Various Color Combinations

I don’t know if there’s another thread like this out there, but in a cursory glance at the forums, I didn’t find one.
I thought it might be interesting to look at the rate of occurrence of various color combinations. Given that PvP and essential PvE nodes only give you the freedom to pick 2 heroes, being able to cover all 6 colors with just 2 heroes is a nice advantage when you can manage it. This list is current as of the release of Professor X. There are 20 possible combinations of 3. They are listed below with the number of heroes that have that combination.
redflag.png
/ yellowflag.png
/ greenflag.png

  • 6
    redflag.png
    / yellowflag.png
    / blueflag.png
  • 6
    redflag.png
    / yellowflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
  • 2
    redflag.png
    / yellowflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 5
    redflag.png
    / greenflag.png
    / blueflag.png
  • 2
    redflag.png
    / greenflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
  • 2
    redflag.png
    / greenflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 6
    redflag.png
    / blueflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
  • 3
    redflag.png
    / blueflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 1
    redflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 3
    yellowflag.png
    / greenflag.png
    / blueflag.png
  • 4
    yellowflag.png
    / greenflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
  • 1
    yellowflag.png
    / greenflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 3
    yellowflag.png
    / blueflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
  • 6
    yellowflag.png
    / blueflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 2
    yellowflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 0
    greenflag.png
    / blueflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
  • 0
    greenflag.png
    / blueflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 1
    greenflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 5
    blueflag.png
    / purpleflag.png
    / blackflag.png
  • 6

Right off we can see that 2 combinations ( yellowflag.png
purpleflag.png
blackflag.png
and greenflag.png
blueflag.png
purpleflag.png
) don’t have any heroes, and 3 more ( redflag.png
blueflag.png
blackflag.png
, greenflag.png
blueflag.png
blackflag.png
, and yellowflag.png
greenflag.png
purpleflag.png
) only have 1 each (Psylocke, Doctor Octopus, and Squirrel Girl if you’re curious). Also, you see a few good combinations. For instance, if you’re looking for a redflag.png
greenflag.png
blackflag.png
to pair with a yellowflag.png
blueflag.png
purpleflag.png
then you’ve got 6 choices on both sides. The same is true for redflag.png
yellowflag.png
greenflag.png
and blueflag.png
purpleflag.png
blackflag.png
. However, one notable disparity is that there are 5 redflag.png
yellowflag.png
blackflag.png
but (as mentioned above), not a single greenflag.png
blueflag.png
purpleflag.png
. So, if you’re starting with redflag.png
yellowflag.png
blackflag.png
(Luke Cage, Colossus, Cyclops, Captain Marvel), it’s going to take 2 more characters to cover every color. The other 0 only has 2 “opposites” (Ragnarok and She-Hulk), so it isn’t as large a disparity.

Thoughts?

TL;DR - We need some yellowflag.png
purpleflag.png
blackflag.png
and greenflag.png
blueflag.png
purpleflag.png
heroes, emphasis on the greenflag.png
blueflag.png
purpleflag.png

The colors are obviously themed to do certain things, and the ‘do damage’ color tends to be more common than the ‘do special stuff’ color like purple, whihc is why it’s not surprising the missing combination all lack purple and 2 of them lacks blue (which is usually the protective color, which isn’t very interesting to design abilities for).

Do a search for the user: “Nonce Equitar 2”. You’ll find a treasure trove of stuff along these lines that I think you’ll find very interesting. If I have time in the tonight, I might find a few “best of” threads and link to them here.

Also, the Devs seem to have made filling in those gaps a priority lately. There was a time when it looked like they only considered “theme.” Now we have tons of heroes with blackflag.png
abilities, even though that initially seemed to be reserved for villains. Now it’s like the “angsty”, “mutant”, or “ouch that’s going to sting for a few turns” color and every new character seems to get it.

One word on theme skewing the color combinations: if they didn’t do it, then infinite combos would be even more of a problem than they are now. If every color generator required purpletile.png
to make some other color, then there wouldn’t be a Winfinite problem. So, theme is pretty important to game mechanics.

Check out the bottom of Nonce’s Compendium for starters:
https://forums.505go.com/discussion/11111