Compensation for Chasm nerf discussion

Do we have any timeline for the chasm rework/buff/missednerfopportunity ? or are they putting that on hold indefinitely as chasm stuns the devs each time they try a change ?

@entrailbucket said:
Chasm isn't overpowered this week. In 3 weeks when the boosted 5* list is Wasp, Hela, Ultron, and Sersi, he'll be overpowered again.

So what your true complaint is that godboost makes things unfair? Completely agree, let's get rid of +100 level boosts, which creates a "Play only the characters we tell you to play this week!" environment.

The other complaint I see there is some characters are horribly underpowered. Completely agree, as I've said for years "nerf everything until wasp is good, and then nerf wasp!". Or I guess let's buff all the bad stuff until there's a bit more of a balance, which there never has been and never will be.

The other complaint I see there is "Meta characters are meta". Because you know what my Chasm will get hit with on that godboost week? SW/Col and Kang/Whatever and Jane/Whatever and....you know, those other meta teams. I've never seen one meta that stops everything else dead, and Chasm has been no different.

Is it frustrating to see the same few teams all the time? I suppose that's why godboost was invented, but it just creates a bigger problem of needing -all- the meta characters rather than a few. I still think we saw a higher % Hulkoye being used in those days compared to Chasm now: and that's just time-distance from meta characters.

It's been a year since Chasm release, and I'm seeing less and less as each season passes. Another year from now, even without a giant meta shift, we'll be down further - as more Chasmers retire and more new players get the new hotness: at which time the cycle will repeat.

See you in 2025 when we're all complaining about a needed 6* Aunt May nerf!

golden oldie as next 2* plz

@SnowcaTT said:

@entrailbucket said:

How on earth is anyone still dumb enough to fall for this scheme?

It's worked for them for ten years.

I mean, here are all these folks complaining about overpowered characters and possible nerfs. Were this the original threads I'd dredge up the 3* Sentry/Hood thread, or Mags/Spidey. Has any specific-topic thread ever gotten more pages than the MBW-true healing one?

Sunk cost / habit-addiction is a hell of a thing.

Respectfully, it's a phone game. It's not heroin. Players can and do stop playing MPQ all the time, without facing fatal withdrawal symptoms.

If someone is addicted to a phone game, such that playing it is no longer fun, or they feel taken advantage of, they can quite easily just stop playing that particular phone game.

EB - I agree that the metagame is boring but I disagree about what it is - playing certain powerful teams is still the game, the metagame is structuring your playing time, organising your alliance, and selecting your slices so that playing those teams maximises your placement & rewards.

All that stuff can FRO, frankly. A few overpowered teams is way less ghastly.

@DrClever said:
EB - I agree that the metagame is boring but I disagree about what it is - playing certain powerful teams is still the game, the metagame is structuring your playing time, organising your alliance, and selecting your slices so that playing those teams maximises your placement & rewards.

All that stuff can FRO, frankly. A few overpowered teams is way less ghastly.

You make a good point about the nature of the metagame. All the stuff you mention is also the metagame, plus more -- all the PvP coordination stuff, plus stuff that nobody actually does anymore, like targeted dumping, enforcing, and sniping for placement.

But the bar to participate in any of that stuff is "you must have these specific few characters, at a reasonably high level," and that's not good, especially when those characters are older or difficult to get.

@DAZ0273 said:
I don't understand what the problem with boosts is. The 4* had them for the longest time when it was the main tier so why not the 5* tier? It took Demiurge a lifetime to even do anything with 5* apart from collect cash - no PvP or anywhere to effectively use them or try them out. It was like they were ashamed that 5* characters existed for so long!

I think the main issue for PvP is that many players end up using the same two or three characters that are determined to be the best among the list. For example this week, it's Kang/Hit-Monkey/Gargantos. Depending on the slice you play in, a good chunk of matches can potentially end up being mirror matches which can get rather repetitive.

Obviously the flip side to that is, if the meta isn't perfectly balanced (wink and a nod to the Mad Titan), you end up with one meta team that completely dominates and you still end up playing a significant amount of mirror matches.

The boost list only provides a sort of respite from the main meta by providing an artificial weekly meta. It doesn't really provide a rich variety of matches nor requires much thought in terms of strategy once you figure out the formula for victory for that week. Sure it is a step up from the "One Meta To Rule Them All" system but I don't think it goes far enough.

Perhaps it's for that very reason that Broken Circle wants to incorporate Supports in PvP. A player would have to check the enemy team's supports and look at their own available supports to gauge their likelihood of success. But that's a different conversation.

@fight4thedream said:

The boost list only provides a sort of respite from the main meta by providing an artificial weekly meta.

That's much better than nothing IMO

But yes, I'd favour more, and more varied, temporary metas - like a level boost if you have all heroes / villains, or 1 Avenger, 1 X-person, & 1 Runaway, or whatever.

Even without introducing damage types, environments, and all the other extras that have been mooted there are ways to shake things up and keep us thinking.

This has been my position from the beginning (and incidentally, I was screaming about boosted 5* long before they implemented them).

It's a band-aid, a quick fix, a low-effort way for them to introduce some variety. Think about the amount of boost -- 100 levels!!! The difference between a 450 and a 550. It takes 100 levels of boost to make some of these guys usable, and worse, some of them aren't even usable at +100 levels! Some people have talked about reducing the boost, but there's a ton of these guys that would be unusable at, say, +50.

THAT's how big the balance problem is in this game. It's just a massive, massive lift to get everybody up to par, and even if they did that, we'd still be able to rank the characters, there'd still be a "best," and we'd still see the best team everywhere.

As it stands, I'll take a meta that changes every week over one that changes...never. It's better than nothing.

I'm not against pvp supports.
But... right now there are A LOT of characters bugged. And weeks and months passing by, nothing changes.
First the foundation and then the roof, because pvp supports will add more bugs.
After saying that, if there are supports in pvp players will probably skip teams if there are a lot of level 5 supports, even if those are bad ones.