Do the devs know what they're doing?

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeey!

The devs have in my opinion shown their intent via actions.

Game problems:

New players need bang for their buck characters to deal with meta toons that overwhelm, up to ascended everywhere characters like Polaris. Even someone in 3 land will quickly be seeing lots of partly covered Polaris/BRB teams in PVP. They will be years behind even low spend vets as they start. Rostering everyone is 368 characters; even leaving off the 5s you're at 263. So they need a way to supercharge their meager roster as they very very slowly roster everyone, then champ them, then add levels in an incredibly diluted game.

Vets have everything and you can basically only enhance/buff existing powersets given the ability sets they have access to. Hence you can't make them want or need anyone that isn't just "turning it up to 11". (The only thing people can propose is an anti-Chasm/team stun ability.)

Super boost characters offer a way to meet both needs (punching up and adding oomph to existing powers) AND since they put them in as low tier characters you are in for a long haul of adding covers via favoriting, with using HP on swaps as your option for speeding things up. They are the lynchpin for lots of teams no matter who you have or what level you're at.

At the end of the day the game needs to keep revenue flowing and making super obvious, hard to max out, targets makes a lot of sense.

If your next question is "what do you do next?" I also ask that, but then I have asked that many times and they have come up with this, I guess, for now. I mean most games run out of gas by now anyway; maybe they have some next plan or maybe they will just keep slowly moving the bar up until it stops working.

If you ask me to answer "do they know what they're doing?" I say, "yes".

@bluewolf said:
The devs have in my opinion shown their intent via actions.

Game problems:

New players need bang for their buck characters to deal with meta toons that overwhelm, up to ascended everywhere characters like Polaris. Even someone in 3 land will quickly be seeing lots of partly covered Polaris/BRB teams in PVP. They will be years behind even low spend vets as they start. Rostering everyone is 368 characters; even leaving off the 5s you're at 263. So they need a way to supercharge their meager roster as they very very slowly roster everyone, then champ them, then add levels in an incredibly diluted game.

Vets have everything and you can basically only enhance/buff existing powersets given the ability sets they have access to. Hence you can't make them want or need anyone that isn't just "turning it up to 11". (The only thing people can propose is an anti-Chasm/team stun ability.)

Super boost characters offer a way to meet both needs (punching up and adding oomph to existing powers) AND since they put them in as low tier characters you are in for a long haul of adding covers via favoriting, with using HP on swaps as your option for speeding things up. They are the lynchpin for lots of teams no matter who you have or what level you're at.

At the end of the day the game needs to keep revenue flowing and making super obvious, hard to max out, targets makes a lot of sense.

If your next question is "what do you do next?" I also ask that, but then I have asked that many times and they have come up with this, I guess, for now. I mean most games run out of gas by now anyway; maybe they have some next plan or maybe they will just keep slowly moving the bar up until it stops working.

If you ask me to answer "do they know what they're doing?" I say, "yes".

I guess I'm not sure which "super boost" characters you're talking about here.

M'baku and 3* Namor get stronger with a lot of levels (although both are plenty effective at lower levels, too).

But Sidewinder is basically as good as he's ever going to be at 270, or potentially even lower. That's not "hard to max out" in any way. Iron May would like to be a 4*, but that's not a long haul for a 3*. Who else is there? Some specifics would help me understand your argument.

If they wanted to create a Sidewinder type character to drive revenue, why not make his boost scale up with levels, so you HAD to chase him or swap for him?

@meteor0905 said:
Fact is winder become worst if you ascend 😉

His boost gets worse, AND he gets less effective in general because he doesn't boost his own match damage.

It is interesting that in game at present they are using Sidewinder and not fan favourite poll winner Hobgoblin to promote the recruit heroes tab. Hmm.

@LavaManLee said:
Does his added health make up for less power? Meaning if he can stay alive longer than two turns, does that make him more useful? Apologies as I haven't seen the ascended numbers yet (if they are posted in this thread, I may have overlooked them). Thanks!

For me I think it does, but I care a lot about PvP defense and that seems to be a pretty unpopular opinion. There's also the major issue that if Sidewinder tanks anything, you lose his boost on that color.

Fwiw the boost goes down to 800%, vs 1500% at 4*.

@entrailbucket said:

@LavaManLee said:
Does his added health make up for less power? Meaning if he can stay alive longer than two turns, does that make him more useful? Apologies as I haven't seen the ascended numbers yet (if they are posted in this thread, I may have overlooked them). Thanks!

For me I think it does, but I care a lot about PvP defense and that seems to be a pretty unpopular opinion. There's also the major issue that if Sidewinder tanks anything, you lose his boost on that color.

Fwiw the boost goes down to 800%, vs 1500% at 4*.

Thanks, so much. I think that is still worth it and imagine you would have to really get Sidewinder up on levels to boost over a 4Asc5Juggs (550) or probably any 500. I could see it being worth it to Ascend just to get him to last 2/3 extra turns in PVP.