** Moonstone (Dark Avengers) **

Daiches

Could you guys please only change abilities during downtime of an event. You owe me 3 healthpacks! Oh wait, there is no more downtime, just one long grind. How about a splash screen then?

optimus2861

d0nk3y wrote:

And holy cow, does this power stink to be on the wrong side of. Two buffed Battleplan strike tiles and a buffed Exquisite Technique attack tile suddenly changing sides means I'm eating an extra 1100 points of damage every turn.

Yup. As I said earlier in the thread, Moonstone is now a damned-if-you-do (Control Shift spam!), damned-if-you-don't (Gravity Warp spam!) villain with regards to special tile generators.

I don't think this change was well thought-out at all. She's too tanky to kill fast, especially when she's over-leveled as she often is, so you're all but guaranteed to eat at least one of her powers every match now.

Which may be exactly the point. Gotta sell health packs.

simonsez

optimus2861 wrote:

I don't think this change was well thought-out at all.

Of course it was. With IF and/or Cage, we've been basically able to neuter the **** that is Gravity Warp on a lv350 moonstone. This was the most straightforward way they could penalize someone for not wanting to eat 5k damage every few turns.

CaptainFreaky

simonsez wrote:

optimus2861 wrote:

I don't think this change was well thought-out at all.

Of course it was. With IF and/or Cage, we've been basically able to neuter the **** that is Gravity Warp on a lv350 moonstone. This was the most straightforward way they could penalize someone for not wanting to eat 5k damage every few turns.

This would make an interesting Q&A inquiry - how much consideration/testing is done on abilities on over leveled modes (eg PVE, Gauntlet, etc). Do Devs consider the impact of an ability when the character is cranked up to level 270+ in scaled PVE? My guess is that in the case of Moonstone, they certainly did the re-design with a nod toward her effecting both non-special tile as well as special-tile generators. I'm not so sure they really thought about the impact when she's boosted to lvl 300+ in PVE - or if they did, they probably didn't care (after all...health packs).

simonsez

CaptainFreaky wrote:

I'm not so sure they really thought about the impact when she's boosted to lvl 300+ in PVE

None of the ones we've heard from play at that level, so even if they did think about it, it'd be wasted mental energy.

CaptainFreaky

aesthetocyst wrote:

optimus2861 wrote:

d0nk3y wrote:

Which may be exactly the point. Gotta sell health packs.

Have I registered my daily complaint about the ridiculous prevalence of Supernova TUs in PVE recently? No? Well, here it is, seems like a good segue. Seems like PVE is a 1-trick pony these days. The only means of presenting difficulty is in scaling up characters and in throwing in **** like Supernovas. The difficulty isn't in winning or losing, it's in maintaining a viable lineup over the long haul. Who is willing to maintain the larger roster, burn the most resources on heals and boosts.

When you do manage to completely dominate a node, just as your about to check out with your team intact, oops, SUPERNOVA!

I literally just took two Supernova TU's in Hulk PVE in the last 10 minutes before reading this. It has become a daily occurrence for me as well in PVP & PVE. It hasn't resulted in me losing a match, but it obviously makes me burn through health packs more quickly. My feeling is that Demiurge is fine tuning their ARPDAU and forcing players through the classic freemium model of "force the user to wait, but allow them to pay to play more" is one of the ways they are doing this. Making PVE a grindfest in the last few hours of each sub, then bringing in high powered TU's to force health pack usage seems like a pretty transparent strategy to increase ARPDAU. My only suggestion is - don't succumb to the temptation to buy health packs. If people don't buy them, then Demiurge will abandon trying to monetize them (as they abandoned the whole "buy-in event" strategy last year). The result is that health packs will become less of a big deal if there isn't money to be made from them. Of course, tinkykitty knows what Demiurge would do next...

Demiurge_Will

There has been no change to enemy Team-Up odds recently. Everyone faces the same odds, no matter how you're doing in the event or how much money you've spent or anything like that; there's no tricky stuff happening.

But we do want variety in what Team-Ups you're up against, and we could use more of it in the current event. In the Story events that are currently using just Dark Avengers for the allowed enemy Team-Ups (that's Heroics and a couple of the episodes), I'm going to change the enemy Team-Up tables so that all villains are allowed (matching the enemy Team-Up tables in events that have been created more recently). You'll see that change in events that we run in the future.

xellessanova

Demiurge_Will wrote:

But we do want variety in what Team-Ups you're up against, and we could use more of it in the current event. In the Story events that are currently using just Dark Avengers for the allowed enemy Team-Ups (that's Heroics and a couple of the episodes), I'm going to change the enemy Team-Up tables so that all villains are allowed (matching the enemy Team-Up tables in events that have been created more recently). You'll see that change in events that we run in the future.

So Sentry's Supernova was added back in by intent? After August 2014 Sentry and Juggernaut were removed from the AI Team-Ups list.

Arimis_Thorn

Well she's certainly made Hulk Bombing a lot more dangerous.

Oh, and level 250+ Venom is an abomination.

Buret0

simonsez wrote:

optimus2861 wrote:

I don't think this change was well thought-out at all.

Of course it was. With IF and/or Cage, we've been basically able to neuter the **** that is Gravity Warp on a lv350 moonstone. This was the most straightforward way they could penalize someone for not wanting to eat 5k damage every few turns.

Scarlet Witch's CD tile is going to be your best friend.

Arctic_One

Team-ups have been a bit of a sour issue for me since inception. As a player I use them in about 1% of nodes, maybe less. AI uses them in 50% or more nodes would be my best guess and sometimes they use it multiple times in a node. AP steal attacks do not steal team-up AP, why? This is not some conspiracy theory but just a curiosity.

Demiurge_Will

Arctic_One wrote:

AP steal attacks do not steal team-up AP, why? This is not some conspiracy theory but just a curiosity.

They were balanced around stealing from just 6 colors, and most of them are quite strong as is. In most cases, we'd have to take something else away or make them cost more.

Psylocke's Bewilder could safely change to affect Team-Up AP, but it's not clear that would make the power more interesting/fun/useful. When considered just as a playable character, Yelena's Lethal Recon would have headroom to affect Team-Up AP, but Yelena's balanced as an enemy for early-stage players and we don't want to make her stronger for that reason.

[There are no current plans to weaken or strengthen any of the existing AP steal powers, just to be 100% clear.]

stowaway

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Arctic_One wrote:

AP steal attacks do not steal team-up AP, why? This is not some conspiracy theory but just a curiosity.

[. . .]

[There are no current plans to weaken or strengthen any of the existing AP steal powers, just to be 100% clear.]

I appreciate the preemptive clarity. But to be additionally clear, Loki's green does steal teamup AP.

Demiurge_Will

stowaway wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Arctic_One wrote:

AP steal attacks do not steal team-up AP, why? This is not some conspiracy theory but just a curiosity.

[. . .]

[There are no current plans to weaken or strengthen any of the existing AP steal powers, just to be 100% clear.]

I appreciate the preemptive clarity. But to be additionally clear, Loki's green does steal teamup AP.

Yeah, thanks for adding that. We added Mischief after the change from Environment tiles to Team-Up tiles, so it was straightforward for us to balance for that.

Fezzik the Great

Dude, this is a terrible change! Yes, it took a lot of matches but that was a big power: to be able to switch a countdown your way OR stun them! Good purple powers are hard to find. And no offense, but it sounds like they're saying they were too lazy to keep adjusting the rules for timer changes. That's a pretty lame excuse.

If there's no outcry over this then a lot of you were not using Moonstone to her full potential. She is one of my go-to characters and she's been seriously handicapped! Many games don't even use protect or attack tiles. Plus, you've removed her stun feature!? Her black power is now useless more than half the time.

CHANGE HER BACK!!!!

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Arimis Thorn wrote:

I can't seem to see a good reason to collect and level her. Is there something I'm not considering?

Not that I can see. As you implied, you already have two 3*s that serve the same function, and do it much better.

Only reason to collect her is potentially for pve 2 star essential nodes that the developers have taken to using now! Beyond that no.

Ducky

aesthetocyst wrote:

Mischief steals teamup AP, yet doesn't trigger on a match-4 or -5 of teamup tiles. What gives?

TU tiles can't be converted into CD tiles...

Unknown

The description says, it's able to steal Attack or Defend tiles, yet it doesn't work against Daken's passive, which generates Strike tiles (there's a message popping up: "Not enough required tiles found on the board", even though there are plenty). Is it supposed to be like that?

Salgy

working as intended...

attack
defend

description says nothing about strike tiles...

Unknown

Higher level of the power will steal strike tiles too, but it won't do that initially.