March 22nd 2017 Update Discussion

[Frost]

Got attacked 30 times since update. Same names over and over.

[Jofer16]

As Nicko has reiterated many times, we all just want it to be fair for everyone and it should be. The solution is the real dilemma.

But that's the problem, it CANT be fair, it's not a single purchase game, like a console. It's a free app that lives and breathes off in app purchases. People that spend money need to be rewarded or the ship would sink. I've played at least a half dozen other big revenue apps and the complaints resonate throughout, the less fortunate always complain about fairness. Only the spenders or the extremely lucky sons of rng get a taste of the top meta. If it wasn't taunt/stun, etc it would be something else. It's the nature of the beast.

[Sparton_LOTB]

Possesed rockets warior do not have an extra skill lvl as stated in tuning

Hm, not sure what's going on here. I'll look into that.

What's up with the Explosive Talismans? I still have a lot of them from last year and they were the first talis that I had on level 50. The button is gone and they should be on when you make a perfect hit. But I didn't see this so far.
Someone has experience with them?
Btw, I was happy to see that they could become useful. The same goes for the Thorn talismans.

Explosive Talismans got a rework in advance of their re-debut in the Brave New World, since we pulled them from dropping normally for not being highy desirable and found this to be an interesting new function for them to do relative to other augments.

Are there any plans to bring back Guard Talisman? I have only one of the them and could need two more.

Those will also be returning in the Brave New World.

the only downside with this is that many things are still causing trouble and they are well known for a long time.

the pointsysystem in PVP is one of them. it'S so frustrating to win 98% of fights and still cannot go further than 1900 points
with the natural refills. this is known since release of pvp and still no changes, even this should be really easy to fix.
just extend the reduced pointloss from 1700 to 2300 or 2100 points and things will be in order. matchmaking fix won't change anything here.

i'm pretty covinced that people will not spend ironite in longterm if they are frustrated because they lost 300 points over night.
this is too much of a sissyphos work, so many will give up and play for coins only like myself. people will spend more if they enjoy the feature and see progress. atm it's a negative motivation
to spend ironite to compensate for the daily losses- a more positive appproach would be better (spending because of gaining more points, higher ranks and thus more iron coins)

With regards to climbing to the higher divisions (where getting to 2100 matters), we're monitoring the rise in average/minimum VP that is needed to reach the highest divisions (rank 100 and higher and rank 250 and higher). Last week obviously gave us some unnatural data (we promoted way more engagement, so things inflated), but so far peoples points for reaching the minimums for the Warlord divisions has risen each week.

Ultimately, your actual VP amount starts to mean less as you get to the higher divisions, where your VP relative to others (ie your rank) is what matters, and we're trending to the point where that's starting to naturally occur at the VP threshold where Warlord III becomes achievable. If we notice that we're no longer trending towards people around rank 250 reaching the 2100 requirement for Warlord III, we'll make adjustments, but right now it looks like it's trending in that direction for that portion of the leaderboard.

We also expect that many people will just play for the iron coins, and we start to flatten out how much more iron coins you get per battle as you get to the higher divisions (to limit the "rich get richer" effect of people already playing lots of PVP to get to the top divisions), so we feel that motivation should taper off at around the same place as it becomes hard to get to Warlord III.

will not talk about balance, because OPness of prisoner, siege, grim reaper and gunner CR. they are all well known, and the talisman are not working as a longterm solution, even if they are very usefull sometimes.

Yeah, we on the development team have definitely been staying on top of the discussions happening here on the forums (and elsewhere), and we're continuing to work on iterating and adding to the game to help encourage more diversity. We definitely recognize that the Shell/Immunity talismans have helped to some degree, but will probably rotate those out somewhat soon to try something else (we will announce when they'll be available for only 1 more week).

Last update just destroyed PVP for me!!
I was barely at 1600 points before the update with opponents at the same lvl as me and with almost equal teams. Now after 20 refreshes i only get 100lvl opponents with beast teams that kill me in the first round.
I only won 2 matches because i went first and i was able to stun the whole opponent team. Also i am getting the same number of attacks as before plus even more cause everyone revenged the weak guy and offcourse i lost all the matches, so basically PVP is over for me.

Could you message me your username (with the numbers)? I'd like to be able to investigate your account on the leaderboard to see if there's something happening to you that's different from what we're expecting.

Anyways, someone mentioned about taunt after the update ... yes, it is ridiculous now. After few fights in a row where I can hit the AI one or two times per whole battle I just don't want to continue playing another one. This is just not fun at all.
Devs, are you planning to do anything with cc balance? Stop to allow stun/freeze/taunt more than one toon per hit. Simply - stun/freeze/taunt should be possible to apply only to selected target not to whole bloody team!

We don't have anything specifically prepared, but we are continuing to monitor the situation and the communities ability to adapt. Many people have found successful responses to heavy CC in various flavours by employing different character and talisman compositions (thought of trying something like Run to the Hills Eddie?), which is indeed one of the main goals of PVP, but we do plan on doing more with both tuning and adding new characters and talismans to give players more options.

And, I might get some flack for this but I'm still of the mind that PvP is intentionally flawed.. imho.. it's proven it favors Prisoner teams, at least advantage wise. Also seems that Void effect is now an issue some teams complain about having to adjust to (not all, but some have and I say that to make this point...) Devs are quick to speak about accommodating those complaints/concerns but won't address the overwhelming majorities concerns in Prisoner discussions. Solutions only seem to strengthen the issue.

We still have the Prisoner in mind... we just want to be very careful to not nerf him into obsolescence, and we're still working on getting tech in place to allow us to move him into a place where we feel he still has an awesome and unique edge while not being as dominant. The pre-BNW release of Shell and Immunity talismans have worked in some ways, but obviously were not a silver bullet.

Just happened again.

[rekt]

Soooo much fun.

What team did you bring in to fight that? It looks like a party healer with Immunity Talismans (Sentinel Allied Soldier, Gunner Undead Soldier) would erase the opponents first turn advantage and let you swing back, and that in conjunction with strong Warriors (Warrior Pyro Soldier, Warrior Golden Son, The Nomad) would make short work of the Mummy Eddie. It'll still be risky if the battle drags on since you don't have an answer for the Troll shields (Sentinel Allied Soldier could help decimate one enemy character if you go first, slightly), but the defense team doesn't look to have that much offensive pressure other than the Gunner Golden Son and the Warrior Troll.

---

On the subject of the matchmaking changes, it looks like there's maybe still some rough edges that might need more work which a clean week of only the new matchmaking may not solve, but overall the impact looks right for some people at least. Thanks to everyone for posting your experiences (good or ill) to help us confirm if the resulting data is matching what players are experiencing.

Just keep in mind that the matchmaking is still trying to prioritize people around your rank, but it is now also trying to prioritize people who've been attacking more than they've been attacked. That's probably why you're seeing some "new" names repeatedly; the system is trying to self correct those with disproportionate attack:defense ratios. It's one of those things which'll hopefully be much more fair and spread out next week when everyone's starting the week under these new matchmaking parameters.

[Browno]

Did ssd skill brace get changed? It now gives mr and def boost as well as the heal shield

[Nicko]

Also seems that Void effect is now an issue some teams complain about having to adjust to .

I brought up the Void Shields and face them all the time without a problem.

And that's the issue. I know how to manage them. The AI doesn't. So anything other than a true damage character on your defense can bring down the whole team.

Ian said there are many ways to manage Void shields. On offense I absolutely agree. But on defense the only reliable way I know is to limit my defense to a few characters that do true damage. And that's a shame because some of us have pretty deep rosters.

It's not a huge deal and Kaz has already responded. In the meantime I'll continue to use them as is - they certainly make offense easier...

[Sparton_LOTB]

Did ssd skill brace get changed? It now gives mr and def boost as well as the heal shield

Hm, Brace has done that for as long as I can remember.

[mjmxiii]

I brought up the Void Shields and face them all the time without a problem.

And that's the issue. I know how to manage them. The AI doesn't. So anything other than a true damage character on your defense can bring down the whole team.

Ian said there are many ways to manage Void shields. On offense I absolutely agree. But on defense the only reliable way I know is to limit my defense to a few characters that do true damage. And that's a shame because some of us have pretty deep rosters.

It's not a huge deal and Kaz has already responded. In the meantime I'll continue to use them as is - they certainly make offense easier...

Totally understand and agree with you on all said brutha, just noticed devs seemed quick to offer a solution to that but seemed to be ignoring (even if they aren't) issues like Prisoner. Not attacking you or anyone by any stretch of the imagination. You're one of my troopers and a strong voice on the forum. When you speak, everyone listens (or *write/reads).

Hopefully devs will not NerF the Prisoner as he is one of the coolest chars in the game. With my luck, he'd drop for me the day after they did. That said it is extremely unbalanced in respect to having and not having this char or a suitable and true counter for him other than himself. I've asked repeatedly that the devs leave him alone and find other ways to counter his passive... (its all in the parentheses)

I use Void talismans almost exclusively and can confirm all concerns (and counters) even though any potential reduction in the proc rate or damage reflection could render them useless as has been the case with other talismans. Again, the solution seems to be the real dilemma here. It's impossible to fix one thing and keep everyone happy when that fix ruins something else.

Cheers guys, thought I might take some flack but I'm glad we're all respectful about our opinions. Says a lot about the community.
🤘

[Pangolim]

Ascencion Talisman bug...Transformed in Warp Talisman :/
-Increaces Special by 25% of MR.

[Frost]

What team did you bring in to fight that? It looks like a party healer with Immunity Talismans (Sentinel Allied Soldier, Gunner Undead Soldier) would erase the opponents first turn advantage and let you swing back, and that in conjunction with strong Warriors (Warrior Pyro Soldier, Warrior Golden Son, The Nomad) would make short work of the Mummy Eddie. It'll still be risky if the battle drags on since you don't have an answer for the Troll shields (Sentinel Allied Soldier could help decimate one enemy character if you go first, slightly), but the defense team doesn't look to have that much offensive pressure other than the Gunner Golden Son and the Warrior Troll.

Blue Bat/Demon Dog

[rekt]

You failed the time you allowed the talisman effects be denied by Siege, and failed even harder when you put immunity yellow instead of green.

[gmac]

Guys,

I just played a little tonight.

All Prisoners teams now have immunity talismans, and everything seems to trigger more often.

And the problem sure is about void shields!!! (hahahahahahah)

I'm out, going to play something else this weekend.

Good luck and have fun everybody.

Cheers
Gmac

(troopers, you'll get your badges of course)