Patch Notes 5/21 Discussion (Inc Spider-Man)

Twysta

It doesn't affect me really but personally I think the new roster "packs" between 8-24 is a horrible change for the f2p community.
I understood the reasons you gave for increasing it ice but think that it can really hurt players who are only paying in smaller increments because they're more comfortable doing that or can only afford small icrements.

As you've said the price hasn't changed and you're just trying to encourage people to be a bit more shrewd with their money and buy more in one go than in pieces, but it's more managable in pieces.
I kind of hope you change it back. If not, I hope it doesn't impact the playerbase.


Edit: It's a lot easier to justify paying smaller ammounts than larger sums for example and people are probably a lot more happy to pay "small" deposits when they need/can rather than paying for more in bulk. Where (I get that this is maybe a bit of an exaggerated example) people are far more likely to pay for Logan's Loonies multiple times than say a Stark Salary. Because it's a lot more easy to say to yourself "okay, I'll get this for 17.99" rather than paying 100 bucks in one go, even if that does net a loss in their HP gains.

IceIX

Bainee wrote:

At skill lvl 4 for Spider-man's purple ability it is allowing 4 protect tiles to be added.

This is not consistent with the posted notes of 3 protect tiles . Was this changed last minute?

EDIT: Also the base protect number is 25 at 4/5 rather than 20 at 5/5 like it says in the notes

For the first, that change was made between the original posting and now and I simply forgot to make that particular change after copy/pasting. Totally on me.
As for the second, hmm. Just checked and you're right. It is indeed 25/56/98/154 at 4/5. Checking into that. It's still the same as posted at 5/5.

Unknown

Finally Ice emerges!

My fear is that from all of this anger on the boards over the last week or two, what will be taken from it is "they are just complaining about the Spidey nerf, they will get used to it". I want to make sure it is known that the spidey nerf is possibly the least of the issues that are plaguing players right now. I dont mind the spidey nerf, sounds fine to me, and I think that people are going overboard about it. However the issues regarding a lack of communication during some recent complaints people have been having with bracketing, MMR, scaling, and the feeling of burnout among the players here has been disheartening. The more these issues go unresolved (or at least un-communicated), the more your player base here at the forums will turn negative. Give us a bone and let us REALLY know how things are happening, conversations happening over there, and how you guys are moving to fix the repetition and burnout and scaling. There have been numerous great ideas regarding how to fix these things, and no word about anything. In fact, even keeping the alterations done a secret, instead of (like many highly competitive games like WoW) releasing how the mechanics work so the top tier of players know how to compete without relying on figuring out a new system every single event.

RoughDawgs23

The game is still fun and addicting I have referred 4 friends in the last two months and they are genuinely into it. I feel the reactions to this balancing are a little exagerated...new players opinions matter too so the devs make decisions based on all of us not just the forum community

Unknown

RoughDawgs23 wrote:

The game is still fun and addicting I have referred 4 friends in the last two months and they are genuinely into it. I feel the reactions to this balancing are a little exagerated...new players opinions matter too so the devs make decisions based on all of us not just the forum community

The problem with that is that newer players seldom play at the higher levels, and do not own the characters themselves. Gameplay at the higher level is punishing, and right now, they removed the only really viable control option in PvP. He was too good, and to this nigh everyone agrees, but he was also hit too hard. Because right now, it looks like people will be more rewarded NOT to play, and wait for many defensive wins, than actually play the game, because the easy-damagebrigade is out there, easily going rampant while their only answer was hurt.

It is akin to soft-banning blue in Magic. "Counterspells are too powerful, let's go manabashing."

IceIX

kermitk50 wrote:

Finally Ice emerges!

My fear is that from all of this anger on the boards over the last week or two, what will be taken from it is "they are just complaining about the Spidey nerf, they will get used to it". I want to make sure it is known that the spidey nerf is possibly the least of the issues that are plaguing players right now.

I don't have any information to give on the other stuff at the moment. But I will definitely most assuredly say that we are by no means sitting here thinking that all the rage is over Spider-Man and nothing else.

As for my absence, just been busy lately. As much as I'd like to pour more time into chatting/keeping up communication with you all, this is one of my many hats and I can't wear it all the time.

M1Lance

I would have to agree that the devs really screwed the pooch with this Spidey nerf.

We all agree that he was overpowered and needed a nerf. And I really thought the devs learned their lesson with the Rags nerf, since the Thor and Wolverine still very useful characters. But spiderman is a rare 3 * character and is supposed to be cream of the crop. I mean I get that 2 AP for endless stuns was ridiculously overpowered but why not add more utility to the move, like a full team stun or 2 web tiles, for the increased cost instead of depriving it of even LESS utility. Look at 2* Thor, yes red and yellow were way overpowered but they made up for it by making call the storm a great move. Hell, his new yellow is probably even more useful now with half the damage due to all the green tiles it generates.

A couple of months ago the devs said that they would try and focus on buffing more for balance than nerfing. I thought with the recent gold characters that they were keeping their word as 3* Thor, Daken and Cap are easily all top characters in the game. Can you really say with a straight face that post-nerf spiderman is even close to being on their level? It really makes me feel like the devs gave the finger to all the early adopters like myself who poured time and money into building what they thought was a powerful character only to have him virtually erased in favor of new and more powerful characters so we can pour real money into them now that the rug has been pulled from our feet. I will give some props for allowing us to now sell him for a good amount of iso and HP, but it still feels like a cash grab to me.

IceIX

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Random thought: Ragnarok was nerfed a while back, and I'm guessing that its safe to say that his nerfs were overdone. I'm curious about the usage statistics of the character post-nerf: has his usage plummeted post nerfs (with the exception of tournaments that feature him),and are you guys going to take this into account when considering future balancing decisions? I would hope that this data clearly indicates how relevant each character remains in the current metagame and whether or not further balancing changes need to be considered. If you see players all of the sudden never using Spidey, are you going to consider rebuffing him to a more reasonable power level? I am of course asking if you're going to do this within a reasonable timeframe: 4 months was a bit much for fixing an absurdly overpowered character like Spidey.

We'll see on the overdone portion. Do keep in mind that the playerbase has had zero time with the updated character. While theorycrafting is all well and good, actually gameplay doesn't always match up with theory. We'll definitely be looking into usage patterns for ol' web head for a bit here to see where he lands in overall usefulness. Not only in picked character ranking but also in his ability usage as well.

RoughDawgs23

Jester Day wrote:

RoughDawgs23 wrote:

The game is still fun and addicting I have referred 4 friends in the last two months and they are genuinely into it. I feel the reactions to this balancing are a little exagerated...new players opinions matter too so the devs make decisions based on all of us not just the forum community

The problem with that is that newer players seldom play at the higher levels, and do not own the characters themselves. Gameplay at the higher level is punishing, and right now, they removed the only really viable control option in PvP. He was too good, and to this nigh everyone agrees, but he was also hit too hard. Because right now, it looks like people will be more rewarded NOT to play, and wait for many defensive wins, than actually play the game, because the easy-damagebrigade is out there, easily going rampant while their only answer was hurt.

It is akin to soft-banning blue in Magic. "Counterspells are too powerful, let's go manabashing."

Fair point

My statement was more towards the I would not recommend this game posts earlier, to your post, I will be playing more due to not getting stupid retaliations from lower level teams...of course I have thor and BP maxed so I might not get attacked!

Unknown

Also, it does make it rough on those of us who aimed for high-damage but low survivability teams, instead of the meatwalls, who grow stronger for this. Arguably, it lifts Patch/Magneto/Black Panther/Hulk/Lazythor and Human Flame to the top of the list, making this game more about "who can bash harder" than it already is.

Unknown

Spidey seems to be nerfed hard in this patch. Although, the change up to the yellow ability is now balanced, the blue ability is too much of a stretch to be useful.

At a max cover of 5, it cost 5 blue AP?

That's a definite stretch and nerfs the usability of Spidey's web. 3 to 4 AP at the most would be balanced, not 5AP.

Without the help of White Magneto, this ability alone is not useful.

I would keep the 5 AP Blue setup if the purple shields already on the board strengthen based on the amount of webs on the board, not after a shield is created.

However, having a max freeze at 3 was a good call by the developers.

Unknown

Hopefully the next round of updates is gonna buff some characters instead of nerfing them.

Unknown

Hey, Ice, while your posting, can you give us any indication of when Classic Daken will be added to the heroic tokens?


Please note that the fact that I am not mentioning any of the other issues with the game does not mean that I concede any arguments in connection therewith.

RoughDawgs23

We'll at least spidey can still heal those low health teams between battles in the story mode .

Unknown

Wow Spiderman completely sucks now, if not the worst of the *** it is close. What a joke. Thanks for the **** update.

FYI, don't have max level, just got enough covers to make him usable a week ago, it was overpowered but holy **** if this is what the team comes up with to "balance" I have no faith in the game being fun long term. there is absolutely no reason to ever spend a penny on a game that does **** like this.

Unknown

RoughDawgs23 wrote:

We'll at least spidey can still heal those low health teams between battles in the story mode .

True, but I am prepared to wager that most people do not prefer to need to do that. I never did use Prologue for healing before, guess that there are those who did and are comfortable with it though.

Clintman

I dont know if anyone checked Spideys Resale value:

141 Spiderman
86,381 ISO
1500 HP

Unknown

wathombe wrote:

Hey, Ice, while your posting, can you give us any indication of when Classic Daken will be added to the heroic tokens?


Please note that the fact that I am not mentioning any of the other issues with the game does not mean that I concede any arguments in connection therewith.

I would like to know this aswell.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

I dont know if anyone checked Spideys Resale value:

141 Spiderman
86,381 ISO
1500 HP

Not worth it. He still ok...

SolidQ

He's sucks now. Just for heal in story mode. if blue would be cost 3ap that okay, but 5 ap too much. Devs will again buff him in long time