Character Kit Design
KontraktKilla
Member Posts: 44 ★
what's the use in developing new characters if their kits are so complex and their damage window (after you build X and do XYZ together, without having X happen to you by wonky AI behavior) is so short or vulnerable to have meaningful viability in most advanced content??? The obnoxious combination of nodes put onto most fights now is blistering to manage in and of itself, and then throw on top of that a complex champion kit, it kind of kills the actual fun of playing and it becomes an arduous task...
i get that the mechanics of how characters interact and the different techniques can be engaging. but when you have to juggle and manage two active mechanics like that, i think it moves the needle to laborious instead of fun and enjoyable.
Im sure there are many that will disagree with this under their own opinion... which is fine... but of my opinion, why do we need to continually make champions which their kits are difficult to manage in their own orbit, and force the player to manage intensive node combinations at the same time?
Am i alone in thinking that the champion kits should resemble some kind of balance that adds enjoyment to the fight and are relatively simple in activating the damage aspects to them. The Spiral Kit is such a menace to manage to build her 15 actions, and then the window of being able to attack on most defenders node combos is largely unpractical... Kind of relegates her to just arena for me. I get that some of the players are uber skilled and can launch her off like a rocket, but for the vast majority id argue that isn't the case, and her useability remains limited by the mechanics of her kit... i think a lot of kits could be tweaked to have their "windows" opened longer or access to them a little less complicated and arduous to obtain and maintain. Again, curious if others see the same issue here.
i get that the mechanics of how characters interact and the different techniques can be engaging. but when you have to juggle and manage two active mechanics like that, i think it moves the needle to laborious instead of fun and enjoyable.
Im sure there are many that will disagree with this under their own opinion... which is fine... but of my opinion, why do we need to continually make champions which their kits are difficult to manage in their own orbit, and force the player to manage intensive node combinations at the same time?
Am i alone in thinking that the champion kits should resemble some kind of balance that adds enjoyment to the fight and are relatively simple in activating the damage aspects to them. The Spiral Kit is such a menace to manage to build her 15 actions, and then the window of being able to attack on most defenders node combos is largely unpractical... Kind of relegates her to just arena for me. I get that some of the players are uber skilled and can launch her off like a rocket, but for the vast majority id argue that isn't the case, and her useability remains limited by the mechanics of her kit... i think a lot of kits could be tweaked to have their "windows" opened longer or access to them a little less complicated and arduous to obtain and maintain. Again, curious if others see the same issue here.
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Comments
There will always be simple and complex champions, one isn't inherently better than the other. Dpfx has great damage and can access it very easily, but he's too simple to the extent that I don't bring him for the content I need to do most of the time since he doesn't have that much utility to speak of. If every champ was as simple as him the game would be impossible to keep running since stronger attackers are only necessary if more complex defenders are added.
I whole heartedly agree with your perspective. I'm by no means anything close to MSD or the other titans of skill in this game either. I'm average at best. but you hit it on the head exactly, BRB, his kits damage window closes so fast and the shocks expire so quickly, the special animations take so long the whole damn shock expires while he's launching it and the mechanic that makes it expire 285% faster if you begin with a medium hit is completely unnecessary and cripples him to a degree, especially when intercepting is a required mechanic of the fight due to node combination or defenders kit. After juggling node combos, then having to manage his kit at the same time, its pure luck to be able to unleash his damage potential on anything harder than monthly event quests.
agree totally that a lot of the character designs are awesome and enjoyable, but the dual management of unnecessary complex kits and ridiculous node combo requirements make a large portion of the rosters unrealistic to employ in most matchups.
Its understood and acknowledged that some champs are built specific to do one end of content or the other and only a handful do it as a jack of all trades... Outside of the specific complexity of some champs kits, i believe that the combination of stacking large numbers of nodes on top of the individual complexity of champ kits, the two combines together make a large portion of champs to be just unrealistic to use, between the damage window being so short or to complex to get to and maintain (while managing/navigating the node combos). So why make everything so complex? the heimdall fight from AoA for example, while some people dusted him off no problem, but how are you supposed to use say a "Spiral" or BRB" or someone else that has a difficult kit to ramp or peak, for that fight with the way her kit is built and the overload of nodes on the defender? you have specific actions you have to maintain while ramping them and at the same time managing a headache load of nodes...
Now using Heimdall as a brief example and not the standard here... it seems like "most" kits are designed with some advanced mechanic to manage in order to get them to peak, couple that with an overload of nodes to manage at the same time, its like where do you actually use them at, so whats the point of making uber complex champ kits while at the same time just overloading the defender nodes to the point of near impossible management? you either end up just brute forcing them down revive by revive and ignoring most of what makes them a good champ in their kit or defaulting to simplistically designed kit like venom or hulk, CGR as your go to for everything. Im all for cool characters and kits, but at some point the balance gets thwarted out of alignment... and couple that with the this AI behavior that is complete and total cheeks... kinda makes the game arduous to play instead of fun to enjoy...
So why continue to create this unneeded overcomplexity?
You're correct, i took a much advised break from the game about this time last year, and came back to it earlier this winter. picked it back up and started playing again. it is a fun game at its core and enjoy most of the content. the problem that persisted for me before and continues now, is just this. my point for creating this post was to see what other opinions are out there on this. enjoy the feedback. upon my return i have learned to dissect the node deliberately and that has seemed to keep at bay for the most part what wore on me earlier. but am curious to know what other players feel about this topic to see if its a sole position i have or are my views on this shared amongst other players in the community. i just find it arduous to juggle and manage a complex kit on top of a really large number of nodes at the same time. and i get the RPG aspects of a game like this over a just run and pound game like mortal kombat, i played that for a number of years too and left it some time ago due to stagnation. i think Kabam can achieve their goals with this game and keep it enjoyable and entertaining without the "excessive" management of kit and nodes combined... i have no problem with challenging and well designed fight nodes... and i can still clear content and do things i want, im just seeking feedback on the combination of the kit and node management combined to see what everyone else thinks, kind of what a forum is for aint it???
But the answer to your question is simply this: every game needs a reason for players to play it for more than a short while. For many games, like MMORPGs, say, it tends to be depth. There's always a new trick to learn, always new abilities and interactions to master, always new tactics to practice, always new stuff to acquire that has never existed before. MCOC has roughly taken this path for their own evolution, and it has served them well overall. Of course, not everyone likes this, but if they had kept the game simple, many of the players who chose to stick around would be long gone.
You decide what you want to be, and you end up with the players who want that to be the game they play. They could have decided to make the game more like what you seem to want, and then you'd be happy and most of the rest of us would be long gone. They chose otherwise, because they thought that would make the game more successful for longer. The fact the game is still going strong ten years from launch suggests they were correct in that decision.
These aren't "unnecessary overcomplexities." They are what the game needs to be what it is. And what it is is a game with depth, for players who want depth. For those kinds of players, the "unnecessary complexities" are not a necessary evil, they are exactly why they play the game at all.
again my opinion on those champs are the windows to do what they do best (which is why you use them, other than utility) is so short and at times difficult to ramp given the fight youre in. some node combinations make them unplayable because of this and the erratic behaviour of the AI (which is a widely debated topic all the time here) and in turn renders them useless for the majority of high level content (In My Opinion). basically relegates them to just use in arena and monthly eq... so why make the ramp so difficult and/or the damage window so short?
I r3ed her immediately when I got her out of the hype, and she is absolutely awful to play. You have to alternate between actions, which means you have to mindful of combos, and alternate them everytime, which then leads you to take a 0.5 sec delay after every hit so you can think and alternate combo, which may leads to defender accidentally parrying you mid combo. This maybe a skill issue from my side but again she's annoying.
Her dancing blades mechanics is very misleading, again you can't throw it like a combo extended they shown in deep dive, 90% of the times, especially not after a combo ender. It takes again a second delay to trigger dancing blades.
My biggest complaint is her playstyle don't even have a great payoff like adam warlock. She has good rupture damage and nice special damage, but not worth the hassle imo. I regret r3ing her she's my least used champ.
That one singular limitation means even if MCOC is around for the next fifty years, it will never reach the level of complexity I used to handle regularly when dealing with end game raid content in any of the MMOs I reached the end game in.
That's not to say MCOC would be better off with those levels of complexity. Rather, it is to say that on a scale of one to ten, MCOC might be a nine on the mobile fighting game scale, but it is at best a three on the MMORPG scale upon whose model it borrows heavily from, and most people familiar with those levels of depth and interactions would not see MCOC as particularly complex, to the point of being unnecessarily burdensome. It is only noteworthy if you approach it as a side scrolling fighting game. It isn't particularly noteworthy as an RPG.
The game's been around for ten years. Their goal is to attract players who want to be around for another ten years. It is unlikely to do so if it's a game most players can figure out completely in one. In the process of finding those players, it may lose the ones that only want a game they can figure out quickly. That's a price they are willing to pay.
i dont expect everyone to share my opinion and thankful to everyone sharing theirs! so thanks to all sharing!
I enjoy most of the challenge and evolution of the game, even more than my first stint playing since i started playing again. i realize the need to keep the challenge alive and evolve. im not advocating here for a player revolt or anything of the sort. just fishing for feedback. completely fine that we have an opposing point of view on what excessive complexity is. thank you for your opinion!
i think tweaking the kits to allow for longer windows to do damage and less complexity to their ramps would expand the useability of rosters without diminishing the complexity of the node combinations (which i still think can get a little carried away). if you need a powerburn immune champ, use a power burn immune champ, but if their kit is too arduous to ramp up for the fight, then it narrows your choice and creates the situation where you revert back to using champs with simple kits and leads to using the same champ every fight, that too creates stagnation... and other useable champs in those situations just sit and collect dust on the bench and go unused. again my opinion, and maybe im in the minority here, but thought id see where everyone else is on this.
again thanks all for the feedback on this!
Again: I don't necessarily agree with all of the ease of use scores per se, but there's no question the devs deliberately make champs knowing some will have low skill thresholds to use and some will require high skill thresholds to use and this is intentional, because there's a million people playing the game and they don't all want the same things.
It isn't just that some players would prefer more and some would prefer less. Just like you think well, fine, but if the game nudges just a little in my direction what harm could there be, there are others who think the exact same thing in the opposite direction. What's the harm in making the game just a little harder, just a little more complex, just a little more tricky?
Everyone thinks deep down that what they want is the normal stuff, and everyone else is the weirdo edge case, but hey, they don't mind compromising for them up to a point. But everyone else sees the stuff you like as the compromise to keep you happy, so long as you don't ask for any more than that.
The challenge for the devs is there is no right answer. Really, you're choosing players. If you want me, there's a bunch of players you're going to lose. Try to keep them, and there's a bunch of other players you're going to drive away. Ultimately, they have to decide what's best for the game knowing that every *tiny* change is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back for someone.
What you're taking about are preferences, and we all have them. It is fine to advocate for your preferences, as long as you recognize they are preferences. But when you ask "but why can't they just do this little thing for me" that's when you forget there are other people, many of whom wish you didn't even have what you already have and would be more than happy to lose you to get more of what they want. That's the balancing act the devs have to perform, and that's ultimately the answer to all "why" questions.
BRB I simply disagree with, if anything his shocks take too long to expire and I have to wait a little longer before I can use the sp1 in order to time it right
I've never had the dancing blades fail to fire exactly as they do in the deep dive because you're supposed to hold block and then swipe up, not just swipe up. It's a little tricky to get your hear around but once you get it it's super consistent. She's not overrated considering she's got very easy to access damage, absurd utility and is also the best counter to the hardest defender in the game