Reality Stone Season Updates (5/1/18)

Dragon_Nexus

What an incredibly timely survey to show up in game. Bet they'll regret that in the days to come.

I was a bit calmer with it though. My issue is Demiurge seems to be doing now what it usually does when bad news happens - they head for the fallout shelter and wait for it all to blow over. Maybe they'll scribble a note, stuff it into Brigby's hand and push him out the door to placate the horde of savage mutants outside (aka us), followed by him frantically banging on the door Fred Flintstone style, begging to be let back in as we demand answers that he hasn't been given.

I feel the radio silence even ends up affecting the community liasons when bad stuff happens. We've heard the talk of "We don't want to go on the forum because it's very angry" and it's such a poor way to conduct business. You lose control of the narrative, if nothing else.

I'm all for being proven wrong, I WANT to be proven wrong, but every time some divisive or negative incident happens as a result of their decisions, they hide.

Dormammu

Dragon_Nexus said:

 We've heard the talk of "We don't want to go on the forum because it's very angry" 

To be fair, these forums can be a touch toxic. There's a lot of good things going on in these forums too, but I typically stay as far away as possible from threads like this one.

The only reason I'm here is that I was trying to get some clarification on what the tinykitty they're doing with these Support rewards, and now I'm caught-up in the fervor saying, "By Odin's beard, are these developers for real? What are they thinking?"

Even the players that were saying: "be patient, we haven't seen the big picture with Supports yet" are starting to quiet. In fact, I don't think there is a 'big picture' with supports. I feel like we are all hamsters spinning in the developer's wheel as they test how out badly they can roll out a new feature.

Brigby

mega ghost said:

Hey Brigby, one quick aside, can you let us know if there will be any character rebalances attached to this season (and coming in a separate announcement momentarily) or if those aren't happening until at least next season? I have covers for a few rebalance candidates on the vine and I've been holding off champing or selling any of them until I knew one way or the other. Thanks!

As of right now, I'm unaware of whether or not there will be any character rebalances attached to this season.

Yepyep

Dormammu said:

Even the players that were saying: "be patient, we haven't seen the big picture with Supports yet" are starting to quiet. In fact, I don't think there is a 'big picture' with supports. I feel like we are all hamsters spinning in the developer's wheel as they test how out badly they can roll out a new feature.

Or how quickly they can connive more revenue out of paying players by rolling out a 1/4-baked, complex, and frivolous new "feature" nobody saw coming, asked for, or sees any real need for.

mega ghost

Brigby said:

mega ghost said:

Hey Brigby, one quick aside, can you let us know if there will be any character rebalances attached to this season (and coming in a separate announcement momentarily) or if those aren't happening until at least next season? I have covers for a few rebalance candidates on the vine and I've been holding off champing or selling any of them until I knew one way or the other. Thanks!

As of right now, I'm unaware of whether or not there will be any character rebalances attached to this season.

Thanks Brigby!

bloafx69

Omg finally I can stop pulling Mockingbird because MEHulk and Chavez are falling too far behind in levels. Best update ever thanks

HoundofShadow

1. As for the numbers, I'm being pretty conservative about it. It doesn't change the fact that the number of active posters/players in this forum is a small fraction of the total number of players in-game. 

2. This is a game about completion if you choose to take this route. 

3. "It also makes no sense to tie items to pvp rewards that are exclusively for pve at the current time."

It seems like they have something planned for the long term. The sixth stone or season ends in November. 

Let's begin with Infinity Stones. A season last for one month. A PvE usually last for 3 or 4 days. Season has 5000 players per bracket while PvE has 1000 players per bracket. If we are talking about Infinity Stone, they are making it rare, as true to the story as possible, and the current mode that allows this is Versus Season. They could make it top 5 or top 10 and some of you still won't be pleased about it.

Secondly, they mentioned that they are looking to implement it in PvP. Just because it's exclusive to PvE right now doesn't mean that everything related to support has to be given out or fought for only in PvE. 

Thirdly, they did mentioned that they are experimenting with more ways of making support tokens or Riso available in-game and they did fulfill their promise. Support is not equal to Infinity Stones. Support has more than just Infinity Stones. Infinity Stones is part of support. It represents 25% of the number of available support currently. If you choose to focus only on Infinity Stones and completely disregard the fact that support tokens and Riso are made more readily available, then there's nothing much to talk about. And their experiments have not ended yet.

DrDevilDinosaur

Dartmaster01 said:

Am I seeing this right? Supports, which can only be used in pve, are only rewarded to the top 1% in pvp. This doesn't make any sense but at this point I guess it's just par for the course. I honestly couldn't be any more disappointed with this game lately.

Let it never be said that development are bad at game design.

They're also bad at balance, logistics, and communication!

scottee

One of the reason this is a bigger deal on the forums is that there are more high level players here (both PVE and PVP). And in all the abilities of all the supports released so far, there's only one ability that makes an impact on 4/5* character play: the Power Stone's perk to fire free abilities.

For champed 4* and 5* characters, pretty much all of the other abilities don't do anything. But that also means the release of the Power Stone into so select few hands will create a disparity between those who can place 1st in a season bracket, and everyone else. That's why 99.98% of the forumites would rather supports not exist with the current implementation. The only way to get Infinity Stones is to be #1 in a season, but that gives 14 players a significant advantage moving forward (and the edge to win subsequent Infinity Stones, at least once they come to PVP).

Yoik

What? Infinity stones? I missed an update

Edit: Ah they are support tokens. Didn't realise. I was excited about something there for a while.

Smart80

scottee said:

One of the reason this is a bigger deal on the forums is that there are more high level players here (both PVE and PVP). And in all the abilities of all the supports released so far, there's only one ability that makes an impact on 4/5* character play: the Power Stone's perk to fire free abilities.

For champed 4* and 5* characters, pretty much all of the other abilities don't do anything. But that also means the release of the Power Stone into so select few hands will create a disparity between those who can place 1st in a season bracket, and everyone else. That's why 99.98% of the forumites would rather supports not exist with the current implementation. The only way to get Infinity Stones is to be #1 in a season, but that gives 14 players a significant advantage moving forward (and the edge to win subsequent Infinity Stones, at least once they come to PVP).

To be fair, the ability to get #1 for pvp season wont ever be determined by a support feature, but 99,99% by how many shields you are willing to buy for 28 days straight...

Calnexin

HoundofShadow said:

I suppose some of you expected Infinity Stone to be given to top 50, 100 or 250 placement, or even as a progression reward. It makes thematic sense that only the top one player of each "world" or "bracket" gets the stone, since it is powerful. I don't get why some of you behave as if it's the end of the world because Infinity Stones are given to only top 1. 

It's not the end of the world, but it is emblematic of catering to the elite.  The most exclusive of trinkets in so few hands means that, probably, the people who are dropping tens of thousands and probably have assistants to grind for them non-stop are going to get them.  The stones seem to have some pretty amazing powers (eg, time stone has a % chance that something that would down a champ character instead heals them), and could very well influence top-tier play.  So the people who are already dominant in that area will increase their dominance, and there is no chance for anyone to outpace them.  So it's just another trophy for us all to gawk at and never have.

That would be fine, except this feature is what occupied pretty much all of their development time.  Instead of working on amazing new content, game modes, features, or fixes for broken content, they threw a bunch of shiny baubles in the sky that are useless for most of us.

I don't begrudge the elite for getting infinity stones.  I begrudge them getting those at the expense of QoL changes and exciting content for the rest of us that the elite happily beat upon to get their stones.

NewMcG

HoundofShadow said:

 At least, top 25 gets an Advanced Support Token per PvP if I interpreted it correctly.

If you interpret it as "25 per PVP season, and not each PVP event" then yes, you interpret it correctly.

fmftint

Here's why the infinity stones don't even matter,  the only GREAT perk is at rank 5, rank 5 is unobtainable to EVERYONE, even T1 season pvp

Basepuzzler

fmftint said:

Here's why the infinity stones don't even matter,  the only GREAT perk is at rank 5, rank 5 is unobtainable to EVERYONE, even T1 season pvp

Isn’t the great perk the bonus one?  Available at all levels?

fmftint

Basepuzzler said:

fmftint said:

Here's why the infinity stones don't even matter,  the only GREAT perk is at rank 5, rank 5 is unobtainable to EVERYONE, even T1 season pvp

Isn’t the great perk the bonus one?  Available at all levels?

My mistake,  you're right

PenniesForEveryone

They needed to create a PvE season to run alongside PvE and have the stones as rewards there, that would have at least made some sense.

zeroswitch

DyingLegend said:

Oh so only the best of the best can earn supports? Makes sense to me... Smh

The best of the best, who got there without even NEEDING supports, making them especially redundant.  Sigh. 

I'd SO much rather have the Steam UI back than supports.

crackninja

I wonder if they thought that this would cause a bunch of people to push for the stones.  If so, I don't see that happening seeing as most people instantly realize they have no shot, but another method could have been a win based pvp where you need 2,500 wins in a season to get the stone.  Then we all feel like we could do it, just most wouldn't.

Shintok17

crackninja said:

I wonder if they thought that this would cause a bunch of people to push for the stones.  If so, I don't see that happening seeing as most people instantly realize they have no shot, but another method could have been a win based pvp where you need 2,500 wins in a season to get the stone.  Then we all feel like we could do it, just most wouldn't.

I was thinking about this as well. This could all be a business ploy to increase Shield and HP sales. The thing about it is that the people that get Rank 1 for the Season are already high level 5* Champ players who would not find much use for it. Those people already spend money on Health packs, HP, and Shields so it would not really change their spending habits. It will also not increase spending for the non elite players because we all know it would be impossible to get Rank 1 with our current rosters or bank account. It all feels like a decision geared to big spenders or Top Whale players and even they wont benefit much from the Infinity Stones since PVE matches are really fast for them.