Is it harder for 1*star users to transition to 2*stars now?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

mechgouki wrote:

r0cky143 wrote:

dlaw008 wrote:

The devs are right to use metrics to measure their changes. If they determined needed game changes based solely on forum response, the game would be ridiculous and still the forums would be unhappy.

I agree with this thought process. Metrics give you the data to make proper decisions.

Then I have to ask. How exactly did the devs arrive at the conclusion that characters like Thor, Wolverine, and the most recent Black Panther, needed to be "funbalanced"? Was it not because of forum response?

It could also be possible that they based their findings on overall popularity of usage. But if they are basing decisions solely on such statistical findings, shouldn't they have already done something about Moonstone and Captain America? They might even nerf OBW since she is so popular.

If you're really actually interested in our methodologies on that, watch this from the recent Steam Dev Days. It lays it out pretty well, and was amusing to me since I was sitting there ready to take notes at the conference when the presentation pretty much just validated our methodologies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwL6zh ... R9TeZWMPjm
If you're not in it for an hour long interesting watch, it basically comes down to: Data is great. Hunches and intuition are great. Feedback is great. Not one of them are valid on their own.

Nice video. Out of curiosity though, could any of your hunches, intuition, feedback etc, possibly might have given you the slightest hint of the possibility that you might need to do something about characters like Captain America and Moonstone to make them more viable and attractive to use?

As opposed to just buffing Captain America on every PVE event and even making him a requirement in battles, maybe you should power him up?

In any case. Thank you for your willingness to answer. I'm glad you came and gave us an explanation even though you are not obligated to.

Spoit

mechgouki wrote:

r0cky143 wrote:

dlaw008 wrote:

The devs are right to use metrics to measure their changes. If they determined needed game changes based solely on forum response, the game would be ridiculous and still the forums would be unhappy.

I agree with this thought process. Metrics give you the data to make proper decisions.

Then I have to ask. How exactly did the devs arrive at the conclusion that characters like Thor, Wolverine, and the most recent Black Panther, needed to be "funbalanced"? Was it not because of forum response?

It could also be possible that they based their findings on overall popularity of usage. But if they are basing decisions solely on such statistical findings, shouldn't they have already done something about Moonstone and Captain America? They might even nerf OBW since she is so popular.

IIRC, even though rags was completely broken, the actual usage numbers weren't actually that high because not that many people had him?

HailMary

r0cky143 wrote:

My wife however, is having MAJOR issues. The Heroic event limits the amount of heroes you can use. The fact that the 1 stars are limited to only Modern BW and Modern Storm prevents her from being able to progress.

Her heroes right now are 1*'s Iron Man, Black Widow, Storm Hawkeye. 2*'s Dakken and MN Mags. She only has 2 heroes that are available currently.

Heroic Juggernaut is not newbie-friendly. The fact that it only allows two 1* chars is makes this pretty clear. I can't imagine a 2-day newbie trying to chisel through it.

Even for people clearly past the "I have a solid 1* team" stage, it's not easy. For example, I'm not seeing crazy enemy scaling: the "Stop" mission is L46 for me, "Tracking Thor" on the far right is L43, there's admittedly one L141 mission. But, even with my L51 Big Thor (event-buffed to L141, I think), max MBW, max A.Wolverine, max MStorm (and lower levels of most other allowed chars), I'm not bothering to grind most of the missions more than the initial unlock-all-missions run. It's just too much of a chore.

r0cky143 wrote:

I have struggled with her frustration level because I said how easy this is and how fun it is to get involved. She is not having the same experience as I did with the Hulk event that's for sure.

I don't mean this in some pretentious manner, but I feel that PvE events aren't meant for one-week-in players (much less 2-day players). If you haven't done, say, the first three chapters/sections of Prologue, you shouldn't really expect to fare well in PvE. Also, Heroic Juggernaut is frustrating a lot of people at all levels of experience. It's a bit of an anomaly.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

IIRC, even though rags was completely broken, the actual usage numbers weren't actually that high because not that many people had him?

The PVE teams had him alright Up to lvl 240. Endless stream of claps for 2 red each followed by godlike from the gathered green.

LRs with the +200% buff were also quite infested. Though we sad the problem is more with the buff%. And that nerfing went way too far, 4AP for clap would be quite enough.

And third power nowhere on sight.

MarvelMan

pasa_ wrote:

Spoit wrote:

IIRC, even though rags was completely broken, the actual usage numbers weren't actually that high because not that many people had him?

The PVE teams had him alright Up to lvl 240. Endless stream of claps for 2 red each followed by godlike from the gathered green.

LRs with the +200% buff were also quite infested. Though we sad the problem is more with the buff%. And that nerfing went way too far, 4AP for clap would be quite enough.

And third power nowhere on sight.

He was way overpowered in LR, but only slightly so in normal play. Then again, a large part of that was the AIs limitation to one usage of a skill per turn. A third power could bring him back into favor as long as it is viable. Personally, I think that 4AP for clap would have still been overpowered. It was the combination of increasing AP and reducing the green change that caused the problem. Either one on their own wouldnt have been enough and together they are too much.

I agree that a better tweak might have been to reduce the event (LR) buffing. Its something that I see as helping/hindering the transitions. People chase the buff too much, which spreads their ISO pretty thin. Selectively chasing buffs eases the transition, but it is hard to hold back because it can mean you arent able to participate in every event/round to the fullest.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

I think that 4AP for clap would have still been overpowered. It was the combination of increasing AP and reducing the green change that caused the problem. Either one on their own wouldnt have been enough and together they are too much.

I meant the 4AP cost with the most recent effect not the old one.

And since then LRs only use +100% buff that is way better. I'd still improve it by having more buff for the captain and leave the others as they are or with lesser buff.

IceIX

mechgouki wrote:

Nice video. Out of curiosity though, could any of your hunches, intuition, feedback etc, possibly might have given you the slightest hint of the possibility that you might need to do something about characters like Captain America and Moonstone to make them more viable and attractive to use?

As opposed to just buffing Captain America on every PVE event and even making him a requirement in battles, maybe you should power him up?

In any case. Thank you for your willingness to answer. I'm glad you came and gave us an explanation even though you are not obligated to.

Captain America finds heavy amounts of use, just not on the more hardcore player's teams. Moonstone is also in the lower portion of 2*s, but she's not unused either. Both actually work fine as characters with no broken or useless abilities, hence why they are how they are. That doesn't mean that they won't find their way into buffs down the line.

Unknown

Ragnarok is fine as he is. Tanks aren't supposed to have overpowering moves or even comparable moves to the their 5800 HP counterparts because otherwise why would you ever use a guy with 5800 HP when a guy with more HP can do the job just as well? The problem with Ragnarok is that he only has two skills. What character do you see commonly used in the high end that has only two skills? Not talking about 2 skills + 1 passive, just plain 2 skills total. To make things worse he only has 2 strong colors which does matter more than people think. It's unreasonable to expect a character missing 31 levels and a 3rd skill to be competitive against a standard 3*, and I'm not really sure why we even have these 2 skill heroes in the first place. They're either completely worthless, or that they're only somehow balanced due to their extremely low levels (Daken would be a living God if he can get to level 141, for example).

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

mechgouki wrote:

Nice video. Out of curiosity though, could any of your hunches, intuition, feedback etc, possibly might have given you the slightest hint of the possibility that you might need to do something about characters like Captain America and Moonstone to make them more viable and attractive to use?

As opposed to just buffing Captain America on every PVE event and even making him a requirement in battles, maybe you should power him up?

In any case. Thank you for your willingness to answer. I'm glad you came and gave us an explanation even though you are not obligated to.

Captain America finds heavy amounts of use, just not on the more hardcore player's teams. Moonstone is also in the lower portion of 2*s, but she's not unused either. Both actually work fine as characters with no broken or useless abilities, hence why they are how they are. That doesn't mean that they won't find their way into buffs down the line.

Do you have also states on "success" rate connected to use?

In PVP I definitely pick any team with Captain or Moonie for an easy beating (compared to other offers without them) and guess others take the same opportunity. They have cool abilities but their price lags them behind others. Also see the big mistakes thread how many people mention dumping ISO on them.

So just having some numbers does not imply it is all good.

Also there was a list with planned balancing, why was it buried? Capt had some tuning on his least used, almost nonexisting ability but Hawkie still just waits and waits? At least announce it was reconsidered if so.

IceIX

pasa_ wrote:

Do you have also states on "success" rate connected to use?

In PVP I definitely pick any team with Captain or Moonie for an easy beating (compared to other offers without them) and guess others take the same opportunity. They have cool abilities but their price lags them behind others. Also see the big mistakes thread how many people mention dumping ISO on them.

So just having some numbers does not imply it is all good.

Also there was a list with planned balancing, why was it buried? Capt had some tuning on his least used, almost nonexisting ability but Hawkie still just waits and waits? At least announce it was reconsidered if so.

Yep, in both PVE and PVP. Success rates are pretty standard across nearly all characters, excepting those that are commonly used for tanking like Yelena and Bag-Man. Do remember that most combats end with an offensive win by players regardless of heroes used and you can see how that'd be the case. If someone doesn't think they can win with X character, they don't use that character.

We also haven't reconsidered that list. The post about balancing changes was made on 1/10 and the last round of character changes from that list was made on 1/28. I completely get that timing of things on Live event driven games is contracted, but it really hasn't been all that long.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

We also haven't reconsidered that list. The post about balancing changes was made on 1/10 and the last round of character changes from that list was made on 1/28. I completely get that timing of things on Live event driven games is contracted, but it really hasn't been all that long.

It definitely feels like ages. If we count not in time but "milestones" connected to major changes and new character arrivals, even more.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

Ragnarok is fine as he is. Tanks aren't supposed to have overpowering moves or even comparable moves to the their 5800 HP counterparts because otherwise why would you ever use a guy with 5800 HP when a guy with more HP can do the job just as well? The problem with Ragnarok is that he only has two skills. What character do you see commonly used in the high end that has only two skills? Not talking about 2 skills + 1 passive, just plain 2 skills total. To make things worse he only has 2 strong colors which does matter more than people think. It's unreasonable to expect a character missing 31 levels and a 3rd skill to be competitive against a standard 3*, and I'm not really sure why we even have these 2 skill heroes in the first place. They're either completely worthless, or that they're only somehow balanced due to their extremely low levels (Daken would be a living God if he can get to level 141, for example).

Even post funbalancing thor is better than rags now, much less lazy thor. Sometimes in 230s, I didn't even bother to stun him, since his red doesn't do THAT much, and his green doesn't even qualify as a tickle

MarvelMan

Spoit wrote:

Even post funbalancing thor is better than rags now, much less lazy thor. Sometimes in 230s, I didn't even bother to stun him, since his red doesn't do THAT much, and his green doesn't even qualify as a tickle

Im with you there. Often I would enter treating the fights differently than I would have had there been three high level opponents, sometimes not bringing spidey, and only stunned Rag if I wanted to make sure the opp wasnt gaining AP.

Spoit

MarvelMan wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Even post funbalancing thor is better than rags now, much less lazy thor. Sometimes in 230s, I didn't even bother to stun him, since his red doesn't do THAT much, and his green doesn't even qualify as a tickle

Im with you there. Often I would enter treating the fights differently than I would have had there been three high level opponents, sometimes not bringing spidey, and only stunned Rag if I wanted to make sure the opp wasnt gaining AP.

Honestly, soldiers are more threatening. Much less lieutenants or those guys that have group attacks

Unknown

IceIX, I'm a new-ish player. Personally I'm finding the transitions between stars very weird right now. The vast majority of my thor/wolverine came from guaranteed prizes - a few three-ofs, prologue covers, two or three from hulk/recruit tokens. My OBW covers, on the other hand, are about half hulk tokens and half luck. It's very frustrating to me to have no real reliable source of OBW covers, especially since I only have one blue for her. I just have to cross my fingers and hope.

The weirdest thing is that between the hulk event and the two juggernauts, I now have almost as many lazy thor covers as modern thor covers. I may actually end up transitioning to three star champs before I ever finish my 2 star team.

Finally: Just because the Cap and Moonstone see a lot of use doesn't make them *good*. You shouldn't use people's non-competitiveness as a justification for leaving characters weak.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Even post funbalancing thor is better than rags now, much less lazy thor. Sometimes in 230s, I didn't even bother to stun him, since his red doesn't do THAT much, and his green doesn't even qualify as a tickle

Im with you there. Often I would enter treating the fights differently than I would have had there been three high level opponents, sometimes not bringing spidey, and only stunned Rag if I wanted to make sure the opp wasnt gaining AP.

Rag also doesn't hurt as much because lower level heroes scale up better. 1s have more stats than 2s, and 2s than 3s, if they're at the same level. Also why high level jugg is such a pain.