Patch R58 Discussion - Live 7/29

Unknown

As usual, I'll avoid taking this patch until I can see how it's impacting people in current events - particularly PvE. Soooo tempting to press the update button though...

Unknown

j12601 wrote:

I just got the patch and am playing a few matches with it.

I think this might be a bug, but I don't understand it.
would be weird right?

Yet in my second match, fighting against MHawkeye and Wolverine, the team up abilities the AI has equipped are ....
Electric Arrow
Adamantium Slash
Ballisitic Salvo

Why can the AI double up on colored vs Team-Up AP, and we can't?

I think it sounds like it is working for the items I did not include. But the quoted onemail dose sound a bit buggy.

GrumpySmurf1002

j12601 wrote:

I just got the patch and am playing a few matches with it.

I think this might be a bug, but I don't understand it.

In my first match, I won a Captain Marvel team-up ability. But I can't equip that in Captain Marvel PVP. It's locked out. I get that, she already has that ability, letting me use it for team up mana or colored AP would be weird right?

Yet in my second match, fighting against MHawkeye and Wolverine, the team up abilities the AI has equipped are ....
Electric Arrow
Adamantium Slash
Ballisitic Salvo

Why can the AI double up on colored vs Team-Up AP, and we can't?


Oh, and World Rupture is available as a team up, in spite of us being told abilities which damage your team (Sunder, Headbutt) would not be available. Is it because those only damage the one character, whereas World Rupture hits everyone?

Question I have (which is moot since change is in place).

Since Ice said it works like a boost, only it carries over if you don't use it. If you have a team up boost set for defense and the AI uses it, do you lose it for offense? How are defensive ones set in the first place?

wymtime

dragma wrote:

j12601 wrote:

I just got the patch and am playing a few matches with it.

I think this might be a bug, but I don't understand it.
would be weird right?

Yet in my second match, fighting against MHawkeye and Wolverine, the team up abilities the AI has equipped are ....
Electric Arrow
Adamantium Slash
Ballisitic Salvo

Why can the AI double up on colored vs Team-Up AP, and we can't?

I think it sounds like it is working for the items I did not include. But the quoted onemail dose sound a bit buggy.

Ice said that Defense would have 3 random Team Ups based on the levels of the team. As a player you can list 3 power ups instead of boosts as well so you can have 3 team ups.

wymtime

IceIX wrote:

Zhirrzh wrote:

Is there a fixed cost for team-up powers (e.g. always 10 Team-Up AP) or does it change depending on the power?

If Team-Up Powers are gained purely as drops from opponents, is there anything in the works to counter the likelihood that, at least among 3* players, we'll be seeing endless amounts of Team-Up Powers from characters like LazyThor, Patch, Sentry, Magneto etc and won't really ever get the opportunity to have fun by gathering Team-Up Powers from 2* characters and lesser used 3*? Is it possible to create a "random" Team-Up drop where you won't know what power it is until you use it (is it going to be a game-winning Sniper Rifle, a reasonably helpful Lightning Storm, or a booby prize Switcheroo?)? Those would be fun (and occasionally sucky).

Team-Up abilities cost however much they'd cost normally, but use Team-Up AP instead. So a Rage of the Panther would cost 12 Black as a regular ability or 12 TUAP as a Team-Up.
As for drops, yes, you're going to see a lot of Magnetos, Wolverines, Sentrys, etc if that's who you're fighting. You can always pop into Prologue Ch 5 and snag a Level 140 Ragnarok if you want though.

For defense, your team will get a random supply of 3 Team-Up powers to use, taken from the characters available in the applicable Comic Pack for that Event (or Heroics if there's no Pack for that Event). So you'll be facing off against teams that have a variety of powers available to them as a result.

Here is the quote from IceIX regarding defense TU.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

At this point we'll just have to wait and see if they are informed by their famed metrics how she'll pass from being a rarely used character to a never used character. 7 Team Up AP does sound nice, but that's only if you give her 5 yellow covers, which sounds unlikely now that the other two abilities are better. Going 5 covers for the 7 tiles is silly, anyway, since firing a Team Up skill is something that more often than not, you'll be doing ONCE per game. 2 covers just to slightly speed that up is really not worth it.

I think you are being a little shortsighted here.

I've thought about last night's info reveal by IceIX about the system works on "defense" or for the AI in PvE, and the lightbulb flickered on.

I'm scared.

Think about it.

The AI can now bring in any three abilities in every fight now.

Think about Daken/Juggs/Venom bringing in Supernova/CoTS/RotP/WR/BR/TBTI as assists...

Now, realize that there is NO way to drain TU (White) AP from the enemy team.
-- Hood can't steal White.
-- OBW can't steal White.
-- Storm can remove White from the board, but not directly from the opposing team.

The only way to prevent the AI from firing off its stockpiled megabombs is to play every single match as pure White denial. But, if a player plays pure White denial, then the AI will more than happily gather up all its needed colors while the player is trying to prevent the Team-Ups from occurring.

Prepare for a future, where almost every match will feature massive unavoidable damage. The only way to win is to be the first to race to whatever colors needed to win on your roster or race to be the first one to be able throw off nuclear-powered White Team-Ups. Escalating arms race, indeed.

We are so tinykitty screwed....

SnowcaTT

Interesting. A bit surprised it went live in the middle of a PVE and Season, but I guess I should have learned by now.

I agree with others, now the backgrounds are little more than changing background pictures.

How do you get rid of these boosts, other than using them? I have the (terrible) 17 costed Moonstone ability which I'll never use or want to use, at level 70 or whatever from PVE. I don't want that, I won't use that, and I don't want it sitting there preventing me from getting something better.

Also, would there be a way to see opponent level of ability? Usually it gives damage or similar and you can guess what it is, but it would be a fast way to determine how much white I need to collect if I want to worry about it, rather than slowly hovering over each ability. Maybe just "Berserker Rage - 79", a simple tack-on to make a quick, visible association.

Bryan Lambert

So, what does that "5" mean on the boosts screen? Because it doesn't appear to mean you have five of them.

I've been playing some PvE, and while I appreciate the stock of boosts we all got to start with, every one I've used so far has disappeared from the screen. This includes starter teamups and teamups I've earned.

The math on this seems problematic either way it's supposed to work, frankly. If I get one teamup for winning a fight, and every opponent gets three teamups just for being in a fight, then it's going to be tough to keep up, even if you don't use all three in every match. Any time you use 2, your total stock drops by one.

Alternately, if it's a bug, and you're supposed to get five-packs, and with no way of dumping ones you don't want except to fire them off in a fight, then we're gonna hit the 20 max really quickly and have to fire off lesser, unwanted powers in actual matches just for inventory management.

GrimSkald

Lyrian wrote:

I think you are being a little shortsighted here.

I've thought about last night's info reveal by IceIX about the system works on "defense" or for the AI in PvE, and the lightbulb flickered on.

I'm scared.

Think about it.

The AI can now bring in any three abilities in every fight now.

Think about Daken/Juggs/Venom bringing in Supernova/CoTS/RotP/WR/BR/TBTI as assists...

Now, realize that there is NO way to drain TU (White) AP from the enemy team.
-- Hood can't steal White.
-- OBW can't steal White.
-- Storm can remove White from the board, but not directly from the opposing team.

The only way to prevent the AI from firing off its stockpiled megabombs is to play every single match as pure White denial. But, if a player plays pure White denial, then the AI will more than happily gather up all its needed colors while the player is trying to prevent the Team-Ups from occurring.

Prepare for a future, where almost every match will feature massive unavoidable damage. The only way to win is to be the first to race to whatever colors needed to win on your roster or race to be the first one to be able throw off nuclear-powered White Team-Ups. Escalating arms race, indeed.

We are so tinykitty screwed....

What's more we need to use an expendable resource to get this which also takes up slots for boosts. The computer gets this for free. I think this distinctly ramps up the randomness of fights.

I am definitely... apprehensive.

poomermon

Bryan Lambert wrote:

So, what does that "5" mean on the boosts screen? Because it doesn't appear to mean you have five of them.

I've been playing some PvE, and while I appreciate the stock of boosts we all got to start with, every one I've used so far has disappeared from the screen. This includes starter teamups and teamups I've earned.

The math on this seems problematic either way it's supposed to work, frankly. If I get one teamup for winning a fight, and every opponent gets three teamups just for being in a fight, then it's going to be tough to keep up, even if you don't use all three in every match. Any time you use 2, your total stock drops by one.

Alternately, if it's a bug, and you're supposed to get five-packs, and with no way of dumping ones you don't want except to fire them off in a fight, then we're gonna hit the 20 max really quickly and have to fire off lesser, unwanted powers in actual matches just for inventory management.

I'm pretty sure that the "5" is the number of covers that ability has. You can have less powerful versions like "3"s or "4"s too.

rawl316

Are we able to just dump ones we don't want? There's no way I can charge up 17 to get rid of that stupid moonstone black power which I was lucky enough to get 3 of.

scottee

To people complaining that the storm change was a nerf, you were letting your ideas go off prematurely.

I just played one match, and team up AP is the single most color in the game for almost every match. You will have to deny it as #1 priority pretty much constantly. Storm taking it off the board is an incredibly important role. Team ups certainly just changed the game.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

To people complaining that the storm change was a nerf, you were letting your ideas go off prematurely.

I just played one match, and team up AP is the single most color in the game for almost every match. You will have to deny it as #1 priority pretty much constantly. Storm taking it off the board is an incredibly important role. Team ups certainly just changed the game.

That may be overstating it somewhat. So far the Team-Ups given to the AI seem to be highly variable. First fight I jumped into had a very nasty looking Fury Demolition TU. Next one was a Snarky Remark and an undercovered Juggy green. Definitely going to be something you want to check when you start a battle, and sometimes it's going to be a deny at all costs situation. But I think there's going to be a lot of times where you'll be perfectly happy to let the AI grab them and throw some weak powers at you instead of their main ones.

And I also had a battle where the AI had a Team-Up for a character that was on its team (Captain Marvel and and extra Photonic Blasts, and no I didn't mistake Moonstone's red for hers). Pretty sure this isn't supposed to happen, since we can't take a power for a character we're using. Another victory for quality assurance? Or...wait on it...working as intended!

DrNitroman

poomermon wrote:

Bryan Lambert wrote:

So, what does that "5" mean on the boosts screen? Because it doesn't appear to mean you have five of them.

I'm pretty sure that the "5" is the number of covers that ability has. You can have less powerful versions like "3"s or "4"s too.

I had the same question as I've seen that this is not the number you possess.
The number of cover that the ability has, it seems plausible, though I did not find some with '3' or '4' until now

Lyrian wrote:

Prepare for a future, where almost every match will feature massive unavoidable damage. The only way to win is to be the first to race to whatever colors needed to win on your roster or race to be the first one to be able throw off nuclear-powered White Team-Ups. Escalating arms race, indeed.

Indeed the few fights I've made with team-ups were quite violent as you can't deny all basic colors and white.

I don't complain (for now ) as it bring some novelty in the game.
With higher rate of regeneration since True Healing , faster paced fights with more damages may be manageable ...

(... or not not we'll see )

Pylgrim

Lyrian wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

At this point we'll just have to wait and see if they are informed by their famed metrics how she'll pass from being a rarely used character to a never used character. 7 Team Up AP does sound nice, but that's only if you give her 5 yellow covers, which sounds unlikely now that the other two abilities are better. Going 5 covers for the 7 tiles is silly, anyway, since firing a Team Up skill is something that more often than not, you'll be doing ONCE per game. 2 covers just to slightly speed that up is really not worth it.

I think you are being a little shortsighted here.

I've thought about last night's info reveal by IceIX about the system works on "defense" or for the AI in PvE, and the lightbulb flickered on.

I'm scared.

Think about it.

The AI can now bring in any three abilities in every fight now.

Think about Daken/Juggs/Venom bringing in Supernova/CoTS/RotP/WR/BR/TBTI as assists...

Now, realize that there is NO way to drain TU (White) AP from the enemy team.
-- Hood can't steal White.
-- OBW can't steal White.
-- Storm can remove White from the board, but not directly from the opposing team.

The only way to prevent the AI from firing off its stockpiled megabombs is to play every single match as pure White denial. But, if a player plays pure White denial, then the AI will more than happily gather up all its needed colors while the player is trying to prevent the Team-Ups from occurring.

Prepare for a future, where almost every match will feature massive unavoidable damage. The only way to win is to be the first to race to whatever colors needed to win on your roster or race to be the first one to be able throw off nuclear-powered White Team-Ups. Escalating arms race, indeed.

We are so tinykitty screwed....

Hrm, I guess that Storm can now work nicely in defence, since in defence you get 3 free T-Us.

scottee

Thugpatrol wrote:

scottee wrote:

To people complaining that the storm change was a nerf, you were letting your ideas go off prematurely.

I just played one match, and team up AP is the single most color in the game for almost every match. You will have to deny it as #1 priority pretty much constantly. Storm taking it off the board is an incredibly important role. Team ups certainly just changed the game.

That may be overstating it somewhat. So far the Team-Ups given to the AI seem to be highly variable. First fight I jumped into had a very nasty looking Fury Demolition TU. Next one was a Snarky Remark and an undercovered Juggy green. Definitely going to be something you want to check when you start a battle, and sometimes it's going to be a deny at all costs situation. But I think there's going to be a lot of times where you'll be perfectly happy to let the AI grab them and throw some weak powers at you instead of their main ones.

And I also had a battle where the AI had a Team-Up for a character that was on its team (Captain Marvel and and extra Photonic Blasts, and no I didn't mistake Moonstone's red for hers). Pretty sure this isn't supposed to happen, since we can't take a power for a character we're using. Another victory for quality assurance? Or...wait on it...working as intended!

Yeah, that's definitely a bug.

As to TUAP's importance, I was thinking through the math. Any given color usually has one, maybe two powers that it fuels. TUAP always fuels three active abilities. So yes, there will definitely be matches where it's ok to not deny it. But there's a higher likely hood than other colors that letting the AI have that color will wreck your team. Just went up against a level 3 7AP Aggressive Recon. You better be sure I was denying that at all costs.

wymtime

Pylgrim wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

.

I think you are being a little shortsighted here.

I've thought about last night's info reveal by IceIX about the system works on "defense" or for the AI in PvE, and the lightbulb flickered on.

I'm scared.

Think about it.

The AI can now bring in any three abilities in every fight now.

Think about Daken/Juggs/Venom bringing in Supernova/CoTS/RotP/WR/BR/TBTI as assists...

Now, realize that there is NO way to drain TU (White) AP from the enemy team.
-- Hood can't steal White.
-- OBW can't steal White.
-- Storm can remove White from the board, but not directly from the opposing team.

The only way to prevent the AI from firing off its stockpiled megabombs is to play every single match as pure White denial. But, if a player plays pure White denial, then the AI will more than happily gather up all its needed colors while the player is trying to prevent the Team-Ups from occurring.

Prepare for a future, where almost every match will feature massive unavoidable damage. The only way to win is to be the first to race to whatever colors needed to win on your roster or race to be the first one to be able throw off nuclear-powered White Team-Ups. Escalating arms race, indeed.

We are so tinykitty screwed....

Hrm, I guess that Storm can now work nicely in defence, since in defence you get 3 free T-Us.

From IceIE the team ups will be based on the levels of the characters on Defense so if you are facing 1* opponents you will probably be facing 1* team ups. I don't think the Dev's want 1* players facing World Rupture or Rage of the panther just yet.

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

From IceIE the team ups will be based on the levels of the characters on Defense so if you are facing 1* opponents you will probably be facing 1* team ups. I don't think the Dev's want 1* players facing World Rupture or Rage of the panther just yet.

I'd agree that the new players should/will be shielded in some way from this, at least for awhile. But under your logic, in the current PvE, Rags is an opponent on many nodes, who is a 3*** character.

I'd probably assert that the situation is more closely aligned with MMR. Then again, most 3*** abilities at level 30-40 don't exactly pack a lot of punch, even to a 1* team. Perhaps there is a weighting against 3*** team ups for new rosters for a certain period of time.

Unknown

I see there are only 20 team up slots. How do you get rid of unwanted ones besides using them? Like the ones you got from seed teams?

GuntherBlobel

Lyrian wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

At this point we'll just have to wait and see if they are informed by their famed metrics how she'll pass from being a rarely used character to a never used character. 7 Team Up AP does sound nice, but that's only if you give her 5 yellow covers, which sounds unlikely now that the other two abilities are better. Going 5 covers for the 7 tiles is silly, anyway, since firing a Team Up skill is something that more often than not, you'll be doing ONCE per game. 2 covers just to slightly speed that up is really not worth it.

I think you are being a little shortsighted here.

I've thought about last night's info reveal by IceIX about the system works on "defense" or for the AI in PvE, and the lightbulb flickered on.

I'm scared.

Think about it.

The AI can now bring in any three abilities in every fight now.

Think about Daken/Juggs/Venom bringing in Supernova/CoTS/RotP/WR/BR/TBTI as assists...

Now, realize that there is NO way to drain TU (White) AP from the enemy team.
-- Hood can't steal White.
-- OBW can't steal White.
-- Storm can remove White from the board, but not directly from the opposing team.

The only way to prevent the AI from firing off its stockpiled megabombs is to play every single match as pure White denial. But, if a player plays pure White denial, then the AI will more than happily gather up all its needed colors while the player is trying to prevent the Team-Ups from occurring.

Prepare for a future, where almost every match will feature massive unavoidable damage. The only way to win is to be the first to race to whatever colors needed to win on your roster or race to be the first one to be able throw off nuclear-powered White Team-Ups. Escalating arms race, indeed.

We are so tinykitty screwed....

Has anyone tried Radar Sense? It used to steal Env AP, right? Even if it does steal TU AP, I doubt that is much comfort.

EDIT: Nevermind, even Radar Sense does not steal TU AP.