Fingers crossed the next 5 to push out Kingpin is decent

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tonypq
tonypq Posts: 549 Critical Contributor
in MPQ General Discussion
I'm really hoping whoever the next 5* is released and who would bump Kingpin out of LLs is decent. With 5 Carol being a huge disappoint and Dooms 5 not being what many hoped for, really hope the next 5 they release is pretty darn good.

I've been building a stash, unfortunately it's about evenly split between LL tokens and CPs. So I can't hit the random 5 stores or LL too hard. I'm a Doom fan so I can live with his 5, Carol was pretty meh with the repeater tile garbage but I could deal with her if the next 5 is pretty good. If not then wow have I waited forever to crack my stash and unfortunately will wait even longer if the next 5 sucks. 

Anyone have faith the next 5 will be above average to really good ?

(fingers crossed)
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  • Treras
    Treras Posts: 47 Just Dropped In
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    Putting my money on average. Kitty was the outlier from the trend of average 5*.
  • bbigler
    bbigler Posts: 2,115 Chairperson of the Boards
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    There isn't any pattern to when we get good 5*s, so I think it's unpredictable.  I've read that the devs like to shake up the meta periodically but Kitty is still in her stride.  Widespread Kitty usage hasn't been going on very long (by comparison) so I wouldn't hold my breath for the next 5*.  But.........if the next 5* is great, it will still take a long time for most players to cover and champ that character (like 10 - 20 weeks)......by then, Kitty will be tiresome. 
  • Richyyy
    Richyyy Posts: 305 Mover and Shaker
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    I'm far from convinced that they actually know when these characters are going to be good, or especially that they'd be good enough to infiltrate the meta. I think they fluke into it. At the other end of the scale, they seem scared to make any of them glaringly too good after the Gambit debacle, so we keep getting characters at the other end of the scale, or who are too complicated to do anything quickly.

    Of course, if they notice that people are getting sick of waiting for a decent 5* and it's affected spending, the easy way to put out one that slips into the meta is to offer Kitty a 5* partner that's better than Grocket. A 5* who puts out special tiles similar to Grocket and does literally anything else (even just offering 5* match damage in non-Kitty colors would be useful) would lead to people cracking open some hoards.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2019
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    Richyyy said:
    I'm far from convinced that they actually know when these characters are going to be good, or especially that they'd be good enough to infiltrate the meta. I think they fluke into it. At the other end of the scale, they seem scared to make any of them glaringly too good after the Gambit debacle, so we keep getting characters at the other end of the scale, or who are too complicated to do anything quickly.

    Of course, if they notice that people are getting sick of waiting for a decent 5* and it's affected spending, the easy way to put out one that slips into the meta is to offer Kitty a 5* partner that's better than Grocket. A 5* who puts out special tiles similar to Grocket and does literally anything else (even just offering 5* match damage in non-Kitty colors would be useful) would lead to people cracking open some hoards.
    Demi has no excuse for NOT knowing how good releases are in advance.  We all have pretty good idea as soon as the numbers go up.  When was the last time the community was wildly wrong about a character?  (Not a little bit wrong because 'we thought they would be good and they turned out to be great,' but really wrong because 'we thought they would be bad, but they turned out to be great'?). Was it 2018? 2017?

    Demi should be about as good at evaluating their own designs as the playerbase. And if they aren't at least that good, then we should be comfortable labeling that as a failing.

    Also, even if we are super generous and say that Thor and JJ were basically done when Gambit released, they still had plenty of time to revise okoye, and they released her as is.  We can't say that they have been gun-shy since gambit became a clear outlier. 

    (Also, notwithstanding what I just said about community rankings, I think GED gets a bit too much flak from the playerbase.  He is basically a true healing version of JJ with boardshake and true heal instead of special tiles.  Both have strong offensive powers that cost 9 or more AP, have strong passives that make them irritating to face on defense and somewhat hard to truly starve of AP.  But they are both too slow to be in the meta.  If the next 5* is GED/JJ strength or better, I think the GED + marvel + new guy tokens are arguably worthy of a hoard.)
  • randomhero1090
    randomhero1090 Posts: 396 Mover and Shaker
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    @fight4thedream

    Nice writeup.  Hopefully some of that input makes it to D3.

    As for CM...  well...  HUGE miss.  This should have been a meta no-brainer considering the hype around the CM movie and then her role in Endgame.
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,311 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Did you notice the meta 5 store a few weeks ago in the middle of this yawn-worthy run?  Do you think the devs don't know how uninspiring their latest efforts are?  They introduced the first ever "buyers club" bonus CP offer as well, still ongoing for a while longer for all the whales out there.  All to prop up sales which are flagging.

    The devs work hard to make interesting 5's.  When they don't work, it's probably a combination of time crunches, personnel shortages, tech limitations.  Every two weeks they push out some character to chase and fit into an increasingly crowded group of abilities.

    I think it's certainly possible that the next 5, probably an Endgame tie-in, will be good.  But what about the one after?  And after that?  I don't want to have one good 5 in the middle of meh-to-terrible ones, like Kitty recently.  But if so, you'll finish a lot of bad characters as you chase them and have to decide how much.

    My champed Loki, Wasp, Kingpin, and Cable all say hi to Kitty.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,916 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I just eclipsed 300 pulls myself (2/3 from CP, 1/3 from LTs), so am hoping Endgame gives us a monster 5* but agree that if we get someone as good as Kitty it’ll likely be an accident. And I’ll pull regardless. I’m pretty much trying to champ them all, or for the bad ones, get them to feeder status at minimum. 

    Also, I loved the write up on Doom @fight4thedream. I love the character and that particular arc, so it crushed me when we got the version we did. And while there’s hope for Marvel and Fisk to get reworks because they’re that bad, Doom is not bad enough to warrant a second look. Sadly, he is what he is. 
  • Richyyy
    Richyyy Posts: 305 Mover and Shaker
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    bluewolf said:
    Did you notice the meta 5 store a few weeks ago in the middle of this yawn-worthy run?  Do you think the devs don't know how uninspiring their latest efforts are?  They introduced the first ever "buyers club" bonus CP offer as well, still ongoing for a while longer for all the whales out there.  All to prop up sales which are flagging.
    I think they know afterwards, when everyone on here points out the ways in which they're flawed and no one spends any money/tokens/CP on chasing them. I don't think they do anywhere near enough testing to know before release whether any given character is going to be a Kingpin or a Kitty.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2019
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    Fight4:

    I basically agree on you re: JJ.  She is good and her powers synergize well.  But she is slow.l, and her offensive abilities are painful, but not very power by 5* standards.  When playing against JJ, her red and black are rarely devastating (in order to get her black to do more damage than Doom'd, you must have special tiles on 2-3 colors, which means you likely have to cast her red, so now you need 20 AP to exceed the da mage that doom can do for 9 (potentially 9+3), or rely on a teammate.  Her biggest attribute is her trap tiles.  On offense you will chase them for the damage/AP, and on defense, even the dumb ai will proc them randomly.  When matches go badly against JJ, it's because several traps get proc'd quickly, and that hurts a lot.

    Doom has only 1 nuke, but it hits much harder than either of JJ's.  It hits hard enough to cause trouble for 1/2 Thor's or 1/2 DDs.  And when playing against doom, the player must choose to either let doom fuel his nuke, OR chase black to suppress doom and proc his healing/ap gen.  This means that doom is likely to get his black nuke off a time or two unless he is downed quickly.  But he cannot be downed quickly by a team that depends on special tiles.  It's a solid 'pick your poison' design.  Plus he brings true healing to the table (disclaimer, I might value true healing more than the average player), which I think makes up for his lower total offensive output as compared to jj.  His yellow is almost worthless without victorious. But having the option to reset the board is not terrible, especially if you don't have a better yellow outlet. I would like him more if his healing/ap gen worked against goons. 

    I don't think he is a top tier character. But the community is treating him as a 'no value' 5* when I think he is a 'some value' 5*.  I think he is kinda like 5BW when she was realesed.  BB/OML were already out, so she was definitely not top tier.  But her damage output was strong at the time, if contingent, and she had some stun/board control utility, so she brought something to the table.

    (More disclaimers, I don't care about the comic book doom character at all, and it seems like a lot of pushback here on the forums is of the "but he is awesome in the comics!" variety. I think that might be clouding judgment on him.  Also, there are still very few GEDs in the wild because he was surrounded by so much 5* trash and the meta store also happened while he was in the pool. I am curious to see what people think when/if he becomes more widely covered.)
  • Treras
    Treras Posts: 47 Just Dropped In
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    As a curiosity regarding C5rol, i double hit a player with her champed, on the current pvp with mine lv470+ Thor and a lvl460+ Okeye.

    The repeter reached 0 three times. She wont have those 100k hit points when her bost ends so as of now she seems like Gambit 3.0.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2019
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    OJSP said:
    Vhailorx said:
    I don't think he is a top tier I am curious to see what people think when/if he becomes more widely covered.
    Well.. you're currently arguing with someone who has both JJ and Doom championed..
    I don't recall suggesting otherwise. I didn't say fight didn't have them both; I said GED wasn't yet widely covered.  There are no doubt dozens or hundreds of vets with champed GEDs already.  But I nevertheless suspect he has been surpressed because (i) people seems disappointed in him, (ii) be was bookended by disappointing 5*s, and (iii) Demi offered a timed 5* store with the 3 meta characrers shortly after his release. 

    But way to conflate two separate quotations from me without any context. ;)
  • Tony_Foot
    Tony_Foot Posts: 1,713 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Quantity over quality.  Must be tough how fast they have to pump these out.
  • jredd
    jredd Posts: 1,387 Chairperson of the Boards
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    there's probably 100 reliable people on here that would play test new 5* characters for one cover of each colour for new 5* releases. just need to ask...
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,601 Chairperson of the Boards
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    jredd said:
    there's probably 100 reliable people on here that would play test new 5* characters for one cover of each colour for new 5* releases. just need to ask...
    I, for one, am grateful that there are no players involved in the design process. Some people here have downright stupid ideas. Such a playtest program would put everyone at the mercy of how lucky the devs are at picking people with good feedback. Let's leave that RNG as it is, please and thank you.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
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    JHawkInc said:
    jredd said:
    there's probably 100 reliable people on here that would play test new 5* characters for one cover of each colour for new 5* releases. just need to ask...
    I, for one, am grateful that there are no players involved in the design process. Some people here have downright stupid ideas. Such a playtest program would put everyone at the mercy of how lucky the devs are at picking people with good feedback. Let's leave that RNG as it is, please and thank you.
    Player playtesting would be good.  There is lots of evidence that Demi doesn't understand the elder game very well.  So better pre-lease gauging of new character strength would be good for Demi and likely good for the game too. 

    Players involved in actually designing new character kits seems like a far more dubious proposition.  No doubt there are some players that would be great designers, it would be like finding a proverbial needle in a haystack, with a lot of downside risk.
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,601 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Vhailorx said:
    JHawkInc said:
    jredd said:
    there's probably 100 reliable people on here that would play test new 5* characters for one cover of each colour for new 5* releases. just need to ask...
    I, for one, am grateful that there are no players involved in the design process. Some people here have downright stupid ideas. Such a playtest program would put everyone at the mercy of how lucky the devs are at picking people with good feedback. Let's leave that RNG as it is, please and thank you.
    Player playtesting would be good.  There is lots of evidence that Demi doesn't understand the elder game very well.  So better pre-lease gauging of new character strength would be good for Demi and likely good for the game too. 

    Players involved in actually designing new character kits seems like a far more dubious proposition.  No doubt there are some players that would be great designers, it would be like finding a proverbial needle in a haystack, with a lot of downside risk.
    It's a double-edged sword, because while more playtesting would be good, there are a great many players that shout "garbage" the instant the perceive a character to not be meta defining (regardless of how accurate that is, as people called America, Okoye, and Kitty when they were new too).

    Theoretically some player feedback could mitigate that (and they could suggest teams to try out, even, like how pairings used to be suggested in the Marvel.com articles), but then we circle back to finding players that can provide good feedback in the first place. Veterans decrying a character as poor for not being meta isn't useful for all of the players still growing and developing rosters, you know?

    And that's not considering different tastes, either. Take Supports as a prime example. Some people love them, some people hate them, some see them as pointless, you've got people that want to use them in PVP and others that threaten to quit the game if such happens, you have people that like the extra random effects they provide, and some that start to get irrationally angry the moment you suggest adding more RNG to the game, and then there's the whole thing with supports coming out after character releases with that pseudo "day one patch" thing going on. You get a lopsided group of opinions from the playtesters, you could end up with recommendations pointing design heavily one way when the playerbase as a whole has broader opinions.

    The downside is that it's always a needle in a haystack situation.

    Push come to shove, I think they get more useful information from the forums, reddit, Discord, social media, etc, getting it from the masses, rather than a few distinct playtesters. It's not as expedient, but it's a better representation of the playerbase as a whole.

    (as an aside, and speaking of expedient, I wonder what kind of time frame you'd have to have players playtest stuff in order to get useful information back during the design process? we know the devs have a generally slow process/cycle, I wonder what the turnaround would be between playtesting something and actually seeing it in the game?)
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2019
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    It's quite predictable what kind of abilities those competitive players will come up with. 

    For example,

    1) No 5* will have drawback to their abilities. Think Kingpin and Gambit. It has been proven time and time again that drawback are always frowned upon.

    2) All 5* will have fewer than 9 or even 8ap for any of their abilities.

    3) repeater will be 1-turn at 3 or 5 covers and fortified. If it's a 2 turn repeater, the effect of the repeater will be activated once immediately after firing the power.

    And more...

    To summarise, it's going to be filled with strategy where new 5* are bruteforcing the game. You don't need veterans to playtest these type of abilities. Even new players can come up with these kind of bruteforcing abilties. The balance of the game will be greatly disrupted due to power creep.  :D
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,311 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2019
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    It strikes me that this is now the longest string of mediocre to bad 5’s in the game’s history.  There have been 2 you might skip comfortably in the past, but never 4 where they just didn’t gel or were actually unfun to use.  

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