Understanding The Metagame

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Okay, so the way I’m reading it, a lot of people miss the point of a metagame, or why it matters. You have people saying things like this:

That’s why I asked the question. We were clearly looking at abilities in a vacuum for Yellow, so why not green as well?

The problem with this is that looking at abilities in a vacuum is all but meaningless. For example, we all know that OBW’s aggressive recon is good. Really, really good - to the point where a 2* with just over 3k health got 7th in the last character ranking poll. But what if the meta was centralized around Falcon+Daken? Is Aggressive Recon still good if people are using predominately that pairing? No. In fact, it becomes virtually worthless, because almost all of your damage will be coming from match damage and passive skills - losing AP doesn’t matter to you much at all. But right now? Much of the damage we do is based on rather expensive nukes, or needing multiple colors - World Rupture+Sacrifice, CTS, RotP, etc. Losing 3AP in each color, especially when you’re relying on one color to help fuel another, can be game-changing. The value of the skill is entirely dependent on the metagame.
But okay, I guess AP steal is something of a special case. What about other skills? Well, imagine a meta in which match damage is gigantic, health is gigantic, but powers were not scaled up. What would the best green skill be? Would it still be CTS? No - CTS would be thoroughly mediocre. What would be really great, though, is a skill which causes cascades and destroys tiles - something like X-Force or Unstoppable Crash.

The point here is that skills do not exist in a vacuum. The only way you could possibly say “Skill X is the best in a vacuum” is if all the skills did the same thing, such as is the case in red, and then you can compare apples to apples. Even then, though, you have intangibles to compare (overwriting a tile vs. destroying red tiles vs. destroying shield tiles), and none of it can tell you if a skill is good - only if it’s better than others. But other than that? You need to talk about the meta, and what’s going on therein. Are people playing glass cannons or tanks? Are people playing normally or shieldhopping? Is AP denial good or are people appealing to Daken and Psylocke to get their damage in?

Which brings me to Sentry.

If you think World Rupture is not far and away the best green skill in the game, you are wrong.

Why? Because in the current meta, World Rupture is meta-defining. It’s not just “good”. It’s not just "the best green skill. The presence of World Rupture in the meta, combined with any skill that can create strike tiles, shapes every single thing about top-level play. There is nothing in the game like it. Nothing in the game is anything like it, and nothing in the game even scratches the surface of the power on display. Even patchneto before the nerf wasn’t winning games in under 60 seconds - even if they were doing it in 3-4 turns, the animations for C.Mag’s powers would take quite a while. Wondering how people are hitting 1700? World Rupture is what enables that - shieldhopping so fast that you’d have to be insanely lucky to catch it. It cannot be overstated how big of a deal this is.

To get an impression of value, imagine what would happen in the metagame if you removed CTS and World Rupture. Ditch CTS and Thor becomes a weaker character, and you just replace him with another tanky bruiser with good AOE - Black Panther, Colossus, Deadpool, Sentry. Ditch World Rupture, and people are now struggling to hit 1300 again. That’s the difference.

Seriously, though, saying “Skill X is good in a vacuum” or “Skill X is good independent of the meta” is kind of like saying “This cake is good independent of how it tastes”. It’s a thoroughly meaningless statement.

(On a side note, Sacrifice is not unconditionally the best yellow skill in the game. Why? Because it’s replaceable. Because you can use Battleplan, or Berserker Rage, or Escape Plan, or anything else that drops chunky strike tiles and still win with world rupture. The true value of Sacrifice is that it’s self-contained, meaning that you can win with a 2-man team of Sentry+Loaner in any PvP fast enough to get your shield back up before someone slams you. It’s good on its own, but neither essential nor unique and so can be hypothetically evaluated on its own merits.)

2

Before this tournament, I don’t think I’ve used sentry (outside of the pve required nodes) in like, a week. X-force is still pretty fast, and more importantly, doesn’t require HP boosts and medpacks nearly as often

3

X-Force has become a staple character for me as well recently, but I still Sentry-bombed some of the tougher PvE nodes in the final sub a few hours ago. Even beyond the top-end PvP final climbs, Sentry-bombing is one hell of a fall-back plan.

4

XForce is good, but clock yourself - how long does it take to finish a match? 120 seconds? 150 seconds? With sentry, you can consistently win in under a minute to shieldhop. Overall, he’s arguably a better character for extended play, but the meta at the highest level is and has been for quite a while shieldhopping.

5

No, I agree, Sentry is absolutely the king of shield-hopping. For that purpose, accept no substitutes, Sentry-bombing is the only way to go.

I prefer X-Force for the early climbs in PvP (before shield-hopping is necessary) or smacking around trivial/easy nodes in PvE. All of his skills are useful and powerful. Even though Sentry-bombing is faster and more powerful, I don’t think it’s worth the health packs/boosts unless you are shield-hopping in high-scoring PvP or nuking the crap out of a tough PvE node.

6

I’ve been leveling up Sentry, but I have not played much until I got my last Green cover from the Predatory and Prey, after which I immediately maxed him out. I’ve been pairing him up with Daken and Hood/Falcon for this latest Starfall tourney.

I don’t like it.

Sure, I does A LOT of damage very quickly. Downing a fully healed Patch with just WR+strike tiles is kinda funny. But I just hate the guaranteed damage part.

Scenario: Start a new match. Board is set up so you get a massive cascade. If you had taken Sentry, you are going to take damage no matter what. Red and Green have friendly fire, yellow is just self inflicted. Had you taken L.Thor, you pretty much won the match with minimal damage.

How often do you run into a setup like this? Not often. But I prefer to play my games where I can take minimal damage, than guaranteed damage. That is what’s fun to me. That is my criteria for Best Green skill. I understand the meta, I just don’t care much for it.

7

Sentry is the cancer of this game.

Everything about him screams imbalance.

That said, D3 seems to have no intention of fixing him. In fact, they actually buffed him…

So, we may as well get used to it…

8

Do you shieldhop? How hard do you push? How many points do you average per PvP?

9

I understand your complaint and acknowledge World Rupture’s impact on the metagame. However, I don’t really play the metagame. It’s not that fun for me. The most enjoyment I get from the game is the puzzles themselves. I like trying out different characters and their powers together. I like strategizing how to match so the colors fall in the right way for cascades or for blocking off the other team. Shield hopping based on one skill and boosts just doesn’t seem very fun to me. That’s OK. You can enjoy the metagame and the speed of World Rupture. And I’ll enjoy Marvel Puzzle Quest my way and vote for the green skills that I like.

10

You don’t climb with Sentry.

His sole purpose is to shield hop and win defensive games.

11

How can we say World Rupture is the best green in the game when it (more or less) requires strike tiles, boosts, and Intimidation to win in the manner you’re suggesting? Your very argument for why it’s the best is that we need to look at it outside of a vaccuum, but then you create the vaccuum (top tier shield hopping).

Yes WR is good, and yes it wins games, and yes it is pretty much required at high level pvp. But I can’t say it’s the best when it requires a setup and pre-existing conditions established in the OP.

12

Analysing abilities in a vacuum is useless when you are trying to get information about the meta, yes, but not when you are trying to find information about the characters. (You’ll realise what I am doing with the polls once all the results are in and I make a post about it.) You keep bringing meta to a discussion that’s not about meta. That’s not to say that meta is not important, of course it is! And when we are talking about meta, you’ll find to your pleasure that people generally are aware of what it means and how to game it. But there’s no reason to call it on every single discussion and then tell people they are wrong for not considering the meta.

13

Boosts and Hood are just icing on the cake. You could throw Sentry a Daken (heck even a TDaken) and win virtually every match quickly in your range at lower competitive levels. The sheer number of countdowns which each count as an AOE attack combined with strike tiles makes it broken. If they did the one fix of making all of world rupture tiles explode once (hence a 1 multipler on attack tiles not counting cascades), it would make the skill not nearly as broken, and still good, though not breaking.

14

Mechanics can’t truly be analyzed independently of the other parts. Doing that kind of design is what likely gave us World Rupture in the first place. Game design should be holistic, meaning that every part you add should be analyzed for how it will impact every other aspect of the game.

The OP definitely included a dig at your polls, but that’s because in part you’re trying to analyze the game in the same way that the developers apparently designed Sentry - looking at the independent parts instead of the whole. I’m not sure what your final post will show on all of this, and hopefully you come up with a unique revelation that makes us go, “huh, nifty”. But each individual ability has been dissected and discussed ad nauseam in the individual character threads. The polls - as far as I can tell - are simply reflecting what people already know from other discussions.

15

Definitely game design should be holistic. But we’re not designing. Hell, I’m not even aiming to create useful data for gameplay usage. I am disassembling. Looking at things one at a time. I don’t pretend to come out with any new revelation (so don’t expect anything of the sort), just obtain numeric data that reflects the player’s perception of the powers and then see whether the numbers put back together are telling.

16

Where do people get the idea that Sentry isn’t good without boosts? Even without them, 7g + 8y that have a high probability of ending a game is still one of the fastest way to win and winning fast greatly reduces the damage taken. But if you don’t boost you can end up in some awkward situation where there’s one guy left with 2000 HP and your Sacrifice tile got taken out somehow and the only move you can use is Supernova. In a shield hopping situation you’d just use the Supernova anyway, but it’s rather uncomfortable to decide whether to match 3 the last 2K damage or use a Supernova if you’re just playing normally.

17

Try hitting 1300 without it. Or hell, try hitting 1100 without it. I’m willing to bet you’re gonna have trouble. Perhaps an apt comparison is in Magic: The Gathering, the card Skullclamp. Skullclamp was good. How good? Well, here’s what happened when it came out. Virtually every deck switched its tactics so that it could either take advantage of it, or tried to find a way to counteract it. In the end, it was banned in standard, extended, and legacy. On its own, it’s not that good, and there’s a lot of decks that can’t really do much with its effect. However, the decks that gained a lot from it (GOblins and Ravager Affinity, to name the two big ones at the time) became so powerful that the choice basically became “use these decks or lose”.

Sentry requires a certain setup, true. But the fact that that setup is consistently achievable means that all we really have to compare it to is other setups which are consistently achievable. A fully boosted sentry hop will go wrong every once in a while. A partially boosted (no +3 all) sentry hop will go wrong occasionally. But it’s still the most consistent, efficient, dangerous strategy for end-game shield-hopping. And this is entirely due to the nature of World Rupture and its unique functionality. (Plus, you can do it without Intimidation.) Find something more consistently effective at hitting without getting hit yourself, with or without full boosts, and you’ll have broken the meta wide open. As it is right now, there is nothing, because no skill consistently can do 10k AOE damage on turn 5.

@Pylgrim: but that’s exactly the point I’m making. Examining these abilities in a vacuum is not just pointless from a game design perspective, it’s inherently meaningless. Call The Storm does, at best, around 550 damage per AP, at an overall cost of 14. What does that tell us, absent the knowledge of the rest of the metagame? Nothing. Because without understanding the meta, we can’t tell if 550 is a strong number, if 14 is attainable, Whether the AOE nature will incur wrath (run it against a team with storm and don’t hurt her before casting CTS and you’ll see what I mean - you’ll eat 6k AOE in response)… You can’t know ANYTHING about the skill without understanding the meta. If skills like World Rupture were everywhere, then the best green skill would be a toss-up between Judgment and Berserker Slash. If protect tiles were as powerful and consistently used as strike tiles, Photonic Blast would be a top 3 red skill. Y’see where I’m going with this? You cannot ignore the meta when discussing how good skills are because their entire value is based on how they fit into the meta! Yes, even dumb pure damage skills! A skill which destroys each strike tile on the board and deals damage to the enemy equal to the total value of their strike tiles - how good is that skill? We have no idea. A skill which destroys each red tile on the board - how good is that skill? What if it’s purple? We have no idea. It’s obvious with skills like that that the meta is incredibly important - the point is that it’s not quite as obvious but just as true! Sheer damage values is a meaningless metric if we don’t know the rest of the meta. CTS is a good skill. But if I decouple its actual properties from the metagame surrounding it, I have no way of determining whether 8k damage is better than a long stun, destroying a countdown tile, and destroying 5AP, let alone if 550/AP on a slow AOE is better than 500/AP on a fast single-target.

18

See the bolded I added. You keep insisting that all quantifiable, veritable and ultimately useful data is that which has direct application about playing and winning the game as it is TODAY, i.e. the meta. But what happens when we look at things one by one, in their own merit, disregarding current, ever-changing external factors? We get a solid base in understanding the characters and adapting when the meta changes. To use a very obvious example, Thor’s abilities (except red) are highly regarded, coming a top in their corresponding colours poll. Put that together and you find out that Thor is an extremely solid character regardless the circumstances. Again, this is widely known, but there may be subtler things in that line that we’ll find out once all the data is together. Currently, the meta is indeed dominated by WR, no one denies that. But WR is a somewhat mediocre ability on its own! Changes to Sentry (already rumoured) -such as the removal of Sacrifice-, changes to the gameplay, or changes to the metagame may at any point take the bonus fangs from the power and leave it standing alone and mediocre. When/if that happens, the more you know about abilities and characters on their own will help you adapt better to new circumstances.

19

We get a mess of unintelligible data. You’re still not getting it. By ignoring the meta, we completely ignore the only context in which the data makes sense. When the meta changes, the context changes; however, we still need that context, because without it the data is literally meaningless.

We get a solid base in understanding the characters and adapting when the meta changes. To use a very obvious example, Thor’s abilities (except red) are highly regarded, coming a top in their corresponding colours poll. Put that together and you find out that Thor is an extremely solid character regardless the circumstances.

Oh yeah? A new character comes out tomorrow with a passive that destroys one AP of each color per turn on each side. Is Thor still an extremely solid character? No! Because now those fancy 12- or 14-cost abilities will see play maybe once every few games. Now all he is is a bruiser with slow, never-to-be-used skills, while suddenly Daken and Falcon become the best pairing in the game, and Psylocke jumps in popularity. Or what if new characters start popping up that put the “new normal” of damage/AP at 600:1? Thor is an extremely solid character in the circumstances of the meta. If the meta doesn’t shift drastically, he won’t change much. But the point is that we still need to know about the rest of the game to reach that decision. Yes, thor has 3 solid standalone powers. The only reason we can know that they’re solid is because the metagame surrounding them exists!

20

I think you’re missing BPC’s point. The people voting are using their experience of how the skills play out in the current meta. If I had no context, I really would have voted for IW’s Invisibility as the best yellow. A skill that makes me invincible? Sure, that’s hands down the best. And she can even protect it too by putting down force bubbles with green and blue. She’s a self-contained invincibility machine. Why isn’t everyone playing her?

The fact that you’re comparing each skill to each other skill in the same color category shows that you’re not analyzing each skill on it’s own merit; you’re immediately comparing it to every other skill in an arbitrary category (color). I say arbitrary b/c you could just as easily have grouped abilities by AP cost ranges and gotten very similar results (World Rupture would dominate 5-7, Demolition the 8-10. Escape Plan the 11-13, and CTS the 14+). Isn’t that sort of the definition of an ever-changing external factor? Something not contained within the character owning the skill? Given this, every time a character is released, the listing should change.

If you’re looking for a solid understanding of the characters, look to see what mechanics their skills utilize that make them fun/effective to play, how their skills compliment each other, how that character can fit into various tourney formats (e.g. featured + 2 others being the most standard), and then analyze which underlying mechanics work well together. From there, you move back up to the characters themselves to see which effective mechanics are contained in other skills and see which characters compliment each other nicely.