Time Stone Season Updates (4/3/18)

DAZ0273

Shintok17 said:

DAZ0273 said:

mega ghost said:

Pongie said:

metallion said:

broll said:

The rockett said:

Ooooo.  Gems to Stones.  That is massive. 

I miss the much more straight forward season numbers. But I get they are promoting the upcoming movie. Wonder if they change it again after Phase 4 launches. 

They've said before the reason they moved away from season numbers was specifically because the season numbers were getting too high, not because they were promoting the movie, so no chance they're going back to that

That's because they used Roman numerals! They ran out of space on the event tabs. If they stuck with digits, that wont be a problem.... for a while.

I thought I'd remembered them saying that it had to do with not wanting to demoralize new players. Trying to step into something labeled as Season 52 could easily make you feel like you've missed too much and that you'll never catch up — "Why get invested now?"

This makes sense to me, especially as PvP is already daunting for a new player.

This reason does not make sense at all. No matter what you name the season any new player at this point is going to feel like they missed something or it's hard to catch up since the game has been out for 4 and 1/2 years. When you start a game so far into it's life cycle you obviously know what your getting into. I have been playing for almost a year now and from what older players have been stating in the forums and in my alliance I have realized that this late in the game it is easier to acquire resources and characters now than back when the game started. So newer players actually have an easier time getting ISO, HP, and covers than before, which lets them catch up and sometimes surpass older players.

Not every new player comes in with such expectations. I've been playing 2+ years, so have twice the experience you have, yet PvP is no more accessible to new players than it was when I started. I can see by at least not having a literal number on the amount of seasons that have gone by might be something the devs might want to avoid. Similar arguments are used in other media with rebooting, not least comic books.

I'm not saying it works or not but it is an illusion and I can see the possible benefits the devs might be trying to gain
.

Waddles_Pines

DAZ0273 said:

I can see by at least not having a literal number on the amount of seasons that have gone by might be something the devs might want to avoid. Similar arguments are used in other media with rebooting, not least comic books.

Slight tangent.  In comics, the whole numbering system sucks.  I See now that Marvel is going back to original numbers.  Joe Quesada (former Marvel EIC) said that the frequent reboots to number #1 were okay because readers didn't really care about numbering.  My counter to that was that they should also put the year number in the cover, so as to make it easier to reference particular issues.  Case in point.  I subscribe to Marvel Unlimited and it's such a pain to find a particular run when you have to go through multiple series to find it because every year or so they reboot it to #1 and thus it's a "new" series.

Spoiler alert for next season:
Thanos arrives, all Hawkeyes are dead or in hiding until next year when Part 2 of Infinity War comes to theaters...  , though I guess Bishop and Pizza Dog are safe since they're not in MCU yet... 
</s>

DAZ0273

Waddles_Pines said:

DAZ0273 said:

I can see by at least not having a literal number on the amount of seasons that have gone by might be something the devs might want to avoid. Similar arguments are used in other media with rebooting, not least comic books.

Slight tangent.  In comics, the whole numbering system sucks.  I See now that Marvel is going back to original numbers.  Joe Quesada (former Marvel EIC) said that the frequent reboots to number #1 were okay because readers didn't really care about numbering.  My counter to that was that they should also put the year number in the cover, so as to make it easier to reference particular issues.  Case in point.  I subscribe to Marvel Unlimited and it's such a pain to find a particular run when you have to go through multiple series to find it because every year or so they reboot it to #1 and thus it's a "new" series.

Spoiler alert for next season:
Thanos arrives, all Hawkeyes are dead or in hiding until next year when Part 2 of Infinity War comes to theaters...  , though I guess Bishop and Pizza Dog are safe since they're not in MCU yet... 
</s>

I don't disagree - just because I can see the logic behind it doesn't mean I think it is a good idea personally.

I got to know Joe Quesada pretty well as I was his (at first) original moderator on his Joe Quesada.com site and I had the same conversation with him over it at one point! Joe felt his reasoning was pretty sound but then he was coming at it from a different angle than us fans. I think he was wrong but I can see why he disagreed.

Waddles_Pines

Daz, thanks for that lil personal anecdote.  From a marketing/business perspective, I totally understand the #1 ad nasuem approach.  That along with rebooting everything as "all new" every few years is great for the bottom line, but makes for confusing continuity and storytelling.  <end old man rant, I'll get off my soapbox now...>

LONG LIVE HAWKEYE (even though he's nowhere to be found in the movie promos...)!!!

broll

metallion said:

broll said:

The rockett said:

Ooooo.  Gems to Stones.  That is massive. 

I miss the much more straight forward season numbers. But I get they are promoting the upcoming movie. Wonder if they change it again after Phase 4 launches. 

They've said before the reason they moved away from season numbers was specifically because the season numbers were getting too high, not because they were promoting the movie, so no chance they're going back to that

You misunderstood (or rather I wasn't very clear).

While I think numbering is better I wasn't intending to suggest they would go back to numbering when Phase 4 starts.  I was intending to suggest that they might switch them to something completely different that fits in with whatever Phase 4 theme ends up being.  

They've said in interviews that Phase 4 won't be called Phase 4 and they'll be calling them something different going forward.  Also they've said Phase 4 will consist of 20+ movies over a 14 year window, this would make it more comparable to all of Phase 1-3 combined.  My guess is that Phase 1-3 will be retroactively considered the Infinity War/Stones/Whatever Phase and the new Phase will have some overarching ark like 1-3 did.  If that's true they might rename the seasons to tie into whatever that theme is to keep the marketing hype on point.  Since they're not numbered they could call them whatever they want...

DAZ0273

Waddles_Pines said:

Daz, thanks for that lil personal anecdote.  From a marketing/business perspective, I totally understand the #1 ad nasuem approach.  That along with rebooting everything as "all new" every few years is great for the bottom line, but makes for confusing continuity and storytelling.  <end old man rant, I'll get off my soapbox now...>

LONG LIVE HAWKEYE (even though he's nowhere to be found in the movie promos...)!!!

Hawkeye will save the day! Everybody always writes him off.

mega ghost

DAZ0273 said:

Shintok17 said:

DAZ0273 said:

mega ghost said:

Pongie said:

metallion said:

broll said:

The rockett said:

Ooooo.  Gems to Stones.  That is massive. 

I miss the much more straight forward season numbers. But I get they are promoting the upcoming movie. Wonder if they change it again after Phase 4 launches. 

They've said before the reason they moved away from season numbers was specifically because the season numbers were getting too high, not because they were promoting the movie, so no chance they're going back to that

That's because they used Roman numerals! They ran out of space on the event tabs. If they stuck with digits, that wont be a problem.... for a while.

I thought I'd remembered them saying that it had to do with not wanting to demoralize new players. Trying to step into something labeled as Season 52 could easily make you feel like you've missed too much and that you'll never catch up — "Why get invested now?"

This makes sense to me, especially as PvP is already daunting for a new player.

This reason does not make sense at all. No matter what you name the season any new player at this point is going to feel like they missed something or it's hard to catch up since the game has been out for 4 and 1/2 years. When you start a game so far into it's life cycle you obviously know what your getting into. I have been playing for almost a year now and from what older players have been stating in the forums and in my alliance I have realized that this late in the game it is easier to acquire resources and characters now than back when the game started. So newer players actually have an easier time getting ISO, HP, and covers than before, which lets them catch up and sometimes surpass older players.

Not every new player comes in with such expectations. I've been playing 2+ years, so have twice the experience you have, yet PvP is no more accessible to new players than it was when I started. I can see by at least not having a literal number on the amount of seasons that have gone by might be something the devs might want to avoid. Similar arguments are used in other media with rebooting, not least comic books.

I'm not saying it works or not but it is an illusion and I can see the possible benefits the devs might be trying to gain
.

Yeah, the vast majority of the player base is not on the forums or even in alliances that are chattily offering up historical context. Most new players have no context besides what the game itself provides, and "Season 52" is negative context with a specific psychological effect. It implies a chronology and a build-up, like you're trying to start a TV show on Netflix on Season 6 but there's nothing you can do to change that, and it's a bummer. Removing the numbering gives a sense of even footing as there's no immediate implication of being deeply behind.

Waddles_Pines

DAZ0273 said:

Hawkeye will save the day! Everybody always writes him off.

It better be with a boomerang arrow...

mega ghost

DAZ0273 said:

Waddles_Pines said:

Daz, thanks for that lil personal anecdote.  From a marketing/business perspective, I totally understand the #1 ad nasuem approach.  That along with rebooting everything as "all new" every few years is great for the bottom line, but makes for confusing continuity and storytelling.  <end old man rant, I'll get off my soapbox now...>

LONG LIVE HAWKEYE (even though he's nowhere to be found in the movie promos...)!!!

Hawkeye will save the day! Everybody always writes him off.

RE: The #1 approach, that's also due to the fact that they know #1 issues sell, and that with almost all series the purchase numbers fall off considerably even by issues #2 and #3. People buy #1 issues because it's a clear entry point, but also because there is still an enormous collector's mentality in comics ("This will be worth something one day!") The comics industry as a whole is pretty resistant to change and by and large has no truly thoughtful marketing (a lot of the thinking is still stuck in the 90's), so they keep milking this. 

Marvel did the .1 naming convention for a bit to denote that an issue was a jumping on point (i.e issue #17.1), which I thought was a good concept (if not necessarily an ideal execution), but they didn't do a good job of explaining it so most people were just even more confused as to what they were potentially buying.

DAZ0273

mega ghost said:

DAZ0273 said:

Waddles_Pines said:

Daz, thanks for that lil personal anecdote.  From a marketing/business perspective, I totally understand the #1 ad nasuem approach.  That along with rebooting everything as "all new" every few years is great for the bottom line, but makes for confusing continuity and storytelling.  <end old man rant, I'll get off my soapbox now...>

LONG LIVE HAWKEYE (even though he's nowhere to be found in the movie promos...)!!!

Hawkeye will save the day! Everybody always writes him off.

RE: The #1 approach, that's also due to the fact that they know #1 issues sell, and that with almost all series the purchase numbers fall off considerably even by issues #2 and #3. People buy #1 issues because it's a clear entry point, but also because there is still an enormous collector's mentality in comics ("This will be worth something one day!") The comics industry as a whole is pretty resistant to change and by and large has no truly thoughtful marketing (a lot of the thinking is still stuck in the 90's), so they keep milking this. 

Marvel did the .1 naming convention for a bit to denote that an issue was a jumping on point (i.e issue #17.1), which I thought was a good concept (if not necessarily an ideal execution), but they didn't do a good job of explaining it so most people were just even more confused as to what they were potentially buying.

Well we shouldn't forget that a lot of that came from Bill Jemas, a man who really had no comic book history and less interest in what "fans" wanted (and from a background of collectable cards).

AdamMagus

Brigby said:

• The Infinity Gem Seasons have been updated to Infinity Stone Seasons, and their colors have been updated.

They will always be Infinity Gems to me no matter what NuMarvel says. 

Brigby

Hi Everyone. I know that it's been a while since our last series of character balances, and that players are understandably frustrated by that, however the team has been very busy with the upcoming major feature. It's coming really soon, and we anticipate providing more information about it later this week.

Once this feature is finally released, I'll be sure to reach out to the team to discuss character balances in the future.

purplemur

Patience is a Virtue.
They are on a roll with the new releases so it's not like they haven't been doing any work, and we know they are about to do something big so it doesn't make sense to make a change right before things really change.

it's not always Riri or IM40. sometimes its kingpin and carnage 2.1.1

Dragon_Nexus

Guys, remember there's this new feature incoming. The team is almost certainly focusing all their design efforts on that first and foremost before they worry about character balances and the like.

Richyyy

Dragon_Nexus said:

Guys, remember there's this new feature incoming. The team is almost certainly focusing all their design efforts on that first and foremost before they worry about character balances and the like.

I think people are getting rather tired of waiting for this 'new feature'. It was weeks (and weeks) ago now that they aggravated a significant slice of their player base with the Steam UI change and claimed it was to make the new feature possible. So where is it? Release that and there'll be fewer complaints about the lack of action on other issues.

Daredevil217

Richyyy said:

Dragon_Nexus said:

Guys, remember there's this new feature incoming. The team is almost certainly focusing all their design efforts on that first and foremost before they worry about character balances and the like.

I think people are getting rather tired of waiting for this 'new feature'. It was weeks (and weeks) ago now that they aggravated a significant slice of their player base with the Steam UI change and claimed it was to make the new feature possible. So where is it? Release that and there'll be fewer complaints about the lack of action on other issues.

Meh... he said that we should be getting news this week. Considering it is Wednesday now and they leave for the weekend Friday afternoon, we should be getting info sometime in the next two days. I for one am super excited!

hunky_funky

Yay! News about new feature this week! You know that thing, when you waiting for something and time like going slower? This few day's will last like eternity for me.

Bowgentle

Dragon_Nexus said:

Guys, remember there's this new feature incoming. The team is almost certainly focusing all their design efforts on that first and foremost before they worry about character balances and the like.

Yeah and this better be worth all that hype, run-up and dev time spent on it.
If it's not, Brigby will have to wear his asbestos pants for a week, trying to appease frustrated forum people.

I think anything short of another Championing thing will be very, very disappointing for most of us.

Jabrony_Geoff

All I'm interested is where we going to get our free 5* THANOS cover.
11years in the making I want a free one .   

Player1575

Hopefully Kraven will be one of the first reworks after this new feature. Playing him in this PVE event has reminded me of just how absolutely terrible he is, even though I have him champed.

I mean for crying out loud my 3* blade (level 180) does more damage and steals more ap per turn for 2 less ap than Kraven's blue...

And then there's his black that relies on destroying your own AP to do marginal at best damage (1600 at level 274 and 3500 when boosted) after you spend 10 just to activate it. Which means if kraven (or another black user) is your strongest you need 13ap to get the meximum effect out of this, and can only get the maximum effect out of it IF your opponent has ap in their strongest color. If not you have to settle for even worse damage or wait to use it.