The Team Up Alternative

FadeToOne

While I don't have any polls or hard facts to lean on, I have to believe the general opinion of team ups is unfavorable at best, and more than likely abysmal by most people's standards. There's little reason to prioritize matching team up tiles over your character's powers, and the randomization of enemy team ups is disruptive to the point of infuriating. I haven't bothered to even set team ups to use since their first week of introduction, save a few random times when I was bored.

Suffice it to say, I think team ups need to go back into the dark, annoying hole they came out of and replaced with something more useful. That's not to say I'd encourage the return of the environment tiles as those were arguably just as useless (but admit it, you abused Oasis for every sweet green tile you could). Also, the 7th color concept can't be eliminated entirely due to adverse affects on the game statistics (you thought you got hit with enough match-5 cascades now? Just wait)

Instead I would propose a new option; Perhaps one of the following:

1. The White Power - What better way to make the 7th tile type more useful than to assign it the same priority level as any other color? Introduce a white power. Re-align some characters to use white instead of whatever other common color they use. This would make the boosts a bit tricky since it would make them uneven, but I can't solve all the world's problems.

2. The Consistent Power - I don't think there's anyone that likes the randomness of the team ups. Nothing like getting nailed with a wind storm to ruin your day. Make the powers consistent for every match and not specific to a toon. Maybe give 3 options for powers to choose from, a stun, a steal or a health boost. Maybe make different tiers of powers based on AP level.

3. The Big Damage No AP Tile - Just make the 7th tile type do extra damage but not give any AP. No annoying powers because of the matches, but there's still a reason to match them.

I'm sure other folks might have additional ideas, but the moral of the story is:

Down with Team Ups! Who is with me?

Unknown

I agree. Sick of the randomness, especially when you think of Defense. Sometimes you might have something useful like windstorm and some times it might give you switch-a-roo. What's the point of having them is you can't use them on both sides of the spectrum.

Unknown

I did like Team Ups when they first came out but after playing with them for weeks, they became useless to me. Unless you have a good team up at a decent level, it's not worth the trouble. You're much better off matching the colors for the abilities your 3 toons have as opposed to trying to gather enough TU AP for a TU. It seems to me that the effort trying to acquire Team Ups (both getting a good random drop from a match and trying to get enough AP for the specific Team Up) is just simply not worth it.

I would have the TU AP allow you to buy a special tiles that you can place almost anywhere on the board (Ex: 10 TU AP lets you buy a Crit that you can place somewhere). Create more special tiles to actually help out, like damage multipliers or create a 3x tile that let's you gain 3x the AP when you match it. Create a bomb tile that takes out surrounding tiles when matched with a color, etc.

I think things like this would improve the fun factor of the game more so than how Team Ups currently do (or don't).

Nellyson

You should put this in the General Discussion. More people will see it there.

Dragon_Nexus

"The White Power".
You couldn't have thought of a worse name for that, could you? =P

Unknown

I agree with the OP, team up powers just aren't that fun. I wish D3 had re-balanced the old environmental tiles instead of scrapping them altogether for a new system. But the developers have invested a lot of time in the TU concept, so it seems likely to stay. At least now we can see what TU the enemy has before battles.

ErikPeter

Yeah, TUs don't really add any fun. It's sorta cool I can hold onto this level 350 Call the Storm and maybe use it to win a difficult PvP some day. But since I'm holding onto it for when I need it, TU AP mostly goes unused.

I think they'll eventually give up and make it a seventh AP color. Grey or white. Seems like it's just a holdover from old Puzzle Quest mechanics where one or two colors (skulls and xp) did something different from the normal mana colors. But since they dumped environment AP (which was a better idea but unevenly implemented--hot dogs were useless except around level 5, forest was broken) they haven't found a place.

Anyway, that would open up a whole new realm for team color balance. Mechanically/Thematically it could still represent teaming up, e.g. Black Panther's yellow could change to white or not, and it could still be used to activate any left over team-ups.

Dragon_Nexus

ErikPeter wrote:

But since they dumped environment AP (which was a better idea but unevenly implemented--hot dogs were useless except around level 5, forest was broken) they haven't found a place.

Oasis was really over powered, too. And Latveria was utterly useless.

Now it just makes the backgrounds meaningless. Could be anywhere, doesn't matter, there's nothing unique about where I'm playing any more.

Unknown

The problem is that since i don't get a tu every match, i can no longer stock up on good tus. I had s lot of long rage panthers. Now i have some useful and a lot of bad ones.

Pwuz_

I would argue that I use TU's more than I used Environmental powers for the most part. Yes Thorned Rose and all the color changing abilities were pretty useful, but if you were concentrating on getting Environmental AP, you were not doing ANY damage either.

Certain characters (like the Punisher) really shined with Environmental Criticals, but for the most part they were a waste and too weak to even consider. Remember Hotdog Stand? 50HP for everyone in your team! WHOOT, now I can sustain the damage of almost a whole tile! I know these were designed from the perspective of unleveled 1* & 2* characters, but they were a joke.

Though I don't disagree with the idea of the 7th color tile being a non-AP generating UBER-Damaging match. In the original Puzzle Quest, besides abilities, matching Skulls was the ONLY way to deal damage to your opponent (ok, there were other ways based on your gear, but my point stands.) Hmm, makes me miss the original Puzzle Quest honestly. The strategy of building the right 7 skills together with the right 4 pieces of equipment to create an unstoppable force. Some combinations were just so Over Powered though, I see why MPQ took it's route.

Perhaps these White Matches could deal damage based on the combined totals off all Match damage for a character. Each tile would deal 246 damage for a max level unbuffed 3*, so a match 3 would deal 768! Could be an interesting change if you ask me.

Unknown

Problems with the current implementation as I see it:

1. Team-up drop rate is too low.
2. Once you've used your team-ups, team-up AP is useless.
3. Once the AI has used their team-up, they have no more use for team-up AI.
4. Randomness of AI team-up takes away from strategy.
5. Team-up collection limits has numerous issues, including stopping OCD gotta catch em all, having trash team-ups like murderous Aim at 19 AP, etc.
6. No team-up management screen. It requires a huge amount of familiarity with the game to be useful.
7. Teammates constantly asking for team-ups clogging up alliance chat (required in order to be uber competitive).
...
I'm sure there's more I've missed.

Considering how much work they put into team-ups, I hope they improve the implementation instead of getting rid of them altogether. If they do get rid of them, I think the Big Damage, no AP makes the most sense.

Unknown

Did they increase the team-up drop rate with a stealth change? I haven't asked for them from my alliance for a while lately. It might be that I have too many high AP cost TUs though.

Pwuz_

daibar wrote:

Problems with the current implementation as I see it:

7. Teammates constantly asking for team-ups clogging up alliance chat (required in order to be uber competitive).

Honestly my Alliance hardly ever asks for TU's. I'd even be whiling to send out a few of my lesser used 3*'s more often if they asked. Heck, some 2* & 1* TU's are FANTASTIC! Not only do they comeback super quick compared to 3* & 4* characters, but often board manipulation or AP stealing are just the kind of abilities that are unaffected by level. Loki is another great example of a character who's TU's are unaffected by level & is rarely someone I bother taking into real battles.

Unknown

I gave up on asking for tu. I tried to tell my alliance that the best think you could give was Thor and storm... Those big team hitting moves... Instead I get bullseye and a 43 BP skill. Oh well. It's new. Im willing to give it a fair shot.

wymtime

Odirty117 wrote:

I gave up on asking for tu. I tried to tell my alliance that the best think you could give was Thor and storm... Those big team hitting moves... Instead I get bullseye and a 43 BP skill. Oh well. It's new. Im willing to give it a fair shot.

I give out OBW, MBW blue, CStorm, Juggs, and Rags as TU. I try and get my team AP Steal, Stun, or board shake up to get rid of enemy tiles or CD like Sentry