Should strike tiles suffer from diminishing returns in cascades?

Starfury

Right now, there's a clear hierarchy in special tiles. If you have X special tiles, you want X-1 strike tiles and 1 attack tile to double dip.

The reason for this is clear: You can benefit from a strike time an unlimited amount of times per turn, while an attack tile has exactly one effect per turn and a protect tile (while also working multiple times) doesn't help you but prevents a negative effect.

Now strike tiles only get stronger over time, with more and more characters adding different attack sources which get another dip into the strike pool. (If you have an attack tile and Medusa's CD, both damage sources get the full boost).

Now that alone is already enough to make strike tiles by far the most useful special tile. But on top of all that, the diminishing returns multiplier in cascades only applies to the match damage itself, each hit still gets the full bonus from strike tiles. This means in Grocket-boost weeks, you have those kind-of-hilarious-kind-of-farcical one-turn wins, where you get a 8 turn cascade doing a total of ~1200 match damage boosted by around 40000 damage from the 7 strike tiles)

Since the 25% damage reduction per cascade step can only be meant as a system to reduce match damage from cascades, adding the same effect to the strike tile bonus in a cascade would not only be consistent in terms of in-game logic, this slight nerf to strike tiles (and indirect buff to protect tiles) would also restore at least some semblance of balance to the three different special tiles.

Starfury

Yes

Since I already got that double post hanging around......

I'd find it interesting if more of the 75% No's would elaborate on their opinion.

• Do you think the strike tiles are fine as they are
• Do you think it doesn't matter if they're unbalanced
• Do you just want to keep them around to get through your 90 daily matches as quickly as possible?
  

Chrono_Tata

No

Ideally I'd like to answer yes but I don't trust the devs to fix the codes for this without screwing something up massively so I'll go with no.

DeNappa

No

I don't think so. At least not without redesigning the whole current strike/protect/cascade damage system, and possibly HP pools too. Seeing that probably at the moment strike tile strength designed around the current system as well, just flatly nerfing them sounds overkill.

Zalasta

No

No, but I do believe that there should be a counter to strike tiles. In much the same way that Venom's Give and Take reduces an enemies protect tiles strength to 1 (at 5 covers), we need a character that does the same for enemy strike tiles. That would be a nice counter to the R&G/Gamora teams that I had to face in 95% of simulator matches.

Quebbster

Zalasta said:

No, but I do believe that there should be a counter to strike tiles. In much the same way that Venom's Give and Take reduces an enemies protect tiles strength to 1 (at 5 covers), we need a character that does the same for enemy strike tiles. That would be a nice counter to the R&G/Gamora teams that I had to face in 95% of simulator matches.

There is, it's Black Suit Spiderman.

...probably not much help for most players though. Would be nice with a 4* version of that Power.

Dormammu

Strike tiles aren't broken, it's just that some of these passive powers have gotten out of hand; 4-star Rocket & Groot is an example of this.

AlexxKats

No

[edit: tl'dr: vote doesn't mind cause no dev will care to fix any of the actual problems]

What you want to ask for a better cascading algorithm except pure rng on every part of this game.

But no matter what of the two you decide to (properly and justified) complain about, demiurge won't give you anything. Or even worse, make things worse.
Because, those random cascades that make no sense  regardless the power level of opponents and/or existence of strike tiles, generate the need for additional health pack usage (because 100+ matches per day aren't obviously enough), which in turn leads to the need to buy said health packs if you want to continue to try and enjoy this game, which leads to profit for the company.

Last 4 years (and especially last 2 years) have proven (and total silence on that parts verifies imb) that bugs/cheating/etc in this game isn't important to fix as long as their existence leads to more profit from them.

Let me add the casual player view as well that will disagree with most of the veterans that are in competitive play, so they won't have to waste time: It's a game, either play slower, or play with a different team you enjoy more, or -if you're not enjoying the game- TRY TO MOVE DEVELOPERS INTO FIXING IT BY POSTING IN FORUMS IDEAS AND STUFF stop play or move to another you enjoy.

AlexxKats

No

Right! 
I seem to recall the fabled
"5*s will not be allowed to be bought but only earned through LTs."
Then CP
Then 5* Heroes for Hire

Starfury

Yes

aesthetocyst said:

Chrono_Tata said:

Ideally I'd like to answer yes but I don't trust the devs to fix the codes for this without screwing something up massively so I'll go with no.

Cascades were nerfed long ago, with good reason, long before any strike tile meta developed, long before buffing tiles was a thing. Those developemnts have partially undone that nerf.

Partially?

I'd have loved to see a cascade based solely on match damage and 2015 level special tiles doing 20k damage. Maybe if Chuck had a field day, that might have happened (though usually the enemy didn't live long enough for him to get enough buffs out)

AlexxKats

No

Partially. You know, when the ai rolls a 5match, and the cascade keeps going, the critical damage resets that proportional reduction and starts over... so a 5x5match cascade is often fatal.

Aaaaand if you're lucky as me, you can get that by panther in a cluster kitty of team up tiles and yellow matches and have a sweet 2x spirit of wakanda on 1st round. Add they super smiley Thanos getting over the top with all that destruction, fora 3 health pack usage by round 1 end

Stax the Foyer

No

I would be okay with DR coming in once the match involves tiles dropped onto the board after the initial match.

This would prevent the brutal luck cascades, but reward moves that will, based on the visible board, create multiple matches.

Daredevil217

No

No:

- It would be a huge nerf to too many characters who both create (Blade, Grocket, Nova, etc.) and buff (Wasp, Falcon, Professor, new Psylocke, etc.) said tiles.

- It would make trivial nodes / seeds / etc. even more tedious.

- Actually the game as a whole would be slower, and with 40 wins being a thing, do we really want longer matches?

(win or lose, I know I'd rather it end quicker).

- As a 4* player, a good Grocket cascade is the only reliable way I can see to beat a low-health 0/0/5 Gambit before he pumps out the AP for his team.

Dotproduct

It would make the matches too slow. Win or lose people are complaining about taking too much time. You want to increase the time of matches? 

animaniactoo

No

In order to do this, they would have to rework a significant portion of the game setup.

I firmly believe that the newer characters with a bunch of passives, etc. are designed at getting people through matches faster so that they actually WANT to keep playing rather than feeling like they are in a forever slog or are spending too much time in the game overall.

Therefore, if you want to reduce this damage, you have reduce the real-time damage that would be a side effect of doing it.

Things would have to change like the number of clearance rounds for PVE and win numbers for PVP in order to offset the significant increase back into the daily time necessary to maintain and progress roster build, etc. Potentially the scaling algorithm for additional ranks as you go up levels (because it's not a straight percentage, it's a curve) as well.

Personally, I would be fine with fewer matches played per day in exchange for the change suggested. However, I suspect many people would rather just play fewer matches with the current setup and without losing their current progression pacing.

animaniactoo

No

Dotproduct said:

It would make the matches too slow. Win or lose people are complaining about taking too much time. You want to increase the time of matches? 

Someday I will learn to do this "succinct" thing.

mega ghost

No

They already do suffer from diminishing returns in cascades, in that they often inadvertently get matched away. It's a gamble — sometimes there is a big payoff, sometimes you lose.

Sandmaker

No

Three main reasons no:

1.) Most characters are balanced with the power of strike tiles in mind. Nerfing them as suggested would require massive rebalancing which we won't see for years to come.

2.) The majority of active powers that provide strike tiles are not overpowered. Over the lifetime of a strike tile, on average you'll do a bit more damage than a nuke of equivalent cost and level, but you do so at the risk of it getting destroyed and the damage being spread out over multiple turns. The main problem comes from the couple OP passive abilities that generate a  bunch of them (Grocket being the big offender, Blade/OML being a distant 2nd).

3.)There is a certain bias when we (or the opponent) wins through something ridiculously flashy, like a multi-cascade with the strike tiles standing. You remember those time, but that kind of cascade happen like once every 20 games. Most of the time it's pretty reasonable damage (Grocket again being the exception).


Honestly, if Grocket didn't have his yellow passive, this thread probably won't even get made. 

Dotproduct

If Grocket didn't his yellow passive he wouldn't have anything. My Grocket team gets handily beaten most of the time. Why do I keep using him? Because it makes everything faster, losses be damned.

STOPTHIS

No

Nope. I'll say the same thing I said about Gambutt, it's better to have a countermeasure than a nerf. Most players don't even care for protect tiles. Maybe those need to be improved. Maybe we need more special tile stealing moves. Or someone who stops or slows down passives.

mega ghost

No

STOPTHIS said:

Nope. I'll say the same thing I said about Gambutt, it's better to have a countermeasure than a nerf. Most players don't even care for protect tiles. Maybe those need to be improved. Maybe we need more special tile stealing moves. Or someone who stops or slows down passives.

Agreed. I think a solid improvement for protect tiles, even if it's just a passive added to several characters who specialize in protect tiles, would be "If the value of your protect tiles exceeds X, nullifies the bonus damage of all enemy strike tiles."