Update To Powered-Up Levels

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi folks,

Starting today, heroes that are Powered-Up in events will be stronger at their starting levels. Powered-Up heroes will remain the same strength at their highest levels.

New Hero Powered-Up:

4-Star:

Minimum: 145 Maximum: 345

Weekly Powered-Up:

4-Star:

Minimum: 140 Maximum: 350

3-Star:

Minimum: 95 Maximum: 240

2-Star:

Minimum: 51 Maximum: 150

1-Star:

Minimum: 5 Maximum: 68

Story Powered-Up:

4-Star:

Minimum: 160 Maximum: 360

3-Star:

Minimum: 134 Maximum: 260

2-Star:

Minimum: 91 Maximum: 170

1-Star:

Minimum: 5 Maximum: 85

Versus Powered-Up:

4-Star:

Minimum: 165 Maximum: 375

3-Star:

Minimum: 145 Maximum: 290

DrStrange-616

I do not understand what this means.

Malcrof

Ok, i think understand this now.. even a 1 cover 4* lvl 70, when boosted, will start with a min level of 145 if new, 140 is an old one, but no matter their Champ level, they max out at 345 boosted?

How will this work when someone has a max champ 4* @ 370?

Stax the Foyer

Malcrof wrote:

Ok, i think understand this now.. even a 1 cover 4* lvl 70, when boosted, will start with a min level of 145 if new, 140 is an old one, but no matter their Champ level, they max out at 345 boosted?

How will this work when someone has a max champ 4* @ 370?

I think you're right about everything but the champ levels. I think (hope) that those continue to pile on top of the boost, which is what I'm currently seeing in Gauntlet.

Malcrof

Stax the Foyer wrote:

Malcrof wrote:

Ok, i think understand this now.. even a 1 cover 4* lvl 70, when boosted, will start with a min level of 145 if new, 140 is an old one, but no matter their Champ level, they max out at 345 boosted?

How will this work when someone has a max champ 4* @ 370?

I think you're right about everything but the champ levels. I think (hope) that those continue to pile on top of the boost, which is what I'm currently seeing in Gauntlet.

Sounds like we have a winner!! Very nice change, this will help test out new releases, and will make the loaner in a new release PVP more viable.

GrumpySmurf1002

This would make a lot more sense if the old values were included.

I think this means, for example, that Nova will range from 165 to 375 instead of 100 to 375 for his event, but hard to tell for sure with the wording.

I don't think this means that a fully champed level 370 4* is only level 350 when boosted.

Linkster79

Can this please be applied to when the AI uses these characters in Story events? Getting really fed up of Juggernaut doing 6k damage every second move. Making opponents overscaled isn't the challenge the game should be presenting. If players beat these opponents without losing too much health we get punished by the scaling increasing, we lose too much health or perish we come to a halt whilst we wait for health to replenish it really is a catch 22 situation.

TheHueyFreeman

Linkster79 wrote:

Can this please be applied to when the AI uses these characters in Story events? Getting really fed up of Juggernaut doing 6k damage every second move. Making opponents overscaled isn't the challenge the game should be presenting. If players beat these opponents without losing too much health we get punished by the scaling increasing, we lose too much health or perish we come to a halt whilst we wait for health to replenish it really is a catch 22 situation.

In a manner of speaking, the level scaling issue with Juggs isn't about an AI thing. It's because the scaling changes weren't made to 1* and non player characters (Gorgon/Ultron/etc).

Pylgrim

David, can we please get a word about problem with hugely decreased damage for 2* and 3* characters' abilities when powered up? (asking in case it's related to this change) We've been begging for an answer to this for almost a month now. If this is an intended change we would at least like to know it for sure and maybe get a rationale, as it's an enormous downgrade to the 3* players' capacity of progressing to the 4* tier. It is appalling that a change of this magnitude has not been at least acknowledged.

_Vitto

I swear I read the OP at least 5 times, and I understood nothing.
Then I switched back to the game, and HB in the gauntlet is not as buffed as he has been earlier.

I just don't get why these changes out of the blue are applied to the game, while bugs (read "strongest-color-choice bug") or strange nerf (what Pylgrim pointed out) are ignored.

This time, it feels to me that you noticed HB was too strong in the Gauntlet and you had to nerf him somehow with a good (?) excuse.

Or maybe I'm dumb and I imagine things.

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Pylgrim wrote:

David, can we please get a word about problem with hugely decreased damage for 2* and 3* characters' abilities when powered up? (asking in case it's related to this change) We've been begging for an answer to this for almost a month now. If this is an intended change we would at least like to know it for sure and maybe get a rationale, as it's an enormous downgrade to the 3* players' capacity of progressing to the 4* tier. It is appalling that a change of this magnitude has not been at least acknowledged.

Hi Pylgrim,

I believe what you are referring to are the intended balance changes that came in with Champions. This has been acknowledged as intended and weeks ago a thread was started for player feedback. The designers have been keeping an eye on that. The thread is here:
Official Balance Changes Feedback Thread (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=37871).

I don't think you're talking about temporarily boosted characters, but if so, that should have been fixed with the recent R93 update:
"- Fixed a bug where character buffs were being incorrectly calculated. All buffs (Weekly, Event and New Hero) should be working as intended now."

This post (OP/See above) is related to new Min/Max levels for boosted characters.

That said, there is still more work the devs are engaged in for boosted characters and scaling and this is why the matchmaking tests have been delayed a few weeks ("Due to work that needs to be done fixing bugs related to minion and boosted character scaling - we need to push matchmaking testing to March (tentative)." - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38849).

Hope this helps and doesn't add confusion.

Pylgrim

"David wrote:

Moore"]

Pylgrim wrote:

David, can we please get a word about problem with hugely decreased damage for 2* and 3* characters' abilities when powered up? (asking in case it's related to this change) We've been begging for an answer to this for almost a month now. If this is an intended change we would at least like to know it for sure and maybe get a rationale, as it's an enormous downgrade to the 3* players' capacity of progressing to the 4* tier. It is appalling that a change of this magnitude has not been at least acknowledged.

Hi Pylgrim,

I believe what you are referring to are the intended balance changes that came in with Champions. This has been acknowledged as intended and weeks ago a thread was started for player feedback. The designers have been keeping an eye on that. The thread is here:
Official Balance Changes Feedback Thread (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=37871).

I don't think you're talking about temporarily boosted characters, but if so, that should have been fixed with the recent R93 update:
"- Fixed a bug where character buffs were being incorrectly calculated. All buffs (Weekly, Event and New Hero) should be working as intended now."

This post (OP/See above) is related to new Min/Max levels for boosted characters.

That said, there is still more work the devs are engaged in for boosted characters and scaling and this is why the matchmaking tests have been delayed a few weeks ("Due to work that needs to be done fixing bugs related to minion and boosted character scaling - we need to push matchmaking testing to March (tentative)." - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38849).

Hope this helps and doesn't add confusion.

Thanks for the answer David. I initially suspected that the change was the "intended balance changes" that you mention. However, they were said to be, and I quote (emphasis mine)

3 and 4-Star Hero powers have been adjusted. Powers are stronger at lower levels, slightly weaker at medium levels and unchanged at Max Level.

In reality, though, we find out that maxed 3*s, when "powered up" deal approximately 25% less damage than they used to deal. I believe this is a result of the change in the damage curve (which now is supposed to be bottom-heavy) through their normal levels (40-166) being extended beyond their maximum levels. It made it so that only when fully championed PLUS powered up those characters are as strong as they once were, which if intended, would mean that championing, instead of allowing you to make your 3*s more powerful, made them quite literally 100-covers weaker for the purpose of buffs. This was not fixed in R93, which for all I can tell, merely fixed a slight error in the amount of levels granted by a weekly or "featured" buff.

This specific issue is the one we haven't received acknowledgement for, so I hope I'm being able to communicate exactly what I'm talking about so you'll realise that it hasn't been addressed.

udonomefoo

Yeah, David, to say that this was "acknowledged as intended" is disingenuous at best. The info we were provided was so vague it was impossible to tell what was intended and what was bugged.

Saying:

Ability and match damage of 2-Star, 3-Star, and 4-Star characters have been re-tuned when above their Max Level. Now go play and see if you can figure out what we changed!

Is not the same as saying:

We lowered the ability and match damage of 2 & 3 star characters when boosted above max level and increased the ability and match damage of 4 & 5 star characters above max level and here's why: blah blah blah blippity blah.

It's one thing to not provide good info with a patch.
It's another thing to ignore repeated requests for info for a month.
It's a whole other thing to then show up and say "what? we answered this question a month ago."

zodiac339

So, trying to lock even more newer players out of PVP? 1 star buffing weakened while featured characters strengthened. The ISO change is good, especially in Gauntlet where we now know exactly ho many times repeating a node is worth something. Usable character scaling wasn't necessary.

fmftint

"David wrote:

Moore"]


Versus Powered-Up:

4-Star:

Minimum: 165 Maximum: 375

3-Star:

Minimum: 145 Maximum: 290

This seems like a vain attempt to slow down the speed of CC matches

CaptainFreaky

"David wrote:

Moore"]

Pylgrim wrote:

David, can we please get a word about problem with hugely decreased damage for 2* and 3* characters' abilities when powered up? (asking in case it's related to this change) We've been begging for an answer to this for almost a month now. If this is an intended change we would at least like to know it for sure and maybe get a rationale, as it's an enormous downgrade to the 3* players' capacity of progressing to the 4* tier. It is appalling that a change of this magnitude has not been at least acknowledged.

Hi Pylgrim,

I believe what you are referring to are the intended balance changes that came in with Champions. This has been acknowledged as intended and weeks ago a thread was started for player feedback. The designers have been keeping an eye on that. The thread is here:
Official Balance Changes Feedback Thread (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=37871).

I don't think you're talking about temporarily boosted characters, but if so, that should have been fixed with the recent R93 update:
"- Fixed a bug where character buffs were being incorrectly calculated. All buffs (Weekly, Event and New Hero) should be working as intended now."

This post (OP/See above) is related to new Min/Max levels for boosted characters.

That said, there is still more work the devs are engaged in for boosted characters and scaling and this is why the matchmaking tests have been delayed a few weeks ("Due to work that needs to be done fixing bugs related to minion and boosted character scaling - we need to push matchmaking testing to March (tentative)." - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=38849).

Hope this helps and doesn't add confusion.

So.....we have to live with incredibly lower ability damage on boosted 3* characters (compared to pre-R91) and it's not, in fact, a bug? Unless of course we add close to 100 levels to them? Wow..... This is a huge nerf to 3* characters and pretty much renders my ability to compete with fully realized 4* rosters much, much more difficult.

Pylgrim

CaptainFreaky wrote:

So.....we have to live with incredibly lower ability damage on boosted 3* characters (compared to pre-R91) and it's not, in fact, a bug? Unless of course we add close to 100 levels to them? Wow..... This is a huge nerf to 3* characters and pretty much renders my ability to compete with fully realized 4* rosters much, much more difficult.

Thing is that we haven't been told this to our face, thus my repeated querying. As Aes points above, confusion has reigned due to loose and misleading terminology, but now that the dust has settled on most matters regarding both intentional changes and bugs, we can see that this issue has never been acknowledged. We still don't know if it's intentional or a bug. At this point the former seems more likely but I'd really appreciate if they admitted to it and at least offer an explanation to see if they realise the negative effect this has in the 3*-4* transition.

CaptainFreaky

Pylgrim wrote:

CaptainFreaky wrote:

So.....we have to live with incredibly lower ability damage on boosted 3* characters (compared to pre-R91) and it's not, in fact, a bug? Unless of course we add close to 100 levels to them? Wow..... This is a huge nerf to 3* characters and pretty much renders my ability to compete with fully realized 4* rosters much, much more difficult.

Thing is that we haven't been told this to our face, thus my repeated querying. As Aes points above, confusion has reigned due to loose and misleading terminology, but now that the dust has settled on most matters regarding both intentional changes and bugs, we can see that this issue has never been acknowledged. We still don't know if it's intentional or a bug. At this point the former seems more likely but I'd really appreciate if they admitted to it and at least offer an explanation to see if they realise the negative effect this has in the 3*-4* transition.

I would say the dev's silence pretty much answers that last question as to whether they realize what they did. I've always felt the stealth nerf to 3* boosted abilities was meant to "push" us to move toward 4* characters faster. Of course, it actually hurts our ability to obtain 4* covers....but there you go.

Helen keller

fmftint wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]


Versus Powered-Up:

4-Star:

Minimum: 165 Maximum: 375

3-Star:

Minimum: 145 Maximum: 290

This seems like a vain attempt to slow down the speed of CC matches

Maybe I'm just cynical but I believe you are spot on sir

Phumade

I feel like what is happening is that D3 has effectively reduced the power of our current rosters by weakening damage at 2*(94), 3* (166), 4*(270). Yes, its true you get all that power and more back by championing and adding levels. I would also agree that its given incentives for people to keep playing and grinding.

but

instead of reducing the progress people have made on characters, why not just consider adding more hp?

Its just feels like a negative design choice. Why not embrace a more positive design and increase power levels appropriately?

Pylgrim

Bumping this because we still need an answer.