Why the Rag nerf keeps me motivated to play

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Sometimes I like playing Devil’s Advocate just for the sake of it and sometimes I actually believe what I say, this will probably be a mix of both.

So, unlike a lot of people on this forum, I’m not terribly upset about the Rag nerf - that’s in large part because I’ve had a high-level Rag for about a month and a half now, so I’ve gotten to use him quite a bit and won quite a few brackets with him. If I had JUST spent a bit of money on HP to level him, then I would feel pretty cruddy about it (and to those who did, I feel for you…I’d definitely submit an e-mail/feedback form to see if they will give some of it back. Just be pleasant, please.)

But, I believe that completing neutering Rags is good for the long-term success of the game for the following reasons:

Build Diversity
Ragnarok was used in (almost) every single high-level player’s team and was the cornerstone of it. Since Ragnarok was both very good on both offense and defense, players HAD to use Ragnarok in order to be competitive. Otherwise, they would be the first team to be attacked by others while skipping.

Battles were getting too short
For the past month, every single boosted PvP match has looked like this for me:

  • Is there a red match on the board? Take it.
  • Target opponent with highest health.
  • Use Thunderclap until he is below 3300 health.
  • After 4 Thunderclaps, I’ll most likely have 19 green AP.
  • Switch to opponent with current highest health.
  • Shoot GSBW sniper rifle.
  • If anybody is still alive, I probably have tons of AP from cascades that I could finish them off with whatever.

There. That’s it. Every match. It didn’t matter which characters I was up against, because they never actually did anything. The opponent probably got 1 tile match out of the whole thing.

This is boring. Really boring. But, I couldn’t change it or else I wouldn’t win.

Ragnarok affected my decision on every single other cover released.
I believe Polkio mentioned this in another thread, but every time a character was released with a red ability, I would compare that red ability to Rag’s red. I would then decide that since it wasn’t as good, that was the skill that would get 3 points instead of 5. Because, well…“there are other red skills out there that are better.”

Similarly, every time a character was released with a green skill, I would just think about how it could be abused if I had tons of free green AP at my disposal. These abilities got 5 points in them, even if the green skill was mediocre.

Ragnarok limited the design choices of the devs for new characters
This is probably more of a sub-point to the two above. Since battles were so short, no new characters could really compete with Ragnarok. They were certainly not going to create characters that would make battles even shorter - that just compounds the problem.

It didn’t matter how unique or creative the new abilities are if nobody used them.

A smallish nerf wouldn’t have changed anything.
We can almost all agree that Rag needed a nerf, though many believe that this nerf went too far. We’ve seen the idea of nerfing Thunderclap to more AP (3 or 4) or maybe decreasing the green generated to 4. However, even if this were to have happened instead, I STILL would have used Ragnarok and I still would have used the same strategy to win, plus a couple of extra turns, at best.

So, why am I more motivated to play?

I can FINALLY take Rag off my team
Whew, not every game is Thunderclap → Thunderclap → Thunderclap → Thunderclap → Sniper.

I can also afford to lose him on defense too, because he’s not a scare factor anymore.

I don’t know what the best team combination is
We’ve seen a couple of threads already wondering what the best team is now that Ragnarok is gone. The mystery is fun. I can finally experiment with different teams of characters to find what works best. Skills I had completely dismissed, are now suddenly viable. Wolvie’s red is actually pretty good, but always got overshadowed. Punisher’s red is no longer mainly about an instant-kill gimmick. IM40s red does the most damage, but has some drawbacks. Magneto’s red actually offers more board control than any other red ability.

I’m enticed by the idea that this will be more like how it was when I first started playing MPQ, when thinking these things through was all part of the experience.

Final comments/TLDR
I believe the Rag neutering was completely justified and I’m happy to see the direction the game is taking in terms of balance/enjoyment. Having an end game that revolved completely around one character is not good game design and the only way to right the ship was to get rid of him completely. That’s the only way players would be motivated enough to find a different way to win.

Having said all of that, I think the devs could have done a better job of communicating things. Having a small heads up of “Yup…Ragnarok makes the game worse for such-and-such reasons, we’re going to take him out of the game completely, look for that after this lightning round ends” would have gone a really long way.

2

Thank you. Exactly what I felt, but couldn’t put to words properly! Fully agree with you.

3

I completely agree here. It’s gonna feel like the backbone got ripped out from many players teams, but I truly believe that this is for the better. With as much variety as this game offers, it shouldn’t come down to one character being the measuring stick that everyone is held to, but rather to see who actually works well together and create your own enjoyable play style.

4

On point, as usual.

Personally, I hated Rags from day 1, so this nerf doesn’t affect me negatively one bit. Anyone concerned that they won’t be able to find success without Rags is simply overreacting. I placed top 2 in LRs without him, it was possible then and should be even more possible now.

5

Don’t know what to do with my Mag now. He’s 3/3/5 and has a pending rebalancing.

Was going 5/3/5 but not sure now. Too bad I already sold 3 red covers. Argh

6

Where you the one getting easy points off me about 16 hours ago in Double Shot? icon_e_biggrin.gif

Anyhow, I agree. He was too powerful so everyone was going for him. I would have too except I was too cheap to use my HP to level him up and just leveled up other heroes who i did have covers for. But i can definitely understand the outrage for the people who just recently leveled him up.

7

Great assessment, with one major caveat:

You can’t switch characters freely at will in this game as you could in MOBAs or fighting games. These haphazard nerfs already decrease the rate at which people can generate isos, on top of forcing people to spend a ton more isos to bring new characters up. With the devs showing that they’re willing to destroy a character at any time, it makes for an awful game of russian roulette.

I would be fine with this if I could sell off my Ragnarok for more than 5850 ISOS, which is a joke.

8

Oh yeah! Thank you, man, seriuosly. It really helped me to get over 1000 plank. I owe you icon_e_biggrin.gif

9

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Last night, I spent a long time thinking about where to spend my stocked ISO to replace Ragnarok. I have enough ISO to basically level up a single 3 star from nothing to maxed. Magneto seemed like the obvious choice, but the risk of him being nerfed in the near future was just far too great. Creating this uncertainty made me a bit concerned.

10

Well said, agree completely.

I like the fact they are taking proactive measures to maintain some semblance of balance in this game. Long term playability outweighs any temporary personal detriments caused by nerfing or buffing. Evolve, adjust your strategy, keep grinding.

11

If D3 Publisher doesn’t respond to my inquiry (I spent $100 on five Thunderclap covers shortly before the nerf hit), I’ll no longer be motivated to play this game (much less pay for its continued development). It is mainly a customer service issue rather than a game balance issue.

I support improvements to game balance, but the developer / publisher could be more considerate toward players who get the short end of the stick. Otherwise it takes away from the motivation for advancing our favorite characters - who knows what’s next on the chopping block. The announced revision queue is a step in the right direction.

12

Ive gone DA and talked myself into that point of view, or opened up other ideas, too many times to count. Can definitely be fun! While I agree with most of what you say, let me point out a few things.

Disclosure: I dont have a maxed Rag, only in the last couple weeks did I even get him to 2/5.

I agree that it was overdone, but now its just Thor/Wolvie. I just cycled through about 50 teams in Double Shot…and there were only a couple that were not IM40/Thor/Wolvie (and those were lower ones with either M.Storm or OBW, and were targeted immediately). I was hoping the impending nerf would result in more diversity, not less.

I agree something had to be done to lengthen battles. The tough thing is that with the sub-standard AI the outcome is rarely in question, so the only unknown is how much damage Ill take before I win. And if I take more damage or lose more Im going to play less, in part because I hate waiting for health packs to regen or using spidey to heal.

I checked all red against Rag, and thought about whether I could spam a green if I had 30 AP, as well. The point I want to make here is that there will always be a standard (its now Thor’s red).

So very true, and the real reason a nerf was necessary.

This is good, and bad. I like not having a definitive “best team,” but not so excited that its because there, seemingly, is no good team. Matches drag out, while ISO rewards remain low meaning that its much, much, much more grindy.

Communication is definitely key, but being less heavy handed would have helped. Tipping the scales from pegged one way to pegged the opposite is not balance (which I think everyone would agree is the goal).

13

An excellent post; thanks for being a voice of reason.

14

Agreed.

It hurts, but it was necessary. Ragnarok was overpowered to the point of being game-breaking.

But I also agree with people who say they should be able to sell off a fully-leveled character for a lot more of its ISO value, if not HP as well, and anyone who says that Rag’s red was nerfed a bit too hard.

15

I think thats unfortunately partly just do to so many people having them, and them being so good still. They are 2 of the most common characters out there. They’ve been available since the start, are given out by the prologue and have been given out in events a ton. Anyone playing for more than a month probably have them maxed, if no one else.

Edit: For example, I’m dropped thor completely pretty much. I use Wolv and OBW. I have a completed covers Spidey (level 73?), but unless I feel the need to play defensively and get his stun and defense tiles, OBW is just more offensive and offers really good utility. Maybe I’ll add him in once I get OBW above him so she matches blues and purples.

16

Dunt respond much lately. But spot on nemek ! And now stop ruling my brackets go join some others…

17

Your reasons are well thought out and valid… but it’s missing an important point.

If this is the balanced power level for 3*, what does that imply for every other character in the game?

They could’ve at least made it do around 1500 damage and generate 4 tiles for 6 AP. That would’ve completely destroyed using him to super power BWGS or the Storms, but still left him as a somewhat viable character at the current power levels. But that’s not what happened… instead his damage was halved, ignoring cascades (and I’ll agree that the green generation was an issue). And it’s not like that was a hard calculation, so it’s unlikely to be a mistake. So expect power levels to be reduced 33-50% across the board for the “good” characters… all the way down to IM35.

Yes, they needed to slow down the game. But if this is indicative then it’s headed toward something so slow that it’s uninteresting. And they’ve already made it clear they’re going to take on all the other top characters – and I don’t think it’s to make them stronger.

18

Nerfs don’t mean the game is gonna totally suck, but it has to be done well. If you ever played a game called Dark Souls on xbox 360 or ps3 then you’d remember good nerfs and terrible ones (the infamous one was iron flesh which went from making you a walking cheating tank to a very slow target) that basically make an item unwanted and unused. I’m not sure if that’s the case for Rag’s but if NO ONE uses him cause he’s total crap then they messed up in the other direction, and should just pull the character completely, cause what’s the point. Also it’s a free to play game which means people will spend money on a character just to level them up, I personally hate this model and would never give them money because it’s terrible, but others do pay into it and spend money on ONE character as opposed to spending money once on the whole game. So it sucks to have all the money you put into a game go down the toilet and have 0 return from it.
My advice is don’t spend money on the game, you’ll be a little less pissed when a nerf happens.

19

There will usually be a best option. Now it’s Mags and Spidey leading the charge. Resources is a issue. It took me a very long time to go from 0 3s to a maxed 3 team. Now that Rags is gone great I still have a decent team but those guys are gonna be changed soon and will no longer be a viable team. There were ways to nerf him and not make him worthless. They chose to take the path of make it so no one will use him. Awesome they are just gonna do this again and again. They aren’t making changes for the benefit of the group. You got bored with winning? Awesome. I sure didn’t. Seems like the only people that are happy are the people who never had one [ these people won’t make you money anyway] or the people that drank the hemlock and took the change as fine and will just ISO up someone else. There was a right way to do this. The Devs just didn’t do it. People may keep playing for a while but it’s frustrating to spend a long time making a great team just to have the devs come kick it over.

20

That’s the thing that has me worried. I was literally 75 hp away from starting to use Ragnarok, and now the nerf hits. Luckily I didn’t spend real money, just hp, but I’m very worried about where my investments will go (and it’ll surely be iso and hp, not real money).

Nerfing to balance is good. Decimating to the point of uselessness is questionable. These aren’t dumb guys - they had their reasons for nerfing Ragnarok to this extent, and my worry is that, as Zathrus says, if this is the standard for 3* characters, is every character going to get smacked around? Surely Thor because he’s used by everyone. And yes, it’s nice that it makes me come up with new strategies, but here’s a question:

My Spiderman, who I actually started using because I got him in some packs that I purchased using the only money I’ve ever given to this game, has 4 blue right now. I’m 75 hp away from 1250. At 1250 do I drop that into the fifth blue? I know they’re going to look at nerfing him soon…which is a bit ironic considering his usefulness was a bit more limited before and then they gave him a really good purple ability. Do I still buy the 5th blue so I can use him for a little while as he is? Granted, unlike Ragnarok, Spidey doesn’t pile damage up and destroy his opponents through things like Rag generating greens → Widow’s sniper rifle, but what should I expect is coming? My Spidey is 3/4/3 right now. I’ve gotten 5 yellow Spidey covers and sold them all because I’d like 3/5/5. I used to want 5/5/3, but then they added a useful purple passive…if they nerf him now to make it useless again, it’s like being faked out. “I had the yellow I would have used…now I don’t want it…crap now I want it again!” That would be irritating as heck.

People may have to adjust their approaches to the game completely. Now instead of focusing on one goal - one specific team idea - they should be collecting a stack of characters that might work well together, because you never know when one may become useless like Ragnarok. I always thought he’d be nerfed, but not to this extent, because he’s relatively difficult to get, but now everything’s on the table: Classic Magneto I’m looking at you. Thor and Wolverine will surely be damaged in some way. Better come up with some interesting combinations!

But hey, we can always sign off these threads with “It says Preview Edition for a reason - we’re all basically beta testers”, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.

It’s not all so bad, Rag…we’ve still got those Dark Avengers tourneys right?..