Confusing turn counts when enemy team uses self stun moves [Solved]

jamesh

This is mostly a cosmetic issue, but it has confused me a number of times.  Often when fighting against a team featuring 3* Iron Man, I've been surprised when he recovered from his stun one turn earlier than I was expecting.  The power is working correctly, but the stun counters can get confusing when some members of a team self-stun and others are stunned by you.

For example, imagine an enemy Iron Man triggers recharge and then it is my turn.  It now says that Iron Man is stunned for 2 turns.  I then fire some power to stun a different enemy for 2 turns, so there are two enemies that are both shown with a stun count of 2.  However, Iron Man will recover one turn earlier than the other enemy.

The problem is that one stun counter is updating on my turns and the other is updating on the enemy team's turns.

It would be clearer if both stun counters changed at the same time, so they tell me how many of my turns will pass before the enemy unstuns.

Dayv

That's not how it works, though.  The enemy's stuns all decrement at the end of their turn.  Self-induced stuns on either side (not counting 5* BP dodging damage, because that's a reaction ability) always start somewhere in the process of that side's turn, so the first round of stun always lasts only for the remainder of that side's turn.

jamesh

I'm not complaining that the powers aren't behaving as intended: it is about how the stun state is displayed.

The confusion is caused by the fact that an overlay saying "STUNNED (1)" can mean two different things:

1. I stunned the enemy during my turn, so they won't be able to play during the next enemy turn.
2. Iron Man (or some other self-stun character) will be recovering in the next enemy turn.

In one case, I can finish my turn knowing I'm safe from that character, and in the other case I can't.

Skrofa

I have also been caught out by IM40 recovering when I thought he shouldn't. It's certainly something to keep in mind when fighting against him.
It's like Thano5 stunning everyone. Make a normal match (which ends the turn), kill an enemy. Thano5 then courts death in such a magnificent way that everyone is left standing in awe. 
End of turn.
Enemies are stunned.
My turn. Oh, my team has recovered. So, they are not actually stunned for a whole turn

jamesh

And just so I'm not just complaining, here is one possible solution to the confusion.

We can't change when the enemy stuns are processed, since it interacts with other moves.  It should be possible to update the display of the count on enemy stuns at the beginning of the player's turn though, decrementing the counts to what they will be in the next enemy turn.

So the case of an enemy Iron Man would go something like this:

• during enemy turn: IM's recharge countdowns trigger, and character labeled "STUNNED (2)"
• start of player turn: text changes to "STUNNED (1)"
• start of enemy turn: no text change
  
• start of player turn: text changes to "STUNNED (0)" (but character remains stunned).
  
• start of enemy turn: character recovers

Jaedenkaal

Skrofa said:

I have also been caught out by IM40 recovering when I thought he shouldn't. It's certainly something to keep in mind when fighting against him.
It's like Thano5 stunning everyone. Make a normal match (which ends the turn), kill an enemy. Thano5 then courts death in such a magnificent way that everyone is left standing in awe. 
End of turn.
Enemies are stunned.
My turn. Oh, my team has recovered. So, they are not actually stunned for a whole turn

Sure they were. They were stunned for your turn, and the AI turn, which is one whole game turn. Sure, you got to take essentially all of your turn before you stunned your team, but that's not the point.

Stuns are very consistent in behavior in the game, the final result is simply different in some cases due to the stun occurring at different points in the turn.

jamesh said:

And just so I'm not just complaining, here is one possible solution to the confusion.

We can't change when the enemy stuns are processed, since it interacts with other moves.  It should be possible to update the display of the count on enemy stuns at the beginning of the player's turn though, decrementing the counts to what they will be in the next enemy turn.

So the case of an enemy Iron Man would go something like this:

• during enemy turn: IM's recharge countdowns trigger, and character labeled "STUNNED (2)"
• start of player turn: text changes to "STUNNED (1)"
• start of enemy turn: no text change
  
• start of player turn: text changes to "STUNNED (0)" (but character remains stunned).
  
• start of enemy turn: character recovers

That's not actually how it works, though. Iron Man's stun (and all other stuns) count down and end at the end of his turn, not the end of yours, just as stuns on friendly characters end at the end of your turn, not the end of the AI's turn. (The difference is not large, I admit, although it matters in some cases such as 5* Spider-Man and 5* Black Panther)

Skrofa

Jaedenkaal said:

Skrofa said:

I have also been caught out by IM40 recovering when I thought he shouldn't. It's certainly something to keep in mind when fighting against him.
It's like Thano5 stunning everyone. Make a normal match (which ends the turn), kill an enemy. Thano5 then courts death in such a magnificent way that everyone is left standing in awe. 
End of turn.
Enemies are stunned.
My turn. Oh, my team has recovered. So, they are not actually stunned for a whole turn

Sure they were. They were stunned for your turn, and the AI turn, which is one whole game turn. Sure, you got to take essentially all of your turn before you stunned your team, but that's not the point.

Stuns are very consistent in behavior in the game, the final result is simply different in some cases due to the stun occurring at different points in the turn.

Nope! Nah! No, they weren't! The killing move was also turn-ending move. Once I did that move that downed the enemy, my turn ENDED. 
Now, if that move was a match5 that gives me an extra move, sure, the other two can do nothing for that other move.

jamesh

Jaedenkaal said:

That's not actually how it works, though. Iron Man's stun (and all other stuns) count down and end at the end of his turn, not the end of yours, just as stuns on friendly characters end at the end of your turn, not the end of the AI's turn. (The difference is not large, I admit, although it matters in some cases such as 5* Spider-Man and 5* Black Panther)

I might have got the exact position where the stun state changes wrong, but that isn't really the point I was making.  I'm not suggesting that the mechanics of any ability change: just how the information is presented to the player.

If there were no self-stun moves, then this wouldn't be a problem: I'd know that stunned enemies will change state on my turn, and stunned allies will change state on the enemy's turn.  With self-stun moves, I need to manually keep track of who caused each stun to know what will happen.

This wouldn't be necessary if the counts were all normalised to show how many more enemy turns the character would stay stunned for (since this is generally what I want to know).

Jaedenkaal

It's not specific to self-stun; the behavior you describe will also occur if you stun the enemy on their turn (Jean Grey, for example)

Skrofa said:

Nope! Nah! No, they weren't! The killing move was also turn-ending move. Once I did that move that downed the enemy, my turn ENDED. 
Now, if that move was a match5 that gives me an extra move, sure, the other two can do nothing for that other move.

That's just semantics. They were still stunned for the rest of your turn, even though your turn then ended immediately. If, as you say, the match was a match-5, it would still have been your turn, and Thanos, being not stunned, could have used a power or made another match. Either way, your stun counter decrements by 1 and your characters are no longer stunned (assuming they weren't stunned for longer than 1 turn for some other reason)

jamesh

That doesn't make any difference to the confusing information the game provides to the user.  Again, the main points are:

1. There are two points during the game loop where a character can recover from a stun: the player's turn, or the enemy's turn.
2. When an enemy is stunned, the most interesting information is how many enemy turns will pass before they recover.

Assuming we're currently at the player's turn, it currently displays the same information for an enemy that will recover during the next enemy turn and an enemy that will recover during the next player turn.

From a strategy perspective, those two cases are very different, so it would be nice if the game made that difference obvious.

Dayv

jamesh said:

1. There are two points during the game loop where a character can recover from a stun: the player's turn, or the enemy's turn.

There's really just one relevant point.  The stun counter decrements at the end of that character's turn.  For enemies, it's the AI's turn, for allies, it's the player's turn.  But the rule is completely consistent.  It does take a while to understand the behavior, but try thinking of it this way: any time a character is stunned on their own turn, they are much closer to the first time the stun counter decreases.

Test this by getting your own characters stunned during the active portion of your turn (instead of the initial countdown phase, which can make it seem longer but behaves the same way).  Take a look at an enemy 4* Jean Grey's blue passive power.  How many turns does it say it stuns you for?  Now make a match-5.  Be sure to look at your stun counter during the enemy's immediate turn.  Or if you have an enemy 5* black widow you can find, use a skill to stun one of her allies.  One of yours is now stunned for a turn.  Finish the turn while watching that character -- they unstun immediately, before the enemy starts doing anything.

If you aren't at a level where you can find these characters often, watch out for Jean Grey in the Deadpool Daily Behemoth Burrito node.  Bring a TU that can create a match-5 on demand, like 2* Magneto purple or 3* Black Widow purple.

Dayv

[Marking this as solved, but leaving open for further discussion.]

jamesh

@Davy: This is most definitely not solved, so I'd appreciate it if you removed that flag.  All I've had is people telling me how moves work (stuff I already understand).

The post was about how the game could present information about the game state in a way that is more useful to the player.

If you're going to argue that the player should just remember what caused each active stun in the game in order to know when they will recover, you could also argue that the displayed counts are unnecessary.

I'm arguing that the counts are useful, but could be better.  I'd prefer something that unambiguously told me whether a character would recover in their next turn.

Alternatively, an explanation of why the current method of presenting the information is more useful to the player would do.

Jaedenkaal

If that's the case then this is probably feedback, and not a bug report.

vernr1

This is a bug. There should not be two separate cases that show the same to the player. As was pointed out, why bother having stuns display at all, if the information is not consistent?

The bug is that there are two very different game states that show to the user as being exactly the same. That is not a feedback, that is a bug.

Hadronic

If its working as intended, and it sounds like it is, then its not a bug. If you want them to change the intended behaviour, and it sounds like you do, that's a suggestion.

zodiac339

If there's any bug, it would be how a stun you apply interacts with the enemy's self-applied stun.
Specific example:
I was using Epic Thanos in Big Enchilada (only level 280, and Court Death does about 2400 damage). AI had IM40 and enough yellow to use recharge. Recharge went off, stunning enemy IM40. I killed on of his allies with a match, triggering Court Death. This was immediately followed by IM40 coming out of his self-induced stun, ignoring the Court Death stun, and using Ballistic Salvo.
It seems that since the stun count was 1, and my Court Death would have only applied a 1 turn stun, that the system determined not to update/overwrite the stun on IM40. Something to bear in mind when dealing with an enemy's self applied stun.

jamesh

Hadronic said:

If its working as intended, and it sounds like it is, then its not a bug. If you want them to change the intended behaviour, and it sounds like you do, that's a suggestion.

I haven't claimed that any abilities are broken: that's not what this thread was about.

What I do consider a bug is that two different game states with an important difference are portrayed to the user in the same fashion.  As a player, I would treat the case of "stunned enemy that will recover at the start of the enemy's turn" and "stunned enemy that will recover at the beginning of my next turn" very differently, but they display identically.

The game does a good job of presenting all relevant game state to the user so you could be handed a phone mid-game and have a reasonable idea of what is going to happen next.  This is what I consider a bug.

Dayv

jamesh said:

@Davy: This is most definitely not solved, so I'd appreciate it if you removed that flag.  All I've had is people telling me how moves work (stuff I already understand).

I'm not sure who Davy is, but I'll respond anyway.

Since there's some dispute over the interpretation here, I'll ask @Tombstone to take a look and put a question mark in the "solved" tag for now.

Tombstone

Quickly testing this I redact my previous statement. I can see how this can be confusing and will definitely discuss this with the team.

Tombstone

However, as far as stun functionality goes, both self stun characters and characters that are stunned via targeted abilities are being stunned for the same number of turns. As of right now there doesn't seem to be too much of a problem with this as no characters come to mind that have both a self stun and a passive that would be missing out due to this difference in functionality.