New Supports Experience Blog

ThaRoadWarrior

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.

AlexR

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.

DAZ0273

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.

ThaRoadWarrior

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*.

Timemachinego

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.

WilliamK1983

@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.

HoundofShadow

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.

AlexR

@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.

DarwinNunez

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.

ZeiramMR

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.

revskip

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?

entrailbucket

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).

Carnifex

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.

Bzhai

@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).

bigjojo04

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?

allen_koholic

Welp, this will make PVP more pay to win. I can't wait for a $75 offer that has infinity stones in it.

Omegased

So I generally like the changes these Devs have made but this one concerns me greatly.

While there's always a challenge in this game, I think the current win rate is something obscenely high at 90%. i think adding supports as they are now, will change that. Some supports in their current form are simply too powerful.

with no info as to how they will be implemented yet, I'm hoping they'll be done well. perhaps only the synergy perk will be active in pvp?

and just to pile on, once again Hound argues in poor faith, and creates drama where there shouldn't be. People are ok to be concerned about this change, and if you can't voice this concern in the official forums - then where?

revskip

@allen_koholic said:
Welp, this will make PVP more pay to win. I can't wait for a $75 offer that has infinity stones in it.

That would be an incredible value tbh and I'd buy it no problem. It costs more than a stark for shields to even try for a season finish high enough to earn a stone and then you have the politics of actually getting there to untangle. Not to mention a roster that can handle its MMR well enough to hop that many times. $75 bucks would be really cheap.

entrailbucket

@revskip said:

@allen_koholic said:
Welp, this will make PVP more pay to win. I can't wait for a $75 offer that has infinity stones in it.

That would be an incredible value tbh and I'd buy it no problem. It costs more than a stark for shields to even try for a season finish high enough to earn a stone and then you have the politics of actually getting there to untangle. Not to mention a roster that can handle its MMR well enough to hop that many times. $75 bucks would be really cheap.

I cannot even imagine the reaction something like this would cause among the crowd who paid hundreds of dollars (or more) in shields and spent innumerable hours politicking (and some time playing, I guess) to win the Infinity Stone supports.

IceIX

Some Q&A from this thread (Combined and paraphrased, of course)

How will this be rolled out in PVP? Is there a timeline?

• We'll be rolling this out in stages, with certain events being tests of the system. It will not be a case of "New PVP Season, now use Supports". We're looking at around 6 months for a relatively full roll out, so we've all got time to put this out right.

It sounds like this will make it even harder to get a good defense team going in PVP. How is this going to be solved so that we don't just get hit more?

• This is what running Supports on certain events will be for before rolling it out as a normal thing. We see situations when looking at this system where people will be able to make some pretty strong defensive teams that make use of Supports to do the exact opposite. It's going to be hard to say before we run some real world tests. Our QA can run as many sims as we can (and will!) but give our galaxy mind player-base an hour and they'll come up with 3 characters and 3 Supports that no one considered to break everything.

Are rewards going to be increased for PVP due to the increased complexity of the mode?

• No plans with this rollout, BUT we're in the midst now of some various economy updates, some of which may be out by the time all this is really getting rolling. So... yes but no?

How will you be rebalancing Supports so they can be used in both PVE and PVP? Worried about some useful PVE supports being nerfed so they don't destroy PVP.

• Older Supports will be updated to be more useful in general, but we're not planning on removing their "flavor" if at all possible. Taskmaster's Sword isn't suddenly going to stop being good against Heroes. The plan is more that you may not want Taskmaster's Sword against all Heroes, because using 3 others that do things that help your specific setup may be better all around than a generalist "Moar damage" approach. In short, not planning on doing nerfs to favor one mode or another. It's most likely that if something like this were to come up, we'd make a modal PVE/PVP modal ability so that you could keep the PVE coolness without breaking everything in PVP or vice versa.

How will leveling up Supports across ranks work?

• More specific info to come, but the base idea is that you'll be able to get Shards of Supports, and when you get enough Shards, you can use some to rank up the Support to the next rank.

How are Supports going to be gained moving forward? A couple tokens a month even with ranking up means we're never going to be able to level these.

• More specific info to come here, but yes, we'll be improving methods of gaining Supports. We agree that the current outlay isn't enough to appreciably level any particular Support without extreme luck. Additionally, with Shards it will be easier for us to push those related rewards everywhere, and Wildcard Support shards will let people be more focused in their targeting.