OP characters are NOT the problem. Problem can't be fixed.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hear me out…

The problem that MPQ has, does not stem from individual character powers. It doesn’t stem from the overpowered nature of some of those powers either. In fact, it doesn’t stem from much except creativity?

What? Yes, creativity got MPQ in trouble here. How? Well, let me tell you.

Did Infiturn MNMags/Mystique exist before Mystique? NOPE
Did XF keep getting fed black before Iron Fist? NOPE
Did we have AP steal-a-rama before Hood and (new power) Loki were put on the same team? A BIT, BUT NOT AS MUCH
What about charged tiles? When did they become a problem? 4*THOR INTRODUCED THESE…

Hmm, I’m seeing a pattern here. New characters = new/improved powers = new combos. The problem is, they wanted to get creative with powers, so they had to introduce something. This maxes the game more complex, and therefore harder to control. It’s like a chemistry experiment where you just keep adding new chemicals haphazardly. The more you have, the more volatile the solution becomes.

Here’s a revelation. So long as they keep pumping out new characters, people will create more OP combos. It really doesn’t matter what the powers are, eventually the sheer amount of different powers will mean that one combo or another is OP. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO.

What I think is that MPQ is shooting itself in the foot by continuing to pump out such a large amount of characters that they really CANNOT test all the potential overpowered combinations that people will ultimately find. I am sure people are already looking for the next HoodThorXF, and rest assured, it WILL be found.

This is the real problem. Nerfs and buffs are reactive changes that will never fix this sort of a problem. It is within the game already.

TL;DR: The real problem is that the number of characters = more powers = more combos. No matter what, someone will find and OP combo every time.

2

Doom blue could feed xforce black

3

You are correct sir. But before Doom got his new purple, you rarely saw him, even with XF. It was always Hood. Doom’s purple made him a more usable character, and now one that is also excellent with Patch, not just XF… You just made a new combo. Not every combo made is OP, but even a blind chicken finds a kernel every now and then. Some of the combos WILL be inevitably OP…

4

And the OP combos will become obvious, and then eventually nerfed. So smoke em while you got em, everyone.

5

It is said over and over that Magic: the Gathering is a source of inspiration for the Devs.

If so, they should have learned a few lessons from it, like this one. Putting in new mechanics can WRECK your game, if you don’t have a playtest (ie: beta) group that has in-depth knowledge of the old mechanics. They really need to beta test. At least recently they have been “allowing” leaks, which get the problems into the light of air by your player base, who often point out the issues before the release. Of course sometimes they are listened to (PX), sometimes they are not (IF…whoops, nerf a few weeks later).

6

I’m not opposed to the combos that people create. What I am opposed to is the balance of counters available to the combos. Something is only considered overpowered if there is no real way to stop it.

7

It’s true, but nothing is going to stop the Devs from creating new characters. It’s just going to be harder and harder for them to release characters without reworking them eventually (or even immediately as recent history has shown).

Don’t ever buy multiple covers for a single character if you are not prepared for a future rework.

8

MTG is an excellent example given the current and former players who are on here.

Anyone who played long enough at a high enough level developed the ability to look at cards and determine what makes for a very efficient combo.

Direct damage decks, denial decks, weenie decks, etc,

Put 64 players in a room with a “sealed deck” of covers and they can develop combos that the devs likely never considered.

9

Hey San,

Yeah. The problem is that they released a ton of AP generators into a meta that they already thought was too fast (see IW notes).

I was thinking that the X-Force meta was something that the devs thought was overpowered but they could live with – but in the last few months they specifically released a boatload of new characters that generated particular colors – I’ve starred the ones that directly boost Green or Black and bolded the top-tier PVP characters. This changes the metagame to supercharge X-Force more so the games get faster.

And that’s not what the devs want because it’s not what they’re designing for - and they’d rather change how the characters work than build for a fast meta.

Mystique - Blue makes Purple and Black*
Iron Fist - Purple makes Black*
Cyclops - Yellow makes TU tiles Red
Professor X - Blue passive makes AP in strongest color with 5-match*
Ragnarok - Red makes Blue, Blue Charges Green*
Kamala Khan - Purple makes selected color Green*
Kingpin - Purple makes Yellow

to add to existing
Dr. Doom - (new Purple makes him top-tier, Blue feeds Black)*
3Thor - Red makes Yellow, Yellow makes Green*
Loki - (new Passive Green steals AP on 4+ match)*
Hood - Passive Blue steal everything*
GSBW (Purple makes lots of Green)*
Squirrel Girl - Green collects random AP
IM40 - (6 Yellow maybe makes 9 Red, 8 Yellow maybe makes 9 Blue+9 Red, 10 Yellow ah screw it just use Cyclops)
and revised Magneto (make 3 Blue and 5 random Red)

10

Your wrong OP.

I’m sorry, I just disagree.

OP characters are a problem. But the “issue” is how they are fixed, and the - at least up until now - #Ignore ‘out of shape’ characters got.

For example:

MNM & Mystique - Infinite, MNM’s Polarity Shift is altered to stop the infinite, and strengthen his ability to cascade and get off HIS strong move, a nerf in the left hand, but a buff in the right. That’s how you adjust matters

Patchneto - Infinites and near infinites. Everywhere. They retool mags, he is no longer OP, but still REALLY damn strong. I skip over Mags on defense more than X-Force (ok that’s an exaggeration, but the point stands)

Sentry - They DON’T change the playstyle of the character, yet make his ‘game ender’ - pretty useless, boiling him down to tank for Hood who can call Sacrifice and scare people on defense because the computer doens’t play him super stupid and will do sacrifice then Nova. All in all though his balls were cut off, cooked in chicken broth, lightly seasoned, and served back to him.

X-Force - He had two REALLY good/almost gdlk attacks. It would make sense to adjust them to lower his ranking, I’m not boo boo the fool. They leave his defense alone (recovery), but get rid of the attack that MADE his defense in SS (no AP means he was taking match damage mostly, and could actually USE recovery), then on top of it they gut the dmg from his main and consistent dmg dealing option, essentially reverting it back to pre-buff XF in nature - i.e. just board shake up.

It’s too extreme. when someone is only slightly overpowered or part of a broken combination - it properly gets ‘fixed’, but if the character themselves are too powerful, they get their knees chopped off and are forced to run around the 616 like Rock Lee training. They take hammers to problems that need a screwdriver.

  • Unreall
11

DEvs can’t see the difference between the best character in the game and game breaking mechanics.

Some justified nerfs were game breaking:
-spidey (loop stun),
-cmags(infinite turns) ,
-Sentry (30 second win) etc

  • I was mad for 4thor nerf but she almost had an infinite stun as well so … ok it’s justifiable.

Xforce did not have a game breaking mechanic, people’s main concern was that every one was using him, that’s only because all the other 4* are crap, if some others were good we would have seen them too, if they had made a very good 4* that did not match well with Xforce and has synergy with some different 3* than I.F we would have seen different teams when reaching the top scores.

Now we have nothing to aspire to, we get a few good 3* and we are done, there is no next step in this game - and I only play DPdaily anymore.

12

Snowcatt mentioned Magic: The Gathering, and it’s true. As they pump out more cards OP combos appear. That is why themselves and most other CCGs cycle through card sets for tournaments. This means the pool of cards is limited to those released within a 3-6 month range, which is easy to have oversight on.

MPQ doesn’t have this luxury, and it will get worse over time. It seems they are dedicated to finding the combos and disabling them however, which is good.

13

Maybe the strategy shouldn’t be to break every powerful combo that emerges in the meta. If there were several competing combos in the meta wouldn’t that be better? Having combos that are hard counters for other dominant strategies in the meta? Wouldn’t that be better? Or do we have to perpetually remain in a world where every character is an island, and no good power or combo can be allowed to remain?

14

I totally agree with the OP, but i don t think it s because of lack of creativity but they fail to see the bigger picture
They seem to desing a character to have sinergy to 2-3 others and forget what can do to the rest. There are 2 visible examples
When Lady Thor was introduced they must have think her as a excellent companion to X-force or even fury, both 4 star.png
But if Nonce didn t point that with Hood s yellow you would have a permaturn, they would have missed it. So the solution was to nerf one of them (Hood in the case)
Iron Fist was probably designed to work with Cage, as they were partners in Heroes for Hire. A def tile, a attack tile, both free, IF purple feeding Cage s black… but they failed to see they were feeding also the most dangerous and powerfull power in the game, surgical strike.
Same can go with Mystique, and his winfinite, Patchneto, and all the others.
They need to beta test the new characters with people who play at high levels, and no casually, a couple of times as they seem to do

15

Absolutely. Aren’t other games built with a rock/paper/scissors design? These guys only know how to make rocks.

16

Actually what I think the OP meant was not that the devs were lacking creativity, but rather that they were trying to be too creative, which led to all these problems

And I agree, and also agree with the fact that this problem can’t be fixed, or will be hard to fix. You want to keep your customers, you got to come up with new powers and new features, so that existing customers won’t get bored. But with new features comes new ways to exploit them. The trouble is ensuring how to minimise the effects of these exploits to prevent them from becoming OP. This is where they really need a proper testing team to discover what kind of exploits will potentially be discovered by top-end players, like others have already stated.

Right now the real problem they are facing is understand how to effectively buff or nerf characters. I admit XF was OP, but not because of his green. If HT is dealing 3.4k damage for 8AP i don’t see how dealing 3.5k plus tile and cascade damage for 8AP is OP for a 4* . If anything the real problem lied with his black. As if destroying all tiles of one colour isn’t enough, draining all AP of that colour at lvl4, and generating AP at lvl5 was OP, because it sped up the game way too much for the player, and made it much much tougher for the enemy to get going. The nerf generally accepted in my alliance is to just remove his AP generating and draining effects of black, and to keep the green damage, so as to keep it more in line with how a 4* should look like damage wise

But right now it looks like the devs are just clueless as to what a 4* should be like. If they are going to be much harder to obtain, much harder to max out, and much more expensive to buy, the power level should scale up accordingly, but right now it just seems like they are intending 4s to just be trophies to be displayed in a cabinet. Because seriously, if that is going to be the general power level of 4s, no one is going to spend the extra money and ISO to max out a character that is comparable or even worse than a 3* which costs much less. They seriously need to reevaluate their opinion on what a 4* character should be like, there’s no point fighting for 1st place or going after the 1000 point progression in PVP otherwise, because it’s not worth the effort. At the end it’s just reduced game time for most people, because they just don’t care anymore

17

This is exactly the same problem that Magic The Gathering faces. The answer is obviously not stop making cards/characters, but get better at spotting abusive interactions, and if one slips, well sadly be ready and firm to cut it. To err is human, but with each error you get better at spotting the next, so stopping or even, slowing down just to avoid more errors is actually counterproductive.

Also, don’t act disingenuous by saying that X-Force is 3.5 plus some other damage. In reality, it is a minimum of 4.4k or so and can go much higher with the right cascades. In addition the board shake/clear is huge and worth the AP alone. (Illusions is a perfectly fine power and ONLY shakes the board, much less than X-Force and costs not much less). To be more adequately 4* upgrade to 3* Fireball (which let’s not kid ourselves is already top notch value-for-AP) without being OP it needed to either lose the board shake and just deal outright 4.4k, or, what happened, keep the board shake and deal less damage. 2k or so damage might be a bit too little but green is clearly not intended to be his high-damage skill, anyway. It’s like complaining about Thor’s Red.

18

I think this is a really valid point. I’d also argue that the solution is twofold: firstly, judicious rebalancing of characters, and secondly, more types of content. If the devs are modelling MPQ at least in part on MtG, it would make sense to try and borrow the limited format from that game too. In addition to the regular PvE and PvP, why not have restricted formats, where only certain characters are playable? That would help limit the effect of potentially OP combos.

Granted, that sounds like the current Heroic format, which some people hate, but if you had a similar restricted format in addition to the regular format, rather than replacing it periodically, I think that would be pretty fun.

19

Pretty much this, the devs don’t know what to do with the 4*'s, they want them to be powerful but not much more powerful than 3*. If that’s the case then what’s the point of 4*'s? i mean look at the power difference between 2 and 3 stars, do you see people carrying 2*'s into the 3* stage? no cause 3*'s are way more powerful than 2*'s, and if that’s their progression logic then aren’t 4*'s supposed to more powerful than 3*'s? like…i don’t get it. We bust our butts to get 4*'s cause they’re SUPPOSED to be more powerful than 3*'s with better abilities, yet you guys are simply making them trophies, just covers that you’ll collect but never use and if one does come along that’s powerful you’ll nerf them(4hor and X-Force) or destroy them completely(Spidey and Sentry). i think 4*'s were supposed to be another transition to go through, but evidently noobs complaining about them being more powerful than their characters have more power than vets who’ve busted their asses for their rosters.

20

Actually. leaving OP combos as is would be the best solution to all of MPQ problems, without ruining MMR and giving disadvantages every single time to developed rosters. And if they left them OP, there would be also diversity.

help any transitioner = unnerfed/readjusted storm
help 2*->3* transitioners = Stormneto
help 3*->4* transitioners = Patchneto, Sentry bombing, Winfinite
help 4*->4* transitioners = XF and/or Thoress
(etc)

Some may needed minor touch, but overdone nerf was not neccessary.