** Moonstone (Dark Avengers) **

Buret0

I don't know whether to sell or keep.

I almost never like the situational powers (like Loki's Black, Daredevil's Purple). I also have her at level 94 and that ISO could go a long way for me with the recent ISO changes.

I actually liked her with Cyclops (Yellow) and Hulkbuster (Blue). Turn the whole board red and then use Moonstone's red power to fry the enemy. Note: I have five Hulkbuster covers... none of them Red, hence the need to bring in someone else to use up all that Red.

Problem is, it was slow, and you were just as likely to cascade a bunch of Red AP and leave the board without that many reds.

In the end, if I'm using a level 94 character to launch red attacks, I'd rather use Magnetic Flux.

I guess it all comes down to how often she will be boosted to level 150 and how often we are going to need her for the 2* essentials.

Ebolamonkey84

udonomefoo wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

1. If her buyback INCLUDES some HP, that would be greatly appreciated.

The increased sell price is just Iso-8.

The idea behind the increased sell prices is that it's an opportunity to reclaim a portion of the resources you've invested in a character when they change, so that you can invest them elsewhere, but virtually no one has invested Hero Points to upgrade Moonstone's powers.

Yeah, you really can't complain about that. And to those complaining about having to face her in pve, don't use a special tile generator in that node, problem solved.

Also, hate to white knight so much in one post, but how do you complain about the devs wasting time on this when he said right in the op that it was done because the old power caused so many bugs and additional time investment in testing for all new cd abilities.

If you don't bring a special tile generator, her purple can hit like a tank. With old version Moonstone, you only really had to worry about her red if you brought a special tile generator; now you will need to worry about red and either purple/black. She could also potentially steal your special tiles and then cast purple for damage if you have no tiles left.

MarvelMan

I have to admit, I like the pick your poison aspect of pink/black. Not that she was/is/will be in my roster though.....


And she will be worse to fight in overscaled PVE. Its just a question of how much. Might not be bad. Lets wait and see.

Buret0

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Sounds like an okay change -- but there are many powers like this already in the game. All of the powers below are highly situational. If an opponent team puts out a lot of special tiles, they are useful. Otherwise, they are completely useless. All of these powers need to be reworked so that they can do something else when there aren't special tiles of the right sort on the board.

Doctor Octopus
Manipulation - 11
Dr. Octavius reaches out with his mechanical arms to use controls and devices, smashing enemy plans easily. Swaps 16 pairs of random tiles, destroying any swapped enemy Attack tiles, and dealing 110 damage for each tile destroyed.

Falcon
Inspiration - PASSIVE
Falcon spreads his wings, motivating his teammates as he swoops into the fight. When the team makes a yellow match, Falcon improves the strength of 2 friendly Protect, Strike, or Attack tiles by 7.

Squirrel Girl
Nuts From Above - 9
Squirrel Girl leaps onto her unsuspecting enemies from the trees in an unrelenting assault of tail and claws. Deals 329 damage to the enemy plus 55 damage for each enemy Protect, Attack, or Strike tile on the board (up to 8 tiles).

Those three are fine as is, but I agree that a stun or a heal for Loki, (new) Moonstone, Daredevil, and She-Hulk might make sense.

Falcon's isn't really situational because he can create his own tiles with Bird Strike and there is no need for an enemy tile.

SG's isn't situational... it always deals damage, just deals (potentially) a lot more damage when there are enemy specials. (Oh hai Mohawk)

Doc Oc still gives you a random board, it just doesn't deal any damage. You also didn't include Doc Ocs passive, which does nothing for you unless the other team has specials.

While not mentioned, Double-Double Cross is kinda situational... you just need to activate it once if they have strike tiles, otherwise you are just gifting them one. And when the AI gets its hands on the ability, they usually just gift a strike tile to the other team. The only reason that ability needs to be adjusted is because of the useless AI.

Now I just wish that Gravity Warp did a bit more damage OR it wasn't completely random which CD or special tile was grabbed. At level five it is still far inferior to Idle Hands (in that it requires a special tile to swap and you can't choose which tile to swap unless there is only one on the board). Especially because most of the time you just want to use it for the damage and the targeted destruction of a single board tile (which I often use to make match fives).

Now, so long as there aren't any CD tiles on the board, you can use Control Shift to clear the path for Gravity Warp's damage.

Again, Moonstone is horribly used by the AI. The only reliable move that she has is her Red beam of death (which she usually gets off because there's better targets than Moonstone). If there are any special tiles on the board, the AI will often use Gravity Warp just to move them to a safer location.

I'm still not sure that, in the absence of AI adjustments, Moonstone's change makes her useless except against a very limited group of teams in PvP, and only when boosted to 150. In PvE, she can substitute in as a poor man's Loki for Purple and Black board management and tile conversion, but with a Red cannon (for where Loki's Green is useless against goons).

Maybe at five covers they should add back in a stun? Then they could make it (at covers one to four) steal X special tiles OR stun (if none present) and at five covers make it steal X tiles AND stun (like OBW blue's healing power).

Unknown

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

No comment. I just wanted to say thank you. You have no idea how much the communication is appreciated.

Y'all don't be strangers. Feel free just to pop in the forum and just say hi sometime.

After reading these forums for a few days I'm not surprised if the devs ignore them. There is a 50:1 Negative:Positive post ratio around here. Basically EVERY post and every reply is **** about what they don't like. Reading them makes me wonder why I even play the game if I'm going to get as jaded (and completely entitled) as those who have been playing for a year or more. I can't begin to imagine the damage to morale that would happen if the devs were more actively reading all the vitriol that's directed at them, especially since most of it presumes that every change someone dislikes was specifically designed to completely screw them over.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Control Shift can lead to some great stories (like that time Miles stole a Recovery Countdown from Wolverine (X-Force)), but it has a lot of drawbacks: It’s situational and complicated for a 2-star [...] And it adds development and testing effort to every power that uses a Countdown tile in a new way, creating bugs and taking time away from other features we could be developing.

We fought to make it work for a long time because it can lead to cool moments, but ultimately a simpler, less expensive ability makes more sense for this character.

I'm going to start by mirroring other people's sentiments regarding communication and transparency. As such I will take you at your word on your reasoning for these changes, and thank you for taking the time to express them here for us to digest and attempt to understand.

Yes, Control Shift was an overcosted power that along with several others (Ballistic Salvo and Sentinel of Liberty say "Hi!") has long needed adjustment. As a 2* villain the implications of this power change are much more relevant in how it will be used against us (at ridiculously overscaled levels in PvE), and it is slightly disturbing that it is now arguably better than a 3* power (Settlement) and a 4* power (Double-Double Cross) that do similar things with far greater complications. Even so, taken at face value the changes are not unreasonable in and of themselves. That said, I find your comments that I've quoted above very concerning. The notion that a troublesome power, that while cool and different causes significant development issues, needs to be changed is not shocking. What is disturbing, however, is the trend of taking all the different and interesting powers out of the game for one reason or another.

CMags' blue was deemed overpowered (rightfully so), but instead of tweaking it and keeping a similar feel to the character we got copy/paste Falcon/Storm replacements, killing what is fondly remembered by many (myself included) as one of the most fun characters to use. The X-Force rework was long in coming, and Surgical Strike was a really interesting power with a lot of moving parts that required some thought and preparation in how to use it optimally. When he was deemed too powerful, instead of a workaround that kept the interesting bits intact it was simplified and sent off to the land of the bland. Too many times powers and characters have been altered for what may (or may not) be sensible reasons in ways that oversimplify and detract from the enjoyment of what is supposed to be at least in part a puzzle game that rewards creativity and intelligent play.

Okay, let's face it. Very few people really care about Moonstone or Control Shift. Everyone will adjust to facing her in PvE and the world will continue to spin on its axis. But you have sacrificed another power that was interesting and different. We can't have AP gathering from tile destruction now because of charged tiles. We can't have reasonably costed color swapping and tile manipulation because of Professor X. Now apparently we can't have countdown tile manipulation either because it causes too many back-end problems.

Where does it end? If the only tools we're allowed to have moving forward with which to slog through thousands upon thousands of hit points per battle are direct damage abilities and throwing special tiles back and forth, it's not going to make for a very interesting game to play. Challenge yourself to find solutions that don't suck all the color and flavor out of the game for the sake of simplicity. Fight harder for those "cool moments". They're more important than you think.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Hi, all,


Control Shift can lead to some great stories (like that time Miles stole a Recovery Countdown from Wolverine (X-Force)),

You mean that ONE time?

That is the only remotely "cool" thing that has ever happened with this overpriced power...and it happened ONCE.

I can't wait use Moonstone and this new power on my team against my stupidly over scaled PVE opponents.....OH Wait...Guess who is on EVERY PVE TEAM?

Cool Story Bro...long over due change.

I'm sure it is going to benefit the player base immensely...

marc

wymtime

Demiurge_Will wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

1. If her buyback INCLUDES some HP, that would be greatly appreciated.

The increased sell price is just Iso-8.

The idea behind the increased sell prices is that it's an opportunity to reclaim a portion of the resources you've invested in a character when they change, so that you can invest them elsewhere, but virtually no one has invested Hero Points to upgrade Moonstone's powers.

Well played will, well played.

On a side not anyone notice that Moonstone a 2* character at level 5 black is better than She-Hulks blue at level 5? She hulk buffs the 2 that she steals, but stealing 3 special tiles is actually more useful.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Hi, all,

Will here from Demiurge to let you know about an upcoming change to Moonstone’s Control Shift power.

To refresh your memory, Control Shift steals an enemy Countdown tile and stuns the enemy if there are none. Upgrades increase the stun and can shorten the Countdown.

Control Shift can lead to some great stories (like that time Miles stole a Recovery Countdown from Wolverine (X-Force)), but it has a lot of drawbacks: It’s situational and complicated for a 2-star. It’s expensive to fire at 17 AP. The nature of the power doesn’t lend itself well to a clean, understandable upgrade path. And it adds development and testing effort to every power that uses a Countdown tile in a new way, creating bugs and taking time away from other features we could be developing.

We fought to make it work for a long time because it can lead to cool moments, but ultimately a simpler, less expensive ability makes more sense for this character.

The cost of Control Shift is decreasing from 17 to 9, and the power now steals enemy special tiles:
At level 1, 1 Attack tile.
At level 2, 1 Attack or Protect tile.
At level 3, 2 Attack or Protect tiles.
At level 4, 2 Attack, Protect, or Strike tiles.
At level 5, 3 Attack, Protect, or Strike tiles.

(As always, these numbers might change between now and when the change goes live as a result of further testing.)

Whenever we make significant changes to a character, we increase their sell price. That’ll be true for Moonstone, too: her sell price will increase (to roughly 50% of the Iso-8 that was needed to level her up, or the current sell price when that’s better) for 2-4 weeks when the change happens.

We expect this change to happen in a patch the middle of next week.

This is outrageous. Why give Shulkie's power to this evil tinykitty

Unknown

Sold my Ms a couple weeks ago out of necessity (roster slot shortage) to make room for the latest PvE essential character, and by the sounds of the changes, I'm pretty OK with the decision...

DBC

Buret0

wymtime wrote:

On a side not anyone notice that Moonstone a 2* character at level 5 black is better than She-Hulks blue at level 5? She hulk buffs the 2 that she steals, but stealing 3 special tiles is actually more useful.

I guess that depends on the quality of the tiles available. If you are talking about the third tile being a Sentry Sacrifice tile or a Hitman yellow tile, then you are right.

If you are talking about one more Magneto protect tile from his, then the buff is going to certainly give you the edge.

Wobby

udonomefoo wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

1. If her buyback INCLUDES some HP, that would be greatly appreciated.

The increased sell price is just Iso-8.

The idea behind the increased sell prices is that it's an opportunity to reclaim a portion of the resources you've invested in a character when they change, so that you can invest them elsewhere, but virtually no one has invested Hero Points to upgrade Moonstone's powers.

Yeah, you really can't complain about that. And to those complaining about having to face her in pve, don't use a special tile generator in that node, problem solved.

Also, hate to white knight so much in one post, but how do you complain about the devs wasting time on this when he said right in the op that it was done because the old power caused so many bugs and additional time investment in testing for all new cd abilities.

Let's be fair. You have to bring a tile generator against high level Moonstone or Gravity Warp is a huge chunk of life taken off.

Lidolas

MikeHock wrote:

Who cares about Moonstone? I can't believe time is wasted on a useless 2* when there are so many other more important issues that need to be addressed. How about Demiurge focus on fixing the bug with OBW and Mystique, where critical tiles explode in mid-air? The thread below has been ignored for 7 months & the issue itself is about 1 year old?
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17505

How about you focus on showing the enemy AP AT ALL TIMES, for mobile users? It's only been asked of Demiurge since the game first started......

The Devs can't win, can they? Many forumites seem to complain often about how useless Moonstone is. Now that they buff her, we have people complaining about that.

Seems like a quick and easy fix. Not what I'd have preferred but I'll take it.

Lidolas

TLCstormz wrote:

2. If you all could STOP releasing new characters so often and work on our existing ones that will help us and NOT harm us (Moonstone and Bullseye do not fall into that category, nor does nerfing 1*s or 2*s, buffing Spidey, Mohawk, GSBW, and Punisher does (but more effectively than Ock and Beast, pls)), that would also be greatly appreciated.

We are in our 2nd PvE in a row without a new character release, and this one, Hulk, is a 7 day event. I like the break and I hope they are using the time wisely.

Lidolas

Demiurge_Will wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

1. If her buyback INCLUDES some HP, that would be greatly appreciated.

The increased sell price is just Iso-8.

The idea behind the increased sell prices is that it's an opportunity to reclaim a portion of the resources you've invested in a character when they change, so that you can invest them elsewhere, but virtually no one has invested Hero Points to upgrade Moonstone's powers.

I understand this, but it does make me a little I saw in the spoilers that a change was coming. I bought a slot for a 2nd moonie hoping to capitalize on it. At least I'll have a spot for the next hero.

simonsez

For crying out loud, just come out and say that you don't want ANYONE with a developed roster to play PvE anymore. Give baby Daken a devastating attack, give Bullseye 13k health, give Moonstone yet another ability that will now beat the **** out of you... hell, you might as well just go ahead and finish the job and give Yelena a 6AP lethal recon ability.

Unknown

I hope they will buff all the dark avengers used in PvEs. Decreasing casting cost of those characters with goons will just be...

I'm overjoyedly speechless.

rixmith

My only good Moonstone stories revolve around her stealing my Captain America shield countdown and then using all that Red AP on the shield return to blast me to bits.

Certainly this makes her a pretty useful 2* especially against Muscle nodes. As an opponent it will force me to rethink my strategy when facing her. Currently I can just bring Luke Cage or Iron Fist and she is pretty useless. Now she'll move up the priority queue in who-must-be-dealt-with-first. And getting rid of the complexity of countdown stealing is a very good thing. Overall I think it is a good change.

fmftint

Stax the Foyer

Demiurge_Will wrote:

TLCstormz wrote:

1. If her buyback INCLUDES some HP, that would be greatly appreciated.

The increased sell price is just Iso-8.

The idea behind the increased sell prices is that it's an opportunity to reclaim a portion of the resources you've invested in a character when they change, so that you can invest them elsewhere, but virtually no one has invested Hero Points to upgrade Moonstone's powers.

No complaints about that in this case, since most of us are swimming in Moonstone and other 2* covers Scrooge McDuck-style, but when considering increased sellback prices in the future, please consider:

1) Letting us sell characters for the full value of ISO that we put into them, and

2) That earned 3* and 4* covers also represent resources invested, not only in terms of ISO and HP spent on boosts and shields, but also in terms of time.

Time investment has become more meaningful with the recent changes to health levels and boosted characters. It's more difficult to play both PvE and PvP at a high level, so we're making a decision between focusing on PvE rewards or PvP rewards. Earning covers in PvP means forgoing covers in PvE, and vice versa, especially with PvP progression awards still the same as before the MMR/health/boost changes.