I was a part of a discussion about what characters the new hero Medusa might have synergies with when Mr Fantastic was brought up as a possibility. I immediately thought that a synergy they might have would be that, as Medusa was once a member of the Fantastic Four, while on the team she should trigger the
AP gain from Mr Fantastic’s yellow power when it triggers. But when I looked I saw that she was missing her FF team affiliation. So it made me think about all of the other affiliations as there have been more than a few member changes throughout the years for the world’s most famous family. I went to wikipedia to refresh my memory on a few. It would seem that every single one appears to be missing the team affiliation:
Medusa
Luke Cage
She-Hulk
Ant-Man (Scott Lang)
Storm
Black Panther
possibly Spiderman
possibly Doctor Doom
To the best of my knowledge none of them were simply ‘one-offs’. The two questionable ones however would be spiderman and doctor doom as they joined the future foundation, which might technically be considered a different team. Spiderman I think did join briefly prior to the Future Foundation, but I believe that was a ‘one-off’ story. However the rest were all solid memebers at various times.
I imagine that they just haven’t thought of it. Spidey should definitely have that affiliation. Not so sure about Dr. Doom. She-Hulk and Scott Lang were also part of the team at some point. God knows Mr. Fantastic can use all the help he can get.
So far they seem to be reserving that affiliation for characters actually wearing a blue jumpsuit with a big “4” on it, with a special exemption for Ben.
The Fantastic Four’s best era, arguably, was John Byrne’s run on the book. She-Hulk replaced the Thing for nearly 50 issues during this time. I associate her with the FF even more than I do the Avengers.
It’s annoying enough keeping track of Team Cap and Team Iron Man, and those are just 5 star characters- if you started having more common more meaningful affiliations at lower levels, it can be hard to remember them all. I’m confident it’s a very intentional decision to limit the Fantastic Four affiliation to the core members, and it’s one I agree with.
Also worth mentioning, Spider-Man does have a FF tag… on his 2 star version.
This could be easily solved by a relatively simple UI change for the roster screen, which I would already feel is an appropriate addition due the headache you mentioned with Team Cap and Team Iron Man.
Each of the characters in the roster could have their affiliations shown with symbols overlayed over the cover.
A quick mockup of this addition:
Where example symbols might look like these:
Avengers:
Agreed – I find the affiliations a bit too cumbersome to keep track of (moreso considering how practically every single heroic character has been an Avenger at some point – including the sure-to-be-added-at-SOME-point 5* D-Man!) While She-Hulk and some others would make sense to add to the F4 grouping, I find that teammate-based AP gain of MrF’s to be a minuscule placebo anyway, and I don’t at all mind that they’ve limited it to just the main F4 family, and Bag-Man as a fun little easter egg for the 7 of us who have him champed.
It wouldn’t be cumbersome, and it would be worthwhile.
Very few characters require team affiliation, and as mentioned, Mr. F’s is a pretty small perk anyways–the perfect kind of perk for a detail-oriented, exploratory player who likes to try out different combos, but easily ignored by 95% of the playerbase–which means adding a few characters to the Fantastic Four wouldn’t hurt anyone at all. It would only require ‘more to know’ for the (very, very) small number of players excited about using Mr. Fantastic, and ALL of those players would be excited to have more options to choose from.
Personally, I think the OP’s making a good point, but it might be more valid if it wasn’t just a minor perk and more of a major concern (like how picking teammates for IM46 matters, teammates for 5Cap, meh). Or make another character whose whole shtick involves managing team affiliations. E.g., Damage villains on both teams, or gain something for each x-men ally, or creating CDs for each different affiliation (4-loki?), stuff like that. Everyone gets more tools, but the players who don’t want do deal with the headache just ignore it and keep busting heads the straightforward way.
You’re describing this as if people don’t play against others players teams. It would absolutely put a burden of knowledge on opponents to know whether or not certain characters count, and punish them arbitrarily for not knowing that that say, Storm and Black Panther could have FF tags.
It’s not a “perk” for a small section of the base, it’s one more thing a player has to know when they fight against Reed, and with there being nothing like it at the 1,2,3 star levels, players that are new or climbing the ranks may be completely unfamiliar with it.
As long as knowledge is available to everyone I don’t see why that burden has to take away from the joy of synergy.
That being said, there are a number of perfectly acceptable reasons to include a lot of other characters on Team Iron Man or Team Cap or on both teams. And they aren’t fully represented in the game.
