Game auto-selecting highest level dupe bug is back

Akari

I sometimes use my dupe 2s and 3s in LR or PvE or whatnot as throwaway teams to save health packs, but when I start the next match, it automatically chooses the higher level version of the dupe. I believe this was fixed in a previous patch, but the bug is back.

Also, just a thought, for essential nodes in PvE, why is the essential character not moved to the front of the list? I tried to bring out my dupe unleveled Ares for Iso8 Brotherhood because the champ one died, and I had to dig all the way down to the bottom of my roster to find him, every single time.

JSP869

Still not fixed? Or is it back yet again?

I'm working on a Gambattery (currently -/-/3). Now that I've hit full progression in The Hulk PvE event, on a whim I decided to use Gambattery with my championed Mockingbird and my severely undercovered (2/-/-) 5* Daredevil in Hidden Stash: Nevada, and it worked exactly as intended. Even with just 3 covers, Gambit's Stacked Deck fueled Mockingbird's Bombshell and Secret Mission, which helped give me yellow AP (my strongest color, thanks to 5* Daredevil), which boosted my match damage. And because Yellow was my strongest color, and not Red, I could use Bombshell without nerfing my match damage.

So I started the second round, Gambit gave me Purple, enough to fire Mockingbird's Secret Mission, I tapped it, and...I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that. What? Oh no. I look at Gambit and see full Red and Purple AP bars, and I realize the damn game screwed me between matches by switching out my Gambattery with my fully covered Gambit. Son of a tiny kitty!!!

This is not just a Gambattery issue. As Akari noted in their post, you may want to use a dupe 2* or 3* in a Lightning Round, or PvE node, so you select your lower level dupe, but after that first match, the game switches out your lower level dupe for your higher level character. And so you have to scroll all the way back through your roster to find that lower level dupe. And you have to do this every single time. I have 149 characters in my roster, and I know there's a lot of players who have even more than that. That's a lot of scrolling.

Or maybe the loaner character in a PvP match is a lower level than your own, partially covered, hero, so you want to use the fully covered loaner. This was my situation in the "Main Event" Hulk PvP event. I only have 3 covers for my Hulk so of course I wanted to use the loaner Hulk, except my Hulk was a slightly higher level and so the game constantly switched out the loaner Hulk for my own Hulk. If I took a break, etc., and forgot to select the loaner, I'd inadvertently start a match with my higher level but ridiculously undercovered Hulk. It was very frustrating because the matches were more difficult when I used my own Hulk instead of the loaner.

Can we please fix this? Again? Maybe permanently this time?

JSP869

Hello, devs? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

I pulled the last black I needed to create my 0/0/5 3* Gambattery just in time to find out how awesome he was with a boosted Psylocke and Teen Jean, but after every single match I had to keep scrolling to the end of the roster to re-select him because after every match the game kept switching him out my with my fully covered 3* Gambit. A couple of times during clears one distraction or another resulted in me mistakenly taking the fully covered Gambit into a match and that completely **** me up.

This goes for PvE AND PvP. If I want to use the loaner character for PvP instead of my own slightly higher level but partially covered character, I should not have to keep re-selecting the loaner character.


This needs to be fixed. If we have multiple copies of one character rostered, whichever version we select for a match needs to remain selected after the match is over until we, the player, replace them.

Talus9952

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

LavaManLee

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Jaedenkaal

LavaManLee said:

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Simple fix, to add a brand new feature, that also requires at minimum a re-designed UI. Yep...

rixmith

There are definitely times where it takes me longer to select my team then it does to run the match! It would be nice to have the last version of a character that was used remembered (within a session). In a new session the highest level one should be selected again.

JSP869

Great. I added the second Purple cover to Nico for The Simulator (but didn't level her) and the game still thinks my 0/0/2 Level 70 Nico is better than the 1/1/1 Level 70 loaner Nico in Staff Appreciation Day, so now I keep needing to re-select the loaner Nico after every single battle or I nerf myself. It's not as bad as needing to constantly scroll through 140+ characters to get to my Gambattery every, single time, but it's still fething annoying to have to re-select the loaner Nico every, single time.
  

LavaManLee

Jaedenkaal said:

LavaManLee said:

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Simple fix, to add a brand new feature, that also requires at minimum a re-designed UI. Yep...

Well, let's put it this way : if that is NOT a simple fix, then the game is poorly designed from the ground up and not thought out well.

abmoraz

LavaManLee said:

Jaedenkaal said:

LavaManLee said:

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Simple fix, to add a brand new feature, that also requires at minimum a re-designed UI. Yep...

Well, let's put it this way : if that is NOT a simple fix, then the game is poorly designed from the ground up and not thought out well.

You are suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect.  You don't know enough about coding cycles in business, but don't know that you don't know, so you feel like you know (ya know?).  If the game was that well thought out (i.e. "We know the features we'll be adding in 5 years, so lets plan for them now."), then having any sort of a "suggestions" forum would be totally ineffectual as anything new wouldn't be in the plan and if they did add it, it would mess up the "Well designed from the ground up" methodology that they instilled.

Changes that seem simple from the user perspective are rarely simple from a coding perspective.  Have you considered that filtering may be an issue on one of the platforms but not the others (Steam vs iOS vs Android)?  I know from experience that getting code changes through the iTunes/iOS store is a bloody nightmare.  Apple inspects every line of code changes and will reject apps for stupid reasons (My company once had a release rejected because our submitted documentation for the appstore had a screenshot that had the word 'demo' in it, even though that folder was included in every app as a training demo.  Their rules prohibit releasing "demo" versions of software).  Add that to the fact that the interface for Steam is vastly different than the interface of either mobile platform, so not only does the change need to be coded 3 times, but 1 of the 3 has to have a vastly different UI, but still maintain a sense of consistency across all 3 platforms.

Another potential issue is scheduling.  There are only so many development hours per sprint.  If a change like you are suggesting I would aggressively estimate at 24-40 man-hours to fully implement (not counting QA hours).  Besides the sorting algorithms, there is the UI interface, the image design (as the framing and backgrounds will no longer fit) and other considerations that will pop-up as it's coded.  That's most to all of a week for a developer assuming perfect progress.  Realistically, it would probably be longer as aggressive estimates almost always under-shoot.

That leads to prioritization. Which other item(s) are getting bumped from the sprint for this to enter?  There are only so many coders, which means there is a finite amount of hours.  Do they bump some bug fixes?  Do they bump new character design?  How about special events?  New PvE stories?  Will this change affect revenue (either positively or negatively)?  Will the bumped items affect revenue more?  They need to turn profits in order to pay their developers, designers, server admins, hardware costs, licenses, etc...  As much as people complain about companies being "only about the money", they kind of have to be or else they can't pay people to make the game.

I do software development for a living (though not in the gaming market) in both the mobile and web platforms.  The 2 most feared words we hear from customers are "simply" and "just".  As in "Simply add this feature" or "Just make this change".  It's a tell-tale sign that the people making those statements have little knowledge of the work it takes to make a professional* project nor do they have realistic expectations.

*professional is the key here.  I could throw together a sort in minutes, but it wouldn't be robust, consistent with game's UI nor varied enough to be useful for enough of the player base to be truly useful.

/I would love to see a filter.  I've asked for it many times, but insulting the developers by unfairly minimizing the effort and/or criticizing their work is not the best way to get your request fulfilled.

Akari

All I know is, this bug was fixed before, and is broken again. The fix exists. It's just lost in one of their subversions. The devs just need to care enough to find it and bring it back again.

TPF Alexis

abmoraz said:

I do software development for a living (though not in the gaming market) in both the mobile and web platforms.  The 2 most feared words we hear from customers are "simply" and "just".  As in "Simply add this feature" or "Just make this change".  It's a tell-tale sign that the people making those statements have little knowledge of the work it takes to make a professional* project nor do they have realistic expectations.

Not just in Software development. Any question starting with "Could you just..." will send shivers down the spine of anyone who's ever worked retail or food service

Talus9952

abmoraz said:

LavaManLee said:

Jaedenkaal said:

LavaManLee said:

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Simple fix, to add a brand new feature, that also requires at minimum a re-designed UI. Yep...

Well, let's put it this way : if that is NOT a simple fix, then the game is poorly designed from the ground up and not thought out well.

You are suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect.  You don't know enough about coding cycles in business, but don't know that you don't know, so you feel like you know (ya know?).  If the game was that well thought out (i.e. "We know the features we'll be adding in 5 years, so lets plan for them now."), then having any sort of a "suggestions" forum would be totally ineffectual as anything new wouldn't be in the plan and if they did add it, it would mess up the "Well designed from the ground up" methodology that they instilled.

Changes that seem simple from the user perspective are rarely simple from a coding perspective.  Have you considered that filtering may be an issue on one of the platforms but not the others (Steam vs iOS vs Android)?  I know from experience that getting code changes through the iTunes/iOS store is a bloody nightmare.  Apple inspects every line of code changes and will reject apps for stupid reasons (My company once had a release rejected because our submitted documentation for the appstore had a screenshot that had the word 'demo' in it, even though that folder was included in every app as a training demo.  Their rules prohibit releasing "demo" versions of software).  Add that to the fact that the interface for Steam is vastly different than the interface of either mobile platform, so not only does the change need to be coded 3 times, but 1 of the 3 has to have a vastly different UI, but still maintain a sense of consistency across all 3 platforms.

Another potential issue is scheduling.  There are only so many development hours per sprint.  If a change like you are suggesting I would aggressively estimate at 24-40 man-hours to fully implement (not counting QA hours).  Besides the sorting algorithms, there is the UI interface, the image design (as the framing and backgrounds will no longer fit) and other considerations that will pop-up as it's coded.  That's most to all of a week for a developer assuming perfect progress.  Realistically, it would probably be longer as aggressive estimates almost always under-shoot.

That leads to prioritization. Which other item(s) are getting bumped from the sprint for this to enter?  There are only so many coders, which means there is a finite amount of hours.  Do they bump some bug fixes?  Do they bump new character design?  How about special events?  New PvE stories?  Will this change affect revenue (either positively or negatively)?  Will the bumped items affect revenue more?  They need to turn profits in order to pay their developers, designers, server admins, hardware costs, licenses, etc...  As much as people complain about companies being "only about the money", they kind of have to be or else they can't pay people to make the game.

I do software development for a living (though not in the gaming market) in both the mobile and web platforms.  The 2 most feared words we hear from customers are "simply" and "just".  As in "Simply add this feature" or "Just make this change".  It's a tell-tale sign that the people making those statements have little knowledge of the work it takes to make a professional* project nor do they have realistic expectations.

*professional is the key here.  I could throw together a sort in minutes, but it wouldn't be robust, consistent with game's UI nor varied enough to be useful for enough of the player base to be truly useful.

/I would love to see a filter.  I've asked for it many times, but insulting the developers by unfairly minimizing the effort and/or criticizing their work is not the best way to get your request fulfilled.

As a developer myself, you can clearly see their poor programming practices.  The fact that fixed bugs keep recurring suggests their source control sucks.  It doesn't matter how hard or simple the UI change would be because character selection is a real problem and needs to be dealt with.

abmoraz

Talus9952 said:

abmoraz said:

LavaManLee said:

Jaedenkaal said:

LavaManLee said:

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Simple fix, to add a brand new feature, that also requires at minimum a re-designed UI. Yep...

Well, let's put it this way : if that is NOT a simple fix, then the game is poorly designed from the ground up and not thought out well.

You are suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect.  You don't know enough about coding cycles in business, but don't know that you don't know, so you feel like you know (ya know?).  If the game was that well thought out (i.e. "We know the features we'll be adding in 5 years, so lets plan for them now."), then having any sort of a "suggestions" forum would be totally ineffectual as anything new wouldn't be in the plan and if they did add it, it would mess up the "Well designed from the ground up" methodology that they instilled.

Changes that seem simple from the user perspective are rarely simple from a coding perspective.  Have you considered that filtering may be an issue on one of the platforms but not the others (Steam vs iOS vs Android)?  I know from experience that getting code changes through the iTunes/iOS store is a bloody nightmare.  Apple inspects every line of code changes and will reject apps for stupid reasons (My company once had a release rejected because our submitted documentation for the appstore had a screenshot that had the word 'demo' in it, even though that folder was included in every app as a training demo.  Their rules prohibit releasing "demo" versions of software).  Add that to the fact that the interface for Steam is vastly different than the interface of either mobile platform, so not only does the change need to be coded 3 times, but 1 of the 3 has to have a vastly different UI, but still maintain a sense of consistency across all 3 platforms.

Another potential issue is scheduling.  There are only so many development hours per sprint.  If a change like you are suggesting I would aggressively estimate at 24-40 man-hours to fully implement (not counting QA hours).  Besides the sorting algorithms, there is the UI interface, the image design (as the framing and backgrounds will no longer fit) and other considerations that will pop-up as it's coded.  That's most to all of a week for a developer assuming perfect progress.  Realistically, it would probably be longer as aggressive estimates almost always under-shoot.

That leads to prioritization. Which other item(s) are getting bumped from the sprint for this to enter?  There are only so many coders, which means there is a finite amount of hours.  Do they bump some bug fixes?  Do they bump new character design?  How about special events?  New PvE stories?  Will this change affect revenue (either positively or negatively)?  Will the bumped items affect revenue more?  They need to turn profits in order to pay their developers, designers, server admins, hardware costs, licenses, etc...  As much as people complain about companies being "only about the money", they kind of have to be or else they can't pay people to make the game.

I do software development for a living (though not in the gaming market) in both the mobile and web platforms.  The 2 most feared words we hear from customers are "simply" and "just".  As in "Simply add this feature" or "Just make this change".  It's a tell-tale sign that the people making those statements have little knowledge of the work it takes to make a professional* project nor do they have realistic expectations.

*professional is the key here.  I could throw together a sort in minutes, but it wouldn't be robust, consistent with game's UI nor varied enough to be useful for enough of the player base to be truly useful.

/I would love to see a filter.  I've asked for it many times, but insulting the developers by unfairly minimizing the effort and/or criticizing their work is not the best way to get your request fulfilled.

As a developer myself, you can clearly see their poor programming practices.  The fact that fixed bugs keep recurring suggests their source control sucks.  It doesn't matter how hard or simple the UI change would be because character selection is a real problem and needs to be dealt with.

Is it, though?  I mean, I would really appreciate it (almost as much as I would appreciate them not over-riding "Control+arrow_key" in the forums from the standard "go one word left/right" to "mimic the home and end keys"), but is it really a "real problem"?  Does it alter game play?   Does it break the user experience?  Does it provide an unfair advantage?

Or is it just simply annoying because we all have Gambats now and get frustrated that we either forget to re-select him each time or that we have to scroll through our entire roster of 180+ toons to find him every battle?

Again, I agree with you that it would be a very nice feature added to sort our toons and/or to remember the specific dupe we had rostered, but that's hardly a "real problem that needs dealt with."

/you seem to have missed the whole point of my previous post.  Criticizing their work and being (as we call it at work) "one of THOSE customers" isn't the best way to get your requested features made.
//Flys ... honey ... vinegar

Talus9952

abmoraz said:

Talus9952 said:

abmoraz said:

LavaManLee said:

Jaedenkaal said:

LavaManLee said:

Talus9952 said:

This also highlights the need for a filter on character selection.  Having over 200 characters rostered, it is a chore to have to find the one you want.  Even if you know the level of the character you want, it takes forever to find it. 

Agreed,  Simple fix would be to allow you to Favorite players and then be able to filter on your favorite players by *** type.

Simple fix, to add a brand new feature, that also requires at minimum a re-designed UI. Yep...

Well, let's put it this way : if that is NOT a simple fix, then the game is poorly designed from the ground up and not thought out well.

You are suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect.  You don't know enough about coding cycles in business, but don't know that you don't know, so you feel like you know (ya know?).  If the game was that well thought out (i.e. "We know the features we'll be adding in 5 years, so lets plan for them now."), then having any sort of a "suggestions" forum would be totally ineffectual as anything new wouldn't be in the plan and if they did add it, it would mess up the "Well designed from the ground up" methodology that they instilled.

Changes that seem simple from the user perspective are rarely simple from a coding perspective.  Have you considered that filtering may be an issue on one of the platforms but not the others (Steam vs iOS vs Android)?  I know from experience that getting code changes through the iTunes/iOS store is a bloody nightmare.  Apple inspects every line of code changes and will reject apps for stupid reasons (My company once had a release rejected because our submitted documentation for the appstore had a screenshot that had the word 'demo' in it, even though that folder was included in every app as a training demo.  Their rules prohibit releasing "demo" versions of software).  Add that to the fact that the interface for Steam is vastly different than the interface of either mobile platform, so not only does the change need to be coded 3 times, but 1 of the 3 has to have a vastly different UI, but still maintain a sense of consistency across all 3 platforms.

Another potential issue is scheduling.  There are only so many development hours per sprint.  If a change like you are suggesting I would aggressively estimate at 24-40 man-hours to fully implement (not counting QA hours).  Besides the sorting algorithms, there is the UI interface, the image design (as the framing and backgrounds will no longer fit) and other considerations that will pop-up as it's coded.  That's most to all of a week for a developer assuming perfect progress.  Realistically, it would probably be longer as aggressive estimates almost always under-shoot.

That leads to prioritization. Which other item(s) are getting bumped from the sprint for this to enter?  There are only so many coders, which means there is a finite amount of hours.  Do they bump some bug fixes?  Do they bump new character design?  How about special events?  New PvE stories?  Will this change affect revenue (either positively or negatively)?  Will the bumped items affect revenue more?  They need to turn profits in order to pay their developers, designers, server admins, hardware costs, licenses, etc...  As much as people complain about companies being "only about the money", they kind of have to be or else they can't pay people to make the game.

I do software development for a living (though not in the gaming market) in both the mobile and web platforms.  The 2 most feared words we hear from customers are "simply" and "just".  As in "Simply add this feature" or "Just make this change".  It's a tell-tale sign that the people making those statements have little knowledge of the work it takes to make a professional* project nor do they have realistic expectations.

*professional is the key here.  I could throw together a sort in minutes, but it wouldn't be robust, consistent with game's UI nor varied enough to be useful for enough of the player base to be truly useful.

/I would love to see a filter.  I've asked for it many times, but insulting the developers by unfairly minimizing the effort and/or criticizing their work is not the best way to get your request fulfilled.

As a developer myself, you can clearly see their poor programming practices.  The fact that fixed bugs keep recurring suggests their source control sucks.  It doesn't matter how hard or simple the UI change would be because character selection is a real problem and needs to be dealt with.

Is it, though?  I mean, I would really appreciate it (almost as much as I would appreciate them not over-riding "Control+arrow_key" in the forums from the standard "go one word left/right" to "mimic the home and end keys"), but is it really a "real problem"?  Does it alter game play?   Does it break the user experience?  Does it provide an unfair advantage?

Or is it just simply annoying because we all have Gambats now and get frustrated that we either forget to re-select him each time or that we have to scroll through our entire roster of 180+ toons to find him every battle?

Again, I agree with you that it would be a very nice feature added to sort our toons and/or to remember the specific dupe we had rostered, but that's hardly a "real problem that needs dealt with."

/you seem to have missed the whole point of my previous post.  Criticizing their work and being (as we call it at work) "one of THOSE customers" isn't the best way to get your requested features made.
//Flys ... honey ... vinegar

It is needed, not just for gambat purposes, that's a different bug altogether in the game not remembering your chosen character.  There are multiple reasons why you would want something than your highest character.  A few examples I can think of:
1.  Gambat of course
2.  Similar vein to gambat, some people have multiple copies of prof x.
3.  I sometimes need to select a lower level dupe when the higher level one dies in order to save health packs for essential nodes.  Same thing for feature pvp, or Balance of Power, if you have dupe characters.
4.  All sorts of reasons for selecting a character that's NOT a dupe.  If i have to find a character that's not my highest, I to scroll a lot to attempt to find the character.  If you don't know the level, you have to just keep scrolling and pray yo recognize/see the character portrait.  Even if you did know the level, if the character is boosted, then you'd have to guess which level it was boosted to. 

This is such a basic feature, that I was puzzled why the devs added the * filter feature to the roster page, and not character selection.

TPF Alexis

Talus9952 said:

4.  All sorts of reasons for selecting a character that's NOT a dupe.  If i have to find a character that's not my highest, I to scroll a lot to attempt to find the character.  If you don't know the level, you have to just keep scrolling and pray yo recognize/see the character portrait.  Even if you did know the level, if the character is boosted, then you'd have to guess which level it was boosted to.

And if you didn't realize that the character was boosted, or can't remember what level you have them at (because, say, they're a niche character, and you don't use them often, but need them now), it can take way too long paging back and forth through your roster. I've actually had to go back out to my Roster page to find someone, and then go hunt them up in the Team Selection screen.

Jaedenkaal

TPF Alexis said:

And if you didn't realize that the character was boosted, or can't remember what level you have them at (because, say, they're a niche character, and you don't use them often, but need them now), it can take way too long paging back and forth through your roster. I've actually had to go back out to my Roster page to find someone, and then go hunt them up in the Team Selection screen.

In fairness, I'm not sure there's any feature that could really help in the "I can't find my niche character that I never use" case.

TPF Alexis

Being able to sort by star level at least cuts the amount of scrolling way down. I can reliably find them in the Roster screen, even if I'm having trouble in the Team Selection screen.

BryanMc82

The game will also change to the highest hit point dupe. I have noticed this for a while now. I'll be playing with a 2 or 3 star dupe then after the match if my duplicate was hit and has less hit points.  It will automatically charge out to a fresh one that I had not used in the match. 

jamesh

Talus9952 said:

As a developer myself, you can clearly see their poor programming practices.  The fact that fixed bugs keep recurring suggests their source control sucks.  It doesn't matter how hard or simple the UI change would be because character selection is a real problem and needs to be dealt with.

Rather than source control, it seems to point to a lack of automated testing infrastructure, or a lack of discipline in writing new automated tests when fixing bugs.

With an appropriate automated test, it should be immediately apparent when some other change to the code base breaks the feature.  It's then a matter of fixing the bug or consciously deciding to change the behaviour.