Upcoming Patch Preview - R50 Discussion

daveomite

Thanks HailMary. I agree that scaling isn't directly related to alliances, but I'm assuming it is supposed to be due to how many grinders you may have in your particular bracket, and possibly your own stats/mmr, which I have no idea where that would place me.

I know on this current event, when it first started, I was seeing the norm 40-90 lvl peeps, but on refresh, all jumped to 150+ average. That, plus not having Steve rogers, limits the nodes I can play, or have success in. But, doesn't stop me from trying, and I do catch all the new nodes that open.

And thanks for the links to the threads, will check them out.

And I see where you were, similar here I guess. Though, I don't have iron man 35 maxed, I don't own iron man 40 either. IM35 and MStorm both 45+ level, and BW is maxed. I have both Thor and obw at 85. Psylocke at 80. Punisher at around 66, ares at 61, magsMN/c storm/astonishing wolvie all just under 60. 3* Thor at 51, X force wolvie at around 45.

I did manage to grab hulk, hood, spiderman, Grey suit willow and patch. Hulk, spidey and GS Willow I only have been lucky enough to get one card only. Spider is 1/2/0...hood is 1/1/1. So, none are that leveled up yet. My BP is 2/1/1.

I haven't even gotten a Red rag card yet. And only 2 green so far. But I got every card under the sun for cap, lol.

My method of leveling has mainly been based on events, who's powered up, and obviously cards I've gotten. I just now finally got a second punisher card, making him 2/3/3, which allow me to level him up a bit more finally. And my psy, just got another card And is now 2/4/5, so I need to do some leveling with her too.

So, I may not have the best, strongest roster yet. But working on it. Now, if there was some magic pull system so I could get more covers that I need, instead of more cap, jugs, bw, hawkeye...I'd be in heaven, lol

Tannen

daveomite wrote:

Now, if there was some magic pull system so I could get more covers that I need, instead of more cap, jugs, bw, hawkeye...I'd be in heaven, lol

Uhhhh... there is such a system in place... But it's powered by HP, not magic.

Now, if there was a magic system that allowed people to get as much money as they wanted... So that I could buy as much hp as I needed... I'd be in on that.

Actually, I take that back. If I was in on a magical money-making system, I'd be arrested for counterfeiting.

daveomite

Tannen wrote:

daveomite wrote:

Now, if there was some magic pull system so I could get more covers that I need, instead of more cap, jugs, bw, hawkeye...I'd be in heaven, lol

Uhhhh... there is such a system in place... But it's powered by HP, not magic.

Now, if there was a magic system that allowed people to get as much money as they wanted... So that I could buy as much hp as I needed... I'd be in on that.

Actually, I take that back. If I was in on a magical money-making system, I'd be arrested for counterfeiting.

lol. I hear ya. And I know I can buy cards for any card cover slot I've opened, and have done that a few times. Just not enough HP all the time, but working on.

If I rob any banks and wind up with a pool of cash, I'll let you know. Maybe a thor/cstorm/punisher crew wouldn't be bad at a local branch...storm down the low health tellers with her blue, punisher reds and blacks his way through security, and Thor pummels the vault door with his hammer and an occasional thunder strike.

Unknown

daveomite wrote:

If I rob any banks and wind up with a pool of cash, I'll let you know. Maybe a thor/cstorm/punisher crew wouldn't be bad at a local branch...storm down the low health tellers with her blue, punisher reds and blacks his way through security, and Thor pummels the vault door with his hammer and an occasional thunder strike.

That's where you need Nightcrawler. He teleports in, grabs the money, and teleports out again. Easy!

KaioShinDE

When I started getting into 3*s the selection was much much smaller. Villians were restricted to LRs so the only 3* that were offered as rewards were Punisher, IM40 or Spidey. That made it pretty easy to cover up and get started in high level play. Now that the covers are spread out over so many different characters, I can only imagine how much harder it is. I'm kinda feeling the frustrations of it, I want to level my Panther, but I can't do anything except wait until he is offered as reward again. Which might be weeks. Until then he is useless to me, even at Lv60 unless he is major buffed in an event. Judging from some conversations in my alliance with 2* players, that's pretty much their entire roster situation. Being flooded with new covers they can't use every week. I think the devs should just be more focused with the rewards. Have 4 events in a row with the same 3* as reward so new people have the chance to get covered up and use that character properly.

daveomite

DaveyPitch wrote:

daveomite wrote:

If I rob any banks and wind up with a pool of cash, I'll let you know. Maybe a thor/cstorm/punisher crew wouldn't be bad at a local branch...storm down the low health tellers with her blue, punisher reds and blacks his way through security, and Thor pummels the vault door with his hammer and an occasional thunder strike.

That's where you need Nightcrawler. He teleports in, grabs the money, and teleports out again. Easy!

HAHAHA... you're completely right. I forgot about ole handy dandy Nightcrawler. Too bad he isn't a character that can just Bamf his way over to the other side, steal everyone's AP, then Bamf right back over so we can run every attack we've got. lol. Actually, not a bad move for him, I mean, bamfing over to steal AP. Then slashing the board with his tail, eliminating a stack of tiles, and adding in some strike tiles. **hint, hint

KaioShinDE wrote:

When I started getting into 3*s the selection was much much smaller. Villians were restricted to LRs so the only 3* that were offered as rewards were Punisher, IM40 or Spidey. That made it pretty easy to cover up and get started in high level play. Now that the covers are spread out over so many different characters, I can only imagine how much harder it is. I'm kinda feeling the frustrations of it, I want to level my Panther, but I can't do anything except wait until he is offered as reward again. Which might be weeks. Until then he is useless to me, even at Lv60 unless he is major buffed in an event. Judging from some conversations in my alliance with 2* players, that's pretty much their entire roster situation. Being flooded with new covers they can't use every week. I think the devs should just be more focused with the rewards. Have 4 events in a row with the same 3* as reward so new people have the chance to get covered up and use that character properly.

I wish there were only 3 3* characters right now, and/or fewer characters total to at least get caught up faster. If I had known about the game sooner, maybe I'd be better off. Just finding out about it so late in the game, some catching up to do obviously.

And I feel like I thread jacked this thread... sorry to Ice and everyone else. I know my original post was about the Patch, then it got a little sidetracked.

Back on the patch though, and possible updates.... I REALLY, REALLY would like it if we could specify WHO we share to (via facebook, etc). Given we are given +3 and some +10... it's always some random list of names, some of which are people who don't seem to play much at all if ever. I know that doesn't really affect gameplay, just think it would help those newer people getting started out getting some nice rewards sometimes. Then things like cards that I keep pulling, which I've got several of in my rewards list - I would love to be able to share them with my better half to help her out (she's much more casual of a player than I am, but still daily). Basically, being able to share a bit more with her would help me avoid the dog house more often, lol.

I know many of the users on here probably have level 141's like crazy and can just click the "InstaWin" button on some nodes. Maybe one day I too will be lucky enough to finally see that "InstaWin" button myself. By then, scaling will most likely be through the roof and most nodes will have level 500+ mooks, gooks, grunts and baddies in it.

DD-The-Mighty

dlaw008 wrote:

And they have rotated the colors of the covers if I'm not mistaken. So while you may miss the black hulk in one tourney alliance reward you will get it in a different one as a single player award.

I honestly don't see why they shouldn't reward the hardest-core players. Casuals can convert to that crowd by figuring out how to create a bigger alliance or get into one.

So far they seem to keep the more widely desired colours in alliances only now (blue 3* captain America, Black hulk) and the next desired in the top 10 and up. and as for rotation they have yet to rotate Psylocks blue into the lower rank spot in the last 2 or so opportunities that she has been available. I sure hope they plan on better rotating the colours so those who can't coast on the backs of their super-clans can eventually get all colours for their 3*s.
Top ten PVP was never easy to begin with, but before, if you could squeak by at 15+ you could at least score 2/3 3* covers. Now that's impossible. The complete removal of all three covers from PVE is also a very sucky loss as no matter how well/lucky you are you will never get that 3rd colour unless you're in one of the "top alliances". AS Ice stated himself if only a few supersentai 5-man bands are cracking the cover tops, and even still they're outnumbered by the bigger clans, making it doable but hardly practical or viable to the mass of players. Non-top-tier alliance players and loners have been majorly cover blocked under this new reward system. I think they have every right to be dissatisfied and shouldn't be dismissed as mere "casuals".

to end on a positive note:
@Ice: With the drastic increase and -i'm guessing- continued increase of 3 star (and inevitably 4*) characters will we eventually see more implementations of 3* tokens?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

I've never seen anyone from demiurge comment on giving the user the ability to tell which goon laid down a specific countdown tile?

has it ever been discussed as being something that needs to be corrected, or is it intentional? It's probably been one of the most requested fixes since the game has begun.

It's one of the many things on the QoL updates list of things to do when someone gets spare time. Problem with that list is that it's ever growing and that they're all "nice to have" upgrades of systems that are working "OK but not perfect", so it's hard to place weight on any of them versus adding something new or refining something with real rough edges that needs better functionality.

So yes. It's been discussed. No, we don't have a timeline or even a "Yep! It'll get done most definitely" for it. It'd be great though.

A quick and dirty fix is to stagger the levels of goons in fights with multiples of the same goon. If one goon was 56 and one goon was 57 there would be a negligible difference in difficulty to the user but you could tell the difference on the countdown timers for abilities that have numbers attached to them because one would do slightly more damage than the other (aka Flamethrowers, Rockets, etc).

Unknown

That definitely sounds like a good idea and would make it easier to identify who dropped which tiles.

Unknown

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

dlaw008 wrote:

And they have rotated the colors of the covers if I'm not mistaken. So while you may miss the black hulk in one tourney alliance reward you will get it in a different one as a single player award.

I honestly don't see why they shouldn't reward the hardest-core players. Casuals can convert to that crowd by figuring out how to create a bigger alliance or get into one.

So far they seem to keep the more widely desired colours in alliances only now (blue 3* captain America, Black hulk) and the next desired in the top 10 and up. and as for rotation they have yet to rotate Psylocks blue into the lower rank spot in the last 2 or so opportunities that she has been available. I sure hope they plan on better rotating the colours so those who can't coast on the backs of their super-clans can eventually get all colours for their 3*s.
Top ten PVP was never easy to begin with, but before, if you could squeak by at 15+ you could at least score 2/3 3* covers. Now that's impossible. The complete removal of all three covers from PVE is also a very sucky loss as no matter how well/lucky you are you will never get that 3rd colour unless you're in one of the "top alliances". AS Ice stated himself if only a few supersentai 5-man bands are cracking the cover tops, and even still they're outnumbered by the bigger clans, making it doable but hardly practical or viable to the mass of players. Non-top-tier alliance players and loners have been majorly cover blocked under this new reward system. I think they have every right to be dissatisfied and shouldn't be dismissed as mere "casuals".

to end on a positive note:
@Ice: With the drastic increase and -i'm guessing- continued increase of 3 star (and inevitably 4*) characters will we eventually see more implementations of 3* tokens?

The alliance reward in The Best There Is is yellow. They tend to rotate the alliance covers.

Unknown

KaioShinDE wrote:

When I started getting into 3*s the selection was much much smaller. Villians were restricted to LRs so the only 3* that were offered as rewards were Punisher, IM40 or Spidey. That made it pretty easy to cover up and get started in high level play. Now that the covers are spread out over so many different characters, I can only imagine how much harder it is. I'm kinda feeling the frustrations of it, I want to level my Panther, but I can't do anything except wait until he is offered as reward again. Which might be weeks. Until then he is useless to me, even at Lv60 unless he is major buffed in an event. Judging from some conversations in my alliance with 2* players, that's pretty much their entire roster situation. Being flooded with new covers they can't use every week. I think the devs should just be more focused with the rewards. Have 4 events in a row with the same 3* as reward so new people have the chance to get covered up and use that character properly.

It's probably deliberate though. The want people to have to buy the covers with HP to make the characters useful.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

thatguy13 wrote:

How long is the focus on Alliances going to continue and how much more are you going to cater to alliances? If alliances were merely an added bonus I'd have no issue but every day it seems more like a rich get richer pyramid scheme. I may be missing something but how do alliances benefit casual players?

You know that 3* alliance reward? Top 250 alliances are getting it in current tourney. That's potentially 250x20 people getting a 3*. Before you had to place like top 2 to get all 3x covers. It's much easier to acquire all 3 or a single cover in general now.

Pretty much this. Numbers are a bit higher now, but let's go with the end of January The Hunt run since it was a nearly nice even 100K and thus easy math.
Before: 100K total users, 2000 user brackets, so 50 brackets total. Top 10 got the third cover. 50x10 = 500 covers handed out for the event.
Now: 100K total users. Top 250 Alliances get the cover, no Alliance brackets. Let's play conservatively and say that across all Top 250, the average Alliance size is 6. 250x6 = 1500 covers handed out.

This is still rich get richer. That rewards manage to hit a few more people doesn't change that. You still have all the super hardcore players all in the same alliances collecting all the top prizes only further ensuring that they take home all of the individual prizes too. The effect will be additive too I think as the hardcores get even further ahead of everyone else. I'm not saying those that play the most shouldn't win events, just that they shouldn't get what seems like double the rewards for doing really nothing extra.

My alliance is super casual with some of the players playing a few matches once a day, during the last alliance event we were in the 5000s. The current ISO event, I have over half of our points and I only usually play once a day. Yeah I could go hardcore and join a hardcore guild...err alliance but that's MMO all over again.

Anyhow here are some possible solutions I will make that would make at least me happier are:
1) Change the individual rewards back to the way they were and make the alliance rewards significantly less valuable. ie Equivalent to winning a sub or something.
2) Cap the number of people you can have in an alliance. Being able to buy your way to prizes shouldn't be an option.
3) Bracket the alliances according to playtime.

HailMary

daveomite wrote:

Thanks HailMary. I agree that scaling isn't directly related to alliances, but I'm assuming it is supposed to be due to how many grinders you may have in your particular bracket, and possibly your own stats/mmr, which I have no idea where that would place me.

Community scaling is based on everyone's performance in a particular node: the more people successfully complete it, the higher the scaling.
Individual scaling is based on your own performance: if you wipe out a lot on a node, its levels should decrease, but if you grind it a lot, its levels will soar.
MMR Is completely roster-strength-agnostic.

daveomite wrote:

And I see where you were, similar here I guess. Though, I don't have iron man 35 maxed, I don't own iron man 40 either. IM35 and MStorm both 45+ level, and BW is maxed. I have both Thor and obw at 85. Psylocke at 80. Punisher at around 66, ares at 61, magsMN/c storm/astonishing wolvie all just under 60. 3* Thor at 51, X force wolvie at around 45.

Well, now that you specify that, you're definitely farther along than I was. Nice work! I'm particularly jealous that you have more Punisher than I do even now!

As for your other specific 3*s, Rags is not so good. I'd aim for getting the newer 3*s (nice Psylocke!), as nowadays, they're featured multiple times as event rewards shortly after release, so getting 3/3/3 just for consistently great event performance is not out of the question. The catch is that this generally requires good PvE placement, and your scaling issues are pretty horrendous.

daveomite wrote:

So, I may not have the best, strongest roster yet. But working on it. Now, if there was some magic pull system so I could get more covers that I need, instead of more cap, jugs, bw, hawkeye...I'd be in heaven, lol

Hahaha, that never changes. I get so much Juggs, Yelena, Hawkeye from standard tokens. I did get two BagMen today, though, so that was... differently meh.

As for cover sharing, I've been convinced that cover sharing will essentially commoditize higher-level covers, and open up the field to serious operations that will farm the s--- out of covers. I am now against cover sharing.

Unknown

Fluffyudders wrote:

IceIX wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

IceIX, please disclose some data: in the last tournament how many 5-people alliances appeared in the top250? My guess is less than 3.

Far more than 3. If you want to get into Top 20-50 positions as a 5 man Alliance then sure, that's rough. But the median score across all users for the last Tourney was under 75K and across all Alliance members not much higher. 5 users in an Alliance that scored 100K each (which wasn't difficult) would push them pretty high up in the alliance rankings. Now, as Alliances get more entrenched for users as something to do in-game and the competition gets fiercer that may change. But a 5 man Alliance is *perfectly* viable right now.

Just to weigh in on this current debate, I was running a very high scoring 5-man alliance for the last PVE event, and fell out of the top 250. The only way I managed to get back up there was by using up my HP stash, buying two member slots and hiring 'freelancers' to push our score up. I'd be very interested to know how other 5-man alliances managed to maintain their spot in the top 250 without some kind of shadiness... I think we all scored around 250k each (did anyone hit 300k?) and needed around another 300k to break into the top 250. How does that match up with the figures??

Bump.

HailMary

thatguy13 wrote:

This is still rich get richer. That rewards manage to hit a few more people doesn't change that. You still have all the super hardcore players all in the same alliances collecting all the top prizes only further ensuring that they take home all of the individual prizes too. The effect will be additive too I think as the hardcores get even further ahead of everyone else. I'm not saying those that play the most shouldn't win events, just that they shouldn't get what seems like double the rewards for doing really nothing extra.

Unless you're just talking about the Rank #1/Rank #1-2 reward tier, I don't see how hardcores are getting "double the rewards." Without alliances, they'll still place well and hit the high reward tiers as individuals.

thatguy13 wrote:

My alliance is super casual with some of the players playing a few matches once a day, during the last alliance event we were in the 5000s. The current ISO event, I have over half of our points and I only usually play once a day. Yeah I could go hardcore and join a hardcore guild...err alliance but that's MMO all over again.

And... your super-casual alliance's super-casual members got into the high reward tiers before the alliance system?

thatguy13 wrote:

Anyhow here are some possible solutions I will make that would make at least me happier are:
1) Change the individual rewards back to the way they were and make the alliance rewards significantly less valuable. ie Equivalent to winning a sub or something.
2) Cap the number of people you can have in an alliance. Being able to buy your way to prizes shouldn't be an option.
3) Bracket the alliances according to playtime.

1. And your rationale is?
2. This is already reality.
3. Like, by timezone? Or, are you saying that D3 should bracket alliances according to total recent hours-played for its members? You realize that the latter wouldn't be some "return to normalcy," right? It'd be a complete overshoot.

Unknown

thatguy13 wrote:

Anyhow here are some possible solutions I will make that would make at least me happier are:
1) Change the individual rewards back to the way they were and make the alliance rewards significantly less valuable. ie Equivalent to winning a sub or something.
2) Cap the number of people you can have in an alliance. Being able to buy your way to prizes shouldn't be an option.
3) Bracket the alliances according to playtime.

1) Community has talked about this one at length see here for some of it
2) It is too late to bring the current cap/pricing back down without causing riots...
3) Not sure how that would work at all considering my alliance has picked up people from the US, UK, Singapore and the Philippines. There is no rational way to bracket alliances.

I want to root for the little alliances. I want them to feel they are getting a fair deal. I am still a little sore that I caved in and have done everything I can to make my alliance larger so we all can do better, but that seemed like the better choice than not doing so at this point.

NorthernPolarity

thatguy13 wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Psykopathic wrote:

thatguy13 wrote:

How long is the focus on Alliances going to continue and how much more are you going to cater to alliances? If alliances were merely an added bonus I'd have no issue but every day it seems more like a rich get richer pyramid scheme. I may be missing something but how do alliances benefit casual players?

You know that 3* alliance reward? Top 250 alliances are getting it in current tourney. That's potentially 250x20 people getting a 3*. Before you had to place like top 2 to get all 3x covers. It's much easier to acquire all 3 or a single cover in general now.

Pretty much this. Numbers are a bit higher now, but let's go with the end of January The Hunt run since it was a nearly nice even 100K and thus easy math.
Before: 100K total users, 2000 user brackets, so 50 brackets total. Top 10 got the third cover. 50x10 = 500 covers handed out for the event.
Now: 100K total users. Top 250 Alliances get the cover, no Alliance brackets. Let's play conservatively and say that across all Top 250, the average Alliance size is 6. 250x6 = 1500 covers handed out.

This is still rich get richer. That rewards manage to hit a few more people doesn't change that. You still have all the super hardcore players all in the same alliances collecting all the top prizes only further ensuring that they take home all of the individual prizes too. The effect will be additive too I think as the hardcores get even further ahead of everyone else. I'm not saying those that play the most shouldn't win events, just that they shouldn't get what seems like double the rewards for doing really nothing extra.

My alliance is super casual with some of the players playing a few matches once a day, during the last alliance event we were in the 5000s. The current ISO event, I have over half of our points and I only usually play once a day. Yeah I could go hardcore and join a hardcore guild...err alliance but that's MMO all over again.

Anyhow here are some possible solutions I will make that would make at least me happier are:
1) Change the individual rewards back to the way they were and make the alliance rewards significantly less valuable. ie Equivalent to winning a sub or something.
2) Cap the number of people you can have in an alliance. Being able to buy your way to prizes shouldn't be an option.
3) Bracket the alliances according to playtime.

I don't see how this is rich get richer at all: the alliance rewards were taken out of the top 2-5 positions of the individual awards, which is a lot harder to obtain for the majority of people than being in an alliance that can place high enough to get the covers. If anything, the ORIGINAL system was rich get richer since the only chance you had at a 3* cover was if you were high enough leveled to place in the top 5. Having alliances gives people who can't place in the top 5 but are in a good alliance a chance to get a 3* cover. This is obviously a change in playstyle as it forces lone wolfs to join an alliance to maximize rewards, but don't play it off as a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" scheme when it clearly isn't.

Dormammu

The poor are getting rich in our alliance. We have several new-to-mid tier players who all got a Lazy Cap cover in the Simulator event as an alliance reward, something few of them had a chance at getting on their own (and didn't).

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

thatguy13 wrote:

This is still rich get richer. That rewards manage to hit a few more people doesn't change that. You still have all the super hardcore players all in the same alliances collecting all the top prizes only further ensuring that they take home all of the individual prizes too. The effect will be additive too I think as the hardcores get even further ahead of everyone else. I'm not saying those that play the most shouldn't win events, just that they shouldn't get what seems like double the rewards for doing really nothing extra.

My alliance is super casual with some of the players playing a few matches once a day, during the last alliance event we were in the 5000s. The current ISO event, I have over half of our points and I only usually play once a day. Yeah I could go hardcore and join a hardcore guild...err alliance but that's MMO all over again.

Anyhow here are some possible solutions I will make that would make at least me happier are:
1) Change the individual rewards back to the way they were and make the alliance rewards significantly less valuable. ie Equivalent to winning a sub or something.
2) Cap the number of people you can have in an alliance. Being able to buy your way to prizes shouldn't be an option.
3) Bracket the alliances according to playtime.

I don't see how this is rich get richer at all: the alliance rewards were taken out of the top 2-5 positions of the individual awards, which is a lot harder to obtain for the majority of people than being in an alliance that can place high enough to get the covers. If anything, the ORIGINAL system was rich get richer since the only chance you had at a 3* cover was if you were high enough leveled to place in the top 5. Having alliances gives people who can't place in the top 5 but are in a good alliance a chance to get a 3* cover. This is obviously a change in playstyle as it forces lone wolfs to join an alliance to maximize rewards, but don't play it off as a "rich get richer, poor get poorer" scheme when it clearly isn't.

The "rich" (top alliance) get 500 HP + their individual rewards, which is more than twice the amount of HP you could mine from a PvP event if you got first even when selling covers gave HP. How on earth is that not "rich get richer"?

over_clocked

Dormammu wrote:

The poor are getting rich in our alliance. We have several new-to-mid tier players who all got a Lazy Cap cover in the Simulator event as an alliance reward, something few of them had a chance at getting on their own (and didn't).

You're pretty nice for a dude with a villain name...