Regarding the "News" "Response to Recent Changes"

Unknown

The balancing and boost price are OK, all the 230s are unacceptable.
Yes, we might beat 230s with or without boosts, but fights last for 8 or more minutes are not fun at all, not to mention a mistake or bad luck can easily wipe out the whole team, even with my lv130+ characters. It takes 2-3 sniper shots of GSBW to finish the 230s, while for new players 1-2 repulse blasts can do the same. Totally unfair. I think whoever came up with this idea of 230s should get fired.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

It's not that ISO rewards have taken a downturn. It's that everyones needs have drastically increased. Not to mention that with the slower gameplay, churning through PvP for the 70/140 has greatly slowed down.

Just ran a quick couple sets of numbers. Overall Iso gain has increased per user, Level Ups per user is relatively steady even after filtering out level ups below 50 so we get rid of the newbies and required IM35 and Storm levels. They've been on a very slow upturn over the past month or so. Naturally, I'd have to dig deeper to see precisely which characters are being leveled. But from a brief view everything looks to be going fairly well as a pure statistical sample.

Also, please don't take "Hi! We're all 230s!" Chapter 4 as a basis for gameplay standings for all players. It's an aberration.

I've got to be honest, that little tidbit right there brings me closer to putting the game away than any borked event or game policy.

Levelling my first few characters was fun because the matches were fast, furious and against lower characters. Now every match is a 85/85/85 war of attrition the ISO rate is wearing me down like a bastard.

85% of my roster is utterly, utterly pointless and the ISO prices in the store are utterly, utterly insane. If there isn't going to be an infusion of ISO (and for the life of me I can't think why covers aren't treated the primary limiting factor in levelling rather than ISO) I can't keep putting effort into the game. It simply isn't worth it.

I can't argue with you when you say you have the data in front of you but that is so far beyond my personal playing experience I am staggered.

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Snip above suggestions

All of the above suggestions would add fun to the game. Currently, the plans seem to be:

1. Nerf Spiderman and Magneto.
2. Maybe raise opponents to level 230 permanently.
3. Charge more for any benefit.

Interesting suggestions, but the plans part misses the mark.
1. Amongst other things, yes. Leaving out the fact that there are characters on that list that need buffs (which is one of your suggestions), the idea that we would only change characters on that list, and only nerfs is disingenuous.
2. The all 230s issue was an aberration. To say that we'd do that for all matches going forward would solve no problems and would chase away our playerbase, and rightly so.
3. Not our intent. And not stating at all that you're one of these types, but there's no way to prove that to someone who sees any change that is tied however loosely to monetization as a change designed simply to suck money from their pocket.

Unknown

Il Palazzo wrote:

IceIX wrote:

TheVulture wrote:

How so? PVP has stayed on course since launch with a PVP event running constantly for a source of 70/140 Iso battles. SHIELD Training has always existed for the same. Lightning Rounds are also a great source of weekly Iso. None of those have changed in their forms. We've also been rolling out PVE Events at an increased rate compared to a couple months back which all have the same Iso rewards (100/200 per first time mission completion, 100/500/Standard Token rewards). I'm interested in how you think that the Iso rewards have taken a downturn? We're not seeing that in our numbers at all. Our users are gaining more Iso per capita than they were this time last month, much less this time October.

You may want to rerun the analytics for this month when it ends. Main reasons being:
Thorverine nerf + increased boost cost: much slower matches, resulting in far less iso/hour, whenever if you boost or not
Decreased morale in general: less matches played over the less matches played for sheer lack of time
Oscorp heroic: rewards not resetting in the map, pitful iso total gain, even less if you decide do boost to overcome the 230s

Also please: shield training is so pointless, its fun factor is zero. If this is an example of the game working as intended, something is really wrong here

I think IceIX was saying that the shield training was more a source for ISO. You win either 70/140.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

3. Not our intent. And not stating at all that you're one of these types, but there's no way to prove that to someone who sees any change that is tied however loosely to monetization as a change designed simply to suck money from their pocket.

Suck my money! Take it! You can honestly have it, the reason I go to work is so I can waste my money on **** like this after I pay my mortgage.

Just give me some decent ISO in return.

Nemek

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

5. More frequent reshuffles.
<stuff>
Trigger a reshuffle when the number of match choices drops under four.

Pretty sure this would make the game unplayable.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

5. More frequent reshuffles.
<stuff>
Trigger a reshuffle when the number of match choices drops under four.

Pretty sure this would make the game unplayable.

Yeah, please don't do that. Nothing wrong with how it is now.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

The Developers seem to be missing a crucial point -- when all opponents are level 230 all the time, the game is no fun.

D3PCS wrote:

Being able to first turn bust out a few thousand damage, some Strike tiles, and 2-3 stuns for anyone surviving depending on team comp made anything but the most difficult battles simple and matters of rote gameplay, not something that takes advantage of the mutable strategy of the puzzle board.

On the flip side, when all opponents are level 230, rote gameplay is the only way to win the battle. There are no longer fun mixtures of strategies and experimentation. Instead, there are set strategies for pulling off 12K + damage to the entire enemy team. Deviating from the rote play will get the party instantly killed by the overpowered opponents.

If the developers want to discourage rote play, there are many ways to do so.

1. Rare Team bonus. There are 4439 possible teams. Track their usage. If someone brings in a team that hasn't been used in 10 minutes or so, give them an automatic boost as an award. Currently, there is no incentive for trying something new.

2. Faster healing. It shouldn't take Hulk 8+ hours to recover from a single fight. Slow healing forces rote play.

3. Trophy hunt. There are 90 powers. Use a power, get a trophy, that's 90 trophies there. Survive a power, including Maggia/Hammer, there's a lot more. Get 15+ countdown tiles on board. Win a game without powers. Get 20+ strike tiles on the board. Win with one of 3500 rare teams.

4. Retreat options. Some teams have good board control. For example, those with Spiderman/Magneto, both about to be nerfed. When the Maggia are putting up 4 instant kill countdown tiles every round, board control is mandatory, and many characters can't help. That countdown tile in the corner might be impossible to match. Not puzzle skill, it's just bad luck. As an option to Retreat, offer an Inspiration option. 10% current party health give +1 to all countdown tiles. Offer a Suddenly... option. 20% current party health for a reshuffle. Offer a Logistics Failure option. 50% current party health, and enemy AP levels all get capped at 5 AP.

5. More frequent reshuffles. Often, the board becomes a Zugzwang trap. There is only one match. There will only be one match for the next 5 turns. If there are countdown timers, and a board controller isn't on the team, the game is lost. Trigger a reshuffle when the number of match choices drops under four.

6. Minor buffs to underused characters. It's been suggested that Captain America's Yellow is priced too high at 19AP. Try dropping it to 17, and see if that makes him more popular. With every major update, give out 3 minor buffs. Lower an AP cost by a point, add more hit points, increase the level of their criticals.

7. When a player uses a certain team and power combo a lot, have a "Counter-ops" icon come up for the subsequent enemy teams. (50% damage Green, 200% damage Black).

8. Buffs for teams much higher in the ranking ladder. If I'm at 100 points, there is no disincentive to attacking someone with 800 points. If their characters had a 200% buff against teams 400 points under them, then maybe I'd stay closer to my ranking. But if I did beat them, those points would be truly earned.

9. Make countdown tiles placeable. Modern Hawkeye relies on countdown tiles. Instead of placing them randomly, let the player pick a basic red or blue tile. Too often, the random choice appears within an easy match area, and they get wiped out.

10. More board control. Too many characters have powers that are completely random, and they are less popular because they have no useful role in a puzzle strategy game. For example, Punisher's Judgement skill. He can wipe out his own strike tiles. He's the only character whose animation uses an aiming scope, but his aim is terrible. Let the players pick that 3x3 block. When more characters can aid in controlling the board, the number of playable teams will greatly increase.

11. Don't buff overpowered characters. C. Storm and Ragnarok were known to be overpowered. They were put into events in a highly buffed state that made them even worse, even in the day before they got nerfed. Same with Thor and Wolverine. If there is a character that is overpowered, then stop buffing them, for any event. Do that for at least a month before considering a major nerf. Very likely, with that character staying normal while others are buffed, the overuse of that character will diminish.

12. When restricting characters, have clear goals. For Oscorp Heroic, meant to highlight Daredevil, characters like Spiderman were picked that do not work well with DD's trap-laying powers. Also, he's going to be a low-level character for most people. Forcing level 230 opponents, and including a lot maggia and hammer opponents that his traps cannot affect rather ruined any chance of Daredevil having a moment to shine.

13. More environments. The City environment is truly unloved in the current mode. How about replaying "Hot Dog Stand" with "Lane Change" -- does a reshuffle.


All of the above suggestions would add fun to the game. Currently, the plans seem to be:

1. Nerf Spiderman and Magneto.
2. Maybe raise opponents to level 230 permanently.
3. Charge more for any benefit.

The above changes won't add fun to the game. Instead, they will encourage the rotest of rote play. Forcing level 230 opponents at someone is like breaking a person's leg and forcing them to run a race with crutches. And then, mid-race, when it's noticed that the crutches are being used, taking them away. For fun! Now that he's crawling, throw more obstacles at them. For fun!

The Hulk and Ares events, with occasional high-level teams, those were fun. I could vary my team a lot more. Ares and Juggernaut were fearsome opponents, just like Ragnarok used to be at one time. But when everyone is high level, that forces the usage of a few select teams -- which forces rote play.

In other words, the Developers intended Recent Changes to lessen rote play. But the changes have instead caused the opposite effect. If they want more play diversity, I've suggested 13 possibilities.

I agree with most of what you say, no counter points will be given. TBH, the SHIELD PvP tourney is somewhere where they can test out new PvP concepts before anything goes truly "live". They can use it as a sort of testbed for ways of diversifying the gameplay a little more than just random hero x gets new LR, or even a way for us to start using combinations of mixed * level covers. As it sits, why would I ever use an underpowered team, unless there was a benefit to me? The other players aren't going to take it easy on me because I decided to use Yelena, Moonstone and Hawkeye. Make there be a benefit, as Nonce pointed out. Team bonuses could be a way to change it up. Get +1 web tile on startup if you use 2 webslingers, or as a defensive bonus, Hulk gets "angry" at 1/3 less his current rate if you team has 2 female characters, etc... IDK, my imagination isn't so vivid.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

TheVulture wrote:

Much appreciate the dev post, but also 100% agree with this that the rate of reward has taken a significant downturn - unfortunately at the exact time people are being encouraged/pushed to expand their rosters.

Granted I've put minimal effort into the most recent PvE (earned the 1st Storm with 2 matches today, whatever that makes my total), but I'm so far in ISO off even thinking of boosting any of the lightning heroes to a playable level.
I don't buy that this is a nefarious scheme to extort real-money ISO - since even the biggest ISO bundle wouldn't push a 3* up near maxed 2* power-level - so I am genuinely curious what the vision is here.

How so? PVP has stayed on course since launch with a PVP event running constantly for a source of 70/140 Iso battles. SHIELD Training has always existed for the same. Lightning Rounds are also a great source of weekly Iso. None of those have changed in their forms. We've also been rolling out PVE Events at an increased rate compared to a couple months back which all have the same Iso rewards (100/200 per first time mission completion, 100/500/Standard Token rewards). I'm interested in how you think that the Iso rewards have taken a downturn? We're not seeing that in our numbers at all. Our users are gaining more Iso per capita than they were this time last month, much less this time October.

My experience has been that every round is much slower on my end despite the games iso opportunities remaining the same. My games in pve and pvp have been slowed because there is no longer a boost jump start and because the character balancing as well as the newly added characters all have abilities with large ap costs. I lose more health and characters while trying to generate enough ap for the moves.

This slowdown is most glaring in the recent heroic chapter 4 pve event. i know the leveling is being fixed but the fact that there was was only one powered up hero that really slowed down the game. Non powered up heroes abilities hardly put a dent in the enemy hp. The enemy HP is so high compared to non powered up heroes that even the strongest abilities (GSBWs sniper in this case) requires 2-3 shots to down one target. Perhaps it will be faster tomorrow when i receive my 5th green GSBW cover as a shield re supply reward for Day 105 but GSBW might not be in the roster of the next heroic event. I like the small roster curveball but please power up a few characters to give us a chance to play with opportunity to try out different character combos and strategies as a short roster indicates we should do.

Perhaps the stat showing increased iso per capita is in part due to the weeks after the rag nerf hit when there was a huge increase in iso from facebook gifts. I was receiving roughly a half a dozen gifts a day and often gifts of 500 iso. The Facebook share rewards have since diminished. I am curious what the stats look like in average pvp match time or average pve match time from a month ago to now. Perhaps this slowdown is not as big for most users as it has been for me.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

It's not that ISO rewards have taken a downturn. It's that everyones needs have drastically increased. Not to mention that with the slower gameplay, churning through PvP for the 70/140 has greatly slowed down.

Just ran a quick couple sets of numbers. Overall Iso gain has increased per user, Level Ups per user is relatively steady even after filtering out level ups below 50 so we get rid of the newbies and required IM35 and Storm levels. They've been on a very slow upturn over the past month or so. Naturally, I'd have to dig deeper to see precisely which characters are being leveled. But from a brief view everything looks to be going fairly well as a pure statistical sample.

Also, please don't take "Hi! We're all 230s!" Chapter 4 as a basis for gameplay standings for all players. It's an aberration.

ISO gain has increased per user .... What range are we talking about? The past few days compared to last week? The past month versus the month previous?

I was strictly talking all PvP. It's significantly slower to win battles and its near impossible to reach higher level progression ISO awards in PvP events. Those two examples are undeniable.

IceIX

Toxicadam wrote:

ISO gain has increased per user .... What range are we talking about? The past few days compared to last week? The past month versus the month previous?

Barring a couple fractions of a percent here and there and wacky days where it dips or rises out of line with the norm (starts of events, servers exploding and such), it has slowly but steadily risen since around mid-November.

Edit: Ahh. PVP. Yes, Iso gains there have dropped slightly due to the Thorverine and Boost changes going in. That being said, they didn't drop as much as you'd think as the average user is simply putting in the extra time per battle there. The PVE event constant pace has been raising those higher as well.

Unknown

Nemek wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

5. More frequent reshuffles.
<stuff>
Trigger a reshuffle when the number of match choices drops under four.

Pretty sure this would make the game unplayable.

Nonce made a list of 13 partially-thought out ideas as jumping off points. If we flesh that particular suggestion out a little further, using more than 8 words, there's a pretty good idea in there.

It's frustrating when there's only one match left on the board, and that Maggia Thug's countdown tile is still running. And you make that match, and it creates one single match, which creates one single match until finally the tile pops and shakes the board up at your expense. An auto-shuffle every time the number of matches is low probably isn't the answer, but there's got to be an answer to that problem somewhere.

Unknown

It has risen, but to what end? Because my needs for ISO in mid November were far less than my needs now.

What I would earn to max level Modern Storm might give me 11 levels on Grey Widow. Which is fine, except I have 11 more three star characters that need attention also. Hard to preach the need for 'roster diversity' when a user is presented with that reality.

Unknown

Personal experience, but ISO is definitely easier to come by for me as a non-grinder.

I think there are 2 things that make people feel sour at ISO gains: FB nerf and Rags nerf. To everyone else, imo, ISO should be easier to come by.

IceIX

Toxicadam wrote:

It has risen, but to what end? Because my needs for ISO in mid November were far less than my needs now.

What I would earn to max level Modern Storm might give me 11 levels on Grey Widow. Which I shine, except I have 11 more three star characters that need attention also. Hard to preach the need for 'roster diversity' when a user is presented with hat reality.

If only Iso gains had risen but leveling of characters and other spend of Iso had fallen (indicating that the Iso doesn't stretch as far anymore), that would be the case. However, users are also leveling characters just as often as before even when you filter out low leveled characters so that you raise the average Iso to level.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

It has risen, but to what end? Because my needs for ISO in mid November were far less than my needs now.

What I would earn to max level Modern Storm might give me 11 levels on Grey Widow. Which I shine, except I have 11 more three star characters that need attention also. Hard to preach the need for 'roster diversity' when a user is presented with hat reality.

If only Iso gains had risen but leveling of characters and other spend of Iso had fallen (indicating that the Iso doesn't stretch as far anymore), that would be the case. However, users are also leveling characters just as often as before even when you filter out low leveled characters so that you raise the average Iso to level.

I dumped 70k ISO recently into my 3*'s. It was from selling thorverine though. Not earned.

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

It has risen, but to what end? Because my needs for ISO in mid November were far less than my needs now.

What I would earn to max level Modern Storm might give me 11 levels on Grey Widow. Which I shine, except I have 11 more three star characters that need attention also. Hard to preach the need for 'roster diversity' when a user is presented with hat reality.

If only Iso gains had risen but leveling of characters and other spend of Iso had fallen (indicating that the Iso doesn't stretch as far anymore), that would be the case. However, users are also leveling characters just as often as before even when you filter out low leveled characters so that you raise the average Iso to level.

I dumped 70k ISO recently into my 3*'s. It was from selling thorverine though. Not earned.

Ah, now it makes sense.

IceIX

RockMonster wrote:

Ah, now it makes sense.

The number of people that have made use of the Iso from the character sell-off is a drop in the bucket of general Iso spending.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

RockMonster wrote:

Ah, now it makes sense.

The number of people that have made use of the Iso from the character sell-off is a drop in the bucket of general Iso spending.

Any chance we could get a ballpark number on the average players per day? I think this would bring this into context a bit more.

Bacon Pants

As a thank you for your patience, I was really hoping we'd all get free Bag Man covers.