obvious one. The other Marvel games seem to have figured out his...issues...so I'm not sure why MPQ hasn't. I used to think Dormammu would end up as a boss, but they don't seem to be doing those anymore, so who knows.

We get a lot of characters because Marvel dictates them as cross-promotion. Maybe one day Marvel will do a 3-hour, epic Flatman movie, and we'll get him as a tie-in to that!

Carnage1484

@LucasRaven said:

@meadowsweet said:
1. Absorbing Man
2. Agent Mobius
3. Aloith the Usurper
4. The Ancient One
5. Arnim Zola
6. Avalanche
7. Banshee
8. Baron Zemo
9. Bastion
10. Beyonder
11. Black Tom Cassidy
12. Blackheart
13. Blink
14. Callisto
15. Captain Britain
16. Captain Universe
17. Carrion
18. Cassandra Nova
19. Chameleon
20. The Collector
21. Crossbones
22. Doppelgänger
23. Ego the Living Planet
24. Fin Fang Foom
25. Fitz & Simmons
26. Foggy Nelson
27. Forge
28. Giant-Man
29. Gladiator
30. The Grandmaster
31. Happy Hogan
32. Hercules
33. Hobgoblin
34. Holocaust
35. J. Jonah Jameson
36. Jigsaw
37. Ka-Zar
38. Kahhori
39. Kevin Bacon
40. K.E.V.I.N. (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus)
41. Korvac
42. Kraglin
43. Leader
44. Lilith
45. Longshot
46. Madame Web
47. Madisynn King
48. The Maker
49. Mandarin
50. Man-Thing
51. Master Mold
52. Miek
53. Morph
54. Nimrod
55. Nuke
56. Proteus
57. Random
58. Red Skull
59. Selene
60. Shadow King
61. Shatterstar
62. Shocker
63. Shuma-Gorath
64. Silver Sable
65. Spiral
66. The Spot
67. Sunspot
68. Super-Adaptoid
69. The Supreme Intelligence
70. Sylvie Laufeydottir
71. Taserface
72. Terrax
73. Titania
74. Tombstone
75. Typhoid Mary
76. Uatu the Watcher
77. U.S.Agent
78. Werewolf by Night
79. Wonder Man
80. Yo-Yo
81. Zeus

I mean ... are all these significant? Why have Shuma-Gorath when we have Gargantos? Is Kevin Bacon significant?

Gargantos is Shuma, they simply renamed him to avoid licensing fees.

Godzillafan67

I believe many players would pay $20 [insert your effective currency type and amount] for a 1a5 Kevin Bacon.

BriMan2222

@Carnage1484 said:

@LucasRaven said:

@meadowsweet said:
1. Absorbing Man
2. Agent Mobius
3. Aloith the Usurper
4. The Ancient One
5. Arnim Zola
6. Avalanche
7. Banshee
8. Baron Zemo
9. Bastion
10. Beyonder
11. Black Tom Cassidy
12. Blackheart
13. Blink
14. Callisto
15. Captain Britain
16. Captain Universe
17. Carrion
18. Cassandra Nova
19. Chameleon
20. The Collector
21. Crossbones
22. Doppelgänger
23. Ego the Living Planet
24. Fin Fang Foom
25. Fitz & Simmons
26. Foggy Nelson
27. Forge
28. Giant-Man
29. Gladiator
30. The Grandmaster
31. Happy Hogan
32. Hercules
33. Hobgoblin
34. Holocaust
35. J. Jonah Jameson
36. Jigsaw
37. Ka-Zar
38. Kahhori
39. Kevin Bacon
40. K.E.V.I.N. (Knowledge Enhanced Visual Interconnectivity Nexus)
41. Korvac
42. Kraglin
43. Leader
44. Lilith
45. Longshot
46. Madame Web
47. Madisynn King
48. The Maker
49. Mandarin
50. Man-Thing
51. Master Mold
52. Miek
53. Morph
54. Nimrod
55. Nuke
56. Proteus
57. Random
58. Red Skull
59. Selene
60. Shadow King
61. Shatterstar
62. Shocker
63. Shuma-Gorath
64. Silver Sable
65. Spiral
66. The Spot
67. Sunspot
68. Super-Adaptoid
69. The Supreme Intelligence
70. Sylvie Laufeydottir
71. Taserface
72. Terrax
73. Titania
74. Tombstone
75. Typhoid Mary
76. Uatu the Watcher
77. U.S.Agent
78. Werewolf by Night
79. Wonder Man
80. Yo-Yo
81. Zeus

I mean ... are all these significant? Why have Shuma-Gorath when we have Gargantos? Is Kevin Bacon significant?

Gargantos is Shuma, they simply renamed him to avoid licensing fees.

He's not though, gargantos is a similar but different character that has appeared in marvel comics

DAZ0273

Calling these characters insignificant is all strictly relevent isn't it? Lets look at Alpha Flight.

Alpha Flight #1 sold half a million copies in 1983. 1983 - that is a staggering amount of copies years before the 90s speculator boom resulted in rampant numbers that had no chance of lasting.

Just a one-off though, surely?

I managed to find a sales chart from 1984 and that showed that Alpha Flight #19 was the fifth best selling comic book of the month, beating Amazing Spider-Man (during the popular Black Suit period), Fantastic Four (by John Byrne), Thor (Walt Simonson), New Teen Titans (Wolfman & Perez). These were all top tier selling books with premium creator teams. The previous month it was the sixth highest selling issue. Batman #380 came in 66th place.

I'm not convinced that the debut of Talisman really would have caused a sales spike! I could be wrong though.

Alpha Flight was therefore a constant top 10 book for Marvel for a sustained period. Alpha Flight. You could argue I guess that John Byrne had a big say in that but then that doesn't account for it outselling his Fantastic Four run and his Hulk run.

Considering a large base of Marvel fans are from this age and the 90s, it is entirely possible that many of them might make up the larger player base of MPQ, obviously we don't know but when a poll was done on the forum years and years ago there was a heavy skew towards players in the late 30s to early 50s range. If that is representative (might be, might not) then a lot of casual players might still be Marvel fans and a good chance many from this era/time period.

So Alpha Flight might be much more significant than we think, despite them being Canadians!

entrailbucket

@DAZ0273 I think the problem with the comic sales argument is that it only gets used for the 80s/90s stuff that most of the forum folks seem to be fans of. When they introduced the dinosaur Spidermans, those guys were from a current bestselling book, and they got pretty universally dismissed here. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur was a really popular animated series a few years ago.

Are they more "significant" than a team of extremely polite superhero hosers (eh) that were popular in the 90s? Who knows! But one could certainly make that argument.

dokiy

Iron Spider Peggy Carterpool

DAZ0273

@entrailbucket said:
@DAZ0273 I think the problem with the comic sales argument is that it only gets used for the 80s/90s stuff that most of the forum folks seem to be fans of. When they introduced the dinosaur Spidermans, those guys were from a current bestselling book, and they got pretty universally dismissed here. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur was a really popular animated series a few years ago.

Are they more "significant" than a team of extremely polite superhero hosers (eh) that were popular in the 90s? Who knows! But one could certainly make that argument.

Very true. Always remember that the worst enemy of any given fanbase is that very fanbase itself and quite often such a fanbase rejects anything new. But it is interesting when you look at these things. Are Alpha Flight a top seller now? I don't have numbers but I doubt it. However they were more significant than Batman in terms of comic book sales at one point which seems impossible but was true! That doesn't mean they were more popular but if you had to cancel one title to protect the bottom line, Bats is in trouble.

The X-Men and Hulk got cancelled at one point.

What makes these characters relevant at the end of the day is how good whatever they are featured in is. Maybe we will get an Alpha Flight movie and it sells a billion and all of a sudden they are A-Listers. Well maybe not...

meadowsweet

@Scofie said:
I find it slightly sad that someone goes to the effort of writing out an enormous list of potential characters, only to have a debate about the word "significant".

Thanks @Scofie - I was hoping folks could just say "yeah, I like X, Y, Z characters too, and they could have really cool powers within this game!" but alas... some folks would rather argue with you about the areas of disagreement and refuse to acknowledge that they agree with you about anything.

But... since we are just arguing over the definition of the word significant, folks should be aware there are multiple definitions:
1. having meaning
2. having or likely to have influence or effect : important
3. also : of a noticeably or measurably large amount
4. probably caused by something other than mere chance

You can spend your time arguing over definition #2 if you'd like, but you cannot tell me that I am wrong for finding meaning in something you do not (definition #1.)

Jellybat

Who knew me starting this topic would get so intriguing? Initially was thinking SIGNIFICANT omissions but I’m not arguing with anyone’s heartfelt wants. You do you!