Prevalence of MThor and could she be the target of a rebalance?

11920212224

Comments

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    I heartily recommend people visit s2 to get a comparison point to the easy slices.
    Then reconsider if you want to play "real PVP" or are just happy to leech off the high point targets in the easy slices.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    When I talk about how the game was, there was basically always coordination. There's coordination in s2!

    The difference is the number of players coordinating. In the old days it was a bunch of groups of 20, or maybe 40, that all hated each other and fought each other, but helped their own group and played together.

    These days the biggest rooms have like, I dunno, 1000 people? All "coordinating" together. There's really no check on points, and some players are functionally immune from attacks. They've built this conveyor belt where everybody gets wherever they want to get, easily and consistently.

    It sounds good, right!? PvP where there's very little danger and you get wherever you want and all the enemies are actually friendly! Except in practice it's horrifically boring (to me, at least, and to many, many of the players actually doing it).

    That's my real problem with this stuff, and with optimal PvE, and with some other MPQ things. A lot of folks choose to play in these really boring, un-fun ways, because they think they have to, I guess, and then complain about not having fun.

  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 4,088 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Scofie said:
    Tsk. I came here for another 5 pages of argument about how OP MThor is but all I got was an insightful conversation about the state of PvP in the modern game...

    Now how do I get into this illuminati group and get T1 without playing PvP....? I once got 2nd place through a lucky bracket snipe with 7 minutes remaining.

    Same here.

    But the thread pretty much ended on page 21 after the Great Wall of Contradictions post. The OP retracted their original stance on nerfing Thor and asked for the thread to die. EB owned up to his many contradictions and also admitted this thread really isn’t about nerfing Thor. Everyone just sort of moved on to talk about PVP in general without even a mention of Thor. Actually it’s sort of a metaphor for the game itself. People complain about whatever the best is but eventually tire out and move on unless the character is an actual problem, in which case you see multiple threads sustained over time and mentions of them in threads that aren’t even about them (Gambit, Chasm). You could probably lock this or split it off at this point.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    This thread is already a split conversation by the few nerfers so it's a bit hard to split it again.

    I don't want a generous slice or sniping a slice in order to get progression or rank rewards.
    What I'd like is a pvp system not controlled by people using another MS app, and not being this people exactly the minority in this game.

    Others asynchronous pvp games don't have slices and everyone is on the same event. There's a percentage of players and there are rewards for entering that %. Maybe rewards for to rank into the 25%, another one for the 10%, another one for 5 and 1%, and then the top 100 players and better rewards.
    You shouldn't be able to chase players and make them lose points. That's toxic and there's really nothing to gain from it except immature people getting pissed off.
    A pvp where alliances have a lot less importance and any individual could have a chance to be the winner.
    That's what I really would love to see.

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    Without alliances and without LINE and without coordination of any kind, the game would have died 9 years ago.
    And this is the last I'll say on the topic of PVP.

  • Glockoma
    Glockoma Posts: 555 Critical Contributor

    Nerf Thor. 🔥🌎🔥

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Tony_Foot said:

    @entrailbucket said:

    @ You won't get t1 anywhere ever though, even with a public room -- those spots are predetermined and only available to those in the extra special top secret rooms (I wish I was joking).

    Remove the names from PVP, job done. These people are the type that play a full priced AAA game while solving the puzzles with a youtube guide. It's exploting and no better than tappers.

    This has been talked about for years as a solution, but it wouldn't actually change anything. There are several ways to handle it with minimal effort that'd have no impact on coordination whatsoever.

    If you combined this with "no skipping while shielded," well, now we're talking. I don't think the devs care enough about it to antagonize these (extremely loud, very entitled) players, though -- the backlash would be worse than any change they've ever made (except true healing, maybe).

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    Pvp is about being good fighting isn't it? Then:

    • No brackets everyone in the same event and there will be a top 100 and a % of your score compared to others players' performance
    • After skipping 2 times you must gain 60 points in order to skip another 2 times.
    • As everyone is playing in the same event, more generous rewards for top 100 and for those in the 25%.

    These changes could make a more transparent, competitive, and less toxic pvp.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited November 2023

    @Bad said:
    Pvp is about being good fighting isn't it? Then:

    • No brackets everyone in the same event and there will be a top 100 and a % of your score compared to others players' performance
    • After skipping 2 times you must gain 60 points in order to skip another 2 times.
    • As everyone is playing in the same event, more generous rewards for top 100 and for those in the 25%.

    These changes could make a more transparent, competitive, and less toxic pvp.

    1 would ensure that only the coordinators could ever get placement.

    2 is interesting, and would help hinder some coordination, but would kill PvP completely for a bunch of lower rosters.

    3 is necessary if you do #1, obviously, but I don't think the combination of those things would have the effect you're aiming for.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,502 Chairperson of the Boards

    If you want to kill co-ordination surely you make it so that when shielded you never give points for an attack regardless of when you got queued?

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:
    If you want to kill co-ordination surely you make it so that when shielded you never give points for an attack regardless of when you got queued?

    This happens much more often in non coordinated PvP than you might think, and "regular" (non coordinating) players would understandably be very upset about getting zero points for winning matches that advertised 60+.

  • MrDupaTM
    MrDupaTM Posts: 67 Match Maker

    @Blackstone said:
    Serious question... Will we just be asking for nerf after nerf of whomever is on top?

    Chasm got nerfed, now Jane is on the block, who's next after she gets relegated to boost only use?

    I'm not arguing on favor of, or against, nerfs. Nor am I saying chasm needed, or didn't... (Or Jane does or doesn't)... Need a nerf.

    I'm asking, realistically, what's next?

    What's next? More rebalances (both nerfs and buffs), it is nothing special, I want to be able to play this game in variety of ways. mThor is not as busted as Chasm was but she was crazy good from the start (I was asking for her rebalance pretty much at the same time Chasm was being discussed. Any online game have rebalances of characters, I do not know why would anyone be surprised this game have those too.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,502 Chairperson of the Boards

    Well due to server time differences the 60+ is only an estimate and "subject to change". So maybe when a player shields they get removed from any queues too?

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 11,502 Chairperson of the Boards

    BTW I am just brainstorming here - I don't have any particular interest in killing co-operative PvP.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @DAZ0273 said:
    BTW I am just brainstorming here - I don't have any particular interest in killing co-operative PvP.

    Oh no, I know! And I don't mean to just dismiss your ideas at all. But the majority of proposed fixes have come up before -- remember we've all been doing this for the better part of 10 years.

    The folks who coordinate have contingency plans for most of the obvious fixes, and most of them are really pretty easily handled. There are one or two that would really disrupt the entire enterprise, but they'd cause some pretty awful knock-on effects for everyone else, so they're unlikely to happen.

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    @entrailbucket said:
    1 would ensure that only the coordinators could ever get placement.

    2 is interesting, and would help hinder some coordination, but would kill PvP completely for a bunch of lower rosters.

    3 is necessary if you do #1, obviously, but I don't think the combination of those things would have the effect you're aiming for.

    1. Rewards getting better and everyone on this event right from the start. I.e: players getting 30% placement get 40 5* shards and 125 4* shards. What is 30%? Unknown. But if there are 6000 players scoring in this event and you place in 30%, ... you are getting a fine reward for to score among 2000 players!
    2. It's needed to get 60 points in order to skip 2 times more. With this to chase someone would prove pretty difficult and if something, not so fast as it's now. Lower rosters would have to choose carefully which team to skip. And by the way, lower rosters probably are playing for wins so they'd only have to quit. (Maybe limiting number of times to quit too)
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 4,088 Chairperson of the Boards

    @MrDupaTM said:

    @Blackstone said:
    Serious question... Will we just be asking for nerf after nerf of whomever is on top?

    Chasm got nerfed, now Jane is on the block, who's next after she gets relegated to boost only use?

    I'm not arguing on favor of, or against, nerfs. Nor am I saying chasm needed, or didn't... (Or Jane does or doesn't)... Need a nerf.

    I'm asking, realistically, what's next?

    What's next? More rebalances (both nerfs and buffs), it is nothing special, I want to be able to play this game in variety of ways. mThor is not as busted as Chasm was but she was crazy good from the start (I was asking for her rebalance pretty much at the same time Chasm was being discussed. Any online game have rebalances of characters, I do not know why would anyone be surprised this game have those too.

    I’ve seen this argument posted on these forums so often, and people refuse to understand that what they are asking for is a game that does not exist. Nerfing Thor in a game where buffs/nerfs happen with every update is very very different than nerfing her in the game we have, where buffs happen at most once per month and nerfs happen pretty much every few years.

    People who have never worked on this game and its spaghetti code love to talk about how “easy” it’d be to do these small rebalances but don’t understand that it’s a small team. It’s not like call of duty or Fortnite. Second, it takes time away from all the other upgrades to the game we’ve enjoyed. Third, a lot of changes are harder than people think. Requests like upping the number of boosts we can buy or replacing pve enemies seem like super simple things to do but the devs themself admit its much more complex. Finally, nerfs don’t make money and in fact one could argue they can only lose the company money. Some players distrust the developers and some not only stop spending, but leave the game completely. Now the exception to this rule and the one time I could see nerfs saving them money is when a character is SO oppressive (eg Chasm, Bishop) that the game becomes unfun and their metrics show a drop in engagement that way. While constant rebalances to all the top/bottom characters would be cool, the infrastructure we have doesn’t seem to support that. So given the game we have where only the very worst offenders get nerfed; Thor is no where near that oppressive.

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards

    This thread is still going?! Wow.

  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 7,012 Chairperson of the Boards

    @MrDupaTM A certain loud subset of MPQ players demand an unbalanced metagame, with overpowered characters, because they hate playing the game but refuse to quit. They want to spend as little time or mental energy playing as possible. If the devs gave them a character that instantly won every match, they'd argue that was "good for the game," because they just want to get done with the chore of playing it as fast as possible every day.

  • Zalasta
    Zalasta Posts: 308 Mover and Shaker

    You’re not too wrong EB. There’s probably a lot of escalation of commitment in players that have been around for years. I find myself thinking of quitting on a regular basis, but I’m somewhat of a completionist, having just championed all classic 5stars. A lot of time and effort gone into this game to simply walk away. Plus I’ve liked many of the changes made by the new devs, even if there have been some missteps and there is so much work left to do. Hoping 2024 will be a year of better improvements and characters.