Bad champions are good for the game

Jack_OHara

In 2018, we were given an INSANE amount of high tier champs. Void, Gladiator Hulk, Killmonger, Corvus, Cap IW, Domino, Ghost, Omega Red, Symbiote Supreme, and Aegon are some of the best offensive champs in the game, and that's leaving out defense.

Now I've been seeing a lot of complaints about how 2019 champions are significantly more mid-tier than 2018. This is completely true. The champions released this year, while not all terrible, just aren't as good as the ones last year. I think this is a good thing.

Adding better and better characters is going to leave the current best champs in the dust. I think that more middle ground ones help keep balance. If great champions keep getting added, and older ones keep getting buffed, there will be no bad characters in the game at some point. I think the risk of pulling a bad champ is part of what makes the game fun.

However, I think the mystic class might deserve a break. Since the beginning of 2018, we've only had 3 mystics. 2/3 aren't great, but I see the point of Ebony Maw. However, he is terrible offensively, and Diablo is pretty bad overall. I think a decent mystic would be well-earned at this point.

Feel free to disagree. I'd like to see what you guys think.

Terra

Diablo is underrated. People just don't like him cause he's complex. His Regen is awesome and he can become stun immune and is somewhat suicide friendly

DNA3000

Jack_OHara said:

I think the risk of pulling a bad champ is part of what makes the game fun.

I wouldn't put it that way. But I would say that I would prefer a game where the champions were all different to one where they were all the same, or had exactly the same value or the same utility or could all do the same content. If everything was too similar it would become boring. And I think it is unavoidable that if the champions have different abilities and can do different things that some will be perceived as more valuable than others by each player. And which are more or less valuable won't even be the same between players. But the hunt for the things I want is only interesting because I don't want everything equally much.

Game balance is a separate question. But even in a perfectly designed and implemented game I would want the champions to be different enough that I would value some more than others. In a perfect game, different players would disagree about which ones were more or less valuable to the highest degree. That's not true now.

WrathfulRaven

I don’t think we should have bad champs. Each champ should have at least some use. Almost like a big game of Rock Paper Scissors. Maybe they aren’t good for all fight buts at least have something of worth. Ebony sucks yes but he has a purpose as a counter for Corvus and ghost, but when a champ has almost no purpose at all, they don’t belong. HB, Colossus, KK, several others who are always in the pool for worst champs. You should never get a champ that has no value at all. I’m glad Kabam is reworking older ones. At least that way they hopefully have a place in the new meta.

Jlive78

Every champ should have some use. Ebony Maw is completely useless.

AshKetchum

Diablo has potential there, just like Sue storm.. but the "skill level" needed to get that damage isn't worth the effort compared to many other champs.

DNA3000

WrathfulRaven said:

I don’t think we should have bad champs. Each champ should have at least some use. Almost like a big game of Rock Paper Scissors. Maybe they aren’t good for all fight buts at least have something of worth.

Pretty much every champ does have a use. The problem is relative value not absolute value. Colossus isn't bad because he is useless. Colossus is problematic because his primary abilities are overshadowed by all of his competition in his space (basically, bleed immune armor procers).

Rock Paper Scissors is often mentioned as a way to balance the performance of games like this, but I think that's actually not the best model. I think the better mental model is a pen and paper roleplaying game called (coincidentally enough) Champions. Champions was a superhero pen and paper role playing game where you built characters using a system of advantage and disadvantage points (at least in most incarnations). The basic idea was to "buy" beneficial abilities by simultaneously taking disadvantages that offered points.

The system always had balance issues, and in my opinion it was impossible to balance for many fundamental reasons. But the core idea is interesting: if you want to be strong here, you have to be weaker there. The stronger you want to be in some areas the weaker you have to be in others, or the more weaknesses you have to possess, relative to some average.

In this kind of system Rock buys supremacy over Scissors by being absolutely horrible against Paper. But you could also make Stones that are actually slightly better than both Scissors and Paper, but get shattered by other Rocks. This kind of system is less binary, and there's more flexibility to make things that aren't the best at anything, but pretty good at a lot of things - even though they individually do less well compared to everything, they also don't lose to anything. That sort of thing.

Bear3

Kamala Khan has a use! Those pesky poison nodes where you need furies to do any damage! 5/65 her people! You. Are. Ah Welcome.