Team-Up Feedback and Changes

scottee

People tend to look for negatives. I will choose otherwise.

Having lots of fun collecting level 395 Hulk abilities. Basically, I only use one of my 20 TU's when I want to gain one from the opponent. If you never use a TU against level 60 Yelena, you never pick up level 60 Payback Mission.

BTW- level 395 Smash does over 6000 damage, and over 800 per extra green.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

People tend to look for negatives. I will choose otherwise.

Having lots of fun collecting level 395 Hulk abilities. Basically, I only use one of my 20 TU's when I want to gain one from the opponent. If you never use a TU against level 60 Yelena, you never pick up level 60 Payback Mission.

BTW- level 395 Smash does over 6000 damage, and over 800 per extra green.

I'm with you it think TUP's showed a great effort to add new features and freshen up the game. While understand the frustrations of some, it was a new feature and players should have given the developers time from the start to tweak the feature and get used it. Just one example, players used to not deny the AI environmental tiles, so when they changed to TUP tiles, players were not used to denying these tiles either. Once you get used to it, it's really not that bad, especially if you want to bring OBW's AR, but do not want to play AR.

Kelbris

Ralstonator wrote:

Oh wait. What about this invisible TU casting character business? Is it going to be fixed that AOEs from either side can magically break countdown based TUs?

Pylgrim

stephen43084 wrote:

I guess that I am in the minority. I am deeply disappointed the extent that TUP's have been nerfed. The reason itself has not to do with just TUP's but with has become the empirical trend of making changes to the game.

Any time there is any kind of "nerf" it is always from one extreme to another. If a character like Rags or Spidey are overpowered, they go to being underpowered (or useless in the opions of some, not me, I think Spidey is still useful). It is never a slight change or tweak. There was a sign of the philosophy spreading to "true healing", but that could just have been due to it was a major change to the structure and strategy of the gameplay. However, the same philosophy has just been extended to TUP's. This itself has created three problems.

1. TUP's had made defenses more viable (although not viable). TUP's went from being a real hassle with AI having them to you can almost completely ignore them now. So, it's back to pretty much back to no defense at all.

2. Storm's Yellow ability's AP cost was raised to 9. This made sense (especially for defense) due to the difference in TUP's and environmental tiles. Now, she has been significantly nerfed on the defensive front.

3. People complained that they were being hit frequently by powerful DA TUP's. While this is the most legitimate complaint about TUP's, why would you remove Sentry and Juggs altogether? I hate getting smacked with these as much as the next person, but this severely limits the DA's (especially in PVE's) and seems to corrupt the spirit of the game. The heroes can have their mightiest allies assist, but the DA's are just SOL.

I hope that it will be reconsidered giving back the AI 3 TUP's and opening any TUP available to players to the AI. I'm sorry, but the argument that I do not want to lose life points is not a sufficient crux of an argument by players to not want the AI to have strong TUP's or even any TUP's. The whole purpose of a match is to win by reducing the opponent's life points to zero. It defeats the entire purpose of the game to make a change on the basis of players not wanting to lose life points. Clearly, the underlying issue has to do with roster depth, healing, and health packs. While, I am sympathetic to this issue, it should not undermine other features of the game.

P.S. Although contrary to what it seems I may have written, I am actually over the moon that developers are listening to player feedback. I am simply advocating not making drastic changes (nerfs or buffs). You can always nerf or buff again instead of going from one extreme to another.

P.S.S. Please do not over-nerf C Mags.

I generally agree with the tone of your post, but the specifics I do not.

1. It's true that T-Us improved defence, but I wouldn't say it did to the point you think, since it happened randomly. Sometimes your team in defence will get Rage of the Panther, and sometimes it will get Lethal Reckon or some other ****. Moreover, YOU as the defensive player never get to actually enjoy this improvement. You never know it happened or the impact it had in the game, while for you as the player in offence, it creates tons of "feel bad moments" when you are easily winning a battle that by all means you should have in the pocket and then you get a Supernova or Magnetic Translocation Reversal out of nowhere and lose or have to waste Health Packs.

2. Mistress of the Elements had already been raised to 9 AP, before it was switched to Yellow. The whole T-U change was a huge nerf to Storm in the practice in spite of what many people theorised and this latest change barely makes it any worse, since the AI doesn't play her well anyway.

3. I get what you say about people not enjoying losses not being a valid argument to nerf features, but here's the thing: T-Us were super stacked against the attacker in the game. See, because you usually don't have that many great T-Us (or don't want to use them in a battle that you know it will be easily won, or that will give you a super bad T-U) more often than not, you will not be making White matches, going instead for what will actually be useful for you. This will leave them to chunk together on the board and be 4 or 5-matched by the opponent. Because the opponent got 3 T-Us and in PVE they have such a reduced pool to draw from (Dark Avengers only) The likelihood of one of those being Supernova, World Rupture, or Onslaught was quite high. Do you know what else is common among those powers? They're relatively cheaper than all the other Dark Avengers's powers, meaning that if the opposing team got Lethal Reckon, Control Shift and Supernova, they will definitely fire Supernova. Play enough games in PVE and you'll see one of those powers almost EACH battle. That's extremely frustrating. Now I understand that you want defence to be improved in PVP... but why should PVE enemies have improved defence? They are AI, they are losing nothing by being defeated.

Moreover, complains do not come so much from conceit about one's Health Packs or Hit Points, but rather from the infuriating frustration caused by randomness. See, if you have a bit of common sense you will not enter battles that you know that you cannot win or have a too small chance of winning. You enter battles that you are fairly confident that you can win. Not only because winning feels good, but also because we have limited time to invest in this game. If we don't get anything (i.e. points towards a prize) from our investment why do it? So we want to minimize our loses. Not completely nullify them, no, otherwise winning would make no sense; but do our best to minimize the chance factor that will allow an opponent that in all justice we should easily beat to win, or to drastically reduce our hero points forcing us to use Packs, reducing the amount of time we can play. Supernova is a game changer, and as I pointed out before, occurs way too frequently. Putting all this together means that defensive T-Us as they are now are an added chance factor that unfairly and indiscriminately reduces your fun, effectiveness and playing time.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

We believe that Team-Ups add an exciting new element of strategy and new ways for abilities to work together, and will continue to see that vision through.

You believe wrong.

scottee

Expalphalog wrote:

IceIX wrote:

We believe that Team-Ups add an exciting new element of strategy and new ways for abilities to work together, and will continue to see that vision through.

You believe wrong.

I think it's added plenty of new strategy. Most people are too busy hating on TU's to come up with them (or can't come up with new strategies on their own), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Carrying around an Aggressive Recon for insurance is the "never-lose" button. Bring three players with no big nukes and they carry a CTS? Yes please. Use my stock of Level 5 Thunderstrikes to generate green for anyone I want? Sure. Farm level 395 Hulk abilities? Hahaha. Shoot, even the level 140's Onslaughts I farmed in the first PVE when these came out were a ton of fun. Use Daken/Falcon to match greens, then instakill the enemy green user.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

I think it's added plenty of new strategy. Most people are too busy hating on TU's to come up with them (or can't come up with new strategies on their own), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What's that you say? Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the 6 Sniper Rifles, 3 Sentinels of Liberty, and 5 Murderous Aims I picked up the first day TUs came out. Call me when I don't have to grind goon battles in the prologue to get rid of this **** and we can talk about "strategy" and "fun". I probably won't buy it then either, but until this patch goes live I'm going to continue to ignore their cumbersome "feature" that's full of more bugs, oddities, and just generally **** implementation than any "professional" release I've seen in quite some time.

Unknown

I'm only gonna say 1 thing.

They removed jugs and sentry.....buy bag lady's "other-team up" remains? Lol

scottee

Thugpatrol wrote:

scottee wrote:

I think it's added plenty of new strategy. Most people are too busy hating on TU's to come up with them (or can't come up with new strategies on their own), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What's that you say? Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the 6 Sniper Rifles, 3 Sentinels of Liberty, and 5 Murderous Aims I picked up the first day TUs came out. Call me when I don't have to grind goon battles in the prologue to get rid of this tinykitty and we can talk about "strategy" and "fun". I probably won't buy it then either, but until this patch goes live I'm going to continue to ignore their cumbersome "feature" that's full of more bugs, oddities, and just generally tinykitty implementation than any "professional" release I've seen in quite some time.

Yeah, I guess not everyone tried to manage their TU inventory early on, and if you didn't early, it was hard to catch up later. Delete button will certainly be helpful.

But I eventually realized I can't pick up a **** TU if I keep my inventory full, which meant only using a TU when facing an opponent I wanted the TU from. It served it's purpose, and I welcome taking on 166's now, pretty much all day.

Though it does also seem excessive at some point. I currently have:
3 Call the Storm (5- 166)
6 Thunder Strike (5- 166)
2 Thunder Clap (5- 166)
2 Retribution (3- 166)
1 Sniper Rifle (5- 166)
1 Magnetic Translocation (5- 166)
1 Twin Pistols (5- 166)
1 Battle Plan (5-166)
1 Control Shift (5- 96)
1 Smash (5- 395)
1 Thunder Clap (5-304)

All I need to do is get rid of that Control Shift, but even then, I'm probably stocked enough. The Retributions are super helpful in finishing Hulks without bringing Punisher. Thunder Strikes are awesome for anyone who has green (particularly fun in GSBW event). The level 300+ Thunder Claps I used felt pretty normal, but the maxed Smash's are crazy. If I have green saved up from using Daken/Patch, instead of using Berserk, I can collect a little more green and one shot Lazy Thor. It's pretty funny.

NorthernPolarity

Thugpatrol wrote:

scottee wrote:

I think it's added plenty of new strategy. Most people are too busy hating on TU's to come up with them (or can't come up with new strategies on their own), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What's that you say? Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the 6 Sniper Rifles, 3 Sentinels of Liberty, and 5 Murderous Aims I picked up the first day TUs came out. Call me when I don't have to grind goon battles in the prologue to get rid of this tinykitty and we can talk about "strategy" and "fun". I probably won't buy it then either, but until this patch goes live I'm going to continue to ignore their cumbersome "feature" that's full of more bugs, oddities, and just generally tinykitty implementation than any "professional" release I've seen in quite some time.

So you're Demiurge_Will and have been slaving away at your computer for a couple of weeks replacing the clearly imbalanced/silly environmental areas with this awesome new "Team-Up" feature, and its set to be released tomorrow. You know that there are some issues with the feature like not being able to delete the team-ups and such, but the alternative would be to push the release back to next week and not have the feature at all. So you say to yourself, "the feature is probably a net positive despite these issues so lets push it out, see what people think, and refactor based off of that information." And then you go read the forums and see posts similar (and more drastic to these) where people are proclaiming the death of MPQ, calling the devs a bunch of incompetent idiots, and calling what they've been working on for the past two weeks a bunch of ****. I mean yeah, the current implementation is far from ideal, given that I don't even bother to use the feature right now, but its clearly well intended since environments were long due for an overhaul (oh wait, no it isn't because everything is a conspiracy to get the more money, which is why world rupture happens 99% of the time an opponent gets off a TU) and this has the potential for at least some sort of additional strategy to the game (although I totally agree with you that in its current implementation its too cumbersome to use to actually be able to have some extra strategy).

This is getting a little ranty (as all my posts are now since I'm bored, woo), but your post was just the first I've seen of this type, which reminded me of a recent conversation: I was talking to one of my coworkers who was a former game programmer, and told me that while the work itself was fun, what ultimately made him quit was how regardless what the game actually looked like at that point in time, whenever he would go online and read online about people discussing the game, it was just full of people talking about how the game was terrible and how the features that he was working were total ****. It's probably a component to why we barely get any dev interactions on this forum: who would want to spend their free time reading about how terrible all of their work is? My coworker eventually got fed up with it and the crazy working conditions that video game programmers generally deal with and left for greener pastures, but its sad to me that this exact situation is probably happening in a lot of video game companies today, and that the general gaming population reacts this way when something like Team-Ups is simply neutral in its current state as opposed to terrible.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

scottee wrote:

I think it's added plenty of new strategy. Most people are too busy hating on TU's to come up with them (or can't come up with new strategies on their own), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What's that you say? Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the 6 Sniper Rifles, 3 Sentinels of Liberty, and 5 Murderous Aims I picked up the first day TUs came out. Call me when I don't have to grind goon battles in the prologue to get rid of this tinykitty and we can talk about "strategy" and "fun". I probably won't buy it then either, but until this patch goes live I'm going to continue to ignore their cumbersome "feature" that's full of more bugs, oddities, and just generally tinykitty implementation than any "professional" release I've seen in quite some time.

So you're Demiurge_Will and have been slaving away at your computer for a couple of weeks replacing the clearly imbalanced/silly environmental areas with this awesome new "Team-Up" feature, and its set to be released tomorrow. You know that there are some issues with the feature like not being able to delete the team-ups and such, but the alternative would be to push the release back to next week and not have the feature at all. So you say to yourself, "the feature is probably a net positive despite these issues so lets push it out, see what people think, and refactor based off of that information." And then you go read the forums and see posts similar (and more drastic to these) where people are proclaiming the death of MPQ, calling the devs a bunch of incompetent idiots, and calling what they've been working on for the past two weeks a bunch of tinykitty. I mean yeah, the current implementation is far from ideal, given that I don't even bother to use the feature right now, but its clearly well intended since environments were long due for an overhaul (oh wait, no it isn't because everything is a conspiracy to get the more money, which is why world rupture happens 99% of the time an opponent gets off a TU) and this has the potential for at least some sort of additional strategy to the game (although I totally agree with you that in its current implementation its too cumbersome to use to actually be able to have some extra strategy).

This is getting a little ranty (as all my posts are now since I'm bored, woo), but your post was just the first I've seen of this type, which reminded me of a recent conversation: I was talking to one of my coworkers who was a former game programmer, and told me that while the work itself was fun, what ultimately made him quit was how regardless what the game actually looked like at that point in time, whenever he would go online and read online about people discussing the game, it was just full of people talking about how the game was terrible and how the features that he was working were total tinykitty. It's probably a component to why we barely get any dev interactions on this forum: who would want to spend their free time reading about how terrible all of their work is? My coworker eventually got fed up with it and the crazy working conditions that video game programmers generally deal with and left for greener pastures, but its sad to me that this exact situation is probably happening in a lot of video game companies today, and that the general gaming population reacts this way when something like Team-Ups is simply neutral in its current state as opposed to terrible.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to what small developers are up against. I've been around the industry for quite some time and I am well aware of what they go through. I recently had a long talk with a younger friend of mine who's deciding what he wants to go to school for about what exactly it means to have a job in the gaming industry, how he should be sure this is something he's really passionate about because for most people who even make it to the point of being employed in the field it means long hours, mediocre pay, and bad job security.

That said, this is a business like any other, and this isn't some fly-by-night indi gaming studio making a cute little game they cobbled together a few bucks on kickstarter to put together in their garage. This is a big licence game put out by a big publisher, and this is a feature that was pushed out very poorly: no management features at all, enemies using their own TUs, TU tiles not adding strike tiles, bizarre countdown tile mechanics, the list goes on and on. Your reaction to the feature may be neutral, but that certainly has not been everyone's experience. If they didn't know there were issues, then their testing is even worse than I feared. If they pushed it out knowing about many of these issues, then they deserve to take the hit. Someone there is making very bad decisions and it's the reason they take much of the heat they take around here, and their public relations is such a mess that everything is just left to fester. If the poor beleaguered developers who work hard and are passionate about the game they make are hurt by some of the feedback they get here, I feel for them. But the product that they're associated with is not managed in a professional way, and until that changes I and others are going to continue to be very critical of them.

HairyDave

scottee wrote:

Yeah, I guess not everyone tried to manage their TU inventory early on, and if you didn't early, it was hard to catch up later. Delete button will certainly be helpful.

There's only so much prologue dumping you can do before it gets so tedious you say "screw it" and ignore them. It took me a minimum of five games to get a Lethal Recon off - even prioritising TUAP - and I had six of the damn things thanks to PVE.

GrumpySmurf1002

I too disagree with elimination of Sentry/Juggs + reduction of TU available to the AI. I know there's that pesky health pack thing, but I was actually enjoying the reduction of my win rate from 99% to like 94%. The AI *should* be a challenge. It should be challenging to win consistently. It should require using lots of characters to slog through an event. This was helping that be the case (save for Sentry-Daken and Cmags auto-wins). However....

The biggest issue with the team up I've had is that the white tiles doesn't/didn't work like regular tiles. Less AP for cascades, no additional damage for strike tiles, adds up to a situation where matching white is actually hurting you, even if you can launch some mega-TU abilities once acquiring enough. Of course nobody is focusing on matching/denying white because of that, yet the AI still focuses on it. Thus, boom, out of nowhere Supernova. (that is easily preventable if you check if they have the ability and actually focus on white denial)

The delete was much needed and obvious (20AP Ballistic Salvos FTW!), but having the strike tile bonus will make white actually worth matching, which will in turn make the team up function more usable. Combined with nebulous idea of getting specific ones from alliance-mates, and they're at least on the right track, IMO.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

Expalphalog wrote:

IceIX wrote:

We believe that Team-Ups add an exciting new element of strategy and new ways for abilities to work together, and will continue to see that vision through.

You believe wrong.

I think it's added plenty of new strategy. Most people are too busy hating on TU's to come up with them (or can't come up with new strategies on their own), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Carrying around an Aggressive Recon for insurance is the "never-lose" button. Bring three players with no big nukes and they carry a CTS? Yes please. Use my stock of Level 5 Thunderstrikes to generate green for anyone I want? Sure. Farm level 395 Hulk abilities? Hahaha. Shoot, even the level 140's Onslaughts I farmed in the first PVE when these came out were a ton of fun. Use Daken/Falcon to match greens, then instakill the enemy green user.

Enjoy the new and improved "TEAM UP PUZZLE QUEST".

Demiurge_Will

M C K wrote:

The delete button removes the necessity for removing "passive" skills (e.g. Healing and Heat, Redwing, etc.) which currently don't do anything. Ice, is there a plan to either make them functional somehow or remove them entirely as TU skills?

Hey, M C K,

In the next app update*, the bug that would sometimes hand out passive Team-Ups has been squashed.

(The bug fix will make any unusable Team-Ups in your inventory disappear, so if anyone wants proof they were there when Redwing was a Team-Up, now's the time for screenshots!)

* meaning the kind of update you download through the app store/Google Play/Steam, rather than the smaller, several-times-weekly in-app updates.

hope that helps!

Unknown

Will, a bit off topic, but if there is an update coming up, will it also finally add some of the new people to tokens?

Demiurge_Will

NorthernPolarity wrote:

So you're Demiurge_Will and have been slaving away at your computer for a couple of weeks replacing the clearly imbalanced/silly environmental areas with this awesome new "Team-Up" feature, and its set to be released tomorrow. You know that there are some issues with the feature like not being able to delete the team-ups and such, but the alternative would be to push the release back to next week and not have the feature at all. So you say to yourself, "the feature is probably a net positive despite these issues so lets push it out, see what people think, and refactor based off of that information." And then you go read the forums and see posts similar (and more drastic to these) where people are proclaiming the death of MPQ, calling the devs a bunch of incompetent idiots, and calling what they've been working on for the past two weeks a bunch of tinykitty.

I appreciate the sympathy (and yeah, that quote is pretty much exactly the kind of conversation that goes on when deciding when to launch a feature), but I'm used to the heat

It's great to have a tough audience. It pushes us to greater heights and y'all wouldn't be so tough if you didn't care deeply about the game. While it would be awesome if the conversation were a little more civil and measured at times (in particular, fewer comparisons between sexual assault and changes to the rules of a game would make this forum a more pleasant place for everyone), I get the emotions behind the insults and I'm going to keep working to realize the potential you see that makes you believe the game can be better.

Demiurge_Will

Ben Grimm wrote:

Will, a bit off topic, but if there is an update coming up, will it also finally add some of the new people to tokens?

That can happen at any time and doesn't need an app update.

We've been slow on this lately because we've been talking about what to do with the increasing number of characters. Some of us think that the number of characters available at any one time can't get too much larger, or the time to get to the power cap for a particular character gets to be too long, and others don't like the idea of an existing character being "out of rotation" for a while, unavailable in most packs. We all know that we've got to keep making new characters, because there are long lists of people's favorites that aren't in the game yet! If you've got opinions and want to PM them my way, that would be great.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Will, a bit off topic, but if there is an update coming up, will it also finally add some of the new people to tokens?

That can happen at any time and doesn't need an app update.

We've been slow on this lately because we've been talking about what to do with the increasing number of characters. Some of us think that the number of characters available at any one time can't get too much larger, or the time to get to the power cap for a particular character gets to be too long, and others don't like the idea of an existing character being "out of rotation" for a while, unavailable in most packs. We all know that we've got to keep making new characters, because there are long lists of people's favorites that aren't in the game yet! If you've got opinions and want to PM them my way, that would be great.

Silly question. Why not have different types of packs with different characters in each? A standard (hero, etc.) token could be redeemed for either pack?

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Will, a bit off topic, but if there is an update coming up, will it also finally add some of the new people to tokens?

That can happen at any time and doesn't need an app update.

We've been slow on this lately because we've been talking about what to do with the increasing number of characters. Some of us think that the number of characters available at any one time can't get too much larger, or the time to get to the power cap for a particular character gets to be too long, and others don't like the idea of an existing character being "out of rotation" for a while, unavailable in most packs. We all know that we've got to keep making new characters, because there are long lists of people's favorites that aren't in the game yet! If you've got opinions and want to PM them my way, that would be great.

may i suggest that you create multiple sets of heroic packs? for example splitting the current total char down the middle and make 2 heroic packs then just add in on one or the other