Should feeder system be demolished? [POLL]

Davan

Topic says it all. I like challenging nodes. I enjoyed the simulator and I like the gauntlet. I like finding ways to beat something. Feeder nodes are not examples of challenging nodes. They are lazy design.

This game is littered with lazy designs. Over scaled 1* goons that are feared more than villians, feeder nodes "that jet fuel massive damaging abilities especially at higher levels", and poorly thought out scaling that uses straight math which makes any problem grow exponentially as it scales up instead of evenly and fairly.

Feeder nodes can't reward your for playing smartly because there is usually no smart way to play against them except pray to the board gods. 2 turn carnage scythes are a prime example of this.

Oh but wait we introduced Quake for aoe protection! Oh thanks one 4* character that is poorly covered by most people.

These nodes are often challenging with the feeding. Carriers can cause serious dmg over time and guard dog is crazy. We don't need feeding on top of it. Stop the lazy design decisions and actually program the goons ap to be unusable by heroes and villians.

/end rant

tph_james

Feeders nodes should definitely be demolished forever.
Since the game has already balanced out with scaling, then what's the purpose of the feeders? Solely for frustrating your loyal players? It serves no real meaning except creating totally unfair match.
It's like going into the boxing match against Mayweather with a gun and the judge keeps supplying him with bullets.
Fun eh?

madsalad

What, you don't like a 7k Symbiote Scythe to the face on turn 3 and every other 3 turns? pshaw. pshaw I say!

firethorne

I think I'm on option 3 on this one. The problem isn't necessarily that such nodes exist. The problem is that, like far too many parts of this game, the rewards are wildly inadequate for the challenge. Symbiote Scythe every three turns could have a place in the game, but not for a crit boost or a pitiful 70 ISO, when players are behind literally millions to level their current characters. Have the challenge, but make it worthwhile.

tph_james

So how much of the rewards are considered adequate? Everyone's opinion varies.
1000 Iso? It's highly impossible for them to hand out Iso so generously.
A better solution might be isolating ap generated by minions and can be utilized by minions only too.
Or toning down the scaling for such nodes, to balance things out.

tph_james

How about D3 creating new allies, who can feed us and cannot move tiles?
Imagine I can repulsor punch carnage every other turn? Wowwww

Calnexin

I concur those nodes can be aggravating, but in context - everyone's in the same boat here. Theoretically, they've scaled points to progression taking into account the difficulty, so you can reach max for the same level of effort. I've rarely seen it otherwise (excepting the recent testing).

For placement, it might be more random. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because it means the dominant rosters won't necessarily take the top prize. They'll take 2nd or 3rd, possibly giving someone still climbing a shot at the top prize for a much-needed boost.

That might not be fun for you to play. I find them more puzzle-like than PvP. Choosing what to target and which characters to bring that can mitigate the worst of damage is more challenging than throwing your top characters with a nod to a counter strategy every now and then.

Nightglider1

I do think it would be kind of neat if heroes could select SHIELD goons and villains could select Maggia/HAMMER/etc. goons. Go into battle with one hero and two goons, whose level would somehow be determined based on your overall roster or something. Just some thoughts.

ScubaMD

tph_james wrote:

It's highly impossible for them to hand out Iso so generously.

What? No it isn't. This is entirely within their power. While the boost in daily bonuses is nice, ISO gains should definitely be increased across the board.

Having said that, I don't think increased rewards justifies how utterly stupid and frustrating the feeder system is. Good for them for trying something new, but it should permanently go away after this event.

Calnexin

Nightglider1 wrote:

I do think it would be kind of neat if heroes could select SHIELD goons and villains could select Maggia/HAMMER/etc. goons. Go into battle with one hero and two goons, whose level would somehow be determined based on your overall roster or something. Just some thoughts.

I love that idea. They should make a PvE around that.

Choose primary hero - tags determine goon access (hero, villain, symbiote, maggia, etc).
Fill two remaining team members from accessible roster-scaled goon or regular choice from your roster.

Make the trail all hero/villain based.

That sounds like a lot of fun. It has the downside (for D3) of not requiring nearly as many health packs, because you'd presumably not have to heal goons.

Jam_Adams

didn't read

thumbs up for thread title alone

__Adam

If the goons weren't feeding wouldn't they'd just jack the levels up to keep the same difficulty? I doubt they're unaware of the difficulty spike.

TxMoose

no and thumbs up. but I would have definitely worded it differently. bad design is not cheating. the automatic ap gain is an unreasonable setup, but I'd stop short of calling it cheating - it isn't doing something outside of general knowledge or standard operations for the game. I'd stop short of calling it cheating.

LuciferianX

The reason it feels like cheating:

The AI can gain enough AP to throw some massive attack, well before you've had a chance to even get six yellow to fuel IM40 (and that's assuming you get super lucky and don't have the wrong person up front because your HP tank doesn't have an eligible match).

So the OP mentioned Symbiote Scythes, a power which I truly despise facing, and he mentioned Daisy. I love Daisy. I have her at 5/3/5. But against a feeder node where Symbiote Scythes go off 1-3 rounds? Even her AOE block is worthless, because:

There are four powers (off the top of my head) that go 'around' Daisy (a counter-counter). They belong to, in no particular order: Thor's Call the Storm, Peter's Sleight of Hand, Cletus' Symbiote Scythes, and Pietr's Colossal Punch (if he's in front). What do these powers have in common? This:

Deal X Damage to the front target, then deal X% damage to the remaining team members.

Call the Storm, ages ago, said this:

Deal X to the enemy team, then an additional X to the forward target.

The difference between the two is that in the current version, Daisy only mitigates damage for characters in positions 2 & 3; your position one character takes the full force of the damage. Which meant that Wade, my 14k XFDP, was downed in 3 strikes (plus crazy high match damage + AI winfinite + Symbiote Snare) because I had no yellow and no red. Eventually I beat that node... twice, and consumed a tremendous amount of boosts in doing so.

Cheating does not mean the game is breaking the rules as written (RAW), and I would agree that under that contract, you know what's going to happen when you click the button. Cheating means that the game is using RAW in a way that you cannot replicate. I get it. Not every fight is going to be 'fair' and some fights are supremely challenging. I only beat that node because I took all the black I could find and then threw a massive Alpha Strike at Carnage's head. And won.

What it does mean from a player perspective? That the game is generating AP and throwing a tremendously high powered attack at you every 2-3 turns, etc. etc.

I try not to post problems without fixes. I recommend any of the following:

* Option 1: Patch non-match AI (symbiotes, goons, snipers) as follows: [This Attack] deploys every [X] turns, and only if X AP is available (if this enemy is in a group without a Hero, ignore this restriction). Does not use AP. This removes the generation, and also keeps us from getting completely overwhelmed.

* Option 2: Patch non-match AI so their AP is unavailable to heroes. This actually strikes me as super kludgy and prone to error, because the whole 'setup' is that we each get a 7 color battery that starts at 0. I don't recommend it, but it's an option.

* Option 3: Patch non-match AI to match, and restructure their powers entirely, scaling costs based on number of goons, etc., on the team. (fairly extreme)

* Option 4: Reboot the entire goon/symbiote system from the front, and bring their powers, speed and potential DPS in line with the heroes they are designed to simulate/emulate. This is hopefully already happening, but in the interim, we need better balance. (super extreme).

Warbringa

OJSP wrote:

LuciferianX wrote:

* Option 4: Reboot the entire goon/symbiote system from the front, and bring their powers, speed and potential DPS in line with the heroes they are designed to simulate/emulate. This is hopefully already happening, but in the interim, we need better balance. (super extreme).

I think if each symbiote only produces 1AP per turn instead of 2, it would improve the situation significantly.

They've changed the way the Maggia NPCs produce their APs (some produce 1 and some produce 2), I think they need to do the same with the symbiotes (and other goons, actually.. especially if they're going to allow the goons to be at lvl 550 or higher)

Agree 100%. Slowing down AP generation when with AI characters is what is needed. In all goon nodes, keep AP generation as current for goons. I would think this would be a not too terrible fix to make...

DeNappa

To re-quote what I posted earlier:

Pairing feeder goons with characters is a fundamentally broken concept; especially when feeding colors in characters' active powers.

When you're fighting a goon-only node, they will generate AP automagically to fire their powers, but at least those powers are mostly behind countdown tiles what caltrops? *cough* oh sorry you just downed my team. This gives you some time for a chance to match the countdown tiles or come up with other counters (stunning, delaying, etc). Generally speaking, you can't block *everything* but with some smart play you probably won't die if the board isn't too sucky.

When you're fighting a character-only node, you can make an assessment of the enemy powers and prioritize who you will deal damage to or what colors you will (attempt to) deny in order to maximize the chance of winning.

But mix those two, and you cook up a recipe for a match where the opponent is given an unfair advantage.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind for all goons to be removed. Fighting countdowns is a whole different (and boring, imo) concept. Just make all matches against tile movers, and remove all automatic AP generation.

I recently started an alt account on steam, just to experience what early game is like (my early days are from like 2 years ago so I didn't know any more). Playing throug the prologue was really frustrating, one countdown battle after another.

Crowl

OJSP wrote:

LuciferianX wrote:

* Option 4: Reboot the entire goon/symbiote system from the front, and bring their powers, speed and potential DPS in line with the heroes they are designed to simulate/emulate. This is hopefully already happening, but in the interim, we need better balance. (super extreme).

I think if each symbiote only produces 1AP per turn instead of 2, it would improve the situation significantly.

They've changed the way the Maggia NPCs produce their APs (some produce 1 and some produce 2), I think they need to do the same with the symbiotes (and other goons, actually.. especially if they're going to allow the goons to be at lvl 550 or higher)

Besides reducing the amount they generate, it should either be in another colour from the one that the active opponent is using i.e. not feeding carnage red & green or better still should not be generated at all when there is an active opponent on the team as otherwise they are cheating by double-dipping on ap, getting it from moves and automatically.

Ricobe

DeNappa wrote:

To re-quote what I posted earlier:

Pairing feeder goons with characters is a fundamentally broken concept; especially when feeding colors in characters' active powers.

When you're fighting a goon-only node, they will generate AP automagically to fire their powers, but at least those powers are mostly behind countdown tiles what caltrops? *cough* oh sorry you just downed my team. This gives you some time for a chance to match the countdown tiles or come up with other counters (stunning, delaying, etc). Generally speaking, you can't block *everything* but with some smart play you probably won't die if the board isn't too sucky.

When you're fighting a character-only node, you can make an assessment of the enemy powers and prioritize who you will deal damage to or what colors you will (attempt to) deny in order to maximize the chance of winning.

But mix those two, and you cook up a recipe for a match where the opponent is given an unfair advantage.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind for all goons to be removed. Fighting countdowns is a whole different (and boring, imo) concept. Just make all matches against tile movers, and remove all automatic AP generation.

I recently started an alt account on steam, just to experience what early game is like (my early days are from like 2 years ago so I didn't know any more). Playing throug the prologue was really frustrating, one countdown battle after another.

I actually like having goons. That's one of the things that sets pve apart from pvp. Although some goons are getting almost overpowered when stronger.

tph_james

What we are discussing here is not whether goons or no goons, it's whether they should feed the heroes.

LuciferianX

James is correct, it isn't whether there are goons (Maggia, Hand, Symbiotes, whatever is next). I'm 100% okay with goons.

Seriously. I don't have them on my team nor should I, goons aren't heroes, but heroes fight goons all the time. It's absolutely 100% okay to have goons.

The break (as noted) is not that there are goons. It's that the goons make otherwise dangerous characters downright OP. This has happened in two recent events:

The Symbiote event (I forget the name of it), where Carnage (7 red AOE strike) is being fueled by a symbiote and on one red match is ready to fire Symbiote Scythes. Totally not okay. It also happened again with the current Wolverine event, where in roughly 3 rounds he can fire Adamantium Slash, an attack so OP that he can auto-down some of my team with it. And if he actually matches red, it's over.

I don't mind facing goons. I don't mind facing absurdly high level heroes. I don't even mind facing goons and heroes* on the same team.

I mind facing broken combinations that result in a near guaranteed win against my roster, coupled with the inability to come close to that kind of AP generation to defend myself before there's four separate countdown tiles on the board, and I'm being fed my lunch through a straw because my insides are outside from Wolverine.

Not awesome.

Sorry to use the word 'I' so many times. /rant.

* "Hero" in this case means a character with powers and the ability to match, not to be confused with a **** stack of passives designed to infuriate you. Lookin' at you, Ultron Bots.

LuciferianX

So, here we are, two months later, ish.

AND OMGSTAHP.

I got my 25 CP and I'm done, I'm out, you can keep Jessica Drew, this event is so wholly unfair it makes me break out in screaming fits of teen rage (and I haven't seen my teens in over two decades). I cannot stress the utter [edit] of this [edit] event enough.

Carnage. 2 feeding goons. That's horrible. Like. By itself. Horrible. So horrible I won't bother. Last night, Carnage, Venom, one feeder on the Hard Node and I chewed through 7 health packs and about 75% of my eligible* roster. I finally gave up, because the fight became so wholly not fun that there was no point.

Then. Add to the fun! 3 Symbiotes, who on turn 3 start spamming tiles. Those tiles spam tiles, those tiles get buffed. I did win this fight a few times, but only because I had Ant-Man, and in later, higher level matches, they spawn tiles so quickly and so aggressively that on a board without Yellow (IM40) or blue (Small Time Crooks) I got swallowed whole. Here's my problem, and yes. I'm repeating myself.

Some things bear repeating.

When the AI does not need to match, but by just sitting there can drop multiple tiles, then buff those tiles, then deal damage through both CDTs and active Attack Tiles, "winning" becomes luck, not skill. At the bottom of the board, one on top of the other, were a Red, Green and Blue shield tile. I couldn't reach them, and the board was so littered with tiles I couldn't activate Wanda's Reality Warp (or whatever it's called) because at best I got two purple. If I used Loki, he got downed before I got 11 black. Jane Foster? Never got 12 yellow. She-Hulk at 5 blue only converts 3 tiles for 9 AP, so that didn't matter, and no one in my roster has the DPS to stop 20k HP monsters without, you know. A ton of AP.

When I won it was luck, with non-powered characters and when i lost it was a landslide. Again. My issue is not that there are goons, it's that we cannot possibly replicate their total speed. They're generating multiple chain matches of AP each round, and I was lucky if I got 3 or 4. Oh. And when I did?

Yeah. Guard Dog.


* By eligible I mean 'those people who would have half a chance in this fight; not to be confused with Champion 2 stars, 3s who aren't championed, etc.