4* DDQ: Your Thing is on FI-YAAHHHH!

Hayek

Official D3 stance on TUs: the enemy is not supposed to have them. The only reason it's still there is because currently, the only way to disable them is to disable TUs for all DDQ nodes.

Meanwhile, they continue to pick the most awful, match-ending TUs like aggressive recon and flame jet. If the enemy is not supposed to have one, meaning the fight is balanced around no TUs, why not just give them bagman every time?

simonsez

Hayek wrote:

Official D3 stance on TUs: the enemy is not supposed to have them. The only reason it's still there is because currently, the only way to disable them is to disable TUs for all DDQ nodes.

Three solutions: either go ahead and disable them for all nodes, or let us have them, or learn how to code, for crissakes...

Doing nothing isn't a solution.

Lightning_Man

Beat this on my second try with a level 165 1/5/4 Thing. Boosted +2 b/g, +2 all ap, and 100% damage all colors. I think that last boost has been key to winning the past few times. Learned from round 1 to deny red, as that fireball is damaging. Got a few lucky cascades that allowed shooting off his green power twice. Used red stun to stop him from his black and team up power. Cashed in my legendary token and got a blue cyclops! After some dud legendary's the past few times, I'll take it!

Dragon_Nexus

simonsez wrote:

Hayek wrote:

Official D3 stance on TUs: the enemy is not supposed to have them. The only reason it's still there is because currently, the only way to disable them is to disable TUs for all DDQ nodes.

Three solutions: either go ahead and disable them for all nodes, or let us have them, or learn how to code, for crissakes...

Doing nothing isn't a solution.

You forgot a fourth solution.
Have the enemy's TU be something irrelevent, like Switcheroo.

The fact the TU is almost always something that compliments the characters suggests to me that this wasn't a "Whoops! didn't see that coming!" but something actually planned. No way the RNG would accidentally pick the characters and abilities it does.

simonsez

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

You forgot a fourth solution.
Have the enemy's TU be something irrelevent, like Switcheroo.

I thought of that, but I figured they'd say that was too complicated, so mentally, I filed that under "learn how to code"

PeterGibbons316

Yeah, that TU made this match a lot harder. It's impossible to deny 4 colors. This would actually be easier if that TU only cost 3 instead of 14. You could avoid red/green, let it go off being useless, and then continue. But with 5 TU matches needed you are almost guaranteed to have 3 red/green to get stolen by that time.

4/2/3, level 147 Thing. After 3 or 4 fails I boosted R/Y, G/B, and 100% R/Y match, and got it first try boosted. I denied red at all costs, then TU next, almost completely allowed green (outside of making my own green matches when available), and once I had enough green to use YSS I didn't worry as much about black.

Having 4 red helped with a 2 turn stun. I saved it until the board looked like it was going to give a red/TU match regardless of the move I made.

Magic

I gave it a go with 0/2/3 Thing. Not even close. AP denial - TU steals it. No denial (all in for green) - burn, baby, burn.

No fun. Not going to waste more time/boosts. It's another of the series so well done D3.

I like puzzle and I like challenge but this is day time **** on a bus. No thanks

Unknown

2/2/5, level 130. Took two tries.

First one done in my bracket.

100% match, 50% R/Y/G/B damage.

HustyReaps

First attempt was successful with my 143 Thing.

+2 g/b, 50% g/b match boost, 100% all match boost.

Focused on red, team up, and black denial.

The board was extremely lucky, too, with not much of his power colors available after I denied him the entire match. The only power he got off was green. Finished with around 6k health left. I went in thinking I had no chance because of my number of red covers, but was absolutely shocked by the outcome.

And I was awarded a Goddess red cover. Yay, 1000 iso!

Lopan15

Lvl 170 2/2/4 took 8 tries. I had 700 health left to Totch's 830 on my last turn (he had enough black to throw down on his next turn). Made a useless purple match which magically super cascaded into a 5 match and crit match to win. Didn't feel like I beat him so much as lucked into a win. Pulled yellow Thing from LT.

Phaserhawk

Compensation should be Thing cover of your choice. Took me 14 tries. 4 times I got him under 1K and Then AP steal causes a Fireball/Inferno. Got so lucky on win. Was out of good boosts. Used the crit tile and scored 3 of them in the match

The Viceroy Returns

This match up is one of the more **** ones we've seen so far.
You'd think my 2 1 3 MIGHT stand a chance, as I've won a few other 4 DDQ matchups with about that leveled a character, but this one is maddening.
Without the TU it would be very doable I feel (like I felt the Ant Man VS Jean Grey with her Inferno was).

The AI having a Team Up, and especially one that is crazy powerful for them, is straight up garbage. It has been completely dismissed as an issue by D3 and barely mentioned at all since the inception of 4 star DDQ highlights. Even more condescending/insulting was the response, after they unexpectedly took ours away = (lumberg voice) "Yeah... We had to take away TU's for you cause we didn't want you to Deadpool Whales to victory, but the AI still has them, and we don't know when/if/how we can take theirs away, so, yeah..."

This just shows how scatterbrained the dev team is and that their priorities are solely in the MOAR CHARACTERS!! mindset and nothing else. Command Points were only added as a new revenue stream (even though they claimed 5 stars would never be purchasable, yet here we are). After a while those "would be nice to fix" issues get so numerous that they get in the way of the game as a whole. We almost there now, it's just that us vets don't realize it.

It's like the old addage, if a bit morbid = If you try to drop a frog into a boiling pot of water, he'll jump out pretty much instantly cause the water's too hot. However, if you put a frog into a lukewarm pot of water, he'll stay. Then, if slowly turn up the heat more and more, the frog won't jump out even when the water eventually is hot enough to boil. And by then it's too late.

That's why the rating of the "would you recommend the game?" question is pretty low by most vets. We've already become acclimated to the boiling water, and we don't want others to get dropped in.

Arimis_Thorn

I've tried 3 times with my 0/3/3 Thing and the best I get is HT down to about 70% or so. I see people with only slightly better builds that have won it, so it *may* be possible, but basically he can NEVER get off a single Fireball or he one shots me.

I may keep trying throughout the day if I happen to have my healthpacks topped off or something, but probably going to miss this one.

DrStrange-616

It's like they want me to rage quit. Maybe that's their secret plan!

Drive people like me to the point of such frustration that we stop posting here about how **** up this game is.

Between this node and having to pray for a generous board to have a chance, or grinding the CP nodes into the dust that makes up dust for one lousy CP, I'm ready to start drinking...early.

I know, I know. You can just quit. Well, to those people I say, cram it with walnuts! Not really. I could. But like so many, I've invested a lot of time and effort to get to this point. It's not easy to walk away. However, having so much of my fate left to the fickle finger of fate is ****.

Worst of all, I don't think they care. *sniff*

Omega Red

My interest in this game is quickly fading out thanks to these unpleasant 4* DP nodes. This is **** gameplay, a blatant cash-grab via health pack sales, a major source of frustration for players.

My Thing is 2-4-4 which on paper sounds like it should have little issue but in reality is a 2-0-4 since the yellow power is totally useless. Of course, you have to fight a boosted toon with three cheap damage-dealing actives and a **** you team up. Four tiles to deny with only two of them useful for player.

I already tried five or six times. It didn't help that in two of them the game crashed on me right after entering the fight, like it tends to do sometimes for whatever the reason.

Someone said in a past thread that this is a very anti-player gamemode. I agree. I might try again later today but I'll remind D3 that I won't spend a single dime on covers, nor health packs nor ISO. To those who do: It might make your gameplay easier but it'll never stop being a ****, unpleasant experience. Stop rewarding this piece of **** gamemode.

You can keep your **** legendary. It's not that special a reward to bother with so much ****.

Unknown

JVReal wrote:

1/0/1 lvl 74 Thing here. Went about as well as you would think. Didn't get his TU off, but did use his Green in an unmatchable spot and his Black killed me immediately afterwards.

The whole TU for the AI but not for the player bothers me a bit. How can you not code the AI to not use it? If you can block it from the player, you should be able to block it from the AI.

The biggest thing that bothers me is the devs say they can't remove it, their sorry... yet choose TU's that are absolutely devastating to the player and help the AI instead of giving the AI a snarky remark TU every time... or something equally useless. If the devs really feel bad that they can't get rid of it why not give it a weak useless one? Their words and their actions do not match on this front.

Have they ever had special exceptions for the AI using powers?

And I honestly don't even think they can control WHICH power they get, like, most of the time it's been a 2* Team Up or other totally random, not-very-powerful-but-they-exist-so-you-hate-them team ups.

Like, if they had specific control over them I'd think you'd either get way softer or way harder team ups to go with the matchups.

I bet it's just a giant coding mess in there.

SnowcaTT

Would love to see some statistics from Devs about "engagement" on these 4* DDQ's as they get into the newer ones that many fewer people have covered....

Maybe it's time to think about lowering the level of opponent again, like the smaller SG that was up against Devil Dino?

Ludaa

270 535, took 4 attempts before it even let me fire off a power.

Unknown

DrStrange-616 wrote:

It's like they want me to rage quit. Maybe that's their secret plan!

Drive people like me to the point of such frustration that we stop posting here about how tinykitty up this game is.

Between this node and having to pray for a generous board to have a chance, or grinding the CP nodes into the dust that makes up dust for one lousy CP, I'm ready to start drinking...early.

I know, I know. You can just quit. Well, to those people I say, cram it with walnuts! Not really. I could. But like so many, I've invested a lot of time and effort to get to this point. It's not easy to walk away. However, having so much of my fate left to the fickle finger of fate is tinykitty.

Worst of all, I don't think they care. *sniff*

There is something mildly amusing that by adding new stuff and new ways to get bigger rewards in difficult ways it actually peeves people off way more then just never adding that stuff at all.

I stand by loving this node for putting a huge reward up against one unique, but very, very hard fight. But like, you can't have a very, very hard node without all the stuff about "relying on lucky boards" and "ruined by enemy cascades" being a factor, unfortunately.

But it's still one of the funnest fights in the game, imo.

Hayek

SnowcaTT wrote:

Would love to see some statistics from Devs about "engagement" on these 4* DDQ's as they get into the newer ones that many fewer people have covered....

Maybe it's time to think about lowering the level of opponent again, like the smaller SG that was up against Devil Dino?

I think they are making a terrible decision in scheduling 4clops and Rulk into the rotation next month rather than starting the rotation over. Those characters will have been out for just a couple of months. Remember that they were special releases with Ultron and you could at most get 3 covers instead of the usual 5 (4 placement, 1 alliance placement). Sure 4clops was 2k SIM reward, but on the other hand, not many alliances got all 3 of his covers because of ultron difficulty round 1. So expect a lot of vets who usually have enough covers to take on these DDQs to join the chorus of people on the verge of /ragequit.