Discussion on the Balance Changes Feedback Thread

Selvokaz

Versus action with Squirrel Girl and Black Widow! - What's this mean?

Stax the Foyer

"We've secretly replaced your coffee with Folgers crystals. Something went wrong during the switch, though. What do you think of the change?"

"Something went wrong? What does that mean?"

"It means what it means. Drink up, Chatty Cathy."

"Well, it does taste kind of odd."

"'Kind of odd?' What the **** kind of feedback is that, Grandma? Fire up the mass spectrometer and let me know when you've got some quantifiable results. I'll be back in an hour, I'm gonna take all your cash and put it on a Dave & Busters card."

Argon Flame

Can we get a list of the changes that were made? We can then look at the numbers that have changed pre/post update and then we can try those characters we think have improved/regressed and make an assessment, you know, like we're alpha playtesting or something.

I have another question: what effect does championing have on PvE (and PvP) scaling. If creating a champion makes your character weaker (less damage??) how is this reflected by scaling?

Apologies for not having more "data" but I don't have enough iso to champion all my characters at this stage I'm about 2 million iso short of being able do do a full comparison (of 3-stars because well 4-stars are a lot scarier to think about and indicatively 2-stars continue to be a waste of time even after championing)

chamber44

Stax the Foyer wrote:

"We've secretly replaced your coffee with Folgers crystals. Something went wrong during the switch, though. What do you think of the change?"

"Something went wrong? What does that mean?"

"It means what it means. Drink up, Chatty Cathy."

"Well, it does taste kind of odd."

"'Kind of odd?' What the tinykitty kind of feedback is that, Grandma? Fire up the mass spectrometer and let me know when you've got some quantifiable results. I'll be back in an hour, I'm gonna take all your cash and put it on a Dave & Busters card."

brilliant.

CaptainFreaky

So Jamie & fabulous mod team -
We've talked about this now for a couple days - any chance you can convince a DEV to come on and talk about three things:

(1) Their intent with regards to scaling beyond (old) max level for 2*/3*/4*/5* on both match damage and ability damage. How is a 95-144 2* supposed to behave, how is a 167-266 3* supposed to behave in terms of match and ability damage generally.
(2) Boosting - was the change in scaling supposed to make a level 140-166 3* (for example) when boosted for PVP/PVE WEAKER in the post-R91 world than it was before R91?
(3) What exactly is the nature of the bug that Hi-Fi reported because it's vague to me what's supposed to be happening versus what's actually happening with boosted characters in terms of ability damage.

I know I and others would be EXTREMELY happy to see a dev write 1-2 paragraphs on each of these topics so we can understand their intent & direction and provide better feedback since good app development depends on good feedback from the users, right...?

THANK YOU

tanis3303

Warbringa wrote:

I know someone else mentioned it but with them reducing 3* match and power abilities, are they going to reduce goons/minions strengths as well? Playing the Hand ninjas, it sure didn't seem like they scaled them back at all. If they don't adjust goons (and Gorgon - whose red ability is ridiculous), they have just made life way more difficult for all 3* players....

You must be new here

If anything, they will use championing as the excuse to scale PvE enemies even higher. Lvl 500 Moonstone/Ares/Daken nodes, Huzzah! Why make battles interesting and actually challenging when you can just jack up levels on the same 5 characters for cheap, easy "difficulty"?

GrumpySmurf1002

Arondite wrote:

Yes, boosted Thor was positively neutered. One of the worst that I've seen yet, actually. It's hard for me to remember precisely, but I want to say his yellow and green did about 4K and 7K+3.5K+3.K. Now, boosted + championed he was getting like 3.1K and 5.8K+2.9K+2.9K. Just not good.

That's boosted though, which is a bug. Unless it's not. Then it could be. But still probably not. However don't address those here, in case it's a bug.

Pylgrim

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Arondite wrote:

Yes, boosted Thor was positively neutered. One of the worst that I've seen yet, actually. It's hard for me to remember precisely, but I want to say his yellow and green did about 4K and 7K+3.5K+3.K. Now, boosted + championed he was getting like 3.1K and 5.8K+2.9K+2.9K. Just not good.

That's boosted though, which is a bug. Unless it's not. Then it could be. But still probably not. However don't address those here, in case it's a bug.

The more infuriating thing is that the very day the released championing we asked the question "are the significantly weakened boosted characters representative of champions at that level?", a simple yes/no question. If they had answered it in all these days ever since, we could have saved tons of speculation, confusion, anger and guesswork. Going with the puzzlingly vague and corporate "there is a bug with boosted characters" has damaged championing's reception instead of helping.

CaptainFreaky

Sandwichboy wrote:

Boosted 3* cap is also massively weakened from what he used to be. I can't recall the exact numbers, but at 260 previously he was doing over 6k with his red and now at 265 he's doing 4900. His protect tiles are also reduced by at least 30% from what I remember. I really hope the intent wasn't to make fully championed 3* characters the new version of boosted 166 characters because that's going to be a very long way off for most people.

Yes - and it is utterly tinykitty DUMBFOUNDING that SOMEONE can't simply say YES OR NO to such a tinykitty SIMPLE QUESTION as what you are asking - whether it's a bug or their intent to neuter boosted ability damage to the amount that is being reported.

It is frankly beyond me why they can't do this and it pretty much makes me what to throw my phone and/or just ignore this forum for good because it's tinykitty useless.

optimus2861

Basically it feels like, despite championing a half-dozen 3* characters now, my roster got an unexpected, undeserved, unwelcome, across-the-board whack with a nerf bat. Meanwhile my scaling hasn't gotten any better and the goons & enemies sure didn't take the same bat upside of the head that I did. The game has been very frustrating to play the last several days.

As usual, the dev silence simply adds to the frustration.

Sandwichboy

Skorche wrote:

Okay so when I read the initial post about the balancing it said that there was an increase at lower levels and flattening at mid levels and no change at higher levels. I assumed for a 3 star that meant that no changes at 166 which is its max lvl. I'm assuming that meant its maxed champion level.

This balancing suffers from a lack of communication. I would've really liked to have have more then just one line explaining stuff like ohh moonstone is a tank and at lvl 155 has 10876 even though rags at lvl 168 only has 10836. that just seems odd to me that a lvl 155 tank has more then a lvl 168 tank.

This game has some strategy and knowing how characters will scale so I know what teams to bring helps. Its hard for me to know what teams are going to be effective now. Its seems like I'm relearning what to bring and who's effective against what. It used to be I'll bring x because they can one shot y now its like if I bring x they can two shot y but that keeps y in the game too long and bogs me down and ohhh look it gave the opposing team enough time to take down z and grr...

Long story short I like champion I would have been more happy if these changes were introduced by more then one vague sentence.

This GAME suffers from a lack of communication. A consistent lack of communication.

fight4thedream

Guten tag meine freunde!

It seems there is a bit of confusion regarding the Official Balance Changes Feedback Thread [Provide Details]. Apparently, my fellow mods would like to collect hard data regarding the changes after last R91 update. Everything else is being removed for the sake of clarity. Now I understand the OP of that thread seems to be a bit misleading but that's because just like you, we the mod team, were also caught off guard by the changes and weren't originally sure what exactly we wanted when the OP was made. After the OP was posted there was some discussion about what sort of feedback we wanted and eventually it was decided that it would solely be focused on providing details on changes. Unfortunately this is not reflected in the OP but by a later statement my fellow mod-in-arms Malcrof made a few posts down.

On behalf of the mod team, I apologize for the misstep. We should have waited until we had ironed out exactly what it was we wanted from the community before making the post. You have every right to be upset about the unannounced changes and your feedback, positive or negative, is important. So if you wish to voice your satisfaction or displeasure in regards to the changes or lack of communication and information in regards to those changes, please do so here.

I will move posts that have been Rafted here. Obviously, overtly offensive posts will not be tolerated but otherwise feel free to speak your mind. We just ask that you try to keep it civil and constructive (or humorous). Please try not to abuse the tiny kitties. Thank you.

Ludaa

Thanks for doing this, fight4thedream. I spent the better part of the day mine was removed wondering if I was going senile. Looks like I've got upvotes to hand out again.

I'm gonna go ahead and ask, were these all removed by Malcrof? I don't post much, but visit often, and my observation is that this is his forum. If not, my apologies, but he is certainly seen more often than other mods.

fight4thedream

No worries! I honestly don't know who moved what posts although I'm pretty sure Mal did do some moving as he is the most active of us. And by active, I mean he does a significant portion of spam-killing and other forum upkeep duties. I try to pop in and help out when I can but other obligations and grinding PvE (lol), ISO farming and chasing after LTs keep me pretty busy as is. I still have to get around to updating the FAQ (my apologies!). I know some people feel he can be heavy-handed at times but he is a pretty friendly and reasonable dude, so shoot him a PM if you ever have an issue with a mod-decision.

With that said, please remember this thread is for discussing the changes and lack of communication in regards to the R91 update. If you have an issue with a moderator, please either contact the moderator in question or Hi-Fi. Thanks!

Malcrof

Ludaa wrote:

Thanks for doing this, fight4thedream. I spent the better part of the day mine was removed wondering if I was going senile. Looks like I've got upvotes to hand out again.

I'm gonna go ahead and ask, were these all removed by Malcrof? I don't post much, but visit often, and my observation is that this is his forum. If not, my apologies, but he is certainly seen more often than other mods.

No, not all. Also, any upvotes given are still there when the posts are moved back in.

kalex716

Drummerboycroy wrote:

Am I actually reading this thread correctly? The developers are asking us to gather data on the changes they made?

Oh man, you couldn't make this stuff up...

DBC

The dev's are not exactly asking us. The community manager (or team, if he is lucky he has a team) is asking us to help.

The problem is, community is a different department than development. If the community team comes to the dev's and says "players are pissed, they don't like that the new changes make them weaker", the dev team, or specific designer (who is likely incompetant) says in a way to brush off the community team so he can avoid real hard work, and move on with his newer tasks:

"Well I need more specifics, because according to my method, things should be glorious, and those stupid players just don't understand why we had to make the changes that we had to do yada yada yada because I suck at my job, and don't have time to go threw thread after thread reading about why those forum schmucks hate our game... Get me specifics so I can take action!!!"

Now the community manager, has to sigh, and come back to us, and ask us to yes, do that shity designers job for him.

Source: I work in game dev.

Linkster79

Is there really any point in discussing things any farther? The community managers have already shown that they are either unable or unwilling to address any of the players concerns or acknowledge any feedback. I mean c'mon they can't even get the freaking Preview or Patch Notes threads up to date so really what makes any of us think they are going to take the time to do anything that may actually help us?

CaptainFreaky

I'm the last to defend them but today was a holiday for many in the US. Lets see if they are responsive on Tuesday. If not, then I will agree with you 1000%.

I do agree that keeping up with the coming soon page should be trivially easy for them though and that they can't even do that speaks volumes.

For the life of me if I were a leader at demiurge I would take 15 minutes at the end of each day to provide some feedback based on whats happening in the game and on the forum. I'd give it to D3 to publish here. Nothing that breaks an embargo but feedback nonetheless. It's not hard to do, but they seem oblivious or willful in their lack of communication and feedback.

Lets see if they get their act together tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath but I'll cut them a bit of slack on MLK Day.

Linkster79

CaptainFreaky wrote:

I'm the last to defend them but today was a holiday for many in the US. Lets see if they are responsive on Tuesday. If not, then I will agree with you 1000%.

I do agree that keeping up with the coming soon page should be trivially easy for them though and that they can't even do that speaks volumes.

For the life of me if I were a leader at demiurge I would take 15 minutes at the end of each day to provide some feedback based on whats happening in the game and on the forum. I'd give it to D3 to publish here. Nothing that breaks embargos but feedback nonetheless. It's not hard to do, but they seem obliious or willfull in their lack of communication and feedback.

Lets see if they get their act together tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath but I'll cut them a bit of slack on MLK Day.

This is an international game. I and many others don't care for American holidays. I have to work every national holiday in my countey except for Christmas day. In an industry and society that work 24 hours per day 7 days per week there should be at least somebody on call in case of emergencies. I appreciate forum feedback isn't in any way an emergency but the lack of communication is either ineptitude, laziness or just outright spite. Seriously if I were to treat the customers of the company I work for this way I would be facing real disciplinary action.

The idea of this feature is excellent, it truly is but it has been sullied by poor feedback and lack of vital information. For them to ask us for hard data is actually laugh out loud ridiculous. All we wanted is for our characters to have the same power at max level and then get stronger the more covers we add to them and for them to scale the exact way enemies do in story events. Why they had to make things overly complicated and difficult for themselves is beyond me.

kalex716

Linkster79 wrote:

Is there really any point in discussing things any farther? The community managers have already shown that they are either unable or unwilling to address any of the players concerns or acknowledge any feedback. I mean c'mon they can't even get the freaking Preview or Patch Notes threads up to date so really what makes any of us think they are going to take the time to do anything that may actually help us?

On the contrary! This thread shows exactly the opposite in fact. The devs need more information, and sadly, they either don't give a ****, or are too busy to investigate themselves.

Therefore, the community team in a rather embarrassing way, has been asked specifically to get hard data from us, so that the shity dev team, can be empowered with some specific directions for where to focus their efforts in order to do their paltry pathetic job.

Remember, the team that interfaces with us, are not the same team as the guys who design, build, and **** up the game we all still irrationally pay to play. 2 different departments. This is very much a "help us help you" thread, as sad as that sounds.