Imbalanced Balancing

[Speen]

It’s no mystery to anyone by now that heroes are going to gradually get better over time…but I think with Pegasus, a few lines have REALLY been crossed

• Skill multipliers are insane, even if he’s just at red rarity his green skill that activates immediately does damage in the billions

An immediate AoE skill (level 88 btw) that activates right away, granting several long lasting buffs and inflicting powerful slows, doing this much damage:

And for comparison, here’s Megavolt’s, a character who was fairly recently buffed, AoE at the same rank (and about the same skill level) as Pegasus:

• The sheer amount of effects each skill grants Pegasus is absurd, tons of buffs/debuffs inflicted that all last a huge amount of time; plus, his red skill isn’t limited by level, none of the three massive effects it grants, so you can easily just unlock it and not need to improve it to get any use out of it

Like compare this:

To the skill of a recently refreshed Miss Piggy:

Level capped AND it offers very little

• Friendship Disks for new heroes (like Pegasus) get several useful stat buffs from leveling them, meanwhile several characters that were refreshed over the past few months didn’t really get much of anything in that department

Compare stat buffs like this:

To stat buffs like this:

I get powercreeping, that’s how money gets made, but I think something needs to change just a little bit with the rest of the game’s roster, and the recent refreshes haven’t been accommodating for that

I’m not saying Pegasus necessarily needs to be nerfed (though I wouldn’t be opposed), rather just the fact that it’s incredibly skewed how heavily new heroes get tons of utility, while refreshes don’t supply older heroes with any new utilities at all, instead just opting to give their currently existing skills a small number buff

Buff everyone’s stats and the buffs they can offer, basically

[The_Real_Numi]

@Speen

The sheer amount of effects each skill grants Pegasus is absurd, tons of buffs/debuffs inflicted that all last a huge amount of time; plus, his red skill isn’t limited by level, none of the three massive effects it grants, so you can easily just unlock it and not need to improve it to get any use out of it

@Speen

Level capped AND it offers very little

You do understand that what you have done is essentially an imbalanced comparison right?
Orange numbers scale by Basic Damage, blue by Skill Power.
And new heroes generally have both high even when low.

Besides, refreshed heroes usually get the stats in disk levels.

[Speen]

@The_Real_Numi

Orange numbers scale by Basic Damage, blue by Skill Power.

Pegasus having 50% more in a basic damage stat than Megavolt’s skill power does not account for a 1000x increase in damage; the problem is the multipliers, still

[The_Real_Numi]

@Speen

Pegasus having 50% more in a basic damage stat than Megavolt’s skill power does not account for a 1000x increase in damage; the problem is the multipliers, still

Besides, Pegasus’ Basic Damage can only be enhanced by one disk when he loses HP, Megavolt gets direct Skill Power increase via a disk. That’s what I said.

And overall Megavolt’s refresh is getting old already (we all know that), you should compare to more recent refreshes.

[Pipsqueak]

PB, realistically, have never wanted to have more than a handful of viable heroes at a time.

This was always achieved in the past by releasing 1-2 very powerful heroes that would remain so for months before eventually being nerfed or falling out of favour, so that we’d always have 1-2 very powerful heroes, a few that were pretty decent, and the rest mostly worthless. Because hero refreshes were quite rare, it was easy for PB to keep this pattern while maintaining a nice gradual power creep typical of this sort of game.

However… users (rightly) asked for more heroes to be viable, and more hero refreshes to be performed. Of course! We want to play with more of our roster.

However x2… PB don’t want us to play with more of our roster as presumably that’s bad for their economy, thus they needed a way to appease us with more hero refreshes while maintaining their hero viability pattern, all while releasing fewer actual new heroes than before.

Their answer to that is the stonking huge power leaps that we see nowadays. If they kept the same gradual power creep as before, we’d eventually end up with a huge number of viable heroes thanks to the rate of refreshes. The only way to prevent that is to bump the power so high each time that the turnover of viability is almost monthly, thus we don’t actually have many more viable heroes than ever before.

Yes, from a user perspective it’s ridiculous and has made a competitive playstyle all but impossible without spending money each month on the chosen few, before they are overturned the following month.

Sadly unless the amount of refreshed heroes slows down, I don’t think it will change.

[The_Real_Numi]

@Pipsqueak

However x2… PB don’t want us to play with more of our roster as presumably that’s bad for their economy, thus they needed a way to appease us with more hero refreshes while maintaining their hero viability pattern, all while releasing fewer actual new heroes than before.

If the “surprise disk power” with 1B disk power or “flash recruitment” with 900k stamina are anything to go - it’s quite the opposite, but not for free.

What I absolutely dislike is how easily you get for a $20 not x2 progress (as you should in this type of game), but like 10x-15x at the very least.
That I find totally detrimental to any F2P trying to get a slice of a chance at being competitive - simply because you can use those 900k consumables on ANY hero you want - aka good ones.

2M consumables are one rank for EVERY hero, meaning that a full rank for all heroes is ~45 dollars worth of stamina.

For F2P to get an equivalent of 2M consumables… even a year would be too little.

[Bluebandit93]

There is 0 incentive for them to make the game playable and enjoyable without paying.

And that has not, nor will it ever change.

So all we can do is ride it out until the cost to uphold the game outweighs the revenue, which I do not believe will be long

[Speen]

Even stats aside, the amount of buffs Pegasus is capable of earning is unheard of

And alright, the closest comparison I can make is with Mulan, another damage hero who was refreshed just a few weeks ago; I don’t have her high enough to give an accurate comparison, but her SP is at about 1.1 million right now; should we multiply that by 4 to match what I have Pegasus at

it still wouldn’t even come close

Keep in mind that Mulan doesn’t get SP from her Disks, and the only buffs she’s capable of giving herself from all of her skills is shield, 100 normal crit, and 100% attack speed; her AoE is then only going to be blinding enemies, and not inflicting anything else

Pegasus on the other hand, upon just using his AoE, gains 250% attack speed, up to 20 determination, slows every enemy by 85%, removes all buffs from enemies, gives them all 5 weakness, and then gives himself a 400% HP shield for 25 seconds

Oh, and then upon using a stack of determination, he’s capable of dealing 300% (three hundred percent!) more damage to all the enemies he’s just given weakness while having 400% more armor and reality

I mean it’s not like you’d even need to level any of Pegasus’ skills at that point except for Take Flight, he uses it right away and can basically wipe out the entire enemy team unless they’re running a set with huge armor buffs, it’s incredibly sloppy design

[SaveElle]

So true. Everything you said.
What in the world is that Red skill? It buffs the skill to remove armor, reality, basic damage, and skill power? BD and SP by 85%!? This is ON TOP of what the skill does.

Another removes all buffs, applies 5 stacks of weakness, and gives a 400% shield? Such overkill. And again, this is ON TOP of what the overpowered, instantly used at the start, skill does.

And then give reflect, because of course, give another overpowered skill. I’m surprised he doesn’t get invisibility and precise, too. He gets self-cleanse and hardy at least. Oh and at least his disks aren’t broken. They are just ok.
PB forgot to balance Pegasus. Someone gave him too much of everything and no one checked it.

I can’t wait to see the next new hero. It’ll probably be completely horrible. Well, I mean any hero that is good isn’t absolutely broken like Pegasus and Negaduck.

[Hypersayia]

It’s honestly fundamentally pathetic. It’s lazy. It makes actually investing in the heroes you WANT to use an utter waste of time.

Because PB doesn’t not WANT to actually balance new heroes. Because then people will keep paying to get the stamina to get the new one up to level so they won’t immediately fall behind.

And the refreshes are either utterly useless or a total overcorrection. Because they need JUST enough refreshs to have an impact so people can hold on to their favourites with the desperate hope of “maybe next refresh will make [character] viable.” so people don’t just LEAVE. And I HATE that I’m falling for it.

I mean, by my own admission, each time the new patch heroes are announced I cross my fingers that the Incredibles would be one of the featured franchises because I’ve basically deluded myself that the resulting refresh would make Dash worthwhile but let’s be honest, that simply is NOT going to happen.

[The_Real_Numi]

@Hypersayia

And I HATE that I’m falling for it.

As some wise former Community guy once said.
“You are free to leave any time you want.”
I´d like to add kinda hidden words, which would fulfill the meaning of the sentence itself:
(If you don´t like what the team is doing.)

[Hypersayia]

Too buried deep into the sunk cost fallacy and it’s too ingrained in my routine to just cut out.

I am the equivalent of an alcoholic who knows he shouldn’t keep drinking but just can’t stop regardless.

Could go on a massive rant about the incredibly annoyingly effective predatory tactics at play but honestly, I just want the game to be actually FUN and not a case of “if you don’t have the newest hero maxed out, you’re wasting your time trying any of the pvp modes”

[The_Real_Numi]

@Hypersayia

Could go on a massive rant about the incredibly annoyingly effective predatory tactics at play but honestly, I just want the game to be actually FUN and not a case of “if you don’t have the newest hero maxed out, you’re wasting your time trying any of the pvp modes”

I started side-playing Street Fighter: Duel a bit. So in the case of DHBM dying out (for some reason) I could just go there.

To be fair, the balance (not with heroes but general progression mainly) is much better done there than in DHBM.
But the reason is simple - what I state all the time here - if $20 gets you 10x the progress of F2P then it’s not good.
Deals in SF:Duel are mostly trash compared to F2P progression so you’d need to spend soooooooooooooo much to get even 2x progress.

[Bluebandit93]

There are so many games that are better and cheaper to play

And having stopped spending, I can now invest in other hobbies and other games.
It is still mostly fun to play daily, but people should start to realise that the game will not last forever.

Whether it will end in a week, a month, 6 months, a year or even 5 more years. It will end.
So best not to put all your eggs in one basket.

[CK_BEEE]

They sure are getting more and more desperate for money. And they don’t even want to hide it or sugarcoat it anymore

That’s why, for nearly 1 year, I stopped paying. Even when I saw some really good deal. Every time I was tempted, I remember how horribly they treated players and then I stopped

Why support a company that ALWAYS disappointed their customers?