Team-Up Feedback and Changes

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

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.

I genuinely feel like they are making a larger and more concerted effort. I'm not saying it's where it needs to be yet, but let's try not to not give the impression like that they are not trying to improve things.

Unknown

Kamuuu wrote:

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.

My problem with this is not everyone is going be sitting on the forum to read the announcement and make comments at the time the announcement comes out. I understand the current format of making an announcement, give the forum community time to make comments, read those comments, and THEN addressing anything that needs to be cleared up.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

My problem with this is not everyone is going be sitting on the forum to read the announcement and make comments at the time the announcement comes out. I understand the current format of making an announcement, give the forum community time to make comments, read those comments, and THEN addressing anything that needs to be cleared up.

Agree with this statement, BUT the announcement was 2 days ago. They need to find a happy medium between immediate and 2 days. 12 to 24 hours seems like a reasonable timeframe.

scottee

I think it should either be:

1. A mix of TU's and boosts drop.
2. Boosts are completely removed from the game.

I'm prefer 1 over 2 (as most do), but I don't mind 2 either. The reason the current state is the least favorable is because now boosts are only available to those willing to spend on them. While many milking Sentry/Daken were already doing this, and some of the boosts only cost ISO, this further polarizes the two sides of the playerbase.

Unknown

papa07 wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

My problem with this is not everyone is going be sitting on the forum to read the announcement and make comments at the time the announcement comes out. I understand the current format of making an announcement, give the forum community time to make comments, read those comments, and THEN addressing anything that needs to be cleared up.

Agree with this statement, BUT the announcement was 2 days ago. They need to find a happy medium between immediate and 2 days. 12 to 24 hours seems like a reasonable timeframe.

BUT, the update has not occured yet. If the udpate had occured, I would agree with you. IRL (especially business time), 2 days is not that long. Personally, I do not get the impatience with getting clarification in this instance. When they had the original TUP update (when timely response was more paramount), they had people on the forum to answer questions.

Pylgrim

Please restore boost drops. T-Us are fun and all but if I'm constrained for time or facing a very powerful opponent, I'd like to have a lil reliable help instead of the "match super-weak tiles for the hopes of casting a one-time ability that may be powerful enough to cause an impact in the game or may not" aid that T-Us are.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

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.)

Thanks for the responce, My thoughts on the subject were to make boosts progression rewards in aditional tiers, where we have rewards for 50, 100, 200, etc... you could add aditional boost rewards at the varing 25 point levels, for example:

25 Recruit token
50 100 ISO
75 (1) +10% to green and Black match
100 Stockpile
125 (1) +10% to Red and Yellow Match
150 (1) + 1 to Blue and Purple AP
etc...

By giving 1 you would not be flooding the streets with boosts, and breaking up the progression ladder gives us a bigger sence we are etting somewhere. I agree that boosts are a bit more powerfull then the TU's but it would be nice to have a method of refilling them other then spending ISO / HP
50

Nonce Equitaur 2

Can the developers sticky this thread? It's got commentary from two different developers.

Unknown

Please keep Team-Ups selected between matches, just like boosts. This would be especially helpful when trying to play matches as quickly as possible at the end of events.

Pylgrim

As for the issue with newer character widening the pool of 3*s, making it statistically more difficult to pull the ones you need, the most obvious solution is to create "categories" or small subsets of characters and allow people to choose which category they want the reward from. However, this raises another issue. Characters are definitely not balanced and with a few of them needing nerfs and many needing buffs, there's no reasonable way in which you can divide characters that will not create a "super-category" that most players will keep choosing over and over. For example,if they made "bad guys" and "good guys", and "bad girls" and "good girls" categories, the "bad guys" would have Sentry, LDaken, Hood, and Doom. Everyone would pick tokens from that category when given the choice.

I think that the best way of getting 3*s covers is not with tokens but with PVP, anyway. However, there are only so many PVPs in a month. With an ever-increasing amount of characters, the chances of the PVP for the character you are trying to build to come around becomes very uncertain. My solution? Run 2 PVP events at a time with two different characters. Players can only choose to participate in one of them, the one with the rewards they need the most. This once again runs into the issue of unbalance as you can guess what will happen when you run a PVP that rewards LThor along one that rewards Loki, but the thing is that we cannot run away from that issue forever. At the very least, doing this will provide very real metrics of players' preferences which may guide their decision to finally buff or nerf the characters that need it.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

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.

Boosts feel "cheaty" but zero-downside Wind Storms and Supernovas don't?

Yeah. Okay.

OnesOwnGrief

Expalphalog wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

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.

Boosts feel "cheaty" but zero-downside Wind Storms and Supernovas don't?

Yeah. Okay.

What was the downside to Wind Storm? Storm? I fail to see what you were trying to say and Supernova is being removed.

Unknown

Low HP.

And yes, Supernova is being removed, but the fact that it was ever an option shows the lack of logic going into these decisions.

NorthernPolarity

Expalphalog wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

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.

Boosts feel "cheaty" but zero-downside Wind Storms and Supernovas don't?

Yeah. Okay.

Boosts feel cheaty because using a boostbasically amounts to you starting the game taking 6 extra turns over the opponent: how are Team-Ups even remotely close to that? Yes, you might unlucky if the enemy uses a random TU on you and wrecks you, but they have to have TU AP to do so just like you have to have TU AP to use your TUs as well.

Spoit

Who (other than phantron) actually complains about optional player-use items "feeling cheaty"?

No one is forcing people to use them

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Expalphalog wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

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.

Boosts feel "cheaty" but zero-downside Wind Storms and Supernovas don't?
Yeah. Okay.

Boosts feel cheaty because using a boost basically amounts to you starting the game taking 6 extra turns over the opponent: how are Team-Ups even remotely close to that? Yes, you might unlucky if the enemy uses a random TU on you and wrecks you, but they have to have TU AP to do so just like you have to have TU AP to use your TUs as well.

Part of how powers are supposed to be balanced is with the colors they're on and the characters they're attached to. TUs have taken this core concept and thrown it directly in the trash. How many times do you have to use something like Recon to radically change a battle's outcome? Once is generally going to be enough, and now you can have them without having to worry about who's tanking those colors for the squishy and if they're going to live long enough to use them. Yes, you've added a new element of strategy to the game, and you've also destroyed a good amount of strategy and balance in the process.

Boosts are just an accelerator, and an extremely significant one at that, but they don't fundamentally change the way the game functions. TUs do. Maybe that doesn't feel as "cheaty" to some people, but it also doesn't make a whole lot of sense in respect to how the game has worked up to this point. And while we're on the subject of boosts, why exactly wasn't their removal from the drop pool in the patch nodes? Why did nobody feel the need to drop in here and comment on all the speculation over whether their absence in the post-TU world was a bug or by design? These are the kinds of things that continue to stir up the bad blood that's been brewing around here for a while now. Whether it was intentional or not it has the reek of shady behavior, and with how often this stuff happens it doesn't take too much to get the villagers reaching for the torches and pitchforks.

The powers-that-be would do themselves a favor by getting that community manage position filled sooner rather than later. Then give them enough information and authority to actually do their job and let us know what's going on in a timely manner. While they're at it, feel free to stop omitting things and trying to slip all these little changes by us. It's not appreciated.

Amazeballs

For the record, I hate them. I don't use them and instead collect high leveled TUs knowing that I probably won't use them. (The 350 Hulks are sitting pretty next to my 200+ Fury that I never used, even though it tried to make me use it the first day introduced.)

As previous posters have said, it radically changes any strategy and can swing the match in one fell swoop. It also seems that more than half the time, they're buggy and were released without being fully developed.

Besides the obvious capability the AI had of using a TU power of someone currently on the team (which is being fixed), I've noticed and been on the receiving end of some TUs that have ended matches prematurely without reason.

For example, when the Moonstone TU of Gravity Warp is used, it doesn't matter if I have 10 attack/protect/etc tiles, it still does damage. This actually knocked me out of a match during the Hulk 4 sub insanity earlier, as the AI pulled it out with a roughly 100 level TU that swallowed a random tile instead of warping one of mine.

People have brought up Sentry's TU so I don't need to go over those, but Ares is another TU that misfires. When the AI uses Onslaught, it does not return any green to me.

I apologize if these have been brought up previously, but I didn't feel like reading through the whole thread, especially when I have my own beef with it.

Honestly, TUs seem to be a quick cash grab, as it inflicts noticeable damage that, more often than not, you have to use a health pack to remedy. This, along with "true healing," feels like a kick in the rear.

daveomite

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

I would rather get boost drops. Without question. TU's are a gimmick to me. Whatever strategy that may have existed is now gone. Boosts are 10x more useful any day of the week. But D3 seems to think they know best and completely removed boosts as drops.

To be clear, I play hours everyday. I do not like team ups. I don't like trying to use them. Tired of trying to get rid of one's that are useless. Tired of facing broken mechanics where the AI can break every rule of TU's.

When the AI continually produces TU ap out of thin air to smack you with repetitive TU's back to back. That's not strategy, it's broken.

You've made it so that if you want to use a TU, you have to change how you play. Meaning, you focus more on collecting TU rather than the whole point of the game...matching 3 or more colors to empower your characters.

Maybe this idea of team ups was a decent concept, and has some potential. But it was simply not well thought out and certainly not implemented well.

I understand that there seems to be so many that seem to like them. Claiming they bring in added "strategy". I completely disagree and will continue to ignore they're even an option.

Unknown

I still want an assurance that when my opponent uses a TU that it comes out of that players inventory. I know it's the CPU using the TU and the actual player is not involved in the decision but regardless it's still unfair to know that the CPU opponent is able to use a TU at no cost where as if I make a decision to use one it is then removed from my inventory after use.

Nighthawk81

I haven't seen it anywhere in the devs notes, but when TU is fixed, will protect tiles also block TU damage? I saw something where strike tiles will get fixed, but I noticed this morning that my protect tiles aren't limiting damage on TU matches. Very annoying when you have three or four protect tiles and still get hit.