AI Heroes Gaining AP for Abilities in Prodigal Sun

Gandalf333

It's normal for SHIELD spies, technicians, etc. (non-heroes and villains) to gain AP for their abilities each turn. But with the Prodigal Sun event, when a hero is paired with them, they're gaining AP for their abilities as well. So Punisher is gaining Black for his Molotov Cocktail (when the other AI characters do not have black abilities), Thor is gaining green for his Call the Storm, etc.

This is a pretty big issue and making matches potentially much harder than they should be. Thor getting Call the Storm even with me denying him green matches is pretty rough. I'm hoping this is not working as intended, but either way, I'd like to see it go away ASAP.

*added*

I can also confirm that this is acting different depending on the node. The Sentry node in the current round (SHIELD Base: Los Angeles) is the one granting Thor green AP, while "Bring the Thunder" is working as it should.

CrookedKnight

Players aren't exactly big fans of hero/villain+feeder nodes, but given how much effort the devs have devoted to making it more noticable that goons generate AP for their team, the behavior is absolutely working as designed.

Scoregasms

I'm pretty sure it's universally accepted that Tile Movers + Goon Feeders = frustrating PVE experience. But as CrookedKnight noted, this is working by design, but they have improved it since the PVE remodel, it used to be much worse (if you can believe it). Not sure if Hells Kitchen has started up yet in PVE, but iirc, there's a 2 Green Feeding Goon + Human Torch node that was always awful, regardless of what level the node was for the player.

While it does seem cheap (actually, it definitely is), it is how the game has been played for a while now and sometimes, you just have to get lucky or +boost prior to even beat them before things get out of hand.

I've always been on the side that if a Tile Mover exists with Goon, then Goon AP Generation should be halted until that Tile Mover is dead or stunned. I get Goons can't move the board, but it does seem a bit overboard to give them match AP AND auto-generated AP on the same turn. In some matches, it's really dumb luck the AI decides to use the Goon abilities over the Hero/Villain.

hesjingixen

I think some of y'all might be missing his point.

Gandalf333 wrote:

So Punisher is gaining Black for his Molotov Cocktail (when the other AI characters do not have black abilities)

I'm pretty sure that's NOT normal. Goons should still only generate AP in the colors they have powers for. I haven't observed this myself (taking this PvE off), but if he's right, that sounds like a bug.

alphabeta

One solution may be for there to be a distinction in the background somewhere - goon AP can only be spent on countdown tiles and hero AP on hero abilities.

Though then you'd have loads of people flooding on to complain about the number of countdowns created and against muscle threaten would seem even more overpowered - at the moment some of the AP gets frittered away - if it call had to go on countdowns you'd have some interesting and complex choices on approach and team composition.