Update on July Rebalances & the Meta-Game Blog

[TheMigz]

Hi folks,

We have been reviewing the rebalances that have been out and reading your feedback and wanted to address a couple of things here.

As you folks have pointed out, the 5-Star Lv550 Ascended versions of many of these characters have lower stats than they had before. (Luke Cage being a particularly clear example.)

What happened?

As we mentioned in the meta-game design blog, there’s a lack of consistency in how characters have been balanced (or not balanced at all) over the years of this game.
Many of the characters in this batch of rebalances were from the earliest years of the game where there was not necessarily any clear balancing practices or guides for how characters were created. When 5-Stars were introduced, there were gaps in how balancing was applied for them, and as far as we can see, for a time there was no revision of 4-Star balancing to account for their new position as the second highest rarity. Then we get to Champions 2.0 where many of these numbers were multiplied individually without considering what the ultimate intention was for all characters at each rating/max level (Iron May would be an example of all these elements coming together to be applied to a new character with pre-5-Star balancing that had been blown up and multiplied by Champions 2.0 calculations).

So, we applied modern balancing to these characters to bring them to where they were supposed to be, and that meant a general increase. However it also brought some of the stats down at the highest levels compared to where they were before.

We should have communicated with you all that this would happen. This was a miscommunication between departments over here due to the complexity of the balancing across rarities and levels which lead to a very simplified message.

That said, what these rebalances have brought very much into focus is that there needs to be a systemic review of the current balancing of characters at 5-Stars.

What now?

We are going to do that review. While we do believe that the pre-rebalance 5-Star Ascended numbers for these characters were too high, we also feel that 5-Star characters should probably generally be higher than the current balance figures we’ve been working off of suggest they should be.

Regarding longer clear times

Another theme in the feedback on character rebalances has been that games do take a little longer. As we said in our metagame design blog, this is expected and intended.

We don’t believe it is healthy for a game like MPQ to have a metagame with no back-and-forth play. However, we were also aware going in that the speed-meta is deeply entrenched in the game.

We are intending to resolve the conflict between these, not by allowing for more Turn-1-winfinites, but by balancing characters and making sure that events are responsive to a slower meta. So we’re also looking at both what can be done with our existing events to alleviate this without making fundamental changes, and also looking forward to what new events can also support this goal.

Ultimately where we want to get to is that even if games take longer than 1 turn to complete, that that’s not a significant burden. Right now, we feel that the game is extremely demanding of when and how people are required to play, and we want to change that.

A Quick Note About A Beta

The question of a beta program comes up a lot and is very relevant to this discussion, so I just want to address it here.

We really, reeeeally want a beta program for MPQ. However, the game just does not support that currently. It was possible during the development of the Unity version of MPQ because that version of MPQ was completely separated from the live game.

Once the Unity version became the live (and only) version, there was no longer a separate MPQ that could act as a sandbox.

What we need for a beta version of MPQ is a sandbox that we can add players to. As we saw with the recent “Test” event, there’s only a thin membrane separating dev and live right now, so operating a sandbox is just not currently possible.

However, we are working on it because it makes no sense for a game like MPQ not to have one.

[Daiches]

Can you at least make it so 5 star versions of characters aren’t weaker than the 4star versions of those characters?

One of your whole reasonings for nerfing May was that a 4 shouldn’t be stronger than a 5, so it makes sense to continue to ascend.

and then you announce a buff for Luke Cage and totally trash him, and worse make his 4 have better stats than the 5.

Don’t review first. Fix the stuff you broke.

And stop changing things when you can’t definitely determine what the effects of your changes are going to be on the live game.

As for longer clears.. when you’re rebalancing characters to be weaker to level out characters across the board in PVP, please remember that you aren’t changing anything in PVE opponents.

Please.. Fire up your game.. go play the 4th hit of the sub CN. 1,5 million health newly buffed Goblin, 1.2 million HP or so Fatpin and his strike tiles that can one shot most characters and a 460k Hood that messed with your AP. In Heroic.

Show us how YOU play the game and if this is the intended game play you have in mind.

All I’m gonna say is there was a dev once that said “You’re supposed to lose”.

His tenure didn’t last long.

For reference:

[Grantosium]

@Daiches

Don’t review first. Fix the stuff you broke

Definitely review first, just review quickly. Throwing darts blindly is what creates the problem in the first place.

More generally, it’s a well written post and demonstrates an understanding of some of the criticisms but at the same time it leaves room for a lot of vagueness.

I’ve often imagined how I’d handle balancing if I were in charge of it. I imagine it’s super convoluted when strikes and CDs and things get involved, but I’d start with some sort of basic framework of what is an average HP bar, how much AP on a vanilla ability should do what percentage of health bar of damage. Probably I’d start with a handful of targets, for example: basic 5AP vanilla ability should do 15-30% of a health bar of damage, 8AP should be a minimum 50%, 12AP should pretty much down your average character at the same level. Why then does a 6AP ability on 1a2 Spider-Man do 90% of his health bar when the same ability on 1a5 Spidey does 30%? I don’t hate the 5 star number there in a vacuum but it doesn’t make sense in context.

[nycjonny]

Can’t get much slower than that node. And we only have one spider related boosted character for heroic this week. One who just got adjusted in maybe not all the best ways. PvE is pretty slowed down if you play heroic. The mission stated feels like it was accomplished in that space.
Side note can my Green Goblin look a little more like that?

[kuntilanak]

The longer PvE clear time is no joke. After SCL10 comes along, it easily 2-3x before. I shudder to think how much longer the Heroic will take. And that’s BEFORE this heavy nerf bat. As usual, the dev dealing heavy handed ‘rebalance’ on some of the popular toons is just par for the course…

[Dayraven]

@kuntilanak

After SCL10 comes along, it easily 2-3x before.

It might be a good idea to set the number of clears in SCLs 8 and 9 to match SCL 10 — in terms of the enemy level, SCL 8 is the old SCL 10 from before the level boost, and at that time SCL 10 already had the reduced number of clears due to its high level. The introduction of 6-stars changes the calculation there a bit, but they’re still not generally high-levelled in the player base.

[kuntilanak]

I’d say the clear count should be 3x, 3x, 2x for current SCL 8, 9, 10 respectively, to be reasonable to start the timer, but guess that’s just wishful thinking…

[Daiches]

Another good idea would be to make sure existing events continue working:

Confirmed by alliance.

[LavaManLee]

@TheMigz

Another theme in the feedback on character rebalances has been that games do take a little longer. As we said in our metagame design blog, this is expected and intended.

But, why? Why does the game need to take longer to play? Seriously, I don’t get it. Why not just keep the game as it was instead of now saying you are going to change events, which there is a horrible track record for doing?

Your mobile game is supposed to be a nice quick diversion for most and, for those with time and possibly money, maybe you want to do placement and get more rewards. The gameplay itself was actually fine.

Aside from a few people on this forum, there was NOBODY hoping each match would take longer. Nobody. This game is built on repetition. I know on my daily walk, for example, that I can do the first clear of PVE and later at night, in front of the tv watching sports, I can do my second clear. That is thrown out the window now and made the game way less fun.

Again, nobody is forcing you to make the game take longer. From a revenue standpoint, I especially don’t understand it. What is a new player actually chasing with their $$$? There used to be things worth spending money on but now? All bets are off.

I truly don’t understand this reasoning.

[Canonteign]

First time poster, long term reader. I wanted to register that after 11 years playing MPQ, this latest set of changes has been the thing to force me out. It’s now taking too long for me, combined with the impact of continued bugs.

I admire the devs’ continued efforts to try get things back under control after Unity, company changes and more. But at the practical level I can’t justify the time any more for something that’s manifestly less fun than I used to find it - the extra grind combined with more frequent loss of time from lost matches after encountering bugs has beaten me. Sorry to be going, but I’ve reached that point.

Also: you rock, forum folks. Take care everyone!

[Tarelgeth]

None of this pr fluff even attempts to address the problem. People play cheese teams because the way to win is to deny the enemy the opportunity to one-shot wipe them. Making the cheese teams not work doesn’t make other teams more viable. No matter how much you nerf Shang-Chi, Wasp does not become a viable solution. It just means fewer solutions.

[SuperCarrot]

I’m fairly positive they don’t understand the game. They also need to read what Daiches said and take it to heart. I’m not sure if they ignored or doubled down…but it was definitely corpo speak.

I will offer one solution for the devs, just add two more clearance levels. Increase the numbers on the enemies. This lets you do more with making original characters and helps you fit in the more powerful 6-stars. Remember the power level cap is artificial and created by you guys. You can change that cap at anytime. Doing this also means you don’t have to mess with all of these characters on this scale. Players just wouldn’t be able to do the higher CL and now have more to work towards and they might feel their toys aren’t broken as much.

[DAZ0273]

We should have communicated with you all that this would happen. This was a miscommunication between departments over here due to the complexity of the balancing across rarities and levels which lead to a very simplified message.

This does seem to keep happening again and again.

[BriMan2222]

Green Goblin be like:

[kuntilanak]

@TheMigz miscommunication? Meaning if you communicated with the community earlier, this won’t happen? I don’t buy it. It’s clearly a fixed decision whether we want it or not, based on YOUR analysis, matrix and whatnot.

God knows what other horrors are lying in wake to surprise us…

[KGB]

@Grantosium

Why then does a 6AP ability on 1a2 Spider-Man do 90% of his health bar when the same ability on 1a5 Spidey does 30%? I don’t hate the 5 star number there in a vacuum but it doesn’t make sense in context.

This one is easy to answer. It’s because health scales geometrically but power damage is scaling linearly. So the higher the level the less damage the power does relative to the health bar totals. That means what took 2 firings to down a character at 2 star level takes 4 or more at 5 star level.

Its why the numbers on Cage made sense before the nerf. His Yellow was meant to finish off a character entirely and it does that at 3 star level. The numbers were huge a 5 star level to reflect that same finishing move. Now it’s a love tap.

The devs are going to have to redo geometric health scaling if they want to successfully adjust character abilities at higher levels (4 and 5).

KGB

[Richrb]

I built up my characters and supports to be able to one shot nodes because it’s idiotically repetitive. If you want a Nerf all these things make everything like Deadpool daily where it’s one clear.

I’ve completely stopped playing competitively in PVE because it’s so utterly and completely boring, it was tolerable when I could do the clears in 15 minutes, anything longer than that I have way better things to do…

One clear at a very difficult level would be fun because you’re figuring things out… six clears at a marginally hard level is boring because with my characters, I will do all the clears and it will just take me LONGER and just be BORING…

This isn’t grand theft auto, this is a time killer match three game, nobody wants to do two hours on this.

[entrailbucket]

They definitely don’t understand how we play the game, and no dev group ever has. None of them have really made an effort to, either.

When BCS rolled out the “new” CL10, they explicitly said in the post that it was intended for players with multiple max 6​. Then they defaulted all the existing CL10 players into the new difficulty, and made no further attempt to explain what they were doing.

Setting aside the fact that there’s currently, like, 1 player with multiple maxed 6​ (and I hope they’ll agree with me that they don’t currently need their very own PvE CL), the move made sense at the time. It was rolled out with the launch of 6​, and they expected that the new tier would allow players to beat tougher opponents. The problem was calling it “CL10,” defaulting everybody into it, and then not explaining anything.

What they should’ve done was gate the new mode behind actually having multiple max 6​, and call it “CL11” or “CL Ultimate” or something. Instead they shoved everybody into a super difficult PvE that could only be won quickly (or at all) by the most overpowered stuff in the game.

[SuperCarrot]

Well said ‘bucket. They can lean into the 6 star stuff. 6s exist now, so maybe take that path. It seems like they are generating ill will and more work for themselves currently with the direction they are heading.

[DAZ0273]

Then the new Devs added Heroics! But they did it in a botched way so at first it seemed pointless and then became vital and all without telling us! If you came out with an instruction menu on how to do this then the Devs version seems to have the pages mixed up.