Patch Notes - 11/13 Discussion

Shuino

IceIX wrote:

ccseifert wrote:

In other words, it's even more expensive to do well. Between this and the new Lightning Rounds, we're starting to see a theme.

The thing to remember about the Lightning Rounds is that they're unbracketed, constantly shifting, and running between time zones. So even if someone with a max level team is dominating for a couple hours, they won't keep it up for the entire time. The longest we've seen anyone continually place has been a few Tourneys in a row, then they settle down again. We've seen quite a few people that haven't monetized at all top out on one Tourney or another simply due to deciding to push on a given time. It's definitely possible. More than that, it's not uncommon.

I think that is a terrible measuring stick for Lightning Rounds. Myself and I'm sure other top level players shoot for the 26-50th spot in these Lightning Rounds as the prize is better. I bet you will see many more repeating names in the 26-50th spot then 1st to 15th.

EDIT:
Also, with these Lightning Rounds you do not need to dominate for a couple of hours. You play the last 25 min and you can easily place in the top 50 as I have done it a handful of times.

IceIX

Shuino wrote:

I think that is a terrible measuring stick for Lightning Rounds. Myself and I'm sure other top level players shoot for the 26-50th spot in these Lightning Rounds as the prize is better. I bet you will see many more repeating names in the 26-50th spot then 1st to 15th.

There's a mix. We get people that obviously shoot for specific prizes, others that try for #1 no matter what the prize is.

IceIX

Reremnu wrote:

For how long are we going to have lightning rounds? 24h? 48h?

The current right this second end is Friday at 12 noon EST. That could change though depending on user load, other event participation, that kind of thing.

Shuino

IceIX wrote:

Shuino wrote:

I think that is a terrible measuring stick for Lightning Rounds. Myself and I'm sure other top level players shoot for the 26-50th spot in these Lightning Rounds as the prize is better. I bet you will see many more repeating names in the 26-50th spot then 1st to 15th.

There's a mix. We get people that obviously shoot for specific prizes, others that try for #1 no matter what the prize is.

Regardless it doesn't change the same group of say 100 to 200 players most likely finish in the 26-50th slots

Unknown

nice, so once again a 2 day event. excellent, considering i've done all i need to do in the thor event.

IceIX

Shuino wrote:

Regardless it doesn't change the same group of say 100 to 200 players most likely finish in the 26-50th slots

I don't have numbers off this Tourney round yet of course, but from the last set we had quite a few more uniques than that that placed that high across the full Tourney time. Don't get me wrong, there are players that will see these Tourneys and win a dozen placements over the time they're up. But the overall numbers of those players is actually smaller than you'd think.

Unknown

I don't think there's any question that the stats for the last set of lightning rounds will have almost no bearing on this one.

Unknown

Well, thanks for saving me money I guess. I had been considering buying some more HP but it's clearly not safe to at the moment - they are worth far less than they were yesterday, the cover slot prices have massively increased.

I've got 23 cover slots, how much HP have I saved or wasted by buying the cover slots before this patch?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Edit: We've also got a change in R42 that I can't talk about quite yet that alters how the collection/cover slots work in general a bit, so that also has an effect on why we pushed in the change that we did.

This, combined with the fact that I don't have anything in the cache right now, means I'm not going to panic over this just yet. However, is it possible to add a few days to existing caches to give this R42 change time to come out? Some people out there are probably going to lose covers because they were counting on existing HP prizes being enough to empty their cache in time.

Spoit

IceIX wrote:

Overall, the cover slot pricing starts lower and ramps higher than it did before. Still maxes out at 40.

What we're attempting to do is make the ramp for new players a little easier and push those that are playing for a bit to do one of two things (or both). One is to play in all the various events we've got running and have planned. Pulling 100 HP from an Event isn't too difficult (and our numbers show that this happens for a large number of players) and a large portion of the prize pool at the end also offers Hero Points. This should give users that play enough HP to continue gaining new Cover Slots when needed and have a little left over to toss at Cover Packs or Ability Upgrades if they want. The other route of course, is to monetize which is definitely a plus for us as a business. We like to put food on our tables and also to fund further development of the game which has a decent cost attached to it. So we'll be looking at the change in Hero Point spending habits across the board with the change and tweaking knobs if necessary to make sure that we don't raise any pay-concrete-walls while still trying to provide a good reason to push open new Slots as players move forward.

Edit: We've also got a change in R42 that I can't talk about quite yet that alters how the collection/cover slots work in general a bit, so that also has an effect on why we pushed in the change that we did.

I was planning to use the extra 100 HP for being a top 10 finisher in the current weekly tournament to be able to afford the slot to be able to fit the character card that came with it, but now I'm seriously considering just throwing battles to get down to the 26-50 level since I at least have a daken to feed. Hell, I would have been more than happy to toss a few more dollars for slots, but at 2.50 each, and going up, I'm far less likey to spend money on slot, much less sinks like covers which I don't even have space to use.

Are there any plans to be able to train covers directly from the stockpile, or better yet, have new covers go directly there instead of an open slot? I've already thrown away 3 yelenas from the lighting round tokens today because I needed that open slot to train other characters

Unknown

So users complain about the coat if cover slots and the reaction is to slightly reduce the cost of initial ones while massively increasing the costs of later ones? Are you kidding me?

Meanwhile we cannot get any kind of official statement on the scoring system and the hideously broken matchmaking system?

I know changes to such a core system are not to be taken lightly, but come on.

This is why it's broken -- you fight someone with equal points at 100 and you gain 25 while they lose maybe 10. At 500 you gain 25, they lose about 15. But once you get to 800 or so the gain/loss is equal. Once you get to 1000 the match making system starts breaking and gives you mostly matches against people that will give you 0-9 points (and if they retaliate then you lose 40). At 1100 you can pretty well forget any matches against equally pointed players. And it just keeps getting worse.

Fix this. It's utterly broken to even display a match where I will earn 0 points. It doesn't even make sense from an ISO point. You're better off playing against minions since the match takes less time and you don't injure your covers.

Please, oh please at least experiment with different ranking systems. You run multiple tourneys every week -- try a different algorithm for one of them.

Bainee

IceIX wrote:

The longest we've seen anyone continually place has been a few Tourneys in a row, then they settle down again.

I have placed pretty high in the last three rounds.

IceIX

Zathrus wrote:

This is why it's broken -- you fight someone with equal points at 100 and you gain 25 while they lose maybe 10. At 500 you gain 25, they lose about 15. But once you get to 800 or so the gain/loss is equal. Once you get to 1000 the match making system starts breaking and gives you mostly matches against people that will give you 0-9 points (and if they retaliate then you lose 40). At 1100 you can pretty well forget any matches against equally pointed players. And it just keeps getting worse.

Fix this. It's utterly broken to even display a match where I will earn 0 points. It doesn't even make sense from an ISO point. You're better off playing against minions since the match takes less time and you don't injure your covers.

Please, oh please at least experiment with different ranking systems. You run multiple tourneys every week -- try a different algorithm for one of them.

Changing a few values in a database to enact changes such as this is relatively simple. Altering matchmaking code that affects all Tournaments or branching code for specific Tournaments to test change is far less so. That's not saying that we can't and won't make changes such as that, only that those sorts of changes tend to not be quick. Even still, these Patch Notes didn't deal with changes to the Tournament scoring, so this isn't the proper place for such a discussion.

Unknown

I think this is due to people like me who only use HP for slots. The good news is that I buy slots as fast as I can afford them (because I have a bad habit of pressing the wrong button and burning my HP) so I have some open. Bad news is that at 350 to get a slot we are are talking about $3.50 in real money which I think is too expensive. Perhaps just charge money for slots. I'd probably pay $1 for a slot if I had a cover I did not want to loose and perhaps pay $5 for 6. This along with an increased likelihood of getting new covers during the lightening round could lead to some hard decisions. I suspect that we will be seeing some new covers soon that will drive us to need slots. This could get ugly. I agree with the poster that is annoyed to have to "waste" a slot to train. I put a junk card in my empty slots so I can sell it to train a good pull. I think it would be much better to be able to train straight from the cache. That would at least free up one slot and remove some of the sting of the price increase.

Unknown

Sorry to have a little moan but I'm getting really fed up with my luck buying cover packs.

Just wasted 3000 iso on the lightning packs and received 3 modern 1* storms in a row. Serious ouch!

Nefarious packs today have so far resulted in:

Classic Hawkeye - Not listed as prize
Yelena
Jugg - Not listed
Iron Man model 35 - Not listed

Heroic Pack's almost a guarantee a bagman and I finished collecting the covers from the standard packs last week. I can't really complain about the standard packs as you are constantly giving out tokens but the shop does nothing but hinder progress. Since starting the game the amount of ISO and HP I have wasted trying to better my team only results in regret for not using it to unlock cover slots and level up.

As always the best way to guarantee great rewards is through performing well in tournaments - which I'm happy to do, but me and the shop have officially fallen out. If you want people to spend money you should be encouraging them with good fortune so that they want to spend again rather than scare them from even spending the in game currency let alone reaching into their pockets.

Edit: Just pulled 2 more pathetic classic Hawkeye's from nefarious pack!

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

we'll be looking at the change in Hero Point spending habits across the board with the change and tweaking knobs if necessary to make sure that we don't raise any pay-concrete-walls while still trying to provide a good reason to push open new Slots as players move forward.

Consider at least one player concrete-walled.

Y'all got 50 bucks outta me, and have my compliments for making a great game with great potential. I might have given you more over time, but as things stand right now, I'm done.

The cover slot prices were rediculous before y'all hiked them. Especially considering how big of a customer-identified pain point this was prior to the update, I don't know how else to interpret this in any way besides a slap in the face to the players.

For anyone interested, the new price for the 31st slot is 400hp.

Unknown

Zathrus wrote:

So users complain about the cost of cover slots and the reaction is to slightly reduce the cost of initial ones while massively increasing the costs of later ones? Are you kidding me?

This is pretty ridiculous I agree. Maybe we should have been complaining that the cover slots were actually too cheap so they would have lowered them even more.

Unknown

I registered only to post how ridiculous the cover price has became after the lateset update, $5 for two slots, are you out of your mind.

Unknown

I dislike the price changes to the cover slots. But changing it without prior notice, so you can't buy cheap covers last minute is a real slap in the face

Unknown

I also really dislike the changes of the price for cover slots. I had 1500 HP saved up which value is constantly shrinking over the last updates. I really like the game but the directions I see at the moment don't make me want to feed you with my money...

With this kind of inflation I can invest my money better elsewhere