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

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  • Waddles_Pines
    Waddles_Pines Posts: 1,229 Chairperson of the Boards
    DAZ0273 said:

    H.E.R.B.I.E. - Remember back in the 70's when they created a robot nobody had the slightest interest in to replace the Human Torch in the FF? He's back! Equpping this support will immediately result in a reduction of usefulness for any Fantastic Four member BY 25% in your team as they cringe with shame.


    +1 thumbs up, though if they made it so that you couldn't use this with HT, it'd be +100 thumbs up cause a lot of ppl would be left scratching their heads at Marvel's animation history...

    Also, I wonder if they'll do 2nd/3rd lever bonuses eventually where if all 3 characters have synergistic boosts that another special effect is enabled.  In this case, H.E.R.B.I.E, Baxter Bldg, and the Fantasticar would make a good combo...
  • CNash
    CNash Posts: 952 Critical Contributor
    Thanos needs his Thanos Copter!
  • Demiurge_Will
    Demiurge_Will Posts: 346 Mover and Shaker
    mega ghost said:
    I think my question got lost in my larger post, but I think it's worth clarifying:

    mega ghost said:
    Will supports and red ISO be integrated into champ rewards as well? And if so, will we receive them as backpay (so to speak) should we have already passed the levels they're awarded at? I have a lot of 3* characters on the verge of being MAX Champed, and if I sell them or start from scratch with dupes it will be a long time before I get their champ rewards again.
    We're not planning any Supports-related changes to Champion rewards at the moment.
  • JHawkInc
    JHawkInc Posts: 2,605 Chairperson of the Boards
    Okay, now that I'm looking at it, an observation, then a question.

    Supports kinda work like Characters (without the Champion system involved). You apply higher Ranks (ie more Covers) and use Red ISO (vs regular ISO) to Level them up. Higher Ranks (more Covers) change the Perks (ie Powers) directly, and higher Level increases the stats of those things. It's a vague/rough parallel, but it's there, right?


    Anyways, based on THIS image in the first post, Rank 1 lowers enemy power damage, and whatever level it is reduces power damage by 2.8k. But a Level 1 version of this Support might only reduce enemy power damage by like a hundred points right? Since higher Ranks unlock new Perks, it seems like the strengths of these Perks would be tied to Level (which kinda ties into the observation above). So having a Rank 1 of this Support lets you reduce enemy power damage, and the value of Red ISO is in leveling that up to reduce more damage, that's all pretty straightforward.

    The real question, then, is what happens with, say, the Rank 2 Perk. The text in the first post says "Rank 2: When the supported character makes a Red match, there's a 40.00% chance to gain 2 Red AP extra." Am I right in guessing that a lower Level version of this Support would have a lower percentage of gaining that extra AP? Similar with the Rank 3 Perk, which provides a 50.00% chance of fortifying a random friendly Special tile at the start of the turn, all Rank 3 versions of this Support have a chance, but how high that chance happens to be is tied to the level of the Support?

    Makes me think they can do some impressive stuff at Level 250 (which would necessitate Rank 5 to unlock that high of a level cap), but that Level 1 Supports will almost be negligible by comparison, so we have a long gradient of leveling them up to see their full potential (much the way a single cover character, a champed character, and a max level champ character are all very different).

    As a side note, I can already see people goofing up the distinction between Ranks (1-5, how many stars/Perks it has) and Levels (1-250, how strong those Perks are) in discussion (much the way people regularly got Shield Rank and Shield Clearance Level mixed up when those were new).
  • BoyWonder1914
    BoyWonder1914 Posts: 884 Critical Contributor
    Demiurge_Will said:
    Moon Roach said:
    Most cool.  Will our opponents in PVE also have supports?
    Not initially, but we think they could make for interesting encounters in the future.
    I am staunchly against this. In fact, I am afraid. Bosses it makes sense to have perks, but I don't want to add even more time to PVE by having a to figure my way around opponents that are jacked up on random perks that I have to circumvent.  :s:sweat:
  • ntcplanters
    ntcplanters Posts: 18 Just Dropped In
    Sounds promising. A little like crafting. Can we please get a new hero/support selection setup with this though? The more heroes we get, the more we have to click to select said heroes (i.e. I have to click 11 or so times to go down the line & select IM40). Maybe it sounds lazy & petty, but it is annoying.
  • Calnexin
    Calnexin Posts: 1,078 Chairperson of the Boards
    Stuff.  I like stuff!

    I don't see it having any major impact for me (and similar rosters), other than as a novelty.  Since it's not available in PvP, it won't help me with my Gambit problem.  In PvE, I don't expect the benefits to make up for sub-optimal start times, so I don't expect to see any effect on rank.  Seems like something for the top of the pile to chase after, with limited impact for us also-rans.

    I'm interested from a collection point of view.  Please tell me that season rewards are not the primary/dominant/only way to get them?  It seems silly to have a PvE-only (for now) thing that you can only reliably get from PvP, and since PvP is still Gambit fest my scores are falling somewhere between miserable and embarrassing.  A feature that's both not that useful and really difficult to get would constitute a "meh" reaction.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    edited April 2018
    talleman said:
    Can a character have multiple supports active at the same time or is it max 1 per character? Sorry if this already have been mentioned.
    A character can only have one Support equipped to them at a time.
    JHawkInc said:
    The real question, then, is what happens with, say, the Rank 2 Perk. The text in the first post says "Rank 2: When the supported character makes a Red match, there's a 40.00% chance to gain 2 Red AP extra." Am I right in guessing that a lower Level version of this Support would have a lower percentage of gaining that extra AP? Similar with the Rank 3 Perk, which provides a 50.00% chance of fortifying a random friendly Special tile at the start of the turn, all Rank 3 versions of this Support have a chance, but how high that chance happens to be is tied to the level of the Support?
    So here's a quick breakdown of how Rank and Level play into the strength / effectiveness of a Support:

    Rank: This determines the perk that's available on a Support. The higher the Rank, the more perks are available. Perks are additive, which means if you have Rank 3 unlocked, then that perk stacks on top of Ranks 1 and 2.

    Level: This determines the strength of each perk, and each level increase benefits at least one Perk, since you level up the Support itself.

    So yes, a lower level version of that Support would have a lower percentage of gaining that extra AP, and how high that percentage is, is tied to the level of the Support.

    //Updated Level description for clarity
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    BoyWonder1914 said:
    Demiurge_Will said:
    Moon Roach said:
    Most cool.  Will our opponents in PVE also have supports?
    Not initially, but we think they could make for interesting encounters in the future.
    I am staunchly against this. In fact, I am afraid. Bosses it makes sense to have perks, but I don't want to add even more time to PVE by having a to figure my way around opponents that are jacked up on random perks that I have to circumvent.  :s:sweat:
    As quoted from Demiurge_Will, "We're not currently planning any changes to the difficulty of Story events - Supports will let you get more powerful and tackle harder missions."
  • Wumpushunter
    Wumpushunter Posts: 627 Critical Contributor
    I love new stuff but not when it favors one play style. New supports through PVP season awards and cash bundles. 

    Yay, more pay 2 win content!

    I wonder why supports weren't added to both story progession and Pvp.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
    Wumpushunter said:
    I love new stuff but not when it favors one play style. New supports through PVP season awards and cash bundles. 

    Yay, more pay 2 win content!

    I wonder why supports weren't added to both story progession and Pvp.
    They'll be available in various vaults and bundles too, so it won't just be through season rewards.
  • hopper1979
    hopper1979 Posts: 565 Critical Contributor
    This looks like a lot of fun and is a good idea that should add another layer of strategy to the game.  Thank you for holding back on putting it into pvp until all the kinks are worked out, I think it will be worth implementing it there at some point but giving everybody a chance to build at a similar rate will not throw off the balance much when you finally do.  Keep up the good work.
  • ZootSax
    ZootSax Posts: 1,819 Chairperson of the Boards
    I wonder if there will be enough time between now and Halloween to roll out "Zombie Plague" support items, as that seems like a better way of doing Marvel Zombies than alternate versions of existing characters.

    Otherwise, I really like the concept of support items.  As someone else already mention, it really reminds me of RPG game elements, but it seems fitting given the structure of MPQ.  Hopefully they start a trend of giving out new support items for major MCU releases, as that seems a more sensible way of movie tie-ins for new players than expecting them to get excited over new 4*/5* releases...
  • Sim Mayor
    Sim Mayor Posts: 309 Mover and Shaker
    AngryGerman said:
    So the only way to increase the support’s rank is by randomly drawing it. Can you tell us the break down of how often each rank should be drawn? And do you envision implementing an alternative method of increasing ranks eventually? 
    Oy, thank you. I've sifted through 5 pages of comments to see if anyone else noticed that the only way to "level" these things is to find a better one. Don't get me wrong, I'm seriously looking forward to this addition, but since me and RNG aren't on the best of terms, I look forward to having level 1-2 supports for a long time.
  • moss04
    moss04 Posts: 147 Tile Toppler
    This is already a long thread, so I haven't read it all to see if this was suggested already, but I'd like to propose that when supports do get added to versus that they be separate.  Story supports only affect PvP and versus supports only affect PvP.  That would make it easier to address the special balance needs of PvP as well as making the 2-hour lock not be a complete headache for those that play both story and versus matches.
  • Heartbreaksoup
    Heartbreaksoup Posts: 356 Mover and Shaker
    Oddly, there's another thread around here about increasing the number of progression rewards.  I am in favor of doing something about that, even if the extra rewards are small or silly.  I started typing up this idea for "postcards," like you see in Two Dots.  Maybe it doesn't add anything to the gameplay, but people who like to collect might enjoy getting a virtual postcard from Avengers Tower.  Then my idea got long and ridiculous and I deleted it.

    And here, a couple of days later, is an Avengers Tower that actually does something!

    I'm looking forward to this being implemented.  For players like me who enjoy using as many different characters as possible instead of just my three Biggest Guns, this could make the "mental-play" of what we're doing even more fun.  Why not send Iron Man, Black Widow, and Hawkeye out with a datalink to Avengers Tower to make them more effective in the field?  That sounds fun.

    I'm not sure who the pizza dog is yet, but I'll figure it out.  Thanks for thinking about fun new additions to the game.  
  • TadPrime
    TadPrime Posts: 9 Just Dropped In
    Spiritclaw said:
    Aha! Clearly, Kitty Pryde hasn't been introduced yet simply because they need to create a Lockheed support!
    Heh, this is actually one of the more compelling arguments in favor of Supports for me...


    Personally I am slightly concerned about adding in a whole new layer of complexity that we have to manage.  This game already takes up more of my day than I would prefer if I want to reach max progression in PvE.  Hopefully I will just be able to optimize good supports on my main characters, and then I will just slap the rest of the support son whatever char they tie into the best and forget about them.
  • Shintok17
    Shintok17 Posts: 620 Critical Contributor
    moss04 said:
    This is already a long thread, so I haven't read it all to see if this was suggested already, but I'd like to propose that when supports do get added to versus that they be separate.  Story supports only affect PvP and versus supports only affect PvP.  That would make it easier to address the special balance needs of PvP as well as making the 2-hour lock not be a complete headache for those that play both story and versus matches.
    That will require a whole lot of supports. It will be nearly impossible to level them since the pool would be super diluted like *Cough* Classics store for 5*'s or any preferred 4*. 

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