Team-Up Feedback and Changes

Polares

Justdangit wrote:

I know it is a bugs and all and it is getting fix but how come the AI have a TU ability the belong to some one on their team every time.

The frequency of this happening is ridiculous. I just got a fix where the AI had 2 lv5 Magnetic project tile TU and a lvl 166 CMag in their team. Got destroy when he use 2 MP in one turn, once with normal AP second time with TUAP, result in a massive cascade and rage of the black panther in the next turn.

Yep, it has happened to me too. But the worst is the number of times the AI has used Supernova or World Rupture on me.

I hope we get this changes soon because after playing a lot this past weekend for the Fury prize I can say Team Ups right now don't work. All these changes seem to go on the right direction, but I don't know if TUs is ever going to be fun... (It is probably more fun for new-medium players, but for experienced players it is just a pain in the ****).

Unknown

I think they just didn't think about the long term revenue generating features of this game. Costumes are indeed a no brainer. They don't need any stats tied to them, and the worst case is maybe nobody ever bought Mohawk Magneto costume for 2500 HP. So you lost a bit of investment for the art guy's time spent on the costume, but that guy should be always on the payroll so he's got to be doing something anyway. I don't know if cosmetics makes as much money as people think they will, but art asset for this game should be readily available so it's a very minimal investment for a lot of potential. We have different skins for the goons in the SHIELD versus HAMMER variants, so it shouldn't be that hard to make them unless the SHIELD Pyro is actually a different character compared to the HAMMER Pyro, and that would be pretty bad programming and it'd be a good idea to invest some money to fix it anyway.

Unknown

Thugpatrol wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

Alternate costumes could even come with some very minor bonuses. A couple percentage points of bonus damage or healing rate here or there isn't going to tip any balance scales, but it might make someone feel a little better spending money for something that otherwise would be purely cosmetic.

If they add stats then they aren't cosmetic. You run the risk of being backed into a paywall where your character isn't going to as good as someone who has it. Single player games, this is fine. Multiplayer games, not at all. This is why LoL, IC, DOTA 2 costumes are all purely cosmetic. You start slightly tweaking things then you can actually make things even more imbalanced.

Hence why I said "could" and "very minor bonuses". I'm not against purely cosmetic, but if they're trying to sell a product a little extra something something couldn't hurt. And do you really think people are going to rise up en masse against the grand injustice of a costume that grants, say, 3% bonus damage? Or a 5% improvement to healing rate?

Bonuses probably should only be faster regen time since it takes way too long for characters to heal unless they're one of the characters with accelerated healing so that shouldn't hurt anyone. Even if you heal 25% faster the time to heal is still measured in hours so it's not like that has any meaningful impact on health pack sales.

There is no advantage too small that has a material effect the game for people to pay over. Even 1% damage increase in damage would still have people complaining about how it's too P2W, and while being P2W isn't necessarily bad, if you go that way you might as well go all the way.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Thugpatrol wrote:

Hence why I said "could" and "very minor bonuses". I'm not against purely cosmetic, but if they're trying to sell a product a little extra something something couldn't hurt. And do you really think people are going to rise up en masse against the grand injustice of a costume that grants, say, 3% bonus damage? Or a 5% improvement to healing rate?

Bonuses probably should only be faster regen time since it takes way too long for characters to heal unless they're one of the characters with accelerated healing so that shouldn't hurt anyone. Even if you heal 25% faster the time to heal is still measured in hours so it's not like that has any meaningful impact on health pack sales.

There is no advantage too small that has a material effect the game for people to pay over. Even 1% damage increase in damage would still have people complaining about how it's too P2W, and while being P2W isn't necessarily bad, if you go that way you might as well go all the way.

Are we really getting into an argument that a 3% bonus to damage from an alternate costume is going to break the balance of the game? So if Rage of the Panther does 3819 instead of 3708 everyone must buy his new costume or abandon all hope of competing? Of course some people will feel like they have to buy it. That's the whole point of very small bonuses: to encourage sales from a different group than those who would buy it purely for looks alone. But I fail to see a problem with game balance in numbers this small, particular when the advantage that you can already buy with boosts and shields is far, far greater. The idea is to turn this into another source of revenue, and you make more money by appealing to a wider group of customers. This is one very easy way to do that.

Unknown

Why not have trade-offs on the costumes then, +5% damage but -5% health for example. Or +10% crit damage, -3% match damage etc

yogi_

Costumes require only one iteration of each character, which you can then reskin. Given that scenario, the concept has merit.

But overall, they need to be purely comestic and should make no difference to the gameplay. In the current state of the game, it's like adding another level of annoying stuff on top of the bonus mish-mash already in place.

Also, I think I remember reading once that the devs said they weren't going to do it, but had talked about it.

yogi_

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Why not have trade-offs on the costumes then, +5% damage but -5% health for example. Or +10% crit damage, -3% match damage etc

This is actually a decent idea as part of a more "ideal" bonus system that the game should have that combines boosts, team ups and the sometimes talked "team bonuses".

simonsez

Why aren't the TU drops in Combined Arms buffed to the level of the characters you had to beat to get them? Doesn't seem right...

edit: and it seems even more wrong when you see that the TUs they play against you ARE buffed...

Pwuz_

simonsez wrote:

Why aren't the TU drops in Combined Arms buffed to the level of the characters you had to beat to get them? Doesn't seem right...

Team ups have always used the characters unboosted levels for drops. The only reason that PvE drops higher is those characters are leveled higher for the event. I know it's a goofy distinction.

I really would like to know, what environmental powers were more useful than team ups? I know, Thorned Rose... But that's really about it. I'm glad that we have the option to take whichever powers we want into battle rather than just the two (but effectively one) we had before team ups.

Sure often times you never get enough AP to use them, but how often did you use the environmental powers?

Reselecting them each match when I have yet to use them is a pain though. I'd rather my Team ups stay than my Boosts, but that's just me. I use my boosts only when I'm full and have an important match against a Sentry or other Tanky team that will cost me too many health packs.

simonsez

Pwuz_ wrote:

simonsez wrote:

I know it's a goofy distinction.

I don't know if I'd call it "goofy"... I can think of a lot of other words though. Seriously, if they do match damage like a lv266, have abilities like a lv266, hit you with lv266 TUs, how have I not earned a lv266 TU by beating them??

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

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.

What about giving people choice by color. Pick red for a guaranteed red cover, same % chance of any given rarity and you may still get that 7th LCap red looking for a Photonic blasts. True the colors are not distributed evenly at all, but in a situation where you only need a single cover to finish a character, betting on that single color is MUCH better odds than betting against the full spectrum.

Unknown

I fully understand not giving out lv266 TU's for this PvP - it would lead to everyone ditching their old 'normal' TU's for these super powered ones then using the 266 ones in regular pvp where they're overpowered.

On the downside, it puts you off using your current TU's in this event because you might get unlucky and get a lv166 TU replaced by a lv40 one.

CrookedKnight

Bear in mind that when you play a team-up in this event, it's buffed too. It's been like that since the last patch showed up - team-ups are affected by an event's level boosts just like your actual characters are. So you'd get a level 166 team-up, which would be further buffed to level 300-something when you deploy it in a Combined Arms match.

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

I fully understand not giving out lv266 TU's for this PvP - it would lead to everyone ditching their old 'normal' TU's for these super powered ones then using the 266 ones in regular pvp where they're overpowered.

On the downside, it puts you off using your current TU's in this event because you might get unlucky and get a lv166 TU replaced by a lv40 one.

Which you can then delete. I have gotten rid of some of my high cost ones, as well as the low level ones. Alot of the time I rarely get enough TUAP to be able to use them at all.

simonsez

DrUnpleasant wrote:

I fully understand not giving out lv266 TU's for this PvP - it would lead to everyone ditching their old 'normal' TU's for these super powered ones then using the 266 ones in regular pvp where they're overpowered.

So, after the Hulk PvE, how many lv420 Thunderous Claps do we have in our inventories? Given that, it's not like lv266s are going to break anything.

Unknown

Force Field Crush needs to be removed from available team ups. Without Force Bubbles being available its a terrible terrible power. Creates 2 force bubbles and ends turn. No player would EVER use it, and with the AI restriction to 1 TU ability the AI shouldn't use it either.

Unknown

I don't usually post on these things but bring back environmentals. I found them far more useful then TU's, all for new features but the TU feature has been a huge let down.

CrookedKnight

It's a small thing (literally!) but that "delete" button in the team-up menu is really fiddly. More than once I've tried to delete a TU and ended up loading it for the battle instead, which means I have to open the menu to clear it and then open it *again* to delete the thing, because you can't delete an equipped TU. Maybe make it so long pressing brings up a "delete yes/no" window?

Unknown

TeamUp is just for trolling in game ..losing time with sharing waiting to come back your hero and in 99% i forget to equip teamup...so in future dont be surprised when they make only to use teamups if you pay for them and buy that you want to use like recruiting hero or something ...

Unknown

I share the sentiment you should be able to choose which power to send, and it should be available for the duration of the patrol length. At the very least, if your alliance mate uses the TU your hero should return from patrol early.