So, I’ve been gone for a long time, and well, a lot of things have changed it seems. Old legends are becoming significantly more powerful with their new secret skills, so I guess the power creep is even taking them along with it too. But there’s something else, a distinct trend emerging that I’m concerned about almost as much as the power creep: an increasingly counter-reliant meta.
As strategies are becoming more and more powerful, they demand that more hard counters be produced in order to give it something to be afraid of. It started innocently enough when searguard and chromera showed up to keep the GT spam in check. Then came deathwarg, geomagnus and dusicyon to help clean out the shells and boxes. But now… I feel like it’s kind of gotten out of hand. Now there’s regalion, who can completely nullify several common moves, severely crippling certain lineups, there’s this new mythic that straight up ignores stun immunity, and now there’s also a payback killer that counters the thing people normally use to safely counter stuff? Seriously? Let’s look at cyclozar. His role is to punish the enemy if they try to pull cheeky and powerful strategies like sleep or turn giving, while in turn not exposing his team to any of the same treatment, since he himself wasn’t vulnerable to any of those same conditions. He had clear pros and cons: can punish the enemy swiftly and reliably and is safe to have on the team, but if there’s nothing to target he has nothing to do. But now that there’s a payback killer… he’s basically being punished for doing his job now. That doesn’t seem fair to me tbh.
Other crazy stuff has happened too… protectors that apparently aren’t vulnerable to protector killer, tons of excessive moves have turned up and made shield/hg so much less reliable, and… dozens of common legends are apparently sleep immune now??
I think this is just an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of strategies becoming more and more powerful… they can’t simply coexist like they used to anymore. They have to put each other in check, strategies need to be become completely ineffective in certain situations, there needs to be a specific monster that’s able to COMPLETELY shut it down, etc. etc. It’s become like Rock Paper Scissors, where how well you do depends in such large part on what kind of team you end up against, a factor you can’t control. Skill seems to play less of a part; sure it does make a difference, but no amount of skill will save you from a motor/tardi combo if you don’t have a way to get rid of the shells.
I dunno if this is ever going to stop… if the power creep’s going to continue, then this counter obsessive trend is just going to keep on going. I personally miss the simpler times when I didn’t have to expect to be completely steamrolled due simply to a bad matchup. Maybe that’s just me, idk.
When i also came back to the game i found these overpowered monsters and made a topic about power creep comparing old legendaries to the new legendaries and how the new legendaries outshine the old ones.
With a bit of luck i managed to pull off dusc out of a rare egg and since then i kept hitting rank 1 very constantly. I do think skill still has it place in the game and power creep will always be a thing.
You will endup picking monsters along the line and be back to top level very quickly.
Have you heard about the move “Daunt” it stuns enemies but doesn’t count as stun. Basically stun re-packaged. Recycling old moves changing their names to continue the power creep.
I understand this is inevitably and have relegated myself to enjoy the game without pressure to be ultra competitive.
I went and wrote a long post detailing difference between PvP today and before, also about how the design of new monsters is actually something I like a lot and has improved the game. However, I rambled and it wasn’t very clear. Instead I’ll just write the following…
The point you raise here about counters being harsher and linking it to archetypes needing heavier counters as they power creep is interesting and very true in some cases. However, what the Devs have done is periodically add new archetype and a counter to it which is a very balanced and stable way to develop the game (much better than power creep). Also, in the case of something like stun the original counters to it were never strong enough that as new things were introduced which could deal with these counters (not stun monsters per say) we needed more powerful counters like stun converter/counter on more monsters.
I don’t think the game is like rock, paper, scissors as much as it used to be. There’s always some element of that, especially with front lines, but the modern monsters typically have more versatility which helps deal with the times you’re paper facing down a chainsaw. Older monsters are quite one-dimensional and to be honest I found that less interesting.
Lots more things are viable these days and it’s now possible to run teams which have good synergy then a couple of really versatile monsters to help them deal with whatever you might come up against.
I love the versatile monsters but I do think in some cases they are a bit too easy to fit into teams. You can jam together “good stuff” and make it work more easily. However, this game will always be heavily into strategy so I don’t worry too much about this ruining the game.
Power creep is nutso fo sho. And the old legends cant stack up against the new ones.
IMHO speed has become the meta. Your FL needs to be 70+ speed and roaring monsters are a must.
But ya, the RockPaperScissors thing started a couple PvPs back. I played some poor fellow today running a poisom heavy lineup. I happen to run cyclo chrome and Draco. Destroyed half his lineup before he could do a thing.
And the plethora of sleep immunes is because the devs gave Oni 1on1 secret skill and made Angelion. That led to a cancer of 3 sleep immunes plus Oni and before you could do a thing you lost your first 5 or 6 and likely faced a fully charged opponent.
Devs should have taken away Onis second 1on1 or just given Angel Insomnia but instead we now have like 5 more sleep immune monsters. Yay.
If you do not have Dolph, dusci, magma, dracorosa, and to some extent some A+ legends included,
You can’t hope to compete for top 3 spots, (skill to use them is must )
You just enjoy your top 50 or you can grind to top 10