Character Feedback

@Borstock said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Borstock said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Borstock said:

@entrailbucket said:

@BriMan2222 said:

@amigopdude22 said:

@F0nt said:
I’ve been sticky beaking the nerf forum post a bit and taking notes for the future.

Please do not bring back nerfs. The few that happened were disastrous to the player base and incredibly disheartening. It starts the inevitable chase of a snake eating it's tail where the team just chases down meta characters or teams that people invest in to compete. Nerfs are bad, buffs are good. Building counters is good.

The gambit nerf was good, he was unbeatable without having your own gambit, which was disheartening. Nerfing him was the opposite, it opened the game up again.

Nerfing bishop was good. He punished 5 stars just for existing and stun locked you out of playing the game.

The chasm nerf was good. He was oppressive to fight against, he dominated the game, and he made matches last forever and often made matches unable to ever end and forced retreating.

The Polaris nerf and mthor nerf made them less op, but still very powerful and still very useful.

I'm struggling to think of any nerf that hasn't been a good thing for the health of the game.

The recent nerfs to Nova and Sidewinder fixed two completely broken accidents, relatively quickly.

The idea that they'd be "bringing back" nerfs, when they just nerfed Polaris and m'Thor, is really funny.

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't those nerfs by the previous team? And didn't the new team pause what was meant to be more nerfs coming?

"Bringing back" may not be a perfect description, but I don't find it "funny" wrong, considering the context.

The old team "paused" the planned nerf to Shang-Chi.

The nerfs cited by the other guy were all done by BCS or Demiurge too, because IP2 has been on MPQ for like 10 seconds.

Okay. So, why is it funny to say don't bring nerfs back? You acknowledge they were paused and done by someone else.

Because the other set of devs like, just did them? Where did they go?

The team doing them got fired.

Something doesn't have to be gone long to be brought back. Charlie Cox is Daredevil again. Andrew Garfield was replaced as Spider-Man very quickly and was then brought back quickly. I can name TV shows that got cancelled, brought back, and didn't miss their premier date.

When you call someone's wording funny, others interpret that to mean "that's so stupid, it's funny". Not only is that rude, but in this case it's inaccurate.

I think you're reading way too much into this.

@Borstock said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Borstock said:

@entrailbucket said:

@Borstock said:

@entrailbucket said:

@BriMan2222 said:

@amigopdude22 said:

@F0nt said:
I’ve been sticky beaking the nerf forum post a bit and taking notes for the future.

Please do not bring back nerfs. The few that happened were disastrous to the player base and incredibly disheartening. It starts the inevitable chase of a snake eating it's tail where the team just chases down meta characters or teams that people invest in to compete. Nerfs are bad, buffs are good. Building counters is good.

The gambit nerf was good, he was unbeatable without having your own gambit, which was disheartening. Nerfing him was the opposite, it opened the game up again.

Nerfing bishop was good. He punished 5 stars just for existing and stun locked you out of playing the game.

The chasm nerf was good. He was oppressive to fight against, he dominated the game, and he made matches last forever and often made matches unable to ever end and forced retreating.

The Polaris nerf and mthor nerf made them less op, but still very powerful and still very useful.

I'm struggling to think of any nerf that hasn't been a good thing for the health of the game.

The recent nerfs to Nova and Sidewinder fixed two completely broken accidents, relatively quickly.

The idea that they'd be "bringing back" nerfs, when they just nerfed Polaris and m'Thor, is really funny.

Correct me if I'm wrong but weren't those nerfs by the previous team? And didn't the new team pause what was meant to be more nerfs coming?

"Bringing back" may not be a perfect description, but I don't find it "funny" wrong, considering the context.

The old team "paused" the planned nerf to Shang-Chi.

The nerfs cited by the other guy were all done by BCS or Demiurge too, because IP2 has been on MPQ for like 10 seconds.

Okay. So, why is it funny to say don't bring nerfs back? You acknowledge they were paused and done by someone else.

Because the other set of devs like, just did them? Where did they go?

The team doing them got fired.

Something doesn't have to be gone long to be brought back. Charlie Cox is Daredevil again. Andrew Garfield was replaced as Spider-Man very quickly and was then brought back quickly. I can name TV shows that got cancelled, brought back, and didn't miss their premier date.

When you call someone's wording funny, others interpret that to mean "that's so stupid, it's funny". Not only is that rude, but in this case it's inaccurate.

Correct and thank you Borstock, I didn't think it was difficult to understand the meaning.

Hi there, always nice to have dev interaction. Here's my thoughts, though I haven't been able to use most of these guys lol.

Sword Master - Lin Lie: I like the artwork. Not your department but still the first thing we see!
Red - Pretty decent for 6 red AP, though I think the whole "ignore protect tiles" is very weak and seldom comes up. Not that protect tiles don't come up, but that they rarely come up in any meaningful way. Vs the challenge node with beta ray bill, sure. I'm also not sure how the 50% permanent damage works from reading it. Does it just do a huge chunk of damage = half their max HP? Or is half of the ~22k (of my lin) permanent? Permanent damage is also very overestimated. Omega Red is pretty much the only one whose permanent damage is good, and that's because it's passive, ramping, and also makes debuffs. All the other characters who do permanent damage usually do it in very very small amounts.

Purple - Locked tiles are very annoying, ESPECIALLY when you can't control what's being locked. Locking enemy special tiles is nice, but still a bit annoying.

Black - Another ignore protect tiles one. Maybe have it do more damage if there are no enemy protects? Seems like it's losing out on a chunk of potential damage. I like the idea of "solving puzzles" to bump up his stuff, but locked tiles really aren't the way to go. I'd honestly rather some sort of quandary-like puzzle lol. Solve puzzles by matching colors in order! Or well, just not locked tiles heh.

• Not a bad character, decent to solid. But locked tiles make ~1.5 of his powers pretty unappealing, so might as well just ignore that. And then the protect tile ignoring is usually useless too. So while he's not horrible, he's also not really someone I'm exciting to throw in a team.

Iron Fist - Lin Lie: Also nice artwork
Red - Now that the self damage is fixed, much better lol. If anything, for a 8ap power you can make the self-damage worse to use. 5% is pretty negligble, especially since it's current health. Multi hit stuff is always fun

Purple - EEK more ignore protect tiles, super unnecessary. A nice power though, wiping out enemy special tiles is helpful too, and on a cheapish power.

Yellow - Animation is a bit slow, but a solid power.

• Stronger than the 5 I think, if he were ascended I mean. Heals and passive protects, multi hits, he'd be a much more usable 5 than swordmaster. As a 4 it's not just as important or impressive.

Falcon - Jaoquin Torres: Uhhh weird artwork
Red - Uhhh bit complicated. I'm not a big fan of powers going up and down, too much work keeping track. It's why 5Hunter is super annoying to use. But there's like 8 different things going on in here. I'd like it if it were simpler. Ditch it becoming weaker, and just have it get better! I don't think the numbers are that crazy where it needs a drawback. The boost to the power is a bit low too, so it makes even less sense to have it get weaker

Yellow - I get the falcony theme of making strikes and going airborne, but if it's going to be competing with sam wilson it's not really close at all. I don't think each 5* has to be better than the rest, but again, this seems to be trying to copy/compete with Sam Wilson. I don't know much about this version of falcon, but probably would've been better if he was his own thing. 30% boost to SAP tiles sounds cool, but you'd need to get some big ones out there already, like with Sam. And at that point there are better options.

Blue - Another complicated power, does I think 4 things lol. It usually seems like the more aspects to a power, the weaker each one is. We don't really know exactly how the "power budget" works for each character, but that's what it feels like.

*Very complicated. In a complex rpg I might like a character like this who juggles multiple skills to get the most out of it. In MPQ...that's not really what I'm looking for lol. Doesn't have to be stupid duh or anything. But I don't want to have to use 1-2 other people to make a bunch of SAP, then use a power go go airborne and boost them, then use a red to come back and boost them some more. It's just a lot of work. I'd much rather he boost stuff WHILE airborne, even if it's not nearly as much. Though that's what Sam does. I never use that though because he has a really strong active that requires him to not be airborne. Maybe if this falcon had a stronger depower, kraven style, while airborne? It'd be a reason to bring him along without needing to juggle 6 different things.

Toad - Mortimer Toynbee: Bit creepy, but he's toad, so why not.

Purple - Like most people have said/found out, this power's pretty busted when combined with his other one. I like the idea though. Cheap kerploding.

Black - Strong stuff, probably don't need it to do damage lol.

Blue - Like mentioned above, bit broken. Making brand new tiles is a bit crazy. Though with 5Magik I WISH she made new ones when you matched her repeaters. Far too often her multiplying would just fizzle. With Toad triggering passively though, and easily, I think it'd be fine to just charge existing tiles.

*A very strong 4, borderline broken but with a few tweaks he'd still be way at the top, which would be great.

Some effects are just a bit too meh and are only useful in extremely rare cases. I think these can all use a buff.

Ignore Protect tiles - Very few teams nowadays put out a lot of/strong protects. Beta Ray Bill/Polaris is pretty much it, and there are plenty of ways to cut that off early, if not t0. I guess May Parker can get up there too, but only when boosted really. So powers like Lin's really only matter when they have such CRAZY protect tiles that you're not getting through it, so then you'd need to fire it multiple times.

Permant Damage - I already mentioned omega red. It's never really enough damage to make a dent in healing. Looking through my roster filtered for "permanent" for a few examples

• Mephisto: permanent damage (PD) to stunned people. Didn't even know it did that, never had it come up where it mattered lol
• High Evo: 12% for 8 black isn't going to come up very often, not worth it
• Crystal: Hers is passive at least, so it's just tacked on damage, the permanent part isn't very important
  Ya, Omega Red is the only one who's PD matters really.

Burst Heal: I get true healing is powerful, but burst healing tends to be pretty weak too. Crystal's is the only one I can think of being strong/annoying, but only when boosted. I think M'Baku's is strong, but that's mostly paired with his DR. Some heroes have really leaned into it like with viper (strong but so complicated) or 3mephisto.

Locked Tiles: Also went into that earlier, but it's usually just very annoying and makes the match take longer because you have to go around them all. That'd be fine for like...a boss fight I guess lol
Quicksilver - Don't mind his as much, because it's only on a blue match, only locks TU, and after so many, clears them all
Jubilee - Very annoying to start a match with a pile of locked tiles.
Totem Dagger - One of the only good examples, because it specifically locks enemy tiles, and has a very low limit (2?). Low chance it'll get in your way, and high chance it'll help you out in the process by taking out an enemy tile.

Synergies: I'd like to see more of these, but for broader pre reqs. There have been a few (in this post!) effects that go off of supernatural, but I don't think that's a very big list. Maybe 20-30 looking at my roster. Ok that's not as small as I thought. But it's also not as easy to tell who they are. Dr strange and other sorcerers sure, buy why x-23? Something that works on heroes/villains, or one of the bigger teams like x-men. Not sure what the top 10 "affiliations" would be, but I think any sort of synergy should use those. Not brotherhood, phoenix five (though that kind of makes sense, all the P5 should have synergy when one goes down!). Or even more crazy esoteric, an effect that's boosted when used with a specific character like phylla vell. I get that too, but it's just sooooo esoteric. And the characters that duo up like that rarely complement each other anyway.

What'd be cool is the ability to equip a specific character as a support. So say, phylla vell could equip moondragon and get a unique support that only works for her.

Side note: What is the new team's plans for supports? We still get tokens and $$ bundles, but the old team didn't touch them for like 2 years. There was a lot of back and forth over using them in pvp, but after the big nasty ones (ugh leapfrog) were banned, I think it's mostly been good stuff. Even not considering pvp, I really like supports and like them adding a unique, extra facet to your team. Would really like to see s'more!

Most people don't care about characters unless they're shaking up the meta. We had nova, and sam before her, and uhhhh not sure if anything else came out last year. 4Moonstone is very strong but squishy unless ascended. 1-5hawkeye has been big as well. I know he's not NEW, but I'm just giving examples of what changed the way people played.

We don't need to constantly be getting ultra meta characters every 2 weeks, or to have character after character trying to counter them (the old team tried like 50x to counter chasm before finally nerfing him. Kang was close-ish).

Passives tend to be popular, cheap powers definitely. Less complicated good. All 3 powers don't have to be those, but if NONE of them are, people are going to gloss over it. Like...Cable's rework made his stuff better, but it's all still expensive, and his passive is meh. So if he had just come out yesterday, no one would want him.

What a promising thread to start and kudos to you @F0nt for giving us hope.

I know im late to this party, but why not. I will also note thay I am pretty passionate about balance and diversity, so no offense is meant if I sound harsh:

Sword Master:
I imagine you might have been trying to play it safe here as maybe its your first character, but overall, I dont see any reason at all to play him, unless you really like his lore. Mostly, he is just very dry and doesn't do anything. You were on to something with the unlocking tiles, but its far too costly and the reward is basically nothing.

Falcon:
More mechanically fun, but falls a little short on value since it seems like he is trying to do a few things, but doesn't do any of them well enough.
He is trying to counter SAPs, but he will quickly be outpaced. He is trying to buff tiles, but in this realm he also seems to fall a little short? I might need to lab this part more though.

Toad:
Started out really fun, but was clearly too strong and may have been nerfed in to much less fun territory. I'll experiment more soon, fun gameplay though.

Related global thoughts (since you seem to be reading them?)

Please please please play the game more (and at a high level) to get a solid understanding of what characters are like and what is balanced (and definitely continue to ask for feedback, like this!). It has been abundantly clear that, for the past too many years, the people with creative control didnt understand their own player experience (like at all). This resulted in wildy imbalanced gameplay and stagnation. The fact that you immediately corrected Toad at least shows you are trying, that's good, just dont swing the nerfs too far in the direction of useless (this also happened a lot).

You must know that it will be almost impossible to be successful with new characters if the current ones are already way out of balance. Or, your only option is to keep creating new OP characters to compete, but matches currently end on turn 1, so you are already at your ceiling.

Examples:
New Swordguy wants to do decent damage with red, pink and black, however, 1star Hawkeye and Shang Chi have a chokehold on red and pink already, and there is no value (when it comes to winning) in choosing a different character who does it so much worse and with no other passive incentive.
Similarly, the Falcon you just created might be slightly more tempting had 5 star Sam not already existed with a similar move set that is way over powered.
Basically, if you dont fix the current out of balance characters, your new characters will never truly get to shine.

I personally would love to see a bit more creativity also. There are still endless options for creative expression in these characters, but mostly we tend to just get the same abilities/mechanics, (maybe slightly tweaked if we're lucky) under a different name.
Using Swordguy as an example again, maybe every time he matches a locked tile, he gets another turn, maybe after he matches a certain amount the ability triggers for free or maybe he is the only character who can move locked tiles. There's a lot more that can be done gameplay wise, rather than rehashing the same stuff. This also gives characters more value beyond just damage.

Luckily only a few characters are currently way overpowered: Hawkeye1, IronMay3 and Sam5. They should definitely be tweaked, but oh boy be prepared for the backlash. Its also worth noting that supports that start the match with AP overly highlight most problems (to the point it needs to be considered what your new characters will do with them) but I can only imagine what might happen if you remove those.

I very much look forward to your teams work (I have been a fan since the original on PsP) and really appreciate the outreach (fingers crossed you all keep it up).

@F0nt said:
Hi Everyone,
My name is Finn, and I'm one of the designers on Marvel Puzzle Quest.

I'm posting here to check in on what people think of the new characters being added to the game.

Sword Master - Lin Lie, Iron Fist - Lin Lie, Falcon - Jaoquin Torres, and Toad - Mortimer Toynbee - How are we feeling about them?

I'm hoping we can get a bit of open feedback with characters going forward to be more active in making characters that the community can enjoy and see a use case for with existing ones.

Cheers!

I’m a little late to this conversation but I don’t think any of the first three should be more than a 3* character. Iron Fist a 2* at best. Toad yes, being a OG character with 60+ years of comics history (books, film, TV, etc.), definitely. The others, too much effort building up characters that a large hunk of the fandom dosen’t even know. I never heard of Lin Lie and I’m a diehard comics fan. Still waiting on Wonder-man here! Another 60+ years of magnificence and not a mention in any of the surveys?!

Here's a thought. I think it's been brought up before but not in this thread. We could do with another character that (for want of a better word) punishes opponents who have brought a loaner or otherwise a character loads of levels below the rest of their team into PvP.

We currently have 3 and 5 star Thanos who deal damage to the team when one opponent is downed, it works quite well against seed teams but against a team running 2 500s and a loaner (or 2 500s and a 370 Iron May, for example) he basically hits once at the beginning and is then pretty much dead weight.

What I'd envision is something like doing damage each turn based on number of downed enemies, reducing enemy ability levels based on number of downed enemies, increasing their own match damage based on difference in lowest and highest enemy max health... This sort of thing.

Obviously you'd have to again be careful not to make the character disproportionately effective on defense as you don't want to have a revolt on your hands, but it could produce a little bit of pressure for the guys running loaner all the time (and those running underleveled Hawkeye and May)

@LuxAurae said:

@Grantosium said:
Here's a thought. I think it's been brought up before but not in this thread. We could do with another character that (for want of a better word) punishes opponents who have brought a loaner or otherwise a character loads of levels below the rest of their team into PvP.

We currently have 3 and 5 star Thanos who deal damage to the team when one opponent is downed, it works quite well against seed teams but against a team running 2 500s and a loaner (or 2 500s and a 370 Iron May, for example) he basically hits once at the beginning and is then pretty much dead weight.

What I'd envision is something like doing damage each turn based on number of downed enemies, reducing enemy ability levels based on number of downed enemies, increasing their own match damage based on difference in lowest and highest enemy max health... This sort of thing.

Obviously you'd have to again be careful not to make the character disproportionately effective on defense as you don't want to have a revolt on your hands, but it could produce a little bit of pressure for the guys running loaner all the time (and those running underleveled Hawkeye and May)

That's a lot of words to say I want something to hit grills with easier.. Feels like trying to take advantage of IP2's lack of knowledge about the game. But we're on to you.

Loaner users already get punished by the way by not having an as strong character and also by not being able to equip supports.

Feels kinda weird you are targetting players that are already at a disadvantage to you if you weren't trying to hate on grills.

I tend to agree with this, as it’s a bit of an odd request. If you want to hurt players using Iron May or Hawkeye at 3 or 4 star so that they can’t ’punch Up’ just have them nerfed. No need to punish all players with underdeveloped rosters

@F0nt said:
Thanks for all the info peeps! I've been putting a lot of these into our characters feedback doc for future considerations.

Were compiling a list of the known characters that don't see a lot of use in the game right now for potential later buffs or partial reworks to try and get some of them back into the light of day. But that's a long piece of string so well be tackling that for awhile.

I'll add Wonder-man to the list. If you've got any ideas for his abilities feel free to air them!

Possible Wonder-man Abilities

Ability: Immortality
Color: green

AP Cost: ???
Resurrection ability like Immortal Hulk and immortal She-Hulk

(PASSIVE) Recycling Ability: Transfer of powers to others (example, if a team member is near defeat he can transfer his immortality, super punch, energy beam or extra health, etc., to that character.)

Ability: Superhuman strength
Color: black

AP Cost: ???
High damage punch. Wonder-man has Thor and Sentry level strength

Ability: Ionic Energy Manipulation
Color: Red

AP Cost: ???
Ionic energy blast from hands and eyes

Additional Abilities:
Immune to absorb powers (ie, Rogues green wouldn’t work on WM)
Energy shields and barriers
Size manipulation
Shape-shifting
Fun little feature: To make him weak against Wanda

Ok, I guess I walked into that backlash. I could take away from that either that I'm way off base in general or that my experience has been quite different from other people due to my MMR being at 370 and not having given that as context.

My team is softcapped. It's not a permanent plan but it's been helpful to allow me to at least consider using a few different options in PvP rather than be locked into one team of 500s while I prepare to start ascending 4s. In that sense, yeah, you could say I'm manipulating the game to bully people that aren't softcapping. On the other hand, I never skip anything in my queue because everything is beatable with a winfinite and I begrudge giving away even 10 ISO, so I'm not actively seeking weak players, at least not on an individual level! What this means is your mileage may vary and I might not be speaking for you.

My queue sees a lot of 1a5 and 4a5 Juggs with incredibly weak team mates. It's not unusual for 2 team members to have 10k-20k health and Juggs has 300k+. I don't have trouble beating them, because winfinites, but I can't help but feel that there's something wrong with that. (Disclaimer: While typing I've seen it flash up that Bucket has replied but I haven't read it yet.)

People hate nerfs and like counters. It struck me that a counter to wonky levelled teams could have some benefits: encourage players to build a wide roster (more a dev perk than a player one), encourage players who rely on a 1a3 or 1a4 Hawkeye to push their Hawkeye to 1a5 (and I say this as someone who does use both a 1a3 and 1a4 Hawkeye), counter 3a4 May by adding a further disinsentive to remain 3a4 without actually forcing a nerf.

Aa for how this is achieved, I'm less bothered on the specifics. It could be some sort of despair or demoralisation power. I'm sure some villain somewhere has one of those.

Anyway, that's a bit of context for where I'm coming from. If it still doesn't make sense to you, fine. I'll accept I'm off base with it and chalk it up to the fact I play the game differently to many others. I think I missed something but I've already been called out for too many words!