This has been derailed to the point of uselessness by Hound's bizarre circular white-knighting. I think the developers are perfectly capable of defending themselves if they choose to do so, and I don't even see anything particularly abusive being directed at them.
@HoundofShadow said: Let me state some facts, as far as some players being unhappy with the information about supports being activated in pvp is concerned: BCS posted and said to wait for approval for more information about future of Support. Thanks for this thread. We have an official post that is currently wrapping up approvals that help to clarify some points and give some further insight on the future of Supports. Should answer a few questions and spawn some discussion. S0kun wrote: Our next blog is going to be a good one folks. Apologies for not having it ready this week, but some of your questions will be answered next week if things go as planned. Fingers crossed. Scofie posted something from Discord, and some of you ate it up like it has been approved or it's some kind of immutable truth. As a matter of fact, at the time of posting, announcement was still undergoing Marvel approval. After this official blog is out, some of you were unhappy supports will be activated in pvps, and decided to bring up Scofie's replies last week.
@HoundofShadow said: Let me state some facts, as far as some players being unhappy with the information about supports being activated in pvp is concerned:
BCS posted and said to wait for approval for more information about future of Support.
Thanks for this thread. We have an official post that is currently wrapping up approvals that help to clarify some points and give some further insight on the future of Supports. Should answer a few questions and spawn some discussion.
S0kun wrote:
Our next blog is going to be a good one folks. Apologies for not having it ready this week, but some of your questions will be answered next week if things go as planned. Fingers crossed.
Scofie posted something from Discord, and some of you ate it up like it has been approved or it's some kind of immutable truth. As a matter of fact, at the time of posting, announcement was still undergoing Marvel approval.
After this official blog is out, some of you were unhappy supports will be activated in pvps, and decided to bring up Scofie's replies last week.
Lol! None of that addresses the initial problem. I am not one of those who am bothered as I was never going to buy this but if you can't see that this all comes down to the leaking of information on another platform being the cause of player consternation then I have to conclude that other posters views of what you are doing here is true. The Devs have been bitten for making statements on non official platforms, they didn't have to but the consequences are their own. If you aren't 100% sure just say you can't comment at the time and wait until the official announcements are ready which preferably occur before what you are doing/selling. Really Hound, it is simple enough that even you can understand.
@BriMan2222 said: @Tony_Foot said: No one wanted them to bypass the approval process, they wanted them to hold off any releases until the information was available. You just keep making stuff up to bash 'players'. I didn't care if it took another week to release. In the same way I don't care if they take longer to release content that works and doesn't break the game. Is that too much to ask for? I honestly don't know why anyone bothers to engage with Hound anymore. He doesn't have real conversations, he doesn't reply to things people have actually said, he just makes strawmen arguments replying to things that imaginary "players" have said in his imagination. It's just a waste of time. No one is ever going to change his mind about anything, he's living in his own world where "players" are constantly attacking the omnipotent and benevolent devs.
@BriMan2222 said:
@Tony_Foot said: No one wanted them to bypass the approval process, they wanted them to hold off any releases until the information was available. You just keep making stuff up to bash 'players'. I didn't care if it took another week to release. In the same way I don't care if they take longer to release content that works and doesn't break the game. Is that too much to ask for?
@Tony_Foot said: No one wanted them to bypass the approval process, they wanted them to hold off any releases until the information was available. You just keep making stuff up to bash 'players'.
I didn't care if it took another week to release. In the same way I don't care if they take longer to release content that works and doesn't break the game. Is that too much to ask for?
I honestly don't know why anyone bothers to engage with Hound anymore. He doesn't have real conversations, he doesn't reply to things people have actually said, he just makes strawmen arguments replying to things that imaginary "players" have said in his imagination. It's just a waste of time. No one is ever going to change his mind about anything, he's living in his own world where "players" are constantly attacking the omnipotent and benevolent devs.
This is solid advice. I started to respond directly and this was a good reminder of how counterproductive it is.
Mod mode off
Here is the double-edged sword of comms. Players want info and there are channels to get that info immediately rather than waiting for the "official" announcement. Me being a mod on here is irrelevant to some degree - I asked a question on discord and it got answered. I repeated that answer here.
My personal view on the blog announcement is this: if supports in PvP was a year away because of UI changes and it wasn't announced for 9 months, people would say it should've been announced here as the strategy for supports going forward. I don't know where the UI is on the roadmap. I don't know if it will stay there. I'm guessing it's sufficiently far enough away to not be able to put any timescales on it. So announcing the intention is right at this moment in time. They clearly want supports to be an integral and interesting part of the game and PvP is a big part of that, so they tried to join up the player base by getting everyone excited for the journey ahead.
It's not lying, it's not misinformation, it's not people misunderstanding the data or the messaging. It's a point in time assessment and that's a little fluid depending on how you are looking at it.
The level of complexity this brings to PVP specifically seems unlikely to invite more players to PVP if that is the goal. That being said, Supports are a very odd partial implementation currently so I think it's something we can adapt to over time if they become a vibrant part of the game. I assume that as long as the leveling/acquisition plan for them is acceptable then it could be cool, but I'm leery of them rolling it all out completely smoothly all at once.
Thing is, supports vary wildly. If the supports are like the "once per battle, when an enemy is downed, they stay dead" from Kamar-Taj, I think they'd be perfectly fine. That's clearly made for pvp, adds utility vs meta without direct nerfs and otherwise doesn't mess with too much. Even all the "make an x tile when..." supports should be fine-- very annoying for the 4* crowd, granted, because it just adds to All Polaris Everything Polaris, ...but otherwise fine. Or the "fortify tile when..." supports, those will probably be fine too.
And the match damage ones, I actually actively welcome in pvp-- with so many powers being dependent on which character has the strongest color, I think it's a good QoL thing to let us influence characters' strongest colors. You don't need to have an unchamped Prof X for Charlie's Angels anymore, you can champ him and use a support to make his strongest color purple. You might not need to have Okoye at such a higher level anymore, you can bump her colors up with supports so she tanks. X-23 won't lose access to her passive anymore just because her team mates are higher level and tank over her, you can give her a support to let her tank colors. That sort of thing, I think is very nice to have in PvP.
But with the passive AP boosts from the old supports, supports in pvp on defense sound profoundly unfun to fight against tbh. Stuff like "at the start of battle, there's a ~70% chance to gain 5 green AP" is just obnoxious when the AI has it on defense. There's nothing you can do against that.
I assume that end of battle on turn one is not going to be the average player experience either on defence or offence. Supports offer a new opportunity to provide counters without making changes to characters so from that point of view this could be a big opportunity if implemented carefully. I am not sure how you address the imbalance of already owned Supports giving an initial advantage as presumably levelling Supports is not going to be a quick thing.
Supports being un-sellable and un-duplicatable, and requiring no currency to roster them creates some interesting implications for how long they should take to roster and grow. LIke it already takes most of a year for an active player to go from "not on roster" to "champed" through direct sharding and feeder sharding a classic 5* character, and the Support acquisition situation is just atrocious at this point. I think i've pulled an upgrade level for a single support out of the support store in the last....year or two maybe? going from 2-3* ? Otherwise i'm overwhelmingly getting them all to 3* via support circuit because they so rarely hit 4 and 5*.
The upside to this is that there will be a lot more options out there in the strong alliance families to be a pvp-free player when this all goes live. I'll give it a go for a week or two and might grind to first cp but I'll be done with shielding and trying to attain some sort of ranking in PVP at all.
@purplemur said:
Go devteam go! If the art for supports keeps coming in as gorgeous as Kamartaj and Krakoa then I might be perusing for some new wallpaper!
I've been pretty hard on the new team(s) over the past 5 or 6 months and for good reason(save the predictable defense hound) so I figure I would give them some deserved props.
The artwork being put out for the new characters(Puck's stature notwithstanding) and now for the new supports really are beautiful. It's something that could easily be overlooked or not have much put into it, but it's the exact opposite. Kudos to the art team.
If you have such a hard time dealing with AI that has supports, just follow some other player's suggestion, use Riri/mThor to stun lock every players, thanks to +10-12 green aps from supports. You'll be able go infinite stun against most teams, including double 672 teams. There are more options out there. Players would be able to punch up against most teams with this duos.
@HoundofShadow said: If you have such a hard time dealing with AI that has supports, just follow some other player's suggestion, use Riri/mThor to stun lock every players, thanks to +10-12 green aps from supports. You'll be able go infinite stun against most teams, including double 672 teams. There are more options out there. Players would be able to punch up against most teams with this duos.
...you realise that you would then see all those same mThorRiri teams with +10-12 green aps from supports on defense as well, right? Does that sound balanced to you or fun to fight? Do you want "ready to stunlock you from turn 1" to be the new meta? Because personally I think that sounds terrible and is a great argument for the AP gain ones to be offense-only at least, if nothing else.
So I've got to ask. I keep seeing people who have been playing for ten years and are big spenders who are going to leave after every new announcement. Like what exactly are you spending your money on? You all moan if you have to use a healthpsck yet somehow you're keeping this community alive with your massive wealth.
All i know is if the condescending tosser on reddit is totally against supports in pvp then I'm all for them.
Maybe I missed something in their announcement: I only see a little bit about PVP and one line about changing the UI to see supports on defense. I don't see it saying that the defensive team necessarily uses the same supports as the player had on offense.
If the defending team had random (applicable) supports, like the random team-up they get assigned, that would make it a lot more palatable. Because as others have noted, there are big problems with just using them exactly as the player did on offense.
Interesting changes if implemented correctly and with a lot of testing ahead of launch. Like A LOT OF TESTING. Which traditionally has not always been a strength for either developer. With the limited info we have I'm definitely not with the pitchforks crowd but do have some apprehension. Did I mention testing?
It's not the end of the world and it's not going to kill PvP. It is going to have a lot of predictable effects and some unpredictable effects. I think overall it'll speed matches up somewhat and also it'll empower certain very strong combos (much more than they already are empowered).
I definitely don't think it's a good thing, though.
I doubt anyone will quit the game over it, because nobody ever quits this game (especially the people who really probably should quit because they don't like it very much).
I wonder if having supports in PVP could be made optional? For example, when choosing your time bracket the player is then given the option of joining a Supports allowed/disabled bracket. I feel this could solve the dilemma for a lot of people, but I understand this would also result in fewer players per bracket.
@Carnifex said: I wonder if having supports in PVP could be made optional? For example, when choosing your time bracket the player is then given the option of joining a Supports allowed/disabled bracket. I feel this could solve the dilemma for a lot of people, but I understand this would also result in fewer players per bracket.
Or have different pvp events. Lightning rounds can be the starting ground to experiment pvp gameplay with special rules (eg. no boosts, limited rosters and supports, hazard tiles etc).
So with the new supports having more of a connection with character affiliations does that also mean we’re not that far away from a filter being added to the game that allows us to see who fits in each affiliation as well?
And secondly, since more are going to be released in the near future and how much easier it will be to actually upgrade them will we see an addition to rewards for leveling up supports in the milestones?
Welp, this will make PVP more pay to win. I can't wait for a $75 offer that has infinity stones in it.