Regarding the "News" "Response to Recent Changes"

kensterr

The price of the boosts wouldn't be so bad if they make HP rewards more frequent, or higher HP rewards from tournament placings or missions.

bahamut685

IceIX wrote:

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.

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?
*Edit: Also, like I said in my original post, please move forward with fixing 2ap skills, so that there isn't a NEED for lvl.230 missions... Or set it up to not give those to people without blue4/blue5 Spidercrack.

IceIX

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

@wow.
Crazy how far off each bracket is. People are up near 50k when no one in my bracket tops 7k. Sheesh.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

I really don't see how the X-Force reward is at all reasonably obtainable because just the time it takes to wear down the HPs of the continous 3X230 battles should make it practically impossible to reach that on time. If the guys hitting this rewards are legitmate players, they either have way easier opponents or they didn't do anything but play heroic Oscorp for the last 5 days.

Unknown

pandaberry6 wrote:

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.

I apologize if my comments are perceived to be rude or disrespectful as I meant the exact opposite, I have the utmost respect for you IceIX and for the games developers. I love this game and want it to thrive so I can continue enjoying the obscene amounts of fresh content you spoil us with. Your writers are amazing - they create interesting storylines and keep each hero/villain true to its comic counterpart. The monetization of the game is a necessary evil of the F2P genre and I have no issues with paying for covers, hero slots or whatever else costs hero points. I appreciate how much work is put into this game and I hope my suggestions and comments are helpful and constructive as that is what they are intended to be.

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.

Define users are leveling charcaters just as fast, I mean I would agree that I'm probably buying levels as fast as I ever did, but my rooster is a lot bigger than it was a month or two ago so those levels don't go as far. Leaving aside an inability to concentrate ISO because there's always some other character who needs to be leveled so I can take advantage of whoever is getting buffed du jour so I don't say for example have a level 15 dud on my team making LR battles that much harder, I've started leveling three star characters and lets face those first 60-80 levels you pump into them are pretty much a waste as I would be better off using Thor, Wolverine, he'll even Cap might be better than say using my IM40. It's going to be a long time until I see any return on investment on any ISO spent leveling up a three star character. I mean right now I have the money that I could buy the six pack of three star heroes and I don't think there' sandy chance I wouldn't get a cover I couldn't use, but at the same time it took me two lighting rounds to earn enough ISO to get one level for the hulk so raising all of my level caps at once is just going to make me feel like I'm falling further behind, and even if i them next I'll probably have to pump ISO into Bullseye or somebody else I never use because they' eh been boosted for pvp you know that play you keep saying we're supposed to be earning our ISO so it still will feel like I'm falling behind. That's why, beyond the complete and utter mess you've made out of it, I haven't been pushing in pve events. Thank god I haven't won Patch or Daredevil I already can't afford to level Hulk, and 3 star widow, and punisher, and ragnorak, and two star widow, hell I can't even afford to have maxed out Ares and he's level cap is still in the forties.

NorthernPolarity

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

I would think that a reasonable level of effort would result in getting the X-force wolvies, such as maybe doing 1-2 full clears per reset. With the way it's setup, I think you need 4 full clears every 12 hours in order to hit X-Force wolvies, keeping in mind that you aren't earning any iso by this point except for the 20 iso throwin, and have to face vs level 230s all day.

Bacon Pants

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

I am somewhere in the middle of these levels. I have a decent roster of 2 and 3 stars in the 50's up to 85. I don't mind a challenge, with boosts I still have a very tough time with the 230's. (even the 150% Hammer damage can be rendered useless by one grenadier or pyro attack) If I am rolling through the event, then yes I expect the difficulty to increase incrementally. That was not the case with this event, it was 230 out of the gate. I have had to ignore certain battles because I have no shot to beat them. This event has helped me refocus my iso though. Everything goes to 3 star characters now, it just takes so long to level them though.

Unknown

7600 is top score in my bracket. He's carried by a lvl 39 basic Iron Man though.

Nonce Equitaur 2

IceIX wrote:

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.

1. Yes, on Jan 10 it was mentioned Wolverine (X-Force) and Hawkeye (Modern) would be getting changes, and players expect to see buffs. I can remember your post of R40, where 4 characters got buffs, R43, where 2 characters got buffs. But those were months ago. Since then, four major nerfs. One inconsequential IW buff. I thought the Ragnarok and Wolverine nerfs were overdone, and thought the Thor and C. Storm nerfs were fine. Minor buffs would be noncontroversial and would verify the concept of funbalancing. Isn't there an underutilised character that can have the cost of a power dropped by 1AP, or have their HP increased? I much preferred the exciting "new stuff" D3 of Oct-Dec to the "takebacks" D3 of Jan-Feb.

2. I'm still seeing nothing but high-level characters at Oscorp. I did get them down to level 180 with the latest patch, but winning that fight shot them right back up to higher levels. All the opponents can still instantly kill any character in my roster, and I need 3+ hits to down any of them with BWGS. It's rotie-rote-rote play. An aberration shouldn't last two weeks. I've heard no clear signal that the aberration will be ending.

3. The change came halfway into an event that a lot of players had invested a lot of time into. The level 230 aberration combined with the new fee in the middle of a weeklong tournament -- well, there are 50+ threads and 600+ messages discussing it. That may not have been the intent, but the timing and communication were not hallmarks of a well-thought plan.

bahamut685

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

Without Spiderman's Blue5/Blue4, there's no such thing as strong enough for those. 230 goons = one-hit everything for us mid-level players who hit the 230 wall after playing each mission ONCE.
I'm pretty sure any users [guessing "plenty" = 2-10] approaching 50k found some exploit allowing runs on multiple platforms for full points, or have trash rosters and so didn't run straight to 230s. And CS's second [bold] paragraph

"
We first tried ramping up the content difficulty to account for this, resulting in fights that contained multiple level 230 enemies. Boosts though, particularly the +3 AP boosts, make it so that the player has a first turn advantage over any opponent in the game that just builds along the line. 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. We wanted and do want players to use boosts and have them in the game for the reasons above. But by having them all be readily available for a relatively small cost meant that they instead became mandatory to succeed. We’d rather balance the game around what players can actually do through gameplay and account for extraordinary situations due to boosts than have to take those situations as the norm and balance the game at that higher level.
"

references stunning 2-3 enemies and dealing thousands of damage at the start, which most people facing 230s (roughly 80% of players) can't hope to do.

Unknown

The funny thing is that the 3XDA battle is probably the easiest, and certainly the quickest battle now simply because you're not looking at 3 guys with 9000 HP each, and as long as you got Daken contained you don't have to worry about them killing your whole team with one move either. Sure, they can probably knock out a guy with one move, but at least it's not the whole team.

If the 3XDA is meant to be the hardest battle (it certainly gives the most points), then I'd expect the villian + 2 minion fights to be around 150-175, and the 3Xminion fights should be 125X150 for the scaling to make sense. Note that the difficulty for those is pretty much unchanged because if you can beat the 230X3 at all, that pretty much implies you've stun locked your opposition to oblivion so making it easier doesn't actually make it any easier (because you still stunlock them), though it'd take shorter to finish the game after you stunlocked the opposition.

IceIX

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

1. Yes, on Jan 10 it was mentioned Wolverine (X-Force) and Hawkeye (Modern) would be getting changes, and players expect to see buffs. I can remember your post of R40, where 4 characters got buffs, R43, where 2 characters got buffs. But those were months ago. Since then, four major nerfs. One inconsequential IW buff. I thought the Ragnarok and Wolverine nerfs were overdone, and thought the Thor and C. Storm nerfs were fine. Minor buffs would be noncontroversial and would verify the concept of funbalancing. Isn't there an underutilised character that can have the cost of a power dropped by 1AP, or have their HP increased? I much preferred the exciting "new stuff" D3 of Oct-Dec to the "takebacks" D3 of Jan-Feb.

2. I'm still seeing nothing but high-level characters at Oscorp. I did get them down to level 180 with the latest patch, but winning that fight shot them right back up to higher levels. All the opponents can still instantly kill any character in my roster, and I need 3+ hits to down any of them with BWGS. It's rotie-rote-rote play. An aberration shouldn't last two weeks. I've heard no clear signal that the aberration will be ending.

3. The change came halfway into an event that a lot of players had invested a lot of time into. The level 230 aberration combined with the new fee in the middle of a weeklong tournament -- well, there are 50+ threads and 600+ messages discussing it. That may not have been the intent, but the timing and communication were not hallmarks of a well-thought plan.

1. The buffs will come. That's all I can really say there, although your point about the change frequency is well taken.
2. There were changes made to the scaling for the future but they are unfortunately not retroactive. The only way to make them active would be to reset the event which doesn't work well for anyone.
3. Understood, and the pages of threads discussing it did not go unread.

Unknown

bahamut685 wrote:

Without Spiderman's Blue5/Blue4, there's no such thing as strong enough for those. 230 goons = one-hit everything for us mid-level players who hit the 230 wall after playing each mission ONCE.
I'm pretty sure any users [guessing "plenty" = 2-10] approaching 50k found some exploit allowing runs on multiple platforms for full points, or have trash rosters and so didn't run straight to 230s. And CS's second [bold] paragraph

The quality of the roster is actually pretty irrelevent. A level 230 Rocket does 2800 to all + tile destruction damage to whoever is in front. Nobody on that roster available has 5600 HP besides Invisible Woman and Daredevil (due to buffs). A level 85 Wolverine will survive one Rocket as long as he's not in the front, though you're going to die shortly after if the opponent isn't already stunlocked at this point (and if they are, you should neve have taken that rocket).

kensterr

Psykopathic wrote:

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

@wow.
Crazy how far off each bracket is. People are up near 50k when no one in my bracket tops 7k. Sheesh.

They have no life or somehow use cheats.

IceIX

bahamut685 wrote:

Without Spiderman's Blue5/Blue4, there's no such thing as strong enough for those. 230 goons = one-hit everything for us mid-level players who hit the 230 wall after playing each mission ONCE.
I'm pretty sure any users [guessing "plenty" = 2-10] approaching 50k found some exploit allowing runs on multiple platforms for full points, or have trash rosters and so didn't run straight to 230s. And CS's second [bold] paragraph

"snip comment"

references stunning 2-3 enemies and dealing thousands of damage at the start, which most people facing 230s (roughly 80% of players) can't hope to do.

The multiple 230s there was in reference to having 230 level enemies in every sub-event of a PVE mission and 200-ish ones besides. Not in reference to scaling. The Boost change happened at the same time as scaling went in so it is impossible for the Boost change to have *resulted* in the 230 situation that Heroic 4 has. It is a separate event and should not be conflated.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

D3PCS LITERALLY said that the 230s issue was INTENTIONAL. And still no comment on the points/unattainable progression prizes for the PVE event?

I just looked through CS's posts and saw nothing about the 230s. It *is* intentional that you can scale up to 230 level enemies if you demolish the PVE events long enough. This would mean that your team would be plenty strong for those opponents, so that's probably who you should be getting. It is *not* intentional to walk into a PVE event and have the whole field of mission pins read that they're all 230s, especially so when you were just facing maybe 150s in another event after scaling. As for progression prizes, they're all attainable. With over 1 day remaining still there are several users that are just past the 8000 Iso-8 reward and staring at the first X-Force reward.

As I said before（page 3), the problem is not if we can beat 230s, but the time we spend in one fight. 1 hour for 6 fights of 230s with 1000 points, totally a waste of time.

IceIX

kensterr wrote:

They have no life or somehow use cheats.

Possibly the former, and maybe that they have a job that allows them to play. We had a main heal in WoW that worked as an EMT on 24 hour shifts. He'd drop sometimes during a raid for a call, but other than that was always on since he had to stay at the station and available.

Just took a look at the top 3: Lots and lots of playtime, long time players, fairly powerful rosters. Number 4 has a lowbie roster which didn't get hit by the monster scaling and has also put in equivalent playtimes to the top 3.

Unknown

What's the max number of points you can get in a cycle without grinding one pointers? 4800 or something? That would take 5 days of grinding out every mission during each 12 hour cycle just to get up to 48000.

That's insane.