This game has a powercreep problem

[Hypersayia]

I don’t think I’m being controversial in saying that. Some of the past few prize wall heroes have been so powerful as to be meta defining on their own.

Everywhere you look, Jake Long, Negaduck, Abu, Pegasus. Usually all in the same team with a Vinny to stop any speed up hero (which, sidenote, we have an interesting case where patches for other heroes keep making Vinny BETTER by virtue of making speed ups more prevalent… Which I guess is just want kinda happens when a hero is designed to stop a singular thing).

And now we got Sally, who has the added headache of being a older hero refreshed so now she bottlenecks parts of campaigns for newer players who simply don’t have the means to overcome the stat difference.

And… I dunno, does anyone on the developer side actually think this sort of rampant power increase is a good idea? Is it even fun for anyone player side to have the idea of using the characters you actually like be totally impractical. I know the game has 210 heroes right now and that a certain degree of lack of balance is to be expected just due to the sheer number but COME ON.

Let’s look at just some basic number for Sally, I think that’ll prove interesting to consider.
So, max level, red skill of 273 (cause I don’t have QUITE enough red skill chips to max that.) she has Basic Damage and Skill Power of over 2.5 billion… That is stupid high. That is what Felix can give with his purple when it’s unmodded. But not the thing worth noting…
Her poison stacks. With that BD and maxed white skill level, she deals over 330,000,000,000 damage per stack per second… The highest base HP that a hero can have in game currently, from what I’ve been told, is 7,500,000,000. In case any one is curious enough to do the maths, that means that a single tick of poison damage is doing almost 50 times the damage necessary to one shot the hero with the highest base HP in the game.

And I have similar complements there with Pegasus’ blue. Which is twice the damage of a tick of a poison stack. But at least THAT is a single hit. Put a reflect or an invincibility there and you might be able to tank it… until he removes the buffs… Because basically every hero since Jake Long that has been released has stupid potent buff removal on top of everything else. Remember when Tron was kinda special that way? That he was one of the only ways to get rid of buffs? Pretty old hat now, huh?

But then… you kind of need that sort of buff removal, don’t you? Some of the buffs in the game have gotten utterly insane. Joy combines with any halfway decent healer for some utterly insane amounts of HP. Kermit’s buff sharing used to be utterly broken before Aurora and Cinderella came along. (Though interesting that makes Negaduck such a pain as half the decent buff removal also DEBUFFS, which just causes his reflect to refresh)

And so on and so on. I can keep going back the entire game and where new things where introduced to deal with the problems caused by heroes being as powerful as they are and how that all keeps snowballing into this massive headache of a mess where the only real viable option to deal with the nonsense is to just build the current newest hero (or refreshed hero, in the case of Sally.) Which. Is. BORING. And antithetical to the idea of a game like this. What is the point of having 210 heroes when maybe 20 of them are worth using? What is the point in playing if you are, say, a Pirates of the Caribbean fan? Oh yeah, you can use Jack Sparrow or Barbossa if you want. But they’re so outclassed you may as well not even bother.

And… You, I know I come off as a whiner. And honestly? I do not care if you think that about me. And is about as polite a way I can put my thoughts on anyone who wishes to call me out as such, because I’m pretty sure I’d get banned off the forums if I use some of the ACTUAL language that comes to mind. My point, ultimately, is this… When is it going to be too much? When is the blatant, rampant power creep going to reach a point where you have to step back and go “hang on, this isn’t fair.” When is the cost of getting the newest character up to max level going to surpass what you’re willing to spend just to keep up? For me? I don’t even know anymore. I’m just sorta stuck in. Most of my motivation towards the game is just… drained. Only holding on due to a combination of the sunk cost fallacy and the occasional bout of rage filled spite.

Who knows? maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, I’d say that that’d be a problem in and of itself but… fine. But what if I’m not? And I’m not, how many feel the same way? And how many will start to feel that way soon? And how many people feeling this way can this game reasonably survive?

[Jody_Caviness]

I’ve said elsewhere that it’s no longer powercreep; it’s in a full gallop now. The numbers have shot up so far and so fast that many heroes who ranked among the best two months ago (like, say, Gothel) are now only useful against non-meta lines; they don’t have nearly good enough stats to compete with Pegasus, Rose, Bowler Hat Guy, and a few others. What good is getting 75% Armor Reduction from Emerald going to do when even 25% of BHG’s team-wide armor is higher than most heroes’ crit damage?

What’s really annoying is that we’ve just had several months of seeing the largest percentage of heroes being potentially useful since the early days of the game, thanks largely to well-chosen patches and mostly-good refreshes. Emerald should have expanded that pool even further, but the ridiculous stat increases we’re getting now are instead quickly shrinking it.

[Satan_VII]

I completely agree with everything you just said.
Especially the part about favouring certain franchises/characters only to end up with a team that just doesn’t amount to anything meaningful.
I don’t even know or care for many of the newer heroes, but if I don’t invest in them I’m pretty much useless in any type of PvP battle format.
Imagine going anywhere in Arena/Coli without any of the characters you mentioned above. Just forget it.
I mean, I see people on YouTube beat the original Pokémon Red and Blue with Rattata and Magikarp strapped to the canons, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to completely dominate Challenger Arena with maxed out Flik and Kaa.

It makes sense that not all heroes match up perfectly in terms of utility and combined abilities, but at this point it doesn’t even really matter anyway because the actual battles are just a mess.

I remember when battles were fun and you could follow your heroes and see their abilities at play and how it affected the battle as a whole and so on.

Now the bell rings, the screen freezes for ten seconds while all heroes on both sides spam their respective skills, making buffs completely drown out the screen and BAM one team is wiped out clean. GG, I suppose.

All the new heroes are just instant death dispensers to a point where you just hope your Abu is a millisecond faster so you can stall the battle out and win.
And it is indeed BORING!

[Mister_Toon]

Not only that, but this power-gallop is putting campaigns to a screeching halt.

No one can move on without running into a hero that us either new or refreshed and get totally curb-stomped or timed-out (mostly the former).

[Pipsqueak]

@Hypersayia

When is the blatant, rampant power creep going to reach a point where you have to step back and go “hang on, this isn’t fair.”

When the latest & greatest hero doesn’t hit their revenue targets.

We’ve been commenting that it’s been getting out of hand over the past few patch seasons, and if anything it’s become even more creepy.

Agree 100% with everything but unfortunately I’m not anticipating any change.

Imbalanced Balancing

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 typi…

[Hypersayia]

I’m fully aware a change is extremely unlikely to happen. The nature of capitalism. It demands infinite growth, which means PB has to create infinite demand for the deals, which means it has to keep making the newest hero worth the buck.

The game will die before that changes. And honestly? I’m wondering if we’ve reached the point where we should let it. But the Disney licence means it’ll always have at least a few whales it can leech off of to keep the servers running.

[Spacerange]

I do agree with what you said about how the game was fun I remember playing the game on my phone years ago and it was fun now it’s kinda boring because you can’t use whoever you want anymore it’s just the annoying ones like Sally I do like her but not with anyone else or In campaign pegasus rose and negaduck he isn’t as good as others but he’s still annoying and I like how they rework the older characters because it makes them be in the Meta for more longer I like it but sometimes it could get out of hand like Sally Flynn rider is okay because he still doesn’t do much anyway I do love his damage and elastigirl is useless still because her single attacks but does good damage those characters aren’t as annoying as someone like Pegasus Sally or rose or even negaduck so I completely agree with your statement

[The_Real_Numi]

The main problem for this game is that there are heroes which barely do a scratch or heal/shield barely anything and then there are heroes with x1000 stats.

Notable example - Jack Sparrow (unrefreshed hero) vs Elastigirl (recently refreshed hero).

While I definitely want heroes to be refreshed and be good… at the same time I don´t want them to completely powercreep the older heroes.
Hence why I ask for a nerf to newest and recently refreshed heroes @Samm so that their stats don´t exceed 10B HP and 1B Armor/Reality/Skill Power/Basic Damage at Emerald+0, TL 390.

Anything over that creeps the balance itself and is very unhealthy for the game. Unrefreshed heroes can´t have large comparative disadvantage to new or recently refreshed heroes.

[SparkleBunny]

Remember when Randall was a problem? Good times.

[Emmanuel_VI]

I come back and repeat, the problem started when the “refreshed” heroes are just raising their numbers x1000 instead of giving them a really good buff, as was the case with Miguel Rivera and his buff. The character changed, he still has the basic idea of him, but he was no longer the useless character that he was before and he found uses for him, until they began to add better heroes and raise the statistics to a billion.

[The_Real_Numi]

@The_Real_Numi

The main problem for this game is that there are heroes which barely do a scratch or heal/shield barely anything and then there are heroes with x1000 stats.

Notable example - Jack Sparrow (unrefreshed hero) vs Elastigirl (recently refreshed hero).

While I definitely want heroes to be refreshed and be good… at the same time I don´t want them to completely powercreep the older heroes.
Hence why I ask for a nerf to newest and recently refreshed heroes @Samm so that their stats don´t exceed 10B HP and 1B Armor/Reality/Skill Power/Basic Damage at Emerald+0, TL 390.

Anything over that creeps the balance itself and is very unhealthy for the game. Unrefreshed heroes can´t have large comparative disadvantage to new or recently refreshed heroes.

Considering I didn´t receive any official response to this, I take it as official agreement that there is no powercreep problem. Which in itself is a bit silly.

[Lord_of_Ales]

When too much becomes way too much it’s just … TOO MUCH !!! So totally agree

[Drewman]

I think a lot of the problem is the way stats are set up. Why would I run a tank to mitigate team damage when a DPS hero has much more health and gives teamwide armor and reality? We no longer have roles for heroes.

When the game first started, support heroes supported, tanks tanked, etc. Now it’s just new heroes that are damage role with higher than tank defensive stats, self/team heal, and crowd control. The roles have no meaning anymore.

[Spacerange]

I do agree but tanks still have a lot of amounts of health controllers has a good amount of controls even thought they do a bunch of damage and supporters still heal but just do more damage than usual but i do agree there is a bit of a over board with stats but I kinda like it as well

[Yunno]

I believe the reason they make such insane refreshes are because they know, if they just give hero a minor stat buff, in no time at all, they would be outdated…again and people would ask for refresh of that very hero… again…

And if they keep ignoring us, they will make players mad, angry and unhappy

So, in order to avoid that, they decide to make refresh as big as they can. That way, heroes will likely to stay in the meta and be useful longer

Just look at heroes got refreshes when Patch just came. Jafar for example. He is now useless and outdated…just like before he got his refresh

I don’t say the current situation is good. I just somehow understand their reason, or at least the reason I can think of

P/s: @samm I really hope you guys will refresh more Aladdin heroes. Genie and Aladdin have potential, the only thing they lack is good stat. The same can be said with Jasmine. Hope you guys consider

[Hypersayia]

@Yunno

if they just give hero a minor stat buff, in no time at all, they would be outdated…again and people would ask for refresh of that very hero… again…

Not entirely wrong, but honestly what that tells me is that refreshes are a stopgap measure rather than something that’ll actually address the horrendous balance issue.

I have no doubts that Sally will get powercrept. I’d even go so far as to say it’ll only take maybe two or three level cap increases. That isn’t the problem. The problem is the sheer rate of the powercreep at this stage.

And that’s honestly ignoring the fact that, when all is said and done, there is absolutely no point of the roles. Everyone has such high damage stats every fight barely lasts 10 seconds, regardless of how “tanky” a given hero is.

[Yunno]

@Hypersayia

refreshes are a stopgap measure

It has always been like that

For heroes with good skill set, they just need good stat to be relevant and useful

For heroes with horrible skill set, no amount of stat can make up for that sure, they can get stronger but a hero that offers nothing but good damage will soon be forgotten

To make a hero lasts, we need a full refresh, like what they did with Miguel and Queen of Heart’s 1st refresh (not the patch one). But that would take too much time and resources, therefore unrealistic for Perblue

[Drewman]

@Yunno

But that would take too much time and resources, therefore unrealistic for Perblue

That’s because they’re focusing on how much money they can make at this moment instead of increasing the longevity of the game. The immediate gratification is what they’re working on.

This game felt very balanced for a while. Sure, there were the occasional OP heroes in the beginning (Randall, Jafar, Bo peep), but I feel like they were addressed pretty quickly compared to what we’ve got now.

I would much rather them spend time and resources on getting the game into a playable state and not a “let’s throw the newest hero at a full team to secure the win” style game. We don’t need new heroes as often as we’re getting them - we need the current roster to be balanced and usable. But this isn’t profitable for them since the whales that spend money on new heroes have already spent money on the old ones.

It’s not that it would take too much time and resources, it’s that they’ve cornered themselves in a position where the only way they’re making a profit is by releasing absolutely overpowered heroes in hopes that people will pay for them so that’s where their time and resources are being allocated.

It’s sad to see.

[Yunno]

@Drewman

It’s not that it would take too much time and resources, it’s that they’ve cornered themselves in a position where the only way they’re making a profit is by releasing absolutely overpowered heroes in hopes that people will pay for them so that’s where their time and resources are being allocated.

That’s their goal. Sad but true. But even with that goal in mind, many of their new heroes are horrible

I don’t know about others but if I can counter a new hero with my current ones, I won’t work on that one

The guy from Meet the Robinsons, Rose… they sure are bad

[Hypersayia]

Okay, so I’m bringing this up again because Mike just got a pretty crazy buff and I think the reason why is pretty obvious.

Namely, patch trials.
Old heroes are forced to contend with the newer ones in patch trails, forcing PB to refresh at least one hero per franchise in order to for them to stand a chance, but now, they’re overcorrecting.
They close the power gap but in turn mess up the progression of friend campaigns and such.