It's about time.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Any idea when the backlog will be added to tokens? It's up to four characters now.

I know Fury is getting added very soon, so that's one less. Not so sure on the rest. The reason it's backed up is that we're trying to work out a way to get more characters in without pulling a Disney Vault thing where we have to remove characters to add more so that the odds stay somewhat reasonable. It could happen that Vaulting is what we go with, but we don't want to add now then have to do a mass remove later if something like that is the solution.

The most obvious way is reducing the 2* odds while keeping the 3* ones at a reasonable fixed percentage - say 1% each - in Heroics. With 2*s now being handed out like candy, even the newer players aren't particularly dependent on tokens for them.

The other big way I thought that will allow characters to be vaulted without being unavailable would be to take a preexisting subset - I was thinking the LR Villains - removing them from tokens, but making the villain LR tokens only give those five out again (at least as the 3* characters; if you want to keep the 3*/2* odds the same as they are now). The same thing could be done with LR heroes down the line. While this could arguably come up again that way, at least this buys you 11 characters more to make up your mind, and there's only 24 3*s out right now.

Another possibility is to introduce a 3* only token and allow tokens to be traded up - x number of standards gets a heroic, y number of heroics gets a 3*. That way,the 3* token will be able to have all of the 3*s, and the introduction of the new characters in the standards and heroics won't matter as much.

One other thought - rotate the characters through the week. Monday, the LR villains are unavailable in tokens. Tuesday, LR Heroes are unavailable. Wednesday, it's only those 11 characters. Etc. If people want to aim for a specific character or set of characters, they can just open their tokens that day - people will be vaulted, but only one day (or a few days) per week.

Unknown

Think Lakestone has been rubbing off on ICEIX, the thread does not appear to be stickied.

Unknown

Jathro wrote:

As far as the 3* speculation, could "at heart" be a pun? "When it comes down" to it? Yeah, I got nothing.

You could be on to something if it's referring to Hearts as in the suit of cards. Gambit? Hmmm, another X-Men character might be overkill.

Unknown

FINALLY!!

hope they improve X-Forces red and/or green powers. The green just seems totally rubbish at the moment and the red isn't really more effective than Adamantium Slash

yogi_

IceIX wrote:

wymtime wrote:

Thanks iceEX. If X-force is the beast you are saying then PVP is going to be death brackets big time.

ice can you let us know when the next new character is going to be released? We are still waiting for the X-men starting with a B.

Beast is coming with the start of Heroic Chapter 3. That starts Friday. After that we've got on the docket Colossus, a 2*, and a 3* that haven't been announced yet with as yet undecided launch order. I'll give some slight teases there and say that the 2* is a variant that's about as similar to their other form as Black Widow (Original) is to Black Widow (Modern). The 3* is a good guy at heart, when it comes down to it. Really.

2* - Too much tease here - a number of ways they could be connected. A current 1* or 3* character, I would think the latter is slightly more likely. A character that is Modern is getting an Original variant - Beast (yes, 2* and 3* both), Captain Marvel, She-Hulk. If you look at unused colour combinations for the 2*'s it really could be a lot of people including Captain Marvel, Black Panther, She-Hulk, Punisher, Hulk (I think this rules out Iron Man, as Cap has those 2* colours already but he does make some sense otherwise). A character with 2 abilities to gain a third - Doctor Doom, Loki, Rags.
3* - Gambit, The Thing, Ghost Rider, Namor, Doctor Strange, Vision, Cable, Juggernaut (yes, Juggernaut as an outside chance).

Here's my call...
2* - Invisible Woman (Sue Storm). Strong other contenders - Beast (Hank McCoy), She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters), Black Panther (T'Challa).
3* - Gambit. Strong other contenders - The Thing, Cable, Vision.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Of course Sentry isn't going to be on high on the usage list since only the P2W + very competitive players have him maxed. But that's like saying Fury is used in a tiny % of the games so clearly he must totally suck too, even though he's quite capable.

This is true, but I'm actually speaking of the funnel of "Uses Sentry + Strike tile character, uses Strike generation, uses World Rupture, kablooey" more specifically. Right now that type of user is relatively rare in the high end.

Here's the problem with that logic. What you're essentially saying is "It's not that big a deal because only a small group of people are using this strategy." Do you know who that small group of people are? They are the people who are winning every bracket. So let's substitute. What you're essentially saying is "It's not that big a deal because only the people who are winning every bracket are using this strategy." Now does that make any sense?

This isn't some fringe strategy that a few people scoring in the 500s are using. This is the core strategy that is dominating the top end of competition. To say you don't care about what the people who are winning all the time are doing is saying you don't care about competitive balance at all, because whatever the winners are doing, everyone else is chasing them. It defines the boundaries and the pace of the entire competition. It's the same flawed logic Will used when justifying the change to 2.5. hour refreshes in PvE by saying only .2% of players were maximizing their points to go with the new system. Well last I checked only the top 2 out of 1000 get the best prizes in PvE. So you're forcing everyone to play to match this new style or have no chance of winning. But that doesn't matter, right? Because it's relatively rare in the high end. Very bad logic.

yogi_

Thugpatrol wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Of course Sentry isn't going to be on high on the usage list since only the P2W + very competitive players have him maxed. But that's like saying Fury is used in a tiny % of the games so clearly he must totally suck too, even though he's quite capable.

This is true, but I'm actually speaking of the funnel of "Uses Sentry + Strike tile character, uses Strike generation, uses World Rupture, kablooey" more specifically. Right now that type of user is relatively rare in the high end.

Here's the problem with that logic. What you're essentially saying is "It's not that big a deal because only a small group of people are using this strategy." Do you know who that small group of people are? They are the people who are winning every bracket. So let's substitute. What you're essentially saying is "It's not that big a deal because only the people who are winning every bracket are using this strategy." Now does that make any sense?

This isn't some fringe strategy that a few people scoring in the 500s are using. This is the core strategy that is dominating the top end of competition. To say you don't care about what the people who are winning all the time are doing is saying you don't care about competitive balance at all, because whatever the winners are doing, everyone else is chasing them. It defines the boundaries and the pace of the entire competition. It's the same flawed logic Will used when justifying the change to 2.5. hour refreshes in PvE by saying only .2% of players were maximizing their points to go with the new system. Well last I checked only the top 2 out of 1000 get the best prizes in PvE. So you're forcing everyone to play to match this new style or have no chance of winning. But that doesn't matter, right? Because it's relatively rare in the high end. Very bad logic.

(cue Twysta and a meme about metrics)

Unknown

Hi IceIX,

I am aware that there has been discussions on nerfing cmags for a long time. But to me this still a pretty bad move. The cmags/patch combination is the only combination that works ok to fight the sentry/hood or sentry/lDaken combo.

On my opinion it is a good move to make a character useful, like what I suspect with x-force. But when will we have a buff for characters like DD? DD is a strategist by nature so he should be able to set up traps where he wishes and not have the traps disarmed so easily.

And though this is a character discussion, it would also be good to have a feedback when we would have more events compatible with different times. I think it is really awfull to take events with nice covers and have such high points through the end that will force people to wake up in the middle of the night to play if they want the covers. This does not reflect a bit respecting the players time. And these are some points that would be more interesting to change rather than nerfing characters.

thedarkphoenix

Wow! I JUST dropped like 60k iso into magneto and about 40 into patch, so lame.

ugh

Unknown

Not impressed. Are we supposed to be excited for the crippling of Magneto?

Game remains stale as a rice cake (see walkyourpaths exit thread).

Unknown

The token drop solution

Let's assume, 3 and 4 star drop rate is 20% for simplicity sake. Each week, there are 3 PvP, 1 Lightning Round, 1 PvE.

Each PvP Token gives only the featured and reward character, each at 10% drop rate.
Each Lightning Token gives only the featured 6 characters, each at 3.3% drop rate.
Each PvE Token gives only the 5 featured characters, each at 4% drop rate.

That is a max of 15 characters, assuming overlap, realistically 12 characters. That leaves (currently) 15 characters left over.

Those 15 leftover characters are in the regular Heroic tokens. They split 20% between them, either 1.33% each or slightly higher for the 4* and lower for the 3*.
Every week, the characters available in the regular Heroic tokens will rotate based on who is not featured for that week.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

ThatOneGuyjp189512 wrote:

FINALLY....any teasers as to what the buffs are gonna be??

You'll find out soon. I'll say this though. X-Force is now as much a monster as Fury is. Don't let him heal. But don't let him not heal.

There's a reason we've got him as the Season reward.

Good for me then that I have him at 4/5/4 already, lol.

So X-force, Hawkeye and Daken will get better and Magneto will be nerfed? That's how I interpret that picture, at least. And just as I got 5 blue for Magneto too...oh well.

How soon is soon?

Unknown

Polares wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

Polares wrote:

And please, don't destroy Magneto, leave Blue as it is now

Sure... cause infinite turns aren't broken at all

But you can't have infinite turns just with blue, you need a very spammable red for that. If you try to use magneto's blue without never using red, you can tipically use blue 3-5 times in a row, if you are vey lucky maybe more, but the typical scenario is 3 to 5 times before you need to match blue again.

I know it is broken right now, but it is algo fun, so I hope there can be a compromise where it remains fun, but it is not so OP (leave blue more or less as it is now, but make red with a cost of 8+ or so, with more damage, etc.)

Blue is the big problem though, not nearly so much red.

Red is certainly too cheap, but it doesn't replace itself like blue does.

The change I've been thinking would be easiest and still would preserve what the skills are supposed to do would be something like:
At 166 with 5/5/3
Blue - 8 AP - creates 2 blue protect tiles each with a strength of 140. (doubled protect strength)
Red - 6 AP - Destroys 5 tiles and deals an extra 312 damage. (doubled damage)
Purple - the same

Purple is certainly strong, but is on par with some of the other nukes in the game by dealing up to 9685 with 5 covers at level 166. ~968 damage per AP is a bit high, but not outrageous, and assumes a board with 13 pairs to swap. That's a bit unlikely, especially if you've been matching them to use his other skills. In comparison, Call of the Storm deals only 645 per AP but it's spread out. Rage of the Panther deals 927 per AP, but is also spread out and gives them AP. I'm too lazy to do the math on what level 5 The Best There Is deals per AP when Patch is the last one standing, but it's up there as well for targeted damage. Torch's Fireball deals 423 per AP, targeted, but also generates 2 red, so it's sort of a refund, thus offering you closer to 565 damage per AP. So ultimately, I think Magnetic Translocation is strong, but tolerable.

The real problems are blue and red.

Magnetic Field is ridiculous currently. The skill reads like it's supposed to create protect tiles, using Magnetos powers to shield you from harm. It rarely does that. It's sometimes handy to overwrite tiles to eliminate countdowns, enemy strikes, etc, but the protect tile is gravy at that point and not why you're using it.

Turn it back into being useful as a shield. Make his protect tiles incredibly strong, but cost more. They could still overwrite other tiles, but when the two of them will eliminate most match damage, you might use them not as part of a combo kill.

Magnetized Projectile is simply too cheap. Even with 4 covers instead of 5, it's remarkably spammable. I've only got 3 covers and it's still spammable. Bring it up to 6 or higher and then it's every 2 red matches equals an activation instead of every 2 matches equals 3 activations. Make the damage higher if needed, but the cost is the real offender here.

Unknown

j12601 wrote:

Polares wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

Polares wrote:

And please, don't destroy Magneto, leave Blue as it is now

Sure... cause infinite turns aren't broken at all

But you can't have infinite turns just with blue, you need a very spammable red for that. If you try to use magneto's blue without never using red, you can tipically use blue 3-5 times in a row, if you are vey lucky maybe more, but the typical scenario is 3 to 5 times before you need to match blue again.

I know it is broken right now, but it is algo fun, so I hope there can be a compromise where it remains fun, but it is not so OP (leave blue more or less as it is now, but make red with a cost of 8+ or so, with more damage, etc.)

Blue is the big problem though, not nearly so much red.

Red is certainly too cheap, but it doesn't replace itself like blue does.

The change I've been thinking would be easiest and still would preserve what the skills are supposed to do would be something like:
At 166 with 5/5/3
Blue - 8 AP - creates 2 blue protect tiles each with a strength of 140. (doubled protect strength)
Red - 6 AP - Destroys 5 tiles and deals an extra 312 damage. (doubled damage)
Purple - the same

Purple is certainly strong, but is on par with some of the other nukes in the game by dealing up to 9685 with 5 covers at level 166. ~968 damage per AP is a bit high, but not outrageous, and assumes a board with 13 pairs to swap. That's a bit unlikely, especially if you've been matching them to use his other skills. In comparison, Call of the Storm deals only 645 per AP but it's spread out. Rage of the Panther deals 927 per AP, but is also spread out and gives them AP. I'm too lazy to do the math on what level 5 The Best There Is deals per AP when Patch is the last one standing, but it's up there as well for targeted damage. Torch's Fireball deals 423 per AP, targeted, but also generates 2 red, so it's sort of a refund, thus offering you closer to 565 damage per AP. So ultimately, I think Magnetic Translocation is strong, but tolerable.

The real problems are blue and red.

Magnetic Field is ridiculous currently. The skill reads like it's supposed to create protect tiles, using Magnetos powers to shield you from harm. It rarely does that. It's sometimes handy to overwrite tiles to eliminate countdowns, enemy strikes, etc, but the protect tile is gravy at that point and not why you're using it.

Turn it back into being useful as a shield. Make his protect tiles incredibly strong, but cost more. They could still overwrite other tiles, but when the two of them will eliminate most match damage, you might use them not as part of a combo kill.

Magnetized Projectile is simply too cheap. Even with 4 covers instead of 5, it's remarkably spammable. I've only got 3 covers and it's still spammable. Bring it up to 6 or higher and then it's every 2 red matches equals an activation instead of every 2 matches equals 3 activations. Make the damage higher if needed, but the cost is the real offender here.

Simpler is better. Make red cost more (say 7), but make more damage and give ap similar to MMN (no cd tile). Make blue make purple tiles. (This is similar to MMN. His purple feeds his blue ability. Here, C Mags blue will have potential to feed purple ability). Have the purple tiles have more shield strength (cost 6). Keep purple the way it is. The only ability not broken, and it is C Mags...he should not be Bagman.

wymtime

Thugpatrol wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Of course Sentry isn't going to be on high on the usage list since only the P2W + very competitive players have him maxed. But that's like saying Fury is used in a tiny % of the games so clearly he must totally suck too, even though he's quite capable.

This is true, but I'm actually speaking of the funnel of "Uses Sentry + Strike tile character, uses Strike generation, uses World Rupture, kablooey" more specifically. Right now that type of user is relatively rare in the high end.

Here's the problem with that logic. What you're essentially saying is "It's not that big a deal because only a small group of people are using this strategy." Do you know who that small group of people are? They are the people who are winning every bracket. So let's substitute. What you're essentially saying is "It's not that big a deal because only the people who are winning every bracket are using this strategy." Now does that make any sense?

This isn't some fringe strategy that a few people scoring in the 500s are using. This is the core strategy that is dominating the top end of competition. To say you don't care about what the people who are winning all the time are doing is saying you don't care about competitive balance at all, because whatever the winners are doing, everyone else is chasing them. It defines the boundaries and the pace of the entire competition. It's the same flawed logic Will used when justifying the change to 2.5. hour refreshes in PvE by saying only .2% of players were maximizing their points to go with the new system. Well last I checked only the top 2 out of 1000 get the best prizes in PvE. So you're forcing everyone to play to match this new style or have no chance of winning. But that doesn't matter, right? Because it's relatively rare in the high end. Very bad logic.

The issue with Sentry is the abuse with the boosts. By boosting RY, GB, AP-all it is 2-3 turn instant win. If you take Sentry out you will still see the boosted shield hopping but with some differnt characters. Lthor with GSBW-2 yellow 2 purples and you could get 2 CoTS or 2 sniper rifles or 1 of each and game over. BP with Patch- 1 green-1 yellow-2 black major damage with strike tiles and Rage of the panther. I think if Sentry gets rebalanced (nerfed) you will might also see more deadpool with his Whales, Whales, Whales with boosts 3 purple matches and you get a little off the top and Whales, Whales, Whales.
the main thing that I am showing is there are a lot of characters that can be usefull for shield hopping and Sentry is really the 3* version of Ares. Deffinatly the top character, but does a lot of self and team damage. He is OP offensively but cannot be used for every battle. I think his tweek should be WR only effects 1 enemy and does not do self damage. It will still be an instant kill for 1 character but would still make him extremly powerful. It would also make him have only 1 AOE attack ability which is in line with all the other characters.

Meto5000

stephen43084 wrote:

Simpler is better. Make red cost more (say 7), but make more damage and give ap similar to MMN (no cd tile). Make blue make purple tiles. (This is similar to MMN. His purple feeds his blue ability. Here, C Mags blue will have potential to feed purple ability). Have the purple tiles have more shield strength (cost 6). Keep purple the way it is. The only ability not broken, and it is C Mags...he should not be Bagman.

How in the world do you think a 6 blue power generating STRONGER purple protect tiles that still overwrites ANY TILE IN THE GAME for a cost of 6 is a nerf in any way? The only way this would be close to balanced is if the protect tiles were spawned randomly. If you could place them like you can place them now, you just turn Mags from an infinite turn generator into the biggest single target nuker in the game by a HUGE margin.

reckless442

j12601 wrote:

Polares wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

Polares wrote:

And please, don't destroy Magneto, leave Blue as it is now

Sure... cause infinite turns aren't broken at all

But you can't have infinite turns just with blue, you need a very spammable red for that. If you try to use magneto's blue without never using red, you can tipically use blue 3-5 times in a row, if you are vey lucky maybe more, but the typical scenario is 3 to 5 times before you need to match blue again.

I know it is broken right now, but it is algo fun, so I hope there can be a compromise where it remains fun, but it is not so OP (leave blue more or less as it is now, but make red with a cost of 8+ or so, with more damage, etc.)

Blue is the big problem though, not nearly so much red.

Red is certainly too cheap, but it doesn't replace itself like blue does.

The change I've been thinking would be easiest and still would preserve what the skills are supposed to do would be something like:
At 166 with 5/5/3
Blue - 8 AP - creates 2 blue protect tiles each with a strength of 140. (doubled protect strength)
Red - 6 AP - Destroys 5 tiles and deals an extra 312 damage. (doubled damage)
Purple - the same

Purple is certainly strong, but is on par with some of the other nukes in the game by dealing up to 9685 with 5 covers at level 166. ~968 damage per AP is a bit high, but not outrageous, and assumes a board with 13 pairs to swap. That's a bit unlikely, especially if you've been matching them to use his other skills. In comparison, Call of the Storm deals only 645 per AP but it's spread out. Rage of the Panther deals 927 per AP, but is also spread out and gives them AP. I'm too lazy to do the math on what level 5 The Best There Is deals per AP when Patch is the last one standing, but it's up there as well for targeted damage. Torch's Fireball deals 423 per AP, targeted, but also generates 2 red, so it's sort of a refund, thus offering you closer to 565 damage per AP. So ultimately, I think Magnetic Translocation is strong, but tolerable.

The real problems are blue and red.

Magnetic Field is ridiculous currently. The skill reads like it's supposed to create protect tiles, using Magnetos powers to shield you from harm. It rarely does that. It's sometimes handy to overwrite tiles to eliminate countdowns, enemy strikes, etc, but the protect tile is gravy at that point and not why you're using it.

Turn it back into being useful as a shield. Make his protect tiles incredibly strong, but cost more. They could still overwrite other tiles, but when the two of them will eliminate most match damage, you might use them not as part of a combo kill.

Magnetized Projectile is simply too cheap. Even with 4 covers instead of 5, it's remarkably spammable. I've only got 3 covers and it's still spammable. Bring it up to 6 or higher and then it's every 2 red matches equals an activation instead of every 2 matches equals 3 activations. Make the damage higher if needed, but the cost is the real offender here.

Since the AI does not use Mags' blue that effectively, how is "infinite turns" that big a problem? Why isn't stalling your opponent so you can do extra moves as much an effective strategy as world rupture/sacrifice or berserker rage/rage of panther? I just don't see how it's a problem that actually hurts players.

To the extent PVP opponents use it against your team, when the AI controls you, there are so many other ways a team can lose, this should not be a major concern. It is a slow way of winning, which is why you don't see patchneto at the high end, and this game should be designed so PVP favors the attacker. If 50% of matches ended in losses, i.e. the game were really balanced between offense and defense, players would give up in droves.

The only "problem" with Mags' blue is the one the Devs see -- it hurts healthpack usage. The Devs continue to persist in this misguided notion that each battle should end with your characters suffering major damage, even in PVE. Mags' blue is the best counter to damage because he reduces the AI's opportunities to attack. If the Devs would accept that players don't want to take thousands of points in damage every match and monetizing via healthpacks just pisses us off, the game experience would be vastly improved. But since they won't, we will get Mags nerfed significantly. It will be justified by a silly excuse about metrics when anyone with a brain knows the real reason is money.

Thanos

Daige wrote:

IceIX wrote:

ThatOneGuyjp189512 wrote:

FINALLY....any teasers as to what the buffs are gonna be??

You'll find out soon. I'll say this though. X-Force is now as much a monster as Fury is. Don't let him heal. But don't let him not heal.

There's a reason we've got him as the Season reward.

How soon is soon?

I wouldn't exactly call Fury a "monster". He's solid but far from being a monster. That statement makes me nervous about X-Forces buff. No offense to ICE but he tends to exaggerate character power levels.

In D3 speak, soon is probably within the next two weeks. Definitely by the end of season 5.

And my guess for the 3* that's a good guy at heart... with all the Guardians of the Galaxy hype going on recently, I'd have to say Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star Lord or maybe Rocket Raccoon.

Unknown

First of all Loki 2 Star confirmed.

I hope they don't nerf Magneto too hard. As somebody in 2 Star Land my 102 Magneto together with Patch is the only way I can climb fast without using up all healthpacks. My blue is even just at 2 Covers right now.

IceIX wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Any idea when the backlog will be added to tokens? It's up to four characters now.

I know Fury is getting added very soon, so that's one less. Not so sure on the rest. The reason it's backed up is that we're trying to work out a way to get more characters in without pulling a Disney Vault thing where we have to remove characters to add more so that the odds stay somewhat reasonable. It could happen that Vaulting is what we go with, but we don't want to add now then have to do a mass remove later if something like that is the solution.

Can you please give a rough estimate? up to 2 weeks, up to 1 month, up to 3 months.
I'm sitting on a lot of heroic tokens but I am missing a Cpt Marvel and my roster is too bad to hoard tokens. So if it's another 1 month I might aswell open all of them.

FWIW I agree that you should simply split tokens into groups. Split Heroic tokens into 2, maybe Villains/Heroes(I have no idea if thats balanced). Instead of adding another confirmation screen where you choose the token you could display it as 2 buttons, both of which say "20 Heroic Tokens" and "20 Villainous Tokens"(When your total amount of tokens is 20 overall) respectively and player just click which one they want.

I'll also use this post to complain about the huge amount of confirmation screens. The "you have too many TUs" just added ANOTHER one. Clicking through so much stuff after every match, ugh.

Meto5000

reckless442 wrote:

The only "problem" with Mags' blue is the one the Devs see -- it hurts healthpack usage. The Devs continue to persist in this misguided notion that each battle should end with your characters suffering major damage, even in PVE. Mags' blue is the best counter to damage because he reduces the AI's opportunities to attack. If the Devs would accept that players don't want to take thousands of points in damage every match and monetizing via healthpacks just pisses us off, the game experience would be vastly improved. But since they won't, we will get Mags nerfed significantly. It will be justified by a silly excuse about metrics when anyone with a brain knows the real reason is money.

I think 3* Daken could produce 2x strength 1 strike tiles, and as long as he still tanked green with a high regen people would use him almost as much as they do now.