Patch Notes - R63 (Live, 10-20-14)

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Team-Ups

- Enemy Team-Ups are now displayed on the pre-battle Boost Select Screen. - Alliance sent Team-Up Abilities now display proper level stats when viewed in battle. - Team-Up abilities gained from certain Prologue enemies now display correct level stats when obtained.

Bug-fixes and quality-of-life improvements are always welcome. Thank you.

IceIX wrote:

Character Changes

- Colossus now stays out of combat intead of leaping to the front while

Invisible and Immovable Object is active.
- Characters that are Airborne now no longer count down their own tiles until they land.
- Invisible characters may now still attack if the rest of their team is stunned and they are not.

I realize this is part of "making weird edge cases perform as intended," but I'm concerned that a practical effect will be to weaken IW and Colossus. IW was already bottom-tier, so a tweak that makes her less powerful isn't that big a deal, but my impression was that Colossus needs a small buff to stay competitive with his 3* peers. Nerfing him even slightly is not good if it moves him from "marginal" to "bottom-tier."

IceIX wrote:

Alliances

- The Player/Alliance Rank display in the top left corner of chapter maps now links to the player leaderboard. - Fixed multiple issues with third party keyboard support in Alliance chat.

Cool.

IceIX wrote:

UI, Tweaks and Bugfixes

-

Countdown tiles are now visually linked to the characters that own them. When you tap on a character, their Countdown tiles will pulse.
- Fixed instances of being able to make an invalid move ending the turn.
- Tiles that trigger board destruction abilities when matched, such as Wolverine (X-Force)'s Recovery, now only affect undestroyed tiles.
- When an Event has less than 1 unit of time left, it now displays the next lower unit to be more exact (instead of rounding up). For example: 1D 1H will change to 1D 59M instead of staying at 1D 1H until it hits 1D.
- When a Countdown tile is Locked by an ability, such as Invisible Woman's Force Bubble, the Countdown tile will now properly disappear when matched as the final damage on an enemy that placed it.
- Suggested matches now display the three tiles to match instead of the two tiles to swap.

The bolded change is HUGE, and long-awaited. Every one of us has had the experience of getting screwed by a Tommy Gun because we stunned or killed the wrong Maggia Muscle. The rest of the fixes are also nice.

Thanks for the patch preview; this looks like a good one.

ErikPeter

yogi_ wrote:

Every character should be as close to balanced (or on a clearly timetabled path to be so) as can be, at all times. This should not be such a difficult concept to understand.

That's not true. It sounds ideal, but it's just not true, especially in a collectible game. Imagine they made Bagman just as good as every other character and they were all perfectly balanced. If every character was as good as bagman, there'd be no good characters. There'd be no reason to desire one character over another, and every random token pull would evoke a similar feeling.

MPQ is fun because it's fun to achieve things. When it was clear that LazyCap was really great, I tried hard to win covers for him. Now I'm pushing in PvE for his 5th Red. That progression is important, and it would matter way less if Cap was just as good as Beast or Colossus. I wouldn't know who to focus on; I'd have to want everything equally.

A clearer example: Devil Dinosaur. He is clearly tinykittier than the other 4*s (IW notwithstanding). However, he's still a Legendary, and it was really fun that they could hand him out like hotcakes during the Anniversary event without worrying about destroying the game. They would never put Fury or X-Force in a token pack with 15% odds; if they did it would trivialize the work people put in to earn those covers. But Dino's a 4* nonetheless and it was exciting to maybe get some. Those odds were enough to finally turn this 300-day free player into a paid player.

Pylgrim

ErikPeter wrote:

yogi_ wrote:

Every character should be as close to balanced (or on a clearly timetabled path to be so) as can be, at all times. This should not be such a difficult concept to understand.

That's not true. It sounds ideal, but it's just not true, especially in a collectible game. Imagine they made Bagman just as good as every other character and they were all perfectly balanced. If every character was as good as bagman, there'd be no good characters. There'd be no reason to desire one character over another, and every random token pull would evoke a similar feeling.

MPQ is fun because it's fun to achieve things. When it was clear that LazyCap was really great, I tried hard to win covers for him. Now I'm pushing in PvE for his 5th Red. That progression is important, and it would matter way less if Cap was just as good as Beast or Colossus. I wouldn't know who to focus on; I'd have to want everything equally.

A clearer example: Devil Dinosaur. He is clearly tinykittier than the other 4*s (IW notwithstanding). However, he's still a Legendary, and it was really fun that they could hand him out like hotcakes during the Anniversary event without worrying about destroying the game. They would never put Fury or X-Force in a token pack with 15% odds; if they did it would trivialize the work people put in to earn those covers. But Dino's a 4* nonetheless and it was exciting to maybe get some. Those odds were enough to finally turn this 300-day free player into a paid player.

See your last example. There are ways of making "rarer" characters to be desirable and exciting to acquire. But when we're talking about bread-and-butter characters, there is no reason for a few characters to be much much better than others and some much, much worse. True balance may be unachievable, but the polar extremes of power level we currently see in the game are far from ideal. All characters can be good. They may just serve different functions and combine differently to give room for innovation and variety. No one wants Loki or Daredevil to be Sentry-levels powerful. We just want to be able to play with them and not auto-lose.

Spoit

Falcon and HT are good examples. They're good at what they do, but what they do isn't always applicable. But it's still fun to bring them out of the toybox when you do get a chance to use them like that

Phaserhawk

While not huge on character fixes, this might be one of the best bug fix/gameplay upgrades in a long time. Assuming no bugs on this, I might rank this as a top 5 update, with #1 still being respec.

Moon Roach

Looks like it's live right now. My Steam game just got updated.

Unknown

Up on Android. Considering there's a current PVE node with 2 muscles on it, this is an insta-download.

MaxCavalera

Just got this, New battle screen is great. GJ guys.

CrookedKnight

Stylish and informative! And I'm glad the countdown identification feature shows up when cycling through enemies instead of having to bring up their info pane just to see their owned tiles. Very smooth.

_RiO_

stephen43084 wrote:

Apparently, one of us does not understand how things work at legitimate companies. I'll take five minutes of my time to explain it.

( ... commences to post loads of common knowledge regarding company process ... )

First off; thanks for the condescending tone. I did not need that.

I happen to work in IT. I happen to develop software for businesses that change their needs on almost a weekly basis and usually work according to very strict, hard deadlines (which is largely related to business processes partly outside of their own control). I happen to have experience with triage of change requests and addressing them timely. With close to a year's worth of time, there is no viable excuse for not being able to plan ahead and dedicate the time needed to build such a highly requested feature as the highlighting of countdown tile owners.

You'd need the absolute worst kind of luck with staff leaving, falling ill, landing under a bus, etc. to consistently miss a planned window of opportunity to work on such a feature for an entire year. The only possible explanation for not being able to handle it earlier is because, as you mentioned, other changes were deemed higher priority. So I ask; what other changes? What big changes did we have over the course of an entire year that consistently prevented the planning of a week long development cycle to implement something as trivial as countdown highlights? (And yes; it really should be trivial... If not, someone really screwed the pooch when architecting the game code.)

Alliances & Seasons; 'True Healing'; Team-ups; and the occasional PvE chapter that actually had a new gimmick requiring updated code. That's basically it. Almost every other change that went into this game was a new 'character-of-the-week' to drive cover pack sales along with the twisting and turning of some knobs to optimize the game economy to squeeze players for more cash. Any QoL features that did make it into the game sofar, such as the 'single-click for express level-up', suspiciously always had a money-earning component attached to them. (In case of the express leveling button; it prompts you to buy the additional ISO necessary to complete the level-up process to its end.)

stephen43084 wrote:

Which brings me to you, and my question for you. You complain the developers do not do things to improve the game. You're not happy when they do improve the game. Why do you play this game if everything about it and everything the developers do make you so miserable?

Perhaps you missed the part where I wrote that I am, infact, happy this change was finally implemented? I only mentioned that I feel the developer does not deserve to be praised for it, as they've left it hanging for such a terribly long time.

You see; I like the core gameplay of this game and I like the setting. However, I severly dislike the attitude with which the developer and publisher have been running the game into the ground and the complete lack of attention to anyone that is not a 'droid or iOS player settled in the US. So I voice my complaints and I am critical of half-baked changes or in this case: changes that arrive far too late.


Having answered your question, let me fire one back at you; why are you such an apologist and suck-up about this?
This is not flamebait; I honestly would like to know. Sofar the only times I see your posts crop up is when you attempt to intervene and downplay issues when people voice complaints or criticism.



[...]

Now then (...) some positive feedback, because this is something the developer does deserve praise for:
Great work on the much improved pre-battle splash screen. It's stylish, complete and has just enough zing to get you amped for a tough match. While no-one asked for the graphical redesign to go along with the team-up info, the new screen really feels like a massive improvement over the old one that we can safely refer to the old as dreck.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

UI, Tweaks and Bugfixes

- Countdown tiles are now visually linked to the characters that own them. When you tap on a character, their Countdown tiles will pulse.

Christmas has come early! That and Colossus' got slightly nerfed, but no one uses him anyways

I hope they have better Team-Up management screens in one of the following releases.

GothicKratos

Just want to add, I just saw the new battle screen, and it's nice on PC.

Also. I would like to add that, as it currently stands, it only "pulses" when you switch that enemy to the front, if we could have the reverse hold true (i.e. if you mouse over or touch a tile, it made the enemy "pulse"), it would be perfect!

AgentCoulsonLMD

I like the new interfact and knowing what Team Up the AI has is very helpful. Big improvement.

Nellyson

GothicKratos wrote:

Just want to add, I just saw the new battle screen, and it's nice on PC.

Also. I would like to add that, as it currently stands, it only "pulses" when you switch that enemy to the front, if we could have the reverse hold true (i.e. if you mouse over or touch a tile, it made the enemy "pulse"), it would be perfect!

Yeah, I was kinda hoping it would pulse the character....but this works too! At least it's something! And for PVE, it's not like you're trying to win super fast that it matters to move the guys to the front, so not all that bad.

atomzed

This is a great patch! Some good QoL changes that we have been waiting for! Especially the team up info no more surprise AR OR WR.

_RiO_ wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

Apparently, one of us does not understand how things work at legitimate companies. I'll take five minutes of my time to explain it.

( ... commences to post loads of common knowledge regarding company process ... )

First off; thanks for the condescending tone. I did not need that.

I happen to work in IT. I happen to develop software for businesses thatchange their needs on almost a weekly basis and usually work according to very strict, hard deadlines (which is largely related to business processes partly outside of their own control)

Rio, I have to point out that while you see him being "suck up", there may be others who sees him as being reasonable and supportive. Similarly while some sees you as cynical and always accuse d3, others might applaud you for your honest appraisal.

We are entitled to our opinions (you probably see me standing more on the side, in your own words, apologist ad suck up side). But what unites us is the love of this good game.

As to why they prioritise the characters release to QoL patches? Well as you rightly pointed out, it's about revenue. I don't think you can fault any company in prioritising revenue. Sure you can complain, and then "vote with your wallet".

The litmus test is when enough players vote with their wallet and they will know that something has to be done. Just have to hope that the day comes before the game is down and out.

Thus far, I am quietly confident about d3 ability to steer the ship in the right direction.

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

Thus far, I am quietly confident about d3 ability to steer the ship in the right direction.

Based on what? Granted, a number of the changes D3 has made over the past month or so have been very good and much needed. However, this has been a recent development following *several* months of jaw-dropping incompetence.

It looks like the company is *finally* headed in more or less the right direction, and that's a good thing--see my post above. They still have to dig themselves out of the massive crater they nuked in their own reputation, due to fairly epic mismanagement. To be sure, I *hope* the positive trend continues, but I see no reason for the type of blind confidence that ignores D3's history.

DD-The-Mighty

atomzed wrote:

This is a great patch! Some good QoL changes that we have been waiting for! Especially the team up info no more surprise AR OR WR.

_RiO_ wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

Apparently, one of us does not understand how things work at legitimate companies. I'll take five minutes of my time to explain it.

( ... commences to post loads of common knowledge regarding company process ... )

First off; thanks for the condescending tone. I did not need that.

I happen to work in IT. I happen to develop software for businesses thatchange their needs on almost a weekly basis and usually work according to very strict, hard deadlines (which is largely related to business processes partly outside of their own control)

Rio, I have to point out that while you see him being "suck up", there may be others who sees him as being reasonable and supportive. Similarly while some sees you as cynical and always accuse d3, others might applaud you for your honest appraisal.

We are entitled to our opinions (you probably see me standing more on the side, in your own words, apologist ad suck up side). But what unites us is the love of this good game.

As to why they prioritise the characters release to QoL patches? Well as you rightly pointed out, it's about revenue. I don't think you can fault any company in prioritising revenue. Sure you can complain, and then "vote with your wallet".

The litmus test is when enough players vote with their wallet and they will know that something has to be done. Just have to hope that the day comes before the game is down and out.

Thus far, I am quietly confident about d3 ability to steer the ship in the right direction.

I believe _RiO_'s issues are more with the nature of d3 fanboys (at least some of them), and their penchant for belittling those they feel besmirch their fair maidens good name. Particularly the forumites that love to White Knight specific company posters.

As you said. opinions go both ways.

DrStrange-616

Forgive the newby question regarding the enemy team-ups. I see one display, but the enemy will launch multiple team-ups. What am I missing? Is there a way to see all of the potential tema-ups they might launch?

CrookedKnight

The AI team only gets one team-up. They changed it in a patch a few months ago.

Lystrata

Some really good changes here, so credit when deserved - good work on this one.