NEW FEATURE - Auto-Fire Abilities!

Bowgentle

@Vhailorx said:

@entrailbucket said:
Just bring a team that has no power overlap. Something like Apocalypse/BRB only benefits from having this on. With supports on board, plus boosts, that's an even faster PvE team than it is now.

The time savings is probably pretty significant, especially in PvE. I have a feeling that if you want to win a PvE, starting in the next week or so, you'll need an autoplay-optimized team.

This is just not true. Casting BRB blue as soon as you have 6 ap is not ideal at all. Nor is casting apoc's black before you have protect tiles out on the board. Would the time savings from auto-casting even make up for the loss of efficiency produced by the ai never spamming abilities and casting out of order?

It doesn't really matter who you cast the blue against,the purpose is to make more protect tiles.
Also with Bill Apoc you have protect tiles out turn 0.
The point Bucket is making that this might make turn zero wins in pve even faster.
It's nothing mere mortals will ever experience.

Vhailorx

@Bad said:
There are a lot of misunderstandings in this thread. Many people actually think that:

• this isn't a gacha game

And all these misunderstandings create for them anger and negativity, sadly.

Definitions can vary, of course, but how exactly do you figure that this game is not a gacha game? It has loot boxes, limited availability stores, play gates, multiple in-game currencies, daily play rewards, etc. It seems to me that those are pretty much all the basic features of gacha-style games.

Vhailorx

@Bowgentle said:

@Vhailorx said:

@entrailbucket said:
Just bring a team that has no power overlap. Something like Apocalypse/BRB only benefits from having this on. With supports on board, plus boosts, that's an even faster PvE team than it is now.

The time savings is probably pretty significant, especially in PvE. I have a feeling that if you want to win a PvE, starting in the next week or so, you'll need an autoplay-optimized team.

This is just not true. Casting BRB blue as soon as you have 6 ap is not ideal at all. Nor is casting apoc's black before you have protect tiles out on the board. Would the time savings from auto-casting even make up for the loss of efficiency produced by the ai never spamming abilities and casting out of order?

It doesn't really matter who you cast the blue against,the purpose is to make more protect tiles.
Also with Bill Apoc you have protect tiles out turn 0.
The point Bucket is making that this might make turn zero wins in pve even faster.
It's nothing mere mortals will ever experience.

Does the autofire fire before the player's first turn? if so then maybe you could get one or more specific 6 or 7 ap powers to fire automatically if a support procs. But this would only work if the ai will fire the right powers in the right order.

I know that most of the top PVE players rely on very high level meta characters and supports to get lots of AP at the start of a match, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with the current meta for top-10 PVE grinding techniques to judge if this will really make a difference. It would also severely undercut BCS/D3's statements that this feature is intended for new players if the only real consequence is a big shakeup of the PVE speed-grind meta.

entrailbucket

@Vhailorx said:

@Bowgentle said:

@Vhailorx said:

@entrailbucket said:
Just bring a team that has no power overlap. Something like Apocalypse/BRB only benefits from having this on. With supports on board, plus boosts, that's an even faster PvE team than it is now.

The time savings is probably pretty significant, especially in PvE. I have a feeling that if you want to win a PvE, starting in the next week or so, you'll need an autoplay-optimized team.

This is just not true. Casting BRB blue as soon as you have 6 ap is not ideal at all. Nor is casting apoc's black before you have protect tiles out on the board. Would the time savings from auto-casting even make up for the loss of efficiency produced by the ai never spamming abilities and casting out of order?

It doesn't really matter who you cast the blue against,the purpose is to make more protect tiles.
Also with Bill Apoc you have protect tiles out turn 0.
The point Bucket is making that this might make turn zero wins in pve even faster.
It's nothing mere mortals will ever experience.

Does the autofire fire before the player's first turn? if so then maybe you could get one or more specific 6 or 7 ap powers to fire automatically if a support procs. But this would only work if the ai will fire the right powers in the right order.

I know that most of the top PVE players rely on very high level meta characters and supports to get lots of AP at the start of a match, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with the current meta for top-10 PVE grinding techniques to judge if this will really make a difference. It would also severely undercut BCS/D3's statements that this feature is intended for new players if the only real consequence is a big shakeup of the PVE speed-grind meta.

So yes, this will only work if the AI fires the right powers in the right order. But we are in control of the order the AI fires those powers! He's not going to cast them randomly -- he can only use them when he has enough AP. So there's a bit of matching skill required, and a bit of board luck, but mostly boosts and supports can take care of that for us.

allen_koholic

Guys listen, this is a feature that new players obviously asked for. Which means the devs are listening.

I’m sure they’re currently working on reducing the pace of new releases because tons of people ask for that.

LavaManLee

In a surprising twist, this forum seems actually way kinder to the devs and the new feature than Reddit. Overwhelmingly, the Reddit posters seem confused as to why this was implemented.

DrClever

@Vhailorx said:
Does the autofire fire before the player's first turn?

It does not afaict. Tested with 5Riri's red.

I'll see if rejigging the order can make it happen but it hasn't so far (I can't make it a reliable turn 0 option without another red power in the mix).

Update: Okay, in a team with no other red powers 5Riri's red will not autofire on turn 0 for me - tested with her in each of the slots.

Also when it does autofire I've had it pick both the AoE and single target effects now so for this particular power autofire would not always be helpful.

Bad

@Vhailorx said:

Definitions can vary, of course, but how exactly do you figure that this game is not a gacha game? It has loot boxes, limited availability stores, play gates, multiple in-game currencies, daily play rewards, etc. It seems to me that those are pretty much all the basic features of gacha-style games.

Read it correctly and you'll see we are saying the same.

@sambrookjm said:
Got 28 Purple AP in the 3-star DDQ node today. Autoplay fired off Scarlet Witch's Reality Crush over Deadpool's WHALES! WHALES! WHALES! both times. Maybe because she is the center character, and Deadpool is on the right? I'll try it tomorrow with Deadpool center, and see what happens.

Edit - In the 2-star node, it waited until I had 14 Red to fire off Magneto's Magnetic Flux instead of Captain Marvel's Photonic Blast (7 Red AP). For this team, Marvel was in the center and Magneto is on the left.

This is a good comment and it was what I was trying to say in my very initial post.
Do you all think you already know what AI will do in every case?
This post says the opposite.

Vhailorx

@DrClever said:

@Vhailorx said:
Does the autofire fire before the player's first turn?

It does not afaict. Tested with 5Riri's red.

I'll see if rejigging the order can make it happen but it hasn't so far (I can't make it a reliable turn 0 option without another red power in the mix).

Update: Okay, in a team with no other red powers 5Riri's red will not autofire on turn 0 for me - tested with her in each of the slots.

Also when it does autofire I've had it pick both the AoE and single target effects now so for this particular power autofire would not always be helpful.

That matches the typical ai behaviour of randomly selecting options whenever a power has sub-choices (e.g., 4* spiderwoman's purple), or wherever tiles need to be selected (e.g., SC).

Insta-wins seem off the board if the ai won't autofire on turn zero. Even if that were not the case, I am dubious that it would work.

I suppose someone could try to design a team with with up to 3 powers being autocast. With +4 boosting plus 3 supports all proc'ing in 3 different colors, one could get 9-10ap in 3 colors before the first turn. So is there a combination of 3 powers that (i) are in 3 different colors, all cost less than 9/10ap, (iii) follow the AI's order of color operations, and (iv) could result in a win against high-level opponents?

If so, then you would get an insta-win about 1/3 of the time (whenever all 3 supports proc). Of course, whenever only 1-2 supports proc you will be in a worse-than-normal position because the ai will waste ap. All in all, I don't see this strategy as likely to effect the speed-grind meta. It's reliant on less than 50/50 events, and but also slower than the default condition whenever RNG doesn't come through. Over many matches I don't think it will actually save any time at all.

Vhailorx

@Bad said:

@sambrookjm said:
Got 28 Purple AP in the 3-star DDQ node today. Autoplay fired off Scarlet Witch's Reality Crush over Deadpool's WHALES! WHALES! WHALES! both times. Maybe because she is the center character, and Deadpool is on the right? I'll try it tomorrow with Deadpool center, and see what happens.

Edit - In the 2-star node, it waited until I had 14 Red to fire off Magneto's Magnetic Flux instead of Captain Marvel's Photonic Blast (7 Red AP). For this team, Marvel was in the center and Magneto is on the left.

This is a good comment and it was what I was trying to say in my very initial post.
Do you all think you already know what AI will do in every case?
This post says the opposite.

This matches AI behaviour. There is an order or operations for characters (center, then left, then right), but also a randomness as to selecting which power is prioritized when multiple actives are present in the same color). This is quite prominent any many of the tile-mover + 2x goons challenge nodes (e.g., BSSM + 2 symbiotes feeding green). Sometimes the AI saves up for 14ap to cast BSSM's green. Most of the time it just puts out more goon CDs. I assume that if we actually tracked the behaviour over enough matches it would average out to a 1/3 chance (assuming all 3 characters are still up).

entrailbucket

@Vhailorx said:

@DrClever said:

@Vhailorx said:
Does the autofire fire before the player's first turn?

It does not afaict. Tested with 5Riri's red.

I'll see if rejigging the order can make it happen but it hasn't so far (I can't make it a reliable turn 0 option without another red power in the mix).

Update: Okay, in a team with no other red powers 5Riri's red will not autofire on turn 0 for me - tested with her in each of the slots.

Also when it does autofire I've had it pick both the AoE and single target effects now so for this particular power autofire would not always be helpful.

That matches the typical ai behaviour of randomly selecting options whenever a power has sub-choices (e.g., 4* spiderwoman's purple), or wherever tiles need to be selected (e.g., SC).

Insta-wins seem off the board if the ai won't autofire on turn zero. Even if that were not the case, I am dubious that it would work.

I suppose someone could try to design a team with with up to 3 powers being autocast. With +4 boosting plus 3 supports all proc'ing in 3 different colors, one could get 9-10ap in 3 colors before the first turn. So is there a combination of 3 powers that (i) are in 3 different colors, all cost less than 9/10ap, (iii) follow the AI's order of color operations, and (iv) could result in a win against high-level opponents?

If so, then you would get an insta-win about 1/3 of the time (whenever all 3 supports proc). Of course, whenever only 1-2 supports proc you will be in a worse-than-normal position because the ai will waste ap. All in all, I don't see this strategy as likely to effect the speed-grind meta. It's reliant on less than 50/50 events, and but also slower than the default condition whenever RNG doesn't come through. Over many matches I don't think it will actually save any time at all.

Why would you need all that? You're massively overthinking this.

A lot of the fast PvE teams are just "cast Apocalypse yellow, let passives kill everybody." If I can get to 7 yellow turn 1 (like these players already do every fight), then auto-casting Apocalypse yellow saves a second or so every fight.

If I bring, say, Beta Ray Bill too, then I've already got Apocalypse yellow on the board, first turn, passively, every single fight. Every time I get enough to fire Bill's blue or green, I want to cast them.

Seph1roth5

I still don't get why people are so fired up about something that wasn't on for them and they don't have to turn on lol.

I just updated and got the popup about auto-fire. Would be nice to work it into the intro/tutorial of the game though. Those popups are easy to miss and new players might not read it or think it's easy to get back to. Especially when it's followed by $$ pop ups.

Blackstone

Gave it try...

0 stars, do not recommend.

Single word description: painful.

I get it wasn't made for me, and I can turn it off.
If you like it, congrats.

Can someone tell me where this was requested, so I can go there and request a continuous mode; within which the next node auto-loads so I can play through a full event as though they were waves?

Thanks.

DrClever

@Seph1roth5 said:
I still don't get why people are so fired up about something that wasn't on for them and they don't have to turn on lol.

Well mostly people are less fired up and more just trying to work out if it can do something useful or at least entertainingly stupid.

But there is an element of sadness in a "is this what the world has come to?" sense about it being profitable to provide people with something that will play a game for them, and play it badly.

It's the sort of Ark Fleet Ship B moment that would have Thanos asking if people didn't think he had a point.

entrailbucket

Yeah, so trying it out...it's fun! I'm not sure if it's going to be fast enough to outpace the fastest PvE players/teams, but I still think it's possible.

What it does do is create a team-building challenge, and also a tile-matching challenge. You want one active power per color, and active powers that you generally want to cast as soon as they're ready. I tend to try to use teams like this anyway, just to avoid decisionmaking to easily go as fast as possible.

One fun thing: it'll use team-ups! This is a huge boon to me because I always forget they exist.

Seph1roth5

That IS kind of nice for trying to hit the teamup milestones. But like entrail mentioned, really need a team designed to take advantage of it.

@DrClever and I'm seeing a ton of vitriol, maybe just more on the discord lol. I don't really use reddit so no clue what's going on there.

Yepyep

It seems pretty obvious this is something designed for new players who just want to match gems. Players who just want to while away subway time without learning any intricacies of the game. This feature essentially sandboxes players away from the game's daunting learning curve and might keep more brand new players playing for longer as a means to build the userbase and grow metrics related to that at relatively little development spend.

It seems likely that focus groups show that x% of new users are scared off by the game's complexities shortly after starting. They delete the game. Sandboxing/siloing match play so the complexities don't have to be dealt with likely results in <x% of new users deleting the game.

Carmela

The Auto-Fire Feature is another stupid decision from the MPQ enveloped Team

DrClever

@Yepyep said:
Players who just want to while away subway time

If they just want time to pass without them having to think while strange things they don't understand and can't control flit before their baffled senses couldn't they just have a snooze and dream?

This feature essentially sandboxes players away from the game's daunting learning curve

When you say "players" do you mean "gerbils"? Because if it's humans being daunted by this learning curve they should probably be sandboxed away from electricity altogether.

I'm sure your analysis is spot on, it's just depressing.

Zarqa

I think this was all planned and executed by the community managers. After the communication frequency from BCS ceased, general posts from the player base have gone drastically down across all platform. This supposedly easy engineering fix to turn on auto fire definitely changed that. Look at all the posts on Reddit, discord and here about it!

I mean, the CMs would be the ones who would “know” that ‘new players have been asking for this’ too. It’s all a big conspiracy by the CMs to get the community chatting again, I am telling you!

(Edit: @Punisher5784 can this be your next episode please)