Sharp increase in balance and fairness issues

ScubaMD

There has been a sharp and noticeable increase in player-hostile actions and activities within the game:

Friendly powers destroying friendly tiles
New dropped tiles matching friendly tiles
Enemy match chains destroying friendly tiles
Multiple AI using multiple powers per turn
Enemy AI using powers they don't have AP for

Every once in a while is one thing, but during the Simulator event, it has been happening nearly every single turn, and it needs to stop.

The following are changes that must be mandated by D3, since Demiurge cannot be trusted to make their own decisions:
- All dropped hero countdowns must resolve as the player intends. When three 'Recharge' tiles are placed, all three must be resolved and gained.
- AI (both heroes and goons) get one power per turn. Hero focus must be on matches. That still gives up to three powers per turn, depending on how many hero characters are active.
- Goons may no longer use Team-Up characters.
- Goon auto-gain may no longer be used for enemy hero powers.
- Goons may not have more than one of the same type of countdown power. For instance, there should never be four 'Threaten' countdowns on the board from the same 'Muscle' character.
- Goons must have a cooldown between powers. If a 'Morale Boost' is matched away, the 'Lieutenant' character should never be able to place another one in the next turn.

Recent changes have been extremely player-hostile, especially towards those who have given you a non-trivial amount of time and money. This changes now.

Phumade

meh, if the rules and descriptions are clear and the game behavior is consistent then the onus is really on the player to work around and address those issues.

This is like saying the AI always matches my SW CD tile before it resolves in my favor. Duh, manipulate the board so your CD tile isn't susceptible to a match.

Jaedenkaal

This seems more like feedback

Besides which, there are definitely cases where the AI does NOT immediately (or ever) match away a SWitch CD, and there are definitely cases where it waits until the last second and then matches away its own SWitch CD, and the frequency of this occurring is certainly random. Replace "matching /not matching SWitch CD" with any game event you like that and all of that is still true.

If you're getting that upset about the random events in a game, it might be time to take a break.

turbomoose

I have noticed that a few times that ai gets to use Powers when I know it hasn't collected that colour but I assume it's a glitch

Natsufan01

- All dropped hero countdowns must resolve as the player intends. When three 'Recharge' tiles are placed, all three must be resolved and gained.
- AI (both heroes and goons) get one power per turn. Hero focus must be on matches. That still gives up to three powers per turn, depending on how many hero characters are active.
- Goons may no longer use Team-Up characters.
- Goon auto-gain may no longer be used for enemy hero powers.
- Goons may not have more than one of the same type of countdown power. For instance, there should never be four 'Threaten' countdowns on the board from the same 'Muscle' character.
- Goons must have a cooldown between powers. If a 'Morale Boost' is matched away, the 'Lieutenant' character should never be able to place another one in the next turn.

1. Just no. All countdown tiles must resolve? That means countdowns immediately become overpowered. Countdowns are generally stronger powers and are mitigated by the fact that they might not happen.

2. One power per turn? Too much. They only use each power once a turn already, but they can fire off all 3 powers if they have the ap for it. Limiting something even more than it already is is overkill.

3. Ok. Maybe. But the team up that the opponent uses shouldn't ever be a game breaking thing. It's a single power. You should be prepared for it.

4. This I can get on board with, but have no idea how they would implement it. Separate ap pools for goons and heros? That seems like too much for their programmers.

5. This is too big of a change. Goons would go from "already fairly easy to deal with" to "why even bother trying?" You know this is something that goons do. Why aren't you playing to stop it? Put some thought into who you bring into the fight. Loki would make those tiles help you. OBW puts all those on lockdown. This is part of the strategy of the game. Make it too easy and it will get boring fast.

6. Similar to above. This is a mechanic of the game. Play specifically to stop it.

There is something however that could help towards your suggestions. Put a limit to how much ap a team can get from goon gains. If the lieutenant gets 2 purple and 1 yellow (no idea how much they actually get) then 3 of them would get 6 purple and 3 yellow, which seems excessive. Limit to 3 in any particular color and 6 total ap per turn. That would help your 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th suggestions by reducing frequency a little without totally breaking difficulty.

ScubaMD

Natsufan01 wrote:

1. Just no. All countdown tiles must resolve? That means countdowns immediately become overpowered. Countdowns are generally stronger powers and are mitigated by the fact that they might not happen.

All countdown tiles MUST resolve for players. The whole point of a 'Puzzle Quest' is to be able to remove enemy countdowns.

Natsufan01 wrote:

2. One power per turn? Too much. They only use each power once a turn already, but they can fire off all 3 powers if they have the ap for it. Limiting something even more than it already is is overkill.

One power per turn is too much? Sure; we can limit them to zero, but I was trying to compromise. Either way, enemy focus should be on matches.

Natsufan01 wrote:

3. Ok. Maybe. But the team up that the opponent uses shouldn't ever be a game breaking thing. It's a single power. You should be prepared for it.

Except it's always game-breaking. It should never happen to begin with.

Natsufan01 wrote:

4. This I can get on board with, but have no idea how they would implement it. Separate ap pools for goons and heros? That seems like too much for their programmers.

It's not that difficult. Personal AP vs group AP.

Natsufan01 wrote:

5. This is too big of a change. Goons would go from "already fairly easy to deal with" to "why even bother trying?" You know this is something that goons do. Why aren't you playing to stop it? Put some thought into who you bring into the fight. Loki would make those tiles help you. OBW puts all those on lockdown. This is part of the strategy of the game. Make it too easy and it will get boring fast.

It's not too big of a change. I have screenshots where the board is full of countdowns from a single goon. It's ridiculous. If there are three of the same type, then I can see having more than one out there, but otherwise it's too one-sided. I DO play to stop it, but the game frequently puts the board into a one-match situation where it won't reset and I don't have the ability to stop it. It's not a planning/strategy problem, it's a poor-game-design problem.

Natsufan01 wrote:

6. Similar to above. This is a mechanic of the game. Play specifically to stop it.

Same answer as above. If I match a countdown, they shouldn't even have the AP to put another one down. There needs to be some sort of respite.

Natsufan01 wrote:

There is something however that could help towards your suggestions. Put a limit to how much ap a team can get from goon gains. If the lieutenant gets 2 purple and 1 yellow (no idea how much they actually get) then 3 of them would get 6 purple and 3 yellow, which seems excessive. Limit to 3 in any particular color and 6 total ap per turn. That would help your 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th suggestions by reducing frequency a little without totally breaking difficulty.

This is too many, but it's an interesting thought. However, the demands as written would go a long way to making the game actually fun. The time players choose to spend should be more valuable than it currently is. This seeks to fix that.

BlackSheep101

These aren't bugs...