Holy **** I think I have it

Scoregasms

Anyone else think this experiment with charged tiles should just be done now instead of this path they are going down now? Eventually, it may be mandatory to have a "charged" tile user? What kind of design philosophy is that really, we have 2 characters now that use charged tiles and they already have to rebalance characters?

They seem to like CD tiles, how about this notion, power surge stuns for 4 turns again and randomly drops a 2 turn smite buff tile. While up, smite does 2x damage, 4.5k normal, 9k while tile is down. AP costs probably need to be tweaked too.

Maybe it's crazy, but I always thought it was odd 4hor was the only one to use charged tiles but hearing more characters coming out to use this whacky game mechanic feels like it'll just cause more headaches down the road. For both the devs and players, I for one don't want to "have" to bring a charged tile user to every fight eventually.

Unknown

I agree with the OP entirely. This solution was posted a few times in the 4thor discussion threads before the nerf....presumably by a genius of some sort....I think it would have been a much better solution than neutering her to the planned degree.

Playing devils advocate though.... it does make charged tiles more like tokens than an interesting and impactful core mechanic if they are 1 ap per. I can see a good argument against doing it but still feel the proposed changes to 4thor are unnecessarily harsh and also think the idea of introducing a hero she HAS to use as a crutch to have a meaningful impact is a very poor design choice.

Unknown

A concept like charged tile is just asking for problems. I guess they thought of it as synergy like 'with just 1 charged tile user it's okay but put 3 of them together and it's unstoppable!' Well, if it's really unstoppable that'd be a balance issue already. If it's really not unstoppable then there's no reason to put 3 charged users together in the first place compared to any other combo, and that'd also mean the charged users by themselves are pretty useless since if 3 of them put together isn't unstoppable then alone they're definitely very stoppable.

Refer to WoW's model where originally some classes brought something unique in terms of buff but then it just turned out that you can never do anything challenging without them, which is why they've the current model where almost any random combination of 10 guys will cover every possible buff needed. If you make some mechanism worth rearranging your team for, then it's probably overpowered, but if it's not worth rearranging your team, why use it over anything else? It just doesn't work out.

scottee

Part of the AP problem is also that, when 4Thor was the only user, her red/yellow/blue charged tiles didn't really combo into anything broken. Introducing charged tiles on something like green though makes 3Storm incredibly broken. (Or...purple charged tiles into...Iron Fist?? They better be pre-nerfing Gambit if so!)

GuntherBlobel

Phantron wrote:

A concept like charged tile is just asking for problems. I guess they thought of it as synergy like 'with just 1 charged tile user it's okay but put 3 of them together and it's unstoppable!' Well, if it's really unstoppable that'd be a balance issue already.

Well, Hood already caused that imbalance with just Thor, so they reworked him immediately. But it wasn't him specifically, it was his board-based AP generating mechanic: Twin Pistols. Now you have to ask, if charged tiles come to the 2* and 3* game, do you have to rework every character that generates AP from the board, especially with charged tiles in the mix?

The Devs had been taking a short-sighted approach to this problem and I think we knew that. I'm not sure if this new, longer vision for charged tiles is the best solution, but here it is. They calculated a new AP cost / charged tile output ratio and now Thor and everyone else has to deal with it.

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

Phantron wrote:

A concept like charged tile is just asking for problems. I guess they thought of it as synergy like 'with just 1 charged tile user it's okay but put 3 of them together and it's unstoppable!' Well, if it's really unstoppable that'd be a balance issue already.

Well, Hood already caused that imbalance with just Thor, so they reworked him immediately. But it wasn't him specifically, it was his board-based AP generating mechanic: Twin Pistols. Now you have to ask, if charged tiles come to the 2* and 3* game, do you have to rework every character that generates AP from the board, especially with charged tiles in the mix?

The Devs had been taking a short-sighted approach to this problem and I think we knew that. I'm not sure if this new, longer vision for charged tiles is the best solution, but here it is. They calculated a new AP cost / charged tile output ratio and now Thor and everyone else has to deal with it.

That's just its interaction with mechanisms. Here I'm talking about how charged tile seems to be something intended to synergize with itself, not unlike web tiles. That is if there's a Gambit the assumption would be that you place a bunch of charged tile and rack up triple AP from a ton of sources and get a super Smite. Well, if it worked like that it'd be overpowered. If it turned out this doesn't work, then since charged tile synergizes with itself (more charged tile = more triple AP to collect to continue another move) then rolling it backwards you get that a charged user alone must not be very good. Back when Spiderman/Venom synergizes with themselves via web tiles it was too easy to setup a massive number of web tiles and this is eventually nerfed, but after the nerf the web tile mechanism ceases to be relevent. To be fair it seems both characters are now designed assuming you'd always have 0 web tile rather than being dependent on them, but it still illustrates how such mechanisms are almost always broken by design.

morph3us

Alright, Phantron, I'll take the bait

I disagree that this sort of mechanic inevitably has to be broken by design. If we take the example of MtG, that's a game that excels at releasing new mechanics, and ensuring that they're relatively balanced. MtG's approach seems to be to release the new mechanic in batches (within the context of a block). I kind of wish D3 would take the same approach here. If they'd designed say five characters utilising the charged tile mechanic at the same time to test the interactions before releasing them, they would have had a better chance at having the mechanic work as intended. They probably would still have needed to tweak as they gathered real gameplay data, but the changes would likely have been of smaller magnitude. Granted, MtG has one other balancing mechanism, which is restricted formats, but I don't see why a mechanic like charged tiles can't work.

dkffiv

A charged tile creator that cannot stun or one shot is effectively useless. Charged tiles on the board are bad for the player, much like casting Berserker Rage as soon as you get enough AP is. Turns the match into a coin flip which is ALWAYS in the AI's favor. If you lose you're out 3 health packs, even if you don't lose there's a high chance you're taking a lot more damage than usual. If the AI loses you get the same amount of points and potentially saved a minute or so - it's not worth the risk.

Things that are symmetric are bad because the player lives with the consequences while the AI just jumps back again with full life the following match. This is why I always hated Sentry and why no one bothers to touch him since he lost his speed advantage.

scottee

dkffiv wrote:

A charged tile creator that cannot stun or one shot is effectively useless. Charged tiles on the board are bad for the player, much like casting Berserker Rage as soon as you get enough AP is. Turns the match into a coin flip which is ALWAYS in the AI's favor. If you lose you're out 3 health packs, even if you don't lose there's a high chance you're taking a lot more damage than usual. If the AI loses you get the same amount of points and potentially saved a minute or so - it's not worth the risk.

The AI doesn't prioritize charged tiles. Charged tiles are always in the favor of the player.

dkffiv

scottee wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

A charged tile creator that cannot stun or one shot is effectively useless. Charged tiles on the board are bad for the player, much like casting Berserker Rage as soon as you get enough AP is. Turns the match into a coin flip which is ALWAYS in the AI's favor. If you lose you're out 3 health packs, even if you don't lose there's a high chance you're taking a lot more damage than usual. If the AI loses you get the same amount of points and potentially saved a minute or so - it's not worth the risk.

The AI doesn't prioritize charged tiles. Charged tiles are always in the favor of the player.

It doesn't matter if the AI prioritizing them or not. If the AI does manage to fall into them 1 in 5 matches you're taking a lot more damage than you normally would. That's like saying casting Berserker Rage as soon as you can is fine because the player will prioritize killing the enemy strike tiles while the AI will not.

Unknown

morph3us wrote:

Alright, Phantron, I'll take the bait

I disagree that this sort of mechanic inevitably has to be broken by design. If we take the example of MtG, that's a game that excels at releasing new mechanics, and ensuring that they're relatively balanced. MtG's approach seems to be to release the new mechanic in batches (within the context of a block). I kind of wish D3 would take the same approach here. If they'd designed say five characters utilising the charged tile mechanic at the same time to test the interactions before releasing them, they would have had a better chance at having the mechanic work as intended. They probably would still have needed to tweak as they gathered real gameplay data, but the changes would likely have been of smaller magnitude. Granted, MtG has one other balancing mechanism, which is restricted formats, but I don't see why a mechanic like charged tiles can't work.

You're probably talking about something like Exalted or Devotion or many various mechanism MTG did that's actually pretty balanced. They also rotate the list of available cards and is willing to ban stuff too. For example Bloodbraid Elf got banned which prevented cascade from being too effective. I've seen no indication D3 would ever consider anything like this so whatever's broken is just going to stay broken for a long time, and even if things aren't broken you'd still have to rotate mechanisms because which MTG does so that you won't just have the same 3 type of deck over and over. I don't mind if the spotlight is on charged tile for a while, but I see no indication that this game has any ability to rotate certain features.

scottee

dkffiv wrote:

scottee wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

A charged tile creator that cannot stun or one shot is effectively useless. Charged tiles on the board are bad for the player, much like casting Berserker Rage as soon as you get enough AP is. Turns the match into a coin flip which is ALWAYS in the AI's favor. If you lose you're out 3 health packs, even if you don't lose there's a high chance you're taking a lot more damage than usual. If the AI loses you get the same amount of points and potentially saved a minute or so - it's not worth the risk.

The AI doesn't prioritize charged tiles. Charged tiles are always in the favor of the player.

It doesn't matter if the AI prioritizing them or not. If the AI does manage to fall into them 1 in 5 matches you're taking a lot more damage than you normally would. That's like saying casting Berserker Rage as soon as you can is fine because the player will prioritize killing the enemy strike tiles while the AI will not.

That doesn't make any sense at all.

A better comparison is that the AI uses Berserker Rage whenever it gets 9 green, regardless of what the board looks like. A human player can wait until there are at least 6 greens, with no green matches available, and less than 6 purples, with one or more matches available.

Learn what strategy the AI uses and counter it. You can adapt to it, but it can't adapt to you.

GuntherBlobel

morph3us wrote:

Alright, Phantron, I'll take the bait

I disagree that this sort of mechanic inevitably has to be broken by design. If we take the example of MtG, that's a game that excels at releasing new mechanics, and ensuring that they're relatively balanced. MtG's approach seems to be to release the new mechanic in batches (within the context of a block). I kind of wish D3 would take the same approach here. If they'd designed say five characters utilising the charged tile mechanic at the same time to test the interactions before releasing them, they would have had a better chance at having the mechanic work as intended. They probably would still have needed to tweak as they gathered real gameplay data, but the changes would likely have been of smaller magnitude. Granted, MtG has one other balancing mechanism, which is restricted formats, but I don't see why a mechanic like charged tiles can't work.

That's true! CCGs that utilize synergy must design such decks far ahead of release, so that cards play well together, but not too well.

MPQ does not do that! And I doubt it ever will. I'm not a programmer, but I hear Agile programing is all the rage in mobile: think MPQ's 2 week release schedule.

I think the "Heroes for Hire" duo were designed together and has the most "synergy" that the game can tolerate and yet appear balanced. So, they could release more duos in the future, but I see 6 mo. old characters as nerfs waiting to happen, particularly if they get in the way of new and interesting characters that the Devs are excited about. It's that, or like you said, ban Thor while hypothetical Gambit is on the loose.

I guess the question is: would you prefer that they lock Thor out of certain Events/Matches? That seems to be their other option.

dkffiv

scottee wrote:

That doesn't make any sense at all.

A better comparison is that the AI uses Berserker Rage whenever it gets 9 green, regardless of what the board looks like. A human player can wait until there are at least 6 greens, with no green matches available, and less than 6 purples, with one or more matches available.

Learn what strategy the AI uses and counter it. You can adapt to it, but it can't adapt to you.

A character that has the potential to buff either team is bad for the player. If it works out something like 75% of the time in the player's favor its still bad for the player because the consequence for losing are much greater.

If new characters are going to be spitting out charged tiles freely I don't see it being that different than mechanics that hand out strike/attack tiles to both teams. Against Patch you need to deny green (think about how much deadlier he would be if he had a powerful cheap second or third ability), against a team of rainbow charged tile generators what are you going to do?

Unknown

GuntherBlobel wrote:

I think the "Heroes for Hire" duo were designed together and has the most "synergy" that the game can tolerate and yet appear balanced. So, they could release more duos in the future, but I see 6 mo. old characters as nerfs waiting to happen, particularly if they get in the way of new and interesting characters that the Devs are excited about. It's that, or like you said, ban Thor while hypothetical Gambit is on the loose.

I guess the question is: would you prefer that they lock Thor out of certain Events/Matches? That seems to be their other option.

Well, there can only be so many interesting options. Let's say heroes for hire is balanced and considered a playable top tier team. Well, if it's a top tier team now it'd still be 2 years from now unless there's some serious inflation going on. It wouldn't do much good to come up with other equivalently powerful teams because if you already maxed one such team out, what's the motivation for having another team that's just as powerful? But of course if you make someone better then that's a standard inflation issue. Alternatively you can nerf the existing guys but that's a different way of doing inflation (instead of new characters get more powerful, old characters just get weaker).

Locking out a generally broken character like Thor won't work well because you'd just end up always locking her out. An example of a lockout that might work is say this month is The Hood's appreciation month so you lock out of X Force, IF, and Loki from all PvP matches. Yes, those characters are kind of overpowered in general, but The Hood benefits especially more compared to others from the elimination of the first two characters and elimination of Loki is to make sure nobody steals The Hood's thunder in his area of expertise. Maybe we can do this for a month or so before returning things back to normal. Of course in this particular case putting the spotlight on The Hood isn't likely to make much revenue so there's really not much point, but I wouldn't mind if the competitive landscape is altered to favor certain characters/mechanisms on a temporary basis. Another example would be if you want to make CDs the theme for the next 3 months, make sure Captain America and Falcon cannot be used.

atomzed

If smite dmg is the only issue, then the simplest fix is to cap the dmg at, say 10,500. This was the same fix they did for Cmag blue.

Mawtful

simonsez wrote:

puppychow wrote:

umm... correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't charged tiles give Rag health when blue power is triggered?

The creation of the charged tiles and the health boost are not related to one another. They just happen independently.

Oh. What if they weren't? What if Rags healed X per Charged Tiled every time charged tiles were created? That would give him an actual interesting role as both an ally or enemy of other charged tile generators.

Unknown

Jamie Madrox wrote:

hermanbloom wrote:

Not a troll. You really believe that? I haven't seen much that has indicated they look very far into the future with this game. It would be great if what you are saying is true, but if so that would mean there would be less character changes in the future? Would love to fast forward six months and see if that is true.

Sure I believe it. I know for a fact that the changes to Magneto MN and Mystique were necessary to prevent multiple infinite/first turn kill combos in the future.

Mmags and mystique on defence was a total joke and I doubt the even if they weren't nerfed in the future they would still be bad on def , on the other hand on offence it was a fun pair. That is maybe why the were nerf because they were fun to use. and now there's no reason to keep either mmags and cstorm on my roster.

konannfriends

all i know is ....Gambit is goona have doodoo health and people are going complain so he better a bomb @ss passive

Unknown

They should make a character like bishop that passively absorbs charged tiles generating ap. That would be an awesome counter to charged tiles.