All-New R69 Patch Notes - 1/19/15

Unknown

Miles from Demiurge here with some All-New R69 patch notes. We had some last-minute work that didn't make it into our other patch notes. Normally I'd just update the other thread, but I thought these might need their own discussion.

1) Fixed a bug where Brotherhood minions were generating AP for colors they couldn't use. The new breakdown for their AP generation is as follows:
- Subject - 2 Green AP
- Criterion - 2 Purple AP
- Control - 1 Blue AP, 1 Purple AP
- Empiricist - 1 Blue AP, 1 Green, AP, 1 Purple AP

This fixes some UI issues as well as bringing them in line with how other minion groups function.

2) Fixed a bug where the match damage of 1*, 2*, and 3* characters were scaling too aggressively when they were past their normal level range.

We noticed an issue that was happening when 1*, 2*, and 3* characters were scaled past their natural level cap (51+ for 1*, 95+ for 2*, 167+ for 3*). Their match damage was scaling far beyond their 4* counterparts. The effect was that in an event such as Balance of Power, 1* and 2* characters were matching for about 2x damage as compared to 4* characters. On top of that 1* and 2* characters that were scaled up in Story events were dealing far too much match damage (one of the worst offenders being Juggernaut).

As a result we've adjusted how characters scale when they're boosted past their natural level range. Their health and ability damage continue to scale up as before, but their match damage now grows at the same rate as a 4* character. The effect being that in Balance of Power, all characters will have roughly the same match damage. Note that this change does not affect minions, only playable characters.

Trisul

Demiurge_Miles wrote:

2) Fixed a bug where 1*, 2*, and 3* characters were scaling too aggressively when they were past their normal level range.

We noticed an issue that was happening when 1*, 2*, and 3* characters were scaled past their natural level cap (51+ for 1*, 95+ for 2*, 167+ for 3*). Their match damage was scaling far beyond their 4* counterparts. The effect was that in an event such as Balance of Power, 1* and 2* characters were matching for about 2x damage as compared to 4* characters. On top of that 1* and 2* characters that were scaled up in Story events were dealing far too much match damage (one of the worst offenders being Juggernaut).

As a result we've adjusted how characters scale when they're boosted past their natural level range. Their health and ability damage continue to scale up as before, but their match damage now grows at the same rate as a 4* character. The effect being that in Balance of Power, all characters will have roughly the same match damage. Note that this change does not affect minions, only playable characters.

Yay for weaker Dark Avengers! (though Sunder and Headbutt will still own you)
Boo for weaker boosted 2*s.

Overall, an indirect buff to 4*s. Hmm.

EDIT: Just realized that this makes 3*/4* tanking priorities all screwy when you account for featured character buff. A 270 XF means no 3* can tank green for you, even when featured.
EDIT: Also, this seems like a really big change to make last minute, considering how long we've known about these mismatched match damage values.

Unknown

I will hazard a guess as to how this ended up in the patch....

http://techterms.com/definition/version_control

read, digest, implement.....

Mawtful

The forum is in quite a bit of disarray.

Haven't you learnt yet? These are exactly the sorts of changes that we'd like to have discussed BEFORE they appear in the game. Is this match damage scaling change a stepping stone on the way to the grand new 4* tier of play? Is this in response to tickets being raised about this sort of thing, or was it an initiative that came from a design meeting? It doesn't have to be a detailed analysis, something like

Hey everyone.
We think that <match damage on characters scaled past their natural max level> is an issue.
We're going to <bring it back to a much flatter increase, but we're going to leave Health and Ability damage alone>.
We think that this change will <be important for making the 3-4* transition smoother*, but still means powered up characters will have a bonus over the rest of your roster>.

[*Editor's Note: I have no idea what the reasoning is for this change. I actually assume that it's designed to slow down some of the earlier PvE matches when enemies haven't scaled yet.]

san

Demiurge_Miles wrote:

Miles from Demiurge here with some All-New R69 patch notes. We had some last-minute work that didn't make it into our other patch notes. Normally I'd just update the other thread, but I thought these might need their own discussion.

We noticed an issue that was happening when 1*, 2*, and 3* characters were scaled past their natural level cap (51+ for 1*, 95+ for 2*, 167+ for 3*). Their match damage was scaling far beyond their 4* counterparts. The effect was that in an event such as Balance of Power, 1* and 2* characters were matching for about 2x damage as compared to 4* characters. On top of that 1* and 2* characters that were scaled up in Story events were dealing far too much match damage (one of the worst offenders being Juggernaut).

As a result we've adjusted how characters scale when they're boosted past their natural level range. Their health and ability damage continue to scale up as before, but their match damage now grows at the same rate as a 4* character. The effect being that in Balance of Power, all characters will have roughly the same match damage. Note that this change does not affect minions, only playable characters.

I'm very excited about this. It might make PvEs a little bit easier some of the time. On the other hand, I really liked how my boosted 2*Wolverine/Ares did in PvE, so we will see how this impacts them.

I am saddened a bit, however, by this also affecting BoP, as this was an event ruled by 1* characters, and I loved that! Oh well, something about having a cake and eating it ....

Unknown

san-mpq wrote:

I'm very excited about this. It might make PvEs a little bit easier some of the time. On the other hand, I really liked how my boosted 2*Wolverine/Ares did in PvE, so we will see how this impacts them.

I am saddened a bit, however, by this also affecting BoP, as this was an event ruled by 1* characters, and I loved that! Oh well, something about having a cake and eating it ....

They should still have pretty beastly ability damage and health though. Juggs will still be a beast in BoP.

Unknown

Shouldn't minions be affected by this change too? After all now they'll definitely always own the highest match damage since they got roughly the second highest match strength of a 3* in every color.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Shouldn't minions be affected by this change too? After all now they'll definitely always own the highest match damage since they got roughly the second highest match strength of a 3* in every color.

No. Minions scale according to their own rate. Minions very rarely do tile damage on their own, so it needs to be a bit stronger than average to balance that out. When a character is teamed up with minions, the character will prioritize matching it's strong colors, so more often than not it'll just do it's normal damage.

IamTheDanger

I like the part about Juggs not being so darned tough. He was always my weak spot. Cheap powers with killer damage. And a lot of health. After taking him on, I would need to revive at least 1 character, sometimes 2. And many, many times, I was close to dead, but only won because of Juggs self damage. Maybe this will be a good thing and scaling won't be so out of control.

Unknown

Demiurge_Miles wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Shouldn't minions be affected by this change too? After all now they'll definitely always own the highest match damage since they got roughly the second highest match strength of a 3* in every color.

No. Minions scale according to their own rate. Minions very rarely do tile damage on their own, so it needs to be a bit stronger than average to balance that out. When a character is teamed up with minions, the character will prioritize matching it's strong colors, so more often than not it'll just do it's normal damage.

Under this patch every match damage will be using the minion's match value when you have a mix because the minion's match damage is roughly equal to the second highest match damage of a 3* prior to this patch, which is definitely higher than any normal match damage after this patch for sufficiently high level, and while this is probably a manageable range, you're still looking at around 150 on every color at 395 whereas I'm guessing 100 is the max match damage at 395 for any non-goon character based on observed numbers. More importantly, though, because goons have no weak colors this means you cannot try to funnel the enemy into a weak color. It's true that goon fights are usually easier because of stuns or in some cases, extremely hard (e.g. green pump + Ares) so it probably doesn't come down to match damage, but it still looks like an inconsistency to me.

Spoit

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

I like the part about Juggs not being so darned tough. He was always my weak spot. Cheap powers with killer damage. And a lot of health. After taking him on, I would need to revive at least 1 character, sometimes 2. And many, many times, I was close to dead, but only won because of Juggs self damage. Maybe this will be a good thing and scaling won't be so out of control.

I don't have an unpatched version to check, but it sounds like the damage from powers is uneffected. So Juggs will still be one shotting people after 2 matches

Trisul

Spoit wrote:

I don't have an unpatched version to check, but it sounds like the damage from powers is uneffected. So Juggs will still be one shotting people after 2 matches

Yeah, but all his nodes will be slightly easier due to reduced match damage, meaning he'll eventually scale higher and headbutt even harder.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Demiurge_Miles wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Shouldn't minions be affected by this change too? After all now they'll definitely always own the highest match damage since they got roughly the second highest match strength of a 3* in every color.

No. Minions scale according to their own rate. Minions very rarely do tile damage on their own, so it needs to be a bit stronger than average to balance that out. When a character is teamed up with minions, the character will prioritize matching it's strong colors, so more often than not it'll just do it's normal damage.

Under this patch every match damage will be using the minion's match value when you have a mix because the minion's match damage is roughly equal to the second highest match damage of a 3* prior to this patch, which is definitely higher than any normal match damage after this patch for sufficiently high level, and while this is probably a manageable range, you're still looking at around 150 on every color at 395 whereas I'm guessing 100 is the max match damage at 395 for any non-goon character based on observed numbers. More importantly, though, because goons have no weak colors this means you cannot try to funnel the enemy into a weak color. It's true that goon fights are usually easier because of stuns or in some cases, extremely hard (e.g. green pump + Ares) so it probably doesn't come down to match damage, but it still looks like an inconsistency to me.

If we find that minions are causing excessive damage, we'll fix it in a future release. The strategy we find with most players is that in a mixed minion & character mission, the character is taken down first. This doesn't change that strategy and doesn't make it any harder than it previously was.

Dauthi

Mawtful wrote:

The forum is in quite a bit of disarray.

Haven't you learnt yet? These are exactly the sorts of changes that we'd like to have discussed BEFORE they appear in the game. Is this match damage scaling change a stepping stone on the way to the grand new 4* tier of play? Is this in response to tickets being raised about this sort of thing, or was it an initiative that came from a design meeting? It doesn't have to be a detailed analysis, something like

Hey everyone.
We think that <match damage on characters scaled past their natural max level> is an issue.
We're going to <bring it back to a much flatter increase, but we're going to leave Health and Ability damage alone>.
We think that this change will <be important for making the 3-4* transition smoother*, but still means powered up characters will have a bonus over the rest of your roster>.

[*Editor's Note: I have no idea what the reasoning is for this change. I actually assume that it's designed to slow down some of the earlier PvE matches when enemies haven't scaled yet.]

I don't think bugs ever need to be discussed to be fixed...

Thanks D3

OnesOwnGrief

That moment when a poorly scaled Patch does 0 damage on red because minions lol. Unless of course they have it in which minions can't own tiles.

Also, I wasn't aware the bad scaling was a bug but rather a feature. So we've gone for over a year with a "bug" that is just now being addressed? After countless months of people bringing up those 365 6 AP Headbutts? How unbalanced BoP has been since day 1 due to 1* and 2* scaling? Come on, tell me something believable.

Dartmaster01

My lvl 275(and rising) DA nodes and I approve this message!

Trisul

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

That moment when a poorly scaled Patch does 0 damage on red because minions lol. Unless of course they have it in which minions can't own tiles.

Also, I wasn't aware the bad scaling was a bug but rather a feature. So we've gone for over a year with a "bug" that is just now being addressed? After countless months of people bringing up those 365 6 AP Headbutts? How unbalanced BoP has been since day 1 due to 1* and 2* scaling? Come on, tell me something believable.

Dem headbutts ain't changing.

OnesOwnGrief

Trisul wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

That moment when a poorly scaled Patch does 0 damage on red because minions lol. Unless of course they have it in which minions can't own tiles.

Also, I wasn't aware the bad scaling was a bug but rather a feature. So we've gone for over a year with a "bug" that is just now being addressed? After countless months of people bringing up those 365 6 AP Headbutts? How unbalanced BoP has been since day 1 due to 1* and 2* scaling? Come on, tell me something believable.

Dem headbutts ain't changing.

Yeah, you right.

Unknown

This patch only addresses the issue where you cleverly funneled Juggernaut into matching black the whole game and found out you still lost to his match damage. Might be a good idea to apply the same to ability damage at some point though so that there's at least a remote chance to survive any AP consuming moves after a certain level.

rixmith

Seems like this will be a slight buff to a player's Protect tile creators as well. Now it will be just a bit easier to get enough Protect strength to eliminate match damage in PvE. Note: I think giving Protect tiles a little more value is a good thing!

Nellobee

rixmith wrote:

Seems like this will be a slight buff to a player's Protect tile creators as well. Now it will be just a bit easier to get enough Protect strength to eliminate match damage in PvE. Note: I think giving Protect tiles a little more value is a good thing!

The fix for protect piles is to make them %-based, so that when you have bird strike'd a couple times, the big damage abilities don't instakill you still.

Would add more value to board shake as well.