Class of 2013 PvE?

Bowgentle

I wouldn't assume anyone is working full-time on this at this late stage of the game.

Borstock

I'll admit I don't know how things work behind the scenes, but why would the previous devs give it up if all they had to do was sit on it with part-timers and collect money?

dianetics

Probably because they were working on it for a decade and wanted to move on to do other things.

DAZ0273

Well I'm done with 2013. Can't say there was much in the way of variety of opponents but it will be interesting to see basically the evolution of various meta as we go along. I'm a bit confused about how we will get a Wolverine combo in 2014 week - won't he be locked out? Or do we keep the 2013 options and add the 2014 ones? 2014 brings us Nick Fury, Th4r and Elektra in 4* town.

DAZ0273

From the 10th Anniversary countdown thread:

Each week we are running an altered version of the "Class Of PVP Events." Each "Class Of PVP Events" allows you to choose solely from the characters released that given year.

So looks like this week is Wolvie X-Force one and done? Next week might be slightly torturous with boosted Elektra black.

2015 should be fun though.

Bowgentle

@DAZ0273 said:
Well I'm done with 2013. Can't say there was much in the way of variety of opponents but it will be interesting to see basically the evolution of various meta as we go along. I'm a bit confused about how we will get a Wolverine combo in 2014 week - won't he be locked out? Or do we keep the 2013 options and add the 2014 ones? 2014 brings us Nick Fury, Th4r and Elektra in 4* town.

We'll see when the 2014 preview comes out.
They could lock out anything that isn't 2014, or they could add a year each event.
Wouldn't be the first time they say one thing, then do another in-game.

DAZ0273

True - rock on Thursday!

ThaRoadWarrior

I landed on XFW/IM40/Doom, that way doom can use the blue to make black along with the green you get from im40. I had to hit 50 wins, 1200 wasn’t worth chasing. I’ll be curious what ‘14 looks like also.

Phumade

Lots of people have asked for no placement events. I wonder how people are enjoying the experience. I'm sure everyone is experiencing similar que behaviors. Of course experiences are skewed because, there a larger % of maxed out XFW / IW /maxed 3*.

One thing is for sure. There are almost no reasons to spend hp for shields. In fact the challenging question is how late in the event should you start to minimize the number of matches to 1200.

Borstock

@dianetics said:
Probably because they were working on it for a decade and wanted to move on to do other things.

Again, if the commitment was just some part-time work, as implied, how could you get bored of making money for minimal effort?

bbigler

Back in 2013, PVP was flooded with 2* s, not 3* s or 4* s! Getting 3* covers was really hard and 4* covers were extremely rare.

During Thanksgiving 2013 I played 2* Wolverine and 1* Storm in PVP, really! Most people played 2* Wolverine and 2* Thor with the 3* loaner. In December 2013, I switched to 2* Thor and 2* Widow, which was unique and dominated. Eventually, everyone else figured out how good 2* Widow was and started using her in PVP.

Standard tokens were the standard tokens you were awarded, with Heroic tokens being more rare. So covering 3* s was very very slow. By Jan 2014 I started seeing more 3* s in PVP, but they were half-covered and half-leveled up. I got to a point in March 2014 where I was literally dominating PVP (getting rank #1 or #2 in every event) by using 3* Thor and the Hood. When the PVP featured 3* Spiderman, it was the perfect team. I got a lot of defensive wins and there were no shields. People eventually learned how nasty the Hood could be and seemed to avoid me. Seriously, he was a PVP deterrent.

bbigler

Keep in mind the game was very different back then:

• no team up tiles, but environment tiles instead with really high activation costs
• Most character’s powers were different than today; Magneto had a 2 Red board shake
• Everyone was ISO starved
• No progression rewards, no shields, no supports, no costumes, no shards, no champs, no CP, no DDQ, no vaults, no 5*s, no Lightning rounds, no boosts, no team ups, no alliances, no quests, no roster filters, no shield ranks or clearance levels, no VIP, no Bonus rewards, no seasons, no special offers, no selling off covers or characters for ISO

The game was basically your roster, HP, ISO, PVP, PVE, rank rewards, token stores and nothing else.

entrailbucket

Did you miss the Ragnarok/GSBW era? I got my Ragnarok to 5/5 literally the day before they stealth nerfed him. One day of domination...

You (probably?) also missed the complete insanity that was Loki v1. I didn't have him at that time, but I've heard stories.

bbigler

@entrailbucket said:
Did you miss the Ragnarok/GSBW era?

I never fully covered mine back then and didn’t see them in play. I do remember the PVE nodes got so difficult that no one could finish them; specifically a Ragnarok node with 2 goons that fed him green. On turn 4, your team is dead. There was another pve node with 15K health enemies, the only way I could beat it was by going winfinite with 1* Storm, 2* Thor and 2* Widow. It took like 30 min to beat though.

I took a break from the game soon after March 2014. I started playing a month after release, but I believe Loki had a 3 Purple board shake, which seemed infinite, especially on AI turns. The v1 2* Widow had a true heal, which I abused by replaying Prologue nodes when I ran out of health packs. My first new release was IM40, but I didn’t realize back then how good he could be. I was excited for 3* Punisher because he had cheap powers. When Patch debuted he had a bug where the purple strikes were friendly instead of enemy. That was a fun 4 days. Then there was the Ares debut where they tried out a rubber band point effect in pve nodes. That was ridiculous.

I also want to mention the desert environment where you could flood the board with green. 1* Storm could go winfinite on turn 2. I remember the street alley environment where for like 50 AP you could active “hot dog stand” for a small heal. The tundra environment had a power to turn everything blue for like 20 AP or something.

entrailbucket

Ragnarok GSBW was the first real top PvP team, and it was pretty well unbeatable if you had it! After the Ragnarok nerf I moved to Patch/Magneto pretty quickly -- Magneto was basically Shang-Chi before his nerf. You could boost +6 AP then, so most fights were won before the enemy moved the board.

IM40 was actually really, really bad at release. Recharge cost like a billion AP for some reason. It got lowered years later, and that's when he turned into a good battery. Yellow powers in general were almost always terrible in the first few years -- it was nothing but passives, bad heals, and bad protect tile powers.

I remember the forest environment for Forest Fire -- it'd reliably turn the entire board red!

bbigler

Yes, I thought I remembered IM40’s yellow power costing more, which would explain why I didn’t like him then.

What was so broken about Rags? I don’t remember

Bowgentle

His red cost like 2AP and made green.

entrailbucket

Yeah, it took them a surprisingly long time to figure out that 2 and 3AP abilities were overpowered.

Of course, they still haven't figured out that 0AP abilities are overpowered...

ThaRoadWarrior

Did those ultra cheap abilities going away coincide with the release of 3* captain marvel and that passive heal? I seem to recall devil dinosaur having 2 or 3ap powers as well, and all that jumbles together in my memory of those days.

entrailbucket

I think they adjusted Dino as part of OML's release, or just before. Kamala did exist by then, but her heal was always burst heal so nobody really bothered with that combo.

The 2ap and 3ap abilities were all massive, massive problems on Day 1, but they didn't all get addressed at once -- it happened one character at a time, as each one became the "meta." Ragnarok lost his first, then Spiderman's 2ap stunlock, then Magneto's boardshake/primitive Shang-Chi abilities.