Yeah, I find that interesting too. It’s like how 90% of the player base plays already and how most all of us played for the first couple months. I personally remember fondly the times I went through the prologue and first 10 tournaments when I didn’t have Rag and actually had to use health packs.
I voted for the top option. I agree that some characters are overpowered and balancing the game to allow for a greater variety in how we pick our teams and characters is a good thing.
However, I do believe (like most people) that the Rag nerf went way too far. I don’t imagine anything will be done about it now, but I hope the Devs read these topics, and when it comes to editing the other characters they’ve mentioned, it becomes a subtle change to balance things out, not a complete overkill of mainstays like Wolvie and Thor. If that happens to the same level the Rag nerf did, I can see a lot of people quitting as we’ve all spent a hell of a lot of time (and in some cases money) in getting our Wolvie and Thors up to max level (or well on the way), based on how we know they work, and if they are destroyed by the Devs I think that’ll be the final straw for a lot of people.
Hope everyone read nemek’s great post in neighboring topic on why he is happy with the change. That was a great summary of relevant forces.
To add my own E0.02, I’d be happy if the abilities got shifted to more role-playing direction. For what the latest characters show great promise, Hulk, Punisher, now Ares. What they do is not just shelling out damage points but act up to their character – for good or bad.
Particularly I’d welcome more drawbacks connected to powers and abilities. Guess even Comics heroes have some issues that could be reflected. And in the strategic gameplay you shall then balance out or look for an opening to react. If they reworked the old heroes in that kind of direction it would keep me interested for pretty long. (as mentioned earlier, a respec ability is needed so we can adjust our teams to changes)
Ares new green skill would have greatly punished people using Rags. It would have been a great counter to that character.
Yeah, absolutely. I just can’t imagine myself getting any joy from buying in with outside money. I normally play other strategy/rpg games at highest difficulty (avoiding those where it means blatant cheating with resources rather than best uncrippled play like elemental wom). I usually enjoy most the first half/twothirds when my I’m still weak and fight to survive and obtain the stuff. Once I have everything it’s just a pushover I do to see the story ending or just declare myself a winner and quit if the game lacks ‘total dominance win’ option.
I.e recent games in Hulk were pretty cool – I had to spam volverine swords first to kill off the thor and company, then fight to eliminate them to avoid angering the hulk. If the game was just to click in the same 100-click spam for a 1st turn kill, I’d be away long ago. Guess this is similar to the Hendry/Davis difference.
Quite possibly. The normal way to fix the arena is to issue new stuff that hoses it. Then some balance emerges. For the current Rag case it was pointed out that really other factors were dominant in OP-ness, like tripling in lightning tournaments and ability to start with 6 mana in all interesting colors.
But we could cut the devs some slack – this is a new game, it started some way and evolves. It looks living, and in years will pick up many interesting features including respec, intra-team tension, love/hate opponents, etc, so many things can be done. Even just what we have now, play with buffs on selected groups stirs the arena quite well. Changes should gain more welcome. Well, actually they mostly are, cries come from impatients. Guess many of them will also cool down and few months ahead the now nerfed Rag may re-gain his role somewhat differently.
Haha sums up the rag fag’s perfectly!
Pasa’s point sums up the fun of progression gaming. If you have to pay to consider yourself good then you’re lame! Ah the folly of the youth today! I remember when you could pay Sega $5 an emerald to get SuperSonic without having to actually play the game!! Oh wait…
The Rag nerf was too much, but some fix was necessary. It’s a mixed bag.
That being said, I think people are jumping the gun a bit by lamenting the ruination of Wolverine, Thor, Magneto and Spiderman. The storm fix really was a fix (they turned her yellow ability to poop, but it was broken before and they left her other abilities intact). Loki sounds like he was gutted (I never had him in his former state), but he also sounds like he was broken before. If they make Thor’s abilities cost slightly more or do slightly less damage, they won’t have made him unplayable, they’ll just have made him less powerful. And if they’re really trying to diversify the field of play, then making Thor less powerful isn’t a bad start.
Also, as a player who uses Spiderman almost all the time, I can see the perceived need to reduce his stun capability. With enough stockpiled AP and a few good matches, your opponenet(s) really don’t ever need to get more than a few turns. This feels like a bad way for the game to run. I use him because he’s really good, but recognize that he probably isn’t good for game balance. It will be super difficult to do the hardest PVE challenges without him, but I can understand the desire to scale back his power level.
I think Ragnarok’s debuff is pretty close to where he needs to be. It does around 150% more damage, and still drops 4 green, for 6 red. I find this reasonable. Both of his abilities are one of the lowest AP cost in the game! Thor’s will likely be dropped down to about that level. This will put them both on par with other damage dealers, finally giving us some freedom in who we can use.
6 is one of the lowest AP cost in the game? 
Yeah not really
It..actually is. There is 3 ap wolvie, no more rag, 2 ap throw away mag red, 2 ap spidey blue, and maybe a 5 ap move or two (mag blue for example). That’s it. Expecting a nerf to at least 2/3 mentioned..before and after the nerf I would still consider 6 ap “low” just not “lollow”. The 2 ap moves were outliers just like the 20+ ap moves are. I would call 4**** wolvie green “expensive” even though there are a few moves in the 20s.
2-4 nerf range
5-6 low
7-10 average
11-14 high
15-18 expensive
19+ buff range …or amazing ability…but none of the ones that expensive are that good.
It wasn’t a very nice nerf but I am holding FINAL judgement until after all the planned nerfs come through. In current state rag isn’t very good though compared to the not yet nerfed spidey/mag/thor/wolvie. He still is top 10…though that may speak more to the weakness of the rest of the cast and lack of characters really.
Currently above rag imo: mag, spidey, thor, wolvie, hulk, punisher
Close either way: doom (little higher) , grey suit, hood.
I would therefore put rag between 8-10…what is most noticeable to me though is he is basically the worst of the 3*** now. Fitting, imo, as I think a 3 color character should be slightly better than a 2 color character.
I’ll recant my statement and agree with that. I think I’m looking back and seeing where he was vs where he is in the meta. Six isn’t that bad I think I’m still in the mindset of that being 3 thunderclaps worth. I don’t want all of the characters to suffer the way of the respec knife but I’ll hold judgement till then.
I’m thinking the meta game is gonna be driven by bigger moves now since matches are slowing down. Big moves being Hulk’s Smash and Magneto’s purple. Thoughts?
I think there will be more counters honestly. Using hulk in this tournement..my lvl 60 with buffs is basically around the same as a maxed lvl hulk. I actually really like his green. No, it doesn’t have mag’s damage or the speed of a low ap or the ap generation of a support, but for 10 ap it does around 1.5-1.8k damage, builds some ap through cascade, nicely shuffles the board, and does a great job of messing up characters with tiles/board control ability. Its not a go to option but as a “ohh, I have 7 green and 1 match let’s me use this” I think its nice. I think that counters someone like punisher that lives off tiles, whie tile characters work with eachother (att+strike).
Those big damage moves like magneto are easy to avoid and a little harder to get to in order to start the ball rolling on offense, but if you can find a sneaky way to get up to it then those high damage 11-18 range moves can be killer. Characters that color change or lock the board counter that. Destroyers counter lock board. Fast damage beats destroyers. Ap builders help power everyone else but generally lack either utility (Im) or strength (storm). If hood’s yellow cost a little less it could be a great move when maxed. I think there will be more balance in how ppl play…though it will still all move towards “what is the fastest” most likely despite shields somewhat mitigating the need for speed in the game. Combing from one move to the next, ala current thor, probably will be the goal. Ideas like **mag purple building blue, blue being used to help build another character’s color (example: doom blue into black) and then using the last move for big damage. Or some might just build a tanky team and forgo strategy beyond “match red until I use hammer, then match red until I hit hammer.” All of this was there before…its just characters like spidey and rag were so good there was little point in going elsewhere with your choices beyond “being different.”.
I am still not that big on punisher’s red outside pve but the rag nerf. CHanged it from “bad” to “pretty good” in many ppl’s mind. It’s a little messed up when a nerf to a single move on a single character can do that.
Marvel Puzzle Quest took the match 3 concept and transformed it into a superhero fighting game
(with enough imagination you’ll see I’m right 
). Now, if abilities are more difficult to use
and you spend most of the time making basic matches (3 or even 4 tiles) it stops feeling like a game
where heroes and villains use their powers to win the fight and starts feeling more like any other
game that uses the match 3 concept.
That being said, I am happy they have decided to increase the min cost of abilities to 5-6.
Abilities with cost 2-3 were a bad design decision and this was obvious to me from the first moment.
And this comes from a new player whose main offense comes from OBW’s Espionage and
Wolverine’s Feral Claws which apparently is going to change so I don’t expect to place in top 10-15
in events any time soon.
However, this may be because I don’t have a couple of 3* heroes that are almost unplayable now.
I wrote in another post that an option to reset the rebalanced heroes to 3/3/3
(returning covers and ISO to players) would help a lot players who have spent a lot of time
in the game and who are essentially beta testing the game.
I say beta testing, because changes of this magnitude you see (or should see) only on unreleased
games. If they designed the game without this option, that was another bad design decision since
they chose to release it before it was properly tested.
Here’s hoping that the devs throw in a limited time respec option for people once all the changes are done. I’m fine with the finality of it but it wouldn’t be an unwelcomed option.
I’m OK with balance changes, but I think matches are on the long side. The healers and high healthers need a nerf.
. Who the heck is healing against you in.a match? Machine spidey is stupid and Luke’s to throw out yellow before his blue. Only other person really is obw whose ability basically does nothing else. Are you referring to self.healing wolverine? His heal.has a good chance if seeing a nerf, but its hardly necessary. Defang the green and he isn’t as annoying to play against.
Also, matches are getting slower not faster right now. Though I think they will speed up again in the future with 4**** characters. I feel the overwhelming reason for the string of nerfs is to lower the damage ceiling so that new cards are worth getting…specifically new ISO sink 4**** heroes.
Bingo
Great questions, thanks, unentshieden.
Battle durations depend a lot on how you play (both how long you take to choose your next move and team composition) and we vary them a lot for dramatic effect and variety (some missions should be easy and quick, some should be epic and long). But we’re aiming for a typical fight for a player that moves at a reasonable pace to land in the 4-5 minute range.
Your last sentence is very much where we’re aiming: we want every character to have their moment and every ability to have its use. We want your choices about team composition and character development to be interesting, with no single clear dominant strategy.
(There are exceptions to that for highly flavorful and unusual abilities. We sometimes make abilities like Venom’s Devour that are probably not part of your optimal strategy but give you different ways to play or create interesting stories. And rarer characters’ abilities tend to be more complex on average, which means that they have a higher skill ceiling but in an expert player’s hands may be more powerful - it’s okay if every character is not exactly as strong as every other as long as there’s still lots of diversity in strategy and team composition.)
We want to fix some systemic issues with the first characters we built and introduced and their ability upgrades and AP costing. We want to fix the fact that the range of ability costs was too high (too many very cheap and very expensive abilities throw off the game’s pacing), make most ability upgrades more interesting than reducing the AP cost each level (it’s not a very compelling way to upgrade an ability, and it leads to pacing and balance issues), improve the fact that some utility abilities that were overpriced/underpowered relative to direct damage, and just generally make the choices between characters and abilities more interesting. And as we’ve gone along, we’ve added a bunch of new tools for making abilities and gotten better at the art of making abilities that are both interesting to play and tell good stories - we want to sprinkle some of that magic dust over characters we designed long before we got to watch so many thousands of players play with them.
I’ve appreciated the discussion that’s taking place here and have been reading (everything) closely despite not posting much. It’s not my style to wade in and defend our decisions - my skills are to entertain the whole playerbase, not win an argument with the forum-going portion of it. (It doesn’t matter if I can convince you something is abstractly the right thing for the game if you’re not having fun.) I’d rather listen, try to understand your experience, and figure out how to make the game better in response without steering the conversation in a particular direction. All of the criticism and support has been useful in guiding our next steps. I hope you’ll be pleased with them, and I hope you’ll continue to let us know what you’re enjoying and not enjoying about the game!