A plea to the devs

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I am sure that the developers put a lot of effort into creating new characters for this game. It seems likely that they would feel rewarded for that effort if players used those various characters.

In the 5* tier, this isn’t really happening in PvP.

Two dominant teams are Okoye with Hulk (Immortal) and Kitty Pryde with Beta Ray Bill. Much has been said about this; the point needn’t be belabored here.

It seems to me that a couple of small tweaks could make these teams less dominant (though still strong), thereby opening up the field for other viable teams, of which there are plenty (were these two excluded). So here are my suggestions:

  • Change Hulk’s power The Green Door to deal team damage if there are at least 10 green tiles on the board (rather than 8). This may not seem like a large change, but I believe it would dramatically reduce the consistency of the team-damage trigger. (In fact, even changing it to 9 would be sufficient.)

  • Change Beta Ray Bill’s power Clash of the Worthy to cost 8 blue AP (rather than 6). Again, this is not a huge change, but it would slow the character down enough to make playing against him more manageable.

Naturally I don’t expect either of these changes will be implemented, as the developers have not shown an inclination toward making small modifications (for reasons I don’t understand). But I wanted to point out how even a small change could have beneficial effects without dramatically gutting a character’s usefulness (as was done with Old Man Logan and Gambit).

Edit 1: I really just had a few minutes available when I dashed off this post. I have elaborated on the … ah, historical imperatives? .. of making an adjustment here: https://forums.505go.com/discussion/comment/948044/#Comment_948044

Edit 2: My apologies to anyone who was already burned out on the “Okoye everywhere” thread (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/84554); I didn’t realize from the title that it was about this same topic (sort of). I just thought, “I don’t care if I see Okoye. It’s the other guy I don’t like so much,” and didn’t read any of it.

2

The developers have shown two typical patterns (though I’m sure there are exceptions):

  1. They way overdo it with the nerfs (as you are pointing out).

  2. They way underdo it with the counters.

I’d much rather see them remedy #2 than #1. Make a hard counter to IHulk. A 5* quake, passive green tile removal. auto-stun when hit with an AOE, etc. No more half-measures. Black-Suit Spidey’s purple is a great example of a super hard counter. More of those would be fine (just make the rest of the powerset decent to good as well please!). Make the game more rock/paper/scissors. No more Daken or Magneto as the answers to Hulk, just like BeardCap and Angel weren’t answers to Gambit. Please no more 4* counters to 5* problems. Make money off of these super powerful toons, then sell us the antidote in the form of a counter character. Thorkoye was powerful on offense. BRBitty was powerful on defense. I don’t like that the current meta is so powerful in both. Every team should have some drawback to being played.

Before the devs learn how to “nerf correctly” I hope they learn to create effective counter so they won’t have to nerf.

3

I still don’t understand why everyone is clamoring for hulk change.

Hulk is not the problem. In events where Okoye is locked out, you basically don’t see Hulk.

OKOYE IS THE PROBLEM. Okoye is the boost. Without Okoye immediate boost, without Okoye mega-boost, Hulk is going to be slightly annoying with a bit of damage…but really, iHulk would be a tier 2-3 character without this immediate boost.

So let’s fix the problem.

Wakanda Forever:
Damage from friendly powers is increased by [%] for each Team-up AP you have beyond four. (plus remaining text)

OR: Damage from friendly powers is increased by [smaller %, maybe much smaller - or not increasing so much with Okoye level]

OR: Damage from friendly powers is increased by [%] for each Team-up AP up to six.

…changing the heal to remove true heal wouldn’t hurt alongside these, but it wouldn’t be enough.

Or maybe, MAYBE all the people wanting hulk change want the problem character to be left alone so they still have the OP character to compete in PVE. Just a thought.

4

Hard counters > nerfs

You will see more:

  1. Prof $/Onslaught
  2. Apocalypse/Prof $
  3. Apocalypse/Onslaught
  4. Kitty/Polaris
  5. Polaris/BRB

in pick 2 PvPs after the nerfs.

iHulkoye needs 1 or 2 more hard counters. BRB already has existing counters like Havoc, Apocalypse, Kitty etc.

There are lots of ideas being suggested for hard counters to IHulk. And increasing the number of green basic tiles from 8 to 10 is a lot, unless you are saying 10 green tiles.

5

This is very true as well. Meta/best will always exist, it’s probably impossible to make a ‘not best’; even having rock-paper-scissors (and you have at least two, with Hulkoye and BRB/Carnage which isn’t mentioned as much) is tough.

Evergreen: no Okoye! Was all BRB/Polaris
One of the other winter events: no Okoye, no BRB! All Carnage +

Get rid of hulk today: you’ll have BRB/Kitty BRB/Polaris BRB/Carnage

Do both the nerfs you suggest: All the big okoye will just add Thor again, and the teams HoundofShadow mentions here will be all over. And I agree with the thought: hard counters, which allow that rock-paper-scissors.

Quake in 5*? Total Hulk shutdown.
Anti-TU in 5*? Okoye shutdown.
Anti-shield in 5*? Total BRB shutdown
Anti-(many tiles) in 5*? Carnage shutdown

Just look at BSSM. Not ‘good’, but started seeing lots of play when kitty was starting to dominate. Just buff BSSM to ‘strike/defense/attack’ and he’d be fantastic, today.

6

A 5* Quake would also be great.

7

Can you list when, since 5s were introduced there were various 5 characters used in PvP? And which characters were they? Thanks.

8

Bring it on, I would much rather fight any of those teams you listed than iHulk/Okoye.
Much more interesting.

9

I see Hulkpocalypse and Beta Ray Hulk, too. Okoye, on the other hand, disappears without Hulk because she is too slow otherwise. Hulk absolutely is the problem, not Okoye.

10

Just make a character that can’t take team damage on offense and defense. Therefore this character would be the best ihulk counter and his best partner. Since ihulk can’t hurt his team either. It would also make the game more fun too.

11

Or in life instead of complaining about something or someone to change to benefit me , from a job to a woman , I just move on to the next better one . Problem gone

12

Certainly.

Here is a thread from exactly a year ago: https://forums.505go.com/discussion/81328

Colognoisseur makes the argument – and I agreed with it at the time – that the PvP meta was the most diverse it has ever been. Among the teams he listed were: Thorkoye, Gritty, Bill/Kitty, Hawkeye/WorthyCap, Strange/Bishop, Daredevil/BSSM, and Professor X/Iceman. He concluded by saying, “We finally have a broad meta.” A later comment agreed, saying, “Speed is no longer the be all and end all of the PvP meta.”

A dissenting opinion later in the thread from Vhailorx admitted, “Right now, JJ, Hawkeye, Thor, Okoye, Kitty, strange, Prof X, and BRB all have at least some place in the 5* PvP meta. That’s legitimately great. More real depth in the 5* tier than it has ever had.” His dissension was rooted not in the fact that the meta was diverse but in its inaccessibility to newer players (which a subsequent post argued against).

(Incidentally, the fact that the meta was seen as diverse then but not now seems to me to suggest that the problem is not with Okoye.)

Of course, even in that environment, it’s not as if each 5* character were equally useful. But it was more possible to use off-meta teams than it is now. To put it another way: While there were many pairings at the time that were not good on defense, they were at least capable of being successful on offense – something that is not possible against Hulkoye.

Is a diverse meta something that the developers have historically desired? Yes. Let me quote from the announcement (in June 2018) about the second nerf to Gambit:

"Gambit is now seen as a more or less mandatory inclusion for players’ teams. Variety is hugely important in any game, and Marvel Puzzle Quest is no exception. When you’re forced to play with or against a character over and over again, things get stale. So we’re making additional changes to Gambit (Classic)."Our goals for these changes were:

  • Keep Gambit strong enough to be a viable choice, but not so strong he’s the only choice
  • Allow counter-play to Gambit, so that if you don’t want to play him, you can defeat him
  • Slow Gambit down a bit, to provide a chance for that counter-play" (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/73602)

Echoing this sentiment is the following comment from the announcement (in April 2017) about the nerf to Old Man Logan:

*"*Old Man Logan, as one of our first 5-stars and one of our first characters with multiple sets of powers, is stronger and significantly more useful than most other options for one’s team, even when he’s at low covers. Over 10% of all battles won include an Old Man Logan on the player’s team. This is higher than the win or play rate of any other character in the game even when those characters are Powered-Up. We believe that his ubiquity and power is reducing options for team composition - Old Man Logan is significantly better even than other 5-stars at low covers, and he’s pushing out otherwise viable 4-star and 5-star options because he warrants a permanent place on the team." (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/62954)

While the developers’ objections to Old Man Logan are not the same as their issues with Gambit, note the comments about “ubiquity and power”, which are similar.

Gambit was released in October 2017 and nerfed a second time (devastatingly) in June 2018, only 8 months later. Old Man Logan was released in October 2015 and nerfed (devastatingly) in April 2017, a full 18 months later.

It is interesting to note that the first link above is from February 2020; Immortal Hulk was released at the end of March. The “best meta ever” didn’t last very long, unfortunately.

So Hulk has been in the meta now for about 10 months, longer than Gambit was a problem but not as long as Old Man Logan. Both of them were nerfed so much that they were relegated to being inconsequential. The primary point of my original post was to suggest that, 1) enough time has passed for “something to be done” about Hulk, and 2) any power adjustment does not need to be as heavy-handed as the ones for Gambit and Old Man Logan (or Bishop and Captain America).

13

Geez @Aweberman decided to shut this thread down, pulling out ALL the receipts. Nicely done and I fully agree with IHulk being the problem and not Okoye. Your post does point out sadly how they miss the mark with their goals to make these characters still useable after being nerfed. This is why I say leave them as is and focus on hard counters.

I wasn’t a 5* player when Gambit got axed. The only character I was pro nerf about was Bishop. There was too much about him that needed countering. I still think the meta can be saved with a nice hard counter. I also agree with hound that the 5* tier has plenty of Bill/Kitty counters (Thor/Havok/Apoc all ignore protect tiles for one, DD/Daken can steal them, deny blue, etc.)

14

I don’t really agree with Ihulk being the main problem here. Or even Okoye being the main problem. It’s just an unfortunate situation where both have abilities that work together so well which leads the combo being a bit over the top. Ihulk is fine as is IMO in any other team, Okoye I’d say is also fine in any other non Ihulk team.

I don’t want Ihulk get nerfed just to see some other characters come out down the road with some sort of passive damage or cheap active damaging abilities that will get exploited and be back to where we are now, then of course having Ihulk nerfed rather senselessly. The reason Okoye/Ihulk is over the top is the instant ramp up in damage with just a couple quick team up matches, boosting per single TU AP, and no restraints on WF. As is this combo is like driving a 18 wheeler through a set of bowling pins just effortlessly plowing through anything and everything with no effort or planning. This just gets worse as so many players are pouring all resources into power leveling her to 550.

Nerfing Ihulk isn’t going to prevent future releases from possibly forming another over the top pairing with Okoye, then all you end up with is an Ihulk who could get butchered so much people might not want to play him. That would be absurd for D3 to be such fools to have two 5* Hulks being trash, I don’t see them nerfing Ihulk personally.

They could easily tweak Okoye to not butcher her but prevent her from being over the top with characters with passive damage or super cheap abilities. You have options for a tweak to Wakanda Forever like but not limited to the ones below,

  • the damage boost happens only in increments of team up AP like 3/6/9/12 and so on
  • the damage only happens once she has X amount of TU AP say 6 then once below 6 it won’t activate until collecting more TU AP
  • they could reduce how much damage WF boosts active damage abilities or make it not boost them at all

Obviously some of the above tweaks would be more impactful that others. I’m not advocating for anyone to be nerfed or tweaked, just saying if they decided they have to I’d prefer to see things done in a way that they don’t completely take the teeth out of either character. If they were to make a tweak to Okoye that would feel acceptable to me, I’d say making her have a certain amount of TU AP before WS starts buffing damage. The at least you would need to make some sort of effort before she can starting buffing others

As far as Ihulk I like him, can’t say I’m in love with the massive team damage he deals. I wouldn’t hate if they tweaked him or passive damage abilities in general so they cannot be buffed by damage boost powers like Okoye and Apoc have. If in turn they drastically reduced the team damage upon reviving. Let him actually revive a few times and deal Hulk worthy match damage without downing your whole team. As is he’d still have a great red active that could be boosted by Okoyoe/Apoc, se he wouldn’t be left out of the dark if paired with them. He’d still have his conditional passive damage to bring something unique to other teams.

I think I’d have more fun playing Ihulk as a character who you’d want to play to boost his match damage and go nuts rather than just exploit his passive damage. Seems like Ihulk being feared due to going crazy with match damage would be more fitting to his character that passive damage.

Any counter characters they release, if they don’t tweak Okoye or Ihulk would be another option. Leave both characters alone and just release a well designed counter character to deal with flavor of the month exploitations. Of course then many players will cover these counter characters and be able to roll them out when needed. It will obviously take quite some time before a good majority of the player base could obtain and cover these counter characters, especially if they are introduced as 5*s. At some point things could balance out a bit where a lot of players have the counter characters rostered.

15

nope, it’s all or nothing in mpq.

she either won’t be touched, ever OR she gets rebalanced - meaning she will be nerfed to the point she is totally useless, but you get the option to sell her for 20 elite and 1000 iso.

16

Really neither ihulk or okayed are significant issues. The big problem is the MatchMaking algorithm.

simply stated why not just make matches with lower tier teams up to 1200?
why is it a given that I can only que teams bigger than me at the starting climb?

I don’t see why any players need to suffer with nerfs when Mmr can be easily adjusted to incentivize the behavior desired.

0-900. You should be given a 75/25 mix of teams 1 tier easier and similarly leveled teams

900-1200 flip the mix to all similar teams with a few easier teams available to break 1200

after 1300 use the normal mmr to matchmake based on scores.

the goal should be to get all classes of players to 1200 before letting people seperate based on roster size and exp

17

Anything you consider a “tweak” that makes these characters less powerful, fast, etc. is still a nerf even if you call it something different.

I don’t believe nerfing IHulk would just usher in a new passive damage plus Okoye meta. Professor, Deadpool, 2099, Polaris, Warlock, Chavez, Strange all do passive damage boosted by Okoye. All of them get used with her too. None of them are meta combos. Why? You can play around them. Hulk really can’t be played around because he can’t die (plus his threshold to proc is a joke). That’s an often overlooked part of his kit, but the fact that you have to chew through tons of health before finally dealing with “the problem” is what makes him so dangerous. All these other passive damage characters you can kill first and Okoye on her own is a joke. With Hulk, you don’t have that luxury. Nerf Hulk, and I promise you won’t have to deal with another Okoye problem, unless another broken character is created. Because some of the characters listed existed and were paired with Okoye before IHulk and none of them were issues.

18

This would be another very simple, non-destructive tweak.

I haven’t expressly stated it already in this thread, so I will also mention that I agree a counter is probably better than a nerf (a la a 5* Quake, for example).

19

I added the following to my first post:

My apologies to anyone who was already burned out on the “Okoye everywhere” thread (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/84554); I didn’t realize from the title that it was about this same topic (sort of). I just thought, “I don’t care if I see Okoye. It’s the other guy I don’t like so much,” and didn’t read any of it.

20

Waaah
waaah
waaaah

you whine about one team and another will pop up. And another. And another. And the whining will continue.