April 2017 Tuning Discussion - PRELIMINARY

[Sparton_LOTB]

1 - Could you elaborate further on possible changes to the prisoner?

In general, some kind of solution that involves the passive applying debuffs is likely the direction we will go, but we may try different ways of applying it to make the effect more impactful (considering it will at least have counters when it's a debuff). We're looking at our options and internally testing some possibilities to see what we can do with our current deadlines.

2 - Most of us are against Angel of Fear second nerf as well, please consider that too. (And please bring back Angel of Strife, he is gone)

The change to Angel of Fear is not a substantial change; as I noted earlier in the thread, he's going from effectively tied for best maxed out Attack in the game to being higher Attack than every character that isn't basically tied for highest Attack in the game (from approx 1750 to approx 1500 at 5 star level 100). We really are just trying to give other high-Attack-focused characters a bit more of an edge without power creeping everyone else above him.

3 - Skill Shards - I still think removable is the best option, but if not would you let us buy more then one a week with Iron Coins? Maybe less trooper points too?

We don't want to adjust the price or purchase restrictions for Skill Shards as they exist right now, but we do plan to have more options for being able to get them (such as features like Sacrifice sometimes giving them, or more events like the PVP one we recently ran).

4 -Any news on the self attack fix?

I haven't been saying too much with this because we're not confident we have a 100% fix for this yet. The issue currently has a fix applied for it and our QA is dedicating time to ensuring the fix functions as intended, but it's still uncommonly seen by us on the development team even when we're trying to make it happen.

Cool lots of good news! The fact you're re-considering Prisoner based on feedback is an encouraging sign, even if it's inevitable.

Thanks Sparton, it feels good to be heard... and even better to be considered 👍🏻

Thank you Sparton for your thoughtful response! I'm sure the majority of us here on the forums are glad that you are listening to us and forming your decisions based on our feedback.

While I have no doubt that some players will continue to find fault in the actions of the devs, it's quite easy to see how communication has greatly increased in the past few months. This is a welcome adjustment!

I can only respect your well though answer Sparton, it's not easy to be in your position right now I can imagine...
Thank you for your reconsideration on some parts of those nerfs, something obviously need to be done we all know & accept it at this point, it's a matter of amplitude I think.. Good to see you are listening & consider "adjustments"

Yes, great that you guys interact with us, can't praise that enough. Hope you guys nail this prisoner adjustment and make everybody ok with it.

Wow! Miss a day,miss alot!!! Very Nice...'nuf said!!!

Thanks for your patience and understanding as well! I am also happy that we can have this dialog to help advance the game in the best manner possible, even if yes, we may not agree all the time.

[Silentknight]

Thanks for your patience and understanding as well! I am also happy that we can have this dialog to help advance the game in the best manner possible, even if yes, we may not agree all the time.

Thank you!

[HomemLivre]

In general, some kind of solution that involves the passive applying debuffs is likely the direction we will go, but we may try different ways of applying it to make the effect more impactful (considering it will at least have counters when it's a debuff). We're looking at our options and internally testing some possibilities to see what we can do with our current deadlines.

What about change his basic attack if he will not be like you devs proposed? I see too many players complaining about his deserved nerf on the passive and just one or two talking about his attack.
He can simply transfer negative effects with 100% chance to a even invisible characters!!! WTH! Stun for two turns!!! WTH² Not saying that he help fuells the fury bar quickly and tank really nice.

All this complain about his passive (like you devs proposed) just looks like a "balance" that some players wants to remain the same.

[gmac]

Hi Sparton

If you could, just couple more questions.

1 - What happens when we cleanse the debuff on the Prisoner new passive? Do they start working again? Or are they gone? Let´s say I go with a Warrior Troll, how that affects him if the debuff triggers?

2 - Are yon considering applying it to every toon first round? Because this is the key issue. If so I assume people that have him will probably go the same say on offense, and that will restrain a lot of possibilities on defense (will need a cleanse toon in there).

3 - What should we do to with all those Iron Coins?

(I missed you Angel of Fear post, good that it is not a major nerf)

Cheers
Gmac

[CanyptianFit]

So I'm one of the ones without a prisoner.

When I go up against AoP, guess what I don't bring in a troll, a HH, or other passive toon, it requires(d) me to develop a broad list of toons that could win even if going second. I have a lot of diversity in my offensive team.

With the proposed AoP nerf, that diversity will diminish DRAMATICALLY. Today I probably rotate about 15 different toons on offense, depending on the opposing team.

Pretty much assume I'm going to have a troll if there are heavy hitters, and a HH/AD if there are high CC's toons in play.

I've said this before during my longer rant in Decembers adjustment (that was the tuning adjustment that made me go from a bystander on the forums to being more vocal) that we as a community will gravitate toward the toons /combos that give us the best chance to win. Freezefest, tauntfest, DM Gunner team from Hell...ultimate diversity isn't going to happen especially if you have different toons with different differentiated capabilities.

So you either try to level the playing field and take away the aura of the top tier toons, and take my desire from the game, OR you maintain the 5 and 4 star differentiation and those best combo's will, to probably a great extent, get replicated.

Natural selection.

My 2 cents, and can't state how appreciative I am that NF is engaging in this dialogue before taking action.

So adding my concern over the AoP nerf, officially I guess, amongst other things.

Cheers!

[Sparton_LOTB]

What about change his basic attack if he will not be like you devs proposed? I see too many players complaining about his deserved nerf on the passive and just one or two talking about his attack.
He can simply transfer negative effects with 100% chance to a even invisible characters!!! WTH! Stun for two turns!!! WTH² Not saying that he help fuells the fury bar quickly and tank really nice.

There is a bug with the fact that his transferring effect of his skill will transfer even onto characters which are vanished/immune, but that is a general issue we need to fix.

Other than that, we do not have any specific problems with the rest of his design. He has dangerous crowd control capabilities that you need to account for with your own crowd control effects or with cleansing, and his adjustments to his passive will reinforce that.

All this complain about his passive (like you devs proposed) just looks like a "balance" that some players wants to remain the same.

Obviously some players want it to stay the same, but some players also don't. Ultimately, after months of mulling it over and looking at what options we can execute on, we've found that there's no appropriate new character or effect we can make to counter a passive without doing more characters that counter passives (which invalidate so many other characters and makes the Prisoner less special), or make a character that specifically counters this one passive (which is incredibly narrow). We feel that adjusting his functionality so that there are other options and ways to counter his passive-blocking capabilities is the best way moving forward.

1 - What happens when we cleanse the debuff on the Prisoner new passive? Do they start working again? Or are they gone? Let´s say I go with a Warrior Troll, how that affects him if the debuff triggers?

Cleansing the debuff will make it as though that character has it's passive again. The passive won't make a start of combat effect occur (like the Warrior Troll shields), but it could help later (the Angel of Fear's First Blood would allow your first kill to give your team extra turns), or help immediately if it's a passive that does something continuously (such as Angel of Strife's Block).

2 - Are yon considering applying it to every toon first round? Because this is the key issue. If so I assume people that have him will probably go the same say on offense, and that will restrain a lot of possibilities on defense (will need a cleanse toon in there).

That is an option we're considering (it's becomes stopped by start-of-battle immunity, and some other passives become viable with Immunity or cleansing).

3 - What should we do to with all those Iron Coins?

Yeah, we don't really have much of a "release valve" purchase for people who've been doing a lot of battles each week, but we're hoping to periodically rotate in other limited time items (such as other, new talismans) and eventually fragments of Eternity Souls.

[Sparton_LOTB]

When I go up against AoP, guess what I don't bring in a troll, a HH, or other passive toon, it requires(d) me to develop a broad list of toons that could win even if going second. I have a lot of diversity in my offensive team.

With the proposed AoP nerf, that diversity will diminish DRAMATICALLY. Today I probably rotate about 15 different toons on offense, depending on the opposing team.

Pretty much assume I'm going to have a troll if there are heavy hitters, and a HH/AD if there are high CC's toons in play.

In all honesty, that is one of my biggest concerns, too. I used Angel of Pain before it was cool (and before Siege was adjusted to work at start of combat), but I noticed the exact opposite problem as you; as certain meta picks became more common (such as Warrior Troll), I found more often that I was picking him than not. It's been brought up before, but nerfing the Prisoner and not changing the Angel of Pain would change Angel of Pain from being the poor man's Prisoner to being the next utility character you bring on nearly every team.

If you're consistently 1 rounding enemies as you climb in PVP, he'll obviously have less versatility, but I think most people underestimate the value of guaranteed Accuracy Down (if taunted, he makes it so that taunter won't be taunting much next turn) and the value of shutting down 1 turn buffs (goodbye Void Shields and it's ilk).

[HomemLivre]

Thanks for you replay, Sparton. That was very clear. Hope you guys find a way to let the game balanced with this fix on the Prisoner, we need it.
Lots of players seek TRUE balance and we deserve this since the beta.

Cumps.

[Kraznoff]

I haven't been replying to specific comments in this thread for a bit, but I'd like to chime in on the reactions to the character tuning in broad strokes:

• Reception to changes to the Prisoner is fairly divisive (unsurprisingly), but it does appear that the general sentiment is that the proposed change is going too far. We are reviewing alternatives posted here and may change the adjustment when the tuning update goes live. That said, no character in PVP should feel like they're almost always someone you should use for every team (PVP attack or PVP defense), and no character should only have itself as a consistent counter, and that is clearly where he is right now.
• We do not want to go about situationally banning characters from certain game modes. This obviously comes with the drawback that characters occasionally necessitate changes to not be overpowered in particular game modes, but that is the direction we are taking. That said, we aren't going to round the edges off every popular character until usage rates are flat... we merely don't want certain characters to have substantially more usage than others, or for certain high-rarity characters to basically have no usage.
• We are not currently considering allowing the removal of skill shards from characters. Our stance continues to be that these are permanent, long term investments to specific characters, especially due to the nature of how they are earned, their increased availability as the game matures, and how they are assigned into skills. As the game evolves, some characters will become more or less valuable for a variety of factors, and direct character tuning is only one of them.
• We are reviewing the work it would take to change logic for PVP point calculations relative to other initiatives we have. That said, points gained when you win and lose are the values they are after accounting for sand recharge time, expected attack win percentage, expected defense win percentage, etc, so reducing losses in certain situations means we'd need to also make changes to how many points you win, or what the requirements are for divisions (otherwise, everyone would blow well past 2100 and then the VP requirements for divisions below Warlord will become largely meaningless). We do not expect that everyone will get rewards for the top divisions, and that many less-competitive players will be fighting just for daily challenges/iron coins, which continues to hold true.
• We are still looking at making adjustments to PVP matchmaking. That said, activity from the player base shows that a greater percentage of players are playing PVP, and more are competing for the higher divisions. Recent changes to matchmaking appear to have removed the most extreme cases where players were attacked very few times and able to rank highly, and we believe we can make further adjustments to further reduce discrepancies that are still reported.

The originally proposed Prisoner nerf DOES NOT go too far. Currently the Prisoner has the most powerful passive in the game, he has one of the most powerful basic attacks with the highest consistent damage I've seen AND a good chance at stunning an enemy for TWO turns, he has high enough defense/health that he's hard to kill depending on talismans, and his power move easily disables healers/revivers. There is literally not a single weak point to the Prisoner and that is why if you have him you will always use him. Even if his passive gets reduced to a chance to disable passives and can be blocked he will still be the best or one of the best characters. If his passive was completely removed he will have some of the highest damage, he will be able to stun for 2 turns, and he can disable healers/revivers. You've stated multiple times that your goal is to balance the characters enough so that there is no character you will always use if you have him. The original proposed nerf might satisfy that goal, but anything less and he will still be used 100% of the time.

Btw I've done a lot of complaining on these forums and I want to say I've seen steady improvement and am very happy with the direction this game has taken. Thanks.

[Liebhild]

Accuracy Down (if taunted, he makes it so that taunter won't be taunting much next turn) and the value of shutting down 1 turn buffs (goodbye Void Shields and it's ilk).

Then there is a bug also, a SSD, blinded and Accuracy Down, very often is taunting my whole team...