Regarding the "News" "Response to Recent Changes"

Unknown

I, by instance, liked the recent changes. I liked how thor and wolverine get scaled at the game, they are still strong, but not OP, while their skill look much more fitting for their "personas".

My opponents at PVP are much more balanced now, I can almost always get good points fight against stronger foes and less points fight against weaker foes.

All in all, I really like games that change, powers changes and the game gets more fluid. Look, I play only for the fun, I try to appreciate each event and each fight so I'm not too worried at gaining a lot o ISO fast (although I do have ISO lack! ).

I also understand that some people get mad at the nerfs and all, but for me, its just part of the game, and i try to see it as an honest try from the developers to balance the game and make it more fun, and of course more profiting (at a normal level).

I don't have a lot of time to play, nor invest real money (except for the starter pack), but I appreciate the game and enjoy my time whit it (for me its just a game, what means it should be fun, and I am truly having a lot of fun by now)

Tks for ur time reading this, best of luck for everyone, have fun!

IceIX

Toxicadam wrote:

I was thinking about this post last night and totally forgot to ask you if 'time played per user' has also increased in this same time frame you examined? Because ISO acquisition is almost purely a function of total playtime.

Overall less time per session, more sessions per user which balances out to the same-ish playtime, give or take a couple percent depending on what events happen to be running at a given time.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

I was thinking about this post last night and totally forgot to ask you if 'time played per user' has also increased in this same time frame you examined? Because ISO acquisition is almost purely a function of total playtime.

Overall less time per session, more sessions per user which balances out to the same-ish playtime, give or take a couple percent depending on what events happen to be running at a given time.

Has the time to complete a match stayed the same?

Also, did facebook shares become more generous? Or are my friends playing more?

IceIX

pandaberry6 wrote:

Has the time to complete a match stayed the same?

Also, did facebook shares become more generous? Or are my friends playing more?

Time to complete a match stayed regular then spiked after Thor and Wolverine were changed. They have been sliding back down since then though. They're still above where they were, as many people's anecdotal evidence also suggests. No change to FB sharing.

Unknown

I definitely think the changes to Wolverine and Thor were needed, because Wolverine needed to be scaled down, Thor was fulfilling too many roles (tank, AP generator, damage dealer) and after I calmed down I realized they were still good characters. Then I sold them, because it made sense economically. Now I miss Wolverine and I'm working on a new one. He is at level 12 right now... lol. I definitely appreciate them letting us sell the characters at an increased rate. had this not been the case I would have definitely quit, and the company would have lost one of their best clients (presumably...)

I don't like the use of HP for the +100 boost, because while the other boosts doubled in price, this boost has increased 10X+. I can generate 200 ISO in 2 fights guaranteed, but not 100 HP. so this is too much of a deterrent, and i will quit using it altogether. I did use it to try to win a tourney, failed to win, and spent extra money between shields and boost, so I won't be making that same mistake again. i will now grant myself a shield budget and be disciplined.

The skip tax is interesting, because it will mean that when I really want to skip and don't have the money, I have to fight somewhere else to make it. This means more grinding. Considering how much I skip, this will get more costly than the boosts altogether, so I'm going to have to change my strategies to minimize skipping. Obviously buying ISO packs to skip is out of the question.

As far as feedback for the company, I think you have made enough revenue improvement changes for one month, and you need to focus on making the player base happy, otherwise chances are this game won't be around 1 year from now.

Here is a list of short targets:
1) improve 4 star characters (they are supposed to be the strongest yet aren't)
2) add more offline content (a second mission, I don't care if you charge.)
3) customization features (improve my profile, let me stand out between every other person that runs the same teams over and over)
4) minimize impact of nerfs by communicating early and listening to feedback
5) address PVP and tournament standings so that there is greater stability at the top (i.e. phenomena where you get attacked by 5 people in the time it takes to do one match)
6) address PVE auto-balance algorithm so you don't face 3 230 LVL opponents for a reward of 200 units.

KillStormFirst

Meh... If you skip 3 or more from a specific level (like the forest for example) then charging the player 10 iso or even 50 iso or whatever isn't all that bad. They aren't putting weaker players up against monster-maxed-out players unless said weaker players kept skipping over legit challengers. I guess my point is fight who they put in front of you or pay the b**** tax. Most of the people who are leading this "revolt against the devs" aren't exactly the top echelon players either. Plus there are better things we can revolt against. Like nerfing. And them wanting money for things that make the game cooler. Nobody says "You know what makes the game awesome??? Skipping opponents!!!" The cost of buying covers, increasing the number of things that cost Hero Points instead of iso -- simultaneously increasing the cost of iso for things that already had an iso price, and changing character abilities... that deserves a revolt.

Unknown

SUPERTOM wrote:

On a positive note I do like the change in PvP where if I successfully fend off an attack I earn appropriate points. It's nice to finally see a + sign when I open the app and not -150pts because I went to bed.

I also don't mind the boost cost increase. I just use them less and they're a bigger reward when I earn them from battles. Although, to balance that they really need to completely drop the 200+ lvl matches or at least limit them to "boss" levels and give us decent rewards for completing them. It's an insult to spend 15 minutes fighting a difficult match without boosts only to get the same reward as fighting 3 lvl20 assassins.

My biggest worry right now is if/when they nerf Spidey, it will significantly reduce my success rate for higher matches. The game will then be reduced to luck and the reliance on a decent board. And more importantly, not fun. It's a simple fact that sometimes it is not possible to destroy a countdown tile and and I can't think of a single character that can deal out 9000+ damage in 4-6 turns.

And lastly, since they crippled Wolvie's healing factor can they tone back Daken's? At high levels he's healing for over 250 each turn basically making him impossible to hurt unless you use AP. And by the time you build up enough to do a second big attack he's back at full health with 47 strike tiles on the board.

Yeah, i think i should level my dakken to full. Have dakken up to full and use with patches and black widow. MMMM delishus death!

Unknown

We quite overdiscussed it already.

The picture in the announcement is carefully painted like reasonable while it isn't. From all the premises does NOT follow that the palette boost need to cost 100HP in any way.

And that price serves a pretty clear agenda to create a steady income from the players that can afford it. Wlike the game goes seriously toward pay2win with just this.

If we take the text as the motivation, then the changes would be different:

- the palette boost can not be purchased. Period.
- to fit the other motivations, it remains available through random drops, rewards, green supply
- the store is no longer limited, one can keep a huge collection

Now that set really ensures that it is scarce and is used only when really matters, as resupply may or may not happen. While fair to every player, and can't be claimed but a design change for better balance and gaming.

IceIX

pasa_ wrote:

We quite overdiscussed it already.

The picture in the announcement is carefully painted like reasonable while it isn't. From all the premises does NOT follow that the palette boost need to cost 100HP in any way.

And that price serves a pretty clear agenda to create a steady income from the players that can afford it. Wlike the game goes seriously toward pay2win with just this.

If we take the text as the motivation, then the changes would be different:

- the palette boost can not be purchased. Period.
- to fit the other motivations, it remains available through random drops, rewards, green supply
- the store is no longer limited, one can keep a huge collection

Now that set really ensures that it is scarce and is used only when really matters, as resupply may or may not happen. While fair to every player, and can't be claimed but a design change for better balance and gaming.

Except that it's done exactly what we expected it to do and has helped to better balance gameplay as a result.

Net results of the change for these:
- All Boost can still be purchased through HP if you *need* that boost. Sales of the boost went way down as expected.
- Iso stores of players that regularly purchased the boost went up slightly as they aren't dropping 200 Iso per 3 fights anymore.
- Boost still drops randomly and is seeded throughout mission rewards which it wasn't really before, leaving availability open to those that don't want to spend.
- The stock is still limited for all boosts as it encourages players to "use it or lose it" instead of infinitely stocking them. We already have issues with players just not interacting with the boost system as it is.
- Players adapted to gameplay without the extra punch of AP at the start of a battle and much better metrics on how people are actually performing in battles are coming through.

If all we were interested in is bleeding more real life dollars out of the economy, we would have just left it the same or raised the Iso cost. Monitoring where people spend currency after a real money purchase, we have *less* dollar for dollar conversions on All AP boosts now as HP than we did when it was Iso. More profits simply was not a metric used for this change.

Puritas

pasa_ wrote:

Wlike the game goes seriously toward pay2win with just this.

So... you're concerned that people who can afford to shell out a lot of cash will have an advantage in winning covers that they could...instead just have straight up bought with that cash?


IceIX, since you're here do you have any comment on the direction matchmaking/scaling is going, particularly in pvp? It's confusing that so much effort is going towards levelling the competitive playing field for all players, which completely negates the point of competition in the first place :<

Twysta

They could always change it so that instead of 100hp it costs 1000 iso.
Expensive but less p2w as ISO is (sort of) more readily available than HP.
1k iso is pretty steep.
Okay fine... maybe 2k.
No?

IceIX

Puritas wrote:

IceIX, since you're here do you have any comment on the direction matchmaking/scaling is going, particularly in pvp? It's confusing that so much effort is going towards levelling the competitive playing field for all players, which completely negates the point of competition in the first place :<

The general goal of matchmaking and scaling is to make the game challenging but not overpowering for everyone. PVP is getting there after many iterations and further tweaking. It'll probably never be perfect, but we're seeing far better matchups for players now than we were a couple months back. By "better matchups" we mean that they are matchups that players can play and win, but aren't cakewalks. A string of cakewalks or required skips because the enemies are way too hard are the major enemy there and things we still need to work to fix. In a perfect world, the majority of players would be skipping a fight or two every now and then when they see something they *really* don't like but being able to engage against most of the people that they're matched up against. It's better than it was, but still not there.

Scaling, similarly was created to combat something that we saw with the first Episode but was *really* hammered home in Episode 2.5 (Hulk). We have players all over the spectrum (as intended). All players want to see all the content. We had a range of levels for Eps 1 and 2, and 2.5 broadened that range as veteran players grew in strength and numbers. This unfortunately resulted in a situation where we had pieces of story that some of our userbase simply couldn't access due to it being too difficult to complete. So we brought in the idea of scaling, since getting the difficulty right for each individual player and accounting for their playstyle isn't something that can be done manually. The idea is that, as with PVP matchmaking, the player plays and through a bunch of different metrics are gathered about how well the player is doing in a given match. With enough play, that player will approach enemy levels that are challenging but doable, with some missions being easier and others harder. As their roster gets better, so does the challenge of the enemies (with the idea that the challenge would lag slightly behind the roster growth so that player power *is* actually gained). This way, newbies can still play in events and push for rankings, but longer term players have an easier time of pushing through missions in their totality due to roster breadth and strength along with evolved tactics.

In general, PVP is getting better, but isn't perfect. PVE is starting on the path with the knowledge learned from PVP's hiccups but ran into its own unique set along the way.

Unknown

The game is set up in such a way that it will always be pay2win. Unlike in other freemium games, there isn't any content that has to be earned, all of the content can be unlocked by buying iso and hp. Other games make a distinction between the currencies or items that can be gained through play and those which can be purchased but MPQ does not. As a result, the game is by its very nature pay2win.

Unknown

Ice, I think part of the issue with the matchmaking changes is as follows:

I, and others have no problem fighting hard battles. The issue is that when you walk out of a more appropriate battle, you find out you've been knocked down 2-4x as many points as you gained because attackers always have the advantage.

kensterr

IceIX wrote:

Puritas wrote:

IceIX, since you're here do you have any comment on the direction matchmaking/scaling is going, particularly in pvp? It's confusing that so much effort is going towards levelling the competitive playing field for all players, which completely negates the point of competition in the first place :<

The general goal of matchmaking and scaling is to make the game challenging but not overpowering for everyone. PVP is getting there after many iterations and further tweaking. It'll probably never be perfect, but we're seeing far better matchups for players now than we were a couple months back. By "better matchups" we mean that they are matchups that players can play and win, but aren't cakewalks. A string of cakewalks or required skips because the enemies are way too hard are the major enemy there and things we still need to work to fix. In a perfect world, the majority of players would be skipping a fight or two every now and then when they see something they *really* don't like but being able to engage against most of the people that they're matched up against. It's better than it was, but still not there.

Scaling, similarly was created to combat something that we saw with the first Episode but was *really* hammered home in Episode 2.5 (Hulk). We have players all over the spectrum (as intended). All players want to see all the content. We had a range of levels for Eps 1 and 2, and 2.5 broadened that range as veteran players grew in strength and numbers. This unfortunately resulted in a situation where we had pieces of story that some of our userbase simply couldn't access due to it being too difficult to complete. So we brought in the idea of scaling, since getting the difficulty right for each individual player and accounting for their playstyle isn't something that can be done manually. The idea is that, as with PVP matchmaking, the player plays and through a bunch of different metrics are gathered about how well the player is doing in a given match. With enough play, that player will approach enemy levels that are challenging but doable, with some missions being easier and others harder. As their roster gets better, so does the challenge of the enemies (with the idea that the challenge would lag slightly behind the roster growth so that player power *is* actually gained). This way, newbies can still play in events and push for rankings, but longer term players have an easier time of pushing through missions in their totality due to roster breadth and strength along with evolved tactics.

In general, PVP is getting better, but isn't perfect. PVE is starting on the path with the knowledge learned from PVP's hiccups but ran into its own unique set along the way.

I do sincerely hope that more work is done on PVE scaling by the developers. Even though I did not face level 230 enemies, my roster is still too weak for enemies above level 120 without boosts. I know it's a complex thing to scale accordingly and precisely for every player, but it's something that developer has to get right to prevent further anger and frustration in future events.

Puritas

Wow, wasn't expecting such a detailed response, thanks

Scaling so that everyone is able to see + clear content is nice, but why should everyone be able to compete for the same level of rewards? Obviously the past two weeks where weak rosters had a strong advantage was inadvertent (4* rewards went to new players every single bracket I was in), but those of us with filled out rosters have very little left to work towards. Even if "player challenge" manages to become balanced properly across character strengths, none of us really appreciate seeing those rewards go instead towards players who don't even have **s yet.

Can't it simply be mild scaling on the first playthrough, and then standardized level increases every repeat regardless of roster?

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I haven't sank 5 months of play into this game in order to save 30-40 minutes of play per tournament when hitting the same rank as someone starting out

Bacon Pants

jozier wrote:

Ice, I think part of the issue with the matchmaking changes is as follows:

I, and others have no problem fighting hard battles. The issue is that when you walk out of a more appropriate battle, you find out you've been knocked down 2-4x as many points as you gained because attackers always have the advantage.

I don't know if it's possible, but some sort of patch to this would be nice. I feel that you should only be able to be attacked once while engaged in a pvp match. It's absolutely ridiculous to win a match and come out with negative points because you were attacked three times in that five minutes.

Unknown

Bacon Pants wrote:

jozier wrote:

Ice, I think part of the issue with the matchmaking changes is as follows:

I, and others have no problem fighting hard battles. The issue is that when you walk out of a more appropriate battle, you find out you've been knocked down 2-4x as many points as you gained because attackers always have the advantage.

I don't know if it's possible, but some sort of patch to this would be nice. I feel that you should only be able to be attacked once while engaged in a pvp match. It's absolutely ridiculous to win a match and come out with negative points because you were attacked three times in that five minutes.

The issue is that that would be a free shield. Just park yourself in an open match for the last 15 minutes of a tourney. But I agree. My biggest problem is the meat grinder that tournaments become.

I have no incentive NOT to skip and find an easier battle, knowing that whether it's easy or hard, I'm going to lose points in the end. Better I should do the easy battle and gain a few precious seconds/minutes so I can try and quickly regain what I lost, than fight an appropriate battle and lose some more.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Puritas wrote:

Scaling, similarly was created to combat something that we saw with the first Episode but was *really* hammered home in Episode 2.5 (Hulk). We have players all over the spectrum (as intended). All players want to see all the content. We had a range of levels for Eps 1 and 2, and 2.5 broadened that range as veteran players grew in strength and numbers. This unfortunately resulted in a situation where we had pieces of story that some of our userbase simply couldn't access due to it being too difficult to complete. So we brought in the idea of scaling, since getting the difficulty right for each individual player and accounting for their playstyle isn't something that can be done manually. The idea is that, as with PVP matchmaking, the player plays and through a bunch of different metrics are gathered about how well the player is doing in a given match. With enough play, that player will approach enemy levels that are challenging but doable, with some missions being easier and others harder. As their roster gets better, so does the challenge of the enemies (with the idea that the challenge would lag slightly behind the roster growth so that player power *is* actually gained). This way, newbies can still play in events and push for rankings, but longer term players have an easier time of pushing through missions in their totality due to roster breadth and strength along with evolved tactics.

I think there's one thing being missed there. If the newbie player can play and beat all the same missions as the veteran player (because they are scaled lowed) AND also get the same rewards, the veteran player feels like what's the point of levelling up at all? Being able to see people's rosters has hammered that home, it aggravates people to see their carefully built roster be less successful in "winning" the PVE event than some level 40 1-star characters...

I appreciate that it's good for newbies to be able to play all the story missions. I started playing during The Hunt and so while I was able to reach Devil Dino thanks to the boosted crit multiplier combined with environmental tiles (which was fixed just afterwards) I couldn't play every mission in The Hunt and ditto in the first playthrough of The Hulk, and that really was annoying. But the way to combat that is to make the story missions more accessible, while still having some missions which don't scale down and mean people with a mid-range roster have an advantage over newbies, and the kinds of players who have a bunch of maxed 3* characters (not me) have an advantage over mid-range people.

bahamut685

jozier wrote:

Ice, I think part of the issue with the matchmaking changes is as follows:

I, and others have no problem fighting hard battles. The issue is that when you walk out of a more appropriate battle, you find out you've been knocked down 2-4x as many points as you gained because attackers always have the advantage.

This! This morning toward the end of the No Holds Barred, I scraped through a tough +31 point match (took about 4 minutes, because I used boosts to cement a top 15, only to come out with a net -186 from being hit by 7 people during the match, and dropped from what would have been 7th into the 80s. This is WAY fubar'd and CAN'T be 'as intended'.