Brand New Supports Feature! (4/5/18)

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  • mega ghost
    mega ghost Posts: 1,156 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2018
    I said this on the release thread but since the conversation appears to be mainly happening here (EDIT: the entire post below is a quote from that thread but the "quote" format seems to be lost):

    mega ghost said:
    Brigby said:
      • It’s not clear from your roster which characters have Supports equipped.
      @Brigby Is a fix for this in development, though? And once there is a fix will we be able to locate this info through the support's page itself as well? This won't be a huge issue in the beginning but it will quickly become one as our number of supports increase. Being able to go to the support's page and seeing who has it equipped, as well as the ability to unequip it from this page, will often be much easier than guessing which of your characters has it equipped based on some icon over their cover in your roster.

      In addition, there should be a simplified way to equip supports at the start of a battle similar to how we equip team-ups, that way we're not forced to scroll through our rosters over and over again before matches. This would also be a good time to improve how we can filter, train, and equip things to our ever-growing rosters.

      This is a great new feature but it's going to need much more sensible UI if it's going to take off in a fun way.

    • Punter1
      Punter1 Posts: 729 Critical Contributor
      Orion said:
      So we need the following:

      1) To be able to unequip a support without switching it
      2) To be able to see who has a support equiped
      3) To be able to equip a support from the support screen
      4) To see the stats of supports at level 50/100/150/200/250
      5) To see the amount of red iso needed for each level
      6) To know how to get support tokens and the odds of drawing which level support from each token

      What did I miss?


      To see on the supports screen who that support is equipped to, if at all. 

      To see what supports you have active when entering a fight

      It looks like they worked out symbols on the support perk detail screen that correspond to different actions of supports.  Moving those symbols on to the support icons would be good.  You could then more easily see what each support does without clicking in.  It's not great, but better than the click fest this is currently.

    • Trilateralus
      Trilateralus Posts: 251 Mover and Shaker
      mega ghost said:
      I said this on the release thread but since the conversation appears to be mainly happening here (EDIT: the entire post below is a quote from that thread but the "quote" format seems to be lost):

      mega ghost said:
      Brigby said:
        • It’s not clear from your roster which characters have Supports equipped.
        @Brigby Is a fix for this in development, though? And once there is a fix will we be able to locate this info through the support's page itself as well? This won't be a huge issue in the beginning but it will quickly become one as our number of supports increase. Being able to go to the support's page and seeing who has it equipped, as well as the ability to unequip it from this page, will often be much easier than guessing which of your characters has it equipped based on some icon over their cover in your roster.

        In addition, there should be a simplified way to equip supports at the start of a battle similar to how we equip team-ups, that way we're not forced to scroll through our rosters over and over again before matches. This would also be a good time to improve how we can filter, train, and equip things to our ever-growing rosters.

        This is a great new feature but it's going to need much more sensible UI if it's going to take off in a fun way.

        So I really don’t understand your complaint. Why do you need to unequip supports rather than just equipping them to the characters you’re using? For the same reason why is it important to see who they’re currently equipped to?
      • Punter1
        Punter1 Posts: 729 Critical Contributor
        Trilateralus said:
        So I really don’t understand your complaint. Why do you need to unequip supports rather than just equipping them to the characters you’re using? For the same reason why is it important to see who they’re currently equipped to?

        Currently from the supports screen there's no info on who they are attached to, meaning you could easily have supports there that are unattached to anyone. While the supports currently are pretty useless, I'd rather they were uselessly attached to someone than not at all. Also it's easy to forget who you've attached stuff too, so you could move a good one to one character and just be taking it off another who you were planning on using anyway. Leaving you down a support say on your next fight without knowing it.
      • Trilateralus
        Trilateralus Posts: 251 Mover and Shaker
        Punter1 said:
        Trilateralus said:
        So I really don’t understand your complaint. Why do you need to unequip supports rather than just equipping them to the characters you’re using? For the same reason why is it important to see who they’re currently equipped to?

        Currently from the supports screen there's no info on who they are attached to, meaning you could easily have supports there that are unattached to anyone. While the supports currently are pretty useless, I'd rather they were uselessly attached to someone than not at all. Also it's easy to forget who you've attached stuff too, so you could move a good one to one character and just be taking it off another who you were planning on using anyway. Leaving you down a support say on your next fight without knowing it.
        As I’ve already said it only matters what team you’re using currently. Equip the appropriate supports before battle and where the rest are simply doesn’t matter. 
      • Punter1
        Punter1 Posts: 729 Critical Contributor

        In theory, when supports actually become useful.  I see a few key good ones being always attached to the handful of 5s I use regularly.  Then some others flipping around boosted or featured characters in each event. 

        I imagine setting them up to adjust every few days, not every fight.  Therefore the supports screen should be useful for this. Currently it isn't.

      • mega ghost
        mega ghost Posts: 1,156 Chairperson of the Boards
        edited April 2018
        Trilateralus said:
        mega ghost said:
        I said this on the release thread but since the conversation appears to be mainly happening here (EDIT: the entire post below is a quote from that thread but the "quote" format seems to be lost):

        mega ghost said:
        Brigby said:
          • It’s not clear from your roster which characters have Supports equipped.
          @Brigby Is a fix for this in development, though? And once there is a fix will we be able to locate this info through the support's page itself as well? This won't be a huge issue in the beginning but it will quickly become one as our number of supports increase. Being able to go to the support's page and seeing who has it equipped, as well as the ability to unequip it from this page, will often be much easier than guessing which of your characters has it equipped based on some icon over their cover in your roster.

          In addition, there should be a simplified way to equip supports at the start of a battle similar to how we equip team-ups, that way we're not forced to scroll through our rosters over and over again before matches. This would also be a good time to improve how we can filter, train, and equip things to our ever-growing rosters.

          This is a great new feature but it's going to need much more sensible UI if it's going to take off in a fun way.

          So I really don’t understand your complaint. Why do you need to unequip supports rather than just equipping them to the characters you’re using? For the same reason why is it important to see who they’re currently equipped to?
          ——————————————————————————————————————————————————

          EDIT: The quoting feature seems to be broken, and it's taking the last part of the quote and making it seem like it's my comment? My reply begins below:

          If I want to equip a specific support to a character and that support is currently already equipped to a different character, in the existing system I would need to:

          1) Recall from memory or trial-and-error guess who the support is currently equipped to.
          2) Locate that character in my roster, which involves cycling through 150+ characters (in most situations it'll likely be within the first few pages though, unless I attached it previously to a boosted 3* in which case they will now be buried somewhere in the middle.)
          3) Cycle through several info pages on that character's screen, and then swap the support off of the character there. Swapping doesn't let me swap that support to a different character, however, it just lets me swap which support is equipped to that character. This requires that I put a new support on that character, I can't just remove the support to free it up. What if there is no other support available at the time, what if they are all currently on lockdown? This now becomes a complicated system of musical chairs.
          4) Once that support has been swapped off the old character, I must now go to my 150+ character roster again, find the new character I want the support equipped to, cycle through their info screen, select 'Equip Support,' and then cycle through my available supports.

          As I noted, with only 4 supports to start this won't be a huge issue, but imagine a year from now when we hypothetically have 50-100+ supports available to us. The current system for managing them will be an impenetrable nightmare, and there would be no reasonable way to track them, especially if you haven't used a specific support in weeks.

          If we could know who the support is equipped to from the support's page and then unequip/swap it from there (unequip if we just want to free it up without the cost of swapping in a replacement support, one of which might not be available) it would be a huge timesaver. It'd be even better if we could do this right before a match like we do with team-ups, so as to not ruin the flow of play (in which we could select any available supports even without having to unequip them first, as long as they aren't in their lockdown period.)
        • Yepyep
          Yepyep Posts: 954 Critical Contributor
          edited April 2018
          Punter1 said:

          In theory, when supports actually become useful.  I see a few key good ones being always attached to the handful of 5s I use regularly.  Then some others flipping around boosted or featured characters in each event. 

          I imagine setting them up to adjust every few days, not every fight.  Therefore the supports screen should be useful for this. Currently it isn't.

          It is for this reason that I wonder if it might be partly designed to disincentivize tapping. My understanding is that the point of tapping is super-minor, marginal advantages. If this is affected by Supports then non-optimal use of them will have a dramatic effect on returns. But (1) optimal use will require time-consuming gear changes and (2) the 2-hr cooldown will prevent flipping. Just a thought that I'm not sure applies (bc it's hard for me to get my head around the willingness of someone to actual engage in tapping... Such a devalued sense of self makes it hard for me to take it seriously or believe that it exists.).
        • Blindman13
          Blindman13 Posts: 504 Critical Contributor
          mega ghost said:
          Trilateralus said:
          mega ghost said:
          I said this on the release thread but since the conversation appears to be mainly happening here (EDIT: the entire post below is a quote from that thread but the "quote" format seems to be lost):

          mega ghost said:
          Brigby said:
            • It’s not clear from your roster which characters have Supports equipped.
            @Brigby Is a fix for this in development, though? And once there is a fix will we be able to locate this info through the support's page itself as well? This won't be a huge issue in the beginning but it will quickly become one as our number of supports increase. Being able to go to the support's page and seeing who has it equipped, as well as the ability to unequip it from this page, will often be much easier than guessing which of your characters has it equipped based on some icon over their cover in your roster.

            In addition, there should be a simplified way to equip supports at the start of a battle similar to how we equip team-ups, that way we're not forced to scroll through our rosters over and over again before matches. This would also be a good time to improve how we can filter, train, and equip things to our ever-growing rosters.

            This is a great new feature but it's going to need much more sensible UI if it's going to take off in a fun way.

            So I really don’t understand your complaint. Why do you need to unequip supports rather than just equipping them to the characters you’re using? For the same reason why is it important to see who they’re currently equipped to?

            ——————————————————————————————————————————————————

            EDIT: The quoting feature seems to be broken, and it's taking the last part of the quote and making it seem like it's my comment? My reply begins below:

            If I want to equip a specific support to a character and that support is currently already equipped to a different character, in the existing system I would need to:

            1) Recall from memory or trial-and-error guess who the support is currently equipped to.
            2) Locate that character in my roster, which involves cycling through 150+ characters (in most situations it'll likely be within the first few pages though, unless I attached it previously to a boosted 3* in which case they will now be buried somewhere in the middle.)
            3) Cycle through several info pages on that character's screen, and then swap the support off of the character there. Swapping doesn't let me swap that support to a different character, however, it just lets me swap which support is equipped to that character. This requires that I put a new support on that character, I can't just remove the support to free it up. What if there is no other support available at the time, what if they are all currently on lockdown? This now becomes a complicated system of musical chairs.
            4) Once that support has been swapped off the old character, I must now go to my 150+ character roster again, find the new character I want the support equipped to, cycle through their info screen, select 'Equip Support,' and then cycle through my available supports.

            As I noted, with only 4 supports to start this won't be a huge issue, but imagine a year from now when we hypothetically have 50-100+ supports available to us. The current system for managing them will be an impenetrable nightmare, and there would be no reasonable way to track them, especially if you haven't used a specific support in weeks.

            If we could know who the support is equipped to from the support's page and then unequip/swap it from there (unequip if we just want to free it up without the cost of swapping in a replacement support, one of which might not be available) it would be a huge timesaver. It'd be even better if we could do this right before a match like we do with team-ups, so as to not ruin the flow of play (in which we could select any available supports even without having to unequip them first, as long as they aren't in their lockdown period.) ____________

            Agreed on the quoting bug - very strange......

            To your main point, you can actually just skip straight to step 4: Pick the character you want to boost, and equip the Support you want to use. It will get pulled from whoever is currently using it.
            There should never be a need to remove a support and leave it unequipped.
          • veny
            veny Posts: 834 Critical Contributor
            Now i am thinking that Supports could actually give some bonus experience points to character they are equiped to.
            Experience would be given for f.e. colour matches, defeating heroes/villains, and other deeds related to the nature of the Support, or buffs they are providing. Daily limit of experience points cap provided by a single Support could be 1 000XP per rarity star (so up to 5 000 XP).
            Reasons why i thinking about this are:
            1) Diversity - from what i see and understand, it will be perfectly enough to upgrade three of your most powerful/used character with three most powerful/fitting supports - rest will remain unused (same thing that is bothering regular characters). With my addition, every single support could be useful, especially if you want to grind.
            2) Another way how to levelup characters  - Naturally, we would be adding Supports mostly to the most powerful characters, which usually means the maxed ones. Game itself forces you to prefer fully leveled characters over, which is fine and it makes perfect sense. My addition would make using non-maxed characters a bit profitable and maybe more enjoyable (imagine leveling 5*s just by playing instead of by sinking ISO in them, or maybe some 2* farms could appear, where players would just play with 2*s, and sell them when maxed for further profit).

            Another reasons are very much either 1 or 2 - more interesting gameplay (focusing on objectives rather than purely on defeating enemy), less ISO needed, allow reasonable PvE farming above max. progression loot etc.

          • mega ghost
            mega ghost Posts: 1,156 Chairperson of the Boards
            edited April 2018
            Blindman13 said:
            mega ghost said:
            Trilateralus said:
            mega ghost said:
            I said this on the release thread but since the conversation appears to be mainly happening here (EDIT: the entire post below is a quote from that thread but the "quote" format seems to be lost):

            mega ghost said:
            Brigby said:
              • It’s not clear from your roster which characters have Supports equipped.
              @Brigby Is a fix for this in development, though? And once there is a fix will we be able to locate this info through the support's page itself as well? This won't be a huge issue in the beginning but it will quickly become one as our number of supports increase. Being able to go to the support's page and seeing who has it equipped, as well as the ability to unequip it from this page, will often be much easier than guessing which of your characters has it equipped based on some icon over their cover in your roster.

              In addition, there should be a simplified way to equip supports at the start of a battle similar to how we equip team-ups, that way we're not forced to scroll through our rosters over and over again before matches. This would also be a good time to improve how we can filter, train, and equip things to our ever-growing rosters.

              This is a great new feature but it's going to need much more sensible UI if it's going to take off in a fun way.

              So I really don’t understand your complaint. Why do you need to unequip supports rather than just equipping them to the characters you’re using? For the same reason why is it important to see who they’re currently equipped to?

              ——————————————————————————————————————————————————

              EDIT: The quoting feature seems to be broken, and it's taking the last part of the quote and making it seem like it's my comment? My reply begins below:

              If I want to equip a specific support to a character and that support is currently already equipped to a different character, in the existing system I would need to:

              1) Recall from memory or trial-and-error guess who the support is currently equipped to.
              2) Locate that character in my roster, which involves cycling through 150+ characters (in most situations it'll likely be within the first few pages though, unless I attached it previously to a boosted 3* in which case they will now be buried somewhere in the middle.)
              3) Cycle through several info pages on that character's screen, and then swap the support off of the character there. Swapping doesn't let me swap that support to a different character, however, it just lets me swap which support is equipped to that character. This requires that I put a new support on that character, I can't just remove the support to free it up. What if there is no other support available at the time, what if they are all currently on lockdown? This now becomes a complicated system of musical chairs.
              4) Once that support has been swapped off the old character, I must now go to my 150+ character roster again, find the new character I want the support equipped to, cycle through their info screen, select 'Equip Support,' and then cycle through my available supports.

              As I noted, with only 4 supports to start this won't be a huge issue, but imagine a year from now when we hypothetically have 50-100+ supports available to us. The current system for managing them will be an impenetrable nightmare, and there would be no reasonable way to track them, especially if you haven't used a specific support in weeks.

              If we could know who the support is equipped to from the support's page and then unequip/swap it from there (unequip if we just want to free it up without the cost of swapping in a replacement support, one of which might not be available) it would be a huge timesaver. It'd be even better if we could do this right before a match like we do with team-ups, so as to not ruin the flow of play (in which we could select any available supports even without having to unequip them first, as long as they aren't in their lockdown period.)
              ____________

              Agreed on the quoting bug - very strange......

              To your main point, you can actually just skip straight to step 4: Pick the character you want to boost, and equip the Support you want to use. It will get pulled from whoever is currently using it.
              There should never be a need to remove a support and leave it unequipped.
              __________________________________________________________

              My reply begins here, darn you quoting bug!

               Ah, have you experienced that firsthand or did you see it written somewhere? That was not apparent to me and I've had the update for less than two hours so I haven't seen the process play out yet post-lockdown. If supports that are currently equipped to a character that are past their lockdown times are available to be selected, then that solves the main issue. That said, I would still like additional and more streamlined ways of equipping supports!
            • Trilateralus
              Trilateralus Posts: 251 Mover and Shaker
              Provided the support you want isn’t on cool down it’s as simple as equipping it to the character you want. There is no need to unequip, there’s no need to search your roster. It really couldn’t be easier. 
            • ThaRoadWarrior
              ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,471 Chairperson of the Boards
              Now that I'm seeing these in-game, I don't dislike them. Of course, there aren't very many of them, so it's still easy to keep a handle on them. Once they become just as unwieldy as my character roster, I may turn on them lol.

              I see that many of the quality of life UI options regarding seeing who has one equipped, seeing who one is equipped to, being able to tell within a match that somebody is using one and what it is going to do were not considered in advance of the feature launch. Hopefully something is done about that sooner than later. Additionally, there isn't really an animation/effect that triggers to let you know one of them has 'worked" in game besides the special tile kind of appearing or whatever. Some of the AP gain ones are probably even less obvious. It would be gratifying to get some kind of notification/screen flash/interesting visual effect to let you know one of them has been particularly effective. Especially once they start being used against you by enemies in either PVE or PVP. 

              Now that the level up tab is gone, it might be nice to see the little up arrow indicating a character can be leveled on the roster screen; just consolidate those two things into one.

              I kind of wish that the terminology "Perks" was being used throughout this new feature, rather than the over-loaded term "supports" on the tab. I still feel that a user's first reaction to that word is going to be a customer service interaction. Items, perks, equip, almost any lore-flavored term would solve this problem. I like perks since it is also used on the cards themselves

              Also it would be great if there were a Shield Agent version of the Hydra Henchman that would give you a damage boost against Dark Avengers. Since you almost never fight regular Avengers in story mode.
            • mega ghost
              mega ghost Posts: 1,156 Chairperson of the Boards
              Trilateralus said:
              Provided the support you want isn’t on cool down it’s as simple as equipping it to the character you want. There is no need to unequip, there’s no need to search your roster. It really couldn’t be easier. 
              @Blindman13 Elaborated on that and I followed up, and if that's how the feature works then you are correct, there is no need to unequip. But it could definitely be easier. As it stands, on the team selection screen before a match you can select a character and then click "Info" to see if they have a support equipped already and then equip/swap one from there, but having UI for this that's more intuitive and streamlined would be very nice and a time-saver.
            • Moon Roach
              Moon Roach Posts: 2,863 Chairperson of the Boards
              I noticed when I got my 500 red ISO that it flashed the 4* reward graphic.  Is that really an indication of the rarity of red ISO?
            • mega ghost
              mega ghost Posts: 1,156 Chairperson of the Boards
              Moon Roach said:
              I noticed when I got my 500 red ISO that it flashed the 4* reward graphic.  Is that really an indication of the rarity of red ISO?
              I was afraid of this too, but I didn't want to jump to any conclusions as I have no idea how this is being implemented yet. My guess is most of my Red ISO will come from getting duplicate supports.
            • mega ghost
              mega ghost Posts: 1,156 Chairperson of the Boards
              Has anyone noticed if there is an animation or notice of any kind if one of the support's perks are enacted? Obviously not for perennial perks, but for the XX% chance perks.
            • pheregas
              pheregas Posts: 1,721 Chairperson of the Boards
              @Brigby

              Since there is some confusion as to which max champ character has a support enabled, would you kindly inquire as to what happens if you sell a character with a support enabled? 

              Does the support go back into inventory, or is it gone for good?
            • Demiurge_Will
              Demiurge_Will Posts: 346 Mover and Shaker
              pheregas said:
              @Brigby

              Since there is some confusion as to which max champ character has a support enabled, would you kindly inquire as to what happens if you sell a character with a support enabled? 

              Does the support go back into inventory, or is it gone for good?
              It stays in your inventory.

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