Your balancing (nerfing) methods are disrespectful

Unknown

The way balancing is handled in this game is very aggravating and disrespectful to thoughtful team building. The first time I experienced this was the Loki change, when I initially started I spent $5 on the game because it seemed promising and I pulled a Loki card. Back then his purple skill was pretty functional, likely overly functional. It permitted me to win most battles once I was able to attain the 12 purple tiles needed as long as there were enough black tiles on the board. Understandably this was not the intent of the ability and it needed to be balanced and it was very thoroughly (to the point he became a sub-par card). When I complained through the official channel my account was awarded 500hp in return.

The second time it was for my benefit, my Spidey is still incomplete but I mainly had purple skill cards (for quite a while that was regarded as the weakest). With the balance, Spidey's purple ability became quite functional. However there are many people who spent HP to directly upgrade abilities based on the comparison of his abilities at the time. Once this change went into place, players were left with a card that was balanced differently than originally planned.

The next balancing was C. Storm, her ability went from a team member being damaged 20% activating a revenge strike for material damage and awarding red AP to, as of today's update, revenge striking at about 1/5th of the amount (except specific circumstances) and awards no AP. Again this balance was likely necessary but handled in a way that alters an ability that a player may have planned specifically around.

I have two suggestions to minimize this frustration:

1. Allow players to invest in all of the ability slots but only a set number can be active and the player can select which ability slots that are activated. For instance with c. Storm a player may have all three power slots upgraded to the 5th ability level and then they can select 13 of the 15 available ability levels to be active. This permits a player chose how the card is setup without negating the collecting of covers mechanic. There could be requirements to allow re-selecting for instance; reselects can only happen when a power is upgraded or changed (i.e balanced).

2. Allow respecs. Any game that does skill trees (which is essentially what the cover system is) permits respecs under specific circumstances. Foregoing this time-tested aspect of the skill tree system offers no long term benefits.

If players have to keep multiple copies of core cards to account for balancing then the bar for entry into competitive play will be too high and it will alienate new players. If players have to believe that cards that the may have heavily invested in can be changed without comparable compensation nor a method to mitigate the damage to their strategy then you will alienate your long term players. Please consider how this aspect of the game as it is inhibiting your long term success.

Unknown

Agree with the respec. If you change a hero that dramatically you should also allow a respec to adjust for the changes.

Unknown

greggray24 wrote:

Agree with the respec. If you change a hero that dramatically you should also allow a respec to adjust for the changes.

Respec and also, don't forget about the covers ! If a 3* character gets nerfed and I've already reached 13 cover cap, how the hell am I supposed to get the extra ones for the respec? Oh, I think they'll want you to buy them for merely 1250 HP each... This is getting way too aggressive...

Unknown

_urpeein_ wrote:

greggray24 wrote:

Agree with the respec. If you change a hero that dramatically you should also allow a respec to adjust for the changes.

Respec and also, don't forget about the covers ! If a 3* character gets nerfed and I've already reached 13 cover cap, how the hell am I supposed to get the extra ones for the respec? Oh, I think they'll want you to buy them for merely 1250 HP each... This is getting way too aggressive...

Agreed - respec should not cost you your covers - that is essentially starting over which you can do now. Considering how many duplicate covers I've thrown away I'd even say that we should just get 13 points to put where we want. Of course if that is the case then I'll be hoping for a Thor change to fix a mistake I made

Unknown

Rated the game poorly on Google primarily for the price-gouging....this inescapable nerfing without compensation garbage merely stengthens the justification for doing so.

It might not change anything, but it sure made me feel better.

Just saying...

Unknown

No to respec, yes to disassemble. Difference being you just get back the covers you have vs. Getting to repick whatever covers you want. Working hard for a higher "rarity" color (ex: red vs green rag...red vs purple magneto) is part of the meta and should stay.. full blown respecs would kill that.

Make it cost 100 hp or something, but out a free one for 3-7 days after a big Nerf or buff patch .

Unknown

Disassemble would kind of suck though, because you might have gotten hard-to-win covers, but destroyed them because you already maxed out the character in question. And that would continue to be a problem unless you spend valuable slots maintaining just-in-case-of-a-nerf covers.

I don't think the option to respec should be available to non-maxed characters, but I think once a character is maxed out, you should probably just let the powers get rearranged at will.

Unknown

Saeviomage wrote:

Disassemble would kind of suck though, because you might have gotten hard-to-win covers, but destroyed them because you already maxed out the character in question. And that would continue to be a problem unless you spend valuable slots maintaining just-in-case-of-a-nerf covers.

I don't think the option to respec should be available to non-maxed characters, but I think once a character is maxed out, you should probably just let the powers get rearranged at will.

then whats stopping someone from getting the easy covers (hood blue and black) and then swapping them for the yellow hard to get one?

Unknown

I think a decent approach is maybe an advance warning of a week before changes at least. As you play higher level the yellow ability becomes less likely. The blue ability is the payoff. However if overpower is the concern Thorned Rose environment tile needs reduced it speeds the game way too fast.

The difference between Storm and Loki is the completely took away the ability. Though it irritated me. Respec may be a solution but only as an interchange and you have the cover available to interchange

Dayv

I think the best way to handle a respec is just to prompt a player to lower another power by one or cancel when attempting to train a power while at the 13-cover limit. It adds few new mechanics to the game (e.g. no need for a respec token, just a cover you want to add and a decision to make). On top of that, if you keep getting the "wrong" covers for a character, you can go ahead and level those powers to 5 anyway and use those power levels while you wait for your preferred covers. No need to worry about changing level limits, since a character would never drop below their current power level. If the devs feel this is too easy, they could add a (hopefully small) HP cost to the decision to respec, but I don't think that should be needed.

Also, this means the player could never have power levels they haven't legitimately received covers for. They couldn't get 3/2/2 in a character and respec it to 1/1/5.

Unknown

Honestly I think the best way to do this is with a cover "swap" where after you find the cover you want, you add that cover and overwrite one of the other two. For example, suppose you have 3/5/5 Storm and want to change to 4/5/4. Once you have the green cover in your cache, you would choose to train with it and be given a choice to overwrite the blue (to 4/4/5) or the yellow (to 4/5/4). If they would change the level cap system slightly so that each cover was worth the same number of additional levels, then this could work seamlessly and be done over and over provided you had the cover of the color you wanted.

Unknown

I think a respec is necessary for incredible character changes like this also, especially when it comes to games like these, where it is hard to get characters the way you want them to be (and nearly impossible to change them once it happens).

It doesn't necessarily have to be a new mechanic, it could just be for heroes who have significant balance changes so that the players don't have to be left to adapt to such radical changes (especially when they almost demand currency). I don't particularly enjoy or rely on Classic Storm, I just find that doing this is really unfair to the players in general.

Players against a respec would be saying quite differently if this were actually impacting them the same way. I think it is naive and childish to think that only the "low-mid newbies" will be the only ones thrown under the bus.

Unknown

Whaaaaattt?? My OP TWO STAR character got nerfed during the beta version of a game OMG!!! I can no longer cheese people by having storm plus an unleveled low HP character in the front. What a surprise lol. A respec option works be rad but I could see a lot of these changes coming before they happened.

Unknown

kermitthefrayer wrote:

Whaaaaattt?? My OP TWO STAR character got nerfed during the beta version of a game OMG!!! I can no longer cheese people by having storm plus an unleveled low HP character in the front. What a surprise lol. A respec option works be rad but I could see a lot of these changes coming before they happened.

So why can't you also see the Rag nerfing coming? Because it won't come! You know, 3 stars, a lot of paying players have him...