*** Ragnarok (Dark Avengers) ***

Dayv

The nerf was needed, but they swung too far. He at least needs a decent third power to bring him back into the mix.

Unknown

I don't have Rags, so I didn't know about this till just visiting the forums just now. Wow, sorry to all of you who paid for your Rags. I always thought he needed a little retooling, but they really mangled him. They might as well have added a fourth star to him and called it a day.

BigMao

Basically what I'm saying is, no matter how much you B and moan nothing will change. If you quit playing it doesn't matter to them because more people will start playing. It's the nature of F2P games which is unfortunate but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

There's no principle which says a business must respect its customers in order to be successful, but I prefer to support those who do.

If D3 Publisher does not respect our collective concerns as players and customers, they will no longer receive my support.

Unknown

WorstAvenger wrote:

I don't have Rags, so I didn't know about this till just visiting the forums just now. Wow, sorry to all of you who paid for your Rags. I always thought he needed a little retooling, but they really mangled him. They might as well have added a fourth star to him and called it a day.

You win this page of the threads!

Unknown

I barely knew ye, Rags RIP.

I finished my Spidey this week, so in a bout a week and a half expect nerfs on him.

My mags is also coming along nicely. You know the drill.

Unknown

BigMao wrote:

Basically what I'm saying is, no matter how much you B and moan nothing will change. If you quit playing it doesn't matter to them because more people will start playing. It's the nature of F2P games which is unfortunate but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

There's no principle which says a business must respect its customers in order to be successful, but I prefer to support those who do.

If D3 Publisher does not respect our collective concerns as players and customers, they will no longer receive my support.

Well I guess they are losing your support. If you think they're going to refund you you're crazy. Better call your CC company and do a charge back.

Spoit

Vivisera wrote:

I try not to be overly cynical, but I tend to agree with pandaberry6 up above: This feels too much like a deliberate bait-and-switch.

The developers could very well have notified the playerbase that a nerf was coming; it doesn't require the forums, since they do daily general announcements in-client. That is the responsible, ethical thing to do, particularly when I'd bet that their vaunted analytics shows a much larger likelihood to spend on upgrading Rag covers (especially the red) over probably any other cover in the game. They didn't even have to announce exactly what it would be in advance (although if they had, probably even fewer people would have paid to upgrade) -- they just needed to announce it at all and people would have delayed purchasing.

Instead, what they appear to have done was maximally ride the monetization curve. I'm sure that because Rag was a core important villain in the Hulk stuff, that they couldn't rebalance him until the event was done -- which provided ample opportunity for them to announce a forthcoming nerf.

Players who are looking to always be the most powerful will always seek out and pay for it. It's to the devs' advantage to essentially allow that rock to roll downhill, so to speak -- to put out breadcrumbs of OP-ness, let players pay to buy in, and then nerf.

I understood the c.Storm nerf (although I think it was significant) -- it turned one character on the team into bait, which was no doubt an undesirable way to play, which needed to be fixed. But c.Storm's still a solid character all-round for her other abilities. Ragnarok could have simply been reasonably balanced, including keeping the feel of the character, probably by further reducing the Thunderclap damage and the number of greens generated; nerfing him below Thor's red is just crazytown. But it might well be deliberate crazytown -- it's going to force players who have already proven their willingness to spend money for power, to go look for the next thing that they can spend money on, since their existing investment is arguably not even really a competitive choice to keep on their team. (i.e., how many Rag players who spent money will now willingly spend money on Hulk or Punisher to replace him?)

It's also an amazing demonstration of bad faith with a player base, though, and I imagine is going to cost them any number of bad reviews and players leaving. On the other hand, they're so early in the history of the game that it might not matter, and player bases have short memories. There's probably the opportunity to burn people repeatedly.

Yeah, to be honest, back when they had the slot and token price increases, IceIX came right out and said that they didn't want to give warning, in order to make it so people didn't cash out

Unknown

Ok it's understandable for everyone who spend time and money leveling up Raggs to be upset. But on the other side of that, I'd love to hear from the people who actually enjoyed fighting against Rag, just watching your phone go to sleep because the an endless chain of green and red gems came pouring from the heavens. The devs screwed up less with this nerf and more with making that character that way in the first place. This game has plenty of balancing issues and he was at the top of the list.

Unknown

WorstAvenger wrote:

They might as well have added a fourth star to him and called it a day.

Awesome! LOL!

Unknown

BigMao wrote:

Basically what I'm saying is, no matter how much you B and moan nothing will change. If you quit playing it doesn't matter to them because more people will start playing. It's the nature of F2P games which is unfortunate but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

There's no principle which says a business must respect its customers in order to be successful, but I prefer to support those who do.

If D3 Publisher does not respect our collective concerns as players and customers, they will no longer receive my support.

You aren't alone

Unknown

SUPERTOM wrote:

Ok it's understandable for everyone who spend time and money leveling up Raggs to be upset. But on the other side of that, I'd love to hear from the people who actually enjoyed fighting against Rag, just watching your phone go to sleep because the an endless chain of green and red gems came pouring from the heavens. The devs screwed up less with this nerf and more with making that character that way in the first place. This game has plenty of balancing issues and he was at the top of the list.

I enjoy the challenge of fighting a L250 Ragnarok in PVE missions.

Unknown

After reading through all the posts about the Rag change, I figure I would take a moment to help try to explain why this is not as bad as some believe. Now mind you, this is all theory on my end, but it makes some sense out of what appears the devs are trying to accomplish.

First, as it stands, comparing him to Thor is a big no no. If the direction of the game is going the way I believe it to be going, and from bits and snippets that I have read here and there, comparing him to another character a rank below who will also likely see a change in the very near future will be folly unto itself (more on that later).

In his current state, Rags should now instead be compared to other characters that share the same role as he, namely 3* tanks. With over 7k health, it's safe to say that he was intended as a damage sink, but the unintended side effect of his red being so low in cost made him a very VERY tanky striker, and extremely effective at dealing damage and speeding up ability usage for teammates.

Using the 12 ap yardstick, he deals approx. 1800-1900 points of damage in that span of ap usage, AND gives free green tiles out on the board. Now, as is being seen with the games version of tanks, they tend to have high ap abilities that are meant as a last resort, and also do something detrimental to the team in exchange, I.e. IM40 does some sick damage for the ap cost, but he removes ap from every color as well. So in this instance, Rags will still be viable, and probably one of the better tanks because of his ability to giving back to his team instead of taking away.

In the same vein, he will still have the quick attacks that they want for the flavor of the character compared to others of his intended role. The 2 ap cost would be on par with the quickness of a striker role, your dps role, and the reality being that having that amount of utility and being tanky at the same time made him a very overpowered character. And considering his level cap is the lowest of the tanks, he also happens to be one of the easiest to hit that cap for tankiness.

Now why shouldn't you compare him to thor, and why do I say thor will get changed as well?

Comparing for mechanics is fine and dandy, but that comparison will only last as long as Thor remains in his current state. And the there are several reasons why he will not last long.

Despite being one of the first 2* characters you receive from the prologue and being very popular because of that, his intended role for his rank is quite clear based upon the type of covers being doled out during the prologue and the amount of health he has relative to his rank. From all appeareances, the initial 2* handed out would appear to be one support, on tank, and one striker/dps, essentially a standard holy trinity. Somehow or another though, the damage placed on each individual ability far exceeded any reasonable amount for the role, and instead became for 2* what rags became for 3*: a too tanky damager. And comparing Thor to Moonstone, who seems to be the only other reasonably tanky 2*, one can even see that her red is variable without being to broken outright.

In conclusion, yes Rags may look weaker compared to Thor, but by doing that, you are comparing it to someone who will obviously get a change as well in the near future. Rags is still good, fills his role nicely enough, and is now more balanced and fair than his initial state was.

Nemek

Good read. I do believe Thor is pretty close to a nerf.

I think the devs put Rag where they intend for him to be in the grand scheme of things (high HP, decent damage), and just need to do the same to Thor.

Unknown

It's nice to have a thread devoid of snarky comments. Let's hope it stays that way.

Personally I think it was a bad change but he is certainly still viable, especially in LRs. Loki still exists; Rags still has a ways to go before being worst in the game.

I believe, especially from the dev notes that got taken down, that this was part of a bigger balance change. For some reason, only the Rags change alone went live. I suppose to test the waters.

MarvelMan

I get that the devs want the games to last more than a couple turns. And that would be a good thing, except this a mobile game (and steam). A huge part of its appeal, for me at least, was the ability to pull it up and run a match while in line or during a commercial. It's gotten much, much slower since there is more build up, which means more incidental damage plus higher risk of absorbing a big attack from the AI. That means I have to heal more, which is costs heavily of the limited health packs or requires a tedious mechanic. Both lead to less fighting, more boredom and therefore less play.

Unknown

DumDumDugn wrote:

SUPERTOM wrote:

Ok it's understandable for everyone who spend time and money leveling up Raggs to be upset. But on the other side of that, I'd love to hear from the people who actually enjoyed fighting against Rag, just watching your phone go to sleep because the an endless chain of green and red gems came pouring from the heavens. The devs screwed up less with this nerf and more with making that character that way in the first place. This game has plenty of balancing issues and he was at the top of the list.

I enjoy the challenge of fighting a L250 Ragnarok in PVE missions.

It wasn't much of a challenge as much as it was having a 4 blue Spidey and hoping for a decent board. If I wanted to play games of chance I'd hit the slots.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Good read. I do believe Thor is pretty close to a nerf.

I think the devs put Rag where they intend for him to be in the grand scheme of things (high HP, decent damage), and just need to do the same to Thor.

If that is the case, and I don't doubt it, they should have changed them at the same time.

Unknown

Misguided wrote:

Nemek wrote:

Good read. I do believe Thor is pretty close to a nerf.

I think the devs put Rag where they intend for him to be in the grand scheme of things (high HP, decent damage), and just need to do the same to Thor.

If that is the case, and I don't doubt it, they should have changed them at the same time.

This much I do agree with, as now it will be more Thor's out there until that happens. But considering in recent memory that there seems to be a trickle of changes coming in each day, I have the sneaking suspicion that Thor change will not be that far off. Either tomorrow or after the weekend if I was to guess at reliant on the speed currently.

Unknown

i would be more OK with the rags rebalance if some other changes also happened at the same time.

areacode212

Hmm, there's a lvl 112 Rags sitting in my retaliations right now in SHIELD training. Maybe I'll take him on. You're not so tough now!