The B Team problem

Unknown · January 2014

It was suggested several times that healing should be lower, but you can play on with all your other heroes.
Yep, the last would be great if the game once gets to a state with more balance.

However with the current PvP it would be a bad move. I start playing with my best team, then as heroes get injured I switch to worse and worse alternatives, until run reach bagman and run out completely. No problem on the attack side.

However for defense the system stores only my team I last played and will show that to every fresh attack, and for retaliations to my first wave made by the A team. In short, using more of my roster the suggested way would bring in a huge penalty for me in the tournament taking multiplied hits. Or if went shielded in time (not realistic as the point was playing on, and opponents will not wait until I "finish") it creates some unfair advantage to others, as they would fight the underlings.

Some deep fix to that should be found -- there was already a topic on assigning defensive teams that is some starting point, or ret. rounds could always use the attacking team covering that subcase at least. The point is some coherent system is needed.

Unknown · January 2014

I ran into this too. Just got hit for 150 points, while all retaliations and PVP options right now reward 0 points. Sitting at 2500, and keep getting teamed up with people 0-100. Going to shield for a bit and check on later to see if there will be any games that I can remake some of those points back.

Really sucks that you play games that reward 10-15 points, and work and work to get your rating up, only to be hit in 3 games knocking you down 150 points.

Unknown · January 2014

Maybe your strategy of starting with the best and ending with the best is wrong?
Try doing the opposite

just a thought.

Unknown · January 2014

Psykopathic wrote:

Maybe your strategy of starting with the best and ending with the worst is wrong?
Try doing the opposite just a thought.

Unknown · January 2014

I think the success or lack thereof depends on the situation at hand and how you handle it. At the start of tournaments, I tend to run my B-Team, because, if I lose, who cares? You going from a score of 230 to 220 won't make a difference, nor will the retaliation. This current Ares tournament, I rotated out one of my A-Team folks and subbed in a suitable character and did minimal boosting if I thought it would help. Doing so let me go from 0 to about 600 points before even using a health pack. Now, mind you, my team is a crippled cookie cutter: base Ares (lvl 6)/85 Thor/85 Wolverine. Nothing special. On the side I have 85 C.Storm, 60ish GSBW, 80ish IM40, 60ish Hulk, and 40ish Punisher. Hell, at one point, I even threw in my 40 M.Widow and was winning. If you are selective with your boosts and understand the AI you can run a B team to garner points. Probably not good to use near close of tourney, but to start? Most definitely.

Unknown · January 2014

There's obviously no point to have a B team at the moment because everyone's A team never gets hurt so the pounding never stops.

If heals are weaker (and really should be none, because heals are really all or nothing, it's always either too good or nowhere near enough) there wouldn't be as many A team out there that are attacking continously for hours as well.

In fact you sort of see that with the Ares tournament. Due to the fact that Ares does insane damage, even with Spiderman occasionally your characters do go down and then you've to use health packs. PvP is all relative. If you're always attacking, that also means you're always being attacked too. Being able to attack less means you'll be attacked less as well. Unless your strategy is simply play more than anyone else, any corresponding weakening in your general ability to attack is going to be offset by the fact that everyone else is also less able to attack you by the same nerf.

MarvelMan · January 2014

WorstAvenger wrote:

At the start of tournaments, I tend to run my B-Team, because, if I lose, who cares? You going from a score of 230 to 220 won't make a difference, nor will the retaliation.

One of the issues with this (which I actually do a bit myself to change things up) is that the team which your opponent sees in a retaliation is the one you hit them with. Right now there are people over 2k that are getting hit by people in the 100-300 range, possibly due to retaliations that were coming due. Getting hit by an old retaliation hurts quite a bit when pushing for a high progression or placement, but the good news is that its capped at a 50 pt loss.....

Unknown · January 2014

MarvelMan wrote:

WorstAvenger wrote:

At the start of tournaments, I tend to run my B-Team, because, if I lose, who cares? You going from a score of 230 to 220 won't make a difference, nor will the retaliation.

One of the issues with this (which I actually do a bit myself to change things up) is that the team which your opponent sees in a retaliation is the one you hit them with. Right now there are people over 2k that are getting hit by people in the 100-300 range, possibly due to retaliations that were coming due. Getting hit by an old retaliation hurts quite a bit when pushing for a high progression or placement, but the good news is that its capped at a 50 pt loss.....

Yeah retaliations is a downside to the strategy but on another note, the 50 point losses have exactly 0 relation to retaliations.

Unknown · January 2014

Having a B team doesn't mean sometimes you take out your level 140 Spiderman for a level 40 Modern Black Widow. It's more like once in a while a level 140 Punisher subs in for Spiderman. Spiderman is almost certainly a stronger character than Punisher, but Punisher is not exactly chopped liver. Now currently you've really have no reason to ever make this substiution, because Spiderman almost never goes down. I see that they're trying to do this with some character specific matchup. For example, a high level IW probably needs someone who can do direct tile destruction to beat in a sane amount of time, so maybe you bring out Captain America instead for the sake of your sanity. I can certainly imagine games against Invisible Woman going for 20 minutes if you're unlucky enough to have multiple of her 'don't die' tiles up.

Spoit · January 2014

Seriously phantron, what is with your hate on for healing. You realize that when they bring spidey's blue in line with the 5 AP minimum requirement, that will also drastically reduce the effectiveness of his heal and his protect tiles, right? Wait to see how bad they maul him before going all rag hater

Unknown · January 2014

Psykopathic wrote:

Maybe your strategy of starting with the best and ending with the best is wrong?
Try doing the opposite just a thought.

Sure, you can go the other way around resulting you play most of your time with a team you believe is suboptimal for the purpose. Is is supposed to be more fun? That way would also ensure you never lift off as everyone will chose your B team instead of others' A team to hit.

maybe I wasn't clear about the context, it is tournaments where you go to compete and aim for position as highest as possible. For casual playing in the prologue sure anything goes and little matters; you can experiment with all kinds of teams without losing anything, especially a chance to get up.

The problem I laid out is more profound than just exhausting the top rockstar team -- it prevents going in with the best fit for the particular fight. When you meet some composition/level in the opposing team, considering the environment too, you may chose different characters. Suppose I decide to drop Thor for that particular run and use my low-level * storm or BW instead. And win with flying colors -- but by now also exposing that team for defense for everything, everywhere get a huge beating.

In the finish of last hulk I had that actual accident changing arenas and forgetting my puny spiderman in place of volverine. Not only did that cost me the game, I accumulated 3 or 4 hits in the few minutes timeframe -- until I restored the state playing another. Now we're bound to that.

Unknown · January 2014

I left my B-Team in play and got hit for -150, I cried.

Unknown · January 2014

Rebuttal = shield up

Unknown · January 2014

Phantron wrote:

If you're always attacking, that also means you're always being attacked too. Being able to attack less means you'll be attacked less as well.

I lost the ball here. As I see the current arena attacks on me are completely independent on attacks I issue. People don't see what I do and attack me all the same if I press playing on or went to sleep long ago.

MarvelMan · January 2014

Phantron wrote:

I can certainly imagine games against Invisible Woman going for 20 minutes if you're unlucky enough to have multiple of her 'don't die' tiles up.

I dont remember what tourney it was but I had IW for some reason and went up against a team with OBW. I didnt take it seriously enough and ended up losing my other two then got lucky to cut it to a IW/OBW fight and had a protect bubble. Whoops. Between the steal/heal I eventually just gave up and yielded since neither of us could do anything serious to the other.

Unknown · January 2014

pasa_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

If you're always attacking, that also means you're always being attacked too. Being able to attack less means you'll be attacked less as well.

I lost the ball here. As I see the current arena attacks on me are completely independent on attacks I issue. People don't see what I do and attack me all the same if I press playing on or went to sleep long ago.

If you can go out and attack continously for hours, so can anyone else with a comparable team. Toward the 1000+ range, there's incredible aggression by anyone who is still playing because nobody ever has a reason to stop attacking so the net result is that hits are very common.

Unknown · January 2014

Spoit wrote:

Seriously phantron, what is with your hate on for healing. You realize that when they bring spidey's blue in line with the 5 AP minimum requirement, that will also drastically reduce the effectiveness of his heal and his protect tiles, right? Wait to see how bad they maul him before going all rag hater

Because healing is a dumb concept that almost every game feel the need to include without thinking whether it make sense. Let's say gaining 1 HP on your team is exactly as useful as taking 1 HP off the enemy team. Let's call Thunder Strike's total damage is 3000. Then this means Web Bandages cannot heal for more than 1000 on each person to be balanced with Thunder Strike, which is the most damaging yellow abilty in the game that is likely to be nerfed. That's less than what you'd heal with only 2 web tiles (or is it 1? I swear it's (1+tiles) * base heal amount sometimes). I'm pretty sure people would consider a rather drastic nerf if Web Bandages can never heal for more than 1000 damage.

Of course this assumption of 1 of your HP = 1 of enemy's HP is ridiculous because if that was actually true, nobody would ever be able to beat the 240X3 computer teams that have at least twice your HP. In reality gaining 1 HP on your team is considerably more useful than taking 1 HP off the enemy team. The only way you can keep heals in check is if it was actually likely for the healer to die before getting a heal off, and if that was a common thing, people would complain (rightfully) that it's pointless to have a healer if that guy usually died before getting a heal off.

I'm saying they should just skip the futile efforts to balance healing and just get rid of it now, because they'll have to do it later anyway. If you assume the computer loses HP twice as fast as you do on a neutral game (no boosts to tip the scale even further), you can't even be allowed to heal for more than 500 on each of your teammates, and I'm sure people wouldn't bother with healing if it was reduced to that level.

Unknown · January 2014

Phantron wrote:

Spoit wrote:

Seriously phantron, what is with your hate on for healing. You realize that when they bring spidey's blue in line with the 5 AP minimum requirement, that will also drastically reduce the effectiveness of his heal and his protect tiles, right? Wait to see how bad they maul him before going all rag hater

Because healing is a dumb concept that almost every game feel the need to include without thinking whether it make sense.

Healing is a necessary concept in any game that wants to have a 'control' aspect included in the gameplay. If there isn't healing then the alternative is denial (denial of attack, actions, resources, ...) If neither of these 2 styles exist the game is all about aggro and boring as hell because of the lack of variety.

Take as example MtG. The white can heal a lot while the blue can ruin your day with those counters. There, 'control' works because it was properly tested. Here, control is messed up because some abilities were poorly designed. It is getting fixed by nerfing the op characters, although it remains to be seen what new players will play with after they are done.

Some don't like control gameplay, others do. The designers of any game try to please as many customers as possible. Personally, I am fine with healing and control in general, but not with the type Spiderman offers right now. The stun is ridiculously cheap and the healing way too strong (from my experience from facing him. Mine is 3/1/0 and since I don't expect to get any covers soon so he is worthless)

Unknown · January 2014

In a game of match 3, there really is no place for 3 Ap or less games. They will always be overpowered or open to abuse.

The B Team problem

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