Those Teamup (Loaner) nodes

bluewolf
bluewolf Posts: 5,237 Chairperson of the Boards
Another PVE (DP v MPQ), another mess of a teamup node.  2Hawkeye, 3 Doc Ock, and Prowler.  There's a little synergy with Prowler fortifying enemy specials, and matching them steals that special while Ock makes some attack tiles.  But there are two (purple and yellow) useless colors with this team and it's all so slow.

I have 13 champed 5's, every other character (except a few 1's) rostered and champed, and I'm stuck playing this if I want the points and rewards in the node.

These nodes are counter to almost every other match you play in the game.  You are forced to use 3 character that are determined by the developer's rotation of rewards, not some attempt to make a fun team that works in a good or interesting way.  THAT particular design approach is implemented daily in the Behemoth Burrito, and I appreciate it a lot, particularly since its an untimed mode and I can have fun just seeing how the match goes.

Some suggest that you only play the node once and be done.  That would be fine, you could even leave it as a replayable node but just have it give no points or rewards after the first time.  That would continue to give all players a chance to use the 3 essentials and give them a spin.  See what a fully covered Prowler can do, etc.

Enemy of the State is the only event that gets this right.  You only have to play that node once.  It's fantastic in that way.

It's just so frustrating to be sitting there trying to get through the node.  And players say "get good teamups!" but that shouldn't be the only way to make it palatable.  If you are forcing players to use a particular team, shouldn't that feel like an intentional choice?  Or at least be done quickly?

The way these are currently set up, they could even make characters seem worse to the average player when they are stuck trying to use them in bad teams.

Comments

  • Shintok17
    Shintok17 Posts: 620 Critical Contributor
    I beat it pretty normally. I have gone through worse.
  • JackTenrec
    JackTenrec Posts: 808 Critical Contributor
    They could at least buff 3* Doc Ock by making his passive fire multiple times based on the number of enemy tiles matched.  Line up that awesome match to get rid of three enemy tiles at once?  Here, kid, have a couple of wussy attack tiles.
  • Dragon_Nexus
    Dragon_Nexus Posts: 3,701 Chairperson of the Boards
    The match made a little sense against Luke Cage, but no sense at all against minions.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    I only play them once. They serve the purpose of reminding me who will be required during the event. Other than that I don't think about them.
  • TeamStewie
    TeamStewie Posts: 357 Mover and Shaker
    Well if you're going for placement every point counts. And 99% of the time the 3 required have little to no synergy. 
  • The rockett
    The rockett Posts: 2,016 Chairperson of the Boards
    I hope they listen to some of the suggestions. This is the worse node of the event when you have a bad team.  In fact, takes longer than the 5E node. This, as I have been saying for some
    time, should be a 1 clear and locking node OR remove the 2E and insert the 5E.  
  • Vins2
    Vins2 Posts: 183 Tile Toppler
    The match made a little sense against Luke Cage, but no sense at all against minions.
    At least Oc's passive works on goon countdowns.  Having Luke cage in that first sub slowed it down so much.  You just know his protect tile is gonna end up in a bottom corner.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    Well the lesson as usual is don't play for placement. Full clears without the loaner nodes gets top 50 easily, close to top 20? So I wouldn't expect them to make changes that cater just to the top 2% of the players.
    But using the 5E instead of the 2E would be cool tho.
  • BigSoftieFF
    BigSoftieFF Posts: 454 Mover and Shaker
    I absolutely hate the loaner nodes. Agree whole heartedly that not only does the team composition usually not mesh well together but there are many times it actually makes the characters feel terrible.
  • AlexR
    AlexR Posts: 427 Mover and Shaker
    I actually kinda liked this one since at least Prowler and Doc Ock had some synergy vs Luke Cage. There are weeks where the 3* and 4* share a bunch of active colours with zero synergy and at worst, are both super slow on top. All those weeks with Emma Frost as essential...

    But yeah, totally in favour of only playing those once. Or at least it should behave like the Shield Training loaner node-- not giving any points after you beat it, but replayable in case a casual player wants to try an essential out again that they don't have or something.
  • fmftint
    fmftint Posts: 3,653 Chairperson of the Boards
    I'm certain these nodes are the primary reason over 100 million match damage boosts have been purchased
  • AardvarkPepper
    AardvarkPepper Posts: 239 Tile Toppler
    So put up a feature request and try to get some support behind it, for a skip function for players that already have all three characters in the loaner node championed.

    One can argue from a business standpoint that loaner nodes introduce newer or uninformed players to characters they might not otherwise use or experience, and get them thinking about possible purchases.  But if a player already has a character championed, probably they don't need to familiarize themselves with the character, right?

    So then it comes down to cost of implementing the feature and any unfair advantage that developed rosters gain over undeveloped rosters.  To the first I can't say.  To the second, though, well you already have well-developed 4* rosters at SCL 4, and well-developed 5* rosters at SCL 7, so although there's a point there in theory, I don't think in practice it WOULD make much of a real difference (though of course if the feature were implemented there would be complaints so metrics should be taken ahead of time to support the hypothesis that a skip feature wouldn't change placement rewards).
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Like others said, most of the essential characters thrown together don't have good chemistry. But in the interest of fairness, they have to use some method to rotate the essentials so that most of the characters have a fair chance of getting covered.

    Making it a one clear node will do but keep the node opened, like the top node in Shield Training. The only thing is adjustment to the points needed for progression rewards. That's a question mark.