Patch R59 Discussion - Live 8/18

Unknown

Interesting stuff:
Lent out maxed Punisher, 24 hours out, 280 HP to bring him back. Coolbond has already deleted the teamup, Punisher has not returned.

He sent me 166 Sentry, Patch, LThor... Used the Sentry Supernova, no longer have his Sentry, but it's still out on patrol for him for the next 24 hours.

I'm going to hold on to the Thor and Patch and see if I keep the teamups after the 24 hours is up, or if it's that you have to use the teamup within that time.

Seems like it could be a strong feature to use strategically. If you can coordinate who is using what characters in your alliance, and thus not needing their maxed whatevers, send those out as teamups and have some pretty strong teamups for something like this current PVP where rolling a bunch of 266 teamups will be advantageous.

Beast1970

franckynight wrote:

Beast1970 wrote:

OptimusPrime wrote:

Yeah i dont like it sharing TU..because you can share heroes from your roster not from your TU..and after that you cant use them for 16 hours or you can recall them for 300 HP

Mine was only showing a 4 hour lend, of course, I sent a Bagman TU, perhaps that time is shorter since everyone would use him right away!

Edit: Bagman was 4 hr lend, 75HP to recall, IW is 12 hr lend, 160HP to recall.

Fury is on patrol for 1,5 day..380 hP to recall.. im happy i dont need him in this pvp..

We just confirmed that using the TU you were given does not return him to the other player's roster, but it is gone from your available TUs as well.

noobprime

So, is there no in-game explanation of any of the changes that are going live? No pop-ups, nothing? I mean ... am I suppose to just know through osmosis? My Psylocke's psychic knife is only L3, is that the problem?

Nonce Equitaur 2

Bagman would finally be useful. Switcheroo is a useful power in many circumstances, but few would miss Bagman in their roster.

When you get a team-up this way, it's a 1 time use. Loaned characters cannot be used for 16 hours.

Unknown

Interesting concept. I can see situations where I would send someone on my bench away to get one of their team-ups for myself. So not a stretch to imagine coordinating that with alliance peeps. This is a way to get those specific tactically desired but rare in the wild team-ups which is kinda cool. I can see lots of people giving away deceptive tactics to fuel their other green users without bringing GSBW and other similar moves.

Punter1

Yippeee I can delete, but the UI is still not encouraging TU use, or at least not for me!

Why can't I manage TUs outside of a fight?
Why cant I see more than a handful of TUs on screen at a time?
Why can't I see what the AP cost or what a Skill does before I delete or use?

Not tried it yet, but do TUps stay populated in between matches? That would be nice!

Ebolamonkey84

I sent my level 94 CStorm to an alliance mate and she is gone for 12 hours, so time gone seems level based to some degree.

jojeda654

So just a couple of facts I've gathered:

It appears that the time characters are "On Patrol" is based on both their rarity AND level.

Max 1*s are 4 hrs.
Max 2*s are 12 hrs.
Max 3*s are 24 hrs. (A lvl 115 will be out 16 hrs.)
Max 4*s are 2.5 days (A lvl 70 will be out 24 hrs.)

You can only send a total of 3 characters to your entire alliance, but you can request 5 TUs.
To request Team-Ups, you need to have 1 TU slot available.
It is possible to have more than 20 TUs. (I currently have 24/20, 5 are from my alliance)

mohio

vudu3 wrote:

Regarding the issue with tokens, why can't they just make opening a token a 2-step process that happens behind-the-scenes and invisible to the user.

Step 1 - The game chooses at random whether the character is a 2*, 3* or 4* character (e.g. there's an 83.5% chance of a 2*, a 14.1% chance of a 3*, and a 2.4% chance of a 4*)
Step 2 - The game chooses at random what the "winning" character is at random based on current--or similar--draw rates (e.g. a 1.67% chance of any particular 3* cover).

Note: There are 21 3* characters currently in Heroic tokens. Three of those have only two powers. So there are a total of 60 different 3* covers. 1/60 = 1.67%

Essentially, the prize for opening a Heroic token would be a 2*, 3*, or 4* token that is then immediately redeemed for a cover. The process would be completely invisible to the user. It wouldn't change the overall drop rate currently--

14.1% (chance of a 3*) x 1.67% (chance of a specific 3* cover) x 3 (number of covers/character) = 0.71% which is the same as the current draw rate.

What it would do is allow D3 to add as many 2*, 3* or 4* characters as they want without warping the odds of getting a cover of a specific rarity. They could add ten 3* characters tomorrow and you'd still have a 14.1% chance of pulling a 3* characters from a Heroic token. However, the chances of pulling any particular 3* cover would from drop from 1.67% to 1.11% (1/90). If the odds of getting a specific cover dropped too much they could easily shift drop rates in Step 1.

Something like this seems like it would make the most sense. However, I have no idea if it's difficult to implement from a technical standpoint.

This is already exactly what is happening when you open a token, and what they're doing when adding characters to the pool. The part I bolded is their concern with just keeping on adding more and more 3*. I'm sure you've noticed, but the individual drop rates have gone from like 1.2% iirc 3 or 4 months ago to like .7% now. The game would get pretty stale if they didn't keep releasing new characters every 2-3 weeks, so it's not like they're planning on slowing down on that front, so they've got to figure out what to do with their token model or it will become a completely unreliable way to obtain covers you actually want/need in the future (it's arguable that it was ever remotely reliable, but that's not the topic at hand currently).

GrumpySmurf1002

vudu3 wrote:

What it would do is allow D3 to add as many 2*, 3* or 4* characters as they want without warping the odds of getting a cover of a specific rarity. They could add ten 3* characters tomorrow and you'd still have a 14.1% chance of pulling a 3* characters from a Heroic token. However, the chances of pulling any particular 3* cover would from drop from 1.67% to 1.11% (1/90). If the odds of getting a specific cover dropped too much they could easily shift drop rates in Step 1.

Something like this seems like it would make the most sense. However, I have no idea if it's difficult to implement from a technical standpoint.

Based on Ice's comments, I think the internal issue at hand is they don't want to dilute the pool too much such that getting any one cover becomes too rare. Your solution definitely works, but having a .25% chance down the line of getting a cover you need is too low to make the tokens worth it. So chances are that would start to tank sales, which of course is the ultimate driving force.

Unknown

I'm confused as to what determines the time before your characters return from being "on patrol". I guess level and rarity may have something to do with it but I'm not sure. My level 166 Steve Rogers returns in 8 hours while level 94 CStorm for example returns in 12 hours. On the other hand, level 166 Punisher returns in 24 hours, and my barely-covered level 40 Mohawk Storm also returns in 24 hours.

Another theory I can think of is that it's based on the power of the abilities of the characters. Nick Fury is the only one I see with 1.5 days. People with extremely powerful AOE abilities are 24 hours, like LThor, BP, Sentry and Deadpool. Not sure about Punisher or Mohawk Storm though.

GrumpySmurf1002

If only there were a way to learn how the On Patrol works without having to have the users test to see what happens and give up their characters without knowing the impact.

Maybe some kind of communication about the Patch and what it does. I think D3 should look into that for the future.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

The easiest way is to split the cards into seperate packs. You could have a good guy/bad guy pack. When you get a token you can elect to pick the good guy pack or the bad guy pack, although we are rather skewed on good guys. You could just randomly assign characters to pack, either way, segregate them. So lets say for arguements sake we did good guy/bad guy. When I get a Heroic Token, I can either elect to spend it on the Good guys pack or the Bad guys pack, much like a Pvp event token is specific to a certain character allotement, we can do the same for that. It would be a simple fix, and could allow players to chase the cards they need.

I'll make it simpler. They need to remove 2*'s altogether from all packs except standard packs and PVE packs. 2*'s are NOT a reward. Players play hard and do not deserve a slap in the face when they redeem their token(s).

The PVE packs should ONLY have the characters that are buffed/featured in that event.

If just the 3*'s were in a pack (given that most have 3 abilities), the odds of getting the one(s) you want is still not statistically probable and will go down when more 3*'s are added.

Even simpler: Rewards should be rewards!

Edit - Deleted "exception"

The 2 stars were pretty useful to me for the firsty forty five days of play. They might not be much of a reward to people who have been playing for 2+ months, but that doesn't mean they arent a reward otherwise. The rewards are lottery tickets, thats just their nature.

Also, if you only got three stars, they would need to drastically reduce how often they hand out the tokens anyway, so you would get three stars from tokens just as often, considering if they just gave out three star covers like candy the long term play of the game would be drastically reduced.

Nonce Equitaur 2

On Patrol times might also be based on the number of Team-Up powers. I loaned out my Falcon, and that's a 16 hour loan. Only one power.

SnowcaTT

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Bagman would finally be useful. Switcheroo is a useful power in many circumstances, but few would miss Bagman in their roster.

When you get a team-up this way, it's a 1 time use. Loaned characters cannot be used for 16 hours.

Hours vary, I have 4/8/12/24 (I didn't see 16). I can't figure out what determines that, I have a 3* BP that goes out for 24 hours and a 3* Cap that goes out 4 hours, they have about the same number of covers.

Buy back varies depending on those hours also. You can recall them to your roster, 80hp for 4 hours and 180hp for 12 hours (didn't test the others yet).

Put in a request to find these somewhere else (perhaps TU/Boost tab?). I found it confusing at first - if anyone is looking how to use:

Go to match, "fight".
In boosts screen, find trash-can symbol: that's where you can delete your team-ups.
If you have any open slots, then you can press "request team-ups" there.

(Back out of match after that point if you want to).

Unknown

So yeah I am never using the Team-Up send thing. Nice feature...

Way too much trouble for 1 single use. I don't know why they think people have time to set new teamups every match while they are getting slammed with attacks in PvP.
The whole of the feature is giving underlevelled teams a huge nuke. Eh

DecoyDuck

I wonder what would happen if you left the alliance while you have covers on patrol? Do you get them all back? Since you left voluntarily (and weren't kicked), could you rejoin in an hour? And then get all your characters back? Stack overflow?

Unknown

I doubt they tested that much based on what I've seen so far. I'm guessing you get yours back, but that's just a hypothesis...

SnowcaTT

Um...any way to un-request? Or set how many to request? I dumped five overpriced ones, tested with a request: it automatically requested all five. Now that text is sitting on top of alliance chat forever?

Unknown

SnowcaTT wrote:

Um...any way to un-request? Or set how many to request? I dumped five overpriced ones, tested with a request: it automatically requested all five. Now that text is sitting on top of alliance chat forever?

Even better, I tried to go in to see if there is a way to unrequest the 5 TU's it requests from your alliance and leaves at the top of the alliance chat... If you hit request again, it says you can only make the request every HALF HOUR. Are you kidding? Did they test this thing before it went live???? With 20 alliance members.. and no way to get rid of that stupid pending TU request other than hope that people dump their low level roster slots to make those messages go away??

Nice one..