Marvel Puzzle Quest: Character Rebalances - Batch #1

@Ed_Dragonrider said:

@KGB said:

The problem is with 500 characters and only 6 colors on the board (ignoring TUs) and X number of unique powers (not sure what X is, but say 30-40 unique powers), eventually you'll run into a lot of duplicate abilities on same colors (eg Red - Trap tiles). Once that happens (and it only gets worse with each new release), the game is stagnant in that there is nothing to differentiate 2 characters beyond X damage for Y AP and making everyone exactly the same is boring for a different reason (ie why have 2 more or less exact same characters).

The other thing about the list of characters is that outside of a VERY few players (talking .0001%), most rosters are not equally balanced. So nerfing Shang whom someone has at 550 in order to make that list of characters more balanced doesn't help unless THEY ALSO have those same characters at 550. In other words if they have that list of characters in say the 480 range, they won't get played when that player has a 550 Shang even if he gets nerfed. That's because obviously a 550 > 480. So all that happens is you make a WHOLE lot of the player bases life worse (nerfing their 550) and those characters still never get used because of the unbalanced roster issue (which is why I expect Polaris to continue to see heavy use because so many will have 550d her or 370d her in 4 star land far ahead of any other 4).

Balancing shouldn't just be about character powers, but about the whole game. It's very easy to say don't rely on a handful of characters for any one reason, but with constant inflation rosters need more and more help to make that happen. The reason why so many are upset at even the thought of strong characters being nerfed is that that will prevent them from achieving the exact diversity the devs are trying to strong-arm them into.

To put it into my personal specifics: I have 33 champed 5s (all between 453-486 so it's not like I have the 3 best at 550 then nothing). I also have an other 30 5s with 13+ covers waiting for iso.
The devs want me to use more diverse teams and strategies? What a coincidence, so do I. But I can't!!
With the new SCL10, there are more rewards so, even though I need to work harder at it, I thought i will be able to get more of my guys off the bench... but no, because at the same time they intend to take away or reduce the very characters that can make that happen.
The 5* and challenge nodes scale so high that a sheer 3match damage can wipe my team, let alone a lucky cascade. And I have to drag my under-leveled weak 5*s into it, so I need 2 of my very very best just to compensate and get it done. I have reverted to using SC and MThor, more than before, but it's the only was I can win against 5times my own health pools.

In short, if the devs want more diversity then they need to fix the whole game economy. ISO-8 economy in my case (which has been acknowledged repeatedly, yet still not much has been done), but for others it might be other resources. The inflation is just far too high!

Thanks for the double ISO though, its been helping a lot. Can't we just make this permanent?
Even at current iso-earning lvls it would still take me years to get everyone to useful levels, but at least it would feel like progress.

If the new CL10 is too difficult for your roster, why not drop to a lower difficulty? CL10 is optional.

Your post is a perfect example of why fixing the overpowered guys will achieve more diversity. Currently you're in the hardest possible difficulty level, meant for endgame rosters, and the only way you can win is by using overpowered guys. If they fix those guys, you won't be able to win those fights at all, and you'll have to choose an appropriate difficulty level where you'll be able to use more characters.

@Grantosium said:
You can now win almost any match, including CL10 and only excepting a small handful of characters, with a level 1 Hawkeye and the right 3 supports: Lucky (min level 3), Quantum Realm, Low Level AI. I don't think it's going to be dramatically slower than Polaris teams even at Level 1. (I've been using my Hawkeye with boosted Spider-Girl and it's been quicker than Sam/Juggs on Fight for Wakanda.) If you don't have these three supports it's pretty unlikely you should be playing CL10 anyway.

I guess it's none of my business really, but I can't buy into the argument of "Polaris' nerf makes me unable to complete PvE" when it came with a buff to a 1 star character that makes PvE trivial.

It's really simple, and it's not any of these players' faults.

The devs accidentally made a 4* character that was so strong and so fast that she could trivially punch up by like 300 levels. Instead of fixing her, they just left her like that forever. So what were players supposed to do? Anybody with half a brain would look at all the other characters on their (low-level) roster, see they're a million times worse, and then use Polaris to do everything!

These folks have been punching up for YEARS with her at this point, with no issues.

So what do the devs do? They finally fix her at the same time they launch a new, more difficult level of PvE, that for some reason is STILL called "CL10," and default everybody into the "new" CL10. They post the explanation on the forum where nobody sees it.

The "old" CL10 was too hard for many of these folks if they didn't have Polaris, and after years of using her, they probably don't even know what any of the other guys do! Why on earth would you do these two things together? Why wouldn't you communicate that CL10 is now meant for the highest-level rosters? What about something saying "hey, sorry, but you weren't meant to be in the hardest difficulty before?"