Upcoming Test: Powered-Up Characters in Versus

Lee T

LXSandman wrote:

If they are going to keep this test thing around they should switch the characters every event.

That's what I thought they would do. Overall I liked the multi featured character. I tink it has the potential to add diversity and reward varied rosters. Not within ech PVE, people will always use what work best, but in the game overall. What they have to do is change the selection with each PVE and maybe buff them a little less, 170 Ares is way too big and I didn't even try to go against a fully boosted Patch.

Unknown

d0nk3y wrote:

mouser wrote:

I applaud the idea behind the test of promoting both team and roster diversity. But I can't call the test a success. The resulting Cons outweighed the Pros in my opinion.

I have the opposite opinion - this is one of the first times I've enjoyed PvP mainly because I didn't hit a 4* wall at 600.

Yeah, wrong. You did hit one, you just happened to have 4*s in the form of your maxed 3*s. You didn't have to hit 1k multiple times to get them covered, or grind 3 nights in a row to get those patch and hood covers, but you were handed 4*s anyway. It's fun, right? Playing with 4*s? Even when other people have them? Yeah, that's how some of us felt when we finally got our goddesses and xforces covered.

Except now patch loki is better than hood xforce and goddess was nerfed into garbage.

You know what isn't fun? When you're hopping with 1k+ points and you see someone around 600 points hitting you for 50 points every fight you finish, because everyone has a maxed hood/lthor/patch/loki. And since lthor has 17k health, you're absolutely not going to finish your fight before someone hits you.

Thats not fun. Not even a little bit.

d0nk3y

ark123 wrote:

d0nk3y wrote:

mouser wrote:

I applaud the idea behind the test of promoting both team and roster diversity. But I can't call the test a success. The resulting Cons outweighed the Pros in my opinion.

I have the opposite opinion - this is one of the first times I've enjoyed PvP mainly because I didn't hit a 4* wall at 600.

Yeah, wrong. You did hit one, you just happened to have 4*s in the form of your maxed 3*s. You didn't have to hit 1k multiple times to get them covered, or grind 3 nights in a row to get those patch and hood covers, but you were handed 4*s anyway. It's fun, right? Playing with 4*s? Even when other people have them? Yeah, that's how some of us felt when we finally got our goddesses and xforces covered.

Except now patch loki is better than hood xforce and goddess was nerfed into garbage.

You know what isn't fun? When you're hopping with 1k+ points and you see someone around 600 points hitting you for 50 points every fight you finish, because everyone has a maxed hood/lthor/patch/loki. And since lthor has 17k health, you're absolutely not going to finish your fight before someone hits you.

Thats not fun. Not even a little bit.

In Fatal Attraction, I didn't start seeing mountains of 4*s until 750 or 800. Below that, I had mostly buffed 3*s.

This smacks hard of sour grapes. No, I didn't have to hit 1000 multiple times to get my characters - I had to grind my donkey parts off repeatedly for months to get the cover and ISO drops I needed. They weren't handed to me at the fabled 1000 point reward. Mine were progression, placement and dumb luck. Mine were irritation, frustration, profanity and sweat. Mine weren't one-of-each and drop cash to get the rest. Mine weren't Sentry-bomb and shield-hop. For you to discount my time and effort just because it doesn't match your precious 4* gold is insulting and demeans the 400+ days of time and effort I put into rounding out my roster.

I freely admit that the buffs given to the PvP characters in the test period were way too much. 225 or 240, fine, but not 280. 4*s should retain their level above the boosted characters, but they should not be gods on the battlefield. I may look at a matchup of TGT, Xforce and <featured character> and skip that battle, but I also like having a roster under my control that lets me choose to take on that fight and have a decent chance of winning.

There's nothing wrong with my opinion - I play a different game style than you do and the buffs help me while they hinder you. This issue is no different than exploiting the mechanics of the Winfinite combo or the Sentry-bomb. I had an advantage and I used it. Your argument on that point is with the devs, not me.

Unknown

d0nk3y wrote:

In Fatal Attraction, I didn't start seeing mountains of 4*s until 750 or 800. Below that, I had mostly buffed 3*s.

This smacks hard of sour grapes. No, I didn't have to hit 1000 multiple times to get my characters - I had to grind my donkey parts off repeatedly for months to get the cover and ISO drops I needed. They weren't handed to me at the fabled 1000 point reward. Mine were progression, placement and dumb luck. Mine were irritation, frustration, profanity and sweat. Mine weren't one-of-each and drop cash to get the rest. Mine weren't Sentry-bomb and shield-hop. For you to discount my time and effort just because it doesn't match your precious 4* gold is insulting and demeans the 400+ days of time and effort I put into rounding out my roster.

Here my argument smacks of sour grapes, and I should just suck it up

d0nk3y wrote:

I freely admit that the buffs given to the PvP characters in the test period were way too much. 225 or 240, fine, but not 280. 4*s should retain their level above the boosted characters, but they should not be gods on the battlefield. I may look at a matchup of TGT, Xforce and <featured character> and skip that battle, but I also like having a roster under my control that lets me choose to take on that fight and have a decent chance of winning.

This is just restating my argument that people who weren't stupid enough to max Beast first were handed characters that are better than 4*s

d0nk3y wrote:

There's nothing wrong with my opinion - I play a different game style than you do and the buffs help me while they hinder you. This issue is no different than exploiting the mechanics of the Winfinite combo or the Sentry-bomb. I had an advantage and I used it. Your argument on that point is with the devs, not me.

I've no idea what this means. How would the boosts hinder me. They give me the same advantages they give everyone, but the resulting event is an ungodly mess.

Try to take discussions a little less personally, will you?

Eddiemon

ark123 wrote:

I've no idea what this means. How would the boosts hinder me. They give me the same advantages they give everyone, but the resulting event is an ungodly mess.

Except you are complaining that they don't give you the same 'advantages', because you used to have a standout team and now the rabble can attack you with impunity. The change actually took away your advantage by levelling the playing field.

I'm +1 on loving the change. The past 3 months have been Xforce + boosted character +1 other depending on where I was at in the scoring, Daken for the grind to 600ish, then Iron Fist for quick kills. And the opponents I saw were generally fluff -> Stormneto -> Hulkbomb -> Unfinished X-force -> Xforce + GT. There was zero variety.

Now I got to play Patch + LThor, Patch + Loki which gave me a different set of abilities to use and changed the game for me. At the same time my opponents shifted their team compositions so I saw less of the defined teams, the only standard that was still present was Hulkbomb with Patch. I even got to trot out Nick Fury who I only have 8 covers for and have him serviceable. I've never gotten to use him in a meaningful match before.

And for those moaning that "it's still a regular group of characters, just different ones', like that is a logical argument, next week when they boost some other group it will be a completely different "regular group of characters, just different ones". While if we added the meaningless options people propose like 'make it a 25% buff to just one character so that my Xforce combo is still far and away the best, you are kind of missing the point of the exercise.

In the current model X-Force will always be a good option. He's competetive and doesn't suck. He has value because every week he will be in the mix. But he isn't default #1 anymore. But a badly set up 4* like Elektra can actually be very usable for a week. The 95% of my roster that only makes it into PvP when they are the featured character will actually get used again. Yes you spent money on your Xforce, but I spent money on my 70 character slots.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

ark123 wrote:

I've no idea what this means. How would the boosts hinder me. They give me the same advantages they give everyone, but the resulting event is an ungodly mess.

Except you are complaining that they don't give you the same 'advantages', because you used to have a standout team and now the rabble can attack you with impunity. The change actually took away your advantage by levelling the playing field.

Yeah, if by "levelling the playing field" you mean made a bunch of 3*s better than my 4*, forcing me to play with the characters I don't want to play with. I guess it is a bigger disadvantage to me, someone who actually has a better character than most 3*s that I'd like to play. In that sense making my lvl250 GT complete garbage also "levelled the playing field".

Eddiemon wrote:

In the current model X-Force will always be a good option. He's competetive and doesn't suck. He has value because every week he will be in the mix. But he isn't default #1 anymore. But a badly set up 4* like Elektra can actually be very usable for a week. The 95% of my roster that only makes it into PvP when they are the featured character will actually get used again. Yes you spent money on your Xforce, but I spent money on my 70 character slots.

You do realize xforce will be boosted eventually, yes?

You do realize we're going to have lvl280 Iron fist? lvl280 Kamala Khan?

dr tinykittylove

aesthetocyst wrote:

ark123 wrote:

...You do realize we're going to have lvl280 Iron fist? lvl280 Kamala Khan?

Not if the devs listen to the majority of the feedback here!

Almost without exception, players who said they liked the idea also suggested it be toned down.

Absolutely the buffs need to be toned down. When you're looking at choices between Thor/hood and maxed xf/buffed fury and go with the 4*s as obviously the easier target, the buffs are too much.

fmftint

Will we see an update on this? What the data looked like? Were the devs happy with what they saw? Will this become a permanent feature?

LXSandman

Yeah these last couple events have been crazy. They kind of go like this:

1. Scrub teams with nothing
2. Max lvl 170 Ares teams
3. Max lvl 280 Thor teams + Patch/Loki

I changed my vote on the poll. I originally said I liked it... but if they don't switch the characters every event then I don't see how anyone can enjoy it. Even if you happen to have all the boosted characters you are still stuck using them. At least before you could bring two characters you actually wanted to bring, but now you are pretty much forced to bring the boosted team if you want to advance. If you don't have the boosted characters then you are pretty much just done.

Xenoberyll

LXSandman wrote:

Yeah these last couple events have been crazy. They kind of go like this:
1. Scrub teams with nothing
2. Max lvl 170 Ares teams
3. Max lvl 280 Thor teams + Patch/Loki

scratch no. 1, those never appeared for me.

healthpacks - the stack of five was often gone faster than you can say tinykitty
shields - i had to use more than i usually did because i had to start climbing earlier to regenerate
hopping was a lottery, often ending in a net loss off 100+ points - i never got to 1k in any of the three events anymore.

i'm afraid the devs will like it because they probably sold more healthpacks and shields than ever before.

Unknown

After playing all pvp so far, I hope things go back to the way it was before. I hate having multiple characters buffs. It should be beneficial to someone like me who has a mostly 2 roster but it's not. It made placing in the top 100s from difficult to almost impossible. Every match becomes a grind and my roster is ultimately destroyed. I went from hoping to sneak in into the upper 80-90s to getting pounded to the upper 100s. And I don't think the devs consider that some off us like playing pve as well. It's just too draining to manage both with this new format Cause we're left with nothing to play with. climbing up use to be strategic for me skipping when I ran into a mountain of a match.....now every match seems to be that way. Ultimately, the rich get richer as they say

I hope the test is over and we go back to the usual. Multiple buffed charactes should stay in pve and lightning rounds. If not, I might have to reconsider if this game is worth the aggravation

Unknown

One simple solution for everyone disagreeing with this band-aid fix to PvP: Stop buying health packs and shields. If a change hurts a company's bottom line they will reconsider faster than you can blink.

That sends a clearer message than writing endless paragraphs on the forum.

GrumpySmurf1002

I'm clearly in the minority, but health packs were never an issue for these PvP. I played my normal routine just with Thor/Loki instead of XForce/PickAPartner. Matches went quick especially when I boosted, so there wasn't time to take damage. I also took Thor in with as little as 5k health, and Loki with as little as 2k (but not at the same time). Never healed Rags unless he was downed, since he was a formality. In the event health was becoming sketcky, I'd start swapping in Patch/Hood as necessary.

Got considerably more defensive wins, was often untouched until I climbed to 850+, and was able to do as many as 7 matches in a hop. It was kind of nice.

Towards the end yesterday I shielded just in time to dodge a -200 series of bullets, but that was the only time and I knew it'd be risky because I wasn't finding anything worth more than 15 pts without skipping relentlessly.

I will say that it definitely feels like PvP will be a have/have not situation, but that's really not different than XForce/4Thor dominating. You have them or you don't. At least now there's more of a chance I'll be part of the haves.

Unknown

As a 4* player, I've got to say being able to use Xforce Groot Gamora in PVP is the most fun I've had in this game since the first ("proportionally scaled") Balance of Power

Demiurge_Will

fmftint wrote:

Will we see an update on this? What the data looked like? Were the devs happy with what they saw? Will this become a permanent feature?

Still reviewing the data, but I can say that
- we're looking at toning down the magnitude of the weekly buffs for next time.
- it seemed to accomplish the goal of encouraging more variety in team composition really well.
- the 1.75x buff for a featured 3-star works much better than the 1.5x buff, in terms of striking a better balance between how powerful it is to have a good featured character and how powerful it is to have a good roster outside of the featured character. We'd been considering that change before we put together the weekly buff group test, and we'll be keeping that in events going forward.
- given all of the individual experiences of being able to score much higher or much less high than before, the score breakdown of these events is surprisingly typical.

Trisul

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Still reviewing the data, but I can say that
- we're looking at toning down the magnitude of the weekly buffs for next time.
- it seemed to accomplish the goal of encouraging more variety in team composition really well.
- the 1.75x buff for a featured 3-star works much better than the 1.5x buff, in terms of striking a better balance between how powerful it is to have a good featured character and how powerful it is to have a good roster outside of the featured character. We'd been considering that change before we put together the weekly buff group test, and we'll be keeping that in events going forward.
- given all of the individual experiences of being able to score much higher or much less high than before, the score breakdown of these events is surprisingly typical.

Thanks for the data. Toning down weekly buffs a bit while keeping featured high is going to help.

Not surprised at all about the score breakdown being typical.

Did you guys give any thought about the number of heroes that are boosted for each rotation? I feel like there's an opportunity there for some themed buffs (like the current Black Vortex PvP).

Eddiemon

ark123 wrote:

Yeah, if by "levelling the playing field" you mean made a bunch of 3*s better than my 4*, forcing me to play with the characters I don't want to play with. I guess it is a bigger disadvantage to me, someone who actually has a better character than most 3*s that I'd like to play. In that sense making my lvl250 GT complete garbage also "levelled the playing field".

Absolutely. I don't actually know another English definition for 'levelling the playing field' that doesn't involve some form of buffs or nerfs. If you still had the optimal team in your X-Force and GT then they wouldn't have 'levelled the playing field', they would have 'shifted the deckchairs', a totally different idiom.

You do realize xforce will be boosted eventually, yes?

You do realize we're going to have lvl280 Iron fist? lvl280 Kamala Khan?

Absolutley I do. You do realise that the 3 stars will be powered up for one week in 15 assuming an even distribution of powerups? And there is no guarantee that they will be powered up in sync with X-Force. (Plus I'm not likely to have either of them fully covered by then so I'll actually have the fun of using them for those weeks without being at a major disadvantage. That's a major increase in entertainment value for me)

And X-Force being powered up doesn't matter. He's the 'I win' now so if in the new model he is 'I win' one week in 7 or however many 4*s there are now that means 6 weeks where he isn't included in every team above a certain rank. I don't choose to focus on the 1 week that stays the same when I have 6 weeks of variety in between to revel in.

I think this is an amazing development that drags the game out of the pay to win cloud that would have killed it. Drop a few hundred to buy an X force, then drop a few hundred to buy a Thoress, then drop a few hundred when something more powerful comes out again. Drop a few hundred on the game or you have no chance of winning and apart from your top 2 characters the rest of your roster really didn't matter. ANd once you have maxed your best 2 characters there isn't any character development to be had apart from growing a roster of second rate characters you will never use. Until teh day a more powerful character somes to town and then you have to immediately buy it or fall from the running.

Now though your whole roster matters. Every cover you get matters if it develops someone. Yes roster slots may cost you money but far less than building an X Force frm scratch. And because the boosts are so good a 9 cover hero is viable, you don't need a 13 cover 166 or 270 to win some serious games. You may not be in the running for #1 with a half completed roster, but you also shouldn;t hit a wall of X-Force/Thoress who are so overwhelmingly powerful that you can't progress.

With a developing roster there may come weeks when you can't field a strong team, but in the current model you couldn't field a strong team anyhow. (And as long as there are 2*s boosted well beyond theri power levels you should have something to work with even on a bad week.) But there will also come weeks when you do have the right pieces and an it gives you an edge to progress further than normal.

Edit: On rereading the original post it appears that I had my numbers wrong. 2 x 4*s are buffed a week (I don;t have a Starlord so missed it). So X Force will be a king one week in 4 instead of 1 week in 7. Still an improvement. And 3 stars will come around 1 week in 7, not 15.

Unknown

If you think xforce is some sort of automatic I win button, you don't have one. He's really good, but he has low health, hit true healing is too slow to matter a lot of the time, and when the strongest color in the other team isn't green, he often won't do much damage.

Eddiemon

LXSandman wrote:

I changed my vote on the poll. I originally said I liked it... but if they don't switch the characters every event then I don't see how anyone can enjoy it. Even if you happen to have all the boosted characters you are still stuck using them. At least before you could bring two characters you actually wanted to bring, but now you are pretty much forced to bring the boosted team if you want to advance. If you don't have the boosted characters then you are pretty much just done.

You're stuck using X-Force now if you want to advance. This mythical choice you supposedly have doesn't exist now. You don't advance with 'who you want', you advance with the best 2-3 characters in the game. Before this week you couldn't get top 10 with Patch in your team unless you managed to snipe a small bracker in the last 5 minutes of an event.

The only thing this does is change who the best 2-3 characters in the game are every week.

Eddiemon

ark123 wrote:

If you think xforce is some sort of automatic I win button, you don't have one. He's really good, but he has low health, hit true healing is too slow to matter a lot of the time, and when the strongest color in the other team isn't green, he often won't do much damage.

So why do all the top teams run this terribly bad an ineffective character? Because they like the artwork?

Maybe it's because his black is often an insta-kill on an opponent character, because it depletes their most powerful AP reserve and if you are playing close to a rainbow team X-Force's partner now gets to use all the AP to do damage. Yeah technically as you said "he often won't do much damage" because he has enabled one of his partners to do the damage instead.

BUt no you keep pretending his black doesn't exist and that his other abilities are underpowered. Because apparently I'm the one who has never used this character.