Question? Ask.

Unknown

Just 2 questions....

When the PvE level cap was increased from 230 to 395 the reasoning at the time was to deal with the spiderman effect. Now that Spiderman has been neutered I was wondering if there is a plan to fully or partially revert this increased level cap. Although you said that hell scaling has been better in the Sentinel event I still ended up with bad guys over lvl300 as did a fair number of other people and, regardless of whether it's possible to beat those nodes it's both tediously long and akin to russian roulette where a single cascade can annihilate you.

Secondly there are a number of heroes which are very strong/balanced in players hands but nearly useless in the AI's hands (most obvious example is C.Mags who's blue is placed randomly, who'll not save red til after strike tiles and only use it 1/turn regardless of availible AP and will use his purple with few if any of either blue or red on the board). Any hero that places tiles is instantly much worse, as well as any conditional abilities that rely on special tiles or specific conditions to work well. Are there any plans to improve this situation and does the severe handicap these characters have on PvP defence get factored into their balancing?

IceIX

Spiderhunter wrote:

Hey IceIX,

Any chance we could get new 1*/2* characters? <Snip>

Any idea if revising the ability system is possible? I know this would be a lot of work, but would it be possible to have the last upgrade of each ability the option to branch? <Snip>

Any idea if putting a proper pause option for matches is possible? I'd like to be able to stop while in the middle of a match, do something else on my phone and come back to the game and not have it be an automatic loss.

Any plans to move the game away from the Dark Reign crossover to other storylines or perhaps a general Marvel universe game and each "event" would be a different story line/crossover?

Any chance we can gift covers or Hero Points to fellow allience members? The person who created the alliance I'm in spent money on slots for all the members. I'd like to pay him back with some HP I've earned.

Thanks for taking the time to do this!

P.S One more question...I don't suppose you're hiring any entry level positions? I'm thinking of changing careers and trying to look for options. I do in fact live in the greater Boston area. Just thought I'd ask.

P.P.S I realize ending a job inquiry with a smiley isn't the most professional thing, but in this casual environment, I hope it wouldn't look too bad

- 1*s are pretty unlikely. There's a decent breadth of 1* characters at the moment and people work through to 2*s quickly. It's a lot of work for characters that most players won't get much use of outside of the odd 1* tourney.
- Branching abilities are also pretty unlikely. What we ideally want is for people to have meaningful build choices between 5/5/3 or 5/4/4 which accomplishes somewhat the same thing. Obviously, some characters are better about forcing this choice than others.
- Ouch, sounds like you have a relatively low spec phone. Normally the game will stay paused just fine while you switch to other apps or telephony tasks. The only time it doesn't is when the OS kills the game due to lack of memory, which it seems like is what it's doing here. Unfortunately, we haven't seen a way to distinguish a user purposefully switching tasks then killing the app and the OS doing it itself, which means that if we didn't do the auto-lose, people would just quit matches without consequence by force quitting.
- It's possible. We're not *locked* into Dark Reign, it's just the story we're telling right now. Of course, there's still more Dark Reign to tell (Iron Patriot hasn't even come on the scene yet), so there's that.
- Maybe. We're still working out how to allow something like that without opening up the quite possible specter of Gold Farming while having that sort of possibility available to everyone, not just Private Alliances. Especially with in-game chat, it would make for a messy time if currency/covers could be gifted and some company decided it would be a good thing to step in and offer their services.
PS - http://www.demiurgestudios.com/careers

IceIX

Spoit wrote:

Is there any chance that there will be a sneak peak at the cmags changes before the covers from this current tournament expire?

His changes aren't off the drawing boards, so no. By that same token, that means he's safe for the near future.

Exce1sior

Exce1sior wrote:

Will anything be done about repetitive covers? I received 5 Ares in a row from my 2* or better tokens.

Has this question been answered elsewhere? If so, would someone kindly provide a link? I would really appreciate an answer as it is very discouraging.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Lets suppose Human Torch is a prize in an upcoming contest. Divide participants into 4 groups as a part of the bracketing.

1. Those with zero HT covers.
2. Those with 1 or 2 HT covers.
3. Those with all three covers.
4. Those with 13 covers.

Since HT is the prize, I think it's fine for everyone in each category to be bracketed together. I'd be in bracket 4, which would have tough rosters, but the players in that bracket wouldn't be quite as desperate to win.

kilgarin

After looking at the awesome daily reward list it seems that the 15 day pattern for a 3* cover breaks. Did you guys change the pattern so that 3* rewards in the resupply are spaced further apart? I noticed, and received, Daredevil on day 210 but it sounds like day 225 doesn't have a 3* cover. My hope is that that's not the case; especially for players who have invested that much time into the game!

IceIX

RageFace wrote:

Question: is there any chance for a large scale funbalancing. Say treating 8 characters slightly at once instead of one every few months, or do you all fear that you couldn't really balance it effectively that way.

Possible but unlikely. It's personally how I prefer changes to come, but it's not really feasible for our workflow. What would be more likely and similar is if a gameplay mechanic changed and therefore affected certain characters. At that point, we'd want to go back and rebalance that group.

Dayv

1. I haven't gone on at length about it, but I've posited before that web tiles are a broken mechanic. Venom's original Devour and all of Classic Spidey's original moveset could be overpowered by over abundant web tiles, and both characters were made much weaker when attempts to mitigate this were introduced. Has there been any discussion over the possibility that web tiles just don't add enough to the game for the complexity they add to skill balancing?

2. Any discussion of the fact that giving an over-leveled Human Torch two goons to feed him four AP per turn might be objectively evil?

3. Any chance we'll see Captain Marvel (Marvel Now! version, Carol Danvers)?

4. Is Sentry's green skill considered to be well-balanced, and were the effects of strike tiles taken into account for it?

SolidQ

IceIX wrote:

SolidQ wrote:

Is there any plan in future team battle? like 2x2 with special tourney

I don't know about a 2x2. Our system is pretty explicitly set up for 3x3 and gets cranky when you have below that in a group with more available characters you *could* choose. It's an interesting idea though, worth putting forward!

What about team battles? Like when player 1 chose (x-x-x) heroes. player 2 choose same (x-x-x) heroes and going battle vs AI 1 ( x-x-x) heroes and AI 2 (x-x-x) heroes. When battle started it fight 1 player vs 1 ai, if player 1 died it switch to player 2 team and continue fight vs 1 ai

Unknown

Ice,

I Pm'd you last week about changing my forum name, not sure if you seen it, skimmed over it, missed it, etc. But I figured since you're here now...
Are you the one I contact about that? Or is there someone else?

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Is there any chance that there will be a sneak peak at the cmags changes before the covers from this current tournament expire?

His changes aren't off the drawing boards, so no. By that same token, that means he's safe for the near future.

Good to know thank you! still hope that you guys would discuss with us before pressing the nerf button.

IceIX

Arogntbastrd wrote:

With all the cutthroat competition that ensued at the end of s1. Are there any thoughts to add more friendly competition or interalliance cooperation

For example have those top 3 trophies in each alliance get an added iso reward. Doesn't even have to be much.

Or how about alliance progression rewards. Or alliance networks where alliances unit to reach a common goal and get a reward? There's a small % of us that actually like each other. It'd be nice to work together from time to time

Oh. And let me pay for an iso multiplier! I give you hot sweaty cash, you give me twice as much iso til the end of times. Do you not want my money?!

- There have been thoughts to that sort of thing, yes. There was an idea for doing Alliance x Alliance battles at one point but when we took the design near to the server that does the MMR calculations on our internal structure the hamster running it nearly had an aneurysm from the amount of work he'd have to do. We would definitely like to get more inter/intra Alliance stuff in game though.
- On an Iso multiplier - While it would probably be a pretty good cash cow, there are worries here that it'd be a bit much on the side of P2W. It would also introduce the possibility of burnout from players buying the multiplier then grinding away to make use of it to the max. New consumables are things that we're always discussing. Having choices of stuff to buy, whether you're interested in it or not is a good thing!

IceIX

gamar wrote:

This came up earlier in the week, but why is ISO such a "bad" value? HP seems a little steep but reasonable, while ISO will give you, what, 5 or 6 character levels for 20 bucks? It seems kind of ridiculous. Is that just to act as a brake on people being able to rapidly level all their characters and then getting bored?

Any thought to selling alternate costumes and hats? It's a gold mine, I'm telling you!

Iso purchasing is intended to be a nice little injection but not a method with which to buy your way to the top. It's a type of "Ahh, ****, if only I had the extra 5K to level Psylocke for this Tournament..." thing instead of "Just got Daken! Let me blow some stocked HP on him and max level him instantly!" If Iso is priced too low, the game comes closer to the dark side of P2W.

IceIX

Emeryt wrote:

What happened to the covers from Daily Rewards? People report that after Daredevil Purple there are none on the day the new cover should appear.

Let me check in on that. Last I checked there were more rewards up on the internal servers so it may just be an issue of something not being migrated over.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Arogntbastrd wrote:

Oh. And let me pay for an iso multiplier! I give you hot sweaty cash, you give me twice as much iso til the end of times. Do you not want my money?!

- On an Iso multiplier - While it would probably be a pretty good cash cow, there are worries here that it'd be a bit much on the side of P2W. It would also introduce the possibility of burnout from players buying the multiplier then grinding away to make use of it to the max. New consumables are things that we're always discussing. Having choices of stuff to buy, whether you're interested in it or not is a good thing!

I'd support an ISO multiplier. My Characters are starving.

Unknown

Regarding Season 1 Burnout - there was a fantastic suggestion on how to deal with this in a recent thread: Only the top 80% of your event scores count towards your total season score. Only the top 80% of an alliance's player scores count toward the alliance's score in that event. Gives everyone the chance to skip a few events without letting their alliance down or putting themselves out of contention. I really don't see why you couldn't adopt a system like this.

What the heck happened to theme events? Divine Champions? Lone Star? Bad is Good? I seem to remember hearing there was a female-champ only tourney at one point, too.

As appreciated as the compensation is, is there any internal discussion going on about improving the way Demiurge handles events like Heavy Metal/Heroic Oscorp, and customer service in general? Because I'd rather have communication from the devs during these kinds of events than extra ISO afterwards.

Oh, and when is the Simulator starting?

IceIX

Exce1sior wrote:

Will anything be done about repetitive covers? I received 5 Ares in a row from my 2* or better tokens.

Possible, but fairly unlikely. The covers are given out on a random roll and all our checks show that everything works out to a statistical distribution nearly exactly equal to the listed odds. Setting a streakbreaker in to stop that sort of thing for any individual user would stand a decent chance of breaking that sort of distribution without some very delicate balancing.

daveomite

Ice,

Some of these questions/thoughts may have already been mentioned here, but going to ask anyway.

1. In PvP, as others mentioned, we wind up in pockets where the same people keep cycling in nodes, no matter how much you skip. Given that, we have to skip...meaning, many of us are spending tons of iso skipping instead of on leveling. That's not a good thing for progression.

2. I understand the need of making changes to bracketing, but, there are obvious issues happening.

A. People with less than 200-300 points can hit you for 45-55 points, but you only get a real for 3 points.
B. Brackets are based on weird metrics. I've been in many of these brackets of death, and managed to survive ok. However, my better half, who only has 1 level 85 2* wound up in 3-4 brackets with the top 10 ending above 900. So, she can't even compete at this point.
C. When some breaks a shield, or it comes down, there is barely any, if any at all, grace time. In most cases, I am forced to unshield, do one match only, then immediately reshield. Then afterwards, I see countless hits my shield almost immediately.

2 (cont). Given these types of changes, it has basically made "shield hopping" almost a necessity. Since a players visibility in some one else's queue is not based on power level, that leaves many players in the "punching bag" situation if they get too high in points. Because they appear almost immediately, are worth large points, and are more easily defeated.

3. Speaking of PvP changes, can you please consider adding a more friendly shield? In many cases, I shield because of spam attacks coming in. In others, I shield to heal up some. It would be nice to have a cheaper, shorter shield, similar to what you have in LR. I think a one hour shield, possibly 25 HP would be a highly used one. It would save a little money, but it would cause more people who don't normally shield, to consider it.

4. Given the MMR issues with node cycles, that means everyone has to skip, a lot. Just earlier, I hit someone, won, came out and skipped in a node. That same player came up again. Skipping beyond them, they came up yet again. But the main issue to me, is the skip tax. That can easily lead to 100-200 between matches at times, trying to find a match above 15 points.

That leads me to the next one:

5. Health regeneration time is astronomical, especially for a 3* 141. That combined with the length it takes for health packs to regen, it all gets out of control if you are trying to put in an hour or two in a PvP.

Based on #4 & #5, my suggestions are:

A. Eliminate the skip tax completely.
B. Add a small 10 or 20 iso fee to regen characters faster.
C. Increase health packs.

At least 6, which would do for two heals of the entire 3 member team. Or, 10-12 of them. 5 is simply too few given how we have to play, sometimes multiple events concurrently. It makes it difficult to continue as we have to constantly stop to heal...which means less time in game.

As far as burnout goes...that is a very real problem, already happening. When there are multiple things happening at the same time, it really stresses some people's ability, or want, to continue. For instance recently, 2 subs of prodigal were ending at the exact same time, and there was an active PvP happening as well, that I believe ended 12 hours after the subs.

In that type of situation, you can't effectively grind out nodes in both subs at the same time, so you have to basically choose which one to focus on mostly. At the end of that, people are already tired, maybe need to work or sleep, or relax. However, they cant, at least not for long, because of the PvP ending 12 hours later. That's barely enough time to, for instance, eat dinner, watch a TV show and then sleep for 8 hours.

Those are things I feel should be considered. I think the Seasons format is a great addition, just think the execution of it, and forcing so many concurrent events, will have negative ramifications long term. There needs to be some cooldown/break time between so many major events/PvP's, all of which have big impacts on either getting a new character, or your S2 placement overall.

Lastly, there have been a few threads and mentions of iso/hp sales, but many of us have never seen them. Is that not something that people who have actually spent money in game are allowed to do? It would be nice to see the occasional sale from time to time, as the costs are already pretty high. For instance, just for me to level Punisher from 120 to 141, if I were to pay my way to it, is well over $100. If you actually were to check my account in game, you'd see if have made quite a few purchases in my time playing. So, some breaks/kickbacks would be nice at times.

Thanks for taking the time to field questions today Ice. I know many of us appreciate it. Also, please excuse any misspellings, etc as I'm currently on my phone.

IceIX

MikeyMan wrote:

Before you go on and Nerf Classic Magneto... can you give hint on what is going to happen to him, so we can give our input for you guys?

Definitely can, and we'll push out that information when it's stable enough for you all to see. It's not at that point at the moment. Understand though that it could end up like Spider-Man where the forum provided information is appreciated but we decide to stay the course.

danikalil

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Lets suppose Human Torch is a prize in an upcoming contest. Divide participants into 4 groups as a part of the bracketing.

1. Those with zero HT covers.
2. Those with 1 or 2 HT covers.
3. Those with all three covers.
4. Those with 13 covers.

Since HT is the prize, I think it's fine for everyone in each category to be bracketed together. I'd be in bracket 4, which would have tough rosters, but the players in that bracket wouldn't be quite as desperate to win.

That's an awfully good idea. I wish it would be implemented. I'm tired of both taking covers I don't need from players who'd love to have them, and having them taken from me just the same.