Open Letter to the Devs

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First of all, guys, let me say that I love the game, it's great. I am always a little surprised by the negativity on display in forums such as this. Usually when I don't like something I put it down and walk away.

There are a few things I feel would make the game better, so I thought I would make some suggestions and share my opinions.

First of all, everything does not need to be a competition. PVP is competition, it is in the name. PVE, on the other hand, should always be cooperative. You have elements of this already, such as certain nodes not opening until the entire field has earned enough points. I think the entire event should be like this. No competitions for placement, but everyone pitching in to earn the best rewards. You could still organize brackets, but those within the bracket should work together. It would be especially nice if there was a way to make each alliance a separate "instance" of the PVE and alliances could work toward their own rewards. Some would complain about "super alliances" and the rich getting richer, but that is how things work. Anyone can improve their roster and eventually join a "super alliance" if that is their desire.

Which leads into this: make alliances more meaningful. Chat will be nice, and alliance events, but allow people in the alliance to help each other out. Let those of us with a lot of heroes gift our unused covers to the lower tier members of the alliance. I understand you have to monetize your work, so charge a small ISO tax from the giver. I am certain that HP sales are your number one source of revenue, so limit HP exchange, if you must.

Rework the MMR system. It doesn't work properly. First of all, defensive losses should not figure into any such system, it makes no sense. Nobody plays on defense, the computer does that. The only choice you have for defense is what team you use. Retaliations, as I understand it, are versus the team you used to beat them in the first place, so there really is no choice there. Random matches are against the last team you won with so your only choice there, really, is whether you've 'tanked' or not. A better measure of player competency would use only offensive statistics such as wins to offensive losses or, battles fought during a tournament, or average win time. Almost as good would be to just match people based on the levels of their last winning team or something. I really like playing with a variety of heroes, so I have never maxed anybody, but instead spread my ISO around. I would like to face teams more similar to my own than Max Spiderman, Max Punisher or Patch, Buffed character in every node.

Lower the RW price of ISO. This one is both obvious and inevitable. The existing rate of exchange on dollars to iso is ridiculous. A person should at least get one near max character from $100 in ISO. At least! And as more new players come aboard and more new characters are released, there is going to be a lot bigger need for ISO than there is now. So run another ISO sale, a long one, make it last about two weeks or so, then announce at the end of the sale you've decided to just make it permanent. You will obviously have to do this for new players joining after 40 or 50 characters are already released, so go ahead and pull the trigger.

Run a wider variety of events. I really enjoyed the recent Lone Star Tournament. It was nice to revisit the old characters and remember how I used to play this game in the beginning. Run Two Star Events. Have more Dark Avengers events or Ladies Nights. Avengers only, or Mutants only. Or how about the 1+2+3 thing where every team is Modern Storm, Original Black Widow, and Black Panther or something. Not everyone will be able to compete in every event, but that's okay. If there is enough stuff running and a wide enough variety there will be something for everyone. Especially for me, since I really like variety of gameplay.

Anyway, TLDR.

Thanks for a great game, guys. Keep up the good work.

mischiefmaker

I agree that cooperative brackets would be cool, but as an addition rather than a replacement for current PvE.

I don't agree that defensive wins/losses shouldn't count. Building your team so that it's competent on both offense and defense is one of the challenges of the game. And if you only counted offensive wins, near everyone would have the same score.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

I agree that cooperative brackets would be cool, but as an addition rather than a replacement for current PvE.

I don't agree that defensive wins/losses shouldn't count. Building your team so that it's competent on both offense and defense is one of the challenges of the game. And if you only counted offensive wins, near everyone would have the same score.

But you are rewarded for putting a good offensive and defensive team together. You are rewarded with tournament points when you win those fights on defense and skips that cost you nothing. MMR is a different story. It is what determines your next opponent.

I suspect that my experience is not unusual. I very rarely lose on offense. Like 1 in 100 or something. On defense I lose a lot. Especially when I get a lightning round win with two first level one stars and a loaner buffed character. Does this sound like I am competent at building a team for offense and defense? Should I now face easier matches because of that competency?

Unknown

Heh - looks like you and I are having similar Friday nights, dlaw008! I started writing my post a few hours ago, and got distracted. We're thinking along similar but different lines!

SpaceBearPig

I could not agree more on the PvE stuff, the game would be a lot more fun and relaxed if the community as a whole tried to reach a certain goal or brackets as you put it. Good suggestion.

Unknown

mischiefmaker wrote:

I don't agree that defensive wins/losses shouldn't count. Building your team so that it's competent on both offense and defense is one of the challenges of the game.

Currently that is too much of a challenge really. As the AI plays your team without any clue whatsoever how to do it. It makes semi-random color picks. It has tendency to use the color ability with more cost and less effect. It leaves special tiles hanging. When it comes to pick locations they seem selected by pure random so killing the most powerful abilities of characters.

In short your team on defense is mostly just the ton of HP and random flailing with abilities. I observed a single character that is played well by the AI, Spiderman -- guess here just random play has the same effect as elaborate one as AI can't pick targets in the first place...