Upcoming Patch Preview - R49 Discussion

IceIX

DaveyPitch wrote:

IceIX, is anyone ever going to explain why the changes to the boosts resulted in the cost nearly doubling, despite assurances that wouldn't be the case?

Before the change, 3 of the two colour AP boost (3 * each colour) would cost 200 ISO, so effectively I would be buying 18 AP for 200 ISO.

Since the change, I get 5 of the two colour AP boost (1 * each colour) for 200, but it's now only 10 AP for that 200 ISO.

Any explanation for this, despite us being told (by you) that the changes to the boosts wouldn't result in a change in costs?

I more meant that in response to the Hero Point priced Boosts, but you have a point in any case. We're not done with the Boost pricing/numbers by any means and it's possible that we'll change things down the line as we see a little more of how users use Boosts in general now that they've changed. We've held off on changing much with them because there are still quite a few users that are eating through their retired Boosts that mess with our input on how people are adapting to the new system/pricing.

Unknown

600HP seems pretty gouging as a starting point especially if the burden is solely on the commander and doubly so if it scales to 1000HP for the 2nd increase. Is there any cap on alliance size?

@IceIX: when there are alliance rewards will it be based on the average for the team or for the total?

If it's for the total, and you're charging HP for alliance slots it's a pretty big gap for a team of 10 vs a starting team of 5. Incredibly big gap if it's by total and there's no cap on alliances and you can have a high spending team of 30 vs a team of 15. It will continue to snowball if placement rewards are not only covers but HP fueling alliance slots.

Honestly I would rather see an equal playing field with alliance where every alliance is the same size of 10, 20, or 30. D3 will already get a lot more of our HP as we shield trying to protect our alliance positioning that we wouldnt necessarily do just soloing it.

IceIX

Catalyst wrote:

600HP seems pretty gouging as a starting point especially if the burden is solely on the commander and doubly so if it scales to 1000HP for the 2nd increase. Is there any cap on alliance size?

@IceIX: when there are alliance rewards will it be based on the average for the team or for the total?

If it's for the total, and you're charging HP for alliance slots it's a pretty big gap for a team of 10 vs a starting team of 5. Incredibly big gap if it's by total and there's no cap on alliances and you can have a high spending team of 30 vs a team of 15. It will continue to snowball if placement rewards are not only covers but HP fueling alliance slots.

Honestly I would rather see an equal playing field with alliance where every alliance is the same size of 10, 20, or 30. D3 will already get a lot more of our HP as we shield trying to protect our alliance positioning that we wouldnt necessarily do just soloing it.

It is possibly a bit expensive, yes. I highly doubt we'd double per slot though, that would get insane very very quickly. At the moment, the Alliance cap is 20, but that's just an initial cap so that we don't end up underestimating something and suddenly have uber Alliances that tilt things before everything's set up more fully. We may keep it at that, may raise it. Just depends on how people are using the system.

With current tech (like I said, mostly being like the personal rankings but with it as the Alliance) it would be purely additive so it would be subject to the snowballing that you mention. That doesn't preclude us changing things up however for the very reasons you mentioned. Just can't get super into our plans for the system at the moment, sorry!

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

I more meant that in response to the Hero Point priced Boosts, but you have a point in any case. We're not done with the Boost pricing/numbers by any means and it's possible that we'll change things down the line as we see a little more of how users use Boosts in general now that they've changed. We've held off on changing much with them because there are still quite a few users that are eating through their retired Boosts that mess with our input on how people are adapting to the new system/pricing.

That's fair enough. I understand you guys don't want the boosts to be a crutch for people, but the two colour boosts have nearly quadrupled in price from 6-8 weeks ago (when the all colour boost went to HP), and that strikes me as too much too soon personally.

SunCrusher

IceIX wrote:

SunCrusher wrote:

*looks at some other mobile CCG games and how they fared re: Guilds and the like and cringes*

So I guess that means those of us who came into the game liking the singleplayer aspect of it (play at your own pace without getting totally cremated by not having all the newest and best characters and rewards) need to start either becoming more 'social' and join an Alliance or risk falling further and further behind?

We're looking at quite a few ways to mitigate that and we're not bound to any one mantra on Alliances. We want anti-social type players to be able to participate in things and not miss out on gameplay opportunities compared to those that join up with others. How that'll pan out in practice at first is another matter. At *very* worst, you could always start a 1 person private set Alliance and be in the leaderboards for everything.

I really appreciate the response; thank you.

My concern stems from previous experiences in other CCG mobile games where Guild rewards played out so strongly that hyper-competitiveness became a serious issue. PARTICIPATE NOW or GET BOOTED and WHO CARES IF YOU HAVE A LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE GAME!!! became the norm and the divide between the haves and have nots grew drastic enough to the point that even regularly paying players couldn't even remotely keep up without dropping in tons more money (I was one of those and I left) or without joining the UBER GUILDS that consisted of all of the best players in the game.

It isn't quite so much the fact that I am anti-social (and I admit that I am a little) as it is the fact that my play hours tend to be all over the place for varying and uncontrollable reasons... so much so that Guilds/Alliances became a major stressor and hassle (because of the competitiveness of the group rewards) and so I ended up favoring singleplayer modes.

My game time, my hours, my participation, and not having to set alarm clocks for every hour, miss out on sleep (which I can't do), and try and sneak in play time during work (no-no at my work for sure) etc.

That aside:

I am happy to see changes coming to the game and I appreciate even more the time taken to address various issues and concerns (thank you for your thoughts on scaling and tanking in the other thread).

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Catalyst wrote:

600HP seems pretty gouging as a starting point especially if the burden is solely on the commander and doubly so if it scales to 1000HP for the 2nd increase. Is there any cap on alliance size?

@IceIX: when there are alliance rewards will it be based on the average for the team or for the total?

If it's for the total, and you're charging HP for alliance slots it's a pretty big gap for a team of 10 vs a starting team of 5. Incredibly big gap if it's by total and there's no cap on alliances and you can have a high spending team of 30 vs a team of 15. It will continue to snowball if placement rewards are not only covers but HP fueling alliance slots.

Honestly I would rather see an equal playing field with alliance where every alliance is the same size of 10, 20, or 30. D3 will already get a lot more of our HP as we shield trying to protect our alliance positioning that we wouldnt necessarily do just soloing it.

It is possibly a bit expensive, yes. I highly doubt we'd double per slot though, that would get insane very very quickly. At the moment, the Alliance cap is 20, but that's just an initial cap so that we don't end up underestimating something and suddenly have uber Alliances that tilt things before everything's set up more fully. We may keep it at that, may raise it. Just depends on how people are using the system.

With current tech (like I said, mostly being like the personal rankings but with it as the Alliance) it would be purely additive so it would be subject to the snowballing that you mention. That doesn't preclude us changing things up however for the very reasons you mentioned. Just can't get super into our plans for the system at the moment, sorry!

thanks for the response.

would it be correct to assume the 600HP is for a 5 slot increase for alliance size?

Unknown

Catalyst wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Catalyst wrote:

600HP seems pretty gouging as a starting point especially if the burden is solely on the commander and doubly so if it scales to 1000HP for the 2nd increase. Is there any cap on alliance size?

@IceIX: when there are alliance rewards will it be based on the average for the team or for the total?

If it's for the total, and you're charging HP for alliance slots it's a pretty big gap for a team of 10 vs a starting team of 5. Incredibly big gap if it's by total and there's no cap on alliances and you can have a high spending team of 30 vs a team of 15. It will continue to snowball if placement rewards are not only covers but HP fueling alliance slots.

Honestly I would rather see an equal playing field with alliance where every alliance is the same size of 10, 20, or 30. D3 will already get a lot more of our HP as we shield trying to protect our alliance positioning that we wouldnt necessarily do just soloing it.

It is possibly a bit expensive, yes. I highly doubt we'd double per slot though, that would get insane very very quickly. At the moment, the Alliance cap is 20, but that's just an initial cap so that we don't end up underestimating something and suddenly have uber Alliances that tilt things before everything's set up more fully. We may keep it at that, may raise it. Just depends on how people are using the system.

With current tech (like I said, mostly being like the personal rankings but with it as the Alliance) it would be purely additive so it would be subject to the snowballing that you mention. That doesn't preclude us changing things up however for the very reasons you mentioned. Just can't get super into our plans for the system at the moment, sorry!

thanks for the response.

would it be correct to assume the 600HP is for a 5 slot increase for alliance size?

I think it is to add one more alliance member...

Unknown

It could be 1 it could be 5... that's why I'm looking for an official response, the notes are unclear what the 600HP gets you

Unknown

Catalyst wrote:

It could be 1 it could be 5... that's why I'm looking for an official response, the notes are unclear what the 600HP gets you

Good call. I am crossing my fingers for 5.

IceIX

Catalyst wrote:

It could be 1 it could be 5... that's why I'm looking for an official response, the notes are unclear what the 600HP gets you

At the moment, one, yes. At this very moment (and again, completely mutable depending on reception), it's essentially 100HP per Alliance member slot. 6 - 600, 7 - 700, etc.

No, we're not expecting many, if any, Alliances to rush to 20. That's 19,500 HP to go to max at the moment. But what it *does* do is let us see at a high level what people value Alliance slots at and when they stop valuing them. This is very much a "vote with your wallet" situation. We're not expecting Alliance leaders to want to drop 20K Hero Points. But it's easier to dial down as needed than it is to find out that we've undervalued slots and knock the prices upwards post release.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Catalyst wrote:

It could be 1 it could be 5... that's why I'm looking for an official response, the notes are unclear what the 600HP gets you

At the moment, one, yes. At this very moment (and again, completely mutable depending on reception), it's essentially 100HP per Alliance member slot. 6 - 600, 7 - 700, etc.

No, we're not expecting many, if any, Alliances to rush to 20. That's 19,500 HP to go to max at the moment. But what it *does* do is let us see at a high level what people value Alliance slots at and when they stop valuing them. This is very much a "vote with your wallet" situation. We're not expecting Alliance leaders to want to drop 20K Hero Points. But it's easier to dial down as needed than it is to find out that we've undervalued slots and knock the prices upwards post release.

In that case I really wish people would stop voting for roster slots so much. Hehe. Wish those would calm down a bit.

Unknown

I really appreciate all of this info, by the way.

I'm really excited to see alliances become viable. I'm not, however, looking forward to telling all of my friends that I do not value them 600 Hero Points. High priced alliance slots, as mentioned, are not friendly.

Provided that alliance rewards are separate from individual competition awards, I don't see much reason for the terror my fellow forumites feel. Is the proposed scheme now that alliance competition will overlay rather than replace other competitions?

Unknown

I think high HP costs for slots is a good thing. It will alleviate some of the concern people have about the necessity of alliances.

If alliances are around 5-8 players typically, that's not going to be as big a deal as if you had a 20 person alliance rolling around.

IceIX

Moon 17 wrote:

I really appreciate all of this info, by the way.

I'm really excited to see alliances become viable. I'm not, however, looking forward to telling all of my friends that I do not value them 600 Hero Points. High priced alliance slots, as mentioned, are not friendly.

Provided that alliance rewards are separate from individual competition awards, I don't see much reason for the terror my fellow forumites feel. Is the proposed scheme now that alliance competition will overlay rather than replace other competitions?

Well, we could do Alliance Only competitions I suppose. Not hard to instrument really. I don't think that would come in the style of "Alliance Lightning Rounds" though (think of the logistics on that one!) Although we could always try one or two Alliance Only and see what people think. Our guess is that people would prefer overlays as opposed to replacements for standard Tournies.

Unknown

thanks for the official response.

I'd like to toss my first vote with your wallet response out that charging HP for alliance slots makes me want to *not* even start an alliance. I've spent 10+ months as a leader for top guilds in 2 different online games so I'm normally inclined to this kind of change.

I really challenge why charging HP for alliance slots is neccessary. It will skew your alliance competitions. This is like offering a permanent +20% point value boost in solo PvP for 600HP. spend 1300HP and you get a permanent 40% increase. don't like 10pt matches? ching ching, they're now 14pts! (requires HP royalty if said boosts appear in game... )

Unknown

Each alliance could have a progress score for a secret reward. IE: When the alliance reaches 1m points they all receive 2k ISO.

For global instead of a point progression bar it would be an alliance completion progress bar. IE: when 500 alliances gather their info all members of those 500 alliances will receive a new 3*

You could even reset it where the bar starts over and next 500 receive a 2* or something.

Thanos

The thought of alliance based PvE events is very appealing. Every member could take turns grinding a node or whatever and everybody gets the progression rewards as they're reached. Would certainly reduce the amount of burnout.

DD-The-Mighty

A bit off topic but what was the reasoning behind the recent changes in the PVP reward structure? Or is this just for the hood and divine tournaments only? -as i also noticed the removing of shields in those as well-
Will we see a return of the old reward structure or will this be an experiment?

IceIX

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

A bit off topic but what was the reasoning behind the recent changes in the PVP reward structure? Or is this just for the hood and divine tournaments only? -as i also noticed the removing of shields in those as well-
Will we see a return of the old reward structure or will this be an experiment?

Part experiment, part rebalancing. One of the things that we noted for most players is that players tend to be cover constrained at start, then become Iso-8 constrained at transition from 1*->2*, then go back to being cover constrained when they're starting up to 3*s but not at the same amount as 1*->2*. Players that are transitioning from 1 to 2 almost without fail end up getting a very good stock of 2* characters that aren't leveled up for a long while because they're doing just fine with their 1*s, while they have enough ability comics to hit above a 1* level. This then causes a lot of those players to never really see the potential in 2*s since they haven't leveled them up as much. We've increased the Iso-8 outflow rate recently through cover sales which allows players across the board to be less Iso-8 constrained. This *should* bring those transitioning players more into parity with the 2*->3* players in that they'll level 2*s as they get covers instead of sitting on full abilitied unleveled 2*s.

Long story short: Players get 2*s fairly commonly as-is through pack draws and some rewards. Giving tons more out through all mid-tier prizes maxes those 2*s out very quickly ability-wise long before most players ever have the Iso to level them. Changing the cover distribution rate means that players will level their characters more in line with gaining covers for those characters. At least, that's the idea. We may have it set right at the moment, we may not. Luckily, Tourney rewards are something that are fairly easy to tweak.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

A bit off topic but what was the reasoning behind the recent changes in the PVP reward structure? Or is this just for the hood and divine tournaments only? -as i also noticed the removing of shields in those as well-
Will we see a return of the old reward structure or will this be an experiment?

Part experiment, part rebalancing. One of the things that we noted for most players is that players tend to be cover constrained at start, then become Iso-8 constrained at transition from 1*->2*, then go back to being cover constrained when they're starting up to 3*s but not at the same amount as 1*->2*. Players that are transitioning from 1 to 2 almost without fail end up getting a very good stock of 2* characters that aren't leveled up for a long while because they're doing just fine with their 1*s, while they have enough ability comics to hit above a 1* level. This then causes a lot of those players to never really see the potential in 2*s since they haven't leveled them up as much. We've increased the Iso-8 outflow rate recently through cover sales which allows players across the board to be less Iso-8 constrained. This *should* bring those transitioning players more into parity with the 2*->3* players in that they'll level 2*s as they get covers instead of sitting on full abilitied unleveled 2*s.

Long story short: Players get 2*s fairly commonly as-is through pack draws and some rewards. Giving tons more out through all mid-tier prizes maxes those 2*s out very quickly ability-wise long before most players ever have the Iso to level them. Changing the cover distribution rate means that players will level their characters more in line with gaining covers for those characters. At least, that's the idea. We may have it set right at the moment, we may not. Luckily, Tourney rewards are something that are fairly easy to tweak.

Pretty small comfort for those of us waiting on 4 OBW Blues and 4 Thor yellows.