Power Changes Involving Team-Up Tiles (2/18/17)

DrDevilDinosaur

Worried about consistency, eh? So does this mean that Mordo's Black will have its functionality updated to match description?

Vhailorx

Orti wrote:

this is the end of winfinite

Don't be silly. Switch was hardly an essential component of winfinite. She was just the starter motor.

But I do think that demi should evaluate this change on a more nuanced basis. doing a single, sweeping change will have very different effects on different types of characters.

There seem to be three classes of characters affected:

(1) Random tile changers (Chulk, Beast): These characters randomly select tiles from anywhere on the board and do something to them (e.g. swap colors or destruction). These characters don't suffer too much, since they were already creating a very unreliable effect. not much to complain about with these

(2) Targeted tile changers (cyc, qs): These characters allow the player to select a particular tile for a particular effect (destruction, tile swap, etc). These characters are hurt a decent amount by this change (at least when played by a human player). This change will noticeably reduce the tactical flexibility of these powers, so where they may previously have been 5 interesting options available for the power before, there might now be only 3 or 4. It's hardly crippling, but it also seems unnecessary. fully leveraging these sorts of powers is among the most puzzle-y and enjoyable aspects of MPQ for a lot of players. Reducing the flexibility of these powers is a real annoyance, especially when these powers, at least in some way, self-limited by the wretchedly dumb ai. No matter how good they are on offense, they are **** on defense.

(3) Adjacent tile changers (WM, Switch, SS): These characters spawn (often randomly) CD tiles that have some subsequent effect upon the surrounding tiles. These characters get hit hard by this change, especially those that spawn random CDs. Switch was already hampered by a 1/4 chance of spawning tiles on an edge row or column, now her CD can also get stuck is a nest of TU tiles and fizzle. It's just another random hazard of an already random power. WM is similarly affected. His green is just there for cheap boardshake, and now he may generate a noticeably smaller amount of boardshake if his CDs spawn near too many TU tiles.

Perhaps a more differentiated approach would lead to a better solution across all affected characters? For example: prevent Swtich and WM's CDs from affecting TU tiles, but fix the spawning mechanism such that they will only ever spawn in the middle 6x6 area of the board. not affecting TU's matters less if there are always 8 potential targets.

ClydeFrog76

Please update Scarlet Witch's Arcane Incantation code so that the CD never spawns on an outside tile.

You have now made her next to useless, and that is the only way you will make her semi-usable again.

drayviper32

Orti wrote:

this is the end of winfinite

Yup! Waiting to see if this gets reversed. Otherwise I might as well champion PX. Winfinite is already sometimes slow this adjustment to SW makes it worse. I don't use Winfinite as much as I used too since CD tile goes in the bottom corners or by other blue tiles that get matched before timer goes off.

DrDevilDinosaur

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

Please update Scarlet Witch's Arcane Incantation code so that the CD never spawns on an outside tile.

You have now made her next to useless, and that is the only way you will make her semi-usable again.

I'd say this change just about puts her next in line for the next 3* character update. There's obviously some concern about her ability to generate AP and match-5's, which were being used to fuel "winfinite" and trigger passives for more AP gain. And after a handful of matches both using Switch and fighting against her, it was obvious that the selected solution had a much more significant impact on her than I expected. I think the solution is to take the ability down a slightly different path.

- CD no longer converts any tiles to Purple.
- instead, CD shatters any Purple tiles within X radius, dealing no damage but gaining AP for each tile.
- Rank 3 should have Radius 2, Rank 4 should have Radius 3, and Rank 5 should shatter every basic Purple tile on the board.
- I'd probably also suggest that the CD count starts lower, but takes longer for higher Ranks (i.e. r3 = 1 turn, r4 = 2, r5 = 3). Thematically this represents Wanda spending longer on the incantation for a more powerful effect.

This would allow her to still accelerate Purple AP every few turns and the change at Rank 5 eliminates the negative of having the CD spawn on an edge or corner tile. Overall, this likely reduces her total purple AP generation potential, but I think it probably increases in other colours. There are still limitations such as the total number of Purple basic tiles (so now 3* Spider-Man and 2* Bullseye exist as counters, that's not entirely a bad thing).

bbf2

NO ONE likes this change. Why do it?
The comments I have seen on here and in other places for discussing MPQ have this as a resounding negative. 0% approval rating. Who cared about the linguistic technicalities? Did you get a single complaint about that? And now with this "fix" all you're doing is nerfing useful characters and making people hate Team Up tiles even more. If you were really hung up on the wording consistency it should have gone the other way and allowed powers like 2Mags purple or GSBW's purple to overwrite TU tiles. All you've done with this change is increase player frustration for absolutely no reason. Complete whiff.

Rick_OShay

Certainly you understand that the devs have seen that SW is over-used vs other characters, perhaps 4Cyke too.
Her Arcane Incantation has less to do with game play and more to do with a cheapish way to battery purple AP. Their decision to nerf it is to balance character usage. I too over-used her for quite some time, then after a while I felt like getting more enjoyment out of the game by strategy and move-making-tactics than using her as a crutch.
There's a "percentage of usefulness" you could assign to each character, and SW has certainly NOT become unusable. If the fair metric is that she is now 17% less useful, or whatever number is truly realistic, maybe this is close to the amount that players have been over-using her.

Perhaps previously it took around 6-7 turns to gain 14 purple (your own matches plus the Arcane passive), and now it takes about 9-10 turns, this nerf probably only makes SW less relevant among 4* rosters than when she's a big part of a 3* roster.

ClydeFrog76

Vhailorx

ClydeFrog76 wrote:

The distinction is arbitrary. Instead of arguing over semantics and nomenclature why don't we focus on the pro and cons of the actual changes being made?

ClydeFrog76

*Insert Buzz Killington meme with "The distinction is arbitrary" text*

bbf2

Rick OShay wrote:

Certainly you understand that the devs have seen that SW is over-used vs other characters, perhaps 4Cyke too.
Her Arcane Incantation has less to do with game play and more to do with a cheapish way to battery purple AP. Their decision to nerf it is to balance character usage. I too over-used her for quite some time, then after a while I felt like getting more enjoyment out of the game by strategy and move-making-tactics than using her as a crutch.
There's a "percentage of usefulness" you could assign to each character, and SW has certainly NOT become unusable. If the fair metric is that she is now 17% less useful, or whatever number is truly realistic, maybe this is close to the amount that players have been over-using her.

Perhaps previously it took around 6-7 turns to gain 14 purple (your own matches plus the Arcane passive), and now it takes about 9-10 turns, this nerf probably only makes SW less relevant among 4* rosters than when she's a big part of a 3* roster.

See, for me, this actually makes things less balanced among the three stars. If you're in 4 star land there's only a handful of 3s that you use outside of when they're required - primarily IM40, you're probably using him 75% of the time. But when the 4 star champ that's boosted for the event primarily uses purple (like Jean or Rulk or whoever), it was a nice change of pace to use Switch as your AP generator instead of IM40. Now instead of using IM40 75% of the time and Switch 20% of the time its going to be IM40 95% of the time.

Coubii

Brigby wrote:

... We will be monitoring this change to ensure that it doesn't create a negative impact on the game.
...

Sorry, but on this one: I don't believe you.

Dauthi

bbf2 wrote:

Rick OShay wrote:

Certainly you understand that the devs have seen that SW is over-used vs other characters, perhaps 4Cyke too.
Her Arcane Incantation has less to do with game play and more to do with a cheapish way to battery purple AP. Their decision to nerf it is to balance character usage. I too over-used her for quite some time, then after a while I felt like getting more enjoyment out of the game by strategy and move-making-tactics than using her as a crutch.
There's a "percentage of usefulness" you could assign to each character, and SW has certainly NOT become unusable. If the fair metric is that she is now 17% less useful, or whatever number is truly realistic, maybe this is close to the amount that players have been over-using her.

Perhaps previously it took around 6-7 turns to gain 14 purple (your own matches plus the Arcane passive), and now it takes about 9-10 turns, this nerf probably only makes SW less relevant among 4* rosters than when she's a big part of a 3* roster.

See, for me, this actually makes things less balanced among the three stars. If you're in 4 star land there's only a handful of 3s that you use outside of when they're required - primarily IM40, you're probably using him 75% of the time. But when the 4 star champ that's boosted for the event primarily uses purple (like Jean or Rulk or whoever), it was a nice change of pace to use Switch as your AP generator instead of IM40. Now instead of using IM40 75% of the time and Switch 20% of the time its going to be IM40 95% of the time.

We can only hope IM40 gets the axe eventually too, he deserved it more. He is a great example of a broken character. His yellow is amazing and creates mainly red and blue for his other two abilities that are bad. He was never meant to use the AP he gathers because most characters can use it better, which is bad character implementation. I see characters like Red Hulk as something they were striving for but threw the ball too hard with IM40.

Scarlet witch is something more like Cho now where she will keep a high concentration of purple on the board instead of creating constant 5 matches that I don't believe were intended. Like Cho she has a competent ability for the color she creates too. This is what separates these two characters from broken characters like IM40.

What you are saying is "these 3*s are broken, you eliminated one and now I only have the other." Scarlet witch will still create purple just fine, she just won't 5 match cascade 80% of the time. (number pulled out of my @#$)

Alsmir

Rick OShay wrote:

Agreed with TW about SWitch, this is a very FAIR change for her. Too many players rely on her in a cheap way. Dang, maybe now you have to actually earn it more... It's not like they changed the power completely, she's far from ruined, geez.
I've had her champed for a long time.
Now, playing -against- her will be much more enjoyable too!

Stinks about 4Clops, but I'll deal with it.

Cheap way? You mean for generating pueple?
We might aswell nerf all the other generators to make it fair.

Although I undesrtand your logic:
Hardly affects me - fair.

SW is still great, I mean I'm totally gonna use her green, that barely does anything or purple with high AP cost, inferior damage and a random (a.k.a. unpredictable) stun.

Skrofa

At least a retouch on SW now would be quite helpful.
Something like cho's passive the creates random green tiles... So have her create 5 purple all around the board.
This way you don't have to sweat it if it is in the corner or if it is surrounded by tu tiles.
Easy, right?

OneLastGambit

Although I disagree with the change there is evidence that devs have ALWAYS made a distinction between basic and team up...

Let me direct your attention to 3* bullseye green power....

"Bullseye let's loose a torrent of projectiles, weakening his opponent for the final blow. Destroys 5 chosen basic or team up tiles and deals damage"


This description has always said this since his introduction so it is some evidence that team up have always been viewed by the devs as different than basic tiles

Crowl

revskip wrote:

It's definitely a buff to 2* Capt. Marvel who I've used a lot since starting the game and who still occupies a place in my DDQ everyday. Since more TU end up on the board as a result of the changes her yellow now has even more opportunities to cause cascades.

Also a slight buff to 3* Cyke for the same reasons, now more spots for red to land on for his yellow power.

It could actually have a negative impact on him too, with more TU on the board, reds will be more randomly placed when the player fires the power with less chance of matches, although obviously the computer will fire the power and generate match 5s from it.

Crowl

Dauthi wrote:

Scarlet witch is something more like Cho now where she will keep a high concentration of purple on the board instead of creating constant 5 matches that I don't believe were intended. Like Cho she has a competent ability for the color she creates too. This is what separates these two characters from broken characters like IM40.

I think you are being overly kind to her purple power, due to having multiple components it is too expensive without a battery and doesn't do enough damage.

If this change did happen due to match 5s (timing seems odd given how long that has been happening in both 4* and 5* era) then they should rework the power completely so it generates purple but not by producing match 5s.

Ythik

Dauthi wrote:

We can only hope IM40 gets the axe eventually too, he deserved it more. He is a great example of a broken character.

The game plays better and is more fun with strong battery characters to pair with strong heroes with direct damaging abilities. If the problem is that we're using specific battery characters too often, the answer is to add more and better battery characters, not to nerf the ones that exist to the point of near-uselessness.

Trilateralus

Alsmir wrote:

Rick OShay wrote:

Agreed with TW about SWitch, this is a very FAIR change for her. Too many players rely on her in a cheap way. Dang, maybe now you have to actually earn it more... It's not like they changed the power completely, she's far from ruined, geez.
I've had her champed for a long time.
Now, playing -against- her will be much more enjoyable too!

Stinks about 4Clops, but I'll deal with it.

Cheap way? You mean for generating pueple?
We might aswell nerf all the other generators to make it fair.

Although I undesrtand your logic:
Hardly affects me - fair.

SW is still great, I mean I'm totally gonna use her green, that barely does anything or purple with high AP cost, inferior damage and a random (a.k.a. unpredictable) stun.

Switch's AP generation IS cheap. It's free, doesn't get any cheaper than that.