Official Balance Changes Feedback Thread [Provide Details]

JamieMadrox
JamieMadrox Posts: 1,798 Chairperson of the Boards
edited February 2016 in MPQ General Discussion
R91 brought with it lots of changes including the following:
"David wrote:
Moore"]Game Balance Changes

Related to Champions, we’ve updated power, health and match damage for all of our characters:
    3 and 4-Star Hero powers have been adjusted. Powers are stronger at lower levels, slightly weaker at medium levels and unchanged at Max Level. 2-Star Characters have had their health adjusted above level 94 to better balance them against each other. As part of the Championing balance changes 2, 3 and 4-Star characters will see a slight difference in match damage and health. Ability and match damage of 2-Star, 3-Star, and 4-Star characters have been re-tuned when above their Max Level."

We'd like to get your feedback on your thoughts on the characters that you've noticed have been balanced. What do you like, what don't you like, suggestions, etc. We can't guarantee that it will mean any major changes, but we have it on good authority that this thread will be monitored. Please be specific with hard numbers where possible. The Characters forum still has the pre-balance stats so refer to them where necessary.

So give us your honest opinions and please keep it civil and constructive. Last thing I want is Malcrof locking my thread.
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Comments

  • Malcrof
    Malcrof Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
    LDaken, @ 173, has yet to even get +1 to his strike tiles. Do they scale at all?

    2* Storm, boosted to 150, used to do 2888 on her aoe, right now, boosted to 167, is doing 2615, pretty huge decrease there.

    2* Thor and 2* Johnny Storm seem to scale very well!
  • JamieMadrox
    JamieMadrox Posts: 1,798 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'll start. I'm not happy with the change to Professor X's blue match damage. He now tanks blue over GSBW and SW purple at level 221 meaning winfinite is broken again. I don't know if this was intentional and I understand that winfinite needs to be fixed, but there could have been more notice of this change and compensation options provided like when they changed X-Force Wolverine last year.

    PX old blue match damage at level 221: 78
    PX new match damage at level 221: 83

    GSBW purple match damage at level 166: 79
    SW purple match damage at level 166: 79
  • Malcrof
    Malcrof Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
    Here is a link to the match damage changes (thanks aes for the hard work), for reference if needed.

    viewtopic.php?f=7&t=37826
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
    One thing I didn't care for is that when this change was put in during the Heroic event, it was pretty obvious how our buffed 3s had been nerfed, but I really didn't notice a corresponding change to the damage the AI was doing. Across-the-board changes are fine, but these felt unilateral.

    And yeah, having flat match damage from 220 to 266 feels so silly and contrived, it's hard not to assume ulterior motives. Let's face it, if they just came out and nerfed PX, people would be losing their ****. But doing it "accidentally" as part of global "balancing" changes gets the desired effect with a fraction of the blowback. Either way, I don't like it. And neither do I like having my customer service request tied up in "escalation", probably long enough to keep me from doing anything else about it prior to the 1/13 HP change.
  • MarvelMan
    MarvelMan Posts: 1,350
    Malcrof wrote:
    Here is a link to the match damage changes (thanks aes for the hard work), for reference if needed.

    viewtopic.php?f=7&t=37826

    That is truly impressive and a huge help....but why couldnt a dev have added it to the announcement or the patch notes at some point? Like when the patch went live.....why does everything have to be community done?
  • Malcrof
    Malcrof Posts: 5,971 Chairperson of the Boards
    Hi, if you have general comments on the change, feel free to make a separate thread (or use the patch notes thread, either is fine). This thread is for real. Hi-Fi asked us to make this, so they can see Specifics on the good, bad, and ugly. Try to keep responses limited to character changes and numbers etc, what changed, how much it changed, and if it was for the better or not. General opinions on whether you liked it or not overall are not what is being looked for in this thread (it is in other threads though!).. Post which chars you believe were hit/boosted the most, and whether the changes were good/bad/indifferent! Thanks for all the input!
  • DrStrange-616
    DrStrange-616 Posts: 993 Critical Contributor
    I have question:

    Were goon/ninja/etc levels also smooshed?
  • udonomefoo
    udonomefoo Posts: 1,630 Chairperson of the Boards
    I was playing the Heroic and using 3* Human Torch a lot. I wish I had noted more accurate numbers, but here's the estimate:

    Unboosted Level: 140
    Boosted Level: 234
    Damage for Fireball: approx 5,000

    After R91, I maxed him because I had several covers waiting.

    Unboosted Level: 170
    Boosted Level: I don't remember, 245?
    Damage for Fireball: approx 4,100

    It was a very noticeable and significant drop, and immediately made me regret the 67.5k iso I dumped into him to max/champ him only to have him be weaker than before.
  • MarvelMan
    MarvelMan Posts: 1,350
    To be back on topic.......One change I think is pretty bad is that in the first node for DPDQ the 2* character can no longer be one shotted by Juggs. Yeah, its just one more match but its change from before and an annoyance.
  • The Bob The
    The Bob The Posts: 743 Critical Contributor
    I can't recall the exact numbers, but boosted Doom's purple seems like it took a hit. Used to do close to 2000 a tile (while boosted), but in his PVP event he was doing around 1600 (still boosted).

    I'm almost positive, anyway, because I'd gotten used to the mental math, so it resulted in some unpleasant surprises in matches. Unless I dreamed it all.
  • mpqr7
    mpqr7 Posts: 2,642 Chairperson of the Boards
    I can't recall the exact numbers, but boosted Doom's purple seems like it took a hit. Used to do close to 2000 a tile (while boosted), but in his PVP event he was doing around 1600 (still boosted).

    That's very true. Doom's pink used to take around 2000 away per trap when boosted. Now in the current pve, he's only taking away 1300. It's extremely sad and makes him so much weaker.

    Also HT's fireball is weaker (5000 to 4000). It's hard to get exact numbers because I don't know what they were.

    It would be nice to have detailed charts on what all characters' powers used to be, and which ones have changed, both for better and for worse.
  • chamber44
    chamber44 Posts: 324 Mover and Shaker
    edited January 2016
    i'd have to look at the wiki for better details, but i know that after the change, my DDQ team changed slightly. My team is 166 Laken, 166 Blade, and 140ish Falcon, and for a while, Falcon was tanking both Blue and Purple, even at a much lower level. I championed Laken with just one cover, and now he's tanking both colors.

    edit: just had a second to look at my roster numbers, and I must be remembering wrong (or else, they radically shifted the match damage), because the match damage numbers aren't close to each other.
  • tdglory49
    tdglory49 Posts: 56 Match Maker
    I didn't keep track of the numbers, but 3* Deadpool and Human Torch at 166 seemed weaker (400-600 pts) when scaled even once getting a couple of champion levels. Vision also seems nerfed, but I don't use him that often. Kamala seemed slightly weaker on her green, but I don't think that's a massive deal. Maybe it's just bias/characters I don't play, but I haven't noticed who got stronger with the change, apart from 4*s doing more match damage.

    Not sure if this is off-topic, but one frustrating thing has been that I've internalized a good portion of how much damage certain abilities do. Once or twice, my mental math was off, which is especially annoying when you're trying to burst kill Hulk.
  • Punisher5784
    Punisher5784 Posts: 3,836 Chairperson of the Boards
    My 4*'s got hit with the "slightly weaker at mid-level". My level 173 4* Cyclops' red use to hit for over 10,000 with 10 T/U but now does mid 9000. Level 170 Red Hulk's green with 18 AP use to hit over 6000 AOE, now does high-5000's.

    It's rather frustrating leveling your 4*'s for them to not become stronger. Where is the incentive? Especially with 4* DDQ being nearly impossible to win with a build that's less than full covered. Leveling our 4*'s was the best method we had to win DDQ, now with the 4*'s becoming weaker, there may be a lot less DDQ wins.

    Also, while I've never used the Winfinite combo, this does look like a stealth-nerf to Professor X, similar how Hood, Loki, Patch, Daken and OBW's nerf was hidden within the Health Increases. The hidden "nerfs" whether they are extremely frustrating whether they were intended or accidental. The point is, be truthful and communicate. Sure we get angry at first (moreso because you overnerf) but we understand why it needs to be done.

    Lastly, it would be nice if we finally had some sort of "Tanking" indicator when we set up our teams. I am not a mathematician nor do I like having to jump back-and-forth between pages to figure out who would tank what. While I agree there are many players who soft-cap their characters to prevent scaling, there are also players that soft-cap certain characters to prevent them from constantly tanking. This is only going to get more difficult now that Championing is here.
  • halirin
    halirin Posts: 327 Mover and Shaker
    Boosted Thor ability damage seems disappointingly low. I am sad about it in divine champions. He just feels kinda lackluster now.
  • stowaway
    stowaway Posts: 501 Critical Contributor
    It seems like people are trying to have one conversation about two different things: the change to ability/match damage at different character levels (which was intended), and the reduction across the board to the power of weekly/event buffed characters (which is a bug, the last I saw from David). Am I mistaken?

    For the first issue, I won't really have an opinion until I've done a few 4* DDQ nodes to see how they compare to last time. For the second issue, yes, it's annoying. It was especially bad to have all the characters in the Heroic nerfed just in time for the end grind of the last day.
  • morph3us
    morph3us Posts: 859 Critical Contributor
    Also, while I've never used the Winfinite combo, this does look like a stealth-nerf to Professor X, similar how Hood, Loki, Patch, Daken and OBW's nerf was hidden within the Health Increases. The hidden "nerfs" whether they are extremely frustrating whether they were intended or accidental. The point is, be truthful and communicate. Sure we get angry at first (moreso because you overnerf) but we understand why it needs to be done.

    Honestly, I think we're over-reaching by calling the buff to 4* match damage, a "stealth nerf" to the Winfinite combo. If you look at Aes' old vs new 3*/4* match damage chart, it was very clear that 4*s prior to the rebalance were doing significantly less match damage than their 3* counterparts, and they needed a buff. I seem to recall several discussions after 5*s were released revolving around the fact that people felt that 4* match damage was now underpowered compared to 5* match damage (which it was, of course). It was just silly that 4*s were doing less damage than their equivalently levelled 3* counterparts. The fact that Winfinite is broken for some people is collateral damage (and it's broken for me too, just in the interests of full disclosure).
  • DrStrange-616
    DrStrange-616 Posts: 993 Critical Contributor
    My biggest issue with the change is my biggest issue with all changes in the game. I'm fairly exhausted from playing "Guess the Rules!"
    [snip]

    This post x 1000. Why aren't details provided? Why do we have to guess and scramble to reconstruct the before and after? This should be provided to us. It should be clearly laid out, in detail. I really hope this is coming.
  • Buret0
    Buret0 Posts: 1,591
    With respect to damage, how many champion levels should you be expected to put in to get the old damage output?

    I'm reading a lot of people talking about how boosted Doom is doing about 700 damage less per trap tile. I assume that sometime between the new 166 and the new 266, boosted Doom will start doing 2,000 boosted damage per trap tile again (and eventually will be doing more than 2,000 boosted damage per trap tile). The question is, how far along the track to we need to be to get our characters back to where they were before the change?

    Obviously that's a huge hit to damage 3*s. Currently, I only bring along boosted 3*s. There's really no room in my 4* roster for unboosted 3*s... I'm much more likely to bring along an unfinished 5*. Now that max level 3*s are doing even less damage, even when boosted... How many champion levels will it take to get them back up to normal... and will we care?

    I know max boosted Cyclops used to do around 6,500 damage with his red and something like 11,600 damage with his black. What are we looking at now? Because if it is 4,225 damage and 7,540 (a 0.65 factor based on the projected Doom decrease from 2000 to 1300), that's going to take max boosted cyclops from being an easy play to a bench-warmer pretty fast.

    You guys need to retool this. Champions shouldn't take 35 or 40 covers just to get back to where they were, or we are going to be leaving them on the bench for months.

    At 166 they should be doing as much damage as they used to (abilities and match damage). Boosted, they should be doing as much damage as they used to. When championed (and unboosted) they should be doing somewhere between their old max damage and their old boosted damage. When championed and boosted, they should be doing more damage than they used to.

    If they don't, the people who use 3*s all the time are going to be nerfed and the people who use 3*s only when they are boosted to mix and match with their 4*s are going to just stop using the 3*s unless they are required.
  • Buret0
    Buret0 Posts: 1,591
    BTW, completely unbalancing the game because you clearly were targeting the 3*/4* match damage into winfinite combo of PX/SW/GSBW is going too far.

    3*s are not getting a big enough match damage boost from max level to max champion. We all know why you are holding the match damage down. What I can't believe is you are also nerfing 3* ability damage (and expecting people to heavily champion to catch up to where it was).