PVP Supports: Feedback Thread

Borstock

@Tony_Foot said:
Are we really complaining about the only two useful 1s that have been boosted together for the only time I can remember, when MThor has been left running free for years decimating other strategies with out a god boost. Or some of the bonkers ascended 4 we are all now chasing down.

The biggest issue with the game is people just cannot stand losing at all. They factor the play time to not lose.

It didn't matter at all that they were boosted together.

That people can't stand losing is besides the point. It isn't a competition when the AI can beat you without doing anything. This isn't about losing a few more matches. It's about the match being over before it even begins.

entrailbucket

@Borstock said:

@Tony_Foot said:
Are we really complaining about the only two useful 1s that have been boosted together for the only time I can remember, when MThor has been left running free for years decimating other strategies with out a god boost. Or some of the bonkers ascended 4 we are all now chasing down.

The biggest issue with the game is people just cannot stand losing at all. They factor the play time to not lose.

It didn't matter at all that they were boosted together.

That people can't stand losing is besides the point. It isn't a competition when the AI can beat you without doing anything. This isn't about losing a few more matches. It's about the match being over before it even begins.

The technical term for this is "non-game," and it's what this change has created a lot more of.

If you and your opponent both have optimized support stacks with high level characters, the game is won or lost based on whose supports trigger, before anyone even makes a move. This SUCKS. At least give us the illusion of agency -- make me feel like I'm accomplishing something when I win.

DAZ0273

I think the biggest mistake they have made is running this for a Season. If people feel this is affecting them negatively they are far less likely to give it a chance. I don't know how plausible it is to do but it would have been better to have run a mini Supports season (say a week long) and maybe then had a truncated Season after that so players could still play normally and they had time to analyse data from the Supports enabled stuff.

Pylgrim

I'm going to add my perspective only because me situation is a bit of an outlier. I quit the game around 5 years ago and until then, I had been as sweaty as a mostly F2P could be. I returned a few months ago, and well, it's been humbling. The best thing I got is the old Okoye-Thor team. I need every teensy gram of HP I can get my hands onto for roster slots so may I can catch up on collection within a year or so; that means, no shields. So I've gone pure progression and entirely dismissed placement. Around every 3 out of 4 weeks I have 0 boosted 5s (even though I used to have a near complete batch back in the day) so I basically have to skip every fight against boosted 5s, which leaves... yes, you guessed it, an ocean of M.Thor/Shang as far as the eye can see.

The most infuriating thing about that duo is not that they are good but rather how lucky they can get. You don't need supports or even boosts, when M.Thor oh so frequently gets **** 1-hour cascades from removing 3 tiles. So if they get "lucky" too many games, I exhaust my healthpacks and sometimes I really struggle with making the 16-wins minimum that for me it's the whole point of playing PVP. When I get a boosted 5* I often can get 25 without an issue. So anyway, that's my context.

So what have supports in PVP done for me? It hasn't really caused me to skip more teams, for one. The teams that got extra skippable with supports were already big no-nos for me due to their match damage and massive HP alone. Second, it has only marginally increased the bullshittery of M.Thor-Shang. But on the other hand, my Talon Fighter on Okoye has made my gameplan massively more effective. Moreover, it has encouraged people to try many different teams that are easier prey (or at least less randomly infuriating) than M.Thor teams for my Okoye-Thor. All in all, it's a positive for me.

Generally speaking, I agree with a statement someone made a few pages ago: Progression players will tend to favour this change and Placement players will tend to loathe it.

I think that one way of improve this is something that has been asked ever since I was a regular back in the day: rewards need to be improved to be more relevant for the people who get them. The top 10 rewards are pretty nice... if you are a fledgling endgame player. However, since there are so few of them, by pure necessity, no matter the existing gameplay systems (i.e. supports), those rewards will tend to go to full endgame players for whom those rewards are a mere drop in the ocean. So the ones who really need them will have to kill themselves to try to luck in there once or twice, do coordination and whatnot, but again, onyl a handful of them will manage. Then they will place within the top 100 and get the sort of rewards that are a drop in the ocean for them (but would be good for transitioning 4* players... who most likely can't get them). And so on.

If fledgling 5* players can get from realistic placements (and from extended progression past 25) the rewards that they actually need to progress (i.e. 5* covers), and those rewards are adjusted similarly all the way down, then much of the sweatiness, stress and anger (general or at any little change that seems to effect their meticulous plans) may melt away. Surely there will be players who still will want to go for the also improved top 10 rewards but that will be out of a desire to prove themselves rather than as the main way to progress one's collection at a good speed in this game.

rainkingucd

In PVP, I like to play the puzzle game of who counters who. I take Electro when someone has Juggernaut or Omega Red, I take Shaw when someone has Mighty Thor, I take Moon Knight against Chasm.

Supports has made that puzzle exponentially more complex, and it is information overload on how to counter the team I am playing. Now it is not just A vs B, but A vs B^(72*5). Each opponent now has a Support at up to 5 different levels, with 5 different functions (not just powers, but scale and % opportunity to fire), that interact differently depending on who they are paired with.

I see the positives when you can amp up your own team, but the negative isn't just a "powered up" opponent, but an opponent that no longer functions how I expect them to. 400+ characters & 70+ supports means I either have to invest a significant amount of "out of game" time to understand what I am doing before each fight, or go in blind and find out what happens as the game unfolds.

It is information overload and makes what I like about PVP (the who beats who style) difficult

LHammer

@slidecage said:
You don't have to memorize anything. Just pick your team and play

Yeah, you kind of do because picking your team and playing what previously would have been a manageable fight can now result in a massacre because you didn't understand what happens when Yelena has Uncle Ben's Rice equipped on a team with Star Brand.

DAZ0273

@LHammer said:

@slidecage said:
You don't have to memorize anything. Just pick your team and play

Yeah, you kind of do because picking your team and playing what previously would have been a manageable fight can now result in a massacre because you didn't understand what happens when Yelena has Uncle Ben's Rice equipped on a team with Star Brand.

Uncle Ben's rice gives you +2 spicy when applied to Mexicans but gets a 14% multiplier to any team equipped with it where at least one character is from Uranus.

plizard

@entrailbucket said:

I'd be fine with removing names, it just wouldn't do the thing you want it to do. It'd make life a little more difficult for the coordinators but wouldn't come close to stopping them. It really wouldn't affect the way I play at all.

But then you wouldn't be able to hit a player 10x in a row. Where's the fun in that?

entrailbucket

@plizard said:

@entrailbucket said:

I'd be fine with removing names, it just wouldn't do the thing you want it to do. It'd make life a little more difficult for the coordinators but wouldn't come close to stopping them. It really wouldn't affect the way I play at all.

But then you wouldn't be able to hit a player 10x in a row. Where's the fun in that?

I play in s2. If somebody's out and they've got points, I don't need to see their name to find them 10x in a row!

plizard

But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

entrailbucket

@plizard said:
But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

Well, if they're only worth 5 points to you, then you have too many points. Hitting someone for 5 points is just gifting them a good retal -- not very spiteful.

Instead you should dump 500 or so, so you can start hitting them for 40 or 50 again.

plizard

That's too much effort. I'm just playing to 50 wins or 1.2, whichever comes first. But I'm not above hitting the same person over and over to reach either goal.

That said, I don't think my ability to hit someone like 5x in the span of a few minutes without the AI getting a turn thanks to supports is particularly non-toxic to the game.

JoeHandle

@entrailbucket said:

@plizard said:
But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

Well, if they're only worth 5 points to you, then you have too many points. Hitting someone for 5 points is just gifting them a good retal -- not very spiteful.

Instead you should dump 500 or so, so you can start hitting them for 40 or 50 again.

If you've broken MMR, dumping breaks the spell, takes you back to 'normal' matchmaking. What's the fun in that?

entrailbucket

@JoeHandle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@plizard said:
But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

Well, if they're only worth 5 points to you, then you have too many points. Hitting someone for 5 points is just gifting them a good retal -- not very spiteful.

Instead you should dump 500 or so, so you can start hitting them for 40 or 50 again.

If you've broken MMR, dumping breaks the spell, takes you back to 'normal' matchmaking. What's the fun in that?

The fun is in smiting one's enemies. What other reason is there to play a Player vs Player game?

JoeHandle

@entrailbucket said:

@JoeHandle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@plizard said:
But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

Well, if they're only worth 5 points to you, then you have too many points. Hitting someone for 5 points is just gifting them a good retal -- not very spiteful.

Instead you should dump 500 or so, so you can start hitting them for 40 or 50 again.

If you've broken MMR, dumping breaks the spell, takes you back to 'normal' matchmaking. What's the fun in that?

The fun is in smiting one's enemies. What other reason is there to play a Player vs Player game?

Using the PvP mode in a roster management game to farm covers. Who cares about the other names on a screen? (whoops, wasn't supposed to say that part out loud, danggit.)

WilliamK1983

@DAZ0273 said:

@LHammer said:

@slidecage said:
You don't have to memorize anything. Just pick your team and play

Yeah, you kind of do because picking your team and playing what previously would have been a manageable fight can now result in a massacre because you didn't understand what happens when Yelena has Uncle Ben's Rice equipped on a team with Star Brand.

Uncle Ben's rice gives you +2 spicy when applied to Mexicans but gets a 14% multiplier to any team equipped with it where at least one character is from Uranus.

Just Ben's. It's how racism was solved, remember? 🙄

entrailbucket

@JoeHandle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@JoeHandle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@plizard said:
But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

Well, if they're only worth 5 points to you, then you have too many points. Hitting someone for 5 points is just gifting them a good retal -- not very spiteful.

Instead you should dump 500 or so, so you can start hitting them for 40 or 50 again.

If you've broken MMR, dumping breaks the spell, takes you back to 'normal' matchmaking. What's the fun in that?

The fun is in smiting one's enemies. What other reason is there to play a Player vs Player game?

Using the PvP mode in a roster management game to farm covers. Who cares about the other names on a screen? (whoops, wasn't supposed to say that part out loud, danggit.)

I've never understood MPQ roster management as a goal for its own sake. MPQ covers, supports, boosts, tokens etc, are utilitarian objects whose only use is smashing other people (or, I guess, the AI in PvE).

It'd be like collecting cars you never drive, or sealed video games or toys you never open -- except in this case your MPQ roster has zero resale value so it's a terrible investment.

Roster management is only a means to an end, and the end is beating other people with your roster. It doesn't make sense for it to be the end...why not play a harem game or a clicker?

AlexR

@entrailbucket said:
I've never understood MPQ roster management as a goal for its own sake. MPQ covers, supports, boosts, tokens etc, are utilitarian objects whose only use is smashing other people (or, I guess, the AI in PvE).

It'd be like collecting cars you never drive, or sealed video games or toys you never open -- except in this case your MPQ roster has zero resale value so it's a terrible investment.

Roster management is only a means to an end, and the end is beating other people with your roster. It doesn't make sense for it to be the end...why not play a harem game or a clicker?

Speaking as someone whose goal is collecting/champing everyone and who loooves teambuilding (my immediate reward for champing any character is looking for teams for them), neither of those things has anything to do with harem games and a tedious clicker is so far away it's not even in the same universe.
Instead, compare the game to Pokemon. Some people are interested in being competitive against other players, and some are just interested in raising teams and collecting Pokemon. The latter, that's MPQ for me.

The teambuilding and collection aspects are the whole point of the game for me. Well, that, and getting to play with characters I like. When I get to run my 5* Loki effectively by running MThor/Loki, I'm elated. When I spend weeks on a journey looking for a team, any team, that might let broken pre-buff 4* Emma do anything, when I get to discover that Chasm plays decently with Riri despite my low expectations of Chasm, when I took every single new 4* I champed during my 4* days into Sim to test/run various gimmick teams and note down what works -- all those sorts of things make MPQ fun for me.

I consider smashing the AI/other players in versus to be the incidental means to an end, rather than the end goal. Which just shows how different people's priorities can be!

JoeHandle

@entrailbucket said:

@JoeHandle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@JoeHandle said:

@entrailbucket said:

@plizard said:
But what if you want to keep hitting that same person until they are only worth 5 points out of spite? Asking for a friend

Well, if they're only worth 5 points to you, then you have too many points. Hitting someone for 5 points is just gifting them a good retal -- not very spiteful.

Instead you should dump 500 or so, so you can start hitting them for 40 or 50 again.

If you've broken MMR, dumping breaks the spell, takes you back to 'normal' matchmaking. What's the fun in that?

The fun is in smiting one's enemies. What other reason is there to play a Player vs Player game?

Using the PvP mode in a roster management game to farm covers. Who cares about the other names on a screen? (whoops, wasn't supposed to say that part out loud, danggit.)

I've never understood MPQ roster management as a goal for its own sake. MPQ covers, supports, boosts, tokens etc, are utilitarian objects whose only use is smashing other people (or, I guess, the AI in PvE).

It'd be like collecting cars you never drive, or sealed video games or toys you never open -- except in this case your MPQ roster has zero resale value so it's a terrible investment.

Roster management is only a means to an end, and the end is beating other people with your roster. It doesn't make sense for it to be the end...why not play a harem game or a clicker?

1. Faux productivity.
2. You've recycled this post many times over the years; have a macro for it?
3. "Harem game"? This isn't a ... ? Oh, hell. Some harems wear more spandex than others!

BriMan2222

So I guess supports can stop insta win powers from working as I learned tonight. Decided to just cheese a dual 672 jugg spidey team with purple ap boosts and some purple ap supports and just drop whales on them. I got enough purple ap, fired mega whales and to my surprise a support activated (I think it was leap frog) and instead of ending the match it left the enemy team still alive, though close enough to dead the I was able to finish them off easily enough.