New Venom Bomb poll

The Viceroy Returns

The goon feeder **** is one of the worst designed PVE concepts this game has. EVERY TIME Carnage was with goons he had at least one Red feeder. EVERY TIME!
This one was just about as cheap as the Hood + yellow feeders in the Rocket & Groot PVE. They had to nerf the entire Maggia set of goons to try to offset it (they only generate 1 AP per their colors now instead of 2 per turn).
At least these fights didn't scale up to Ludicrous Speed in levels for me and were surprisingly manageable.

Not to mention any node that has Carnage + 2 goons, making attack tiles every damn turn along with their Countdown tiles.
Another irritating thing is the very first time you got to fight Eddie Venom, he was boosted super high and had 2 feeder goons.
Nice way to ease in introduction for him to see how he would actually play huh? The 2 feeder mechanic distorts any character they are with, and you get no sense if they are actually balanced or not.
That Venom Yellow is some **** though. I think in the final fight on the final sub mine deals over 6K damage for only 9n Yellow. Who cares if I get some measly 50 Point Shield tiles...

If there weren't powerhouse characters like Luke Cage and Iron Fist boosted, this event would have been even harder.
I hate to think of what the next run will look like when they will probably give us **** characters like a 3 star Iron Man or Daredevil or other launch-era 3 stars that haven't been updated in ever.

The high point value of the LT in the progression reward is **** too.
I may not get it for the first time since LT's were added as a Progression reward.

All I have to say is whatever new feature they are teasing about the last 4+ months had better be worthwhile...

Crowl

The situation with goon feeders is just so ridiculous, trying to play somewhat skillfully and denying an enemy colour gets rendered irrelevant because the goons will generate it anyway.

There are plenty of improvements to the current ones that could make them much fairer, such as:

• tone down their individual generation, this merely delays the issue a few turns but would still make things fairer.
• limit the non-match generation to a single goon a turn in double feeder teams.
• have the goon ap be used for goon skills first.
• only allow goons to generate ap if there was a potential match in that colour on the board.
• pick colours for goons that do not feed the main opponent.

Merrick

There should be another option. Depends on who the boosted characters are at the time.

I did decently this event, but without the boosts to the heroes for hire, spider-man, & gamora, it would have been a vastly different story.

I hated the feeders. But the one change I'd really like to see is with the guard dog ability. Make it only go off if I match the special tile, not when the AI matches it.

Dragon_Nexus

I'd be able to offer an actual opinion if they hadn't run this over christmas. I didn't bother starting it until day 3 and I wasn't lucky enough to enter an empty bracket, so I did two runs, was still 400th+ and just gave up.

That final Carnage node on the third sub event though was pretty nasty. It does puzzle me when developers put their hands up and say "Okay, we agree it's unfair to have goons feeding characters that stomp you with move spam. We'll cut that out in future." and they did! We don't get shot up by Hood as much with his two muscle henchmen, for example. Long gone are the days of Ragnarok and Magneto's 2AP abilities being fed by goons so they fired every turn.

And then...they go and pull this PvE? With Carnage, one of the most devestating 4* characters, fed red so he spams his scithes. I said from day 1 of Carnage being revealed that this was a character designed to eat health packs, either using him and him damaging your team, or the AI using him and sapping your HP as the fight continues. There are a few characters out there that seemed designed not for us to use but for the game to scale up way past their max level and stomp on us. I said the same thing about 1* Spider Man and I'm surprised how infrequently we've seen a level 250+ version of him.

atomzed

I will play it again JUST to see this line from Morales. (And Ares got another dialogue line!)


On a more serious note, I like this story. The introduction venom as a new character was excellent. This is as good as when sentry was introduced. Can we have this way of introducing all new characters, pretty please¿

Putting carnage in the story was also a nice touch, as you bring in all the symbiotes in this story arc.

One of my friend also mentioned about how good the art of the symbiote Statue of Liberty. I thought it was cool and forms the background of the battle.

The new goons are good. At low level they are dispatched easily but at higher levels their special tiles adds up quickly. Feels really like the symbiote multiplying and eventually getting out of control. That was a nice touch (never mind how difficult it can get)

What I like them to change is goon feeding carnage red. To take a scythe on the third turn and every 3 turn thereafter feels cheap.

The Viceroy Returns

atomzed wrote:

On a more serious note, I like this story. The introduction venom as a new character was excellent. This is as good as when sentry was introduced. Can we have this way of introducing all new characters, pretty please¿

Putting carnage in the story was also a nice touch, as you bring in all the symbiotes in this story arc.

One of my friend also mentioned about how good the art of the symbiote Statue of Liberty. I thought it was cool and forms the background of the battle.

The new goons are good. At low level they are dispatched easily but at higher levels their special tiles adds up quickly. Feels really like the symbiote multiplying and eventually getting out of control. That was a nice touch (never mind how difficult it can get)

What I like them to change is goon feeding carnage red. To take a scythe on the third turn and every 3 turn thereafter feels cheap.

Agree with pretty much all of this.
The story/dialogue/characters used was great a welcome breath of fresh air. Especially using "new" Characters in the story. And the Luke Cage line about Queens.
Even seeing Moonstone & Bullseye again wasn't a chore this time around.
The new goons are great in concept, and of course it's always great to have another piece in the toolbox for the devs when making new PVE's, but the specific ways they were used this go around is where it went wrong for me.

The red feeding goons with Carnage is just wrong and should have never happened. MAYBE in an easy low level node. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson from Hood + Muscles, or some of those ahole red feeders + Juggernaut nodes in the a Juggernaut Heroic PVE.
2 of the 4 new goons generate red, and almost all of them generate green. This means that any character with them that has either of these colored powers is an annoyance that is difficult to strategize around without taking a ****-ton of damage. You'll probably get hit by Venom's high damaging green at least once if you're not careful/lucky by having the goon use the AP first.
Aside from stunning, I still don't know if there is a good way to "trick" the goon into using the AP instead of the character.

Overall this PVE is a very welcome addition to the game.
However, just like pretty much everything else new they've added in the past year, it could definitely have used some very obvious tweaks/balance/adjustment to have been even better.

The Amadeus Cho reveal PVE was probably the best new non-character content they've released in a long while based on its fun to bugs/balance ratio.
And, the fact you got a Chulk cover on top of it was even better. This should happen for every new character PVE reveal; a guaranteed cover through node rewards. It would probably get a % of the player base to spend that otherwise would not, because they now have to find a roster spot for the new guy and could Whale Him Up, even just that one cover.

fmftint

So, it's back, anyone want to change their vote?

Ungoliant

Loved the art of the symbiote goons, and it's nice seeing new content! However, playing against them wasn't as fun; mostly because it feels like the goons just slowed down the action too much, with waiting for all their passives and abilities going off each round than really playing. Once in a while is fine (like Cage's passive or Iron Fist's passive), but it felt excessive during Venom Bomb.

That said I'll give the rerun event a go.

Crowl

Ungoliant wrote:

Loved the art of the symbiote goons, and it's nice seeing new content! However, playing against them wasn't as fun; mostly because it feels like the goons just slowed down the action too much, with waiting for all their passives and abilities going off each round than really playing. Once in a while is fine (like Cage's passive or Iron Fist's passive), but it felt excessive during Venom Bomb.

After going through my first clear of the first sub, I think I am definitely just going for the LT rather than a placement for the reason you mention, the passives are just too spammy, slowing the match down and forcing health pack usage.

HxiiiK

atomzed wrote:

I will play it again JUST to see this line from Morales. (And Ares got another dialogue line!)


On a more serious note, I like this story. The introduction venom as a new character was excellent. This is as good as when sentry was introduced. Can we have this way of introducing all new characters, pretty please

I agree with this one, it was AWESOME that there was some amount of humour in the story (it IS spidey, after all, spidey's known for his one liners) and how he went 'Oh.' after Cap. Marvel told him who they were; Golden!

Makes me want more spidey themed stories, I appreciate the time taken to craft the storylines and the humour; just please leave out the goon feeding red to carnage and we have ourselves a winner

Tatercat

I was fine with this event as is, but I'll be sitting out this one out , at least until Friday night or Saturday. New Years seems like a perfect excuse to take a break and you should never play while drunk (and I will be drunk tonight).

That said, I might try a late slice by the weekend, to hopefully take advantage of low player interest to get a top 10 placement. I could use some covers of Mrs Grimm's ever-loving, blue eyed baby boy.

Note to developers tho, I promise to buy a Asgard Treasure of HP if you do some epic trolling and replace Carnage with Bagman in the final sub this time.

abmoraz

CrookedKnight wrote:

GrimSkald wrote:

The Good
New content! I'm always in favor of new content.
New goon types - adding more variety to your opponents is always a nice thing, it keeps the game from feeling stale.
Good structure - I thought the structure of the event was particularly good. There weren't any wave nodes (not necessarily a good thing, but the wave nodes really add to grinds so I'm putting it in the postivie collumn,) no "extra unrepeatable nodes to slow down your first clear" (I'm looking at you, Florida,) and the fact that there was a "boosted loaner" every sub gave us a chance to really test out the new character.
New story content, including use of characters that haven't really been featured in other PVE stories like Captian Marvel, Luke Cage, and She Hulk.

The Bad
The new goons were surprisingly hard, and very intensive on the Health Packs. This is not always a bad thing - shaking up strategy isn't bad, but even with good strategy things could go really south really quickly, particularly with the Carriers. A bad board and you were in trouble.
The Legendary Token was set at a noticably higher point level than other PVEs.

I agree with pretty much all of this. I generally like survival nodes but this is already a pretty grindy event, especially with the high Legendary target, and debuting a survival-focused PvE while survival fights are bugged would be exceptionally bad form. As far as the "ugly" of Carnage/Venom with red/green feeder goons, I think this only really crossed the line when we had Venom with two symbiote goons and was firing his green every couple of turns -- when it's two villains and one feeder, and we have a bunch of buffed heroes who can stun, I think it makes for a fun fight.

On balance, I like the event and would be happy to play it again without a new character on the line, provided the legendary token is set lower and there's still a good set of buffed heroes. Dealing with the symbiote army without a team that can take down the top threats fast or strategically stun them would get very very frustrating.

There was a lot of ... "discussion"... on my alliance board about the Carnage/Venom and the feeders. A lot of upset people. The key to those boards was to NOT do the standard strategy. In just about every PvE node where you have feeder goons and heroes, you clear the heroes first since they can match and fire stronger powers. The 3 nodes in discussion here were the exact opposite. You *MUST* kill the feeder(s) first to limit the heroes to 1 or 2 powers. Then they get pretty easy.

My strategies were:
She-Thor (270 5/3/5), XFW (250 5/4/3), Hood(166 5/5/3). Switch target to the feeder, match damage until either Thor's blue or XFW's black is ready. If thor, switch to carnage, stun him, then switch back to feeder. If black, just annihilate the feeder. Then hate match either red/green (if Carnage is still alive) or red/yellow (if just venom and feeder), using the reds to Thor them to death. Use any yellow for thor (if there are a lot of fist tiles) or Wolvie (heal/extra damage-shake up board) as the situation requires.

or

Cage(166 5/4/4), Iron Fist (3/5/5), Gamora (5/4/4): again, switch to the feeder. Focus matches on Red, Green, Yellow (in that order). Soon as you have enough green, use Gamora's skull crusher to stun 2 (doesn't matter what 2). Unleash the built up yellow (Uppercut) and Red (slash) on the Feeder then Carnage. Wipe up Venom with whatever is left. Cage's protect tile should keep you from getting eaten alive by the fist tiles and you can use IF purple and Cage's Black in late game for damage/stun.

Sm0keyJ0e

My strategy was generally different with the Carnage nodes--I'd go after Carnage, not the goons, and as soon as there were enough red AP for Carnage to launch his red power, I'd stun him with Spidey's cheap stun. The goons when then use the red AP for their CD's. It didn't always work out perfectly (especially with a bad board and no blue), but I would say I was able to delay Carnage's red power at least 50% of the time.

Tatercat

abmoraz wrote:

There was a lot of ... "discussion"... on my alliance board about the Carnage/Venom and the feeders. A lot of upset people. The key to those boards was to NOT do the standard strategy. In just about every PvE node where you have feeder goons and heroes, you clear the heroes first since they can match and fire stronger powers. The 3 nodes in discussion here were the exact opposite. You *MUST* kill the feeder(s) first to limit the heroes to 1 or 2 powers. Then they get pretty easy.

That was my first instinct last time too, to target the feeders first, stemming from every Doom + doombots node we've ever faced. But when I did that (even on the 1 feeder node with Venom) Carnage would still get at least two Scythes off, usually more. So I tried targeting Carnage and rushed to kill him first. That worked better for me overall, as he never got more than two Scythes off before I put him down, if that. It costs health packs but I only lost once to him - that last essential Mile mode, but it was bad board. (I used the boosted IF/Cage + Shehulk mostly, with occasional help from HB and JG).

Daiches

The most important change to make is to remove the red feeder from the carnage/venom nodes.

I feel those nodes would be fun with Carnage's black tile spam feeding Venoms abilities. If only you didn't get demolished by a Symbiote scythes every three turns.

Gantz1985

Carnage/Venom - fed by goons.

Terrible design - do the devs even playtest before release!? How is this fun? You need to replace the goon with a non generating red/green goon OR reduce the amount of red/green generated. Very frustrating...