Team-Up Feedback and Changes

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

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. I specifically said "more viable", but "not viable" yet. So for this one, I think you may have just missed this because I was so long winded.

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. The changed was made before. However, my belief is that they new the TUP change was coming and that was the reason for the change. Enviro tiles took a lot to activate, so a lower AP cost was okay. TUP's take less; thus, the higher AP cost for storm's yellow and the lower TUP costs (compared to Enviro's).

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. This is an argument for more varied TUP's with not all of them being nukes. My point remains that occasional powrful TUP's and varied TUP's among three would be more in the spirit of the game.

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.

Again you must have missed this due to my OP was so long. However, I am not advocating to keep the status quo for TUP's. I am simply stating that the more powerful DA TUP's should not be entirely removed, and that there should still be 3 AI TUP's (varied, not 3 Supernovas).

Dartmaster01

Hey Demiurge_Will, when will these changes go into affect? Sooo tired of getting hit with the random supernova at the end of a match.

Demiurge_Will

dragma wrote:

I am seeing one item that may have been overlooked:

Normal boosts are currently either dropping at a highly reduced rate or not at all. Is this going to be resolved?

Team-Up drops replaced boost drops.

The theory there was that Team-Ups are much more interesting and flavorful to play with than boosts, and boosts feel "cheaty" to many players. We know some folks find boosts strategically interesting, or have built teams around them, so we don't want to retire them entirely if we can avoid it. Plus, boosts are a good way to add a little bit of variety to loot tables.

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

dragma wrote:

One other:
TU tiles durring cascades return less then the matched amount, unlike normal colors. this can be seen most readly where you end up matching 2 sets of colors at once (one green and 1 TU) the team up match would only return 2.

This needs an app update to be fixed. It's not in the next one, but it is in the one after that. (App updates are the big ones, not the ~3x-weekly ones.) I know it's small comfort, but both you and the AI are being equally shortchanged at the moment.

Demiurge_Will

Dartmaster01 wrote:

Hey Demiurge_Will, when will these changes go into affect? Sooo tired of getting hit with the random supernova at the end of a match.

Not all of the listed changes will happen at once. Sentry being cut from the AI's Team-Up lists will be in the next app update.

famousfoxking

dragma wrote:

TU tiles durring cascades return less then the matched amount, unlike normal colors. this can be seen most readly where you end up matching 2 sets of colors at once (one green and 1 TU) the team up match would only return 2.

Except when they don't: In a cascade created by an AI Thunder Strike today, the AI received full TU AP (3) from a match in that cascade. Now, that may not be because it was the AI, it may be calculating cascades created by matches differently than cascades generated by power use, but it was INFURIATING.

Pylgrim

Again you must have missed this due to my OP was so long. However, I am not advocating to keep the status quo for TUP's. I am simply stating that the more powerful DA TUP's should not be entirely removed, and that there should still be 3 AI TUP's (varied, not 3 Supernovas).[/quote]

I got that. I actually agree that powerful T-Us shouldn't be removed as those are, obviously, the ones that are the most exciting to use yourself in offence. I strongly disagree with the 3 T-Us, though. As I said, it's the fact that the opponent gets three picks what highly increases the likelihood of them getting a low cost, game-changing T-U (such as the very bemoaned World Rupture or Supernova) most games which is exactly the main complain people have against defensive T-U's. With only 1 T-U, the chances of getting hit by an out-of-the-blue powerful ability and losing an otherwise easy battle will become much more sporadic. Getting Supernova'd to death by a team of a weak Yelena and two goons will be the kind of thing that would become an almost funny story that you tell your friends. As it is now, is almost a commonplace occurrence.

Demiurge_Will

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Are unused TUs becoming deselected after every match a feature or a bug? Either way, its incredibly annoying and should be fixed.

Hey, NorthernPolarity,

This is being changed so that your Team-Up choices stick around. Not in the next app update, but the one following.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

It's a mix. I used boosts rarely enough that getting them occasionally meant enough for when I used them. You can store, many, many more boosts than team-ups, so I wasn't overfilling them, but only what, three different boosts are ever awarded as prizes (fruit salad AP & % bonus plus Crits), which means I have to stop usaing them or start paying for them very soon.

But the disappointment is, I think, twofold:
1) the lack of communication on the issue is becoming a bit of a distressing pattern. This was a major enough change that it needed to be communicated
2) most of us, by now, are essentially getting nothing to replace the dropped boosts, because our team-up reserve was full by the end of the first day, sand they're too hard to remove to be worth the effort. Team-up drops aren't replacing boosts drops for me, a message screen is.

I suspect, if you polled the playerbase, most people would prefer a mix to just team-ups. I think I've gotten exactly one actual team-up drop this week, and it's a red GSBW I'd delete if I could.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Most important is to make using them less of a chore.

If a person doesn't pick any team-ups, assign them randomly. That way, a person isn't forced to spend 15 seconds before every match picking Team-ups that they likely won't be able to use anyways. It's incredibly boring.

There is also the Poll of Team-Up modifications.

I suppose I should apologize for my last list of questions.

mohio

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

I actually did get a boost the other day, but maybe being full of TUs the game allows for that? Anyway, to answer the question for myself, I would definitely rather get the occasional boost drop instead of a team-up. The ap boosts are fun to use every now and then, especially when you have to be fast, and having to always spend ISO if I want to use them (and frankly not willing to spend hp on the rainbow boosts) is a little bit annoying. And anytime the boosts do drop it would be more exciting than a random team-up I'm not likely to use or even want at all.

Dartmaster01

mohio wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

I actually did get a boost the other day, but maybe being full of TUs the game allows for that? Anyway, to answer the question for myself, I would definitely rather get the occasional boost drop instead of a team-up. The ap boosts are fun to use every now and then, especially when you have to be fast, and having to always spend ISO if I want to use them (and frankly not willing to spend hp on the rainbow boosts) is a little bit annoying. And anytime the boosts do drop it would be more exciting than a random team-up I'm not likely to use or even want at all.

I second that! Please bring back boost drops.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Demiurge_Will wrote:

would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups?

Anyone with Team-Ups full should get Boosts instead. "You would have won a prize, but your Team-Ups list is full" is NOT a fun message.

TheHueyFreeman

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

For me and several of the people that I talked to, its a combination of both but exasperated by the former. We had been enjoying their use (while recognizing the potential for an unfair advantage which some call P2W). The most advantageous boosts (worth hp to replace) already had a rather small drop rate so that the majority of matches weren't simply boost fests. I, for one, would rather have the boost drops back even if it was at a reduced rate.

What likely irritated people extra about it was the fact that we had no idea that it had happened until we started running out of boosts unexpectedly.

I understand that it isn't the end of the world and if we don't go back to getting boosts as rewards, we will live. People will always be unhappy about certain changes regardless of what you do (see: true healing), but knowing what will happen and why beforehand helps us to understand and hopefully respect that choice.

Unknown

Edit - Erased my post due to I did not read down to Nonce's post first, and did not read it until it was too late to delete this one. I agreed with him. Sorry Nonce.

mohio

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups?

Anyone with Team-Ups full should get Boosts instead. "You would have won a prize, but your Team-Ups list is full" is NOT a fun message.

But team-ups drop at 100% rate and boosts were maybe 5-10% before. Don't think they would do this (also will just said they are not 1 to 1). Agree with your idea in principal however.

GrumpySmurf1002

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

Eliminating Boost Drops took something of monetary value (i.e, we have to buy them to replace them) and replaced it with something of zero monetary value (can't buy or sell TU abilities). To do that, without mentioning it, can and likely did send the completely wrong message about what your goals for TU actually are.

As for the question at hand, yes, I'd rather see boost drops in there.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

While I am somewhat aggravated by the fact that it was missed in the announcement, I am VERY disappointment by the disappearance of random boost drops.

I don't use boosts as a matter of fact, but they are part of my strategy at critical junctions in PVP and PVE and I am resentful of having to buy every single 2-colour AP boost I want to use. That feels absolutely miserable. Furthermore, I think having boost drops as an option would enliven the after-fight clicking-through-multiple-screens routine by lending it more variety of rewards. AP boosts are very valuable and I wouldn't even be put out by getting, for example, purple/blue AP boosts instead of a level 300 Thunderous clap some fraction of the time. Boost drops rates as they were before, or even slightly lowered, would be my preferred solution.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Demiurge_Will wrote:

is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups ...

When the developers seem to know less about the game than the players, that's a huge disappointment. If you'd like, I could compile a list of all the announcements that were blatantly wrong, with no attempts made to make corrections until days or weeks later.

Currently ...
1. Announcements of upcoming changes are nearly meaningless.
2. Announcements of actual changes go through a player verification process since they are often wrong.
3. Stealth changes occur frequently with no announcement at all.
4. The developers seem detached and uninterested in their own game.

If you want to get a handle on this, make corrections in a timely fashion. If an upcoming change is trickier than expected, cancel it. Become more reliable.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

When the developers seem to know less about the game than the players, that's a huge disappointment. If you'd like, I could compile a list of all the announcements that were blatantly wrong, with no attempts made to make corrections until days or weeks later.

Currently ...
1. Announcements of upcoming changes are nearly meaningless.
2. Announcements of actual changes go through a player verification process since they are often wrong.
3. Stealth changes occur frequently with no announcement at all.
4. The developers seem detached and uninterested in their own game.

If you want to get a handle on this, make corrections in a timely fashion. If an upcoming change is trickier than expected, cancel it. Become more reliable.

I would add: when you schedule an announcement, make sure the announcer can stick around and do any needed follow-up. The latest announcement about Team-Up sharing and "On patrol" status is a perfect example. The announcement is very short and there were a few ambiguous statements. There are good, concise questions and requests for clarifications that were asked quickly about the features but the announcement was made and there are zero replies from "red-named" people in the whole thread.

simonsez

Demiurge_Will wrote:

What would be great to know now is: is the disappointment here mostly about the fact that this was dropped from the patch notes on Team-Ups, or would most of you rather be getting occasional boost drops in place of Team-Ups? (Not 1-for-1: several Team-Up drops are equivalent to one boost drop.)

I can't imagine anyone saying they don't want to be getting boost drops...