Update to Supports (7/3/18)

Twysta

The reason people think they're underwhelming is because of the scarcity of acquiring them.
Considering how hard (and expensive) they are to get and level, they're not worth it.  No quantities of buffs or changes is going to change that... because if you buff them too much.  They're not actual "supports" the main characters would be supporting them.  
Until availability is greatly improved there's going to be a lot of tumbleweed around any other support announcements.

CathexisZero

-Quintupling the amount of Red ISO is necessary, but not sufficient.
-Adding beginner and advanced supports to the PvE Supports feature is necessary but not sufficient
-Adding advanced supports to progression rewards in PvE and PvP is necessary but not sufficient
-Adding support tokens into the Deadpool Vault is necessary but not sufficient.
-Doubling the power of currently existing supports and their perks is necessary but not sufficient.  

If supports are going to be a central part of the game, they need to feel like a central part of the game, not merely an afterthought like they are now.   The change D3 is making does not change that.  

Borstock

I personally don't think supports should be all that strong. I want most of the power to come from the characters you choose. I think supports should be a nifty little thing that can be helpful at times but won't change the way you play. They should be more of a wrinkle than anything else.

So, rather than make supports stronger, I personally would've just made them a lot easier to obtain and level. That's my two cents. I understand that there are those who disagree and wish supports would make lesser used characters relevant. I suspect most people would just use them to make the strongest characters even stronger.

Blindman13

So, now the perks are more powerful, but there's less perks.....so a net gain of nearly nothing?
I like supports. On the rare occasion that they do something, it's a nice little addition. I assumed they would be getting some sort of re-work, but this feels like the wrong solution to the right problem.  As others have said, more Red-ISO and/or more tokens would be the first change I would have made.

Freelancer

While you're making changes, can you update the supports tab to display the characters thumbnail on any equipped supports, please. The interface is so clunky, that the hassle of determining which support is attached to which character makes me not even want to bother.

JHawkInc

Feels a bit like putting the cart in front of the horse.

We need them to be available enough that people can both collect them and level them up, THEN see if people are satisfied with their strength, THEN make changes if they are not.

This feels like they listened to the mega whales that said Supports were too weak within a day of them coming out, and ran off to the drawing board to figure out how to make improvements without sticking around to listen to any subsequent complaints.

I would rather have 5 perks than 3, because more perks gives you more options and reasons to put the Support on more characters. Fewer perks makes the Synergy perk more meaningful so you're even more likely to use that Support with the one character that will benefit. I like the idea of every Hero being able to use Wasp's Gauntlets, but Wasp using them better, or every Hero getting to use Cap's Vintage Shield, but obviously Cap uses it better, but if you make it so no one ever wants to equip it to anyone else, you're nuking their versatility, which hurts the usefulness of the feature as a whole.

Not to mention the question of whether or not the existing Supports will be changed. Are they going to be updated and lose some of their abilities for the sake of making the others stronger? Can you reset my levels back to 1 so I can re-evaluate where to spend my Red-ISO? (just to clarify, I think that would be necessary regardless of whether or not the first 32 are getting re-done or not)

I would rather you guys use the Time Stone, rewind, and trade this announcement for "We're going to try making Supports more usable in the game by adding one Basic Support Token to Story Progression and Versus Progression. The increase in Supports will increase the number of duplicate Supports which will result in more Red-ISO available to the players as well. Hopefully this lets players better utilize existing Supports so we can fine tune them going forward."

veny

Briefly said, having 4* Support is no longer way better than 3*, so super lucky/rich players with 5* Supports get huge advantage over players with 4* Supports, that are a bit easier to obtain.
IF supports are stronger overall with unchanged RISO/supp token economy, it makes game more pay to win, which could multiply existing problems once they become part of PvP.
Anyway, thanks for trying to fix the issue... lets wait for results.

HoundofShadow

The real problem is accessibility of Support Token. Time to open the Support Store. It has been under renovation for close to two months.

The small amount of Red Iso-8 gained in PvE or PvP can be overcomed by duplicates of Support Tokens. A Rank 3 Support Duplicate gives 12000 Red Iso-8 or 6 times the amount of a 5* cover.

If Support Store is opened for business, should it be purchased using HP, CP or a new currency? The vets would definitely favour HP over CP, while new players might favour CP over HP. If not, a new currency might be out, which won't be a surprise to me.

mega ghost

As several others have already noted, our disinterest in supports is inextricably linked to their accessibility. 5* characters are hard to get, but at least there is a chance of pulling one every time we spend CP or use a Legendary token, and there are now even feeders. Supports are infinitely less accessible than 5* characters, and as such, to most of us, they might as well not even exist. So while I'm glad to hear they are getting some boosts in their utility, I'm still going to ignore them as I will likely never have the chance to see that utility in action.

Carnifexx

I see a lot of people saying what I’m saying, but I’m going to repeat it anyways just to hope the devs hear it: IT IS TOO HARD TO GET SUPPORTS! Sorry for yelling, but I am a near whale, pay way too much on this game, and I have hardly any supports. Also an easier system of showing which character has which support would nice, but for tinykitty’s sake, please release more tokens to the players.

DyingLegend

I think if you were listening to the same feedback that I've been reading, the overall consensus is that supports are worthless and should have never been implemented and the implementation of support has been nothing but a mess.

I still feel like the time spent on supports could have been spent at coming up with a dilution fix, character re-balances ETC.

I have yet to equip a support and i don't plan to. They don't benefit me in any way. What benefits me more is earning 4 stars and 5 stars easier. That makes me feel stronger, supports do nothing for me. 

professorplum9

Hey all,

Since we launched Supports, we've been paying close attention to the community's reception of them, and listening to your feedback. One piece we heard repeatedly is that Supports just weren't strong enough to bother playing with. We're thinking about how to respond to all all of your feedback, but this was the piece that we felt we could address the quickest.

Quicker than increasing the amount of RISO available for players to earn in events, quicker than increasing the number/quality of supports offered as rewards (placement/progression), quicker than making vaults of realistic size and acceptable odds so that you have a decent chance of getting a support instead of another 2* cover?

therightwaye

Supports are fine. I haven't leveled supports because I hate another variant of RnG. Getting covers is already random enough. Adding supports should have never been a buy a coin, put it in the slot machine. You're already doing that with covers. 

I'd rather see supports earned through fun side nodes. Leveled up with just RISO. I'd even spend a couple of dollars every so often for a unique support that comes attached with the right character cover in HfH.

I JUST DON'T WANT TO SPIN THE WHEEL ANYMORE.

zulux21

not that I can get red iso or supports in general to even care about supports.

but all I see here is a further devaluing of the support tokens that give a 4* or 5* support.
removing the 4* power means that the 4* version isn't any better than the 3* version. Sure you can technically level it higher but well not if you don't have red iso.

so it means you effectively only have 3 tiers to care about... which given there are 3 tokens it really feels like you should drop the 5 tiers, make it just 3, and the tokens given you at each the tier.

given the rate you are releasing supports there is no need for the carrot on the stick for people trying to chase 5* versions... even if the master tokens gave nothing but 5* tokens it would still be basically impossible to get all of the supports right now.

Logically supports should be something fun extra to chase and play with.... not something that is the hardest thing in the game to make have any meaning, that you don't want to spend iso to level up on because the iso is so rare it means you can only really level one support period.

alaeth

I honestly don't know if Supports are any good because I cannot use them- the UI is terrible.

There's no way to traverse from character to support and back... even with adding a button to get to Characters from the supports screen, what we really need is:

* The ability to navigate seamlessly between
** generic supports page, each applied support showing they've been assigned...
** a specific support (again, indication who it's assigned to via a button that navigates to...
** the character it's applied to
** the overall roster
(back and forth).

As it stands, given the details of the supports, the nuances of synergies, my legs have literally gone numb as I sit on the porcelain throne trying to decide (and then remember/navigate the UI) to apply a single support.

purplemur

Supports are great! they have been very powerful since the beginning but nobody could tell because of the drought of red iso.
?So you up the overall power by eliminating 40% of the perks? what kind of sense does that make? you didn't fold them into the other powers at all! Spinning lies instead of real talk: shame on you. I hope this is a failed experiment.
Also another support that only benefits a 5* character. 
TERRIBLE vault. again. - chances within chances- give us some specific supports in the vault. Less 2*s already
TERRIBLE bundle. again. -  Why don't you include the actual support "Wasp's Gauntlets"  in the tinykitty bundle? 500 CP and you don't even get a guarantee of getting the support in question. 
More master token dilution. 1:27 chance of getting a 5* is putting them effectively out of reach at all. 

They are way overvalued,  underrepresented in progression, Super low approval rating and all because of how they were handled. This is another step in the process of total disenfranchisement with this feature. I love supports and hype them whenever I can but if your cheerleaders(who are in the minority) are getting burnt out on these inexplicable decisions is there any wonder that mostly the players think they are dumb? 
What kind of metrics are you looking at for supports, has ANYONE maxxed a Support yet? that is a critical failure that should tell you the red iso levels are astounding low. Why are the devs not on the forum having a discussion with players on supports? How come again there is no information coming from the devs? but you want us to swallow that line about listening to everyone's feedback when you make a change that comes from left field- quit with the hyperbole and spin. It just makes you look disingenuous. 
 I hope the manager responsible for supports loses they job. seriously bungled at every step.

#ricefamine

moss04

Since 5 star supports basically can't be acquired, this change actually makes supports worse. Now you can only realistically get 2 perks on any support, and most likely the most useful perk will be the third one if the newest "improved" perk is a good example of future designs.  At least some of the old supports had good perks at 2, 3, or 4.

Jaedenkaal

moss04 said:

Since 5 star supports basically can't be acquired, this change actually makes supports worse. Now you can only realistically get 2 perks on any support, and most likely the most useful perk will be the third one if the newest "improved" perk is a good example of future designs.  At least some of the old supports had good perks at 2, 3, or 4.

Imagine that with the change, perk 2 is equal to perk 3 AND perk 4 from a support today. Possibly with improved numbers. That's what I'm reading here. I'd say that makes 3* supports better than today, and 4* supports, at the very least, more or less the same.

Heartbreaksoup

I'm with @purplemur .  Good reply, that.

I like Supports a lot.  I enjoy deciding who gets equipped with what as I assemble my PVE team, also finding the right gear for the required characters in the essential nodes.  I really like this part of the game, it makes the missions more creative and imaginative.  And I do love Okoye starting off with extra yellow AP thanks to Avengers Tower.

It's made my nightly roster maintenance more fun instead of a chore. I like having the freedom to decide whether to keep levelling up Wong or spreading the wealth - ha! "wealth"! - among other Supports.  The whole thing's just great fun...

Except, look.  You devs... you have this so backward that you think Wyoming comes first when you alphabetize the states.  The vault should not be a 120 item vault.  It should be 80 *at most*.  The Wasp Gauntlets should be one of those items, not fifteen tokens which each have a 1:25 chance of getting the Wasp Gauntlets.

Most importantly, you really need to drop the number of 2* covers.  Those are NOT why we consider spending money in a Support vault!  In a normal vault, sure, those are fine.  Everybody understands that if you spend HP in a normal vault (Partners in Crime, Unstable ISO-8, etc) then you are fishing for covers.  Makes sense that most of THOSE are 2* covers.  We know that before we click the button.  If it's a Support vault, then certainly a 4* cover will make most people smile, but we get more than enough 2*s everywhere else in this game.

In the Wasp Gauntlet vault, the 2*s are booby prizes.  And the odds are better than 50% that you'll get one.

Yes, we need more sources for Red ISO and yes, there should be more chances to get Supports via progression, but those 120-item vaults with 63 2*s are really insulting.  If you made it almost exactly the same in an 80-item vault and just knocked the number of 2*s down to 23, even that would be a mammoth improvement.

Heartbreaksoup

Actually, you know what would be lovely?  You know that node in Webbed Wonder that rewards a Howard cover?  How about adding an optional node to each PVE story that does not award any points whatsoever, just a Support token.  That way, the players who enjoy Supports can play it for a prize that we want, and the players who seem offended by the very existence of the things and want our fun toys taken away from us can skip the node and not worry about earning one.