Help me be a Unity optimist

helix72

I really want to be optimistic about the new engine, so I'm asking for help. Where have you seen improvements? Right now, I can count the following:

1) The game loads quicker
2) You can retreat from battle faster

Unfortunately, "things that have gotten worse" is a longer list--and more impactful on gameplay.

1) The game play is slower--every aspect (PvP, PvE) takes measurably longer than before
2) The game burns my battery faster
3) The game takes up more memory on my device
4) The game swaps some of my characters after I've selected them, even on saved teams, making some saved teams useless. As an example, I used to have a saved team for PvE easy nodes with Chasm, Rocket, and Thanos, but I don't bother anymore because every time I select it, it changes Thanos to Juggernaut.
5) Quests don't work with ascended versions of characters (I'm looking at missing out on you, FF tokens)
6) More frequent mid-match game freezes requiring force close and reopen
7) Often needing to tap things multiple times to get them to register (like buying or applying boosts, the back button, accepting rewards, etc.). Often the on-screen item "throbs" and recognizes it was pressed but doesn't do the action it should.
8) After a fight in PvE, the screen resets to the center of the PvE board, instead of staying centered over the node you just hit. This means for nodes off the screen you have scroll before each hit.

I'm playing on the most recent iPad Air with the most up to date iOS so it really shouldn't be a device related issue. And I've been playing consistently since the new engine was released, so I don't expect the "it gets faster with time" answer to apply to my current experience.

Where do you see improvements?

EDIT 1
Added one more plus. And one more minus.

Hellblazer666

Yes Unity has slowed play down. I used to be able to beat PVE levels around 3:40 pst now it takes me almost till 4:00 PST that’s 20 minutes longer. The old engine was so much faster in terms of gameplay

Kross

I am in a similar boat. I am trying to be positive, but I have yet to see anything that I feel is "better" than before.

WilliamK1983

I'm giving the game until the end of the year. If the new engine isn't purring by then and churning out new content(looking at you stale **** pve) then I'll call it a day.

bluewolf

Well….ummmmm…..

Maybe these FF quests and the vaults were easier to build in Unity? That seems pretty new in a way as far as volume and timing.

Ummm…

Starting and retreating is lightning fast, good for those “play with ____” quests.

Ummmmm…

Hoping some other improvements appear soon that aren’t just fixing broken stuff.

helix72

Hey thanks for reminding me! Yes, retreating from battle can be done more quickly! That's 2 in the plus column.

WilliamK1983

Omfg yes!! #8 @helix72 I just started having that happen with the final clear in the hunt(savage land) and it's still going on. I'll admit I've been one of the lucky players who hasn't had to deal with much more than some visual issues like text overlays but this one suuuuuuucks.

WilliamK1983

@WilliamK1983 said:
Omfg yes!! #8 @helix72 I just started having that happen with the final clear in the hunt(savage land) and it's still going on. I'll admit I've been one of the lucky players who hasn't had to deal with much more than some visual issues like text overlays but this one suuuuuuucks.

And right on cue I get a couple frozen matches during my clears in pve. Figures.

meadowsweet

The transition has been a hot mess and I'm not defending it as a whole, but the devs are still just doing damage control and trying to fix bugs to get the new game to exactly mirror the previous experience. Most of these should have been caught in testing and fixed prior to wide release, but they chose not to do that, for whatever reason.

But you sound like you're asking for a list of completely new game features that they've been able to roll out as a result of the new game engine, which isn't realistic at this point (and I wouldn't want them to prioritize over bug fixes either.) That stuff is going to happen in the months and years to come, not in the days or weeks after a new engine. They're having to rebuild the plane in mid-air here.

DAZ0273

Just stop the game freezing. It can't be that hard. If your players cannot match 3, you do not have a match 3 game.

bluewolf

To be a bit more generous, in the Ice Q&A he mentioned few things at least that they would like to/plan to/might do as things progress.

But I think we all agree that the promised experience (you basically won’t notice anything initially, then new features will be added, etc) was not met in any way initially.

But it’s getting closer to that.

dianetics

The only thing to really be optimistic about is that a lot of people know how to develop in Unity. So if the devs fire a bunch of people they can be replaced more easily.

Blackstone

Before Unity, when you'd search a character, then search another character, you had to delete the first thing you searched.

Now, thanks to the new engine, when you engage in consecutive searches, the previously searched for name is highlighted so you can just start typing the next name.

Depending on how often you need to search for multiple characters (especially considering all saved teams were deleted) this could save untold seconds.

helix72

Ooh that’s a good one. I also noticed sorting alphabetical matches how they sort in my spreadsheet, for some reason the way the old engine sorted punctuation Ant-Man and Anti-Venom were always reversed, and M’Baku was somewhere other than what I expected. Small wins but wins!

I will also add the alliance chat doesn’t try to autocorrupt what I type anymore. Another win. The wins are climbing!

Krazy

I feel for the Developers. They knew there were issues in June, when it was pushed to Steam (PC)

Add "tile throb" (On your turn, your strike tiles will pulse in size) bounce, and slide animations: to both the pros and cons list.

The Q&A was a great first step, and probably should have occurred a bit sooner.
Q&A Short recap: They are focused on bugs, performance and stability. (not new features)

If your items were addressed I think people would be a lot happier.

1-2) Using Unity's profiler and Visual Studio, the developers should be able to find code that can be optimized.
3) Memory allocation and pooling can be improved. (see 1-2)
4) A bug. I suggest looking at your saved teams, and have them be unique characters.
5) A bug. Not the first time the game has seen ascended characters differently. (i.e. Roster filter bug)
Also not the first time that we could not complete a Quest. (They have been good about compensation)
6) There are three things for this.
6a) A logic race condition where the game loses track of whose turn it is. (doesn't let you click on tiles, on your turn)
6b) A network issue occurred, and the reconnecting to the network logic gets hung up. (also happens on startup)
6c) Phone is throttling itself due to overheating. (see 1-2)
7) Delayed responsiveness could be cause by the CPU being overwhelmed, thus taps will lag (see 1-2)
8) There are a series of nice to have UI issues, this is one of them. (all worked better in the non-Unity version)
8a) Don't recenter the screen, remember where I left it.
8b) Clicking on a champion's awards should scroll them to their current level
8c) Scrolling through your roster should be faster
8d) Don't pop up a "Options" or "Retreat" dialog every time I switch apps.
8e) Have the initial tiles drop like they used to, Not some weird; yellow tiles first, (pause) and then the rest phase in.
Note: Board reshuffles should not cause damage.
8f) Once a PvE story completes it should stick around "closed" for 24 hours, so we can see rankings.
8g) Chat doesn't work if you add certain characters.
8h) Today's News doesn't work. This is how most people get their MPQ info.
8i) Dead Pool Daily says Crash of Titans is "unavailable".
8j) We were given a Reed Richards cover, but it was actually a Invisible Woman.

I'll stop there, as most of these are re-hashes of known issues.
Once those are taken care of then:
Future features that could help some with performance:

• Allow users to pick a max frames per second (120, 60, 30, or 15)
• Allow users to pick a "mute audio" option. If it is checked, the sliders can go away, and audio resources are not needed.
• Allow users to disable bounce, slide, sparkle, and throb animations. (some people are reporting motion sickness)
• Allow users to download all assets. This will download all graphics to your phone, as opposed to having them trickle in, as they are needed. (a.k.a. "the game will get faster the more you use it")

Codex

I could be wrong but aren't they just fixing bugs. I don't think they have implemented anything new through unity.

When we start seeing new pve storylines or alliance chat upgrades or new game modes we will see the impacts of unity.

I don't play with animations on, I would imagine the animations would be smoother?

LavaManLee

@Blackstone said:
Before Unity, when you'd search a character, then search another character, you had to delete the first thing you searched.

Now, thanks to the new engine, when you engage in consecutive searches, the previously searched for name is highlighted so you can just start typing the next name.

Depending on how often you need to search for multiple characters (especially considering all saved teams were deleted) this could save untold seconds.

That is a huge plus.

As is in my iOS, when I search for a character it no longer assumes I am mis-spelling something. It now let's me type it in and search for whatever I type.

WilliamK1983

Ascension, Quandary, Cover Exchange, new 3, 4, and 5* characters, new supports, supports in pvp, new costumes, increased boosts from 10 to 99, I could keep going. All done while working on the new engine. Don't tell me they can't do more now than before.

Pantera236

I'll add an plus, a minus and mention a minus that I didn't get.

Plus: there are certain animations that got sped up so even though the game is overall WAY slower seeing those few faster animations gives me hope.

Minus: I'm no longer getting pvp hit/blue android notifications. This was something we lost for a couple/few months but was fixed. Now broken again.

Minus I didn't get: no battery drain or overheating device.

revskip

It's hard to optimistic at this point. The only bugs that seem to be getting quashed quickly are those that have a benefit to players like the extra tokens. PvE is still frustratingly slow, with the matches often taking less time than the load in and load out process. New characters are being released so bugged that they break the game or are DOA because their abilities don't work. Crashes are still very frequent. They can't be bothered to check simple things before pushing them out like making sure the text of the daily quests actually line up with what they are requiring users to do. Even when they send out compensation it is bugged with Mr. Fantastic transitioning to Invisible Woman.

Couple that with the company bleeding money after pissing off the buy clubs and folks generally tightening purse strings because of this disaster of a launch and I'm beyond worried that the game I have loved for nearly a decade is going to fizzle out. It is a giant bummer.

entrailbucket

@revskip said:
It's hard to optimistic at this point. The only bugs that seem to be getting quashed quickly are those that have a benefit to players like the extra tokens. PvE is still frustratingly slow, with the matches often taking less time than the load in and load out process. New characters are being released so bugged that they break the game or are DOA because their abilities don't work. Crashes are still very frequent. They can't be bothered to check simple things before pushing them out like making sure the text of the daily quests actually line up with what they are requiring users to do. Even when they send out compensation it is bugged with Mr. Fantastic transitioning to Invisible Woman.

Couple that with the company bleeding money after pissing off the buy clubs and folks generally tightening purse strings because of this disaster of a launch and I'm beyond worried that the game I have loved for nearly a decade is going to fizzle out. It is a giant bummer.

If you're worried for the future of the game, you can increase revenues by spending more yourself. That's what I've been doing!

If everyone does their part then the game won't die. I guess some people don't really care if the game goes away, though.