R41 Change Results

IceIX

Hey all,

Now that R41 and its attendant changes have actually have time to shake out, I wanted to let you all in on a little bit of how that's actually impacted the game as a whole playerbase. It's one thing to have your own anecdotal evidence, another to see everything from a bird's eye view. Of course, neither are "correct", but more ways to see things is certainly helpful.

- The average length of time in any given session across the playerbase remained the same. Players are playing for just about as long with this change as they were before. These changes did bring the peaks and valleys in a little closer though. Players that were ekeing every last second out of their characters playtime before are playing slightly less per session while players who would binge and wait till next time picked up their playtime per session. - The average number of sessions across the playerbase went up. Players are checking in more often throughout the day and spending more time playing the game as a whole. Overall, this also means that playtime in general for the game has increased, since more people are playing average playtimes more times during a day. - Versus Tournaments experienced a vastly reduced amount of "swing" towards the end of the Tournaments. By removing leveling healing, the brackets stayed far more stable compared to before. Naturally, there was and still is swing, but we saw a much larger turn towards players that had "earned" their place keeping that place as long as they were playing. - <Bug> The change in how Team Ups work with characters using buffed strengths only when their base stats are more powerful had a hand in pushing swing down a little as well, as players couldn't rely on brute forcing opponents to death through extremely powerful matches on buffed characters.

We're undecided internally, but this may actually be a serendipitous bug that'll stay around as a feature (with better UI to identify Color Strengths).

- Small thing, but we've got far less people asking about power caps now that it's spelled out. On the downside, people that are suddenly aware of this even though it's always been there are whacking at reviews as a result. Odd that being transparent about an established mechanic can have a possible negative effect.

Now, there are far more numerous smaller changes to playerbase activity that always happens whenever any change is made, but I figured you all would be interested in hearing how things are looking top level for the game as a result of the patch.

Unknown

Honestly speaking, 1100 Spidey and the 26-50 reward being "better" than the <25 reward had at least a moderate impact.

Do you have numbers on how many people got Spidey?

Unknown

I think black widow and Spider-Man are at about the same strength. Spider man becomes self sustaining at some point, and be kills your whole team. Facing either after about 10 rounds = death.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

Honestly speaking, 1100 Spidey and the 26-50 reward being "better" than the <25 reward had at least a moderate impact.

Do you have numbers on how many people got Spidey?

Moderate impact on what? People giving the game negative reviews? Also how is Thor better than grey suit black widow?

Bainee

IceIX wrote:

<Bug> The change in how Team Ups work with characters using buffed strengths only when their base stats are more powerful had a hand in pushing swing down a little as well, as players couldn't rely on brute forcing opponents to death through extremely powerful matches on buffed characters. We're undecided internally, but this may actually be a serendipitous bug that'll stay around as a feature (with better UI to identify Color Strengths).

This does make team composition more important rather than just fielding your strongest team in these tournaments.

Unknown

I agree. I don't think that the IM40 tournament or the current Thor tournament are good measuring sticks for how this impacts last minute attacks. I think looking at the FFA results are valid, and maybe there will be some other tournaments coming up where people actually want the top level rewards. When faced with the option of fighting like mad to try and stay in the top 10 (with no hope of getting 1st or 2nd) or relaxing and going for the 26-50 reward, it was a very, very easy choice. Especially once I realized that her green cover was what I really needed. Meanwhile the top rewards in this tournament are 4* Wolv (widely regarded poorly here amongst players who have him... but I'll still take him) and Loki (who desperately needs a buff since being placed in Thor's nerf prison).

Or maybe both ihearthawthats and myself are wrong and this is an omen of things to come. I don't think so though. The end of the FFA tournament was just as hectic as ever.

And the Thor tournament is just insane... I haven't seen a lot of back and forth yet, but I've made it to 800 so far. A high level Thor and boosts mean matches are 2-3 rounds usually. You can get destroyed if the AI gets a lucky cascade, but otherwise it's cake. But I expect that to go both ways...

Unknown

Thanks for the update IceIX, much appreciated.

IceIX

ihearthawthats wrote:

Honestly speaking, 1100 Spidey and the 26-50 reward being "better" than the <25 reward had at least a moderate impact.

Do you have numbers on how many people got Spidey?

From the 1100 reward? Around about 350 unique users. More than that if you count users that are probably playing two accounts at once with multiple devices instead of linking.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Hey all,

...

- <Bug> The change in how Team Ups work with characters using buffed strengths only when their base stats are more powerful had a hand in pushing swing down a little as well, as players couldn't rely on brute forcing opponents to death through extremely powerful matches on buffed characters. We're undecided internally, but this may actually be a serendipitous bug that'll stay around as a feature (with better UI to identify Color Strengths).

...

This was very useful to me. My team is more flexible when the boosted team member isn't having to take ALL the hits.

Unknown

Good info, man. Thanks for sharing.

Definitely appreciate the transparency, hope there's more comin' in the future too

Unknown

I don't quite understand the "bug" of when a boosted character doesn't use his boosted stats to attack? Can anyone spell this out clearly?

Unknown

Twanbon wrote:

I don't quite understand the "bug" of when a boosted character doesn't use his boosted stats to attack? Can anyone spell this out clearly?

The way the game decides who attacks is determined by non-boosted attack strength. Boost becomes pointless if you can't attack with them, so you gotta be more careful with team selection. So for example, you have Thor with 50 attack and Storm with 51. Boost now gives Thor 100, but it goes to waste because Storm will be the one to attack.

Unknown

not totally pointless, see activating thor's abilities will see the boosted damage

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

Twanbon wrote:

I don't quite understand the "bug" of when a boosted character doesn't use his boosted stats to attack? Can anyone spell this out clearly?

The way the game decides who attacks is determined by non-boosted attack strength. Boost becomes pointless if you can't attack with them, so you gotta be more careful with team selection. So for example, you have Thor with 50 attack and Storm with 51. Boost now gives Thor 100, but it goes to waste because Storm will be the one to attack.

If Thor is always in the front he's always taking hits. Lets say you need one more yellow tile for Thor to obliterate the opponent. You see that the last surviving opponent, an IM40, has 13 red AP. You're worried about him blasting the next attacker. Thor is toast If he is the attacker on all colors. You can't send out another team member to take one for the team. There's no flexibility.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Twanbon wrote:

I don't quite understand the "bug" of when a boosted character doesn't use his boosted stats to attack? Can anyone spell this out clearly?

The way the game decides who attacks is determined by non-boosted attack strength. Boost becomes pointless if you can't attack with them, so you gotta be more careful with team selection. So for example, you have Thor with 50 attack and Storm with 51. Boost now gives Thor 100, but it goes to waste because Storm will be the one to attack.

If Thor is always in the front he's always taking hits. Lets say you need one more yellow tile for Thor to obliterate the opponent. You see that the last surviving opponent, an IM40, has 13 red AP. You're worried about him blasting the next attacker. Thor is toast If he is the attacker on all colors. You can't send out another team member to take one for the team. There's no flexibility.

That situation would require 3 characters all with red/yellow/green, which is a bad idea in the first place if you ask me. Not having Thor on red would require at least 18 red AP to take out the team, whereas if Thor is on red he can take out 1 character on normal attacks alone.

Unknown

If your Thor isn't already high level, you can't tank with him either. I'm using L48 C.Storm, L33 Thor, L30 IM40 and Storm is picking up most of the damage because she matches everything except red. If I throw in L30 Venom instead of IM40, he picks up black and purple (IIRC).

I can see it both ways, but if part of the goal of the buff is to help folks who haven't leveled up a lot, it's failing at that with the current situation.

Say you buff Loki in a future event. Since none of his abilities do direct damage, he is essentially no different than unbuffed Loki.

Unknown

ihearthawthats wrote:

Twanbon wrote:

I don't quite understand the "bug" of when a boosted character doesn't use his boosted stats to attack? Can anyone spell this out clearly?

The way the game decides who attacks is determined by non-boosted attack strength. Boost becomes pointless if you can't attack with them, so you gotta be more careful with team selection. So for example, you have Thor with 50 attack and Storm with 51. Boost now gives Thor 100, but it goes to waste because Storm will be the one to attack.

Team selection doesn't even matter for me, using storm and thor as example my thor is 30+ on red and storm is at 9 and it still uses storm for my red matches. It isn't using the highest non boosted its using everything but the boosted for me.

There is no point using your own hero cover when the free one and classic storm make it way easier to tempest through everything you fight.

Unknown

Light wrote:

ihearthawthats wrote:

Twanbon wrote:

I don't quite understand the "bug" of when a boosted character doesn't use his boosted stats to attack? Can anyone spell this out clearly?

The way the game decides who attacks is determined by non-boosted attack strength. Boost becomes pointless if you can't attack with them, so you gotta be more careful with team selection. So for example, you have Thor with 50 attack and Storm with 51. Boost now gives Thor 100, but it goes to waste because Storm will be the one to attack.

Team selection doesn't even matter for me, using storm and thor as example my thor is 30+ on red and storm is at 9 and it still uses storm for my red matches. It isn't using the highest non boosted its using everything but the boosted for me.

There is no point using your own hero cover when the free one and classic storm make it way easier to tempest through everything you fight.

I don't use that strategy.

Unknown

Thinking about this further, the bug compounds the advantage of someone who already has a high level version of the buffed hero. In the current tourney, if Thor is already high enough that he will take the lead in matches, you get the boost advantage on matches (like the one who just first turn crit killed my Thor) and can still use him with other red power heroes.

For my lower powered Thor, the options are to use him with only non-red power heroes, or only *really* low powered ones.

Unknown

fatcatfan wrote:

Thinking about this further, the bug compounds the advantage of someone who already has a high level version of the buffed hero. In the current tourney, if Thor is already high enough that he will take the lead in matches, you get the boost advantage on matches (like the one who just first turn crit killed my Thor) and can still use him with other red power heroes.

For my lower powered Thor, the options are to use him with only non-red power heroes, or only *really* low powered ones.

Doesn't that reward those with the high level featured char, as it should be?

Unknown

I dunno. I'm sure the devs have a better handle on all the impacts the buff has on the game balance, and what the goal is with it.

It just seems odd to me that the buff would be a disadvantage in any form, but that's exactly what it is right now. It limits my team options. Some folks will love it because it means I can't effectively use my C.Storm, but I don't use her to spam Tempest. That's just a fallback option if I get unlucky with matches.

I guess I see it as wrong because it doesn't seem to provide equal benefit to all players, it's unbalanced (in it's bugged form). Obviously, since it's a multiplier it will provide greater increase to higher powered heroes, that's the reward for their higher level that you expect. But at lower levels it comes with caveats and restrictions.

I guess it could be the same at higher levels? "Why is my maxed out Ragnarok making all the matches instead of this buffed Thor? This severely limits my advantage from this buff!"