Analyzing the New Changes

DirigiblePilot

I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread where we could have all the changes in this new update in one place, in order to more easily facilitate discussion. Or I could just be a wacko. In which case you can ignore me.
So let's start by listing them,eh?
-Thor and Wolverine nerfs have taken effect
-Patch is patched
-Only one chance to win PvP battles instead of 3
-Tank team is now the team you last won with (not sure about this)
-Boosts cost more or HP
-You can view people's rosters
-Various UI changes (sleeker mission select, fancier Rewards button in roster section, etc.)
-Little pop-ups that indicate which missions are team-ups or have certain heroes required for entry
-Ability usages have banners that flash on-scren
-In the same vein as above, passives are quicker but also more obtrusive

Anything I'm missing? Feel free to discuss.

Unknown

They introduced a new meta game of watching forum meltdowns. It's been more entertaining than the game itself.

IceIX

Toxicadam wrote:

They introduced a new meta game of watching forum meltdowns. It's been more entertaining than the game itself.

If you want even more of that, Avenger's Alliance has been seeing a forum meltdown since around this time yesterday when they extended their PVP season a week just before it ended.

Unknown

Thor/Wolverine changes are fine -- the devs overcommunicated and are also giving people an 'out' with the insanely good ISO/HP you can earn for cashing in your covers.

I feel pretty burned by the 100 HP for boost though, especially since the PvE difficulty is really up there.

I don't begin to admit I understand the technical side of rolling out patches, but as a former game designer for a CCG, I feel this latest patch was a bit too much in terms of the breadth of changes. Would've liked to seen it spread out or have some more of the negative changes communicated first.

DirigiblePilot

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

They introduced a new meta game of watching forum meltdowns. It's been more entertaining than the game itself.

If you want even more of that, Avenger's Alliance has been seeing a forum meltdown since around this time yesterday when they extended their PVP season a week just before it ended.

Ooh, they did that? Now I have a chance to get back up to gold league...
And I can tell this thread will go nowhere. Carry on commenting in other threads, folks!

Hulk11

This was useful information- but...

All these mostly make the game unplayable or closer too it. We have to agree that alot of people don't have high level characters. Unless there's gonna be some other way to get your character to a high level, this is almost a stalemate.

Dninot

I'm honestly having fun with this, I must be super bored.

That and my phone is dead so I cant really play.

Unknown

IceIX,

Since hindsight is a wonderful thing, in your opinion should the changes have waited till the end of this PvE event to give people a chance to play with the changes?

With the changes to Wolvie and Thor and the boost cost it appears some match ups are almost impossible to win.

Will the difficulty of the current event be scaled down till people have had a chance to adjust their rosters? I mean fighting a lvl 230 everything isn't easy when Thorverine was OP but now it's almost not worth bothering.

Thoughts?

-Brutus

bcas76

I have a maxed Wolverine and Thor and honestly was sick to death of seeing them in PvP. So, cool with that.

I haven't seen the UI changes but was thinking the game looked stale staring down month three of playing, so I'm on board.

Charging for skipping will be tough, and the one and done PvP will also be unpleasant. But I'm sure we've all invested enough time and money (lots of money) that unless you start introducing Disney characters or charging to log on, we'll all probably keep playing.

Unknown

Just like to add the current PvE event wasn't well thought out having everything at lvl230 many ppl cannot cope with that without boosting now they will just stop bothering to play all together.

I love this game, have dropped coin in the past and will drop coin in future when I deem it worthy; but you can't nerf / change core things without compensating on the gameplay which already seemed broken.

-Brutus

IceIX

Brutus wrote:

IceIX,

Since hindsight is a wonderful thing, in your opinion should the changes have waited till the end of this PvE event to give people a chance to play with the changes?

With the changes to Wolvie and Thor and the boost cost it appears some match ups are almost impossible to win.

Will the difficulty of the current event be scaled down till people have had a chance to adjust their rosters? I mean fighting a lvl 230 everything isn't easy when Thorverine was OP but now it's almost not worth bothering.

Thoughts?

-Brutus

We won't mess with the scaling algorithm during the event, too risky. And we could have waited till the end of the event, yes. But R47 was also needed for support for a couple of other upcoming things (nothing major, just support) so we needed to make sure it was out before those things go live. If we didn't, we'd end up with a situation where people that haven't updated quite yet can't use content that people that have updated can.

Hulk11

IceIX wrote:

Brutus wrote:

IceIX,

Since hindsight is a wonderful thing, in your opinion should the changes have waited till the end of this PvE event to give people a chance to play with the changes?

With the changes to Wolvie and Thor and the boost cost it appears some match ups are almost impossible to win.

Will the difficulty of the current event be scaled down till people have had a chance to adjust their rosters? I mean fighting a lvl 230 everything isn't easy when Thorverine was OP but now it's almost not worth bothering.

Thoughts?

-Brutus

We won't mess with the scaling algorithm during the event, too risky. And we could have waited till the end of the event, yes. But R47 was also needed for support for a couple of other upcoming things (nothing major, just support) so we needed to make sure it was out before those things go live. If we didn't, we'd end up with a situation where people that haven't updated quite yet can't use content that people that have updated can.

What about the other half of his statement? People are in a situation now, where they cannot compete.

It's like if the NFL were to "patch" the super bowl and say you need to be 15 ft tall to play. Just can't compete.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Brutus wrote:

IceIX,

Since hindsight is a wonderful thing, in your opinion should the changes have waited till the end of this PvE event to give people a chance to play with the changes?

With the changes to Wolvie and Thor and the boost cost it appears some match ups are almost impossible to win.

Will the difficulty of the current event be scaled down till people have had a chance to adjust their rosters? I mean fighting a lvl 230 everything isn't easy when Thorverine was OP but now it's almost not worth bothering.

Thoughts?

-Brutus

We won't mess with the scaling algorithm during the event, too risky. And we could have waited till the end of the event, yes. But R47 was also needed for support for a couple of other upcoming things (nothing major, just support) so we needed to make sure it was out before those things go live. If we didn't, we'd end up with a situation where people that haven't updated quite yet can't use content that people that have updated can.

Thanks for the response IceIX. Would it not have been possible to do the support patch without the changes? Is this something to consider in future major/minor changes?

Sorry don't mean to hammer the issue; I'm sure you guys have been busting **** trying to deal with forum meltdown!

-Brutus

Unknown

Hulk11 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Brutus wrote:

IceIX,

Since hindsight is a wonderful thing, in your opinion should the changes have waited till the end of this PvE event to give people a chance to play with the changes?

With the changes to Wolvie and Thor and the boost cost it appears some match ups are almost impossible to win.

Will the difficulty of the current event be scaled down till people have had a chance to adjust their rosters? I mean fighting a lvl 230 everything isn't easy when Thorverine was OP but now it's almost not worth bothering.

Thoughts?

-Brutus

We won't mess with the scaling algorithm during the event, too risky. And we could have waited till the end of the event, yes. But R47 was also needed for support for a couple of other upcoming things (nothing major, just support) so we needed to make sure it was out before those things go live. If we didn't, we'd end up with a situation where people that haven't updated quite yet can't use content that people that have updated can.

What about the other half of his statement? People are in a situation now, where they cannot compete.

It's like if the NFL were to "patch" the super bowl and say you need to be 15 ft tall to play. Just can't compete.

Was just about to edit my post RE this but you posted for me

-Brutus

bahamut685

The Thor nerf is the most amusing... It was needed, but my Ares (20 levels lower) now has 3 significantly stronger powers than my Thor, using the same colours and for comparable AP costs.

Unknown

New UI is amazing. I think I'm in love. Stalking people is definitely cool. Top people in my Punisher bracket are quite the pushovers.

Playwd Wolvie and Patch. Both seem to be fine. Wolvie is 5/5/3 and Patch is 4/3/3. I have enough covers to complete him but still deciding build. 3 in healing is "good enough" but must be supplemented with additional healing sources once in a while. I might go 5/4/4. Red has not been very good from my experience.

Haven't tried Thor yet but I need a respec to get 5 in yellow (originally had him 5/4/4).

Tanking has made me use m.Storm and I miss her dearly. Quite formidable for a 1-star. Low health is much too of a liability on D but she can hold her own offensively.

IceIX

Hulk11 wrote:

What about the other half of his statement? People are in a situation now, where they cannot compete.

Sorry, missed that in my response. I don't have much for that really. Rubberbanding on points will help to an extent there since you'll be able to regain the points you wouldn't have gotten elsewhere due to impossible matches. It's not a magic "stay in the game" button, but it's a help at least.

As for being able to do the data patches and clientside one at once, sometimes but not always. Patches are designed to work with any given release and have to be backported if we want them to work with an earlier version. That's *usually* trivial, but if something changed in how the server talks to the client it can involve some decently time intensive work to make sure that whatever that change is acts the same in the current version and when the newer one comes out.

Unknown

Appreciate the responses IceIX.

-Brutus

Unknown

Put me in the category of not really caring that my 85 Thor and Wolvie got nerfed. They still seem to work even against lv 230 Maggia, and if it causes us to see more characters that's a good thing.

It does seem like bad timing on the buff costs.... I blew through a lot of mine trying to get Patch rewards, and now I'm basically out right at the time they're suddenly expensive. It does seem that a major patch like this shouldn't go through in the middle of a big event, especially one as hard as this one. But again, it's not a big deal to me.

Hulk11

SaintJimmy wrote:

Put me in the category of not really caring that my 85 Thor and Wolvie got nerfed. They still seem to work even against lv 230 Maggia, and if it causes us to see more characters that's a good thing.

It does seem like bad timing on the buff costs.... I blew through a lot of mine trying to get Patch rewards, and now I'm basically out right at the time they're suddenly expensive. It does seem that a major patch like this shouldn't go through in the middle of a big event, especially one as hard as this one. But again, it's not a big deal to me.

I think most people are having a problem if they don't have those lvls. Congrats for getting them that high.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

They introduced a new meta game of watching forum meltdowns. It's been more entertaining than the game itself.

If you want even more of that, Avenger's Alliance has been seeing a forum meltdown since around this time yesterday when they extended their PVP season a week just before it ended.

So is this a marvel mandate to piss off the playerbases all at the same time? I blame jj Abrams.