I spend a lot of time talking about just how bad the developers are at game design. I mean, a lot of time, because they are really bad - but let’s not get sidetracked. I just wanted to make sure you have the right perspective when I say this:
Nova has the best character design in the game.
Seriously.
Whoever led the design for Nova: pat yourself on the back, go and grab a coffee, and take the rest of the day off - you deserve it and if anyone asks, tell them I said it was ok.
Now I’m sure the rest of you are probably starting to think, “Geez, Mawt, not only are you obnoxious and habitually offensive, but you’re also dumb. You are so dumb.” To you I say, “Sweet Summer Child, let me show you the error of your ways.”
1. Nova is fun.
I made up a metric called “Time To Fun”, or TTF. This is basically how long it takes from the start of a match before a character starts being fun. A lot of support characters tend to have long TTF - Loki is a heck of a lot of fun when you can goad the AI into making a match 4 in a colour they’re not even going to use or firing off Trickery just after Patch’s Berserker Rage, but those aren’t always guaranteed events. Some of the bigger bruisers have combos that are great fun - like Hulkbuster’s Rocket Fist - but they’re often quite slow and you’ll do anything to activate them sooner. Nova’s much scrappier fighter. He’s got three cheap abilities which means his TTF is low. You can be activating abilities by the second or third turn. A single ability doesn’t do much by itself, but this leads to our next point,
2. Nova is self sufficient.
Not like Hulkbuster or Stupid Sexy Cyclops, because he doesn’t generate AP for himself. Instead Nova makes Strike tiles. All of his abilities make them - any colour you want, as long as it’s black - and two of them do “more stuff” if there’s enough of those Black Strikes sitting around. As soon as you’ve activated one of his abilities, you’ve already made your next move better. Super. Nova’s totally independent, just activating abilities and being awesome at it like it’s nobody’s business, I guess we can just stick him on any and every team and let him just do his thing. Well..
3. Nova is not OP.
Here’s the thing. Here’s what makes Nova such a well designed character in my eyes.
His abilities are strong, but they require a little bit of set up to reach that full potential, and he’s at the lower end of the health pool spectrum. He’ll punish you for letting him gain the advantage, but he won’t punish you like Jean for random events from just playing the game.
Nova also has some truly great options for team synergy. Partner him up with X-23, who also creates Black Strike tiles and has an ability which gets cheaper the more there are; Professor X, who loves buffing friendly special tiles & allies with cheap abilities; or either Teen Jean or Iceman for rainbow coverage. But he’s not a guaranteed auto-pick for your team. He and Hulkbuster are contesting 2 out of 3 colours, he and Star-Lord (should you feel compelled to use Star-Lord) are basically tripping over each other, he’s probably a little too fast to pair with Carnage and reliably keep ahead of the enemy attack tiles.
Nova is fun to play, he’s got great abilities that work well by himself but also offer decent synergy with a number of characters and a number of different types of teams. That is what makes him so good.
I truly hope that this level of design can be replicated and it’s not like lightning in a bottle.
Once again, kudos to those involved in this design process.
