4 Star Nightcrawler Suggestion

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Hellaluyeah1
Hellaluyeah1 Posts: 8 Just Dropped In
in MPQ Suggestions and Feedback
I love Nightcrawler, especially his Bamf! Power. The only thing that annoys me about it, is that I have to count which tiles are the most represented on the board. As soon as two colors are similarly represented it gets hard to tell. Also I don't know how the power accounts for ties, when there are the same number of tiles on the board in two different colors. Since a lot of characters already exist, that count specific stuff, like "strongest enemy color", it should be easy for Nightcrawler to tell me, which is the most represented color on the board, or? Anybody, who has an opinion on this, an answer to the tie-question or would second this wish, is gladly welcomed to do so!

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  • abmoraz
    abmoraz Posts: 712 Critical Contributor
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    This has been brought up several times before.  The answer we got (don't remember if it was directly from the devs or via one of the mods/managers here relaying the message) was along the lines of:

    (paraphrasing) "Because of how the power works, there are technical limitations that makes this a lot harder than other characters that have similar powers that are based on the most common color on the board (such as Black Bolt or Lockjaw). "
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,162 Chairperson of the Boards
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    The actual answer was more along the lines of: "it takes a lot of effort to add any dynamic UI." I never saw one where they said Bamf! was more challenging than any other power, or why the relevant code couldn't be copy pasta'd from Lockjaw etc. 
  • abmoraz
    abmoraz Posts: 712 Critical Contributor
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    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    The actual answer was more along the lines of: "it takes a lot of effort to add any dynamic UI." I never saw one where they said Bamf! was more challenging than any other power, or why the relevant code couldn't be copy pasta'd from Lockjaw etc. 
    I don't work for D3 or Demiurge, but I do work as a software developer for a living and work mostly as a maintenance coder.  I can tell you from experience that if it were that easy, they'd've likely already done that.  (but copypasta is almost ALWAYS a bad software architecture decision)

    Just postulating and guessing, but I would bet that different people/teams coded Lockjaw and Nightcrawler, and whatever method/function they used for one or the other is hard coded and not exposed in a way that could easily be ported over or "copy-pasta'd" into the other.  I can't tell you the number of times I've had to respond to my boss's "We have this functionality in this part of the software, just copy it over to this section" with "the existing functionality is hardcoded and not exposed.  It uses entirely local variables and methods that reference ephemeral objects created in that object.  To port that into a central object that could be called by either location is days/weeks of work, not hours.  Copy-pasta is a solution, but then we'd have code that does the same general thing in multiple places, making maintenance a nightmare and usually introducing bugs that seem to "reoccur" after being fixed.
  • JSP869
    JSP869 Posts: 820 Critical Contributor
    edited April 2018
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    While the devs may not be able to copy/paste Lockjaw's code to make this change for Nightcrawler, when you select "BAMF!" the game has probably already determined which color it considers most dominant and thus has probably already determined which color tiles will be added to the board if you fire "BAMF!"

    Then again, maybe the game doesn't count the colors and thus doesn't 'know' which tiles will be spawned until after you fire "BAMF!".

    If the latter, that could explain why they cannot easily code "BAMF!"'s text to dynamically update as the board changes, because when two (or more) colors are equally predominant, the game literally does not know which color tiles will be added to the board until after you press the button.
  • TPF Alexis
    TPF Alexis Posts: 3,826 Chairperson of the Boards
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    It was mentioned somewhere that the reason it works for Lockjaw is that his blue is actually six different powers that change based on what colour is most present. So changing the power description for him uses the same functionality established for characters like OML, 3/5 Hawkeye, etc.

    The same post said that, due to how the system is coded, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to dynamically update the description for a single power depending on the tiles on the board.
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2018
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    ThaRoadWarrior said:
    The actual answer was more along the lines of: "it takes a lot of effort to add any dynamic UI." I never saw one where they said Bamf! was more challenging than any other power, or why the relevant code couldn't be copy pasta'd from Lockjaw etc. 
    They have on Discord if not here.

    They specifically say that in the case of Lockjaw, Lockjaw's description changes because in the backgrounds it's 6 different moves that vary based on active color (like Hawkeye, but by color vs order).  Doing 6 separate moves is also not easy so it's not a good work around for Nightcrawler.  They've said it's on their backlog to fix, but it's not super likely to get priority off of other things like new characters.

    They've also said that the most likely way this will get fixed is if/when a new character is made that has a simular enough move to Nightcrawlers that they can make reusable code and make the change to Nightcrawler.  We've seen this in the past.  Before Hawkeye, you couldn't see both Antman's Grow & Shrink powers (and other characters with multiple powers), with Hawkeye they added the ability to scroll between multiple same color powers and added it to all other characters it applies to.

    So hopefully they find a character to do this with because I agree it nerfs Nightcrawler pretty bad not having it.
  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,162 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I'm a professional developer as well, though I do project management, and I'm sympathetic to refactoring and its impact on a schedule. But as a player, it is frustrating when some powers that have functionally identical behavior (Ravager's Ruse and say Everywhere at Once - destroy/steal AP in the enemy's strongest color as a secondary effect) have different levels of  UI help. Ravager's Ruse has a static UI that doesn't tell you what color it is targeting. Everywhere at Once tells you what color it is targeting, but doesn't give you the final damage tally, leaving you to calculate in your head what 896pts * AP in that color will equal out to in the end. Similarly, Mordo's Power With Purpose has a static UI, making you check what the enemy's highest colored AP pool is and then multiply that by 806 to see what kind of damage you'll be doing. 

    There are enough characters in the game right now that make me say "As Player, I would make a strategic decision to fire a power based on a specific color's prevalence on the board" that such a thing being abstracted out into a re-usable module is starting to reach a critical mass.

    3* Hulk's red power - how many greens on the board?
    Lockjaw - what's the most prevalent color?
    Nightcrawler - what's most prevalent color?
    Cloak & Dagger - How many black/yellow tiles to trigger a number of secondary effects? (this one is less critical, but still)
    Moonstone - what's my total red damage going to be?
    Patch - how big is my heal going to be if i make that match?
    Daken - how many blues are on the board right now?

    Those are just some places I feel like dynamic UI would be helpful, i'm sure everybody has their own pet characters/powers that could benefit from something being tallied up for them. 


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