New Supports Experience Blog

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.

revskip

@entrailbucket said:

@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.

I can imagine it. The forums would be fun to read for a few days. Some names on the leaderboard would change but less than one might think. Threats and recriminations aplenty. Oh and Eye of Horus would definitely white knight like a champ for it.

Codex

Are there any plans to roster multiples of the same support or once a support is added to character it is applied to all copies of that said character?

Daredevil217

@Daredevil217 said:
Overall, I’m going to take a wait and see approach with this. I think it’ll just create a bunch more broken combos personally, and the developers don’t seem to know how to rein that in. The arms race just got real folks. So here are some obvious questions (many already asked):

1. How are supports going to be upgraded?
2. Can we target/shard/upgrade any supports we don’t own (Infinity Stones)?
3. Will Chasm nerf beginning of the game perks that supports give?
4. It appears there are plans to upgrade old supports (ie turn flat damage into percent increases- yay!) but are there plans to nerf any (don’t you dare touch my Sharron/Shang combo)?
5. Any plans to change the number of daily swaps you can make with supports (I always thought this was dumb)?
6. Was there any testing before making the decision to implement supports in PVP?

1. More to come
2. ??
3. ??
4. I’m confused. So they’ll change but keep the same flavor. So no nerfs?
5. ??
6. Sounds like no

@IceIX any chance you could answer 2, 3, 5 and clarify 4? I’m really interested in Chasm because he’ll be even more must-play than now (if possible) and I really want to move away from Chas-matches even with Kamar-Taj being a thing.

ThaRoadWarrior

6. sounds like not yet, we will be doing that testing across the next six months as a team.

IceIX

@Daredevil217 said:

@Daredevil217 said:
Overall, I’m going to take a wait and see approach with this. I think it’ll just create a bunch more broken combos personally, and the developers don’t seem to know how to rein that in. The arms race just got real folks. So here are some obvious questions (many already asked):

1. How are supports going to be upgraded?
2. Can we target/shard/upgrade any supports we don’t own (Infinity Stones)?
3. Will Chasm nerf beginning of the game perks that supports give?
4. It appears there are plans to upgrade old supports (ie turn flat damage into percent increases- yay!) but are there plans to nerf any (don’t you dare touch my Sharron/Shang combo)?
5. Any plans to change the number of daily swaps you can make with supports (I always thought this was dumb)?
6. Was there any testing before making the decision to implement supports in PVP?

1. More to come
2. ??
3. ??
4. I’m confused. So they’ll change but keep the same flavor. So no nerfs?
5. ??
6. Sounds like no

@IceIX any chance you could answer 2, 3, 5 and clarify 4? I’m really interested in Chasm because he’ll be even more must-play than now (if possible) and I really want to move away from Chas-matches even with Kamar-Taj being a thing.

1 - Answered. Rank up as at current + Shards to rank up.
2 - Current plan is to mimic Favorite Heroes, but it's possible we could lock certain Supports off of favoriting (as with Limited characters).
3 - Start of battle AP from Supports is the same as start of battle AP from Boosts. So same result.
4 - There's a lot of flat damage stuff that doesn't scale well between character rarities and a lot of copied functionality between Supports that can be equipped at the same time that makes little sense. We want Supports to be fairly unique next to one another and have them be able to grow with your Roster. (Absolutely not an announcement, purely hyperbole for illustration) If you had a level 700 character, what good is Destroyer Gun doing creating a strength 400 tile when your match damage is sitting at 10K a match? That's the kind of thing we want to make more regular.
5 - Quite possibly, still finalizing that but it makes sense to do so.
6 - Yes, in the extent that we are sure it works mechanically and that we know some of the outliers at the outset, and thus where we should initially be focusing on counterplay so as to keep things from instantly spiraling out of control.

entrailbucket

It sounds like they don't know those answers yet either. Dunno if that's good or bad, I guess it depends on your viewpoint.

Anyway I'm glad they're planning to make changes/redo existing supports. The only truly problematic support abilities for PvP are "generate X AP of Y color at the start of the fight." I think there are a couple more that have a chance of giving extra AP on a match, too. Everything else is either totally inconsequential or barely noticeable.

If they change all those abilities, we're good. That will "ruin PvE" for some people, but...eh.

ShionSinX

Personally, I'd like to see some things being standarized all around. For example, having supports that increase (example) 18% match damage of one color, then one for each combo of 2 colors that increases 9% in both and one for each combination of 3 colors that increases 6% for each.

Then lets say the red-yellow one has a chance each turn (or on match4 or greater perhaps) to make a strike tile, then green-blue makes an attack tile on the same ocasion and one black-purple that makes a protect tile.

Things like that.

Punisher5784

@IceIX said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@Daredevil217 said:
Overall, I’m going to take a wait and see approach with this. I think it’ll just create a bunch more broken combos personally, and the developers don’t seem to know how to rein that in. The arms race just got real folks. So here are some obvious questions (many already asked):

1. How are supports going to be upgraded?
2. Can we target/shard/upgrade any supports we don’t own (Infinity Stones)?
3. Will Chasm nerf beginning of the game perks that supports give?
4. It appears there are plans to upgrade old supports (ie turn flat damage into percent increases- yay!) but are there plans to nerf any (don’t you dare touch my Sharron/Shang combo)?
5. Any plans to change the number of daily swaps you can make with supports (I always thought this was dumb)?
6. Was there any testing before making the decision to implement supports in PVP?

1. More to come
2. ??
3. ??
4. I’m confused. So they’ll change but keep the same flavor. So no nerfs?
5. ??
6. Sounds like no

@IceIX any chance you could answer 2, 3, 5 and clarify 4? I’m really interested in Chasm because he’ll be even more must-play than now (if possible) and I really want to move away from Chas-matches even with Kamar-Taj being a thing.

1 - Answered. Rank up as at current + Shards to rank up.
2 - Current plan is to mimic Favorite Heroes, but it's possible we could lock certain Supports off of favoriting (as with Limited characters).
3 - Start of battle AP from Supports is the same as start of battle AP from Boosts. So same result.
4 - There's a lot of flat damage stuff that doesn't scale well between character rarities and a lot of copied functionality between Supports that can be equipped at the same time that makes little sense. We want Supports to be fairly unique next to one another and have them be able to grow with your Roster. (Absolutely not an announcement, purely hyperbole for illustration) If you had a level 700 character, what good is Destroyer Gun doing creating a strength 400 tile when your match damage is sitting at 10K a match? That's the kind of thing we want to make more regular.
5 - Quite possibly, still finalizing that but it makes sense to do so.
6 - Yes, in the extent that we are sure it works mechanically and that we know some of the outliers at the outset, and thus where we should initially be focusing on counterplay so as to keep things from instantly spiraling out of control.

Thanks for sharing these details.

• Will Supports change MMR? For instance, I'm returning to the game after 2.5yrs so I missed alot of time getting supports (getting characters is easier). I'll be severely behind players of similar roster than me. I'm afraid I won't be able to compete if supports are added to defense.

• Shards sounds great, but it'll favor the players that hoarded support tokens. Will there be a new store for the updated supports to prevent this?

• With Supports gaining AP, is your team considering tweaking AP boosts? I played back at a time you could do +5 AP boosts but it was nerfed to +2.

Kwahder

@IceIX said:

2 - Current plan is to mimic Favorite Heroes, but it's possible we could lock certain Supports off of favoriting (as with Limited characters).

Would it be possible to have certain supports locked from being favourited if you didn’t have them, but still have it possible to level them up if you already had them? i.e. make it so that you couldn’t earn them that way, but you could rank them up?

HoundofShadow

6 months rollout... Just in time for MPQ Anniversary: Supports Shards and "Covers" in anniversary store? By then, new supports and updated classic supports will be available. Support + new pvp mmr has the potential to shake things up. There would be more varieties in pvps and new metas will be easier to deal with. The default fuss-free counter team could be Riri/mThor. It's probably time to make a list of characters who can stun using non-blue powers.

Will the dev remove 5* boost (in pvps) once supports are fully rolled out?

Itsmeabxab

$upport$

Daredevil217

@IceIX said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@Daredevil217 said:
Overall, I’m going to take a wait and see approach with this. I think it’ll just create a bunch more broken combos personally, and the developers don’t seem to know how to rein that in. The arms race just got real folks. So here are some obvious questions (many already asked):

1. How are supports going to be upgraded?
2. Can we target/shard/upgrade any supports we don’t own (Infinity Stones)?
3. Will Chasm nerf beginning of the game perks that supports give?
4. It appears there are plans to upgrade old supports (ie turn flat damage into percent increases- yay!) but are there plans to nerf any (don’t you dare touch my Sharron/Shang combo)?
5. Any plans to change the number of daily swaps you can make with supports (I always thought this was dumb)?
6. Was there any testing before making the decision to implement supports in PVP?

1. More to come
2. ??
3. ??
4. I’m confused. So they’ll change but keep the same flavor. So no nerfs?
5. ??
6. Sounds like no

@IceIX any chance you could answer 2, 3, 5 and clarify 4? I’m really interested in Chasm because he’ll be even more must-play than now (if possible) and I really want to move away from Chas-matches even with Kamar-Taj being a thing.

1 - Answered. Rank up as at current + Shards to rank up.
2 - Current plan is to mimic Favorite Heroes, but it's possible we could lock certain Supports off of favoriting (as with Limited characters).
3 - Start of battle AP from Supports is the same as start of battle AP from Boosts. So same result.
4 - There's a lot of flat damage stuff that doesn't scale well between character rarities and a lot of copied functionality between Supports that can be equipped at the same time that makes little sense. We want Supports to be fairly unique next to one another and have them be able to grow with your Roster. (Absolutely not an announcement, purely hyperbole for illustration) If you had a level 700 character, what good is Destroyer Gun doing creating a strength 400 tile when your match damage is sitting at 10K a match? That's the kind of thing we want to make more regular.
5 - Quite possibly, still finalizing that but it makes sense to do so.
6 - Yes, in the extent that we are sure it works mechanically and that we know some of the outliers at the outset, and thus where we should initially be focusing on counterplay so as to keep things from instantly spiraling out of control.

Thank you for this. And yay for Chasm not countering supports!

@Punisher5784 said:

@IceIX said:

@Daredevil217 said:

@Daredevil217 said:
Overall, I’m going to take a wait and see approach with this. I think it’ll just create a bunch more broken combos personally, and the developers don’t seem to know how to rein that in. The arms race just got real folks. So here are some obvious questions (many already asked):

1. How are supports going to be upgraded?
2. Can we target/shard/upgrade any supports we don’t own (Infinity Stones)?
3. Will Chasm nerf beginning of the game perks that supports give?
4. It appears there are plans to upgrade old supports (ie turn flat damage into percent increases- yay!) but are there plans to nerf any (don’t you dare touch my Sharron/Shang combo)?
5. Any plans to change the number of daily swaps you can make with supports (I always thought this was dumb)?
6. Was there any testing before making the decision to implement supports in PVP?

1. More to come
2. ??
3. ??
4. I’m confused. So they’ll change but keep the same flavor. So no nerfs?
5. ??
6. Sounds like no

@IceIX any chance you could answer 2, 3, 5 and clarify 4? I’m really interested in Chasm because he’ll be even more must-play than now (if possible) and I really want to move away from Chas-matches even with Kamar-Taj being a thing.

1 - Answered. Rank up as at current + Shards to rank up.
2 - Current plan is to mimic Favorite Heroes, but it's possible we could lock certain Supports off of favoriting (as with Limited characters).
3 - Start of battle AP from Supports is the same as start of battle AP from Boosts. So same result.
4 - There's a lot of flat damage stuff that doesn't scale well between character rarities and a lot of copied functionality between Supports that can be equipped at the same time that makes little sense. We want Supports to be fairly unique next to one another and have them be able to grow with your Roster. (Absolutely not an announcement, purely hyperbole for illustration) If you had a level 700 character, what good is Destroyer Gun doing creating a strength 400 tile when your match damage is sitting at 10K a match? That's the kind of thing we want to make more regular.
5 - Quite possibly, still finalizing that but it makes sense to do so.
6 - Yes, in the extent that we are sure it works mechanically and that we know some of the outliers at the outset, and thus where we should initially be focusing on counterplay so as to keep things from instantly spiraling out of control.

Thanks for sharing these details.

• Will Supports change MMR? For instance, I'm returning to the game after 2.5yrs so I missed alot of time getting supports (getting characters is easier). I'll be severely behind players of similar roster than me. I'm afraid I won't be able to compete if supports are added to defense.

• Shards sounds great, but it'll favor the players that hoarded support tokens. Will there be a new store for the updated supports to prevent this?

• With Supports gaining AP, is your team considering tweaking AP boosts? I played back at a time you could do +5 AP boosts but it was nerfed to +2.

Great questions here. I hope they keep the AP boosts or at least the extra AP on match.

I like the idea of new support tokens so everyone is on equal footing but don’t see that happening necessarily.

@HoundofShadow said:
Will the dev remove 5* boost (in pvps) once supports are fully rolled out?

What does one have to do with the other? I need the 5* boosts to keep PVP fresh. Without the rotating boosts people will just land on the same meta duo plus meta supports and run it into the ground every event like ever PVP ever before god boosts. I doubt they’re going away.

HoundofShadow

I think Support can shake things up in terms of varieties in pvps. There would be more glass cannons out there because of the speed that supports provide. Most players play for wins so they won't be too bothered by defensive losses.. Removing boost in pvp will help somewhat for newer players with limited champed 5* who want to hit 1200 in fewer wins. They could experiment removing boosts from pvps and see how supports affect varieties. By then, Chasm is history. By October, 550 players would have unloaded their LTs/CPs on the next meta set.

Punisher5784

@HoundofShadow said:
I think Support can shake things up in terms of varieties in pvps. There would be more glass cannons out there because of the speed that supports provide. Most players play for wins so they won't be too bothered by defensive losses.. Removing boost in pvp will help somewhat for newer players with limited champed 5* who want to hit 1200 in fewer wins. They could experiment removing boosts from pvps and see how supports affect varieties. By then, Chasm is history. By October, 550 players would have unloaded their LTs/CPs on the next meta set.

Players not being bothered by defense losses is likely untrue. Besides the aggravation of seeing the dreaded -100+ pop-up, personally I go for Wins, but I still need at least 800pts for T50-100. In addition, alliance PvP requirements need to be taken into consideration. I am already seeing hybrid alliances considering dropping PvP requirements due to these changes.

We'll see what happens, but this is the biggest PvP change I've seen in.. forever. While the devs are doing a slow rollout over time, if it's anything like the recent rollout of 7-day events, this will be a huge backlash. They need this to be a homerun

Blackstone

I'm going to use this thread (and others) to explain to my grandchildren exactly how people have a predilection to view issues through the lense of their own perspective/bias/wants/needs/assumptions while refusing to consider arguments/viewpoints that fail to meet their expectations. Making points and counterpoints for/against an argument is rational. Critiquing arguments is rational and helpful. Yet human beings feel the need to attack each other (the presenter of the opposing opinion) which detracts from the discussion as a whole, yet it happens again and again.

That's not an attack on anyone on any side of any particular discussion, just an observation. People see from their perspective and attack those that don't agree, even though each side may make equally valid (or nonsensical) points as the other.

Politics, religion, MPQ forums.... People never seem to rise above this need to attack/become defensive to the point that it's as much human nature as anything else in the human experience.

I'm guilty of it myself so, no judgement, just observation.

My personal opinion: supports add versatility and options to building a team, which is a good thing because playing so many matches a day everyday for years gets repetitive. Those of us playing 3000+ days likely have an entirely different view than those under 2000... And have experiences that vary wildly between each other.

I liken it to the increased complexity of character abilities. It's bound to happen, otherwise there would simply be more repetition... Which would tinykitty suck.

Obviously, this opinion means nothing if the implementation of new supports happens in certain ways... But it looks like there will be testing before things are set in stone, and I'm happy to see we will have a part in that testing.

Of course I'm still wary of big changes, and concerns are valid, but that's the beauty of choice. If the game breaks, we can all move on. I hope it doesn't come to that though as I doubt I'll find another game that catches my attention the way this one did so many years ago.

I've carried MPQ with me to maybe two dozen countries, including warzones (rare to have connection in that case though...) And it's been a great tool to relax when needed, so my bias is leaning towards hoping for the best and adapting as changes come.

If anyone disagrees, that's fine, you're allowed to do that. Would be nice if we could do that as a group without attacking each other though.

liminal_lad

@Blackstone I would love it if people only discussed ideas, but I think it's also a problem to not identify when people argue in bad faith or have a habit of escalating discussions. Most commenters seem to discuss things with a reasoned matter. We should probably all ignore the people who escalate things, but sometimes it's more difficult than others to feel like turning the other cheek.

I think the discussions in this forum are typically much kinder and gentler than other places on the Internet. I hope that's other people's experience as well.