New Fortify Tiles & Ability Changes

smoq84

pheregas wrote:

Two questions:

1) Will Surfer's Black Hole be able to eat a fortified tile? If so, does it grant the original AP the tile was before it became fortified?

2) Is there a plan for what happens when a fortified tile causes the board to be unresolvable? I would assume, like IW, or QS, if the placing of a fortified tile makes the board have no valid moves, then it would cause the board to shuffle. However, if there are enough fortified tiles out there, it may take more than one reshuffle. Or does the reshuffling process guarantee a minimum of one valid move? A Goblin versus Goblin matchup could make _a lot_ of fortified tiles.

Fortified tiles are not locked, they can be moved and matched.

TLCstormz

I am so sick of saying this, but :

"Amateurish Coding Skills, As Per The Norm."

JVReal

If/then statements are nice.

Example:

If they could code
Then they wouldn't have these problems.

Tada!

rkd80

I must be slow. What is the rage all about? So the tile no longer is destroyed and turns back? I can see some benefit to that. We may lose a small % of a board shake, but someone like iceman benefits from having more blue on the board.

Is there something else I am missing?

Buret0

Malcrof wrote:

Can fortified tiles be destroyed by a match 4? SS's black isn't supposed to be matched away, but a match 4 can wipe it off the board, will this work the same?

If it works like MTGPQ, then no. Match 4 will 'damage' the fortified tile, removing the fortification in the same way it used to remove a lock.

Dayv

rkd80 wrote:

I must be slow. What is the rage all about? So the tile no longer is destroyed and turns back? I can see some benefit to that. We may lose a small % of a board shake, but someone like iceman benefits from having more blue on the board.

Is there something else I am missing?

What you're missing is the inherent forum tendency towards outrage at almost any change they weren't specifically clamoring for.

Come on, were any players really relying on the tile destruction aspect of those abilities? Do people not see what a killer combo (quite arguably overpowered) this would make Punch a Snowman (for example) with Green Goblin's tile fortification?

The point of the powers being changed was always that the countdown tile in question was not there anymore after the powered-up skill was used. Tile destruction was chosen as the method of removal for some of these skills. Later they came up with fortification and realized it would make some nasty combos, so they made a very minor adjustment to prevent those skills from being abused.

They figured it out in advance, and are fixing it in advance.

Here's the real kicker to debate over this "nerf": is anyone going to want to respec these characters because of this change to their skills? No! Because it is a very minor adjustment. That one tile's destruction is not why you built them that way.

Pinko_McFly

At least now we know what idea Infinity Interactive contributed to get their logo added to the splash screen.

Dayv

pheregas wrote:

Two questions:

1) Will Surfer's Black Hole be able to eat a fortified tile? If so, does it grant the original AP the tile was before it became fortified?

I imagine it will unfortify them and generate no AP for that tile. Is that what it does to locked tiles? I haven't used Black Hole on any locked tiles yet.

Buret0

DayvBang wrote:

rkd80 wrote:

I must be slow. What is the rage all about? So the tile no longer is destroyed and turns back? I can see some benefit to that. We may lose a small % of a board shake, but someone like iceman benefits from having more blue on the board.

Is there something else I am missing?

What you're missing is the inherent forum tendency towards outrage at almost any change they weren't specifically clamoring for.

Come on, were any players really relying on the tile destruction aspect of those abilities? Do people not see what a killer combo (quite arguably overpowered) this would make Punch a Snowman (for example) with Green Goblin's tile fortification?

And you don't see how the game could differentiate between tile matching destruction (fortification protects) and move specific destruction (fortification does not protect).

Kingpin uses Poke of Wilson and the CD tile it selects is fortified? Fortified CD tiled blows up.
Mystique uses Shapeshift when there's already a fortified Shapeshift tile on the board? Shapeshift tile blows up.
Punching a Snowman? Your CD tile blows up, even if it is fortified.

They are already changing the code in all of these abilities, why not code it the right way when you are getting in there and mucking about?

Dayv

Buret0 wrote:

And you don't see how the game could differentiate between tile matching destruction (fortification protects) and move specific destruction (fortification does not protect).

Kingpin uses Poke of Wilson and the CD tile it selects is fortified? Fortified CD tiled blows up.
Mystique uses Shapeshift when there's already a fortified Shapeshift tile on the board? Shapeshift tile blows up.
Punching a Snowman? Your CD tile blows up, even if it is fortified.

They are already changing the code in all of these abilities, why not code it the right way when you are getting in there and mucking about?

It's far less complicated to just not do those trivial countdown-only tile destructs anymore. If you have a choice, it's always better to take unnecessary code away than to add new code for increasingly fiddly edge cases.

simonsez

DayvBang wrote:

It's far less complicated to just not do those trivial countdown-only tile destructs anymore.

Why is it "trivial" when potential board shake is getting taken away from us, but when when the devs are doing damage nerfs, board shake is considered highly valuable?

Am I outraged? No. But come on, this is going to cost us AP. Not always obviously, but it will, no two ways about it. And why? Because programming is hard?? It's rationale like that that annoys me more than the change in the first place.

CrookedKnight

Similarly, making it so these abilities blow up the tile unless they're fortified, in which case they convert to basic instead, would make for a pretty convoluted description while muddling the overall principle that fortified countdowns can survive being destroyed -- instead it would be "can survive being destroyed most of the time, but some abilities that normally destroy countdowns will change behavior to wipe fortified tiles anyway because reasons."

TxMoose

"unfair advantage"

ok, i'll grant that ice needs no help in any way. he's my #1 4* out there and pulling this back on him I have no issue with. but kp/mystique/vision - come on. they had such an unfair advantage that nobody plays them - ever. even extremely rare when boosted. I think the same person who came up with 'unfair advantage' also came up with ddq having 'less' ultron sentries starting yesterday (today had 2 waves with them).

jtmagee

Please talk to the devs about making Fury's Escape Plan a new Fortified Tile, as well. If any character in the game were to have precautionary measures to ensure their ability reaches its maximum, it would be Fury.

Dayv

jtmagee wrote:

Please talk to the devs about making Fury's Escape Plan a new Fortified Tile, as well. If any character in the game were to have precautionary measures to ensure their ability reaches its maximum, it would be Fury.

That would be especially handy since you have absolutely no idea what color it will spawn on. With most countdown abilities, you can cast it when the target color doesn't have many matches available.

Buret0

No but seriously... the prop bet odds makers have the over/under on bugs associated with this new feature at 7.5. I think there's pretty easy money to be made on the over.

wymtime

Here is a different question, is this the fix to vision or is something else coming? Dave replied to my post yesterday that the announcement was coming today on the Vision changes. If his changes are the AI won't ping pong back and forth with his density and it now converts a tile that is a little underwhelming of a change. My preference would be to let him own attack tiles when he is in the center position like he was when he first came out in the game. Hat made him very usable and density heavy was then a very good ability.

The Viceroy Returns

For the abilities that destroy a Countdown tile when they fire off (or now used to), I'd suggest two adjustments:
1) Slightly increase the damage of the skills to include however much that tile would have dealt.
It's like the "conversion process" of turning it back into a regular tile adds the one tile's worth of damage. Kinda like Daredevil's Purple in thought process, but built into the power without any more text/description to avoid confusion.
2) Gain 1 AP in the color of the tile as part of the conversion process.
This offsets the loss of minor (and sometimes major) board cascade that occasionally happens now when a given Countdown tile is destroyed like this. I mean, how many times does Kingpin's Black cause like a 3 match cascade when the AI uses it? So is it a boost because this won't happen to you anymore?
Human Torch's Red (and all Storm Greens) is a skill that destroys & gains AP, so it's not totally uncommon to get minor AP like this.

Sure, they seem minor things, but we lost something with the cascade opportunity, so we should get something back to compensate instead of "Taking away something cool but not giving you anything back. Too bad."

As far as more bug going forward, I'd expect to see quite a few.
There are STILL situational force bubble bugs/oddities out there, and Invisible Woman is a 2+ year old character.

It's a shame that several characters are getting nerfs for a character that most players won't ever have, let alone in a usable/playable state.

Dayv

wymtime wrote:

Here is a different question, is this the fix to vision or is something else coming? Dave replied to my post yesterday that the announcement was coming today on the Vision changes. If his changes are the AI won't ping pong back and forth with his density and it now converts a tile that is a little underwhelming of a change. My preference would be to let him own attack tiles when he is in the center position like he was when he first came out in the game. Hat made him very usable and density heavy was then a very good ability.

There's still information on Vision to be released, based on what Hi-Fi said in another thread yesterday. He said it would be posted today.

Buret0

Buret0 wrote:

No but seriously... the prop bet odds makers have the over/under on bugs associated with this new feature at 7.5. I think there's pretty easy money to be made on the over.

This post no longer makes sense as the post prior to it was removed. The removed post contained satire, written from the future, describing bugs that were not yet live in the game.

As far as the on-topic portions of the post (of which there were many), I will repeat them here without parody/satire/light-heartedness.

Hey devs:
Will you be able to fortify basic tiles?
If so, can you fortify the tiles around a SW CD tile? Will the CD tile create purple tiles in the non-purple surrounding fortified tiles or is a fortified basic tile no longer a basic tile?
If so, will the first match 5 created destroy the fortification and gather AP? Will it immediately be followed by another match 5 with the same 5 tiles?
Can you use hexbolt to destroy the fortification status of a tile? Will that gain AP?
Can you fortify a charged tile? Will the charged tile continue to count for Thoress' Smite? Will you do triple damage and gain triple AP when matching a fortified charged tile?
You can't fortify a locked tile, but can you lock a fortified tile?
If an enemy Doc Oc matches a fortified special tile, will he create attack tiles? If MrF was on your team at the time, would he generate heal? If you match a fortified red, yellow, or green tile while MrF's Black CD tile is out, will it activate as normal?
What if you have three red fortified tiles lined up and you move one to match them? Will they match, lose their fortification, and then match again? Would Mr. F's black fire the first and second time they matched?
Can Cap overwrite a fortified tile? Can Magneto?
What happens when a CD tile that has been fortified reaches 0? Normally the CD tile is destroyed. Does it now simply remove the fortification?
What about with CDs that go to 0, resolve, and then go back up (Punisher's Cocktail, Torch's Flame Jet, Ghost Rider's red, Black Panther's Blue)?
Can Moonstone and Quicksilver swap a fortified tile? Does the fortification move with the tile or remain where it was?
What happens when you match a trap tile that has been fortified?
Can you steal or convert special tiles using abilities like Loki's Trickery or Moonstone's Control Shift if those tiles are fortified?

Thanks for your insight on this new feature.