Changes Coming In Season XIII

Demiurge_Will

Hi, all,

Will here from Demiurge to talk about some changes you can expect in Season XIII.

Here’s the quick summary; more details below:

• Higher chances of drawing 3-stars from packs.
• Changes to Versus matchmaking. We’re fixing some bugs where certain players can see matches much harder or easier than intended, making some changes to soften the “wall” where all of a sudden you start being matchmade with teams that are much harder, and addressing cases where players new to Versus get attacked an extremely high number of times.
• The maximum number of times that +AP boosts can be stacked changes from 3 to 2. We still think that there’s interesting gameplay that comes from +AP boosts, and don’t want to get rid of them, but we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to balance characters in such a way that they’re fairly matched both when players start with 6 AP in a color and when they don’t.
• Changes to Versus progression rewards. The 2-star and 3-star characters and the first 1000 Iso-8 award become easier to get. An additional event pack token has been added to the rewards.

Higher Chances of 3-stars
Most packs have a higher chance of a 3-star, and a lower chance of drawing a 2-star. The exact amount of the change depends on the pack. The magnitude of the change is similar to what it will be in the 1x Heroic pack, where the odds of a 3-star increase by about 33% (they used to make up about 14% of the pack, and now make up about 18.6% of the pack).

The Deadpool Daily Quest and Standard (500 Iso-8) packs aren’t affected by this change. The Heroic pack and all event packs are affected.

This change will take effect with a patch late in the day Eastern time on 4/2.

Matchmaking Changes
We’re shifting matchmaking calculations to achieve the following aims:

• We used to use a persistent, hidden Versus rating to help with matchmaking. There were a number of ways where that could cause some quirkiness where people’s hidden rating gets far off from what we expect, and their matches are much harder or easier than they should be. That hidden rating no longer figures into matchmaking, fixing these issues.
• The removal of hidden rating makes it so that purposely losing to get easier fights stops being effective.
• Newcomers to PvP stop getting pounded on quite so badly, and retaliation fights are more likely to be within reach.
• The flipside to that is that higher-level players see less super-easy targets. You’ll generally see opponents with a minimum difficulty of roughly one star level below you. (Players with maxed 3-star teams will see maxed 2-star teams and stronger, for example.) If there's a shortage of opponents worth a meaningful number of points in this band, you can be matched with easier teams than that. And if you climb high enough in the event, anyone can see you as an opponent, even if they’re much higher level.
• The experience of suddenly hitting a wall and seeing much harder teams is reduced. The upper bound on how difficult a team we match you with gradually increases as it becomes harder to find good matches for you, so you can still expect matches to get harder as you climb higher in an event.

This change will be a part of the Versus event starting on the evening of 4/2 and all Versus events that follow. Balance of Power will be unaffected by these changes.

Boost Stacking Change
The Team-Up +AP boost, all-color +AP boost, and 2-color +AP boosts used to be stackable up to 3 times. They can now be stacked up to 2 times.

We’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not possible to balance the game for cases where people are using as much +AP as was available before and cases when they’re not. We still think that +AP boosts are an interesting piece of the game, and we want to keep them available, just reduce their maximum power.

For some of the most highly competitive players, this will have an effect on the speed of matches in Versus. We’re keeping an eye on how this affects Versus scores and, as with all changes that could have an effect on Versus scores, we’ll adjust progression rewards if that proves necessary.

This change will take effect with a patch late in the day Eastern time on 4/2.

Changes to Progression Rewards
The following progression rewards change in Versus:

Old:
200: 250 Iso-8
500: 2-star
650: 1000 Iso-8
800: Event token
900: 3-star

New:
200: 2-star
500: 1000 Iso-8
650: Event token
800: 3-star
900: Event token

This change will be a part of the Versus event starting on the evening of 4/2 and all Versus events that follow.

scottee

Tell everyone at the office, "Awesome work!"

AaronTheLuigi

Glad to see focus on the PvP system from the team. As always, we'll provide feedback on how these changes stack-up.

My only request is in the coming days a link to this post goes in game, so everyone will be up to speed.

rixmith

Those all seem like positive changes. I'm sure the boost reduction will be controversial, but I'd much rather have balanced characters that are designed to reflect the nature of the character and not have to worry that they completely break the meta with full boosts.

Unknown

Monster changes

The heroics should have more 3* - yay

The vs matchmaking should help transitioning players when they hit "the 166/270 wall" & high scoring hoppers for skips from 3 pt matches - yay

Less boost stacking will be annoying but will ultimately make things more fair (and ultimately force everyone to save more ISO) - mostly yay

Improved progressions make ISO easier to get & way lower the amount needed for the event token. Should help transitioners a lot & make everyone above happy from more ISO - yay

All in all I like this. Best adjustments in a long while. I would think most everyone will like this

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Higher chances of drawing 3-stars from packs.

packs.

Otherwise, the rest looks amazing! Tanking effectiveness reduction, boost reduction, 3* at 800.
May hurt PVE though, only +2 AP boosting?! May have to break out the old-school +3ALL boost.

westnyy2

Will there still be a bunch of boosted players for PVP events?

udonomefoo

Cool! I'm sure some will be sad about the ap boosting, but I've seen many here make the argument that balancing is impossible with boosts being allowed. Step in the right direction imo.

turul

The flipside to that is that higher-level players see less super-easy targets. You’ll generally see opponents with a minimum difficulty of roughly one star level below you. (Players with maxed 3-star teams will see maxed 2-star teams and stronger, for example.) If there's a shortage of opponents worth a meaningful number of points in this band, you can be matched with easier teams than that. And if you climb high enough in the event, anyone can see you as an opponent, even if they’re much higher level.

bolded part not very fun...

Roswulf

These are great changes all (well, great changes on the surface- obviously it's impossible to judge a reshuffled matchmaking algorithm without play. And realizing the increased chance of 3* only applies to packs was a kick-in-the-teeth, if not actually a change for the worse).

The one suggestion I would make, considering the rethinking of lower-level rewards for PvP, is to similarly reassess the reward structure for SHIELD Simulator. In its present form, you are giving away 1* covers well above the level a 1* roster can conceivable reach. That does nothing for nobody, other than discourage newbies. Even something as simple as giving away standard tokens would be a real improvement.

But again, these are all extremely promising changes. A couple months ago, the 2*-3* transition approached a mathematical impossibility. Now it looks not only achievable, but paced so as to be potentially fun.

rednailz

Good timing there Will. After a full day of swearing about MPQ I'll have to say this is a real positive move forward, and shows somone somwhere listens. I'm pro-boost, but you can't win em all. if scaling gets worked out better, then less boosts would work.

GrumpySmurf1002

Just so I'm reading this right...Heroics currently are ~14% for 3* and 2.4% for 4*, that's increasing to 23% and 2.4%, relatively? Or is it 23% total (meaning 20.6%/2.4%). Either way is welcome, just want clarification.

These progression rewards changes make a ton of sense. Bravo!

Tredo

Can you clarify the "packs" part of the change? Will this impact single tokens? If it's only in 10 and 42-packs, then obviously $$$$.

sinnerjfl

daibar wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Higher chances of drawing 3-stars from packs.

packs.

Pack can mean just 1 token btw, that's how they word it.
From what I understand, the change will affect all of the packs, including the 1x. Confirmation please?

Unknown

Please put the words "Do not make anyone broken with a power that costs 7 or 10 AP" somewhere, preferably in blood, since that's 1/2 matches from the maximum number of AP boosts. I thought about the current characters and I don't think any of the powerhouse characters fits that description so it should work for now.

We'll probably be seeing The Hood return now that it is difficult to drop him in 2 matches without AP+3 all boosts (you start with 2g, but if he steal even 1 you'd still need 3 matches) and it'd still take 2 matches to take him out even starting with 4g, though at least The Hood has a quasi-tolerable solution by running a mirror match.

Malcrof

Just got a google play gift card..with higher 3* chances, any chance of a sale coming ^^. I am really hoping that as a transitioning player, i can actually hit some higher rewards this season! I cannot wait!

mags1587

Like the progression changes, like the token odds changes.

My first thought about the boost changes was actually to wonder how it was going to affect PvE. Some of those fights you really do need to fire off a power ASAP in order to win.

Withholding judgment on the MMR changes until I see how they play out. Sounds like it'll make my initial climb harder but if it prevents the issue where I see the same 5 people over and over and over again I think I'd be okay with that.

I was glad to see a mention that they're watching how the changes affect scores and how that impacts players' ability to reach the progression awards.

Unknown

Most packs have a higher chance of a 3-star, and a lower chance of drawing a 2-star. The exact amount of the change depends on the pack. The magnitude of the change is similar to what it will be in the 1x Heroic pack, where the odds of a 3-star increase by about 66% (they used to make up about 14% of the pack, and now make up about 23% of the pack).

This part makes me think that this will apply to all tokens.

Great change. I was kinda frustrated about the back-to-back new chars, but this and the change to the PvE alliance reward show that you guys are listening and trying to make the game better for everyone.

Unknown

Will the 4* odds in packs change as well? They're getting ridiculously low, and they go down every time a new 4* is added.

On the whole, I think these are very positive changes.

Demiurge_Will

turul wrote:

The flipside to that is that higher-level players see less super-easy targets. You’ll generally see opponents with a minimum difficulty of roughly one star level below you. (Players with maxed 3-star teams will see maxed 2-star teams and stronger, for example.) If there's a shortage of opponents worth a meaningful number of points in this band, you can be matched with easier teams than that. And if you climb high enough in the event, anyone can see you as an opponent, even if they’re much higher level.

bolded part not very fun...

This is necessary so that people can't climb to the top of an event, invulnerable to those around them, by fielding an intentionally under-leveled team or some quirky strategy along those lines. The spot at which this happens depends on everybody else's behavior, but usually we're talking about a situation where you're in the top 5-10% of high scores.

OnesOwnGrief

The AP change is nice. Still doesn't change 5-8 AP abilities that will remain unaffected by this. I was already playing with +2 AP boost during PvP matches for a very long time.