Forum Thread

fmftint

3 years of new character churn finally wearing thin on the devs too, eh?

notamutant

While the potential time saving from being able to send heroes to do a node for you sounds good, I agree with the other comments here about that essentially making the game less about playing and more about waiting/watching. I would rather the time commitment just be lowered.

The alliance war feature does sound interesting. I am just concerned how they can implement it in a way that would be fun, strategic, and yet fair. For example, would alliances which have players with champ 5 * rosters dominate? If so, that won't be much different from normal PvP, except it will be more frustrating for unbalanced alliances, where people feel like they are being held back. If it is too precise, meaning do this and that in this exact way or you will lose, it will be boring. And they said you would step back from match-3, implying you are not actually playing matches. So what would you be doing? This sounds vaguely similar to a mode in a game I played years ago, Crime City. In that game, all you did was send units (with different power levels) to specific nodes to hold it, and at the end of 30 minutes, the syndicate (alliance) with the most points in the node owned it, and the syndicate with the most nodes owned won. It was pretty stupid, like most of that game. I am afraid this idea will end up like that, and just involve some stupid tapping to send units somewhere and that's it. Would be boring and not increase fun. I could see it increase spending temporarily, as this mode was certainly pay to win in Crime City. I linked to what that mode looked like below. On the surface, the alliance battles sound somewhat similar in concept.

http://forums.gree.net/showthread.php?9 ... ault-Guide

Dragon_Nexus

New modes are great but...the survey was super vague. I mean, this all sounds different but I've got no idea how any of that is meant to work.

Also "Compete for incredible prizes". That's a very subjective remark. The dev's idea of incredible might be very different to my incredible. I mean, winning 50,000 ISO at the end would be incredible to me. They might think winning five 3*s is incredible. Or...more than one 4* at a time, even.

TazFTW

RE - Strike Teams

Anything that allows me to use my maxed Yelena and Championed BagMan is a good thing. MYGA!

wymtime

stochasticism wrote:

anyone have the survey link so I can fill out the other one?

You can go into setting daily news and then click on the link again.

Dormammu

Queue up a strike team in the morning before work, collect the resources when I get home? I'm in.

(Yo! Beast, Sentry, Punisher, Psylocke... you're up!)

SummerGlau

strike teams sounds like a good use for the heroes i don't use (or aren't using in a heroic event)
I'm mildly intrigued

PuceMoose

I posted a positive response to the survey (Strike Team for me), as adding things other than new characters to try and mix it up a bit should be rewarded with at least some tentative enthusiasm. Maybe the strike teams will include a new micro-story each day, and we'll get a few new lines of dialog for initiating/completion, as well as a special "Strike Team Award" dependent on how our team did.

Despite heavy opposition (you chose difficulty level 3 out of 5), your team managed to emerge victorious against superior forces. Battle Report:
Psylocke (downed): 300 ISO-8 for three powers launched, 5 HP for downing one enemy
Punisher (downed): 200 ISO-8 for two powers launched, 7 HP for downing one enemy (with [Punisher] less than 10% health remaining)
Beast (survived): 400 ISO-8 for four powers launched, 10 HP for downing two enemies, +250 ISO-8 for being Last Man Standing

fmftint

Ultimately you still won't be using your unused characters, they may be earning you extra resources for you, but YOU still won't be playing with them

Punisher5784

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

DapperChewie wrote:

So I got the strike team one, and I don't like it. I am ardently against any automation in a game like thid. It sounds like they want a way for you to send your characters on a 8 hour mission, that costs 300hp to recall or finish early. I have absolutely no interest in a new game mode where I'm not actually doing anything, I don't want the game to play for me.

Counterpoint - in a game of 110ish characters where most people use like 20 tops, having the other 90 doing stuff in the background to presumably earn resources for no effort doesn't sound like a bad option to me.

Exactly. I would love to send Kingpin out to finger others and bring me money. Pimp Punisher

Dormammu

fmftint wrote:

Ultimately you still won't be using your unused characters, they may be earning you extra resources for you, but YOU still won't be playing with them

Who knows how it's handled, but it sounds better than letting them collect dust without gaining me anything.

Jam_Adams

i don't understand some of you people's logic here. why be so apprehensive about something we don't know that much about? why not give a new mode a fair shake without being negative?

using that same logic, i am just going to be upset about this weekend. it's two days away, and i don't have any plans, but i know i will be doing something. something will happen, i just don't know what. dammit, that's not my kind of weekend. plus, i've been going to work for the past four days! since i'm not sure what's going on this weekend, i should probably just go to work instead since i'm used to that.

mpqr7

I'm excited about all possible new game modes, hope they don't suck and hope they offer rewards that are worth the extra effort.

I have a massive 100+ roster and don't use most characters, so I don't mind if they get killed in auto-battles.

notamutant

Jam_Adams wrote:

i don't understand some of you people's logic here. why be so apprehensive about something we don't know that much about? why not give a new mode a fair shake without being negative?

using that same logic, i am just going to be upset about this weekend. it's two days away, and i don't have any plans, but i know i will be doing something. something will happen, i just don't know what. dammit, that's not my kind of weekend. plus, i've been going to work for the past four days! since i'm not sure what's going on this weekend, i should probably just go to work instead since i'm used to that.

In theory, I am all for any new mode or content added to the game. In reality, adding new content that ends up sucking will 1) take away time from working on other things, 2) harm the game long-term, 3) potentially require more commitment of time and money to the game to remain competitive.

So it all really depends on whether or not they could actually implement a new feature without it also having some big drawback or sucking. I think every new feature they introduced, even good ones, came with bad parts. Past examples:
1) Championing - further split the haves and have nots, weakened 3 star boosts to no longer be competitive
2) legendary tokens and 5 stars - split the game really badly via RNG, and introducing pay to win to the game
3) alliance boss battles - just about every single one had serious server crashes when first introduced, or insane scaling
4) new story events in pve - ridiculous new enemies that are annoying to fight or crazy scaling

All of these new things they added to the game were great. But they also came with problems they created. So I want new content, but I want it introduced in such a way that it won't have any negative components, and I am not sure how either suggestion could do that. Implementation as well as fleshing out the ideas is key. They would also need to actually share the details with the players fully BEFORE they spend a month coding it. We don't want them to release a new mode without asking the players if they want that mode, by describing it in full detail, before they spend a single minute coding it. It might spoil the fun, but it is better to know in advance if it will work than have another Galactus/Boss Rush/Kaecilius added to the game.

DrDevilDinosaur

I love how everyone thinks that they heroes they don't use will have the same % chance of success as the actual good characters.
Strike Teams will require you to send your best and brightest if you want anything of value in return, and will certainly cost HP to recall early if you suddenly remember that you need them for whichever event is about to end.

I voted 0 for everything, but mostly because those values will absolutely mess with their results.

UNC_Samurai

JHawkInc wrote:

My alliance saw both, apparently clicking the link gives you one at random (so if you can get to the link after filling it out, you can possibly get the other survey).

Looks interesting. But, quick glance, it looks like fun ideas that haven't been fully thought out yet.

Strike Teams. My roster of 110 can do stuff while I'm away? That's a brilliant idea. And it sounds like something you can do if you only have a moment (launch the teams, fire and forget, collect results later), but it's also something you can do with unused characters while actively playing the game, and that's a feature I love in games.

But it gives Intel, which lets you breeze through difficult Story missions to earn the rewards? Does that mean JUST one of the six rewards? Does it count as a clear? Do you get the points for it for that event? It sounds like something meant to help people with weaker rosters (or people who are at a point of screwy scaling where the harder nodes are much harder), that will ultimately screw over clear and grind times for people pushing for top placement, and that's worrying.

Alliance War. Combine rosters with your alliance? That'll be fun. I'm a juggernaut in my alliance (roster of 110 like I said above), but I know people in my alliance have some different 4*s champed, some of us have 5*s with different number of covers. Quick glance, I have 7 champed 4*s, but between the alliance, we have 22 different champed 4*s. So that'd be fun. No idea what coordinating the war from a distance means, but it sounds interesting. I'm guessing branching paths and coordinated efforts to get to certain nodes or something? We do enough coordinating with a family of a half-dozen alliances anyways, so getting direct in-game rewards for it will be awesome! Also says we're fighting through famous battlegrounds... cool, but I can't exactly think of any I'd be excited to see in the game, either.

But it's PVP. I don't want to compete against another alliance. What if the matchmaking is wonky? What if we're paired up, and rosters shift making the fight uneven? What if the event is over a weekend and one of the alliances simply has more free time? How much of a difference will it make? Why not just make it PVE, and let us push for progression and bragging rights, instead of having to hope the PVP is fair and balanced?


Overall, exciting. But left with more questions than answers, and I can easily see this being a Boss Rush release instead of a Civil War release, and that worries me a little.

I fought a few alliance wars in Clash of Champions. It was great in theory/when it worked, but way too often I would try and make progress but get destroyed by characters way more powerful than I was. It wasn't fun to blindly run into people with double your attack power.

smkspy

Reading the possible negatives is making me rethink my initial enthusiasm, if these modes turn out to be like some are describing then I can pass on the idea.

Honestly, if I want to use the rest of my roster, just apply scl to the prologue. Have it cost HP to unlock as you advance through SCLs, but ultimately, it'll be a stand alone form of free play that will net resources and allow me to tinker with teams and combos as I see fit with no fear of lost placement. It's easy to code, and a game resource already in play and goes unused by the player base after 1-3 months.

hodayathink

notamutant wrote:

Jam_Adams wrote:

i don't understand some of you people's logic here. why be so apprehensive about something we don't know that much about? why not give a new mode a fair shake without being negative?

using that same logic, i am just going to be upset about this weekend. it's two days away, and i don't have any plans, but i know i will be doing something. something will happen, i just don't know what. dammit, that's not my kind of weekend. plus, i've been going to work for the past four days! since i'm not sure what's going on this weekend, i should probably just go to work instead since i'm used to that.

In theory, I am all for any new mode or content added to the game. In reality, adding new content that ends up sucking will 1) take away time from working on other things, 2) harm the game long-term, 3) potentially require more commitment of time and money to the game to remain competitive.

So it all really depends on whether or not they could actually implement a new feature without it also having some big drawback or sucking. I think every new feature they introduced, even good ones, came with bad parts. Past examples:
1) Championing - further split the haves and have nots, weakened 3 star boosts to no longer be competitive
2) legendary tokens and 5 stars - split the game really badly via RNG, and introducing pay to win to the game
3) alliance boss battles - just about every single one had serious server crashes when first introduced, or insane scaling
4) new story events in pve - ridiculous new enemies that are annoying to fight or crazy scaling

All of these new things they added to the game were great. But they also came with problems they created. So I want new content, but I want it introduced in such a way that it won't have any negative components, and I am not sure how either suggestion could do that. Implementation as well as fleshing out the ideas is key. They would also need to actually share the details with the players fully BEFORE they spend a month coding it. We don't want them to release a new mode without asking the players if they want that mode, by describing it in full detail, before they spend a single minute coding it. It might spoil the fun, but it is better to know in advance if it will work than have another Galactus/Boss Rush/Kaecilius added to the game.

In the time that I've been here (a year plus), I think they've introduced 4 new PvE events (Venom Bomb, Webbed Wonder, Strange Sights, and Hearts of Darkness). Only 2 of them have introduced new enemies (SS and VB). I get the argument with symbiotes, but I don't remember if anyone complained about the Mindless Ones (they weren't particularly annoying, but I don't know how their scaling got on higher levels). So that right there is an over-exaggeration, and I didn't even mention the one-off story events in PvE like Amadeus' Inferno and Growth Industries.

And them giving out all the details before coding anything isn't a realistic expectation, for a bunch of reasons, one which comes to mind being that coding is complicated enough (especially when you're dealing with this much legacy code) that you may have to change the implementation of it while working on it.

WEBGAS

JHawkInc wrote:

I don't want to compete against another alliance. What if the matchmaking is wonky? What if we're paired up, and rosters shift making the fight uneven? What if the event is over a weekend and one of the alliances simply has more free time? How much of a difference will it make? Why not just make it PVE, and let us push for progression and bragging rights, instead of having to hope the PVP is fair and balanced?


Overall, exciting. But left with more questions than answers, and I can easily see this being a Boss Rush release instead of a Civil War release, and that worries me a little.

This is exactly how I feel....not enough info and due to the last debacle (aka Boss Rush) I am not excited at all

Polares

First, new game modes are good news, but if the resources they have are limited, they really need to get it right on the first try.

This is still a bit to vague but let's try to come up with an opinion with the things we know.

Strike Teams: This one has some potential. It looks like it will requite almost no time, and then you will probably get rewards related to the team you sent. If you sent 3s, X rewards, if you sent 4s X*1.5, if you sent 5s X*2. If it is like this it will probably help to get more resources to the teams that need them the most, so It might be an ok mode (even though you really don't play at all here).

Alliance Wars: I don't like the idea of this one. This one looks designed to be enjoyable just by very strong alliances. How is the matchmaking going to work? There are a TON of factors, that can play a big role here and that might end up pairing your alliance with one much stronger/dedicated than yours. As someone else said, ALL alliance play should be PvE oriented.

Sincerely, none of them looks like that exiting to me. Things like:
- Gauntlet type of event for the whole season in parallel with other PvEs (fixed scaling, get as far as you can type event)
- PvP real battles (asynchronous/turn based battles ala word with friends)
- Real simulator/training grounds where you can chose the teams you want to fight,
or other modes people have thought here in the forum look much more fun/rewarding.

This game is still very very time dependant, you can't really play when you want to most of the time, you play when you need to. So adding time independent modes that are quick, that don't force you to put a lot of time into them, but that you can really play whenever you want I think would make this game better.