Game Balance: Champions Worth Rank 5
Why do I have to start the post this way? This is not a criticism of Kabam. Actually most of it is praise for a job well done. Please read the whole post before moderating it. :P I promise it's constructive.
So... way back when Kabam rolled out the much hated 12.0 update, they said something about their motivations behind the massive nerf to the most dominant champs in the game (and minor buff to some lesser champs); something that made a lot of sense to me even though it was an unpopular decision at the time. Their explanation was that they wanted a more level playing field, a game environment where any player could choose to rank up any character and not be significantly handicapped for doing so. Every character was supposed to be viable.
In my opinion that's an admirable, though difficult, goal to achieve that leads to a robust and healthy game environment and for the most part, with one *glaring* exception which I will get to later, I think they have succeeded. I have some evidence to back that up which I'll also get to a little later.
I agree with most of the decisions they've made since then, especially since they corrected the 12.0 overreach (the nerfs were too strong) with 12.1 and beyond.
Scarlet Witch is still awesome, she just doesn't totally dominate everything like she used to.
Black Widow is still great, she's just not broken.
Thor is still great, he's just not broken.
StarLord is perfect.
Doctor VooDoo.. meh... he wasn't so overpowered to begin with. This is the only nerf I really thought was uncalled for. He kinda stinks now. They ought to put him back to how he was.
Spider-Gwen isn't overpowered but she's not the worst character in the game anymore.
The buffs to Luke Cage and Red Hulk were great; these characters are very useful now but not overpowered. Just right. Looking forward to similar buffs for Colossus, Hulkbuster, and Carnage. (but please never buff Kamala Khan, someone needs to retain the title of worst)
So... this brings me to my main point: do any characters still dominate the way Scarlet Witch used to? Or is it the even playing field that Kabam was trying to create?
Well, by looking at the top 100 highest rated players in the game I did an informal survey of which champions these players saw fit to bring up to rank 5. Here are the results:
Of the top 100 MCOC players, this many took these characters to rank 5:
11% Doctor VooDoo
7% Morningstar
6% Iceman
6% Ghost Rider
6% GwenPool
4% Dormammu
4% Corvus Glaive
4% Magik
4% Thor Ragnarok
3% Spider-Man (Stark Enhanced)
3% Sentinel
3% Mephisto
2%: Hyperion, Killmonger, Medusa, Vision, and Quake
1%: Sentry, Sabertooth, Proxima Midnight, The Hood, Void, Cable, StarLord, Archangel
and... if that's where the list ended, I would say awesome job! Very balanced and varied field of champions with maybe the small exception of Dr VooDoo who might be a little overpowered and overrepresented but all in all 11/100 people choosing to rank up one character is not that big of an imbalance at all.
Except... I left one character out. Of course.
70% of the top 100 players in the game have taken Blade to rank 5. 70%!!!
If you were going for a balanced environment I think someone messed up here. The biggest problem might be the synergy with Ghost Rider which extends his danger sense (which is too strong) to way too many champions. It breaks the game. And I'm sure you know this already as we've seen some design choices already obviously meant to help correct it. But still. Blade is more dominant now than Scarlet Witch ever was, at least in terms of the choices players are making about which characters to rank up.
Just wanted to share the results of the survey, and maybe elicit some ideas about what to do about this. Do other players see this imbalance as a problem? What should Kabam do? Nerf Blade? Keep bringing out villains that aren't #villains? Make new characters that are just as strong or stronger? Rebalancing is going to be difficult. I posted a couple ideas for AWD in my character ideas thread already.
