It's about time.

Unknown

BigMac3 wrote:

Please nerf the hell out of Classic Magneto. I understand that he's an uber-mutant in the lore, but he's obnoxiously powerful in this game. I hate fighting him, no matter the build i'm facing. I have no particular fixes for him, but raising the AP on both his red, blue, and purple may be appropriate. He's fantastically powerful at the moment and I hate to have him on the other side.

Weakling.

Unknown

Knyghtmare wrote:

Since death brackets were mentioned, one thing that would prevent it greatly is to not allow alliance members to fight each other (major trick used is to attack shielded members in your team). It would also help accidental attack which create drama. Think about it, if you were in a real-life alliance, would you attack your friend. It may not fix it completely, but it would definitely help.

I already asked for this last month, devs don't give a ***. Reason? Money.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

flnn1 wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

@IceIX Two questions

1) If you're going to use little-to-no rubberbanding from now, does it not make sense to revert PvE to time-based bracketing? It's demoralizing to join a bracket where the leaders are several refreshes or even one entire sub ahead.

2) How about previewing the funbalance changes on the forum, accepting feedback from players, and possibly making tweaks based on that feedback? While you devs know what's best for the game, the players' opinions are valuable too, especially those that play the game the most.

And while you're at it for #2, please present the funbalance changes in an easy-to-understand, intelligible manner. Remember the Daken changes that were pulled (postponed) some time ago? We would not want to read that again.

I'll just answer off this quote so I hit both.

1) Were tweaking PVE balancing a bit again as you've noticed, mostly with the idea that shorter Events may be better than longer ones. Longer events get more overall players but shorter Events get more engagement. Problem with short Events is that subs also get shorter which reduces the effectiveness of rubber banding.

2) One of the methods of gaining feedback on ability changes is already the forums, but in a proactive manner. When we consider changes we look at what people are saying about the abilities, concepts for changes, balancing issues, etc and use that to formulate what our plans are.

2a) We've got both a block of abilities like for Daken as well as a post which details the thought process behind each change. So you'll have both.

No offense but you sidestepped both my questions.

1) From your answer, can I assume that sharding is working as intended and you don't intend to tweak it even though the ability to compete after being sharded into horrible brackets is being changed?

2) Let me ask again in a more straightforward manner: Can you post the upcoming character changes NOW? We know they are subject-to-change. If you post them early enough, you will still have time to implement the good suggestions people post before R60 is set to release. Even if you ultimately don't implement any suggestions, the gesture will still build goodwill and trust with the playerbase.

IceIX

amarrero wrote:

So, what's going to be final Laken/Daken nerf? I remember that the original post was full of errors before they announced that the nerf would be postponed. I was about to pump ISO into Laken (now that I've maxed Patch) but I'd like to know what the final tally of the nerf will be before I do.

Largely the same as it was written before (sans errors)

Unknown

Wow, this thread went from positive (hurray, finally changes are coming, IceX is back!) to negative (burn the devs!) so quickly. I hope that the new community manager has some really thick skin.

Spoit

IceIX wrote:

amarrero wrote:

So, what's going to be final Laken/Daken nerf? I remember that the original post was full of errors before they announced that the nerf would be postponed. I was about to pump ISO into Laken (now that I've maxed Patch) but I'd like to know what the final tally of the nerf will be before I do.

Largely the same as it was written before (sans errors)

It's pretty unclear what the actual nerf was because of all the errors.

And any chance of getting a breakdown on the actual numbers for fury's yellow?

IceIX

stephen43084 wrote:

I'll ask again. A lot has been said regarding making newer players happy and making game attractive for new players. My question, are there any plans to help in retaining veteran players (more and more keep leaving or playing very little) such as new game modes, etc.?

Obviously, if there is no plan, or if this is not a conern, then no answer is necessary.

Edit - jazzed it up

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Yes, but further reaching than the next couple releases. To vets leaving: This is true of any game even if constant new content is developed. While we'd love to hold on to every player ever, we get that some people will just fall out of love with the game for any number of reasons and stop playing. We most definitely look at anything we can to see why those long time players leave so that we can plan around it of course. We've got plans for the longer term retention style stuff, but at this precise moment, we're focusing development on improving the game for newer players in particular or buffs/nerfs that affect everyone more or less equally.

That being said, we're also solidifying our plans for our 1 year anniversary in October. That's looking to be pretty cool.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

I'll ask again. A lot has been said regarding making newer players happy and making game attractive for new players. My question, are there any plans to help in retaining veteran players (more and more keep leaving or playing very little) such as new game modes, etc.?

Obviously, if there is no plan, or if this is not a conern, then no answer is necessary.

Edit - jazzed it up

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Yes, but further reaching than the next couple releases. To vets leaving: This is true of any game even if constant new content is developed. While we'd love to hold on to every player ever, we get that some people will just fall out of love with the game for any number of reasons and stop playing. We most definitely look at anything we can to see why those long time players leave so that we can plan around it of course. We've got plans for the longer term retention style stuff, but at this precise moment, we're focusing development on improving the game for newer players in particular or buffs/nerfs that affect everyone more or less equally.

That being said, we're also solidifying our plans for our 1 year anniversary in October. That's looking to be pretty cool.

Thank you for answering the question. It is much appreciated. I'm sure it will not be popular. But, hopefully, they'll appreciate your honesty and forthrightness.

Unknown

sms4002 wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

Another devil's advocate thought: You really think nerfing Sentry will reduce the points the X-Men put up? No, it won't. They'll just switch to the next speedkill combo, say Patch/Hulk. Sure, Hulk needs a Health Pack after every match instead of after 3 like Sentry, and you might get a bad board, but it's still 3 fights every shield hop.

I don't think the solution to the crazy high scores is as easy as nerfing Sentry.
Yes, he needs a nerf because he's more prevalent than Thorverine at their best times, but it won't solve the underlying problems.

I don't really agree with this. Without sentry you can't do 2 50 point matches in 1 min and not get hit. With the other combos, you are out a lot longer and have the possibility of getting hit a lot more than with 30 second sentry matches. It's no coincidence that the scores started getting crazy right when sentry was introduced. Remeber flo98? he was hitting 2k with JUST sentry daken. I don't think even xmen could hit 2k without him no matter how many hops/ shields they use.

But if your matches take longer, so do the matches of people trying to snipe you. You may be visible a little longer, but it's still going to take time for someone to fight you if they can't Sentry bomb you.

IceIX

gobstopper wrote:

No offense but you sidestepped both my questions.

1) From your answer, can I assume that sharding is working as intended and you don't intend to tweak it even though the ability to compete after being sharded into horrible brackets is being changed?

2) Let me ask again in a more straightforward manner: Can you post the upcoming character changes NOW? We know they are subject-to-change. If you post them early enough, you will still have time to implement the good suggestions people post before R60 is set to release. Even if you ultimately don't implement any suggestions, the gesture will still build goodwill and trust with the playerbase.

None taken.

1) Sharding is working as intended as a function. Sharding is not working as intended in the creation of death shards. We've made changes to try and minimize the creation of death shards, but the base process by which they're created is kind of a self generating system. A change to eliminate death shards will also need to not adversely affect the people that can compete at the same level as the people creating the shards just as much. That's the portion that we're trying to zero in on a good fix. There are a couple suggestions in this thread (and elsewhere) that are good steps, but not necessarily solutions.

2) Should be posting the planned changes up today, so yes. I posted the little teaser yesterday just to let people know that they're all finally coming.

Thanos

Any chance we can get Beasts full stats? Also Fury's full yellow stats would be appreciated as well. I'm glad to hear you guys are planning on running shorter PvE's, nine day grind fests are NOT the bee's knees.

Unknown

Any chance this thread could get stickied?

Unknown

IceNine, apologies for insisting, but can you guys just remove the Team-Ups from the game altogether? The way they're implemented now makes them a hindrance. Better just remove them and relaunch when final; I hate beta testing your unfinished product. Thanks.

reckless442

wymtime wrote:

gamar wrote:

reckless442 wrote:

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?

Because:

reckless442 wrote:

Mags' blue is the best counter to damage because he reduces the AI's opportunities to attack.

Your argument seems to be "don't nerf mags because players don't take damage when they use him, and players don't like taking damage." Um, so? How is that a realistic expectation? Why not go all the way and just remove the "enemies take a turn, ever" mechanic from the game entirely?

I think the fact that high-level play devolves into "who can shield-hop the fastest" instead of "who is effective at matching gems and using abilities" is a major FLAW in this game. You seem to be advocating that d3p just give up on the whole "battle" concept and make shield-hopping 100% of the game instead of 80% or whatever.

To add on the Dev's did not intend to have any ability to be used 5+ times in a row. I have CMags at level 91 with 4 blue and I completly abuse this power. By throwing strike tiles out first CMags can wipe out all 3 players in 1 turn by thowing out defensive shields, and then destroying 5 tiles at a cost of 2AP which stil do a lot of damage with strike tiles. Players have been able to take advantage of this for a long time and it is good that they are changing him. You can call it a Nerf if you want, I will not call it that unless he becomes unplayable. The Dev's have taken a lot of time to work on his changes so I am hoping he is still strong since he is such a powerful Marvel character. If it is a nerf then at least I got some time to abuse him while I could.

For the first eight months of the game, there were multiple ways to get multiple or infinite turns. You could use Spidey's stun, you could use Storm/Classic Mags in certain environments, or you could use Classic Mags. So gaining board control was always a part of the game. And it should have been; it's a tactic just like using overwhelming force or throwing up a lot of protect tiles (which are useless, of course against strong AP powes).

Why has that tactic been eliminated? It really isn't that useful in PVP once you get to a high level because it takes too long, the AI never used infinite turns right, and to players whose defensive teams might lose to lower teams in the scoring bracket, how you lose is rather insignificant because there are a lot if ways to lose and you can always protect yourself with shields.

So let's be honest. Infinite turns are only an issue for PVE. And it only became an issue when the Devs changed healthpacks from costing ISO to HP. Since then, one change after another has been made to increase the cost of playing the game by trying to force us to buy healthpacks. Just look at the changes -- scaling if you don't take massive damage; true healing; Spidey nerfs; introducing characters in Heroics; always buffing in a PVE the same character that is featured in the PVP; Team-ups instead of environments that increase damage taken; etc. Plus, we had IceIX tell us here that Devs optimal play in PVE is for your characters to take significant damage. Why is that? No explanation, and it certainly doesn't make sense in PVE mode that avoiding damage is a bad thing. But in the Devs' mind it is. Given the history of changes, I don't think it takes a telepath to figure out why the Devs would see low damage as a bad thing -- it results in lower healthpack usage.

So, yes, I think it's stupid to punish players for avoiding damage when it is a logical tactic. And I think decisions like persisting in a Magneto nerf proves the Devs don't understand the play dynamic they created or what players really want.

IceIX

Spoit wrote:

Also, any chance of getting actual numbers for each part of fury's yellow?

Avengers Assemble
Level 70
Captain America: 2 82 strength Protect tiles
Iron Man: 1370 damage to target
Hawkeye: Places 2 Crit tiles
Black Widow: Stuns target for 3 turns
Hulk: 685 damage to all enemies

Level 270
Captain America: 2 163 strength Protect tiles
Iron Man: 2720 damage to target
Hawkeye: Places 2 Crit tiles
Black Widow: Stuns target for 3 turns
Hulk: 1360 damage to all enemies

IceIX

stephen43084 wrote:

Any chance this thread could get stickied?

Was planning on stickying the information thread itself, since this is more of a teaser and the first 9 pages won't be very interesting reading on ability discussion once that comes around.

BearVenger

j12601 wrote:

sms4002 wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

Another devil's advocate thought: You really think nerfing Sentry will reduce the points the X-Men put up? No, it won't. They'll just switch to the next speedkill combo, say Patch/Hulk. Sure, Hulk needs a Health Pack after every match instead of after 3 like Sentry, and you might get a bad board, but it's still 3 fights every shield hop.

I don't think the solution to the crazy high scores is as easy as nerfing Sentry.
Yes, he needs a nerf because he's more prevalent than Thorverine at their best times, but it won't solve the underlying problems.

I don't really agree with this. Without sentry you can't do 2 50 point matches in 1 min and not get hit. With the other combos, you are out a lot longer and have the possibility of getting hit a lot more than with 30 second sentry matches. It's no coincidence that the scores started getting crazy right when sentry was introduced. Remeber flo98? he was hitting 2k with JUST sentry daken. I don't think even xmen could hit 2k without him no matter how many hops/ shields they use.

But if your matches take longer, so do the matches of people trying to snipe you. You may be visible a little longer, but it's still going to take time for someone to fight you if they can't Sentry bomb you.

I think the concern being raised is that someone with high-level Sentry et al, some HP, a handful of boosts, and the willingness to use them all has an advantage over anyone else who doesn't.

The theory is that slowing down Sentry wins (by increasing AP costs) would leave players vulnerable longer between shielding. If each Sentry win took 25% longer, then maybe the Sentry shield-hops would go down to 2 wins being "safe" and 3 being a "gamble" before suffering a point loss. And if a 75HP shield would only net you 40-70 points, rather than 100, would it be worth it?

Another alternative would be a cooldown time between triggering shields (with requisite Captain Kirk-Mr. Scott yelling debate).

With either option (longer matches, lag between shielding), fast-strikes would become less viable, or viable for fewer players.

As someone who doesn't have a high-performance Sentry and is stingy with HP, I don't really advocate either. I just wanted to provide a counterpoint to the "everyone slows down if we slow down Sentry" argument.

Spoit

IceIX wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Also, any chance of getting actual numbers for each part of fury's yellow?

Avengers Assemble
Level 70
Captain America: 2 82 strength Protect tiles
Iron Man: 1370 damage to target
Hawkeye: Places 2 Crit tiles
Black Widow: Stuns target for 3 turns
Hulk: 685 damage to all enemies

Level 270
Captain America: 2 163 strength Protect tiles
Iron Man: 2720 damage to target
Hawkeye: Places 2 Crit tiles
Black Widow: Stuns target for 3 turns
Hulk: 1360 damage to all enemies

Thanks

CrookedKnight

Plus, we had IceIX tell us here that Devs optimal play in PVE is for your characters to take significant damage. Why is that? No explanation, and it certainly doesn't make sense in PVE mode that avoiding damage is a bad thing. But in the Devs' mind it is.

Because if you can breeze through the dev-designed fights without taking damage then the game isn't hard enough? It's not really rocket science. There's a reason the nodes aren't just "tap here for points every 150 minutes" and instead require you to play the game.

Unknown

CrookedKnight wrote:

Plus, we had IceIX tell us here that Devs optimal play in PVE is for your characters to take significant damage. Why is that? No explanation, and it certainly doesn't make sense in PVE mode that avoiding damage is a bad thing. But in the Devs' mind it is.

Because if you can breeze through the dev-designed fights without taking damage then the game isn't hard enough? It's not really rocket science. There's a reason the nodes aren't just "tap here for points every 150 minutes" and instead require you to play the game.

Well said, I 100% agree. Plus, PVP Sentry/Daken/Hood + Boosts + Shields = Tap Here For Win