Supports are coming to PVP

ThisisClemFandango

I think it's widened the playing field the mass favourite of shang and Jane doesn't do so well against stunners who can get the stuns off earlier, also mister sinister is awesome against Jane in general

BriMan2222

It's only been one event, but so far it made climbing much faster and easier. I hit 1200 earlier than I have in quite awhile. Thumbs up so far.

samael64

I'm enjoying it as well, feels like I'm able to get to 25 wins faster and am seeing a wider variety of opponents.

Kusik73

I used to love PvP and this is just making it unbearable. Too many teams that are one hit kills. Please, please remove supports from the game.

AlexR

I hate it, lol.

I've held off on judgment until I've seen it in action, but people have lots of really strong supports (Omnipotence city...) and I lack the vast majority of them, having been on hiatus for a year. I'm tearing through my health packs. This is not sustainable. It is such a slog.

Team-wise I'm seeing more variety, but I feel like I'm super limited in what I can run in response. With the supports, the AI gets too much free stuff and hits too hard to take chances. I'm pretty much back to being reduced to my Shang Chi team, because otherwise I cannot keep up. Damn, that's disappointing.

Guess I'm scaling back how much I play pvp this month. 25 wins each event through this slog ain't it, no thanks.

Tony_Foot

It's the same pre supports, some events are slogs depending who is boosted. I have events where I will do 12 wins and others where I will go for 1k. Far too early off the back of one event.

Although I'm absolutely convinced where we will end up is supports on offence only. They have spent a long time on this, I don't see it going away. I have a vast majority of supports at level 4 or higher but I've loved and chased them since introduction and can see from the people I'm hitting a lot of people haven't cared.

I'm not sure god boost and supports for defence is a thing you can have while keeping health packs in the game.

AlexR

I freely admit it's a compounding issue for me: I'm early in 5* territory, so I have usually neither godboosted characters - too few 5* champs yet -, nor do I have good supports due to having been on hiatus. That combo made the vast majority of teams very threatening. Last week, even when I avoided all boosted iHulk, at least I did fine vs the non-boosted teams. Not so today in this event, where the non-boosted teams had also threatening supports and ate my health packs.

Neither of these issues is likely to go away frome event to event this season, therefore my somewhat bleak post above.

I hope you're right that we end on them being offense-only. I'd be totally fine with the supports on offense, but on defence they sure are a pvp entry hurdle.

658_2

Ran into my first supports buzzsaw. Guy had three rank 5s. He had doubled me and tried tripling in the time it took me to play a side node in Simulator, so I hit him twice. Both matches he started with 10+ purple. He was using 3* May, 1* Spidey. First match he took out my boosted Sinister turn 1 with a 220k+ crit match. I got a nice cascade from Phylla and did hold on and won that. Second match he did a 240k+ crit match and took out my Phylla his turn 1. I wiped hard that time. I don’t mind wiping, and I went into supports in pvp with an open mind, but c’mon, eating 200k+ crit matches turn one is stupid and not fun.

ArchusMonk

I prefer a quick loss to a long drawn out one. A long drawn out loss is a total waste of time to me.

658_2

I don’t care about the competitive aspect for myself, but above 900 is very obviously going to be a no go zone for anyone who isn’t collaborating or who doesn’t have their own rank 5s (to go along with heavy duty rosters). I don’t know how the devs expect newer players to compete, if they still care about that demographic. They’ve done a lot of rich get richer stuff over the years (that I’ve admittedly benefited from) but this is extreme and way out of balance imo. Funnily enough, it will probably be most miserable for players at the very top end. I get and respect that the devs need new things to sell, and maybe they can get players feeling the squeeze to shell out, but one pvp in and it already feels like a drag to me.

Tony_Foot

@658_2 said:
I don’t know how the devs expect newer players to compete, if they still care about that demographic.

Of course they don't care about that demographic, if they did they would remove names from PVP in some form. The collaboration is cheating, gaming the system, gaining an advantage that a huge portion of the player base have no idea exists.

entrailbucket

(Disorganized) first impressions:

• saw a ton of weird/random/non optimized supports. A lot of players haven't figured out how to do this yet
• did not see the Aunt May team at all
• free AP supports were very strong in general, but free AP supports+ boosts produced a bunch of non-games
• the purple infinity stone is crazy on characters whose powers cause cascades
• I didn't get any turn 0 wins but there were some games that were pretty much over turn 0
• edit: Chasm does NOT shut down supports. All of my supports fired their start of battle effects against him as normal

Phumade

@ArchusMonk said:
I prefer a quick loss to a long drawn out one. A long drawn out loss is a total waste of time to me.

A quick loss is better than a slow win.

Rule 1 of placement mpq.

Phumade

@658_2 said:
I don’t care about the competitive aspect for myself, but above 900 is very obviously going to be a no go zone for anyone who isn’t collaborating or who doesn’t have their own rank 5s (to go along with heavy duty rosters). I don’t know how the devs expect newer players to compete, if they still care about that demographic. They’ve done a lot of rich get richer stuff over the years (that I’ve admittedly benefited from) but this is extreme and way out of balance imo. Funnily enough, it will probably be most miserable for players at the very top end. I get and respect that the devs need new things to sell, and maybe they can get players feeling the squeeze to shell out, but one pvp in and it already feels like a drag to me.

The 900 and its relationship to 1200 is a very intentional decision and part of an age old ELO MMR discussion. Under the the hood, there a dev choosen K number that sets a limit (the math people can describe this better) Once your score exceeds that number alot of weird match making becomes possible. Thats why MMR is sim feels different than MMR in LRs or events.

I don't want to get too into the weeds beyond saying, high value players congregrate because its the only way they can acquire other similar high value targets to make progress to 1200 and beyond.

There alot of theoretical game and match theory at play and who knows if old assumptions are true with the rng of supports included. Yes its far more nuanced, but the consistent value ques (really the only way high value players can meaning gain points late in events) are the only meaningful way to compete for placements. (and I'm ignoring the issues of grills etc. lets simply just say a 75 pt cc is the same as a 75 pt sniper whale)

Objectively, I haven't seen scores drop and or leaderboard names change. Yes they are playing in a different pattern but they are also plenty experienced with fast hops between shields.

There has been a long discussed theory that #of matches below the K number is what drives the number of points per slice. Now that smaller whales can reasonably hit super rosters, I'm curious to see if that changes what size can float and how does that effect number of points in the slice at any specific time.

I know the season has been disruptive, but interesting to see how whales change there playstyles.

WilliamK1983

@Tony_Foot said:

@658_2 said:
I don’t know how the devs expect newer players to compete, if they still care about that demographic.

Of course they don't care about that demographic, if they did they would remove names from PVP in some form. The collaboration is cheating, gaming the system, gaining an advantage that a huge portion of the player base have no idea exists.

Would have preferred this be addressed first before supports in pvp.

dianetics

Not a fan of this so far. Maybe I'll mess around with it more, but it will probably push me to do even less PvP.

bluewolf

@WilliamK1983 said:

@Tony_Foot said:

@658_2 said:
I don’t know how the devs expect newer players to compete, if they still care about that demographic.

Of course they don't care about that demographic, if they did they would remove names from PVP in some form. The collaboration is cheating, gaming the system, gaining an advantage that a huge portion of the player base have no idea exists.

Would have preferred this be addressed first before supports in pvp.

There is no way they do this.

The game doesn’t have that many people left who are hardcore PvPers but those who are, include the remaining whales. They enjoy the competition, the roster comparisons, trying to push past each other. It’s not just coordinating.

If you literally removed their ability to know who they’re fighting they would enjoy the game less. Probably spend less.

Not to mention it would be a major game overhaul, aka a lot of work with no upside except making some players who don’t spend money a little happier when they can place better.

Spoiler: the people who coordinate would still find a way to coordinate.

The outcome you imagine would not result from this.

slidecage

@WhiteBomber said:
I started a PVP match with stormbreaker on her and she did like 100k on spawn. The match was over before it began, good stuff.

What is spawn. Mostly using Emma aunt may get up to ,25;wins or so and stop don't really care about placement

So far really never found a good defence team

Only thing I hate about supports is now I have to read them and really used them

Only way to make all happy is to make two pvps. Supports or non.

Punter1

Didn't find my first event that different than usual. Still found that in the first part of the climb here's lots of variety and it's not too hard to 10-15 wins. Then I do a 2nd push to 1k/25 wins on the last day. As points get higher it's back to cycling through the same 2-3 players to find 1 reasonable target with ok points. The support addition didn't seem to add any more players or variety to the mix in the latter part of the climb.

I found some fight easier when the opponents didn't have supports attached and the odd fight where cascades and supports seemed to quickly give the edge to the opponent. Otherwise, it was mostly business as usual when fighting similar levels, supports and characters, the player has the edge over the AI.

The only downside was the odd fight were certain opponent supports seemed to fire lots of random stuff. I find keeping track of all the different supports and abilities way too much of a chore, so these odd occasions just slowed things down and got annoying when you're not sure what is triggering them.

I didn't see any obvious "turn zero" teams on defense. Mostly just the standard mix of the better boosted characters with the odd mthor thrown in.

Bzhai

Boosted characters in pvp are not necessarily a bad thing.
Supports in pvp are not necessarily a bad thing.
But both combine is ridiculously broken.

As mentioned by others people are running with spider and double purple ap generators doing planet destroying damage on their first turn. Adding salt to that wound is it's a character that can be purchased, making this game into a pseudo pay-to-win condition.

Just remove supports from regular pvp and make a separate event for it where rewards and placement don't matter. And no, nerfing the supports is not the solution either, Unless they plan to remove the competitive nature of pve too.